Tuesday, March 9th, 2004

MUST-READ

Evelyn McDonnell & Nicole White expose Miami and Miami Beach police department efforts to profile rappers.

Here’s a taste:

“Officers say they have photographed rappers as they arrived at Miami International Airport. They stake out hotels, nightclubs and video shoots. They consult a six-inch-thick black binder of every rapper and member of his or her group with an arrest record in the state of New York. The binder begins with a photo and rap sheet of Grammy-nominated rapper 50 Cent. It ends with Ja Rule. ”

Also, today is the anniversary of Biggie’s passing. My man Cheo Hodari Coker has penned what will probably be the final word on Biggie’s life and death, and it hits the stands today.

posted by @ 12:57 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, March 8th, 2004

THE CASE FOR THE SHIELD

Oh, so much easier than Nader. First, here’s Oliver’s, uh, right-on-the-money take.

I’m a fan of police procedurals, probably owing to the fact that I grew up around detectives and the HPD, and I don’t know of any TV show that’s captured the politics of policing quite like The Shield has.

Oliver’s spoken about the acting and the characters a bit–to which I’d only add that the show’s take on masculinity is as nuanced as anything since, say, Scorcese’s “Raging Bull” and “Good Fellas”.

No Lethal Weapon/Law and Order hey-buddy stuff here. Aside from Mackey, whose complexity alone should set off a flotilla of cultural-studies readings, there’s Shane’s father-adoration of Mackey, Dutch’s desperate loneliness and self-loathing, Aceveda’s sense of destiny and entitlement, and Julien’s complicated black gay male denial. In itself, this makes The Shield one of the most eye-opening shows ever to hit a network.

The series also has a lot to say about 21st century policing. When it debuted, the model for the Strike Team (which remains the driving narrative force of the show) was clearly Rampart Divisions’s sick corrupt CRASH unit. Farmington is clearly a composite of the Pico-Union/Westlake ‘hood around Macarthur Park.

Aceveda, a Chicano, has city-council ambitions–after all, his district has become largely Latino in the last decade–so he must deal directly with the tides of pressures exerted from above. This may take the form of an independent audit, pressure to add a person of color to the Strike Team, and most importantly, Mackey and Aceveda’s show-to-show haggling over what the new price of corruption will be.

The upshot is that Aceveda leaves Mackey largely autonomous if he can deliver high-profile or high-quantity busts. Mackey works the interstices of official policy, between the statistical reports that the politicians demand and the constantly changing, always profitable forms of criminal (often ethnic) enterprise being developed on the street. Honorable, ethical cops like Claudette Wyms are marginalized in this kind of a system.

This is exactly what police reform opponents have been talking about for years. No one will deny that police are often outgunned and outflanked. The potential for corruption erupts at every corner. But the solution to corruption is to reform a culture that continually rewards the gamers. Time and again, it’s been shown that the ultimate result of that style of command is the gangsterization of policing itself.

In any case, answers are not simple. Here is where The Shield becomes timeless. Since the rise of television, LAPD has been the epitome of the complexities and contradictions of modern policing, and indeed its representations–from Dragnet on through–reflect the changing generational consensus about such policing.

(An aside: it would be interesting to see someone develop a show based on the New Orleans police department…)

The Shield captures the good, and the mostly bad and ugly, without blinking sentimentality, what we want and need these days. Forget Starsky and Hutch. It’s all about Wyms and Mackey this spring. Check it out tomorrow.

posted by @ 10:31 am | 0 Comments

Monday, March 8th, 2004

THE CASE FOR RALPH

So great is the urgency to burn Bush, that a new coalition of the pissed-off has begun: Nader haters. In Brooklyn, Ian asks, “Why?” Uptown, Hertzberg begs, “Leave”.

But let’s be real. If the left is to have any chance of flipping Kerry’s flops, there has to be a credible candidate pulling him towards all the Edwards populists, Deaniac warriors, and Kucinich peaceniks. I don’t think Nader will be any better on race than he’s been in the past. In every other instance, Nader may at least help keep Kerry honest, even if nothing is going to challenge the DLC’s “moderate” grip on the party any time soon. So bring Nader on, please.

Meanwhile, I’m sort of warming to cold cold Kerry. More this week.

posted by @ 8:05 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, March 4th, 2004

Proof again that great music inspires lots of great writing: Johnny Ray Huston on Arthur Russell.

posted by @ 7:21 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004

LOCAL GIRLS ROCK, PART 2

A great year for Pinay divas from Hawai’i, yeah? Ho brah, my heart beats with pride. Give it up for Maryknoll girl, Jasmine Trias. Also glad to hear our favorite, Jennifer Hudson, will be back next week in the Wild Card competition.

So yeah I know an election went on yesterday. But who really cares about Kerry? As opposed to beating Bush? Give me a week to get over my cynicism.

If you’re in Urbana/Champaign this weekend, holla.

Next week: More Idol, and the return of The Shield.

One of these days, much less TV and much more editing.

posted by @ 9:20 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Special issue of Boldtype! , an email newsletter on books, featuring music stuff—including Philip Sherburne on Love Saves The Day, my ever-Blazin’ Julianne Shepherd on my man, Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, Melissa Maerz, Ira Robbins, other great books and great critics, and your boy on Michael Thelwell’s The Harder They Come.

posted by @ 1:53 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004

A good piece by James Best on Andre 3000 and Jay-Z, in, of all places, the East Bay Express, the New Times rag that pays Matt King far too much money and all its other staffers far too little. (Rrrrrrrrrr-ah!) James Best did the great piece last year on John Walker Lindh’s move from hip-hop to the Taliban.

posted by @ 6:05 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004

Sorry about taking down the excerpt from the Jamaica chapter yall but I get back (hopefully) final edits from SMP today and I was feeling all self-conscious and shit. Plus, nobody wants to read long posts that aren’t off-the-chain rants anyway.

More importantly, it’s Super Tuesday. Vote early and vote Kucinich yall, the only candidate who has taken young people of color seriously.

posted by @ 8:18 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004

Where do I send my check for the SFJ fan club? Here he is on Arthur Russell in The New Yorker. What? The New Yorker. (Thanks to Matos W.K for the link.

posted by @ 8:10 am | 0 Comments

Monday, March 1st, 2004

Blog post of the week!

posted by @ 9:21 pm | 0 Comments



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