Sen. Joe Lieberman is the Fredo of the Democratic Family. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is from Nevada. He should take Lieberman out for a fishing trip on Lake Mead. I'm just sayin...
Just over a month ago, I posted the video of “Read a Book” by poet, activist and not-a-rapper Bomani “D’Mite” Armah. The video has been blowing up on YouTube (over 800,000 views) and BET (debuted on July 20 and is one of the few BET airings to make me proud). Tomorrow, Saturday September 1, Bomani will be on CNN at 10:30pm, and the video will hit BET’s 106 & Park again on Tuesday September 4. You can vote for the video to be number 1.
“Read a Book” has been garnering much-deservedpraise and mainstream attention for the biting satire that it is, shining light on the sadly misplaced priorities of black popular culture, especially in pop rap music. The song is average length at just under three minutes, but the lyrics basically come down to 10 lines (warning, some explicit language)
Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh’fuckin book!
Not a sports page (what) not a magazine (who)
But a book nigga, a fuckin book nigga (YEAHHH~!)
Raise yo’ kids, raise yo’ kids, raise yo’ God damn kids
Your body needs water - so DRINK THAT SHIT
Buy some land, buy some land (what) FUCK SPINNIN RIMS
Brush yo’ teeth, brush yo’ teeth, brush yo’ God damn teeth
Wear deodorant nigga, wear deodorant nigga
It’s called Speed Stick (bitch) it’s not expensive (bitch)
Read a book! Read a book! Read a muh’fuckin book!
Yes there is explicit language and lotsa booty shakin in the video, but satirists must use the tools and techniques employed by the subject of their satire. Sure we could listen to another angry lecture from Bill Cosby, or we could hear, in these 10 short lines to a catchy beat, Bomani challenge rap artists and the consuming public to use our resources in a more reasonable fashion. Seriously? “Buy some land?” When is the last time you heard a black leader talk about the importance of real wealth accumulation? How many preachers are advising their flock to do more than contribute to his Cadillac fund? (I know I’m generalizing but I’m just sayin).
I get the message in the video, and I know my friends do as well, but poor Reverend Jackson and the folks over at Rainbow PUSH are unsurprisingly out of touch. Rather than praising the video for its effort to challenge the pop cultural images that are literally killing black America by supporting unhealthy eating, unsustainable consumption and a threatening image that tightens the trigger finger on an already gun-happy, black-bashing law enforcement community, Jackson & Co went out of their way to condemn the video.
CHICAGO and ATLANTA (August 23, 2007) The following is a statement released on behalf of Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, from Attorney Janice Mathis, Vice President and Executive Director of Peachtree Street Project, Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Mathis’s commentary comes after the release of a rap video, “Read a Book” on YouTube and BET. If Benjamin E. Mayes challenged us to reach for the stars, the not-a-rapper video “Read a Book” on YouTube takes us into the abyss. Billed as a satirical look at popular culture, a viewer is left with the distinct impression that nothing matters, that life is futile, knowledge fruitless, manners meaningless.
Wrong!
A common definition of satire is witty language used to convey insults or scorn. The video is plenteously scornful and insulting, but not of crassness. The video insults reading, personal hygiene, family values and frugality. “Read a Book” heaps scorn on positive values and (un)intentionally celebrates ignorance. The narrator is obviously illiterate, unkempt and disrespectful. So who takes his advice seriously?
Apparently, Rainbow PUSH does. How do you go about giving a definition of satire and then interpret art literally, all in the same paragraph? That takes a special kind of incompetence for which the word “incompetence” does not suffice.
The best Hip-hop is clever, with allusions to politics, history, great music and literature. Part of the fun is finding the hidden meaning.
…which you clearly did not do!
I was prepared to forgive the crude language and lack of creativity if there was as message encouraging viewers to read and otherwise conduct themselves responsibly. I was disappointed. The simplistic repetitive rhyme and tune made it clear that the creator had not taken his own advice, i.e. to Read a Book.
Uh, the title of the song is READ. A. BOOK. That was the point. Do we really need to spell it out? Maybe Bomani can drop a track called R - E - A - D A B - O - O - K and deliver it personally to Jackson.
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is a progressive organization protecting, defending and expanding civil rights to improve economic and educational opportunity. The organization is headquartered at 930 E. 50th St. in Chicago. For more information about the RainbowPUSH Coalition, please visit the organization’s website, www.rainbowpush.org or telephone (773) 373-3366. To get additional information, please call the number listed above.
That’s it. No more press releases from Rainbow PUSH. We have songs out there like “A Bay Bay” and you’re gonna focus on the one hip hop song that actually says something??You have just disqualified yourself from speaking on behalf of anyone. I cannot believe that the people who were there during the Civil Rights Movement, when poets and actors and musicians played such a vital role in opening the public’s eyes and challenging the system are so blind to the same role being played by today’s artist/activists.
It’s possible, of course, that Rainbow PUSH’s press release was itself a work of satire, making fun of an increasingly out of touch and irrelevant generation of has-been Civil Rights leaders.
Originally published in Baratunde’s bi-weekly GOODCRIMETHINK column in the August 29, 2007 edition of Boston’s Weekly Dig
Dear Boston,
This is the hardest (and first) letter I’ve ever had to write to you. I’d like to think I could tell you anything by now. I’d like to believe that you’d listen, but I know better because I know you. We all have our own coping mechanisms. You’ve got a wicked temper, and when you get angry, you tend to drink heavily and burn cars and finance unstable infrastructure projects.
For that reason, you might want to sit down. I’ve got something to tell you, and you may not like it. Here goes: For the past few years, I’ve been seeing other cities.
At the time, I told you they were just business trips, and at first they were: a festival in Austin, a comedy gig in Chicago. Still, things have gotten serious with one of them. We stay up late all the time, sometimes just talking about my dreams. She gives me more comedy and writing opportunities. She says I’m not really living unless I spend every day under threat of a dirty bomb explosion.
I’m moving in with New York.
Don’t try to change my mind. My bags are packed, I have a place to stay and I’ve already changed my network on Facebook. Before you go canceling another round of elections, I should make it clear that I have no intention of supporting the Yankees. I didn’t care about baseball in Boston, and I damn sure won’t start in New York. My rule has always been, if it makes bitter Bostonians happy, I’m for it. So, go Sox!
Boston, we’ve been together for a long time-12 years. We never talked about our “future” or raising a family, but I know you assumed we were headed there. You’ve got to understand, though, that a person gets tired of going to bed in the same town night after night, year after year. It’s not you, it’s me.
However, this doesn’t have to be a goodbye letter. I refuse to simply throw away all that we’ve built together. I’ll visit you often, and I’ll stalk you online at Universal Hub and the Dig’s new ‘website. I’ll continue to recommend you to drunk high school students who are looking forward to becoming drunk college students.
And of course, if you’ll let me, I’ll continue to write for the Dig.
The timing of my announcement is probably rough for you, falling just before the annual Running of the Rental Trucks from August 31 to September 1, but you’ll do just fine without me.
My one unrealized Boston dream was to be present when some government inspector finally shut down the U-Haul in Central Square, where the employees’ idea of customer service is to lift a ringing phone six inches and slam it right back down on the receiver. I know New York can be a brutal bitch, but I’ve still never seen something as cold as what goes down in that dream-crusher of a retail operation at 844 Main Street.
Oh, and tell Somerville: Nice job on giving me a parking ticket my last day in town. I get it. Ranting about peak oil while owning an SUV cannot go unpunished. Justice was served.
BARATUNDE THURSTON IS A COMEDIAN AND AUTHOR LIVING IN … OH, WE CAN’T BEAR TO SAY. HIS COLUMN RUNS BIWEEKLY. CAN WE STILL BE FRIENDS WITH BARATUNDE.COM?
I’ve made a habit of hating on MySpace and that other social network that shall not be named in this post. Yesterday, MySpace upped the ante on its suckiness by making it that much harder for me to reply to emails there. I received a message. I pressed reply, and this is what I got:
What does that even say? I failed the image verification three times.Is this really the problem, people replying to their friends with SPAM? So, a friend writes me a message about collaborating on some comedy project, and I use that opportunity to be like, “Hey, Baron Vaughn, you want some Vi0gra and Cial1s!??!”
“Good news, good news!” (said in the voice of Boss Hog for those who know what’s up). Life’s been kind of blurry lately. Let me try to put some things in focus for this here edition.
Artist Cross-Promotion: Mieka Pauley
On a regular basis, I try to promote folks in my life who are doing big things. Mieka Pauley is one of them. This singer/songwriter is finishing up her next album, and you can pre-order it over here. She’s also doing a FREE concert in NYC tonight at 5pm. Yes, there is free entertainment in New York that doesn’t involve hustlers on the subway. I will be there, so my NYC people should roll through, hear some great music and catch up.
Rockwood Music Hall - 5pm - FREE
Tuesday Aug 28
196 Allen Street
New York City 10002
212.477.4155
between E. Houston and Stanton
take the F and V subway to 2nd ave NPR, Huffington Post and Black Weblog Awards, Oh My!
Between the Dig column, my blog and hate letters to Rudy Giuliani, I’ve been writing my butt off. Sleep has been in short supply, but how can you sleep when the president finally acknowledges that Iraq is just like Vietnam. I fired off a piece for Huffington Post last Friday, and it hit the front page of the site! You know you want to read something titled, “iraq is to vietnam as dubya is to wtf!?!?” It’s got over 100 comments on Huff Post, and is one of my favorite things I’ve written in a while.
Oooh, and this is just flattering. I’m a finalist for the Black Blogger Achievement Award. Not sure what I win, but winning things is nice, so help push me to the top, and vote in that bad boy.
Vegas, Baby
New York is a great place to be, but it’s about 10 times more stressful than Boston. I spent the weekend chillin out in Vegas with some of my boyz, and I know that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but I assure you the most immoral thing I did was shop at Walmart. I just can’t feel clean after that.
That’s about it for now. I’m kind of at war with Facebook and all these social network sites that are bleeding me for time and attention. Stay tuned for some cool new stuff on baratunde.com to help us all remain a happy Internet-mediated family
A few weeks ago, I wrote a comprehensive, sometime scathing critique of Facebook and its shortcomings (it’s worth a read, though long, and builds the basis for this current post). Despite that review, I was still positive on Facebook vs. MySpace and could live with its deficiencies while they sorted things out. I have now changed my mind. Facebook just cost me access to 639 fans/leads/potential customers, and I am partly to blame for trusting someone else to manage my business.
As I pointed out in my previous post, I use Facebook in the same way I use MySpace: a bit of personal communication but mostly artist-to-audience communication in the form of announcements, videos, calendar, etc. Because Facebook does not let you send messages to all or groups of your friends (I have 944 of them) and because I wanted to give people an explicit choice to receive such messages, I created a Facebook Group. I called it “GLOBAL Fans of Comedian, Author & Vigilante Pundit, Baratunde Thurston.” The “GLOBAL” was because the first fbook group I created was limited to the Harvard network, and Facebook’s staff said they could not change it once set that way. It’s also because I will be taking over the world shortly.
Over time, this group grew in size to nearly match the size of my email list. In fact, with the growth of these social networks, I noticed fewer and fewer people signing up for the email list at all. I used the group mostly to send my NewsPhlash email messages to group members, three or four times per month at most. It helped get people out to shows, announce cool accomplishments and get feedback from people on ideas. The Facebook group complemented my other “channels” if you will, which include
My regular email list
MySpace friends
Blog/Podcast and associated RSS feeds
Upcoming calendar and Twitter
Friendster decommissioned summer 1996 due to lameness
My routine had been that every time I wrote up a NewsPhlash I would send it out via email, blog post, MySpace bulletin, MySpace blog, Twitter announcement and the Facebook group. As more people joined Facebook or began to use it more (especially when they opened it beyond students), I got a higher response to my posts from Facebook users than from email or MySpace. I have always been annoyed at this needlessly, inefficient cross-posting arrangement, but other social media types I respect insisted that you have to do it. It’s one of the reasons I prefer blip.tv to manage my podcasts cause they do a lot of the cross-posting for you, especially to MySpace, and anything that keeps me from logging into that design nightmare is a good thing.
On August 16th, a big part of Facebook died to me. I tried to send out my latest NewsPhlash to the group. It included announcements of an upcoming NPR appearance I wanted folks to check out, plus links to a recent column and a photo of me with Barack Obama. Exciting ish! Sadly, Facebook did not care how exciting it was. My group message went only to me. I have tried over 50 times since then to send out a group message to no avail. I got into software testing mode and tried from five browsers — three on my Mac and two under Windows. Nothing.
I wrote Facebook, describing the problem. One day later, August 17, they wrote back:
We are aware of the problem that you described and hope to resolve it as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Between then and today, I had tried repeatedly testing the message feature. Nothing. So today I got ahold of a an anonymous source at Facebook. This person was kind enough to talk to me about some of what’s going on. Out of respect for this person, I’m gonna keep the exchange anonymous and merely summarize many of the points we discussed
Point 1. Facebook is nervous about groups using the messaging system for SPAM and has some “limits” set up.
SPAM? That’s why I created the group in the first place — to give people an explicit opt-in to my messages. Unlike actual SPAM, people can leave my group at any time. The message source is transparent. If people feel they are being spammed by their groups, they should leave. I wrote back explaining my frustration and thanking the person for taking the time to be in touch with me. Always thank people for their time yall, even if they disappoint you! I basically said I had been building up my group over months only to have it broken. The response was quite revealing. Again, summarizing some points.
Point 2. People sign up for Facebook assuming we’re like MySpace, and we’re not. We’re a very different kind of service.
Ok, tell that to your investors and the media and your users and the public and Microsoft and Yahoo who thought they were trying to buy something a lot like MySpace for $1 billion or more. If people sign up for your service expecting something, either provide it or make it clear to those people that they won’t find what they’re looking for. Don’t get folks all invested then pull the rug out and say, “we don’t support that.” As for being a “very different” kind of service, I’m not so sure. Different, yes. “Very” different? Meh. More summary:
Point 3. Facebook is focused on “connecting real people with the people they know.” Groups were designed for this, but users re-purposed them for things like promotion. We don’t want to do the MySpace thing in the area of promotion. We think we can do it better.
I can partially respect that. Facebook does get that users will build whatever they want and can with your tools but is not comfortable with that. Again, there is this point of not being MySpace, and I don’t fully get it. Maybe they want less noise than the MySpace system which overwhelms me with event invites and grotesque HTML comments all over my profile. Man, it’s good that Facebook’s pleasant environment doesn’t overwhelm me with meaningless communication like zombie bites or friend comparisons.
Again, I gotta give it up to this person for a very professional and empathetic tone. I actually got screamed on by another Facebook engineer who was upset at how I tagged a video and, rather than discuss it with me, bitched about me behind my back to a friend. Good to know there are mature, thoughtful people at the company. Sad to know that the company is being so rigid about how people use a tool.
Through continued correspondence I discovered that Facebook says it sets a limit for group messaging. Based on my experience, this limit must be around 500 or 600 people, but perhaps it’s a bit different for different users. This, of course, doesn’t apply to sponsored groups like “Apple Students” with 400,000+ members, but Apple is paying for the privilege. Me? I’m not spending any money except on silly $1 gifts. All I’m doing is being an active node in the network and increasing its value by providing valuable, ad-monetizeable metadata about myself and my friends. All I’m doing is being Facebook, but what do I know?
This is all very troubling. I invested a lot into Facebook, but I’ve discovered, painfully, that Facebook doesn’t value me nearly as much as I’d hoped. I took one of my most important assets, my relationship with my fans, and allowed Facebook to mediate a large portion of it. Sure, I still have my email list and blog subscribers and my pedophiliac MySpace friends, but the loss of access to my Facebook group will be felt. Facebook users are still largely college folks, and that’s one of the few groups that will actually pay me to perform.
Meanwhile, I have to come up with a way to patch this hole. Unlike an email list, I cannot simply load my Facebook friends into another system as I would if I moved from Topica to Constant Contact. There is no Internet standard for a “Facebook user” like there is for an email address, and that’s one fatal flaw in the system for anyone who plans to outlive Facebook.
At least Facebook and MySpace have not been my end-all, be-all web presence like some folks I know. This has served as a wake-up call for me and hopefully others. Build and own your online presence. I knew this when I registered baratunde.com way back in 1998 and began managing my own email. I got a bit lazier in recent years, but I’m glad I still have my Baratunde-controlled universe to fall back on. Too bad I can’t message my Facebook group and tell them about it.
Epilogue - My Plan of Action
I cannot afford to wait for Facebook to fix my group messaging, and even if they fixed it sooner, I no longer trust the service with such valuable information. I will keep my Facebook account, but I have closed my Facebook group to new members (what’s the point if I can’t communicate with them?) and will be sending them individual Facebook messages asking them to follow me in some other, more open, portable, non-hostage-taking way. I’ll be adding forums to my own site and encouraging people to follow me with RSS. This will take a lot of time, but it’s worth it. Contracting out major parts of your business has a huge long term cost, though on paper it looks more economical. I think we’ve all learned this lesson.
It’s sad, I had fun making people random officers in my group with such titles as “Dirty South Regional Enforcer of the Family Name” and “Awkward Turtle Whisperer.” I had hoped to eventually make 50 people officers, but Facebook has an officer limit. Nice. More artificial limits on my creativity.
I wish it were as simple as saying, “see Baratunde, that’s what you get for believing in Facebook,” but it is not that simple. I didn’t just “believe” in Facebook. This was not a faith-based decision. I used it because that’s where the people are. I stopped using Friendster because the people left. The “Internet” has all sorts of more open tools I could use to do what I was doing with Facebook, but millions of people have chosen Facebook instead. It seemed foolish to ignore that. Will people show up just to see me without having their friends, photos and Zombie bites one glance away? Facebook has become to the Internet what RSS readers are to the blogosphere. As I mentioned in a comment on my previous Facebook post:
…no matter how open a system I build/take advantage of, it is worthless if no one is there to use it. I don’t use facebook for fun. I do it because the people I want to communicate with are there, and they are not willing to work with me right now to cobble together the equivalent of an open social network / event manager / messaging platform / internet application storefront / discussion board. Yes it is true that I could individually manage all those pieces, but I guarantee you, only a handful of the people I’m trying to reach would follow me.
I suppose it is time to find out.
You can follow Baratunde’s musings, show schedule, videos and more at www.baratunde.com, and he promises not to hold you hostage.
On a pretty regular basis I try to promote the activism and artistry of fellow travelers. Right now, I want to do a promo for singer/songwriter Mieka Pauley, who I’ve known since she was a busker in Harvard Square and sang for tips in Starbucks. Mieka’s doing a free concert this Tuesday August 28 as a preview for her new album, Elijah Drop Your Gun
5pm FREE 5pm FREE
Rockwood Music Hall
196 Allen Street
New York City 10002
212.477.4155
between E. Houston and Stanton
take the F and V subway to 2nd ave
On a semi-related note, a fan of Mieka’s recorded this video of her performing “We’re All Gonna Die” at a show last night. I doubt she’ll be playing this at Rockwood, but it’s a damn cool song and a nice video too, so get a preview of the preview right here.
Wow this is cool. So the Black Weblog Awards are happening, and yours truly is a finalist. Voting ends on August 31, so get on over there and do the voting thing. Democracy, my people! I’m a finalist in the “Black Blogger Achievement” category which is described as:
This category is for bloggers that have been blogging visibly since January 1, 2003. This award can only be won once (sorry George and Lynne… we still love ya).
Is there less pollution in the air? No.
Have we decided to leave iraq soon? No.
What could it be that has america looking all sexy and constitutional this morning?
Oh yeah, the worst attorney general in the history of the country has finally resigned. I gotta say, america, you look SO much better now that you’re back with the bill of rights. Yall make a good couple.
This article was originally featured on the front page of Huffington Post. Check out my profile page for more articles there.
Just as effective democracy assumes and requires the consent of the governed, so does an effective analogy assume and require a common set of beliefs and experiences among its intended audience. This week, George W. Bush finally made the analogous connection he has so vehemently avoided between Iraq and Vietnam. But, as he has done with Biblical interpretation and the English language, the boy has badly mangled the meaning.
On August 22, Bush used his speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars to yet again to “reframe” the Iraq debate. How long can you “reframe” something before you realize that the problem is your crappy art and not the choice of a speckled mahogany vs. fluted sterling silver enclosure? Answer: at least four years.
After rehashing freedom-loving, fascist-hating arguments previously applied to American mid-century intervention in Europe, Shrubya used Microsoft Word’s search-and-replace feature to tell the story with Asians. That’s when he broke out the surprise Vietnam analogy.
However, it was neither the well-understood Vietnam-as-quagmire nor the equally-applicable Vietnam-as-conflict-he-avoided that the president relied upon. No, Bush rested his latest justification on Vietnam-as-lost-because-we-didn’t -stay-long-enough. Yeah, that was just the problem. Think about it. Had we stayed longer, we could have killed every last person in Vietnam and won the damn thing, but those perpetual back-stabbers in Washington again failed to support the troops.
Bush’s strategery in this case, as with global warming, evolution and other facts, depends on creating doubt. He said things like:
1. “Now, I know some people doubt the universal appeal of liberty, or worry that the Middle East isn’t ready for it.”
2. “Others believe that America’s presence is destabilizing, and that if the United States would just leave a place like Iraq those who kill our troops or target civilians would no longer threaten us.”
3. “Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently.”
4. “Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left.”
No, there isn’t. This is a complex literary device known as “bullshit,” which is employed all too often by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. I, too, can invoke the tree hugging, ape-descending, freedom-hating “some” and “others” to create a “legitimate” debate where none legitimately exists. Watch me work my magic:
1. Some can argue that babies come from a magical stork that shoves the fetus into a woman’s body moments before birth then teleports back to its home in the trash can where Oscar the Grouch lives.
2. Others believe that babies are always inside of women, remote controlling them like that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain, Krang, the talking, fluid-dripping, pink brain that installed himself inside an ogre’s abdomen in order to defeat our turtle heroes.
3. There is a legitimate debate about how a woman becomes pregnant.
For Bush to sell the Iraq war by using America’s most shameful military expedition of the 20th century shows just how desperate he is. He’s not just drinking the Kool-Aid, he’s freebasing the powder.
In case you missed it, here is the audio from the Blogger Roundtable section of NPR’s News & Notes, hosted by Farai Chideya. The show aired Wednesday August 22, 2007 at 1pm Eastern Time.
Liza and I were in the NYC studio (thanks to John Guardo and Studio Engineer Manya for hookin us up), and Avery was in DC. We had originally planned to discuss four topics but had to drop Jose Padilla due to time constraints. The three we did get to were:
Black Hollywood doing major fundraisers for Clinton (Magic Johnson) and Obama (Oprah)
What Kind of Black Are We? (a WaPo story about the evolution of American black identity in light of voluntary immigration from the diaspora)
Black Hollywood Fundraising The jump off was an LA Times story I had suggested for discussion. (Big Up / Hat Tip to Negrophile’s Twitter posts for putting me on to the story. Gotsta love the Interweb.) We discussed several angles including: the generational gap between Obama and Clinton supporters and how that mirrors the black political generational gap; the effectiveness of fundraising; the ability of events like these to translate into black votes
What Kind of Black Are We? This was based on a recent-ish Washington Post article by Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs. We covered: the importance of the labels “black” vs. “African” vs. “African American”; the distrust and misinformation between descendants of American slaves and those from the diaspora who have come here later; and what is “black” anyway? who gets to define it?
LaVena Johnson Pfc. LaVena Johnson died in Iraq two years ago. The military says it was a self-inflicted wound, but evidence points to sexual assault, beating, shooting and an attempt to burn her. For a heart-wrenching and frustrating version of events, check the video below of LaVena’s father, Dr. Jack Johnson, at a Veterans for Peace Rally
The roundtable discussed the logical connection to the Pat Tillman case and if the blogosphere is an appropriate place to get this sort of issue out. Of course it is, and I hope we can collaborate as in the Jena 6 case to shed light and action on this tragedy
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