Category Archives: communication
911 as Mitt Romney’s campaign song: Rick Ross and Jay Smooth
Freaking brilliant comparison. The Rick Ross strategy of simply lying to make yourself into a celebrity laid out next to the Mitt Romney campaign who, with the advent of VP candidate Paul Ryan, have take lying to a whole ‘nother level.
“Post-realness” indeed.
As someone who has read about the stories Gary Webb reported about the CIA selling cocaine to California gangs, the origin of the “Freeway” Rick Ross name, I’ve felt kind of icky about the linguistic hijack Rick Ross presents. Sort of like someone taking a mass murderers name (Jim Jones?) and re-branding it for sale to teenage pop fans, the choice to appropriate this particular criminal for a nom-de-tough-guy has never sat well with me.
When the real drug-dealer Freeway Rick Ross sued the rapper Rick Ross and lost, I was astounded. I remember ranting at that time that the rapper was impervious to reality.
Jay Smooth suggests the entire republican campaign is generating an inviting and fictional narrative. And like Rick Ross, one that will be resistant to suggestions that it isn’t factually correct. Some communications corrode against other communications.
In this sense, Rick Ross might be the best comparison to the Mitt Romney campaign. “Post-realness” means just making it up and then calling anyone who disagrees with you a bad name.
Since the G.O.P. is having a tough time finding any musician who will allow them to use any of their music, perhaps they should ask Rick Ross if they can use 911? I think it is as strong an ideological fit as Ted Nugent’s “Cat scratch fever.”
1. Explicit biblical reference to open the conversation? Check
2. Focus on wealthy people with explicit disregard for the poor? Check
3. Retaliatory ethics with encouragement of NRA gun violence? Check
4. Consumer identity presented as patriotism? Check
5. Pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps bullshit? Check
6. Women included via objectification? Check
You may know that Rick Ross’s new protege Gunplay (the other guy in the video) has a swastika tattooed on the back of his neck. If Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group did become more explicitly aligned with the Republican party, the value of Gunplay on the roster would obviously go way up. Not only is his name an NRA wet-dream, but the swastika tattoo would probably help get the votes of those die hard right-wingers who didn’t feel that the GOP showed enough visible Nazi tattoos.
Filed under communication, hip hop, juxtaposition, media, music, propaganda, representation
Kiese Laymon and how to slowly kill yourself and others in America
Thanks to wikipedia for the gun photo.
Kiese Laymon is currently an Associate Professor of English and the co-director of Africana Studies at Vassar College. This essay was originally published on his blog, Cold Drank, and was republished with permission. It is an excerpt from Laymon’s forthcoming book, On Parole: An Autobiographical Antidote to Post-Blackness. Laymon is also the author of the forthcoming novel, Long Division, which will be released in early 2013.
I’ve had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies — once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I’ve helped many folks say yes to life but I’ve definitely aided in few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
The college decides that two individual fraternity members, Shonda and I will be put on disciplinary probation for using “racially insensitive language” and the two fraternities involved get their party privileges taken away for a semester. If there was racially insensitive language Shonda and I could have used to make those boys feel like we felt, we would have never stepped to them in the first place.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
Mama’s antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it’s to insist on excellence at all times. Mama takes it personal when she realizes that I realize she is wrong. There ain’t no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
Filed under academics, communication, human rights, juxtaposition, learning, police, race, representation
I’m going to do more stuff.
I just finished a nice essay from Bernadette Murphy about riding a motorcycle. It’s a great piece of writing. At the heart is an encouragement to take risks and to follow your desires. I’m not going to get a motorcycle, but I am going to do more stuff.
But what about when we voluntarily choose to do things that scare us? Even little things? That’s different. When we voluntarily wrestle with the boogieman of fear, we gain skills and self-knowledge that steel us for the rest of life – those soul-numbing, bone-crushing times when we have no say in how much hardship we can take, how long we can last, how strong at our core we might be. Nothing so strengthens our resolve as having a regular, intimate encounter with the fear that tries to stifle us, that tells us we’re not smart enough, or young enough, or pretty enough, or strong enough.
When we’ve made peace with our fears and have taken risks at our own volition, we learn the most powerful bit of self-knowledge possible: that we have what it takes. Joy often hides in the very things we’re afraid of, and if we can move past fear, we can see how much more there is to life.
via Sunday Rumpus Essay: Don’t Call Me Biker Chick – The Rumpus.net.
Filed under communication, learning, representation
Bike Snob fakes out the Paris Review
I like the blog the Bike Snob. I ride a bicycle a couple times a week and I’m a snob, so it fits. The Bike Snob is heavy on witty trash talking. One of his favorite techniques is to make something ridiculous up, for instance imagining the septuagenarian founder of the Paris Review, George Plimpton riding around on an ugly Trek Y-frame.
Anyway, when my friend (I do actually have a friend) forwarded me the Paris Review post, my first thought was, “So by some extraordinary coincidence did George Plimpton actually ride a Y-Foil?” Then I wondered, “Maybe I didn’t make up the quote after all and I just think I did because it seems like something I’d come up with.” Finally though, it became clear that somehow the current editor of The Paris Review must have come across my bullshit quote and accepted it as fact. Furthermore, now that it’s actually been published on their website, everyone else will accept it as fact as well, and thanks to a certain popular search engine poor George Plimpton will be forever associated with one of the ugliest and Fredliest bicycles ever made.
It really makes you think about the complex relationship between reality and absurdity. Take religion for example. Sometime back in the Iron Age some wiseass probably made a joke about milk and meat, and now thousands of years later Jews need to have two dishwashers.
via Bike Snob NYC: Foiled Again: Truth is Faker than Fiction.
Filed under bicycle, communication, learning, media, representation
Sports music, cultural appropriation and Das Racist
I’m getting prepared to DJ the roller derby bout today. Thinking about sports-music — the stuff that gets the crowd pumped. A number of quirky tunes came up in my searches, including this catchy number:
But it reminded me of the Das Racist tune which I might just play.
The Das Racist video was created by the brilliant Dallas Penn by the way.
Filed under Animals, communication, cultural appropriation, music, representation, roller derby
Screw you New York Times for restricting access
When you read the New York Times online you are limited to ten articles per month. I believe this is a terrible practice in a shortsighted desire for profit. It hurts the business, and is terrible for informed citizenry.
This morning I was going to quote an article from the New York Times that was about a specific article (American soldiers, military drugging and the relationship with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.) I thought it would be interesting to join in the conversation about this topic by re-blogging a key argument from the article.
But the realization that anyone who clicked the link would be swept into the New York Times crappy paywall made me say “forget it.”
Screw you New York Times!
This is the internet era where advertisers ask about things like “reblogging” and “brand loyalty” right? How is this possibly good for their business?
More importantly, how terrible is limiting access to information? It’s bad for readers, reporters, other news agencies, and of course limits the participation in important conversations. The paywall is bad for citizens, bad for communities, bad for working people and of course, bad for the New York Times!
Filed under capitalism, communication, media
Rhetoric, sports and ability
Sporting events are exceptionally significant in human culture. In every corner of the planet kids kick a ball around. While sports are ever present, we also have to navigate the stories that define what that play means. Competition, fair play, hard work, hierarchy, teamwork — we are steeped in the narratives that permeates sports stories. These stories invite participation, and they also exclude. It is worth considering what happens when the desire to play a sport doesn’t conform to the bodily requirements of that sport.
One punchline for these stories ends with Rudy Ruettiger, the pint-sized Notre Dame football player whose hard work eventually leads the coach to put him in the game. Another possible ending is for accommodation through the development of a new sport. Wheelchair rugby comes to mind.
Recent convert to wheelchair racing, Victoria Stagg Elliott wonders why more people don’t get involved in adaptive sports in an essay at The Rumpus.
What if more runners, when faced with having to hang up their shoes for whatever reason, switched to wheelchair racing rather than cycling or swimming or giving up physical activity completely?
Here’s what I think would happen:
So-called disabled athletes would have more opportunities to participate in able-bodied sports and vice-versa. We would all realize that we are more alike than different, and that playing alone really isn’t very much fun.
via What If Wheelchair Racing Were Just Another Sport? – The Rumpus.net.
I like Elliot’s take on adaptive sports, and the encouragement for people to simply play. It seems like sports and play are worthwhile fundamental human desires — it is worth crafting a world where people who wanted to participate in any activity would get the chance.
It also takes a certain amount of work to change sports stories. With sports the concept of fairness can help to persuade some people to make sports inclusive, but the Title IX separate-but-equal is a predictable pressure release valve. It seems valuable to push forward on all intellectual fronts to bring forward inclusion. To support adaptive sports, to fund and celebrate sports communities who become more inclusive, and to engage in sporting play ourselves — regardless of our level of ability.
Filed under communication, disability, health, human rights, representation, sport
Michael Kimmel and ‘No Homo’
I spent some time last semester talking about the phrase “no homo” as gender policing. My argument is that it verbalized patterns of behavior that were not generally sexualized. Quite often bringing sexual attention to something that was previously mundane. Consider rap intellectual Dallas Penn’s use of “no homo” to ensure heterosexuality is mapped when getting a compliment about his Polo scarf.
He didn’t introduce himself as a rapper, a graff artist or anything spectacular. All he did was compliment me on the ‘Lo scarf I was rocking. No homo, of course.
via dallaspenn.com » Blog Archive » MEYHEM LAUREN IS REALITY….
I have traditionally argued that “no homo” is simply gender policing. Making sure that people around you know that it is not acceptable for your version of a man to compliment another man on a scarf for instance. It seems like this is an extension of pathological homophobia. Not just fear of gay sex, but fear that non-sexual acts would be read as the precursor for gay attraction.
It seems like an interesting subject because it makes an easy map to see the boundary lines for modern masculinity. The rules for men-to-be-real-men are seldom as explicitly verbalized as with “no homo.”
I’m a fan of Michael Kimmel. I think he is a smart man who gets a lot of the power dynamics of gender. In the case of “no homo” he argues that this is a kind of linguistic development which marks a loosening of the boundaries of new heterosexual masculinity.
I think we’re a little less homophobic. There’s good evidence that young men are less homophobic than older men are. And I illustrate this often by the difference between “that’s so gay” and “no homo.” Because “that’s so gay” is a way of policing other guys, saying don’t do that, that’s gay. But “no homo” says “you can do it, no homo.” Or “I love you, no homo.” It gives us permission to say something but then back away from it. That’s really different than not being able to do it at all. It’s a small step. The next step is to be able to say it and then not back away from it at all. I think it’s a little bit progressive, not a lot bit progressive.
via An Interview with Michael Kimmel | fbomb.
I think this is quite interesting. It seems as though the “permission-with-commentary” may come with substantial linguistic homophobic baggage.
Filed under communication, feminism, homophobia, representation
Autocritical hip hop: David Banner, Killer Mike and Stalley
I don’t have any particular expectations that an entertainment medium like rap music should be political.
All music speaks to the politics, ideology and identity of the forces that create them. In 2012 hip hop is a particular series of almost mockable ultra-capitalist tropes. It makes sense that right wing pundits would continue to amplify moral panic out of rap music because most of music and imagery is created to be increasingly outrageous.
The fun part is that twenty years of cultural saturation has shared the tools to make rap music with millions of young people. Quite a few of them grew up and made rap music. Some of them currently make excellent rap music.
I agree with El-P (shown here with Killer Mike). There is a lot of good rap music out there.
The people who make rap music have a certain investment in the art form. Stalley’s new video “Live at Blossom’s” from the Savage Journey to the American Dream mixtape is a good example of the internal reflection about materialism, violence and sexism in hip hop.
Edward Said would call this kind of poetic monologue autocritical. To encourage the listener to layer their own political awareness against books, movies, videos, songs, and unpack the politics represented in the media artifact.
Killer Mike’s rant rap is always excellent. You can basically buy anything he has put out or download any of his mixtapes and you’ll get something quite entertaining from it. Here Killer Mike represents his deep seated loathing for the Reagan era in “Big Beast,” a horror movie/jacker/gore fest. Assists from Bun B, T.I. and El-P in this almost ten-minute mini-movie. Not safe for work.
You could argue that the cannibalism of T.I. and Killer Mike is a thinly veiled mockery of consumers of violent hip hop. David Banner makes those arguments explicit, calling out rap music in a particularly dramatic fashion. Enjoy “Malcolm X” for that critical perspective on hip hop.
Filed under capitalism, communication, hip hop, music, representation, resistance
Life of refinement 