Taking Hip Hop a little too literally (and not taking it seriously)

Obama and Luda (one of the future Prez's faves)

UPDATE: Fixed News coverage on this debacle. So funny. I hope Olbermann goes in on this. This just kind of co-signs my point about how the campaign’s handling of this makes Luda look like a “radical” as Hannity keeps saying. Compared to Ayers, Luda is right-wing.

Everyone has heard: the Obama campaign has distanced itself from Ludacris’ mixtape track “Politics: Obama is here.”

In kind of a silly season day yesterday, Obama campaign staffers had to flood cable news and the Internet distancing themselves from Luda’s laudatory song, which also contained a few jabs at Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Here are the excerpts that have everyone so mad:

“Hillary hated on you/So that b**ch is irrelevant.”

“McCain don’t belong in ANY chair unless he’s paralyzed/ Yeah I said it cause Bush is mentally handicapped/ Ball up all of his speeches and I throw ‘em like candy wrap.”

All of this is ridiculous. (Please give me props for not making the easy pun and calling the situation “ludicrous.” I avoided it.) Obama’s campaign shouldn’t have even addressed it. I don’t think it would’ve snowballed into anything at all.

First, let’s address the lyrics themselves. Okay so for the average non-hip hop listener, the lyrics sound a bit harsh. But really, what’s the big deal. I think it’s kind of funny. And it’s not because I’m anti-feminist or heartless. It’s that Luda, when he rhymes, says funny things. Remember folks, this is a dude who was hanging upside in with a big ass blow-out fro in his first major music video. Every rapper has a style, though it may not be unique. There are overarching styles that most rappers choose, wittingly or not, from. Luda, among other things, can flow and has funny punchlines. It’s his artistic disposition. Anyone heard of hyperbole?

Second, let’s address the “this was very impolitic” argument. It’s true, during a time when Democrats are still worried whether Hillary’s women voters will make the switch to Obama, it’s not exactly the right time to anger some Hillary people. But come on now, Luda, as far as I know, is not an Obama spokesman, nor is he in any capacity associated with the Senator, save for the fact that Obama, in a Rolling Stone interview, listed Luda as one of the cats in hip hop he knows and are “good guys.” That’s something I would believe. Luda seems like a good dude, and I’m sure he’s charismatic as hell, like Obama, since he was a radio jock. Barack likes Luda’s music; Luda likes Barack’s politics. Isn’t that okay?

But back to the campaign distancing itself from Luda. I’m not really upset about it. Of course they can’t put out a press release reading: “Ludacris has one of the best flows in the game. Stop acting salty cuz Clinton lost and McCain is old as dirt. Bitches!(Please imagine that in Britney Spears’ voice.)” I understand that they have to be extra careful about Obama’s image, including who raps about him. This is especially true because somehow older white people are stupid enough to think that because Obama listens to Luda; he holds all of his views about the world (that is, if one actually for the sake of argument believes that Luda raps what he thinks and believes on every single verse). We already had that stupid Jeremiah Wright business. I understand all of this. Hell Obama is MY guy too. I’m sensitive as well.

So why am I thrown off? Well it’s because Obama had kind of a similar thing happen to him when various people began to connect him to Bill Ayers, the distinguished education scholar at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and former member of the militant 60s-70s group “The Weathermen.” What did the campaign do? They let the candidate deal with it on stage at the ABC debate, with a pretty good answer. Obama articulated something along the lines of “I shouldn’t be responsible for ideas, actions and statements of people who I know but who are not part of my campaign.” Why couldn’t the press release have been something along those lines?

I think the Obama campaign caved into one of the biggest cultural misunderstandings in America. Hip hop, even among its consumers and fans, is taken literally, and thus not seriously enough. You ask: What’s the difference? Isn’t being taken seriously also being taken literally? No, not at all. When something is considered art, it is taken seriously by its viewers, in that it is not driven down to the lowly ground of realism. What I mean is that when you see a Picasso painting of an actual historical event (such as his depictions of WWII and the Korean War), no self-respecting art historian would say, “This is terrible. It does not represent what actually happened. Mr. Picasso should be ashamed of himself for taking so many liberties with the truth.” Now, some conservative art historians may say they don’t like it, but nevertheless, all would agree that it is Picasso taking his expressionist influence to the nth degree. As now a respected, canonical painter of the 20th century, he and his work are afforded such degrees of freedom in interpretation. Why not for hip hop? As many inroads hip hop has made in American business and culture in general, it is still not afforded any kind of artistic license. As much as I hate to admit, Michael Eric Dyson has been making this argument for quite a while. We can’t say that Americans have fully accepted black culture just because white kids buy hip hop records, and want to act black. It’s far more complex, and it is in

these types of situations that the complexities come up to the top.

Sadly, this has been the state of black art in America since at least Josephine Baker, who fled Jim Crow to France, only to have to perform in “jungle” garb for French audiences. It’s the double-edged sword of recognition…

Maybe rappers should stop saying they are the realest. It’s kind of corny anyway.

Escapism…Would you like that with milk or black?

John Milton (author of Paradise Lost)

In a rather clever and nicely written short piece in the Week in Review section of the NY Times, Mary Jo Murphy writes about the two oppositional forms of escape–mirth and melancholy. She gets these from Milton (yeah, Paradise Lost Milton). And what are the most well-used means of escape in America? For Murphy, it’s still the movies; hence she is speaking of two particular films that are currently showing which sort of embody this typology of escape–Dark Knight and Mamma Mia!.

(Sidebar on writing: God damn it; she’s good. I always read writing in either the Weekend NY Times or the New Yorker and feel that mixture of jealousy and astonishment at how tightly people can weave high and low together so easily, stuff like Milton and big-budget Hollywood films. I have a few misgivings with her argument but I gotta give props when they are due.)

Now, Murphy’s question is why do some prefer mirth and others prefer melancholy, or as she puts it:

Why do some people prefer to belt out a peppy Abba song in the happy knowledge that the heroine will get her guy in the end (“Mamma Mia!”), while others opt to hang on every malign word that issues from that smeary rictus on the face of Batman’s nemesis (“The Dark Knight”)?

She outlines a few different perspectives to come at this question. First, psychoanalysis, which suggests that people who say they are into mirth, or belting out Abba (John McCain is an Abba fan.) go into the movie to actually experience the very opposite–melancholy. In other words, according to psychoanalysis, whichever we pick, we are encountered with both.So the search for one form of escapism is futile since there is an inevitable trace of the melancholic in the mirthy, and vice versa?

Are we just into the opposite of what we think we are? What is this–opposite day? Not exactly.

Another perspective Murphy presents is from cultural geography, which suggests that culture is in itself escape from an animal state of being. So any cultural form, be it films or novels or episodes of the Wire, is escape. But specific to the mirth vs melancholy question, it seems that more people are attracted to the dark side to escape it. What? Yi-Fu Tuan, the cultural geographer from the article explains:“If we are the agent of death, we’re not likely to be the victim of death…It’s not logical, of course.”

I think he nailed it because he doesn’t fall into the trap of saying that films are escapist but newspapers, for example, are not. So we escape in culture to escape not only from our everyday life–the 9-5, school, friends, etc. but also to escape death. How…religious. Murphy quotes Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, who says, ““culture depends for its very existence on leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and consequently living link with the cultus, with divine worship.” Cultus –> Culture. Brilliant.

The question remains (click for the Gangstarr song of the name same): is culture always and forever, for all posterity, divine worship in the same way? Don’t the way films look in 2008 as opposed to 1908 make a difference in the type of divine worship? Do the fact that technologies used to produce culture are wholly different make a difference in how escapism works?

What I mean is: don’t you have to ask the technological question with regard to culture and escapism? Murphy poses culture and escape to be constants but can anyone say that watching The Wire on your laptop gives the same experiential effect (and affect) as reading about the drug trade in a social science or journalistic text? I feel like the elephant in the room is “experience.” Are we meant to assume that there is a singular experience for all who see a film?

Is “escape” the same for everyone?

Welcome to the Cuil

The blogosphere is ablaze with news of a new search engine Cuil, started by a few defectors from Google. Every tech blog has been wondering what to make of it. I gave it a test-trial yesterday when it opened up for business and I have to say that I won’t be making the switch just yet, although I’m quite happy that someone is trying to put a dent in Google.

If you go to the portal, you’ll se that Cuil boasts of a ridiculous amount of websites that it indexes. “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages” according to them. What this means is that it has a lot of pages that it keeps in its databases to search. In other words, it is expansive as a motherf–ker. But the real question is: is it good? But those of us who use the Web all day do not really think about what constitutes a “good” search engine because frankly we’ve been spoiled. Just to think back to the pre-Google days (I know, it’s like seeking the trauma in a therapy session, but it’s good for you, trust me, your techno-analyst). When I first encountered the Internet (I think around 6th grade), AOL’s search was powered (I believe) by WebCrawler. When you entered a search, what I really was looking for was not necessarily predicted very well. Nevertheless, it was the only option. In today’s Googlized world, we have not only been treated like favorite grandchildren when it comes to web search, we’ve also become hardwired to Google, though perhaps for good reason.

Google is just that good. They are killin’ it in the game because they are smart as hell. Listen, I’m not pro- or anti-Google in anyway substantive way, but what I mean by “killin’ it” is their adeptness to the maths(as the British call it). Google’s algorithm is so good at modeling what the searcher is looking for that it has us thinking that Google=the Internet. This is far from true, but nevertheless it is what good algorithms do, especially Google’s PageRank system, which feeds back into Google’s system what searchers actually click on in order to place them higher on the list for specific search terms. All predictive math, including statistics and polling, rely on algorithms. And even with Cuil, the big G’s algorithmic hegemony goes unchallenged, and as far as I can tell, it will be that way for a while. Despite the fact that it is made up of ex-Google employees, Cuil can only say that it has more pages indexed, but not really what you want.

In short, for modulation of desire and magical “open sesame” type of web browsing, stick with Google for now.

“You’re Indian? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I went down to E. 6th St the other day…”

A couple of nights ago, I had to go to dinner on E. 6th Street and Avenue A with a bunch of my friends. I got off at Astor Place, walked down to 6th and took a left eastwards. For those of you who are not in New York City, East 6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues is flooded with Indian restaurants. One thing that you notice about a lot of them is that they have sitar and tabla players entertaining the diners. And yes, I admit it. I’ve definitely been to at least one of them. (Some of them are okay, but I hear everyone who runs them are Bangladeshi…kind of like most pizzerias are owned by Albanians in New York. But let’s get it straight, all the kitchen workers are always Central American, so I guess there’s no need to get carried away with this authenticity of “who” is making our food.) Though I had walked that block numerous times, at that moment I wondered: who thought that was a good idea? And more humorously, what was the reaction by the other restaurants when the first Indian restaurant on the block decided to have a sitar and tabla player. Moreover, what motivated them to follow suit? And lastly, the most loaded question: what do Indians think of this? Do they even go to these restaurants or are they embarrassed?

Thus I found it to be kind of interesting that Newsweek has an online exclusive article that has highlights from Chris Fair’s new book on international relations (that’s what they call political science now…weird) and food, called Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Relations. As cutesy and pop-py as the book sounds, there were a couple of notable passages from the article:

How can a nation’s food describe its place in the world?
There are some countries for which the project of becoming more established in nationhood can be read through food. In Israel, for example, you see shirts, postcards, dedicated to promoting the falafel as the national food. The Arabs, of course, say that’s utter nonsense. The food that is designated the national food says a lot about how that nation interacts internally and how it wants to be seen from the outside.

Can food explain how countries interact?
An interesting indicator of historical relationships is what countries consider to be cheap food. Usually that reflects some imperial history with the country that produces cheap food. When you go to the Netherlands, you eat Indonesian food. When you go to France, you’re eating the stuff from northern Africa. In England, it’s curry. In Japan, it’s Korean. And in the U.S., it’s Mexican. So when you go to these countries and see what the fast food of popular choice is, it usually represents a deeper political history.

Pretty interesting. The interrelation of the process of becoming a nation and standardization of cuisine. Maybe the famous study Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson could have used some of this. I think that the second point is far more interesting regarding colonialism and food. And I think it’s relatively accurate. But I wonder if that applies to New York. In New York, one can pretty much any cuisine in both high-end and low-end forms. Mexican food in my neighborhood (East Harlem) is delicious and cheap. But one can easily go to Rosa Mexicano and get a pretty overpriced burrito (still delicious though). So is a plate from Rosa Mexicano still considered cheap eats if it costs a lot? It seems that in NYC and other cosmopolitan centers in the world, cheap is no longer necessarily from subjugated cultures. And likewise, there has been in the past decade a revival in “peasant food” in the New York City fine dining scene. (David Chang’s success in Korean low-brow but upscale food.)

This is of course related to something that attracts many diners–the mythical “dining experience.” But when diners go to places that serve peasant food, wittingly or not, they are gastrono-tourists, who have ventured beyond their class and cultural background to experience another. You may ask: what’s so different about peasant food when people have been eating non-domestic cuisine since the inception of the American union? Well, I would suggest that that the high-priced peasant food gives even more authenticity and legitimacy to the diner’s desire to be the exotic Other, without having to deal with the obvious discomforts of eating with actual peasants. In other words, the peasant food revival, thus, allows those who can afford to, the luxury of saying “Oh, X and I went out to eat at Z the other night. And it was so good; it wasn’t, you know, Americanized at all, it was authentic.” What the Indian restaurants on E. 6th Street do with their tabla and sitar players, the high-end restaurants do with “peasant food.” It is, to allow us, fancy diners, to feel closer to another culture in a climate-controlled environment, not to their sultans and kings, but to their volk. It is the best of both worlds: feel close to peasants, but not be around them.

But I don’t have to tell this to those of us in New York, where Katz’s Deli, which serves the food of once-poverty stricken immigrant Jews has a sandwich for over $10.

That’s New York for you…

Blame the Internets

When in doubt, most cultural conservatives and like-minded folk blame technology (and rappers) for a lot of things. (So I guess hip hop blogs like Nah Right? must drive them particularly craaaazy.) Sometimes, as much I hate to admit it, they have a point. But not with the current anti-Internet tidal wave most recently found in an article written by Nicholas Carr of the Atlantic called “Is Google making us stupid?” and a new series of articles in the New York Times called “The Future of Reading” described on their site as “a series of articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read.” If you were wondering, we can end the questioning right now: NO, the Internet is not making your stupider, but it’s not making you smarter either. Though I obviously think that the Internet has made profound changes in everyday life and beyond for most of the world, I still think a smart/stupid mutually exclusive dichotomy is a missing the point. (And didn’t they read Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil in college? The key word being: BEYOND.)

This wave of reactionary thinking regarding the Internet, specifically what people call the Web 2.0, echoes the arguments of a book that came out a little while ago called The Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting our Economy by Andrew Keen, in which the Internet is credited for ruining the modern imagination, critical thinking and also culture at-large. Funny, because these are kind of the reasons why I love it. Well, let me qualify that…I think that Keen and Carr, and others like them, are very much guilty of a slew of things, only one of which is their age, and generational mis-understanding. More than that, which you can’t really fault them for, they are guilty of holding a rather crude, though widespread view of the relation of technologies to humans, though it’s not the most disdainful, in my opinion, of the views of technology.

That honor goes to the following:

It is a view that simultaneously gives too much of the wrong type of credit to technology and, in turn, doesn’t give enough of the right type of credit to it. Martin Heidegger, the philosopher, calls this view the anthropological view, by which he meant that technologies are seen as merely tools. It is also sometimes referred to as an instrumental view of technology. Either way, they both maintain that the human-technology relation is characterized by the human with leather boots and whip (dominant) and technology, blinded on all fours with a ball gagging its mouth (dominated). It assumes that technology ultimately is a product of humans, and thus limited to its use by humans.

Fortunately, this very old-school view of technology is not entirely the one adopted by Carr, Keen and others, but they demonstrate another view, which has some elements of the instrumental view. They are not so much critics of that technology holds power over us in toto. In other words, one could argue that Carr, Keen et al. view technology as a monster, more specifically as Frankenstein. As may recall, Frankenstein is the brain child of Dr. Frankenstein that runs wild and wreaks havoc on all of those around, the classic irony in the story of course being: what man makes he cannot control and turns against him. It is this tragedy that has pervaded the most recent reactionary critics of new media.

For them, the Internet, from its pre-Google, -MySpace and -Facebook days, has turned into a monster of unforgivable proportion. Instead of being good little technologies, they decided to run amok and actually affect their creators–humans. Bad bad technology. (Really, what were they expecting? Were they naive enough to the point of replicating the attitude of the two kids from the movie Weird Science, who create a gorgeous woman who would fulfill their teenage sexual appetites and also become their best friend?) Now, it has ruined the upward progress of human civilization by turning everyone into celebrity gossip whores and so-called “citizen journalists.”

Let’s continue with the journalism theme to illustrate the point, since Carr and Keen (he’s not really a journalist, but he writes for The Weekly Standard sometimes, which in my book makes him less of a journalist and more of a terrible person). It is undoubtedly the case that the traditional print news industry has been most-affected by the Internet and the explosion of bloggers that are now doing their jobs for much cheaper (sometimes for free) and faster than they ever can, thought sometimes not as well. The response from the newspaper industry was to engage in a war of cultural values, which, as some of them are now finding out, was hyper-defensive and ineffective. The blogs, they deemed, were untouchable, unquotable and unprofessional. It wasn’t journalism, as far as they were concerned. I remember in high school, every teacher reminding us: “There’s a lot of false information out there on the Internet. Be mindful of what you use.” At the time, it was sound advice. But today, newspapers cannot with clear conscience expect their readers to not read blogs supplementally. (Isn’t that kind of what newspapers were for–to spark interest in events?) What scares Keen and Carr the most is the de-professionalization and de-specialization of various jobs, most especially theirs–journalism. But they would never admit such a thing–that their positions on Google and the Web 2.0 are responses to the crises of their own. Instead, they argue that the Internet threatens broader, social principles, ones which, if ignored, could be detrimental to the world. In the end, reactionary new media critics, though raising very good points, are presenting views of new media that are apologies for market capitalism. They are upset that a good bit of information is flowing freely, that is, without being monetized and they have, among others, made a claim that this would ruin humans by making them lazier and stupider.

You know what other media they said that about? Cinema, television, and also one of the most influential forms of media in the past two centuries–the novel.

The BlogHERsphere

Blog who? No, blog you!

In a rather ironic moment of slight editorial mishap, the New York Times’ story on BlogHER, a conference of women bloggers in San Fransisco, was categorized by the web team or somebody in the higher ups in the “Fashion & Style” section. (Full Disclosure: It is also cross-categorized in the “Technology” section. But if you click on the link, you’ll see that its main category is supposed to be F&S, as “Fashion & Style” appears in large emboldened letters.) Normally, I wouldn’t really point this kind of finnicky detail but I think in fact that Times has done it on purpose, with the intent of attracting women readers, but it’s sort of funny in that the article and the conference really in whole deals very little with Fashion or Style. I guess having Maureen Dowd as columnist allows a couple of offenses against women.

As do most journalistic treatments of blogging or the blogosphere, this article mentions the sea change in the situation (mostly financial) of popular blogs and the bloggers behind them. And because this article was on BlogHER–a conference of women bloggers, the focus was on the really successful “mommy blogs,” some of which like Dooce have allowed the bloggers (and sometimes their husbands!) to blog full-time(whatever that means). And of course, in turn, BlogHER, now has corporate sponsors the likes of General Motors (they could use a bit of good PR nowadays) and K-Y(yeah, it’s who you you are thinking of). Some companies like Chevrolet ventured to even loan the blogger a new Malibu during the conference, in the hopes of her blogging about it. “I think they knew I’d love the car so much I’d want to write about it, too, on my blog . . . I’m not making any money off of it.”

In all honesty, I can’t really knock that hustle. Hell, if an auto company hollered at me to drive their whip for a while, I’d do it in a second. So what really interests me is not so much the “corporatization” of the blogosphere but the real reason why BlogHER exists in the first place–the gender bias against women bloggers, which to me is quite complicated.

There is no doubt that women bloggers have a far more difficult time gaining legitimacy and recognition from other media pipelines like print and cable news. In fact, as someone who reads a couple of political blogs, there are, as the article in the Times notes, very few women political bloggers that are at the level of Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, Talking Points Memo and DailyKos, besides The Huffington Post. One simple explanation is that the blogosphere, although seemingly a far more “democratic” social space, remediates a culture that doesn’t really take women seriously…still…well, fine…only if you’re naked, and keep your mouth shut.

It seems to be rather true that the political blog hustle is a male-dominated hustle but I think this isn’t a point to be more mourned over! Why?

I think the bankability and monetizing potential of women-oriented blogs signal a newly carved space for and by women (kind of like FUBU….anyone get this reference?), and able to stay that way. Why ask to be included into the boy’s club (e.g., the male-oriented domains of blogging like political blogs) when there is a girl’s club of blogs that collectively receive a crazy amount of unique visitors. Traffic and ad revenue are the objects of desire for all bloggers, and it is clear that the bloggers at BlogHer basically have them at their fingertips. Why bother dealing with the whole business of asking to be let in the door, when you are already in the house that they (male bloggers) are begging to be in? The second-wave feminist retor would be that it’s another form of domination to withold legitimacy from what women do. And to that, I have to say absolutely it is. But isn’t it also true that by using the dominant (hence: male) standard of legitimacy in blogging in order to measure the equality of men and women’s reception and influence in the blogosphere, using “the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house,” as Audre Lorde once so aptly put it. In other words, isn’t asking to be let into the realm of political blogging without changing the rules and conditions that keeps that realm male-dominated just as bad as the originary exclusion based on gender?

A case against the Olympics

The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing are fast approaching and it may be high time to address what kind of politics lay beneath the less and less interesting world games. This time around, the Olympics have had more than its usually minimal share of controversy, most of which have to do with the high levels of pollution in and around Beijing, security issues and also–wait for it…–human rights violations! All of the recent attention China has received as not only host of the Olympics but also an economic powerhouse (average economic growth at 6% is real serious-like), alongside India (ya’ll ever hear of Chindia?). Discussions surrounding the Beijing Olympics have usually had this kind of China-is-growing-like-crazy economic triumphalism as its background, which I think has hidden from view what the Olympics, at its core, stand for–blatant nationalism rendered excusable by the hokey, Disney-swagger jacking opening ceremony. Most economically-skewed conversations regarding the Olympics follows a specific story-line which really harkens back to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. As it did for S. Korea in 1988, the Olympics set the mood for an economic takeoff that would a few years later solidify the country’s position as one of the Asian Tiger economies (Who makes up these terms? Definitely not an Asian person. Well, at least I hope not.), alongside Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. What this did for Korea was it basically solidified its entrance into the global economy and thus effectively awarded it respectability, facilitating investment opportunities for foreign capital. (If you were wondering, yes, the tax rates for foreign investment were MAD low.) In the case of China, however, there’s been a kind of upending of sequence; it is already a major player in the global economy and most definitely a big shot geopolitically. (Chinese Prez Hu Jintao helped broker the North Korean de-nuclearization deal, which just resulted in a nuclear cooling tower being dismantled and blown up by the N. Koreans as a sign of good faith.) China has seemingly jumped a lot of steps to get to where it is currently economically and geopolitically.

But back to the Olympics, all of this kind of talk regarding “the post-American world,” which is the name of the new book by Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek and CNN, has rather covered over a fundamental aspect of the Olympics which I think is kind of worth talking about: the quanta or basic unit of the Olympics is a geopolitical one; it’s the nation-state. In the realm of geopolitics, with internal strife and often outright civil wars, the “national Olympic team” is a mythical entity which serves to gives the impression of a cohesive unit under false pretenses. And in many ways, what the Olympics do, is it charades the internal divisions that are at the core of many nations. (Ever wonder who the Sudanese national soccer team consists of?) Now, many people claim that the Olympics do exactly what I laid out and it’s for the better. It serves to heal the wounds of in-fighting and for a few weeks, it relieves tensions–political or otherwise–that may exist within any given nation. I could swallow this argument if it weren’t for the fact that it is a similar argument made to black soldiers during every single conflict until Vietnam, when the armed forces first began to desegregate its combat troops.Were black troops and even civil rights folks (of all races) being traitors to their country? See, this is where the nationalism thing really gets me. It seems that sometimes the American brand of nationalism–”patriotism”–is a bit severe. (Some political scientists believe that “patriotism” and “nationalism” are different monsters altogether and should not be confused. I kind of tend to agree, although I haven’t traveled enough, and haven’t looked into it enough to really speak on it.) Because in the States, when someone is seen as critical of the nation, s/he is seen as against the nation. (Forget that, no lapel pin=terrorist nowadays.) In fact, during the early part of the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong (the Communists that had hold of the north) picked up on this uniquely American paradox and began drop-down missions of fliers that were addressed to black soldiers asking, in fact, why they were killing other people of color for a country that could not bother to give them equal protection under the law. Touche, Ho Chi Minh, tou-freaking-che.

Whenever I watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, the spectacle of the flags and marching remind me of a very very scary, yet similar scene. Don’t you think that’s a problem?

Finally, an end to dreaded phone contacts issue

….maybe. In those “primitive times” in which we postmoderns existed with pre-SIM card cell phones, there were funny “I got a new phone, and lost all my numbers. Can I have yours again?” or “Oh, I know why you have my number but I don’t have your number! (Awkward pause….because you know this person didn’t make it to the new phone for x,y,z reason) I got a new phone” conversations at parties. Now, with that solved, thanks to the SIM card, we have other, similarly annoying, issues. The one that Facebook’s new initiative attempts to solve is quite similar, though with email, IM, and other identities that exist across platforms.

The NY Times reports that Facebook is launching a new initiative called “Facebook Connect,” that will serve to allow other non-Facebook sites and online platforms to use and link with Facebook’s services. An example of this would be if your Gmail and Facebook account could “talk” with one another and automatically generate your Contacts list in Gmail from your Friends list from Facebook. It’s very unremarkable but makes a pretty tedious process (adding Google Contacts) into a far less painful endeavor. A iPhone application, called Friend Book has so cleverly solved the issue of manually typing in contact info by having a motor-tactical (by which I mean touch movement) solution. All you have to do is shake (like a Polaroid picture…sorry I had to bring that back) 2 iPhones to exchange data. Freakin’ GENIUS! The days of exchanging contact info via text message are long gone. See below:

Anyway, the problem of smooth data exchange and meta-identification, which Facebook is trying to get at, is not really new to most of us who have been to college, let’s say. It’s something that every database necessitates–a means by which to identify individuals or groups across different informational milieux in order to keep track of them. At college, we had something called a WesID, onto which you everything you did that related to the university was funneled, recorded and kept. But the advantage that universities and workplaces have is that they have a single platform that they are working with. In the real world, where various media languages and technological platforms criss-cross rather herky-jerkily, developing the dominant meta-language is not only technologically innovative and thus will wet nerd panties all over the world, but it is a lucrative market endeavor.  And that is exactly what Facebook is trying to do with this Facebook Connect business. If they pull it off, it will be something else. But regardless of whether they succeed, this the area where the $ and effort is being channeled on the business side of the tech world.

There is no such thing as the Holy Grail in the tech world because the Internet operates on a different plane of causality. Or maybe there are Holy Grails that are far more temporary, something like every half-a-fiscal quarter. What happens is that accidentally something takes off and becomes popular–we can think of the Internet as a “bastard” itself, developed out of Cold War-era Department of Defense networking technologies. In other words, what Facebook or Apple talks about in their press releases are usually not what become the driving forces of the technology. Apple, for example, was quite wrong on the first generation iPhone because they were really not up on the application-side of the phone. Finally with the 3G, they’ve expanded on it (maybe to a fault). But for now, we should be on the look out for the new meta-connectivity platform, whether it be from Facebook or Google or whomever.

Going in on this “Obama is too cocky” crap

I had to do it. I wanted not to get into American electoral politics, but I mean really, who can resist? Even the Europeans are excited about Obama.

In the past couple of days, since the beginning of Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe, people have been saying that he “needs to be careful” about not appearing like he’s already won the office of the President. And to that I say, “Good point.” He isn’t yet el presidente, and may not be (Dear God, I hope that is not true). But what is the line between acting like he’s already president and then also acting “presidentially” so as to effectively show Americans that he can be president. It’s tough to make that distinction between “I’m eager to get this job, so let me show you how I would act if I did indeed get it” and “I already got it, biaaaaaaatch(imagine that in Too $hort’s voice).” Maureen Dowd at the NY Times writes about this today in her column (not about Too $hort though, sadly).

Now, this would be a fair warning to Obama if it weren’t for one thing that nags me. Would they be saying this if it were McCain who were over there? Well, first of all, this many people wouldn’t even be over there because really McCain is uninteresting. I doubt he can hit a jump shot like Obama. But still, I think what the various pundits (including some of the blatantly pro-Obama ones), in their “wise words to the Senator” say, condescend in a manner that is quite familiar to us.

*Picture me reach into my back pocket and pulling out a card–the RACE card.*

Yep, I said it. It’s a race thing, though perhaps not solely. Obama’s aura of assurance should pose as relief for Americans. A person who has the potential power to shape foreign policy acting like they know what they are doing…someone tell me why this is a bad thing? I can imagine a retort: Humility is an important quality for any person, especially the President of the United States. And to that, I say “what kind of humility are we talking about?” Because let’s be straight here; there are different kinds, namely two.

1. Self-Deprecation. It’s the most Jewish comedian-esque of all the types. I basically make fun of myself to the point where you know that I’m not serious and then assume I know what I’m talking about/doing since I couldn’t possibly be revealing that I’m terrible if I actually were.

2. Sycophancy aka Tomism (not to be confused with Thomism–the line of theological thought stemming from Thomas Aquinas). It is the most Louis Armstrong-esque of all the types. I make myself into a yes man to the point where I have convinced you that I really love you and your white children and thoroughly enjoy being talked down to, even when you think you are just speaking to be normally.

Wait, what? That’s it? Isn’t there a middle ground between Larry David and Bo Jangles? Yes, of course there is, but it’s not readily available to all people in equal proportion necessarily. And this is because for someone like Obama, a bi-racial man (or swirly in common parlance) who identifies as African American has different rules for humility. To draw yet again an unfair parallel, let’s take the whole “bling culture is really wack and crude” line of thought that exists out there. On the one hand, yes it sucks. Like why do you need a Bentley? (Sidebar: It’s silly that some of my favorite rappers talk about Bentley’s because it’s not really a car that you drive. If you are rapping about a Bentley but also have a driver, then I say it’s fair. But really, shouldn’t you clarify instead of having all of us imagine you as Mr. Belvedere?) On the other hand, isn’t this kind of what American capitalism is about? Money-making is the cultural value par excellence in the US. Real talk, as they say. Why do people want to shield the fact that, as Lil’ Kim once said, “first you get the money, then you get the power, and then you get the respect.” (Sidebar: Is she really with Young Joc? Hmmm…Didn’t know he was into women with a 20/80 human flesh to plastic ratio.)  And don’t come at with me with the Americans-value-other-things-too argument because you know it’s McDonald’s, bad fashion and other not so reputable things. No, but my point simply, is that people get mad at rappers for showing off their wealth (as meager as it is in relative terms) but say nothing of rich white people who spend their money on more “classy” things like…I don’t know…country houses???? The conditions of cultural and social capital are set up so that anyone who is newly endowed with loot has to hit a big learning curve to know how to play like you are rich, which in limousine liberal circles translates to: having a lot of assets but then making fun of people for being gawdy. Listen, you and the chick who you just made fun of for having an expensive but ugly LV bag have a lot more in common than not.

So, how does this relate to Obama? Well I think there is a similar set up where the conditions for “humility” are set up for Obama to be damned if he doesn’t act presidential and damned if he does. People want to see him deferential enough but then also not weak. This harkens back to Bo Jangles because for the majority of history of media representations of black men in America, the dominant typology was clear. A black man can be on TV only , as Jesse Jackson alluded to, sans balls. Why? “Well, he’ll rape white women otherwise!” It is one of the reasons why black men in America for a very long time were referred to as “boys.” That is, not yet man (and thus sexual).Philosopher Lewis Gordon argues that the act of lynching(with the requisite castration of the black male body) was not so much a symbol marker of white-male patriarchy (“You can’t have our women, not even if they want to be with you. And this is what will happen to you if there is even an intimation at the possibility.”) but a fear of being penetrated (Keep in mind the historical links between description of land and of women. A woman who is unable to bear children, for example, is dubbed “barren.” Err…is she a desert? One’s homeland is referred to as the “Mother Land.” Thus, women are at once the wombs of one’s community but nevertheless kept in abject positions) by the absolute Other of the white phallus–a black one.)

Small things like “he’s acting too COCKy”(see…I’m not making this stuff up) actualize the histories that are only buried in the top soil of the history of race in the US. So as John Riddley at Huffington Post writes, when someone like Karl Rove calls Obama “arrogant,” he means uppity, that is, out of place, out of line. In other words, not like his given role in the landscape of race and power.

Now, I know I’m sounding like crazy ass Eldridge Cleaver right here, but please rest easy. I’m not going to be adopting a nationalist politics any time soon (too masculinist, sexist, homophobic, and uncomplicated). But I do think that we have to be a bit more semiotically rigorous as people pat themselves on the back for having a black presidential nominee.

And that means you Chris Matthews (although I love you and watch your damn show every night).

Patti Labelle Dudes

If you are from NYC or live here now, you might have met this type of dude or more likely seen him rolling by in a Mazda MPV with a new suspension, unabashedly blasting a female voice singing lyrics about loving some man up, as a lot of early-80s R&B is prone to do. Since it is summer time, you will most likely see them in shades, a monochromatic linen short-sleeve button down and way-too-long shorts set, MANdals, gold jewelry and a certain kind of “old man” swagger. You know who I’m talking about. You’ve seen him when you got off the train on the ride home from work. You’ve scratched your head. What is this guy’s deal? He’s not like the other cats who hang out in front of the bodega. He’s not just a regular corner dude. He’s on some next. He gets out of the car–yes, Patti is still blasting in his system–and the young dudes dap him up like an OG.

I find this to be mad funny especially in light of the very reactionary “no homo”/”pause” game that is still played. It’s clear: there is some pretty effing gayness inherent to the OG status in NYC. How come the Patti Dude doesn’t get “paused”? Regardless, I’m glad Patti Dudes are around, representing the rather tenuous nature of bodega masculinity and the teetering line between OG-status and utter gayness.

Killin' em