Whining Conservative Hypocrites By A. Peter Bailey Conservatives and their neocon cohorts in the journalistic and academic worlds get a real kick out of ridiculing those Black folks as whiners who insist that this is not a postracial society, that White supremacy, if not racism, is still persuasive throughout the land. Does this mean that we have hopelessly thrown up our hands as some black folks charge No, it means that we acknowledge racial reality, not racial illusions. As for the conservatives who call us whiners, they are premier worldclass whining hypocrites who, in oped after oped, in book after book, on television and radio program after television and radio program, most often in the same media that they are criticizing, whine loudly about liberal bias in the mainstream media. This has been going on for nearly 50 years. One would think that a group of propagandists who are backed by numerous right-wing foundations, think tanks, universities, corporations, organizations and individuals with many billions of dollars on hand, would have, by now, launched their own nation-wide media empire. Read More...

Joe the Plumber on the Analyst’s Couch By Sid Davis The John McCain campaign machine, running on fumes in the last frantic days before the election, still won’t abandon the desperate Joe-the-Plumber narrative it rolled out in an attempt to create a game changing moment in the third presidential debate. Even with poor Joe now exposed to the nation as non-licensed, a non-taxpayer, and even a non-Joe—his real name is Samuel Wurzelbacher—the Republicans have decided to defend their poor, beleaguered symbol until the bitter end. Of late, they have said that it doesn’t matter what isn’t true about Joe, but what is—that he’s an everyday American trying to get ahead, a salt-of-the-Earth type, into whose steely blues we can all gaze and see tiny, saintly reflections of ourselves. Such a claim invites a psychological analysis—for if he truly is Everyman, then we need to examine the person who Republicans say is strolling every street in every town of these vast United States. So let’s put Joe on the analyst’s couch and take an unflinching gander at him—and in so doing see what the Republicans think of the rest of us. Read More...

Uncomfortable With Change By Clover Sultan Are people really ready for a change Am I When I set out to find the answer to these questions, I started my journey in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York City at the Marcy Houses. Oddly enough, the Myrtle Ave side of this housing project is considered BedStuy while the side Im on, the Flushing side, is considered the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Marcy Houses is now seen as being culturally diverse, and although it is still a predominately AfricanAmerican community, there are what we like to call little sprinklings of ethnicities. My housing project is currently home to Jewish, white, and even Chinese families. The recent building boom in New York City has had amazing effects on all of Brooklyn. However, the only problem with that is theyre building AROUND Marcy Houses. Its almost as though they dont want to admit that its there. Across from the projects there are newly built lofts all occupied by Caucasians. And on either side of these stand huge buildings built for the Jewish community. These million dollar lofts are of course occupied by people within a bigger tax bracket than the residents of the housing project. So I decided to ask the white men I know who reside within Marcy houses if they felt uncomfortable about the chance that the next president of this country could be a black man. Interestingly enough, they all did just about the same thing before answering Read More...

Sarah Palin Pandering To The People By Ash Agony As with many elections throughout history, the current race for the presidency has become mired with the warm sounding rhetoric of populist politics. The air of this race has become thick with the nauseating odor of the standard populist appeals to the interests of regular, middleclass Americans. Unsurprisingly, Americas recent economic crisis has resulted in an amplification of populist rhetoric on the campaign trail, and nothing is more cliche than politicians claiming to be on the side of the average Joe. What makes this all the more sickening to a cynic, like myself, is that both parties have adopted this populist style of discourse, though obviously the McCainPalin ticket is the latecomer to this rhetorical celebration of regular folks. What one should remember is that populism isnt necessarily an ideological disposition or a specific set of policies. It is a more like a style of political seduction, sophistry and spectacle for plebeian consumption. Also, in this age of visual media, populism has been turned into image and appearances. Nowadays, candidates are either elites trying to put on the facade of being a regular Joe Sixpack or philistines attempting to masquerade themselves as competent enough to actually carry out the duties of the position they are seeking to fill. What we are examining in this article is the latter, the type of candidate is exemplified by Americas sweetheart Sarah Palin. Her appeal to average, downhome Middle Americans has become a political tool used by the Republican party and should not be underestimated and taken lightly by the Democratic party . Like our current dear leader George W. Bush, Sarah Palins appeal to politically illiterate Joe Schmoes could, scary as it may sound, be Read More...

Blackness Ain't Dead Yet - Raphael Saadiq By Justin Mitchell Since its inception Black music has essentially been a cry for freedom and a counterstatement to the other Americas worldview. The Spirituals, Blues, Jazz particularly Bebop and Hard Bop, Rhythm and Blues, Soul, Funk are expressions born out of a particular cultural experience and therefore reflect a distinct aesthetic ideology. The spirituals were a rejection of the New Testament values espoused bave masters. The Blues and early Jazz represented a celebration of all things Black that is, things deemed unsavory by whites vernacular English, sex often prostitution, violence, and drugs. When whites began to make it palatable, blacks rebelled and created a music that they suspected was unplayable to anyone but themselves. They turned to the harder, Blacker stuff. The search for new forms that eventually led to Bebop and Hard Bop was a political move, motivated as much by a search for artistic freedom and novelty as it was by black disillusionment with postwar America, an America that put a white stamp on black music and spit in the faces of black veterans. When R&B birthed that ugly bastard rock n roll, Blacks turned their backs in disgust and again sought new forms. They leaned on the Blues and combined it with Black innovations in Jazz to create Soul, and Funk forms that were unapologetically and explicitly Black. Over the past few decades black music has taken some serious hits. First there was the Disco backlash, part of suburban Americas war on city life. The discotheques were nothing more than a metaphor for the American city, which many whites had fled in droves to avoid having to live as equals among blacks. The discotheques were marked by integration, sexual freedom, and drug use. Not surprisingly, rock music, which is a fundamentally fascist art, formed the soundtrack to white Americas attack on black music. Socalled hard rockers triumphantly declared Disco a refuge for a Black population in desperate need of a place to feel free dead. Then came Reaganomics, which cut funding to after school music programs in Americas inner cities. As if to add insult to injury crack reared its ugly head, destroying an already fragile communal infrastructure. In short, a new generation, despite their reverence for their parents music, lacked the means money and institutions school, church, kinship networks to learn how to play it. In the 1980s black music survived in the form of adultoriented Quiet Storm, but largely ceded ground to hiphop, a genre lacking the melodic complexity of its precursors because it was not made by trained musicians. New Jack Swing, although shortlived, brought some muchneeded harmony to hiphop. By the late 1990s, however, an entire generation raised on hiphop and what some have inexplicably termed hip-hop soul had taken over R&B. In fact, it is safe to say that contemporary RB is mostly derived from hip-hop and bares only a faint resemblance to Black music of the past. This music, arguably the best music that America has ever produced, is standing on its last leg. Read More...