Wigger Lover

Wigger, you gay.

Senator Larry Craig has been in the news recently following his arrest for lewd conduct in a Minneapolis bathroom. The arresting officer Dave Karsnia said that Craig's refusal of the depiction of events on the arrest report were unheard of for an old white guy. "I guess I'm gonna say I'm just disappointed in you, sir, I just really am," Sgt Karsnia said. "I expect this from the guy we get out of the 'hood. I mean, people vote for you."

Earl Ofari Hutchinson over at the Huffington Post blog chimed in on that nonsense:

From what's on the tape, Craig didn't dispute the characterization. And in the tortuous public gyrations he's gone through to try and explain what he did or didn't do in the men's bathroom, he made no reference to the reprimand. But way should he? There's absolutely no way that Craig would ever compare himself to a guy from the hood. But could he be? The answer is yes and no. Legions of white men, and that includes wealthy, prominent, high positioned white men, have been indicted and jailed for lying to judges, grand juries, congressional committees, FBI and Justice Department investigators. Over the years, the white men that run government agencies from the White House to the FBI have been repeatedly caught in lie after lie to cover-up their misdeeds or blatant criminal wrongdoing. So it's no stretch to compare men such as Craig to the guy from the 'hood.'

The problem with that and here's the no part, the comparison insults the mythical guy from the 'hood. But he is very real to Karsnia because he fits in snugly public beliefs, or to be more precise, stereotypes about the 'hood.' The stereotype fits even more snugly when it's jammed next to negative public perceptions and fears of black crime. When some young blacks turned to gangs, guns and drugs, and terrorized their communities, much of the press titillated the public with endless features on the crime-prone, crack-plagued, blood-stained streets of the ghetto.

...

The prevailing notion of who's a crook and a liar and who isn't has also spilled over into the job market. In 2005 Researchers at Princeton University surveyed nearly 1,500 private employers in New York City. They found that black men with no criminal records were no more likely to find work than white men with criminal records. In another study of employer attitudes toward minority hiring, some employers didn't even try too hide the reason they were reluctant or refused to hire the guy from the 'hood.' They flatly described blacks as "unskilled," "uneducated," "illiterate." "dishonest," "lacked initiative," "unmotivated," "involved with gangs and drugs," "did not understand work," "unstable," "lacked charm," "had no family values," and were "poor role models."

The last reason they gave for slamming the employment door on blacks was especially apt in relation to Karsnia's reprimand of Craig. He was righteously offended that a senator could so abuse his name and reputation by stooping to commit a petty criminal act in a men's restroom. That immediately disqualified him as any kind of fit model for decency. In that instant whether Karsnia knew it or not, and could admit it or not, Craig was the fictional guy from the 'hood.'

Kanye West's Favorite White People

It is kind of shocking that Mike Meyers didn't make the list. From New York Magazine:

"Homecoming," Kanye West's much-anticipated collaboration with Chris Martin, is making its way around the blogosphere this afternoon and — amazingly! — it's actually pretty great. Martin eschews the usual schlocky mid-tempo stadium balladry for some flashy piano work that almost sounds like it could have come from Billy Joel (but in a good way!). The track seems like an easy sell to radio and should help pay for Kanye's next gold-plated sweater vest.

Still, though, if the Coldplay singer wants to be Kanye's favorite dorky white dude in 2007, he's got some stiff competition. Below, we see how the candidates measure up.

1. Chris Martin

Laugh all you want, but Kanye's newest BFF has some serious gangsta credentials — Martin was responsible for producing the fourth-best track on Jay-Z's Kingdom Come, an impressive feat given that Dr. Dre, Just Blaze, and West himself made the other beats.

2. Justin Timberlake

More of a frenemy these days, sadly. Kanye's repeatedly expressed his admiration for Timberlake, but, in a recent interview, he called JT his "nemesis" and "only competition."

3. Daft Punk

"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," the 2001 hit by these space-helmeted Frenchmen, serves as the foundation for "Stronger," Kanye's current single. But Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo should probably be disqualified on the grounds that they are actually robots.

4. Peter, Bjorn, and John

Dopey white guys don't come much whiter or dopier than the ones in this Swedish indie-rock trio, but Kanye's sampled PB&J's "Young Folks" on a recent mix tape with impressive results, and even performed with them as his backup band.

5. John Mayer

There was a time when Ye and May were inseparable, but not nearly so much anymore. "Bittersweet," a track on which Mayer sung the hook, was left off Graduation, likely because it was terrible. Also, his recent cover of "Chocolate Rain" probably didn't help his case.

6. Zach Galifianakis

This portly comedian is easily our favorite geeky white guy. Kanye tasked him with making the video for his recent single "Can't Tell Me Nothing," and, well, this happened:

"Fuck the Holice / That's if ya racist or ya crooked!"

WBNS--Central Ohio's News Leader--broke with a story this morning involving a 15-year veteran of the Columbus Police force. Officer Susan Purtee has been participating in a YouTube show featuring production values that make porno look like 300. In "The Patriot Dames" two white sisters make deregatory comments towards the United States Jewish population, African Americans, and hip hop culture:

"We're going to investigate to see if the Jews are the problem in the United States," one of the characters said. "They helped the blacks for a long time they helped them get messes up, destroy their neighborhoods; gave them new rap and Ebonics culture."

In one potion of the tape, the women discuss Adolph Hitler and the state of the Jewish population during World War II.

"When Hitler tried to get rid of them, no other country wanted them," one character said.

Another segment shows Purtee's co-host holding a sign that reads, "Jews are the problem."

Rabbi Howard Apothaker said he finds the internet videos especially disturbing because a police officer appears in them. While he said he supports free speech, he said a police officer shouldn't demonstrate the views that appear in the videos.

"She needs to show actively, as opposed to passively, that she doesn't hold some of the same views within the performance of her duties as a Columbus police officer," Apothaker said.

While the legal team reviews the videos to decide whether or not Purtee will face departmental charges, Fraternal Order of Police president Jim Gilbert said Purtee is entitled to her opinion.

"She's not representing herself in the video as a police officer, or FOP member," Gilbert said. "It's just her personal opinion. You may not agree with it, I may not agree with it, but the fact is she has the right to say what she wants."

Here the scholars discuss the history of Ebonics:

Nice White Lady

Breakadawn!

Danny Hoch's latest via BroadwayWorld:

"In what may well be the first epic and seminal work of Hip-Hop generation dramatic literature, Till The Break of Dawn is the first commercial production of Hip-Hop in straight-play form, from one of the pioneers of the field. Danny Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2000 and continues to be one of the loudest voices in the theater for that generation. Till The Break of Dawn also marks Mr. Hoch's first new written work to be presented in New York since 1998," state press notes.

"In Till The Break of Dawn, Gibran, an internet hip-hop activist, leads a group of his New York friends on a trip to Havana to attend a festival. They've always been radical at home, but in Cuba, radical means something else. So does Hip-Hop, and so do they. Watch as hip-hop politics, South Bronx angst and Cuban reality all clash in this raucous and provocative play from the author of Some People and Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop," state press notes.

...

The 11 character work begins performances September 4 at the Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street) on Manhattan's Lower East Side for an eight-week limited engagement. An official opening night is set for September 13, 2007.

Performances are Tuesday – Friday at 8:00 p.m., Saturday at 2:00 & 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $35 ($15 for students) and are available by calling (212) 352-3101, visiting www.cultureproject.org or in person at Culture Project or the Abrons Center box office.

The Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street. Nearby subway stops are the F at East Broadway or Delancey, the D, B or Q at Grand Street and the J or M at Essex Street.

"Thought I wouldn't have that ass done? Fooled you [wiggaz]"

From the Time Magazine on newsstands now:

Since the 1980s, when Run-DMC attracted sponsorship from Adidas, the rap community has aspired to be big business. By the '90s, those aspirations had become a reality. In a 1999 cover story, TIME reported that with 81 million CDs sold, rap was officially America's top-selling music genre. The boom produced enterprises like Roc-A-Fella, which straddled fashion, music and film and in 2001 was worth $300 million. It produced moguls like No Limit's Master P and Bad Boy's Puff Daddy, each of whom in 2001 made an appearance on FORTUNE's list of the richest 40 under 40. Along the way, the music influenced everything from advertising to fashion to sports.

The growth spurt was fueled by sensationalism. Tupac Shakur shot at police, was convicted of sexual abuse and ultimately was murdered in Las Vegas. But Shakur both alive and dead has also sold more than 20 million records. Death Row Records, which released much of Shakur's material, was run by ex-con Suge Knight and dogged by rumors of money laundering. But between 1992 and 1998, the label churned out 11 multiplatinum albums. Gangsta rappers reveled in their outlaw mystique, crafting ultra-violent tales of drive-bys and stick-ups designed to shock and enthrall their primary audience--white suburban teenagers. "Hip-hop seemed dangerous; it seemed angry," says Richard Nickels, who manages the hip-hop band the Roots. "Kurt Cobain killed himself, and rock seemed weak. But then you had these black guys who came out and had guns. It was exciting to white kids."

Hip-hop now faces a generation that takes gangsta rap as just another mundane marker in the cultural scenery. "It's collapsing because they can no longer fool the white kids," says Nickels. "There's only so much redundancy anyone can take."

THAT WHITE GIRL

Educator and activist JLove's latest novel THAT WHITE GIRL dropped yesterday. You can purchase a copy online at Amazon.com. The book is described by Publisher's Weekly as follows:

A white girl follows her cultural fascinations into hip-hop, graffiti and the Denver Crips gang in this mildly gritty and massively disappointing novel by JLove (a.k.a. Jennifer Calderon). Propelled by nothing much more than an overworked single mom and a perpetually stoned brother, high schooler Amber follows pal Juan into the local Crips crew, the Rollin' 30s. Despite the disadvantage of her skin color (it is white), Amber is soon completing her initiation-holding a gun on a convenience store clerk during a robbery-and earning a reputation as a graffiti tagger. The books' opening third is a fast-paced mix of danger and graffiti craft, but Amber's drama-queen tendencies become more annoyingly apparent over a string of cheesy romances, and when Amber moves to L.A. to attend college and decides that hip-hop is the key to solving racial strife, the narrative turns insufferable.

The book has also been getting more praise than a Sunday morning. The White Rapper Show host M.C. Serch says it is, "like reading a diary and wanting to reach out to the person writing the story to befriend them, so that they see that they are not alone." Jeff Chang chimes in adding, "JLove has the heart, the skills, and the underdog love to tell this deeply moving coming-of-age story the way it had to be told."

"If white people aren't having a good time, then what's it all for?"

From Yahoo News:

Poll: White youths happier than others

By LARRY McSHANE and TREVOR TOMPSON, Associated Press Writers

From their relationships to their jobs to their money — even from they time they first roll out of bed — young white Americans are happier with life than their minority counterparts.

According to an extensive survey of 1,280 people ages 13-24 by The Associated Press and MTV, 72 percent of whites say they are happy with life in general, compared with 51 percent of Hispanics and 56 percent of blacks.

"It doesn't surprise me," said Martin Carpenter, 21, a black New Jersey resident. "There's a lot of issues out there for African-American young adults. You can still go to certain places and feel uncomfortable, like you don't belong there."

Martin's feeling about racism, real or perceived, was echoed in the survey: 28 percent of minorities believe race will hurt them in the quest for a better life. Among whites, 20 percent feel their race will help in getting ahead.

Destiny Brown, 17, a black Virginia high school student, said she has friends who were already passed over for work simply because their names sounded different: "I know sometimes your name — people will give you a hard time when you try to get a job."

The difference in levels of happiness is not always stark, but it's consistent. Among whites, 67 percent usually wake up happy in the morning; for minorities, the figure is 61 percent.

Those numbers extend into all aspects of life:

• Parents: Sixty-six percent of minorities are happy with their relationships with mom and dad, compared with 79 percent of whites.

• Sex: Sixty percent of white youths are happy with their sex lives, compared with 46 percent of minorities. Both groups are about equal on the sexual activity scale.

• Friends: Eighty-one percent of minorities are happy with their relationships with friends, compared with 88 percent of whites.

• Jobs: Fifty-one percent of minorities are happy with their jobs, compared with 64 percent of whites.

• Money: Forty-four percent of minorities are unhappy with the money they have, compared with 35 percent of whites.

• Grades: Sixty-three percent of minorities are happy with their school grades, while 73 percent of whites are satisfied with their marks. Barely half of the minority respondents say school makes them happy, contrasted with 60 percent of the whites.

The study also found a split in how the races perceive the keys to happiness.

Among minorities, the most important factor was lack of financial worries, chosen by one in four respondents. For whites, one in five people chose a good family.

Carpenter, one of the survey participants, spoke for the majority of minority youths who feel their race will not cause problems later in life.

"I don't think so," he said. "I'm thinking on a smaller scale. In my community, it's not that big a deal."

___

The AP-MTV poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks Inc. from April 16 to 23, and involved online interviews with 1,280 people aged 13 to 24. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

"If you ain't in it for the money, then get out the game."

Article from today's Seattle Times on the ever growing ability of rappers to turn hip hop into a business. Included (in addition to "lies, damned lies, and statistics,") is the ironic role white kids play as consumers.

The rap game in particular is increasingly just another hustle, a starting point for would-be moguls seeking to establish themselves as brands and cash in on their names. It's savvy, from a business and marketing standpoint, but it's having a deleterious effect on quality and creativity, especially in the mainstream rap world.

"I have a quote on my desk, right above my computer, from 50 Cent that says, 'I didn't get in it for the music, I got in it for the business,' " says Brian Coleman, author of "Check the Technique," a behind-the-scenes look at 36 seminal rap albums. "Honestly, what more does anyone need to know?"

Indeed, the title of 50 Cent's 2004 debut says it all: "Get Rich or Die Tryin'." Still, Fiddy is not to blame. Like any good businessman, he's responding to the marketplace. In this case, it's a marketplace that emphasizes hit singles over lasting careers, the homogenizing reliance on the same group of record producers to supply those hits, and the continuing dominance of bling-rap tunes obsessed with violence, subservient women and status-symbol possessions.

...

Teens and college-age consumers buy more than half the number of rap albums sold, and young white men buy more rap than white women and black men and women combined, Essence magazine reported in 2005. There are exceptions, but that suggests rap music as a whole isn't reflecting social conditions so much as supplying content to its customers in the form of a macho fantasy they want to hear.

"White America is much more willing to buy a misrepresentation of an entire race," says Tim Fite, a Brooklyn indie rapper, whose latest album, "Over the Counter Culture," is a scathing and funny critique of the corporate music machine and blind consumerism.

"It's alluring to them," continues Fite, who is white. "There's this sick fascination that's completely unfounded. You go to the so-called rough neighborhoods where everybody is real, and it's a whole lot of real families trying to make a real living and get along. But a lot of people don't believe that because they only believe what they hear in hip-hop songs, and that is so far from reality, it's not even funny."

One thing that's unlikely to change is the role of music as a marketing tool. It's always been one, from sales of sheet music in the days before radio to trinkets for sale on the early country-music circuit to the Sex Pistols' origins as a consumerist ploy by their manager, Malcolm McLaren, who was looking to drum up business for his clothing boutique in London. The difference is hip-hop succeeded where McLaren mostly just schemed.

From I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE

There's a funny bit in this movie where a character played by Kerry Washington tells Chris Rock that people of other races make music, too.

Although it all could be a plan to get black folks to act as dumb as Dave Grohl from The Foo Fighters.