And Jon Stewart enters the fray…
Last week, President Obama hosted the rapper, Common at the White House. Since he isn’t white and espousing poetry with Biblical overtones, the talking heads at Fox have jumped right on the kool-aide wagon over this latest action that proves Obama is a facist/Marxist/commie sympathizer who is not an American citizen.
Seems Common has joined others in criticizing the handling of the cases of two people convicted of killing cops. As with many cases from the 70s and early 80s, procedural errors and other questionable tactics in cases involving persons of color perpetrating crimes against whites and authority figures were often ignored and/or covered up.
The two individuals involved, Mumia Abu Jamal and Assata Shakur were not exactly pillars of society and both were once members of the Black Panthers and other activist groups. Both were put at the scene of the crimes they were convicted of but both cases also raise lots of questions about the fairness of the justice system.
OReilly threw down the debate gauntlet in front of Jon Stewart who eagerly accepted the challenge. The video of their exchange can be seen HERE.
While I think both of them are publicity sluts, whoring for ratings, I did find the exchange of some merit.
For one thing, OReily tips his hand to his true objections when he questions why this rapper who is not identified as a poet should have been invited to the White House at all. Apparently Bill is now an artistic aficionado and all artists invited to the White House need his seal of approval. He adds weight to his remarks (in his mind anyway) by asking the rhetorical, “Do you know how many poets would have loved to be invited to the White House?” Jon showed class and restraint in NOT answering, “I don’t know, Bill – how many?”
I am sick and tired of angry, old white men, born of privilege and entrenched in their own racist, bigoted beliefs continually trying to regress society to a prehistoric social system. STFU!!!!!!!
I am heartened by Stewart’s reasoned responses as well as Obama’s recent smack down of the birther debate led by that cotton-haired loonie, Trump. Obama weathered the scrutiny of his (non)relationship with Bill Ayers and I think this latest pseudo-outrage will also become Common.
In the meantime, we have quite a few groups in this country working to review cases and bring true justice to victims by ensuring that not only is justice served fairly but that it is served on the actual perpetrator of the crime. The fact that these groups exist and are finding errors and wrongful convictions does not speak highly of how our justice system has operated thus far. This SHOULD be the topic of discussion.
O'Reilly has a habit of opening his mouth and inserting his foot. Well said, Rocky.
ReplyDeleteI think that there is often a failure to recognize that one's own cultural bubble does not necessarily include all that is relevant to others who inhabit other cultural milieus. 99% of black people under the age of 30 know who Common is and they do think of him and all rappers as poets. Most of the folks in my age group are familiar with Common. Personally, I take notice of handsome young men who are particularly articulate and don't use their art form to denigrate women; Common is such a a artist. Did I mention that he's hot? I'm shallow.
No doubt, Common's audience doesn't consist of only black people, but he has already become an iconic part of black culture, primarily becsue he is a rapper with a real message and does not engage in the misogynistic rhyming of some of his contemporarys. Singer/songwriter Jill Scott was also one of the poets invited to the WHite House. I suspect that Mrs. Obama (this was her event) was trying to reach a younger generation by selecting poets with whom they were likely to be familiar.
I definitely agree with Rocky that we need to be talking more about the problems with our justice system that result in wrongful convictions. The majority of these wrongfully convicted persons are male and a disproportionate numebr of them are black. The headlines speak of men who have spent 10, 20, 30 years in jail, wrongfully convicted. There is no compensating someone for a life wasted. Besides, the states have all set strict limits on financial liability for wrongfully convicted persons, regardless of how much time they serve.
Prosecutors intone that the individual was convicted by a jury of his peers as if that somehow means more than the conclusive evidence, often DNA evidence that shouts of the person's innocence. Think about the number of crimes where there is no opportunity for DNA evidence to prove guilt or innocence. Murder and assault, sex crimes, may involve DNA evidence but if you're wrongfully convicted of armed robbery, there may be no DNA evidence, nothing to conclusively show that the culprit was not you. With the number of wrongfully convicted persons that have been released, I can't help but wonder about the number of wrongfully convicted persons who still sit in prison cells waiting for someone to hear them when they cry, "I didn't do it!"
According to the Innocence Project Case Files, there have been 271 post conviction DNA exonerations in U.S. history. If you want to know what you can do, how you can make a difference, please visit the Innocence Project website for a list of ten things that we can do to help exonerate innocent people and prevent wrongful convictions.
You're right, it is expected that we would have at least some divergent cultural references. Common is a cutie but I must admit, before the hoopla about his being invited to the WH I had never heard of him. Then again, until I watched The Voice I had never heard of Marooned 5 or Blake Shelton.
ReplyDeleteI hope this attention gives Common a bigger audience to air his views on what bothers him about these two cases.
My point of reference is the case of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter who was made famous in the Bob Dylan ballad.
And your comment, "The headlines speak of men who have spent 10, 20, 30 years in jail, wrongfully convicted. There is no compensating someone for a life wasted." should set a gold standard for investigation and prosecution.
I absolutely want the bad guys locked up where they can't do any more harm. If they do the crime, I totally want them to do the time. But we MUST insist on thorough, nonprejudiced police work and conscientious prosecution.
There are far too many wrongful convictions turning up and, surprise, surprise, the majority are in Southern states. Texas is one of the worst but our own NC has nothing to brag on.
Rocky,
ReplyDeleteI have often cited this example in the pages of the Swash Zone, the voice of an infamously angry pundit bullying the most helpless and innocent of persons:
Michael Savage: "I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. (…) They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot' … You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That's why we have the politicians we have."
Here is an account of Michael Savage’s father as recalled by a childhood acquaintance:
“Benny [father of Michael Savage] had a chip on his shoulder and was always mad at the world, and he was tough on Michael. There was nothing Michael could ever do to please him," recalls Alan Zaitz, who has known the radio talker since the two of them were in Hebrew school together as second-graders (…) Benny Weiner verbally abused his son and didn't hesitate to embarrass him in front of his teenage friends, Zaitz says. "Michael would have on tight black jeans and a boat-necked sweater and his dad would say, 'I don't like the way you're dressed. You look like a fag,' stuff like that," he recalls.”
Granted, Bill O’Reilly is not Michael Savage; yet there are remarkable parallels in their respective family backgrounds. Bill O’Reilly, from all published accounts, had an abusive and authoritarian father who hit, slapped, punched, and subjected the kid to constant verbal humiliation.
Here is another public figure with an obvious anger management problem broadcast on CNN, Congressman – and former judge - Louis Gohmert.
I mention these accounts again and again to underscore a point: When character disordered pundits and public officials decompensate in public, their lunatic behaviors enter our culture, are deemed normal and acceptable, and legitimized by mainstream media. Furthermore, when these personalities invent scapegoats and trade on bigotry and hysteria, they are also the most likely to commit miscarriages of justice. Just a thought (and an old theme of mine).
Dear Rocky,
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is most important is that we all have so much to learn from one another.
By the way, I love The Voice. As my grandmother would have said, that's some real good singing!
Sheria - I grew up in such an ethnically diverse community that all the different languages, foods and traditions were commonplace. I have been so fortunate to have been able to learn and grow as a human being from a childhood spent with such wonderfully different people. We do have so much to learn and so much to share!
ReplyDeleteI'm loving The Voice but I can't wait for The Sing Off. It's a competition between A cappella groups and it is astounding! No doubt your grnadmother would have loved it.
Rocky, we're birds of a feather! I also watched The Sing Off when it was on and I am also eagerly awaiting its return. I love a capella groups.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, speaking of Jon Stewart, if anyone saw his show featuring clips of Ted Nugent telling the President to "suck on my machine gun, you piece of shit" and raising his finger told the Secretary of State to ride on this?
ReplyDeleteOf course Nugent has been on Fox as an honored guest, playing guitar with Huckabee and Insanity Hannity has strongly defended him against criticism. . .
All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who rail against me use my name as a curse. . .
Too much weed will fry your brain. Haven't you seen those commercials with the frying egg? Ted's brain was fried long ago.
ReplyDeleteBut do Hannity and O'Reilly and Huckabee have that excuse? Or a brain, for that matter?
ReplyDeleteIt's too widespread a phenomenon to be anything but good old fashioned hate for anyone better than you and since most living things are better than those three, it's what they do.
Spoken like a wise raccoon, Rocky. Seems to me these righties just wake up every morning 100% prepared to make Obama out to be the boogeyman. And the more they listen to one another, the truthier it all sounds to them. This sort of thing will completely backfire because, so far as I know, COMMON is pretty mild for a rapper and all the young'uns know that. So the old-white-men critics just sound foolish when they make him out to be some kind of violent, hate-spewing menace.
ReplyDelete