UPDATE: Eight people in total shot outside Empire State Building, one of the dead is shooter - New York police source
You can agree with everything that Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz say on MSNBC and still oppose their right to say it.
FLASH: Two dead in shooting outside Empire State Building, police say no apparent link to terrorism - New York police source
Why Lupe’s video is Problematic
I was gonna wait to write this. But I’ve been on a long post kick today, soo, w.e.
My Review of the Video:
Let me start off by saying, I know what his intent is, the message that he is trying to get across. But what I’m talking about is the physical, the impact, the actual product that I watched.
So, the video was supposed to provide some social commentary about current music.
But, the problem is, he went about it in what I think is the wrong way.
First off, it was clear that he was targeting Nicki Minaj. And its like, yes, I don’t agree with A LOT of shit that she does. But rapper to rappper, he should understand, that as a woman in a industry that is male dominated and male oriented, shit is hard. So to specifically come for her in a song where he is trying to discuss female empowerment….I just don’t fucks with that.
And, the whole idea of “bitch bad, woman good, lady better”-it’s like, shouldn’t it be up to women to decide how we want to be labeled. Isn’t the problem that we are too often defined in man’s eyes. And what the fuck is acting like a lady?
And also, the part where the girl has on the bandeau and short shorts, and he’s saying because she has those clothes on and calls herself a ‘bad bitch’ she is somehow not deserving of respect. Idk how it gets more misogynistic than that.
Like forreals.
And just the idea that the media directly influences people, like there aren’t other factors that guide who you are and who you choose to be. That’s also problematic.
Every little girl who sees a song with a video girl shaking her ass is not going to want to be a video, I guarantee you.
I do think the blackface minstrel part was very thought provoking, because yes, a lot of black people in entertainment are at the end of the day putting money in the pockets of white execs at the top. I think that is true for music and sports. Exploitation is real. Really real.
But beyond that, no.
I think, a song like this would have been better from 1) a female perspective (ya know since that is the focus of the song). Who better to discuss how women are defined in music than a woman. and 2) a less judgmental standpoint (which I think would have accompanied a female rapper doing this)
Honestly, it shouldn’t be up to you to tell us what labels we should value being called.
That’s how we got to this whole misogynistic society in the first place.
In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Fear of a Black President”
You can Google ‘Sri Lanka’ and it doesn’t come up that all these people have been murdered or bombed, it’s ‘Come to Sri Lanka on vacation, there are beautiful beaches’ … you’re not gonna get the truth till you hit like, page 56, and it’s my and your responsibility to pass on the information that it’s not easy anymore.
Maya “M.I.A.” Arulpragasam(following these comments, M.I.A. received death threats directed at her and her son)
(via dr-killjoy)
Source: hatfulofquotes
Being fact-checked is not very fun. Good fact-checkers have a preternatural inclination toward pedantry, and sometimes will address you in a prosecutorial tone. That is their job and the adversarial tone is even more important than the actual facts they correct. In my experience, seeing your name on the cover of a magazine will take you far in the journey toward believing your own bullshit. It is human to do so, and fact-checkers serve as a valuable check to prevent writers from lapsing into the kind of arrogant laziness which breeds plagiarism and the manufacture of facts. The fact-checker (and the copy-editor too actually) is a dam against you embarrassing yourself, or worse, being so arrogant that don’t even realize you’ve embarrassed yourself. Put differently, a culture of fact-checking, of honesty, is as important as the actual fact-checking.
You know discourse is bad when the president has to say ‘rape is rape’.
Jamie Kilstein
Imagine if Mitt Romney or Ron Paul were arrested last week. Now imagine no one is really talking about it. Feel like the world has gone a little crazy? Me too.
PHILADELPHIA — Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and her running mate have been arrested at a sit-in at a Philadelphia bank over housing foreclosures.
The arrests came after about 50 party supporters staged a protest Wednesday against Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage lender.
Some tried to reach Fannie Mae’s downtown office through the adjacent bank. They staged a sit-in when they were denied access to the office building.
Stein and her running mate, Philadelphia activist Cheri Honkala (HAHN’-kah-lah), are among five people arrested. Police say they will face charges of defiant trespassing.
The demonstrators included several city residents struggling to keep their homes. Two met with Fannie Mae officials.
Stein is a Harvard-educated physician. Her “Green New Deal” platform aims to create sustainable local economies and reduce corporate power in politics.
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