Superman | Diamond D + “No Drama Obama”

Diamond D: Superman (prod. DJ Scratch) (128kbps)
Single (?, 2010)

I am a '72 baby. I am fastidious and nonconforming.

I do not listen to the radio for music instead, only, for news (preferably NPR). The "radio ready" - "lollipop" machinations misnomered "music" are cause for antacid.

Diamond D's "Superman", by contrast, is refreshing - mellifluous and euphonically resplendent; further, the lyrical rhythmic exactitude is "right-on".

Good music is nourishing.

Yet, as Superma[e]n go Barack Obama is premier - Times Online rhetorically ask, Did “No Drama Obama” cool served him poorly as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig problem worsened? Most poignantly TO provides:

Suddenly Americans did not want an icy-cool leader, but a superman. A nation whose distrust of central government has reached a post-Civil War high wanted a huge and powerful government to jump in. Perhaps no one summed up that desire more succinctly than Mr Obama’s own daughter Malia, below, who peeked her head around the bathroom door last week to ask: “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?”


+It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama! | NYT
*MP3 courtesy of RIK

Is It Wrong to Talk About Michelle Obama's Body?

Talking Heads: Born Under Punches (courtesy of Captain Crates)
Remain In Light (Sire, 1980)

No synopsis for this article (eff that/read this one wholly):


AlterNet article by Tamura Lomax, RH Reality Check. Posted November 22, 2008:

A recent Salon article declared 'First Lady Got Back.' Does the piece tap into racist assumptions about black women's sexuality?

The recent cacophonous chorus surrounding Michelle Obama's derriere is undeniably troubling. Yet, to be quite honest, it is also strangely gratifying to me. I recently read Salon's feature piece "First Lady Got Back." Taken aback by the implicit oxymoron between the words, "First Lady" and "Got Back," I sat for hours pondering all that this cluster of words signified. For instance, what does it mean to place "first lady," which designates a "respectable" social position, with "Got Back," a sexist epithet coined by rapper, Sir Mix-a-Lot, in his hot song, "Baby Got Back," in the early 90's? And, what does it mean to inscribe these words onto the body of our very first African American First Lady?

The deployment of both "lady" and "back" can be viewed as problematic. First, discourses about mythologized "ladies" didn't initially include black women. A "lady" was a woman or wife who innately possessed such virtues as delicacy, piety, beauty, politeness and gentleness. Black women, who were not seen as "ladies," "women" or wives, were historically not privy to such designation. Historically speaking, this was a term reserved for white women. And let me just say upfront, this was not necessarily a compliment. As I understand it, "lady" was just as imprisoning as the more derogatory terms used for black female slaves -- just in a different way.

Secondly, there is a long history of discourses regarding harmfully reductive views of black women's "backs." Black women have been pathologized and objectified because of their "backs," which, by the way, come in all shapes and sizes just like those of other men and women. Sir Mix-a-Lot's hit song, "Baby Got Back," was only the tip of the iceberg. The cultural chorus regarding black women's bodies, particularly their fragmented backside, had been singing for centuries. Sir Mix-a-Lot simply joined in. Or did he?

To be sure, the mass production of "Baby Got Back" via radio and television took ongoing essentialist discourses about black female hyper-sexuality to new dimensions. The constant reproduction of the gyrating images became a source of social studies on black female sexuality. This was obviously deeply problematic. However, as stereotypically reductive as this song and video was, in its own way, it also celebrated black women's bodies. Sure, this so-called celebration reproduced every stereotype about black female sexuality possible. And, by fetishizing black women's privates, reduced them to mere objects, namely their butts. This was absolutely damaging. However, it also did something else. Through the process of representation (via video imaging), which presented black women's butts as evidence of stereotypical difference (regarding black female sexuality), many black women, including myself, strangely found a sense of pride in our bodies, specifically our butts. Thus, while Sir Mix-a-Lot (and others) reassigned mythical legacies to our behinds, some black women were re-imagining themselves as subjects with beautiful bodies.

However, it is important to realize that this was not everyone's experience. Nor was it likely the experience of those like Sir Mix-a-Lot who commodified black women's bodies for his own use and enjoyment. Nor is it likely the experience of many of those who have joined in the chorus regarding Michelle Obama's butt. Deployment of terms such as "lady" and "back," without some sort of critical analysis is irresponsible at best, particularly in reference to black women. Even if Obama's butt makes us beam with pride every time her beautiful body sashays center stage, we cannot ignore the effects of the obvious "blackening" of the already historically brimming noun, "lady," when placed together in a title like "First Lady Got Back." There are serious implications to consider here, namely the pathologization of our first African-American "First Lady."

In short, if we are not more careful in our utilization of language and not more forthright in our criticisms of the language of others, we run the risk of reinforcing historical ideals of black female sexual savagery at the highest level. This is very dangerous. So, if Michelle Obama's body makes us proud, why not shape our enthusiasm with a critique of the status quo, which continues to treat her as an object by fragmenting her to her parts? Obama is a subject -- more than a body, and, more than a butt. Inscribing her with words without carefully evaluating their operation first is beyond distressing. It is death dealing. Not just to her, but to all women.


+Luddite In Chief l Why Barack Obama Should Keep His BlackBerry: Slate

Idaho Students Chant l 'Assassinate Obama'

CLD PRSS

Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed "the reddest place in America" by Salon, but that didn't make it any less shocking when elementary school children allegedly started chanting "assassinate Obama" on the school bus.

Matthew Whoolery told KIKD News he found out about the chanting from his second and third graders, who had no idea what the word "assassinate" meant.


Rhetorical: Has Obama become an effigy at the behest of elementary school students or are school children, as they often do, mimicking their parents who joke (?) with race and terrorism? For this I request that the Phantom Band chime in: No More Fooling (courtesy of Bumrocks). WTF??!!!

Beyond Red & Blue l 7 Ways to View the Presidential Election Map

Per SciAm, Nov. 11, 2008:

Electoral maps are all the rage in presidential election coverage, with NBC going so far as to turn the Rockefeller Center ice rink in New York City into a map of the U.S. on Election Day. As the network called states for the two candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, staffers manually colored those states blue or red, respectively.

Mark Newman, a professor of physics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, took the simplistic concept of red and blue states and exploded it, reimagining the country as defined by its politics and not by its borders. His "cartograms" take state- and county-level election returns as well as data about population and electoral college representation and churn out a vision of the U.S. that is novel, yet still recognizable.

Slide Show: Beyond Red and Blue States


+Slide Show: Obama's Victory On Newspaper Front Pages l Huffington Post
+Obama's First Meeting with a Dangerous World Leader without Pre-conditions l NFADK
+Great Expectations l Economist

?uestlove l What Obama Will Bring (Video)

The Roots drummer hypothesizes about the changes Barack will bring with the UK’s DJ Manny Norte at their Obama Fundraiser in NY’s Sutra Lounge.

Meet President Nanobama

Per New Scientist l Blog:

The image shows the tiniest representation of the new US president yet. Each face is built from roughly 150 million carbon nanotubes.

As the artist/mechanical engineer that made them, John Hart, puts it "that's about how many Americans voted on November 4". Although, of course, only about 53% of those nanotubes actually voted Obama. For more images, and to see how they are made visit Hart's site.

Hart's creation is the latest in a tradition of nanoscale engineers making tiny structures for artistic or self-promotional reasons.


+Obama Promises New Era Of Scientific Innovation: NS

The Day After l Science In The Obama Administration

CLD PRSS

Stanford University biologist Sharon Long, a science advisor to the Barack Obama campaign, talks about science in the upcoming administration:

Podcast hosted by Steve Mirsky.


+Obama's New Ad Frontier: Video Games: Wired l Blog
+White Supremacists Fantasize That Obama Will Help Them Recruit: AlterNet
+On Fears Of Obama's Stand, Gun Sales Spike: NPR
+Obama Mocks Socialist Attacks: "I Shared My Toys in Kindergarten": AlterNet l YouTube
+Inspired by Obama, Jay-Z for New York Mayor: AHH Rumors l Illseed's Quickies

The Low-Road Warrior

Image from NYT

+Mudslinging will damage McCain’s brand—but it may be the only way he can win: New York Magazine.

The Eco-Rundown On Alaska Guv Sarah Palin

Subject title article: Grist l Playahata

+Former captor denies account of torture, says McCain made it up for votes: MSNBC

+DNC

+AlterNet: Palin Pick Is GOP Hypocrisy at its Best l Palin's Speech Tactic: Substitute Cultural Symbols for Actual Policies

Cagle: Jesse Jackson's Obama Trauma

Cartoon by Pat Bagley - Comment on the cartoon

The Pharcyde: If I Were President
Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde (Delicious Vinyl, 1992)

Jesse Jackson's Obama Trauma
by Clarence Page - Comment on the column

What did the Rev. Jesse Jackson mean when he accused Barack Obama of "talking down to black people"? That was the second question on my mind in a telephone interview with Jackson. My first was something like this: "Did you really say you wanted to castrate Obama?"

As the world knows by now, Jackson says he didn't know he was wearing a "hot mic," a turned-on microphone, on the set of a Fox News program when he made what one newspaper headline called his "cutting remark."

Remember the old saying about how character is what you do when nobody's looking? Jackson's inflammatory whispers suggest a new twist: Character is what you do when you don't know that the world may be listening.

If so, his whispers about America's first likely black Democratic presidential nominee reveal Jackson at his worst. He sound frustrated, marginalized and left by the side of the road in the rising glow of a younger star.

Jackson did not dispute that he made the vulgar remark in angry whispers to another show guest about Obama's recent call to expand President Bush's faith-based initiatives. Twice he complained that Obama has been "talking down to black people."

That was a reference, Jackson says, to speeches like Obama's Father's Day address at the predominantly black Apostolic Church of God in Chicago.

It was a speech in which Obama revealed his inner Bill Cosby. He called for more parental responsibility, whether it was assisted by government help or not.

"Any fool can have a child," Obama preached. "That doesn't make you a father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.

Jackson, too, has called for parental responsibility. I was part of the national media that gave glowing coverage to his PUSH for Excellence drive in the 1970s. Across the country he preached to black youths: READ MORE

Video: Obama Faces Racism in West Virginia

“...Yankee do it ethic…”

In other racist Obama news:

Obama sock monkey: thesockobama.com is hosted by Binkley-Toys.com.

Per Binkley Toys:

“We are a ‘Work For Hire’ custom manufacturer. We do not own the property you are referring to so we cannot comment on the intent of the creators of that product. … I don’t believe there would be any negative intent behind their product and I am sure that they can enlighten you on their thinking.”

The Sockobama Co., LLC is registered in Utah as a Limited Liability Company.
The owners are David J. Lawson and Elizabeth A. Lawson, residents of West Jordan, UT.

Per webmaster update – the newest version of their website – reads:

AN APOLOGY

We are very apologetic to all who were upset by our toy idea.
We will not be proceeding with the manufacturing of this toy.
Thank you.

GD

+Plunderblund: Racist Obama Doll
+City Room l New York Times Blog: ‘Assassination’ Artist Is Questioned and Released
+The Real News Network: Official Site

The Empire Strikes Barack

+The Dark Side

Baracky: The Movie

Per The Huffington Post with Fulsome's embellishments:

Baracky: Obama Is Rocky Balboa, Clinton Is Apollo Creed In New Video

Hillary Clinton has compared herself to Rocky Balboa, saying that she and the character from the 1976 film have a "lot in common." However, a video titled "Baracky: The Movie," has taken this comparison to a whole new level. The roles have been switched, with Obama cast as Rocky and Clinton as Apollo Creed, but a whole host of other political players have cameos in this movie, including Clinton's former chief pollster Mark Penn and Oprah.

Needing Loving

Richard Pryor: Black & White Women
From: Bicentennial Nigger: ...And It's Deep Too! - The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992) (Warner Archives/Rhino)

Below find excerpts from an article entitled: Michelle Obama Comes Under Attack? by Pearl JR.
Many of us are noticing that there is really and truly an attack on the value, worth, and importance of Black women in the lives of prominent men. It has gotten so bold that Angelina Jolie is playing a Black woman, 70 percent of Black women are living without spouses, the vast majority of our children are growing up in a single mother household, sixty percent of Black men who earn over $100,000 annually are married to non-Black women, and now a group of White people have created, produced, and distributed a music video that insults Presidential hopeful's Black wife, Michelle Obama; who is now the newest Black women to come under attack to soon be unmated.
Yesterday, while watching Fox News, there was a story about a group of college White students who are posing as Barack Obama supporters that produced a music video called "I Got a Crush on Obama" featuring a sexy White chick lip singing because she was recruited from Craigslist to act in a music video.
Apparently, the Jewish looking female vocalist just wasn't sexy enough to persuade a response from the public or to get Barack Obama's attention they had to use a dummy to pull off this mind-twisting insult.
This video hails Mr. Obama as some type of sex symbol Mandingo that is swooning White women and White people with his sexiness and not his intellect nor his integrity. Forget that Mr. Obama is running for the most powerful job in the world, the Presidency of the United States of America, and put aside that he has a Law Degree from Harvard University and was the only Black President of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, plus voted in as the ONLY Black Senator in the United States Senate among many other notable accomplishments has now been reduced down to being the object of White women's sexual desire.
The scantily dressed White woman with the name of "Obama" on her butt must be to let Barack-ster recognize that she and the producers are aware that Black men like asses, or just in case, he's a tits man, her blouse is tight, especially around the breast area. Furthermore, there is zero mention of Michelle Obama nor his two Black daughters as if they don't even exists, or soon won't, because he is now on White women's radar.
Lastly, check out this comment that I received from YouTube, "if Obama is a true black man he would dump his colored girl wife and shack up with a blonde lady."

*This write-up reads like book and website advertisement and victim role-play via stat cooking: 70%?!
*R.I.P. Richard Pryor the original comedy king courtesy Paul Mooney co-writting
*whitepatriot88:
ill be damned if that nigger becomes president
that space is reserved for WHITES ONLY

Marked as spam

Magic Negro: Brackish Curative Black Benevolence

Whodini: It's All In Mr. Magic's Wand (Prod. by Thomas Dolby)
From: Whodini (Jive, 1983)

Cold off the presses comes excerpts from LA Times, March 19, 2007, article: Obama the 'Magic Negro' by David Ehrenstein:
…it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro.
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."
…most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in...
Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

If you haven't yet read the An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey by Saul Williams go get a late pass.

The Word of the Day for May 02, 2007 is:

brackish • \BRACK-ish\ • adjective
*1: somewhat salty
2a: not appealing to the taste b: repulsive

Example Sentence:
Water is often brackish and undrinkable at points where freshwater rivers flow into the sea.

Did you know?
When the word "brackish" first appeared in English in the 1500s, it simply meant "salty," as did its Dutch ancestor "brak." Then, as now, brackish water could simply be a mixture of saltwater and freshwater. Since that time, however, "brackish" has developed the additional meanings of "unpalatable" or "distasteful" - presumably because of the undrinkable quality of saltwater. "The brackish water that we drink / Creeps with a loathsome slime, / And the bitter bread they weigh in scales / Is full of chalk and lime." As this use from Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" illustrates, brackish water can also include things other than salt that make it unpleasant to drink.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

*I met John "Ecstasy" Fletcher of Whodini in Harlem years ago (~1998) at a 106 and Park outdoor concert a week after they performed at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington DC, which I also attended. While talking with Ecstasy I mentioned that I attended their last performance as mentioned in the latter. Additionally, I praised Whodini's past work and lauded Larry Smith their producer for their Back In Black (Jive, 1986) album which featured: "Funky Beat"(co-produced by Whodini & Carter, D.Hutchins - whom I know nothing about), "One Love", "I'm A Ho" (co-produced by Jalil Hutchins of Whodini) and "Echo Scratch", (my favorite Whodini non-commercial release!)", who learned to play bass by listening to the late James Brown.
During my diatribe Ecstacy eyes dilated, his head nodded and he articulated, "ok, Ok, OK!" repeatedly - paralanguage profferring expositional respect relative my Whodini-based factualness.