Another Obama song

You’d think that people would have had enough of Barack Obama songs. I look around me and I see it isn’t so.

And what’s wrong with that?

I blogged about the mariachi Obama song. I blogged about several reggae Obama songs. The latest comes from an L.A. rock ’n’ roll combo called Pistol Opera.

It’s called “Obama,” and it might be a goof. (Sample lyric: “Like Abraham Lincoln crossed with the Mack. Once you go Barack, you never go back.”)

Or maybe it’s just a money-making move. Could even be sincere. Who knows?

To hear “Obama” streaming on my Vox blog, click here.

It’s downloadable from eMusic and Amazon.

UPDATE (05/19/08): Hmmm. Turns out it’s a goof and it’s sincere. Because Eli Braden of Pistol Opera fancies himself a bit of a comedy writer.

Four months ago, he blogged: “I’m Totally Gay For Barack Obama.” It’s an amusing post.

When Cosby blamed whitey

A couple of years ago, I tracked down and bought a copy of Bill Cosby’s doctoral dissertation.

Y’all know Cosby likes to flaunt his doctorate, right? He even puts “Ed.D.” on some of his television credits. You ever wonder what his thesis was about?

Here’s the title: “An Integration of the Visual Media Via ‘Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids’ into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning.”

Cosby presented this dissertation in September 1976 at the University of Massachusetts.

Here’s what’s interesting about it. Whereas Dr. Cosby has lately been stressing personal responsibility and the failure of black folks to lift themselves up, he was humming a different tune 30 years ago.

Back then, it was all whitey’s fault.

“Schools are supposed to be the vehicle by which children are equipped with the skills and attitudes necessary to enter society,” Cosby wrote in his introduction. “But a black child, because of the inherent racism in American schools will be ill prepared to meet the challenges of an adult future. The ‘American Dream’ of upward mobility is just another myth.”

Yeah. Bill Cosby wrote that.

He was wrong then. He’s right now.

“Far from being prepared to move along an established career lattice, black children are trained to occupy those same positions held by their parents in a society economically dominated and maintained by a white status quo,” Cosby continued in his dissertation.

“Because urban children come from a poor socio-economic environment, teachers – instilled with their own racist attitudes – are quick to make assumptions about the cognitive abilities of their students.”

Hmm...

“The failure that minority children experience from the very outset can only reinforce the debilitating sense of worthlessness whites convey in a variety of ways,” Cosby wrote, “and so feed the self-hatred produced by discrimination and prejudice.”

Damn. He was on some Jeremiah Wright shit! He even quoted from Stokely Carmichael’s book “Black Power” to define the scope of white racism in American society.

According to Cosby, “[t]he ferociousness with which racism is perpetuated transcends all class levels.” And white people “are raised with a counter myth of white supremacy (power and domination) and intellectual superiority (by which to assert their power and domination).”

Of course, with the passage of time it’s now evident that no matter how high you pile the leftist horseshit, it won’t make black kids do better in school... and it won’t decrease the rates of black violent crime.

Those are things only black people can fix.

Something DVD-licious from Curtis Mayfield

I didn’t know this new DVD was coming... but as soon as I stumbled on it, I ordered one. And I bet some of y’all will do the same in a few minutes.

It’s “Movin’ On Up: The Music and Message of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions.” The DVD trailer is embedded below. If you want to read a review, try this one or this one.

‘The Black List’ is opening soon.

Back in January, I blogged about a new documentary film by my friend Elvis Mitchell and his friend, photographer/filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

It’s called “The Black List: Volume One,” and it’s a series of interviews with notable black folks.

Mark your calendars; “The Black List” opens May 30 at the Laemmle’s Grande 4-plex in downtown Los Angeles. It will open in New York City two weeks after that, and it’s due to premiere on HBO in August.

Variety has praised the film as “a rich and revealing work of portraiture.”

Below are Elvis and Tim talking about “The Black List” at the Sundance Film Festival.

A free Thornetta Davis download

Detroit’s own Thornetta Davis flew across my radar a dozen years ago. She was an indie rocker backed by a white funk band called Big Chief.

Now she is a full-on blueswoman.

Follow this link to Ms. Davis’s MySpace page, and you can download a FREE MP3... if you have a MySpace account also.

It’s a live performance of “Damn Your Eyes,” a tune that’s been recorded by Etta James, Bettye LaVette and Sinead O’Connor. This version is from Thornetta’s 2001 CD “Covered Live at the Music Menu.”

Click here to stream “Damn Your Eyes” on my Vox blog.

Last August, I streamed a track from Thornetta’s 1996 indie-rock album, “Sunday Morning Music” (downloadable from iTunes). Click here to hear “And I Spin,” a track I would use in a TV show in a heartbeat. Especially the chorus.

Rematch in Zimbabwe

The government of Zimbabwe has set a date for the runoff election between longtime ruler Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the challenger who got more votes than Mugabe the first go-round.

The new election will be held on June 27.

Tsvangirai has been out of the country for weeks while his supporters have faced a violent crackdown by pro-Mugabe forces. But Tsvangirai is due to return to Zimbabwe tomorrow to renew his campaign for the presidency.

Below is a 4½-minute profile of Morgan Tsvangirai produced by the U.S. government’s Voice of America. It was uploaded to YouTube two weeks ago.

UPDATE (05/19/08): Tsvangirai canceled his return trip to Zimbabwe, citing a supposed assassination plot against him. It’s a damn shame, because now it’s starting to look like Tsvangirai might lack the courage to see this thing through.

In the words of one political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe: “If he doesn’t come back, he will be demonstrating that he is fearful of Mugabe, therefore he is less of a leader than Mugabe.”

Anti-Obama rumor of the day

A blogger I hadn’t heard of – former CIA officer Larry C. Johnson – is spreading a rumor about Michelle Obama. To wit:

“I now have it from... four sources (three who are close to senior Republicans) that there is video dynamite – Michelle Obama railing against ‘whitey’ at Jeremiah Wright’s church.”

Johnson continued: “Republicans may have a lousy record when it comes to the economy and the management of the war in Iraq, but they are hell on wheels when it comes to opposition research. ... I am told there is a clip that is being held for the fall to drop at the appropriate time. ... It is their October surprise.”

Sounds like bullshit to me. I’m willing to bet that this smear will go the way of the Hillary Clinton lesbianism rumor. That is, nowhere.

Even my favorite Obama-hater, Lawrence Auster, seems to suspect this is worthless hype.

According to Wikipedia, Larry Johnson is a Republican, but has posted at the liberal blog Talking Points Memo to bash right-wingers. Johnson is a Hillary Clinton supporter.

The pro-Clinton blog HillBuzz was all over Johnson’s rumor last night, with a post titled: “Michelle Obama Caught On Tape At Trinity United Making Racist Remarks.”

The rumor has spread this afternoon among conservative websites such as Townhall.com. (“If this is true, it could be lethal.”)

I’m telling you... this is nothing.

Random stank-butt funk

There are a few musicians I’m a “completist” about. If their name is anywhere on the credits, I wanna own that music. Keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell, for example. And bass player Jamaaladeen Tacuma.

I’m that way with guitarist Jef Lee Johnson too. Which is why I recently downloaded a few tracks off a 2007 album by Ursus Minor. I found out Jef was a charter member of that jazz-funk quartet.

Ended up turning myself on to a Minneapolis rapper named Brother Ali. He’s white, he’s an albino, he’s legally blind, he’s a Muslim, and he can rap.

Click here and listen to the Ursus Minor track “Doin’ the Do,” featuring Brother Ali.

The hook is strong, I like Jef Lee Johnson’s chicken-scratch rhythm playing, and I really like how Ali interacts with the musicians. (“Guitar-picka from Phila on some other shit...”)

Just a little random funk to get you ready for the weekend.

On ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’

One of my longtime commenters, Matt Norwood, mentioned something curious in the Jim Jones thread.

He’s convinced that the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” originated not with Jonestown... but with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters in the 1960s.

Matt says there’s an “edit war” raging on Wikipedia over this matter.

I was gonna let Matt’s comment slide, even though it riled me up. I mean, damn... it’s so fricking obvious by the way people use the term, it’s a reference to the Jonestown Massacre.

Then a British website linked to my Jim Jones post. And a commenter there wrote that “the cliche itself – Drink the Kool Aid – predates Jonestown by about twelve years, and refers to the use of LSD – a psychoactive drug – forty years ago as chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Acid Kool Aid Test.”

Enough of this bullshit! Let me prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that “drink the Kool-Aid” became an American colloquialism only after the mass suicides at Jonestown.

Just check the archives of the New York Times, America’s newspaper of record.

The first appearance in the New York Times of the phrase “drank the Kool-Aid” was on January 20, 1989.

It was uttered by Jack Solerwitz, a lawyer who’d represented striking air traffic controllers (and was ruined professionally as a result). “I was the only lawyer who kept the doors open for them,” Solerwitz told the Times, “and I thought I’d get a medal for it. Instead, I was the one who drank the Kool-Aid.”

“Drank the Kool-Aid” didn’t turn up again in the New York Times till 10 years later. But since 1999, it has appeared more than a dozen times.

Variations of this phrase became popular after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Consider the first appearance of “drinking the Kool-Aid” in the Times... in an op-ed column by tech journalist Rodes Fishburne:

“The saying around San Francisco Web shops these days, as companies run out of money, is ‘Just keep drinking the Kool-Aid,’ a tasteless reference to the Jonestown massacre. For some, there isn’t much Kool-Aid left.”

That was published in April of 2000. “Drinking the Kool-Aid” had never appeared in the New York Times before that.

As for plain old “drink the Kool-Aid,” that first appeared in the Times in January of 1997. Business executive Richard D. Parsons (pictured), a former friend to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said this about Giuliani’s staff:

“The Mayor doesn’t necessarily surround himself with the creme de la creme. They’re well-meaning, but I’m not sure terribly long on judgment. It’s kind of like if the Mayor says, ‘Hey, let’s all drink the Kool-Aid,’ they all go ‘bottoms up.’ ”

So then... that settles it, right?

Right.

In search of Misidentified Black People

To maintain this blog’s longest-running gimmick – a catalog of Misidentified Black People in the media – I occasionally do the tedious work of searching through newspapers’ online corrections pages (via Regret the Error).

I should be happy when I don’t find any MBPs. Instead, I get a little frustrated. (I know they’re out there somewhere!)

For the past week or so, the Los Angeles Times has been misidentifying everybody except black folks.

On Monday, the Times ran a photo of novelist Michael Tolkin but mislabeled it as filmmaker Henry Bean.

The Times last week misidentified a photo of L.A. Laker Sasha Vujacic as Vladimir Radmanovic.

And the Times misidentified a photo of Taiwanese official James Huang as Chiou I-jen (a different Taiwanese official).

The L.A. Times even misidentified a photo of a Kentucky Derby horse. But no MBPs.

If they keep this up, they’re gonna ruin my premise.

Two free KJ Denhert downloads

Native New Yorker KJ Denhert has a new CD coming out in two weeks – “Lucky 7.” But it’s already digitally downloadable from iTunes, eMusic and Amazon.

Unfamiliar with KJ Denhert? I was too. But she’s a singer-songwriter with a jazzy, poppy, somewhat funky sensibility. You can sample her new album by means of two FREE MP3s.

Click here to hear “Little Problems” streaming on my Vox blog. To check out the track “Lucky 7,” click here.

To download either or both of them, click the song titles below:

“Little Problems” (MP3)
“Lucky 7” (MP3)

Bill O’Reilly – the dance remix

(Thanks, dj.)

Bruce Lee speaks

I wasn’t deep into the kung-fu movies as a youngster. But I understood the coolness of Bruce Lee.

In honor of APIA Month, I’m streaming a 30-second audio artifact of Bruce Lee. Click here to listen.

It’s one of several vocal snippets available (plus music) on an album called “Dragon Tales.”

Pinay girls are the cuteness.

Seems like every season on “American Idol,” there’s a Filipina contestant trying to become the first Asian-American winner. (Hooray for Asians!!)

Take Jasmine Trias. She’s now a hero to her race... and she only finished third.

Well, I stumbled on an amateur singer on YouTube, and I think she should try out for “American Idol.” (Except she’s up in Canada. Whatever.)

Her name is Cherry-Ann Guevarra, and that right there... that just fucking rocks! That’s like a comic-book character name.

She’s Filipina. And I think she’s very cute. Cherry-Ann’s voice won’t blow you away. And it sounds like she has pitch problems too.

But if you got a few minutes, check out her acoustic cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” and tell me if you think she’s got potential:

Really? (Really.)

If you’re curious about the origin of this T-shirt, read this article from today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Thank you, Dre.)

Playlist: All about Joe Louis

Joseph Louis Barrow was born on May 13, 1914, in La Fayette, Alabama.

To get a sense of how big a culture hero Joe Louis became, check out some of these songs from the 1930s and ’40s:

1. “Champ Joe Louis” – Bill Gaither

2. “Joe Louis Is a Fighting Man” – The Dixieaires

3. “Joe Louis Is the Man” – Joe Pullum

4. “Fighting Joe Louis” – Ike Smith and His Chicago Boys

5. “Joe Louis Blues” – Carl Martin

6. “Joe Louis Chant” – Richard M. Jones

Bill O’Reilly gets his Irish up...

... and I can’t... stop... watching...

The Jim Jones ‘death tape’

Be warned: this is the grimmest thing I’ve ever posted on this blog. But I must do it because it’s an extraordinary audio artifact... a stunning piece of history.

Six months from now will be the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre – the mass suicide (and murder) of more than 900 members of the Jim Jones cult in Guyana, South America.

The Jonestown tragedy added an ironically playful phrase – “drink the Kool-Aid” – to our American vernacular.

Perhaps we all should remember the horrible source of that phrase.

James Warren Jones founded an interracial church in Indiana in the 1950s... a church soon dedicated to his vision of utopian socialism. Jones called it the Peoples Temple.

The church moved to California in 1965. It grew in prominence during the 1970s in San Francisco, where the Peoples Temple attracted many poor black followers.

In 1977, Jim Jones encouraged his disciples to move with him to “Jonestown,” a settlement built in the jungles of Guyana.

U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, an outspoken critic of religious cults, traveled to Jonestown to investigate claims of human-rights abuses there.

A small group of Peoples Temple defectors asked to be taken back to America, and they left Jonestown with Congressman Ryan.

But at an airstrip, Jim Jones’s armed guards opened fire on the congressman’s group, killing Leo Ryan and several others. At the same time, Jim Jones was urging his loyal followers to commit an act of “revolutionary suicide” and to “take the potion” – a mixture of grape drink and cyanide.

The FBI later recovered audiotapes that Jim Jones recorded while orchestrating the mass suicide.

A 42-minute package of these recordings is for sale online – under the title “The Jonestown Death Tapes” – at iTunes, eMusic and Amazon. A free version (slightly longer) is downloadable from the Internet Archive, where it can also be streamed.

I’m streaming a 15½-minute edit on my Vox blog.

You will not hear people dying. It’s more extraordinary than that. You’ll hear Jones running the ultimate mind-control game on his believers.

After making his case for mass suicide, Jim Jones yields the floor for “any dissenting opinion.” That is when a black woman, 60-year-old Christine Miller (pictured left), calmly and courageously argues for life.

“Not that I’m afraid to die, by no means,” she says. “But I look at our babies, and I think they deserve to live.”

The back-and-forth between Jim Jones and Christine Miller is bone-chilling and heartbreaking.

Eventually Christine was shouted down by other temple members. You’ll hear several of them speak in favor of Jones’s plan. They sound grateful to give up their lives at his command.

On the full version, grown black folks lovingly refer to Jim Jones – this psychotic white man – as “father” and “dad.”

I end my edit at the point where the poison is starting to be consumed.

Click here to listen... if you think you can handle it.

A free Foxy Brown download

Here’s one for the hip-hop heads... if you’re out there.

The notorious Foxy Brown has a new CD coming out on Tuesday called “Brooklyn’s Don Diva.”

Click here to hear “We Don’t Surrender” on my Vox blog. If you want it as a FREE MP3, follow this link to Download.com.

Playlist: Happy Mother’s Day

1. “Sadie” – The Spinners

2. “Mama Used to Say” – Junior

3. “Cosmic Slop” – Funkadelic

4. “I’ll Always Love My Mama” – The Intruders