Entries Tagged 'Culture' ↓
June 23rd, 2008 — Culture, Journalism, Race, TV
I find the exaggerated vocal stylings of news reporters contemptible. Particularly, I dislike the stretchy vowels and odd pitch changes through which African-Americans tend to report TV and radio news. It’s aurally inauthentic, and, I believe, it disarms Black people. It keeps us from utilizing a wide range and sophisticated set of rhythmic and tonal apparatuses by which we comment on information—signify—in real time, as we relate it.
So, it’s fascinating to see, in this clip, how quickly the reporter goes from Standard American Newsman to NSFW Black Vernacular when a chewy, protein-rich insect flies into his mouth.
June 20th, 2008 — Black Music, Culture, Education, Entertainment, Hip-Hop, NONFICTION, Pop Culture
Thinking broadly: George Washington Carver, 1906
What are the possible uses of hip-hop, all of them?
How many kinds of tasks can it do? It what kinds of ways might it be used, in order to help people better understand themselves and/or each other?
This question is, to me, the most important, yet least-addressed, as it pertains to hip-hop and its future. It’s also the one on which I’m focusing, assisted by a talented rapper and educator, during my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 20, 2 pm ET.
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June 13th, 2008 — Children, Culture, NONFICTION, Race, Writing
Unusual sighting: Monty (Idris Elba), a mechanic, fathers his brood
It’s a story told so rarely—as it is, for example, in Tyler Perry’s 2007 film, Daddy’s Little Girls, above—that it’s, for the most part, nonexistent: What are the travails, challenges, joys, and rewards of bringing up children, alone, as a Black male?
In his new book, Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single Fatherhood, suave literatus Trey Ellis grapples with the transformative experience of raising his daughter, Ava, 10, and son, Chet, 7, as a solo dad.
We’ll talk with him about his book on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 13, 2 pm ET.
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June 6th, 2008 — Automotive, Culture, Entertainment, Pop Culture
Coming up short, fellas? Well, trust me: Women love nothing more than a man with a hot car, and nothing makes a car hotter than flames. Not painted-on flames, but flames for real, blastin’ out the back.
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June 5th, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Government, Race
“This baby is black. It’s a dark, ugly thing.”
Utah State Senator Chris Buttars was talkng about a pending bill when, in February, he uttered those words on the statehouse floor.
In the uproar that followed, he called the NAACP-led protest against his remarks a “hate lynch mob,” adding “How do I know what words I’m supposed to use in front of those people?”
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June 3rd, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Journalism, Politics, Race, TV
It takes one to know one: Hillary counts on her peeps
I never get tired of news footage that documents blatant racism. Also, when it’s coming from Al-Jazeera English, you know it’s got to be good. It’s going in some direction that the self-congratulatory, corporate U.S. media, still suckling the dry, cracked teat of American exceptionalism, is completely unwilling to go.
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June 3rd, 2008 — Art, Black Music, Culture, Religion
When I saw that the Smithsonian is running an exhibit ’til Nov. 8 on Rastafarianism—“Discovering Rastafari!” is the horrible title—my first thought was this: I’d have given my eyeteeth to have heard the ensuing comedy of errors when white, Ivy League-bred curators negotiated with Rastas for artifacts.
Then, it occurred to me that everything in the show is probably already owned by white Brits.
Then there’s this question, which The New York Times, itself, raises: Why is this exhibit in the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History?
the Rastafari exhibition does not really belong in the same museum as paleontological finds and collections of insects and gems. That placement is a relic of the 19th-century conception of the natural history museum as a temple devoted to exotic “natural” cultures and objects — evolutionary predecessors of the scientific West.
How unexpected.
June 2nd, 2008 — Culture, Money
“Be vewwy quiet. I’m hunting duckets”: Poor old rich guy
I find the nuances of wealth endlessly fascinating. But the aspect of it that I find most intriguing is the carefully maintained illusion of limitless capacity the rich apparently work to maintain.
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June 2nd, 2008 — Advertising, Culture, Fashion, Pop Culture, Terrorism
“Is that a fashionable scarf, or are you just happy to terrorize me?”: Rachael Ray, meet Yasser Arafat, late head of the PLO
Late last week, Good Morning America took on the the tempest-in-a-thimble over Rachael Ray’s scarf, doing so, actually, sensibly.
Conservative bloggers had raised the the charge that Ray’s scarf, in the print ad, above, was a keffiyeh. This, “for the clueless,” as screechy Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin warmly explained on her web site,
is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not so ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities and left-wing icons.”
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May 21st, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Science, Technology, Work
Last ones out the lab, turn off the lights: Japanese engineers
You know the way Americans always talk about Japan as the epitome of engineering? Apparently, that illustration is about to be permanently outdated.
According to The New York Times, “Japan is running out of engineers”: Fewer and fewer young people are entering the field.
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