a fresh heroic nation of live and electric men
Some of Walt Whitman’s genius in cleverly, aptly, subtly describing the political ills of antebellum America…still true, unfortunately, almost exactly, 150 years later:
The sixteenth and seventeenth terms of the American Presidency have shown that the villainy and shallowness of great rulers are just as eligible to These States as to any foreign despotism, kingdom, or empire – there is not a bit of difference.
Whence the delegates of the politicians? Whence the [political] conventions?
Not from sturdy American freemen; not from industrious homes; not from thrifty farms…not from among teachers, poets, savans, learned persons, beloved persons, temperate persons…
Who are [the politicians] personally?
Office-holders, office-seekers, robbers, pimps, exclusives, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men…spaniels well-trained to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President…spies, blowers, electioneerers, body-snatchers, bawlers, bribers, compromisers…
From The Eighteenth Presidency! (Voice of Walt Whitman to each Young Man in the Nation, North, South, East, West), 1856
maplications
Small oversight or semi-intentional insidiousness, the map of Israel in the London subway system that failed to delineate clearly Gaza, the West Bank, or the Golan Heights?
Conversely, check out this map that shows the Palestinian lands as islands, and surrounding Israel and other countries as water. Clever perhaps, but also insidious?:
meddling in lebanon
The US has given the Lebanese army $410 million since 2006 and rejects claims that it is meddling in Lebanese political affairs.
Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have both visted Lebanon recently, to emphasize what they call a need for “free and fair elections.” They are really just trying to ensure that Hezbollah, a legitimate political party, does not win seats in the Lebanese parliament, because they, like most American politicians are obsessed with “terrorist” groups. Clinton, supporting the “forces of moderation and democracy” in Lebanon, completely ignores the fact that the country’s political structure is set up in such a way that certain religious groups are not well represented and the the current religious group in power has unlawfully held power since the 1940s by refusing to conduct a national census.
And another statement that makes zero sense given reality: “The White House said the visit by the vice-president was meant to reinforce US support for ‘an independent and sovereign Lebanon’.” Are we stuck back in the first half of the 1900s?? What does this even mean? If they mean that Lebanon is sovereign and independent of colonial powers, this has been true for a long time. Given the way the US talks about Middle Eastern countries, it probably is a blanket sentence implying that Lebanon is not free from the influence of political groups that the US does not like, such as Hezbollah. Unfortunately for the US, Hezbollah is a legitimate political party, and so denying voters the chance to choose whomever they want, however good or bad, is tantamount to meddling.
rich boy asks the tough questions
I wrote earlier that finding subtle but non-explicit social and political commentary in music is difficult. Finding the opposite, though, is much less difficult; lots of gangster rap is political…the only trouble is finding rap that is subtle and nuanced in its commentary.
Rich Boy’s Let’s Get This Paper is a song that juxtaposes nicely the banal content of most modern rap with the raising of some serious social questions. On the face of it, Let’s Get This Paper is another song about making money:
Hey, money my motivator, my mouth, my money maker
Now I don’t see them haters, so let’s go get this paper
The album cover shows yet another tattooed rapper wearing jewelry. At least he leaves out negative phrases about women. We are inclined not to care, until Rich Boy, turning the refrain’s relative meaninglessness on its head, starts asking tough questions that resonate throughout the ghettos of America:
They tore down the projects, so where we gonna move next?
They takin’ them food stamps, they stop government checks
What about a tough question that resonates throughout the ghettos of the world:
That boy was only fifteen years old, f**k what they say he did?
So tell me how I’m s’posed to feel when police killin’ kids?
A similar sentiment would no doubt be expressed by those in the Parisian banlieues where the 2007 riots, caused by the deaths of two immigrant youths, took place. Rich Boy’s voice is anguished and angry. In some ways, his raps conform (no doubt they have to in order to be mainstream) to the norms of contemporary rap culture. Let’s Get This Paper is not solely a response to the problems that make Rich Boy frustrated with the life around him, but he captures well the essence of the cycle of poverty, drugs, crime, and prison in American ghettos.
Innocent people that do not deserve death die all the time, and that pisses Rich Boy off. He makes numerous references to his “dead homies” throughout the song, and also to Martin Lee Anderson, who died after a police beating in 2006. They did not even have a chance, mired in poverty with no way of “gettin up out this ghetto life.” He sees the same loss of innocent lives happening in America’s wars:
They shippin’ them boys off, they fightin’ in Iraq
Its soldiers in that war that ain’t never gonna make it back
Brutality in the ghetto, pointless wars….those who die in those situations die for the whim of others, not as a result of their actions. Rich Boy points out the common way of trying to escape: drug trafficking. Is breaking those kinds of laws in order to eventually create a better situation for one’s friends and family worth it? If those in power are not willing to help, one has to take matters in one’s own hands: “rob, steal, anything to pay them bills.”
He implicitly agitates for action. The government will not change by itself; ignoring laws in order to survive is one way of forcing lawmakers to confront the situation. It is about the individual, victim of those situations, working for change, not being complacent. Rich Boy, with a dash of irony, challenges the status quo, the rappers who sing about such things as money, women, and cars. It isn’t about that, he maintains:
What difference did you make?
earth party
Is this just an apt play on words, or do they actually interest themselves in ‘green’ matters?
حزب الخضر اللبناني
لأن الارض لا طائفة لها إنتسب
Lebanese Green Party: “because the earth doesn’t have a party.”
Either way, it is novel to have a political party the driving objectives of which are environmental or ecological. In the United States, we do not really have political parties that have driving objectives in the first place.
(picture from arabist.net)
