1. Campaign 08: The Black Factor–Obama Needs Will Smith’s Endorsement
Oprah and Will Smith live! With Obama! Coming to your town soon….Will 2008 be the year of the black American?
For the first time in US history, the most popular television personality, movie star, pop star, and politician are all black. This weekend “I am Legnd,” Will Smith’s alien disaster movie, grossed $70 million and smashed December box office records. Last week Oprah and Obama drew 30,000 people to a South Carolina football stadium. And the year’s biggest pop artist is Kayne West.
Writing about Orpah-Obama, Mike Lupica called 2008 the pop culture election. But what if it’s not pop culture as much as the Katrina-factor that’s changing American politics and culture?
Consider the Friday after Katrina, when NBC aired an impromptu celeb-studded fundraiser. One phrase summed up the national mood: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”–Kayne West’s words, who at the time was a rising rap star. At the Oscars a few months later, best picture went to Crash, a film about racial inequality. Best song went to Memphis rappers Three Six Mafia’s “It’s Hard to be Pimp.” Pop culture was confronting the race issues illustrated by Katrina. Then came Obama’s audacious summer. Would his rise have been so meteoric were it not for dead black bodies floating in New Orleans?
Maybe I’m overreaching, but Katrina certainly politicized race in America to an extent not seen since at least the King riots, if not civil rights. Pop culture reacted. Populism developed. Now Obama leads all candidates—GOP or Dem—in the race to become President.
Did Katrina force America to care more about black people? So much so that we’re ready to elect Obama? In many ways, I hope so. But Obama still has questionable positions on health care, special interests, and foreign policy. Let’s see what he tweaks in the second half of the month. I sure wouldn’t mind a Democratic Convention this summer with a performance by Kayne, Will Smith punching a soon to be legal alien, and Oprah juggling some Picador and Vintage paperbacks while kissing babies.
2. Iraq Related Triplet: Northern Iraq in flames; Gawker does Baghdad; Record number of Journos Killed.
Kurdish Mess
300 Turkish troops invaded northern Iraq last night. This after a Sunday Turkish air assault killed women and children. The Turks are hunting the PKK, Turkish-Kurd separatists who’ve sought refuge in Iraq’s Kurdistan. The WaPost confirms that the US provided intelligence to the Turks.
Iraq’s government is pissed about Turkey’s sovereign violation, blaming the US “who control Iraq’s sky.” Today Secretary of State Rice conveniently visited Baghdad and Kirkuk, Iraqi-Kurdistan’s political base, to ease tensions.
What does all this mean? Nothing good, that’s for sure. Kirkuk’s an ethnically mixed city of a million. It’s majority Kurdish but has a substantial Turkmen population. Turkey hates the Kurds and supports the Turkmen. Kirkuk also sits on the second largest oil fields in Iraq. Oil and nationalism plus foreign invasion in the most peaceful slice of Iraq is as depressing as it sounds.
Gawker Covers Reak News
A few weeks ago Gawker, Manhattan’s premier media gossip website, saw the resignation of three top editors. Days later, Gawker announced it was shifting towards being a more traditional news. Yesterday might have seen the first sign of things to come. Under a header of “Reporting the War,” Choire Sicha examines a long Army Times piece on “Task Force 1-26, with 823 soldiers…deployed to Baghdad,” 31 of which were killed over a 15-month span.
Sicha on what Army Times reporter Kelly Kennedy saw:
So she was on base when the Bradley was hit by an IED.
“It took an hour to get close because the flames were so high. They watched one of them burn alive. So they’re waiting for news on their guys, you can hear small arms fire, there was another explosion, which hit the chaplain as he was coming in. He was essentially okay…. Every time it seemed to calm down again, you’d hear another explosion. Another was a rocket-propelled grenade; it hit an MP truck and decapitated a woman that was driving it. The day just got worse and worse…. [And] as angry as some of them were, others were coming to us and making sure we had water and were okay. It was 117 degrees that day…”She spent ten weeks in Iraq, from June to August of this year, and rarely saw other reporters. “We ran into one from Stars and Stripes, and in the Green Zone we ran into several. I didn’t see any T.V. reporters out of the Green Zone. I saw someone from the French wire service. I think someone told me there were 20 reporters in theater, and it’d gone up because of the surge. It’s dangerous! And as a news_organization, it’s a lot of money for insurance. And our editors deal with the same things commanders deal with: What happens if you lose your reporter, your photographer?”
It’s refreshing to see Gawker finally covering the war. Search Gawker’s archives for “Iraq,” and you’ll come with a few photo links posted by Sicha but not much else. Sicha’s piece is in-depth, over 1000 words, long by blog standards. It’s especially essential considering Gawker’s calls itself a media site, and this year saw record numbers on media professionals murdered in Iraq (see below)….
The Year in Death 2007: 64 “Journalists” Killed; 175 “People Who Work For Journalism Outlets” Killed.
What’s the difference between a journalist and someone who works for journalists? 113 dead bodies, according to two separate reports. Unclear was whether fixers count as journalists or as people who work for jounalists. Fixers—the local fact-gatherers foreign news organizations use as co-reporters—should be counted as journalists. Of the two totals, nearly half the dead were in Iraq.
3. The Brit’s Do It Better
I’m still confused as to why anyone gives a fuck about the Led Zeppelin reunion. Page and Plant together sucked. Plant solo sucked. Page solo sucked. Zep’s been washed-up since Knebworth 79’.
Whatever, the Brits are still holding down the throne as the most degenerate, self-destructive rockers on earth…
Recently LINK, Amy Winehouse’s dad, Mitch, a cab driver, beat the shit out of Pete Doherty with a guitar backstage at Brixton Academy. Nice!!! Just between Amy and Pete we have crack rocks, taxi driver vs. druggy backstage fist fights, multiple prison terms, bloody toes from shooting heroin, Kate Moss sniffing coke, etc. Now that sounds like rock n’ roll. America had “brand-rock” like Duaghtry and Linkin Park, Arcade Fire and The Shins. Fall Out Boy’s Honda Civic Tour…
TAGS: A Milli, Amy Winehouse, Babies, Crack, election, George Bush, GOP, Heroin, Iraq, Kate Moss, Manhattan, Movie, obama, Oprah, Pete Doherty, political, Politics, Race, war
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