Tragic Casualties of the New Year
It's just after eight a.m. here, which means that midnight just hit across the East Coast. As is to be expected, the projection TVs in the chow hall are blasting news coverage of the Times Square celebration.
Waiting in line for my omelete, I turn to stare blankly at the screens. It's Fox News--typical--and between the split-screen images of Manhattan revelry are interspersed the usual cookie-cutter pair of blond, suntanned news anchors, male and female. The camera cuts to the image of the descending ball, burning in the night sky like a rogue moon burning up as it draws close to incinerate our planet. I stare at all this impassively. None of this is unusual.
What IS unusual, however, is the bling-adorned individual I see laughing it up on the screen immediately following. The camera cuts back to the anchors, so I have to stop as I walk out with my to-go plate. However, after taking a closer look, the garishly-dressed man appears yet again; orange oversized sweater, Dr. Seuss hat, and shades contrasting against chocolate skin and gold fillings. It's Flava Flav, I realize, from Public Enemy. Public Enemy, the original antiestablishment political rap supergroup. Flava Flav is busying chuckling and aping it up for the amusement of a couple of WASPy Fox News anchors, who of course are about as antiestablishment as a dry martini and a couple of Prozac. I shake my head and resume walking out of the chow hall, styrofoam box in hand. This is how I ring in my New Year.
It's official: Grab a bodybag and a sponge, and notify the next of kin. Rap music is dead.
Waiting in line for my omelete, I turn to stare blankly at the screens. It's Fox News--typical--and between the split-screen images of Manhattan revelry are interspersed the usual cookie-cutter pair of blond, suntanned news anchors, male and female. The camera cuts to the image of the descending ball, burning in the night sky like a rogue moon burning up as it draws close to incinerate our planet. I stare at all this impassively. None of this is unusual.
What IS unusual, however, is the bling-adorned individual I see laughing it up on the screen immediately following. The camera cuts back to the anchors, so I have to stop as I walk out with my to-go plate. However, after taking a closer look, the garishly-dressed man appears yet again; orange oversized sweater, Dr. Seuss hat, and shades contrasting against chocolate skin and gold fillings. It's Flava Flav, I realize, from Public Enemy. Public Enemy, the original antiestablishment political rap supergroup. Flava Flav is busying chuckling and aping it up for the amusement of a couple of WASPy Fox News anchors, who of course are about as antiestablishment as a dry martini and a couple of Prozac. I shake my head and resume walking out of the chow hall, styrofoam box in hand. This is how I ring in my New Year.
It's official: Grab a bodybag and a sponge, and notify the next of kin. Rap music is dead.
posted by Milo at 6:04 AM
9 Comments:
Oh, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Flava of Love is so much more foul and acrid than you could ever imagine...
Yeah, you've obviously been out of the country waaaaaaaaay too long...
Chuck Muthafuckin' D is still the man!
The TB
Milo, I wish you and your comrades a safe New Year.
Hi SPC Freeman,
My first time here, via Low and Left, here's hoping this new year goes far better than the last one, hope you come home soon with your buds, healthy and intact, sadder but wiser from your service.
The thing I can't help but feel about the execution is that now the whole truth about Hussein and our involvements with him, well, by our I mean Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney et al, will never truly by known.
And I can't help but thinking that's a definite benefit for the BushCo cabal. Yeah, we'd hate to hear about how he gassed the Kurds, and why, and with whose chemicals, wouldn't we?
Peace out!
That was meant for the Justice post below, sorry!
Gah! Slept through it all, I'm happy to say.
Life just keeps happening, doesnt it?
Love and Balance Milo.
PS: word verification: eatek. I refuse. I refuse to eat ek. ;)
You're probably a little too young to have lived through the Great Punk Appropriation, kid, but trust me, Flava Flav appearing on a Fox News New Year's show ain't nothin' compared to the cognitive dissonance of watching Navy fighters take off from carriers to the "inspirational" tune of the Clash's "Rockin' the Casbah" during the First Gulf Unpleasantness.
Any notion I ever had of the Power of the Language of Dissent died the death that night.
I'm utterly confident that you'll weather the current Unpleasantness and become a very important voice in the future. You are far, far too discerning and intelligent a voice to lose.
May I recommend Thomas Frank's Commodify Your Dissent as a useful text in understanding just why Mr. Flav made the choices he did?
I'd be happy to forward you a copy, in the name of the War Effort...
What neddle said. That, and they're selling the safety pins we're supposed to stick through our jackets and eyebrows now. Gah.
Rap probably died its death when its black consumers were outnumbered by white suburban 13-year-old boys. I think that happened about 1995.
I still have my CD by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Only rappers to give props to Noam Chomsky, I'd wager.
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