i do not have it all figured out. i am guilty too. this is more like "enough already" than "here is a well-researched powerpoint presentation."

Re: the Saul Williams/Oprah thing. This will make more sense if you view/read all of that before you read this.

(And yeah, Bryan, this is recent. I was confused. I thought, for some reason, I had already heard about Saul's letter a while ago, but I was wrong).

This is not so much about current 441 topics, but it is about the strange habits of those who control prevailing language, and the rest of us who indulge in the habits of old languages just because it feels good.

I think this is all very frustrating. This whole thing exposes the notion of "dialogue" as hollow and vague. I agree with both "sides," even though I'm not sure of the argument or where the sides diverge. I don't feel sorry for Russell Simmons or Common or any of the others onstage, or feel that they were unduly sabotaged, because whatever discomfort they might have felt is minuscule compared to the issues at play. I'm tired of the idea that the issue is "pointing fingers" or "saying on three that we acknowledge the problem" or any of that. This is not just for this talkshow, obviously, but for whenever things like this happen.

I'm tired of the idea that Russell Simmons can say he mentors rappers who are misogynistic and materialistic because they grew up in a culture of violence and fear--which is true, which is overwhelmingly true--and yet nothing ever really changes.

I'm not talking about what Saul Williams calls "backpack rap," rap that tries in earnest toward self-consciousness and self-examination.

I'm not saying this doesn't happen with, say, punk rock or country music, and their targeted demographics.

But I mean all these mainstream rap records that continue to come out with unexamined exploitation of the "block," of shock-jock flash and bang, deploying words of weight and sting with blinders on, pretending they are "just words," pretending these videos are just fantasies or whatever, or that the music is "just catchy," or that people don't, in some ways, listen to it because they like rollercoasters, because with every thong and "shit-I-shoot-em-if-i-hate-em" the listener from that environment will recognize how scary such things are in real life, will get a controlled prick that reminds them of the frightening reality. And this prick, this tiny twin reality that won't hurt them like the real reality, makes them feel a little wild and dangerous and out-of-control and paradoxically in control of their reality, but in an utterly inconsequential way.

So young white people like us can continue to make shock jokes of these words, these hot potato words, which are catchy because they are "not okay" in a vague and meaningless way (to us), the same way people like to eat things that are on fire.

So people in tenements of town or cities can feel in a logical manner that the whole solution is to be hardcore, that you can solve life by cartwheeling in an armored and aggressive way through all the fear of it, that if you buy a gun you can protect yourself from it, that if you have a yacht you can sail from it, that if you drink enough you can numb out of it, that if Men fuck enough and treat women as sexual doodads they can "Man" their way out of it, that if we all just hunker in and protect ourselves from all of it the all of it won't happen to us, to the me's and me's of us, which is the most important part. Not that the all of it exists and continues to exist—inevitability—to others.

Somebody on one of those blogs, I think, said that "Scott Joplin managed to write songs without talking about bitches and bling," which I think is the wrong idea. This is "avoiding" the issue, or trying to provoke Paradise by depicting Paradise, which doesn't work, which is still compartmentalizing the fear into some sort of abstract philosophy. No matter how much champagne and sex you have, you're still going to die, which is a truism that musn't be viewed in a calm, philosophical manner.

But instead a stern, systematic, loud, moral, pleading way to please stop just telling poor people back in your neighborhood that once you have enough money everything will be happy and hyphy all night long. That with enough money you will have cars that shine and sex without names, which will stimulate the entirety of your chemicals and therefore solve life.

This is untrue.

This is untrue.

If there is a rap artist mentoring session, I don't understand why it isn't just "Stop having goddamn parties in your videos." And then a rapid, stern, systematic explanation of why.

And I'm tired of Oprah looking at her ratings and recognizing in her brain that hundreds of thousands of people watch her show, people not in tenements, people with money set aside to send in envelopes, maybe, given the right whim, people with garages and spare chunks of time in which to do earnest, good things. Because most people, given a choice, are guilty or decent enough that they want to do a few earnest, good things. I'm tired of Oprah looking at those ratings and still holding these meaningless, self-preening, ineffectual summits.

I agree with Saul Williams that men need to outgrow their ideals of jealousy and anger if misogyny is to degrade. Especially those with the education to self-analyze and realize such an ideal exists. I am tired, more or less, of those people using rhetoric and scorn and humor and out-of-context logic to elude such a change, simply because they want to indulge in their habits. To say things like "That commercial wasn't offensive to gay people. Gay people should get a sense of humor. I have a roommate who is gay and he laughed at that commercial. I'm not a bigot: I hate everybody equally (ha ha)." I am tired of men who are smart enough to understand the fossilized biology underlying their abstract notions of manhood--how irrelevant that biology is inside a supermarket, for instance, or anywhere in today's society--and yet insist on "acting like a man" and "not being queer." Blowing up Coke bottles, or lifting weights so they can be a better professional boxer, or writing a book about the "poetry of boxing" if their muscles are small, or taking off their shirt when it's not really that hot outside, or shooting deer for fun, or believing in Fight Club, or acting wounded in a fake and childish manner (but trying to drum up a "mature" and intelligent-sounding rhetoric) when subjected to the truth that they can't handle "powerful women."

These are all okay ways to act if you are thirteen.

Otherwise you're just being an asshole because it's easy and feels good.

I am tired of smart people using their intelligence to justify ignoring things. Or to justify acting like they're thirteen because they like to stimulate the entirety of their chemicals all the time and feel as if they are solving life. I am tired of intelligence and rhetoric and "dialogue" toward justification instead of toward legitimate change.

It is all very frustrating.