"Nothing but excuses."

It was stream-of-consciousness Youtubing earlier this evening, starting with Michelle Malkin’s daily email-featured video highlight of her on Fox and Friends. You know how it goes, once you click that one, your given a preponderance of related videos.

By about the fifth or sixth video, I’d rewound the calendar (deliberate mixed metaphor, for fun) about a month or two when something struck me that Hannity said during one of his weekly segments with Michelle Malkin and some awful Left Wing token hack, I think Tamara Holder was her name.

Hannity cited how incredulous he is over how the great one, or “The One” – our current President, who walked on water all the way to the White House, portending to become the single greatest President in U.S. history – somehow seems to issue, or his surrogates do, one excuse after the other. It’s Bush’s fault. It’s the Republican House of Representative’s fault, etc. (Sidebar: Funny how the Dems so easily blame the Republican House which has been a majority for barely over a year, yet no Dem ever cites the Democrat House and Senate for the last two years of Bush’s presidency, when the spending and bailouts really got out of whack.)

This was an astute observation – and it reminded me of an analogy to the “duped by Bush” dichotomy of the 2004 election season. Remember how that one went? On the one hand, Bush was dumb – probably the dumbest president of all time. That was according to one Left Wing narrative. Yet, on the other hand, Bush was so savvy that he duped a bunch of Democrats in Congress into voting for the Iraq War. Duped by a dummy? Then how dumb does that make the Congressional Democrats?

It’s fascinating stuff when one is able to sift through the rhetoric to find these curious juxtapositions. Obama the Greatest, who was surely so great he would overcome any obstacle to fundamentally transform us with hope and change. Yet he and his cronies and media surrogates offer nothing but excuses as to why he didn’t get it done, and by extension, why he deserves four more years to get it done.

Fascinating, don’t you think? There’s a lot more of it to come and I, for one, hope Romney picks up on this Obama-dichotomy, or Obamachotomy for short, in the near future.

"Shut your mouth, @Distd2!"

I found myself in the middle of the firestorm as I tried to defend favorite columnist Phil Mushnick’s column which applied words commonly used in Jay-Z’s rap songs to a hypothetical, “Why not go all out with the acceptance of Jay-Z and use these words in the Nets’ team name and the name of its dance team?”

Some people understood the satire and the point it was making. Predictably, however, others were indignant and calling for the silencing. I.e., firing, of the man who merely quoted Jay-Z’s lyrics.

A guy called Bomani Jones who apparently is on ESPN offered an analogy I didn’t quite understand. He wrote something like, “Mushnick wouldn’t write this about Francis Ford Coppola if he was part owner of a sports team.”

Francis Ford Coppola? Okay, I think I see what Jones is saying – that Coppola, as well of Scorsese, have made violent movies about Italian mafia and you might even argue that they glorified the violence. I would argue that they merely depicted the violence and ugliness of mafioso activities.

There’s a parallel to be drawn, I suppose, to rap music which purports to do the same: merely depict the violence and ugliness around which many rappers grew up. Even if we concede this as the altruistic intent of rap music, then it seems as though it’s not having the intended effect. By this I mean that I don’t recall a bunch of Italian kids shooting and stabbing each other outside the movie theaters where ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Goodfellas’ played. Nor do I see Italian kids inspired by those films to become gangsters. I mean, this may be naive of me but is there even a mafia left in this country?

Meanwhile, there seems to be a gang-related shooting outside (or inside) every rap concert. Now why is that if the intent is to dissuade people from gang activity?

Sure, Bomani told me on Twitter that I should shut my mouth because I don’t even listen to rap music so, naturally, I just don’t get what it’s really about. I hope Jones is correct. I hope that because I don’t listen to rap (though I do tend to enjoy the songs when they appear in movies), then I’ve simply missed the part where the Jay-Zs tell the listener: “Don’t do this stuff. This stuff is bad. You shouldn’t do this.”

I’ve hopefully missed the rap songs with positive messages. Hopefully Jay-Z has just as many songs I don’t know about called, “Treat Your Woman With Respect” and “Be Cool With Cops”.

Then again, if he did, would anybody buy them?

Meanwhile, during the lively dispute, a guy named “Retreaux + Genius” with the Twitter handle “@JohnAmosForever” (I love John Amos – both in “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons”) chimed in to echo Bomani’s sentiments that Mushnick and I should be silenced and he also cited “negative media” coverage of rap as the reason people like me don’t get it.

“Negative media?” I replied.

The mainstream media slobbers all over Jay-Z and other rap stars. I mean, what editing would they have to do to distort rap as something negative? Simply report the gang-related violence it engenders? I would suggest you wouldn’t have to do any editing like NBC did to the Zimmerman 911 call tape. The editing that is done is to edit out the profanities and misogynistic imagery portrayed in rap, to sanitize it as something every bit as legitimate as any other pop song.

Yet still people think it’s “negative media”.

First of all, could it simply be that rap music itself is negative? No, it has to be that it is only portrayed as such by the media. (Ugh!)

Second, I would guess that people who think rap music gets bad press also believe the President gets bad press, whereas, say, Romney and Palin and Bush got GREAT press coverage - complete with thrills going down the media’s collective legs!

Look, I haven’t walked in their shoes, I haven’t been randomly pulled over, I haven’t had cabs go whizzing by without stopping – well, yes I have actually. Nevertheless I still can’t see how people can see things that aren’t there, I.e., negative media coverage of rap music and the President, when both receive overly, mockishly deferential coverage. No one, afterall, wants to be accused of racism.

Another ridiculous analysis of the column offered by some on the discussion board was that “white people like Mushnick are upset that blacks now own that word and so they can’t use it themselves”.

Um, no. Mushnick and I are offended by the word and we don’t want anyone to use it. Heck, I’m more offended by that word than I am of anything you might call me: Wop, Dago, Greaseball, Honky, Whitey, Cracker. None of those terms are more offensive to me than the n-word.

That’s the point here. We’re being good upstanding citizens and as a result we receive the knee-jerk reaction that we’re racists. So so sad.

Just to be fair and balanced, here are some earlier points I’ve made about rappers making good actors, criticizing Conservatives for calling Farrakhan and his ilk “racist” and also criticizing Conservatives for slamming the great Morgan Freeman.

Bottom line for me is this: If you don’t want a columnist occasionally quoting your lyrics, then don’t write them. I mean, why be in high dungeon when someone merely quotes the lyrics? Accept that this goes with the territory and get over it. Nobody’s taking a cent away from Jay-Z, no one is threatening his free speech. On the contrary, the free speech of Mushnick, who merely quoted Jay-Z’s free speech, is now being threatened by the same people who would celebrate Jay-Z’s free speech.

Monday update – Postscript: Mushnick, thankfully, has not been hushed by his employer the NY Post. His two regular Sunday columns and his Monday column were published; business as usual. No apologies or sensitivity training were mandated. He even doubled down on his Jay-Z criticisms with more critiques of another favorite target of his, Al Sharpton, in his TV column on Sunday. Bold and brave indeed.

Don't mute the messenger!

I was on a New York Yankee fan forum when I saw a thread about the New York Post and racism – I thought nothing of it; I figured it’s some Lefty complaining about the Rupert Murdoch Conservative ties to the paper in general.

So, the mention of the Post made me realize I hadn’t read today’s column by favorite columnist Phil Mushnick of the New York Post. Earlier in the week, as I do on a regular basis, I emailed Mushnick with my comments on the Brooklyn Nets new “urban” jersey colors. He sent a reply that included an exclusive sneak preview of what would become the controversial comment from today’s column.

Even after I read the column, I still did not immediately put two and two together and realize the Yankee forum fan comments were referencing THIS column – and I’m quoted in the column.

I thought nothing of the commentary because the misogyny of Jay-Z and many others like him has been a regular theme for Mushnick’s column. He has used the n-word (“bleeped” print version) to make his point on many occasions as well. I don’t see why this particular article would get him in trouble, unless it’s the first time anybody noticed. I mean, the flap over this makes Mushnick’s point even more astute. It’s okay for Jay-Z to use the n-word and refer to women as B’s and Hos, but it’s not okay for Mushnick to use the words, even when he specifically is citing Jay-Z’s use of the words juxtaposed with his acceptance in mainstream culture despite them???

What the hell???

Mushnick quoted my comment: “How will the Nets know which jerseys are the alternate black jerseys for nationally-televised games if they wear black every day?”

My comment was a play on another common Mushnick theme: the appeal of black sports uniforms to gangsta types, the preponderance of alternate black jerseys as targeted attempts to appeal to said gangstas and Nike’s insistence that college teams – even those with colors in their team nicknames (Blue Devils, Red Storm, Yellow Jackets, Cardinal, Scarlet Knights) - wear black for nationally-televised games.

I even noted how McDonald’s seemed to embrace the “urban” look when it went to “McEdgier” all-black uniforms (must be hot behind those friers).

I searched for news items on this. I found this James King blog entry on Village Voice, which includes Mushnick’s response to a reader – which I appreciated. Also note the commentary thread that ensues, including some who are incredulous that anyone could’ve first heard the n-word from a hip-hop artist. (Fortunately, King spared my comment in the column from any criticism.)

I mean he is basically QUOTING Jay-Z’s song lyrics. How can you get in trouble for that? It almost seems like some sort of entrapment. I mean if a white dude is walking down the street singing Jay-Z’s songs out loud, will he be arrested for a hate crime?

Well, if – Heaven forbid – this was Mushnick’s last column, at least I can say I was a part of it.

The bottom line is this: people should be outraged by Jay-Z’s lyrics and should be demanding that he not record songs with such inflammatory language if they don’t want a columnist to quote those lyrics. I recently rode the train and sat next to three African-American youths, and every other word they openly and proudly used in front of all of us passengers was “n” and “b”. (The young woman even talked about how her boyfriend used to beat her in places on her body that couldn’t be seen by the public.) I was offended by this, and so is Mushnick. That’s the point here. We’re not the racists, we are offended by racist language.

Alas, I get that it’s a Catch-22 for Jay Z. I mean if he made records called, “Cool with Cops” or “Treat Women with Respect” - would anybody buy them?