Do you do Facebook and MySpace? I’m slowly venturing across the social media/networking landscape with a basic MySpace page. Check it out. By the way, MySpace is kind of bulky and ugly, don’t you think? Anyway…
Facebook is easier on the eyes. To see my Facebook profile, you’ll have to sign up/sign in and be my friend, or something like that. I signed up last year but hadn’t paid much attention until recently. It’s sort of fun, but I have to laugh at the day-to-day obsessiveness of it all. 
Friends?
Update (6:21 p.m.): Thanks for the “friend” requests! I…I feel so loved! 
I’m working on a review of Lenny Kravitz’s new album, It Is Time For A Love Revolution. Turn on/turn up your computer’s speakers and listen to “I’ll Be Waiting.” I’ll bet it’s about ex-wife Lisa Bonet. Yep, even after all these years…
Update II (2/12): Get well soon, Lenny. And come to DC!
I don't cover politics much anymore, but I still receive review copies of political books. I wrote a review of Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past, by Bruce Bartlett. You may find it useful.
“[V]irtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.”
On December 5, 2002, Republican senator Trent Lott toasted 100-year-old Republican senator Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist, at a private birthday party, saying that if the rest of the country had voted for Thurmond for president as he had (Thurmond ran in 1948 as a Dixiecrat), “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”
About a year and a half later, on the Senate floor (and on taxpayers’ time), Democrat Chris Dodd said that Democrat Robert Byrd (who said on cable TV a few years earlier that he’d seen a lot of “white niggers” in his time), a former segregationist and KKK recruiter, would have been “a great senator” during America’s founding, crafting of the Constitution, and the Civil War.
The backlash against Lott was fierce. He apologized and groveled on Black Entertainment Television (BET) but was eventually drummed out of his leadership post. The backlash against Dodd? Non-existent. He neither prostrated himself before the PC gods nor played the fool on BET.
This double standard was the result of a long distorted history of both parties. The Democrats, seen as the civil rights party, supported slavery, opposed civil rights legislation, instituted the “Black Codes,” and created the Jim Crow system. The Republican Party, in contrast, was founded in opposition to slavery, and supported post-Civil War and Civil Rights Movement-era legislation.
“All of the racism that we associate with [the southern] region of the country originated with and was enforced by elected Democrats,” writes Bruce Bartlett, a former domestic policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush. In Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past, Bartlett goes deep into the history of the Democratic Party and attempts to set the record straight.
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by La Shawn on February 5, 2008
in General
Working from home, I sometimes like to have music playing in my ears. Because my work involves reading and writing (and blogging), I have to be able to concentrate on the work while listening.
I have different playlists on my iPod for different moods and levels of concentration, but last week I found the ultimate (for me) playlist of songs to listen to while working: The Chillcast, a 30-minute podcast of “chill” music.
Anji Bee, a musician and former radio DJ, gets permission from independent bands to play their tracks in full on her podcast. She gives “stage” to artists who might not otherwise be discovered. When I heard “Beautiful Life,” by Annie Barker, I started looking for the track on iTunes before it had finished playing on the podcast. Bee’s podcast exposes me to independent artists I’ve never heard of, and subscribing to it eliminates the need to forage for new music.
If you’re looking for soothing music to work to, and you’re tired of your same old playlists and you don’t want to buy new music just now, check out the “podsafe” music on The Chillcast.
By the way, I’m not being paid for this. It’s just a public service message. Work on!
by La Shawn on February 4, 2008
in Reviews
Blacks in country music are rare.
America’s most well-known black country singer is Charley Pride, whose crossover hit, “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” garnered him a Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year award in 1971 and Male Vocalist of the Year in 1971 and 1972. In 1967, he was the first black performer to appear at the Grand Ole Opry since DeFord Bailey, who appeared between the mid-1920s and 1941.
Throughout the legendary Ray Charles’s career, he recorded in various genres, including a style known as “country soul.” Several years ago, a self-described “blackneck” named Troy Coleman, better known as Cowboy Troy, exploded onto the scene with an audacious blend of country music and rap he dubbed “hick-hop.”
But Rissi Palmer, whose self-titled debut album was released last October, isn’t dabbling in country music, nor is she trying to invent a new style; however, she’s not your typical country singer. Palmer, 26, said when country music radio programmers find out she’s black, they inevitably wonder, “Is she really country?”
Read the rest.
