MUSIC: Tyler the Creator is an Idiot

http://www.avclub.com/articles/today-in-tyler-the-creator-tyler-the-creator-respo,56143/

As a rule, I don't like the idea of telling people what they can and can't say, but Ms. Quin makes a really good point. If Tyler, the Creator was spitting racist shit in the same way the he's spewing misogynistic shit he'd never, ever, ever get away with it.

I know some really liberal, sensitive people who don't bat an eye at the rampant misogyny in hip-hop which seems to me to be a very special kind of racism. The kind that somehow thinks black artists are so special and so genius that the normal rules for how to conduct themselves as human beings don't apply.

"If Tegan and Sara need some hard dick, hit me up." That's his fucking response. The only bigger idiot could be the person following him like the pied piper, calling his shit brilliant. How brilliant could he possibly be with that "hard dick" comment? I'm gonna try not to get fooled again

POLITICS: Korematsu: A Case You Might Not Have Heard of That Could Be Used to Substantially Limits Your Rights

A man of Hawaiian-Pacific descent is arrested and charged with violation of Executive Order 9066.  A civil rights lawyer bails him with $5,000 against a misdemeanor charge, but even after the bond is posted, the accused man is not released to his attorney but is sent hundreds of miles away to a camp in Utah where he is to remain for an indefinite period of time with others people of the same group of which he is accused of belonging. 

The man is a United States citizen with no criminal record.  He is engaged to an Italian-American woman who is also a citizen.  There is no specific question of his loyalty to the United States beyond his violation of the Executive Order. He is 23 years old.

Fred Korematsu was a testing ground for fighting the Japanese American internment in the western U.S. during World War II. He lost.

Justice Hugo Black, writing the majority of the opinion said :"It should be noted, to begin with, that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect."

“It is said that we are dealing here with the case of imprisonment of a citizen in a concentration camp solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry of his loyalty or good disposition towards the United States… Regardless of the true nature of the assembly and location centers… To cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice, without reference to the real military dangers which were presented, merely confuses the issue.”

The Justices of the Supreme Court in 1942 used the Constitution, a document which is meant to grant an entire universe of rights and liberties to American citizens and deny and disparage none, to inter a man against his will who was accused of no felony, for an indefinite period of time because we was Japanese. In fact, no Constitutional provisions were included in the majority decision, because none could possibly justify Mr. Korematsu’s internment.

At this point in history, only Mr. Justice Murphy’s dissent is considered to be important.  Saying that the exclusion of Japanese peoples from the western United States “goes over ‘the very brink of constitutional power’ and falls into the ugly abyss of racism.

This decision is something of a black eye for the Court and is rarely referred to outside certain Constitutional Law circles.  But it’s very, very important.  Here’s why:

“That this forced exclusion was the result in good measure of this erroneous assumption of racial guilt, rather than  bona fide military necessity is evidenced by the Commanding General's Final Report on the evacuation from the Pacific Coast area.   In it, he refers to all individuals of Japanese descent as ‘subversive,’ as belonging to ‘an enemy race’ whose ‘racial strains are undiluted,’ and as constituting ‘over 112,000 potential enemies . . . at large today’ along the Pacific Coast. In support of this blanket condemnation of all persons of Japanese descent, however, no reliable evidence is cited to show that such individuals were generally disloyal.” (emphasis mine)

But this is the kicker. Despite Justice Murphy’s eloquent eloquence on behalf of the Japanese people and really, all aggrieved minority races - the troubling bit is that Korematsu remains active and uncontested precedent. 

I want you to take a second and think about that. 

This case has not been overturned, moderated, mitigated or even really discussed  in any substantive official capacity by the United States government. Ever. The law of your land right now - at this very second – is such that the President may choose to inter U.S. citizens on racial grounds during wartime.  And guess what?  In September, we’ll have been in wartime for ten straight years with no end in sight. 

Korematsu himself sought to have his own conviction overturned and President Clinton eventually awarded him the Congressional medal of freedom, which I’m sure was a very nice token of recognition for Mr. Korematsu.  The problem is, our enmity for the Japanese has melted into a cuddly, prosperous and culturally open relationship. 

Unfortunately, our relationship with the Muslim (especially Arab and Persian) world lacks the same warm tones.  A video which was shown to Navy recruits during World War II and tell me you don’t hear some familiar language:

"The army of Japan is a well-trained and sternly disciplined force of fanatics filled with reckless courage inspired by a primitive moral code that promises a man who dies in battle an immortal life among the Shinto Gods.”

Let me replace a couple words:

"Al-Qaeda is an wholly indoctrinated and sternly disciplined force of fanatics filled with reckless courage inspired by a primitive moral code that promises a man who dies in battle an immortal life among 77 virgins in the loving embrace of Allah.”

Honestly, the rhetoric is nearly identical and the justifications all the same. 

I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that most people in this country consider the Japanese internment an embarrassing part of our shared history – a humiliation of overreaction.  And yet, here we are with this Goddamn ticking time-bomb of a case that says we’re only willing to grant rights to any given race insofar as we perceive no threat from them.

The only thing more embarrassing than the internment itself is the fact that we stand ready -  at this moment – to repeat the mistake should the circumstances turn.  

OTHER: Some Designs I've Done

MUSIC: Eisley - Valleys

I always wonder why critics reacted to Fleetwood Mac so harshly back in the halcyon days of FM radio in the 70s. Even if as the soft-rock will-they-or-won't they aesthetic might have rubbed some the wrong way as trifle and licentious I wonder how they could have missed - what sounded to my ear today anyway - a sound so sophisticated. Those subdued harmonies, the sad/major chord progressions, the never-overwhelming but still affecting mix of all the instruments: it must have been incredibly difficult to achieve and it always surprises me that the critics back then couldn't hear that. You can string a thin thread from those albums to what Eisley is trying to do today with Valleys. But while the trifle persists from the 70s, the sophistication never really materializes, particularly in the pastel-colored first half.

The voices lilt and ooh in satisfying ways but the unbroken, fluent connection between how proximately pretty and ultimately vapid the proceedings are prevents any real enjoyment.

When the target is "plaintive" the execution is usually something more like "exasperated." Similarly, "joyful" begets "saccharine." Every emotion is scrambled to the point that an album that's ostensibly aimed at adult listener never comes across in the manner intended.  Everything lacks subtext, nuance or anything that feels grown-up.  It's not unlike a teenager demanding a curfew change by throwing a hissy-fit.  The content doesn't match the execution.

By the time "Better Love" arrives midway through achieving a pleasingly solid execution of what can only presume was the intent all along, the die has already been cast. This is, at its core, a pretty lightweight album. Lightweight doesn't have to be a bad thing, female fronted indie acts superficially similar to Eisley have made some of the best pop in recent years without trying to shoot the moon thematically: Tegan & Sara, Camera Obscura, Imogen Heap; but there's an atmosphere of grandiosity that implies Eisely was gunning for more. To hear this distinction embodied, take "Mr. Moon," which begins with a lush and very sad verse building genuine stakes only to let all fall away into a nothing of a chorus.

There could have been something here but Eisley squandered any possible goodwill by mixing in pretensions (delusions) of Important Things with a swill of too-sugary soft rock radio.

MUSIC: Best Albums of 2010

1 - Ali & Toumani - Ali Farka Toure
No record before has ever captured the sound of death - beautiful, haunting and easily accessed, even by my ruined pop-music-loving, American ears.

2 - High Violet - The National
More about mood than it was about great song-writing, but what a mood! The National does dark better and easier more than any band save maybe Radiohead.

3 - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West
Overwrought, over-the-top and even downright silly at times. In a lot of ways, it's Use Your Illusion for the rap world. I haven't actually said anything good about yet: the work of a Beethoven-esque genius or Brian Wilson-esque madman, but we'll still be listening to this album in 20 years.

4 - The Lady Killer - Cee-Lo Green
Cee-lo seems to be a one man standard-bearer keeping Motown and first-wave soul alive for pop music audiences. A valuable endeavor, indeed.

5 - The Guitar Song - Jamey Johnson
I'm not going to act like an expert about country but to my ears, it has all the usual heart and expressive storytelling while really minimizing the cornpone corniness that comes with your average middle-of-the-road Nashville release.

6 - Shadows - Teenage Fanclub
Pop music, simple, pure and a delight through and through. The Fanclub still, pound for pound writes the best love song going right now.

7 - Apollo Kids - Ghostface Killah
With all the usual Wu-Tang alums making an appearance, I'm surprised the best guest turn of the year on any record was Black Thought. Ghost's best and most energetic since Fishscale

8 - Spiral Shadow - Kylesa
It's easy to miss with Dillinger Escape Plan, Future of the Left and many others, metal is in sort of a little niche golden age right now with some of the most creative releases every year coming from that milieu

9 - Swanlights - Antony & the Johnsons
A lot has been written about Antony and his ghoulish, vibrato-laden tenor. You love it or you hate it and I fall squarely in the former category.

10 - Special Moves/Burning - Mogwai
If The National does dark the best, then Mogwai does dreamy as well as anyone.


P.S. A little late, I know

MUSIC: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Tao of the Dead

Deep, analogue bass pulse through and around your inner ear. At the same time, a half spoken/half sung monologue conjures cosmic imagery in a low whisper before the guitar crackles like an old photograph lit on fire descending into a pink nose reminiscent of the ending of "Karma Police." Before long, the noise stands aside for a bright acoustic guitar confidently strumming sunny chords before they themselves are standing aside for a blast of thick, forward-leaning distortion.

If all that sounds like an exhilarating experience, it often is and you should sprint to your local record store and pick up Tao of the Dead. And if you think that sounds like a formless, chaotic mess, well, it's that too and you and I should totally party because we think a lot alike.

Even by the ADD addled, too-many-studio-toys Pro Tools-modern standards, this is a restless album. It's progressive to be sure, but that's not especially new. That's  a direction Trail of Dead has been heading for some time. The music is joyous first and sort of pointlessly fidgety second. There seems to be little agenda from moment to moment (the demarkations of the songs themselves aren't exactly arbitrary, but they're close) other than to do something different because they did the same thing for too long consecutively.

It seems it's not enough to move to a B section with a new melody or arrangement. Why not just announce it with an unexpected blast of feedback and an enormous slow-down in tempo? Ideas are never bad in that it's always better to have too many than not enough but when you try to do everything you're not really doing anything and frankly, Trail of Dead spend a good portion of the Tao of the Dead trying to do everything with a playbook that's actually pretty limited. After the 5th sudden breakdown into crashes on every downbeat and the 4th descent into electronic pads and beeps it gets a touch wearying.

Ironically, for such a self-consciously 2011 album, the big choruses, when they do come occasionally, have a very 90s alt-nation vibe - Smashing Pumpkins with a slight Jane's Addiction flavoring. But that's part of the grandiose charm.  It IS joyous and that makes it much pleasurable an experience than it would have been had they used the same tactics to make a dark or muddy record. Tao of the Dead is never, ever muddy; it's clean in it's production. Maybe pathologically so... clinical, even, like an early Minus the Bear effort.

I'm at once having a hard time finding a kind word to say about the emo-elderstatesman's effort. but at the same time, I can't say I didn't enjoy it and maybe that's the lesson to be taken away: If you do something and don't succeed but do it enthusiastically and joyfully it will make for a pleasurable experience.

But it won't necessarily be good art.

POLITICS: CBS News Was Guilty of Propagandizing During the Iraq War

Let's start by defining news:

News is the act of conveying information that has a cultural relevance and/or shared public interest.  The information conveyed in this manner, according to Dean Howard Schneider of the Stony Brook News Literacy department must be subject to some manner of journalistic vetting.

The vetting contains three sub-sections, which will be the crux of my argument going forward:  This information must be verified; it must be conveyed independently and the person or organization must be held accountable for the information they promulgate in this manner.  This is the criterion furthered by the News Literacy department at the SUNY: Stony Brook.

Furthermore, when news isn't news... that is to say, when information is conveyed in a manner that suggests news, gives the appearance of news and is in the public interest in a similar manner to news, but that news fails to meet the above criteria, then that information is propaganda.

Please watch the following video before I expand, it was produced in all likelihood in 2004:



Obviously this is news, or at least it’s meant to be news: it seeks to inform, was originally produced by professional journalists on the ground in Iraq and was aired by a well-known and often renowned news company: CBS News. However, I think it falls well short of the journalistic process and is unworthy of the CBS brand.

First, it is not properly vetted and therefore fails the “verification” requirement. I'm well aware that an argument could be made that it is easy to, with the benefit of hindsight, know that the insurgency was not “all but over” as the video claimed at the top, however, this video relies almost exclusively on unnamed “U.S. Commanders” and “Iraqi Officials,” all of whom paint the rosiest of pictures with regards to the war. The only two named in the sources in the piece are U.S. Marine Christopher Meyers and U.S. Naval Surgeon Dr. Richard Jadick, neither of whom are identified by rank, nor is whether or in what capacity their personal involvement with the anti-insurgency was,  though we can infer their roles.

How interesting that Mr. Meyers describes how RPG Gunners have “just hammer[ed] away at [the U.S.] tanks and instead of addressing the difficulties the American soldiers are facing, Ms. Palmer continues to jingoistically trumpet how hard the insurgents are being hit. Further, when Dr. Jadick says casualties were “better than we thought,” the reporter again glosses over how the expectation was “a huge amount of casualties” “in an urban environment,” especially now knowing how those huge numbers of casualties were just around the corner, it seems Ms. Palmer could have afforded to do her job and actually question whether or not things were as hunky dory as the “Iraqi officials” stated.

Secondly, this story violates the tenet of “independence.” CBS News didn’t have a vested interest in the Iraq War per se, but the reporter has a clear pro-war bias. Note how she opens the piece: the Fallujah offensive is described not as a solemn event or an unfortunate battle in the midst of a larger and serious objective but “a devastating display of American firepower.” Rambo would've blushed at that sort of "cowboy-up," gung-ho description. Moreover, the reporter uses the phrase “mop up” or “mopping up” multiple times in furtherance of the narrative that the Fallujah offensive and by extension the Iraq War is going swimmingly. Given how the reporter over-relies on unnamed sources claims that the offensive was a success and downplaying every instance of American casualties or sacrifice, I believe the piece fails the test of independence.

Finally, and in fairness, we only know this after the fact, this violates the tenet of accountability. Almost everything in this piece turned out to be factually wrong and while I know there is a provisional truth to the news that states things could have been going very well when this piece was first produced, I find it very difficult to believe that the Fallujah offensive, one of the most devastating to American soldiers in the whole Iraq War really started out this well. Given that around the time of this piece Vice President Cheney said the insurgency was in it “last throes” there was clearly a narrative being promulgated that the reporter bought into wholly. I think it’s telling that this video was put up on Youtube not by CBS News but by Maxx64, an everyday user.

CBS should be ashamed of this piece, and for all I know, they are. However, no correction, retraction or other apology has made its way from any of the major media outlets for the abdication of their journalistic responsibility to the U.S. people during the Iraq War. If they did, is was quiet enough that a voracious news consumer such as myself was able to miss it.

Everyone can be guilty of getting caught up on a nationalist fervor following an event as horrifying as 9/11, so the News Media can be forgiven for some measure of going along with the government in a show of national unity.  But this was, at the earliest, 30 full months after 9/11 and not a single one of the stated reasons for the Iraq War ever came to fruition (and before you say it, deposing Sadam Hussein was not, until much later, trumpeted as the objective of this war), the fact that our news media didn't have the temerity to start REALLY questioning this war until AFTER it had already become unpopular is a scary portend of things to come.

Let me end by saying that this was not limited to this piece or CBS News, if anyone is aware of any similar abdications on the part of the news media during the war, please send them my way.   This isn't about pro-war or anti-war, this is about baseline skepticism and journalistic practice being tossed aside at the highest level... and that's beyond unacceptable.