My hottest takes
Commentary by Chitown Kev
I had nothing planned for today until the call from Miss Denise that she’s being honored at a ceremony this evening honoring her activism for the Puerto Rican community.
So I have some laconic hot takes on some non-political items in the news.
Yes, this is a no trump hand.
1) Touré is absolutely correct.
“Off the Wall” is an extremely cohesive album. All of the songs come from the genre of disco. This album is perhaps the greatest distillation of what disco is. And the songs reflect the world of a young man trying to find love. He dances, he loves the club life, he falls in love, he gets his heart broken. It’s almost like a movie about what it is to be an early twentysomething in the big city, and in that way, it speaks to who Jackson was then. He was then a former child star who loved to dance for dancing’s sake but also he was not certain that he was going to make it as an adult star. It’s abnormal for child stars to become adult stars. For sure, there have been some who made that leap, but there are way, way more child stars who were unable to transition to adult stardom. Before “Off the Wall” was released, some were not sure that Jackson could do it. That’s one of the big points in Spike Lee’s great documentary “Michael Jackson’s Journey From Motown to Off the Wall.” So Jackson was at that crossroads in his life, and he was in the clubs experiencing the explosion of disco at a critical moment in its rise, and he was trying to figure out who he was as a young man. All of that got poured into the album.
“Thriller” is not at all cohesive. It feels like a greatest-hits collection. Of course, it has many legendary songs, but there’s no thread binding the songs together sonically or thematically. “Off the Wall” has a thesis — it’s about the sound of disco and the world of a young man who loves to dance and is desperately looking for love. “Thriller” has no big idea pulling it all together. What do these songs have to do with each other? Each piece of “Off the Wall” makes it clear that they were thinking, how does this fit into the whole thing that we’re building? “Thriller” feels like, OK, these are the nine best songs we’ve made in these sessions. These are the ones that are most likely to get a huge commercial reaction. But where “Off the Wall” is exploring disco, “Thriller” moves from the sappy pop of “The Girl Is Mine” to the creepy funk of “Thriller” to the blissed-out soul of “Human Nature.” These are all great songs, but a stellar album is more than a collection of great songs.
I wouldn’t go even as far as to say that Thriller sounds like “a greatest-hits collection.”
I’d say that it simply sounds like a collection of really good to great singles that’s trying to hit every nook and cranny in the music marketplace. In that sense, Thriller may have anticipated much of the way music is purchased today.
2) I’m with The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill on this one: If you don’t know what you are talking about then just shut the hell up!
The arrival of a dynamite WNBA rookie class, headlined by the sensational Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, has prompted an explosion of coverage of women’s basketball. But—and perhaps I should have anticipated this—the surge in popularity has come at a cost. Ill-informed male sports analysts are suddenly chiming in about the league and its players, offering narratives untethered to facts and occasionally making me long for the days when the WNBA largely flew under the radar. [...]
As more and more male pundits opine on women’s basketball, some of the analysis is just plain cringeworthy. In April, in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament, Clark put up 41 points and 12 assists in a decisive victory over Louisiana State University, the defending champion. After the game, the NBA Hall of Fame player Paul Pierce offeredscintillating analysis on the Fox Sports 1 talk show Undisputed. “I’mma just keep it 100 with you,” Pierce said. “We saw a white girl from Iowa do it to a bunch of Black girls. That gained my respect.” His fellow panelists nodded in agreement.
A white woman dominating Black opponents in women’s college hoops sure does sound remarkable—unless you know anything at all about the history of the sport. Women’s college ball has been littered with dominant white players. In 2021, the University of Connecticut star Paige Bueckers, a favorite to be the top pick in next year’s WNBA draft, was the first freshman woman to win the John R. Wooden Award, given to the best player in the nation. Breanna Stewart, the reigning WNBA MVP, won four straight national championships and three national player-of-the-year awards at UConn. The NCAA women’s record holder for most career points before Clark was Kelsey Plum, a white point guard who now plays for the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces.
I understand that cable sports networks and the sports pages of major newspapers and magazines want the sports commentators that are being paid the big bucks to comment on the newfound popularity (for some!) of women’s basketball (since media organizations aren’t hiring too many other people these days).
But is it too much to ask that either these commentators should do the necessary research or hire some (maybe a stringer) who can do this.
I mean, Loudmouth Steven A simply got smoked here.
3) I was talking to Miss Denise this past Sunday about Dwight Garner’s hair-raising review of a Black conservative’s autobiography in The New York Times. Well...since I’m struggling for a subject to include in these hot takes.
Glenn C. Loury’s new book, “Late Admissions,” is unlike any economist’s memoir I have ever read. Most don’t mention picking up streetwalkers. Or smoking crack in a faculty office at Harvard’s Kennedy School — or in an airplane at 30,000 feet. Or stealing a car. Or having sex on a beach in Israel with a mistress and attracting the attention of the Israel Defense Forces. Or later being arrested and charged with assaulting her. Or cuckolding a best friend.
Or abandoning children born out of wedlock. Or becoming estranged from the children that weren’t. Or writing computer code to win at blackjack. Or having a porn addiction. Or keeping a bachelor pleasure dome decorated with a bearskin rug, a brass four-poster bed and a fat marijuana plant. Or sidling around in a paisley smoking jacket with a matching ascot because it “radiated suave sophistication and Hefneresque cool.” Or sneaking into dorm rooms as a professor to suck face with much younger women. Or entering detox clinics, finding God when it was convenient, appearing on “The 700 Club,” then ditching God. [...]
Loury, 75, is a theoretical economist who has taught at Harvard and Brown, among other elite colleges and universities, though he is probably best known as a conservative Black (he prefers a lowercase “b”) commentator on social issues. The economist and the opinion-maker in him comprise one half of his person.
Back in the day when I was using drugs, I absolutely knew people like Mr. Loury (though not quite as well-known). People like Mr. Loury know how to compartmentalize these activities (the faculty office at The Kennedy School, tho?).
Given Mr. Loury’s particular profile, I’m even a little envious that he was able to pull this off, although I guess that I would have to read the book to know how much he actually “pulled off” in living his double life.
Survivor’s guilt is a bit of a thing, I guess.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Hundreds gathered in an Ohio city on Wednesday to unveil a plaza and statue dedicated to abolitionist Sojourner Truth at the very spot where the women’s rights pioneer gave an iconic 1851 speech now known as “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Truth, a formerly enslaved person, delivered the speech to a crowd gathered at the Universalist Old Stone Church in Akron for the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. In the speech, Truth drew upon the hardships she faced while she was enslaved and asked the audience why her humanity and the humanity of other enslaved African Americans was not seen in the same light as white Americans.
Though the church no longer exists, the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza and the United Way of Summit and Medina Counties now stand in its place.
Towanda Mullins, chairperson of the Sojourner Truth Project-Akron, said the plaza will honor a piece of the country’s past and help to shape its future.
“It’s going to remind others to be the first one to speak up, to speak up for all, not just for some,” she said.
Before taking the name Sojourner Truth, Isabella Bomfree was born into slavery in or around 1797 in the Hudson Valley. She walked away from the home of her final owner in 1826 with her infant daughter after he reneged on a promise to free her. She went to work for the Van Wagenen family, and took their surname.
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For his first all-new book of nonfiction in nearly a decade, Ta-Nehisi Coates traveled the world.
One World announced Thursday that Coates’ “The Message” will be published Oct. 1. “The Message” is set everywhere from the American South to the Middle East and Palestine and focuses on a single question: In a time of growing strife and injustice, why do stories matter?
“In ‘The Message,’ Coates explores this question by reporting from three powerfully resonant sites — Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine — that have been profoundly shaped and riven by contested accounts of meaning and reality,” the One World announcement reads in part. “Weaving together on-the-ground reportage, personal narrative, and insightful dives into literature and history, he tries to clarify what’s real beneath layers of propaganda, wishful thinking, and enforced silence — and why we are so often misled, with sometimes catastrophic consequences.”
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In plenty of schools around the country, students have been reading the same books for decades. Besides being just plain boring, we can’t ignore that most of these books, which are often considered classics, don’t exactly reflect Black people’s lived experience in America.
Although some US schools are attempting to add diverse titles into the mix, conservatives are working overtime to ban books that talk about slavery or anything else that might make them feel uncomfortable.
And while you won’t catch us telling anyone to ban these books completely, we wanted to make an impassioned plea to educators to take another look at their required reading lists and add Octavia Butler and Zora Neale Hurston along with J.D. Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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After suffering a stunning blow in last week’s election, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has begun closed-door negotiations with its political opponents to begin talks about forming a coalition government.
On Sunday, the Electoral Commission (IEC) announced that elections in South Africa were “free and fair” but with no single party gaining an outright majority. The final election results confirmed the ANC’s decline in support to just more than 40 percent of the vote – far less than the absolute majority it had for the past 30 years after bringing about an end to apartheid.
Parties have a two-week deadline to elect a president, and analysts said the ANC would likely need to concede to an array of demands to bring others on board for a coalition government.
The ANC held a meeting of its national leaders on Saturday where they discussed coalition permutations and the possibility of forming a “government of national unity”. Such an arrangement would be reminiscent of the era of former president Nelson Mandela, who led a government of national unity from 1994 until 1997. Mandela was the president, with FW De Klerk, the last apartheid prime minister, as his deputy. Leaders of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) were part of the cabinet.
But public policy expert Kagiso “TK” Pooe, told Al Jazeera that a government of national unity might only work if built around clear goals that all parties can agree to.
“Key among them will be the economic recovery of the South African economy and promoting employment,” he said. “Secondly curtailing the problem of institutional corruption and inefficiency.” Without the will to commit to such objectives, “the coalition will always be at the precipice of failure and fallout,” he said.
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Finding the motivation to run a half or a full marathon was never a problem for Fred Whitaker. The thought of completing 13 or 26 miles was daunting, but when doubt crept into his head, his friend Yusuf Neville simply told him to “shut up and run.”
“Sometimes when I do get frustrated, and I’m out there by myself, I can see his face and hear him saying, ‘Just shut up and run,’” he said. “It’s the tough love we showed each other, but it’s saying, ‘Why are you complaining about the things that you asked for in life?’”
That motivation only grew after Jan. 29, 2014, when Neville took his own life just four days before he was to run the Miami Marathon. Instead of running beside the 28-year-old Neville, Whitaker and his friends participated in his honor in the half-marathon. Ten years later, the marathon continues for Neville’s friends who are the subjects of a new four-part documentary, “Inspiration by the Mile.”
The YouTube series — produced by Los Angeles Lakers player LeBron James and his business manager Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company — follows Whitaker, Ryan Shaffer, Lashawn “Quiet” Ray, Hercules Conway II and Denaz Green, Jr. as they train for one of the World Marathon Majors, the Boston Marathon, this year and reflect on their understanding of mental health and suicide among Black men.
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An Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel halted an Atlanta venture capital fund’s small business grant program for Black women Monday, a major victory for conservative efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs in corporate America.
In a 2-1 ruling, the judges said the Fearless Fund’s contest likely violates the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 that prohibits the use of race in making contracts. The three-judge panel, consisting of two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump and another appointed by former President Barack Obama, also found Fearless Fund is unlikely to enjoy First Amendment protection and its program inflicts irreparable harm.
Therefore, the appeals court panel reversed a September decision by a lower court judge and put a preliminary injunction into place.
The case is one of the more prominent legal challenges on DEI programs in corporate America and today’s ruling is a setback for supporters of those initiatives.
In August 2023, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, a conservative nonprofit, sued Fearless and its foundation over its Fearless Strivers grant contest, which awarded $20,000 small business grants to Black women. The Alliance was founded by Edward Blum, the activist behind the group that successfully challenged affirmative action in colleges and universities.
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Voices & Soul
“… i asked the clerk
if he had kept you tied down in boxes
or does he use your books as dart boards… “
- Assotto Saint
”The Geography of Poetry”
I'm Special Agent DJ Justice, Radio Host and Managing Partner for Netroots Radio and I'm manning the dials, spinning the discs, warbling the woofers, putting a slip in your hip and a trip to your hop.
Update: Podcast is available on Spreaker
The playlist for 2 June 24 8pm to 9pm Pacific Edition of The Justice Department: Musique sans Frontieres
“Does Color Modify Poetry?”
1 - Ibrahim Ferrer — Buenos Hermanos
2 - Kokoroko — Colonial Mentality
3 - War — City, Country, City
Station Break
4 - Grover Washington, Jr — A Secret Place
5 - Cymande — Dove
6 - Funkadelic — I’ll Stay
7 - Daft Punk - Something About Us
Who luvs ya, baby?
Your Intrepid DJ