Kanye and Gaga = Shrug
Posted: December 21, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, Thought Food | Tags: 2009, copenhagen, dave lachappelle, indiana jones, jon pitts-wiley, kanye west, lady gaga, michael jackson, nidal malik hasan, photo, Pitts Indeed, president barack obama, the black snob, town hall meetings Leave a comment »
Because of the above picture, my buddy The Black Snob is just now regaining feeling in the left side of her face.
As I look at it, all I can think is: Kanye’s not that swoll.
That’s about it.
Far be it from me to disavow allegiance to calling out fuckery–I make a living of it frankly and will probably snap about something or other in ten to fifteen minutes–but this just doesn’t bother me. It’s not that I don’t like it or will spend time defending it; it’s that I don’t really care.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think 2009 is the Year of Submission. Not submission in that people agreed to whatever was going on–the year started with The March on Washington II, transitioned into people acting a donkey at town halls and will end with people getting lumped up in Copenhagen–but rather a year in which things topped each other to the degree that, after a certain point, you just sort of shrugged and say “OK.”
This was a year that had no ceiling and apparently isn’t winding down. Stuff will continue going down until 11:59 on the 31st. Count on it.
Michael Jackson, along with every celebrity ever died, a dude shot up a military base and a serial killer’s bodies stunk up a neighborhood. And a cop shot Oscar Grant in the back on the BART platform. And the president was compared to Hitler daily. Tiger had sex with one out of every three cocktail waitresses in the United States.
Perhaps this pic has been brought to my attention far too late. As of December 21st, I can’t muster the strength to even kind of speculate as to why Dave LaChapelle wanted to make this happen. Nor can I speculate as to why Kanye wanted to carry a naked Lady Gaga, doing her best airbrushed blonde bombshell, out of the jungle looking like a zombie Indiana Jones who spends his free time doing crunches in the antiquities wings of Egyptian museums.
I just don’t know. And I care less than I know.
So to this photo I say: OK. #KanyeShrug
The Secret Service Doesn’t Care About President People
Posted: November 27, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Soap Box, Thought Food | Tags: joe biden, michaele salahi, president barack obama, rahm emanuel, tareq salahi, the new york times, white house state dinner, white house state dinner crashed 1 Comment »
I’m sure the Secret Service doesn’t its job right 99 out of 100 times. I’m sure they thwart threats that we never hear about. I’m sure of it.
What I’m not quite sure about is how they let certain confidenc-shaking shenanigans see the light of day.
While I was, like most people, mildly amused by the Iraqi shoe thrower, I was extremely troubled by the incident. Sure, the gesture was meant as more insult than harm, but the fact that a guy got two clean shots at the President of the United States baffles me. The first shoe I’ll grant him because…who the fuck expects a guy to go tossing Docksiders across the room, but as he reached for the second shoe, I would expect the Secret Service to have subdued and/or shot this guy. Period.
This most recent incident at the White House State dinner was probably more troubling. How can two people crash anything at the White House while the president is on the premises? What’s that now, they had a cameraman with them?
The Salahis–the crashers–claim they didn’t crash anything and that there was a misunderstanding that will be cleared up soon. Maybe this is true; maybe they were supposed to be on the list and are owed some apology. But that apology needs to come on the heels of their being barred entrance to the event. This is the White House, not Bungalow 8.
Obviously, I’m sort of pumped that it took place because it is a choice example for white (or white-looking) privilege. If this is a colored (or colored-looking) couple, you can believe somebody get folded up right there at the gate. The story in the Times would have been “There are whispers coming from the State dinner that a woman was scoop slammed and her husband back body-dropped for attempting to get into the event without having their names on the list.”
So0meone will like get assigned to Des Moines over this, but the troubling thing is that, had these people been a well-dressed sleeper cell, they could have brought harm to any number of people, including the President of the United States of America. Not that I’m in the business of quoting Rep. Peter King, but this piece in The New York Times is on point:
Mr. King said he had seen people turned away from similar White House events, including a congressman who brought his daughter instead of his wife, whose name was on the list. He also raised concerns about the Secret Service’s assertion that Mr. Obama was safe because all guests passed through metal detectors.
“The fact they went through the magnometer is incidental,” he said. “They could have had anthrax on them. They could have grabbed a knife from the dining room table.”
He added, “The next time it will be a far worse reality than a reality TV show.”
To the Secret Service: 99 out of 100 is good enough for everybody else.
