Politics and Gossip

I believe the measure of a leader is in their ability to inspire their supporters creatively.

Will.I.Am said of his remix of Obama's New Hampshire speech :

"It made me reflect on the freedoms I have, going to school where I went to school, and the people that came before Obama like Martin Luther King, presidents like Abraham Lincoln that paved the way for me to be sitting here on ABCNews and making a song from Obama's speech," will.i.am said.

"The speech was inspiring about making change in America and I believe what it says and I hope everybody votes," Dylan said.

I believe the measure of a leader is in their choice to engage supporters as collaborators in the building of a social and political future. The difference between a campaign and a movement is in how people take the political moment as a call to action, regardless of whether the powers that be are there to reward them :

This is a special treat for all the linguists and language philosopher in da houze. It is time to compare and contrast the rhetorical styles of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Lady's First :

Highlight of the speech it's right there at the beginning :
I come tonight with a very full and I want especially to thank New Hampshire. Over the last week, I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice.

John Edwards is next :

Highlight from the last third of the speech:
I want to be clear to the 99% of Americans who have not yet had the chance to have their voices heard that I am in this race to the condition, that I intend to be the nominee of my party and I am in this race until we have actually restored the American Dream and strengthened and restored the middle class of America.

So I ask all of you here and all of you who can hear the sound of my voice that 99% whose voices have not been heard in this democracy to join us in this grassroots campaign to create the kind of America that all of us believe in.

It's "Hispanic Heritage Month", a 31-day long pseudocelebration which, along with Black History month, makes a mockery of anything on US soil that is not Anglophilic.

I loathe the term 'hispanic' so much that I am willing to bring to you 31 reasons why Latin American culture is not mired in 'Hispanic' colonialist nostalgia; and what better way to start that than with a little taste of Nueva Trova.

One of the most outrageous pieces of misinformation spread about Fidel Castro is that he somehow has ruled in a complete political vaccum. Americans love to infantilize anybody they deem lesser (ie: a minority) to their cause and since 1959 they've spent a remarkable amount of ink describing Cubans as a country of cowering, uneducated twits who have been easily manipulated by "The Bearded Demon".

Cuban society and culture is much more complex than that and nobody embodies this distinction so well as Silvio Rodriguez.

Silvio is considered one of the pioneers of the Movimiento de Nueva Trova, the Cuban equivalent of the Nueva Canción movement that was sweeping Latin America back in the 1970s and 80s.

I was thinking of alcohol. Like massive amounts of rum or tequila, but I am afraid I may fall asleep faster than you say Al-Qaeda, so I am actually doing a double espresso with a shot of milk ... un cortado as we say in the isla.

What about you? Come on over to the chat room and tell us all about it.

So, I'm sitting here checking my email and I am reading one sent by a spokesperson for a couple of First People's tribes and all that pops into my head is "whatever happened to A Tribe Called Quest.

There's a Wikipedia page up for them. That you get their page first instead of MTV, show's how cluless they've been about capitalizing on their importance as an archive of Hip Hop history.

I guess MTV has left it up to VH1 to the heavy historical lifting.

Here's Google's compilation of their discography.

And you can find their MySpace page here.

Why can't hip hop be more like them?

Liberal cry-babies whined about Sally Fields' censored rambling at last the Emmy Awards but somehow completely overlooked the fact that hers was not the only bleeped or blacked out speech at the awards. Kathryn Hagel and Ray Romano come to mind.

Then there's Kathy Griffins' HI-lariously profane speech.

Kathy rocked the house at the 'technical' Emmys award ceremony which happened a week before last Sunday's primetime show. Did she whine about? Hell to the no.

Here she is on Larry King Live loving every moment of it :

Kathy Griffins, FTFingW!

Sally Fields won an Emmy Award last night. Unfortunately, she also won another opportunity to make an ass of herself by making "the statement of the night" at another awards show broadcasted to millions of households across the globe.

I hate it when Sally Fields gets all manic and twitchy, ready for her emotionally retarded speeches. Sally Fields making "a statement" is like listening to a banshee all decked out in felt scratch his nails on a blackboard while chewing styrofoam. Dogs weep when she gets on a podium and starts soap-boxing.

Which is no wonder why people at Fox Networks decided to rather aggressively bleep her ass, blackout the TV screen and force her off the stage. Take a look at how they violently do away with her dignity :

Here's the thing : Sally should have bowed out at 1:28 in this film clip. Had she stopped at that first round of applause, she would have left with a succint speech about the importance of acknowledging the selfless work of all mothers, especially the mothers of those "left in harm's way by war". Had she taken the cue from her peers, she would have walked away with the most profound speech of not just the evening but any awards show in recent memory.

Especially when it's spinned by The Daily Show. This is worth at least an Emmy nomination. It's beyond brilliant. It's perfect.