The Flavor of the Rhythm I Wrote

Here's a rundown of some of my recent writing on Vice Magazine's Thump sub-site.  I started a cooking column, wherein DJs from across the globe tell me how to make their favorite recipes.  Since DJs often cross into the restaurant and hospitality business as they get older - I've been able to recruit a number of restaurateurs and cook-book writers.  The rest are just professional foodies.  So far so good.

I have a few non-food related articles too, including an interview with the guy who did the legendary mixtape drop "Damn Son, Where'd You Find This?"

Cooking With The DJ: Halifax Donair With Rhek
Cooking With The DJ: The Hood Internet's Steve Reidell
Cooking With The DJ: Linguine and Slim Jims with Frankie Banks

With New Immigration Fees, Touring DJs Aren't Welcome in Canada 
Meet The Voice of "Damn Son, Where'd You Find This?"

Caught, Can We Get a Witness?

Astrophysicist... or Black astrophysicist?  Philadelphia Magazine lets you know white peoples' thoughts.

The City is all atwitter about Philadelphia Magazine's sensationalistic cover story "Being White In Philly."  Reactions to the story are pointedly negative, and for good reason.  At worst, the story is described as a central casting conservative indictment of political correctness as the protective veil of the welfare state.  That gives the author, Robert Huber, and the suburban cow-tows at Philly Mag a bit too much credit.  The story is not a polemic, it's a disjointed mess.  More accurately, it's a purely lazy, disconnected series of interviews with white people lamenting their inability to talk about race while proving terribly bad at it whenever they try.   The author editorially acquiesces to their feelings with such unconscious ham-handedness I was surprised nobody mentioned that "they have a lot of black friends."

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and said "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  The speech is so famous, and King so hagiograph-ied that invoking it may seem simplistic.  Worse, maybe it's hyperbolic, especially in a comments-section-driven era of extreme discourse.

Fast forward 50 years, and Philadelphia Magazine made it known that Huber (and by proxy, the editors), the vast majority of his interview subjects and by inference, white people across Philadelphia, rue the day such a dream was voiced.  They wish nothing more than to ramble inconclusively about whether or not we need to use skin color as a meaningful descriptor of their fellow citizens... in order to sell magazines.

That's pretty much all the article is - rambling.  A bunch of people say "some black kid stole a chair from my porch this once" or "black neighborhoods have low graduation rates."  There are man-on-the-street interviews where Huber meaningfully records that "black guys whistle at me, white guys don't."  Interspersed is a bunch of meandering commentary by the author and his subjects about whether or not blackness is what's important here.  "Not that it matters.... but maybe it does ... but if it did could I say anything... I don't know."  On and on and on.

What's the message here?  Not that "there's a problem talking about race."  The message is that "people who believe race determines behavior are not sure why they run into problems talking about race, and a bunch of other people seem not to be sure why they are being probed for their opinions on blackness."

Huber's work is a lazily written reason to put some 100+ point font on the cover of Philly Mag, draw sales and provoke blog posts like this one.  It's a sophomoric series of anecdotes about Philadelphia's descent into poverty, drugs, segregation, violence and every other social ill you can think of, and the main message is "do you think that maybe this is related to blackness... or something?"  There's no attempt at explaining the correlations between race and class.  If "show me, don't tell me" was the MO, the analysis would be a bit more trenchant than some ramblings about pangs of guilt and uncertainty about North Philly's ills on a drive to his son's apartment at Temple.  Who knew white people were so lazy?  I thought that was black people!  Quick, what do seven randomly selected white people think?

Robert Huber, and sympathizers city-wide, here's my message for you - if you wonder aloud whether or not it's OK to discuss race in Philadelphia, you are contributing productively to a discussion.  If place race* first in any discussion about human issues, like poverty, violence, education, you are doing it wrong.  Doing so is dehumanizing.  Plain and simple.  My message won't sell your magazine, but it would have saved you the trouble of having to account for your half-baked article.

*-"race" being a distinct concept from "racism"

Bond Atomically

There's something going on akin to the 1960 "Missile Gap" issue - Kennedy said that the Soviets had more missiles than the US, and Nixon, being the Vice-President, knew this was untrue but knew that he couldn't say so because the information on missile numbers was classified.

Similarly, Obama can't acknowledge the very successful cyberworm attack on Iranian nuclear facilities (which the administration denies but there are books, articles etc about it), nor can he mention whatever number of covert operations are in progress. Consider, for example, if this election had occured in April, 2011, when Obama knew Bin Laden's location and was planning to execute an operation against him - Romney could have hammered him for not having caught Bin Laden, and Obama would have had to keep quiet.

Beyond the Iranian worm attack, I can't really begin to speculate what kind of stuff Obama's hands are tied on, but it's an interesting angle to consider.

That said, Obama looks strong on foreign policy. It's unlikely that any of the real "third rail" issues will come up, just like they didn't in debates one and two - surveillance, drone attacks and shadow wars. If they do, expect them to be dealt with superficially.

By the way, anybody who has not read Bob Woodward's book about the Afghan strategy review, Obama's Wars, is doing themselves a disservice.

What Color Is Your Lambo, 2012 Edition

Again we reach the time where month-to-month economic data, ignored for years at a time, data only tangentially related to the power of executive office, becomes the basis upon which we make long-term political decisions.  Some new unemployment numbers came out today, they look good for the President, especially in light of his punch-pulling, wonky performance in the first presidential debate.

I think that people vastly overestimate the control the President has over many elements of the economy, especially the stock market.  However, people tend to use some of these indicators as measurements of the President's success, especially right around election time.

"It's the economy, stupid," as James Carville memorably said.  Obama got a boost in 2008 from bad numbers rolling out in the early fall.  Reagan destroyed Carter in 1980's stagflating economy.

This year, if Romney is to charge back, it will be on the strength of bad economic news as he follows the standard challenger's game-plan - assail the incumbent as the cause of any and all things bad in the country.  Write some checks with your mouth that your ass may or may not be able to cash once you get elected.  Obama did the same to the GOP in 2008, and found out that steering the economy isn't quite the same as ordering an admiral where to take his aircraft carrier.  Perhaps this is because the President is really just the people's elected zeitgeist, one who is expected to set the tone for the country through his or her leadership.

This all reminds me of a recent Freakonomics podcast (which was in fact an updated reprise of a 2010 podcast).  If you want to know what people as diverse as Don Rumsfeld, Joe Maddon, John Ashcroft and a whole crapload of economists think about the actual power (or lack thereof) of the presidency, check out this March, 2012 episode of Freakonomics Radio.  Rumsfeld's opinions are perhaps the most interesting.  As much as I dislike the guy's personality and politics, he has been either an advisor to or cabinet member for every GOP president since Nixon.

Freakonomics Radio, March 29, 2012 - The Power of the President

Cover Story in Philadelphia Weekly

After a several year hiatus, I made my return this week to the Philadelphia Weekly.  Did it in style too, with a cover story about a Philadelphia activist software developer and his Shazam-like app for deciphering political advertisement provenance.

Check it out:  Fact Attack (Philadelphia Weekly)

Shoutout to Crazy Pills

HuffPo: "Allen West: I've 80 House Democrats Are Communist Party Members"

Not really sure who this Allen West character thinks he is, but he seems just like the kind of guy we could use on the campaign trail against Truman this fall. Although it's possible he was just in Florida lobbying to be manager of the Marlins.

Another day in Florida I suppose.

On Yesterday's Events

In the wake of last night's news that Osama Bin Laden was killed by American special forces in Pakistan, some scattered thoughts, some of which are distilled from conversations I have had over the last 12-14 hours:

-I don't think it's appropriate to rejoice over the deaths of others, even if they were very bad people. Bin Laden had this coming, but dancing on his grave is wrong. At a Passover Seder, you remove a drop of wine from your glass for each one of the ten plagues as a reminder not to take joy in the suffering of your enemies. It's important not to lose your humanity in the moments when extreme circumstances force a resort to violence.

In mentioning this sentiment, I've had a few people say this is somehow a sympathetic viewpoint, which is ridiculous. I believe that our greatest potential asset in combating violent extremism is exerting a goodness of character and comporting ourselves in a way that suggests that using violence is something that we do not enjoy or wish to do willingly except under the most grave circumstances.

-I think that it is unclear whether this diminishes the operational capacity of Al-Qaeda or changes the political momentum in favor of the United States, but it is most certainly a better outcome than NOT killing Bin Laden and it provides some closure. Al-Qaeda is designed to be decentralized, and I can't help but think that although political events since 9/11 may have lionized Bin Laden in the Arab world, they may have made him less relevant because of the other, similar organizations that coalesced around American military intervention and detention policies.

-Conspiracy theorists are boring. I'm not saying that politicians don't hide things or offer misdirection from time to time, but I don't have time for people who think that grand orchestrations like fake moon landings, inside-job 9/11s or fake Bin Laden assassinations are worth the time or risk. Why would you fake killing Bin Laden, only to have him pop up later and make you look really really really bad? Impeachably bad. Dumbasses.

I really wonder about the folks that distrust anything that an "authority figure" says, but offer near blanket acceptance of pretty much any jerk who writes a book about how the symbols on currency imply some sort of cabal to poison you with MSG and cell phone brain rays.

State Properties

I'm kind of an American history buff, and I've been following the NYT series on the 150th anniversary of the war. Today marks the 150th anniversary of the other emancipation proclamation - the emancipation of Russia's 23 million serfs by Alexander II. This was somewhat of a political blow to the south, because they were able to point at Russia as being another major western society with a codified social order of servitude.

In recent years, I've been amazed at the way in which America has been unable to resolve some of the disputes over our nation's philosophical and political framework which have persisted since 1776. Although slavery is in the rearview mirror, the recent healthcare debate has sparked calls for "nullification" of Federal statutes by the states - an issue at the heart of the debates over states rights in the context of slavery. If the greatest catastrophe in the nation's history can't put that one to bed, who knows what can?