The Rebel Flag Incident

I've already voted (yep, Obama). And as such, I've been trying to only read headlines this week and not get too wrapped up in all of the nonsense before the election. My blood pressure can't take it, and after all, I don't have insurance. What's finally put me over the edge, oddly enough, is all of the socialism stuff. I've spent way too much time and way too much money in school studying econ and poli sci to listen to people scream about socialism who don't even know what it is. I'm not saying you have to like it, but I am suggesting you should understand it if you want to talk about it. Incidentally, you know things like one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the world, American agriculture? Yeah, that ain't capitalism, baby. That's kind of like the wealth generated by the efficient industries being redistributed to prop up inefficient industries. Hmm.

But I digress. As I was saying, I've been trying to protect my delicate sensibilities in this last week of the election, and so I didn't see the above video of someone yelling out "he's a (n-word)" about Obama at a Palin speech until Ron Mexico posted a link in his blog. I'm not particularly surprised, nor am I surprised that some people are saying she's yelling, "redistributor!" Come on, redistributor my arse, but whatever. I think we can see from Palin's reaction that she heard it and she didn't say anything. That doesn't surprise me either.

OK, so this video doesn't surprise me, but it does drive home a point that is on my mind very much this week. I've seen two trends emerging in the media, online and in conversations I hear when I'm out and about. One says that Obama is going to lose a lot of votes on election day on the basis of race. The other says that race is not a major issue in our country. I think this second school of thought is just plain wrong, and this week, of all weeks, we ignore that at our peril. Incidentally, you don't have to be a democrat to acknowledge that. But, here's how I know that race is a big issue - my rebel flag story. This experience was big wake up call for me about how deeply these feelings run, and maybe if you don't think that race is an issue, it will surprise you a little bit.

When I was in high school, I was the editor of the school newspaper (this was in the 1990s). At the start of one school year, we had a series of fights in our (highly segregated) lunchroom and courtyard that were kicked off by a bunch of guys waving around a rebel flag and yelling all of the requisite stuff that goes along with that. They were pointedly trying to get a reaction out of some of the black students, and they often succeeded, and we ended up these racially motivated fights. Don't remember exactly how many, but at least a few, possibly several.

I wrote an editorial saying that they shouldn't be allowed to bring the rebel flag to school. Mind you, Malcolm X shirts had been banned for being inflammatory when they had become popular after the Spike Lee movie. To be honest, I didn't even know anyone read the school paper. They did this time.

I'd need a novella to do justice to all of the fallout from what I wrote, so I'll just give you the greatest hits here. I received a letter in the newspaper office that first of all suggested that my middle name is "Black Lover" (in reality, it's Lee), and then went on to say a bunch of nonsense, including, "if you love the blacks so much, why don't you just go be one." It was a low point for the English language, but it was hate filled and it was signed by hundreds of people - HUNDREDS. Including some people I thought were my friends. People yelled "N- Lover" at me as I walking to my classes. A teacher called me that (he was not reprimanded). One of my teachers said she could not grade my papers objectively any more. Someone reported to the principal that some guys were talking about running me down in the parking lot, and so the school had to move the parking spot of the friend that I rode to school with up to the teacher's area so I wouldn't have to walk across the lot. We received threatening phone calls at home, and it's kind of funny, I didn't know until recently just how bad that got because my parents protected me from some of it.

Now, leaving aside the obvious question of why people who defend the rebel flag and claim it's not a racist symbol retaliate to any objection to it with racial slurs, what I really learned from this experience is just how much of an issue race is, even with people who you may not realize have an issue with it. I excepted this kind of stuff from, say, the guys who started it all with their flag stuff in the first place, but 95% of the people that I had a problem with through all of this were the people I never would have expected.

So, my point here is please, please don't write off this issue in the run up to this election, and please, please don't assume this is in the bag for Obama. Race is definitely an issue here, and he will definitely pay for it on election day. Don't get lazy! Vote! Please!

For Marisa, On Forgetting to Mail Her the Football Tickets

I was supposed to mail my friend Marisa tickets to the UNC v. Boston College football game for today. It didn't happen. Oops. So, here, Marisa, a public apology and a video dedication. I know this one will remind you of trips to UNC games past.

Lord Kitchener - Dr. Kitch and More

Dr. Kitch - funniest song ever? Maybe. But just about everything Lord Kitchener did was was fantastic, and I just came across a really good video (posted below) of the man himself talking about his childhood, moving to the UK (including some the famous footage of him singing London is the Place for Me as he arrived in Britain) and more. It made me dig out two of my fav comps that I haven't listened to in awhile - they're part of a series that started out chronicling the music of West Indian immigrants to Britain and later branched out to include more immigrant groups:




I stole both of those images from one of the best labels ever, Honest Jon's (stealing from Honest Jon's, have I no shame?). The first one is subtitled Trinidadian Calypso in London, 1950 -1956 and with a few exceptions is essentially a Lord Kitchener comp. The second one is subtitled Calypso and Kwela, High Life and Jazz from Young Black London and has a much more varied track listing. So, I can't recommend these collections enough, and if you're a little bit nerdy like me and like to understand the historical and cultural stuff behind the music, you'll really like the liner notes.

Last but not least, here's that Lord Kitchener video. I know, I know, someday I'll write about something for real instead of just posting videos, but come on, people, I'm tired. Cut me some slack. Please?

You Know I'm Always Moanin', But You Jump Start My Serotonin

Lest you think all I can do is post old dancehall videos on my blog, here I prove to you that I can post old Scottish indie videos as well. The title of this blog is a line from this song by Arab Strap, called The Shy Retirer. I remember having an ludicrously impassioned debate with a friend of mine about it - I took the position it was a stupid lyric, and he took the position it was the best lyric ever written. In retrospect, I believe that copious alcohol consumption in the run up to the debate may have caused us each to defend our points with a bit too much enthusiasm.

For some reason, this lyric popped into my head when I woke up this morning, and I had to hear the song. I like Arab Strap, but this has never been one of my fav songs by them (obviously after objecting so strenuously to that line in the song, I always had to take a hard line against it), but what do you know, I like it now. Go figure. This is the one and only time I'll admit, though.

Scenes from a Record Store #2: Dirty Little Secrets

Don't get too excited, because this post is less about dirty little secrets than it is about not engaging in subtle mockery with people who don't understand subtle mockery.

The man who owned the record store I worked in had expanded his empire to include more locations, and as such, there were some employees of the company who had so called "district" roles. A few of these people had real jobs, but some of them seemed to be just be old friends of the owner who were on the payroll for no good reason, taking money from the rest of us who really worked.

There was one man in one of these jobs that was particularly disliked. From where I was sitting, his job seemed to exclusively entail printing up typo filled flyers and leaving them on the store counter ("DJ Goldie will be spining!" - that's a direct quote that from one of these flyers that has stayed with me through the years). He was handsomely rewarded for his work. Or well, handsomely rewarded by indie record store standards.

That, however, was not enough for him, and here is where he made enemies. Like all record stops, we received tons and tons of promos. We used to divvy them up at periodic "promo parties" which involved copious amounts of alcohol, but that's another story. As a used record store, we bought back CDs. We often sold our own CDs to the store to get money to supplement our ridiculously bad pay (and then we would take the CDs we had sold to the store and put them on hold until we got paid, kind of like our own little pawn shop. Sometimes we got our stuff back in other ways, but 5th Amendment and all that). Obviously, selling promos back to the store was an attractive option. Pure profit. But, because we got them for free, and labels spent money pressing them, we could only sell them back to the store for $1 and price them at $2. That was the rule.

Well, our typo happy friend, who was technically outranked all of us in the store, didn't like this policy for himself. He scored lots of promos for unfathomable reasons, and he would sell them, like, 100 or more at a time, and insist we pay him full price for them. He'd walk out with hundreds of dollars sometimes. We hated him for it. Well that, and he was just generally a twat, but that's beside the point. He seemed to like to come to the specific shop I worked in most often, so although dislike of him spread throughout the stores, we had to put up with him frequently.

Now, it just so happened that one night, one employee of the store attended a party where a friend of a friend of a friend had way too much to drink. This friend of a friend of a friend confessed two things:

1. She worked as a dominatrix
2. Mr. Buy-My-Promos was a customer of hers

Oh, this information. It was better than winning the lottery. It was unclear what we could do with it, but just the knowing that we knew this dirty little secret of his felt so good.

Not long after, he came into the store. He had a huge box of promos. Tons of them. The same deal was in place - we were to pay him as though they were regular CDs. It must have been a shift change, because there were four of us behind the counter instead of the usual two. We all knew about the dominatrix. We decided to amuse ourselves. The conversation went kind of like this:

Mr. Buy-My-Promos: So, how are y'all doing today?

Employee One: Phew, I'm beat.

Employee Two: Yeah, these customers are really whipping us into shape today.

Employee Three: Definitely, we're really getting spanked here.

You get the picture. I believe "I'm all tied up right now" and other such things were worked into the conversation. We were quite pleased with ourselves, and he was none the wiser. The thing was, only three of us had been taking part in the conversation. The fourth employee was actually doing the buy back. I guess he decided he wanted a piece of the action, though. When he handed the money to Mr. Buy-My Promos, he said:

"Now, don't go take all this money and spend it on a dominatrix!"

Not only did he say that, but then he turned around, looked at the three of us, laughed and gave a self satisfied nod. For a minute it seemed like he might run around and high five us all. We just froze in stunned silence. Mr. Buy-My-Promos gave an awkward, "Ha ha, um, ok, thanks, see you guys" and high tailed it out of there.

Needless to say, this particular employee was frozen out of all future attempts at subtle humor amongst the staff.