Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing opened in theaters on June 30, 1989, and as he told the Associated Press recently about the film’s controversial climax, “White people still ask me why Mookie threw the [trash] can through the window. Twenty years later, they’re still asking me that. No black person ever, in 20 years, no person of color has ever asked me why.”
Perhaps the white people who’ve asked Lee that question also wondered why black people across the United States celebrated the 1995 acquittal of O.J. Simpson, a famous black football player accused of murdering his white wife. As Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California, noted in the HBO documentary O.J.: A Study in Black and White (2002), the gut reaction boiled down to psychological payback. In other words, for every black man in this country who’s been beaten, lynched, shot, or thrown behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, you didn’t get this one.
It didn’t have to be O.J., who wasn’t exactly a shining beacon of black pride. And it wasn’t that every black person in America thought he was innocent. But, as Boyd noted on ESPN.com two years ago when discussing Barry Bonds’s home-run record, “acquittal in a court of law was trumped by conviction in the court of public opinion” in the following decade. Now Simpson is behind bars, for armed robbery and kidnapping — the verdict in that 2007 case was handed down exactly 13 years after he was acquitted for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman — and it’d be difficult to believe that the jury wasn’t influenced by the general perception that Simpson had gotten off scot-free in the ’90s.
The black community had a similar, though more muted, reaction when Michael Jackson was found innocent of child molestation in 2005: “the powers that be” had failed to bring down another rich and famous black man who had risen to the top of his profession. (R&B star R. Kelly, who wrote Jackson’s 1995 hit “You Are Not Alone,” was acquitted of 14 counts of child pornography last year. So far, his career hasn’t been affected the way Jackson’s was.) But the biggest musical star of his generation wasn’t a symbol of black pride, either, at least not on the outside: since the mid-’80s his skin color had become lighter and lighter, his hair straighter and straighter, and his nose smaller and smaller due to an overabundance of plastic surgery. In 2002, when he accused his record label, Sony Music, of not supporting its black artists, the standard joke was “Who is this white woman and why is she calling Tommy Mottola a racist?”
You may have noticed the lack of intros to my posts lately. While this series is all about the music, I do like to do one now and again, but am going through a nice little writer’s block right now. However, there is one thing that always breaks me out of it and that’s more inappropriate ghetto music!
Yeah, I haven’t had one of those moments in a while, in fact it’s been months since Debbie Gibson blared out my car, but it happened again this past week. For those who are new to the series, let me explain. I normally drive to and from work in a route that bypasses my neighborhood ghetto. But on days where I’m picking up dinner on the way home, the row of restaurants takes me right through the slums. And lately, I’ve been taking the long way to my son’s daycare in the morning and that puts me the other way through the dingy streets, but the ghetto in daylight usually just isn’t exciting. When the lights go down it’s crack whores and homeless people (though, unlike last time I haven’t seen the homeless guy with the broken leg in a while).
The other day I was driving through the ghetto just as the sun was starting to go down. I got stuck behind a school bus that at one point must have let 20 kids off at one time. So here I am in my three-week-old Scion xB with the windows down and the iPod on shuffle. Playing as the kids got off the bus was Manowar’s “Loki God of Fire.” Strangely enough that wasn’t the inappropriate song choice. I must have been at the very end of the song because as these kids were crossing the street in front of my car, my iPod shuffles to “Soldier of Love” by Donny Osmond. At least three kids stared into my car and laughed as if to say, “You are the whitest person I have ever seen, retard.” You know, I don’t care what people think about my musical choices, but there’s something really embarrassing about a group of 13-year-olds laughing at a grown man. Of course that could have been my conscience talking as well, as those kids could have been laughing at a joke or someone could have farted. Maybe it wasn’t the Donny Osmond after all. And I mean, fuck, I’m sure they had no clue that was Donny fucking Osmond unless they are the coolest kids ever. Who am I kidding? I was a grown man being laughed at by kids for inappropriate ghetto music. Maybe I need to plan better and just always have Lil Wayne handy for these moments.
Anyway, on to a whole mess of songs that probably wouldn’t be too inappropriate. This week we begin the letter J as we take a look at the lower three-fifths of the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the 1980s.
Seems Uncle Donnie has recently taken a shine to the King of Pop; this particular missive was near the top of the Skwatzenschitz archive. MJ could do worse than follow some of the advice therein; then again, he could also almost assuredly do better. —RS
TO: Michael Jackson
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career advice
Mike, I gotta tell ya, Mitzi and I were at this party up in the Berkshires last weekend (the weather was gorgeous, and the place we stayed had a slide that emptied out into a hot tub. Amazing. You should consider it sometime—the kids would love it), and the damnedest thing happened. It was pretty quiet—you know, little hors d’oeuvres, sparkly drinks, polite conversation, and the like—until somebody had the khutspe to ask the string quartet to play “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” You should have seen it, Mike. Eighty-year-old women and their grandkids, bustin’ moves all over the place—and this is without a backbeat! It was a skirt-hikin’ good time.
Got me to thinking how perfect the timing is now for you to make a comeback. All the legal shit is behind you by a couple years, and the memory (not to mention the attention span) of the public is notoriously short. The kids who bought Thriller have kids of their own now, so your audience is at least two generations deep, and most of them never heard Invincible when it was out, so the stink of that one probably won’t cling to you. Here are some things I think you should do:
Stay away from the following things: children, Elizabeth Taylor, Saudi princes, monkeys, hyperbaric sleep chambers, your brothers (Jermaine is jer-messed up, Mike. Well, somebody had to tell you), boy bands, British press, 60 Minutes, the LAPD, Liza Minnelli, Lisa Marie, any giant likenesses of yourself, antique stores, and Debbie Rowe. These things always seem to get you into trouble, Mike. (more…)
Scott: Could Gilmour sound more bored? No wonder he called Floyd quits. Although Momentary Lapse of Reason had its moments, neither of the post-Waters Floyd albums hold a candle to Gilmour’s second solo record, About Face. In fact, you can hear echoes of that ‘84 album in the Gilmour-led Floyd records. And the live performances were so bloated. How many people did they have onstage?
Jon: Zzzzzzzzz … oh, sorry, I fell asleep as soon as I saw that number “7:32″ on the volume bar. Could somebody give me a rag? I need to wipe this drool off my chin.
Isn’t this song the reason punk was invented … 20 years earlier? Couldn’t Gilmour have caught a clue by 1994? I actually was never a big Floyd fan, but after Waters left I tuned them out completely — except for “Learning to Fly,” which at least has a discernible melody and something of a hook. Please don’t make me listen to this again.
David: I own The Division Bell, but I do not remember a single lick of the album, except for “I never thought you’d lose that light in your eyes.” That’s one of the Nick Laird-Clowes songs, yes?
Perhaps the white people who’ve asked Lee that question also wondered why black people across the United States celebrated the 1995 acquittal of O.J. Simpson, a famous black football player accused of murdering his white wife. As Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California, noted in the HBO documentary O.J.: A Study in Black and White (2002), the gut reaction boiled down to psychological payback. In other words, for every black man in this country who’s been beaten, lynched, shot, or thrown behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, you didn’t get this one.
Seems Uncle Donnie has recently taken a shine to the King of Pop; this particular missive was near the top of the Skwatzenschitz archive. MJ could do worse than follow some of the advice therein; then again, he could also almost assuredly do better. —RS
