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Awesome.

If he's black, he must rap

Rich over at Four Four is back again proving that he is the smartest man on the planet.

If he's black, he must rap: "

R. Kelly. Bobby Brown. Ray J. Estelle. Sisqo. Russell Simmons. Shaggy. Damon Dash. M.I.A. Santigold. Kelis. T-Pain. Akon. All of these people have two things in common: 1) At one point, they were referred to by the New York Post as "rappers," and 2) None of them are. You see how some of these might confuse people: how the sing-songy styles of M.I.A. and Akon could be mistaken as rapping for the uninitiated and hard-of-hearing, old white people who write the Post. T-Pain is a "rappa ternt sanga," so that explains that. Bobby Brown has rapped (I mean, has a couplet finer than "Too hot to handle, too cold to hold / They called the Ghostbusters in they're in control" since been spat?), Kelis, R. Kelly and Santigold have kind of, as well, I guess. Russell and Damon have worked around rap, so I guess they're rappers by association?

The fact of the matter is that even if the case can be made that a few of these people could possibly write "rapper" on their resume, a more accurate title could be applied to any of them. (Someone like Kid Rock apparently is one of the few of the multi-hyphenate elite. Guess why!) I do not know for sure why they are called "rappers," but I can make a few guesses. The Post still fetishizes rappers as the bad boys of the entertainment industry. The vast majority of its hip-hop coverage -- I'd say just from the informal survey that I took to find the above examples of faulty labeling, 80 percent of it involves the rappers involved in some sort of crime. As silly as it is, the word "rapper," still has sensationalistic value at the Post that "R&B star" or "dancehall artist" or "mogul," just doesn't. (Shit, they called Barbie a rapper, even though she was actually, Rappin' and Rockin'.) Also, these people who have no idea what they're talking about regarding pop culture, may hear about a (usually male) black recording artist and just assume that he is a rapper. I'm not saying that these people are racist (although, if they work for the Post, I'm not saying they're not racist, either), but I am saying they're lazy, ignorant and prone to stereotyping. That's all!

The reason that I bring this up is that in Tuesday's paper there was an item labeling Ne-Yo a rapper, which is the most egregious error of this sort yet. I think I've rapped more than Ne-Yo has. He's a fucking crooner, you know? A singing, songwriting crooner. (I discovered through my research that this isn't even the first time the Post has done that.) Seriously, Post, who's next? Stevie Wonder? Miles Davis? Lenny Kravitz is part-black, so he must be part-rapper, too, right? And look, I understand factual errors. I make them often. I understand meaning one thing and typing another. But I don't understand working at a national media outlet and just assuming in the place of fact-checking. That's nonsense.

It's not just the Post that does this, of course. Come, let's laugh at the mistakes of what we can presume are stupid white people:

The L.A. Times is almost as bad as the Post, having referred to Marques Houston, John fucking Legend and Chris Brown as rappers.

At least they know how to retract.

Rolling Stone called Omarion a rapper. So much for music-industry authority.

Fucking Jet called Jodeci a "rap group," once again proving that if you can fit a periodical in your back pocket, you should not trust it. (Sorry, Reader's Digest.)

This one's really, really bad: the New York Times referred to Mary J. Blige as a rapper. Granted, they were talking about the use of "411" as slang, and she does rap on the title track of What's the 411? On virtually every other track on that album and since (except for "Enough Cryin'"), she sings, though. It's just what she's built her career on. No biggie.

Ginuwine "keeps rap Ginuwine" according to the New York Daily News.

Oh, and I've mentioned R. Kelly, but it seems particularly fucked up that a Chicago publication like the Sun-Times would be referring to him as a rapper. Let me guess: house music is a form of country and western? It's not even house music, in fact, it's barn music.

The photo houses are really, really bad, too. WireImage says Mario...

...Keyshia Cole...

...and Lyfe Jennings...

...are all rappers (the Lyfe example is from Life magazine, but since WireImage did the shot, its fair to assume that the frequently erroneous company is responsible for the caption as well). Yeah, that's not a guitar Lyfe plays -- it's a stringed turntable.

Getty, on the other hand, lists Anthony Hamilton...

...Trey Songz...

...and fucking Jamie Foxx...

...as rappers. You wonder if these people have ever heard any popular music ever. Isn't there a nation of young, unemployed, pop-culture savvy graduates who would shit themselves for the opportunity to write even the most basic copy for an organization half as reputable as Getty?

But my favorite, favorite, favorite of all of these examples is this one about Usher:

That's gorgeous, as irony goes. Really, really solid work, everyone. Oh, and since it's from the Newswire, it's basically a press release, so if you need a more reputable journalistic source for Usher's status as a rapper, the Post has it covered, too. Good, old Post!

So basically the point is that just about every single male R&B singer of the past 10 years (and quite a few females) has been labeled a "rapper," by sources that are more or less trusted. When in doubt, though, I think you should use your sense of hearing. It's a much, much better source.

"

Newsflash: Gore Vidal a cunt

Repost from boy culture

Gore Vidal has always struck me as a bloody nightmare, someone I'd absolutely hate having to be around, yet someone with keen insight. In a wide-ranging interview with Times Online, he offers the following sunny observations.

On the future of the United States:

"We'll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn't realize how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is."

On President Barack Obama, whom he supported for president after switching from Hillary (whom he now believes would have been better):

"I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we've had in that position for a long time. But he's inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He's acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism. We've failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it...[I retain optimism in Obama] because he doesn't lie. We know the fool from Arizona is a liar. We never got the real story of how McCain crashed his plane and was held captive."

On Obama's handling of health care:

"He fucked it up. I don't know how because the country wanted it. We'll never see it happen...Maybe he doesn't have [a wider vision], not to imply he is a fraud."

On the Republicans:

"Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it's a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred—religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word 'conservative' you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They're not, they're fascists."

On Edmund White's play Terra Haute, based on Vidal's "supportive" correspondence with terrorist Timothy McVeigh ("a true patriot, a Constitution man"):

"He's a filthy, low writer. He likes to attack his betters, which means he has a big field to go after...That play implies I am madly in love with McVeigh. I looked at his writing and all he writes about is being a fag and how it's the greatest thing on Earth. He thinks I'm another queen and I'm not. I'm more interested in the Constitution and McVeigh than the loving tryst he saw. It was vulgar fag-ism."

On his fellow Americans:

"Does anyone care what Americans think? They're the worst-educated people in the First World. They don't have any thoughts, they have emotional responses, which good advertisers know how to provoke."

On Katharine Hepburn, who complained of her role in Suddenly Last Summer that she was "far too healthy a person to know people like this":

"She had Parkinson's. She shook like a leper in the wind."

Not exactly agreeing with him on every point, but his harsh critique of Obama is fascinating (and a world apart from "where's that uppity Kenyan's birth certificate?"). I have to agree on Edmund White's writing, which I find tedious and as grim as sexual addiction, but I don't know if I can get past thinking favorably of Timothy McVeigh...!

"

Canadian Blood Services sues gay man for donating

This story is pretty old, but the lawsuit is still ongoing. Kyle Freeman, a Canadian gay man, is currently being sued by Canadian Blood Services for lying about his sexual activity when donating blood, something which he's done 18 times since 1998.

Read more about it here.

Gay Zombies!

So, kinda old, but still cute.

Swimming Dream