| Let's take the rap for what we listen to
Don Imus has been rightfully dispatched. Now, activists have turned their scopes on the misogynistic and often-violent lyrics of rap music. They're either slow to act or opportunists, because the lyrics they despise have been present for the better part of two decades. It's always a slippery slope when you want to get into censorship of music. It's an issue faced by Elvis, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, Ice-T and many others. The best way to deal with lyrics you find objectionable is to simply ignore the music. That's almost impossible when it's so in your face. Jason Whitlock, a columnist for the Kansas City Star, has been a vocal critic of what he calls the "hip-hop/prison culture" that's creating these lyrics (and an accompanying lifestyle). Whitlock, who is black, wrote last week: "Pop culture is like ants in the spring.
Being black and beautiful against stereotypes
How have African-American women maintained their femininity and sense of beauty after centuries of dehumanization? They survived the inhumanity of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the indignity of being separated from their families on slave auction blocks. They endured abuse and rape by slave masters and overcame the injustice of being bred and worked like animals. During segregation and after desegregation, they suffered doubly for being black and female in a culture that esteemed neither. More recently, the physical attributes historically possessed by black women were deemed undesirable by America's wider society - until women of other ethnic groups began to exhibit them. Cornrows weren't chic until Bo Derek got them, curvaceous derrieres weren't sexy until Jennifer Lopez came along, and full lips were unattractive until Angelina Jolie's kissers showed up and sparked a cottage industry of lip-plumping potions.
Turkish formin picked as president candidate
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's ruling AK Party picked reformist Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as its presidential candidate on Tuesday, a decision that may ease tension with the army and boost the Islamist-rooted party's electoral chances. Gul's candidacy is the first time in modern Turkey's history the post, traditionally held by the secular elite, is poised to go to a former Islamist. It will complete the AK Party's capture of all key posts in Turkey's political hierarchy. .
Larry King on pop culture, star power and suspenders
(CNN) -- Almost from the start of his broadcast career in 1957, Larry King has been asking questions, to everybody from the person next door to the man in the White House. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper sat down with the host of CNN's long-running "Larry King Live" to ask him about guests who have fascinated him over his 50-year career, the secret to a good question -- and how his trademark suspenders began. COOPER: So, Larry, what is pop culture to you? KING: The answer is very difficult ... Is it anything that's popular? It's a hard thing to answer. I don't know the definition. For example, is George Bush part of pop culture? Is Lindsay Lohan part of pop culture? The answer to both may be yes. If you're in People magazine -- someone said that People magazine determines what's pop culture.
AFRICAN EXAMPLES A prelates’ service to humanity
He was the first African prelate to be elected General Secretary of the World Council of Churches in 2003. Locally, he is remembered as one of the many voices that called for change at the height of the clamour for multi-partyism in the 1990s. He is a prelate, an administrator, served as chair to Kenyas Election Monitoring Unit, helped broker peace among warring factions in Sudan and has several book titles to his name. Yet for Rev Samuel Kobia, all these accomplishments are nothing more than him responding to Gods call to serve humanity. In his acceptance speech soon after election, Kobia refused to consider the achievement a personal victory. Said he: "I come from a culture where this is considered not as a victory of the individual. It is our victory, belonging to all of us together because I believe it is Gods will that I be asked to assume this responsibility within my calling in ecumenical ministry." But the road he has had to travel in serving God and advocating virtues of peace, justice and equality has been long and sometimes rocky.
Ornette Coleman Wins 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music
"The Pulitzer is one of the very few prizes that award artistic distinction in front-edge, risk-taking music. To dilute this objective by inviting the likes of musicals and movie scores, no matter how excellent, is to undermine the distinctiveness and capability for artistic advancement."-Composer Lewis Spratlan (2000 Pulitzer Prize in Music winner for opera Life is a Dream), on the Pulitzer's 2004 decision that "the prize should not be reserved essentially for music that comes out of the European classical tradition."Of course! We wouldn't want anyone thinking that music outside the "classical" academy could have distinctiveness and capability for artistic advancement, would we, asshole?It's prejudices like Spratlan's, extremely narrow-minded but all too common in the ivory-tower world of "serious" music, that made it still shocking this week—three years after the Board decided to broaden its musical range—when Ornette Coleman won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music for last year's wonderful Sound Grammar album.
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