Via Wendy McElroy, a Gary Gibson article at The Dollar Vigilante (about which I know precisely nothing) states that one of the acts at the Obama re-coronation spectacular (which I thankfully managed to stay away from completely) went a little off the reservation:
Limbaugh is a racist
Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza Strip was gettin' bombed, Obama didn't say shit
The article then embeds a music video of Lupe Fiasco performing this piece, which is actually pretty powerful. This particular embed seems to have scrubbed the curse words, but (as usual) you can tell just exactly what they are.
What's amusing beyond words is that the much-vaunted Obama marketing machine apparently didn't catch this little lack of solidarity at all, even though the tune seems to be credited to an album that was released in March 2011, and they scheduled the fella for Monday's
The biggest terrorist is Obama and the United States of America. I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism...The foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists.
Again, presuming the veracity of the interview quote (Gibson does not link to that, but it wouldn't be that surprising given Fiasco's political views), isn't that just delicious? I can only imagine having a conversation with Fiasco right before he went on stage.
Gibson then embeds a second video, which purports to be footage of Fiasco, at the inaugural, being "escorted" offstage in the middle of the set. When I tried to play it, there was a takedown message that implied that a different party owned the content. Chasing that name led me to this YouTube video:
And as it turns out, there are others, too (most point to the same raw footage), and with a few amusing twists, including an Illuminati claim. Note too that the "The biggest terrorist is Obama..." quote seems to be validated by an appearance on professional windbag Bill O'Reilly's show.
It may be that Fiasco actually kept repeating the same "offending" verse, over and over, until event security shut him down. This might well validate some of the claims of "bizarre rant" and "repetitive and jarring" that I've seen, but I'm not sure how that, in and of itself, would not simply further underscore a complete failure of the marketing machine: if that is indeed what he did, then his tactic--repeating it until it could not be ignored any longer--is certainly a time-honored one. (Here, one could begin conjecture on the utility of such a stunt to Fiasco's career.)
It's all part of "the show", of course, and it's not impossible to suggest that this somehow serves the Establishment's purposes, but ridicule where it's appropriate certainly can be fun, and the more people that notice, the better.
In that regard, you at least have to give Fiasco some sort of brass balls award for doing that at the coronation shindig. (With all the cult-of-personality bullshit I've seen over the last couple of months--otherwise normal people going squee! over a known serial murderer and claimant to absolute power--this sort of thing is a breath of fresh air.)
Another interesting anecdote in these interesting times.
1 comment:
I didn't watch any of it, but heard a little about this fuss. Glad to have your clear explanation. I wasn't about to wade through the morass to find it.
And goodo on what's his face, the singer. I don't listen to any of that either so don't know their names.
Anybody who will yell to the crowd that the emperor has no clothes is ok by me. And bearding the idiot in his own coronation deal is just priceless. I might have to buy one of this dude's records just to say thanks.
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