Please be the NYP.

Please be the NYP.

edit: goddammit, NYT

Dark_Side wrote: »

Malkor wrote: »

Phillishere wrote: »

AngelHedgie wrote: »

shryke wrote: »

enlightenedbum wrote: »

The simplest version is he would like the President to stop giving speeches to black audiences with white media figures as his target audience.

That's not what he's saying at all. In fact, he specifically labels those speeches as being for the black audience. The thrust of his "problem" is that he feels that Obama is scolding the black community specifically as his only black-specific actions as president. He then lists things he dislikes that he's done that effect the black community. Except he then admits that, yeah, there's nothing black-specific Obama could really DO beyond talk.


It seems mostly that Obama doesn't see himself as a black president who's there to solve issues for black americans. Or at least, that's never the way he's acted or presented himself. He just sometimes speaks directly to the black community as a member of it and, frankly, his rhetoric on that account is bog-standard.

You have to read the rest of his output to get the whole picture of why Coates is angry, but what it comes down to is that trying to fit a mainstream definition of success on the black community without understanding the past and how it impacted (and still impacts) it is patronizing at best. (It's why Bill Cosby has gotten a good amount of well deserved flak, for one.)

One of the commenters makes a great point that the audience - graduates of a prestigious, academically challenging black college - were the least appropriate group for that speech. They are all already highly accomplished strivers, so what is the point of giving them this speech? And it fits in a tradition of Obama giving speeches to black crowds that seem aimed at the prejudices of white audiences.

It would be the equivalent of a speaker at Harvard going on about Duck Dynasty and the ills of the white community. People would just go "WTF?"

Then he wasn't speaking to the graduates. He was using them as a prop. And they were polite enough to not give a shit, since no one remembers their commencement speaker anyway.

I think one would remember if a sitting president was your speaker.

Anyway, that is a good point. But it's not one based in reality. The truth is that the best Obama can really do is give patronizing speeches to black audiences, because the minute he changes that tack the media will be all over him as a reverse racist or some such nonsense.

Addressing the problem of black inequality requires both tangible and intangible measures. It requires both establishing programs that can benefit those groups, and also convincing those groups to get up and take advantage of them. It's about affecting the landscape and also affecting the culture. Obama as president can only do so much to create and further the tangible programs that can help black folks, but he has a lot more control over what sort of cultural message gets delivered to those folks.

I think his aim is to create, among black children, a drive to take what is rightfully theirs. To create a sort of entitlement, but of a healthy sort, so black children are saying, "I have a right to get a good education and learn shit and go to a great college and get a good job, so fuck you, I'mma take those things."

I guess you can quibble about his choices of rappers and ballers as career choices, but I think the difference between underprivileged children and Regular Children is that the latter more commonly has parents to say, "Yeah, okay, aspire to be Mike Bibby, and in the mean time do your damned homework." Poor children, and black children in particular, are less likely to have strong parental figures to make that point, and so I think Obama is trying to make an end-run around them and go straight to the kids. He is being the parent telling the kid to have a back-up plan.

The worst thing you can say is that maybe his message can use some fine-tuning, but getting all pissy because Obama is delivering this message at all is spectacularly short-sighted. Yeah, yeah, it'll be nice when you can talk to white families and black families with the exact same message and the exact same language. Guess what, though - we're not there yet.

CoM/LF read, to me, like the fantasy equivalent of HHGttG, but without the charm. It's just wacky hijinks. Not terrible, but it absolutely didn't sell me on Discworld the first time I read them.

I think Guards! Guards! and The Truth both do a good job of balancing the power of Pratchett at his best with stories that don't lose too much by not knowing what came prior, and so they make for decent starting points. If you know you're going to read the whole series, just start at CoM and trudge onward, with the knowledge that Mort is the first book that starts to really shine.

I loved Small Gods, but there are a couple bits, IIRC, that benefit from having read Pyramids, which is a fine book but not a perfect sales pitch.

Definitely make Guards! Guards! the first Watch book you read, though, because you really have to follow Vimes' career from the start. His character arc is The Best Thing.

Also, that bloke who mentioned a book with Weatherwax, Ogg, and Ridcully as teens? Yes, this person is smart and should be listened to.

I just watched this last night and omg.

"Are we negroes?"

Jesus, I couldn't breathe.

gjaustin wrote: »

cptrugged wrote: »

The Prestige was one of those movies that snuck by me and I was never spoiled on until I saw it at home. I was blown away. I love movies like that. Someone just comments that "Oh yeah, that was pretty good" offhandedly and you end up watching something amazing. I had similar experiences with Sunshine and Push.

Yeah, Push was pretty cool. I wouldn't call it "amazing", but I certainly enjoyed watching.

Tomanta wrote: »

Memento does the same thing, too.

It's something that Nolan is superb at.

Excellent point. That's probably why he's, hands down, my favorite director.

I wish Rod Serling was alive so that they could work on a movie together. That would be the most spectacular thing ever. Can you imagine if Serling worked on Prometheus instead of Lindelof?

If Sterling wrote Prometheus, it would be pretty much the same as it is now, except Noomi Rapace would say at the beginning, and at numerous points during the movie, "Wow, I sure do want to know where the human race came from. I am certain that we were created by a kind and benevolent people who totally love us!"

I love Twilight Zone as much as the next nerd, but it was rarely anything more than 30 minutes of ham-fisted irony set around some occasionally cool what-if scenarios.