Culture
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Now this is interesting
The Smoking Gun is running a long article on James Frey, author of A Million Little Piece. Apparently he made it up.
Of interest to me
During the October show, which featured Frey as its only guest, Winfrey discussed details of that tale. He was, she said, “the child you pray you never have to raise,” a raging, drug-abusing teenager who had been arrested 11 times by age 19. In college, he drank to excess, took meth, freebased cocaine, huffed glue and nitrous oxide, smoked PCP, ate mushrooms, and was “under investigation by police.” By the time he checked into Hazelden in late-1993, Frey, then 23, was “wanted in three states,” added Winfrey.
Now really, if you’ve been arrested 11 times by 19, and done all the drugs listed above, what’s left to investigate? Heavy, Bad Lieutenant style drug use would seem to preclude most heavy criminal activity, and pretty much anything else. If you’ve reached the crapping blood stage of drug use (as he claims), I don’t think you rate any high powered police attention.
I haven’t read the book, but the article is very good and very detailed. If true, (and it seems to be) Frey is quite the liar.
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But what about Biggie?
link via The Agitator, Cynthia McKinney brings America.… the
SEC. 4. TUPAC AMARU SHAKUR RECORDS COLLECTION AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES.
- (a) In General- (1) Not later than 60 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the National Archives shall commence establishment of a collection of records to be known as the `Tupac Amaru Shakur Records Collection.’ In so doing, the Archivist shall ensure the physical integrity and original provenance of all records. The Collection shall consist of originals or record copies of all Government records relating to the life and death of Tupac Amaru Shakur, which shall be transmitted to the National Archives in accordance with section 2107 of title 44, United States Code. The Archivist shall prepare and publish a subject guidebook and index to the collection, including the central directory described in paragraph (2)(B), which shall be available to the public and searchable electronically.
And
SEC. 5. CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMITTEE.
- (a) Not later than 60 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the National Archives shall appoint an independent Citizens Advisory Committee, subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C., App.), as defined in App. 2, from candidates solicited from and nominated not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act by non-governmental organizations from the Society of American Archivists, the National Bar Association, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc., and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, the civil rights, civil liberties, entertainment and African American community, which will consist of appointees–
- (1) who have not had any previous involvement with any official investigations into the life and death of Tupac Amaru Shakur,
- (2) who were never employed or engaged by any Federal, state or local intelligence or law enforcement agency which is covered in the scope of this Act’s search for records related to the life and death of Tupac Amaru Shakur,
- (3) who shall be impartial private citizens, none of whom is presently employed by any branch of the Government, and
- (4) who shall be distinguished persons of high national professional reputation in their respective fields who are capable of exercising the independent and objective judgment necessary to the fulfillment of their role in ensuring and facilitating the review, transmission to the public, and public disclosure of records related to the life and death of Tupak Shakur,
- (A) who possess an appreciation of the value of such material to the public, scholars, and government, and
- (B) who include at least three scholars in current history, at least 3 members of the civil rights community, at least 3 experts on civil liberties, and at least one member of the immediate family of Tupac Amaru Shakur.
IIRC I think there is only one immediate member of Shakur’s family.
I think we saw the gutlessness of the Republicans with the failure of the Coburn amendment. If this makes it though Congress I suggest we hand the keys to the country to Walmart and call it a day.
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Some people are just wrong
I read the article L.I. Principal Cancels ‘Bacchanalian’ Prom, not quite knowing what to expect. In short summary, the prom pre and after parties were getting out of hand and the principal cancelled the school prom. Then I come across this juicy quote
“It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be; it is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity’s sake  in a word, financial decadence,” Brother Hoagland said, fed up with what he calls the “bacchanalian aspects” of the prom.
This, mind you, is a Catholic school. So, the principal finds spending money on the sex/booze/drugs more objectionable than the sex, booze and drugs? He’s the principal of the school and he’s primarily concerned about the price of the decadence!?
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Jane Galt at her best
From one of several posts recently about poverty and culture
In other words, middle class culture is such that bad long-term decision making also has painful short-term consequences. This does not, obviously, stop many middle class people from becoming addicted to drugs, flagrantly screwing up at work, having children they can’t take care of, and so forth. But on the margin, it prevents a lot of people from taking steps that might lead to bankruptcy and deprivation. We like to think that it’s just us being the intrinsically worthy humans that we are, but honestly, how many of my nice middle class readers had the courage to drop out of high school and steal cars for a living?
I’m not really kidding. I mean, I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I was eighteen, if my peer group had taken up swallowing razor blades I would have been happily killed myself trying to set a world record. And if they had thought school was for losers and the cool thing to do was to hang out all day listening to music and running dime bags for the local narcotics emporium, I would have been right there with them. Lucky for me, my peer group thought that the most important thing in the entire world was to get an ivy league diploma, so I went to Penn and ended up shilling for drug companies on my blog.
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Social Decline
From the article Police: Witnesses mum in rap mogul’s shooting
“It’s disturbing that someone can let off six shots in a packed club and can escape without being arrested,” said Elliott Wilson, editor in chief of the rap magazine XXL. “The hip-hop community doesn’t trust the police to confide info to them, and in turn the police have done little to make us feel like they give a damn about our safety. It’s a vicious cycle.”
He said this out loud. As if giving information on someone who had shot a member of the “hip-hop community” was some sort of deep favor to the police. Sigh.
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So like us
I saw this at Gates of Vienna under the heading “The Jihad That Refreshes”. Then I laughed hysterically. It basically takes the Coca Cola logo, flips it, changes it is non-obvious ways, to make the logo have an anti-Islam message. It’s a middle eastern version of the old Proctor & Gamble church of Satan hoax.
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Funny
Nothing is stranger than reading the New York Times discuss NASCAR
For a certain segment of the population, Nascar’s raid on American culture — its logo festoons everything from cellphones to honey jars to post office walls to panties; race coverage, it can seem, has bumped everything else off television; and, most piercingly, Nascar dads now get to pick our presidents — triggers the kind of fearful trembling the citizens of Gaul felt as the Huns came thundering over the hills. To these people, stock-car racing represents all that’s unsavory about red-state America: fossil-fuel bingeing; lust for violence; racial segregation; run-away Republicanism; anti-intellectualism (how much brain matter is required to go fast and turn left, ad infinitum?); the corn-pone memes of God and guns and guts; crass corporatization; Toby Keith anthems; and, of course, exquisitely bad fashion sense. What’s more, they simply don’t get it. What’s the appeal of watching . . . traffic? It’s as if ”Hee Haw” reruns were dominating prime time, and the Republic was slapping its collective knee at Grandpa Jones’s ”What’s for supper?” routine. With Nascar’s recent purchase of a swath of real estate on Staten Island, where it intends to plop down an 80,000-seat racetrack and retail center for the untapped New York City market, the onslaught seems poised on the brink of full-out conquest. Cover your ears, blue America. The Huns are revving their engines.