On Dead Prez and Divine, "Malcolm, Garvey, Huey"
Wish they had done it in chronological order. Garvey, Malcolm, Huey.
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On John Edgar Wideman On The Sadness Of Emptiness
I agree that Philadelphia Fire is great but Brothers and Keepers, about his brother locked up, is a MUST read. Like right now. Go get it.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: The Promethean Woman, or, Our Dog in the Parthenon
True.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: The Promethean Woman, or, Our Dog in the Parthenon
Superb, though I take some exception to your casting of postmodernism as linguistic constructionism. While there is some evidence to suggest as much, one could also accuse non-postmodernists such as Wittgenstein of the same. Nevertheless, I especially appreciated the critique of old-school women's lib as being unsympathetic to the experience of childbirth. I think you are spot-on. The idea that the experience of giving birth to a child does not change someone is predicated on a "We're just like you"-ideology which precludes difference, and leaves the Promethean narrative defined through a "male" framework (though one wonders why a man knowing that he has fathered a child would somehow leave him unchanged. It certainly has affected Peter Campbell.)
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On Anti-Abortion Protestors Still Think They're The Civil Rights Movement
Faye Ginsburg's book "Contested Lives:the abortion debate in an American community" is a key text in trying to understand the moral discourse that is deployed by the anti-abortion crowd.
http://books.google.com/books?id=qEzmXEUHxAAC&lpg=PP1&dq=faye%20ginsburg&pg=PR8#v=onepage&q&f=false
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On Janelle Monáe, "Tightrope"
I believe that Janelle's move at the 2:51 is some modified version of the gliding heel-toe. At any rate, it was teh awesomez.
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On Language, Progress, And Everything Else, With Tony Judt
Though Judt's recent writings on his experience with ASL in the pages of the NYRB and his political writings on Israel/Palestine are to be lauded, I'm not quite sure if his historical work is all that it is hyped up to be. I think he falls squarely within an Anglo-American historiographic mainstream and dare I say orthodoxy. His works of French intellectual history are at times full of "gotcha" political analysis that falls short of any kind of philosophical rigor, in my opinion, akin to the work of Richard Wolin.
But, on this issue in particular, about the utterly debased understanding of "socialism" and "democracy" in America, he is surely spot-on.
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On Mary J. Blige And Grand Puba, "What's The 411?"
Dave,
That horn loop is ridiculous!
But yeah, speaking of Grand Puba, you must check out the interview that Combat Jack and Dallas Penn did with Dante Ross. He claims that Puba is the most brilliant underachiever in hip hop history. He's so right. Also, Puba supposedly got jerked by Puff for this beat. No surprise there but still sad.
http://pncradio.tumblr.com/post/4423024379/the-combat-jack-show-4-6-11-dante-ross