I am embarassed to say this,

but this song is the shit.

Jay-z’s Six Points

Published March, 2009 in Best Life.

I’ve been meaning to read this all week

But I have this tic that I can’t get rid of. It’s… oohh… uhhh… STOP TALKING ABOUT FUCKING SKIP GATES!!! ohhh…. sorry…

Moving on, Obama’s own thoughts on the ridiculous media kerfuffle re. his NAACP speech, from Eugene Robinson.

“I’ve noticed that when I talk about personal responsibility in the African American community, that gets highlighted,” Obama said in an interview Friday. “But then the whole other half of the speech, where I talked about government’s responsibility . . . that somehow doesn’t make news.”

A very clear, logical point of view and a nice little piece. I particularly like this bit at the end:

“One of the ways that I think that the civil rights movement . . . weakened itself was by enforcing a single way of being black — being authentically black. And, as a consequence, there were a whole bunch of young black people — and I fell prey to this for a time when I was a teenager — who thought that if you were really ‘down’ you had to be a certain way. And oftentimes that was anti-something. You defined yourself by being against things as opposed to what you were for. And I think now young people realize, you know what, being African American can mean a whole range of things. There’s a whole bunch of possibilities out there for how you want to live your life, what values you want to express, who you choose to interact with.”

Kwame,

I come to you now again. Why won’t you come to me?

Protected: Thursdays can be the hardest

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Real Estate envy, circa 2008

Spoke with some friends yesterday who are looking for a one-bedroom in Fort Greene, with a very reasonable price limit of around $1700, and are having much difficulty. Then today I stumble over this article I remember from about a year ago that proclaimed that Erykah Badu is still hoarding a rent-controlled one-bedroom in my nabe. What do you think she’s paying? I would peg it at around a grand. Given her lifestyle, she probably spends a fraction of the year there (I’ve never seen her around). Share the wealth, Erykah!

[NYT]

Dear God,

Jesus, Allah, Al Roker, Whoever, 

You are fucking kidding me with this forecast, right?

Z

*SMH*

Ross Douthat has become markedly less tolerable since joining the Times. I think it’s the format–conservatives need more space to defend their views than the op-ed word count allows. 

And you can see the outlines of a different, better future in the closing passages of Barack Obama’s recent address to the N.A.A.C.P., in which the president presented an insistent vision of black America as the master of its own fate.

Affirmative action has always been understandable, but never ideal. It congratulates its practitioners on their virtue, condescends to its beneficiaries, and corrodes the racial attitudes of its victims.

All of this could be defended as a temporary experiment. But if affirmative action persists far into the American future, that experiment will have failed — and we will all have been corrupted by it.

[NYT]

“But what has he done for you lately?”

How did I not know this existed??????

Love at first sight

Do you ever start a book and know, from the first paragraph, that it will be one of your favorites? Such is my experience with this book:

In the somnolent July afternoon the unbroken line of brownstone houses down the long Brooklyn street resembled an army massed at attention. They were all one uniform red-brown stone. All with high massive stone stoops and black iron-grille fences staving off the sun. All draped in ivy as though mourning. Their somber facades, indifferent to the summer’s heat and passion, faced a park while their backs reared dark against the sky. They were only three or four stories tall–squat–yet they gave the impression of formidable height.