Facebook's 1-decade anniversary.

Here is my facebook status update that I want to share on this blog

Congratulations to facebook for their 1 decade anniversary.
Facebook allowed me to reunite with people in my past and allow them to be a part of my future!

Facebook has broken down barriers in that it allowed me to get to know people that I only had a few interactions in person, and it allowed them to get to know who I really am!

Facebook also gave allowed us to share articles, music videos and photos with each other, giving us greater access to information out there.

I'll go as far as saying that Facebook is one of the greatest inventions that occurred in my lifetime. Thank you to the founders of Facebook. And more importantly thank you to everyone on my Facebook friends list, I really appreciate you all!

Check out my previous blog posts about facebook

"One year on facebook" which I wrote on June 2010, my 1-year anniversary of joining facebook
 http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-year-on-facebook.html

Now, my facebook list has 214 friends. These are people from various parts of my life, from elementary school, middle school, high school, college, a few work colleagues, and a few others I met in other phases of my life! You'd be surprised how easy it is to get that many people on your list. In fact, I know people who started facebook later than me, have more people than 214.

Having that many people on the list, and reading their updates on their lives has been very emotionally beneficial for me! Just being connected to them makes me feel good, even on days when I am feeling down. We can also share our joys in our triumphant moments, and we can also console each other in our greatest tragedies. Even if we live miles away and haven't seen each other in person since the previous millenium. I've seen so many of that happening in my 1st year of facebook, and will so more of it soon.

The most heart-warming part of using facebook was reconnecting with a few I haven't seen since elementary school. So much life happened since then, but we still remember each other! I'll always cherish that!

Also check out ................

 "My debate with a facebook hating uncle" (one of my shortest blog posts ever)
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-debate-with-facebook-hating-uncle.html

"Facebook and Pop Culture is GREAT for the world!"

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2011/07/facebook-and-pop-culture-is-great-for.html

music and cultural segregationists

Brittney Cooper is at it again!

Brittney Cooper is a black supremacist "professor" who writes for Salon.com, and I already mentioned here in an earlier blog post at http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-saloncom-lost-its-way.html

Salon.com

Brittney Cooper

(aka Disugsting Racist Prick)

(aka cultural segregationist)

Brittney Cooper is so upset that Macklemore won a Grammy award in which Kendrick Lamar was a nominee. 

Macklemore is of European-American, Kendrick Lamar is African-American.

That shouldn't matter to rational thinking person.

Brittney Cooper is NOT a rational thinking person! She is a racist punk who wants cultural apartheid! She thinks hip-hop should be "blacks only"! She is hostile to any European-American who is successful in hip-hop or any related genres (ie. R&B, reggae, etc)

You may say "why bother going after Cooper, she's nobody". Well, this "nobody" is a professor in women's studies and African-American studies at Rutgers University. In other words, New Jersey taxpayers are FORCED to pay her salary!

Also, she is given a forum in an extremely prominent news/editorial/arts/culture website Salon.com

In other words, she is given access to a very high-traffic website!

Well, if she got Freedom of Speech, so do I! 

Well, let's start analyzing Brittney Cooper's piece of racist trash!

 http://www.salon.com/2014/01/27/macklemores_useless_apology_grammys_and_the_myth_of_meritocracy/?source=newsletter 


Cooper: The Grammys have long been a source of disappointment because of the recording academy’s lackluster record of acknowledging the gifts and artistry of black musicians.

My response:What "lackluster record of acknowledging the gifts and artistry of black musicians"?  

Just because a white guy won an award that usually goes to African-Americans?

Let's look at the whole list of Grammy award winners this year

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/grammy-awards-2014-winners/2014/01/26/aa881be8-86da-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html

And here is some of them

Pharell

Jay-Z

Alicia Keys

Rihanna

Darius Rucker

Gregory Porter

Ben Harper 

Wayne Shorter
Terri Lyne Carrington

Tye Tribbett

 Tasha Cobbs

Ziggy Marley

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Snarky Puppy With Lalah Hathaway

Gary Clarke, Jr

What do they all have in common (besides winning a Grammy this year?). All are of African ancestry!

Yet Brittney Cooper has the nerve to say the Grammy's have a "lackluster record of acknowledging the gifts and artistry of black musicians" ? STFU, Brittney Cooper!

Someone went on Twitter and mentioned that Pharell won 4 Grammy awards the same night Macklemore won. Here is the my screenshot of that Twitter exchange!

 

Twitter

(screenshot taken on 1/28/14)

Yep, Brittney Cooper who asked "Unclear how you pointing to one Black artist winning changes my analysis at all" shows the following

• this "professor" doesn't even know how to count
• this "professor" doesn't even know how to do a basic Google search (which was how I found out how the lesser-known award winners  look like)
• her "analysis" is NOT much of an "analysis" at all!

Kyle Robinson mentions some past Grammy award winners (ie. Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, etc) which totally disproves Brittney Cooper's nonsense about "recording academy’s lackluster record of acknowledging the gifts and artistry of black musicians"

 And other stats to prove Brittney Cooper's pile of BS

http://seattletimes.com/html/entertainment/2022756910_grammysbynumbers1xml.html 

But other musicians with Seattle roots have done way better. Ray Charles, who got his start on Jackson Street in the Emerald City in the late ’40s, was nominated after his death in 2004 for eight awards and won seven in one night. Over his career he nabbed 17 Grammys.

That’s nothing compared to Charles’ Jackson Street pal Quincy Jones, who has so far racked up 79 nominations — the most in history — and won 27 times.

The record for most Grammy nominations in one night goes to Michael Jackson, who got 12 nominations and won eight in 1984, a record for wins later tied by Santana and Charles.

(note: put the jokes about Jackson's skin color changes aside -- he is African-American)

And from Wikipedia's list of top Grammy award winners

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_records

 

Wikipedia

(screenshot taken 1/30/13)

Yet, Brittney Cooper has the nerve to say that the Grammy's have a " lackluster record of acknowledging the gifts and artistry of black musicians" just because a RARE European-American guy won an award for rap music?

-------------------

But the nonsense goes on from the same Cooper article I mentioned earlier.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/27/macklemores_useless_apology_grammys_and_the_myth_of_meritocracy/

Cooper: The most egregious error of the night was seeing the brilliant Kendrick Lamar get totally shut out. Everyone knows he’s the best new artist.

My response: "Everybody knows ...."? 

AlexK

"Everybody knows"?  You know what everybody knows? Everybody knows they're sick of sore losers claiming "everyone knows the guy I wanted to win should have won."

The_Ox

"Everyone knows." Wow. Argument from omniscience. Logical fallacies 101.

Sorry, the second a writer relies on "everyone knows" to make their argument is the second I lose interest,.

Musical taste is subjective! None of this "everybody know this singer is better than the other" is something a  middle schooler would say!

---------

Cooper: Even Macklemore acknowledged that he “robbed Kendrick,” via a text message that he then sent out screenshots of via social media. However, Macklemore claimed that fear prevented him from taking a courageous stance and saying exactly that when he went up to accept his award.

My response: What the hell does Macklemore have to apologize for? His apology was just a simple message of condolence you will say to a friendly competitor!

It's like saying "even though my team won the game, I got no hard feelings towards you!"

It's called good sportsmanship, something Brittney Cooper can NEVER understand!

Cooper thinks Macklemore should give his trophy to a defeated opponent. So what next, the Super Bowl winner giving the trophy to the defeated opponent?

I think a message of condolence is enough!

-------

Cooper: Simultaneous to us witnessing this whitewashing and erasure of the black bodies and black artists who helped create the sound of folks like Macklemore, Justin Timberlake, Pink, Katy Perry and Robin Thicke, the Grammy’s force-fed us a lie of American progress

My response:  In other words, Brittney Cooper is upset that European-American artists are collaborating with African-American artists. 

Brittney Cooper is angry when European-American musicians get recognition in an African-American musical genre.

That is like being angry at a part-African, part-Asian guy who excells at a game started by the Scottish!

That is like being angry at two African-American sisters from Compton who excell at a game invented by the French! 
 

In other Brittney Cooper is a racist, segregationist piece of crap!


--------

Cooper: Macklemore is so popular in part because his music critiques gratuitous consumption and homophobia, both of which are figured to be problems endemic, not to American society, but to hip-hop culture in particular. Thus both he and Lorde scored big awards, he as best new artist, and her song of the year, because the view is that these white folks have come to a transnational consensus, that hip-hop culture is what ails us, and their critiques constitute a cure.

My response: So in other words, Brittney Cooper thinks that only African-Americans can criticize other African-Americans!

Look, I may be part-Latino, but I expect people from all races to NOT HESITATE to criticize any Latino who is promoting homophobia or elitist snobbery!

This was what Martin Luther King was talking about when he hoped his children would be "judged by the content of their character" . He NEVER said "dont judge my children", just to use the correct criteria when judging them.

Now, it is true there is a lot of homophobia in hip-hop! You expect Macklemore to be silent, just because he happens to be a different race from most rappers? Or did you just want Macklemore to perpetuate the same negative stereotypes of hip-hop that Eminem did a decade ago?

As for Lorde and her anti-materialist song "Royals", it was about materialism in pop culture in general!  Not just hip-hop.

But racist prick Brittney Cooper wants Lorde to just criticize only those materialist snobs of her own race? Screw that!

-------
Cooper : The problem is that their shit ain’t original.


My response: Who cares?

I mean nearly every R&B/pop/country/EDM song is either "I love you" or "I'm heartbroken". Where is the originality in that?

What is so original about another alternative/emo band singing about "life sucks"

Originality is over-rated anyways!

What matters to most music fans is the background music, the voice and the flow!



---------
Cooper: The progenitors and producers of hip-hop culture have had and have maintained a robust critique of the music and the culture since its earliest days.


My response:  Yeah, I remember when  Root's "What They Do" or Jeru Da Damaja "You're Playing Yourself" criticized the  pimp & playa lifestyle back in 1996. Those videos only got MTV airplay on "Yo! MTV Raps" on Friday nights.


How is it that Macklemore's and Lorde's fault? He was only 13 years old when that was going on?  Lorde was born that exact year!



-----------

Cooper:  In other words, black folks merely take up space, but they are not ever able to move forward in time in the American cultural imaginary. Thus it is the movement of black cultural aesthetics onto the bodies of white folks – Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, and Robin Thicke — that reads as American racial progress. When black folks cry about appropriation or point out the ways in which we are being written out of the history of shit we entirely made possible, we are accused of being “stuck in the past,” unable to move forward in time.


My response: "Cultural Appropriation"? Excuse me?

This "cultural appropriation" nonsense is a bunch of crap saying "how dare white people use black people's music"?

But musical influences are NOT a one-way street.

Jazz was started with African-Americans using European instruments. Same with the blues. Similar thing going on with Jamaicans and their reggae music.

And hip-hop isn't just influenced by African-American music like soul, funk and disco

Much of early hip-hop was also influenced by Kraftwerk, a group of white German guys who are the pioneers of what later became techno and EDM.

Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives

Kraftwerk 

(major influence on hip-hop, techno, EDM) 

Just listen to Afrika Bambatta's "Planet Rock" and then listen to Kraftwerk's "Trans Europa Express"
(by the way, "Planet Rock" also used  Japanese culture by the chanting of Japanese numbers -- ichi, ni, san, shi)

Listen to Jay-Z (feat Foxy Brown and Babyface) "Sunshine" and then listen to Kraftwerk's "Man Machine".

Listen to Afro Rican "Give it All you got"  and JJ Fad's "Supersonic, then listen to Kraftwerk's "It's More Fun to Compute" 

Dr Dre listed Kraftwerk (along with Parliament Funkadelic) as major influences.
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.11005/title.dr-dre-says-hes-listening-to-kraftwerk-parliament-funkadelic

Hard to argue with one of the biggest hip-hop legends, isn't that right?


So doesn't that make Brittney Cooper look like the stupid, racist loser that she is? Yes.





Also, look at Brittney Cooper's nickname

 

screenshot from Salon.com

Crunk is a hip-hop subgenre that started in Atlanta, Georgia!

But Brittney Cooper is NOT from Georgia, she is from Louisiana!

So who is practicing "cultural appopriation" now? So who is "stealing culture" from the people of Atlanta?

Racist prick Brittney Cooper is the answer.

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Cooper: The second lie is like unto the first – namely that white folks have received these awards because of meritorious performance rather than racial privilege. Meritocracy is a myth.


My response:  Hah! Macklemore benefits from "white privilege" just because he is an occasional "white" winner in a category which is usually awarded to African-Americans?


So what next, be mad at Darius Rucker for being an African-American guy who wins an award in a mostly European-American genre  called country music? And that happened the same exact award show!

---------

Cooper:
But white privilege is real. It creates space for folks like Macklemore to do “conscious” and “positive” hip-hop and become superstars, while completely ignoring the work or killing the careers of black artists who wish to do the same.
Macklemore emerges then as just another white savior figure come to redeem the pathologized black masses. The fact that he doesn’t want the mantle means nothing. Lest we forget, real Jesus didn’t want the mantle either. Perhaps Lorde is Mary, the mother of Jesus, in this sick morality play.


My response:  I already addressed  most of those stupid charges already, so
 I'll let another commenter take it from here

fauxcault

To Ms. Cooper:
You write, "In my humble estimation,  though, we have been Royally screwed. To riff on the work of the late great legal scholar Derrick Bell, the Lorde – no, not Audre — is here 'and we are not saved.'”
1) Nothing about this piece suggests that you've been humble.

2)  Audre Lorde is one of my favorite authors. You do her a disservice by evoking her name here. She was motivated as much by issues of class, gender and sexuality as she was by issues of race (she once described herself as “consciousness as a woman, a black lesbian feminist mother lover poet all I am”). To quote Henry Louis Gates, she "insisted that [all] those whom society has marginalized must communicate their experiences and render visible, however painfully, what society endeavors to keep invisible."
How do you think she'd react to you reducing Macklemore to his ethnicity? That should be the easy one (although I guess you'd just as easily find fault with his ally stance towards sexuality?). As for her namesake, she wrote a song, "Royals" which has already been attacked by other writers who have engaged in a weirdly reductive reading that limits it only to a critique of hip hop culture (and I thought we had squared that away months ago). A more convincing reading would point to its expression of class consciousness and its critique of materialism, period; the signifiers Lorde includes are hardly limited to hip hop these days, and hip hop is not monolithic--plenty of hip hop artists critique materialism, themselves. 
Your myopic presentism does them a disservice, as well, just as your myopic focus on race alone at the expense of sexuality and class does a disservice to what should be considered the joint struggles of others that are oppressed.

3) There's real racism out there. Hyperbolic outrage only fuels the fire of trolls who claim that all charges of racism are bogus (just look at some of the comments here) and it makes it harder to call on the public when genuine outrage, condemnation, and action are required.

---------------

But what disturbs me about Brittney Cooper is


1) she is given a forum at Salon.com, where she  poses as someone who speaks for all African-Americans. No she doesn't! Nobody voted for her to be the ethnic spokesperson!


2) She is not being aggressively criticized in the mainstream media because too many people are scared to death of her race cards!

Imagine if someone like Ann Coulter said something like what Brittney Cooper said? Nobody would hesitate to mock her on social media or the mainstream media!

But Cooper plays the guilt trip card as if her ancestor's oppression immunizes her from aggressive criticisms of her non-logic!

That stuff shouldn't fly!


Macklemore and Lorde will be probably take "the high road".  Britney Cooper probably knew that, so she starts fights with them, knowing they won't fight back. In other words, Brittney Cooper picks on easy targets

 If Brittney Cooper tries to start a verbal fight with Eminem, Eminem would  go into Slim Shady mode and win big time!  Dr Dre and 50 Cent would probably join in, and humiliate the living crap of Brittney Cooper!




3) And most importantly, I'm a strong believer in cultural integration!

Music is for everyone. We should all have the right to enjoy (and even make hits) from all musical genres, regardless of race!

Dont let anyone tell you "hip-hop is for black people only" or "country music is for white people only" or "mariachi is for Mexicans only"Screw all that!


WORLDWIDE CULTURAL INTEGRATION FOREVER!