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Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The piece is hard to get through, and it's not always clear what he's saying, or why. If it came from an author with whom I generally agreed, I would be more critical of it, but I appreciate the author's willingness to agree that his own team's shit stinks.
Most artists are involved in a self-creation creation of an artistic persona, be it Robert Zimmerman becoming Bob Dylan or Thomas Pynchon opting out and using Irwin Corey as a surrogate. Williamson's treatment of Tupac is not particularly sympathetic or insightful, except in that he is wiling to acknowledge this process of creation, which is significant to him not as it relates to artistry, but as a debunking of the conservative notion (or the notion often advanced by conservatives) that black culture represents some cultural pathology. Williamson sees that it's a schtick, and that so is country music, and that the later can be just as pathological. This is not particularly insightful biography or cultural criticism, but politically speaking it is something of a statement against interest, and so relevant and admissible. Would it have been better if he hadn't tried to say anything about Tupac? Sure. But a conservative pathology is that you can't say anything critical about conservatives unless you also prove your bona fides by going after someone like Tupac or Elizabeth Bruenig, whose value in demonstrating Williamson's bona fides was, I suspect, in inversion proportion to her relevance in what he was otherwise talking about.
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The dumb shots at Shakur and Springsteen are worth skipping. The guy doesn’t get either artist (and I say this as someone who thinks Springsteen is often a cliche machine).
I see the current “minstrel show” as the natural end of the Southern Strategy. It’s what happens when a party keeps its underclass fat, drunk, and stupid, and tells them they’re “Real ‘Murica.” (Pour a 40 for Flounder, btw.)
They now think they run the place.
I’m beginning to think opioids might be the best fix for an impossible problem.
