Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Sonia from the Block

This morning President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Her acceptance speech follows.


Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

Projects to Princeton
So yeah I do it well
No wonder Barack loves me
I'm like brown Michelle
Second circuit New York City
Court of Appeals
And saved baseball for my public
Cause I keep it on the reals

Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

I'll be up in the Senate
Judiciary hearings
Pink tracksuit, low bun
And the fat hoop earrings
Singing tracks from West Side Story
Every stereotype
Boricua from the Bronx
That's what Supreme looks like

Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)

President Obama's verse:
You want to block her confirmation, Jon Kyl from Arizona?
All the Mexicans in your Senate district
Think they'll still be votin for ya? (Na-ah)
Picked the first Latino, yeah you didn't think of that
Whip is playin checkers
Ha-haa! I'm playin chess

Thursday, May 21, 2009

La Crise Plogxistentielle

The plog asks, Why do I exist? And I don't quite have an answer, although I suspect there is one out there somewhere. It's nothing new. Plogicide ideation is a weekly Clebilicious routine when not a daily one. The Statcounter numbers come in, enthusiasm flags, the "Delete This Blog" button beckons. I have to give it to the ploggie blunt: the world may not care, but the plog must go on! Why? I don't know! I just make unexplained demands like some banana republic dictator. Occasionally I am encouraging, too. There, there. Carry on, little plog. Carry on.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Beyoncé and the Impersonal Pronoun

No one can self-objectify quite like Beyoncé. (And when I use her name, please hear the Stephen Colbert pronunciation, fully engaging that accent aigu on the terminal "e": Bay-on-SAY.)

Let's begin, shall we, by attempting to unpack the nut graf of "Single Ladies":

Don't be mad when you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Wuh-ho-ho, &tc

Begin at the beginning. What is "it"? In its latter use, we might might expect the referent to be "finger." As, That poor girl. He should have put a ring on her finger. But this theory crumbles the moment we consider the pronoun's other roles, standing for the thing wanted (by another), and conditionally liked (by the narrator's former flame).
Is the finger metonymous, then, for the body? In such case, the full meaning becomes, If you liked this body, you should have put a ring on this finger, which stands for this body. The logic holds, but the implications are troubling. Is appreciation of a woman's physical assets adequate basis for marriage? Surely not. And yet, how much more dismaying if we suppose the word "it" in fact stands for the woman in her entirety--body, soul, mind, spirit.

For, what woman thinks of herself as "it"? Aha! you say, glimpsing the path down which I appear to intend to lead you, Perhaps a man could think of a woman as "it"!

The "it" in question.


And indeed, "Single Ladies" was created not by some jilted woman, but by R&B mastermind The Dream. (Perhaps tellingly, he co-wrote Mariah's "Touch My Body" as well). Like most
Beyoncé lyrics, these were written by a stable of male songwriters, Beyoncé credited among them.

Men writing objectification tracks for women leads to strange distortions. For example, in
Beyoncé's "Check On It," written, per usual, by a stable, the word "it," used as described above, appears 49 times. Here is the construction I find most bizarre:

You can look at it
Long as you don't grab it
If you don't go braggin
I'ma let you have it
Does any woman think of her body as a removed Other like that? Wares to consciously ply? Here the direct referent appears to be the badonkadonk, metonymous again for the body whole.

While the lyrics evoke the body as a removed Other, they simultaneously conflate the body with the total woman.
In one instance in the earwormish "Check On It," the word "me" is substituted for "it" (i.e. having said "check on it" eighteen thousand times, she throws in a "check on me"). Confirmation then, if any were needed, that Beyoncé herself--one supposes, body and soul--is "it".

When a man writes a song and a woman sings it, there is a certain synergistic fucked-up-edness. He can slip in offensive notions (woman="it") without voicing them himself. She voices these notions without giving the implied ownership thereof much thought. (See the related "ho cosigner" phenomenon.)


Beyoncé always strikes me as a childlike star, a sexpot never quite in possession of her sexuality. Hence she vixens it up throughout the "Single Ladies" video, but gigglingly disowns the whole bit at the end.

Feminist carping to the contrary, there is one way I don't mind: at least her work promotes the stubby-legged, long-waisted, back-stacked body type in which I share a stake. And hell yeah I can do the "Single Ladies" dance.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Paul Krugman Is Driving Me Insane

We get it, Krugman. You, with all your pre-recession Chicken Littling, were right. Must feel pre-tty fri-ckin sweet.

Oh, and thanks a lot, Nobel Committee. You've created a monster. Now everything he says, he says with the arrogance and the imprimatur of a *Nobel-prize winning* economist.

Ever since his ultimate vindication--
the sky, and the Dow, have indeed fallen--Krug feels justified, if not downright giddy, shitting all over everything for all time. He has particular contempt for Bernanke's 'green shoots' comment, on which he rained disdain in two columns plus a blog post.

Green shoots? The phrase itself sickens Scroogeman, with its overtones of fresh hope and delicate vernal regrowth. Blech! Don't you just want to rip those shoots right out?

He has become the world's most cantankerous groundhog, scrambling back into his underground lair with joyous contempt. Winter will be here forEVAH HAhahaHA!

"Even in the Great Depression," he taunts in another post, "things didn't [Montgomery Burns fingers-tapping gesture] head down [moohoohahaha] all the time." Naturally this was on a week when things were looking up, and any buzz needed to be promptly smited.

If we do have Depression II, imagine what it will do for Krugman. On the one hand, the devastation of 25% unemployment. But on the other, he called it!