Common VS. Johnny Cash

I woke up with the sunshine. A sunshine I had never seen. There was light at the end of it. Reminded me to forever dream. I was dreaming I walked into the White House. With love on my sleeve. And love for each and every one of you. Reminding you to believe. These are the words of a believer achiever. Leader of the globe, feed the souls of those in need. I bleed the blood of the struggle. Walking over troubled puddles. The hustle is in my chest. No hustle no progress. Extremities of life in this process. The birth of a son. The death of another. With love I caress both mothers. And told 'em whose in control is the one that's above is. I walk where money talks and love stutters. The body language of a nation. Going through changes. The young become dangerous. Spent into anger. Anger gets sent through the chamber. It's tough when your own look like strangers. We are the sons of gangsters and stone rangers. If he could how would Ernie Barnes paint us? Look at the picture. It's hard not to blame us. But time forgives in the Chi(shy) where the yound die often. Do they end up in a coffin because we haven't taught them? Is it what we talkin', we really ain't walkin'? Dudes, hustlers, paid. How much did it cost them? I find myself on the same corner that we lost them. Real talkin' in their ear like a walkman. My thoughts been 'round the corner to the world. So when I see them I see my baby girl. The Lord lives among us. The youngest hunger, recover. Means to get it by any ways necessary under pressure. Children feeling lesser with the spill upon the dresser. Killer, willer aggressors. Destiny's children, survivors, soldiers. In front of buildings their eyes look older. It's hard to see blessings in a violent culture. Face against rappings. Sirens, holsters- that ain't the way Langston Hughes wrote us. So controllers on the shoulders of Moses. And Noah. We go from being Precious to Oprah. Cultivated to overcome. Ever since we came over. Seize the day in the way you can see the determined. The soul that keeps burning. Shorties know to keep learning. Lessons in my life are like stripes that we are earning. I took Grant's advice that Christ is returning. Like a thief in the night. I write for beacons of light. For those of us in dark alleys and park valleys. Street hits spark valleys of the conscience. Conquerors of a contest. Even the unseen know that God watches. For one King's dream he was able to Barack us.

     These are the lyrics to a poem written and read by Lonnie Lynn, Jr., better known as the rapper and actor, Common, in front of an elite crowd at the White House poetry night that would incite fury and rage on the right-winged media outlet known as Fox News. Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and Karl Rove have led the attack against the White House's decision to invite Common to recite a poem in front of the President and his wife, and their honored guests. The other poets invited were: Billy Collins, Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Kenneth Goldsmith, Alison Knowles, Aimee Mann, and the wonderful Jill Scott.

    Hannity and Rove are outraged, exclaiming that Common is a "violent" and "sexist" lyricist, that his songs are full of gang violence and drug use. Well, this is comical because anyone who has ever heard Common's music knows that not only is this inaccurate, but the exact opposite is actually closer to the truth. They admonish him for his anti-Bush, anti-war lyrics. But Hannity, who might be the most outspoken of the three, has recently not only excused, but justified recent antics by Republican celebrity, Ted Nugent, when he paced around on stage with a loaded machine gun, screaming loudly into the microphone, "Hey Obama, suck on this! Hey Hilary, sit on this!", referring to his machine gun as he shot round after round into the air in front of this live audience. Yet, Common is too violent to read a poem in front of a well-dressed crowd at the White House? Sarah Palin calls him "vile". Isn't this the woman that put her self-exclaimed "gun sights" on the heads of Democratic men and women of Congress who opposed her in the form of bulls-eye targets pasted to their heads in pictures on her website? Does anyone remember that Congresswomen Gabrielle Gifford was one of those heads? For those who forgot, she was shortly thereafter taken down in a hail of gunfire in Arizona. Yet, Common, a "conscious rapper", who very emphatically eschews himself from the violence and objectification of "gangster rap", has a message that is too violent, persuasive, and harmful?!?

     The controversy started when the president of the New Jersey State Troopers Fraternal Association filed an official complaint in regards to the presence of Common at the White House. He referenced a fairly popular song by Common entitled A Song for Assata. The song is about Joanne Chesimard, better known as Assata Shakur. She was a well known member of the Black Liberation Army and the Black Panthers, who was convicted of shooting and killing a NJ state trooper, and injuring another. Shakur broke out of prison a few years later, and eventually fled to Cuba where she was granted political asylum in that country. Given her popularity, and affiliation with the BLA and BPP, it is safe to say this wasn't just a simple shooting of an innocent state trooper. Whether it was a set up, or self-defense in response to police brutality, which was a fairly regular practice in those times, what they say happened, probably didn't happen. Here are some of the lyrics from Common's song, A Song for Assata: 'Cause federal and state was built for black fate. Her emptiness was filled with beatings and court dates. They fabricated cases, hoping one would stick. And said she robbed places that didn't exist. In the midst of threats on her life. And being caged with Aryan whites. Through dark halls of hate she carried the light.

     Down the ditches for a thousand years. The water grew Ira's people's crops. Till the white man stole the water rights. And the sparklin' water stopped. If this anti-government, anti-establishment, anti-white sentiment had been written by Common, or any other rapper, it would be yet another piece of intolerable lyric given to us by the hip-hop community. But wait, this was written by none other than the late, great, honorable Johnny Cash. In whole, Johnny wrote more about guns, hard liquor, hard livin', and errant ways than Common ever has, or will. He also wrote just as much about fighting the establishment and fighting for your freedom as an American. We all know the infamous, I shot a man in Reno. Just to watch him die. How much more grim and violent can you get? The answer is none, none more grim and violent! So I am curious, and this is the whole reason I bring Johnny Cash up at all in this whole controversy; why then, was there no ouotcry from the right, and from Fox News, when Cash was invited to D.C. to personally receive the National Medal of Arts from the hand of President Bush himself? The obvious answer is that Fox News would not dare question the ongoings of one of its own. The second most obvious answer is the one I want to focus on.

     There is a not-so-subtle yet somehow politically ignored form of racism oozing from the right. Nobody wants to admit, and understandably so. To admit being a racist would ruin one's political career. But where there is smoke, there is fire, right? I honestly don't see how one could rationally argue that the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh aren't racist assholes! If Fox News would just come out with a headline that read, Listen, our President is black, and we don not like him because of this, it would be the most factual thing they have reported in a decade. It amazes me when I read or watch reports about Civil War reenactments flooding the southern states on the anniversary of the Civil War. You don't hear of any of the states above the Mason-Dixon honoring this war. Countrymen were killing each other over whether or not an entire race of people should be dehumanized and degraded down to slaves. Remembering this war should be a dark time of  anamnesis, celebrating only our progression from former, primal ways of life. Even more cause for concern is that the only members of society that celebrate this war are ones who lost the damn war!?! They should support socialized healthcare so they can get their mental health checked for free.

     Living in the South my whole life, I have been able to see a lot of blatant racism first hand. Other than my eldest sister, I don't remember the last time I had a discussion with a Republican that didn't bring up Obama's skin color as a negative attribute within the first five minutes. I am not willing to make a blanket statement like, "all Republicans are racist". I know that this is simply not true. Teabaggers on the other hand, well, they are a different story. I have no problem accusing 100% of them of being racist. Many, if not all, will never admit it. They beat around the bush and use sugar-coated rhetoric, but in the end, the job that this President has done, and will continue to do, will never be looked at from an unadulterated, unbiased, objective-based point of view because we just can't get over the fact that the leader of the free world is a black man with a funny name. You can justify and give whatever lame excuse you want to for the uncalled for attacks on this Administration for the presence of Common as an honored guest at the White House poetry night, but at the bottom of this is issue is the fact that much of the right is racist, and they saw an opportunity to jump in and exploit the racial stereotypes in this country. They saw an opportunity to ignite the emotions of the outspoken ignorance that is the Fow News watching demographic. 40% of voters in Alabama voted against formally amending the state constitution in order to allow legal interracial marriage. 46% of primary Republican voters polled in Mississippi believe that interracial marriage should be illegal. Almost 60% of those polled in Virginia said they thought America was no ready for a black President. On a side note, the fact that First Lady Bush's poetry night got cancelled because all the poets declined to appear due to protest on the invasion of Iraq might have played a small roll in the right jumping to attack mode here. Jealousy is the Republican's version of green energy.

Adulation of the Panthers is hardly ideal, to be sure, based more on drama than action. But if it's wrong for the Obamas to have anyone over who sees a certain revolutionary heroism in the Black Panthers as people battling the more overt racism and police brutality of that historical period, then this would disqualify probably every second black writer or thinker in the United States, not to mention legions of ordinary citizens with Huey Newton t-shirts~ John McWhorter, contributing editor at The New Republic