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To: SeekAndFind
Well, they tell me that the country needs to be brave enough to have a conversation about race. Where Brad Paisley went wrong was that he thought he might be allowed to say something. That's not how the conversation works. White boy sits down, shuts up, and listens while the black man yells at him and calls him names. That's called conversating. Until white folk have the courage to have that conversation, this country is going to have a problem with race.

Now excuse me, I have go play that knock-out game.

6 posted on 04/12/2013 7:15:09 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (The ballot box is a sham. Nothing will change until after the war.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

From Jonah Goldberg:

SEE HERE: http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2013/04/12/are-brad-paisley-and-rand-paul-the-bravest-men-in-america-n1565504

EXCERPT:

I can’t really second-guess the music critics. It is not a great song from what I can tell. Though is it really the “worst song ever,” as several critics have said? It seems to me that “Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)” is catchier but substantively less redeeming.

Which is to say that Paisley — with an accompaniment from legendary rapper LL Cool J — is striving for something important. The song is a ballad about a white Southerner trying to reconcile his Southern pride and his rejection of racism. It begins with a scene where a black barista at Starbucks takes offense at the Confederate flag on the white narrator’s shirt. “To the man that waited on me at the Starbucks down on Main, I hope you understand/When I put on that T-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I’m a Skynyrd fan.”

Paisley defends the song as an effort to — you guessed it — start a conversation. Personally, I think art that has to be defended on conversation-starting grounds probably isn’t art. Conversely, I’m inclined to think that any song with Paisley’s message would be denounced and ridiculed. Right or wrong, letting the South off the hook for its racial sins is not something that interests many of Paisley’s critics. The fact that Paisley (and LL Cool J) made the critics’ job so much easier doesn’t change that.

Something similar can be said about the reception to Rand Paul’s appearance at Howard University this week. Here, Paul did exactly the right thing by making his case to a politically unsympathetic audience of minorities. Though, at one point, he miscalculated a bit in an exchange where he assumed his audience didn’t know that black civil rights pioneers — including the founders of the NAACP — were mostly Republicans. Howard, one of the nation’s premier historically black colleges, is one of the few universities where the average student probably would know that stuff.

Much of the criticism of Paul centered on speculation about his motives. He’s just trying to soften his image! He’s using the audience as a prop! To which the only intellectually honest rejoinder is: Maybe he is! Isn’t that what politicians do?

Both Paul and Paisley are doing exactly what liberal politicians, civil rights activists and editorial boards have been demanding for decades. Paisley contributed his best effort for a “frank dialogue.” Paul reached out to minorities, engaged in the conversation and didn’t take blacks for granted. No one should be shocked that neither effort settled anything. That’s how conversations are supposed to work, but not, apparently, the kinds of conversations the conversation-starters have in mind.


10 posted on 04/12/2013 7:28:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: ClearCase_guy

A+ on your post.


11 posted on 04/12/2013 7:31:59 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: ClearCase_guy
Well, they tell me that the country needs to be brave enough to have a conversation about race.

Dumb ol' Brad Paisley never read the poem:

Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly, 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."
Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

42 posted on 04/12/2013 11:49:22 AM PDT by donna (Pray for revival.)
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