Graphic Designer Turned Celebrity is Poster Boy for Intolerance

The guy who created the Obama poster everyone raved about is mad at Barack Obama. Shephard Fairey, pictured here looking like a pouting child, is pissed off that Obama has chosen celebrity pastor and writer of schlock religious pulp, Rick Warren, to deliver the invocation at the inauguration. Warren has said some things that have angered the gay community. And because he chose him to recite a prayer at his inauguration, Obama obviously agrees with Warren's views.

Hey, Shep; I've got an idea:

Why don't we just take all the people who don't think exactly like us and put them on trains to reeducation camps?

Were you not listening to Obama when he was campaigning as a uniter? Was the Hope that everyone would suddenly get along and our differences vanish under the new black president?

Hey, Fairey; you are being as intolerant as you claim Warren to be. Where were you when Obama was branded as a terrorist because he brushed shoulders with some hack radical from the 60s? Where were you when the far right was accusing Obama of thinking just like Jeremiah Wright? I only ask because you are doing the exact same thing now.

It's the fucking invocation - not a cabinet position - not even the benediction, which will be delivered by an 87-year-old black preacher named Joseph Lowery. And I would bet a good sum of cash that you could find things in Lowery's belief system that you don't agree with.

Get over yourself, Fairey. You got the guy you wanted in power, now let him do what he said he was going to do. Just because your Che Guevara rip-off poster got you some press and your own Wikipedia entry doesn't make you the spokesman for a generation.

Who do you think you are? Bono?

Via Animal New York.

You Tubery Musical Friday Flashback

Seven old songs that could start a weekend. Crack open a brew or two and crank up the speakers. (But you gotta watch, too.)

• In a nice companion piece to a Jeremiah Wright sermon, a couple of blind Black superstars rip into Livin' For The City.
• Beck and his secret homage to Shatner that occurs at about 2:25.
• From the 1966 film Blowup, Jimmy Page, (Jeff) Beck and the Yardbirds rearrange Train Kept a Rollin. An extremely bizarre scene.
• The Eels reenact many of my dreams in this video of a song that won't grow old: Novocaine for the Soul.
• The wit, art, fun and funk of RHCP.
• Tracy Chapman ruled the world with this song for a month a long time ago. Heard it in a store this afternoon, prompting this post.
  
• A Sony/BMG Market Research team took CAKE's "Short Skirt Long Jacket" out into the streets of LA to see how it would play to a broad focus group. They got some funny, honest results.

At the Risk of Alienating...

...some of my readers, I'm going to go out on a limb here and defend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years.

It's seriously not fashionable in this week's political climate to say anything good about Wright. He has uttered what are being roundly criticized as "inflammatory" and "divisive" comments. He has said things that are "unAmerican." Obama himself has been forced, in the interest of political expediency, to distance himself from his own pastor.

But if we look at who is making the loudest protestations about Reverend Wright, we find the usual suspects who long ago linked their flag with their God. "God Bless America" is not a prayer in the minds of these people. It is a demand. It is their right. It is expected. "God, you will bless America, and you will do it now!" They are also, by and large, White men who know NOTHING of the Black experience in America. These are the people most inclined to wave the "support the troops" banners, yet few of them ever served in the military. These are the people, who while claiming to love the God of the Bible (the God of Israel) will tell you with complete conviction, that, "America is the greatest land God ever gave this planet."

Do you seriously want to make that boast to the God of Israel?

Reverend Wright said that we as a country have done terrible things. Reverend Wright said that we as a country have some explaining to do to our God. Reverend Wright said that we as a country are not nearly what we claim to be. And I agree with him 100%. I have been saying the same things for eight years, though not as blatantly, as I learned quickly that knee-jerk "patriots" will not be able to hear you if you don't speak their language.

And have not the James Dobsons of the world been decrying the "sins" of America for decades? Didn't Jerry Fallwell call 9/11 God's judgement?

How is Jeremiah Wright any different?

Once again, to my Christian friends who have wrapped Jesus in the Stars and Stripes: Jesus is not an American. He sure as hell is not a Republican. And he damn well hates your nationalistic pride.

I guarantee it.

Lady Liberty has become a whore, and American Christianity is nothing more than cheap costume jewelry.

A prophet has no honor in his own country.
Gospel of John, 4:44