F*** New York

Yeah, I’m not sure how this clip got away from me. Let me first admit, I’m far from schooled in hip hop. That said, I think this piece by some young white New Yorkers protesting the coming of the Republican convention is unusually sophisticated.

It’s not hard, in the course of writing about “the Bush dynamic,” to feel like a broken record, elaborating endlessly on the variants of spin and subterfuge. Like that perpetual Groundhog’s Day, however, there’s no escaping the fact we’re living this conundrum. Like foraging for food, the daily parsing of the events of the day from the government’s formulation of those events has become nothing more than a basic survival mechanism.

What’s great (or at least, smart) about this video is how these pseudo-white hoods “get” the reality trap that Bush/Cheney have subjected us to. At the surface level, these guys present themselves as white boys playing bad ass black gangsters. But it’s the level beneath that — where the association is to Government actors — where the video really nails it. In showcasing this role playing and misdirection, the video puts the Administration’s best tricks right on stage.

View the .mov file here.

View the comments and interview with the creators here.

(source: hiphopmusic.com via anildash)