The New SteveSilver.net

NO MORE WHITE RAPPERS EMERGE?:

NO MORE WHITE RAPPERS EMERGE?: I caught Jerry Nachman's new show tonight on MSNBC just in time to watch a highly surreal segment about racial politics and their relation to rap music. Nachman moderated a debate over whether white people should in fact be allowed to be rappers, which was between a militant black cleric (who said in the interview that white people should be "banned by law" from becoming rap artists), and Coolio, who had a more democratic attitude towards Caucasians rapping. In reality, none of the three belonged in the conversation: Nachman has likely never heard hip-hop in his life; the "cleric" didn't have much of a grasp of constitutional law and also looked like he was about 16 years old, and Coolio (whose career has been on a slide-slide-slippity-slide for the past 6 or 7 years) is hardly the most qualified public ambassador for hip-hop.
While the African-Americans who pioneered hip-hop (as well as its listeners at the time) rightly objected to embarrassing white rappers of the past like Vanilla Ice and Snow, most black people I know feel a considerable kinship with Eminem, both for his talent and for much the same reason they identify with Bill Clinton (as Toni Morrison famously said): he was raised poor, never knew his father, and is associated with a traditionally black form of music. After all, Chris Rock pointed out the greatest examples of the 21st-century American melting pot: "the best golfer in the world is black, and the best rapper in the world is white."

NACHMAN: NOT OF BRATSLAV: Watching Nachman and realizing that he's the most counterintuitive choice to host a cable news show since Mike Barnicle, I wondered whose idea it was to give him his own show- oh wait, it was Nachman's own idea!, as he is in fact the "Editor in Chief" of MSNBC. I'm glad they brought in Phil Donahue, as its nice to catch a whiff of left-wing populism as an alternative to Bill O'Reilly's tiresome right-wing version of same. And Pat Buchanan, repugnant as he may be, has always been very effective on TV and I'm glad to see him back. But Nachman? Sitting in his ill-fitting suits, on a set that looks to be his basement, and a logo in which his head takes up 95% of the screen? I mean, Fox News boss Roger Ailes is even fatter and balder than Nachman, though at least he has the good sense to remain off-camera.