| About | |
| Contact Us | |
| Articles | |
| Topic Index | |
| Reports | |
| Quotes | |
| On the Web | |
| Links | |
| TW Tracker | |
| Support | |
Times Watch for
November 17, 2003
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Thug
A.O. Scott's reviews "Tupac: Resurrection," the documentary of Tupac Shakur, and strains to give a posthumous makeover to the rapper, who died as he lived--violently--in a drive-by assault in 1996.
In his Friday review, Scott wonders why social conservatives would ever have raised a word in protest of this sensitive young artist: "Shakur, an open-hearted young man who attended a prestigious performing-arts high school in Baltimore (the actress Jada Pinkett Smith was a classmate), seems in some ways an unlikely target for the hysteria of anti-hip-hop scolds like C. Delores Tucker and William Bennett. His love of Shakespeare is at least as convincing as Mr. Bennett's, and his musical influences included Frank Sinatra and the soft-rock troubadour Don McLean. Of course, the literary and cultural sophistication of rap have long been underestimated, in part because promoters of anti-pop-culture hysteria rarely actually listen to the music they deplore, and in part because so many rappers value the pose of street-tough masculine hardness over the display of sensitivity or intelligence."
But a column by MRC chairman L. Brent Bozell upon Shakur's violent death in 1996 notes some of the highlights of the artist's (term used advisedly) career: "His 1993 LP 'Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z...,' released in the wake of the Texas trial, copiously, cold-bloodedly bashed police. The title track declared, 'Mister F--- a Cop is back/And I still don't give a f---.' 'Souljah's Revenge' is even more venomous: 'Can't find peace on the streets/So the niggers get a piece/F--- the police/F--- 'em/Motherf---in' punk police/I hate 'em.'" One could well turn Scott's question around: Did Scott actually listen to Shakur's music before citing Sinatra and Don McLean as influences?
Scott's hagiography continues: "In the interviews sampled at length in 'Resurrection'--in the studio, on the Venice Beach Boardwalk, at the Clinton Correctional Facility where he served time after being convicted of sexual abuse in 1994--Shakur comes across as funny, sensitive and insightful. His soft brown eyes and easy smile make the strutting thug he sometimes played in his videos and on the evening news seem like a knowing, calculated performance."
Catch that little mention (right before the part about Skahur being "funny, sensitive and insightful") about the artist's imprisonment for "sexual abuse?"
For more of A.O. Scott on "Tupac," click here.
• Arts | Movies | Music | A.O. Scott | Rap | Tupac Shakur
Thom Shanker erroneously reported on November 14: "In his first trip to Asia since
returning to the Pentagon for a second tour as defense secretary, Mr. Rumsfeld
stressed that he was carrying no formal proposals for discussion in coming days
with the leaders of Japan and South Korea."
As the Times noted in a correction the next day, "[Rumsfeld] had previously visited several parts of Asia since joining the present Bush administration. This is not his first trip there."
What makes this a particularly odd mistake for Shanker is that he accompanied Rumsfeld on at least one of his previous trips to Asia. In a June 16, 2002 report titled "On Tour With Rumsfeld, the Jacket Stays On and the Monkeys Stay Way," Shanker wrote that one of Rumsfeld's international jaunts ended "on the Asian subcontinent with a tour of India and Pakistan as they ever so carefully stepped back from a dangerous confrontation."
• Asia | Corrections | Donald Rumsfeld | Thom Shanker
'Speaking Up For the Middle," from the Far Left
Lynette Clemetson's "Clergy Group to Counter Conservatives" paints
a new group with liberal and left-wing ties as having appeal to religious
moderates. Clemetson writes for Monday's edition: "In an effort to counter the
influence of conservative Christian organizations, a coalition of moderate and
liberal religious leaders is starting a political advocacy organization to
mobilize voters in opposition to Bush administration policies. The nonprofit
organization, the Clergy Leadership Network, plans to formally announce its
formation on Friday and will operate from an expressly religious, expressly
partisan point of view."
A subhead to the story reads: "A coalition wants to speak up for the middle and the left." Yet the only listed members of this coalition are the liberal Interfaith Alliance and the left-wing National Council of Churches. Meanwhile, the new group's chief executive, Albert Pennybacker, is former public policy director for the National Council of Churches, and is also a former chairman of the Interfaith Alliance. Yet Clemetson identifies him only as a reverend from Kentucky.
Pennybacker went to China with the NCC in 1998, after which the group issued a report implausibly claiming to find no sign of repression of Christians in the Communist country. Pennybacker blamed the very idea of such repression on "ultra-rightists" in Congress, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that accusations that China is broadly intolerant of religion ignore the "vital, recognized and unrecognized public Christian community alive in China. That kind of campaign, if you think that's not tied to the political campaign of the ultra-rightist people in Congress, then you're naive about what is at stake here."
Can people with such intimate ties to left-wing groups really be relied on to "speak up for the middle"?
For the rest of Clemetson's story on countering conservative Christians, click here.
• Lynette Clemetson | Clergy Leadership Network | Labeling Bias | Religion
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org