Karl Rove busts a move
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
This made my eyes bleed.
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This was an abomination. Who on earth would think that middle-aged to elderly white men rapping, beat boxing and fake turntabling would be a good idea? Notice how they brought out the token black guy to add legitimacy to the whole thing. He doesn’t say anything, he just grins. What a traitorous tool! I’m almost angrier at him because he should know better.
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I wonder what they’ll perform the next time they meet with the Congressional Black Caucus.
Oh wait a minute. Key members of the Bush administration never meet with the Congressional Black Caucus.
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*sigh* yes they do HighJive. Who, when, and about what you don’t want to know…
NOTE: this was done at the Radio & Correspondents’ Dinner in DC. There are better “full frontal” clips floating around.
I actually give Rove credit. Preceding the “rap”, he got off sine cheap/bad joke about the federal prosecutor who recently convicted his former chief of staff *and* said convicted dude, whom the Administration sacrificed to protect Rove’s involvement in leaking the identity of a former covert CIA agent as payback for her ambassador husband’s discovering the truth about Administration claims of uranium enrichment in Africa– all while evidence still continues to arise that Rove was actually behind the dismissal of federal prosecutors loyal to the Administration as payback for not being political enough.. in the same room with his boss (the President) and the very people who cover him on a daily basis (i.e. the press), while managing to engage one of the reporters the Administration loathes most (i.e. “the white guy”) to participate as a backup dancer.
If that isn’t “thug” by political standards, I just don’t know what is…
For the record: Ken Blackwell (i.e. “the black guy”) is an NBC producer who covers the Senate; David Gregory (i.e. “the white guy”) is NBC main White House correspondent.
And this was more the fault of Brad Sherwood and Colin Mochrie of the awful show,
“Whose Line Is It Anyway?” which airs on… ABC. They also encouraged NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and correspondent Cheryl Gould to burping “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.Trust me, the JibJab spoof on the media in general that premiered at the same event was much funnier
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When you’re making fun of someone’s nerdiness, legitimacy is the last thing you’ll want to add. It’s far more likely that the black guy is there as a contrast. You don’t add a cool person to a group of Pee-Wee Hermans to make them look cooler, particularly when their coolness is very much the opposite of the point. It’s going to heighten the contrast with cool people, and that’s very likely by design.
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What the hell!?! It will be interesting to see what real MC’s have to say about this…I’m speachless….
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Carmen, this made me think of something I think you said in a recent podcast re: blackface parties on college campuses-if you aren’t mocking black people then what exactly would you be doing when you are?
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There is no God.
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And what neccessarily makes Ken Blackwell cool in this instance? He may have been cool in many other times and places but this surely is not one of them. It just doesn’t sit well with me that they would juxtapose one of the worst instances of bad white rapping next to having one black man on stage who came out specifically for this segment.
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Sorry for typos, bit jet lagged and typing from phone…
My point: Totally scripted on the comedians’ and Rove’s part, no one on NBC was prepped in advance (though they should’ve probably declined). Given the dynamics of the event, I’m guessing this was ABC’s dig at NBC more than anything else– knowing their folks would lose face among the crowd if they didn’t participate. They’ve been rubbing their faces in the dirt since Feb. sweeps…
Not a Rove fan, but for him to get away with this is ballsy even for him. I do ask, however, if old white men can’t make fun of themselves in bad verse, do I truly live in a free society?
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It actually makes much more sense knowing that Ken Blackwell is one of the media people at the event rather than someone Rove brought with him. Chances are pretty good that the comedians put him up to it. It’s possible he heard what they were going to do and thought it was so ludicrous that he wanted to be on stage when it happened. I just can’t see how Rove would have preferred to have a black person on stage if he had to do something like this, unless he was deliberately trying to contrast what he was doing with how it ought to be done.
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Nina, it’s important to distinguish between two things someone might mean when they describe something as “making fun of black people”. I don’t object to characterizing the blackface parties as racist, but I think the reasoning needs a further step that Carmen doesn’t provide if that’s all she said.
One thing you might mean by “making fun of black people” is that you are making fun of some people who are black. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are making fun of them because they are black (or because of something central to black identity). It doesn’t mean you are making fun of all black people or black people in general. I might make fun of Martin Lawrence and Chris Rock, say, without making fun even of other black comedians. It’s technically true that I’m making fun of black people if I do that, and so the statement is literally true. But it’s extremely misleading.
When people hear the words “making fun of black people” they will automatically assume that you mean making fun of black people because of their blackness or making fun of black people in general or making fun of black people as a whole. I do think that goes on at the blackface parties, largely because it involves gross stereotypes and across-the-board generalizations that are supposed to represent black people as a whole. It also involves a lot more elements of supposed black life than just one.
This, on the other hand, at worst makes fun of just hip-hop. I’m not convinced that they’re making fun of hip-hop even. My first impression is that they’re making fun of themselves in comparison with people who really do have rhythm. But if I’m wrong about that, it doesn’t seem to me that there’s anything here that implies that all black people do anything or that black people as a whole have any particularly negative characteristics. If it is making fun of hip-hop, then it’s making fun of hip-hop. That isn’t “making fun of black people” in the second sense any more than making fun of the blues is making fun of black people. It might count as making fun of some people who happen to be black, i.e. the first sense. But there’s nothing morally problematic about that in itself. You need some extra tie to black people as a whole, overgeneralizations, or something like that to make it like the blackface parties, and I don’t see how something that doesn’t mention black people at all but just has some people being stupid can demonstrate any such assumptions.
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Lmao @ Rob.
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Oh hell no.
As a semi-politico, my first thought is “you dumb ass.”
As a hip-hopper, I am outraged. How can a person who directly contributes to policies that create global animosity and poverty and class based partitions in our society even think of playing with the art form that arose out of the resulting strife - even if it is to casually mock himself?
As a cynical black person, I’m thinking “We can’t have fucking NOTHIN’!”
As a pop culture junkie, I’m thinking, “Wow, this shit is worse than that rap cat commercial for Burger King.”
[Can’t you just see Rove going “meow meow meow-meow, me meow me meow?”]
The cynical bitch part of me [different from cynical black person] wonders why they didn’t just teach his ass to cabbage patch while they were at it. Or did they, and that was too complicated?
*sigh*
I wasn’t offended in the least by Smirnoff’s Tea Par-tay commercial, because that was actually funny.
Of course people are supposed to parody hip-hop. It’s like Al Gore doing the booty call dance - hilarious because it’s so ludicrous.
But Rove doing it?
That feels like a slap in the face.
I’m glad our little culture amuses you. I’m glad that you can have your casual fun with what was borne from the poverty that you, and your boss - fuck that, your whole squad - contribute to everyday. Pretend to beatbox, and keep cutting the programs that would provide music and instruments to underprivileged schools. Pretend to be a mic controller for a day. Live that shit up, MC Rove. Then, you can stop playing, and go back to being a global controller. A cash controller. A policy controller. It’s nice to have options, isn’t it?
Next time you play “I’m a rapper,” don’t forget your shoe polish.
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Note: Check out Mos Def’s “Black on Both Sides” LP for a track called “Mr. Nigga” (track 15) to catch what I intended with the shoe polish comment. The literal meaning works, but I was thinking about it in the Mos sense…
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Jeremy Pierce: ‘That isn’t “making fun of black people” in the second sense any more than making fun of the blues is making fun of black people.’
While the rap assessment has a strong hold on the duality that exists in any examination of hip-hop and its attendant statements about Black people in the general sense, I would disagree with you that the same can be said of the Blues and any easy application of a benign slighting of Black people when one mocks it.
For too long the introduction of the ’scat,’ or the heavily-laden-with-sleepy-and-empty-headed-overtones voice that employs the basic Blues chord structure in delivery of some asinine jingle, or animated animal voice, or as the butt end of a joke has made use of the historical origins of the Blues as originating from the traveling musician (Black), often unschooled, and perhaps a bit rural.
I’d have to see something in a truly bland context, without any of the attendant racist elements so often used, to divest the racial element from the mockery.
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*Side note 2 - Rap Cat is from Checkers, not BK. My bad!
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Kim and Jeremy: … or basically say, to that effect, “no one who doesn’t at least resemble me or sound like me is ever allowed to touch MY music at all…”? Boy would that have some connotations…
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In which Karl Rove takes hip-hop on a quail hunting trip and shoots it in the face.
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They go with this crap instead of inviting Stephen Colbert?!?!
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*facepalm* Looks like someone rented Bulworth this past weekend.
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Ananse: How did you get that ?
Mockery is felt and understood to be such when it touches too deeply at the core and organic roots of a thing/behavior/speech, and is seen to be far from celebratory or in imitation of, but rather poking fun at, or ridiculing.
Music being the universal language, to go with the hackneyed, allows for many and all to follow suit ,and to partake, but there are avenues of entry that seem offensive, and some intentionally so.
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1. I didn’t feel like Blackwell was there to provide legitimacy as such. I did wonder what he was doing onstage, though.
2. But J. Pierce, I must tell you I had exactly the same response as Celeste when I read your “cool guy” response. What the hairy fuck (besides his melanin and bald head, reminiscent of Isaac Hayes and Sammy Jack,) would make Blackwell register as “cool” to anyone?
3. I must say, it smarts when I see the main group responsible for demonizing hip-hop donning their “self-effacing, good-natured white guy” costumes to parody that very culture.
4. For some reason, the reporter irritates me even more than Rove in this clip. I just can’t stand that whole “white guy rap” shtick (not to be confused with “white rap act,” of course).
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Thirds, fourths and fifths on J. Pierce’s “cool guy” comment.
Ken Blackwell — he’s not the former (and recent) Ohio secretary of state? If so, I doubt he’s an NBC producer now. To be clear, I don’t know if that’s him on stage and I may be wrong about his latest career developments. But I can’t find reference anywhere to him joining NBC (or to another Ken Blackwell who’s been with the network as a producer.)
The “reporter” who interviewed Rove and then rapped about him, Brad Sherwood, is part of the two-man comedy team hired as entertainment for this event… I’m willing to bet that for them, this is a regular skit, slightly modified from venue to venue, group to group — meaning “MC Rove” had little idea of what he was getting into before he got on stage.
So that sort of offensiveness — or utter corniness, as I see it — is on display all the time. If “MC Rove” was part of it this time, I don’t see that as ironic in the least.
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Actually, I thought he almost looked human.
Anyway, I think he was just warming it up for when he competes on The (White) Rapper Show.
But, you know what he should’ve done? He should’ve performed a Dixie Chicks song.
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@ deb — that would have been funny
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Perhaps if there were a snowball’s chance in hell that MC Rove and the reporter had an actual appreciation of hip-hop I would not perceive it as mockery. There’s no way for me to know that with certainty as I’ve never spoken with either of them. I don’t mind having fun with hip-hop if you actually know something about it and appreciate it. But for some comedian and shady politician to appropriate it like that with what is (I’m admit I’m assuming this) little to no appreciation of it mockery. I hate to sound like they need ghetto passes but you don’t just rip something off from another culture because it’s supposed to be funny that these particular white men are doing something traditionally done by black people. Also, I was not impressed with Blackwell’s dancing, it kinda sucked. He wasn’t that much better and they didn’t even let him rap. I don’t think he was any cooler. Justin Timberlake would have added more of a cool factor than he did.
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Yeah, I thought the name to be Blackwell’s of Ohio, as well. Just doesn’t look like what I’ve seen of him…darker and sans hair and all, as this chap is.
Gotta tell you folks…I ain’t never seen old white guys with rhythm. This shit is funny.
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I was laughing my ass off, then I had to remember just what exactly I was watching. Wew.
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Colin and Brad were awesome, but the other guys, oh man…
Go you old white guys, it’s your birthday! Go you old white guys, it’s your birthday!
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Who is the Negro in the back? And, please notice that I used the word Negro…should I say Uncle Tom? After watching that video, I declare rap dead. I think I’m going to be ill. Someone lock that Rove up on gun offenses! He must be stopped. This is how white people earn the “they can’t dance” thing.
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Correction: “black dude” = Ken Strickland. I was eating Snackwells when I responded days ago, and it was a,”Roviam” slip. Apologies I thought I typed the right one above…
Neither Gregory nor Strickland was in on the joke beforehand (and no one in the audience paid as much attention to them as it went on from reports through the grapevine).
Four items popped today that I hear whenever a news item of this sort emerges:
Hip-hop is sacrosanct.
White people should never touch those things traditionally done by black people.
One who doesn’t “belong” to a culture should refrain from engaging in behaviors traditionally associated only with certain members of another culture especially when there’s racial sensitivites at work.
No one is ever supposed to appropriate anything from another culture because the mere juxtaposition of that which is unnatural, unfamiliar, or unexpected in its presentation, form, or execution is just plain… *icky*.
I’m not sure which bothers me most, but anytime folks are stymied enough that they’re reduced to casting aspersions, counter-stereotypes on people who are clearly making fun of themselves, and reclaims on something that’s out there in public acceptance (something the art demanded, no?), I know all must be okay in the world…
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Ananse:
“No one is ever supposed to appropriate anything from another culture because the mere juxtaposition of that which is unnatural, unfamiliar, or unexpected in its presentation, form, or execution is just plain… *icky*.”
Now you know what they call that: flippin’ the script, and bein’ a little bit behind the beat.
Think you’re off here.
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Ananse: there is a difference between adapting/referencing culture and MOCKING it. What do you honestly think Rove and company were doing? Do you really think he has any NWA or, hell, even Living Colour in his CD rack? Maybe Color Me Badd…
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Color me badd…HA HA HA HA! I am rolling on the floor!
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tick tock get up stop stop to the heart
(wasn’t that how it went?)
not that I had that on tape or anything back in 91
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Okay Carmen..if we start singing this crap, smack us. OOOH OOOH! I remember it well…one George Michael look alike lead singer, the smooth Black dude, one curly headed freaky looking guy…oh my God. Slap me now, as I remember the Color Me Bad video.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
When Don Imus and other racist jerks appropriate African-American terminology at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture on 11 Apr 2007 at 8:00 am
[…] ignorant people in the house. To narrow the group even further, there are a lot of ignorant racists dancing poorly, to their own rhythm. And to whittle it down even one degree further, there are a lot of ignorant racists throwing their […]