The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

Iraq and Back

10.4.02 @ 5:26PM

What's your pleasure today? Foreign or domestic? Northwestern or northeastern? Midwestern or Southern? Northern Iraq or southern New Jersey?

We didn't think it would happen so soon, that Florida would recede into the nostalgic past. But when it's Democrats your dealing with, everything is possible. Which is not to say we're not tremendously dismayed by the Third World thuggery that has replaced rule of law in lovely Trenton, N.J. True, we knew Robert Torricelli needed to be removed in favor of less desperately corrupt. But did his successor have to be a retiree who, as his name suggests, can only claim that he is not a lout? Particularly since New Jersey already had a well-tested public official in the wings previously appointed by Gov. McGreevey to a prestigious post. Unlike the tight-lipped Lautenberg, this public figure knows how to proclaim from the rooftops, is battle-tested, and has never avoided from the most controversial public issues of our day. What's more, he doesn't allow himself to be bullied, and doesn't even require phone calls from Bill Clinton to buck him up. So, Gov. McGreevey and all you Jersey mafiasullis, why didn't you choose Amiri Baraka to be your new senator?

Before there was rap, Baraka put the hip in hop. Besides, his now immortal screed, "Somebody Blew Up America," is the most faithful reflection of Democratic thinking ever put to rhetorical music. Here are some stanzas, selected and composed at random (and living proof that Al Gore isn't the only Demo who tells it like it is):

Somebody Blew Up America
They say it's some terrorist,
some barbaric
A Rab,
in Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn't
The gonorrhea in costume
The white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases.

Another choice Republican pops up later:

Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who know who decide
Jesus get crucified

Baraka's target here is just as unmistakable:

Who the biggest executioner
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the oil
Who want more oil

He offers a staunch defense of the Democrats' most sacred programs:

Who decided Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal,
The New Frontier, The Great Society

He's a staunch multilateralist:

Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism

He recalls the crimes of Reagan, Nixon, Kissinger et al.:

Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later

"Who? Who? Who?" as Baraka likes to say, "Who and Who and WHO who who/ Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!" So is this the same fellow who composed "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Or is he attempting a bad imitation of Tom Wolfe?

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Bill Clinton, Hollywood, Law, Supreme Court, Iraq, NATO, Oil