Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The fake news problem, in reply to Neil,
Greenwald has gone all anti-anti-fake news.
There’s this really weird phenomenon of people denying at great cost to their integrity that there were any factors that decreased the chances of. a Dem victory (other than of course Clinton and the Elites being corrupt liars etc etc,).
And with such vehemence and dishonesty
Yes! I got sick of having any kind of discussion with people screaming that it was only permissible to talk about one reason for a result for which there are patently multiple reasons.
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Feed: World of Food 1: Afghanistan, in reply to Nat Curnow,
Hey buddy. Glad you saw this. Amberleigh's inspiring in a bunch of ways :-)
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Thanks Amberleigh – looking forward to the next 195! I wonder how different this dish is to an Indian saag gosht – I'll have to look ...
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I wish I'd got the whole song (late onto it and then accidentally touched the stop button with about 45 seconds to go), but this is still pretty awesome. Matthew Heine, Andrew Moore, Marty Doo and Mark Anderson as Suicide Wednesday, playing 'TV Eye' last night at a party at Tabac:
What about that Matthew Heine, eh?
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Hard News: Friday Music! Mic drops and…, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Not least the way it was widely embraced as ‘Urban Pacific’ and then ’Urban Pasifika’.
Good point.
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Hard News: Friday Music! Mic drops and…, in reply to JacksonP,
There was a good discussion on the ‘Urban’ tag by ethnomusicologist Dr Kirsten Zemke on Morning Glory this week. While covering much of the above, the focus was more on the fact it was an audience defined term rather than a musical genre, in a racially loaded sense.
I don’t agree with her history at all. She’s right that it’s a radio format, not a music genre, but the urban contemporary format and its name were the creation of the legendary black radio DJ Frankie Crocker. The format’s success was a crucial breakthrough for soul, funk and R&B artists in mainstream radio and it changed the American radio industry.
Mai FM was the first “urban contemporary” station in New Zealand – Ross Goodwin launched with the format as the founding programmer and it, too, changed New Zealand radio, by identifying a young audience that pop radio had been largely ignoring.
I suspect Mai’s ascendancy at the time had something to do with the “Urban” name being adopted for the category in the 2003 Music Awards. The press release at the time explained it this way:
Best Urban Album -
The category has been broadened to reflect an international trend that has also been evident in New Zealand. Last year the awards celebrated only R&B Hip Hop, but in 2003 this award encompasses the broader spectrum of the urban genre being produced in New Zealand.
Dance, Pacific Island and Roots were introduced the same year – it was definitely an opening up, an attempt to recognise a greater diversity of music. (“Roots” was blues, folk and country and didn’t last long.)
Maybe “urban” has outlived its usefulness, but you have to ignore a few things to declare its origins racist.
I also think Dr Zemke is wrong to say “urban” doesn’t include white artists. Tyrese Gibson complained last year that Top 40 radio was ignoring his number one album while “urban radio plays Robin Thicke, Justin Timberlake and Sam Smith.”
There is a lot of historical debate about this, and I feel Aaradhna did well to use the platform to highlight another way in which we ‘other’ people.
Yeah, I totally get the need to explode every now and then and she was great doing it. But I see people now declaring racism on RMNZ’s part and I just don’t think it’s warranted.
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Hard News: Friday Music! Mic drops and…, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Who knows, but either way, it’s got her a hell of a lot more press than just winning the award.
Indeed. And like Damian says, it was "a highlight of the show and just fantastic". It was something that couldn't be flattened out by the television production and it gave the whole thing a boost. It's worth knowing some context, though.
For some unknown reason, I was seated at table 12 this year, rather than down the back with my journalist brethren. It was pretty cool being out of the hubbub zone and able to enjoy what was at a times a hell of a show. Bruce Ferguson's video work is incredible in the room.
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The Wireless has also interviewed Damian Vaughn, along similar lines to me.
I think it's a bit glib to describe Aaradhna's speech as "the highlight/only event of significance" at the awards last night.
It may well have been the former, but it wasn't the latter. I thought several of this year's performances, including Aaradhna's, were stellar.
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The Washington Post's The Intersect column interviews "the OG of fake news", Paul Horner.
My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.
He feels regretful.
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Hard News: The fake news problem, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I think his widely-predicted appointment of the utterly batshit General Michael Flynn as national security adviser suggests a literally unprecedented period of American foreign aggression. American Conservative on the book Flynn published this year:
Flynn’s specific recommendations seem to involve endless warfare against what he calls the “the terror armies, above all in the Middle East and Libya,” which would commit the U.S. to an unknown number of conflicts for the foreseeable future that would only be concluded when we “win.” In other words, Flynn offers a recipe for perpetual war in predominantly Muslim countries, and if we take his rhetoric about the “enemy coalition” seriously he may be talking about waging wars in other parts of the world as well. His willingness to blur distinctions between disparate and mutually hostile groups suggests that the U.S. would find itself fighting multiple enemies at the same time. Flynn also thinks that the U.S. should “clearly and forcefully attack their crazy doctrines,” which credits our government with a degree of competence and cultural understanding that it has not demonstrated in decades. The U.S. could denounce various foreign leaders as “false prophets,” as Flynn suggests, but why would anyone inclined to listen to these “false prophets” care what Washington said about them? Likewise, “insisting on the superiority of our own political vision” is all very well, but it would achieve nothing except to intensify resentment against the U.S.
The belief in Trump as an anti-war candidate is a particularly feeble fairy story.
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