Our friend Phil's racist rant about Jay-Z's Nets raising eyebrows

Mushnick's readers don't need him to add context. They read him. They know his body of work.

The HuffPo wanted to make an issue of what he said. They are introducing Mushnick and his work to a new audience. They need to add context. Fuck, their own author appears to not know who the guy is. Maybe he sould have spent five minutes with google.

Hell, maybe he could have read the first page of today's column. It dealt with race too:

What a fucking racist.

 

This fits THE narrative. No thought involved.

 

I'm very worried

 

I think bigot is the preferred term.

 

You mean for you right? The man who predicted that black people will riot if George Zimmerman goes free.

 

Mushnick is on the internet.

So he's available now to tens of millions of people who've never heard of him or read him before. One of whom apparently writes for the Huffington Post.

Like Imus, whether or not Mushnick is himself a racist is less important than the lazy joke Mushnick made. He and his editor both should have paused and said, 'hey, maybe we need half a sentence to set this up.'

Any joke you make in which even the Post has to print 'N-----s' is a joke you need to construct carefully.

 

I agree with YF and Boom here. Phil's problem -- and it could be a big problem -- is his failure to put the thoughts he's long explored into proper context for readers who today might be reading him for the first time.

And as an aside, someday I'd love Jay-Z to elaborate upon his supposed vow to drop the word "bitch" (and possibly "ho") from all future projects now that he's had a daughter. Having a wife and mother and working alongside women never caused him to think about the impact of those words before Blue Ivy was born?

 

Mushnick shouldn't catch hell because he's a racist, which I don't believe he is, but because he's completely out of touch with reality on this issue and as a result wrote something moronic. Boom, YF, I'm confident neither of you care about this distinction, and thus will just dismiss it to mock it, but there is a huuuuuuuuuuge gap between the word "Niggers" and "Niggas." It's a bit like the difference between these two statements.

My friend is Hispanic.

My friend is a Spic.

The idea that Jay-Z would refer to himself, or any other African American, as a group of "niggers" is completely moronic. I seriously doubt you guys care about the distinction, so I'm just wasting keystrokes, but it absolutely exists when using the written word. You're a writer for frick's sake. If you're too oafish to write about race in an intelligent way, don't write about race.

Even if you do not buy the Niggers vs. Niggas argument, this clumsiness of what's written also dips a toe on the water of the undeniable truth that members of a minority group that has been oppressed and discriminated against in the past can use words about their own ethnic group that members of the oppressing ethnic group cannot say about about that group without causing offense.

The whole thing just reads like cranky old man race baiting, even if that's not the intention, because Mushnick doesn't care about the distinctions or subtleties. He just wants to throw out a lazy point about Jay-Z using the word "Nigga" to remind everyone how scary and angry rap seems to old white people like Phil.

Does anyone really think Mikhail Prokhorov was able to amass his fortune in Russia without committing a single illegal or amoral act? Yet are you surprised Mushnick doesn't make a bunch of jokes about the Russian mafia and the KGB, even though Prokorov owns 80 percent of the Nets and Jay-Z owns 1.5 percent of the team? Of course not, because that wouldn't play into the clumsy "black guys are scary!" theme.

 

He's "on the internet"? So what?

Mushnick has a regular audience of readers. I moved out of New York 12 years ago. I specifically read Phil every Friday, Sunday, and Monday.

Should he write for his audience, or should he write every article for somebody who may have stumbled upon him (thanks to a link from someone who's accused him of being a racist).

Does Paul Krugman do this every time he writes glowingly about the murderous, dictatorial, Chinese government, and their ability to "get big projects done"?

And, while Bill Simmons might get to write as long an article as he likes, Mushnick still has to fit his column into an actual newspaper.

Besides, are there people who don't know that Jay-Z ues the "n" word in his lyrics, or calls women bitches and hoes? Do people not realize that black uniforms appeal to people because they appeal to gangs? The Raiders opened up this market over 30 years ago. And, if you have red or blue in your team colors, you've turned off half of the gang market.

I also have no doubt that Phil was struck by a bullet aimed at Rupert Murdock. Phil works for the Post, so he must be a bad guy.

I disagree with Phil on a lot of issues. But, I don't think he has a racist bone in his body. (And, when I sent him an email objecting t something he wrote about the Egyptian uprising, he was nice enough no write me back, in a friendly tone.)

I don't thnk Phil has a single thing to apologize for, and I don't believe his job is in danger. (Though, as often as he criticizes wishy-washy, PR driven, and written, apologies, I'd almost expect him to resign, rather than issue some sort of half apology, for something he doesn't think as wrong.

Oh, and I LOVE Gingerbread being on my side (even if she doesn't agree with my every word, which I'm sure she doesn't).

 

So, DD, would there be the same uproar if Mushnick suggested the team be names the Niggas?

I almost wrote earlier that it was his one mistake.

 

You know what is the strange part of that, YF and DD? The word as he wrote it has too many dashes for either. Count 'em out.

N------s
B----hes

 

YF--

It would have at least showed he understands the distinction, and how the word is used in rap music, or by black people. As to his whiny question about "Is he the only owner allowed to call black men niggers?" my answer would be "He's the only goddamn owner who can use this word as an artistic expression in a song because he writes music for a living, you dolt." Does he really think Sean Carter is sitting down in a business meeting with vendors saying "Well, make sure you have some super smart niggas working the concessions in the new arena." Mushnick is suggesting Jay-Z might, in addition to changing the colors to SCARY URBAN BLACK AND WHITE put the word "Niggers" on the front of the jersey because Jay-Z is clearly the kind of fellow who, because he uses some version of that word in his songs, thinks it can also be used as a mascot for his team (which he owns 1.5 percent of).

He's not a racist. His body of work, I think, proves that.

He's an out of touch old man.