RSS
June 5, 2007
Extra, Extra - Who's Afraid of the Quiet Riot?
- Barack Obama says that blacks are pissed and there's a "quiet riot" brewing in LA and the rest of the country. Does that mean that the real trouble won't come for another 20 years when folks begin to finally "rage against the machine"? - AP
- Although the adult video world generates about $12 billion nationally, Vivid Video co-partner David James says, "Very few people make over $150,000 in this industry" - Daily News
- Speaking of public nudity, remember when Sarah Silverman during Sunday's MTV Movie Awards invited you to "google" Cisco Adler's balls? If you'd rather just click to a NSFW picture of the man and his nads, CityRag will educate you - CityRag
- Paris' last meal was via a drive-thru? That's so LA - Pink is the New Blog
- Speaking of Paris, although she might not get a roommate in jail, it looks like her chances of getting a staph infection are pretty good (and still we'd hit it) - National Ledger
- Rents are going down in Venice and Westchester - Market Wire
- The LA County Board of Supes passed a plan today that would give all Veterans free parking at any parking meter in the county. Now that's how you support the troops! - Bottleneck Blog
- If the streets of LA feel safer, they are, Tom Sizemore is back in the clink - Defamer
- Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon all got their hands and feet cemented at the Chinese Theater - Popbytes
- There are a dozen recent crimes that the LAPD needs the public's help in solving. Be a good neighbor - Associated Content
- A Glendora elementary school recycled 15,904 pounds (close to 8 tons) of crap to win a recycling contest sponsored by Wal*Mart. The school won $7,970. Which WalMart turned over to a real recycling company for $10k (just kidding) - Business Wire
photo by xxjetlab via LAist Featured Photos
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
[ report this ]
Regarding the Quiet Riot, not that you would be able to tell from the AP piece, but what Obama said bears little relation to what the AP reported.
Here is how the AP framed what was said...
HAMPTON, Va. (AP) -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.
The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.
And here is the relevant text from the speech, minus framing...
If you had gone to any street corner in Chicago or Baton Rouge or Hampton -- you would have found the same young men and women without hope, without miracles, and without a sense of destiny other than life on the edge -- the edge of the law, the edge of the economy, the edge of family structures and communities.
Those "quiet riots" that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths. They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better. You tell yourself, my school will always be second rate. You tell yourself, there will never be a good job waiting for me to excel at. You tell yourself, I will never be able to afford a place that I can be proud of and call my home. That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. And then one afternoon a jury says, "Not guilty" -- or a hurricane hits New Orleans -- and that despair is revealed for the world to see.
Greg Sargent deconstructs the amateur journalism of the AP quite nicely at TPM which I apparently cannot link to, because I am not signed in...
[ report this ]
what is the point of your comment?
[ report this ]
What? He's expanding in an informative way on an interesting point you brought up in your post.
[ report this ]
Of course the AP is a shallow media source.
But to 'Matthew' the above poster: PUH-LEAZE.
Social responsibility and civic involvement begins on the individual level. Pointing fingers only creates a false power paradigm.
Face it. Much of today's "Urban" youth culture in America absolutely celebrates being ILLITERATE and UNEDUCATED (read: "street") as well as MATERIALISTIC and VIOLENT.
Throw in a hardcore machismo-complex ("thugged out"), and then you've got yourself the so-called 'quiet riot' fear.
Until a culture arises which promotes the simple ideal that only with education can you free your mind and achieve your dreams -- and not by blaming The Man -- its very hard to feel any empathy at all.
And it makes it even harder to vote for Obama, who's slide into irrelevancy is becoming more assured with every pandering, flaccid speech.