Jon Stewart got away with a lot of ridiculous arguments on The Factor last night.  Stewart’s argument that Common wasn’t actually supporting cop killing because he somehow believes that both Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal are actually innocent of the crime – and therefore should be excused – is both irrelevant and ludicrous.  O’Reilly largely let him get away with it.  Does Stewart think Rashard Mendenhall should be off the hook because he *technically* doesn’t support or sympathize with terrorism if he actually thinks Bin Laden’s hijacked airplanes might not have been the cause of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing?  Attempting to rewrite the history of clearly and unforgivably evil people is decidedly rejected by good and decent people.  Stewart can shove that argument. 

Mendenhall recently lost his endorsement from Champion Sports over a few infamous, perhaps impulsive tweets.  Common wrote a damn love song about convicted cop-killer and domestic terrorist Assata Shakur, went to visit her in Cuba, and named his daughter after her.  I have attached that song at the end of this post, because I want everyone to see exactly what we’re talking about here.  If you name your daughter after a convicted cop-killer, domestic terrorist and violent, militant Black Nationalist, then the song you wrote worshipping said cop-killer was not simply adopting an artistic voice.  If your defense is going to be that you believe she’s really completely innocent, you better have some damn good reasons for believing so if you expect anyone to let it slide. 

Common’s taking sides with Assata Shakur doesn’t have anything to do with his expert legal opinion.  He’s taking sides with Assata Shakur because he apparently worships everything for which she stood – Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army (BLA), ethnic sectarianism, and the great socialist revolution.  He didn’t write a song arguing that even though Assata Shakur joined a reprehensible, racist and violent terrorist organization like the BLA and did a number of awful things with them, in this particular incident there were anomalies in the application of due process.  He wrote a song worshiping her values and her life’s mission. 

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Ken Larrey is working up a piece of analysis now, but I wanted to post the video and throw this question out there…

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Truth be told, watching some on our side make an issue out of Common’s lyrics/poetry kinda depressed me. It’s an argument lost before it can even begin. Artists frequently create characters in their work, most especially songwriters. Did Johnny Cash really shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die? Did Bruce Springsteen really go for a ride where ten innocent people died? Even Common’s call to “burn” Bush can be defended as metaphor. But the real reason this approach depressed me is because it was totally unnecessary. Not as as a poet, not as a singer and not as a character, it’s just a naked fact that Michelle Obama’s White House guest defends convicted cop killers and opposes interracial relationships. Which brings me to my point…

Thank you, Bill O’Reilly:

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Some, like O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, did bring up Common’s open opposition to interracial relationships and his craven support of two convicted cop killers. In other words, on top of the lyrics, there was also a discussion at FNC (and elsewhere) about the full context of this extremely divisive and sometimes repulsive “artist” the White House saw fit to stamp with their approval. But Comedy Central’s “New Murrow” only wanted to discuss Common within a safe-for-Obama context (the lyrics) and in the above video, Bill O’Reilly calls Stewart out for this act of “comedic” intellectual dishonesty.

Naturally, in their journ-o-listic quest to put the story to bed before the full truth gets out, the MSM grabbed hold of Stewart’s dishonest attack on Fox News, labeled it “epic,” pronounced it “ownage” (want to see how corrupt journ-o-lism works? Click this and this), and positioned it as the last word. But this story — and some of this is our fault for making lyrics an issue — still hasn’t been properly told. O’Reilly understands this and to his great credit has no intention of allowing Stewart, the MSM and the White House to wriggle off this hook so easily.

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This is no youthful indiscretion, this is 2003. Will the ObamaMedia be able to ignore a Czar associated with lyrics like this:

The American way manufactured by white folk in office, by these rich men here to mock us. The United States; a piece of stolen land led by right-wing, war-hungry, oil thirsty… And when it’s all said and done still can’t [garbled] the wrong place cause they got people of color playing servant to do that shit for them; mother fuckers ready to wipe out soft targets on territories harboring terrorists?

Tragedy.

The true terrorists are made in the U.S.

Truther/Czar Jones himself at the 4:20 mark: (more…)