I also just noticed your comment upthread:
>> It would be like trying to describe a Muslim extremist without being able to tie the fact that they are Muslim to why they do what they do, its central to why they do criminal acts.
Actually, yes. It's exactly like that.
Do you support the FBI describing the entire Muslim population (2.6 million people) as a "loosely organized hybrid terror sect"? If not, why does it make sense to describe ICP fans (5+ million records sold) similarly?
The Latin Kings are a dangerous gang, and the fact that they associate with Latino identity is obviously part of what goes into investigating them. But no one would dream of claiming that the existence of the Latin Kings means that Latinos, in general, are a gang.
We just have a fundamental disagreement about what law enforcement is for. It's a very new idea that regular cops are supposed to be a paramilitary force standing around in riot gear to make sure nobody gets out of hand. That sort of thing made people very uncomfortable up until very recently, when security theater became de rigeur. Yet somehow this heightened security has only made us more fearful and insecure -- so much so that the largest law enforcement agency on the planet is focusing its energies on a rap group most people have never even heard of.
In your own response you say you "have no f'ing idea" how this FBI report could possibly make anyone safer, but you favor it purely because "knowledge is power". I'd argue that the FBI already has all the power it could ever want, and the world is no safer for it. Maybe it's time to scale back a bit and stop using bogeymen to justify increased discretion and funding.
Blake Edwards: I'm not allowed to continue our thread, but I want to respond to your point:
>> How do you tell them a part when they all look the same and act the same right up until the actual crime is committed?
The answer is that you don't. I know this is a radical idea in post-9/11 America, but you're actually not supposed to prosecute people for their potential future crimes. A person who has not committed a crime is by definition not a criminal.
Maybe this stuff gets a little fuzzy when we're talking about Al-Qaeda, but we're not. I really don't think the Buckfuck, Ohio Police Department needs to keep dossiers on every pudgy teenage Juggalo to preemptively stop a crime that one of them might commit. This isn't "Minority Report".
By the way:
>> That doesn’t mean you ignore everyone in a tapout shirt because your scared of offending someone who isn’t a gang member, it means you just need to make sure you practice due diligence before acting.
This means you disagree with the FBI, and this judge's ruling.
The FBI report says that Juggalos, in general, are a gang. You know this isn't true, and your response indicates that. Literally not one single person has said anything about ignoring every Juggalo to avoid offending anyone; we're saying that the FBI should treat criminals as criminals and leave everyone else alone. So who are you even arguing with?
Your response really isn't cogent.
It's fine if "people" want to associate Jugglos with gang activity. I can't tell them how to feel.
The FBI, on the other hand, has a responsibility not to associate people with violent criminal organizations based on what's on their iPod. This really isn't a radical assertion.
>> There are two groups of juggalos
There aren't, though. There are dozens of groups scattered all over the place. Some of them are criminals and should be dealt with as such. But there simply is no nationwide criminal organization rooted in ICP fandom, as claimed in the FBI report. It's a thing that does not actually exist.
>> As far as cops mistreating juggalos and profiling them, that’s wrong too, I’m not condoning that.
But that's what the entire conversation is about. You can't say you oppose profiling Juggalos *and* agree with the FBI that Juggalos are a gang. If they're actually a gang, then it isn't profiling.
If all you're actually saying is, "Juggalo culture seems kinda dumb and glorifies antisocial behavior," I don't think you'll find a lot of disagreement there. But that really has nothing to do with the conversation. I also think MMA culture seems dumb and glorifies antisocial behavior, but I don't think cops should be allowed to treat everyone in a Tapout t-shirt as a gang affiliate.
No one's saying there are no juggalo criminals out there, but there's a very important distinction between dealing with Juggalo-related gangs and saying that Juggalos, in general, are part of a loosely organized gang. That's the issue here.
Crips and Bloods often incorporate blue or red sports team merch into their outfits, but it doesn't mean Dodger fans are a loosely organized hybrid gang.
No, I definitely didn't mean "conservative". It's really not a political thing. Besides, if there's any group with a truly apoplectic hatred for all things Juggalo, surely it's educated white liberals.
Agreed. Everything the Lips do lately reminds me of a teenager who hangs out at the store in the mall that sells incense and baja pullovers, trying to convince the cute girl behind the counter that he's down.
What a joke. "The FBI isn’t responsible for actions that local law enforcement agencies may have taken based on the report"? So what is the report for, exactly? Was there a disclaimer on the first page that said, "For entertainment purposes only"?
I know it's hard for thinking people to get too worked up about an anti-Juggalo ruling, but it is straight-up unfair and illegal to tar several million people as gang members, and expose them to all the enforcement and sentencing considerations that go along with such a distinction.
I used to be like, "Eh, this band hasn't done anything good in a long time but you have to respect their commitment to every hokey art school freshman idea that pops into their heads."
But you know what? I was wrong. You really, really don't have to respect it.
What a shame. I guess they had to commission a new painting to avoid any potential copyright issues if the original thrift store painter suddenly came out of the woodwork, but the original version is so much crisper and generally better-looking than the Weezer version.
Fellow Stereogum readers: you guys get that the whole narrative thrust of "High Fidelity" was for the characters to grow up and focus on doing something meaningful, right? All the fighting about pop music is not something you're supposed to aspire to.
Just wanna say that I was the first to point out the "Here, My Dear" connection on this site: http://www.stereogum.com/1686129/the-week-in-pop-what-can-we-actually-learn-from-billboard-and-twitters-trending-140/franchises/the-week-in-pop/comment-page-1/#comment-8407939
Make the check out to cash, all my money's tied up in startups right now
Yeah, this is in the unfortunate tradition of taking a great pop song, turning it into a constipated downer, and thinking that somehow imbues it with more meaning. (cf. Chvrches' "Tightrope", Coldplay's "Fight for Your Right", Obidiah Parker's "Hey Ya", Final Fantasy's "Fantasy", etc etc etc)
It's literally never been done well and there's really no excuse to keep doing it.
I have no problem with classifying individual Juggalo gangs as gangs. It's not hard at all to imagine that there are real gangs with Juggalo members.
But ICP have sold over five million records. It's irresponsible and unethical to classify their entire fan base as a gang. The FBI has a responsibility to know better.
Except it *is* off-base. The criteria for calling something a gang is much more complex than "I'd be nervous to run into them at a bus stop".
The FBI is the most powerful crime-fighting organization in the world, and when it makes a formal report labeling a group of people a "gang", it gives local and state governments justification to crack down. There's enough police violence in our country as it is without cops using gang-war tactics on every face-painted suburbanite they find skateboarding in a 7-11 parking lot.
Picture some 16 yr old juggalette getting in trouble for trespassing or stealing a candy bar. If her municipality deems juggalos a gang, then her ICP t-shirt means her petty crime is "gang related". That goes in her file forever and is considered at sentencing. It sounds silly but that's how these things work.
Let's not forget that the FBI gives free reign to consider anti-war protestors as "potential terrorists", enabling them to be locked up for days without charge. It's all part of the same culture of American law enforcement's disproportionate response to even the slightest anti-authoritarian display.
Juggalos are obnoxious, and the low-hanging fruit of music fandom, but they are categorically *not* a gang. I hope this goes before a judge, and I hope ICP wins. The FBI needs to be held accountable for turning normal citizens into enemies of the state.
(yeah I just called juggalos "normal citizens")
Are you still posting? You haven't counted your words, fine -- though I notice you're rather obsessive about tallying your up/down votes -- but surely you've noticed that you're responsible for over half of the text in this comments section, right? Maybe it's time to hang back a bit. You've expressed yourself sufficiently, and your continued histrionics aren't making anybody like you any better.
You're being downvoted because your reference to China has no logical connection to anything, and because everyone thinks it's amusing to imagine smoke pouring out of your ears as you type 2,000 words into these comment boxes in between reloading Pick-Up Artist message boards in a separate tab.
I don't think anyone had a problem singing along with Whitney's much catchier, gender-specific version.
The use of "you" instead of "him" is really annoying in this version because the song is already being sung to a different "you". The whole point of the lyric is that the speaker is talking to a THIRD person about the man the speaker is in love with. The last line of the chorus -- "I'm asking you because you know about these things" -- makes no sense if "you" is the man the song is about.
I think people would be a bit more sympathetic if this were Morrissey's first, or even tenth, cycle of cancellation followed by mock-regret followed by histrionic defensiveness toward doubters. As it stands, if you actually buy tickets to a Morrissey show in 2014, you are a mark.
Hey, interesting artists, please get the fuck off social media. It's killing everything that used to be fun about following popular music. Whatever mystique you create by singing with your back to the camera evaporates pretty quickly when you become a public Yelp troll.
So now Robin Thicke is putting out a maudlin, cringe-inducingly straightforward album about his divorce? He's really not working very hard at deflecting the Poor Man's Marvin Gaye label, is he?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here,_My_Dear
I appreciate Grace's opinion on this. People don't always have to agree, and that disagreement doesn't always have to be a permanent battle line.
Personally I think it's distastefully ignorant and sanctimonious to say Jamaican teenagers don't have access to music videos or Spider-Man movies. It's like she thinks the entire non-white world is a Somalian tent camp and kids have nothing but sticks to entertain themselves. They have Youtube in Jamaica, dude.
By the way, is there any more useless word in modern discourse than "problematic"? It's just completely meaningless, doesn't impart any useful information about the thing being discussed, and is a way for people on a high horse to put others on the defensive without actually offering a cogent point of their own.
It's never a classy move to complain to millions of people about the high fives you didn't get from your ex, who has an anxiety disorder. Jack should stick to his mysterious Wonka persona, which is a lot more likeable than the man behind it.
He's 100% right about bands that only play "weird obscure b-sides" and think "the audience is an imposition on their sacred creative act". Only trouble is, Radiohead categorically is not one of them.
I've seen them a couple of times, plus seen them on TV and read setlists from shows, and they always play a ton of fan favorites. True enough that they don't play too much stuff they wrote 20-25 years ago, but that's kinda normal, isn't it? It's not like they're coming out and doing a 45 minute version of a King of Limbs b-side and then refusing to do an encore.
A surprisingly good piece. I think you walk away with a lot of respect for both guys, though I'm sure the anti-rap crowd will see this as a "Why can't they all be No Malice?" op-ed. I don't see any way to enlighten those people about just how much talent these two possess, so I'm actually glad CNN didn't waste a bunch of time trying to push the "rap is street poetry" angle. The reporter is a bit cringeworthy when he tries to sound like he's down, but that's par for the course on this kind of thing.
To be honest, I had written Malice's conversion off as typical too-much-fame kookiness, but I think those were just my own prejudices coming to bear. The man has clearly thought long and hard about his place in the world, and is doing what he feels is right.
Thanks for being the only music writer I've read to give an accurate account of John Lennon's actual personality, which in no way resembles the way he is talked about or depicted. For someone like me who was born in the early 80s, it came as a bit of a shock to actually review full-length interview footage with the man and see how unkind and cynically he could be, and how completely vapid his politics were.
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