Post #201, Pataki Vetoes minimum wage increase, and a few more songs

The last post was number 200, so belated happy 200th post to The Problem Of Leisure blog. Hopefully the state legislature will, as phoebe suggests, override governor pataki's veto, and hopefully said veto will mean that come the next election, Dennis Rivera of District 1199 and the eladership of other progressive unions who recognize that the fate of the labor movement and that of unorganized low-wage workers are inexorably linked, won't be backing Pataki anymore, not even for the amazing health insurance and card check legislation they won last time around. With that taken care of (and by the way, if you haven't seen either Spider-Man 2 or Metallica:Some Kind Of Monster yet, i highly recommend both,) i guess it's time to continue with my Rosenberg-inspired protest soundtrack.



13.Song number thirteen is yet another song by the Clash. Combat Rock's "Rock The Casbah" offers a subtle but explicit critique of european colonialism and oil nationalism in the middle east, as well as enduring conflicts between a secular and westernized elite and popular religion and fundamentalist revolt, which can speak, more than two decades later, not simply to the chaos and insanity of the neoconservative project of remaking southwest asia, but also its scope and importance to the neocon imperial global imaginary. The song's video featured armadillos, oil derricks, rabbis with peyesses(sp?) and Arabs with Kaffiyehs (the latter two fratronizing in the front seat of a "brand new cadillac.") The terror the Bush administration has unleashed upon the world which overwhelmingly opposed its war may prove to be no less as frenetic, and, indeed, moreso.



14.and 15.For similar reasons, Outkast's "Bombs over Baghdad" deserves a spot on the compilation. One of SpeakerBoxxx's best tracks, Big Boi's polemic against Bush's "War" on iraqis and on african americans was probably heard by more people this year than any other song on this list thus far, with the possible exception of Rock The Casbah. But not only has it reached a wide audience, it's also a great antiwar song and a keen analysis of the world as managed by the bush doctrine, and the agency of black cultural producers in confronting the homeland security state.

W-A-Rrah, there'll be no tomorrow but sorrow

and horror will follow the hollow hearts battle for dollars

Politicians, modern day magicians

Physicians of death, more health care for poor health

Who makin us ill, they makin us kill

That's makin me spill my guts (chill Big, lay in the cut)

For what? I refuse to sit in the backseat and get handled

Like I do nuttin all day but sit around watch the Cartoon Channel

I rap about, the Presidential election and the scandal

that followed, and we all watched the nation, as it swallowed

and chalked it up, basically America you got FUCKED

The media shucked and jived now we stuck - damn!

16.Cheap Trick, "I Want You To Want Me." Unlike in "Surrender," Nielsen et al. do not here caution the song's object to not "give [her](?)self away" to the power of male desire, but instead simply articulate their need for adulation. This seems an apt metaphor of they ways in which both Bush and Kerry construct their respective electorates in ways which render them subject, delimited, their abilities to contest and reconfigure the terms of their relationship to the candidate curbed by desperation and fear. Disagreement is welcome.



17.Reflection Eternal featuring Mos Def: "This Means You." At the end of next month, the republicans will converge upon New York City. This is a post giuliani New York, a new york visibly altered by the neoliberal initiatives of the bllomberg administration. Perhaps no other song describes the vast changes to my hometown over the last decade or so than this track of 2000's Reflection Eternal/Train Of Thought. Mos Def's verse is unyielding.

Things changed in New York, type strange in New York

Forty-Deuce don't look the same in New York

Just politics, tricks and big games in New York

Switched trains a writer can't get fame in New York

Internet and Wall Street got paid in New York

Poor folks and workin class got slayed in New York

Even still, everyday they make weight in New York

Flashlights lookin for a brighter day in New York

In New York they say it's - red hot

Will the temperature ease up? Black I guess not

It's multi-lane traffic, no sign for rest stops

No corner breaks, put on your gloves and just box

No dance school to teach you to wop and bus stop

Better get up in the booth, hop up and just rock

If you think it's like that, it's not so just stop

All mankind time runnin down on one watch, just watch

or, as Big Boi puts it, "Tic Tic Boom."

18. Jadakiss featuring Anthony Hamilton, "Why." A powerful track which asks a series of questions essential to the conflicts the political contest hinges upon and those it seeks to erase.