Lowered Expectations (aka Your Favourite Artist isn't that Smart)

The first few years of college are a transformative period in every young person’s life. It’s there we’re exposed to thousands of people roughly the same age as us, all having relatively similar experiences in areas like dating and academic pursuits. I remember my first and second years in particular as eye-opening with regards to the latter. I went to many lectures outside of my course-required ones and became exposed to different intellectuals.

Being on the left of the political spectrum, I was naturally drawn to the works of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader and Naomi Klein. At the time I thought their work was revolutionary. They somehow knew exactly how to say what I was feeling vis-à-vis capitalism, American foreign policy, colonialism, etc.

My profs too would have an influence on my political thinking, and through their lectures, tutorials and assigned reading, my views on these subjects would broaden and expand. The somewhat narrow view I adopted from the academics listed above would go through many changes. I grew somewhat critical of Chomsky, Klein and others, largely because they seemed to focus all their criticisms within a very confining box. America is bad, capitalism is worse, and the only way to solve the world’s problems is through socialism or anarchism.

As critical as I am of Klein et al., I’m even more critical and disappointed by artists whom I admired so much in the past for their political views. Mos Def draws my ire especially. When he released his solo debut “Black On Both Sides” in 1999, it was like a huge revelation. I always liked progressive hip hop before, but since its decline in the early-90’s, very few rappers were out there on the progressive tip. But Mos (along with Black Star partner Talib Kweli) rejuvenated the genre and put out some cutting verses aimed squarely at issues of poverty, racism, cultural appropriation, and politics, particularly on songs like “New World Water,” “Mr. Nigga” and “Mathematics.”

Mos’ politically-charged lyrics and activism, however, lost sway in the 00’s, not only because his music grew stale, but because the man himself seemed to be less knowledgeable of the subjects he was attacking than originally thought. This became apparent to me after watching his ridiculous appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher.

While it’s obvious he’s out of his depth arguing against the likes of Ivy-league scholars like Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie, his lack of understanding of the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, and refusal to acknowledge their role in 9/11, smacks of deliberate ignorance. It’s like he’s going out of his way not to believe that Osama Bin-Laden is a terrorist.

I don’t deny Mos’ assertion that he grew up poor in a tough section of Brooklyn, but he’s been a star for most of his life, and no doubt accumulated enough money to get himself an education at one of America’s many top universities if he wanted to. But even if he chose not to go along that path, he should still at least do a better job of staying informed if he’s going to speak out on such complicated subjects like the war on terror.

Along with Mos Def, I have to mention Aaron McGruder, the cartoonist behind the hilarious comic strip The Boondocks. This clever strip about two black kids being raised by their grandfather in the white suburbs touches on plenty of taboo subjects, from the war on Iraq, to the R. Kelly trial. I loved reading The Boondocks and thought the satire was really on-point most of the time. But reading McGruder in interviews, he comes off as knowledgeable as a first year poli sci major.

A lot of folks would argue that no matter what our disagreements are internally, if we're attacked from the outside, we have to come together and support the current administration even if we have problems with it. How do you respond to that argument?

I don't think that's true. Look, they're telling us these people are bad because they hate us, and they hate our way of life. And they hate our way of life because they hate freedom, and they hate the fact that we have freely elected officials. This is what the president said. Well, he wasn't elected! We really have to think about that. Considering that people around the world, other people, people "over there," "bad" people will always try to do bad things, that's kind of outside of your control. The only thing you can be responsible for is what goes on here. The American people have no control over what the military does. We have no say in American foreign policy. None. The only thing we can exercise some will on is what happens here domestically. So I think the focus is wrong.

I don't think the American people should be worried at all about Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or anybody, because our government is going to do what it wants to do to them regardless of what we want them to do or not. All we can control is what happens here. And what happened here is what allowed those attacks to take place. The intelligence community failed. Security failed. The military failed. Everybody failed at the same time. I can be really nice to them and say, "You guys really messed up and need to check yourself." Or I could be not nice and say, "You know, I don't think it's really probable that all the systems can fail at the same time, which means something far more insidious took place." People are really afraid to get into that.

Are you suggesting some collusion on the part of our government in the Sept. 11 attacks?

I'm not suggesting that. I'm saying I'm not going there. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're idiots, and not that they had something far more nefarious in mind. However, history does teach us that the government has done things like that before, particularly with Pearl Harbor, where there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that [FDR] was aware of it and lured the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. He literally left it undefended. There's some new evidence that has just come out about the CIA planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in the '60s and how they were going to set up Castro for it in order to get America behind a war in Cuba. That's not even a conspiracy theory. The CIA drew up the plans, even though it never happened. So if I were to go that route, I wouldn't be crazy. But I'm not going to go that route. I'm just going to say that the American people need to be concerned about what happens here. Forget what happens overseas. That's out of your control. Be concerned with what happens here. Because honestly, if our game is tight here, we can't be attacked. If our intelligence community and airports and military are doing what they're supposed to do, then we should be relatively OK.

I suppose artists aren’t necessarily supposed to be big wells of knowledge, and their politics, as ideological as it may be, might make their art more provocative. But it serves as a bit of a letdown when you think about how much influence their opinions had on you, and all the more disappointing when they're taken down a peg.