Today At Big Think: Sean Hannity's Sucker MC Obsession With Common

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Sean Hannity's Sucker MC Obsession With Common



This fake controversy about the rapper Common and his invitation to a White House poetry reading had me thinking about “Sucker M.C.’s”, an old rap song by RUN-DMC. Sean Hannity has proved once and for all that he is a real Sucker M.C., a “sad face clown” who “just ain’t right.” To Hannity’s core Fox News audience, the kind of people who delight in listening to him decry subversive Negro madness, this manufactured controversy lines right up with what they want to believe about African Americans.

But most of my mulling has not been about Hannity and his Hee Haw Posse of attack dog guests over at “We Wish We Were A Real News Channel”, who will be sputtering and muttering about a Christian vegetarian pro-life rapper from Chicago for the next six weeks, a rapper whose biggest group of supporters are white and college educated. Some of my mulling has taken place because unlike most of the general public, I actually go to real live poetry readings from time to time, the kind that feature poets no one has heard of yet. And some of my mulling has taken place because I grew up on rap music, and have often wondered, at various junctures during my early adulthood, what it would have been like to try my hand at rapping for a living.



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Today At Big Think: You Are More Likely To Drown Than Die From A Terrorist Attack

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

You Are More Likely To Drown Than Die From A Terrorist Attack



A friend of mine sent me a text message yesterday. “Should we be worried about retaliation?” I was in the middle of something, so I gave her a one word reply. “Yep.”

It wasn’t until later that I thought about the level of anxiety that the public is feeling right now. So even though I need to give some topics other than the Osama bin Laden whirlwind some attention this week, I've decided that stuff can wait another day while I try to come up with a more satisfying answer.

My first inclination is to tell my friend that if she were to apply the laws of probability, as boring and as predictable as they are, to the likelihood of her or her loved ones being the victims of a retaliatory terrorist act, she would find out that she is more likely to:

-- You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack

-- You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack

--You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack

-- You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack

-- You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack

--You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack

--You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack

EXCERPT SOURCE: News Blaze



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Today At Big Think: “If Obama Gets Bin Laden They Will Forget He’s Black”

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

“If Obama Gets Bin Laden They Will Forget He’s Black”



I heard about the death of Osama Bin Laden the same way a lot of other people across the country did – while I was doing something else on a Sunday night other than watching cable news on TV. In fact, I was sitting outside, finishing off a mediocre but still satisfying stogie while in the midst of firing up my trusty dusty laptop when S. opened the door, all ready for bed with her curlers in her hair, and said “they killed bin Laden.”

It took me a few moments after she had closed the door to process everything she’d said. Then I sat the laptop down, laid my cigar down gently and went into the house to get the phone, for the words my buddy had uttered back in the spring of 2009, soon after the death threats against President Obama had escalated and the Tea Party had been born, came back to me.

“…come on man…I think if he gets bin Laden they will forget he’s black.”




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BigThink.com is a global forum connecting people and ideas.

You can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers, movers and shakers, and, best of all, respond in kind. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or throw your own question or idea into the ring.