Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Stanley Crouch

Via Media Minded

Stanley Crouch says a controversial article led to a dismissal from Jazz Times.

Like MM i like Crouch's essays alot. He is bold and blustery and often wrong. But he is usually interesting, and fair-minded. It's too bad that several of his collections are out of print.

IMO the article did not give clear picture of his thinking. This is from the All American Skin Game:

In this climate, obnoxious, vulgar and anti-social behavior has been confused with black authenticity. This has led to blaxploitation in politics, in higher education, and in art-- to Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, and the Black Panthers, to black students at San Francisco State demanding that pimps be recruited to teach psychology classes, to the least inventive and most offensive work of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy; to the angry cartoonish coons of Spike Lee and the flat misogynist gutter verse of Ice-T and racist rap groups like Public Enemy.

And this is from Always in Pursuit:

the way feminists turned up their noses at the charges against Bill Clinton made by Paula Jones or joked about her 'white trash' looks and manner or failed to attack those who judged he merits on class and taste. I guess this means that if one is lower ranked or lower born abuse is not abuse, a kiss is not a kiss. Seems like uncolorized plantation logic to me.

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