If you are like me and get all your "news" from snatches of overheard conversation and the links at the top of your inbox, you may or may not have seen Karl Rove walk it out at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner. For those who missed it, peep game:
Whether it's Tom Cruise's appearance on BET or K-Fed's "Popozao" studio session, there's always something knocking about the Inter-web to make white people seem like huge bamas. Indeed, the so-called "democracy" that is user-generated video basically just succeeds in making the world look incredibly ignorant. But that's a subject for another time, another blog…
A few things that I find notable about the "Rapping Rove" clip:
- According to the Garment District, looking "tuxedo fresh" is still the lick no matter what. Unfortunately, I am not sure if that is just an expression or if it applies to the actual wearing of tuxedos.
- Despite his uncouth stylings, the way Karl growls "MC Rove" suggests that he might actually listen to DMX.
- Rove text messages like he's operating a light saber. Why does he associate hip-hop with text-messaging? That strikes me as strange. More strange is that he was probably BlackBerry messaging "I have huge boner" to a White House page like his boy Mark Foley.
- The lone black guy on stage does not look all at all comfortable. Do Nas and Jay know that this is what it means to be a Black Republican?
- His flow may be lacking, but on the real, Brad Sherwood comes off the dome better than any contestant on the "White Rapper Show."
I would give Rove the benefit of the doubt since I think I too would look like a bama if someone asked me to do a "hip-hop dance" in front of some journalists while some comedian rapped about me. But then again, I did not fix an election and help orchestrate a Reign of Terror. Plus, I would never go to a Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner in the first place because those fools don't invite BallerStatus.com writers. Get with the times and recognize the next generation, people! If Ballerstatus were invited, the party would get cracking and Nick Cannon would mercilessly roast some politicians. It would be completely hilarious!
While it is always amusing to watch people act like assholes, there is something disconcerting about the people who run the government and the people who run the press getting together in a room to laugh about the war and lampoon subcultures they don't understand. Before the "dance," Rove jokes about collecting stamps and "ripping the tops [heads] off animals"—don't say the rabbit's topless, say the titties is out! His delivery of these jokes can only be described as "anti-social," making him sound like the political equivalent of Master (Norman) Bates from Psycho, leering through CCTV cameras at his next victim while his dead mother (Bush) sits up in the mansion (White House).
Of course, there are a lot of other issues here: What is the joke, really? It doesn't seem like Rove wants to be "down," he is just insane. Is the line "That's right, he can't be beat, because he's so white from his head to his feet" a meaningless ad hoc quip or is it a loaded statement? Is it Rove's whiteness that makes him antithetical to hip-hop, or the fact that he is the brains behind a regime that, according to Kanye West, hates black people?
Who knows. It is easy to get carried away with these type of things, and it seems ironic that the press managed to orchestrate a media frenzy on the one night when they knew they'd be busy going to dinner instead of watching the wires. But horror flicks and politics aside, it is just disappointing that people are so lazy and uncreative that "middle-aged white man plus rap" is still a comic formula. If hip-hop is not dead, these are the people who can kill it.
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