Critics say the lines are in essence a how to manual for robbing Chinese and other Asian American homes and businesses. Protest organizers have already successfully gotten YouTube to remove the video. They have circulated a petition to ban the song from public media and have YG investigated by federal authorities. The petition has already garnered the necessary 100,000 signatures for it to go before the Obama administration.
“I do believe this was a hate crime,” Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen told reporters. The comments were applauded by observers glad to see authorities not mincing words when talking about the mass shooting. The FBI and the Department of Justice quickly announced that they have opened up a hate crime investigation for the shooting. The only issue is: South Carolina is one of only five states in the nation that doesn’t have a hate crime law on its books.
Images, and the words that oftentimes accompany them, have a tendency to take on lives of their own. The mustache sported so famously by Hitler represents many things. It represents fear, violence, extermination, destruction, hate. The very fact that someone would use an image as loaded as that of Hitler to make a statement about an economic policy is irresponsible. That being said, the policies born from economic theories have had huge impacts on the lives of millions upon millions of people.
If Boseman wins a Golden Globe for his performance (he is nominated for best actor in a drama), some will believe it is out of sympathy. That thought should be dispelled now, as it diminishes his incredible work. In “Ma Rainey,” based on the like-titled August Wilson play, Boseman plays Levee Green, a trumpet player in a music world where black artists are mercilessly abused. Although capable of writing and playing with the best, Levee is relegated to backing Ma Rainey (Viola Davis, also nominated for a Globe), a black diva who has achieved enough fame and success to hold sway over white record producers.
At the same time, wood—in its “original” state as trees—has been adversely affected by global climate change and other environmental factors. This has led to wildfires of unprecedented fury and reach, including the megagires in Australia in 2009 that generated an inferno of hellish proportions, eventually covering more than 100 million acres. What comes across most vividly in this panoramic study of wood is Roland Ennos’s love of the subject.
