Appropriators

How It's Done in America Today.

I can't help notice the casual way art is apporopriated in this society. The top recording "hits" now are by clueless white girls like Christina Aguilera singing black; exact duplications of hip-hop without a trace of originality or personality added. (Which even Madonna managed.) Who can blame blacks for believing the general society wants them exterminated? (The message seems to be: why put black faces on the Affluent Class's video screens when they can be replaced with idiotic robotic white stand-ins?)

(Fact is underclass blacks ARE considered obsolete, are on the verge of economic extinction, the white working class not far behind them. Next: major segments of the middle class, on the road toward a country of slaves and aristocrats.)

The battle against appropriation is what the ULA's "Howl" protest was about-- fighting against literary aristocrats casually co-opting the Beat stance and name. We saw their fraudulence up close. If the elegantly dressed co-optors had a sliver of reality to them, they would have joined our outdoor mic, instead of scurrying quickly inside. Their behavior showed a total lack of confidence. They have a gigantic cultural establishment of boards, foundations, conglomerates: MONEY behind them, but they have no balls; not a trace of belief in their voices or in their own intrinsic reality as poets and writers. They know better than anyone else their fraudulence-- that their towering impressive edifice of Literature is made of cardboard.