In addition to helping out on The FNGTAC, Alex works as a music journalist for whomever will pay him to do so (and a few people who won’t). His most recent interview for MSN Music has a bit of an FNGTAC connection—we’ve discussed Tyler, the Creator and GOLF WANG a few times on the show so we thought you may want to take a look at the results of the FNGTAC meeting up with OFWGKTA officially. Not included in the interview was this bit of text from the very beginning of the call:

Publicist: [to Odd Future] Guys, we have Alex Thornton from MSN on the line.

Alex: [to Odd Future] Hey, guys—how’s it going?

Tyler: [to no one in particular] Alex wants to fuck me in the ass.

And with that, the “conversation” began. Good times!

As you probably heard on our last episode, Kamau is finally able to divulge that secret project he and Vernon have alluded to a few times over the months. Rather than going into details myself, I’ll link you to this announcement on a little site called The Huffington Post.

We love you, FX.

This weekend, the US government officially dedicated the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on The National Mall in D.C. The project was spearheaded by members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and, as you’ll read about in this article on CNN, originally conceived by George Sealey (and his wife Pauline) thirty years ago. What you won’t read in the article, however, is that George is my grandfather and is therefore literally FNGTAG family.

I’m only a year or two older than the idea itself, so for my entire life, I heard my grandfather and his brothers talk about the legal wrangling and fund raising that had to go into this project and as you’d probably assume, it was no easy feat. Almost all of the decades-long project was simply spent trying to get the memorial approved and funded, and while my grandfather died a few years ago before getting to see it dedicated, he did at least live long enough to see it through to the construction phase and know that his years of work eventually paid off.

Obviously we take no credit, but I’m sure I can speak for Vernon and Kamau when I say that we’re proud to have some small connection to this permanent part of D.C.’s famous collection of monuments, especially one so appropriate to what we do here. The next time you’re in the area, definitely make sure to stop by.

-Alex

The United States is a country that was built on protest, created laws to protect it, and has since seen it at the center of huge and important sociopolitical change. We all grew up hearing the legends of Paul Revere, marveling at Susan B. Anthony coins mixed in with out spare change, and seeing footage from lunch-counter sit-ins and bus boycotts, all the while absorbing the sense of pride and accomplishment for what those protesters did. Unfortunately however, protests like the current “Occupy Wall St.” movement seem to have forgotten the thing that all those famous protesters had to make made their efforts significant—a purpose.

As Twitter buzzed with excitement when this all started, I went to the usual sources of national news to see what Occupy Wall St. was actually about. Based on the tweets, there was a lot of general talk of “greed” and “corporations” and how big banks were hurting the country but not much more. It all sounded like the typical entry-level politics of any Freshman liberal arts student learning what money is for the first time, but I assumed that these blanket statements were just 140-character shorthand for something more specific. As it would turn out, they were not.

Reading through reports coming out of CNN, NPR, The Huffington Post and other seemingly sympathetic news outlets, I struggled to find any actual centralized theme, largely due to the fact that the protest itself has no real organization or leadership (a fact that the protesters themselves seem proud of but has ultimately been to their detriment). Again, many man-on-the-street interviews gave voice to people who took issue with corporate greed, but none seemed to have anything deeper than that.

What corporations specifically were the problems? What actually constitutes “greed” and what did anyone propose to do about it? What exactly did these protesters hope to see happen as a result of their efforts? What impact are those efforts even having that might incite change? Who are they calling on to actually make those changes and how? If anyone knew, they certainly weren’t telling. Of course, these questions can’t easily be answered because they’re all far too broad and situational to really be summed up in a concise manner, but I’m not sure anyone at these protests actually understands that or cares.

Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of reasons to complain about the effects of capitalism on our society, but so-called Evil Corporations don’t exist without someone purchasing their products—we all have our roles in the current financial ecosystem. It simply isn’t possible to remove “corporations” as a concept and still live the way that we’ve all become accustomed to, so if that’s the occupiers’ goal, then they’re wasting their time and everyone else’s by trying to demand a simple solution to a very, very complex problem.

Judging by the number of Nike sneakers, Levi’s jeans and Apple iPods strewn throughout the crowds of protesters, large corporations obviously play some role in these protesters’ lives, so again, which corporations are we talking about here? Those Guy Fawkes masks that people are so fond of clearly aren’t hand made, so they must’ve been purchased somewhere. Do small business owners count? After all, if Nike disappears tomorrow and is replaced by a thousand small companies, one of them will still eventually grow to Nike’s size and the cycle will continue. Does that make Joe Shoemaker greedy? If so, exactly whose fault is that?

What about the issues of corporate personhood that are raised by some of these protesters? On one hand, some complain about the idea that a corporation should have overarching rights and protections similar to individuals, but in the same act, accuse those corporations of having very human emotions like “evil” and “greed.”  Which is it? Again, this is an issue that needs some serious discussion, but not one that can be productively encapsulated by anything written on a cardboard sign.

For a protest to be successful, it needs to have a clear, specific purpose that people can form an opinion on: “we will keep doing _____ until _____” happens. More importantly, the consequence of the protest needs to actually affect the people who make decisions. Bus boycotts didn’t work because the stirring protests melted the hearts of racists, they worked because the financial impact of losing that many black customers eventually became too much to ignore. If the protesters’ assertion is that Evil Corporations only care about money, then tampering with that money is the obvious way to get results. Wearing a jester’s hat while shouting at the police about “those fat cats on Wall Street” is not.

The Occupy Wall St. (or LA or wherever) protests are aggravating to local law enforcement and get a lot of media attention but to what end? Many of these people are still tweeting about it on their pricey smartphones over one of The Big Three’s cellular networks an irony that seems to be lost on many despite its seemingly obvious nature. While it’s hard to get a clear picture of which corporations are being branded as evil and which are acceptable, it is clear that neither is losing or making any money over this situation so they don’t really care.

Things do need to change and the American people are ultimately going to have to be the ones to do the changing. That said, Occupy Wall Street won’t change anything because of the disorganized activities and unclear desires of it’s participants. The only thing that seems truly important to a large number of those participants is the false sense of nobility that hash-tagging a tweet with “#OccupyWallSt” seems to afford them. This protest is the physical equivalent to actors wearing red ribbons at award shows to fight AIDS—a nice sentiment, but one that almost instantly outlives its debatable usefulness.

To put it bluntly, Occupy Wall St. is The Tea Party for Democrats: a lot of sound and fury from scared, angry people that will never amount to anything because everyone is more focused on pointing out perceived problems than providing solutions. They’re both groups of citizens who call themselves disenfranchised, but really only because it’s a convenient excuse to avoid learning how government actually works. You can replace the gun-wielding rednecks with iPad-wielding hipsters but the impact is the same—nothing. Enjoy your Facebook sit-ins if you like, but do you really remember anything that people were Tweeting about a year ago? Probably not, and at the rate it’s going right now, “Occupy Wall St.” will have the exact same legacy.

-Alex

First, allow me to adress some issues: yes, we’re calling what (I think) are technically Episodes 28-31 “Episode 25″ and yes, three of the “25th Episodes” were posted before this site update. Well, we like to do things a little different around these parts and have decided that the FNGTAC doesn’t subscribe to your totalitarian notions of counting and the passage of time. We rock in the free world, man.

The good news is that whatever you want to call these episodes, they’re great. Naturally, we start off with Vernon and Kamau dissecting the news of the day in their usual insightful fashion, but afterwards, we have a few guests stop by. First up is an interview with the incomparable Alfre Woodard conducted by our new Field Negro Operative, Baron Vaughn. You may remember Baron from an earlier interview he gave with Kamau; we’ve since made him an official part of the team as an F.N.O. and he has definitely delivered the goods for his first assignment.

After that, we have two more interviews that Kamau conducted in Edinburgh with Australain comic Aamer Rahman and British comic Ava Vidal. Besides being all around funny people, Aamer and Ava are international counterparts of sorts to our own W. Kamau Bell due to their willingness to speak on real issues of society and politics in their work. American audiences may not be familiar with either artists as of yet, but I promise you’ll want to hear more after these interviews.

Parts 1-3 are already up and Part 4 will be here soon, so make sure to drop by iTunes and subscribe to get them all.

-Alex

Katt Williams has been under fire for comments he recently made on stage that have been called racist and anti-Mexican, and while Katt himself hasn’t been shy about commenting on the situation, Vernon and Kamau naturally had to touch upon the subject—if the FNGTAC doesn’t talk about a performer dealing with issues of race and politics, then what has this all been for?

Of course, the conversation is aout far more than Katt Williams and his specific “questionable” decisions, leading The Dynamic Duo through a lengthy discussion that couldn’t be contained in just one episode. Head over to iTunes and download both Episode 24, “Star Spangled Krazy Katt,” and its B-side, “Return of the Katt.”

-Alex

Continuing on with the Jazz talk from Episode 23, take a listen to The Jazz Session, the informative and well-produced podcast from FNGTAC listener Jason Crane. It’s a wonder that he even finds the time check in with us since he’s obviously a busy man: Jazz Session just passed it’s 300th Episode. Wow.

For those of us who aren’t well acquainted with the current Jazz landscape, Jason’s show is a welcome alternative to the (often true) stereotype of the stuffy old guy on an obscure AM station who only plays records for his own amusement. Jason has fun, but actually brings the rest of us along with him to make a show that’s informative but accesible.

It’ll take time to become an expert, but in the meantime, you’ll definitely have some smart-sounding stuff to say at a cocktail party by ripping off bits from The Jazz Session so visit Jason’s site and subscribe on iTunes today.

-Alex

“To mark guitar giant Vernon Reid’s 53rd birthday, I’m posting the uncut proceedings of a DownBeat Blindfold Test that he sat for a few years back on the occasion of the release of Birthright, an unaccompanied Ulmer recording that he produced, following the ensemble dates Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions (2001) and No Escape from the Blues: The Electric Lady Sessions (2003).”

An entertaining read for fans of jazz and Vernon Reid alike so take a look!

-Alex (via listener Jason Crane)

After Vernon and Kamau discussed Steve Harvey’s recent criticism of Cornel West and Tavis Smiley’s recent tour, listener Jon left his thoughts on the subject in the comments section:

“Listened to #22, as usual, I love your discourse around social issues. I think you both have excellent points to make around key issues. This is why I was disappointed to see the issue of Tavis Smiley & Cornel West’s poverty tour be glossed over.

You guys described it as an ‘Obama Hate Tour’ and played a clip of Steve Harvey calling them out for not speaking out against other administrations. My question is, if a group of people decide to give up time and resources to travel around the country and spotlight the needs of the poor, why do they have to prove themselves by citing a track record several administrations and a couple decades long? If you want to help the poor, can’t you just help the poor? Especially in a climate where the poor are demonized (see the Aug 18 episode of Jon Stewart for an immediate example).

There are lots of ways Obama gets hated on that are very obvious (see Jon Stewart Aug 17). I don’t think that this is one of them. I’d encourage you to listen to the Smiley & West podcast for Aug 19 where they chronicle their journey. These guys are trying to spotlight the issues of your nation. I’d suggest you give them an ear before you ‘throw stones and ask questions later’ – the very kind of criticism you gave during this podcast.

I really enjoy your work. That is why I’m writing.“

Just to make sure Jon’s points didn’t go unnoticed, I thought I’d address them here instead. I can’t speak for Kamau and Vernon, but allow me to provide some elaboration on why many people, including myself, have been critical of Cornel West and Tavis Smiley—I encourage Jon or anyone else to comment after reading to see if we can get to the bottom of this:

To begin with, I feel that it gives the Poverty Tour too much credit to describe it as “giv[ing] up time and resources to travel around the country and spotlight the needs of the poor.” I can’t really know what’s going on in the minds of either man, but based on their past and present behavior, I find it hard to believe that their intentions are so pure.

To say that West and Smiley are giving up time and resources isn’t really accurate: both men travel around holding speaking engagements regularly because it’s a large part of what their careers entail. They’re not “giving up” anything because, since both men quite literally trade in media attention, they’re getting plenty out of the transaction. I don’t fault them for that—it’s just how the world works when you’re in their lines of work—but with that information in mind, I then have to look more deeply at their motivation than I would if a school teacher or clergyman took up the same task. That question of motivation is where I start to have problems with West and Smiley.

Both men have personal issues with President Obama and both have been fairly critical of him through his entire term. In both cases, the criticism started shortly after incidents where they felt “snubbed” by Obama and his team, calling into question why they’ve chosen now of all times to “spotlight” these issues. Poverty is a problem that has existed for as long as humans have had the concept of currency, so if the tour is set up to fight poverty, why are they mostly just fighting Barack Obama?

Why during election season? Why not two years ago or, even better, during previous administrations where better economic climates made it far easier for the middle class to ignore the problems of the impoverished? Blaming a president for poverty is a logical fallacy to begin with, so the fact that their idea of “helping the poor” has mostly taken the form of complaining about Obama shows that Smiley and West frankly aren’t thinking about the issue deeply enough to have any real value in the discussion.

What exactly are they actually accomplishing for the poor through this tour? They don’t seem to be raising money for any outreach programs or mobilizing any additional volunteers, simply arriving in a city, riling people up, talking to the local media and moving on. Who is this helping? One might say that they’re “raising awareness”—a common claim by people who want credit for helping without actually doing anything—but what person living in modern America is unaware of poverty? There are certainly plenty who chose not to care, but those people are not showing up to listen to a Cornel West or Tavis Smiley speak.

The economy has already done the job of making us all aware of poverty, so the money being spent on running that bus could have far more impact if allocated to any number related causes. Of course, what those causes actually are is more difficult to figure out, so West and Smiley have simply swept the topic aside and chosen a “solution” that best suits their own needs. It’s easy to point out problems but difficult to provide solutions, and West and Smiley seem more interested in the former than the latter.

I’ve found Tavis Smiley vexing for as long as I can remember, so ultimately, I’m inherently mistrustful of anything he does. Countless times, I’ve heard him on CNN, BET, PBS or HBO criticizing whomever is the popular straw-man of that moment while swinging his “views” around wildly to suit the audience he’s in front of. Like many modern political pundits, Smiley makes it his business to say provocative things in order to earn camera time and his credibility has been ruined after years and years of this behavior. Simply put, I don’t trust him now because I’ve never beed able to before and this tour fits right into his typical modus operandi. I’m all in favor of listening to what someone has to say before rushing to judgment, but I’ve heard more than enough of Tavis Smiley to feel comfortable in my opinions of him.

Cornel West, on the other hand, is a man who I would have once considered highly credible, but the fact that he’s fallen in with Smiley makes me question his logic as well. In his case, however, I feel that his intentions are less financially motivated and instead are driven by spite. We’ve seen the similar tantrums from other so-called “Black Leaders” in the past, and like Jesse Jackson before him, Cornel West strikes me as a man struggling with the idea of his own irrelevance in a changing world.

While the work of civil-rights era leadership is historically significant and racism still very much exists, the time of segregated water fountains and bus boycotts is long over. The difficulties that most modern Americans have with race are far too nuanced for grand gestures like marches and bombastic speeches to be of much help because changing the law has accomplished about as much as it can. Men like Jackson and West have been pushed to the side because their “old guard” ways have little use in the modern climate and they don’t like it. While Obama himself isn’t the catalyst for this change, he is highly symbolic of it and, as a result, has become a target for selfish, short-sighted men who always envisioned themselves as The Next Great Black Man.

Despite those years of struggle that made it possible for there to be a President Obama, now that the war is over—at least in the way West knows how to fight it—he’s the bitter vet who expected the parades to continue for as long as he was around to see them. What he fails to understand is that a freedom fighter’s main goal should be his own eventual irrelevance and that he should take satisfaction in the fact that at least some parts of the battle have been won. Instead, he releases embarrassingly out-of-touch rap albums and goes on tour with Tavis Smiley in order to keep himself at the center of attention, ultimately helping nobody and tarnishing what would have been an otherwise admirable legacy.

If West and Smiley want to help the poor, I’ll be glad to see them do it. Stirring the pot and pointing fingers, however, isn’t accomplishing anything but making us talk about them more. Their hustle is no different than tactics employed by the worst of The Right: taking advantage of uninformed poor people by convincing them that if they just vote against a specific list of politicians, all their problems will somehow be solved. When people are frustrated, they look for someone to blame and, if you can give them that, they’ll continue to listen to what you have to say no matter how little substance there actually is to the claim. West and Smiley are smart enough to know that and are using it to their advantage.

As Vernon mentioned in the episode, calling someone’s “blackness” into question is a slippery slope at best and a plainly racist premise at worst. With that said, it does seem counter-intuitive that a pair of men who would paint themselves as champions of black thought would be so quick to tear down Barack Obama, a man who has accomplished something that most of us thought impossible even while it was happening. They shouldn’t be expected to follow him over a cliff just because he’s black, but it does seem like they should at least be willing to leave him to his own devices since there’s no real indication that he has ill intent.

Cornel West and Tavis Smiley are not making the world a better place, they’re shouting into an echo-chamber. They’re participating in the worst kind of political theatre and manipulating uneducated or out-of-touch people with their celebrity. Is Steve Harvey right to bring the barbershop talk into the public? Suffice to say that’s an issue the black community has debated for decades, but just because he may have violated the code doesn’t mean that his anger is misplaced.

As for Kamau and Vernon, I’m sure they could have discussed the issue at a greater length, but there were plenty of other big stories this week and, frankly, it would be a little silly to devote more time to a pair of attention-seeking hucksters than the U.K. riots. If Smiley and West want to discuss the topic of poverty in a deep and nuanced way, I’ll gladly suggest that we return to the subject, but until they choose to stop glossing over real issues, there’s no need to do more than gloss over their opinions. They can carry on their vendetta just fine without us.

-Alex

P.S. I could go on for days about my distaste for Jon Stewart and his show but that’s another topic entirely. Either way, I wouldn’t go too far in taking him seriously either.