Did anyone see this last night?? I watched it, and gained even more respect for Chuck D.
Transcript:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: The storm didn‘t discriminate and neither will the recovery effort.
JESSE JACKSON, RAINBOW-PUSH COALITION: These are American citizens who have been abandoned essentially by our government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What really happened is that Mother Nature decided that we were going to get the most devastating storm that could ever hit America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have pushed us around from one place to the other. I feel like it‘s not right and I feel like something needs to be done about it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You got National Guard, state troopers, (INAUDIBLE). We‘ve been out here all night.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Chuck D is the leader and the founder of the legendary rap group Public Enemy. He now hosts a show on Air America radio every Sunday night. He‘s written and recorded a new song called “Hell no, we ain‘t all right.” It‘s critical of the Bush administration in its response to Hurricane Katrina. He joins us now from New York, Chuck D thanks a lot for coming on.
CHUCK D, FOUNDER, PUBLIC ENEMY: What‘s up, Tucker, how are you?
CARLSON: I‘m doing good. I just read your song, I read the lyrics, haven‘t heard it yet and I, you know, I agree with a lot of it. You make the point that the federal government was slow in coming to the aid of the gulf coast and that a lot of people are suffering. But you have all these references to race in here and racism that I don‘t think makes sense.
Let me just read one of them. “Racism in the news still one sided news saying whites find food, prey for the National Guard ready to shoot, cause them blacks loot.” The National Guard didn‘t shoot anybody. Maybe they should have shot people but they didn‘t, black or white, and I guess I just don‘t see the race angle in this. What do you mean by that?
CHUCK D: Well, when I write a song that‘s what songwriters do. I cover a whole history of the United States, so this negligence is just a reflection of what‘s been going on for the what hundreds of years. So, when I write a song I have to write as a songwriter to kind of like touch on historical perspective and see what we see today and say uh huh, see, there you go. The pictures don‘t lie.
CARLSON: But part—I guess why it kind of bothered me was you once described rap as the black CNN, meaning it‘s a source of news for black people and presumably people, black and white, who listen to your music and take it seriously, take the words seriously.
CHUCK D: Right.
CARLSON: And I think this just misrepresents what‘s happened. There were a lot of white victims of Hurricane Katrina, a lot of black, a lot of Indian victims. I just don‘t think there‘s an intrinsic race angle and it seems wrong for you to suggest there is.
CHUCK D: Let me tell you man when I look at New Orleans and one day I was looking at one news station, it could have been CNN, it could have been MSNBC, I forgot, it showed back how it used to be, remembering New Orleans and it showed like just a whole lot of white folks touring through New Orleans and, you know, that was admirable but the reflection on New Orleans is the fact that it‘s a black city. The majority is black, black mayor for the last two or three terms.
CARLSON: Yes.
CHUCK D: And for the first time you had a lot of Americans that didn‘t even know the makeup, the racial makeup of New Orleans when I know when I visited New Orleans it was just a disproportionate amount of poor people who just didn‘t get service by either the city, the state, or the country when it came down to figuring out what its needs were. Come on, the levee system going back to what, when was the levee system built?
CARLSON: Well, it was built hundreds of years ago and it‘s received...
CHUCK D: Hundreds of years ago.
CARLSON: It‘s received hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government in the past five years and it‘s still broke, which tells you something about the leadership in New Orleans.
CHUCK D: No, Tucker, listen.
CARLSON: But here‘s the point. Wait, but you make a great point. Hold on. You just said something really interesting. You said it‘s a black run city. It‘s had a black mayor for a long time and it has a heavily black city council. It‘s got a black chief of police. It‘s got a black Congressman. So, why is it necessarily the result of white racism when the people of that city aren‘t served by their leaders who are black?
CHUCK D: Because when they yell loud enough they‘re not heard. I mean, look, if Hoover Dam could stop the raging Colorado River, I‘m pretty sure that they could have came along with a strong enough levee system to stop Lake Pontchartrain.
But now, you know, here‘s the fears. The fears where racism really turns its ugly head on what‘s going to happen to New Orleans, (INAUDIBLE), probably the black people that have moved out probably won‘t be able to afford to get back in and New Orleans, the new New Orleans is fears that it will probably be one of the most magnificent cities and probably will be protected against a hurricane ten.
CARLSON; Well, but hold on. I just don‘t—I‘m sorry to get hung up on one thing but you keep accusing Bush of racism or applying that Bush is a racist and...
CHUCK D: No, I will have to echo Kanye West‘s statement.
CARLSON: OK that Bush hates black people or whatever.
CHUCK D: No, no.
CARLSON: But wait a second.
CHUCK D: Kanye West didn‘t say hate.
CARLSON: What about the—what about the...
CHUCK D: Wait, wait, wait, Tucker.
CARLSON: Doesn‘t like black people.
CHUCK D: No, he didn‘t say doesn‘t like.
CARLSON: What did he say?
CHUCK D: He said doesn‘t care, does not care for black people.
CARLSON: If you don‘t care about—if you don‘t care about people who are dying...
CHUCK D: If the media makes the mistake...
CARLSON: ...you hate them. I mean it‘s the same thing. You don‘t care about people who are suffering in New Orleans you‘re a hater in my view.
CHUCK D: No, you can‘t say it‘s the same thing. It would be like, you know, you just don‘t acknowledge them and you kind of feel like they are not even there and often black people in this country feel that, you know, unless our back is up against the wall that we‘re not acknowledged at all.
CARLSON: Well I...
CHUCK D: As a matter of fact, there‘s another...
CARLSON: I know people feel that way but it‘s such a terrible way to feel that I‘m sorry that you‘re perpetuating that feeling by spreading stuff that isn‘t true like what you just said.
CHUCK D: Tucker, Tucker, listen here. There‘s a tenth anniversary of the Million Man March coming up called the Millions More Movement March October 16th to deal with a lot of issues. There‘s still not enough acknowledgement on the advances made on the Million Man March of ten years ago by Mr. Farrakhan.
CARLSON: OK, well speaking of minister, I‘m glad you brought up Minister Farrakhan because he, of course, needless to say weighed in on Hurricane Katrina. He said this, “I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25-foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry.”
Now that‘s a lunatic thing to say. That‘s a hateful thing to say. That‘s going to make people more paranoid and unhappy. Will you just say to people who listen to what you say that that‘s wrong and even to traffic in a conspiracy theory like that hurts this country?
CHUCK D: You cannot blame people for coming up with conspiracy theories when they look on television and see that the government is four days late in saving people that are supposed its citizens.
CARLSON: But you‘re a smart guy. You know that white people didn‘t blow up a levee to kill black people. Now come on. You know that that didn‘t happen.
CHUCK D: I try to be smart. I try to be smart. I try to be smart and I can‘t say unless I know for sure what‘s actual fact and what‘s actually false. All I‘m saying is that the pictures don‘t lie. When we saw people out there saying “I‘m locked up in the city, I‘m trying to get up out of it and I need the government to help me,” you know, the pictures don‘t lie.
CARLSON: Well the pictures—look, I can say for certain that it was not a white conspiracy. White people did not blow up a levee to kill black people. I think we can say that for sure.
CHUCK D: I don‘t think it‘s a person at fault but I think the system needs some revamping.
CARLSON: All right, Chuck D, formerly of Public Enemy, thanks a lot for coming on.
CHUCK D: All right, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, if there‘s anyone who knows how to fight the power it‘s Chuck D‘s Air America colleague Rachel Maddow, who joins me now. Rachel, you can go ahead and admit that the levees weren‘t blown up on purpose to hurt black people can‘t you?
RACHEL MADDOW, AIR AMERICA RADIO: Did you go down there and investigate (INAUDIBLE)?
CARLSON: I did. I was—actually we were there. I didn‘t see any saboteurs but, you know, I didn‘t even need an investigation to know that that‘s demented.
MADDOW: Well, you should have had Minister Farrakhan on to defend himself and not have Chuck defend him.
CARLSON: The problems is that people, you know, people believe that stuff and it makes them—it makes them feel even more hated than they already feel and it actually is bad for the country, conspiracy theories like that. That‘s the kind of stuff you see in Pakistan where the Jews are behind everything or whatever. It‘s bad to traffic in stuff like that.
MADDOW: Conspiracy theories don‘t necessarily help but you have to understand where they come from. They come from people feeling like this disaster had a real racial component. I mean it was a majority black city that was absolutely abandoned by the country where people went through stuff they never should have gone through.
You, yourself, have said this probably would not have happened if these people were stranded under an interstate in Connecticut. I mean people feel like it‘s a poor city. It‘s a black city. It was abandoned and you feel when you see that many black people suffering on TV, not being rescued, it feels like there‘s a racial component. That‘s where it comes from.
CARLSON: Well, I felt terrible. I felt terrible for those people regardless of their color. I will say the leadership of that city bad, bad leadership, but look...
MADDOW: Well, bad leadership of the city, sure, but come on the disaster was not at the city level. The disaster was a national (INAUDIBLE).
CARLSON: It was. I agree which gets us to Bush.
MADDOW: Yes.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9365706/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Hinckley writes piece about HELL no WE aint ALLright!
New Orleans under water, a rapper's anger overflows
Chuck D voices his frustrations on 'Hell No.'
Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly.
Musicians gotta write songs.
When the first television images made it clear what the wake of Hurricane Katrina was doing to New Orleans, Chuck D, longtime frontman of Public Enemy, couldn't swoop in with a rescue chopper or patch up the levees.
He could, however, write a song.
"Hell No, We Ain't AllRight," he called it, and he finished it a day before fellow musician Kanye West remarked during a relief fund-raiser on national TV that "President Bush doesn't care about black people."
That's no coincidence, since "Hell No" springs from the same frustration. While Chuck D's song is less directly personal about George W. Bush, he's just as angry about the government George W. Bush leads.
New world's upside down and out of order/ Shelter? Food? Wassup, where's the water?/ No answers from disaster, them masses hurtin'/ So who the f- we call - Halliburton?
No diplomatic niceties here, not that we'd expect any. Public Enemy has always been a locomotive in whose path one stands at one's own risk.
But regardless of how powerfully he writes and raps, Chuck D wouldn't matter if he weren't saying something his audience wanted to hear. In this case, after the country saw fellow American citizens pleading for food and water while their government was apparently taking a nap, Chuck D and Kanye weren't the only viewers who got angry.
Chuck D calls rap "the CNN of black America," and while rap hasn't been very topical lately, that doesn't mean its fans didn't care about what was happening in New Orleans.
Writing a song like this also ties Chuck D squarely into one of music's oldest traditions.
Before radio, television and sound recordings, songs were a mass medium used to spread information and points of view. Slaves spoke among themselves for generations in a whole language based on songs and percussion. Partisans during the Revolutionary War put their arguments to music, and sympathetic minstrels went to taverns and town meetings to sing them.
In "Hell No, We Ain't AllRight," Chuck D also calls out artists who care more about flashy jewelry for televised awards shows than their brothers and sisters. But he's a media guy himself these days, with a regular show on Air America radio, and like CNN, he returns in the end to his real point:
Now what's over here/ Is a noise so loud/ That some can't hear/ But on TV I can see/ Bunches of people/Looking just like me.
And they ain't all right.
Originally published on September 14, 2005
http://www.publicenemy.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The conservative bent on the interview)
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/16/11533.shtml
Transcript:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: The storm didn‘t discriminate and neither will the recovery effort.
JESSE JACKSON, RAINBOW-PUSH COALITION: These are American citizens who have been abandoned essentially by our government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What really happened is that Mother Nature decided that we were going to get the most devastating storm that could ever hit America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have pushed us around from one place to the other. I feel like it‘s not right and I feel like something needs to be done about it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You got National Guard, state troopers, (INAUDIBLE). We‘ve been out here all night.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Chuck D is the leader and the founder of the legendary rap group Public Enemy. He now hosts a show on Air America radio every Sunday night. He‘s written and recorded a new song called “Hell no, we ain‘t all right.” It‘s critical of the Bush administration in its response to Hurricane Katrina. He joins us now from New York, Chuck D thanks a lot for coming on.
CHUCK D, FOUNDER, PUBLIC ENEMY: What‘s up, Tucker, how are you?
CARLSON: I‘m doing good. I just read your song, I read the lyrics, haven‘t heard it yet and I, you know, I agree with a lot of it. You make the point that the federal government was slow in coming to the aid of the gulf coast and that a lot of people are suffering. But you have all these references to race in here and racism that I don‘t think makes sense.
Let me just read one of them. “Racism in the news still one sided news saying whites find food, prey for the National Guard ready to shoot, cause them blacks loot.” The National Guard didn‘t shoot anybody. Maybe they should have shot people but they didn‘t, black or white, and I guess I just don‘t see the race angle in this. What do you mean by that?
CHUCK D: Well, when I write a song that‘s what songwriters do. I cover a whole history of the United States, so this negligence is just a reflection of what‘s been going on for the what hundreds of years. So, when I write a song I have to write as a songwriter to kind of like touch on historical perspective and see what we see today and say uh huh, see, there you go. The pictures don‘t lie.
CARLSON: But part—I guess why it kind of bothered me was you once described rap as the black CNN, meaning it‘s a source of news for black people and presumably people, black and white, who listen to your music and take it seriously, take the words seriously.
CHUCK D: Right.
CARLSON: And I think this just misrepresents what‘s happened. There were a lot of white victims of Hurricane Katrina, a lot of black, a lot of Indian victims. I just don‘t think there‘s an intrinsic race angle and it seems wrong for you to suggest there is.
CHUCK D: Let me tell you man when I look at New Orleans and one day I was looking at one news station, it could have been CNN, it could have been MSNBC, I forgot, it showed back how it used to be, remembering New Orleans and it showed like just a whole lot of white folks touring through New Orleans and, you know, that was admirable but the reflection on New Orleans is the fact that it‘s a black city. The majority is black, black mayor for the last two or three terms.
CARLSON: Yes.
CHUCK D: And for the first time you had a lot of Americans that didn‘t even know the makeup, the racial makeup of New Orleans when I know when I visited New Orleans it was just a disproportionate amount of poor people who just didn‘t get service by either the city, the state, or the country when it came down to figuring out what its needs were. Come on, the levee system going back to what, when was the levee system built?
CARLSON: Well, it was built hundreds of years ago and it‘s received...
CHUCK D: Hundreds of years ago.
CARLSON: It‘s received hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government in the past five years and it‘s still broke, which tells you something about the leadership in New Orleans.
CHUCK D: No, Tucker, listen.
CARLSON: But here‘s the point. Wait, but you make a great point. Hold on. You just said something really interesting. You said it‘s a black run city. It‘s had a black mayor for a long time and it has a heavily black city council. It‘s got a black chief of police. It‘s got a black Congressman. So, why is it necessarily the result of white racism when the people of that city aren‘t served by their leaders who are black?
CHUCK D: Because when they yell loud enough they‘re not heard. I mean, look, if Hoover Dam could stop the raging Colorado River, I‘m pretty sure that they could have came along with a strong enough levee system to stop Lake Pontchartrain.
But now, you know, here‘s the fears. The fears where racism really turns its ugly head on what‘s going to happen to New Orleans, (INAUDIBLE), probably the black people that have moved out probably won‘t be able to afford to get back in and New Orleans, the new New Orleans is fears that it will probably be one of the most magnificent cities and probably will be protected against a hurricane ten.
CARLSON; Well, but hold on. I just don‘t—I‘m sorry to get hung up on one thing but you keep accusing Bush of racism or applying that Bush is a racist and...
CHUCK D: No, I will have to echo Kanye West‘s statement.
CARLSON: OK that Bush hates black people or whatever.
CHUCK D: No, no.
CARLSON: But wait a second.
CHUCK D: Kanye West didn‘t say hate.
CARLSON: What about the—what about the...
CHUCK D: Wait, wait, wait, Tucker.
CARLSON: Doesn‘t like black people.
CHUCK D: No, he didn‘t say doesn‘t like.
CARLSON: What did he say?
CHUCK D: He said doesn‘t care, does not care for black people.
CARLSON: If you don‘t care about—if you don‘t care about people who are dying...
CHUCK D: If the media makes the mistake...
CARLSON: ...you hate them. I mean it‘s the same thing. You don‘t care about people who are suffering in New Orleans you‘re a hater in my view.
CHUCK D: No, you can‘t say it‘s the same thing. It would be like, you know, you just don‘t acknowledge them and you kind of feel like they are not even there and often black people in this country feel that, you know, unless our back is up against the wall that we‘re not acknowledged at all.
CARLSON: Well I...
CHUCK D: As a matter of fact, there‘s another...
CARLSON: I know people feel that way but it‘s such a terrible way to feel that I‘m sorry that you‘re perpetuating that feeling by spreading stuff that isn‘t true like what you just said.
CHUCK D: Tucker, Tucker, listen here. There‘s a tenth anniversary of the Million Man March coming up called the Millions More Movement March October 16th to deal with a lot of issues. There‘s still not enough acknowledgement on the advances made on the Million Man March of ten years ago by Mr. Farrakhan.
CARLSON: OK, well speaking of minister, I‘m glad you brought up Minister Farrakhan because he, of course, needless to say weighed in on Hurricane Katrina. He said this, “I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25-foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry.”
Now that‘s a lunatic thing to say. That‘s a hateful thing to say. That‘s going to make people more paranoid and unhappy. Will you just say to people who listen to what you say that that‘s wrong and even to traffic in a conspiracy theory like that hurts this country?
CHUCK D: You cannot blame people for coming up with conspiracy theories when they look on television and see that the government is four days late in saving people that are supposed its citizens.
CARLSON: But you‘re a smart guy. You know that white people didn‘t blow up a levee to kill black people. Now come on. You know that that didn‘t happen.
CHUCK D: I try to be smart. I try to be smart. I try to be smart and I can‘t say unless I know for sure what‘s actual fact and what‘s actually false. All I‘m saying is that the pictures don‘t lie. When we saw people out there saying “I‘m locked up in the city, I‘m trying to get up out of it and I need the government to help me,” you know, the pictures don‘t lie.
CARLSON: Well the pictures—look, I can say for certain that it was not a white conspiracy. White people did not blow up a levee to kill black people. I think we can say that for sure.
CHUCK D: I don‘t think it‘s a person at fault but I think the system needs some revamping.
CARLSON: All right, Chuck D, formerly of Public Enemy, thanks a lot for coming on.
CHUCK D: All right, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well, if there‘s anyone who knows how to fight the power it‘s Chuck D‘s Air America colleague Rachel Maddow, who joins me now. Rachel, you can go ahead and admit that the levees weren‘t blown up on purpose to hurt black people can‘t you?
RACHEL MADDOW, AIR AMERICA RADIO: Did you go down there and investigate (INAUDIBLE)?
CARLSON: I did. I was—actually we were there. I didn‘t see any saboteurs but, you know, I didn‘t even need an investigation to know that that‘s demented.
MADDOW: Well, you should have had Minister Farrakhan on to defend himself and not have Chuck defend him.
CARLSON: The problems is that people, you know, people believe that stuff and it makes them—it makes them feel even more hated than they already feel and it actually is bad for the country, conspiracy theories like that. That‘s the kind of stuff you see in Pakistan where the Jews are behind everything or whatever. It‘s bad to traffic in stuff like that.
MADDOW: Conspiracy theories don‘t necessarily help but you have to understand where they come from. They come from people feeling like this disaster had a real racial component. I mean it was a majority black city that was absolutely abandoned by the country where people went through stuff they never should have gone through.
You, yourself, have said this probably would not have happened if these people were stranded under an interstate in Connecticut. I mean people feel like it‘s a poor city. It‘s a black city. It was abandoned and you feel when you see that many black people suffering on TV, not being rescued, it feels like there‘s a racial component. That‘s where it comes from.
CARLSON: Well, I felt terrible. I felt terrible for those people regardless of their color. I will say the leadership of that city bad, bad leadership, but look...
MADDOW: Well, bad leadership of the city, sure, but come on the disaster was not at the city level. The disaster was a national (INAUDIBLE).
CARLSON: It was. I agree which gets us to Bush.
MADDOW: Yes.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9365706/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Hinckley writes piece about HELL no WE aint ALLright!
New Orleans under water, a rapper's anger overflows
Chuck D voices his frustrations on 'Hell No.'
Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly.
Musicians gotta write songs.
When the first television images made it clear what the wake of Hurricane Katrina was doing to New Orleans, Chuck D, longtime frontman of Public Enemy, couldn't swoop in with a rescue chopper or patch up the levees.
He could, however, write a song.
"Hell No, We Ain't AllRight," he called it, and he finished it a day before fellow musician Kanye West remarked during a relief fund-raiser on national TV that "President Bush doesn't care about black people."
That's no coincidence, since "Hell No" springs from the same frustration. While Chuck D's song is less directly personal about George W. Bush, he's just as angry about the government George W. Bush leads.
New world's upside down and out of order/ Shelter? Food? Wassup, where's the water?/ No answers from disaster, them masses hurtin'/ So who the f- we call - Halliburton?
No diplomatic niceties here, not that we'd expect any. Public Enemy has always been a locomotive in whose path one stands at one's own risk.
But regardless of how powerfully he writes and raps, Chuck D wouldn't matter if he weren't saying something his audience wanted to hear. In this case, after the country saw fellow American citizens pleading for food and water while their government was apparently taking a nap, Chuck D and Kanye weren't the only viewers who got angry.
Chuck D calls rap "the CNN of black America," and while rap hasn't been very topical lately, that doesn't mean its fans didn't care about what was happening in New Orleans.
Writing a song like this also ties Chuck D squarely into one of music's oldest traditions.
Before radio, television and sound recordings, songs were a mass medium used to spread information and points of view. Slaves spoke among themselves for generations in a whole language based on songs and percussion. Partisans during the Revolutionary War put their arguments to music, and sympathetic minstrels went to taverns and town meetings to sing them.
In "Hell No, We Ain't AllRight," Chuck D also calls out artists who care more about flashy jewelry for televised awards shows than their brothers and sisters. But he's a media guy himself these days, with a regular show on Air America radio, and like CNN, he returns in the end to his real point:
Now what's over here/ Is a noise so loud/ That some can't hear/ But on TV I can see/ Bunches of people/Looking just like me.
And they ain't all right.
Originally published on September 14, 2005
http://www.publicenemy.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The conservative bent on the interview)
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/16/11533.shtml
