Nas Steals the Show
By RP Staff | July 25, 2008
On Tuesday Jeff Chang posted an entry announcing rapper Nas’s forthcoming participation in a rally outiside Fox News in which netroots organization ColorofChange was to deliver their petition with 600,000 signatures protesting the stations depiction of African Americans, and racist comments directed toward the Obama family. As is often the case when celebrities become involved in protests, they, and not the issue at hand become become the focal point. In this case, Nas’s participation revived his beef with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, (a battle neatly summarized for the viewing public by Stephen Colbert on Wednesday evening, a clip of which is pasted below). The media coverage homed in on the Nas vs O’Reilly feud while Color0fChange’s petition seemed to fade into the background, or worse yet, seemed to become a trivial afterthought in this battle between two larger than life personalities.
Color of Change has been working on this campaign for months, and they rightly point out Fox’s history of using both direct racist comments against African Americans and people of color, and vile innuendo like when they called Barack and Michelle Obama’s celebratory pound a “terrorist fist jab.” Fox may not be a news organization, but the impact that their racist lingo has had on shaping the political conversation this decade is unquestionable. They have succeeded in poisoning debates in this country’s public forum that practically every conversation about Muslims and Islam is reduced to a debate on terrorism. In the case of Obama’s it is not malicious to wrongly presume that Barack may have at one time been Muslim–it is malicious for well informed tv analysts to pervert that presumption by turning it into an affirmation about potential terrorist affiliations.
This latest campaign by ColorofChange comes on the heels of their work done during the Jena 6 trials last year and other campaigns to bring more support to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and raising awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur. ColorofChange’s work is ongoing, therefore whenever they make a decision to affiliate themselves with a celebrity, they clearly know it’s a calculated risk that will on the one hand bring more attention than their claims might have gotten otherwise, but on the other, may also deflect attention from their campaigns intended purpose. We saw a similar occurrence a few years ago when Russell Simmons became involved in the the movement to repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Many felt that Simmons may have overstepped his boundaries when he entered into negotiations with NY State officials on the behalf of other organizations.
This incident with Fox News is occurring on a smaller scale than what transpired in New York. However, it does have larger ideological ramifications because it is inevitably a campaign about perception as much as it is action. To that end, one argue that the attention being heaped upon Nas raises the campaign’s awareness tenfold and brings new stake holders into the conversation.
Still, what do you think are the best practices or approaches for using celebrities in political campaigns?
Topics: Bloggers, Justice, Media |
