Living up to my "new president" resolution (to not spend the next 4-8 years complaining, hating or grumbling) is not easy to do -- especially when you hang around Republicans. Every little joke or off-handed remark at Obama's expense makes it harder and harder to give the new prez a fair chance. It makes it harder and harder to keep an open mind and harder to see any good that he might do. I remember all the Clinton jokes and the stories about Whitewater and such. They fueled an unrest and an anger that -- sure, it helped give "energy" to the opposing political party, but -- made it easy to shut my heart and mind to one side.
Sure, I could be wrong. I could be giving credence to the Anti-Christ or an evil, bad leader. But I'm confident that if I am in error, that my mistakes could be corrected. I have a hunch, though, that the approach I'm taking is the right one for me. I want to support our new president and not be a nay-sayer this time. I've done that. I listened and laughed and repeated many a Clinton-bashing report between 1992 and 2000. I'm still not a fan of Bill Clinton nor his wife, Hillary; but Hillary is not our next president, Barak Obama is. I'm going to pray for him, support him, and hope he becomes our best president ever. That would be so cool for our country to have some good, solid leadership right now. He's not a proven leader, per se, so a lot of our hope is idealistic, but here's to progress!
As I write this, I'm not sure I'll ever post it. I have another blog that's pretty lengthy that I've shelved, because politics can divide so much. I know that religion is divisive as well, but my role as HM editor sets up the expectation that religion and music will be in the mix. Politics will just divide the audience and I don't see much reason to do that. Just as some people might make a passing comment about "unsubscribing if we start covering hip hop" (based on a short tweet/comment where I mentioned that hip-hop is fun to listen to), I hope that most people will give me a chance and "wait me out" if I make a comment that (gasp) they don't agree with. I hope that my 23-going on 24 years of printed music coverage will give those that check HM out some level of trust to know that they can pretty safely know what to expect with HM.
P.S. I was out with my family and heard some R&B tune on Bob FM, one of those stations that plays whatever the heck it wants to, jumping around from genre to genre. I remember my high school years, where there was such a divide between rock and disco. Rock was hard, like metal and disco was very smooth, dance-able and upbeat. One thing I can appreciate about hip-hop is that it’s a hard edge. I can imagine the guy steeped in R&B gravitating to the edge of hip-hop like a guy steeped in rock looks for the edge of metal, gladly leaving behind the fluff of “lite rock.” A lot of young ears today truly appreciate the diversity between rowdy hip-hop and super indie alternative rock and the uber death metal sound of some hardcore.
I think what you said was very classy...nothing to "unsubscribe" for at all. It's your blog and you can blog what you wanna, so do it. As far as covering R&B/Hip Hop...well, a little bit of that never hurt anybody. =)
Posted by: Jade =) at January 20, 2009 02:18 PMi agree with your comments about obama-its hard not bash the anti-christ hah but he does seem like a pretty cool guy if his politics weren't so horrible and socialistic
Posted by: hannah at January 21, 2009 07:19 AM