The show in question is "Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & The Notorious B.I.G." The story is about the murders of two rappers way back when and it's being promoted as similar to the rehashing of the OJ case last year. I doubt many of you care. I certainly don't. What does interest/annoy me though is a line in the trailer that is blatant race baiting. About halfway through the ad, one of the characters suddenly asks... "What if this had been a white celebrity!"
Gasp!
Well, let's think about that.
First, we would be wondering how the white celebrity community had split itself into two tribal factions -- East Coast Celebrities and West Coast Celebrities. Yo. Then we would be wondering how this split would have gotten so ugly that these celebrities would start encouraging their minions to drive-by shoot the others. Yo. "Yo beatch, don't you dis the complex and enlightening lyrics of 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' or I'll bust a cap in your buttocks!"
Secondly, while the producers are no doubt claiming that since these murders remain unsolved, the police must not have cared, the truth is that many celebrity murders go unsolved. Bob Crane is a good example. Barbara Colby, James Kiernan, Jack Nance, George Reeves, Christa Helm are others. Bruce Lee and Marylin Monroe's death are suspected murders. Or think about the Natalie Wood case, which is only now being reopened. The truth is that when someone walks up to a celebrity and shoots them, they aren't going to be found unless they are whack jobs like the guy who shot John Lennon or the Mason Family members who killed Sharon Tate. The fact that Tupac and Biggie's murders aren't solved is because the killers drove away and never bragged about it... not indifference or racism by the cops.
Third, when white celebrities die, people tend to move on pretty quickly. People don't invent conspiracy theories, blame cops or scream that their race had anything to do with it. Heck, we might even do the unthinkable: we might decided that their lifestyles pretty much meant they were asking for it. Yep. Many honkeys believe that when you engage in risky behaviors, it's hard to feel sorry for you when those risks come true.
So yeah, that's what would have happened if this had been a white celebrity... little would have changed except that we would have shaken our heads and said, "They were playing with fire." But I guess that doesn't sell television shows... or stoke race hate.
Thoughts?
I never bought into the conspiracy crap around either guy's death, but the conspiracy theory I heard the most 20 years back (when both deaths were recent) was the belief that Tupac faked his death and then murdered Biggie (Machievelli style).
ReplyDeleteAs for whites moving on when celebs die, Donald Trump, now the President of the United States, in 2016 accused Ted Cruz's father of being part of the conspiracy which killed JFK fifty years ago. I could go on.
Needless to say, conspiracy crap is everywhere.
Billy Graham has died at 99. He always struck me as a good guy. RIP
ReplyDeleteAndrew, Great point as always. There's absolutely no reason to turn this into a race thing. With race relations as ugly as they are, it's irresponsible to use something like that as a selling point.
ReplyDeleteAnon, Exactly. This is a cautionary tale of pushing hate and division. Trying to turn this into a race issue is ridiculous. And it's even more troubling that they would try to tap into that to sell the program.
ReplyDeleteAnthony, that is a good point. Also Kennedy's death. And in fact Hollywood has made movies about these conspiracies. My favorite are the Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy had secretary named Lincoln and so on, so therefore...THE ILLUMINATI! Actually there is a tinge of ideology-hawking in these conspiracies - Lincoln was killed by KKK-clansman/bigots (true) and Kennedy may have been killed by a Commie trained in Soviet Russia.
ReplyDeleteBut I get what Andrew is saying. It's not that these guys were murdered and no one cared because they were Black gansta' rappers who monetized violence. It's just the perps drove away and didn't talk or post a video on social media.
Yes, I just read that Rev. Billie Graham passed away at 99 yrs old. I always liked Rev. Graham. For all his religiosity, he was always embracing of people of all faiths. He was genuinely a man of God and not just religion doctrine. RIP
ReplyDeleteThis is how much he embraced people of other faiths. He was married to the same woman from 1943 until her death in 2007
ReplyDeleteand "[d]espite Billy Graham being one of the world's most famous Baptists, his wife remained a Presbyterian and often taught Sunday School."
Bev, That's how he struck me as well. I also liked that he wasn't apocalyptic. Religion should be a positive, not a negative.
ReplyDeleteBev, That's the point exactly. It strikes me as immoral and destructive to market this thing as some sort white versus black crap when all it really was was reeping what you sow.
ReplyDeleteFocusing on the words "conspiracy theories" is missing the point.
The idea that life in America (or the world) is significantly different for blacks is as destructive as it is overblown. I harken back to my old college friend who thought the FAFSA was just for black students until another friend told him otherwise. That's a relatively mild example, but it's exemplary of some people expect different treatment. We all know that when you expect something, you tend to encounter it. Obviously people get treated differently for myriad reasons, but when you're on the lookout for racial discrimination, you're going to automatically interpret those differences as racism.
ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeletePerhaps I wasn't clear. First, the most popular conspiracy theories around Tupac and Biggie never had anything to do with race. The theories were always that one man planned the death of the other. Don't take my word for it, Google Tupac or Biggie conspiracy and see what comes up.
I'm not saying there is no conspiracy theory blaming whites, police the Illuminati and\or aliens but they aren't popular.
Generally speaking conspiracy theories are immoral, destructive things which feed animosity, and are dangerous when one of the subjects is a real person or thing.
Hi Anthony,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry your comments keep getting swept up in the spam filter for some reason. It's not intentional. It's something Blogger is doing. I'll keep getting them out as soon as possible.
On the conspiracy theories, my point really was just that these people are feeding the very raw race hate nerve when there's no justification for it.
Two groups of rappers play with fire, start a feud, goad their followers to violence. Someone decides to act upon that. That's how stupid people end up dead.
To spin this as (basically) "it would have been so different if these guys had been white" is irresponsible garbage which feeds a highly destructive false belief that damages millions of people and our country as a whole. I find that despicable.
tryanmax, I have a conversation I need to write out at one point. It was with a black guy who showed up at my home unexpectedly (he knew my wife years ago) and proceeded to pick fights over race. The things he voiced are truly amazing. Basically, he was sure that his entirely life has been white trying to destroy him. Rawanda was a CIA operation. Every disease was invented by the white government to kill minorities. Drugs are whites trying to kill blacks.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite -- I got into college because I'm white. He didn't because he's black... ignore the six felony assault convictions.
It was a very disturbing two days before I kicked him out.
Anthony, I liken it to the intellectual Shakespeare/Marlowe conspiracy. Obviously Billy-Bob Shakespeare wasn't to the manor born and couldn't possibly have written all of those insightful plays about the human condition that have stood the test of time! Or that a seemly uneducated lowlife like Lee Harvey Oswald could possibly pull off the assassination of a President all by himself...
ReplyDeleteBev, I would suggest there are three types of conspiracy theories:
ReplyDelete(1) Those created people who don't want to believe that a nobody could disrupt the world by killing someone important. E.g. JFK.
(2) Those that are based on collation errors: the human need to categorize and sort knowledge leads people to assign meaning to coincidence and, eventually, intent to their paranoia.
(3) Leftist deconstructionist thought. Specifically, I'm talking about the need to prove something new to get a PHD. The easiest thing to "prove" is that someone famous was gay (J. Edgar Hoover) or wasn't who they claimed to be (Shakespeare) or or had secret plans to destroy the world. You can assemble these arguments with no proof using conspiracy theory logic. It gets you your PHD rather easily. But then this flood of crap gets passed on to mindless students who suddenly start to believe it.
I remember young black airmen of mine arguing, very loudly sometimes about who killed who, who was to blame etc...they almost came to blows over it. Absolutely amazing.
ReplyDelete