Try To Make It Real Compared To What: Scoble and Kaplan Going At It

So, Ethan Kaplan went to Gnomedex, and was unimpressed with “these blowhard hacks who suck the life of the room with their own sense of self important [sic - importance]”.

Ethan is someone who I really enjoy reading, and Gnomedex seemed — from afar, granted — a bit choppy, to be generous. He suggests that a few of the presenters — Darren Barefoot and Derek Powasek [I think] Miller — were getting real, touching on subjects a hair more profound that the coolest, shiniest new web app.

And then he went to a Patti Smith concert, and had an epiphany, pushed out of the normal grooves:

[from Saw Patti Smith tonight…and thoughts on Gnomedex ‘07]

We yield [weild?] dangerous tools. They can and have been used against us, and our loved ones. In a world dependent on data, its the wielders of the math who hold the ultimate power, and those that can recombine math upon data upon material life that are more dangerous than any threat in existence.

It is within our capacity to take that back, and recombine ourselves. If we continue to get caught up in playground fights over who’s [sic - whose] dick is bigger, we’re just holding the gun to our foot and pulling the trigger.

Nice.

But Robert Scoble interprets this in some strange light, taking umbrage to the ‘blowhard hacks’ and ‘whose dick is bigger’ rhetoric:

[from Warner Music: why do you fund this crap]

You talk about “blowhard hacks” at Gnomedex.

What you are doing and funding (and supporting through your technology) is FAR worse for the human race than any arguing we’re doing at Gnomedex. [He alludes to the recent 60 Minutes show investigating the ‘Don’t Snitch’ meme running in the hip hop world.]

What do you say about this Ethan?

How can you write hypocritical posts like this one about Gnomedex and go to work for the company you work for who are spreading the kind of vile [bile?] described by 60 Minutes?

First of all, I find it laughable (sorry, Robert) that Scoble is wagging his finger at Ethan about what big bad Warner does, considering Scoble’s history as a front man for the evil empire of Microsoft. Even if Warner is wrong on the ‘Don’t Snitch’ issue, Ethan’s comments about the tech scene and Gnomedex have to stand on their own. You shouldn’t divert the discussion this way. It’s a cheap rhetorical slight-of-hand.

Second of all, the bit about Warner’s involvement in the ‘Don’t Snitch’ thing is pretty weak.

The background: within the hip hop community, there is a strong ethic of not talking to the authorities about criminal actions taken by other, mostly black, hip hop community members. This is a well-known cultural aspect of black life in America. So the muckracking 60 Minutes digs into this mess, and mentions Warner in passing:

[from Stop Snitchin’ ]

[…]

“It’s that sort of edgy, you know, kind of ghetto, everybody’s kind of into it. It does package well, and it does sell well. And beneath, you know, beneath all of this stuff, there’s huge corporate profits in the industries that feed off this,” Canada says. [One of the talking heads in the show.]

Many of the big-name rappers who rail against snitches are distributed on major record labels. Cam’ron is distributed through Asylum Records, a division of Warner Music.

When the rapper L’il Kim committed perjury rather than implicate members of her entourage in a shooting, Black Entertainment Television launched one of its most popular shows ever, chronicling her days before going to prison.

“Black Entertainment TV ran a reality series about her that was advertised with the tag line, ‘She’s going to prison with her mouth shut and her head held high,’” Professor Kennedy says. “This is a Joe Camel issue. This is big business selling death.”

Black Entertainment Television has said its series on L’il Kim did not condone her crime, but rather took “a very serious look at her life and her choices….” As for Cam’ron’s relationship with Warner Music, an executive there declined to comment. [Cam’ron is a rapper]

“I dare any of those executives in the major companies to put one of those songs on in board meeting. I dare ‘em. They’d never do it,” Canada says. “You put on some song that has the n-word 50 times that talks about killing and murder, oh no. Board members don’t want to hear that kind of stuff.”

“I just think that rap takes way more slack than the video games and the movies. We don’t make guns. Smith and Wesson makes guns,” Cam’ron argues. “Like, white people make guns and bullets and all we’re doing is rhyming and putting words together.”

“If your record label said to you, ‘Look, we’re not going to promote you, we’re not going to distribute you if you keep calling Curtis Jackson a snitch.’ Or you keep, writing about guns and selling drugs, would you stop?” Cooper asks.

“No record company in the world would say ‘We’re not promoting if you keep calling somebody a snitch. They know what makes money,” Cam’ron says. “A record company would never be that stupid. Ever.”

So, without really explaining where he comes down on the issue substantively, he just throws an innuendo at Ethen and stalks off.

How about explaining your point, Robert? Are you saying that the Black community in general is wrong to distrust police? All the evidence demonstrates that justice is totally skewed in the US against Blacks and Hispanics. Some staggering number of convictions overturned in the last few years by DNA evidence were of innocent Black men.

This does not mean I condone wanton violence, or even the violence advocated in hip hop. But it is better that a hundred guilty are let free rather than one innocent man go to jail: or have I missed the basis of Western theories of justice? I know our government has.

But the cultural and ‘tribal’ mores of the Black community is not some marketing promotion cooked up by Warner in order to make money.

But all that to the side: I think the two issues are totally and completely unrelated.

Let’s get back to Ethan’s point: a more interesting discussion ahead, I hope.