The Biggest Gangsta

What this war is really about is George W. Bush showing the world that he is the biggest, baddest gangsta of them all. The war is a message, sent to everyone on the planet, and written in Iraqui blood: “I can do whatever the fuck I want, and you are powerless to stop me”…

What this war is really about is George W. Bush showing the world that he is the biggest, baddest gangsta of them all. The war is a message, sent to everyone on the planet, and written in Iraqi blood: “I can do whatever the fuck I want, and you are powerless to stop me”…

Jay-Z may call himself J-hova, but he could never get away with anything like this. Dubya is the ultimate frat boy, and white frat boys have long been into black “gangsta rap.” Black male rappers may have been using the music to usurp for themselves the authority and power and money that rich white men tend to possess; but insofar as these rappers merely state out loud the misogynistic cliches and boasts of self-entitlement that are ubiquitous (but often hidden) in the boardroom and the country club, they are just mirroring ruling class privilege back to its possessors, in a stylized and exaggerated form. This is minstrelsy, in short. But the representation never matches the real thing; No rap battle will ever be able to match the ferocity, or the finality, with which Dubya puts down Saddam.

There’s also the matter of going it alone: “I did it my way.” You might say–in a properly sardonic tone–that, by so casually dismissing the opinions of the UN, the Europeans, and nearly the entire world aside from Tony Blair, Bush has done more to derail globalization than the legion of anti-corporate protesters who have been active around the world for the last several years.