Readers have welcomed my decision to eschew the NYT op-ed page in favor of RZA’s commentary on the election, but it turns out that the Wu-Tang Clan is a cabinet of all the wits. MTV reports that Raekwon has also been in Denver, although technically for a show rather than punditry… but wait:
He wants Barack to win, but said he’s worried that “if he do win, they’re going to put him in a situation where the country’s going to be haywire,” meaning that Obama could be set up for failure since he would be entering the presidency at a difficult economic time for the country.
He also commented on John McCain, saying, “McCain is cool but nobody knows about McCain. Barack is connected to the community, and people in the community want to see a change.”
The point about McCain is a bit weak, but the fact that 2009 may be a bad year to be a new president is a good one – and less glib than, say, Thomas Friedman’s column yesterday. Still, this is all somewhat short on policy ideas. For those, turn to Wu-Tang’s Method Man, who set out this strategy while in the UK in June:
The rapper is a big fan of the Democrat but he insists no new president should be allowed to lead the country without visiting the toughest areas of America.
He says, “My people never feel the effects of who changes the world or who’s in office because it never trickles down that low on the scale. We don’t feel the President’s power down there (in Compton, LA, as in “Straight Outta…”), we just feel the poverty. Blessings to Obama and the whole Obama click. Hopefully he’ll bring his ass to Compton and walk through the war zone to see what it is. Somebody told me, ‘Why would he go there; that’s dangerous.’ That’s why he should go!”
With half the press hard at work linking LBJ, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama (OK, Robert Caro had a rather fine piece in the NYT about all that) it’s a fair point.
