When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that.
In Paterson that’s just the way things go.
If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street
less you wanna draw the heat.
President Obama called it a “teachable moment.” Noted African American scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pointed to his arrest for
disturbing the peace in his own home as an example of “what it’s like to be a black man in America.”And while Gates’ indignation was intended to be self referential, President Obama’s
equally indignant comment that the Cambridge police had ‘acted stupidly’ in their treatment of Gates may very well have provided the first glimpse into what it’s like to be a black president in America.During the campaign, Obama went out of his way to avoid the issue of race. And to his credit, relegating race to the back burner allowed more pressing issues
like heath care, the economy, and the war in Iraq to take precedent. In fact, it was only in the midst of the infamous Jeremiah Wright incident, when the issue of race threatened to boil over, that Obama was forced to chime in on the topic. By all accounts (including those of Professor Gates), Obama didn’t just tackle the issue of racism in American, he transcended it.But the cool, ethereal detachment Obama displayed during the campaign was decidedly absent last week as the president allowed himself to be drawn in.
And while Obama appeared to have acted impetuously when he broke from his seemingly perpetual tranquil state, the truth is that racial profiling—what many have placed at the epicenter of the Gates’ controversy—is an issue to which the president has given considerable thought.While in the Illinois legislature
Obama was the chief sponsor of a bill, which eventually became law, that requires police to record the race, age and gender of all drivers stopped for traffic violations. The data collected is then analyzed with the intent of deterring racial profiling.
And while Obama’s authoring of the racial profiling bill may explain his ‘stupid’ response to the arrest of Professor Gates, it did little to transform the incident into the “teachable moment” the president had hoped it would become. Unless, of course, the lesson was how to exploit a 
tenuous situation for the political and professional gain… in which case President Obama and Professor Gates both passed with flying colors.
For Obama, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates was a striking example of racial discrimination that he had hoped he could point to from a distance without have to become embroiled in the politically decisive issue. Of course, no one expected Obama to actually show his true colors on the topic. Judging from the amount of language 'recalibration' Obama has done over the last week, that assessment extends to the president himself.For Henry Louis Gates, the front porch skirmish, which would have said volumes about the status of race relations in this country without Gates
having to ever even have said a word, has been reduced to little more than the impetus for his next project—a PBS documentary on, you guessed it… racial profiling. And so, in both instances, what could have been a real moment of clarity was instead sadly and selfishly squandered.
Of course, the exploitation of race for personal gain is not just limited to politicians and Ivy League professors. It turns out pop stars are prone to it, too.
Certainly, Bob Dylan fell prey to the polarizing issue of racial profiling in the fall of 1975 when he championed the cause of a middleweight boxer by the name of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. The song, which maintained C
arter had been wrongfully charged and sentenced on three counts of murder, played the race card in ways that would have made OJ’s defense team cringe.And while many of Dylan’s claims, including the assertion
that Carter could have at one time “been champion of the world” were clearly self-congratulatory exaggerations employed to bolster a case for injustice, in the end it hardly mattered.The mere fact Dylan had put pen to paper in
defense of the beleaguered boxer elevated Carter’s plight to mythical proportion. It did marvels for Dylan's career, too. The song would go on to become one of his most popular; Desire, the album on which it appeared, one of his biggest sellers.
The issue of race in America may very be the most morally debasing issue our country has had to confront over our 200-plus year history. And even though Obama and Gates missed an opportunity last week to educate and enlighten on that issue much in the same way Dylan missed his own ‘teachable moment’ 35 years ago, there’s no question we’ve come a long way when it comes to our attitude on race in America.And while those in power may occasionally play loose and free with the facts to advance the side they’re on, it’s refreshing to see the side they're on is the right one…
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fools hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.
an Iranian singer-songwriter who has been likened to “an Iranian Bob Dylan,” was sentenced to five years in prison for recording music that "dishonors" passages from the Qur'an.
“poet of a generation” is just another glaring example of Iran's tyrannical theocracy run amok, it turns out the sentencing of Namjoo wasn’t the most flagrant suppression of free through to have occurred last week.
to five years in prison for "his unconventional singing" of the Muslim holy book, hundreds of Kindle owners woke up to discover that two books they 
Jeff Bezos has long been a proponent of the dissemination of digital content. For Bezos, the notion of delivering content (read: the millions of books Amazon sells) to anyone, anywhere, anytime has been more than a catchy mantra—it’s been a personal mission of sorts. And with the launch of the Amazon Kindle this past March that mission was by-and-large realized. But at what cost?
It turns out that when you “buy” an electronic copy of anything—a song, a book, a movie, it doesn't matter—you don’t actually own that copy free and clear. It is encumbered by something called digital rights management software, or DRM.
The new Britney Spears single, Dan Brown’s latest literary endeavor, the most recent episode of “The Office” shuffled off to our iPods— we paid for it, which presumably gives us the right to listen or watch it when we like, where we like, and with whom we like. Sort of.
rights to the material in the first place. Plausible enough, I suppose. But the fact that Amazon can remove content at their sole discretion, effectively assuming the role of a modern-day, Orwellian Big Brother is the real looming danger. And herein enters the irony.
The two titles that Amazon effectively ‘banned’ by removing them from the Kindle with a simple flick of the switch? 
Mohsen Namjoo and Bob Dylan—iconoclasts of change with prophetic messages of their own—who will continue to fight to make sure that whoever controls the message can never control the messenger, no matter how it may be delivered…
threatened to walk away from the music business. But that’s precisely what happened in the days following the July 29, 1966, motorcycle accident that nearly claimed the singer’s life.
Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle Dylan crashed on a road near his home in upstate New York have always been sketchy at best—whatever transpired was enough to force the reclusive singer to reexamine his priorities.
And while Dylan may have had mountains in the palm of his hand in terms of his creative prowess, he was demonized nearly every night, forced to endure irate fans who were determined to deter Dylan’s new musical direction with jeers of “Judas!” on more than one occasion.
Dylan was looking forward to spending some time with his new bride, fashion model Sara Lownds, whom he had secretly married the previous November.
“voice of a generation,” by the summer of 1966, it was evident that his audience’s insatiable appetite for all things ‘Dylan’ was beginning to take a rapacious toll on him.
Overnight Bob was besieged with questions. Was the accident a cover for another drag-addled rock star whose addiction had gotten the better of him? Was the whole incident a carefully calculated publicity stunt designed to increase speculation around Dylan’s next creative endeavor? Would there even be another endeavor?
kept Dylan’s legions of devoted fans up at night— it was the incessant speculation on what might have happened. Conjecture, it turns out, was the biggest contributor to a rapidly mounting mystique that all but eclipsed the notoriously ascetic artist.
Nearly 40 years later, a new conundrum has captured America's imagination. But instead of unfolding in the solitary the woods of Woodstock, this one is taking place in the open wilds of Alaska.
Sarah Palin’s July 3 press conference in which she announced that she would resign as governor of Alaska was so surrealistic that one had to wonder if Palin had momentarily mistaken herself as Patti Blagojevich’s replacement on “I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here.”
something that even her most staunch supporters haven’t completely ruled out—clearly there’s more to the story than the wily politician from Wasilla is letting on. But anyone who patently dismisses Palin’s penchant for the dramatic is missing the point of her decidedly populist appeal.
in Minneapolis, Palin has taken to fame like a fish to water. In hindsight, however, perhaps Palin’s aversion to being labeled “a dead fish who goes with the flow” makes perfect sense. After all, when it comes to fame and adulation, nobody drinks it in better than Sarah Palin.
cobbled together a series of incongruous sports analogies in an attempt to explain how abandoning a state in crisis translates to the type of leadership she can offer a nation in peril, was definitely a swing for the fences. In the end, however, Palin struck out big time. Though time will tell how much America’s favorite MILF’s recent muff dive will tarnish her once unmistakable luminous quality.
been a critical component to the ‘Dylan mystique.’ Second-guessing what’s going on inside Dylan’s brain is precisely what makes him such an appealing and enigmatic figure. If the events of last week are any indication, a speculative glimpse inside the mind of Sarah Palin is clearly a far more trepidatious trip.
It looks like it just may be time to retire the old adage, “It takes two to Tango.”
AP reporters, the scandal-emblazoned South Carolina Governor put his best foot forward, addressing head on the allegations of a romantic rendezvous with Argentinean newscaster Maria Belen Chapur.
Not since Bill Clinton’s contemptuous, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” declaration at the height of his own sex scandal has a politician engaged in such a virtuoso performance.
none of the suave, smooth moves that made Bill Clinton a poster boy of cool, ethereal detachment, the governor’s response to doing the hokey poky did share one similarity with Clinton's infamous finger-wagging incident: both engaged in a breath-taking dance to the death.
decision to abandon the expected soft-shoe approach and come clean has completely cleared the dance floor of any prospective partners other than his own ravenous guilt.
ascent to the pinnacle of South Carolina politics, no one is going to mistake Jenny Sanford for a wallflower. Yet despite her understated approach to managing her husband’s affairs, chances are she won’t be stepping out of the shadows singing Tammy Wynette’s magnanimous marital mantra, “Stand By Your Man,” any time soon.
Maria Belen Chapur? Exactly where does the Argentinean beauty at the heart of this whole sordid affair stand on the issue? Sanford’s hot tamale isn’t talking. Bar extradition, she’s made it clear she plans to stay put on the Patagonia.
to take a turn on the dance floor, Sanford turned to the pages of the Good Book for companionship, citing a parallel between his plight and that of the world’s most infamous adulterer. "[King] David failed, literally, and yet he reconstructed his life," Sanford recently told reporters.
Upon reflection, however, maybe the analogy Sanford should have cited to parallel his rather precarious situation isn’t the story of David’s seduction of Bathsheba, but rather the fabled story of Jericho, in which the seemingly impermeable walls came tumbling down in ruins with the sound of a single trumpet.
Of course, Sanford didn’t need someone to blow the whistle on his indefensible indiscretions. He brought his world crashing down all on his own with his incessant pronouncements of unrequited love.
amplified Sanford’s overly affectionate opines for Ms. Chapur, the real problem isn’t the intense scrutiny of media. Sanford may be the consummate politician, but somewhere along the way he overlooked his most important constituent– his wife.
in the fish-eye lens. But the difference between a politician like Mark Sanford and a pop star like Bob Dylan mourning the memory of his “one true love” is while the former may 
With politicians, however, it’s different. Yes, we place them on the spotlight. But the last thing we want them to do is wither when the heat is turned up.
And while the “moth to the flame” metaphor is in keeping with his undaunted persistence to be with his self-proclaimed “soul mate,” perhaps someone should remind the love-struck Sanford of this simple fact—
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