XR presents Doomberg Report
END TIMES CULTURE INDEX JULY/AUG 2024
AI MEETS THE CHITLIN CIRCUIT
The simulation is simulating. As the US hurdles toward the AI election, there is no respite from the sneaking suspicion that nothing we see is real. We are forced to question everything. Facts are now facsimile, consensus reality a thing of the past. Socials have given the random and the ignorant increased access to our collective thought space. Everyone has a say on what is and what isn’t. That seems more democratic in theory but accelerates the spread of mental viruses in practice. Add to that din, the media manipulators, the ones listening to your texts, with their fingers on your algorithm, feeding psy-ops to that black mirror in your pocket. The ones who insist that you believe them over your lying eyes. Those burning babies? Pay that horrorshow no never mind. The economy is not tanking, it’s a tank. Those soaring egg prices are temporary. “Hey, look at how amazing this white girl is at these black girl dances. Give her all the money.”
The near miss of an assassin’s bullet and the point blank murder of Sonya Massey, an innocent Black woman, kicked off a July of surreal scenes and neck snapping reversals. The current US President, the late Joe Biden, who zombie walked through the last few months and was barely able to ASMR his way through his face-off with Donald Trump, was forcibly removed from presidential contention by the party bosses. “He’s sharp as a whip” they crowed, only days before said shitshow. Suddenly, he was put out to pasture. This was followed by the instant oatmeal of the Kamala Harris for President campaign, that somehow had all the posters printed, the slogans ready and timing perfected — just days after Republicans used their convention to attack a candidate no longer there. (In basketball this move is called “pulling the chair”). The money momentum, the collective sigh of relief and the historic implications all lined up to put the Republicans on their heels and erase the memory of Kamala’s historically low approval ratings as Vice President. Now she is a Messiah. And just in time. Kamala Kool-Aid in the sweltering season of Trump.
Truth be told, she is the perfect nominee in this Age of Fugazi. She is the ChatGPT answer to the Democrats’ desperate prompt: what the fuck do we do now? She is all the things. Nominally black and sufficiently lightskin, somewhat Asian, youthful and telegenic, a non-threatening policy chameleon. There will be no Michelle Obama fistbumps here. But “tuff” enough. The Prosecutor that will take the Felon down. Not an authentic bone in her body. Panderella in the flesh. At her first event in Fugazi’s second city, ATL, Harris reached into her usual bag of tricks. She recruited Megan Thee Stallion to twerk for democracy (someone tweeted ‘Hoes for Harris’), she found her Southern accent and later quoted Migos in a canned attack on Donald Trump, careful to correct the English. “He doesn’t talk it, like he walks it.” The cringe was palpable. And familiar. In the past, she posed with collard greens. She courted Glorilla thinking they might get a remix to “Yeah Glo”. She fake-called the BET Awards to announce that she be “in these streets” and that “they not like us”. Let us state for the record, Michelle Obama would never. The former first lady managed to get through two campaigns and eight years in office without ever making us queasy. But Beyonce and potentially Taylor Swift and “democracy is on the ballot” and the AKAs on the zoom said… so Kamala it is.
In Chicago, black journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference watched Trump field questions from three Black women journalists who pressed him for the cameras. Trump responded to a question about DEI with a question regarding Kamala switching her identifiers when convenient. “She was Indian before and now she’s Black.” All hell broke loose and the canned outrage of talking heads went on for days. It was as if his near death and his epic photo-op — surrounded by secret service, black power fist raised, blood streak across his face, old glory flying high — hadn’t happened. Completely erased. This was no longer Mr. Badass. This was Mr.-Mexico-Is-Sending-Rapists. Socials got to ranting and raving reacting to this latest whiplash-inducing reversal. It didn’t play well to most mainstream media but for the Kamala set they were aware of what Trump was trying to do. Reclaim the pole position in the race for the candidate with the most Negro bonafieds.
So now it’s a style war, Kamala and Trump competing for the Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich demo on the presidential chitlin circuit. Who can claim most authentically Black adjacent? One pledged the other was railroaded by the system. One got collards on the stove (and in the bathtub apparently) the other has a sneaker deal, a mugshot and opps that wanna see him dead. One enters to Beyonce the other to 50 Cent. The last people to attain the vote in this Nation are now the Folk who will decide its fate. The Last will indeed come First. The year 2024 asks, Are you not entertained?
FREE GAZA
Jubilant cries of Gaza! greeted Adidja Palmer, the original prisoner president, as he ended a twelve year bid and stepped out Tower Street Correctional Facility a free man. In another unexpected reversal this year, his 2014 murder conviction was overturned. Covered in bandanas to conceal a badly swollen face, the Worl Boss raised his fingers in victory. Many questions remain, particularly concerning his health, but one of the island nation’s most potent creative forces, whose absence from the scene constrained the genre’s possibilities, is once again free to provoke musical innovation and perform live pon stage.
UNREASONABLE CLOUT
Back when the beef was still fresh, Jay Z sent a devastatingly direct shot at his ex-business partner Dame Dash via an HP laptop commercial of all things, a computer we are quite sure Jay never used a day in his life. Nevertheless, the commercial aired during the NBA Finals, ensuring a national audience of hiphop aficionados. Between stunting on the proverbial Jumbotron about his new post-Dame projects, he stopped to play a move on a virtual chessboard. He castles, and then states “This game is over, I wonder if he knows?” Well, Dame lost his decades-long chess game with Jay Z years ago but the final blow may be come at the end of August when US Marshals auction off his one-third ownership of Jay’s seminal classic Reasonable Doubt to pay a $800K judgement against him. It was conceivable at one point that Dame sell his shares to Jay directly but that was before Dame spent a good part of the last decade talking shit about his ex-partner on various interviews and podcasts. Although Dame deserves his propers for his visionary leadership of Roc-a-fella Records, his ego and his mouth got the best of him. A clear cut case of He Did It To Himself.
LET THEM COOK
The Olympics Ceremony opened with a Dionysian remix of the Last Supper featuring drag queens and other marginalized demos at the table. This and other symbolic messaging (Behold! A pale horse!) throughout the opening caused some controversy. Many asked Why? Or simply what the fuck? But the spectacle did what was intended. Some distractionary tactics. Pomp, circumstance, bread and circuses. Even the vaunted Olympic flame lofted into the Paris sky by a massive hot air balloon was not a actual cauldron of fire. It was an electric flame, an illusion created with water and light. We are in the Simularity.© Waist deep in the Age of Fugazi.
But like this year’s Met Gala, the gap between the dark rituals and darker realities seems to be closing. Days before they sent the false flame airborn, the train stations in Paris exploded in very real flames, hit by arsonists. While beautiful athletes competed for thinly plated medals, unrest erupted in Nigeria, racial riots broke out in the UK, bombs descended in Beirut, Northern Israel burned, murder reigned in the Congo and Israelis debate whether IDF soldiers had the right to RAPE their prisoners. The question is less about what the Olympic organizers were trying to communicate with the pale horses, the assassins and the headless singers. The better question is what are they trying to avert our eyes from? Considering the politics of post-pandemic Europe, most notably France, it may also be appropriate to ask not why the Last Supper but who’s?
SOUTH SUDAN VS EVERYBODY
Against all odds, the team from the infant nation of South Sudan showed up and showed out. One of the more compelling stories coming out of Paris, South Sudan’s basketball team entered the Olympics as the butt of jokes on sports talk and came out with new found respect and attention. Undisputed commentator Paul Pierce, full of derisive laughter, wondered if USA Basketball would spank them by 40. But the East Africans came within 1 during exhibitions, with refs who knew where they croissants were buttered. Rocking All Black Everything on and off the court, with hot jerseys and fits by Rwandan designer Moshions to match their blue black skin tones, they pushed the juggernauts of basketball — Steph, LeBron and AD included — to the brink of humiliation. South Sudan's near-win prompted perennial fuckboi Gilbert Arenas to go on Live attempting to clown team USA with ignant afrophobic jokes at South Sudan’s expense. Luol Deng, the former Bulls player who organized, coached and self-financed the national team, was the epitome of dignity in his response. He dismissed the ignorant comments and expressed disappointment in his fellow NBA alumnus. To his credit, Pierce corrected himself after the game. Arenas, for his part, doubled down, disqualifying himself from ever being taken seriously again. But South Sudan, on the other hand, got something to say.
POST-DIDDY TRAUMA
Danyel Smith’s recent Times piece about her experience with Puff as the editor in chief of Vibe during his and its heyday was an uncomfortable read. While she was clearly complicit in the creation of the villain now known as Diddy, she blames it on the precarious position of women in the male dominated music industry. She also claims memory loss and other symptoms of PTSD. Similarly, Young Miami, formally of City Girls, spoke publicly for the first time being implicated in Diddy’s nefarious activities and attempted to do the impossible: distance herself from Diddy on her Diddy-created show on Revolt, a Diddy created platform. Caresha, please.
WHAT PRICE MISS SOUTH AFRICA?
The recent kwafwafwa surrounding the half Nigerian South African, Chidimma Adetshina, a contestant for the title of Miss South Africa, has led to her dropping out and even the potential deportation of her mother. The hatred shown to this young woman, the demands from Black South Africans that she never represent their country in a beauty contest was baffling. A deeper analysis of this anger might reveal South Africans pain coming from the broken promises of the the post-apartheid era, Black South Africans who still own no land and have little to show after their liberation from the oppressive Apartheid regime. It reflects a new protectionism directed at the other Africans flooding into their country for a piece of an economy that they have yet to fully participate in. But the atttitude is also marked by both selective memory and amnesia. SA did not act alone against the brutal regime. Africans across the continent and across seas bolstered their movement. It was only months ago, South Africa boldy and nobly came to the assistance of the Palestinians at the Hague. But in matters of pan-african solidarity, South Africa rarely fails to disappoint. It should surprise no one that a white South African took the crown.