As IF Times

link Former Oakland man, aspiring rapper, killed in shooting on Vegas Strip – San Jose Mercury News.

What’s the difference between a rapper and an aspiring rapper? Is there a threshold of earnings that has to be crossed?  Number of mentions on TMZ? Hits on YouTube? Value of exotic vehicles owned?  Maybe the criteria involves length of criminal rap sheet;  I wonder if that’s where the rap moniker comes from.

Is there a rap school where aspirants can learn their craft as ballet dancers and jugglers would?  And finally, is there an endless demand for essentially the same tribal bellicose beat tunes about violence, racism, misogyny and drugs?  Or is rap just the easiest of music to get into since all you need to do is chant words that generally rhyme? And not even real words; often the letter ‘g’ is eliminated altogether for convenience.  Just sayin’.

As is obvious by now, any artistic expression of rap also requires  the necessity of having the rap imagery and lifestyle.  Rappers can’t be wearing J Crew and Sperrys.  There has to be the standard garb of aviator shades, gold chains, earrings and the obligatory expensive vehicles and entourage of thugs and slutty women.   Most people know by now that this is a schtick.  Think back to the 60’s when all bands had the obligatory beatles haircut; the 70’s when big hair and moustaches were the standard costume.  In the 80’s it was the druggy/metal look which some relics like Steven Tyler insist on wearing to this day.  The fedex commercial in which a band manager complains about his guys carrying golf clubs instead of expressing hate and death hits it right on the head.

But the rap culture is a bit different.  Apparently, to have the look isn’t enough, the artists must have street cred.  So it’s good for business to get into the odd gang shoot out, crash the odd car, or beat up some of your competition.  Having a criminal record is even better.  Only then will the music have any legitimate meaning.  The music has to be about urban anger, overt racism and supposed disenfranchisement.  Seems to me if you can afford gold chains and drive fancy cars, there’s not that much to be angry about.  Here’s an oldie but goodie from 2004:

“…We gonna order take out and when we see the driver We gonna stick the 25 up in his face…… White boy in the wrong place at the right time Soon as the car door open up he mine We roll up quick and put the pistol to his nose By the look on his face he probably shitted in his clothes You know what this is, it’s a stick up Gimme the do’ from your pickups You ran into the wrong niggaz…” Artist: DEAD PREZ Song: HELL YEAH Album: RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta Genre: Hip-hop Label: SONY Released: 2004

 

Not exactly “and I’d really love to see you tonight” or ” I want to hold your hand”.  On any given week, the media will have a story about some ‘rapper’ being shot, arrested or getting notoriety in some way.   It’s hard to understand why this is even news.  They could at least report the headline as it should be without the embellishment of the artist label.  Instead of:

” Aspiring rapper killed”, it should more accurately read,

” Pretend gangster killed by real gangster”

As for all those ‘aspiring’ rappers out there here’s an original rap composition:

Now this is a warning,

To one and all ya’s

Posin’ as a rap star

Yo’ sho to be fall ya’s

Yo think yo’ gon’ be all mean and gangsta

Someone bigga gonna kick yo’ assa

Tryin’ to build some street tough cred’

All’s ya gonna do is wind up dead.

 

 

link Lawyers Call for Drastic Change in Educating New Lawyers – NYTimes.com.

Let’s for a minute consider the assumption of the article: We need more lawyers not less.  Hmm.  As we can probably guess by now, the United States has the most lawyers per capita of all of the world’s nations according to a number of compilers found on a google search.  We can quibble over what the actual statistic is, but in general, the number comes in at around one for every 300  people.   So what?

Well, the statistic has implications when you think about how western societies have evolved, or devolved depending on your view.  This number is amusing if we compare other statistics that are routinely paraded out by the popular media in furtherance and support of a particular cause.  We often hear that the U.S. has the largest prison population per capita in the world, especially among minorities.  Does that mean that they have more criminals, or does it imply that the criminals have bad lawyers?  Maybe they just have too many laws.   Recently, we’ve heard the bleating about the correlation between gun ownership to gun related violence.  There is the accusation that one leads to the other.  In the case of the lawyer population, does that imply that more lawyers leads to more crime?  In an article written last year by the author Mark G. McLaughlin:

“…In America today you are more likely to find a lawyer than a soldier, a doctor, a police officer or a firefighter.  With an average of one lawyer per every 300 citizens, the United States has not only more lawyers per capita than any other country  but also more lawyers than any other country – including those with populations two, three or four times as great…”

From that alone, we are led to assume the following:  as a population, we are more concerned about our legal circumstances than we are with our personal safety and national security, our personal health and of our houses burning down.

If we assume that American society is at its core, evil and that lawyers are needed to protect the interests of the citizens from each other, that’s a scary thing.  This implies massive shortcomings in moral structure resulting in a society constantly in need of  legal guidance .  Are we saying that left alone, it would be a “Lord Of The Flies” society?  When we look at other advanced societies in the world such as Japan where the per capita number of lawyers is significantly lower, is there more crime there?  If however, we reject this notion of a naturally belligerent and combative  society, then it implies that the volume of lawyers are unnecessary and a drag on an otherwise benign population.  The old saying that, when all you have is hammers, everything looks like nails seems apt.

In one of the most outrageous scams of self dealing since accountants got involved with taxes, is the fact that not only are laws written by lawyers, they are so arcanely worded that you have to hire them back to figure out what they mean.  Common sense should tell you that if you require lawyers to be constantly involved in the course of day to day living,  you either  have too many laws, or the laws are so badly written that the regular folk can’t make sense of them.  It’s actually comical to have to  pay someone to tell you what the law is.  It would be as if you went to a restaurant and besides paying for the food offered by the chef, you also pay for  his advice on how to eat it.  If you ask me, lawyers’ roles should be similar to travel agents or flag people holding traffic signs at construction sites.  However, because of the evolution of confusingly written and contradicting laws, the nature of the law racket is adversarial.  Hiring a lawyer is more like hiring a poker player to gamble with your money, since in the end if you lose, the hired guy doesn’t pay;  you do.

The referenced article is somewhat correct in that the focus on legal education has to change.  But it is written from the perspective of what’s good for future lawyers and how to improve their lot in life rather than improving their role in society.   Lawyering has devolved into the tactic of parsing minutiae in pursuit of an outcome rather than through principled arguments of right and wrong. We recall back in the days of President Clinton’s travails, his infamous comment of, “that depends on what the meaning of is, is”.  This hair splitting has given rise to the cavalcade of absurd lawsuits and judgements rampant in the U.S. today.  It has also given support to an entire business known as the victim and entitlement industry.  The caricature of lawyer Jackie Chiles on the old Seinfeld TV series is probably not as far fetched as most may think.   Consequently, people are encouraged to sue over bad grades, hot coffee, spurned affections, the length of sandwiches and any possible event from which you can get some kind of financial restitution.  On the other hand, those that can afford to pay wind up shafting those that cannot.  Justice may be blind, but it’s not cheap.  There’s good reason for all the lawyer jokes.

In the 2003 black comedy film, Intolerable Cruelty, there is a scene in which George Clooney, playing crack divorce attorney Miles Massey is interviewing his client Rex:

Massey:  “So you propose that in spite of demonstrable infidelity, on your part, your unoffending wife should be tossed out on her ear?

Client Rex: “Is it possible?”

Massey:  “It’s a challenge!”

We don’t really need more people advising on how to game the system; we need people that actually do things.    Lawyers are supposed to be the lubricant that smooths the wheels of society, not the grease on which a society slips.  As long as lawyers get paid by the word and by the minute, that’s never going to happen.