Awesome. I wish this were more serious, less mischief. If I download something it's because it's not worth the money, I can't afford it, I want to check it out before spending money, or I want to protest it or something associated.

Between money, capitalism, and that we should have a *right* to a confident, fair purchase, there are a lot more mature, socially-critical messages that could be shared with this kind of work.

But that's me, and these guys are probably 'just trying to have a good time' or something.

I think there's a lot of criticism of 'that artist' for various reasons, and I've seen a lot of underground rappers call him out for variously A) not being a good rapper, B) offering watered down social criticism that makes white middle class feel societally responsible, and C) for being very successful without giving any cred to his influences and predecessors.

I don't really care too much about that though - I just love how brother Ali manages to diss him while never mentioning his name... but rhyming his name in nearly every line.

@Trancecoach
@vadeosaft

I agree with you on a lot of these points about men, but you are using the vilification/ignorance surrounding the portrayals of men in the media to justify the portrayal of women in the media. Neither set of stereotypes is preferable, but justifying one bad portrayal by saying "men have it just as bad or worse" doesn't make for a good argument.

@Stu
I don't know what you're referring to. Here is what I found:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/emily-ratajkowski-interview-blurred-lines
This?
That's not really an explanation of what the song is about. And if it's supposed to be poking fun at those types of stereotypes, I feel they did a poor job. Come on, this is a far cry from A Modest Proposal in terms of sarcastic social criticism.

@Trancecoach: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rrk3og (Lily Allen addresses your concern)

@EMPIRE @ChaosEngine: What you want is Deltron 3030, nerdy, socially critical sci-fi hip-hop

Hip Hop can be a great thing if you remove all that bling bling, "bitches", and bentleys.

Hip Hop used to be almost completely about social criticism. And it needs to go back to that.

The mediocre characters played by the Cracked cast let me pretend that I too could weave an endless sequence of riffs on popular culture into social criticism so witty that the entire Internet would want to hear it.

comedy is the best way to present social criticism.

... ooh dave chappelle, where for art though

@GenjiKilpatrick

I think it's good to be reflective about our attitudes about sex and gender, and to keep in mind that people are all different when it comes to sex and that's fine, but I think that's not the whole picture.

We call WoW obsessives nerds or dorks, we call frat guys bros or douchebags, we call Scientologists cultists, and we call Wall St. guys greedy. Her activity of choice is sex with anybody who's there... her activity is of no benefit to herself or anyone else (the odds seem good that she's spreading permanent STDs), and in her document she seems to exhibit a pattern of carelessness and insensitivity toward self-discipline and ethics... there doesn't seem any reason to make her exempt from normal social criticism.

"What is white culture?" is the ultimate softball question---that is, if you are not a white supremacist.

In grade school, most of the history, social studies, and humanities courses I took dealt with this question. Any american elementary school graduate is qualified to answer this question. Yet a grown man, who purports to be a big time social critic can't.

"What's that behind your back?" is a hard question if your intent is loutish.

The little girl seems much to healthy and happy for someone who's on the breach of death. It's seems to be me that the social critic of this tale has been smooth out (like in most of Disney's work btw). It disappointed me since the story and the animation has otherwise great potential. Adding this to the less compromising social critic and depth of emotion in which someone like Isao Takahata dare to go would have made a great animation of this.

>> ^deathcow:
wtf why the downvotes

Well, since you asked, let's go back to your original quote (before you sarcastically edited it)...

"wow, Mos Def sounded much more intelligent on HHGTTG.... the "IQ 80" accent does not suit him"

The IQ 80 accent? As if everyone who speaks "ghetto" or uses slang must be unintelligent. No, Mos Def should go back to the corrupt and despicable school system of the ghetto (he grew up in Brooklyn) and learn himself some real English so us whiteys can understand him better! Then maybe he'll be more accepted into the mainstream media instead of being written off as another tokin' black guy for Uncle Sam to chuckle at. In reality, Mos Def is one of the leading underground hip-hop artists of our time, a man who actually has a message to his music, unlike 90% of the c"rap" that's out there talking about bling, guns and hoes. And as seen here, he's willing to speak his mind and say things in public that many people have thought but are too afraid (read: no balls) to say.

The accent doesn't "suit" him? Please. Do us a jig Mos! As if he's putting on some kind of act. Then to say he sounded more intelligent in some cheesy kiddy movie where he WAS acting, completely degrades what this man has accomplished in his lifetime - and believe me, HHGTTG is barely a blip on his radar.

On to the next quote...

"mos def might have a speech disorder, but luckily we can understand him alright.
cornell west.... who cares."

Speech disorder - pfft, yeah. Maybe he should start talking "more white" so that we can translate this foreign ebonic jibberish. See above.

Cornel West... who cares? Right, he's only a former Harvard professor, current Princeton professor, a best-selling author, civil rights activist, a well-respected sociologist and social critic especially when it comes to matters of race and religion, etc. etc. Nope, he's just using a bunch of big phony words I can't follow, therefore he must be talking out of his ass. In fact, Cornel West has many more meaningful things to say than you or I probably ever will.

I never thought I would give out downvotes, especially to people who upvoted my own video, but those comments completely missed the point.

Wish my Ergo Proxy OP sift had made it too

Anyway, excellent anime if you enjoy your social criticism with exorbitant levels of violence tagged together with a dash of sadomasochist and rampart nudity.

thanks! it is shameful that so few people know about the acerbic and witty social criticism coming from the one of the fastest men on Earth...

continued...

Togo sent Ambassador Sato to Moscow to feel out the possibility of a negotiated surrender. On July 13, four days before Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met in Potsdam to prepare for the end of the war (Germany had surrendered two months earlier), Togo sent a telegram to Sato: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. It is his Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war."

The United States knew about that telegram because it had broken the Japanese code early in the war. American officials knew also that the Japanese resistance to unconditional surrender was because they had one condition enormously important to them: the retention of the Emperor as symbolic leader. Former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew and others who knew something about Japanese society had suggested that allowing Japan to keep its Emperor would save countless lives by bringing an early end to the war.

Yet Truman would not relent, and the Potsdam conference agreed to insist on "unconditional surrender." This ensured that the bombs would fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It seems that the United States government was determined to drop those bombs.

But why? Gar Alperovitz, whose research on that question is unmatched (The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Knopf, 1995), concluded, based on the papers of Truman, his chief adviser James Byrnes, and others, that the bomb was seen as a diplomatic weapon against the Soviet Union. Byrnes advised Truman that the bomb "could let us dictate the terms of ending the war." The British scientist P.M.S. Blackett, one of Churchill's advisers, wrote after the war that dropping the atomic bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia."

There is also evidence that domestic politics played an important role in the decision. In his book, Freedom From Fear: The United States, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999), David Kennedy quotes Secretary of State Cordell Hull advising Byrnes, before the Potsdam conference, that "terrible political repercussions would follow in the US" if the unconditional surrender principle would be abandoned. The President would be "crucified" if he did that, Byrnes said. Kennedy reports that "Byrnes accordingly repudiated the suggestions of Leahy, McCloy, Grew, and Stimson," all of whom were willing to relax the "unconditional surrender" demand just enough to permit the Japanese their face-saving requirement for ending the war.

Of course, political ambition was not the only reason for Hiroshima, Vietnam, and the other horrors of our time. There was tin, rubber, oil, corporate profit, imperial arrogance. There was a cluster of factors, none of them, despite the claims of our leaders, having to do with human rights, human life.

We face a problem of the corruption of human intelligence, enabling our leaders to create plausible reasons for monstrous acts, and to exhort citizens to accept those reasons, and train soldiers to follow orders. So long as that continues, we will need to refute those reasons, resist those exhortations.

wiki: Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922) is an American historian, political scientist, social critic, activist and playwright, best known as author of the bestseller, A People's History of the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn

Howard Zinn served as Second Lieutenant and bombardier, U.S. Army Air Corps where he flew combat missions in Europe, 1943-45.