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Stic.man and Obama

¿Viva Mexico?

When gunmen burst into a bar in Mexico's Michoacán state that September and dumped a bag of cocos on the dance floor, it was barely a blip on the national media radar. In Mexico, though, people freaked out. Coinciding as it did with election of Michoacán's native son Felipe Calderón to the presidency on a law-and-order platform, the incident at Sol y Sombra is a good candidate for the exact moment when the "War on Drugs" changed from a Nancy Reagan-esque propaganda term to something approaching Iraq in terms of intensity.

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Saturday, January 24, 2009 1 comments

American Revolutionaries in the Age of Obama: Stic.man of Dead Prez






While Barack Obama is surely an admirable person, his task as President is not enviable. Hunkered down in the Oval Office, he is now calculating with advisers as to how big a shovel he has to use to clean up all of the shit left around by his predecessor. And not only that, but how he will pay for the shovel? And, of course, which shit gets shoveled away first? And, after all, will these shovels even work?

Aside from those practical issues, Obama also has the burden of handling the emotions of the millions of Americans who embraced him wholeheartedly during his campaign, with their wallets and their hearts. The expectations are monumental on a national and international scale. Some expect a messiah, some a magician, and others, just a tax cut.

Even now, in these long-time pro-Obama circles, there are hints of disappointment floating – a near inevitability for the President, considering the volume of support he received from so many who were ready and willing to frame him as the way out of an eight-year coma. Some light public grumbling has already made its way through certain leftist venues over Obama's reluctance to comment on the situation in Gaza, while others were perhaps displeased at the proliferation of his cabinet by ex-Clintonites – Obama's former rival, after all, who was derided for her insider habits.

Now, as he is officially holding the reigns of power, legions of Obama supporters will come face-to-face with the reality that political compromise is going to be necessary, and much of their favored policy decisions will have to be delayed, if not killed off.

The unavoidable criticism of Obama from some of his former supporters for his inability – and surely, lack of desire - to be a leftist cure-all will likely be portrayed by most media outlets as a novel phenomenon, ripe for the picking by Republican spin artists. By necessity, however, this portrayal will discount the fact that there have always been those who are unrelated to Republican political gamesmanship that have always been unconvinced of Obama and his role in the political system.

“I think he is a charismatic brother and he even comes off as level-minded and fair, until you take into consideration a black power agenda. You have to say he is not really representing the black masses in terms of his agenda.” rapper and political activist Stic.Man told the New Madrid. “Maybe in his skin tone he is. But, shit, Obama and Bin Laden both have the same skin tone, for that matter.”

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Friday, January 16, 2009 0 comments

Men Will Bleed, Bones Will Be Crushed

by Reid Jupin

Whatever deity is out there in the ether must be smiling down on Pennsylvania this weekend, because only a higher power would bless us with this weekend's AFC game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Let me take you on a quick trip through history to emphasize why this match up will unquestionably be a historic one.

Ray LewisSunday December 14, 2008, Balitmore, Maryland: With the Ravens leading Pittsburgh 9 to 6 in the waning minutes of the 4th quarter, rookie coach John Harbaugh instructs his team to punt on a 4th down after his team's offense--led by rookie quarterback Joe Flacco-- fails to convert a late game 3rd down. The ball is snapped, the punt goes up and falls perfectly, gracefully, and fortunately within the 10 yard line of Steelers' territory. With the ball ultimately downed at the 8 yard line, and the home crowd in Baltimore explodes… That’s it!... It’s done!... Game over, man!...

That beautiful punt all but insures a Ravens' win, as the Steelers would have to move heaven and earth to win. To secure a victory, the Steelers needed to drive 92 yards in a little over 2 minutes and score a touchdown. To make things worst, the defense that would be preventing them from doing this was no ordinary unit, but the fabled and feared Baltimore squad, led by outspoken middle linebacker Ray “I might have helped kill a guy” Lewis. No, there was no way that could happen--no way could the Steelers pull off an impromptu victory, not in front of this crowd, not against this defense.

Of course, it did.

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Monday, January 5, 2009 2 comments

Katrina Stories


by Donn Cooper

Around the Fire

Just about everyone I've spoken with from southern Louisiana has some horrific personal account of loss or hardship during and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Homes were flooded, personal belongings destroyed, lives ended. I've heard of grandmothers dying in the attic and entire families swimming through septic sludge to flee the city after Katrina made landfall. It goes without saying that these narratives need to be repeated, to recognize the suffering and to burn into the American consciousness the painful memory of unpardonable social and political failures.

Explaining how Katrina happened—describing, for one, the modern engineering mechanisms that permitted the city's population to exist in almost an amphibious natural environment—would take every volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and then some. Grasping the entire rhyme and reason is nearly impossible because New Orleans has long been a literal sump of problems. Then again, ascertaining causes is always nearly impossible in a catastrophe, especially for those involved. Survivors cope by sharing stories of their tribulation and deliverance. In contrast to an abstract time-line of contributing factors--or, in the case of Katrina, a compilation of oceanographic charts and congressional budgets--their immediate experience is something real and tangible to which they can hold.

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Tuesday, December 30, 2008 2 comments

The Ballad of Weezy Salah

by Lusy Dupree

The perils of the internet do not cease during the Holidays, of course. The ruses just get more focused.

Most are familiar with the traditional e-mail scam: an unsolicited message is received from an unknown person in a foreign land requesting financial assistance with the promise of a large financial reward. Following the instructions, victims of the so-called "Advance-fee fraud" (aka the Nigerian E-mail scheme) send money overseas with little hope of seing any return.

According to legend, the e-mail scheme business is a major industry in Lagos, where internet cafes cater to scammers working on prying the cash out from overseas. The ideas of the scams have been numerous, if not silly, at times using false airline tickets, diplomas, and even the forged signature of the Nigerian president.

Evidently, as we at the New Madrid discovered, the scam artists began targeting Christmas Tree vendors during these holidays. One of our contributors - who at times has operated a Christmas Tree farm (really) - received a slew of grammatically-flawed sales inquiries at his business address from a number of email addresses, each asking for an order of trees to be sent overseas.

The scam comes in when the "purchaser" demands a certain shipping agent (of course, a fake one) be used and paid in advance by the tree vendor, as we discovered in the following correspondence.

In this case, however, something beautiful blossomed from our correspondence with the scammers: true love, the ultimate Christmas gift.

Please enjoy the following exchanges. We responded in turn as an "independent Christmas Tree consultant" for the below correspondence. It is long in length, but a quick read that is entirely worth your time.

The correspondence from the scammers is entirely unedited.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008 1 comments

The Ecstasy of James Dickey

by Donn Cooper

His intimates and apologists liked to talk about the real James Dickey–fortunate son of Buckhead, mollycoddled introvert, intuitive teacher, and sensitive genius. Most people, instead, witnessed the evil doppelganger Jimbo. A creature of carnal appetites disproportionate even to his 6'3" frame, he reveled in shock and scandal, in sauntering over to the dean’s wife and asserting his droit d’ ecrivian right to a quickie. As a character Jimbo had limited range, lettered redneck or great, countrified Id. For both sexes the latter was a harrowing encounter on the reading circuit, a drawling and crapulent incubus that, outside of groupie meets fish, could put Led Zeppelin to shame.


Jimbo’s supersized persona compensated for James’s self-consciousness and public discomfort. Dickey submerged what he felt were connotations of effeminacy inherent to being a poet by playing a distorted imago of his father, a modernized Rooney Lee, new and improved with co-eds and amphetamines. His bombast and manufactured egotism grew out of another professional insecurity as well. Being an unacknowledged legislator of the world was hardly reward for an American poet in the second half of the twentieth century. Shelley’s term “unacknowledged” didn’t sit well, especially in America, especially where fame means success. Through his boorish antics Dickey, in part, was trying to cement his spot on Mount Parnassus, albeit per the ignominious route of celebrity.

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The Image of the South

by Donn Cooper

Cataloguing has become a fool’s errand. It’s a parlor game played by Elizabethan relics, workaday ironists, and other lovers of futility. Definition has become absurd, even regarding the sexes. The canon and its kind are defunct, undermined by rhizomes of minority literatures and performativity theories. Earnest litanies are the exclusive trade of academics, obscurantists, and human dynamos–folks like Harold Bloom whose dryness, oddness, and mind-numbing productiveness help deflect insult. Make a list; suffer the stings and arrows of cavilers and anarchists. Invite impolite accusations of defective methodologies and criteria. With your inadvertent omissions provoke an infinite comment loop, generating compulsive and riotous list-making that underscores the inherent impossibility of making lists.

Southern film’s primum mobile index is Larry Langman and David Ebner’s Hollyood’s Image of the South: A Century of Southern Films, published in 2001. Given the difficulty of the matter, the compilers’ measuring stick for Southernness is sound enough: “When we categorize a film as a ‘southern,’ we mean to say that it has passed the ‘Confederate test.’ The action either takes place at any time in one of the states that composed the Confederacy or else it takes place during the Civil War in some other state but Southern troops are involved.” Langman and Ebner, unfortunately, ought to apply their standard a tad more rigorously.

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Sunday, September 28, 2008 1 comments

You Must, Must Control the Rock



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