Digital Ink Los Angeles

What is Erykah Badu saying in her new music video for her single, “Window Seat“? (Click image to view.)

She’s protesting free speech with her naked booty?

She seems to have a lot to say. And it’s a shaky truth.

One should not “Group Think” this one too much, but it seems evident that Ms. Badu wants us to think about JFK and the reality of social delusion. And her booty.

Thank you, Ms. Badu, for your courage. Now, explain that public booty-shaking session for us, please.

Anyone who’s ever been to a ball game knows its call to stand and give praise to
Old Glory:

O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

195 years ago today, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem describing the U.S. flag still standing after a British bombardment. It was during the War of 1812, and Mr. Key had been watching the Battle of Fort McHenry from the British confinement he was being held in for one night. When the sun rose, he saw the flag had survived.

On any day, the same freedom that allows someone to burn a flag also necessitates their need to give thanks for that same flag.

In a nation that allows someone to speak to the eminent figure of U.S. government in slander (You Lie!) in front of 50-million people, what’s the essence of this freedom if not the emblem of this freedom?

The Star Spangled Banner is more than an anthem to commence an athletic event, it’s a testament to American liberty and the idea that, no matter how tough things get, that flag will still be there. Regardless of race, creed, religion, gender, politics, age, or income, the flag flies.

Jim Hendrix saw the Star Spangled Banner as a protest song. Makes sense, as the freedom it personifies requires active participation.

Watch Jimi protest his liberties and freedoms by letting his “freak flag fly” here:

Voltaire knew the world was on the cusp of a greater existence — technological development, New World expansion, individual liberty, and societal equality — but he felt there were subtle forces restricting this progression.

Forces like militaristic avarice, aristocratic ignorance, and the unequal distribution of wealth between the upper-class and the lower-class. Of course, these concerns, and resistance by a burgeoning middle-class, led to the French Revolution.

Francois Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) was born on November 21, 1694, in Paris. Provided an aristocratic education, Voltaire was what might be called a “smart-ass” in modern times, and he was often too smart for his own good.

In 1726, Voltaire insulted the powerful young nobleman, Chevalier De Rohan, and was given two options: imprisonment or exile. Choosing to be exiled, from 1726 to 1729 Voltaire lived in England. While in England, Voltaire became enamored with the philosophy of John Locke and the unique vision and imagination of Sir Isaac Newton.

Voltaire was particularly interested in the philosophical rationalism of the time — embracing a notion that humans should remain steadfast in an intellectual, deductive pursuit of truth, instead of emotive, sensory perception of the world.

In 1759, Voltaire’s Candide was published, and the world would never be the same. The legacy of Candide remains today as a piece of fire-brand literature that speaks to man’s simian roots — that we are all just monkeys with nice haircuts.

Some of Digital Ink‘s favorite Voltaire quotes:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

“Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.”

“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.”

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

“All that I care to know is that a man is a human being–that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”
~~ Mark Twain, in Harper’s Magazine, September 1899

Mark Twain is a man of American letters who spoke to the profound paradox of man — at once a brave beast, divine and brutal, with ugly virtue and graceful depravity.

There’s a video circulating the internet with naked images of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, taken surreptitiously by a voyeuristic video-maker with access to Erin Andrews’ hotel-room peep-hole.

All dorm-room humor aside, and after the initial lure to search “Erin Andrews Naked Video” for the best-quality posting on the internet, there arises a moment of pause…

What kind of sick freak has the audacity to put his video camera to a door’s peep-hole and video a young woman in the privacy of her hotel? Not casting any stones, just wondering what this person does for fun? Is there an extreme likelihood that this voyeuristic freak wouldn’t know what to do with Erin Andrews if she invitingly opened her door and offered her uninvited guest to come in for a nitecap?

Quite simply, Erin Andrews is a beautiful woman living in an ugly world. She deserves better. Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, and Colin Farrell somehow found their sex videos on the internet because they had intentions from the beginning to capture these compromising images.

Maybe Erin Andrews can call up some of her NFL buddies with gangster friends and criminal histories — Michael Vick, Pacman Jones, Ray Lewis, Travis Henry, and Steve Smith — to exact some violent justice on this peep-hole pervert? That would be a nice professional courtesy, considering the way Erin Andrews has always been an absolutely professional and courteous reporter since she began with ESPN in 2004.

According to the NY Times article on February 1, 2009, ExxonMobil:

“…beat its own record for the highest profits ever recorded by any company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion, thanks to surging oil prices. The company’s sales, more than $404 billion, exceeded the gross domestic product of 120 countries.“

With the onset of the worst domestic economy in 80 years, and plunging balance sheets at Wall Street banks, ExxonMobil managed to return “highest profits ever recorded by any company.” They must be great businessmen and astonishingly good at their jobs.

Bernie Madoff was arrested on December 11, 2008, for charges of securities fraud and outright theft, constituting the largest investor fraud ever perpetrated in history, to the tune of almost $65 billion.

Bernie Madoff had a keen business mind and was really good at his job: theft. On June 29, 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed. At the rate of ExxonMobil‘s current profit return, by the time Madoff gets out of jail, they’ll have profited $65 trillion from consumers. Profiteering is good. America was founded on this, right Mr. Gecko?

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.“
– Gordon Gecko, Wall Street (1987)

Pumping Profits or Ponzi Ploys, which is worse?

On July 14, 1789, the French citizens represented by the Third Estate had arranged themselves into a militia capable of enforcing their new National Assembly‘s laws, mostly in response to growing dismay over their blossoming national debt. The storming of the Bastille created the Bastille Day holiday, equivalent to the United States’ Fourth of July Independence celebration.

Of course, the reason the French nobility had broken their national coffers and bankrupted their country — they were trying to help the American colonies gain their independence and freedom from England.

The Sans-culottes (French for “without knee-breeches”) were the poorer members of the Third Estate, and also the most likely to exact violent repayment of social debts by the aristocratic nobility who they felt responsible for the poor state of France. Within this broiling realm of hatred and revenge, a notion for “humane” execution had emerged — oddly, from Louis XVI, who sought a way to appease the angered masses and their protests over the inhumane Catherine Wheel.

From this emerged an instrument of “humane” execution: The Guillotine.

According to Wikipedia, between July 1793 to July 1794 in France is known as the Reign of Terror, the upheaval following the overthrow of the monarchy, which hurled France into chaos, and the newly formed government into frenzied paranoia. Most of the democratic reforms of the revolution were suspended and large-scale executions by guillotine began. Former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were executed in 1793, and this was just the beginning of the bloodletting.

Robespierre had emerged as a speaker for the people in the new government, and his history associates him with much responsibility for the vulgarity and absurdity of the Terror. The “Revolutionary Tribunal” sentenced thousands to the guillotine. Every shape, size, class, color, and shade of people were charged and beheaded on suspicion of “crimes against liberty,” leading them down the short path with a big blade waiting for them — often referred to as the National Razor. Estimates of total guillotine deaths range between 20,000 and 40,000 sliced necks.

Vive La France!. Of course, coup d’etat has always had a different meaning since then. Slicing their way to freedom, one head at a time.

Sliced baguette anyone? Sacre Bleu!

Shepard Fairey Enters Burmese Politics

Shepard Fairey has been quite busy over the last two years — between helping get Obama elected and fighting vandalism charges in the Boston courts — but not too busy to embrace the cause of one Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the preeminent human right activists in the world today. Her father, Aung San, founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947; he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. She has opposed the military junta quasi-government of Myanmar (Burma) since they nullified her election as the democratically chosen Prime Minister in 1989.

An Oxford-educated aristocrat, Aung San Suu Kyi helped found the National League for Democracy on September 27, 1988, and was put under house arrest on July 20, 1989. She was initially offered her freedom if she agreed to leave the country, but she refused. Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for almost twenty years. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, and remains a figure of social upheaval and human rights in the country of her birth.

Hats off to Shepard Fairey for his recognition of Aung San Suu Kyi’s plight, and the profound relevance of her struggle to the current events in Iran.