The Keys to a Good Conspiracy

Well, that explains the 90's.

Alicia Keys - magnet for militarism and controversy (just look at that eye shadow!) - has taken it upon herself to expose the latest vast conspiracy to befall society. Gangsta rap was created in a government lab, and in her words "was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other."

Oh, really?

Keys notes that "Gangsta rap didn't exist." She has a point there. I checked with Genesis, Stephen Hawking, and the Mayan calendar and it is true that gangsta rap is not evident until the Reagan administration (although there were near misses with Descartes' "I think, therefore I floss" and Plato's "The Durty Republic"). Score one for Keys and chronology.

However, the argument is hollow at best. Haven't poverty, ignorance, gangs, and crime in general done enough to get "black people to kill each other"? I guess even societal scourges have the government nosing in on the fun from time to time. Whod'a thought of the ghetto as the next great bastion of libertarianism? Of course I can join Alicia - I mean Miss Keys, cause I'm nasty - and go all post hoc on yo' ass. Revisionism all up in dis!

Why do black people have to do all of the killing? Where's the collateral damage to those folks not the initial target of this conspiracy: white people? I haven't heard of any ripple increases of suburbanite on suburbanite crime lately. I myself must have seen the "Ain't Nuthin but a G Thang" video 100 times in my white adolescence but have yet to join in the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush endorsed assault on the black man. Maybe that's just because the gang signs were all blurred out. Thank you, thank you yet again, MTV for saving me from myself. Who knows what this conspiracy could do once it reaches the Latino and Asian/non-Pacific Islander demographics!

Let's wait and watch. If Ice-T and Public Enemy were just government pawns we should see some escalation of the evidence now that Keys has exposed the plan. These artists have already shown their Americanism by making millions off of the situation. Of course they're in bed with Bush and Cheney. Those guys just drip success.

I think it's already too late and all of this AK-47 jewelry proves Keys is a mere stooge for the gun lobby. Now that Charlton Heston's gone, who's gonna carry the torch? Alicia Keys, that's who, whether she likes it or not.

Let's hurry up and move to Canada before Ben Gibbard exposes indie rock for what it really is: a government ploy to convince white people to buy more iPods.