rishawn steps up to the ol' dirty bastard

at first i wondered what was behind rishawn biddle's recent diatribe against ol' dirty bastard. odb's paternity problems don't sound much different from, say, james brown's, and rishawn doesn't demonstrate that he actually "gets" or knows anything about odb. (does odb really represent "that being Black is to be ignorant, a vagrant and uneducated"? after all, this is a member of the wu-tang clan we're talking about; they're not quite public enemy, but they're hardly NWA.) and i know rishawn isn't upset about odb's promiscuity, because i've read the infamous luke ford interview in which rishawn discusses the size of his black book (not little) and how many women he beds (more than six in 2001 alone), though presumably rishawn wears he a condom when he's knockin' all those boots so as to avoid paternity suits.

then it all became clear in rishawn's next post. the real target of his attacks was not big baby jesus or the wu (who, as they say, ain't nothin' to fuck with), but local columnist and radio host amos brown. and what do you know... rishawn refuses to mention amos by name!

you might recall that in last month's feud with gary welsh, rishawn confessed that there were three local pundits "whose lack of class, dearth of civility and unwillingness to deal reasonably" was so severe that he simply will not mention their names when he blogs about them. (of course, this practice only punishes his own readers, who are left to puzzle out wtf he's talking about if they don't know already, but let's ignore that for now.)

at the time, he confessed that advance indiana's gary welsh is one of The Three Who Must Not Be Named On Expresso. and while he never directly admitted as much, it's clear that the second is jen wagner of tdw. but this left the question of who is the third? i initially guessed that it was steph mineart, but rishawn set me straight in the comments here.

i think we now have our answer. the third person who's so classless, uncivil, and unreasonable that rishawn can't bring himself to utter his name (and strangely can't bring himself to just ignore either) is none other than amos brown. oh, and unsurprisingly, rishawn insists in the expresso comments that "For yours truly, [my feud with amos] isn't personal. For others, it is." because for rishawn, just like EPMD, it's always business, never personal. it's just that all his critics happen to have grudges against him, you see.

let's look at that list again: amos brown, jen wagner, and gary welsh. two are democrats; one is republican, but really socially progressive (which you'd think rishawn would dig because he's supposedly a libertarian). all three are, like rishawn himself, from "minority" groups that are now or recently fought civil rights battles. (jen is female; rishawn and amos are black; gary is gay.)

now let's look at who's not on that list: socially conservative republicans. where are the eric millers? where are the mike jezierskis, the jocelyn-tandys, or the john sorgs? there are no right-wingers on rishawn's list of bad actors: gary has his partisan failings, but he's actually quite moderate on most issues, and very liberal on gay-related and civil rights issues. do you think that's a coincidence? does rishawn think there is nobody on the right who's as uncivil and unreasonable as jen, gary, or amos? or do you think there's something else going on? ¶