Not to be confused with Bum Bum Tam Tam by Future, J Balvin, MC Fioti, Stefflon Don, and Juan Magán, Bum Bum Pam Pam by Farocraz is a real banger to throw you into the zone on a Monday. (Psst: the two tracks are almost identical, and guess whose is more professional.) I read in his bio that Farocraz is about 15 years old from Merida Yucatan, Mexico, and wrote his first song on Guitar Hero. He eventually moved onto real instruments, started making beats, and the rest is history. What his bio doesn’t explain is his fantastic choice in imagery. Let me know if you can figure out how Selma plays into all of this.
The Roseanne redux that came out last week has some of the the highest ratings of any show on TV right now. We’re all acting shocked, but joke’s on us… again. Roseanne was always one of the few shows about a white, working-class family in America, and in the reboot, the show tackles our current red-blue divide head-on. In its first episode, there’s a pussy-hat-wearing nasty woman in Jackie, who incessantly pesters Rosanne about her Trump vote; there’s also a gender-nonconforming grandkid; a question about where we’ve hidden the household gun; and another on whether Roseanne’s daughter can make her own choice to bear a child. If that’s not clickbait I don’t know what is, and would wager that the last two years of America are what inspired the comeback in the first place.
Off the screen, lots of the folks say they don’t want to engage with a real, live Trump supporter onscreen (Roseanne is a vocal one who spews hateful things about Muslims, immigrants, trans people, and, most recently, Parkland shooting survivors, on twitter). On the one hand, you could argue that that’s what got us here in the first place, and tuning out people you don’t like stacks the odds against doing productive work together. Or, on the other, that Roseanne’s reduction of political issues to convenient TV plots isn’t actually very helpful, so why bother giving her the views. Whether or not you watch the show, you can keep your view balanced by reading Roxane Gay’s response next to the one from Fox News. Also a pretty horrible exercise.*
*Heads up, Fox compares Roseanne to Black Panther and This Is Us. It’s potentially triggering, and also succinctly illuminating re: the right-wing narrative. White liberal friends, here is our daily reminder to do the work.
This got me thinking.. what other longstanding white working-class families are there on network TV? Why, The Simpsons, of course. Work with me to drag this from the back of your brainspace: they are still on the air, and they are, naturally, making some quality Trump content. Clearly the creators are left-of-center, whether or not Homer is, and they’ve got a strong Donald going. It’s worth sitting down with these few clips if you have a few free seconds in your day; could help you shake out the Fox News creepies.
BookBub sends deals on e-books to your inbox (and sometimes you just get books free). Nice for saving $, it also functions as a good reading prompt– helps you discover books you didn’t know you wanted to read. Take a minute this week and lose yourself in something; I’ll bet you deserve it. Sign up here.
