The answer, of course, is simple:

IT'S RACIST!!!

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For Vanity Fair, a publication that reps a cosmopolitan city like New York, at the heart of the world's melting pot, and now finds the Obamas moving more units than pretty models, to have such a narrow commercial perspective on their website is disappointing. You shouldn't need Bono to force you to open up your worldview a little. But also, luckily, this is all very fixable! Nothing some tweaks and a new matrix can't get right. In fact we might be able to get started here.

Negropedia rummaged around in his knapsack then emerged with this:

We have about 30 sites on here. We lose the continuum of news/opinion — since most sites seem to offer a mix of both as a matter of course — in order to add a cultural continuum. Feel free to add tips, suggestions etc.. Next weekend we'll have the full updated clickable Blog Mela-Matrix.

Send hate-mail, crickets, tar feathers and the rest to my home base. And with that, I'm off to lick my wounds and nurture my page-view sensitivity with a tall refreshing girly-drink. XOX -TAN

This was one of my father's favorite songs when it came out a few years ago. He loved it like a carnivore loves steak! He also very much raised me on the whole "you know my style/I'll do anything to make you smile" sensibility.

So in the spirit of smiling, and Father's Day, I want to send this next song out to my daddy who hooked me up with a sense of humor, a deep voice, and, I suspect, the buttery two-button suit I'm rockin' above. Word.

Now, ladies, I have some questions:

MP3 File

Lyrics:

New York City …
you are now rallying …
with The Assimilated
gotta love it

when I blog sometimes I twist the la
write posts on my iBook g5 (ed: just go with it, people)
it's all white, like these girls that's on my jock
I don't know son, it makes no sense to me
hope you got everything you need cause I
am so broke it might even make you cry
I got some questions that I gotta ask and I
don't give a fcuk what you give as an answer baby

Giiirrrrlll
It's easy to love TAN
But what if I'm not a brand?
Just a man
Would you still have love for me?
Giiirrrrlll
Can you get me a Ketel-cran?
The official drink of TAN
So scram
And show your love for me

Verse:

if I got AIDS tomorrow
would you still touch me?
if I lost both my arms
would you still hug me?
if I got knocked into a coma for half a century
could I count on you to still have respect for me mentally?
if I killed the prez
i'm on the run from the feds
would you mind wearing a beard
and growing some dreds?
if I give you a black eye
you wearing glasses to hide?
if you caught me cheating
would you let it slide?
if I got you a fake bag for $5.99
are you giving me head
or starting to whine?
what if you work a tough job
straight walking with blisters
while I'm home, unemployed
banging your sister?
if I bite off your tongue
would you bite back???
if I nut in your eye
would you wipe that???
I could piss in your mouth
you know a nightcap???
might pass a little gas
I know you like that ...

CHORUS

These are questions that need answers, people.

That's a seriously hot couple on the cover, no? Did they have Photoshop back then, or is that straight natural melanin?

AnyJet, WTAN is back in the building this weekend. For those just tuning in, I'm your host "The Assimilated Negro". And I'll be holding your hand as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death for the next few hours.

For entertainment purposes, we're going to get a little conversation flowing on the rising interest in taxing weed. I've got blogger and weed-olympian Jason Mulgrew, left-coast hip hop music columnist Jeff Weiss, and an Anonymous Hedgefund Guy (but not this one) to comment on getting green for green. Always a fun topic.

And then, with any luck, we're going to debut "Negropedia Brown, Blog Detective" as he attempts to solve a couple Media Mysteries. We have Jay-Z and "The Case of the Undead Auto-Tune". Here I will only use the words "Slate", "Jody Rosen" and "smackdown" to get the advance notice on the Google Alerts popping.

Then to celebrate the one year-ish anniversary of Vanity Fair's blog matrix, we have something along the lines of "The Case of Black People Using the Internet, Too". If you want a little more background on what that will be about, check out the Blog Matrix VF put out last summer and try to figure out if anything's missing. I mean really, what would Obama think about that?

But for now, what's hotter than a Swedish indie siren covering old school hip hop? Absolutely nothing. Totally fanning out on Lykke Li right now.

Lykke Li - Can I Kick It? (A Tribe Called Quest cover) from yelloyello on Vimeo.

Back soon ....

Thanks to my guests for blessing the space on this sparsely-populated Saturday afternoon: Melissa Lafsky, Jozen Cummings, Abiola Abrams. All of them very attractive and charming. You would be wise, and of judiciously discerning tastes, to try and chat them up via email, twitter, their websites etc. Tell them TAN sent you.

Thanks to Sonia Sotomayor for making history. And The Bronx for providing the rags in her rags-to-riches narrative. Everyone always forgets the rags!

Thanks to the media for talking incessantly about "empathy". That was butter.

But yo, before I go, I'm gonna down a whole bottle of Jager in under a minute. Like this dude:

Is that real? I think I'm going to try it. RIGHT NOW! Someone run my blog for me when I die. If I do survive, I hope to see you next weekend. Peece.

image: via

So yeah, should be a solid lineup for your schmoozy Saturday afternoon.

With all the media-hubbub over Obama appointing the first Hispanic (or is it Latina?) female to the Supreme Court, we were surprised no one went to the BX to find out how they're reacting to "Sonia from the block" getting the nod from Obama to sit on the high court. So we did that.

Then, the headlines about the recession being over are accumulating fast. It's kind of sad, no? We got Jozen Cummings (Vibe), Melissa Lafsky (Discover), and Abiola Abrams (BET, VH1) to offer suggestions on how we should celebrate.

Finally, since "empathy" has been such a big topic of conversation this week, somewhere in the mix we're going to run a "Political Empathy Matrix" and scattergraph some of the week's top storylines.

I saw this video over by Ta-Neezy this week. Realized it makes the perfect song for the Saturday afternoon shift. So let's toss it to De La Soul, singing that assimilated favorite, "Saturdays"

Oh, I'm your host for the next couple hours. Call me, TAN.

image: via

Not that I'm going to do an interesting post about our reverence for the old guard of Black heroes, versus our sustained dismissal of hip hop (read: contemporary Black) heroes or anything. It's a holiday weekend, baby! But just wondering.

Anyyawn, thanks to Sasha Grey, and my discussers of feminist issues: Jill, Amanda, Jess, and Matt. Support your artists!

I'm signing off. It's 9PM. Black bloggers got to get home before the freaks come out! By home I mean the bar, of course. Fek and I took our time to indulge, and make sure this blogging day was as relaxed and spread out as possible. It's the weekend!

Send all your complaints about tainting the feminist conversation via gawker, or gawker via feminist taint, to my internet PO BOX. If you see Sasha Grey, tell her I look forward to talking it out.

Before I peace-out this bitch, here's a clip of Biggie, modern Black hero, twenty years ago, at the age of 17.

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Hmm, well I guess his speeches are a little NSFW. See y'all next weekend.

Word.

We're Jezzin' it up this weekend with a whole bunch of X chromosomes in the house: We've got Amanda Marcotte of fem-political blog Pandagon; Jill Filipovic from Feministe; Jess McCabe imported from The F Word across the pond; and then, to throw in a smidgen of peen, I asked masculinist Matt Ufford of With Leather and Warming Glow to romp with the ladies. They're basically gonna get all up in the coochie of the recently launched Slate: Woman Double X blog until it's worn out and really truly knows the pain that comes with giving birth to a blog. Babies should see this level of backlash.

After all that hot mostly girl-on-girl action, we'll put up my interview with existential porn princess Sasha Grey who stars in the mucho-hyped and just-opened Stever Soderbergh meditation, The Girlfriend Experience. Then we'll send it back to Foster: Live in Vegas!

For the uninitiated, I go by the three letters you probably need a little more of in your life: TAN. Sometimes also, "The Assimilated Negro", and/or, "the black dude who's on Gawker sometimes. holla!"

Now that's out of the way, let's have Jay-Z set the tone with his classic ode to the ladies. Please place your laptop/mobile phone speakers in the loud and upright position so the whole park can hear:

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Who knows what other surprises we'll have in store. Maybe George Bush will start tweeting how he really feels, and then Cheney will most definitely be in the building putting him on blast. But you know what? Even if that doesn't happen, it'll be fun, because we'll both be here. And when we get sick of each other, we can leave, and then come back... What or why am I typing right now?

Before exiting stage left, I want to remind folks where to holler if you need me. Thanks to Susan Orlean, Emily Gordon, Eric Easter, Troy Patterson, and Aviva Yael for their contributions. Support your artists! We're gonna close this puppy out with Sade Adu singing a poignant love-ode to ridiculous tattoos. At least, that's what it is now.

Sade & WTAN Present: Like A Tattoo from weekendvids on Vimeo.

Wear it like a tattoo, y'all.

True story, no hipster-grifter! We also have a panel including Emily Gordon of Emdashes, Troy Patterson of Slate, and Eric Easter of EbonyJet to talk about all this code-of-omerta breaking going on via Dan Baum. We can fix this!

We are also going to present "The Ten Tat Commandments" (c.f. Notorious BIG) while looking at some of the most ridiculous tattoos ever, courtesy of tat-curator Aviva Yael.

(Oh, and for those unfamiliar: I'm T.A.N. — The Assimilated Negro, for short — and I rock the mic here every Saturday afternoon. )

But for now, we toss it to French girls walking through the streets of music with text boxes over their girly parts. Woot.

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Yall. Sersly just kind of wish all the popular memes were started by me. Like the hipster grifter, and this is why you're fat, and lolwhatever, like what if you I unveiled that I did all those things. And I was Dooce. And I'm blak. You would totally friend me on f-book, I know it.

N e ways, just feel peeps are always treating blak like a brand, or sub-brand. Like blak peeps are a french horn and white people are acoustic guitars. They're both instruments, yall. Depends on how you play it.

Don't want to make this post all entry-level black and uncomfortable. Like when u make jokes about not getting a cab even though they pick up every1 now. Just think there's a lot of blogs and pundits and smart people out there and we could figure it out if we focused.

Maybe I should live my life in Red HD, like Nyle. That camera makes every1 look good!

OK. THAT VOICE IS OVER.

This was sort of a trying weekend. I had Sasha Grey lined up. Then I had these hipster dewds, which is why I was talking hipster kewl; wanted them 2 feel comfy yall. But didn't come together as planned, and alas the weekend, for WTAN, has come to an end.

We should have Sasha next week though. Unless she fucks me. Sorry, had to do it. No, I'm pretty sure she won't. (again!) She's at Exxxotica, I'm told. But here's some of my questions as a teaser. I have more, but feel free to add yours in the comments and maybe we'll get them in for next weekend.

Have a good one, yall!

Sasha:

1. Do you think you can be seduced via email interview?

2. I haven't seen any of your movies (Really! Well, except for The Girlfriend Experience which I saw last night.) What am I — and others out there — missing from the purely visceral porn side of your oeuvre? Do you consider yourself as having an "oeuvre"?

3. Everyone talks about how smart you are. It sort of feels like when Obama/Black people are celebrated for being "clean and articulate". Are porn stars by and large idiots or something? Do you think your intelligence would stand out in other fields/careers as much?

4. Are you familiar with the 10,000 hours theory, via Malcolm Gladwell and others? It suggests that masters/geniuses of their craft become so by somehow, someway diligently working at their craft for 10,000 hours. Do you think you've hit the 10,000 hours mark for fucking? Are you a "fucking genius"? Are there masters of porn/geniuses of the craft of sex? Sexual outliers. If one fucks for 10,000 hours will one be a genius? How do we identify the geniuses?

TK TK TK

Back to you, Fek. Holla if you need me.

image via

But sersly yall, been wondering what I should blog about here on the big gawkr stage. What do u think? What would u blog if u were blk on gawkr? Feel like Megan Fox, and don't want to have to prove I'm smarty-ScarJo but maybe I have to? Just want to be real.

Kinda just want to 'lie' about 'a bunch of shit' and call it 'hipster-griftering' and rock out on sum pa$eviews dewd.

Thing is lately, i kinda feel like doo-doo. not like a dark-race-black thing, like I'm 3/5 of a doo-doo or anything. (chill Sharpton!) just like, unsanitarily lethargic, y'know? Feels like i'm whirling in a toylet bowl and n0thing n e 1 can do. Feel like some peeps think i'm too black-core on my blog, yall. i don't know. is obama too black-core? Feel like i blog like he would.

Wondering if i should blog in more mature fashion. Like Ta-Neezy Coats."Ta-Nehisi" sounds real african. Is he from 'frica? Wonder if its better to be from Africa or be African studies major. Wonder if coats name was Jim Gray or Bob Costas if peeps would respect him as much? not many blak peeps who can keep it real but also throw in the social commentary like he does.

Kinda wish I could blog 50x/day like the pros[e!].

(btw, OMG!!: love loves loved colbert taking down that stupid racist. love when the white superstar celebrities get behind the race issue. feel like everyone's kinda united then.)

Just want black people and wyte peeps to understand each other. not even playing yall. have you seen the wire? u should totally netflix it. best show/movie by wyte peeps about black peeps evar. better than crash yall. even tho i do sometimes feel i'm just crashing into peeps.

Oh. Been thinking it's kinda ridoffulous that 'bams is not on twitter yet. ZOMG! if he's prez and not on Twitter, makes me feel i could b prez 2. like when my friend had a white grlfriend and i knew she would b with me 2 if we met b4 they did.

I don't know. just feel i should b further in life since so many blk peeps are still rioting for chicken or calling 9-1-1 over mcnuggets. is that wrong and racist to feel i m better than them? alwayz feel i have 2 rap to peeps to get them 2 understand me. just want david simons to wryte something shakespearean about my life u know? think i have 'the goods'.

Anyrace. not gonna bore yall with that n e more. This weekend is gonna be real hipster on WTAN, tho. Hipsters don't care about race. think i can relax. Coming up: we've got a Hipster Sensibility Matrix with Tao Lin on blurbage, an Assimilator on this possibly-fake hipster reality show casting call, hoping for Blog Media Bingo with Carls from Hipster Runoff, and maybe some other trix.

Feel this Blak-peeps blgging on Gawker could be big though. Like civil rights meaningful-core, Animal Collective-on-Letterman epic-beowulfian huge. So glad they were on the show cause i want to end my intro posts by tossing it to 'the band', even tho there isn't really a band in the blog, but still want it 2 b meaningful when i say 'here's this weekend's band'. so now i can post that vid and have it mean something.

Just want it to mean something when i blog yall.

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I don't want to get overly racial-conspiracy-theory about this, but in reading Stuart Jeffries piece on the revival of exclamation marks I had to wonder a few things:

1. I couldn't quite tell if the article is sourced from the wikipedia entry, or vice-versa (I'm guessing the latter), but I think someone needs to hat-tip the other. They pretty much follow the same narrative!

2. The first point is reinforced through their shared omissions as well. No mention of Greasemonkey scripts that scrub away excess excla-pointing!!! Or Slate's profile. Both of those items are over two years old. Also no mention of Choire, who legend has it is the Godfather of exclamation marks!

3. Which brings us to the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: "An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes." Ha! It's so true! Also sort of falls under things stuff white people.

I once chimed in the comments with this:

[exclamation points] are an easy way to add energy or personality or whathaveyou to writing, especially if you're churning out posts like some sort of machine that churns out a lot of stuff. But you really don't see it much on black, hip hop, or other ethnic blogs. Knahmean? [ed: I think they/we might do more coding through slanguage. Feel me?]

In any event, since hanging around blogger/bledia types I do more drinking, smoking, and using of exclamation points! So I think it's a grammatical representation of some element of the assimilation process!

Quoting my comments in a new post! Very worth of exclamation points!

But amidst the terror of swine flu and, um, AIDS, have we considered the horror the punctuation-assimilation process can render on those who know nothing of Tom Wolfe? This indoctrination is not unique to my experience. I once remarked to Gawker's own Hamilton Nolan when we were at an underground hip hop show, not particularly concerned about running into any Gawker commenters, and he admitted to being a victim as well. His exclamation mark usage had increased exponentially since joining Gawker!

So I don't know what to think of these smart exclamation points; they're the hipster-Mac to the Period's PC; the itty-bitty stud on the nose of that white girl who likes The Roots; the ironic slash across the throat of earnestness. But how come the usage hasn't really crossed over to hip hop blogs and such?

And will they go extinct when the multiculti hip hop generation becomes the seated majority in 2050?

If you can let me know by next weekend, I won't bring it up again. Promise!

WTAN signing off. See you next Saturday!!!! Holla if you need me!

So yeah. How awesome is it that when Jimmy Fallon opens the National Magazine Awards with a line about Gawker, we have his house band The Roots on Gawker discussing — and so articulately! — the ongoing Great Magazine Die-Off? Granted it falls short of our president going crazy at a Little League WNBA Final Four game, but it's still pretty cool! And timely! Certainly a reason for Jimmy to keep not-not reading Gawker or whathaveyou! (more on those exclamation points later!)

And did you read this op-ed in the Times from Mark C. Taylor, chairman of Columbia University's religion department? You should, it's very provocative. Dude is all like: universities are retarded, buncha Bernie Madoffs and Hipster Grifters. And the commenters at the Times were all like: Yo, son! We are all in debt because of our investment in "higher education" so you better watch your mouth sucka. We will intellectualize you into a pulp right here in the comment section.

But there's some truth to it, right? A quick perusal of the "Shut Up, College" tag certainly reveals that something is wrong. I mean, $54K to protest in an NYU lunchroom? Since I'm only good for inserting that slick-talking give-me-some-skin jive I got some intelligent people to parse out the issues. Credits include: N+1, The New Yorker, NY Mag, and The Nation. Lots of "N's" in there if anyone was in need.

They all disagree with Professor Taylor, so if you want to see an intellectual gang-bang this is the spot in like thirty minutes.

And then there was this cool piece on exclamation points, and it does a pretty good job of digging into its usage. But it leaves out racism! Because white people (this includes assimilated white-ethnics) blog like this: So cool! Perfunctory, even! Seriously! And Black people are like, "What are y'all trying to prove with all the grammatical histrionics, son. Be easy." And I have questions — some theories, but mostly questions — about why.

All that adds up to a great show we've got lined up. So stick around, but before the commercial break we're gonna toss it to this week's band: hipstah darling Lykke Li, in a Black Cab, singing "I'm Good, I'm Gone"

*this indicates both a riddle and a mystery associated with the particular phrase. at some point in your life, maybe later today, maybe thirty years from now, you will realize the profundity of that asterisk. it's kind of like what JJ Abrams did in the print edition of Wired recently, but on a blog and infinitely deeper.

So coming up in 15 minutes, we're going to talk White Rapper 3: The Chronicles of Asher Roth, the melanin-challenged eminem-inflected emcee who released his album this Monday (4/20). He's got the pop MTV and EW buzz behind him, and Eminem has grasped for his brother's hand in solidarity (making them the Martin & Malcolm of white-rappers, I s'pose?), but I have Tom Breihan (Pitchfork), Touré (Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast), and Byron Crawford (XXL) weighing in on the merits (or lackthereof) of the album and related media narrative.

Then I want to try something different with this Roots clip we have. Make it like an open caption, but with video or something. And we might give stuff away! If you're into that. Are you? Well stay tuned, and we'll figure it out then.

Also: Yesterday I took a trip to Spanish Harlem (SpaHa, stand up!) with celebrity photog Diana Levine; it was sort of a Ghetto Pass Illustrated treasure hunt for pictorial gold. You can let us know if we found any.

Finally, did you know next month (May) is Black History Month? There's a manifesto and everything! Stay tuned and we'll get you up to speed.

wordemup.

Last weekend we teased an interview with your favorite Late Night band The Roots and we preempted that for more Hipster Grifter coverage. Next weekend we won't petty swindle you out of some hip hop band action. Promise. If I don't give you The Roots up close and personal, I'll move to Utah.

Thanks for bearing with us as we get off the ground here. Any tips, copies of Elements of Style, or esteemed candidates for The Assimilator, should be sent to me via my blog The Assimilated Negro. Or you can email that name @gmail.

Have a wonderful Grifter-free rest of the weekend!

image via

But I want to make this weekend spot a place of sanctuary from the normal rigorous cut-throat business that goes on, as it must, during the week. So we're digging into this story more, but with a sympathetic edge that ultimately, I hope, brings a smile to Kari's face (we know you're watching!).

So coming up we have a panel that will feature Vice mag co-founder Gavin McInnes weighing in on the saga. Along with Doree(!!), and a book editor discussing the potential merits of a book deal. Also my video report from Williamsburg, where we met people who interacted with Kari!

I'm behind schedule though, gotta run. Stay tuned!!!