Matt Drudge -- remember him? -- complains about the VMAs

Which is a shame here, because there are so many good reasons to talk shit about that VMA.

But as a rule, that favorite reactionary tactic of just quoting the worst-sounding parts of something completely out of context ... it's just stupid and self-serving and intellectually dishonest and gives people absolutely no critical frame in which to decide what it is that they're being told to be upset about or why.

And can I also say that I am sick to fucking death of this well-meaning (usually conservative) concern about black comedians being somehow exploited or minstrelized whenever they're doing something unflattering. If more white people were able to see a black person doing something without immediately extrapolating that that action is somehow representative of all black people everywhere, then Jamie Foxx would be able to fuck sheep all day long without exploiting anyone but himself. And people would realize that when Eddie Murphy acts like a jackass and black people love it, it's not because he's mocking black people as a whole but mocking specific types of black people that other black people know -- like that one crazy cousin or that fool that lives down the street -- the same way white people can act like buffoons on TV and it's obviously meant to represent specific white people who are buffoons and not white people in general.

Jesus! As you can tell I am pissed-off and off-topic tonight.

I.e., what makes him decide that the VMAs are somehow representative of the entire state of music and youth culture? It's like reading a bad book and saying, "This author has killed literature."

Uh, probably the fact that he either woke up one day and decided, or had over the course of several days slowly, naggingly come to the conclusion that...gasp!..."literature/music/youth culture is dead, at least the way I remember it," and then went looking for a convenient whipping boy.