You can't politely fly a Confederate flag, but you can hang a Larry Bird jersey
Say you are Black and in an Oregon bar anywhere outside of Portland, and you’re watching the the New York Knicks’ thrilling comeback win over the Pacers of Indianapolis. You notice that the sole NBA jersey on the wall belongs to that Boston icon? The news is that you are looking at a White Lives Matter-level dog whistle. Keep your wits about you.
Lower your voice when critiquing 4547 through the ad breaks. Settle up with the barkeep and GTFO before the post-game show starts.
For damn sure don’t be buzzed when you hit the streets.
When we spoke with this week’s podcast guest, playwright, author, and journalist Cintra Wilson on Monday, our internationally-charged professional hoops moment was not even a little bit on her mind. Yet, same as whichever Negro ultimately ends up winning this year’s NBA Finals MVP trophy, the Chico native ia not in the running to receive a Whites House invitation.
This episode is a gonzo. Political af and possibly my favorite one yet.
Shit nearly goes off the rails as Wilson sprints through the early West Coast years and her leap to the New York Times’ style section from youthful San Francisco plays. Some of the ep’s top Wilson witticisms come from her book Better American Living Through Tyranny, which girl my age “wrote in 2007, right after Obama got elected. But it was after the Bush administration had already ushered in all of this frightful consolidation of executive power crap and things like that. I'm like, that's not going anywhere. As soon as somebody with ill intent gets into the White House, we're going to have a tyrant. And I was right about everything in that book.”
Though widely identified as a Brooklyn writer, the Chico native is back in California for what we hope is not the state’s final season. She brings with her the cachet of a memorably anti-establish New York Times fashion column and a passel of astute books like A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Imagined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations (2000) and 2008’s Caligula for President.
‘I got away with a ton of shit, like I got things published in there that they're still scraping the archives for things that I said to take them out.’
The episode roams deep and free across its the second half. That’s when cohost Lev Anderson takes us into the ideas of Naomi Klein’s hot new book Doppleganger. Specifically, what I remember setting things off is Anderson’s description of social media influencers that, “really kind of come across as they have like this real expression that they care and that they're really sweet like, well, if you do this, this and this… But really they're just looking at themselves in the phone. Like they're looking at their own doppelganger, looking back at them while they're filming all these selfies.”
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