Do you run out of Kleenex, Paper Towels and Toilet Paper at the Same Time? You know its true!

So a commenter on one of Ta-Nehisi Coates' postings about Glenn Beck (posted as a joke comparing Beck to Mos Def asking whether white people should be embarrassed about Beck like he jokingly suggested that black people were expected to be embarrassed of Mos Def. Just to throw in my 2 cents on the Mos Def thing, I was only slightly uncomfortable because I like Mos Def's work and assumed he was a pretty smart guy. While he sounds naive at best and conspiracy-addled at worst, I think that in there is a grain of a good point, which is that there never was a lot of media air time devoted to what folks like al-Qaeda and the Taliban actually say about themselves and the rest of the world. Hitchens says to go and watch bin Laden's videos or listen to his tapes, but that kind of shit was never broadcast on TV or radio, which I think should have been Mos Def's point. Why not? The words of these fools ought to be broadcast so that there is no confusion about where they stand and so that reasonable people can reject and oppose their ways. Marketplace of ideas or something like that. Mostly I think the problem for Mos Def was that he had the misfortune of coming onto the show on a night when Christopher Hitchens was not visibly drunk. Don't get me wrong: he's a smart guy and very interesting to listen to and read, but I have definitely seen him drunk on Bill Maher's show before.) linked to this great clip from True Stories (more David Byrne for ya. I wish he made more movies). Glenn Beck's conspiracy theories, unfortunately, are not nearly as baroque as even this guy's, but he's still young, and has time to grow....