I’ve gone back and forth with Syl Jones for years.

Oh, let’s be realistic; Syl Jones has written stuff with the complete blessing of the region’s largest media outlet; I’ve responded in my little basement blog.

As noted earlier, I disagree with Jones about 80% of the time; it’s not that I agree with 20% of his columns, but 20% of any given column (as an average) might be something I can get behind.

While today’s column (via Anti-Strib, whose mission would seem to be nearly accomplished) is probably going to push the curve up a bit, Jones remains…

…well, let’s just cut to the column:

Who’re those people traipsing around downtown Minneapolis after 11 p.m. every night? Who’s blocking the sidewalk daring you to cross the street? Who’s calling women “bitches” under their breath for the fun of it? Who’s running like banshees through the skyway? Look — it’s the New Slaves.

The New Slaves come in all colors, all races, both genders. Too many are African-American but that’s nothing new. The New Slaves are defined less by race and more by their failure to discern their own enslavement. They are shackled to a subculture of violence and yet their chains are invisible to them. We who have eyes to see, however, cannot fail to recognize the old signs of an ancient enemy.

Whoah.

The New Slaves chant lyrics to songs that glorify materialism. The New Slaves claim that obeying “the rules” means selling out. The New Slaves hang out on street corners selling drugs, harassing ordinary citizens, and shooting each other on buses. The New Slaves wear T-shirts saying “Stop Snitchin.” The New Slaves celebrate their own defilement.

It’s a right of passage, in fact.

Jones gets to something that’s bothered me for years:

But, let’s be real: The zombies who patrol our urban metroplex are not alone in their disrespect for others. Our entire society is steeped in rude and destructive behavior that is not only accepted but also televised. We glorify Donald Trump, Rosie O’Donnell, Britney Spears, Simon Cowell, Paris Hilton, even the Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho — to name a few — by broadcasting their personal brand of disrespect around the world. The New Slaves may be untutored in the deeper significance of this culture’s foibles, but they’re not stupid. They are learning that it pays to be disrespectful, pays big time, and they are demanding a piece of the action.

For me, the great symbol of this was always…

…Dick Vitale.

Yep, the loud but dimwitted basketball sportscaster whose career peaked in the eighties by bringing a glorification of mindless agression to the coverage of pro basketball; it was around then that the NBA began looking less like a professional sports league and more like an evening at an R’nB club.  It was about that time (and I may be a tad hyperbolic when I “credit” the whole movement to Vitale, but it was with Vitale’s ascendance that I really noticed it) that trash talk became the lingua franca of pro basketball – with football not far behind.

And Jones is…

…right:

When the Masters in our society — the “wealthy curled darlings” as Shakespeare characterized the Venetian upper class — stoop to new behavioral lows and are rewarded by 24/7 coverage, the New Slaves get the message. They are ready to act out with increasingly deadly force to protect their fragile sense of self-esteem.

Feeding a culture of narcissism, self-indulgence and instant gratification to a generation of people addled by the replacement of “Self-Respect” with “Self-esteem” is like keeping a four-year-old on a diet of Captain Crunch.

Oh, Jones isn’t totally right (emphasis added):

The New Slaves, you see, have access to guns courtesy of the NRA and a disgruntled sense of entitlement, a deadly combination.

This is, of course, crap.  The NRA is behind most gun laws that work – the laws that punish gun criminals, as opposed to the worthless palliatives Jones’ fellow travellers shill, which attack only the law-abiding.  I’ll assume Jones doesn’t care enough about the issue to know the facts, as opposed to being a mindless disinformer.  (I’ll allow in advance – I’ve been wrong before).

It is time for a new civil rights movement — with an emphasis on the word “civil” — aimed at freeing our youth from a cultural imperative that preaches death, imprisonment and a profound failure of personal development.

Corporate America, youth leaders, the philanthrophic community — all need to rally around the idea of a) calling out the New Slaves and their Masters and b) setting them free. Mayors, police chiefs, university professors, athletes, pop stars and, yes, the slick Russell Simmons — rap mogul extraordinaire — need to stop hiding behind the mask of libertarian license and help set these young people free by, paradoxically, establishing limits for their behavior.

So far, so good.  In fact, there’s a major political movement that’s been saying exactly that for the past fifty years or so.

Although Jones either doesn’t know, or would rather the uninformed not hear it:

We don’t need the bitter personal invective of a ranting Bill Cosby or the partisan tongue clicking of self-identified conservatives selling a failed Republican agenda.

Syl Jones:  Take careful notes here.

What you propose IS the Republican agenda; getting show-biz to curb its behavior for society’s good; promote individual responsibility (as opposed to the group blame to which so many in what was once called the “civil rights movement” are handcuffed).

We don’t need Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, for that matter. What we do need is something W.E.B. Du Bois specified many years ago:

“It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.” Not only is this is how we become human, it is how, at long last, we become truly free.

Where have we heard this?

Syl Jones, right as he is in this case, might be mortified to hear it.

(Via Tracy at Anti-Strib, who has a very different take on the piece)

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 11:31 am and is filed under A 'n E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.