Next, Neil Diamond's "Auschwitz"

[akirlu]

God knows, I am not normally the most sensitive soul ever, and I think Lionel Richie has every right in the world to cut a Country album and name it whatever he wants, but I must tell you that when I see photo of a black man sitting on a porch (tipped back on his chair, in a wide-kneed posture that could certainly be interpreted as a bit sexualized) with the word "Tuskeegee" superimposed over the image, my first thought is not of music.

Maybe this is a subversive move to reclaim something or other, but I can't help thinking it might just have been poorly thought through.

Comments

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

I sometimes listen to a bit of Pandora at work. not much because we have a 2 gig limit, which could theoretically be reached in 2 days of solid listening in an non-wifi setting.

They have ads. The ads are also spoken. By a computer. The word Tuskeegee made me look at my phone for a moment going, "Wbaaaa?" (Something like tuss-keh-GEE.)

I thought it was weird too. they showed the cover. that was alsp "Whaa?" moment. Then again, I was in the midst of listening to "Old time radio" (read old, old country-- Grand Ole Opry and the days when people went to perform demos live on radio stations).

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Huh. I haven't looked at the image, but when I see a picture of a black man by the word "Tuskeegee" what I think is, a) World War II heroes, b) isn't that spelled wrong? c) oh, yeah, syphillis experiments. It is true that I never think of music in that context.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Tuskeegee is a place. And the name of a university, with a long history. A lot of people have lived there. A lot of things have happened there.

One pops into your mind first. (I can only guess what it might be; you did not say.)

It may not be the first thing that comes to mind for other people.

For me, a person who knows little of Tuskeegee and has never been there, the order is approximately: the university, George Washington Carver, the Airmen, and then the shameful syphilis experiments. Then the city.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

Lionel Richie was born there.

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

And Booker T. Washington, who founded it as one of the first institutions of learning for black people, at the time at which most of them (like himself, and Dr. Carver) had been born in slavery.