Word: rapping
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who issued the famous pronouncement that "violence is as American as cherry pie" when he was known as H. Rap Brown, finds it easy to spread the blame. "Racism is the state religion," says Amin, now the operator of a small dry-goods store in Atlanta. "Racism is to America what Catholicism is to the Vatican. Racism is the religion, and violence is its liturgy to carry it out." More thoughtful observers are less dogmatic. "What causes racism is the most researched question in all of American social science in 80 years," says Thomas Pettigrew...
...Jeff Bridges to help her sort out the mess she's in and fill up her bare life and refrigerator while he's at it. He's the kind of man any woman would count herself lucky to find, adept at making dinner while helping you beat a murder rap. And without burning the sauce. It takes a while for Viveca to warm up to this knight-in-shining apron, but it's only a matter of time before the sparks start flying and the buns start burning...
...late Trudeau has been breaking his self-imposed silence, and on behalf of a controversial project: Rap Master Ronnie, a cabaret revue lampooning the Reagan Administration. Begun in 1984 as an off-Broadway lark, the show has been staged in nine cities, including Washington, where it opened in October and has been extended into next year. Trudeau constantly revises, adding for Washington a parody of bargaining with the Soviets for the release of American Journalist Nicholas Daniloff. "I feel passionate about this," says Trudeau. "I want people to think about events during the Reagan years that we tend to forget...
...character in the strip toured a largely vacant expanse purporting to be "Reagan's brain." The President has returned the compliment. A devoted reader of what he calls the "funny pages," Reagan blasted the strip in October 1984, and has since said that he always skips over Doonesbury. Yet Rap Master Ronnie is outwardly as genial as the President it satirizes. This Reagan (Jim Morris) smiles incessantly; he may be befuddled but he is never cruel. That was a strategic choice by Trudeau and the show's composer, Elizabeth Swados, a theater innovator (Runaways) with whom he also created...
...reliance on pop-culture symbolism ("an idyllic land of tax breaks and lots of big-grossing summer movies"). The title number depicts Reagan as a shameless manipulator of images in defiance of content: he seeks black support for his policies toward South Africa by chanting in the style of rap music and attempting an arthritic version of Michael Jackson's moon walk...