Read a Book!

Now that there's a video, the world has discovered the Read a Book song, which Reedies have known and loved for years. The sampling of Beethoven's Fifth, the (sadly) much needed message, and the humorous way that message is conveyed combine to make it the only rap song I have ever liked.


(hat tip Andrew Sullivan)

I didn't notice until I watched the video, but the song is pretty heavily directed at the inner city black youth community, but I think it is a message that most Americans need to hear. Andrew Sullivan thinks that it is an anthem for the Obama generation, which makes sense since Obama is all about actually addressing social ills (unlike most Republicans), but also actually demands personal responsibility for those ills instead of blaming everything on society (unlike most Democrats). [Note that philosophically I do think society probably is responsible for our behavior to a large extent, but politically I think that the way to stop behavior we don't like is to change what is culturally acceptable, and so we should have society advocate personal responsibility. Yes, there is irony in society being responsible for our 'personal responsibility', but only with the Plato-esque lie of individual efficacy and responsibility will we change the herd's behavior, whereas an accurate assessment is effectively societal acceptance of the behavior in question.]