My Man of the Week: Nas

This week the activist group Color of Change attempted to deliver a petition to Fox News headquarters that demanded that Fox end its continued use of racist and sexist slurs, especially with regard but not limited to Obama and his presidential bid.

Rapper Nas stood on a podium made up of the 620,127 signed petitions (my name is on one of those sheets of paper) outside of Fox HQ and made his pitch to Fox to "man up" and accept the petition. "Faux News" did not acknowledge the protest, but lo and behold -- Stephen Colbert did, as he invited Nas onto his show The Colbert Report on Wednesday, July 23rd.

Stephen, of course, began his segment with his usual satirical take on the whole petition and the"Of Course Fox isn't racist! bit" by showing clip after clip of evidence supporting the claims. ("Barack's 'Baby Mama'" anyone??) He then had a great interview with Nas, in which the rapper recounted his ongoing feud with Fox Host Bill O'Reilly. Nas made great points about the violence in rap/hip-hop lyrics and the importance of questioning the actual origins of such violence. He described violent lyrics as a symptom of a greater violence problem rather than the scapegoat cause of violence -- a theory to which O'Reilly subscribes. I encourage you to check out the video of the interview or watch the re-run sometime this weekend. It really was great.

In the meantime, I want to leave you with the video of Nas' performance at the close of the show. He wins my "Balls of the Week" award for this verbal assault on Rupert Murdoch's empire and the Comcasts of the world. It's a balls-to-the-wall, no-holds-barred teardown of everything from Fox & Friends to the NY Post to Myspace and on down the line. It's beautiful and spot on. Kudos my friend. Nas, you're my hero of the week. Enjoy.