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This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.

This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.

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Plantations: First Hillary, Now the LA Weekly

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Hillary Clinton caught flack last week for saying that the U.S. House of Representatives "has been run like a plantation."

But was that the start of some sort of trend? We were reading the LA Weekly's review of Jamie Foxx's CD Unpredictable. Writer Ernest Hardy first gives props to Foxx...

The problem here is not a lack of talent. From his days as Ugly Wanda on In Living Color to his eponymous sitcom, and from Peep This, his acclaimed ’94 recording debut, to his Oscar-winning performance in the otherwise awful Ray, Jamie Foxx has worked hard to let you know he can sing, dance, act, mug and crack wise with the best of them. The problem comes with defining “best.”

...and then lets us have it. Here's the kicker:

On Unpredictable, Foxx takes the term to mean the depressingly literal, enervated excrement that’s harvested and shucked on plantations Sony, BMG, Warner, etc. by their oiled-up, worked-out, interchangeable and disposable Negro property.

Ouch. Can we call a moratorium on using such Civil War-era descriptors? And don't even talk to us about hoop skirts.

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