On Thursday Take Two addresses the leaked Michael Brown autopsy, new book "Who We Be: The Colorization of America" and George Clinton shares the evolution of funk and why he decided to write a memoir.
Leaked Michael Brown autopsy could support officer's account
On Wednesday the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a leaked autopsy report on slain teen Michael Brown.
Brown was shot by a police officer that claims the unarmed Brown was going for his gun. The report, according to medical experts hired by the paper for review, seems to support the officer’s account.
Take Two gets the latest on the story and finds out how the community of Ferguson is responding to the latest information.
Guest host Deepa Fernandes talks to Kenya Vaughn, web editor and reporter for the St. Louis American, one of the oldest African American newspapers currently in publication.
'Who We Be' explores race and culture in America's recent past
Rapper DMX captured the rift of racial tension in his 2001 song, "Who We Be," with the following lines:
The tears, the hugs, the love, the slugs
The funerals, the wakes, the churches, the coffins
The heartbroken mothers, it happens, too often
The problems, the things, we use, to solve 'em...
The title from that song forms a point of departure for author and cultural critic Jeff Chang's new book, "Who We Be: The Colorization of America."
"Colorization is a term that I've been using to describe the demographic shifts that have occurred over the last century and the cultural shifts that come along with it," said Chang.
Race has long dominated U.S. history. Just in the last 50 years, the country has witnessed the civil rights movement, the impact of immigration, the election of President Obama and the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
And even though we may see ourselves as "multicultural" or "post-racial" – the buzz phrase used after Obama's first election – events like these have deeply shaped how we talk about race today.
Chang explores these themes, taking on pop art, TV commercials and political campaigns.
"I focus on a lot of artists and look at the way they can literally change the way we see each other," said Chang. To that end, he poses a series of tough questions about race, identity and perception – of ourselves and each other.
It's all part of an effort, he says, to look not just at where we've come from, but where we're headed.
"I'm hoping that the book sparks some conversations among people and that we're able to emerge over the next couple years with a better sense, not just of who we've been or who we are, but who we can be," he said.
One of the artists Chang looks at is LA-based visual artist Daniel Joseph Martinez, who stirred up controversy in the art world during a show at the Whitney in 1993. Here's how Chang describes the impact of that moment:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/244126636/WhoWeBe-Excerpt
From Who We Be by Jeff Chang. Copyright © 2014 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.
Upcoming event: Jeff Chang will be reading in Los Angeles on November 8. More info here.
Bureaucrat aims to get more young citizens to vote
The June primary election set a record for low voter turnout - especially among people under 25. Less than 3 percent of them cast ballots in Los Angeles County.
Turnout for next month's general election might not be much higher.
But KPCC political reporter Sharon McNary says one county bureaucrat with a big vision is working to change that.
Related: Can this bureaucrat get young citizens to vote?
Why can't Americans vote online yet?
In less than two weeks about 40 percent of Americans, if history is any guide, will cast their vote in the midterm elections. They will drive to their polling place and punch a hole through a card or perhaps mail in an absentee ballot.
It seems rather antiquated in the iPhone age, which brings up the question, are we any closer to being able to vote online? To help answer that, Take Two spoke with David Dill.
Dill is a professor of computer science at Stanford and founder of Verified Voting, non-partisan non-profit group that advocates for accuracy and transparency of elections.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
We do a lot of things online, like banking, that require security. Why not voting?
Surprisingly, it's practically impossible to make online voting secure. There have been many, many reports over the past decade by top computer scientists explaining the difficulty of trying to do that. If you try to bank online you can, if something goes wrong, get a statement at the end and see if your money went to the wrong place. When you vote there's no way to get a voting statement because we've got a secret ballot. If somebody was able to tell you how you voted so you could check whether it was recorded properly, that would be a big, big problem.
Why can't you just get a receipt?
That's the same problem. One of the things we worry about in voting is whether you can prove how you voted to a third party. We don't want people to be able to do that because we don't want them to be able to sell their vote or be coerced, say, fired if they vote the wrong way.
So that's more the problem than the technology?
It's a combination. This is the wrong technology for this particular problem. The thing that's scary about elections is that if votes are changed you can't necessarily tell. If someone rips off your bank account, you at least know that it happened. But with an election you can secretly get the wrong outcome. That undermines the credibility of all election results. And when you think about it, an election you can't believe is virtually useless.
So in that case will we never have online voting?
It's really hard to say. There need to be some breakthroughs. The state of Internet security now is pretty terrible. Every time you open the paper there's this thing where millions of credit card numbers have been stolen or some horrendous backdoor has been found in software that's been used for many years. I wouldn't rule out Internet voting as something that could eventually be done safely but right now we don’t know how to do it and we need to resist efforts to deploy it prematurely.
Some other countries are testing, if not already doing this. Estonia has online voting.
Estonia hasn’t solved the fundamental problems I'm talking about. One of the very biggest ones is viruses on people's computers. We live in a world now where there are millions of computers controlled by third parties, so called bot nets. If somebody can control your computer without you knowing it, they can change your vote when you put it into your computer. Estonia hasn’t fixed that and there's been a recent study of Estonia Internet voting where computer scientists looked at their system and found many security flaws. So I wouldn't use Estonia as an example.
Do you feel there's much movement in the U.S. to lobby for online voting and solve all these big problems you're talking about?
There is a bit of a movement but the problem is the people who haven't really understood the problem very well keep proposing it. It's counterintuitive; we do use the Internet for a lot of things. So people who don’t understand the difference between an election and banking often float the idea of doing Internet voting. There are also companies in the business of selling online voting. So whenever you have companies pressing for something you have lobbying in the background to try to get the government to use it.
If online voting isn’t the answer are there other things we can do to improve the voting system and increase turnout?
Internet voting has been shown, time and time again, to not affect voter turnout. People keep coming up with ideas to make voting more cool for young people such as using electronic voting and Internet voting and the places where it's tried, it really hasn't increased voter turnout.
Why? That also seems counterintuitive.
You really have to find a way to motivate people better. One of the things we can do to improve voter turnout is to improve voter registration. The inconvenience of having to register and sometimes the impossibility of registering does make it difficult for people to vote and that demonstrably reduces voter turnout.
One thing that keeps coming up, oddly, is the link between voter registration and jury duty. A certain number of people don't register to vote because they don't want to be called upon to do jury duty. I think we could separate those two tasks.
The Wheel Thing: Lethal airbags, cheap gas, a new high tech way to sell your car
Some 7.8 million American cars are suspected of having faulty airbags that can explode and send shrapnel flying through the passenger compartment. The recall was first announced early last summer, but took on urgency when Federal officials told consumers this week they should have the bags replaced "immediately."
But, as our car critic Susan Carpenter notes, most dealers don't have the parts to perform the replacement. And even if they did, the huge number of cars needing service will create an enormous backlog. She gives us some background on the Japanese firm that supplied the airbags, and says while it's still unclear who will pay for the recall repairs, consumers won't have to foot the bill.
Also this week, Carpenter reports that falling gas prices are putting the brakes on sales of hybrids, electrics, and other alternative fuel vehicles. Meanwhile, Americans, seeing lower prices at the pump, are snapping up SUVs and pickups.
And she reviews a new, web-based company that claims it has the technology to make selling your car easier and more profitable. Carlypso sets up test drives, and installs a GPS tracker so the test driver doesn't disappear with your vehicle.
Susan Carpenter joins Take Two each Thursday for The Wheel Thing.
More transparency from the LDS church; 'magic Mormon underwear' explained
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints may be going on a public relations offensive.
It recently came out with an online video about temple garments, asking people to drop the "magic Mormon underwear" label and give the vestments "the same degree of respect and sensitivity that would be afforded to any other faith by people of good will."
Watch the video:
As well, a couple weeks ago, the Church came out with a feature length film called "Meet the Mormons," designed to dispel misconceptions about the church.
Joel Campbell is a journalism professor at Brigham Young University in Utah. He said this is "the most recent iteration of what the Church has been doing since the 1800s to present its side of an image that is often maligned and made fun of."
"I think that historically, [the Church] has been an outsider. You know, geographically, first of all. It left the United States, went to what was then, Mexico; kinda had this very secretive nature, wasn't really part of the United States; and then announced publicly their practice in polygamy . . . I think that kind of carries in some degree to this day -- that they're weird, they're different," he said.
Now it seems the LDS Church thinks transparency may be the key to dispelling misconceptions about the modern Mormon Church. Campbell, who is Mormon himself, said, "I think the idea now is, 'Let's tell our own story...we're not trying to convert you, we just want you to understand us better'."
George Clinton: 'I ain't done nothing yet'
You go to a concert nowadays and you may hear a great band, maybe even see an inspiring light show and some cool costumes and props.
But how many people can say they went to a concert and saw a spaceship land center stage? Well, if you happened to be in the audience in the mid-'70s or mid-'90s when this guest slinked out of the top of one such spaceship, then you know we are talking about the Mothership and its iconic head pilot, known by many as Dr. Funkenstein, but by his mother, simply as George.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjKFCYzqq-A
George Clinton has a new book out this week. It's his memoir: "Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't that Funkin' Kinda Hard on You?"
Clinton joined Take Two in the studio to talk about the memoir and why, after years of writing so much music, he decided to pen a book.
(KPCC staff was so excited to have him in the studio, that it resulted in some fan photos, seen in the slideshow above.)
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
It strikes me that 'funk' used to be a bad word?
Lots of words used to be bad. It's just communication. Whatever period you're in, words change their meaning. Funk used to be one of those words. You'd get smacked upside your head if you say that. It was too close to… you know.
What about the connotations of the word 'funk'?
My grandparents thought we were insinuating the other word. It's always nasty but nasty's good too.
Then you have a whole genre of music that you're one of the pioneers of that it's named after.
Funk is the DNA for hip-hop. A lot of techno music, disco, a lot of rock music. Chili Peppers is a good example, that's rock as funky as you can get. Funk just is in everything.
How is it different writing a book from writing music?
This book, I had one intention. It's my story on trying to recapture for my heirs and my family all the copyright and ownership of all the music you're talking about. That’s my whole reason for writing the book. I'm not finished otherwise, I'd still be out here jamming. We are going to the Supreme Court fighting over ex-lawyers and managers and record companies over this music that's going into the Smithsonian.
Is it easier to write a book than music?
It's easier because I've been planning to write the book all that time we were doing that crazy stuff. I wasn't doing it for nothing. I knew I had to put this down. So I've been planning to do this for a long time.
Early on, you were rejected, essentially, by Motown and that's something in the book that really surprised me.
We were too late. By the time we got there The Temptations had that look and style sewed up. We were short and chubby and they were 6-feet and thin, so it was about a look and we didn't fit that so we decided we'd do totally the opposite.
When did you feel like you had made it?
I still don't feel like I've made it. If you feel like that, you ain't got nowhere else to go. It's like catching up with happy; if you catch up with happy where is there to go? You're bored.
I need something to aspire to; I need some place I haven't done yet. As soon as I hear Eminem, Kendrick Lamarr, that kind of fresh, you think, 'I ain't done nothing yet.'
As soon as I hear old musicians … or parents say, "That ain't music" I run to that music, that's the music I want. Because it's going to be the next music. Kids love the music that gets on your nerve.
State of Affairs: LA minimum wage, mayors in hot water, and the race for Waxman's seat
Southern California Public Radio's Alice Walton and Frank Stoltze join guest host Ben Bergman for the latest in California politics.
The wrangling at Los Angeles City Hall over raising the minimum wage continues. Last month, Mayor Eric Garcetti proposed hiking the wage to $13.25 an hour within three years, with the first bump next year. Now, five members of the City Council want an in-depth study of the proposal, a move that could derail the mayor’s plan. What's behind this move?
Mayor Eric Garcetti is in Washington DC this week. Why is he there?
Big money continues to flow into an independent expenditure committee for Bobby Shriver, who is running for the District 3 seat on the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. He is competing with former State Senator Sheila Kuehl to replace outgoing Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky on the powerful board. Where's the money coming from?
There’s an unusual story involving the mayor of Murrieta in Riverside County. He’s resigned after a car crash where police said he failed a field sobriety test. The crash injured four high school girls and one remains in the hospital. But he continues to run for re-election to the city council. He has resigned, but he is still running?
And the longtime mayor of Santa Ana is under fire for shutting down a recent city council meeting because someone in the audience refused to remove their hat with an anti-police expletive on it. Mayor Pulido faces other challenges as well.
Finally, a pop quiz: Los Angeles County’s Registrar of Voters is placing new cardboard kiosks in each of the county’s more than 4,000 polling places on election day. The kiosks will provide voting information in 10 languages. English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Japanese are five of the languages. Can you name the other five?
UNC fake-class investigation finds athletics program was involved
On Wednesday the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill released the findings of an investigation into a long-running academic fraud scandal at the university.
The report, prepared by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein, found that for almost two decades, two employees in the university's African Studies department, along with academic counselors for athletes, set up a system of fake classes designed to keep student athletes eligible to play.
Dan Kane is an investigative reporter with The News and Observer newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina. He first uncovered this story three years ago.
California prisons to end race-based punishment
Prisons in California will no longer use race or ethnicity to impose broad lockdowns on prisoners.
The change comes from a court settlement in a federal civil rights suit this week.
The suit was brought by prisoners after a warden at California's High Desert State prison confined African American prisoners to a wing of the prison for 14 months.
But the implications could go statewide.
For more, LA Times reporter Paige St. John weighs in.
Measure P puts fracking on the ballot
Controversial oil extraction techniques are on the ballot in Santa Barbara County.
Measure P would prohibit so-called high-intensity techniques like fracking and acidizing. KPCC's Molly Peterson says the measure has implications statewide.
Related: 'Fracking' fight heats up ballot in Santa Barbara
Inmates get skills and confidence at prison dairy
Making license plates is the stereotypical job for a prisoner, but in the Central Valley there's a group of inmates doing very different work - supplying milk to almost all the prisons in the state system.
The low wages for the work may be shocking to people on the outside, but inmates say the job gives them something else.
The California Report's Lisa Morehouse has the story.
Jeff Garlin talks playing Keira Knightley's dad, Take Two turning two
You may have noticed that the show's regular hosts - A Martinez and Alex Cohen - aren't here today.
That's because they're gearing up for a show tonight at the REDCAT theater in downtown Los Angeles.
It's a celebration of Take Two turning two.
The BAD news is the show is sold out.
The GOOD news is you can watch it live online tonight at kpcc.org.
The GREAT news is that they have a fabulous line-up, including comedian Jeff Garlin.
His latest project is a film called "Laggies."
It stars Keira Knightley and Sam Rockwell - Garlin plays Knightley's father.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xep7s36qZL0
Take Two's Alex Cohen recently had the chance to catch up with Garlin while he was taking a break from shooting his ABC sitcom "The Goldbergs."