As Political As He Wanna Be? Luther Campbell ("Uncle Luke") runs for Miami Mayor

[MCWAY]

From "Me So Horny" to "Me So Mayor"........Only in America!!

Miami Vice

Mayoral candidate Luther Campbell, not as nasty as he used to be

For over two decades, Luther Campbell has been having a conversation with America. Unfortunately, most of it can’t be repeated here. As the leader of the sexually explicit, obscenity-spewing rap group 2 Live Crew in the early nineties, he was targeted by everyone from Florida prosecutors to Tipper Gore for his lyrical content. Campbell, an accidental First Amendment hero (he’s fond of quoting his constitutional lawyer, and Bruce Spring-steen lent him “Born in the U.S.A.” so he could remake it as “Banned in the U.S.A.”), prevailed in his anti-obscenity case in the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Likewise, he prevailed in a copyright case in the Supreme Court, where 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” (Two timin’ woman that takes a load off my mind / Two timin’ woman now I know that baby ain’t mine) was ruled fair use. The High Court did not weigh in on the deleterious effects of self-parody.

As one of the first acts to earn a parental advisory sticker with 2 Live Crew’s double platinum-selling “As Nasty As They Wanna Be” album, and as the architect of the still-enduring Miami bass sound (or “booty music” as it’s called in the trade, with all the bumping, pumping, heaving-glutei-as-jiggling-Jell-O-mold videos it inspires), Campbell has done his part to make the F-word, the B-word, the P-word, and pretty much any other word you can imagine commonplace in our national discourse, such as it is.....


 But Campbell is now 50 years old. In hip-hop years, that makes him something akin to Methuselah. He has a new wife (his first) and a new baby (nowhere near his first). A half a century on, the hip-hop artist once responsible for our unofficial national anthem (“Me So Horny”) is looking to better himself, and in turn, to better the city in which he lives. As he told his hometown paper in a flare-up of civic consciousness, “I’m not degrading women any more, I’m leaving that up to the other guys.”

Sure, you can still buy the Freak Show DVDs on his website, along with his CDs and music downloads​—​a man has to eat and pay child support. But having recently disassociated from Uncle Luke’s VIP Gentleman’s Club​—​a strip club he licensed his name to in West Palm Beach—Campbell is going legit. That is, if you consider entering politics more noble work than twirling naked around a pole for strangers. For Uncle Luke has a plan: to become the next mayor of Miami-Dade County, the eighth-most populous county in the United States.

He is not alone. As of this writing, 10 other candidates have the same plan for a May 24 special election after two-term mayor Carlos Alvarez was driven from office in a March recall election by a whopping 88-12 percent margin​—​the most lopsided recall of a local politician in U.S. history. Alvarez blames his ouster on everything from a bad roll of the recession dice (unemployment in the area is now 12 percent) to the efforts of the hard-charging billionaire agitator Norman Braman, the former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, a renowned art collector, and a car dealership magnate.

After Alvarez addressed budget shortfalls by hiking property taxes on 40 percent of local homeowners, Braman, who has ranked as high as 281 on the Forbes 400, went to the mattresses, spending $1 million to engineer Alvarez’s demise. In the process, he has become the unofficial spokesperson for irate Miami-Dade residents, which these days seems to encompass pretty much everyone...

 find Campbell already seated in the sanctuary, and we whisper introductions. He looks rather anonymous in dark jeans, topsider boots, and a short-sleeved flannel shirt. When he stands, he’s an imposing 6′3″, but for now he’s slumped inconspicuously in a back pew, taking in the youth summit, which is nearly devoid of youth but choked full of the concerned citizens, local do-goodniks, and community activists who all favor the P-word. Not the P-word in Uncle Luke’s songs but, rather, “programs.” They’re not happy with the ones that exist, and they want a lot of new ones.

They want more financial education. They want summer jobs. They want year-round jobs. They want, they want, they want. Then they want to hog the open-mike and talk about how the system is broken. (No fooling​—​at the rate everyone wants something, Alvarez would’ve had to hike property taxes on the other 60 percent of the electorate.)

This is what Luke calls part of his “listening tour,” shuttling around the community and listening to the concerns of the people, which he often does anyway as a de facto ambassador for those he calls “the have-nots” and as a weekly columnist for the Miami New Times. In columns, Campbell often takes up local causes when not playing a wildly unpredictable national troublemaker. He classifies himself as being part of the “Hip Hop Party,” which seems to entail saying whatever the hell he wants with no particular political allegiance. So the former First Amendment champion might, for instance, please liberals by suggesting the government shut down the Tea Party, whom he considers a hate group. Then he’ll throw a bone to libertarians, decrying the Transportation Security Administration, the TSA, as “T’n’A” for their invasive frisking, while suggesting rappers be allowed to carry arms in the workplace, since they work in some pretty dangerous places. Then he might side with conservatives against the Ground Zero mosque as an insult to our dead soldiers. (“Muslims don’t need to explain their religion to Americans. We can go online to find out about Islam.”)


 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/miami-vice_558500.html?page=2

[Soul Crusher]

LLLMMMFFFAAAOO.  Did you read that?


The cities are broke and the residents are demanding more programs?   ha ha ha ha.     

[MCWAY]

LLLMMMFFFAAAOO.  Did you read that?


The cities are broke and the residents are demanding more programs?   ha ha ha ha.     

Yep!

I wonder how Luke is going to run; Independent? Libertarian? I don't think he's all that fond of Democrats.

[Soul Crusher]

Yep!

I wonder how Luke is going to run; Independent? Libertarian? I don't think he's all that fond of Democrats.

Why?   Math always seems the enemy of the average RAT.

BTW - Two Live Crew was freaking great back in the day.       

[Soul Crusher]