Thank god almighty

Speaking of angel dust, there's some good news, for a change, out of New York today.

David Paterson, the blind guy who got promoted to governor after Eliot Spitzer got caught frequenting hoo-ers, just issued a full and unconditional pardon to Slick Rick, who spent the better part of the '90s in prison for attempted murder and weapons charges.

Since the shit just went down, I'm not really sure what took place behind the scenes to make this happen. As I mentioned on my own site just now, Slick Rick might have set the pardon in front of him and told him it was a credit card receipt for some fried chicken. At any rate, this should represent the end of a long and troublesome ordeal for the rapper.

The older and hence sexier among us will recall that Slick Rick got locked up in the early '90s behind an incident in which he shot his cousin and an innocent bystander and crashed his Honda Accord (or was it a Honda Accord? Slick Rick doesn't seem like he'd drive a Honda Accord) into a tree, severely injuring the girl who was in the car with him.

I was only a young kid at the time, so I didn't really understand the nature of the drug PCP. In fact, I'm not sure if I really do to this day. It might take actually being on it to understand just how batshit it can make you.

Recently, I read a story in GQ about the fucked up state of James Brown's finances since he bought the farm a couple of years ago, and it was getting into all the wacky shit he would do back in the day, like taking broads out in the woods and raping them, dressing up like an Indian and driving his car into shit, and installing all kinds of surveillance equipment in his front yard. (Note: I'm so not making any of this up. It's in the April issue, with Adriana Lima on the cover. My little brother has a subscription.)

I'm not saying Slick Rick wasn't justified in what he did. I'm just saying. I wonder if we ever really got the full story. It's too bad I was way too young at the time to do the kind of important journalism I do today, i.e. rampant speculation informed by stereotypes, mixed with crude sexual humor.

I can't remember all of the details this long after the fact, and I'm not about to exert any more effort than I have to on a holiday weekend like this, but from what I understand, Slick Rick shot his cousin because his cousin had been threatening to kill him. How in the world he arrived at this idea, I'm not sure. According to the press release regarding his pardon, which you can find at Nah Right and the New York Times' City Room blog, Slick Rick believed his cousin had been responsible for at least one previous attempt on his life.

I'm not gonna try to draw a connection between this and the fact that Pimp C claimed he was attacked by a group of people in that mall, when word on the street is that it was just a woman, because I already suggested earlier this week that his death might have actually been due to autoerotic asphyxiation, and that's just uncalled for.

But that's all over now. Slick Rick has actually been out of jail for over 10 years now, and he's been off parole supervision since the year 2000. But I know he ran into some issues after 9/11, when the US government, rather than trying to find bin Laden, was trying to go back and retroactively deport people just because they tried to kill two people. Pshaw! As far as I know, Slick Rick isn't even a Muslim.

And I think he ended up spending a bit more time in jail over some shit that had to do with his passport. He left the US to "La Di Da Di" on a cruise ship, which is the kind of shit he's been reduced to these days, and then they didn't want to let him back in. Which didn't make any sense to me, since he was here all that time, and he paid his debt to society, but you know how the laws in this country are all fucked the fuck up. In fact, I think the purpose of this pardon is so that they can no longer fuck with him on some ol' bullshit.

It's too bad this couldn't have been done 10+ years ago, but I'm thinking this might be one of the perks of this new era we're heading into, where you gonna have a lot more black people in elected office. If we can't actually make it to the promised land, at least we might be able to get some of our family out of jail.

Think about it: Would Slick Rick have had to put up with any of that shit, if there were more black politicians in this country? I seriously doubt it. For example, we learned in this current election cycle that even religious-ass Mike Huckabee once pardoned Keith Richards, who had gotten caught riding dirty down in Arkansas back in the day. And the only reason Dallas Austin isn't sitting in a prison over in Dubai somewhere sweating getting his head chopped off (don't play dumb) is because of motherfucking Orrin Hatch of all people.

The real coup could be if Barack Obama is actually elected president. As I mentioned on my own site just now, it's probably a good thing he isn't black the way many of us are. Otherwise, he'd pretty much be obligated to get mad people out of jail. And not even necessarily on some bullshit, either. One of the perks of being president is that you get to issue pardons to people in your family; and from what I understand, pretty much every president does it. It's just that, if you're white, how many people in your family are in jail anyway? A lot of times, people in the Bush family will get caught doing illegal shit and won't even go to jail.

I'm gonna throw you convicts the same question I floated on my own site: Who's the hottest Asian pr0n star? If, by some miracle, Barack Obama was actually elected president, which black criminals should he let off the hook? Speak on it.