Bastards of the Party

I watched this HBO documentary by former Blood member Cle Sloan Tuesday night (I loathe the mannered respectful reviews of the LAT and NYT). I found the production as primitive and revolting as the protagonists. Most of the people in the show seemed just a small step above animals and articulated like King Kong. Cle, whose English is so bad it’s as though he’s speaking another language, found salvation in the fantasies of Marxist historian Mike Davis. According to this way of thinking, blacks, even when they are slaughtering each other and burning down their own homes, are the eternal victims of white racism. The loss of high-paying non-skilled jobs in Los Angeles by 1970 is presented as the primary reason for the dissolution of the black family and the flourishing of gangs such as the Crips. In other words, Davis, Sloan and this show want us to believe that blacks are too stupid to get skilled jobs and to wait to procreate until they are married. Yeah, whitey’s to blame for 50% of blacks and latinos in Los Angeles failing to graduate high school. The redemptive third act of Bastards was as primitive as the rest of the documentary, presenting an incoherent babble about love and forgiveness as the solution to gang warfare. After watching the show, I had the same feeling about gang members (of whatever race) murdering each other as I did about radical Muslims murdering each other — the more the better.