A dozen Brits sing a vaguely reggae-like song a white American (**) wrote for exotic flavour in the sixties and it's a "true classic of reggae".
UB40, which has black members, was not covering the Neil Diamond song, they were covering the Jamaican singer Tony Tribe's version of the Diamond song. That album is a set of covers of Jamaican records, some of them covers themselves, that UB40 loved in their youth: ska, rocksteady, and skinhead reggae. An authentic homage to some brilliant music.
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovhuKZPNGSU&fmt=18 You're welcome.)
I know everyone caught the fact that Padraig's moguls dropped, i.e. he became a man, when he began to imitate a black rapper. Look deeper though: this is more than the standard "white guy raps and it's funny" or "olde Englyshe culture was so uptyghte" joke. It's clear from the other strips in this arc, and the wedding strips, that Onstad's depicting a Welsh culture that is just as rich and worthy of respect as the hip hop. What's the wider point? Just as neither Ray nor Beef alone could have won the GOF, neither Brit nor Jamaican, nor Welshcat, nor African-American is an island any longer. Power and freedom, not to mention many good jokes, arise from their coming together in peace and breaking the rules. And Onstad is doing a service by provoking the
Auseinandersetzung with race and culture seen on this thread. I'd suggest though that discussion be motivated by desire for truth, not ill will.
However, organized religion, oh yes. A crutch that we've convinced ourselves we need when all along we could walk and run. The shackles on mankind since before we left the caves that limit a potential that would otherwise only be limited by our mayfly lifespans. Basic source of most of the pain and injustice in the world. Would that I would with a wave of my hand, I'd blast the concept to rags and atoms. Worst force in all of human history.
Can you walk and run? Is your potential limited? If so, by what? If not, how did you liberate it?
It's not "religion" that's the worst force is it? The worst force in all of human history has many names but "religion" is not one of them. How about "obsessive, mechanical thinking fuelled by hatred"? The Tridentine Mass and the word "God" do not create obsessive thinking, nor do they destroy it. Nor does cynicism, which is itself a manifestation of such thinking.
There is no such evidence and there will never be. That's why it takes faith. Which you have or you don't. So you might as well stop looking for it.
The kernel of truth in this claim is: There is something outside of thinking.