Thursday, November 5, 2015

Rapped Attention

Never mind
the whole neurosurgery thing

and the "rising from poverty
in Detroit
to graduate from Yale" shtick

Ben Carson

has released a minute-long radio ad

with hopes of enticing
the young black vote

in Birmingham, Memphis,
Jackson, Atlanta

Little Rock,
and Houston
with "Christian Republican rapper"

called "Aspiring Mogul"

(who on his Twitter page
has a profile picture
of himself in a Where's Waldo shirt

and leaning against a wall
with a poster of Ben Carson

and coolly
looking very much
away from it)

showing off his own
rap lyrics

in between out-of-meter snippets
from Carson's stump speeches
who waxes prosaic about personal responsibility
and picking up the baton of freedom.

"Vote and support Ben Carson
for our next president
and be awesome"

he raps

and closes with

"If we want to get America
back on track

we got to vote for Ben Carson
matter of fact."

The beat is actually pretty good

and it was nice
of Carson's campaign

to support such a small-time talent
with an unspecified amount

of the $150,000 ad purchase

and yet the near-mogul
contradicts his own philosophy

as expressed
in a blog post
from May of 2013

about President Obama's election

"Politics is not based on popularity
or how cool someone is."

Whoops.

If such is the case
he should've just played up

Carson's vegetarianism
and his college scholarship fund.

This poem © 2015 Emily Cooper.