Make the Love, Paint the Picture, Write the Song

… the substitution of state ownership for private ownership does not abolish the capitalist system of production. This system is distinguished by the separation of owners of the means of production and wage owners. Instead, syndicalism seeks to create an autonomous and worker-controlled system of production which eliminates the distinctions between producers and owners of the means of production. With the passage of private industry to the state, the state bureaucracy replaces the capitalist, and the worker remains a wage-earner.

I’m like a fucking whale. I remember everything that I say.

A Seattle Times review of a recent Madonna tour stop praises the artist for “rocking us as a feminist icon” and applauds the singer for her brazen sexuality: “stripping down to a bra, then pulling her pants down below a thong and baring her cheeks to the Key [Arena].” Even the Guardian’s Freeman, in an ode to Like a Prayer, the writer’s favorite album, speaks longingly about Madonna’s midriff-baring ’80s fashion and the video to the title track, which “featured a woman named Madonna apparently giving a blow job to a black Jesus.”

Through a career that has included crotch-grabbing, nudity, BDSM, Marilyn Monroe fetishizing, and a 1992 book devoted to sex, Madonna has been viewed as a feminist provocateur, pushing the boundaries of acceptable femininity. But Beyoncé’s use of her body is criticized as thoughtless and without value beyond male titillation, providing a modern example of the age-old racist juxtaposition of animalistic black sexuality vs. controlled, intentional, and civilized white sexuality.