First, the Typekey era is over. Input comments as your heart sees fit, but feel free to use Typekey if you like. However, there’s no reason to send comments through me. Put ’em on the page and get this hee-yuh crunk.
I’ll send an SOS to the world
I’ll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
message in a bottle
–Gordon Sumner.
Keeping that in mind, peep the new fund-raising mechanism being prepared by the Huey Newton Foundation (this link’s originally brought to us by Mark Anthony Neal. His take can be easily found via the Blogroll).
This will be interesting…

I see no reason to trip over this. Money’s money, man. Take it how you get it. So long as they’re not slangin’ rocks, blow, or smack, I don’t think I’d care too much what they were selling. Sure, there’s something sorta funny about the mental image of Kathleen Cleaver telling us how mmm mmm goood this hot sauce is. I’d be lying if I didn’t see some Samuel Jackson beer potential in Bobby Seale trying to peddle this stuff on an informercial.
But an honest dollar is just that–an honest dollar. No qualms on my end for that one.
I’ve got two thoughts, though. First, this might be ingenious. Teh profit margin on hot sauce has to be ridiculously high. Think about how many peppers are needed for one bottle of sauce. I’m guessing not that many. The biggest part of the production costs would surely come from the glass needed from the bottle (paying for glass shipments can be no joke because of bottles’ propensities to break), but the sauce itself won’t cost much of anything. They could make a mint off this, though I have no idea what the start-up costs are for a business like that. I assume they’re sorta high since we don’t see that many hot sauce companies. Tabasco and Texas Pete been runnin’ this sauce shit for as long as I can remember.
It ain’t like the Panthers are trying to take over the game, though, so maybe that’s nothing to be concerned over.
But here’s where the fun could really begin–the Panthers want to copyright/trademark (whichever works in this instance) to the phrase “Burn Baby Burn.” Now, my memory ain’t that great, but the revolutionary I’ve always associated that phrase with was the former H. Rap Brown. Something tells me that Rap’s sorta incapable of fighting that measure from the federal penitentiary, so he won’t be saying too much about it.
The real lawsuit threat would be coming from The Trammps, who released the disco classic “Disco Inferno” in 1977. First line in the hook–“burn baby burn!”
Will they, and songwriter Leroy Green, say anything about this? Perhaps not if the trademark were only being used to make the sauce, but this would also put the Panthers in a position to control any merchandising of the phrase. So if this ever went to court, could any plaintiffs and defendants ever be more diametrically opposite than the Panthers and Trammps? The revolutionaries from the East Bay vs. a bunch of folks singing watered-down “dance” music? Could you imagine Eldridge Cleaver hangin’ out at Studio 54?
I couldn’t. Man, this could be a blast!
But that’s this Sunday morning’s random thought. Best of luck to the Foundation. If someone sends me a free bottle, I’d be more than willing to review it or whatever. Anything for free stuff, jack. Anything.