Fox News asks Boots Riley about the Coup; calls his response a “political rant.”
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Last week, Cleveland’s Fox 8 News invited Oakland-based artist Boots Riley on air ahead of his performance with The Coup at the LKWD Music Festival. After the outspoken Riley unsurprisingly expressed his frequent political talking points, Fox declined to air the interview and sent festival organizer Kelly Flamos an indignant email.
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The show’s host asked Riley to describe The Coup. His concise response, delivered calmly and articulately, outlined Riley’s long-held goals to “make everybody dance” and foment Communist revolution. It elicited a nervous and evasive follow-up question from the host, who clearly knew very little about her interview subject. Joseph Evers uploaded the clip to YouTube, which The Lakewood Citizenshared.
Shortly after, Flamos shared the following email from Fox, which grossly exaggerates Riley’s statement as a “political rant,” as reported by Spin.
Following Riley’s “Shadowbox” installation and performance at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (which he discussed at length with the East Bay Express here), the LKWD Music Festival performance concluded The Coup’s Midwest tour in style.
Update: A previous version of this post suggested that The Lakewood Citizen uploaded the clip. It was, in fact, uploaded by Joseph Evers.
