I believe that the underlying story here is the NYT's over-eagerness to buy into the woman's tale -- hook, line, and sinker.  The story fit their template for PC-ness, and for presenting America in a way that says "Just look at this awful country of ours, where people live this way!"

Leaving aside the fact that people live a lot worse elsewhere -- I haven't personally known anyone who has come from such a life as this woman portrays in her "autobiography".  And I've lived and worked all over the United States -- big cities, small towns, and rural areas.  The type of lifestyle which is portrayed in this woman's tome is 'enjoyed' by a very small minority of people in this country.  It certainly doesn't represent the norm.......although the NYT's would have us to believe that it does.

I recall walking through Boston's Combat Zone back in the early 90's -- or traveling through the South Bronx at around the same period.  I've been through LA, too.  And in the roughest parts of downtown Seattle.  I was approached by a teenage girl in Boston, begging me for money.  She looked like a fresh-faced, red-headed kid who belonged in middle school.  I was also approached by others in these cities -- some offering, some begging, some demanding.

The astonishing thing to me was over "Why do these people want to live this way?"  Even if you were born there -- in this country: there's no law which says that you have to stay there.  But yet it remains: a place of despair and hopelessness.  And it hasn't been cured at all by 50 years of government hand-out type solutions.  If anything, those 'solutions' have made the situation worse.  Old men used to be able to play checkers on the street in the poorer parts of downtown Philadelphia.  They can't do that these days.

BTW - life on the street among the Crips and the Bloods version of their society & mores is absolute hell on women.  This (lying) woman's perspective was a bit......of the rose-colored-glasses-wearing variety.  Those men are truly evil -- they aren't nice guys with hidden hearts of gold.  It's my understanding that her place in such a world would have been far more abased than the things that she claimed in that book.

Gangsta rap stems from a reality, contained in a certain cultural context.  Nobody in their right mind would want to live in such a context -- especially not if they happen to be female.

But this fine lady, the writer of record here -- if nothing else, she's added an additional weight of evidence to one truth: the NYT's will readily buy into and publish anything that furthers their agenda.  And without bothering to go to the trouble of getting their facts straight first.

Something To Do At 3:00AM