Pitchfork Media reported yesterday that Michael Eric Dyson’s (originally of Penn, but who recently moved to Georgetown for a prestigious University Professorship) new book has intros and “outros” written by rappers Jay-Z and Nas.

Dyson has made a career out of trying to legitimize the study of hip-hop within universities, and cut his teeth as one of the most virulent racial politickers in the country. I remember his speech as a keynote address at U-M’s Martin Luther King Day Symposium, where he more-or-less implied that Bill Cosby was an Uncle Tom because of Cosby’s critique of contemporary African American culture.

Dyson’s career, indeed, reminds me of a verse from The Decemberists’ bitingly satirical song, “Sixteen Military Wives”:

Fifteen celebrity mimes Leading their fifteen sordid wretched checkered lives Will they find the solution in time Using their fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds?Eighteen academy chairs Out of which only seven really even care Doling out the garland to five Celebrity minds, they’re humbly taken by surprise