Obama in touch with rap culture

WASHINGTON — Perhaps this is what the Funkmeister — that other Clinton — meant when he sang about painting the White House black: There's Barack Obama in North Carolina on Thursday, fresh from the debate dust-up Wednesday, beleaguered but standing, acknowledging that he's taken some hits from his opponent, some mighty hits, but you know, it's OK, because that's politics. Ultimately, you've got to ...

And then he — pay attention — brushes the dirt off his shoulders. Repeatedly.

The crowd leaps to its feet, applauding and laughing.

Talk about a Jay-Z move. It's a seminal moment in the campaign, the merging of politics and pop culture: in which a presidential candidate — a self-confessed hip-hop and Jay-Z fan — references a rap hit and a dance move.

Within hours, there were video mashups on the Web depicting Obama dusting himself off as Jay-Z urges, "If you feelin' like a pimp ... go and brush your shoulders off. ... Get that dirt off your shoulder."

The move illustrated a generational and a cultural gap: On MSNBC host Joe Scarborough's show Friday, The Washington Post's Richard Cohen said the shoulder-shaking was "contemptuous and aloof" and "not smart." Scarborough on Obama's move: "We looked at each other and said, 'What's he doing? "

The merits of whether miming the move of a millionaire rapper who grew up in the projects is smart or elitist can be debated.

For the initiated: To brush one's shoulders off, according to the Urban Dictionary, is to engage in the act of "shaking them haters off. In other words it means to brush off negative energy of statements made about you."

So was Obama's action a deliberate Jay-Z reference?

Friday, Obama's campaign spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said only this: "He has some Jay-Z on his iPod."