deeceevoice's blog

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968)

The Assassination

April 4, 1968, I was in the 11th grade, 16 years old, perpetually morose and in what I called "enemy territory" -- attending a fairly affluent, majority White and Jewish school in conservative, white-bread Indianapolis. That evening after school, I sat at home, cross-legged on the floor in front of the television set in our family room as I always did, watching the evening news. I was waiting for some leftist, white schoolmates of mine to come and pick me up. We were in the midst of the Indiana Democratic presidential primary. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was in town, as well as Sen. Eugene McCarthy, stumping for support. My friends wanted to go hear McCarthy speak, and though I wasn't supporting him, I respected his stand on the Vietnam War. Bobby Kennedy was my candidate, and I had worked on his campaign. (At the end of his campaign in Indiana, I remember standing in a receiving line of campaign workers as Bobby worked his way down the line, dutifully shaking the hands of everyone and personally thanking us for our work. When he reached me, I remember that he was surprisingly short and that the encounter felt somewhat awkward and staged -- which, of course, it was! )

I'd decided I'd go hear what McCarthy had to say.

I watched as the station broadcast footage of the garbage workers' strike in Memphis and then of King's remarks. Just as the story went off the air, I got news that my friends were there to pick me up. I rose, and as I did so, I announced (to no one in particular) somewhat matter-of-factly, "That man's gonna be shot dead." The words escaped my lips almost unconsciously, reflexively, like an involuntary grunt. It wasn't the foreboding in his words -- "I might not get there with you, but I've been to the mountaintop, and I've see-een the Promised Land" -- it was something as close and certain as my own name. And it was disturbing -- but I had somewhere I had to be.

That moment was just one of many of my intermittent moments of precognition, which Mom always seemed to studiously ignore. I guess she figured if she didn't acknowledge them, then they weren't real. I think the notion of clairvoyance challenged her notion of the way things should be; she found the idea of the Unseen generally unsettling, as did, she told me many years later, her father (whom I never met) when deceased relations visited him. In retrospect, I figure my political activism, refusal to go to church, or stand for the flag or pledge allegiance, and my outspokenness, were troublesome enough. ("Best ignore this weird sh*t. Maybe it'll go away.")

It may seem curious, perhaps even self-centered, but I remember that night as much for that flash of future vision as for the tragic event that would turn the streets of the nation's inner cities into raging infernos -- battle zones with National Guardsmen on one side and mostly poor Black folk, venting their rage and despair on the other.

If anyone else in the room heard me, they said nothing in response, and I gave it no further thought. I headed out the door to greet my friends, but my mood had turned dark.

My friends and I drove to the McCarthy rally in one of those old VW hippie vans. If you grew up when I did, you know the kind -- like a cracker box on wheels with bad posture -- slump/round-shouldered and emblazoned with peace signs and plastered with bumper stickers. The radio was on, and somewhere en route, we heard the news that King had been shot. Everyone in the van gasped but me. My friends wanted to know if I wanted to go home, and I answered flatly, "No." We were almost there, and there was nothing to be gained by returning home, so we proceeded to the rally.

We'd heard no news on King's condition, but I knew immediately he was dead. He was only 39 years old.

That Night in Naptown

I don't remember much about what McCarthy had to say in addressing the virtually all-white crowd. I don't even recall where it was -- just a large meeting room, most likely in the community center of a Unitarian church or something similar. By then, the horrifying subject of conversation of the evening was King's death. I remember McCarthy addressed the matter in passing, and then went on with his remarks.

Afterwards, my friends and I decided to head to the Kennedy rally to see what was what. Unlike McCarthy, Kennedy had chosen to visit the heart of Indianapolis' inner city, speaking at an intersection near the projects -- the Naptown equivalent of 14th & U Streets.

By the time we arrived, it was on the downside of dusk. The area was eerily deserted, like an Old West ghost town in a '50s shoot-'em-up -- only instead of tumbleweed, the streets and sidewalks were strewn with broken bottles, shattered windows/windshields and debris. There was silence, but it was an angry silence. There was no quiet, no calm. No peace. The few streetlights that remained intact illuminated the shards of glass littering the asphalt, and they glinted in the semi-darkness. I remember at the time thinking it looked like the streets were blanketed with hard, angry tears. It was the way I felt -- hard and angry. I wanted at that moment nothing to do with my companions. All I wanted was to be in the company of My Own.

I found out after I got home that the reason Naptown hadn't burned like many of the other urban cores across the nation that night, with National Guardsmen, tanks and guns at the ready squaring off against Black folk turning their bitterness and rage and despair inward against their own communities, was that Bobby Kennedy had convinced the outraged and hurting throng to put down their bricks and rocks and return to their homes. He had summoned up the memory of his assassinated brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and pleaded for calm.

Two months later to the day, Bobby Kennedy, at 42, would himself be the victim of an assassin's bullet.

I remember going to school the next day, seething with rage. For the non-Black kids, it was pretty much business as usual, and I had had enough. I stood up and addressed my homeroom, where I was probably the only black student, and chastized them for their apathy in the face of what was for my people a tragic loss. In that time of increasing militancy in The Movement, I told them that King was the last friend White folks had, and that they'd better straighten up and start paying attention to something other than their clothes from preppy Roderick St. Johns and who was going to The Rivvy (the segregated Riveria Country Club). The response was sullen silence.

Later that day, the school administration allowed the Black kids to go home early. I suppose it was Our version of a snow day, or maybe Rosh Hashana, when all the Jewish kids -- usually about a fourth or more of every class I had -- were allowed the rest of the day off. I also recall that a lot of the ass-backward knee-grows who chose to go home early used the time off not as a time of mourning and paying their respects -- but to throw a party.

That was another thing I recall vividly -- and another reason I knew I needed to get the hell on up out of Indiana and get my Black, militant, trouble-making bee-hine to Howard University -- and on the quick.

Principled Nonviolence

Like a lot of Black youth and like many of the students at Howard, apparently, I, too, repudiated nonviolence. But I still respected King, though I would sometimes roll my eyes and shake my head when he would speak of Whites as our "brothers and sisters." I still remember reading King's "Showdown for Nonviolence" that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post shortly before his assassination. Never having been a religious person, I always suspected that King's espousal of nonviolence sprang from some vestigial reluctance to challenge, and feelings of impotence in the face of, White authority. I eventually came to a realization and understanding that King's principled stand for "militant nonviolence," as he called it, was deep-rooted in his religious faith and personal spirituality. The man was fiercely resolute; he was a militant -- in the truest sense of the word. One need only watch the footage of some of his speeches and sermons to see the outrage and tenacity and courage of the man.

I'd like to share with you a link to a video of a John Legend performance dedicated to the memory of King, interspersed with montages of King's life and death. The song is "Pride" ("In the Name of Love"), a piece by U2 (a band fronted by another principled visionary and activist whom I respect, Bono) .

Enjoy. :)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/04/03/DI2008040301941.html

A Legacy of Commitment to Righteous Struggle

Every year, from the day after Christmas/first day of Kwanzaa to the end of January, I proudly wear a button issued at the time Martin Luther King's birthday finally became a national holiday. And I take time to read from his collected writings and speeches. These things help remind me of the immeasurable debt of service that I/we owe to King and those who stood with him, and behind him, and to The Ancestors, who, often at great personal risk -- and sometimes mortal sacrifice -- enunciated a Vision, lived a Purpose, and dreamt a Dream to make for us, as the Old Ones used to say, "a way outta no way."

I thank God for Them.

*bowing low in respect*

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LeBron goes ape-sh*t for the camera. 

My bet is you've already seen -- or at least heard of -- the current Vogue  cover (above) featuring tattooed, muscle-bound b-baller LeBron James. In and of itself, the notion of a Black athlete on the cover of a fashion magazine cover featuring "best bodies" isn't a big deal.

The controversy is in the execution; the "blue-eyed devil," as Brother Malcolm once would have said, is in the details. James is snarling and baring his teeth like a roaring beast. He's clutching a svelte, smiling blonde with one hand and dribbling a ball with the other. Of course, there will be those who will counter the growing outcry over this latest indignity targeting The Race as flimy, hypersensitive and wrong-headed, as crying wolf; "there's no racism there at all." Below is an old poster for "King Kong." You be the judge.

King Kong with a thing for Fay Wray - Movie Poster (c. 1933) 

The fact is there were lots of ways to photograph James: dapper, well-dressed, classy; on the court, doin' his thing; with a sexy woman, or several, of different ethnicities. The options were many. But Vogue chose, arguably, one of the most offensive and incendiary images it possibly could: the Black, male athlete as brute beast. The Black man as King Kong, White woman in hand, only this time as a smiling, willing companion. The photographer aped (pun intended) the old M. Cooper/E. Schoedsack poster right down to the poses of his/her subjects; right down to the silk charmeuse, slinky bias-cut dress so evocative of the 1920s and '30s (the original "King Kong" was released in 1933) and the hair color of the model (Fay Wray was a blonde as well). The Vogue photograph is, in fact, so faithful a fascimile of the vintage poster, it's highly probable that the iconic image served as the inspiration, if not the template, for the cover shot.

The message/image is all too clear, the comparisons inevitable, the stereotype as old as White supremacy itself: Black men are gorillas. Animalistic. Brute savages. And dem big, Black bucks jus' lubbs dem sum Waa-aaat wimminzes! (Well, that last one certainly appears to be true! )

Is this a message deliberately, cynically calculated to inflame the passions of White men, with several Democratic primaries still pending and a presidential election in the offing? With White women literally swooning at Barack Obama rallies? It wouldn't surprise me in the least -- particularly since the White, male demographic, somewhat unexpectedly, has been voting for Obama instead of Clinton in recent primaries. I mean we know how antagonistically and viciously White men react, and have always reacted, to the perceived superior sexual potency of Black men and White male feelings of inadequacy. The book Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America is proof enough of that. And there's no coincidence that sales in penis enlargement nostrums and the vasodilators Viagra, Cialis and Levitra are booming at a time when more and more White women are openly pursuing -- and being pursued by -- Black men.

It's too bad so many younger Black folk have so little race consciousness, so little understanding/grasp of our history, so little political savvy or self-pride that they constantly allow themselves to be manipulated by, or collude with, the media in this manner to denigrate and ridicule our people -- from that boob-tube coon Flava Flav, to Bobby Brown talking on MTV about digging a "doody bubble" out of Whitney Houston's butt (crack constipation, one supposes) as an expression of marital devotion, to that kickboxing fool in Japan, Bob Sapp - who, I'm convinced, understands full well what he's doing: pandering to ugly stereotypes about the Black man as mindless, brute savages -- in a word, a gorilla. After washing out of professional football, Sapp has made a fortune in Japan by calculatingly becoming that ugly, damaging stereotype reified.

Check this out. This is Bobby Sapp is unable to control himself upon being shown a photo of one of his kickboxing opponents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__il-LxDlI

(Is there a way to embed video on this crappy website?)

Note the banana. He's a raging beast. But he's childish, feeble-minded enough to be easily subdued and handcuffed by a single, physically unassuming policewoman. His moniker, in fact, is "THE BEAST," which he wears emblazoned across his backside in what are akin to Speedos, cut tight to accentuate his relatively small "package." (Can you say "steroids"?)

I wish I could find another video I've seen, of Sapp at a Japan zoo, doing a similar schtick in front of a gorilla cage, flexing his muscles, roaring at the poor, imprisoned creature and pounding his chest like one himself -- all the while, again, cramming bananas into his mouth, eyes bulging. This guy gets paid big bucks for being a modern-day sellout, an animalized Steppinfetchit. He was, in fact, recently in the U.S. for a bout, photographed alongside Mike Tyson.

"The Beast" is a household name in Japan. He makes a killing off commercial endorsements and kitsch like this.

The Beast, Sapp's kickboxing persona, is big, dumb brute with the mind of a child, but the real man is a reasonably articulate, clearly business-savvy performer.

That there is much discussion and criticism of the "Vogue" cover is appropriate. We shouldn't tolerate this sh*t. James should be castigated -- and schooled. The man is about as wretched in this regard as rapper DMX, who, when recently queried about Barack Obama shamelessly admitted he'd never heard of the man and repeatedly mocked him because of his first name -- this from a mindless, narcissistic, gutter-mouth, gangsta wannabe whose name consists of three letters -- and not a vowel among them.

Go figure.

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Sen. Barack Obama and New Mexico's Latino governor, Bill Richardson

James Carville, the runner-up in the Annual Inside-the-Beltway Celebrity Skeletor Look-alike Contest (Carville is creepy, but Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff is scarier!), has likened New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, to Judas because of the governor's endorsement of Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Richardson served as UN ambassador and Secretary of Energy under the Clinton administration, so it appears Carville believes Richardson owes the Clintons, and he's now positively twitchily apoplectic that the Clinton campaign has come up empty at Richardson's door.

Bitch!

Snarked Carville in that Old South cracKKKa drawl of his that always sets my teeth on edge and calls to mind rednecks at "lynch-a-nigger" picnics back in the day, "Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out [Jesus] for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."

Now, that should go a long way toward helping Hillary out with the Hispanic vote!  That's just great, Carville.  Why don't you try shooting your candidate in the other foot, go on national TV and brand John Lewis a racist for announcing his support for Obama? ;)

Richardson refused to respond in kind, but remarked, "That's typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton.  They ... have a sense of entitlement to the presidency."

Indeed.  Never known for his graciousness, not only is Carville starting to look like his spouse, conservative talking head Mary Matalin -- only with hair -- he's beginning to yap like her as well. 

Tsk, tsk.  Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy!!!

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Obama in Philly Yesterday

With a couple of exceptions -- hopefully the result of political necessity, and possibly ignorance -- Obama's Philadelphia address is the most lucid, accurate assessment/description of the state of "race" relations in America today I've heard from the lips of a public official in recent memory (if ever).

Frankly, I have no problem with Rev. Wright. Still, I understand Obama had to repudiate certain of the minister's comments. In his assessment of Wright, he expressed his disagreement with him on certain points -- and that's his prerogative/right. But in explaining Wright's comments, Obama ascribed them to Wright's shortcomings as a man and to "his generation" as though Wright's point of view is outdated, his judgment somehow clouded by bitterness. Frankly, that's a load of crap. And Black folks know it. At least, however, Obama was honest enough to state flat out that Wright's views are fairly common among Blacks in the U.S.

What Obama completely failed to mention, however, was all too obvious -- that Wright comes out of a very specific cultural tradition (which Obama may not quite get, given his ethnic background), which is out of the Black Church and the Black oral tradition, where hyperbole and various forms of verbal aggression/attack are part and parcel of everyday discourse and, certainly, of public speaking. Over-the-top characterizations and incendiary polemics are historical qualities of the African-American spoken word. It's a no-brainer. White America is, after all, very familiar with the hyperbolic bravado of rap (White kids buy more rap CDs than Black folks do) and the verbal aggression of ball-court trash talk, perhaps less so with woofin', signifying and the dozens. Still, hyperbole in African-American oral tradition is a phenomenon White America easily would have been able to recognize, if not relate to -- had Obama bothered to connect the dots for them.

The fact is, owing to deliberate obtuseness (racism) or just sheer ignorance/stupidity, White America still needs a lot of help when it comes to inter-ethnic understanding. And when it comes to African Americans especially, they're still on the short, yellow bus -- if you get my meaning. ;)

The other thing I had a problem with was his obligatory and blatant a** kissing with regard to the Zionist lobby/electorate. I cringed at the way he completely and utterly discounted the issue of the illegal settler colony of Israel as the primary grievance of the Islamic world against the U.S. (and the West, generally), ascribing anti-American Islamic animus merely to some sort of unreasoning "hatred." I can't believe Obama could possibly be so naive/ignorant! As calculated as it would have been, I have to hope his comments were out of perceived political necessity. It was the only gross miscalculation/real error I saw in his address. It deeply marred an otherwise excellent address. Certainly, the issue of Israel/Occupied Palestine warrants as nuanced and balanced an approach -- even in passing -- as the issue of "race." But we didn't get it yesterday. Muslim Americans and other anti-Zionistists (including anti-Zionist Jews) have to have been disappointed at his complete discounting of a very real and intractable problem, one that will not go away with such glib and dismissive rhetoric and pandering instead to the 'crazed, hate-filled militant Islamists' demagoguery that has been so much a part of this country's public discourse since 9-11. I know I was. I hope Obama's unfortunate remarks in this regard were simply currying favor -- and not indicative of the way he will conduct foreign policy once in office.

I noted that on MSNBC, Scarborough initially tried his usual conservative spin, citing only Obama's comments about Black grievances and completely ignoring the fact that he also addressed Whites' complaints. But Scarborough (asshole-with-an-agenda that he is) had to take a step back from that position once Brian Willliams allowed the brother from The Washington Post to set the record straight in that regard.

So, all in all, the address was very well done.

Now, let's see if the White electorate has the intelligence to receive and honestly process what Obama had to say.

Frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

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<b>Why is this idiot dancing?</b>

I was watching President Bush talk about the economy yesterday. He was attempting to assure the press and the American public that, despite the meltdown of the mortgage lending industry and the subsequent collapse of housing markets, the implosion of Bear Stearns, the falling value of the dollar, the skyrocketing price of fuel/oil, reports that in February alone of this year the nation lost an <i>additional</i> 63,000 jobs (I'd go on, but what's the use?), the Fed had things "well in hand." The man kept saying, "It's for certain that...," "It's for certain that...."

Unconsciously, my lip curled into a sneer. God. What a witless f*ck. The man can't put together a simple, literate sentence, and we're supposed to feel comfortable that he's been entrusted with the (increasingly alarming) future of our nation?

And now I read that clueless, spineless, Ken doll Mitt Romney is a hot bet for second place on the GOP ticket with John "Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran" McCain.

<b>Color-true Obama screen shot</b>

<b>Obama as the Clinton Campaign's Big, Black Bogeyman -- Willie Horton style</b>

Hillary Clinton seems hell-bent on dragging the Democratic party down with her flagging bid for the party's nomination, utilizing every sickening, race-baiting trick she and her handlers can scare up: the conspicuous absense of any black children in the infamous "red phone" ad. And have you seen the doctored image of Obama the campaign has been using? Now it looks like they're trying to scare the White electorate by darkening Obama's skin to some muddy, gray-green-brown shade I haven't seen on a living human being since the early TV news anchors of the 1970s before makeup artists got hip to the red undertones in Black skin. (The racial slur "sh*t skin" comes to mind.) And if you look a little more closely, notice the widening of his head and nose -- presumably, an attempt to make him look more "Negroid" and, thus, more threatening. (Why not just put a grill in his mouth, a crack pipe between his lips and a gun in his hand?) Is it just me, or is anyone else reminded of Lee Atwater and the iconic mug shot of Willie Horton in the 1988 presidential election cycle?

<b>After Clinton Ditched Her Incompetent Latina Campaign Manager, Maggie Williams Is Now Gunning for Obama</b>

Maggie Williams is truly earning her 40 pieces of silver. I mean the sister is tap dancing hard for Miss Hillary. Perhaps when all this is over, she'll use a portion of her ill-gotten gains to buy herself a conscience.

I gotta tell ya. If the Democratic party can't get its act together and shut down Clinton's self-destructive operation, and if the dumber-than-dirt American electorate puts the Republican party within stealing distance of the White House a third time (and try to steal it again they will -- are you listening, Howard Dean?), I'm dropping out. This is one Black vote the Democratic party will never be able to count on again. Chuck the electoral process; it'll be permanently screwed, with no appeal whatsoever remaining for the millions of voters who've been galvanized and given a reason to hope by Obama's message and his vision of a new America.

Maybe I'll follow the lead of a lot of Black folks, become an expatriate and live abroad. Or, maybe I'll renounce my U.S. citizenship altogether, embrace my Cado and Cherokee roots and opt instead to join my distant cousins in the now sovereign Lakota Nation <a href="http://www.republicoflakotah.com/"></a>. It doesn't look like I'd be giving up much -- because after eight years of George and Barbara Bush's idiot spawn, one thing's for certain: the country is totally f*cked.

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Check this out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/us/politics/16delegates.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1205676326-eAyNZo3F5BrqmAUTJJSs9g

According to today's New York Times, there was a meeting at the Washington home of Sen. Clinton this past Thursday with uncommitted superdelegates. This woman is pulling out all the stops. Still, it looks like superdelegates and party operatives are starting to agitate for an end to this mess. According to the article, apparently, the collective will of the superdelegates so far is to go with Barack Obama -- because he has the superior numbers in committed delegates and popular vote. People aren't willing to thwart the will of the electorate. Still others see the standoff continuing and going all the way to the convention floor -- but only after the likely winner of the nomination (Obama) has been hobbled by another five months+ of attacks from the Clinton camp.

What the fuck is wrong with this woman? Somebody in the party, do something. Dean, just do it! Do it, please. And do it now. Bitch-slap this stupid, self-absorbed heffah and tell her to abandon her lost cause. Clinton's ship of fools, the H.M.S. (Hillary's Masochistic Superego) Entitlement, is listing badly, but goin' down slow.

Time to torpedo that ugly, unseemly sucker and get on with the business of beating McCain.

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Frankly, I don't think Ferraro was speaking of Black men generally when she made her infamous comments; I think she was speaking of the fact that Obama is "biracial," that that is what has caught the imagination of some (particularly) White Americans. But once she put her foot in it, she didn't dare say anything more in that regard.

But, frankly, she's got a point there.

That does not, however, make what she said any more acceptable. Obama's ethnicity may have sparked some initial interest/curiosity. Modern-day White America loves its mulattos.  Plus, Obama is a family man.  He's young and hip, and he can speak flawless Standard American English -- always something that gets us extra brownie points with White folks.  Wrap all that up in a package that's none too hard on the eyes, and you've got a combination set to make White America swoon -- and White women practically cream themselves.  I mean they're literally fainting at his rallies.  And at a time when White folks are fantasizing so hard about being anything other than just plain, boring white bread (e.g., a half Native American former drug dealer raised in South Central L.A. by a classic "Big Momma" earth mother stereotype, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust -- get this -- raised by wolves!!!), they're doin' it in published "memoirs," embracing a "biracial" person makes them feel less racist, less ... well, White.  And if accepting "biracial" people makes them feel all warm and fuzzy, then, shit, voting for a "biracial" presidential hopeful should be right up there with popping a few "special" mushrooms or tokin' that wacky tabacky. It feeds their fantasies of some great, big, amorphous kumbaya melting pot, of that oft-invoked "color-blind society" (whatever the hell that is), their delusions of that nonexistent "level playing field."  Ah, the afterglow!

Yep.  They be straight-up trippin', boo.  ;p

But all that said, let's be fair.  To any reasonably objective person, it is obvious why Obama is where he is in the race today for the Democratic party's presidential slot. I'm not going to bother to name his positive attributes.  I'll let others do that.  Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" smackdown of Clinton on CNBC was dead on. Suffice it to say that the upshot is he appeals to that segment of the voting public who are hungry for change, who are seeking a new idealism and vision in American politics.

The other reason is he's run a smart campaign. Hillary, frankly, has not. And after dumping her Latina campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, she's hired on a Black woman, Maggie Williams, to spin her shameful, race-baiting attacks on Obama.

In no small part because of the ineptitude of her campaign (add in a healthy dose of real hatred/contempt for her and her spouse on the part of the American electorate:  "So, how do we beat the bitch?"), she's lost the contest for the Democratic nomination. She hasn't won, and will not garner, enough delegates in the remaining primaries to beat Obama. There's no defensible rhyme or reason to her continuing in the race -- not even if she's hoping superdelegates will give her a break and swing her way. She doesn't have enough of those either. All she's doing now is engaging in a self-serving, ego-massaging exercise in futility. Her blatant and tackily shameless exhibition of her clearly deeply felt sense of entitlement to the White House is not only hurting the party but her own political future as well -- and I called her national campaign headquarters to say just that. What she and her husband have said about Obama is simply scandalous.

I have to sneer each time Clinton says she's "more qualified" for the presidency than Obama because of her "experience."

Uh, Earth to Hillary. You were never the commander-in-chief. You were First Lady! And if doin' the president makes someone qualified to be president, then why wasn't Monica Lewinsky (or any of Bill's Arkansas white-trash trollops) drafted to run?  We may think the initial field of Democratic presidential hopefuls was crowded. But can you imagine? With Bill's series of skanks on the side included, those first debates would have had to have been conducted in mini series-like installments.

It's time for the DNC to do damage control. It's past time to rein in Hillary and tell her, "Enough is enough. Time to sit your ass down and shut the fuck up! You're going to cost us the White House if you keep it up."

But perhaps that's her mission: spoiler. It's the only ting that makes sense. She can't win her party's nomination, but she certainly can damage Obama so badly that he loses against McCain. Then she can self-righteously say, "See? I was right that Obama couldn't take the White House. You should have anointed me your candidate instead of voting for that loser."

Olbermann's right about Clinton campaigning like a Republican.  She's taken a page from Dubya's playbook on this one:   flimsy, nonsensical propaganda/logorrhea frontin' like Prophetic Truth.

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Julian Bond recently wrote a letter to Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean expressing his concern about the sanctions it's imposed on Michigan and Florida for holding their primaries out of time.  The communication has been widely assailed for its embarrassing spelling errors, but there's a bigger problem here.

First, that letter:

While we recognize and appreciate that the Democratic party has done much over the past decades to overcome the sordid history of racially discriminatory primaries and other obsticles placed [sic] in the way of full voter participation in the electoral process, we are deeply concerned that not finding a solution to this delima [sic] that recognizes the will and intent of the Florida and Michagan [sic] voters could cast troubling aspertions [sic] on the democratic process of selecting candidates in a fully and equally inclusive manner.  As such, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to come to some solution to this problem which will not leave the milions of voters that [sic] went to the polls to cast a free and unfettered vote during the primary without representation

Sincerely, Julian Bond, Chairman

Bond's letter is so wrong on so many levels, where do I begin?  Let's start with the obvious stuff first. Lots of people have been asking, as one blogger framed the question,  "Why Can't Julian Spell?"

I believe Bond to be highly literate. I think the problem is he has an assistant or a secretary who is far less so, and he didn't bother to proof the correspondence before affixing his signature. That was careless and very surprising -- particularly since one must assume he has some inkling that this staff person is, uh ... challenged when it comes to language skills.

He should be embarrassed to send junk like this out the door. I know I'm embarrassed for him.

Speaking of language skills, that still doesn't account for other issues with the letter. Frankly, someone needs to introduce Bond to the simple, declarative sentence so he can get straight to the point. His convoluted syntax makes my head hurt. And "...voters that..."? Last I checked, voters were people, not inanimate objects or animals. That should be "voters who...."

While embarrassing, however, sloppy spelling, grammar and syntax pale in comparison to other, more important issues.

I can't competently speak to Bond's intent in writing Dean. I know a lot of old-line Black officials are backing Clinton over Obama (a decision more than a few of them now are regretting/second-guessing). That notwithstanding, there is also a good deal of concern in the Democratic camp that the party's penalizing of Florida and Michigan voters may cause party defections come the general election, or cause thousands of disgruntled Democrats to vote with their butts -- to grumpily simply sit on their hands at home instead of going to the polls -- in the fall. It could be this is the concern that prompted Bond to write the letter.

But getting into his letter a little further, I have to seriously question Bond's fatuous praise of the party. Just exactly what the hell has the Democratic party done to combat "racially discriminatory ... obsticles (sic) placed in the way of full voter participation in the electoral process"? More specifically, what has it done for Black folks lately? Has Bond suddenly been stricken with amnesia? Galloping Alzheimer's? Doesn't he recall the party's shameful failure to act -- in the cases of Florida and Ohio, particularly -- in the last two presidential elections -- when it turned its back on plea after plea on the floor of the Senate by members of the Congressional Black Caucus after the 2000 election? When it uttered only the flimsiest of protests as the GOP flat-out stole the last two presidential elections with subversion of the courts and dirty tricks, lies, obfuscation and intimidation that targeted the most loyal base of the Democratic party, Black voters?

WTF?

The fact is the Democratic party has done about as sorry a job at protecting voters' rights as Bond did at spelling "Michagan."

With a desperate and flailing GOP doubtless poised to three-peat its dirty tricks campaign this time around, now is the time for Bond --and all of us -- to remind the Democratic party of its sorry record in preparing for and countering the scuzzy, sleaze-ball and outright illegal antics of the GOP and caution it against failing the American electorate again. This is not a time for false praise -- not even in passing. With so much critically at stake, we should be holding the Democratic party's feet to the fire and demanding better.

IMO, Black folks need to be jackin' those fools up down at Dem party headquarters and issuing threats -- not planting our lips on Dean's pasty, bat-shit crazy a**.

A poorly spelled communication is the least of all this. What the hell were you thinking, Julian? I mean jus' day-um!

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... Knowles shouldn't play Etta James:  she's dumb.

I understand she referred to Tina Turner as "The Queen" at the Grammys.

Aretha's got her jaws all tight about it.  I'm not feelin' Re-Re on that, but, then, I didn't earn the title; she did.

Still, anyone with half a brain knows Aretha Franklin is the uncontested Queen when it comes to our music.  And while I give Tina Turner props for her unique voice and her overcoming, musically and stylistically, she's not fit to shine Aretha's shoes.

Knowles is a boob, an air-head.  The light's on, but there ain't nobody home.

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Okay.  I've read it from two, separate sources now.  Beyonce Knowles apparently is slated to play Etta James in the biopic "Cadillac Records."

Somebody's casting agent apparently has been smokin' crack.

This is THE WORST idea. I'm hoping to high heaven it's a groundless rumor.

Beyonce has respectable voice, but she simply does not have the classic R&B pipes of Etta James. When you do a story about someone like James, first and foremost is the music.

You GOTTA respect that.

This casting choice dumps what this woman's entire professional life has been about in favor of some (presumed), shallow box office appeal.

Beyonce as Etta? I mean REALLY!

The very thought of it makes me wanna hurl. And why on earth Etta would agree to such a travesty is completely beyond me.

Jennifer Hudson's triumph in "Dream Girls" should tell people something - that talent when it comes to Black music is far more important than sex appeal or name recognition. We expect someone to deliver when they step up to that microphone. And Beyonce is completely incapable of delivering a convincing performance as Etta James. Where is that blast-furnace intensity? That husky, growling, hair-raising, gut-busting, snarling, gospel, FONKY earthiness that embodies Etta James' style?

Beyonce doesn't have it, can't get it. And you damned sure can't fake something as real as that.

Please, please, PLEASE, people. Do a talent search if you have to. Find some undiscovered gem who will shine in the role and respect Etta James' talents and legacy as an artist.

But don't let Beyonce do this. Because she can't.

I mean just day-um!

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Ah, those driven, ingenious, industrious Japanese.  They've given the world sushi, Toyotas, rentable sleep cubicles, anime -- and now a new take on the porta potty.  It's a car poop pot for those too busy to stop and take a proper piss.

"Gives new meaning to "going in the car"

TOKYO (Reuters) - If you're stuck in traffic when Mother Nature calls, Japan's Kaneko Sangyo Co. has developed the loo for you.

The manufacturer of plastic car accessories drew back the curtain on Tuesday on its new portable toilet for cars.

The toilet comes with a curtain large enough to conceal users and a plastic bag to collect waste.

"The commode will come in handy during major disasters such as earthquakes or when you are caught in a traffic jam," a company official told reporters, according to Kyodo News.

Japan is situated on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

Drivers stranded by tectonic movements or stuck in tailbacks simply assemble the cardboard toilet bowl, fit a water-absorbent sheet inside and draw round the curtain.

The product is small enough to fit inside a suitcase, the company said.

But prospective customers will have to hang on until November 15, when the firm begins selling the new product online.

----

Now, you, too, can turn your Mercedes CL 600 into a $120,000 rolling thunder mug.  Order yours now and avoid the holiday rush.  It's the perfect gift for that busy commuter in your family.

WTF?

I suppose it's an improvement over members of the drunken French (not particularly known for their hygiene, anyway) aristocracy back in Marie Antoinette's time taking dumps in their opera boxes and flinging poo in besotted disdain at the Great Unwashed in the cheap seats below.

But not really.  

Just yuck!

On my count.  One, two, three.  Everybody say, "Ee-uuu-www."

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Okay, so now it's official.  Mitt Romney, the monied Mormon, Republican, Ken-doll presidential candidate, who recently blew off a wheelchair-bound voter inquiring about Romney's stand on medical marijuana, is not only an insensitive jerk.

He's a nitwit.

What follows is a blog entry by Eric Schulze.  It's such an unbelievable post, I'm reproducing it in full here -- along with (of course) my response.

Mitt Needs Some Rest.... - October 23, 2007

Mitt made the unbelievable slip yesterday, not only of mixing up Obama and Osama briefly in a sentence -- that would be understandable -- but of actually confounding their positions. Somehow he tangled in his head Osama's call for to reinvigorate the stalled jihad in Iraq and Obama's insistence that we should bug out of Iraq yesterday.

"Actually, just look at what Osam - Barack Obama - said just yesterday. Barack Obama, calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq. That is the battlefield. ... It's almost as if the Democratic contenders for president are living in fantasyland. Their idea for jihad is to retreat, and their idea for the economy is to also retreat. And in my view, both efforts are wrongheaded."

On its face, the mistake is either hilarious or pathetic, but it's understandable in a weird way. First, it is not, as his spokesman later claimed, a mere slip of the tongue. A slip of the tongue is mixing up names. Suggesting the a U.S. presidential candidate is calling for Jihad in Iraq is a slip of the brain. A very weird slip for a Harvard JD/MBA universally acknowledged to be brilliant.

But like so much humor, intentional or un, it is funny partly because it rests on a grain of truth. Who is mad as hell that we are in Iraq? Obama and Osama. Who would have us pull out without waiting to stabilize the country? Obama and Osama.

Well, kind of. On the last point, Obama has waffled a bit, acknowledging at times that US troop presence will be needed for some time. But here's what his campaign spokesman had to say about Mitt's slip:

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said, "Apparently, Mitt Romney can switch names just as casually as he switches positions, but what's wrongheaded is continuing a misguided war in Iraq that has left America less safe."

Look, I give props to Obama for having opposed going in. I think he was right, in retrospect. But once we are there, the real question is when and how we get out. He appears to have no answer to this question. At least no answer with which Osama would not agree.

Okay.  His blog over.  My turn.

Take a seat, Schulzke.

You're looking about as addle-brained as Romney.  You've tried so hard to twist, wring and contort some semblance of logic out of Romney's incredibly incoherent ramblings about Obama and Iraq, you've clearly spun yourself senseless. It's hard to judge what's worse -- Romney's stupidity or your own mind-numbing logorrhea.  The fact is Romney's comments are more worthy of that half-wit on "The View," Sherri Shepherd http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/18/new-view-cohost-sherri_n_64864.html , than of a candidate for this nation's highest political office.  And that's got nothing to do with Barack Obama's stand on the U.S. in Iraq or anything else.

You're right about one thing, though.  Romney definitely needs a rest -- something the American people will be all too happy to provide him in a few, short months.

If you had better judgment, you'd have ignored this humiliating incident in the hope that it simply would have blown over (not!), perhaps eclipsed by the growing scandal surrounding Giuliani's embarrassingly tacky domestic situation and his retention of Monsignor Alan Placa, a disgraced pedophile priest, as a close personal advisor.  Now, that's a story worth commenting on, but it's easier for shallow, cynical political hacks like you to pander to the ignorance and xenophobia of American voters by make witlessly facile, off-point remarks about a man of integrity like Obama than to spin a candidate playing footsie with a sexual predator -- isn't it?

The upshot, though, is you've accomplished nothing but to further publicize Romney's appalling incompetence and place on full display the Republican party's desperate flailings.  Mitt Romney for President?!!  Come on, guys.  That's the Janet Jackson strategy:  one boob out, another boob in.  The nationwide paroxysm of despair over the "assault on family values" mounted by the halftime follies of Super Bowl XXXVIII has been nothing compared to the sh*t storm of pubic and international outrage over the Iraq War, Abu Ghreb, rendition and the Alberto Gonzalez Justice Department.  The Republican party, apparently not sufficiently chastened by eight years of a corrupt, amoral, utter moron at the helm of American government is now trying to sell us another fundamentally clueless dolt.

Write what you will, lipstick on a pig is still a pig.

Mitt Romney for President?  Give it up Schulze, baby.

When pigs fly.

(Desperation.  It ain't pretty.)

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Dr. James Watson is a brilliant scientist.

I remember back in 1963 reading excerpts from a thick book in the library at Delaware Trails Elementary School about the discovery of DNA.  I was fascinated and committed the  terms "ribonucleic acid" and "deoxyribonucleic acid" to memory and never forgot them.

In the many years since, the use of DNA technology in forensics and the discoveries of the Human Genome Project, have recalled to mind that sunny afternoon spent quietly reading about the building blocks -- the double helix, to be more accurate -- of human life.  I've wondered from time to time what course my life would have taken had I been encouraged to pursue my active interest in science and botany.

Yesterday, I was disappointed to learn that Watson, one of the heroes of my childhood fascination with science, is -- and there's no nice way to put this -- a racist asshole.

Watson was part of the team awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of DNA, but this week he put his foot in it with some particularly obnoxious, anachronistic statements about "race" and intelligence that have cost him dearly. 

Once one of America's brightest scientific minds, Watson remarked that he is "gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."

Icing on the cake was his lament that, although he hoped that all "races" were created equal in terms of intelligence, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

You know, I'm an occasional editor on Wikipedia, that pretentious online, piece-of-crap populist "encyclopedia," and I encounter racism all the time.  White (and Asian) editors all the time are writing, in discussions and articles treating "race" and I.Q., shitloads of thinly veiled POV crap about black folks being inherently inferior, and whitewashing, appropriating, edit-warring, and generally lying about our contributions to world history and civilization as a people.  Wikipedia is a cesspool of white-bwoi ignorance, arrogance, presumption and pretention -- white supremacist ideology and practice thriving and feeding upon itself in cyberspace among the primarily 40 and under set.

So, reading this tripe from an old cracKKKah fart in his 70's whose countenance reminds me  of the nearly skeletonized faces of old, hard-luck, white-trash rednecks leering at me from the lynching photos on vintage postcards was certainly no shock.  Still, it's a low-down dirty shame to see one of God's creatures so amply endowed with intellect so tragically and abysmally lacking in fundamental intelligence.

You see, I'm what people call a genius, and I have the IQ scores to prove it.  The thing is, though, in reflecting upon the black folks I've known throughout my life, there are any number whom I consider my intellectual equals or superiors -- everyday black folks -- friends, fellow students, activists, professionals, blue-collar workers, preachers and scoundrels.

So, I know what Watson apparently cannot grasp -- what a load of bullshit I.Q. tests are, and that theories about "race" and intelligence carry about as much weight as a fart in the wind.

Speaking of old farts in the wind, Watson's idiotic comments -- and he's made similar remarks before -- properly have alienated him from the credible academic and scientific community, who've left him to twist.  In response, Watson issued a semi-apology.  No, he didn't admit to being an imperfect human being, confess his own racism and ask forgiveness.  He did, one supposes, what little he could manage.  He stated,"I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said."

Dunno know about you, but my reaction when I read it was, "What?  Like you were having some kind of out-of-body experience, and were just an innocent bystander when some jerk who looks like you put his foot in your mouth?"  Maybe Watson was replaced by a doppelganger, or maybe his body was taken over by pod people while he slept the night before his presentation, like in that B-movie horror film classic "The Body Snatchers."

Whatever his vague excuse, Watson's British book tour has been cancelled, the Science Museum in London dumped a sold-out lecture of his, and he's been suspended from his position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, a position he's held for 40 years or more.  And the University of Edinburgh rescinded an invitation to Watson to a -- get this -- "Enlightenment Lecture" on "DNA, Dolly and other dangerous ideas." 

(Awkward.)

And it serves him right.  Being twisted enough to believe blacks are inherently inferior is one thing.  My years on the planet have taught me that's something more whites than not actually and deeply believe (though most are in utter public, if not private, denial about that fairly sad fact).  It is another thing entirely, however, to be stupid enough to reveal such blatant and fundamental racism in a public forum and propound such nonsense as fact.

In fairness, Watson subsequently stated "there is no scientific basis" for the views he earlier expressed, but it was too late.  The simple truth is you can't run around insulting an entire group of people on the basis of skin color, telling the world they're essentially subhuman and doomed to poverty, exploitation and disease because it's some perverse sort of birthright or Curse of Ham. 

At least you can't say such things and get away with it.  There's just no way you can sling sh*t with clean hands.  One way or another, you gonna come up stank. 

Watson, you may be a Nobel Prize winner, but let me pull your coat:  This is the 21st century, and you're an anachronism -- a  soul-sick, racist dolt.  Odds are you're too old and mired in white supremacist dogma to be willing to, let alone be capable of, change.  And, frankly, I couldn't care less.  You're likely headed straight to Hell anyway.  But do the planet, and particularly our vulnerable, impressionable youth a favor. 

The next time you feel moved to comment publicly on the putative inherent inferiority of my people -- and just so there's no misunderstanding, I'll spell it out in elementary, single-syllable words that even a Nobel laureate can understand:

Don't.  Just shut the fuck up and take your dumb ass home.

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I've stayed away from the Jena Six here 'til now.  Everybody and they momma is talkin' about it.  Everyone seems to be focusing on Jena.  When Jim Crow comes after our children in such a blatant and shameless fashion, even black folk who heretofore have been silent and passive in the face of injustice feel compelled to stand up.

And it's about damned time.

The recent headlines remind me of the Louisiana I know.

You see, while I was raised in the Midwest, I was born in Shreveport.  My mom and dad, from Louisiana and Texas, respectively, got the hell on up outta there with my three sisters and me back in the fifties.  They could see the writing on the wall.  Many of our extended family -- uncles, aunts, cousins -- did likewise, but took the main route to freedom, following the exodus of blacks from that part of the South out West, to California.  History textbooks call it The Great Migration.

I call it The Great Escape.

It's not that we didn't find racism, bigotry and Jim Crow in Indianapolis.  One of my earliest memories of Naptown is my sisters and me being turned away from a Disney movie at the Circle Theater in downtown Naptown.  I remember the whites-only Riveria Country Club (the privileged kids at the school I attended referred to it glibly as "The Rivvy") and the one day a year that Riverside Amusement Park was open to "Negroes," as we were known back then.  And I remember the afternoon a scrawny, little white kid shouted "Nigger!" over his shoulder at me as he ran across the playground of my virtually all-white/Jewish elementary school.  I guess he knew instinctively that I'd beat a retraction from those thin, mean lips if he'd given me half a chance. Instead, I did the only thing I could.  I yelled back defiantly, "Crrraa-aaack-KKKuh!"

Too bad that by the time I thought to do so he was probably out of earshot....

Still and all, "Up South" was relatively safe for black folk.  Despite the fact that Greenfield, Indiana, was the seat of the KKK in the North, the new destinations offered refuge, a degree of protection -- and certainly greater educational and economic opportunity than we had had back home.

Nonetheless, a lot of family stayed in Louisiana and Texas -- particularly the older folks -- and my family has gone back from time to time.  

When we do, it's always a culture shock for me.  Maybe that's not the right phrase.  I'm too familiar with racism and ignorance to be shocked anymore; at my age, it's something I've come to expect from whites; that's just the default setting.  (If I'm pleasantly surprised with intelligence, then so much the better.) As soon as I breathe in that Louisiana heat and humidity, it's like PTSD -- a combat flashback.  My reaction is more than cerebral; it's organic, visceral, reflexive.  More than being embedded in my brain, that sh*t is in my muscle memory. Whenever I go "home" to Louisiana, my backbone stiffens; I walk differently.  I'm hyper alert. 

I'm deep behind that Mason-Dixon line, and instinctively I know I'm in enemy territory. 

There's just something about the place -- that ever-present undercurrent of black subservience and deprivation and white arrogance and privilege that, in these days and times is not always in your face, but it's nonetheless palpable -- and ubiquitous.  Katrina exposed the real stinking soul of Louisiana to the world.  I breathe in the stench of it along with the haze and humidity; it seeps in through my pores and stings my consciousness. 

Don't get me wrong.  I love Louisiana; it's home.  It's where my ancestors rest; it's hallowed ground.  (I remember our family tending Granddaddy's grave in the segregated graveyard the last time we were there.  It meant everything to me -- and even more to my mom.)

I also hate it; it represents my family history of slavery, grinding poverty, stollen dreams, opportunities denied, discrimination and oppression.

A lot of white people in Jena resent the attention the matter of the Jena Six has focused on their quaint, sleepy, little southern town.  They protest they've been mischaracterized; they're not racist!

Yeah, right.  Like the parents of that stomped-on white kid sitting before the cameras on national TV claiming they had no idea why their son got beat down.  Because they raised a racist little asshole who was stupid enough to racially taunt a group of black kids.  THAT'S why!

Denial.  Don't you just hate it when people KNOW you know they're lyin', but they keep right on doin' it?  It's like they just assume you're not gonna challenge them because you're too polite, or too f*ckin' scared or stoo-pid to call them on it outright.

Thank God for black bloggers and black talk radio hosts who brought the case to the forefront of public attention, because the white media was ignoring it -- still doin' that okey-dokey crap about how America is a "level playing field."  The usual pablum and bald-faced lies, feeding white America's delusion of a "color-blind" society -- whatever the hell that means.

As disgusting and disturbing as the Jena Six case is, I hope it's only the beginning -- because, I know what every black person (with the possible exception of Clarence Thomas -- and even he's just lyin' to himself) in America knows, that Jena, Louisiana, is Anytown, USA.  There are lots of Jena Sixes out here.  We just haven't heard about them yet.  The fact that it took a almost a year for this story to get out is not only sobering, but alarming.  I'm reminded of how white folks in Louisiana and Texas kept the news of of the Emancipation Proclamation to themselves for almost three years before my ancestors found out they had been declared free.

Nowadays, we've got cell phones, BlackBerries, video phones, the Internet.   If we brought back the talking drum, word of the Jena Six woulda reached even Jersey in a couple of months!  Come on, people!  I hate to say it, but, "We got to do mo' bettuh!"

Let's hope black folks are finally sick and tired of being sick and tired.  Stop bitchin' and moanin' among yourselves and bendin' over and taking it up the a**, drylongso black folks -- wherever you are.  And if you're in some backwater hellhole and can't see a way to change things on your own, then pick up the gottdamn phone and call for backup!

'Cuz you're family, and -- bet new money -- we gotcha back.

No justice, no peace!

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Has anyone been following the building of that series of dams in Nubia?  How Bashir is displacing millions of Nubians to build them?  Word is they'll end up producing just as much hydrocarbon pollution as old-fashioned power plants.  And there are other concerns as well, that they'll interfere with fish migration/spawning, siltification that will give them a relatively short lifespan, and intefering with the ability of people to fish along the banks of the Nile.  Not to mention the fact that the planet's oldest pyramids (predating those in Egypt, because Nubia gave rise to dynastic Egypt) will be completely submerged. 

Bashir intends to finish what the Aswan High Dam started when it flooded that portion of Nubia that falls within Egypt -- only then at least UNESCO intervened to save the Temple at Abu Simbel.

Where are they in Sudan?  So far, not a mumblin' word to save the planet's oldest pyramids, the oldest evidence of humankind's earliest high civilization.  They screamed bloody murder when the stone Buddhas at Bamyan were threatened (and eventually destroyed) by the Taliban -- before those illiterate, misogynist, goat-humping mental cretins moved on to using schoolgirls for target practice for daring to seek an education).

And to top it off, Bashir, that self-loathing creature who thinks he's an Arab -- and he's blacker than I am -- won't allow the Nubians to return to the area once the damned dams go online.  Oh, no.  He's already sold that land to Arab (Semitic Arabs -- the real deal) interests and has invited Egyptian Arabs to move in and essentially colonize what's left of Nubia.

Chalk up another one for the continuing, racist Arab onslaught/incursion into Africa.

The brothers and sisters in Nubia are riled up -- especially after government troops shot some peaceful protestors down like dogs at the site of the Kajbar dam back in June.  (Google "Kajbar Dam" on You Tube -- but be ready for some grizzly footage.)  Some are talking about armed resistance, taking the lesson from the civil war in the South that the only thing that Khartoum understands or will listen to is violence right back.

"The Nubian Liberation Front" they're calling themselves. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nubia31aug31,1,7269074.story?ctrack=6&cset=true

I'm not one to rush to advocate violence, but -- sh*t.  The water is already rising at Merowe.  I can't believe it.  Merowe!  If the international community won't respond to the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing's recommendation and pressure Bashir and his Chinese, French and German co-conspirators to stop construction on the dams based on human rights concerns http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23617&Cr=sudan&Cr1, or to the International Rivers Network's call to stop this travesty based on environmental concerns http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article14670, then perhaps it's time to for Nubians to take matters into their own hands.

Seems to me it's time for Nubians -- perhaps in concert with some of their Nuba brothers and sisters from Central Sudan (since the Nuba comprise approximately 40 percent of Sudan's armed forces -- deprived of their land, what else can the men do? -- and they're getting screwed by Bashir, too) -- to get together some committed brothers and sisters, train them in explosives and guerrilla warfare and blow them suckas up. 

Blam!

Yeah, Bashir.  Take that, you vile, disgusting, self-loathing pile of pig sh*t!  Besides, they'd be doing you a favor.  The freakin' dams are being built by the Chinese.  Given the Chinese track record -- killing patients in Latin America and China with poisonous, fake glycerin; killing dogs and cats in the U.S. with tainted pet food, poisoning children with lead-based paint in toys; poisoning camels in Saudi Arabia with tainted camel chow (or whatever the hell they feed those critters) -- what are the chances the dams are structurally sound anyway? 

You guessed it:  slim to none.  Take a lesson from Katrina and ponder two words:  flood insurance.

Maybe when one of those monstrosities springs a leak, the majority of sensible black people in Sudan -- who don't consider themselves Arab, by the way -- will round up your despicable, murderous, avaricious, depraved, rape-sponsoring, black ass and force you to stand at ground zero with your finger jammed in the crack to hold the waters back.  Maybe they'll take a lesson from a little thing  the French colonial forces would do in Africa to amuse themselves and sweeten the deal by jamming a stick of dynamite up another crack -- where the sun don't shine -- firing it up and waiting for the fireworks to begin.

Aw, yee-uh.  Now, that's something I'd pay to see.   ROFLMBAO.

Nigguh, couldn't ya just die?

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I'm self-employed, and as bosses go, I suck.

The work isn't steady, and when it does come, it comes in torrents.  As a result, my sleep habits are erratic, and meals are irregular.  In the end, I work ridiculously long hours, often on nightmarish projects that take way too much of my time for the pay I get.

I wish I could give myself a pink slip.  I wish I could go country-walkabout-Johnny-Paycheck on my crazy, slave-drivin' b*tch of a boss and tell me:  "Ty-ake thee-us job ay-yun' shuv ee-it.  Ah ain't a-werkin' heere no more."

Yep.  It's "Brokeback Mountain" meets "The Office."  I'd quit me if I could.

See, it's only Wednesday, but already it's been a sucky week.   I should be working now, in fact, to meet a deadline, but I'm playing hooky, blogging instead.  Yep, I'm goldbricking -- on myself.

Staff morale is bad.

Still, I've been thinking about how things could be much worse.  I remind myself that black unemployment in the U.S. is officially at 8.1 percent (down from almost 10 percent for black males in 2005), though I'd guess the real number right now is probably a lot closer to 9 percent.  Lots of people simply have no employment and no prospects, and hundreds of thousands more who are working are underemployed. 

And my job could be worse.  I mean when I think of things I wouldn't want to do, the list is a long one.  I suppose right up there at the top, though, is anything involving killing.  Like working in a stockyard or a meat or poultry processing plant.   Or, being the person who flips the switch in an electrocution chamber -- or soldiering for Uncle Sam. 

Nope.  Definitely not my cup of tea.

Closer to home than Iraq, though, is a place I don't wanna be anywhere near.  They have entertaining commercials that beckon to tourists and urge them to connect with their elders and their history.  The ads are catchy and colorful, and tinged with a kind of wry, hip humor.  I suppose to a lot of people it seems like great fun.  I'd probably buy it, too, but there's a problem:  I'm black.

The place is Colonial Williamsburg.

Put aside the notion of working there for a moment.  As a vacation spot, even, for me it's completely out of the question.  I mean has anybody out there seen "Westworld" -- that 1973 flick with Yule Brynner and Richard Benjamin?  A bunch of okey-doke white guys take a vacation to an ersatz, shoot-'em-up Old West town complete with android gunslingers.  The droids are programmed not to harm humans, so that when a slow-as-molasses greenhorn take one on in a quick-draw showdown, he won't get his butt blown away.  He gets to live out his macho fantasy harmlessly, and everything's just hunky-dorey.  Right?

Not.  The androids go runagate, and proceed to coldly and emotionlessly stalk about, hunting down and exterminating the horrified vacationers like an Orkin guy in a Big Apple Taco Bell:  http://www.shoutpost.com/%22http://youtube.com/watch?v=sdVLJhWhnyQ\".  It's "City Slickers" on crack -- and Jack Palance really is a psychotic, homicidal maniac.

With my luck, I'd go to Colonial Williamsburg and get the Westworld treatment.  I'd get abducted, sold into slavery and wind up pullin' cotton as somebody's fieldhand.  And it'd serve my crazy ass right.  What the hell would any self-respecting black person be doing vacationing in a spot where black folks are slaves anyway?

And working there?  Dunno.   What do you tell people when you go on vacation and someone asks, "What do you do?"  How do you tell people with a straight face (forget about any semblance of dignity), "Oh, I'm a slave"?

WTF?

Makes you wonder -- doesn't it -- just how Colonial Williamsburg manages to attract people for such positions.  I mean how/what do they advertise?

"WANTED:  Nigras -- uh, colored -- uh, knee-grows -- um, er ... some people of the dark-skinned persuasion to live and work in Colonial Williamsburg.

"Position:  Slave reenactors.

"Duties:  Mostly scattological.  All the crap white reenactors won't do -- the heaviest, manual labor; shoveling cow crap; digging latrines and shoveling people crap; plowing with a mule (watch out for that rear end; it craps!); raising snot-nosed bratty, white kids and wiping their crappy butts; washing white folks' laundry -- by hand; cooking white folks' (and your) food -- over an open fire.  And, oh, yes, bowing and scraping, knowing your place and generally taking crap.

"Attire:  Square, homely, itchy homespun crap.

"Food:  Roughage (that makes you crap), awful offal (chittlin's, fatback 'n' such) and all the veggies and critters you can grow or slaughter yourself in your off time."  (*erlch*)

Yeah, right.  The military (and military grub) is lookin' better and better.... 

Check this out. http://www.shoutpost.com/%22http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/slave.cfm/%22  It's an article called "To Be A Slave," complete with photos, at the Colonial Williamsburg website.  The caption of one photo, an extreme long shot of toiling reenactors (I guess a close-up would have been too brutal?) reads: "Shouldering tools, reenactment slaves trek to the fields under a merciless sun." 

Screw dat!  I'd be on the phone to OSHA in a minute -- if I had a freakin' phone.  They couldn't pay me enough.

And I'm wondering what the job interview sounds like when it comes time for the prospective employee to ask questions. 

"Do we have to read and write in secret?"

"What happens if I get caught doing either?  Will they sell or dispose of me?  Sell my kids?"

"And what happens if I try to escape to, like, the mall down the road to catch an hour or two of football in the Wal-Mart electronics department?"

"Oh.  Okay.  But are the beatings and whippings for real?"

"What about the lynchings?"  "The rapes?"

"Can we burn massuh's crops in retaliation?"

"Are bloody, brutal slave rebellions allowed?  If so, how many overseers and random white folks can we kill?"

(Now we talkin'!.  That's my kinda slave. ;)  Sign him/her up!  "Denmark Vesey lives.  News at 11.")

I'm just wondering.

How twisted, how desperate, do you have to be to voluntarily apply for a 24-7 slave (job) to be a slave?

And do you get free therapy for life when you retire?

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Old Movie, Old Friends

I went to a meeting downtown at the District Building (city hall) a few weeks back to meet with Adam Sterling of the Sudan Divestment Taskforce and the legislative aide to the councilmember whose committee is tasked with reporting out divestment legislation for the District of Columbia.  Ostensibly, it was a "strategy" meeting, but because passage is a slam-dunk exercise, it was pretty much pro forma and very informal.

(Incidentally, the hearing went well, and we expect the bill to be fast-tracked for a vote sometime this month.  Ya-aay.  Doin' my happy dance.)

Adam and I left together and headed uptown.  It was hot.  And not just hot; it was DeeCee hot.  The "Founding Fathers" (their brains obviously addled by the heat and possibly malaria) built this town on a swamp (think "Foggy Bottom"), and even by early spring the heavy, languid air hangs like a wet towl against your skin.  Stifling.  I cheerily gave Adam the business for wearing a coat and tie.  He shrugged, explaining it's his first summer in Washington.

Oh, yeah.  He'll learn. ;)

The movie "Killer of Sheep" http://www.killerofsheep.com/ was playing nearby at the E Street Cinema (I recommend it), and I'd planned to attend the 5:30 screening, but the meeting was short. Checking the time, I realized I could probably make the 3:45, missing only the coming attractions trailers -- if I humped it.  So, I peeled off from Adam by the National Press Building at 14 & F and doubled-timed it on over to 11th & E in the steamy heat.  I arrived in the lobby -- whew! -- only to find the show began at 3:30.

Bummer.

So, I decided to cool my heels at the Starbucks a block and-a-half away, where I nursed a grande mocha frappuccino, trying not to think about the work I had waiting for me at home -- and what that 420 calories was doing to my rear end.  What the hell?  It was hot, and I had a chocolate jones.  I spied a vacant seat by the window and happily settled the object of my concern in a comfy chair to watch the people show.  When I figured the time was right, I ditched the cup and retraced my steps to the cinema.

I was early, so I parked my calorie-enhanced bee-hind on a bench against the wall and waited for the theater to clear.

I spied a black couple (yep, there are still a few of those around!) heading a procession of people leaving the theater, and I asked them their impressions of the movie.  We spoke briefly (they gave it a tumbs up), and then suddenly I heard someone call my name.  Damned if right behind them wasn't an old friend from college whom I hadn't seen in, perhaps, 20 years.

"Roy!" I responded, pleasantly surprised.

He stepped over the ropes separating us and joined me on the bench, and we talked for a time.

I remember Roy as taciturn.  Cool.  That afternoon and the few times we've spoken since, he and I probably have had more to say to one another than the whole time we were in school together.  More, even, than when the "Mean Mobile 13" made the trip down to Sippi (Holly Springs) piled nearly on top of one another in a fonky, old van to do a get-out-the-vote thing with Charles Evers' people.

And then just as I was telling him I never ran into people from Howard, Cool Roy says nonchalantly, "Now, here's someone you remember from Howard."

I follow his gaze, and I see another brutha from back in the day, only it's been maybe 35 years since I last laid eyes on him. 

Unlike with Roy, I easily could have passed Jeff by on the street without a second glance; I wouldn't have recognized him immediately.  But as soon as Roy named him, I looked more closely -- and, sure enough, it was "Brother Purple." He was slimmer, but he had the same eyes.  And there was that familiar profile.

Roy had asked me earlier how I knew who he was.  I looked at him and told him he hadn't changed.  And he hadn't -- not really.  Despite gaining a few pounds, he was much the same.  

I certainly could have asked him the same thing about me.  

I also was blessed to spend time earlier this year with another friend from Howard, a Kenyan citizen, for the first time in maybe 20 years -- now, sadly, deceased.  Kiagu (I love you, my dear brother) was ill and undergoing chemotherapy.  I found him much thinner and with graying hair and crowsfeet when he smiled.  But he still had the same beautiful face; chocolate skin; and clear, almond eyes.

Still, I'd have recognized him by his voice alone.  It had a lilting resonance, a serenity and dignity -- the kind of voice that beguiles old women and delights wide-eyed, burbling infants.  I even saved his voice mails for a time -- until it became too painful to hear them.  They are erased, and Kiagu is with the Ancestors.

Curious.  How distinct we are among billions.  And how, no matter what, there's almost always something very recognizable about each of us over time.  Through all the years and the changes, there's a sameness, a continuity, an essence that is constant.  It may be in the voice, the face, something in the eyes, a gait, a gesture, or merely a pose -- or something else completely inexplicable/intangible. 

But it's there.  In the end, something almost always gives us away. 

I guess it's kind of like how animals recognize one another after years of separation and changes of all kinds -- amputations, disfigurement, old age, debilitation. 

We're ratted out by some timeless something branded, seared into our DNA, and by the unerring second sight of others -- both traits likely developed over time to ensure the survival of the human family, the continuity of species or clan. These things are givens; we take them for granted. 

Yet, in the end, they really are truly remarkable:  inherence and discernment and the uncanny ken of kin.

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There is a disinformation campaign being directed at the African-American community on the genocide in Darfur, the aim of which is to keep us ignorant, mis- and disinformed, silent and on the sidelines.  The chief purveyors of this steady stream of logorrhea are Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and his minions.  Over the years, Farrakhan has become little more than a shill for the regime of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, completely rejecting all evidence of its ongoing, aggressive Arabization campaign against other, non-"Arab" Sudanese blacks through marginalization, disenfranchisement, displacement, cultural aggression and violence, of which the Darfur genocide is merely the most recent and appalling example.

I am a charter member of a group called Black Voices for Darfur, organized by black people in the Darfur advocacy community, because we are fed up with the propaganda and the silence, but also because we see a need to reach out to others of the African-American community and our brothers and sisters on the Continent and in the African diaspora, wherever they may be, to address the Darfur crisis and issues related to black genocide in general.  We here in the Washington, D.C. area are uniquely situated to do this.  The region hosts large expatriate and first- and second-generation immigrant communities of Ethiopians, Nigerians, Somalis, Ghanaians, Kenyans, Egyptians, Sudanese, West Indians, South Pacific Islanders, Southeast Asians, etc.  If you can name the nation, and its citizens are members of the African diaspora, they're represented here among our population.

Below for your consideration is a statement by a member of BV4D, approved by its members, in reaction to one of the latest columns disparaging the Darfur advocacy movement by a writer named Askia Muhammad, who is published in a number of black newspapers around the U.S. and who writes for The Final Call, published by the Nation of Islam.

In struggle -- deeceevoice.

PROPAGANDA, DISINFORMATION AND SILENCE:  WHAT THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT SUDAN & DARFUR

What Askia Muhammad offers readers instead of a reasoned analysis of the Darfur situation in "Darfur and the Sudan ‘Hustle'" (Washington Informer, Thursday, June 7 http://www.washingtoninformer.com/OPEDAskia-2007Jun7.html ) is far from convincing.  It causes me to wonder, "Who's hustling whom?"

I am an activist, what many would call a "leftist." I am inherently distrustful of U.S. foreign policy objectives, generally, but particularly as they relate to people of color - and this is true in spades on the African continent.  I also am a Darfur activist.

But I'm not Jewish.  I'm not white.  I am a pan-Africanist, a student of history, an anti-Zionist African-American.  And I have not, to use Muhammad's words, "been duped."

Muhammad's arguments are all over the place and completely miss the mark.  How can one, after all, propose to address honestly the matter of Darfur with barely a mumblin' word about Khartoum's devastating and appalling record of human rights abuses, on a massive scale, against its marginalized populations?

The Save Darfur Coalition

I won't respond to Muhammad's column point by point; however, I will say, first, two things about his utterly disingenuous comments about the Save Darfur Coalition.  Muhammad must know it is grossly unfair to castigate an education and advocacy organization for not delivering direct aid.  It isn't "hustling" to use funds for education, outreach and lobbying instead of for humanitarian assistance, which clearly is not Save Darfur's mission.  In its own words, the organization solicits contributions to fund "crucial awareness and advocacy programs that play a critical role in building ... political pressure ...to end the crisis in Darfur."

And about David Rubenstein:  he likely would not have felt the need to place full-page ads in the black press if there weren't so many misinformed and disinformed black folk demagoguing the issue of Darfur out of opposition to the Zionist lobby, Muslim solidarity, or some misdirected sense of common cause with Arabs, ostensibly because they are Third World people of color and because of the plight of the Palestinian people.

The Nation of Islam and Muslim Solidarity

Props to the Nation of Islam for its work with the black underclass and working class when many "respectable" black churches didn't care, and for advancing black consciousness and our struggle for justice for more than 75 years.  But when it comes to the sometimes mind-numbing, facile polemics of anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, leftist political correctness, NOI spokesperson and minister Louis Farrakhan has few, if any, peers.  In recent years, he opportunistically has forged working alliances with the likes of  Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church and Lyndon LaRouche, both of whom, not coincidentally, are stinking rich and have mounted well-funded recruitment efforts aimed at making inroads into the African-American community.  And Farrakhan has been cozy with oil-rich Khartoum since at least his "World Friendship Tour" in 1996.  Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir addressed the Nation's annual Founder's Day gathering this year in Chicago via satellite, at one point taking questions from the faithful; and the minister and at least one of his lieutenants, at Bashir's invitation, helped wrangle a delegation of African-American journalists to fly to Sudan to get the "real scoop" on Darfur.

Anybody remember the often co-opted reporting of the embedded press during the 2003 Iraq invasion?

The Destruction of Black Civilization

Bashir is just one in a line of Sudanese heads of state whose stated purpose has been the Arabization of Sudan, with a history of marginalizing and denying government services to Sudanese who do not self-identify as Arab.  He has no use for them - only their land.   

In the West, the people of Darfur have been victimized by all manner of depredations and threatened with literal extinction.  In the South, the death toll is officially and undisputedly at 2 million non-"Arab," black Southern Sudanese, the victims of a bloody civil war when some of their number finally rose up and said "no more."  Presently, while the Government of Sudan continues to reap millions in oil wealth from the oil-rich South, it spends less than ½ of 1 percent of its total GDP there.  That means no roads, no schools, no hospitals, no water projects, no electricity - nada. 

The only attention Darfur receives from Khartoum is of the unwanted kind:  helicopter gunships, Antonov bombers and government troops on the ground, who soften up civilian targets for government-armed and -funded Janjaweed militias, who in turn burn and ransack villages, poison wells, rape, mutilate and murder innocents at will.  There are highly credible accounts going back several months that the Sudan government has painted planes to masquerade as UN and African Union aircraft while ferrying arms and military hardware to Janjaweed militias.  Thus, Bashir fuels the existing conflict, using these "devils on horseback" to do his dirty work of obliterating the people of Darfur.  He then blames the mounting death toll, the massive displacement on "rebel conflict," disavowing any involvement or responsibility - until earlier this year, when the evidence was so irrefutable, Bashir himself had to admit that the government had bombed  "rebel" villages in Darfur.  For him, this shell game is a threefer:  advancing Arabization, removing any possible political opposition, and consolidation of control over the region's land and oil wealth.

The Nuba in the North have long been victimized by a government Arabization campaign and now are at risk of losing, to hydroelectric projects at Meroe and Kajbar, their homelands, as well as the ancient archaeological treasures of a culture that gave rise to Egyptian dynastic civilization.  The proposed dams not only would obliterate ancient Nubian archaeological sites, they would grow dramatically the population of displaced Sudanese - already estimated at about 2,150,000 from the Darfur genocide alone - and threaten to cause water wars in neighboring nations.

The situation in Nubia is eerily reminiscent of what happened in Egypt in more ways than one.  The Aswan High Dam was built and went online in the 1964.  It flooded much of lower Nubia, destroyed untold archaeological treasures and displaced over 90,000 people.  Even more profoundly, however, and farther back in time, Arabs conquered Egypt in 700 A.D., more than 3,500 years after the foundation of dynastic Egypt was laid with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt - by a black king.  And now, a little more than 1,300 years later, Egypt is the seat of the Arab world, its population and much of the rest of the world in complete and utter denial of its black African heritage.  I cringe at the possibility of what Sudan might look like even 40 years hence, given the accelerated pace of the assault on the non-"Arab" blacks of Sudan.

In fact, were he alive today, noted historian Chancellor Williams could write a sequel to his masterwork The Destruction of Black Civilization:  Great Issues of a Race Between 4500 B.C. and 2000 A.D. focusing alone on the 21-year conflict in the south of  Sudan, the Darfur genocide, and the hydroelectric projects in the North that Muhammad so glibly and irresponsibly touts in his column.

Should the ongoing campaign to Arabize Sudan succeed, with the marginalization, slaughter and displacement of non-"Arab" populations by the Bashir regime left to continue, Sudan will become, like Egypt, an Arab nation, more closely aligned politically with the Middle East than with Africa. So much for Muhammad's specious contention that "Sudan has the potential of being a bridge between Islamic Arab North Africa and Bantu Black sub-Saharan Africa."  Khartoum repeatedly has responded to the indigenous, black, Bantu peoples of its own nation with marginalization, exploitation, cultural aggression, displacement and genocide.  There is no reason to believe - or even hope - that its response to sub-Saharan Africa will be to extend the hand of brotherhood.

Still, an African-American population traditionally provincial when it comes to international affairs; a cynical disinformation campaign - nonsensical as it is -  that targets our community and  panders to long-standing ideological hostilities and a well-earned distrust of U.S. foreign policy objectives has turned Arab "I Ain't Black" Bashir into Soul Brother Number 1 in some quarters.

And why not? 

The Godfather of Soul is dead and buried  - finally - and Michael Jackson is white, tragically confused and living in Bahrain.  So, I guess the title is up for grabs.

The Judgment of History

Curiously, what is common knowledge around the world seems to carry little weight among too many in the African American community - that Bashir is a lying, murderous scoundrel and a war criminal.  Chad threatened to quit the organization if Bashir became head of the African Union, and other African nations protested vociferously until the baton was passed instead to the president of Ghana earlier this year.  And Bashir is a racist.   After all, black self-loathing and denial is nothing but anti-black racism internalized, and like many of our black and Muslim brothers and sisters in East Africa, Bashir self-identifies as Arab - not as black.  That these "Arabs" couldn't pass the paper bag test, as Muhammad correctly asserts, doesn't change the fact that Bashir and his henchmen are targeting and ruthlessly exterminating non-"Arab" blacks like vermin.  It is true that the historically accurate stereotype of Semitic Arabs victimizing black Africans is not the case in Sudan, but as African-Americans, we should be especially sensitive to, and wary of, the discounting of black-on-black violence, or of people who use it to justify the profound and shocking silence on the part of much of the African-American community on Darfur.

We, the descendants of slaves, should know better.  Human life is human life.

So, what will we tell our grandchildren should the non-"Arab" peoples of Darfur, the South and the Nuba Mountains recede into history as victims of ongoing warfare and cynical neglect directed at them by their own government, as casualties of the first genocide of the twenty-first century?  If their once thriving villages and cultures disappear into the dust, the drifting, uprooted survivors left to subsist in miserable refugee gulags dotted throughout Chad and the rest of the region?  How will we, as African Americans, explain our failure to speak out, to act, to stand with the people of Darfur?  What will we tell our grandchildren when they ask, "Grandpa, Grandma, why didn't you do something?"

What will be the unblinking judgment of history and our progeny?

It will be one of ignorance, apathy, laziness and astounding gullibility in the face of smarmy, lying, unctuous demagogues spouting the flimsiest of rhetoric in defense of a ruthless tyrant.  It will be that our inertia, suspicion of the U.S. government and our opposition to the Zionist lobby were greater than our moral outrage at preventable human suffering; greater than our sense of duty to the sacred legacy of struggle, overcoming and humanity bequeathed to us by our ancestors - and, tragically, shamefully, far greater than the love we possessed for our own people.

Kathleen Holt Wills, Black Voices for Darfur - Washington, D.C.

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(from my forum on blackplanet.com)

A couple of victories

Two HBCUs finally have divested: Hampton University and Howard University. Ya-aaay! *doin' my happy dance* :D

I can't say I played much of a role, but I did call and badger Howard University pretty mercilessly for several months and stayed in communication w/a friend of mine on the Board of Trustees. Sent her info whenever I could.

I know from trading e-mails with him that Joe Madison, "The Black Eagle," was in regular communication with HU prez Patrick Swygert on the matter.

So, kudos to all involved in these first two, important divestitures. It's fantastic news. (It's about damned time.)

Okay. So, that's two down and how many more to go...?

In the vinyards - HBCUs & divestment legislation

I've called several other HBCUs around the country, but so far there ain't much goin' on that I can see. Will renew my activities on that score in the late summer/early fall, when the schools and BoTs are ramping up for the fall semester. I've contacted the membership association of HBCUs -- not even a callback so far, but I'm persistent. I'm thinking of a conference call in the fall with HBCU prezzes and/or CFOs, with an online Power Point presentation (already put together by the Sudan Divestment Taskforce). Gee. I wonder if the CFOs or prezzes of HU and/or Hampton would be willing to participate and share their experiences with divestment up to that point?

Partly as a result of my efforts, we have a bill before the D.C. City Council! Right now it's in committee. I'll be wrangling people to testify in support of D.C. divestment, so if you're a D.C. resident, here's your chance to do something constructive. I've been going to demos & rallies -- most recently at the Holocaust Museum (the day Baby Bush spoke, backing down from his Plan B in the face of a request from Ban Ki-moon -- WTF?) and at the Global Days for Darfur rally in Lafayette Park a couple of weeks ago.

I see the NAACP's onboard on Darfur. Great. There was a representative of that organization at the rally. Maybe they have some ideas about getting black folks off they butts....

Networking

And on that note, I attended a invitation-only (not exclusive by ANY means, but presumably for Darfur activists/advocates) reception for Don Cheadle and John Prendergast at the Mayflower Hotel last week. Fantastic event. Rows of the book "Not On Our Watch" for purchase, a ballroom jam-packed w/people, the obligatory open bar, and attendants making the rounds with finger food. (Good grub.)

Most important, the reception was an opportunity to network. After I bought the book, I went around to many of the brown spots in the place and engaged them on strategies for galvanizing the African-American community.

Quite by coincidence, I happened to be standing near the podium when the presentation began. Cheadle is a relatively short, slight, almost tiny brutha. While I had no trouble hearing him, there's something quiet about him. He said what he had to say and little else. He's extremely knowledgeable and very articulate on the issue; I'd caught him the day before on WAMU (American University's radio station) speaking on the issue of Darfur and was suitably impressed.

Then Cheadle's co-author John Prendergast, a tall, easy- and outgoing white guy with shoulder-length hair, made his remarks. The whole timle, Cheadle, dressed unassumingly in jeans, a shirt and an outerwear jacket, mainly looked at the floor. I'm thinkin', "While this brother's out here on this issue, this really isn't his thing."

Immediately afterwards, as if on cue, the ballroom crowd surged forward toward the pair, who were standing there with no barrier -- not even a table -- between them and the surge. "I dunno," I thought. I could see the headlines "ACADEMY AWARD-NOMINATED ACTOR TRAMPLED AT D.C. HOTEL." So, I demurred and fought the wave of humanity, moving in the opposite direction. (I'd already met Prendergast, a D.C. resident, anyway, and I figured I wouldn't force the poor guy -- Cheadle -- to shake another hand.)

Book tours can be grueling undertakings. I let them be.

Mother's Day demonstration

THERE'S A MOTHER'S DAY DEMONSTRATION IN FRONT OF THE SUDAN EMBASSY TODAY, 12:30 P.M. BE THERE, IF YOU CAN. BRING YOUR FRIENDS. BRING YOUR MOM. THE CAT. THE DOG. THE GERBIL -- ANYTHING BLACK. WE NEED BLACK FACES THERE!

[We need everybody there!  I don't give a damn what color you are....]

Staying motivated

Have you read the book? It's a primer for action. Have you seen it? The face of that beautiful, vulnerable child on the cover, with the furrowed brow and searing hazel eyes that likely have seen far too much brutality and depravity for his young years, haunts me. I see him (her?) in my mind's eye every time I take a meal. I wonder if he's still alive and what food or shelter, if any, he has for sustenance and comfort. It drives me to keep calling, writing, demonstrating, lobbying, networking, organizing.

Interested in working for the people of Darfur in ANY way? Contact me at: blkvoices4darfur@aol.com.

(AKOBEN, war horn.  Adinkra symbol, Ghana. Meaning:  A call to arms. Vigilance. An urgent call to action.)

"Justice is love in working clothes."

Time to suit up, people.

In struggle, deeceevoice.

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VATICAN CITY (April 21) - Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching on limbo, approving a Vatican report released Friday that says there were "serious" grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven. -- "Catholic Church Reverses Teaching on Limbo," Nicole Winfield - AP

That this should even make the news is laughable.  That some Catholics actually believe/d such tripe is tragic.  This episode is just another example of the Catholic Church recanting some twisted, perverse teaching cynically calculated to terrorize true believers and rigidly enforce adherence to Church dogma and practice, which stands up to neither enlightened examination nor sensible inquiry -- and most assuredly was one which was never in concert with the idea of a just and loving Creator.

This sort of sickness is embedded in the institution's DNA. There's that nasty, little episode regarding the Copernican model of the universe, which was condemned by the Catholic Church -- which believed that, since Man was made in the image of God, surely the rock on which he resides (Earth) MUST be the center of the universe. Recanted -- after the Church persecuted and tormented poor Galileo and had him jailed for his adherence to heliocentrism.

And then there's Pope Gregory II and that sexist tall tale about Mary Magdalene bein' a ho' -- a former prostitute, to be more specific. Yep. Recanted.

Down the road, there will be more. There's an even bigger one coming up -- the ordination of women. But don't hold your breath; the current paleopope isn't likely to budge on that one. Apparently, the fact that Jesus had a penis instead of a vagina is of momentous importance -- enough for the Church to deny women the priesthood, even in the face of a dire shortage of priests. (Celibacy 'til death seems to discourage many men -- go figure. That's another recantation in the making, but even further down the line.) Even given the fact that many women now are performing many of the duties of the priests, the Word of the Church remains the same: "Sorry, dearie. This is a men-only club."

And what of that old canard about papal infallibility? Given the track record of the pointy-hatted pontifs throughout the centuries, one would think that one would have disappeared down the rabbit hole as well. I mean if popes were infallible, there would be no recantations, no reprehensible silence on the part of the Vatican when church officials go astray, no nightmarish papal PR gaffs. Like the tawdry, downright un-Christian silence of the Church during the Holocaust. Like its looking the other way for only God knows how long when it came to priestly indiscretions with young boys (and girls). Or, like when Joey Ratzinger became pope and then promptly put his foot in it with his decidedly un-pope-like, inflammatory, and extremely ill-timed comments about Islam.

So, with this pronouncement by Benedict, it's just another inane teaching consigned to the dustbin of religious history, another nonsensical tenet of Catholic dogma down the tubes -- with many more to go. Until then, Catholics simply will have to use the innate common sense and spiritual intelligence God gave them and ignore the outright idiocy of some of the Church's teachings.

Frankly, I find this announcement by the Church no cause for surprise, relief or celebration. My immediate response is an impatient, "AND...?"

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Thanks to Mary-Mary for the tip. :)

Well, it took the brother 61 years of toilin', totin', boilin' and butlerin' in the big house, but he's finally been promoted. Bruthaman -- Ben-baby -- is now chairman of the board!

Check this out. http://www.unclebens.com/

The man's got his very own office 'n' e'erythang. It seems company executives decided it was time to break away from the stereotypical, iconic blackman-as-house-servant image.

Man, oh man! My brain is reeling. I can't handle all this. It's just too much in one week. I find out Imus has gotten the axe, canned (actually, I saw that one coming), and now I find out the genial, smiling Uncle Ben -- Aint Jemima's cuz -- both of whom I've known since childhood, gets booted from "duh big house to duh bowedroom."

Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?

Yep. It's true. We're in the Last Days for sure. It's global warming. It's cats f*cking dogs and dogs f*cking cats. It's the Apocalypse and Sanjaya winning "American Idol" all at once! We're all doomed!

*running from the room screaming* "Run, Fo-rey-ust! Rrr-u-uu-n!"

But hold up.

"Scree-eech!" *coming to my senses*

Wait one damn minute. Don't grab the freeze-dried rations, hiking boots, blankets, buffalo jerky, water purification tablets, backpack, shotgun, shells, shortwave, cell phone, laptop, Razr, I-Pod, etc., etc., etc., and head for the mountains just yet.

There may be hope yet for the world as we know it. (Hell, yeah, I know it sux, but it's better than a post-Apocalyptic hellhole populated by flesh-eating zombies and monster cockroaches wearin' people suits a la Edgar The Bug in "Men in Black.")

Maybe the world hasn't shifted on its axis.  Maybe we're safe and things haven't changed so much after all....

When I reached the website and the images loaded, I noticed a few things. Like that shiny, brass wall plaque to the right of those big, impressive double doors. "CHAIRMAN." That's all it says. No name. Just "CHAIRMAN." And when the doors open, there's this ugly, hideously drab office (but I'll get to that later), with a message overlaid on top of that image in a neat, little black box with white print.

"Hello, I'm Uncle Ben," it begins.

Innocent enough -- right?

Au contraire. 

Aside from the fact that my inner vision had me reading, "Hello, I'm Uncle Tom" (and that's no lie; I had to pull up short and go back and read it again), I'm immediately suspicious. This man apparently has no last name. And not only is he still called "Uncle," now the man is using that hated racial slur, used to demean elderly black men back in the day (the equivalent of calling a mature, virile blackman "boy"), self-referentially!

"I'm Uncle Ben"?!! That's like a suited-down brutha striding up to you, confidently extending his hand and introducing himself as "Nigguh Pete."

WTF?

Now what kind of corporate executive or head of anything -- other than yo' momma's sister's family -- goes around calling himself "Uncle" anything? Like, say, "Hello, I'm Uncle Bill (Gates)"? Or, "Pleased as punch to meet you. I don't have a last name (or a mirror, either, apparently; why else would he go out in public with his hair so jacked up?). Shucks, jus' call me Uncka Donald. Come own iyyun an' set a spell"?

How about this one: "I ain't your damned 'Ain't Oprah.' Kiss my $1.5 billion black a**! Security!!!"

But I digress....

Okay. So, I'm up in this office. It's hideous -- brown on brown in brown. Big, homely brown desk. Brown (hardwood) floors. Brown wood paneling. Beige/off-white rug. Blahs all around. It's the kind of office no self-respecting bruthaman with any sense of style or taste would be caught within 40 feet of. There's a brown face on the wall, too, a "portrait" of the new chairman, the only real color in the place -- in more ways than one. It's the spittin' image of the face that smiles out at me from the shelves at my neighborhood Safeway. It's a visage that beams pleasantly and seems to say, "Ha do, ma'am. How may I serve you?"

I note that the name plate on the desk -- again -- has no name. It reads "CHAIRMAN." And I begin to see how carefully thought-out this charade is. They couldn't use a name, because they would have had to call him "Mister" or maybe "Doctor." I guess that simple, conventional courtesy was too radical a concept for the boys on Madison Avenue.  It somehow was much easier for these PR wizards to fathom that the public would accept a house servant suddenly and inexplicably being kicked upstairs straight to the boardroom after six decades of loyal service, with no additional training.  Dang.  Not even night school?

They're right, of course.  I mean, gosh.  Who would buy that a man who's performed his humble responsibilities with skill and dignity, nearly a half decade after the Civil Rights Movement, would now be accorded the simple dignity of a proper title?

Nor, apparently, could they bring themselves to give the man a last name -- presumably because then they'd have had to change the brand name.  But it's not like they'd have had to market "Mistuh Jones'-Mau-Mau-Ain't-Gon'-Shuffle-No-Gottdamn-Mo'-So-Eat-Me-Rice!"  Yeah, I admit it has a nice ring to it, but I can be reasonable.  "Ben's Rice" would have suited me just fine.

But back to that butt-ugly office.  It's interactive. The first thing -- after the nameless name plate -- that catches my eye is that little, brown photographic image on the work table beyond the desk chair.

H-m-m. Lemme see what moves this man.

*click*

I'm whisked around behind his desk, and I'm thinkin', "Cool."

It's almost as dreary from this angle, black and -- what else -- more brown.  There's an oatmeal sofa in the background, complete with the obligatory chess set on a nearby coffee table.  The all-too-obvious message?  "This is no ordinary knee-grow who got his job through Affirmative Action or white guilt" (as in, say, for example, "Golly, we sure are sorry for using you as a demeaning mascot for over six decades.").  No, siree, Bob. This is a thinking man!") The desktop is sleek and shiny -- brown marble.  Brown leather notebook. Flat-panel monitor.

Wait. Back to that notebook.  Let's see whut this brutha b thankin'....

*click*

"FROM THE DESK OF UNCLE BEN -- CHAIRMAN"

"Traversing through Bengal and Doab, I learned that they have an oft-quoted proverb: grains of rice should be like two brothers -- close, but not stuck together. I think brothers should always attempt to be more like my COUNTRY INN chicken & vegetable rice -- tasteful and well-prepared."

WTF?  I don't how much Mars (the parent company) paid those ad execs to come up with this silly artifice, but what former butler brutha do you know uses "traverse" -- except maybe when referring to a curtain rod? Or "oft" except in, "Day-um! Dem pigs jus' up an' oft dat brutha when he reached fo' his wallet!"?

Give me a break.

Okay. I'll grant that a brutha should be tasteful and well-prepared. Sounds reasonable -- but ask yourself:  is old Ben in a position to speak on the subject?  I mean he's about as well-prepared as deep-fried, pickled Minute Rice.  And tasteful? You're kiddin' me -- right? His office looks like a colostomy bag blew up in it!

I'd bet new money there wasn't a single, solitary black person involved in this abysmal attempt at a corporate makeover.  It's not only completely preposterous, it's an insult to our intelligence.

Let's face it.  It was a failed undertaking from the git-go.

I appreciate the sentiment/effort, guys, but lesson one: you can't make slavery and servitude right with trivial window dressing. (Duh.) Lesson two: you can't put a white character in blackface and make him believable. (Bi-ii-ig duh.) Lesson three:  If a man can "traverse" through India, play chess and heads a board of directors, he deserves an office befitting his intelligence, sensibilities and status.  In short, if you make any man chairman of the board of a major corporate enterprise -- especially a blackman -- and give him an office, you'd bettuh trick that mutha out!

From the article in The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/media/30adco.htmlex=1176868800&en=bf8ac1e66bef8358&ei=5070

that reported the story:

"This is an interesting idea, but for me it still has a very high cringe factor," said Luke Visconti, partner at Diversity Inc. Media in Newark, which publishes a magazine and Web site devoted to diversity in the workplace. "There's a lot of baggage associated with the image," Mr. Visconti said, which the makeover "is glossing over."

"Cringe factor"? Indeed. I've stopped laughing myself sick. Now, I just wanna go, "Ee-uu-uuw."

I feel unclean.

Where are those damned Gold Dust Twins

http://www.geocities.com/~jimlowe/tmoore/golddust.html 

when you need 'em?

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Imus is finally gone -- finally. No word about his sleazoid sycophant executive producer Bernard McGuirk.

Below, the text of a communication I sent to CBS about noon yesterday, before CBS finally grew some and did the right thing.

CBS's response to the Imus situation was slow and remains unacceptably inadequate. I have absolutely NO intention of watching the CBS network or patronizing any of the network's subsidiaries or major advertisers/sponsors unless and until CBS management does the right thing and fires BOTH Don Imus and Bernard McGuirk for their appallingly racist, sexist remarks. Their conduct is reprehensible and an affront to all people of decency and conscience.

The announced two-week suspension of Imus isn't even a slap on the wrist; it's a vacation. Someone, please explain to me how CBS can pretend to be a responsible corporate citizen and plan to continue to employ people who have a history of polluting the public airwaves with such disgusting speech.

I am a college-educated African-American woman. SURELY, you must have some notion of the political strength and purchasing power of the black community. We will no longer tolerate such offenses, such affronts to our people. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that had Imus used the word "kike" or "money-grubbing Jew" or some similarly disgusting rhetoric on his show, he'd be out on the street on his butt as soon as the "On Air" light dimmed.

The issue here is a simple one:RESPECT. 

Imus and McGuirk are the line in the sand.  Enough is enough!

Imus' apologies notwithstanding, his remarks in his interview with Al Sharpton and elsewhere clearly indicate he still doesn't get it.  And while an apology is what any sensible person would do; it cannot obliterate the words, it cannot undo the harm. Imus must be made to pay for his on-air conduct with his job. 

The same is true for Imus' executivei producer Bernard McGuirk. We've heard not a peep out of him. Not only did he inject sexist and racist animus into the discussion with the introduction of "ho'," he then continued on to talk about "jigaboos"! This mental and moral cretin, hired, in Imus' own words (in an early interview) to "do the nigger jokes," has GOT to go.

WHERE IS YOUR CONSCIENCE? YOUR SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY TO THE PUBLIC? YOUR SENSE OF DECENCY, CORPORATE INTEGRITY AND MORALITY? 

The exodus of sponsors has will continue. 

... I and others will communicate our thanks and support to NBC and the advertisers and individuals who have disassociated themselves from the Imus show. We will lodge formal complaints with the FCC, demanding that they take action in this instance and in other instances where radio talk show hosts engage in such hate speech as was exhibited by both Imus and McGuirk last Thursday. The fine of $325,000 per utterance for obscenity and offending public decency should be levied in such cases as the Imus/McGuirk incident. Let's see. That's "ho'", "nappy-headed ho's" and "jigaboo." Just for starters, that's $975,000.

Your corporate bean counters should give serious consideration to the escalating consequences of keeping Imus and McGuirk on the air. We intend to follow through on this. Hate speech is NOT covered by the First Amendment. And if the FCC can go after PBS stations for airing fairly innocuous obscenities uttered in historical context, then it certainly can and should go after those who spew racist and sexist venom that panders to the lowest common denominator, that inflames/feeds old hatreds and resentments and inflicts deep wounds on some of the most hopeful and vulnerable among us.

From a "Washington Post" article: "'He's crossed the line, he's violated our community,' [African-American CBS executive and former head of the NAACP] Gordon told the Associated Press. 'He needs to face the consequence of that violation.' CBS declined to comment on Gordon's statement." 

Gordon is right. Imus and McGuirk should have BEEN gone -- and not just suspended; fired. Fired for not only this episode, but for a track record of sleazy, vicious, vile commentary that is racist, sexist and homophobic. Such intemperate, offensive speech and conduct have absolutely NO place in our increasingly diverse society. They must have no safe harbor if we are to build the harmonious, egalitarian, respectful, cohesive, civil, American society that we all must all strive for -- for ourselves and those who come after us. 

Do the right thing. Fire them both and then try to salvage whatever respectability/credibility with the black community you may have remaining.

DO IT NOW.

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