The Mad (political) Scientist

Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow...

2012-01-28T01:52:00.004-05:00

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!

Today is Saturday, Jan. 28.

And in the City of Philadelphia, we have already had 31 people murdered, and a whole bunch of folks shot.

At this rate, The City of Brotherly Love and Please Put The Damned Gun Down may just see the kind of murder rates that we used to see regularly in the late 90s and early 2000s where hundreds and hundreds of folks were shot dead in the streets.

During his first term, Mayor Michael Nutter promised that he'd bring the murder rates down...and would decline to run for a second term if he didn't.

The first year or so, the rates did, indeed, go down. But starting last year, parts of Philly became Dodge City all over again, something that would occasionally make Mayor Nutter start cussin' people out...sometimes in front of live television microphones...

At a press conference on Thursday, Mayor Nutter basically told Philly's criminal element, "I'm tired of all of this murder and shit, and i'm I'm gonna get your asses!"

Mayor Nutter announced a new program to fight the city's crime issues. Included in this plan is a reward fund that he hopes will make folks come our of their shells and tell police about the murders they're seeing in the streets, more money for witness protection, which might keep people from getting killed when they do decide to do the right thing, at least 220 new police on the streets charged with going into the neighborhoods where the shootings are occurring the most, and, and I'm pretty sure that this is gonna piss off the folks here in Pennsylvania that believe that a free society is a strapped society, a reward fund for people who turn in folks walking 'round with illegal guns. You get $500 for every illegal gun you get off the street.

Now on its face, this seems like a series of really good ideas.

I've been complaining about the sorry state of witness protection in Philadelphia for years now. But while some of the failings of Philadelphia's witness protection program are financial, some of them stem from the fact that the witnesses that this program tries to help don't understand that you (a) have to leave your neighborhood to be protected (b) may also have to leave the state and (c) can't contact your homies from the block because they'll probably lead the folks who want to keep you from testifying right to you...for the sole purpose of killing your butt! Hopefully, some of the $400,000 that's going to this particular part of the plan will focus on educating the public on what exactly "witness protection" means...

I'm also down with the whole reward thing. Mayor Nutter came up with the idea of a reward fund designed to pay people for tips after a $20,000 bounty was placed on the heads of three men who beat a man to death in Old City, one of Philly's tourist areas. Since you just don't beat people to death among the tourists, we all kinda knew that Da Mayor was gonna throw down the gauntlet...

"To every criminal out there, I just put a $20,000 bounty on your head," Nutter said. "We are coming for you. We will find you. People will give up that information."

He hopes...

Like I said, I'm down with the whole reward thing. I like that it's $20,000. That's a nice round number. But it's not like it isn't something we haven't tried before. Thousands of dollars go unclaimed every year because people say to themselves "I'd like that $20,000, but if I testify, I won't be alive to spend it! Snitches get stitches..." While the money is nice, it's not very useful if you can't get people to take it...Which is also why I'm glad that this plan includes an anonymous tip and text line. This might just loosen things up...

But while spending money on rewards, police, and witness protection is good, many of us here in Philly, a place where you can swim in the potholes in the summertime in some neighborhoods, and where unchecked urban blight runs amok in some places have one question:

Where is our supposedly broke city, a city where city workers have been working without a contract for four years, coming up with all of this money?

Mayor Nutter has set aside $500,000 for the tips program, but could that money be used elsewhere? And could we get a little help from the same philanthropic organizations that you managed to raise a gang of money from to get rid of School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman?

And did you have to use the word "bounty"? When I heard you say this while watching television coverage of your announcement Mr. Mayor, two things popped into my head: a mental picture of Duane "Dog" Chapman and his dysfunctional family scouring the streets of Philadelphia, looking for criminals on the lam and the voice of the late Sammy Davis Jr. singing the theme from the television show "Baretta".

I know, I know. That's a big literal. But my guess is that Da Mayor wants the city's potential murderers to have those same mental pictures.

Let's hope it works because while my Mom is no longer around to call me every time that someone gets shot to ask me if I knew this person, my older sister is...

And it's still gonna annoy me...

So if you're smart, you'll take Sammy's advice...

Getting the Point

2012-01-27T00:27:00.000-05:00

Hope she made her point...

Arizona Gov, Jan Brewer has probably been interviewed more by the national media today than she has been since Arizona became the only state in the Union where I could be asked for a copy of my birth certificate if I find myself looking too Dominican while in Phoenix.

That's because she decided to do something that you shouldn't do to anyone: she decided to stick her finger in someone's face. That this face was attached to the President of the United States was what made it news.

Otherwise, it's just another white woman trying to put a black man in check.

Now I know that some of you are going to look at that last sentence and say "Why must you make everything racial? That wasn't about race. Why is it that every perceived disrespect when it comes to this President gets looked at through the prism of race?"

Because when it comes to a lot of the things that Republicans do and say to this particular president, the prism of race is the most obvious one through which it can be viewed. Don't shoot the messenger. It is what it is...at least it is what it is in this case...

Now why do I say that? Well, let's look at it in another direction and you'll see why.

Suppose the positions in this picture were reversed? Let's just say that this wasn't President Barack Obama, but Gov. Barack Obama. And let's pretend that Gov. Brewer was the President instead. Now let's further extend this scenario and have Gov. Obama confront President Brewer as she came off of Air Force One and stuck his finger in her face.

Before you could say "angry black man", people would be calling for his head. How dare he disrespect the President like that...and a white woman to boot? You're sticking your finger in this white woman's face? Are you nuts boy?! Better get your nigga ass back in its place...!

(Now if you don't think that's how it would have gone down, I have the deed to the Ben Franklin Bridge. I'll sell it to you if you want....)

But here's the part of this that kinda cracks me up. When Gov. Brewer made the television talk show rounds today, she said that she felt "intimidated" by the President.

On one hand, I guess I can understand that. If I had done something stupid enough to possibly lead to my ending up face down on the tarmac or looking down the barrel of a Secret Service gun, I might feel intimidated.

But because America is possibly the only place in the world where a white woman can put her finger in a black man's face and then claim that HE'S intimidating HER, she's been hailed as a hero on Fox News.

If that's not proof that we're deep into the Silly Season of American Politics, you tell me what is.

It is dynamics like this that made me decide that I'd like to know more about political speech...and the coded messages connected to it. It is these codes that have given us such things as "food stamp president", "welfare queen" "socialism" and other things that seem to act as dog whistles to the people to whom they're directed.

I started noticing coded speech when I was working for the Reading Eagle-Times in Reading, Pennsylvania. Because I can be a little nuts at times, I found myself covering organized hate groups.

(Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm black. I'm talking to Klansmen. Not the safest gig. Mom got on me about it a lot. Even told the paper that if anything happened to me, they'd have a new owner...)

But while the rank and file of these groups weren't made up of the brightest bulbs in the lamp, their leadership, the ones that recruited them, were pretty intelligent. They knew what to say to get these folks into the fold. They knew that these folks were looking for someone to blame for the fact that they didn't have a job, or food for their families and they also knew that they weren't quite smart enough to say, "Hey! What about the greedy bastards that laid me off?!"

Thus, they were able to say, "It's the blacks fault!" or "It's the immigrant's fault!"...and these folks bought it because it was easier than trying to understand the inner workings of multinational corporations.

It's almost the same in politics. In 2004, President George W. Bush got a second term because he was able to distract people from the war by keeping their eyes on "gay marriage". Because bills codifying marriage as an institution exclusive to straight couples were on the ballot, and the anti-"gay marriage" forces were largely Republican and largely religious, he rode to victory.

(Here's where I say what I usually say when I write about gays and legal matrimony: I still don't understand what gay folks can do to ruin the institution of marriage that straight folks haven't already done. I mean hey, we've got a guy currently running for president who asked his second wife to consider an open marriage so that he could continue screwing the woman who would later go on to become his third wife. If that's not proof of my contention, nothing is. Not even Elizabeth Taylor tried anything like that...)

Now coded speech in politics has always been with us. These dog whistles get blown no matter who is in charge.

But when you have an African American incumbent in the White House, and a segment of the population that's still pissed off about this, the code words come flying fast and furious. In the last few months alone, we've heard that Spanish is "a language of the ghetto", black kids "need to work as janitors in their schools so that they acquire a work ethic" blacks should "demand paychecks instead of food stamps" and that "I don't want to make life better for black people by giving them your money".

It's annoying. It's grotesque. It's disrespectful. But it works.

But because it's appearing in 2012 that people of color have no rights that anyone is required to respect all over again, it makes sense that a woman who tends to make up stories about Mexican cartels killing people in the Arizona desert (something that has been proven false time and time again) feels that she has the right to put her finger in the face of the President of the United States.

However, Gov. Brewer should be really, really glad that President Obama was alone when she wagged her finger at him because my guess is that this picture would have looked a whole lot different if First Lady Michelle Obama were present.

If she's at all like most of the women I know, you'd have learned the definition of "intimidated"...

Back up off me, y'all!

2012-01-21T01:24:00.000-05:00

Wanna know what the big story was for me this week?

No, it wasn't that Newt Gingrich allegedly asked his ex-wife for an open marriage so that he could have permission to continue to cheat on her with his current wife....

It wasn't that Vanessa Bryant became the $75 million (and three mansions) Woman thanks to marrying a man too undisciplined to keep it in his pants and too stupid to get himself a pre-nuptual agreement....

And it wasn't even finding out that President Barack Obama can carry a tune, something that's probably going to give Republicans and every black man who's tired of hearing "Why can't you be more like Barack?" just another reason to hate him...

For me the biggest news of the week was the news that Paula Deen, the Southern Fried hostess of the only Food Network program that I can get my boyfriend to watch with me without hearing him complain about it, is a Type-2 diabetic...and has been for the last three years.

Deen made the announcement as part of the unveiling of a website from Norvo Nordisk, a drug company that has employed her as its spokesperson for the diabetes medication she takes, something called Victoza. The website includes recipes for healthier meals created by Deen, who is better known for things like the video above, which features her making a deep-fried cheesecake.

(Mad (political) Scientist's Note: Her son, Bobby, has just started a show on the Cooking Channel called Not My Mama's Meals, designed to take the creations that his mom made famous and make them healthier. Someone's gotta think of the brand, I guess...)

Predictably, every nutritionist, chef and Paula Deen critic came out of the woodwork to call "Shenanigans!" on her for waiting until she was given millions by a drug company to talk about her illness and also for continuing to cook the kinds of food that everyone associates with giving you Type -2 diabetes, which can be caused by obesity among other things. Most notable among those critics is fellow celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who took to his Twitter feed to proclaim that he should, and I'm paraphrasing, go into leg breaking so that he could make millions off of selling crutches.

Now do I think that Deen is just a tad disingenuous for tying the announcement of her diabetes to the announcement that she's gonna get big bucks for telling people about her medication? Yeah. I've got my issues with that. When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I had a doctor that I swear was in bed with the pharmaceutical companies. I felt like a lab rat by the time that I finally switched doctors, his unwillingness to take me off of Avandia, a drug associated with heart attacks in diabetics, being the last straw.

But do I think that she's the anti-Christ because she refuses to say "I'm never going to eat another spoonful of macaroni and cheese ever again"?

No.

You see, my hope is that Deen uses her bully pulpit on Food Network and everywhere else she goes to use a word that no one seems to want to use when it comes to the politics of food consumption in this country:

Moderation.

Now I know that to some of you who will read this blog, I've just said a bad word. You're not supposed to practice moderation if you're a diabetic. You're supposed to want to eat nothing but salads, and fish, and sugar-free stuff for the rest of your life. You're supposed to look at a chicken wing like it's toxic. You're supposed to think of your disease every time you even think about eating.

To those of you who feel this way, I have a simple and concise one-word response.

Bullshit.

Now I recognize that my response may be perceived as harsh. I recognize that to those who love the diabetics they call family and friends this may appear unfeeling. I get it. While I think that you should focus more on whether or not we have health insurance than what we're eating, I do, indeed, get it.

But here's what you need to get when dealing with us when it comes to food: We know what we're dealing with even better than you do. So we'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't stare down our throats as we have that occasional serving of macaroni and cheese during the holidays. We'd love it if you wouldn't begin fretting the minute we take a bite from a Red Velvet cupcake.

In other words, we'd appreciate it if you didn't treat us like we can't control our impulses. We're not Kobe Bryant...

Let's be honest with ourselves here. If folks actually ate the stuff that Paula Deen (and if he's honest with himself, Anthony Bourdain) cooked all day every day, you'd be able to pick their hardened arteries out of their arms within six months. Rich, fatty, deep fried foods aren't generally included in the everyday meals of most people.

But when things like macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, Red Velvet cake and Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream are on the menu, folks should be allowed to enjoy them without being made to feel like they're going to die within an hour of consuming them.

As a nation, we have an obesity rate that's kinda ridiculous. Our rates of childhood obesity are so outrageous that First Lady Michelle Obama has made reducing them her cause. Granted, Congress isn't helping her much by saying that pizza is a vegetable (which it ain't), but she's trying to get more veggies into our kids.

However, I can't help but think that some of America's problems with obesity stem from our dysfunctional relationship with food. When you try and shame people into losing weight by making snide remarks, or chastising them whenever they so much as take a bite out of a piece of bread, you make food more important than it actually is.

That makes people self-conscious.

Which leads to their feeling ashamed of eating.

Which makes them eat in secret.

Which leads to depression.

Which leads to overeating.

Which leads to obesity.

Which can lead to diabetes.

See where I'm going with this?

So rather than condemn Paula Deen for being a diabetic who makes gooey butter cakes (I personally make chocolate chip cookies from scratch...I eat two and give the rest away), I'm hoping that her being a diabetic forces us to have a conversation about moderation....

because, as she often puts it, she's our cook, not our nurse.

No, I'm not gonna eat all this butter! So back off of me, y'all!

We Almost Lost Detroit...

2012-01-17T22:47:00.000-05:00

Imagine this scenario:

You live in a pretty decent sized town. The elected officials in your town aren't the greatest. The town's budget is a bit of a mess. Jobs have left that probably won't be back because the industry they were connected to no longer exists in the form it used to. There's been a few instances of corruption and some of these local officials have found themselves taken away in handcuffs for their malfeasance. So your town has an election, and you, and your fellow townspeople, vote to throw these bums out and replace them with people who have a plan designed to fix the budget, drum up some business....and by extension some jobs. And to put a cherry on top of this new hot fudge sundae, they're probably the most ethical folks in your town, so you know their hearts are in the right place.

Now imagine that despite the fact that you and your fellow townspeople have done what they could do on a small-"d" democratic level to get the town back on track, the governor of your state decides that your efforts aren't enough and armed with a law that his political cronies worked hard to get implemented, nullifies the intention of the voters in your town by installing an overseer with unlimited power that can do anything he or she wants...and your taxes are forced to pay for his decisions.You have no way to protest this person's actions and they can't be voted out.

Now if you're a longtime resident of Washington, D.C., this particular scenario is probably something you're far too familiar with. Depending on who the current occupant of the White House is and which party holds the majority in Congress, you either have a say in how your taxes are used on the federal level, which means you have some actual control of your budget, or you're basically told, "We own you bitch! Shut up and take it!"...which is something that I'm sure that Newt Gingrich probably said when he was Speaker of the House in the 90s.

But if you're a resident of one of the 50 states that make up the rest of United States of America, you probably never thought that you'd ever have to deal with this scenario in any way, shape or form. I mean, why would any governor decide that he or she was not only going to take over a town government and give the citizens in said town no say in how their government, a government that's supposed to represent them, conducts itself?

If you live in the state of Michigan however, that's the reality you're currently living under. Especially if you're living in the towns of Flint, Pontiac, Hartranft, Ecorse, Benton Harbor, and Three Oaks. Under the Emergency Manager Law, one of those draconian measures that always seem to go hand in hand with what I like to call "bully government", Gov. Rick Snyder can decide unilaterally that he doesn't like your town's government, have it removed, and replace it with one he likes...one that isn't accountable to you, the citizens.

Now we here in Philadelphia have our own smaller scale experiences with things taken over by state-sponsored entities that have no accountability to us as citizens despite the fact that they are financed through our taxes. The School District of Philadelphia is the biggest example of this, followed closely by the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

But just like in Michigan, state takeover hasn't equalled excellence. Heck, we here in Philly could have told them that. The School District of Philadelphia has been operating at a deficit ever since the Commonwealth took it over, as are the towns that have been subject to this particularly heinous power grab.

The Detroit School District, which has been under state receivership for a while, is still a mess.

So imagine the horrified looks on the faces of the folks in the City of Detroit, a city that managed to survive Kwame "I don't wanna be a freak, but I can't help myself" Kilpatrick, the greed of GM, and a whole host of other things, when they found out that despite electing a new mayor, Dave Bing, a new city council, and trying to put its own house in order, it and another town, Inkster, are Gov. Snyder's next takeover targets.

Wow.

There are a lot of things not to like about this law. We can talk about how it's a total subjugation of democracy. We can talk about how it doesn't give towns in Michigan an incentive to try and clean up their governments on their own because they know, no matter what, the Governor will take over the town if he doesn't like their choices. We can talk about how political in the most grotesque sense this is.

But what really stood out to me about the consequences of this law was this: if Inkster and Detroit join the ranks of Michigan's takeover targets, 50 percent of the state's African American community will be living in towns governed by officials they didn't elect, can't un-elect, and aren't accountable in any way to them.

Wrap your head around that for a moment. I'll wait...

That means that 50 percent of Michigan's African American community has no say so in their own governance.

Getting it now?

As times get harder and towns find it difficult to keep up, it would be no surprise to me at all if more laws like this found themselves being proposed in state legislatures.

But in the words of the Rev. David Bullock, one of the leaders of a march to Gov. Snyder's Ann Arbor home in protest of the law, it would be a bad idea to use a lack of funding as an excuse to take away the right of a municipality to govern itself.

"There is no connection between dismantling democracy and fixing a deficit," Bullock said. "Democracy allows for accountability and transparency. If you take democracy off the table, you have tyranny. There is no accountability. We must also add that emergency management does not work. The Detroit Public Schools is under emergency management: still has a deficit. Benton Harbor is under emergency management: bills paid late. The city of Highland Park was under a weaker form of emergency management for nine years: still has a deficit. You cannot manage a blood loss. If I were in a car accident and I was losing blood, you wouldn't manage how much blood I was losing. You would stop the bleeding and you would send a blood transfusion. We need targeted reinvestment in Michigan."

Let's hope they get some. Beats the hell out of the alternative.

"I have a dream...." and I got it for half off!

2012-01-16T17:02:00.001-05:00

Right now as I'm writing this, folks around the country are participating in service projects, going to ecumenical services, or doing other things to benefit their communities as part of the observance of the 83rd birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Here in Philly, the folks at Global Citizen put together a series of projects that gave just about every community in the Delaware Valley some needed assistance that it probably wouldn't have gotten due to budgetary constraints.

Just what Dr. King would have wanted.

When the King Holiday became reality 25 years ago, and folks were trying to figure out how to celebrate it, the one concern that everyone had about it was that it might become just like every other holiday: a day off and not much else.

To try and counteract that, former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford, a man who was a contemporary of Dr. King's and had worked with him during the Civil Rights Movement, suggested that the holiday become "a day on, not a day off", a day of service, not a day at the mall.

And for the first 10 or so years, that's exactly how it worked. People took to the streets to plant gardens, build playgrounds, paint school buildings, cook and deliver food to the hungry, and perform other kinds of service to mankind. Interfaith ecumenical services (because you can't honor a minister without having some sort of church service), luncheons honoring those who work toward King's "beloved community" and educational activities have also been a part of the observation of the King Holiday.

(There is also a full slate of NBA basketball games to commemorate the King Holiday because after a long day of giving back to the community, catching a game with your buds is a great way to unwind..)

But over the last few years, I've started to see something connected to the King Holiday that I was really hoping it could avoid.

What might that be, you might ask?

Well, it's this...

Why Sears and KMart are losing market share...

This, in case the caption isn't clear, is an ad from KMart for an MLK Day sale. I went looking for (and asked my Facebook friends to send me) ads like this after seeing Sears MLK Day appliance sale ad on television.

It's not the only one that I saw. Everyone from clothing retailers like Betsey Johnson to car dealerships, to even the Home Shopping Network has a slew of discounts connected to the birthday of a man who would have reacted to it in much the same way that Jesus reacted to the moneychangers in the temple during Passover.

And, and I'm saying this because I'm starting to think that we can't help ourselves, the more heinous damage from a retail perspective being done to the King Holiday, a holiday that African Americans worked hard to make possible, is, of course, self-inflicted.

Observe:

The levels on which this is wrong defy description. This is for a party in Miami. There were others, including, and this was my personal favorite, a nightclub in Washington, DC offering the "I have a dream" cocktail.

(God, do I wish I was kidding!)

Now don't get me wrong. I know that I live in a nation where "Cash Rules Everything Around Me" is the law of the land, something that was codified when the Supreme Court decided to give corporations personhood through the Citizens United decision.

Because of this, I also know that no holiday is safe from crass commercialization. Don't believe me? Go to any CVS pharmacy the day after Halloween. You'll see that in one day it's changed from spooky ghosts and witches hats to a winter wonderland, complete with motorized Dancing Santas.

I also realize that there are folks out there, many of whom are ensconced on the boards of the very corporations responsible for most of the crass commercialization of our holidays, who are still pissed off that King has a federal holiday because they saw him as a Communist agitator. Wanting to see such things as humane treatment for workers, people being able to support themselves by making a living wage, and true equality for everyone, and being willing to take it to the streets to make it a reality, can make you unpopular in some quarters.

But I thought that we could, as a nation, at least let the King Holiday maintain the significance its supposed to have for at least a little while longer. There's still too much that needs to be done in our communities for the holiday to become just another opportunity to hit the mall.

So what do we do? Good question.

Maybe someone can get Sen. Harris Wofford back on camera to remind us of why the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King deserved a holiday in the first place...

Me and my bud Brian Marcus at the King Memorial

Once you go black...

2011-09-15T22:18:00.004-04:00

I remember when Sarah Palin first became John McCain's presidential running mate. She was an enigma to most of us because the last thing that we in the lower 48 do is pay a lot of attention to who is running that State Up North and To The Right. So while the Republicans thought she was, and this is quoting one of the magazine covers she graced back then, "The Hottest Governor in the Country", the rest of us simply said, "Sarah who?"

But from that moment on, we've learned so much about Sarah Palin she's practically family. Granted, she's the Black Sheep of the family, but she's family nonetheless.

We were there when she sent out the press release that let everyone know that her daughter Bristol was pregnant, something that has led to a radio show, television appearances, and as a stint as the poster child for abstaining from sex before marriage for teens. We were there when she went out on a bus and showed the entire world that she slept through American History class. (See the post "Me, My Horsey and a Quart of Beer" on this blog...)

And now, we're learning that not only was she possibly the most unprofessional news reporter in the free world, but that if she had actually made it our of Alaska, her reporting style could have set female sports reporters back at least 50 years.

In the new book The Rogue: Searching For the Real Sarah Palin author Joe McGinnis tells us a whole gang of things that we may not have known about La Palin. Things like she's done a little cocaine. Like she's messed around on her husband Todd both before and after they got married. Like she got it on with former NBA star Glen Rice when he was playing for the University of Michigan in the Great Alaska Shoot-Out and she was a sports reporter covering the tournament.

it's that last one that seems to have gotten the most notice.

(I could make some snide remark about how this makes sense considering that Rice played for Michigan and guys from Michigan have really bad taste, but I'll try and leave the whole Michigan/Ohio State thing out of this.)

In any case, the reason why the tryst, which took place in her sister's college dorm room according to the book, is getting so much notice is because (a) Rice admitted to it, (b) he's black, she's not, and a lot of Palin's political rhetoric implies that she believes black men problematic and (c) when you go around wagging your finger at people who engage in the kind of behavior you appeared to have engaged in yourself, the word "hypocrite" starts getting thrown in your direction.

Naturally, those who are Palin partisans have labeled the book "petty", and filled with lies and innuendo. Even the New York Times Review of Books, not a publication that LaPalin would read frequently if her television interviews are any indication, have panned the book.

But good or bad, people are buzzing about it.

Now to be honest, part of the reason for that buzz stems from the fact that Sarah Palin is about as likable to some people as a bad case of poison ivy. Some folks don't think she's very bright. She's kinda irritating because she believes that we all ought to aspire to live in a land where only the rich have health insurance, the poor deserve to be there, and folks like her should have a say on whether or not you have a kid.

So being able to give her grief about her Black Man Fetish (according to the book, not me) is probably some folks' idea of fun.
But I really could have gone my entire life without knowing about her peccadilloes.

However, I am really, really glad that she didn't decide to stay in my line of work. Having someone who would sleep with a potential source, especially when that source was a college kid and they're a professional journalist, working with me would be a nightmare I don't want to think about.

You see, once upon a time I was a sports reporter. I covered the Phillies and the Eagles for WRTI, Temple University's Public Radio Station. I had always been a big football fan, so naturally I wanted to cover the Eagles game when they played my favorite team, the Oakland Raiders.

The Sports Editor, a guy who I really liked otherwise, told me that I had to cover a Temple football game before he'd let me cover the pros. So I did. But he didn't let me cover the Raiders game despite my being more knowledgable of professional football than most of the GUYS in the newsroom.

I then asked if I could cover the Eagles/Miami Dolphins game. Again, I was told that I had to cover another Temple football game before I could go and cover the pros.

(Did I mention that Temple's football team was simply abysmal in the early 1990s? Those two games added up to six hours of my life that I'll never get back!)

So after putting myself through another Temple football game, I asked for the newsroom credential for the Eagles game. The Sports Editor told me that he didn't think it would be a good idea if I were allowed to cover the game because "girls don't go to these games to cover the game..."

I went to the News Director, taking the Sports Editor with me, and told the both of them that either I get the Eagles credential, or they'd get to me my attorney and the EEOC when the discrimination lawsuit goes to trial.

I got to go, but the message was really clear to me: If I was going to cover sports, I'd have to kick the whole professionalism thing up another notch. I don't wear button down shirts unless I have a sweater on over it. If I wear a skirt, i'll also wear tights instead of panty hose. I'm friendly to the men I interview, but I don't flirt.

In other words, I make sure that these guys know that I'm there to do a job, and while I know this job may require that i kiss your ass a little, I won't be giving you head. That's a far too intimate act that I don't like you enough to even consider doing. Besides, you've got a wife and a whole lot of groupies for that.

Or, if you're Glen Rice, you have Sarah Palin.

On that note, some Parliament/Funkadelic...

Deals with the Devil...and other reasons to stop watching CNN

2011-09-13T03:04:00.005-04:00

Remember this date: Sept. 12, 2011.

Now why am I telling you to remember this date? I'm telling you to remember this date because Sept. 12, 2011 is the date that CNN, a news network created by Ted Turner to provide international news coverage to Americans on a variety of issues, lost what little of its credibility it had left.

How? Because CNN decided to partner with the Tea Party Express to produce a Republican Presidential Debate on Monday night in Tampa, Florida.

(Wow! Florida! Quel Surprise!)

But lest you think I'm pulling you leg, I'm not. CNN partnered with the Tea Party Express, the group of gun-toting, birth certificate demanding, no understanding of the Constitution having, economy hostage holding astroturfers from the world of the Koch Brothers to produce a presidential debate. That's like my partnering with a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to creating a newspaper and expecting fair and balanced coverage. It certainly makes about as much sense.

Because I am somewhat of a masochist, I found myself watching this debate at 3 a.m. The whole idea was to help me fall asleep somehow.

But after sitting through it, I may never sleep again. In fact, I found myself yelling at the television. I won't tell you what my Significant Other, who woke up and found himself watching with me, was saying. Mostly because much of it was profane.

After the first 30 minutes, I got the following out of this:

1-The EPA has run amok and regulations governing the pollution of our air, water and soil should be drastically reduced. In fact, any business wanting an incentive for creating environmentally friendly "green jobs" is asking for a handout.

2-Herman Cain moves himself further and further away from being taken seriously as a presidential candidate every time he opens his mouth. When you say the American people are too uptight and that you'll bring a sense of humor to the White House, you kinda cry out to be laughed at.

3-Health care should be a privilege, not a right. And if any of these jokers are elected president, a whole lot of us are going to be hurting in that regard.

4-Rick Perry had two really good ideas: mandatory HPV vaccines for young girls so that they can avoid having cervical cancer through this virus. and a sort of DREAM act designed to help illegal immigrants who are in Texas get a college education. Too bad he's running away from them as fast as he can.

5-All of these clowns are willing to make up whatever lie they can about anything that President Obama has done as a means of giving red meat to this base within a base.

and 6-Newt Gingrich is an asshole. But then again, you knew that already.

The Tea Party Express and it's groups nationwide were the questioners for this clambake and because they were the audience, there were a couple of moments that can only be described as cringeworthy.

Like the following:

In case you didn't catch that, the people yelling "Yeah!" in agreement with Paul's contention that you should be allowed to die if you don't have health insurance are the folks in the Tea Party audience.

See what I'm sayin'...

Now I understand that CNN wants to be the debate station for the GOP, especially since the Democrats haven't found anyone willing to alienate the party's most most consistent voting bloc by being a primary challenger to President Barack Obama, not to say that the far-left, so-called "progressive" wing of the party isn't hoping that their White Knight in Shining Armor, otherwise known as Hillary Clinton, will come charging to the rescue...

But having produced a debate myself once, I believe that you should be careful who you sign on to do one with.

Now if CNN had partnered with the New Republic or some other right-wing publication, I'd have no problem with this. It would be a couple of news organizations trying to bring news to their viewers and readers in a way that allows them to make a choice of who the Republican nominee should be.

But when you partner with the Tea Party Express, who in addition to being a group of sources is also a group with some really serious credibility issues, you put yourself in a position to have your credibility seriously questioned. Considering the fact that you have a better chance to getting a news program with CNN if you're a failed governor or a former Fleet Street hack, the channel's credibility was already kinda shaky.

My guess is that CNN is going to find out what John Boehner, most mainstream Republicans, and anyone who likes a little sanity with their right-wing politics has learned when dealing with the Tea Party Express:

You can make a deal with this particular devil if you want to, but he comes to collect early....and his prices are to quote former New York Gubernatorial Candidate Jimmy McMillan, too damn high. People are going to look at them a bit askance from now on, so I hope they enjoy the ratings.

I sorta know now why Christiane Amanpour left...

I sat through as much as I could of the debate before deciding that not even my sense of humor could stomach much more of this. But because of that whole masochist thing, I'll be sitting in front of my TV when CNN presents the next GOP debate in Las Vegas...a town in which it makes sense because it's a town filled with really garish stuff.

Besides, the thought of having a bunch of Bible Thumpers like this in Vegas is just too heady! You'll probably be able to see Rick Santorum's hives in HD. With any luck, sex columnist Dan Savage will be in the audience, bringing even more delight to my sick sense of humor....

My Parents' Wedding Anniversary

2011-09-11T21:44:00.004-04:00

I woke up this morning and turned on my television set, which was last on A&E, where I had been watching "Storage Wars" I believe

What greeted me was a documentary on the Sept. 11 Terrorist Attacks. This film showcased the attacks in real time from the moment that the first airplane hit World Trade Center Tower One to when Tower Two went down, including the folks who felt hopeless enough to jump to their deaths.

Not really caring to linger on that visual, I changed the channel.

But it seemed as if everywhere I went, the terrorist attacks followed me.

They were featured on "SportsCenter". All of the Sunday Morning programs originated from Ground Zero. MSNBC even re-ran the Sept. 11, 2001 edition of the "Today Show".

And don't even get me started on Fox Sport's coverage of the NFL. I fully expected Howie Long to put on a flight suit and make his way to an aircraft carrier before the kickoff of the Philadelphia Eagles/St. Louis Rams game.

It was patriotism run amok...and when an Army Brat tells you that, it's an issue.

Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with America and Americans remembering a day that really did a number on us as a country. In addition to the loss of close to 3,000 people, we lost our sense of security as a nation to a large extent.

Heck, I can even remember where I was when the attacks happened. I was on I-95 north on my way to work. I saw a sign that said, basically, that New York was closed, something that made me say "Well, I guess I won't be going there today..."

When I got to the picket lines of the teacher's strike I was covering and found no teachers there, I also figured that something was up. I went to the Union Hall and found out that the teacher's weren't picketing because a plane hit the World Trade Center tower and the union president was afraid that her daughter was on one the planes. (She was flying from Boston to LA). That began one of those days where being a reporter is a good news/bad news proposition. The good news is that you have a hot story that everyone can localize. The bad news is, you're not able to process it for yourself until you get home.

(Editor's Note: I'm still pissed off at ABC for showing the airplane hitting Tower Two on a continuous loop all night. I couldn't sleep behind that shit. If I ever meet the producer who thought that was a good idea, he or she will get slugged. That is all...)

But that said, the loss of our sense of security has led to America doing some things that have really pissed me off over the last 10 years. There was a time after the attacks happened that I couldn't get on an airplane without damn near having to submit to a full-cavity search. And remind me sometime to tell you about the fun I had getting my souvenir baseball bat from Turner Field in Atlanta home on an airplane without breaking it.

And I'll be kind enough to spare you my diatribe on the fact that we've decided that if it's a choice between liberty and security, we've opted for security. USA PATRIOT ACT. I'm just sayin'.

A Facebook friend posted a blurb that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman put on his blog about the commemorations of Sept. 11 and how subdued they seemed this year. He also says that in light what happened next, they should be subdued.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I wish that I could disagree with Krugman. But I can't. It's still not safe to be a Muslim in the United States. We're still in two wars, only one of which makes sense to me. And our economy is still all kinds of jacked up, something that's led to the further decimation of the news business.

But while I could dwell on all of that, something that it appears the TV industry would love to see me do and something that would really give me something to talk about in my Media and Social Memory class on Tuesday, I've kinda been raging against the dying of the Sept. 11 light over the last couple of years.

Why? Because of the date these bastards chose to play "Let's crash the airplanes into the towers!"

You see, Sept. 11, more than a few decades ago, my parents, Jack and Ollie Clay, got married.

My dad was in the Army and mom worked in a factory near Paris, Kentucky, which is where they got married in my grandparent's living room. They were together for over 40 years and as far as my dad was concerned, there was no one more important to him than my mom and the rest of us.

I have since found out that Sept. 11 is also the birthday of my friend Carol Colby-Hubler's late father, the father of Kim Pearson, journalism professor extraordinaire, Annette John-Hall, one of my favorite newspaper columnists, my old neighbor Kyle Brown who has always amazed me with his intellect, me and Carol's former classmate Joyce Artemus, and a whole host of other people who have made their mark on the world.

So while it would make sense for me to concede this day to the assholes who barged in on it, and the havoc they created as a result, I refuse.

My mom and dad loved each other until the day he died. And I'm convinced that she will still love him until she's no longer on the planet.

So to me, this day isn't about the acts of some misguided people. It's about love. The love between my parents. The love Carol and Kim have for their dads. The love that Annette has for the written word. The love that Kyle has for knowledge. The love I have for all of them and the people who I call my friends and family.

A love that's stronger than any hate that can be brought to bear.

So while I'll say a prayer for those lost to the violence that befell us as a nation on Sept. 11, 2001, I'll also say another prayer thanking God for the love that surrounds me every day.

Because in the end, love is stronger than hate, any day of the week.

Here's a commercial that Spike Lee did for State Farm to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of Sept. 11. It's actually kind of cute having kids singing "Empire State of Mind". Thankfully, they chose the only verse that kids could sing without raising the eyebrows of their parents, Could you imagine a kid singing: "City never sleeps, but i'll slip you an Ambien"?

Bringing the Crazy, Part II: The Really?! Edition

2011-07-19T21:43:00.010-04:00

This woman, who is also the current front-runner for the Republican Presidential Nomination (much to the chagrin of most Republicans) believes that the settlement finally being given to Black Farmers for the discrimination they suffered at the hands of the USDA amounts to fraud and should be given to flood victims in Mississippi.

This man believes that anyone who supports President Barack Obama is "threat to the gene pool" and has also written a threatening letter to a fellow congressperson.

And this man seems to have an unnatural obsession with Muslims. He believes that anyone who wants to build a mosque is not only espousing Sharia Law (what is it with Republicans and Sharia law?) but is trying to negate the separation of Church and State. Thus, in one of those moves that sends my friend the First Amendment straight to the bar, he calls for folks to have the right to block the building of mosques in their neighborhoods. Granted, no other religion has to go through stuff like this, but like I said, homeboy has an unnatural obsession with Muslims.

So without further ado, I now present "Bringing the Crazy, Part II: The Really?! Edition".

We'll start with a dude so Islamophobic that he makes Rick Santorum look tolerant, Herman Cain. Cain, who raised a couple of million dollars this election cycle isn't bringing much heat in Republican Presidential Nomination polls, but he's saying all the stuff that Tea Party-ers (and other ignorant folks) seem to want to hear.

Over the weekend in an interview with Fox News' Chris "My father is probably so disappointed" Wallace, Cain said all the usual Tea Party stuff like 'We don't need to raise the debt ceiling!" and "We don't need for rich folks to pay their fair share (or any) taxes." But since his repertoire includes such bon mots as "I know that all Muslims are terrorists and I'm not comfortable with them being in my cabinet," "Muslims believe in Sharia Law", and other stuff that would indicate that while he doesn't really know any Muslims, he has no problem saying really stupid shit about them, I wasn't surprised to hear him say that the government should be able to ban mosques from being built.

This coming from a dude who says that we need to read the Constitution. Funny, but if you read the Constitution, it says that you can't ban anyone from building a religious institution anywhere they want to.

And you want to be president? Really?

But while Cain is offensive to those of us who understand the First Amendment, he's not as head-scratching as Allen West.

For those of you who don't know who West is, and really, unless you're a political wonk like me you don't know, he's a Congressman from Florida who was swept into office during the 2010 Contract on America wave. He's, and this should be no surprise to you, another Tea Party favorite who should really be kept away from live microphones whenever possible.

Why? Because occasionally stuff that comes from guys who don't realize that not even Kid of Kid and Play is wearing the high-top fade anymore comes out of his mouth. As part of a blog posting regarding the economy, he blends his opinion on tax policy (namely that he's a believer in Trickle-Down Economics) with some fallacies about President Obama's tax policies and ends on the following note:

"I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool."

Now I'm not one of those people who believe that if you're black you have to support President Obama. Everyone's entitled to their own way of thinking and with supporting whom they wish politically. It's a free country and it's a beautiful thing to have the choice of voting between at least two black men for the nation's highest office.

But if I don't think the same way you do I'm a threat to the gene pool? Really?

As if that wasn't enough, West took exception to a speech that fellow Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (who is also chair of the Democratic National Committee) made regarding his support for a House budget proposal that probably won't make it through the Senate and would probably be vetoed if it ever made its way to President Obama's desk.

Wasserman Schultz said that she couldn't believe that a Congressman from South Florida, where I'm guessing every doctor accepts Medicaid and Medicare, would support a plan that cuts these programs in favor of cutting taxes to folks who can afford to buy mansions on South Beach and ride around in private jets.

(She didn't say the South Beach and private jets part. That was me.)

Now that's not news really. It would be news if West didn't take exception to what Wasserman Schultz said considering the fact that she's a Democrat and he's a Republican. But despite the fact that she didn't mention him by name, West decided to take it personally...

“Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want a personal fight, I am happy to oblige. You are the most vile, unprofessional ,and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up. Focus on your own congressional district!,” West wrote. "Understand that I shall defend myself forthright against your heinous characterless behavior,” West continued. “You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!”

Just because I'm curious to know, I wonder in what ways the Congresswoman has proven to West, a former Military Man, that she is not a lady. Did she let her skirt ride up in public? Did she drink him under the table? Or, does her position as head of the DNC, and the gene pool tarnishing connected to it in West's mind, cause him consternation?

But the winner and still champ in the Presidential Olympics of Crazy is, my favorite reason to stay away from the water in Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann.

That's because she wants to deny Black Farmers something they should have gotten when they asked for it the first time: money to maintain their farms.

According to LaBachmann, who is currently at the top or near the top in the GOP Presidential Polls, giving these farmers the money that they won in the lawsuit filed in the Pigford case (a case that was led by a farmer from North Carolina, resolved in favor of the plaintiffs in 1999, and held up until President Obama said 'give these dudes their $1.2 billion and stop fooling around') amounts to...

Well, I'll just let her say it...

"When money is diverted to inefficient projects, like the Pigford project, where there seems to be proof-positive of fraud, we can't afford $2 billion in potentially fraudulent claims when that money can be used to benefit the people along the Mississippi River and the Missouri River."

Now I'll admit that this doesn't top LaBachmann's assertion that Black kids were better off during slavery, but i'm wondering where she gets this crap. I mean, you're running for president. If this is your idea of courting the Black Vote, I would have to say it's failing miserably. It's also showing that you either (a) slept through or (b) were daydreaming about the day that you'd meet a chubby man in an industrial strength closet and marry him (oops! Did I say that?!) during history class.

'Cause you sure didn't pay attention!

I wonder how many Republicans are going to be asking themselves come November, "How did we get here?" when it comes to all three of these folks.

Well I can answer that question for you.

In 2010, you all made a deal with the Devil to get the House of Representatives. You asked him to get your power back and you didn't care how, or with whom, he did it.

But here's the thing about making a deal with the Devil. You don't know who he's going to use to fulfill your need and you don't know what the payment plan is going to look like in the end.

Folks like Cain, West and Bachmann are the kind of folks he chose to use to get the Republican Brand back on top. The good news is, it worked. The bad news is, these folks are as crazy as Junebugs and have all but assured that you're going to not only lose the House again, but that while the President is still gonna be a Black Guy, he's not gonna be one of yours.

In other words, the Devil has taken his money off of the top...and has left you with lint in your pockets...

Bringing the Crazy...

2011-07-09T21:39:00.003-04:00

When I last wrote about the Republican nominees for President, I pointed out the fact that Michelle Bachmann, the Republican Congresswoman who never seems to be at a loss for words, had managed to get through the first of the Republican candidate debates without making any major faux pas.

I also pointed out that we shouldn't expect Bachmann to stay off of the Crazy Train for long. When you have a reserved sleeping bunk for interstate travel on said train, getting on and off is no problem for you. Hell, Bachmann might have a long-standing reservation on the Acela car with her level of crazy.

Well, she's back in her bunk and, as she often does, Bachmann, a favorite of people who couldn't define socialism if their lives were on the line (or as they're sometimes called, The Tea Party), has brought her stunning lack of knowledge of American, African American, or any other kind of history with her.

Apparently, Madame Bachmann has signed one of those things that always seem to bite Conservatives in the ass: a family values pledge. Bob Vander Plaats, a social conservative from Iowa, has put together this pledge entitled: "The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMILY" (emphasis theirs).

Now for the most part, the pledge has the usual boilerplate "family values" language. You can't get divorced. Gay folks can't get married unless they marry folks of the opposite sex and live like normal folks. (Believe it or not, I just had that discussion with someone yesterday.) Rejection of all of those parts of the First Amendment that say that we have freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion. No Sharia Law. No abortions. Pretty standard stuff.

(Not to change the subject too much, but where did the idea that Sharia Law was coming to America come from? Did it come from the same folks who said President Obama is a Secret Muslim from Kenya?)

But the part of the pledge that seems to stand out for a lot of folks, particularly a lot of black folks, is this one:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

Okay. Let's talk about this.

First of all, if you sat through even five minutes of Roots, you know that this statement is inherently wrong because let's face it, the job of the slave master in those days was to make black women single parents, if they were allowed to truly be parents at all.

You see, the only reason why black men and women were allowed to get together in a sexual way during slavery was to produce more "young, black bucks". These weren't love connections for the most part. They were the master's way of ensuring he'd have a steady supply of slaves to work the fields, cotton gins, and to serve as nannies for his kids.

For those slaves who did find love, marriage was out of the question. Marriages between slaves weren't recognized and even if the slave masters did recognize that these two "darkies" had jumped the broom, it didn't prevent him from selling either half of this couple whenever the need arose. The kids were fair game for the auction block as well and were often taken away from their parents at a very young age to be sold to another plantation.

Heck, at least the kids of single parents in the Age of Obama get to stay with at least one parent...and there's no FOR SALE sign on 'em either!

So a basic knowledge of history renders Mr. Vander Plaats inaccurate...and a little silly.

Now why is Madame Bachmann the only one who has come up in connection to this historically inaccurate pledge?

Well, there's two reasons:

First, is the fact that we've been regaled by Bachmann's lack of knowledge of African American History before. A few weeks ago, she tried to tell us that the Founding Fathers were trying their hardest to end slavery. Granted, it took them about 100 years, a Constitutional Amendment, and a Civil War, but they were busting their asses to change things....at least according to Bachmann.

And secondly, Bachmann has been the only GOP candidate to sign this pledge so far. That's no real surprise because she's the only one just thrown off enough to take it as seriously as Vander Plaats wants the GOP candidates to, but it's kind of telling that the other candidates haven't touched it with a 10-foot-pole.

(Heck, Newt Gingrich would probably touch it and turn into a pillar of salt right there.)

Now you're allowed to adhere to whatever beliefs you want to adhere to. It's your world. I'm just trying to live in it.

But some information from a study done regarding President Obama's Twitter Town Hall this week should tell these candidates that instead of returning the phone calls of Vander Plaats and his social conservative ilk, they should be talking to people who can answer a question that would be far more beneficial to black families than what they're discussing right now.

That question: Where can I find a job? That's what most of the folks Tweeting the White House wanted to talk about. They weren't interested in a lack-of-history-lesson.

Now this being a free country and all, you can run on whatever platform you want when you're running for elected office.

But I can't help but laugh derisively when I see conservatives sign family values pledges like this at the same time they're making sure that families don't have the minimum they need to keep themselves together: things like health care, education, and heck, a job.

Maybe you all should pledge to do something about that...

The Torrents of Gannett

2011-06-21T19:41:00.006-04:00

When you're someone who observes politics for a living, one of the things that you get really good at is recognizing the irony in just about every situation you come across.

So when I tell you what happened in the world of journalism today, and specifically where it happened, you'll see why I've brought up the word "irony" and what it has to do with the logo pictured above.

Gannett Newspapers Inc. laid off 700 people from its Community Newspapers division. According to the folks at Poynter.com, which is where folks like me go when they want to get the latest information about the stuff that's going on in the corporate offices of media corporations, that's 2 percent of the workforce in that division.

Considering that many of these folks work in small community newspapers where the staffs weren't all that big in the first place, there's about to be a whole lot of speed-up going on in a whole lot of places. I'll explain what I mean by that in a minute.

If that wasn't enough, some of the folks who did remain, folks who work in places like the Star-Gazette, Gannett's first newspaper based in Elmira, N.Y., have been asked to take a pay cut of 5 percent. The same ask has been made of the folks in Binghamton and Ithaca, which are the two towns that you have to pass through in order to get to Elmira. Considering that these folks weren't making much money in the first place, I can only imagine what a 5 percent pay cut is going to make their checks look like.

Now how do I know that they weren't making a whole lot of money?

Because I was once one of them.

One of my first gigs in the business was working for the Star-Gazette. I didn't even know where Elmira was until I had to go there for my job interview. I connected with them through the Unity 1994 Convention in Atlanta, the first convention I went to as a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. After the convention, I got a call from Charlie Nutt, the publisher of the newspaper, asking me to come in for an interview.

I got the job. And got very little money. But since the cost of living there was relatively low, it didn't hurt...much. Let's just say that this was the period in which I really began to appreciate my ability to make homemade vegetarian spaghetti sauce.

Layoffs are becoming the only thing that you can count on in the newspaper business anymore. There's a website called Paper Cuts http://newspaperlayoffs.com/ that tracks them and according to that site 2,828 people were laid off in 2010 alone. Including the 700 from the Gannett bloodletting today, 928 folks have already lost their jobs in 2011, and it's only June.

Heck, one of NABJ's founders, Sandra Long, was laid off two weeks ago after spending 27 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer! They apparently cut her entire division. She barely got to say goodbye to her colleagues because, as it always seems to be when layoffs come these days, she was ushered out of the building.

Now don't get me wrong. I get it. Businesses are in business to make money. That's what they do. Them's the rules. If a business doesn't make money, to bankruptcy court it goes.

But there are some dynamics of business that I just don't get. For example, here's the truly ironic part of this whole mess, which was found at the top of the Poynter story....

"In March it was disclosed that Gannett CEO Craig Dubow received a $1.25 million cash bonus and had his salary doubled."

You see, the 700 layoffs came after all of Gannett's employees took furlough days (meaning days that they stayed at home and didn't get paid for) to try and save the company money and thus their jobs.

They were rewarded with pink slips.

Dubow was rewarded with $9.4 million. (That's double his $4.7 million salary.) Add the $1.25 million bonus, you get a dude who made over $10 million putting workers out on the street in boxes.

If you want to do the math and see how many jobs that translates into, go ahead. I'm far too angry to even try.

That's because while I understand profit and loss, greed as a concept eludes me.

The reporters at these newspapers are still going to be expected to cover their communities, although there will be fewer of them. They'll be expected to have things in on deadline despite having to make due with substandard equipment. They'll be working harder and doing not only their work, but the work of the three or four colleagues they just lost. Meanwhile, the company will continue to make the kind of money that will allow them to pay one dude more than $10 million.

I mentioned the phrase "speed-up" earlier in this post. The paragraph above defines it. The phenomenon is detailed in a story in this month's Mother Jones. The link is here: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speed-up-american-workers-long-hours

I wonder how many people this latest speedup will cause to burn out, leave the profession, and be replaced by, well, nobody...

Meanwhile, we as Americans are probably the least informed that we have ever been as a people. We don't know what's going on in our world. We barely know what's going on in our country. And because we don't have anyone providing us with the information, we have people clamoring to see President Obama's birth certificate because they've been told he's a "secret Muslim", people who think teachers are devils who should live in a box down by the river and teach your kids for minimum wage, and most importantly, people who believe that Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann should be within two time zones of the "red button".

And don't get me started on what this lack of information has done to people of color. I recently listened to a radio broadcast from talk show host Neil Bortz that advocated shooting black men because they're "thugs". This is a direct consequence of the lack of coverage of neighborhoods of color brought on by layoffs of the magnitude of today's Gannett bloodletting.

I don't know the answer here. Sometimes it's too depressing to even think about.

I do know, however, that the answer's gotta be within my reach.

Too bad that doesn't help the 700 jobless folks trying to figure things out right now.

When good Mad (political) Scientists become Politicians

2011-06-17T20:48:00.009-04:00

I know that you can't really tell from this picture, but this is me, circa 2003, hosting a Mayoral Debate as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

This debate, which was a collaboration between PABJ, and the local chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, was moderated by Comcast newsman Arthur Fennell and featured featured Mayor John Street and his Republican opponent Sam Katz. It also happened just before a FBI bug was discovered in the Mayor's Office, something that led to the debate receiving nationwide coverage and a gang of indictments afterward.

(When my mom called and said that she saw me on C-Span, I knew we had hit a home run. The Mid-Atlantic Emmy that PABJ and Comcast received months later confirmed that. Phillies' slugger Ryan Howard had nothing on me that year!)

But while we got a lot of mileage and accolades out of putting that debate together, it also pulled the curtain back on the sausage factory that is Philadelphia's political process. While politics is the art of the possible, those possibilities cost millions of dollars to try and make happen and involve a lot of sometimes really dirty pool. While it's not nearly at the level of nasty that national politics (particularly presidential politics), is, it's still pretty cutthroat. But I get the process now, something that's made me be able to better analyze it.

Lately, that knowledge has become kind of handy in my personal life.

You see, I've entered the world of politics.

A couple of months ago, I decided to run for the office of Vice President-Print for the National Association of Black Journalists. I've been an NABJ member since 1994 and it's allowed me to meet some really good people, visit a lot of places that I probably wouldn't have on my own (like Chicago's Wrigley Field), and it's helped me out in terms of finding subjects for the research I do on African American journalists and objectivity.

But while I've been an NABJ chapter president, I didn't see myself running for national office.

That is, until I started teaching.

While it's been a long while since I've been in a church without being forced to be by (a) a funeral, (b) a wedding, or (c) serious maternal guilt, I still remember the lessons that I was taught in church before I realized that most of the people teaching them to me were no better than I was despite their assertions to the contrary. One of the lessons that has really stuck with me is the lesson of not hurting others.

Now the good thing about being a researcher with an emphasis on Blacks in Journalism is that you get a lot of data and information about how Black journalists are doing within the profession. You get to see such things as newsroom census data, studies about who is covering what, and what that means for the quality of information that Americans receive each day.

That you get this information, and lots of it, is also the bad thing about being a researcher. There have been days where I've asked myself if I really want to continue teaching journalism because of the hell that journalists of color are catching on an almost daily basis. Did you know that only 13 percent of the White House Press Corps, one of the most important groups of reporters in the country because they cover our government, is made up of people of color? I got this information from a study done by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and UNITY Journalists of Color.

While the information predated the presidency of Barack Obama, not a lot has changed. While reporters of color sometimes get to open up a news conference, they're still kinda easy to spot.

Me at the Inauguration

So after seeing the number of journalists of color contract instead of expand, and remembering that I was actually sending young people out into this on purpose, I decided that I owed it to them to try and make the path as less bumpy as I could. Since the path for Black Journalists wasn't smooth when I got into the business, and it probably has never been smooth for us, having that as a goal would not only have been far too ambitious, but damn near impossible.

So I'm running for office. I'm hanging out at all the right events, going to candidate forums, and spending money to try and get my message out, something that as a freelance writer and part-time copy editor means more than you know.

But while my campaign manager keeps telling me that this isn't a so-called "real" election, I've gotta say that it has all of the earmarks of one.

There's a lot of horse trading. You find yourself asking for stuff from people you just had a violent argument with. And memories are long. Real long. Folks bring up stuff you did to them so long ago that you forgot what you did.

It's been a real eye-opener.

But I've been trying to focus on one thing: what does this mean for Black Journalists? Right now, everyone is nursing a case of the "Last hired, First fired" blues in the business. When the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News underwent their first round of layoffs after being sold, roughly 71 of the 150 folks scheduled to be laid off were journalists of color.

In fact, every time you see the word "layoff" in the newspaper, you see it connected to at least one or two people who look like me. I'm not saying that white folks don't get laid off because they do. But when there are more of you in a profession, it doesn't look as bad.

And, as it is in the newspaper business, your stories still get told.

Without someone in the newsroom advocating for the stories of people of color, and by that I mean the stories that don't involve someone committing a crime or being on the wrong end of a gunshot wound, those stories don't get told. That's good news for hyperlocal websites or specialized presses, but it doesn't help communities filled with people who don't have a computer or have no access to a Black, Asian, Spanish-language, Native American or gay and lesbian newspaper.

In other words, folks get left out. I don't see anywhere in my friend the First Amendment where it says that's okay.

So I'm trying to get connected to a place where my voice, and voices of the like-minded, can be amplified in such a way that the bean counters who run the media these days have no choice but to pay attention.

That place, near as I can tell, is the NABJ board.

Or at least, I plan to make it that way should I win.

I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Here's a picture of me at a recent event. I'm going to be doing a lot of this over the next month and a half.

Someone I've missed

2011-06-16T22:45:00.004-04:00

I probably shouldn't want to talk to Keith Olbermann because he made a liar out of me.

You see, when Comcast bought NBC Universal, I thought that because his show was the number one show on MSNBC Keith Olbermann was relatively safe. I thought, "Comcast is nothing if not a multinational conglomerate seeking to make tons of money. There's no way they'd get rid of one of the largest of their cash cows!"

But then Olbermann donated money to the re-election campaigns of a couple of the Democrats that often came on his show. NBC found out. They suspended him, which made sense because if you're doing something closely resembling journalism, donating money to candidates is a Bozo-no-no. You've gotta take the wrath.

However, public outcry made that suspension a really short one. Olbermann was back, he came out swinging, and didn't care that one of the people he was swinging at was NBC.

So they let him go, shortly after Comcast completed the purchase of NBC. Everyone has tried to tell me that these two events aren't at all related. In a related story, there is a Santa Claus. The fact that I'm said the latter thing means that I could believe the former...at least I could if a frontal lobotomy were involved.

I was wondering where Olbermann would end up. He's kind of burned his bridge at ESPN so heading to the House of Mouse was out. While I would have loved to have seen he and Bill O'Reilly wandering the same halls, I sort of knew he wouldn't end up at Fox either. Olbermann might have made a good host on VH1, BET or MTV. Can you imagine him talking with the "Mob Wives" or the "Basketball Wives"? That would have been some of the most sarcastic television I've seen in a long time.

Fortunately for him, Vice President Al Gore saved Olbermann from all that. He put him on his network, Current TV. Granted, you really have to know where to look to find that particular station, but the fact that the VP has chosen to not only give Olbermann his old 8 p.m. time slot, (something that's probably gonna kill "The Ed Show" on MSNBC by the way), but also control of the news product at his network means that he's kinda serious.

And not a moment too soon.

Because we're currently in a world where we worry more about whether or not our elected officials screw around on their wives or are putting their dickshots on Twitter than we do the fact that they're trying to screw the American public without at least taking it out to dinner first, we kind of need Olbermann. Like him or not, he brought up issues that we needed to talk about, and not just the big ones.

It is for this reason that I welcome Keith Olbermann's return to the airwaves on Monday at 8 p.m. I've missed his righteous indignation on a variety of topics. Here's a Special Comment on the Anthony Weiner saga. Unfortunately, the Congressman resigned today. Score another victory for the holier-than-thou.

(And by the way President Obama, if you ever found yourself in Congressman Weiner's shoes, you wouldn't have to worry about resigning your office. Having been a black woman for 47 years, I can say with no fear of contradiction that Michelle would kill you, thus saving you the trouble.)

Taking one for the Team

2011-06-14T02:04:00.005-04:00

This is the time in our Presidential Election lives, oh readers of the Mad (political) Scientist, that I show you how much I love you and am willing to do to make your electoral lives easier.

Now how do I do this? I do this by sitting through things that would only piss you off and do the reporting on them for you. In April 2008, I sat through a debate broadcast on ABC between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton where the most pressing issues, at least to the folks doing the questioning, were American Flag pins (or the lack thereof) and whether or not folks are good Christians, and didn't kill anybody. I did it so you didn't have to. Why should all of us be aggravated?!

This year, I've done it by sitting through the first of what promises to be a whole gang of debates between the folks running for the Republican Presidential nomination.

I took the time to watch the old: (Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich) the new (Tim Pawlenty) and the Tea Party (Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain) be put through their paces by CNN Newsman (?!) John King for about 90 minutes of a two-hour debate.

The only reason that I didn't sit through the entire thing is because it was my boyfriend Chris's birthday, and I was taking him to see "X-Men: First Class"

In retrospect, I probably learned more useful things from watching Charles Xavier, Eric Lensherr (the dude who would become Magneto) and the rest of the mutants than I did from watching this debate...

That's not to say that it was a total wash, however.

Bachmann announced her presidency for all of us and went on to show that Ed Rollins is some kind of evil genius by toning down her vast reserve of crazy. If you observed Bachmann at all during the 2008 race, she was the one who felt that we should investigate people to make sure that they weren't against America. One of those people was President Obama, whom she believed to be a Kenyan national until he unveiled his Hawaiian birth certificate.

I also learned that while these paragons of state's rights wouldn't step in to try and change a state's laws regarding same-sex marriage, they were all for a Constitutional Amendment legislating who could get married (a man and a woman in case you're wondering) and also for returning Don't Ask, Don't Tell to its former form, meaning that gays and lesbians wishing to serve their country would have to aim their rifles from a closet.

(Or a foot locker. Remember, Rick Santorum was one of the folks on this panel. And don't even get me started on how Newt Gingrich just plain old needs to shut his piehole when it comes to the subject of marriage. If he's not careful, I'll have to pull out that 1995 Frontline documentary with his cancer-stricken ex-wife in it!)

We also learned that in the name of market forces and letting private industry do anything it wants including give people really dangerous jobs that pay pennies on the dollar, all of these folks would have let the Auto Industry go down the drain, and take millions of middle-class jobs with it. This is in spite of the fact that the auto industry bailout really helped make things better and that the automakers have already paid the government back on these loans.

We learned that none of these folks would raise the debt ceiling because paying our debts without gutting all of the programs that folks need to live thanks to the lack of employment brought on by all of the tax incentives that private industry received to move jobs overseas first. We also learned that the economy won't get back on track until taxes are cut so much that practically no one is paying any.

(Something that has already happened in the case of many multinational corporations.)

I regret that I missed the abortion questions. But my guess is that my liver is glad that I did. Downing an entire bottle of Patron in one fell swoop couldn't be good for it.

However, I did get yet another set of examples of why you should first read the Constitution before you try and teach it to someone else.

A question was asked about the separation of church and state. Now according to the First Amendment, these two things are supposed to be apart because when the folks who founded our country decided to leave Mother England, one of the reasons they chose to do that was because the church ran the state. Everyone but Ron Paul thought that it would be a good idea to put church back in state. Paul, the lone Libertarian in this group, disagreed vehemently.

But the most in-your-face example of how you should read the Constitution before you try and teach it came from Cain, the lone black man in the group. Having already given us such lovely bon mots as he won't sign anything over three pages long and any deal between Israel and Palestine should be so heavily weighted in favor of the Israelis that the Palestinians get nothing, it didn't really surprise me that he's still committed to making sure that any Muslim that just happens to end up in his administration would be a true-blue American...tests and all.

First of all, you're not allowed to make "What religion do you practice?" one of your job interview questions. That's unconstitutional. Secondly, you're not allowed to NOT hire someone because they practice a religion you don't like.

But thirdly, I now have an argument the next time that someone Black tries and tells me that we as a people can't be prejudiced and ignorant because these things stem from power relationships. We now know that Black folks are just as capable of being ignorant and prejudiced as people of any other color and Herman Cain stands as your proof.

While it was 90 minutes of my life that I probably could have spent doing anything else, I'm glad I watched his debate. It gives me some indication of what I should put in my Republican Presidential Candidate Drinking Game: phrases such as "President Obama has failed to leaad", "Obamacare", "What does the Constitution say" and others are leading so far.

But i'm willing to put my liver on the line for you M (p) S readers. Hopefully, the herd will thin out soon, Meanwhile, I'll just sit here and wait for Michelle Bachmann's eventual meltdown. Being the voice of reason is only going to last so long for her...

Raising Cain

2011-06-07T19:16:00.004-04:00

I've kind of hesitated to discuss Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain here on the Mad (political) Scientist.

Most of that hesitation stems from my lack of knowledge of the man. In fact, all that I knew about the guy until recently was that he used to be the CEO of Godfather's Pizza, a chain that I frequented when I had money to spare as a student at The Ohio State University. It was okay...but when I came back home to the Delaware Valley, I realized that Godfather's was a greasy, nasty mess compared to what I get at places like Ralph and Ricky's or Gianfranco Pizza Rustica here in South Philly.

But I also hesitated because whenever you write about African American Conservatives, and you're not one, anything you say that isn't totally complimentary is seen as having a bias against conservatives and blacks that don't "toe the line" of the Democratic Party. You especially get that particular knock when you point out that most of what comes out of these African American conservatives mouths sounds (a) unfeeling, (b) unrealistic and (c) not at all in tune with what's really going on in the African American community.

However, since I've already annoyed a lot of folks by saying that I think it's more than a little stupid to demand that Rep. Anthony Weiner resign over putting a picture of his privates out on the Internet when the only person who should be pissed off about this is his wife, I figured, why not? I'm feeling adventurous...

So here goes...

I started to pay attention to Herman Cain just because he's a black dude running as a Republican and that kind of commands attention. My twin brother is a Republican and that has led to more than one, let's say, nasty argument. He particularly likes trying to explain the First Amendment to me, a part of the Constitution that conservatives really seem to have a special scorn for...

I also began paying attention because he's one of those Tea Party folks and I'm really interesting in seeing if that means he'll be taken seriously or if he'll get the same treatment that Alan Keyes got in 2008. For those of you who don't remember the Keyes campaign, I'll keep it short. He was a black conservative that ran for president. He was treated like an interloper. He didn't get to participate in any of the Republican debates. He got no traction.

So far, Cain has been invited to all of the right conservative parties. My guess is that this is going on because (a) his Tea Party affiliation and (b)because there are some Republicans out there who are hoping that he can chip away at President Obama's support in the African American community.

Cain himself believes that. He says that African Americans are actually conservatives.

His argument does have some merit. I say this because there are certain topics that when you discuss them with black folks, you might as well be having a conversation with a rock-ribbed member of the Christian Right.

For example, let's talk about gay rights. To be exact, let's point out the fact that in many ways the struggle for rights for gays and lesbians mirrors that of the struggle for rights that blacks went through in the 1960s. I did that in a column that I wrote a long, long time ago regarding the stabbing of a gay man by a black University of Arizona student. The stabbing was a pretty blatant hate crime and I said that prejudice is bad, no matter who espouses it.

I won't get into the emails I got from one dude about that. Let's just say that everything from my blackness to my sexuality was questioned.

And I definitely won't get into the fact that I'm still waiting for my mom to have "the talk" with me, and I'm 47 years old!

(Remember this the next time that you see a statistic showing that HIV/AIDS is going through the Black Community like Grant went through Richmond...)

But where Cain might have a problem with getting Blacks to join him for a cup of Tea is when he says stuff like "Blacks are too poor to Tea Party."

And where he might have a problem getting anyone else to take him seriously is when he says stuff like he won't sign any bill over three pages long if he's president and that his Middle East policy would consist of giving Israel everything it wants at the expense of the Palestinians.

Admittedly, there's not much that Herman Cain and I have in common.

But I hope that he does really well because Black folks need to be involved on all sides of the spectrum. I may not agree with anything Cain says, but I'm glad that he's a part of the conversation.

Let's see how long he stays there.

Why I'll never run for Congress.

2011-06-06T17:52:00.006-04:00

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A few confessions first:

1-I live with a guy that I'm not married to and have for the last six years. We have no immediate intention to get married. In fact, we just talked about it this morning and agreed that our relationship as it stands now is pretty good and won't necessarily lose anything from not having piece of paper notarized by a judge.

2-On July 14, 1994, I was raped. It was a guy that I used to date and I probably should have pressed charges, but I was far too freaked out by it and I also didn't want to put my friends and family through a date rape trial governed by Pennsylvania's antiquated date rape laws, laws that required bruises to prove rape.

(In some states, that hasn't changed a whole lot.)

3-If you've read this blog even once, you know that I swear. I also pull no punches when it comes to saying exactly what I think. While I'm always a lady, I'm not always, necessarily, lady-like.

And there are a few more things about me that might make your mouth hang open for a little while longer, so I won't get into them here. Suffice it to say that they're fairly personal things and some of them I'm not real proud of.

But while all of the stuff above is true, so is the following:

1-I mentor to the point that there are young people all over the country that have my cell phone number...on purpose.

2-Once I've had you in one of my classes, you're stuck with me forever, meaning that you can come to me five or 10 years later and I'll still try and help you find a job, get into graduate school, or do anything else you need me to.

3-I know the Constitution better than Sarah Palin, although that's not really hard for anyone to do.

and

4-I work my tail off, sometimes to the point where I forget to do little stuff like eat and sleep.

I thought about all of this as I watched Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York join the seemingly endless line of politicians who have had to have what I call the Mea Culpa press conference. This kind of press conference usually takes place when you do something stupid, illegal, illegally stupid, or just so incredibly dumb that you should be taken out and flogged.

Now don't get me wrong. Taking pictures of your body parts and sending them to folks via Twitter and Facebook is dumb. Real dumb. Continuing to do it after you got married is real, real dumb. Lying about doing it is dumb-diddy-dum-dum-dum. Doing all of the above when you're a prominent Democratic Congressman who enjoys showing the rest of the world when Republicans are at they're dumbest especially when there are folks with no scruples like Andrew Breitbart on their side is Sarah Palin-level Dumb.

But the fact that people are crying out for Rep. Weiner's resignation kind of explains to me why folks the nation's best and brightest are taking a pass on politics.

You see, the list of stuff I have listed above would indicate that I've had some things happen in my life that might be considered bad for a politician's image. The ones I didn't include would really do me in.

However, none of these things would stop me from doing my job if elected. But you'd never get to know that because that's all the media would allow me to talk about.

And that's kind of sad.

When you're in a country where the economy is going to hell in a bucket, unemployment is at 9 percent, people can't access health care because it's far too costly despite there being a health care reform bill passed and folks are taking out bank loans to do little stuff like fill their gas tanks and eat, we need our best and brightest on the case. We need serious people with serious ideas that can turn said ideas into action.

We need people for whom a tea party is a gathering, not an excuse to take us back 200 years.

But because the media these days have become so focused on digging into someone's life so intensely that all of your most irrelevant scars are put out for all the world to see, folks that would have made really good legislators, mayors, governors and even presidents are taking a pass on sharing their talents.

We don't have time for our focus to be on whether or not a Congressman was stupid enough to send pix of his privates to a friend out west. Is it yucky that we have pictures of the weiner of a guy named Weiner running around on the Internet? Yes. But if I have a choice of focus when it comes to Congressman Weiner, I'd rather focus on the fact that he fought like a demon for single-payer health care than what I can find on his Twitpix file.

But then again, we also don't have time to focus resources on covering the family trip of a woman so dumb that she couldn't pass elementary American History either. But we sure seem to make it.

Listen, I'm not saying that the media shouldn't cover the Weiner story at all. But hell, Sunday marked the 30th anniversary of the first diagnosis of HIV/AIDS and there was next to no coverage of that compared to the ink that Sarah Palin's Magical Mystery Tour and Congressman Weiner's weiner has received. I would think that since there was no money from campaign funds (or rich parents) exchanged to keep husbands (Sen. John Ensign), or baby mamas (Sen. John Edwards) from talking to reporters, this story should go away relatively soon.

Besides, don't we have a flag pin debate, birth certificate hunt or other bit of stupidity for the media to focus on?

Me, my horsey, and a quart of beer...

2011-06-06T10:45:00.003-04:00

Since rolling into Washington with a mandate worthy of Gil Scott-Heron's derision (Get on the Google and type in "B-Movie" if that statement confuses you), the Tea Party folks (or as we like to call them here at the M(P)S, the folks who actually run the modern Republican Party), have been regaling us with all of their talk of the Constitution and how we should practice strict adherence to it.

Only problem is, it kind of helps if you know what the document says yourself before you try and teach it to other people. At least two high school students have challenged future Republican Presidential Candidate Michelle Bachmann to Constitutional debates because of some of the stuff that's come out of her mouth...like that the Founding Fathers tried to end slavery and that the government should be able to regulate all of the press...except Fox News because she likes them!...(thank you Mother Jones!)

But by far, the lead Dumb Brunette of the Tea Party was, and still is, former Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin. From the moment that John McCain felt the burning need to bring her on the scene to the (unintentionally) side-splitting interview that she did with Katie Couric on the campaign trail, Palin proves every day that it is possible to have just enough knowledge to be dangerous...

Lately, she's been on a tour of National Parks and historic sites. She stopped by Independence Hall here in Philly recently and talked with folks as part of her "not really campaigning for president, but I'm gonna announce any day" tour. She's brought her family along and the press has been following her like a pack of wild hounds, something that inspired the following from my friend and Atlanta Post columnist Charing Ball...

"If Sarah Palin were a sexually transmitted disease, she would be herpes. Not that I think she is a nasty, scabby wart that comes with a reoccurring itch, but just like the STD, just when you think Palin is gone, here she comes again to seriously mess up your day."

(That is the bestest lede for a story I've seen all year, by the way!)

As part of the Palin Does America tour, she went to Boston...and felt the need to tell us the story of Paul Revere and his Midnight Ride. Rather than tell you about it, here's the video...

There are days where I really wish that I could make this stuff up. But I can't. I'm not that good.

But based on this, can we, the mainstream (or lamestream in the words of Palin the Intellectual Giant) media now and forever ignore this woman?! Please?!

As part of her tour across America, Palin had dinner with Alderman Davis, oops, I mean Donald Trump.

That these two knuckleheads broke bread says a lot.

One, it says that the Republican Party is, officially, no longer capable of controlling its crazies or encouraging its best and brightest to take center stage. When your presidential candidates (or candidate wannabees) include folks like Trump, Palin, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain (whom the Tea Party has trotted out to show that it isn't racist) and the like, you're not bargaining from a position of strength.

And secondly, it also says that the Mainstream Media is in more trouble than I originally thought. The fact that there's a busload of reporters following someone who so obviously didn't pay attention in elementary American History is telling. Palin is pretty...pretty vacant...but in a day and age where media organizations are cutting out international bureaus to save money, is following this dimwit really the best capital investment?

I think not.

But as long as Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and the other Tea Party Dumb Brunettes are out there, folks who should be focusing on stuff like the Middle East, the economy, or just about anything else of substance will be forced by the media to focus on their shenanigans instead.

Think about this the next time that you see a survey that shows that our kids are slowly becoming as dumb as a box of rocks...

I leave you with a group who is probably better versed in American History than Sarah Palin ever will be...the Beastie Boys...

The Return of Alderman Davis

2011-04-27T20:27:00.003-04:00

One of the things that every child of the 70s can easily identify is a scene from the show "Good Times".

Florida, James, Thelma, Michael, Wilona and, of course, JJ were weekly visitors to our homes back in the day. Through them, you got a view of the ghetto that seemed more funny than hardscrabble. Although hardscrabble came to visit more often than not.

(Any show in which a character can marry a pro football player and yet still wind up in the ghetto would indicate that.)

The scene above is from a show in which politics came into play. The bald gentleman is Alderman Fred Davis, the elected official that represents the project in which the Evans Family lives. The younger gentleman is an idealistic challenger who has decided that he's going to take the Alderman on because he thinks that the neighborhood deserves better.

While the challenger runs a campaign seeking to stick to the issues, Alderman Davis manages to win because he's able to "play the dozens" (crack insulting jokes), and keep the populace from remembering that he actually hasn't done jack to help them out throughout his time in office. The challenger vows to come back next time, but he also recognizes that he may have to learn how to "play the dozens" to do what he wants to for his potential constituents.

I thought of this scenario this morning as I heard President Barack Obama's news conference in which he released the long form of his birth certificate for all the world to see.

Doing the best Alderman Davis imitation I've seen in awhile, Donald Trump has managed to obfuscate the political debate just enough to keep our eye off of what's important and put them back on the kind of election issues that are so irrelevant that they make me angry and should make you angry too.

And the fact that he's being taken seriously as a presidential candidate tells me that just like Alderman Davis's constituents on "Good Times", there are folks out there willing to pay attention to his silliness despite the fact that it comes with no solutions.

After three years, you might think that the Birther class, having lost every legal fight they've had on the issue, would have decided to give this issue up. I mean, when Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, a woman whose porch light is never completely on, decides that the issue is no longer an issue, everyone should follow her lead.

But when you're Donald Trump, you're not everyone else. You're a different breed of cat, right down to the hair.

Trump, reading the polls that showed that more than a few Republicans have bought into the Birther nonsense, called (and called, and called) for the President's birth certificate to any reporter who would listen.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of them.

As his star rose among the contenders for the Republican Presidential Nomination for 2012, Trump and his calls for President Obama's birth certificate got a lot of traction. The din from the rest of Birther Nation got so loud that President Obama felt he had no choice but to answer with the unveiling of his birth certificate.

"This issue has been going on for two, two and a half years now. I think it started during the campaign," Obama said. "I have watched with bemusement, I've been puzzled at the degree at which this thing just kept on going."

Alderman Davis, oops, I mean Trump, trumpeted his apparent triumph of course.

"He should have done it a long time ago. I am really honored to play such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue," he said.

But will it get rid of this issue? Somehow I doubt it. Especially when you consider the fact that significant numbers of Republicans believe that the President is a naturalized and not natural-born citizen.

That belief sure beats actually having to come up with some solutions to our problems, doesn't it?

I have been saying for a while now that we have entered the age of Ringling Bros & Barnum and Bailey Politics. The clown cars open every few days and more and more clowns come pouring out. Trump is just the latest. To his credit, Obama called him on it.

"We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers," the president said.

(I'm guessing that this, somehow, is a direct reference to the fact that Trump now wants to see President Obama's collegiate transcripts.)

Now I could continue to talk around the real issue here, but when gas is $4.04 a gallon for regular here in the City of Brotherly Love, I don't feel like it. I don't feel like it because I know that as gas goes up, food goes up and I'm going to be asked to pay $17 for a pack of chicken wings again. Kind of like I was in 2008 when the "ooh, shiny!" issue on the table was the musings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Let's call it what it is. This is some racist bullshit and always has been. No other President, presidential candidate, or even a person who's thought about running for president, has been through the kind of scrutiny that President Obama has.

As much as I would like to see this in some other way, the only reason that I can see for this is the fact that he's a black man named Barack Obama.

Now I didn't really expect this kind of crap from Donald Trump if for no other reason but "the blacks" (he gets along fine with us by the way) and their fondness for gambling have managed to keep him in models and toupee glue. But for a guy who has managed to run a casino or three into bankruptcy, he's got more than a bit of nerve.

I'll end this by saying something that I didn't think I'd have to say until 2012, but since Trump and the Birther Bunch are rearing their ugly heads right now, I'm forced to do it early.

We don't have time for this shit.

Like I said, gas is $4.04 a gallon here in Philly, mostly because the oil companies see the turmoil in the Middle East as their opportunity to gouge all of us. Food is going to go up next. Folks in the Tea Party-controlled House are so intent on cutting off everyone's access to health care (including the Senior Citizens that they tricked into voting for them. So much for keeping government hands off of Medicare, right?) that they seem to have forgotten our high unemployment rates and the jobs that they promised.

(Notice I didn't say Republican controlled. The Republicans don't control it. They made a deal with the Devil in 2010. He's getting paid now.)

Things are about to get messy.

My hope is that this obsession with all things "shiny" will end in time for us to deal with the real issues our country faces.

But if it happens, that will be the first time.

So unfortunately, Alderman Davis will win yet again.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Rear View Mirror

2011-02-10T23:45:00.005-05:00

Now before we go any further, I'm going to let all of the men who read the Mad (political) Scientist know that unless she just happens to be in a picture with President Barack or First Lady Michelle Obama or at some point talks about something I might be interested in with the same level of intelligence she reserves for talking about her fashion line, her latest movie, or the rather inane music she puts out, this will be the first, last and only time that you will see Mrs. Beyonce Knowles Carter on this blog.

But now that this disclaimer has been issued, I'll move on to the reason why I have decided to illustrate this post with a picture of the creator of some of the most annoying dance music this side of Lady Gaga.

This is a post about image. To be specific, this is a post about how image can kill and how a young woman from England who longed for a career in music videos found that out the hard, and permanent way.

A few weeks ago, I read a column by Philadelphia Daily News columnist Jenice Armstrong about the new trend that's sweeping the nation: butt implants.

No, I'm not kidding.

Apparently, something that me and most of my friends have been made fun of about our entire lives is now the rage for women of all races, creeds and colors. Thanks to the popularity of women like Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj and others, you're envied if your derriere isn't as flat as a pancake.

Because of this, women are buying special underwear, sticking pads on their backsides, or rushing off to the plastic surgeon to pay for something that they could get for free if they just hit the gym or took the stairs instead of the elevator.

(Anatomy 101: your buttocks are a muscle. You build it up, you get Beyonce. )

But hitting the gym or taking the stairs doesn't produce the kind of results that will help you win that job in Beyonce's Husband's Next Video by next Tuesday. Besides, what happens if you find yourself reenacting the scene from "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!" where the lead character finds out that nothing on the woman he's taken home is real? Thus, better living through Brazilian Butt Lift becomes the next best thing. There's just one problem with that: like most plastic surgery, it ain't cheap.

So just like anything else, you can get it illegally if you think you need it.

And that reality brought 20-year-old Claudia Seye Aderotimi to America.

Aderotimi had done a music video in London when she met talent scout Tee Ali, according to the Sun newspaper. She wore the specially padded trousers that women who don't have the badonkadonk needed for music video fame use to give the appearance of a fantastic fanny.

She was a dancer, so she could move. She wanted to be well-known, so she had the drive.

But she didn't have the booty. And when she went to audition for another video and had to tell the truth about her curves, Aderotimi didn't get a second shot.

So she came to Philadelphia for one. Aderotimi and three of her girlfriends came to the United States for a holiday. Two of the women went to New York while Aderotimi and her other girlfriend came to the Hampton Inn at the Philadelphia International Airport to see a man about a liquid silicone injection for illegal hip and buttock enhancement.

Aderotimi died Monday after complaining of chest pains and trouble breathing after the procedure.

Now I could go on about some of the substances that people are allowing themselves to be injected with in the name of the booty beautiful, substances that range from petroleum jelly to building caulk.

But this is a post about image, so let's stick to that.

About a month or so ago, a friend of mine named Heather Faison wrote a post on her blog about an image issue that she was going through with some young girls she was teaching in Cameroon. She noticed that these beautiful Black children were walking around under umbrellas and using products to bleach their skin.

Why? Because they wanted to conform to the image that they saw in the fashion magazines. They wanted to be the long-legged white models with the long, flowing hair that they saw in mags like Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Elle. Since they couldn't do that with what they had, they were willing to stay out of the sun and poison themselves with skin creams to do the job.

I felt for Heather. So I asked if there was anything that we, meaning myself and the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, could do to help. She said that if she had some printed alternatives to show them, that might help.

And to the credit of everyone in PABJ, they stepped up to the plate big time. I sent out a bunch of magazines about a month ago, and another bunch is leaving tomorrow. In fact, Heather might need help getting this bunch back to her place in Cameroon. When folks give you boxes of magazines, it's no joke.

But one of PABJ's members made a good suggestion: include something like a study guide with them because American magazines, even ones with Black faces, can send the wrong message. I didn't think of that, but once it was brought to my attention it made sense.

You see, when America presents Black women, you're more likely to see someone who looks closer to the models in Vogue. Even when I look at magazines like Essence or Ebony or Vibe I don't see me.

Lots of women don't. And we need to address that.

Hopefully it'll happen before the next enhancement trend springs up....and the next illegal entrepreneur figures out a way to profit from it at the expense of another young woman.

(You notice that this stuff never happens to men? I'll address that next post.)

From the mouths of comics...

2011-02-02T22:03:00.006-05:00

It's February 2, 2011.

For those of you who either don't know, or don't want to acknowledge this, it is the second day of Black History Month.

This is the month that is singled out to look at the historical accomplishments of African Americans in this country. This is when teachers talk to students about the achievements of such folks as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B DuBois, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If we're lucky, these teachers also talk to students about Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells Barnett and others.

I know that this year the subject of President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama will come up. It has for the last two years. Can't talk about Black History Month without talking about the one piece of history no one saw coming....

But if you're black in America, and a native of this country, chances are that at some time during this month, you're going to have a white person ask you the following question: "Why is there a Black History Month?" followed closely by "Is it still necessary?"

Sometimes, there are people who pose this question looking for a fight. When I lived in Klan Kountry, a lot of white guys asked me that question in hopes of getting me to tell them where to go and how to get there, thus confirming my lack of humanity in their eyes. But after awhile, I found that ignoring them was the better course of action, especially since if you're supposed to be superior to me, why is it that I've discovered soap and water and you haven't?

But most white folks who are asking that question are doing so from a position of innocence. They really want to know why we need a particular month to recognize what people of color have brought to this country.

They especially want to know this if they're not originally from these parts. And it helps if the person asking is a really, really funny comedian.

Last night, Craig Ferguson, devoted the entire hour of his Late, Late Show to this question. As a new citizen of this country and someone who hadn't grown up surrounded by the unique brand of racism that was practiced during the time that Black History Month was created, he innocently wanted to know why the observance existed.

Dr. Cornel West was who Ferguson went to for answers, and what resulted was a pretty good show that talked about everything from the origins of Black History Month, why taking the N-Word out of "Huckleberry Finn" cleans the text....and the history surrounding it ...far too much, and whether or not you can find an orgasm machine.

(I did mention that it was a comic having this discussion, right?)

I didn't get a chance to see it live because I was trying to write a paper at the time. But I made a point to check it out today. I thought that it was good because you could tell that Ferguson had done some homework. He was also able to connect it to the history of his native country, which was also nice. And West, as he often does, made the discussion as much about humanity as it was Africanity. I am going to find a way to use his phrase "former Negroes" in my writing somehow. I don't know how yet, but I'll find a place for it!....

I was glad to see his questions answered.

But to be honest, I look forward to a day where separate months to celebrate the achievements of everyone who makes up the salad that is America is no longer necessary. Not because I don't like having my own month despite it being the shortest on the calendar, but because I thought that by now we'd have our act together as a people.

You see, in 2012 I celebrate my 30th anniversary of being out of high school. When I left Pemberton Township High School, which is located just outside of what used to be called Fort Dix in New Jersey, I left a much different person than the person I am now.

That's because Pemberton Township High School was a very different place. We were what in Yiddish is called a mishegas (thank you Jeff Winbush!), or a collection. Pemberton was truly multicultural not because of busing or anything like that, but because of the United States Military. Any race, creed, color, national origin or religion that you could think of here in the salad that is America was represented in the hallways of PTHS. Uncle Sam doesn't play favorites....and dares you to!

And it was amazing.

But it was also a bit sheltering. So much so that when I got hit with the reality that where I came from wasn't necessarily the norm, it kinda hurt.

I went to The Ohio State University for college. Columbus, Ohio isn't much of a city when the university isn't in session, but when it is, it is the center of the universe. I went to college with future NFL Hall of Famer Cris Carter and saw first hand what women are willing to go through to get themselves a man with deep pockets, or potentially deep ones, which is a subject I'll tackle in another post.

Anyway, I had the most popular yearbook in Lincoln Tower, the dormitory in which I spent my freshman year. Not because it was such a good yearbook (although I was on Yearbook committee and was kinda proud of it), or because the wrestling team was kinda cute (which it was...).

My yearbook was the talk of the town because it was the only yearbook that featured a diverse student body. I can't tell you how many times I got asked "Were the cops there a lot?" because no one could believe that a student body that diverse could exist without there being a lot of tension.

Now I'm not going to say that everyone at Pemberton got along because that doesn't happen anywhere. We had our knuckleheads. Every place does.

But for the most part, the students at PTHS not only got along, but genuinely liked each other. That it wasn't the same everywhere kinda bothered me. In fact, it bothered me so much one time that I ended up in the Dean of Students Office.

(Anyone who knows me well is probably not at all surprised by that fact.)

However, the "you're not in Kansas anymore" lesson was brought home. It was innocence lost. And I am still sometimes annoyed by that.

But all that I can do is my own personal part to bring forth the change that I'd like to see. That's all any of us can do.

I have the first part of Ferguson's interview with Cornel West at the top of this post. Here are the last three, one of which also includes a musical performance by George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars of the classic "One Nation Under a Groove". I apologize in advance....

Suffer the Children...

2011-01-25T00:45:00.008-05:00

Before I start this posting, I'd like to introduce you to the little girl on the right.

This is my niece, Mikesha, or Keisha for short. She's one of my older brother's kids. In fact, by the time that you're done reading this post, you're going to meet almost all of my nieces and nephews through the pictures of them that I'm going to post on this blog.

All of them are in their 20s or 30s now. I lost one of them, my sister's son Phelan, last month to a car accident. He was 36 and was the first of all of these kids that I decided I was absolutely nuts about despite the fact that they occasionally drove me up the wall.

But that's what kids are supposed to do. They're supposed to make you wonder occasionally why you love them....until they answer that question for you with a hug, a kiss on the cheek, a handmade card, a flower they picked from the front yard or a simple "I love you..."

I have seven nieces and nephews altogether, and nothing made me happier than having them wrap their little arms around my neck as I picked them up and hugged them tightly.

But as I write this post, I want you to keep that number, the number seven, in mind because it's going to figure prominently.
That's because seven is the number of kids that Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been charged with killing in the inappropriately named Women's Medical Center in West Philadelphia. Seven is the number of children whose lives were ended by either having their throats cut or by having their spinal cords snipped by a pair of scissors.

Seven kids that will never know the feeling of birthday cake in their hair.

Seven kids that will never know what it's like to go out to the park with their mom and dad, to be spoiled rotten by Nana and Pop-Pop or to be taken to the mall by their auntie or uncle.

Seven kids that will never get to wrap their arms around someone's neck for a hug.

Seven kids whose lives were cut short by someone for whom the word "monster" is far too kind.

This is my nephew Jack

When Dr. Gosnell was arrested last week, and I'm using the term "doctor" only because that's technically what he is, I saw stories about the Grand Jury report that detailed what went on at the Women's Medical Center. According to the news reports, when Dr. Gosnell wasn't exercising, being one of the largest prescribers of Oxycontin in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or using 15-year-olds as anesthesiologists in his practice, he was taking as much as $2,400 a shot from poor women who found themselves pregnant.

But the stories didn't tell you nearly as much as the Grand Jury report itself. Because I was getting the chance to interview the family of one of the victims, I had to read this 300-page sucker. The text was bad enough. I still see the pictures in my sleep. Thus, I find myself blogging about this at 4 a.m.

After reading it, I came to three conclusions:
1-You should never say "Now I've seen everything" when you're a journalist. That's because there's always something lurking around the corner to prove you wrong. And it's usually something so gruesome that there's no way you could have seen it coming.

2-Anyone who believes that the worst thing that anyone could have done to anything was what Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick did to the dogs of Bad Newz Kennels should read this report if for nothing else but to get themselves a perspective check.

And 3-There is a hell. And it was located at 38th and Lancaster. Anyone who tells you differently needs to come and talk to me. The pictures of Babies A and B will set them straight.

My nieces Sheree and Sheena

The pictures are what make this report stand out, at least for me.
You never forget seeing bloody gurneys, bags of human body parts, and jars filled with formaldehyde and babies' feet. (No, I'm not kidding).

But the pictures of Babies A and B did it for me. I was already wincing at different parts of the report when I came across these pictures. Seeing the pictures of dead babies covered in blood in shoe boxes and stuffed into gallon-sized spring water bottles was enough for me to forget that I'm supposed to be an impartial, objective journalist.

At that moment, I went back to being an aunt.

And as an aunt, the only thing I found myself thinking was how much money I could save the Commonwealth if I were left alone for five minutes with this sick fucker and one of Phillies slugger Ryan Howard's bats.

After I stopped crying that is.

But while the deaths of seven children and the horrible ways in which these children were disposed of is painful enough to take in, it's important not to forget the forever changed lives of the women Dr. Gosnell worked on in his unclean, understaffed, should have been shut down years ago, house of horrors.

There was the 19-year-old woman who had to get a hysterectomy after her visit to Dr. Gosnell. The young woman who nearly died from sepsis because parts of the fetus were left inside of her uterus. The young woman who tore her cervix and colon because she couldn't deliver her child despite the number of drugs the doctor, or more accurately the doctors grossly untrained staff, gave her.

And then there's Karna Maya Mongar. She was a 41-year-old immigrant who had spent 18 years in a refugee camp in Nepal due to the religious persecution she had suffered in her native Bhutan. She had come to this country in search of a better life with her husband and three children. They had moved to Virginia and were starting a new life when Karnamaya discovered she was pregnant. The time wasn't right for a fourth child, so she sought an abortion.

For some reason, the clinic she visited in Washington referred her to Gosnell.

Karna Maya Mongar lapsed into unconsciousness due to being administered at least five different drugs at once by folks not licensed to administer them and a lack of supervision on the "doctor's" part. Paramedics were called, but because it took 20 minutes to get her out of the building, she was barely surviving when she reached University of Penn Medical Center, according to the report.

The next day, Mrs. Mongar was taken off of life support and later died.

She wasn't the first. Another woman had died at Gosnell's hand when his unsafe procedures led to her dying of sepsis. A civil suit filed on her behalf was settled by Gosnell's insurance company, according to the Grand Jury report.

My niece Solicia

I met two members of Mrs. Mongar's family at the law offices of Anapol Schwartz in Center City yesterday. They've filed a wrongful death civil suit against the doctor and are asking for punitive damages. While they realize that no amount of money will bring their loved one back, they want to realize some justice in the country that to them epitomizes the term.

This isn't the first time that Bernard Smalley, the family's attorney, has taken Gosnell to court. He won a civil judgement on behalf of another woman that the "doctor" had maimed. He didn't understand why and how he had managed to stay in business despite the number of legal actions and complaints leveled against him, one taken by hand to the Pennsylvania Department of Health by a doctor who has since become the City of Philadelphia's Health Commissioner.

That's a good question, and it's one that the Grand Jury Report asks. How in the hell was this person able to keep his doors open, especially since most of the city's doctors had stopped referring patients to him?

That's simple. Out of state referrals.

Poor women with no other options.

People who were, in the words of Gil Scott Heron, "too far gone with their problem".

The price for Gosnell's special brand of help started at $1,600. If the mother was further along, it went up to $2,400.
And if a woman came in and decided that she didn't want to have the abortion after all, Gosnell and company would grab her, hold her down, and force her to terminate the pregnancy. He didn't want to have to give back the money, you see.

According to the Grand Jury Report, Gosnell made about $1.8 million between his oxycontin and illegal abortion businesses. When the clinic was raided in February 2010, $240,000 and a gun were found in a filing cabinet in is 12-year-old daughter's closet. The Commonwealth Health Department finally started shutting this place down in March 2010. They found the remains of 45 fetuses, many of them in freezers.

One of the fetuses was Karna Maya Mongar's.

Oddly enough, it was still intact.

Despite the ends he was collecting, Gosnell hasn't yet made bail. Since he's got "criminal enterprise" charges, his cash is probably frozen.

Anyway, he's probably safer in jail. If the folks in Kensington are any indication, doing stuff to kids is gonna get you beat down in the Illadelph these days.

My nephew Phelan

The fallout from this case is going to be pretty far reaching I think.

For one thing, it's going to be used to gin up both sides of the abortion debate.

Despite the fact that what this so-called abortion doctor is alleged to have done is pretty gruesome, I don't think that abortion should automatically be outlawed. In fact, the fact that this was allowed to continue for as long as it did and was as profitable as it was for Gosnell is an argument for abortion remaining safe and legal. It should also be a call to all of us to think a lot more seriously about what we teach our children, both boys and girls, about birth control.

But to me, the part of all of this that has me shaking my head the hardest is that this was done by (a) a doctor and (b) a parent.

Last year, I wrote a post about a little girl named Danieal Kelly who was the subject of another Grand Jury report. In this report, a report that led to a whole lot of folks in Philadelphia's Department of Human Services being added to the nation's unemployment rolls Danieal was allowed to starve to death at the hands of her mother because she didn't feel like dealing with the possibility of cleaning her daughter up afterward, due to Danieal's cerebral palsy. Danieal was 14 when she died. Her mother was, I understand, headed to trial. Hopefully, the wrongful death suit that Andrea and Daniel Kelly, Danieal's parents (and I use that term loosely) filed against DHS has been thrown out of court for the joke it is.

I said in that post that if what I wrote didn't piss you the fuck off by the time you were done reading, you needed to go out and get a kid to love so that you'd understand. If you didn't understand after that, in the words of Flava Flav, "I can't do nuttin' for ya man!"

This man has a 12-year-old daughter. That he allegedly ended the lives of little people who barely got the chance to take a first breath, much less anything else, stuns me. Especially when I look at some of the parents I know. They'd never even let you get close enough to their kids to do some dumb mess like that.

And I wouldn't either.

You've been introduced to some of the kids that I love through this post. These are kids that despite my predisposition to gun control, I'd shoot you in the head and call the police, and tell 'em I did it and why over.

So this bothered me a lot. Especially since the little boy on the Big Wheel is no longer here for me to protect. I'm glad that I got the 36 years that I got with him. I can only imagine how horrible it would have been if his life had ended before he got to take his first breath. What I'd have missed is incalculable.

I end this with something for my former students, just in case they're reading this post.

I've talked to you a lot about getting into the journalism business, how important it is, and how much I've gotten out of it.

Now I'm going to tell you one way that you can tell that it might be time for you to get out.

If you can read a Grand Jury report in which seven children are murdered, people are maimed, and women die from a medical procedure that was done by everyone but a doctor and look at it as just another day at the office, it's time for you to do something else. No one is asking you to take a side on something like this, but if it doesn't make you run home and hug the first kid you come across after you get all of the facts out, you're tougher than anyone I know.

And I'd hate to break it to you, but no one is that tough.

Not even your former professor.

Here is a link to the Grand Jury report. Don't read it over breakfast. Trust me.
http://media.philly.com/documents/GrandJuryWomensMedical.pdf

Hanging in Mumiaville

2010-09-22T20:09:00.006-04:00

In politics, there are subjects that are recognized as "third rails", meaning that if you touch them you usually wind up electrocuted, which is what happens when you touch the third rail on a subway line.

In most of the country, those "third rails" are limited to things like religion, racism or any other social issue that occasionally leads to lots and lots of loud arguments and in extreme circumstances, punches thrown.

But in Philadelphia, because we're special that way, there is one more subject that qualifies as a "third rail". I've seen loud arguments over it, all kinds of hyperbole thrown around, and because of the parties involved, punches thrown, people arrested, and charges of such things as intimidation.

Here is Philadelphia's own special "Third Rail":

The gentleman pictured above is Mumia Abu Jamal. When I was growing up here in the Delaware Valley, I knew him as a radio reporter on WDAS-FM. He had a distinctive voice that I really admired and that always made me pay attention to what he had to say. He was also, at one time, president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, just like me.

But his journalistic bonafides aren't what he's known for anymore. Right now, Mumia Abu Jamal is best known as probably the world's most famous Death Row inmate.

That's because in December 1981 while I was trying to figure out Algebra II and looking forward to graduating from high school, Mumia Abu Jamal was shooting a Philadelphia Police Officer named Daniel Faulkner because Faulkner represented a corrupt, unjust society that could only be brought down through violent revolution. Because the evidence against him was so overwhelming, and there was a group of eyewitnesses that saw him do it, the jury that convicted him did the right thing and instead of continuing to try and get a new trial, he should be nearing his final days.

Or.....

Mumia Abu Jamal was being framed for murder by a corrupt police department who had decided that because he was a Black Panther in his youth and was championing the cause of a back-to-nature group called MOVE that he was a violent revolutionary and deserved to be put to death for his beliefs. He was convicted in a trial for which the word "sham" would be a kind description because of the rampant and blatant racism of the judge that presided over it, the witness coercion by the police (and then Police Chief Frank Rizzo) that was a hallmark of it, and the fact that Mumia's brother William was either prevented from testifying by his lawyer, or coerced into not testifying by the police. In any case, there are too many unanswered questions in the air to put him to death.

It is these two extremes that are the basis of two movies that were shown here in Philly this week. On one side is "Justice on Trial-The Case of Mumia Abu Jamal", which promises to provide new evidence that Mumia was framed, evidence that includes the author of a book entitled "The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal." On the other side, "The Barrel of a Gun", a film which makes the argument that Abu Jamal should have been put to death years ago and here's the reasons why.

I spent a day seeing both films. What I also ended up seeing was how far the Constitution can stretch....and how that elasticity can be seen as onerous to some.

I started out the day by seeing "Justice on Trial" at the National Constitution Center. In addition to the film, there was a panel discussion that included Temple University journalism professor Linn Washington, attorney Michael Coard, and, believe it or not, Mumia Abu Jamal himself. (via phone) An audience of Mumia's supporters, academics, journalists (it was a press screening) and students from the Boys Latin Charter School viewed the film.

When "Justice" director Kouross Esmaeli was finishing his documentary on the Jena 6 trial a few years ago, he was looking for someone to narrate the project. He considered a lot of voices for the project, but decided that the best person to help him tell the story of a fight that showcased the racial pitfalls for Blacks in the Louisiana legal system and the young men who found this out the hard way was.....Mumia Abu Jamal.

After the project ended, Esmaeli decided to look at his narrator's situation and with the help of his producer Johanna Fernandez the larger criminal justice system.

"We didn’t take a position in terms of guilt or innocence,” Fernandez said. “We just poked holes in the accepted narrative and laid out the inconsistencies, and the instances of tampering with evidence and the coercion of testimony and bribery of witnesses.”

The heroes in this piece included those attorneys who continue to try and find a way for Mumia to get a new trial, the people who make up International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal, MOVE, a back-to-nature group that had its own violent confrontation with police in 1978, and the Black Panthers, a revolutionary group that Mumia belonged to as a teen.

We even met his kids in this film, kids who have since had kids of their own who only know their grandfather as a man behind bars. All of the above were portrayed with dignity despite being in a situation that is rough at best.

Because what happened with Mumia happened here. Esmaeli and Fernandez were especially interested in bringing the movie to Philadelphia, bringing everyone on both sides into the discussion, and trying to come to a meeting of the minds. But it proved to be a whole lot harder than they thought, Fernandez said.

"We had a hard time finding a [public relations] person here to even help us get the word out," she said. "There were so many folks here that had relationships with the government and the police department that no one would touch the movie. We were motivated by a desire to have an open, honest dialogue in Philadelphia. But there was so much police intimidation."

The phrase "police intimidation" seems to be the best lead in to the second half of my journey, my trip to see "The Barrel of a Gun", the latest film from local director Tigre Hill.

When I walked into the Merriam Theater to see "Barrel", I was met by, and I'm not kidding, folks in leather biker gear. As it turned out, most of them were either off-duty police officers or their supporters. In addition to an audience that consisted of them, lots of local officials were in the audience. Among them current District Attorney Seth Williams, former district attorney Lynne Abraham, Joseph McGill, the prosecutor who presided over Mumia's conviction officials from the Fraternal Order of Police, local radio talk show host and MSNBC contributor Michael Smerconish and Maureen Faulkner, Daniel Faulkner's widow.

The heroes in this film were much different than the ones in "Justice". For example, the loudest cheers came for former Mayor Frank Rizzo, who was known for being tough on crime, and in the minds of many even tougher on African Americans.

Many of the same people who were mentioned in "Justice" played roles in "Barrel".

But in this film, they looked a whole lot different.

In "Barrel", the Black Panthers were violent revolutionaries looking for police officers to kill, MOVE was a back-to-nature cult with a definite trend toward profanity, as were the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal, and Abu Jamal himself was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer that was looking for a cop with whom he could play judge, jury and executioner.

And if you didn't know where this movie's heart laid, the riotous cheers from the audience when it was announced that Mumia Abu Jamal would probably never get a new trial would have told you.

The film itself was shot well. Hill did a great job. I remember talking to him when he started this project and his enthusiasm for it was clear.

But this was the first film screening that I've ever been to where I've felt uncomfortable.

I guess that some might call me hypersensitive about this, but when you hear folks yelling "fry him" about a Black man in a movie theater, especially when those folks are police officers in a city whose police department has been on Department of Justice oversight because of its treatment of people of color in the past, it may make your Spidey Sense tingle a bit.

This is not the first time that I've taken on the Third Rail that is Mumia Abu Jamal. I've written about him before in my Public Record column. And I'll say now what I've said then, I don't have an opinion about his guilt or innocence. As I said earlier, I was too busy struggling through Algebra II and otherwise trying to get through high school to really take a position here. Besides, I'm a reporter not a lawyer. It's not my job.

But I would like to address some of the Constitutional issues that I saw.

First of all, I'm going to come right out and say that I'm not in favor of the Death Penalty period. I say this because once you kill someone, they're gone. If it turns out that the person that you put to death was indeed innocent, you don't get a do-over. What you do get is the knowledge that you killed an innocent man.

It is because of this that we have the appeals process that we do when someone is sentenced to death. Before we give you the hottest of hot shots, we want to make sure that you're guilty of what you're accused of. If there's new evidence that might exonerate you, we want to see it. If there's a reason you did what you did that we didn't know we want to know it.

Now I understand that for those families who are waiting for the executions of those who convicted of murdering their loved ones this process might be perceived as onerous. Maureen Faulkner said as much in "Barrel" when she called for the executions process to be "streamlined".

But streamlining the process would be wrong. There are too many instances of mistakes being made in the Criminal Justice system for that to be anything but wrong. I know that it hurts. I know that you might see it as justice denied. But the Death Penalty appeals process is what it is for a reason. Murdering someone for a murder they didn't commit doesn't bring justice. It only brings another type of guilt.

Now folks have already asked me when these films will be available in wide release. I don't know that yet, but when I get that information, i'll put it here on the M (p) S.

But I'm kind of glad that I'm leaving Mumiaville. It's an interesting place to visit, but for me to stay here requires me to spend more time that I'm comfortable with in 1981. It wasn't a bad year, but it'll probably include Algebra II, so I think I'll pass.

I'll leave you with clips from both films.

JUSTICE ON TRIAL - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal from bignoisetactical on Vimeo.

Keepin' it real...real dumb

2010-08-31T22:26:00.014-04:00

While it won a lot of Oscars and got a lot of notice, I was never a really big fan of the movie "Forrest Gump."

Sure, Tom Hanks did a good job in portraying Gump, a character who managed to do a whole lot with his life despite being more than a little slow on the draw. But sappy movies tend to wreck my nerves and let's be honest; "Forrest Gump" was as sappy as they come. I sat through it at the movies because I went to see it with friends, but the rest of the times I've ever seen it, i've seen it for free and because nothing else was available to watch.

But while watching "Forrest Gump" sends me into insulin shock every time I do it, it did provide me with a line that I've found very useful. That line: Stupid is as stupid does.

That's exactly what Forrest would have said had he been at Saturday's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial. The rally, one of two dueling gatherings held on Saturday to coincide with the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, was designed to, and I'm not kidding, "take back the Civil Rights Movement".

What made the premise of "Restoring Honor" so side-splittingly hilarious was that it was put on by a combination of Tea Party Folks, flat earthers, and these two dumb asses:

Glenn Beck
Sarah Palin

In terms of a justification for having "Fool-A-Palooza" on the same Lincoln Memorial steps where King gave his ground-breaking speech, Beck said, and again I'm quoting here so you don't think I'm making this shit up, that "Black People don't own Martin Luther King." The cherry and whipped cream of that argument being the appearance of King's niece, Alveda, as part of his program. To see a really good take on her, I invite you to visit The Domino Theory, my friend Jeff Winbush's blog, which you can access by clicking on to my blog roll on the right.

Now combining Beck, who got stuck in the character of Howard Beale from "Network" without having any of the late Peter Finch's talent Ms. King, who my friend Jeff describes as that crazy cousin that you can't get away from at the family reunion, and Palin, whose most recent claim to dumb assery was saying that Dr. Laura Schlessinger should "Reload" and fire off all of the "niggers" she didn't say in the advice call that made her sponsors decide that they no longer wanted to pay for her fruit stand in the Marketplace of Ideas gets you an event complete with some Class A stupid, complete with folks who wear T-shirts like this in public.

Now I admit that I'm more than a little annoyed that Beck held Fool-A-Palooza on ground that is sacred to me as an African American because of what happened there, especially in light of the fact that a group of Muslims are being told that they shouldn't be allowed to put a community center two blocks away from Ground Zero because of what happened there.

But what annoys me even more about this particular hoedown is that it's yet another example of the fact that America has chosen to follow its fools, not marginalize them.

I was reading the August 25 entry in the New York Times' "Opinionator" blog from contributor Timothy Egan entitled "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings". In his post, Egan talks about how folks are believing some pretty stupid hype in the form of "Obama's not an American Citizen; he was born in Kenya", "Obama's a secret Muslim" "Michelle Obama took her kids and her friends to Spain on the people's dime" and my personal favorite, "Obama bailed out the banks."

As Egan points out, all of the above can be very easily proven as false. President Barack Obama's birth certificate from Hawaii, which is still a state unless something's changed in the last hour, has been requested so much that the Hawaiian government now refuses to show it to people. But if you really want to see it, it's on the Internet. The Prez has proclaimed his Christianity on anything that is not a neon sign. Before she became First Lady, Michelle Obama was a vice president for the University of Chicago Hospital system. She's got more than enough money to take folks to Spain.

As for the bank bailouts, that happened a full year before Sen. Obama became President Obama, so nice try there.

According to a study done by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, the fact that these falsehoods continue to be the coin of the realm stems from a willingness on the part of 46 percent of all Republicans (those who believe the "Obama is a Secret Muslim" lie) and 27 percent of all Republicans (those who believe the "Obama was born in Kenya" lie) to believe what they hear in the right-wing press.

Actually, I can't blame the entire right-wing press. While news organizations like the Washington Times annoy me, they by and large report the facts.

I can, however, blame what I call the Asshat Media. That's the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, and others of that ilk who know that there are folks out there who want to believe the worst about this President so that they can justify wanting to harm him, harm his family, or otherwise do something so stupid that it'll cause a riot that will make South Central LA look like a clambake. These clowns give their followers just enough misinformation to make them dangerous, then they turn them loose.

But while the anti-Obama insanity is one branch of stupid, there are others. The folks who don't believe that climate change is real despite the fact that Philadelphia has temperatures in the high 90s this week while Los Angeles is in the 70s. The poor and middle class people who think that it should be okay to continue tax cuts for the top 2 percent of incomes despite all of the evidence that "Trickle Down Economics" has never worked because the wealth, despite the tax cuts, never trickles down in any way that helps them.

And don't get me started on the folks who made such folks as Kim Kardashian, Jon and Kate (and their brood of eight), and the entire cast of "Dancing With the Stars" household names. Actually that's not stupid. That's a willingness to view a train wreck trackside instead of at a safe distance, which I guess is its own brand of insane.

The truth is, we've been on an anti-intellectual downslide for a long time now. During the Bush Administration, the smart were dismissed in favor of the ideologically pure. No Child Left Behind is a law that encourages stupid because it locks teachers into a test instead of letting them teach. Look at how smart folks are portrayed on television. When's the last time that you saw someone on a TV show that was not only smart, but also good looking?

(And no, Blair Underwood doesn't count. His new show doesn't start until later this month.)

What kills me is that the same people who want to cut teacher salaries, cut school budgets, and decrease the number of college openings to save money are also the same people who piss and moan about our inability to compete with the rest of the world when it comes to academics.

Wanna know the difference between us and them folks? They spend money on education. Lots and lots of money. We'd rather pay a guy $30 million to miss free throws than pay a teacher a living wage.

But don't blame us. We're just keepin' it real....real dumb.

Doing one of the many routines that Dr. Laura used as justification for her recent "Nigga-fest", here's Chris Rock.

Bar Hopping with the Constitution

2010-08-23T22:57:00.005-04:00

My original intention tonight was to sit around the house, watch "The Closer" on TNT, maybe do a little light reading before the heavy reading begins in earnest next week....

But I got a call from Bill, the bartender at the watering hole that I often visit with my buddy, the United States Constitution.

Apparently, the document, known as "The Constitution" (sort of like "Jersey Shore's" The Situation, except he's got a brain to go with that six-pack) went to the bar and found himself face to face with Tea Baggers, people bent on religious persecution, and some of the other dumbasses that have been giving him a hard way to go of late.

In fact, according to Bill, the word dumbasses was the word that started the fight.

You see, Constitution was at the bar after a long, hard day of being the law of the land. He's used to working hard. He did manage to survive the Bush Administration, USA PATRIOT Act notwithstanding.

But he thought that he'd get a break with President Barack Obama, a dude who was a Constitutional Law Professor, in the White House.

He was wrong.

A group of Tea Baggers, anti-immigration folks, and folks bent on religious persecution came into the bar and started touting their recent successes. In Tennessee, California, and Kentucky, mosques are facing zoning challenges. Protestors bragged about interrupting Friday Ramadan prayers. A dude from Florida bragged about the knucklehead from his state that put a pipe bomb near a mosque in hopes of blowing it up. Arizona was heard from in the form of the anti-immigration folks who want to rip apart the 14th Amendment so that the children of illegal immigrants won't enjoy the citizenship rights that their birth in this country grants them.

But between the announcement from a Florida church has declared Sept 11 "International Burn a Koran Day" and the phrase "Ground Zero Mosque" Constitution had heard enough.

Sitting in his condo near the National Constitution Center (where he hangs out by the way. You knew he was a Philadelphian, right?) Constitution poured himself another Jack Daniels (straight, no ice, no nuttin') and told me how he tried to patiently sit and listen as folks planned their "Burn a Koran Day" activities and bragged about how they were going to get the Islamic Cultural Center, which is actually going to be located two blocks away from the former World Trade Center, moved.

He couldn't take it anymore.

"I said, listen you dumb asses! My boy the First Amendment says that this religious center can stay right where it is. It doesn't matter if you think it should be there. It doesn't matter whether or not you like the religion. It's the law of the land. If you don't like it, you can kiss my ass you dumb sons of bitches!"

The folks didn't care that this was the Constitution, otherwise known as the law of the land, saying this. They took him on.

For awhile, he was able to hold his own.

But by the time that i got there, the fight had gotten to the point where torches had been pulled out and lit, and when you're a 222-year-old piece of paper, give or take a few amendments, that could be a very, very bad thing. I got him out, thanks to the help of some of the other folks in the bar, including ACLU and People for the American Way.

I bought them a round before we left. They were pretty understanding. They were catching some of the same hell that Constitution was going through.

I get where they're all coming from. It's bad enough that my homeboy has to deal with crazy assed Orly Taitz and the lawsuits she keeps bringing that say President Obama is a "secret" Muslim that was born in Kenya and Sarah "It's considered an obstruction of the Constitution if the FCC thinks its uncool for a pop psychologist to say the word "nigger" for five minutes on her nationally syndicated talk show" Palin.

But should he also have to deal with people who want to dismantle the very essence of his first born because they're scared, racist, stupid, or some combination of all three? He's 222-years-old for God's sake! Can somebody show him some love and tell these knuckleheads to pound sand!?

I finally got my buddy up to bed. He'll sleep the evening's activities off and he'll try again tomorrow

But if we don't help him out, the Constitution is going to have a nasty case of cirrhosis of the liver.

Let's give him a hand.....or send him to AA, whichever comes first.

A Refresher Course

2010-08-17T21:12:00.005-04:00

When I was a kid, Saturday mornings meant three things: waking up earlier than a 6-year-old should on a weekend, eating a bowl of cereal (Unless Dad was home and made one of those breakfasts that would be at home on any pro football training table), and watching lots and lots of really good cartoons.

Since I grew up during the time when television networks were mandated by the FCC to produce true educational programming, I was treated to possibly the best educational cartoons ever created: the SchoolHouse Rock series. Through SchoolHouse Rock, me and my friends learned our multiplication tables, parts of speech (conjunction junction, what's your function?) and lots and lots of history.

One of those Saturday morning history classes was the cartoon featured above: the Constitution. Through this cartoon, we learned about the document that details our system of government, what it governs and what it doesn't, and how we fit within it. Granted SchoolHouse didn't talk about the whole slavery thing, but "Roots" filled that in for us later.

I bring this up because the last few weeks have been dominated by a discussion that tells me that it might be time for ABC to do us all a favor and start rebroadcasting SchoolHouse Rock, especially the cartoons that dealt with the Constitution.

You see, there are a lot of folks out there who seem to have gone without reading it, or at least without reading my favorite part of it, the First Amendment. I say this because anyone who has read the First Amendment knows that because it covers freedom of religion as well as speech that trying to tell folks where they can put a religious institution is wrong.

I've been following the whole controversy surrounding the Muslim group that wants to put a community center and prayer space up two blocks away from the former World Trade Center space. Folks are saying that it's wrong for this group of Muslims to do this because some misguided folks who just happened to practice their religion smashed two planes into the World Trade Center on what would have been my parent's wedding anniversary, Sept. 11, 2001.

They killed more than 3,000 people with that move, a move that led to a war that we're never going to get out of and another one that we never should have started in the first place. It was a crappy thing to do to say the least.

But because a group of people did something stupid in the name of a religion doesn't mean that everyone who practices that religion is bad or deserving of some sort of persecution. If that were the case, Catholics would be catching hell right now.

In other words, well let's let my friend the First Amendment speak for itself:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Notice that nowhere in this paragraph does it say that it only applies if you like the religion, or the people who practice it, or if no airplanes crashing into buildings are involved.

President Barack Obama said as much when he told a group of Muslims attending an Ramadan Iftar (that's a breaking of the daily fast dinner for those of you who don't know) at the White House that he respected their right to practice their religion wherever they want to.

Shortly after President Obama said that, it became 2004 all over again and Asshats on Parade began in earnest.

Because the Republican Party has never met a shameless act that it didn't like, they of course decided that they would use the fact that the Constitutional Law Professor In Chief was actually observing the Constitution as a campaign issue. I guess that if you don't have any good ideas, you resort to what you do best...OOH Shiny! politics.

(That's when you distract the people from what's really wrong by waving something shiny in their faces...it's been done before. See 2004, Bush, George W.)

Leading the Asshat Charge was Newt Gingrich who brought up images of Nazi Germany in his opposition. Then there was the asshat who in the name of Christianity proposed that there be no more mosques built. And don't get me started on the Asshattery of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh (isn't he supposed to be in Costa Rica? I thought that we got rid of him with health care reform!) who have spread their own special brand of ignorance on this issue.

But lest the Democrats think that they're escaping my venom, Asshat Majority Leader Harry Reid (actually he's Senate Majority Leader but there's a theme here) has kept that from happening. He must really be scared of Tea Party Activist (and Asshat extraordinaire) Sharron Angle to allow himself to form the words "I don't think that the mosque should go there..."

Meanwhile, normal, average, everyday Muslims are catching hell. Mosques around the country are facing zoning challenges. A pipe bomb was placed near a mosque in Florida. A man was beaten in broad daylight in San Francisco (which was a surprise to me) and in Idaho, a man was beaten after a softball game so severely that his jaw had to be wired shut. His kids were called "ragheads" and "murderers". His mother was also beaten as she tried to stop the fight.

Nowhere does my friend the First Amendment say that this shit is cool.

But my personal favorite was the group of protestors in Bridgeport, Conn. who protested at a mosque as worshippers came there to celebrate Ramadan. Some of them screamed "Jesus Hates Muslims" at the parishioners.

They claimed to be Christians. Christians? Really?

True Christians don't comport themselves this way.

But then again, neither do those who call themselves observers of the Constitution, especially my homie the First Amendment.

Now I know that many of you who will read this blog will think that I've really gone off the ranch here. Some of you will say that my Dad would see this as spitting on the 32 years that he spent defending our country.

To be honest, I don't know what Dad would think.

But I do know two things: 1-Dad taught me to be an independent thinker. If you've talked with me for even five minutes, you'd probably say that he succeeded mightily. He and I used to debate a lot of stuff.

And 2-I know that Dad read the Constitution. He believed enough in it to swear his allegiance to it and to what it represented.

Because of this, I think I'd be on solid ground with him.....and with anyone else that knows that freedom of religion means just that.

Speaking of freedom, I leave you with Rage Against the Machine....

What are Words Worth?

2010-03-26T01:20:00.005-04:00

Let's start this post with a little something from my junior year of high school, or in the case of some of my former students, the year you were born:

I loved this song from the moment I heard it the first time because it talked about some of my favorite things in the world: words. I'm crazy for words and always have been. To me, words are more powerful than guns, knives or anything else. If you can express yourself through the written or spoken word, you have a power that goes beyond what others perceive as power.

That's why I never let anything roll off of my tongue or out of my computer that I'm not totally and completely prepared to stand behind. If I've said something to you good, bad or indifferent, I meant it. I probably also thought about it for a good long time before it came rolling out of my mouth.

If only the folks that are still pissed off about the passage of health care reform would exercise such restraint.

Democratic Congressmen who voted to approve health care reform have been getting some pretty vicious tidings from Tea Party protesters and other health care reform foes in their districts since making that choice. From the constituent who called Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak a "baby-killing mother f***er..." and wished him not only rectal bleeding but also terminal cancer, to the assertion made by House Minority Leader John Boehner that his fellow Ohio Congressman Steve Dreihaus would be "a dead man" if he voted yes on health care reform and returned to his district, a lot of folks have been looking crazy because, to paraphrase Chris Tucker in "Rush Hour" we understand the words coming out of their mouths.

Add this to the Republican National Committee website that has Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi engulfed in flames and Republican spokesmodel Sarah Palin's website that features Democratic targets complete with gun sights, the fact that the offices of several Democratic Congressmen and women have been vandalized and the cutting of a propane line at the home of the brother of Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello, a move made when some Tea Party dumb ass put the wrong address on his Facebook page, and you get a combination that is going to keep FBI agents busy for awhile.

(Don't even get me started on the assholes who called Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and members of the Congressional Black Caucus niggers, spit on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) and who called Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) a faggot. The chance to kneecap them would make me dance a jig!)

To be fair, Rep. Boehner has since backtracked a little and said that violent behavior is unnecessary and that if folks are really mad, they can make their voices heard in November.

But for the most part, Republican leaders have done something that they got really good at during the eight years of the Bush Administration: they've blamed the victim.

Or at least Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor has....

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now you're probably getting to the point in this blog where you're asking me why I've taken the time to point this all out. It's because, as I said earlier, words have power. Because of that, they should be used responsibly. If you're a Republican party leader and you tell folks to chill, they'll chill.

But if you have these same folks believing that they're not responsible for their actions, but that liberals and Democrats are instead to blame, they'll buy that as well.

Can you guess which one of these scenarios is being followed right now? I'll give you a hint: I had a debate on Facebook a couple of nights ago with a dude who swears that the Emanuel Cleaver was spit on by a Democratic planted within the Tea Party protesters to make them look bad.

Honestly, I still don't understand why these folks are so hot under the collar. All that the new law does is allow me as a diabetic to purchase health insurance without being denied due to my condition. The insurance companies are still getting paid folks, they just can't gouge me.

But since you all have taken the time to be angry about this, might I suggest that you at the very least choose your words more carefully? This way, we won't all think that you're a bunch of racist, crazy, winged freaks.

And in case you're wondering, I meant to say that.

I leave you with Missing Persons, another group that I'll probably have to explain to the young folks reading this.....

Goodbye Rush!

2010-03-21T23:58:00.004-04:00

On what would normally be a day where I'd be out frolicking in the sunshine, sipping an Arnold Palmer (a combination of lemonade and iced tea) and trying to get the lovely and talented Ollie Clay (otherwise known as Mom) out on her deck to enjoy the sunshine, I instead found myself inside typing on my computer and watching television.

Why? Because today was Goodbye Rush Limbaugh Day and I didn't want to miss a minute of it.

Now what made today a day where those of us who are tired of being forced to listen to drug addicted blowhards who have to order their women through a catalog dance a jig?

Well, I'll tell you.

Today was the day that moved America one tiny step closer to no longer being the only industrialized nation that doesn't provide health care to all of it's citizens. The House of Representatives voted 219-212 to pass health care reform.

While the bill wasn't my favorite because it creates far too much new business for insurance companies, didn't include a public option (or better yet, single payer insurance) and is about as anti-choice as possible due to Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak, his fellow anti-choice Democrats, and the executive order they extracted from President Obama that disallows women who want to use their federal assistance to buy insurance that may include abortion coverage, I still had to support it because it was a start toward making health care more of a right and less of a privilege for Americans like myself who are (a)freelance writers and (b)diabetics.

I spent most of the day on my Facebook page listening to both sides of this debate. I even invented a drinking game based on the number of times that we heard certain phrases while watching the debate on C-Span. So if you heard "death panels", "socialism", "1700 new IRS agents", "federally funded abortions" or any of the other oft repeated terms that the Republicans used during the debate, you were to take a drink. Since they got repeated a lot, my suggestion was that you played this particular game with non-alcoholic beverages.

What struck me about the day-long (and I'm not kidding, it took all day) debate was the tone that it took. It was closer to the UK's Commons Question Time than it was to a normal day at the House of Representatives. You had people shouting, interrupting, and even calling folks names. I should have made a bet on whether or not someone would shout out something rude during the debate, because someone ended up shouting "baby killer" at Congressman Stupak.

(Considering what he forced Obama into to get his vote on the bill, I'd say that the screamer was far from accurate.)

By the time that the vote actually happened, I had conservative Facebook "friends" telling me that the United States was headed for ruin while my liberal "friends" were damn near turning cartwheels.

Now what does this have to do with helping Rush Limbaugh pack his stuff so that he can take his sorry ass to Central America?

You see, Rush Limbaugh knew that the Democrats had the votes to pass health care reform. This knowledge so incensed Mr. Limbaugh that he threatened on his radio show to move to Costa Rica should health care reform pass. Don't believe me? Here he is saying it:

Well, dude. They passed it. By this time next week, it should be all nice and signed into law.

So now it's your move.

Do we help you search for a property or have you or one of your mail order brides got that covered?

And do you know that Costa Rica, the nation that you want to run to so that you can get away from all of that nasty health care reform, has had national health care since, well, forever?

That's the part that's been cracking me up the most about the whole health care debate. Everyone that's against it has one thing in common: they all have health care. Folks yelling "Keep your hands off my Medicaid" have Medicaid to work with. Folks with insurance plans from their jobs have health insurance to work with. Folks who are on their parent's insurance have that safety net to fall into.

In other words, the hypocrisy has flowed like a mighty stream on this one.

So since the only thing that seems to bind health care opponents together is the need to make sure that they have what they need while the rest of us don't, I'm glad that these folks are being made to grieve the loss of their built-in inequity.

But back to Limbaugh. He said he was gonna leave if health care reform was passed and I'd like for him to be a man of his word on this one.

So here's what I propose...

Since he seems to love the sound of his own voice, my suggestion is that everyone take the time to give him a call and ask one question: When ya leavin'?

I'm serious. Rush Limbaugh needs to know that we all heard him say he was leaving and that we care enough to give him the best of all possible going away parties.

So here's Rush's number: 800-282-2882. Call him between noon and 3 and ask him "When ya leavin'?" Tell him we'll even hold a bake sale for him if it helps.

Bye Rush! Won't miss your sorry ass!

The Politics of Dancing

2010-03-14T19:38:00.005-04:00

This is the time of year where if you want me to come and hang out with you, it had better be at a sports bar and you might want to plan to be there all day.

As the picture above would indicate, it is March Madness time, or for those of you who don't follow college basketball, it is time for the NCAA Men's (and Women's) Basketball Championships. The group pictured above are the champions of the Atlantic 10 Conference, the Owls of Temple University.

(Did I sound like CBS commentator Greg Gumbel when I said that or what?)

Like millions of folks, I'll be seated in front of my television set for most of this weekend looking at the bountiful cornucopia of basketball that will be dancing in front of me during the men's and women's tournaments. I love college basketball because it's something that even if you aren't a real rah-rah kind of person when it comes to your alma mater, you can really get into.

Now I know that some of you are looking at this and saying "While I can understand that she's happy that her alma mater, Temple, got into the tournament, there's nothing political about NCAA Basketball, so why is she writing about it?"

Because, surprise, there are politics involved.

For one thing, there are going to be millions and millions of dollars made on the concessions, tickets, television rights, and everything else connected to this tournament.

The colleges involved, in fact the entire NCAA, will be getting the kinds of cash that most non-profits would kill for. I'm pretty sure that Temple will get the kind of ducats that will help them build the new library, or at least keep tuition costs from flying even further through the roof. Coaches Fran Dunphy and Tanya Cardoza may even get raises for their hard work.

But what will the men and women who will actually be playing these games get from the hard work they put in to make March Madness the tournament it is?

If you said not a damned thing, you're absolutely right. Sure they get a basketball scholarship to their various colleges, but when you compare it to the millions and millions of dollars made on the tournament, it's less than a drop in the bucket.

But you know what really, really makes me scratch my head when it comes to this stuff? No one thinks that these athletes should be paid, yet because of NCAA rules, they can't get summer jobs (or any jobs) either.

So what do they do for money? Leave college early, in most cases without a degree. All this does is put these kids one blown knee away from oblivion.

Someone in the NCAA needs to ask themselves what they'd want done if they were in this situation. Either let them work or give them a few bucks of the tournament money so they can actually utilize that college scholarship you gave them to get a degree. You shouldn't be able to have it both ways.

But now that we've talked about money, let's talk about who actually gets into the round of 65 that is the NCAA Tournament. According to the folks at CBS Sports, the so-called "power" conferences took up the bulk of the 65 slots, while the so-called "mid-majors" got a few crumbs.

And those mid-majors had to win their conference tournaments to get in, while schools like Syracuse, Villanova, Maryland and Minnesota were able to get in based on their membership in the Big East, Atlantic Coast, and Big Ten Conferences. To make it so bad, Temple, who had a really good year and won their conference in both the regular season and the tournament, ended up a five-seed, when they had a better record and strength of schedule than some of the folks who got two or three seeds.

If that ain't political, you tell me what is.

While I'd love to see the NCAA treat folks like Temple, who plays one of the most brutal out of conference schedules I've ever seen because it regularly includes folks like Kansas, Duke and Villanova, a little better, I know it's not going to happen. The big conferences rule the day.

But while the Temple men, and other mid-major basketball conference men's teams get absolutely no love, it could be worse.

They could be women's collegiate basketball players.

I love watching women's basketball. It's a better game than the men's game because it's not all about showy dunks, flashy passes and other stuff that doesn't really add to the game.

Yet unless you're looking for it, you won't see the women's game. It's as if the NCAA views it as an afterthought, which it probably does because the only reason it exists is because Title IX, the rule that makes colleges provide equitable collegiate sporting experiences for both men and women, still exists.

Not that folks aren't trying every day to get rid of it. Because colleges have decided to implement Title IX by getting rid of things like wrestling, men's gymnastics and men's swimming, men's advocacy groups have invested loads of money and time in getting Title IX repealed.

(Granted, they could get enough money for everyone's sporting programs if they would just make college football programs remember where they're located, but no one wants to talk about that. Could you imagine how many women's sports programs a few million from the Penn State football program could fund? The football program probably wouldn't even miss it!)

So while I intend on fully enjoying Temple, Ohio State (another place where I went to college) and Kentucky (the alma mater of most of my cousins)as they make their way through the tournament, I'm going to do so with the knowledge that these kids deserve more than they're getting.

My hope is that one of these years they actually get it.

A Good Texas Education

2010-03-13T20:00:00.014-05:00

Before he became the first African American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall brought Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas before that body. As Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Marshall successfully argued this school desegregation case and others that paved the way for African Americans to fully realize their rights as American citizens.

Before Barack Obama rode the motto to the White House, Cesar Chavez led the members of what would become the United Farm Workers Union to say "Yes, we can!" (or "Si, se puede!")as they fought to organize and improve working conditions for farm workers in California. Chavez and his movement pioneered some of the tactics used by those who fight for social justice today such as boycotts.

In addition to being one of America's founding fathers, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and our nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson inspired revolutionaries in the 18th and 19th centuries to fight for freedom in other countries. He also fought for freedom of religion (or freedom from religion) in this country.

Now why do I bring up the accomplishments of these three people?

Because if you live in Texas, you'll have to teach this stuff to your kids yourself.

On Friday, the Texas Board of Education voted 10-5 to require the state's history textbooks to have a more conservative slant, meaning the following will be part of what you learn about history in Texas:

*There was never such a thing as the separation of church and state.

*"Capitalism" is being replaced by "free-market system" in all books that talk about economics because "free-market system" is warmer and fuzzier because we all know that "capitalism" is great!

*Sen. Joseph McCarthy was right. There were communists in all branches of government so he had a right to bring people before Congress, accuse them of stuff, and cause folks to rat out their neighbors.

*The Japanese Internment wasn't racist because we locked up Germans during World War II as well.

*While the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was the face of the Civil Rights Movement, those violent Black Panthers were there, too. Besides, King and the other African Americans who marched for their rights weren't the main people responsible for the advancements in civil rights. They wouldn't have been able to do anything without the votes of those kind, white Republicans in Congress.

(Wow. Somewhere Hillary Clinton is smiling. Her argument during the 2008 Presidential Campaign has now become a part of someone's curriculum!)

*The students will be taught about the Republican resurgence, the Moral Majority, the Contract With America, and the National Rifle Association.

These are just the highlights. Other bits include the "unintended consequences" of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Great Society programs, Title IX, and Affirmative Action, a unit on teenage suicide that includes a discussion on "the personal responsibility for life choices" and more of the writings of John Calvin, William Blackistone, and St. Thomas Aquinas because they, unlike Jefferson, believe that there is no separation between church and state.

Now here's the funny part of all of this. Teachers, actual teachers, approved these revisions.

(If you're paying attention President Obama, the next time that you want to fire some teachers, might I recommend these guys?)

Now under normal circumstances, I'd just laugh this off and say, "Well, if Texas wants to perpetrate its own special brand of miseducation, it's more than welcome to it."

But when you consider that textbook publishers tailor their textbooks to places like Texas because of the volume of kids they educate, it could have an impact on states where, I don't know, people want their kids to learn all of America's history, not just the parts that make us look good.

Besides, unless all of the kids in Texas wind up at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, they're going to learn all of the truths the folks on the Texas Board of Education are trying to keep from them in college. The complaints about this that these kids will surely register will most likely bring David Horowitz and his "we believe in free thought unless it's thought we don't like" crusaders to their various campuses.

My Significant Other and I heard about this decision on NPR while going out to brunch today and it inspired the kind of profanity laden tirade that could only come from a true educator. He believes that kids are only truly educated if that education is all-inclusive.

As someone who's trying to be an educator herself, I can't say as though I disagree with him.

The rules are supposed to come up for a final vote in May. Because the board will probably still be dominated by conservatives, they're probably going to pass.

One of my Best Buds has a granddaughter who lives in Texas. She's a really bright kid who has, fortunately, been taught a lot of the stuff that's going to be banned from history education in Texas from her grandmother.

But if my friend wants to make sure that her head doesn't end up totally twisted, she might want to bring her, and her other grandkids, to Pennsylvania. We may not be perfect, but you can learn about Thomas Jefferson here.

America the Aspirational

2010-03-13T00:53:00.006-05:00

For the last five months, I've been unemployed.

If you're a journalist, being unemployed, especially lately, isn't something that's foreign to you. It's kind of par for the course, especially as the business contracts. But it's still not anyone's idea of fun. You make a lot less money with unemployment compensation than you do from a job and most of the time you find yourself without health insurance, something that as a diabetic is pretty important to me.

But while I'm technically unemployed, I'm still working pretty hard. I'm in graduate school so I have papers to write, research to do, and I'm also freelance writing, trying to learn new things and looking for a job. I'm not just sitting around eating bon-bons and watching television.

However to hear former Congressman Tom Delay tell it, I'm a welfare queen.

According to the "Dancing with the Stars" alum, collecting unemployment encourages laziness and because of this, unemployment compensation should be shortened. No extensions should be granted because extensions just allow these lazy asses to continue to sit on their butts and collect a check.

Spoken like someone who has lived in subsidized housing for a chunk of their life and made a living off of my tax dollars.

(What, you didn't know that the White House was public housing and that Congressmen get the equivalent of a Section 8 check to help them maintain a home? Where have you been?)

The thing that pisses me off regarding Delay's sermonizing is that it doesn't take one very important thing into consideration: people aren't hiring. Congress can pass as many jobs bills with as many tax cuts for businesses that hire new workers as it wants, but unless the economy improves enough to make businesses want to take advantage of these tax breaks, they're meaningless.

Delay also doesn't take into consideration the fact that folks are trying to do anything they can to bring money home for their families. Hell, I took the damned Census exam and have even applied for a job at Wawa.

But his attitude doesn't surprise me. I mean hey, when you were among the group that put us in the economic mess in which we find ourselves, you're going to spend a little time in Denialville when your handiwork and it's consequences rear their ugly heads.

However, the main reason why Delay's attitude doesn't surprise me is because he's bought into the lie that is America.

As the title of this post suggests, America, I believe, is aspirational. That means that just about everyone in this country aspires to be something other than who they are at the moment.

Part of this belief in the aspirational properties of America is the belief that if you simply work hard, do what your told, and follow the rules, you too can be ____________ (rich, famous, respected, or all of the above). Don't believe me? Ask yourself why magazines like "People" and television shows like TMZ are so popular.

While that's a nice theory in which to believe, it would require a lot of changes in this country for it to be actually true.

For one thing, the playing field that is America would have to be truly level. Now before my white, male readers view this as an attack on them, let me explain. When I say the field would have to be level, I'm talking about class. If you're a rich white dude, you've got resources that poor white dudes don't. Those resources can put you on the right track, even if you're as dumb as a box of rocks.

(Insert George W. Bush joke here.)

However, if you're poor, a person of color or a woman, the playing field that is America has some landmines for your ass. Between having to negotiate a possibly substandard school system, not having the resources you need to accomplish what you want to pull off, and being held back by either your class, race or gender (let's just put that out there), you're faced with having to work twice as hard to get half as far.

But while we recognize the unfairness of it all, we bust our behinds nonetheless because like all Americans, we too are aspirants. We read the same magazines and watch the same television shows. We want the Glamorous Life. Who wouldn't?

However, some of us need a little help as we make our way up the aspirational ladder and that's what things like unemployment and welfare represent.

It's too bad that folks like Tom Delay would rather see folks starve while trying to reach their higher ground.

My Old Kentucky Fool and Other Tales of Political Chickanery

2010-03-03T23:43:00.007-05:00

Were it not for the Army giving my parents the good fortune of being transferred to Fort Dix, New Jersey shortly before my birth, I would have been born in Kentucky, the state that continues to send the man on your left, Jim Bunning, to Congress.

My entire family was born and raised there. Many of them still live there. Some of them have been ravaged by the economy in Kentucky. Heck, one of my cousins works two jobs to keep her head above water.

It is because of these relatives that I'm kind pissed off at the Distinguished Gentleman from Kentucky. Bunning decided to have an attack of Fiscal Conservatism and until today held up a bill that would extend unemployment benefits and health care assistance for most of this week. As his reason he cited concerns about what the $10 billion bill would do to the deficit.

(There are always two things that I find hilarious when Republicans say stuff like this: one, that they never got these attacks of fiscal conservatism when President George W. Bush asked for $87 million a shot to fight the War in Iraq off the books and two, that they can say this crap with a straight face!)

After getting a lot of constituent reaction (including some from folks who thought he was doing the right thing believe it or not), Bunning decided to let the unemployment extension bill come to the floor for a vote.

On behalf of all of the unemployed folks who lost their health care subsidy, their unemployment benefits, and all of the other things this money was used for thanks to your actions, I say thanks a lot....dickhead.

The next time that you decide to have one of your concussion flashbacks from the fastball that you obviously took to the head when you were pitching for the Phillies Sen. Bunning, do us all a favor and take an extra Aleve. I'm so glad that this clown is retiring after this year!

While Bunning and his craziness stood out because of who it impacted, he wasn't the only person playing the nut role this week. Nuts and other bad political actors were hanging out all over the place.

For example, I have to put the person who wants to slap Ronald Reagan's visage on the $50 on this week's Nut List.

Congressman Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, has proposed putting Ronnie Raygun on the $50. Citing a need to give this generation a dollar bill with one of their "heroes" on it, he's suggesting that Ulysses S. Grant should step aside. Thirteen other Republicans agree with him on this.

Wow.

While I wouldn't mind having Ronald Reagan's face on a roll of toilet paper, having his mug on a $50 bill, something he made damned sure that most of us couldn't get our hands on during his eight-year reign of terror, is more than a little disingenuous.

First of all, we still haven't quite recovered from the "let business go nuts" fiscal policies that led to the deficit mess that Bill Clinton had to clean up as president. Secondly, any so-called human who allows thousands of people to die from a disease that he feels can be ignored because of who has it doesn't deserve a tribute of any kind, much less his face on our currency.

But considering the fact that Republicans still think that this B-Movie actor practically walked on fucking water, I'm not surprised they're looking for another way to remind us that many of us bought Reagan's Morning in America bullshit. I guess they believe that we haven't been screwed over enough yet.

Lest anyone believe that my Nut List only has room for Republicans, I end this post with Congressman Charles Rangel. Until yesterday, Rangel had one of the most powerful positions in Congress, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

However, he obviously didn't learn the Adam Clayton Powell lesson and got busted accepting corporately financed travel. Now he's under an ethic investigation and the Republicans are dancing in the streets, mostly because they see his departure as helping the Bush tax cuts inch one step closer to permanent.

If you're making the kind of money that you make as a Congressman, I think that you should be able to buy your own plane tickets, especially if you're a powerful Democrat with Republicans circling you like sharks.

What pisses me off the most about this is that Rangel was sloppy. Now is not the time to be sloppy in Congress, Charlie. You've been there long enough to know that.

Stay tuned for more Nuts. I'm sure they'll be some.

School Daze

2010-03-02T22:39:00.004-05:00

In our capitalist society, money talks, and a lot of money practically screams.

Thanks to a pot of money that's been put on the table by the Obama Administration, a lot of teachers in a lot of school districts are about to find out just how loud money can be, and it'll be at the cost of their jobs.

On Monday, the school board in Central Falls, Rhode Island voted to fire all 93 of the teachers, principals, school psychologists, and other staff from the town's lone high school because the school hasn't met the standards set by the No Child Left Behind law.

The district decided to make this move so that they could have a shot at some of the $900 million in federal School Turnaround Grant money that the Obama Administration hopes to make available if the proposal gets through Congress.

To get this money, school districts have to agree to do one of the following things: fire the principal and at least half of the staff of a failing school; reopen the school as a charter school; or close the offending school and send the students in that school to one of the district's better performing schools.

Guess we know which avenue the folks in Central Falls chose to take.

Now President Obama has managed to get himself in trouble with the American Federation of Teachers because he, and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have applauded the move. The AFT says that while it's convenient to blame the teachers, moves like this are an easy fix, not a long term solution.

When I heard this story on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday, it woke me up because I kinda saw it coming.

You see, before I became your Mad Political Scientist, I was an education reporter and a teacher. It was the latter experience that kinda led to the former.

Educational policy has always interested me for two reasons: Without an education, you can't really do anything. It's the cornerstone for anything you might want to try be it journalism, cooking or even digging ditches.

But the second reason that I became interested in educational policy was because of how high the stakes have become. Real Estate agents market listings based on school districts and just about every politician I've ever met has given me the first line from the song "The Greatest Love of All", which is "I believe the children are our future."

(Unless the subject is paying for education. then the tune quickly changes to Public Enemy's "I Can't Do Nothin' For Ya, Man." We'll get to that later in this post.)

In the middle of my time as an education reporter, folks started talking about serious education reform. I started having to cover things like Charter School hearings, educational standard announcements, and other things that spelled "reform" in some way or another.

But the busiest time in any education reporter's life is when the state test scores come out. Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, every state had to come up with a set of educational standards and a corresponding test to measure whether or not students were meeting them.

If your students pass the tests, you're fine. Your school and in most cases your district get some nice bonus money. If not, you get hit with all kinds of sanctions including some of the ones mentioned earlier in this post.

While I can appreciate the trend toward making school districts and the folks contained within them accountable for what students learn, blaming the educators and the educators alone is the equivalent of putting a band aid on a gaping wound: you haven't solved the problem and someone's probably going to bleed to death.

I say this for two reasons: One, while politicians have no problem paying for flashy fixes like the School Turnaround Grants, they seem to have a problem giving school districts the money they need to keep things from getting to this point in the first place.

When it comes to funding, school districts are always treated like poor relations. They're made to beg for the money they need to make sure that our kids are educated, even if these kids are dealing with stuff like poverty, homelessness, trying to figure out a new language and a life in a new country, or a developmental disability while trying to get this education. Yet, if they don't do the job up to the standard that these tests say they should, it's penalty time. And don't even get me started on the whole unfunded mandate thing.

And two, the one group that seems to escape accountability in this equation is the one group that should perhaps be the most accountable of all: the parents. When I was teaching, I had kids who were in really bad shape academically and I wanted to talk with their parents about ways to solve the problem.

If I were to trip over these parents, I still wouldn't know who the hell they were. But hey, if their kid fails English, it's because I didn't know how to teach, not because they weren't helping me make sure their kid learned.

And while No Child Left Behind has created a nation of kids that can jam on a standardized test, these kids aren't real big on independent thinking. I remember giving a test in one of my journalism classes and expecting the students to give a certain answer to a question. Because I expected them to come up with the answer themselves and not rely on a prompt for it, I had kids complain to me when I took points off.

(This is one of the dirty little secrets of some of these reforms: they scare all of the creativity out of teachers and encourage them to teach to the test, not to what these kids are going to need later.)

See this kind of stuff enough, you become as cynical as I was when I left education reporting.

So while another round of educational consultants, private educational management companies, universities, and others stand to make a killing on this latest round of "reforms", a lot of teachers, and most importantly kids, stand to lose.

It'll be interesting how the whole Central Falls situation shakes out. My guess is that the words "breach of contract" are going to come up. I'll keep you posted.

Just Like Starting Over

2010-02-25T23:16:00.002-05:00

Because I'm a masochist, I sat through the first hour or so of the Health Care Summit held at the White House Today.

I also sat through it because (a)my mom is in the hospital and I can only imagine how much she'd need to pay if she had to pay for the care that she's currently getting. Of course, there's no accountability in the current system so the jokers who left her in the middle of the floor of the rehabilitation center she was in will not be punished unless we sue 'em, but at least she's got insurance and (b)I don't have insurance, which can be kinda tough when you are also a diabetic.

I saw exactly what I expected to see, which was a whole lot of posturing, the talking points that will be used in the 2010 Midterm Elections and a repeat of the 2008 Presidential Election.

(By the way, it ended the exact same way as last time.)

I've said more than once that it's time that President Obama gave up the whole bipartisanship thing because it only works when both sides want to play. Since no one else seems to be able to get this through his thick head, I think that it's time that Michelle had a talk with him.

But one thing I'll hand the President is that he realized that the only way he was going to come within 100 miles of getting something done is if he kept the participants in this travishamockery focused, even if it was only for a few minutes.

As the Republicans came at him with entreaties to scrap the bill, complete with visual aides, talking points and the like, the President kept saying pretty much the same thing: "Got a better idea? Bring it! What do you like about the bill?"

He, unsurprisingly, got nowhere.

Now I know for my Republican friends, this is great. They think that we have the best health care system in the world, despite the fact that 30 million people are left out of it. They think that if you don't have money for health care that you don't deserve it. And whatever you do, don't be a freelance writer or someone with a pre-existing condition that might need some financial assistance. We can't afford to help you, we have wars and unneeded defense contracts to pay for.

Besides, if the Democrats don't pass heath care reform, the Republicans can use it against them in 2010 and possibly get the one thing that they really want: a return to power and another chance to finish the job of turning the country into a place where the poor and the rich move even further apart.

However for the rest of us, this kinda sucks. Health care needs reforming. There are folks that are going without it. Something needs to be done now. Our economy takes a hit everytime someone has to spend money that they could have spent on something else on something related to health care.

So I personally am hoping that the Democrats realize that they have the majority in Congress and decide that they have had enough of the Republicans obstruction tactics. There's an option that they can exercise, and it looks like they may decide to do it to get health care reform done.

It's called reconciliation...and it means that a simple majority gets a bill passed. What's cool about this is that it also takes some of the power away from those conservative Democrats that have decided tht the insurance companies shouldn't have to compete with the government or anyone else to provide health insurance at reasonable rates.

What's not so cool, at least to the Republicans, is that it takes their favorite weapon, the filibuster, out of their hands.

We'll find out over the next few weeks how things are going to go down in terms of this bill, but it should be interesting.

If nothing else, we won't have to put up with another travishamockery like this one again any time soon.

Black Tea

2010-02-17T00:29:00.007-05:00

When the subject of racism comes up, how it manifests itself depends on who is having the discussion.

If you're in a room filled with people of color, the conversation begins with the assumption that racism exists, it has an impact on our everyday lives, and we have to negotiate it in order to do such things as work, go to school, or otherwise live our lives.

But if that room is filled with white people, the conversation changes. In White World, the assumption that racism exists isn't a given. If it is indeed acknowledged, it is usually only in the context that it isn't nearly as bad as it used to be because (a)People of color are doing better than they were in the bad old days of Jim Crow and (b)Well, the PRESIDENT is black now, so racism is gone.

(By the way, it amazes me how the only context in which Barack Obama is totally black is during the "racism doesn't exist anymore" discussion.)

From the moment that Barack Obama became the first black man that we could discuss during President's Day, folks much smarter than me knew that he was going to cause a lot of folks some mental anguish.

One of those folks was Dr. Sonya Peterson-Lewis. Peterson-Lewis is a professor of African American Studies at Temple University, and she told me that because white men would no longer be able to think of the presidency as their own exclusive club now that Obama has joined it, they'd have to make some adjustments, adjustments that they may not be able to make without manifestations of fear rearing their ugly heads.

Enter the Tea Parties.

Now don't get me wrong. I have no problem with tax protesters doing their thing. They're entitled to it. To say that I have serious problems with my tax dollars going to defense contractors, wars, Dick Cheney's pension, etc. is an understatement.

But I'd never allow my protest to manifest itself by carrying a sign like this around:

If you're a fan of President Obama, or are just afraid to see the anger that creates signs like that go to its illogical conclusion, the urge to say "Hey! This is nuts!" tends to rise up inside of you.

When it comes from people of color, the urge is easily ignored. He's one of us. We're supposed to say "Hey! This is nuts!"

But when it comes from a white person, especially a white man, that urge gets noticed. I had a friend who was run out of town by the Klan for acting on her urge to say "Hey! This is nuts!", but it didn't make as much of a noise.

Making a noise is something that Keith Olbermann has become kind of good at.

During a Special Comment on Monday night's edition of "Countdown", Olbermann did something that white men aren't really big on: he talked about racism using the paradigm used by people of color. He not only assumed it existed, he called people on it.

If you missed it, here it is.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On the one hand, I have to give Olbermann his props for understanding that we can't get past racism if we don't talk about it honestly. But on the other hand, watching my friend go through what she's been through for speaking out has been an education. She's had to move several times, has found things like dead rabbits at her door, and has yet to find a place in which she feels safe.

Hopefully, MSNBC will do a better job at protecting him than everyone from the FBI to the local police department has done with protecting my friend.

But if not, Olbermann might consider going to his next New York Yankees game strapped. I'm just sayin'...

The Cabin Fever Blog

2010-02-11T21:29:00.008-05:00

In case you don't have access to the Weather Channel (or any of the many overwrought weathermen that seemed to be coming out of the woodwork on television yesterday), where I live, Philadelphia, was hit with a pretty massive snowstorm.

Because this latest snowstorm came on top of the snowstorm we were hit with last Saturday, a snowstorm that dumped a foot of snow on the City of Brotherly Love, I haven't been really able to leave my house, something that has given me entirely too much time to think.

So, here is a bunch of random thoughts that sprung from my Cabin Fevered mind....

*President Bill Clinton was admitted to the hospital today. He was complaining of chest pains and had to have one of his arteries unblocked. According to his doctor, he's going to be okay. Get well Mr. President. There are young ladies in Harlem just waiting for you to chase them!

(oops! Did I say that?)

*If we believe our friends at the National Enquirer, John Edwards is about to become the Democratic Party's version of Newt Gingrich.

(For those of you wondering what I mean by this, here's the story. Newt Gingrich handed his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital battling cancer.)

Weeks after finally admitting (without a "Maury" style DNA test I might add) that he was the father of mistress Rielle Hunter's baby, the NE is reporting that Edwards is gonna divorce his long suffering wife Elizabeth (who finally kicked him to the curb, thank God)and marry his baby mama.

Now Edwards says that isn't true, but let's remember that the National Enquirer is the "news" organization that broke the story about the Edwards/Hunter affair. I wouldn't dismiss this out of hand.

*If you want to get a weatherperson all hot and bothered, say the word "blizzard". They look at a blizzard in the same way that all of the exotic dancers in Dallas will be looking at their poles during NBA All-Star Weekend: it's their time to shine and they know it.

"Blizzard" also seems to have the same impact on climate change deniers. They came out of the woodwork as the snow fell on my little hamlet of Philadelphia. Many of them, most notably Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, hopped on their poles immediately and started swinging their panties around their fingers.

(sorry for that visual. It's grossing me out too!)

The thing is, climate change is the reason why we're gonna see more snow here in Philly this year than I did the entire time I was in Upstate New York. The damage that's been done to our environment has caused me to be able to a variety of things ranging from putting on shorts to see a Mummers parade (Google it. It's hard to explain)to having my air conditioner attached to me during the summer because Philly is on it's 10th day in a row where the temperatures are 90 degrees or higher.

Usually, the prospect of Philadelphia having two blizzards in four days is something that no one even discusses. But this year, we've gone through most of our snow removal budget because, well, we had two blizzards in four days.

So the next time that your favorite climate change denier tries to throw the whole "Al Gore is a fraud! Look, it's snowing!" thing at you, tell him (or her) that your bud The Mad (political) Scientist was able to go Christmas shopping in a sweatshirt. In Philadelphia. In December. Without a jacket. You get what I mean...

*I tend not to namecheck people like singer John Mayer. He's a little too folky for my tastes and this is more a Gil Scott Heron kind of blog.

But this week, Mr. Mayer became a cautionary tale for the Twitter generation through an interview that he gave Playboy magazine. In said interview, which I read because there are certain things that you've just gotta see for yourself, Mayer shared enough to cement his reputation as one of music's biggest douchebags.

Rather than tell you what he said, here it is:

Mayer: Someone asked me the other day, “What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?” And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, “I can’t really have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’"

PLAYBOY: It is true; a lot of rappers love you. You recorded with Common and Kanye West, played live with Jay-Z.

MAYER: What is being black? It’s making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that’s seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you’ll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude’s.

Now if he had stopped there, even with the use of the N-word, he might have been okay. Sure, dropping an N-bomb is still gonna piss off a lot of people, but that might have gone under the radar with most news organizations.

But because Mayer apparently has the worst case of diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain in music today, he didn't stop and ended up in the crosshairs of a group of people you don't want to be in the crosshairs of:

Black women.

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

PLAYBOY: Let’s put some names out there. Let’s get specific.

MAYER: I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She’s superhot, and she’s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she’d be like, “Yeah, I sucked his dick. Whatever.” And you’d be like, “What? We weren’t talking about that.” That’s what “Heartbreak Warfare” is all about, when a girl uses jealousy as a tactic.

Now this last part makes me ask three questions: What is white-girl crazy? Is it different than black-girl crazy?

And most importantly, when are Holly Robinson Peete and Kerry Washington going to bitchslap this silly motherfucker in his head and can the folks from TMZ make sure it gets on the air when it happens?

I have no problem with people being upfront with their feelings. Let's face it, I don't see any sista with a sense of self saying "ooh, I've gotta go get me some John Mayer!"

But where I got mad was when I saw this piece on my Facebook page. It was a piece from Salon.com where writer LaToya Tooles writes the following:

"I doubt you have any idea what it feels like to be invisible, to come to a party looking for a little sexual validation and have white men look through you like you're wearing sweats. I doubt you know what it's like to feel the weight of cultural expectations every time you stand on a dance floor, knowing that your dance card will be empty since you won't play the freak. I doubt you know what it's like to question everything about yourself -- how you stood, how you dressed, how you smiled, trying to figure out what you did so wrong that men simply stayed away? I'm not ignorant enough to think my color is the only reason men would dismiss me, but when that happens enough times, it's hard to ignore the common factor. Do you know what it's like to be ignored in a roomful of romantic partners your age? Well, multiply that by 300 years of servitude.

I grew up hearing black is beautiful. I grew up knowing black men and women who believed that in their bones. But that lesson just seems to be lost on too many seemingly smart white men like you."

In the interest of full disclosure, I have dated a few white dudes in my time. One of them broke my heart so badly that I took a nearly two year sabbatical from men because of it.

But I didn't let that incident make me feel invalidated. It saddens me that the woman in this piece has allowed John Mayer and his lack of brain engagement to make her feel that way.

But I have hope for LaToya. Maybe she'll find herself in Dallas during All-Star Weekend and Dallas Maverick Dirk Nowitzki will slip her his phone number. He likes black girls...especially ones with identity theft records....

Well, that's it for the Cabin Fever blog. Hopefully, it won't snow enough for me to write another one.

Don't ask, Don't tell, Don't make sense...

2010-02-05T00:06:00.003-05:00

This week, thanks to a not-so-subtle request from President Barack Obama during the State of the Union address, the folks in Congress decided to have hearings related to the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

As part of those hearings, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, called for a repeal of the policy that mandates that gays and lesbians be kicked out of the military the minute they decide to come out. Shortly after the hearings, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and former Secretary of State), Colin Powell issued a statement in support.

As I watched portions of those hearings, I thought of my high school American History classes.

In 11th grade, my American History teacher at Pemberton Township High School was a dude named Mr. Cantalupo. Now, there are two things that I remember about him: one, no matter what we were actually studying in history, he found a way somehow to connect it to the Vietnam War. I don't know what his issue was with that war, but I guess it made sense to him.

And two, an assignment he gave us that taught me something about my parents. We had to interview someone for our history class that had been through a war. World War II was preferred because it happened to be the unit we were studying at the time.

Fortunately, I knew someone who had been through World War II: my dad.

Dad and I sat down and he told me the story of how he snuck into the Army at 16, was discovered shortly after boot camp, and was taken back to his mother in Kentucky to await his 17th birthday and the chance to legally enlist.

But before the Army discovered that they had basically began training a kid to use an M-16, My dad got the chance to see up close the reception a Black man got when he said he wanted to fight for his country. He told me a story that included harassment, threats, and in some cases lynching, especially on the Southern bases.

Before former President Harry S. Truman integrated the Armed Forces, Black soldiers were segregated, given menial jobs, not allowed to advance, and were basically denied the opportunity to serve their country in the best way possible.

But hey, unlike the gays and lesbians currently serving in the military, at least they weren't kicked out for being Black.

Now I've heard all of the arguments against allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. It'll mess up unit cohesion. It'll lead to harassment. It's just not a good idea.

But just like the arguments that I hear when the subject of allowing gays and lesbians to get married, these arguments don't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Let's just deal with the unit cohesion argument because it's the one that is most easily refutable.

When you're in a battlefield, you tend to think of just one thing: getting off of that battlefield in one piece. My guess is that anyone you're with on that battlefield is thinking pretty much the same thing.

Because of this reality, it makes more sense (at least to me) that if someone was harboring a secret crush on you, they'll put it on the back burner long enough to make sure that you both make it home. If that's not unit cohesion, I don't know what is.

Also, most of the folks that we're kicking out of the military due to their sexual orientation are just the folks we need right now: folks that can translate Arabic. You remember Arabic, don't you? The language that the folks who are coming after us in the War on Terror speak? The one that we don't understand?

Yeah, Arabic.

At a time when we need folks who are actually willing to fight for their country, we really can't afford to continue letting folks who want to serve not do so because we don't like who they sleep with.

Eventually, my dad spent 32 years in the Army, was given all kinds of awards and commendations, and rose through the ranks to become a Command Sgt. Major, the highest rank that an enlisted man can achieve in the Army.

Maybe by repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, gay and lesbian soldiers might finally get the chance to Be All They Can Be.

A Retreat that was no Retreat

2010-01-29T22:09:00.004-05:00

As part of his "I ain't scared of you...." tour, President Barack Obama spent Friday at the one place where he was most likely to hear "You Lie!" shouted at him at top volume.

He went to the House Republican Retreat in Baltimore, Maryland.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for people trying to reach out to those with whom they disagree, even if the disagreement is as vehement as the scuffle between President Obama and the GOP has been during his first year in office.

But when my Significant Other pointed this out to me as I was trying to do some of the less academic stuff that I do on Fridays, I had only one question:

What's the point?

It's one thing to try and reach out to those with whom you disagree. It's another thing entirely to put yourself in a room filled with people who would cheerfully beat you about the head and neck with a bat if they could.

But as I often say, that's why President Obama is better than me. He hasn't punched anybody yet.

President Obama spent a good deal of time with the House GOP members, and even too their questions. My guess is that this Congressional equivalent of the British House of Commons' question time was supposed to be the House member's best shot at making the Prez look like he didn't know his head from, well, not head.

(If you want to see some television that will make you double over with laughter, I recommend Commons Question Time. It comes on every Sunday on CSPAN and will make you wish that your elected officials kept it that real with each other.)

Didn't work.

The President instead used the question and answer session to call for bipartisanship, call the House Members out on some of their half-truths and overtly political rhetoric, and to generally make the GOP folks look like they were a little directionally confused on the whole head, not head thing.

I'm glad to see that while President Obama hasn't completely abandoned bipartisanship, he's decided to mix some of that Eliot Ness with a little more Jimmy Malone.

And I'm also glad to see that the GOP is cooperating with him in his efforts to make televised presidential speeches more entertaining.

I ain't scared of you.....

2010-01-27T22:26:00.003-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You couldn't blame President Barack Obama if he would have rather had been just about any place that wasn't Washington last night.

Because this particular Presidential Model reads the newsapers, watches the news, and probably has found all of the NPR stations in the DC market, he walked into his historic first State of the Union address Wednesday night knowing that the political chattering class has been measuring him for his coffin since Scott Brown became the senator from Massachusetts last week.

President Obama also had the displeasure of watching as Democrats on the hill proceeded to do the best Henny Penny imitation I've ever seen the day after the Brown victory. Despite continuing to have the largest majority in Congressional history, these fools were running around like the GOP had once again regained the majority instead of just increasing their minority by one.

Even the President's supporters were writing him off. Heck, I had a bet with one of my friends on Facebook that some Republican was going to yell something at the Prez tonight. I lost $5. Damn Republicans let me down again!

Now don't get me wrong. The occupant of the nation's highest office is supposed to be cool under pressure. But I wanted to see President Obama put the Republicans, the Democrats, and the political chattering classes in check.

(For those of you not familiar with that term, to put someone "in check" is to tell them that their nonsense will no longer be tolerated.)

On Wednesday night, he finally decided to.

President Obama walked into the House Chambers and proceeded to call for more funding for education and a forgiveness program that would encourage kids to go into public service in exchange for loan forgiveness, a bill that would help create jobs, a health care bill that would actually reform the system, and banking reform that would stop the folks at Citibank from buying private planes with taxpayer dollars. He even called for an end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that's made it hard for gays and lesbians who want to serve their country to do so.

He then proceeded to issue a bipartisan smackdown to some folks who needed it.

First, he smacked up the Supreme Court of voting 5-4 to give corporations the right to adversely influence the political process by throwing as much money as possible at it.

He then told the Democrats to grow a set and stop acting like they no longer had the largest majority in history.

Next, he let the Republicans have it for the grief they've been giving him as he tries to clean up the mess their guy, President George W. Bush, left for him last January. He also took 'em to the woodshed for their policy of obstruction for obstruction's sake. If you want to do that, he said, prepare to show some leadership. He also told them that if they had any better ideas regarding health care reform, bring 'em.

In fact, at one point during the speech I started to wonder when President Obama began channeling the spirit of the late comedian (and Chicago native) Bernie Mac. All that he needed to say was "I ain't scared of you motherfuckers", and it would have been official.

But while I'm glad that didn't happen I was happy to see President Obama stop letting things slide. He needed to let folks have it. Not doing so would have just let the status remain quo. Now the ball's in the courts of all concerned.

It was the only State of the Union speech I've ever sat through that didn't feel like it took forever. While I'm sure he didn't mean to, it caused some of the folks that I was watching with on Facebook to laugh occasionally.

That's because President Obama did something that all of us could relate to.

He cussed out a whole lot of people...and they didn't even realize it.

If you missed the speech, I have a clip of it at the top of this post.

If you don't know who Bernie Mac was, here's a clip of him right here.

It must be in the water

2010-01-26T22:53:00.005-05:00

Except for layovers when I'm headed south, I've never been to South Carolina.

I know folks who live there and they say it's nice, so I've gotta take their word for it. I applied for a job at the state's main newspaper, The State, once, and the folks were nice to me when I talked with them. I didn't get the job, but at least I had a good interview.

Because South Carolina contains Myrtle Beach, I know that I'll get there eventually because any place with a beach is a-ok with me.

But when I do, I'll be bringing my own water, thank you.

Why? Because if the politicians that represent South Carolina are any indication, President Obama needs to send an EPA Emergency Response Team down there with the quickness. Someone's septic tank obviously went nuts and the water around the state house has something wrong with it.

For those of you who have managed to miss South Carolina's political faux pas, here's a rundown:

*Thanks to South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford, we have a whole new meaning for the phrase "hiking the Appalachian Trail." You see, that's where Sanford told folks he was when he went missing for a few days in June. In truth, he was nowhere near the Appalachian Trail, unless the trail now stretches as far as Buenos Aires, which is where Sanford was holed up with his mistress and "soul mate" Maria Belen Chapur. Unlike some politicial wives, Sanford's wife Jenny figured out how she wanted to solve a problem like Maria: she kicked her hiking hubby to the curb.

*Next we have Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who made news on Sept. 9 when he shouted "You lie!" at President Obama during a speech he was making to a joint session of Congress regarding health care reform. Depending on which side of the fence you sit, Wilson was either totally disrespectful or your new hero. All I have to say is this: no one shouted "You lie!" at President Bush during the eight years that he got behind a microphone and said things that some of us would definitely consider whoppers. I'm just sayin'....

*But during the Sanford imbroglio, I found myself asking why no one was calling for his impeachment, not because he had an affair, but because he had abandoned his office.

I have since found out why Sanford is still in office. It's because even South Carolinians aren't ready for Andre Bauer to be their next head of state.

Why? Because it's bad enough you have a governor who's geographically challenged. Why have one who doesn't appear to know the difference between stray animals and poor people...or maybe he doesn't think there is one...

He's since apologized to the citizens of South Carolina for making all Southern grandmothers look bad, but Bauer's on the record for this crap. In fact, one of his opponents has pretty much said "I can't do no more!"

Wow. Just wow.

Don't get me wrong. I live in Pennsylvania, a place that has some foibles of its own. I mean, we did have a politician shoot himself in the head on live televison because he was being indicted (Google Bud Dwyer but avoid the video.),we have a legislature that tends to vote in illegal pay raises for itself, we haven't had a state budget passed on time for as long as I can remember, and the former mayor of the city I call home, Philadelphia, had an FBI bug in his office.

But the next time that I complain about my representatives here, I'll remember that it could be worse.

I could be living in South Carolina.

But look at the bright side: as long as it exists, Jon Stewart will always have material....

Thank You, South Carolina - Andre Bauer

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The WuTang Era

2010-01-21T21:31:00.006-05:00

We have a lot of debates in this country about who or what is considered a person under the law.

The Supreme Court usually ends up settling these debates. Because of Roe v. Wade, we know that a fetus is considered a person once the mother is three months pregnant. The Court has also let us know that corporations are people too, something I don't understand because corporations are inanimate objects. The day that Bank of America or Independence Blue Cross walks up to me and asks me if I want to go out for a cup of coffee is the day I'll consider them people.

Today, the folks at the Supreme Court handed the corporations even more personhood than they've ever had before. By a 5-4 vote, the Court decided in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission to allow corporations to throw as much money as they want to at the political process in the name of free speech.

In other words, we are about to enter what I'd like to call the WuTang Era of Politics where "Cash rules everything around me, CREAM get the money, dolla, dolla bill y'all!"

Under the Supreme Court's ruling, unions and corporations can break out their fatter-than-the-average person's-wallets anytime during the federal election cycle and try to influence things in their favor instead of, well, folks like me who are unemployed graduate students who don't have health insurance.

As anyone who knows me knows, I believe that the First Amendment came down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai. I believe that free speech is sacrosanct. I may think that what you're saying is silly, outrageous, or just plain wrong, but I'll kick the ass of anyone who tries to keep you from saying it. The First Amendment not only protects speech we like, it protects speech we don't.

But while a lot of folks are trying to use my respect for the First Amendment to try and get me to think that this decision is okay, it's not working.

First of all, corporations have been able to shout to high heaven through their money for years now. If you want proof of that, you need only look at the whole health care debate. If corporations weren't already speaking loudly and proudly at the expense of those of us who are actual people, we'd be celebrating the 16th anniversary of national health care.

Why give entities that have more money than most of us will see in our lifetimes the right to control our country?

Secondly, has anyone thought about what this is going to do in terms of the candidates themselves? Since money talks, are our elected officials going to listen to the people who actually take a few moments to vote or to the corporations who have given them big bucks to run?

I think that I know the answer to that, and it ain't good.

So what happens next?

Being an optimist and all, my hope is that Americans will look at this and say, "Hell to the no!"

But Americans have broken my heart before.

The Chicago Way

2010-01-20T22:08:00.004-05:00

Back when Kevin Costner had a viable career as an Oscar-winning actor, (something that the younger readers of this blog probably won't remember, but that's okay) he starred in a movie called "The Untouchables".

In this film, which was set in Chicago, Costner portrayed Eliot Ness, the Treasury department agent who brought down notorious mobster Al Capone, portrayed by Robert DeNiro.

Among the other members of the cast was Sean Connery, who portrayed one of Ness's agents, Jimmy Malone. As a Chicago native, Malone tried to explain to Ness, a dude so straight he made Boy Scouts look like bank robbers, what he'd have to do to bring Capone down. Click on this clip because Connery says it better than I can write it:

I thought about this scene last night as the news came down that Republican State Sen. Scott Brown had defeated the Attorney General Martha Coakley in a special election in Massachusetts to fill Senate term of the late Ted Kennedy.

If the conduct of Republicans and their anti-health care reform cheerleaders was any indication, it's time for President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress (something that everyone in the Fourth Estate who isn't Rachel Maddow seems to have forgotten) to realize something that most of us, especially those of us who don't have access to health care, have already realized.

(A) the Republicans aren't interested in compromise, they're interested in power. They got used to the eight years they spent doing such things as starting wars, giving their rich buddies (and the private contracting agencies they own) big tax cuts and contracts and torturing the foreign prisoners they arrested on evidence they can't bring into American courts. It's the kind of power that's hard to give up.

So, (b)They're not trying to work with you. Even if every consitutent they have says "I don't have health care. Can you please vote for reform?" the Republicans in Congress aren't going to support it because, wait for it, not passing health care reform moves you one step closer to being a lame duck.

So while I understand that it is your nature to offer the Olive branch, it's time, Mr. President, for you to consider doing things The Chicago Way.

The Republicans think that by getting a faux populist, truck-driving Playgirl Model elected in Massachusetts, they've put health care reform in the hospital. It's time that you put them and their ideas in the morgue.

Now how do you do this, President Obama?

Well, for one thing it's time that you stopped playing nice.

If you hear Republicans in Congress lying through their damned teeth regarding health care reform, call them on it. Don't back down. I know that you're not real fond of getting your Angry Black Man on, but it's time you did. Nice isn't going to cut it now.

Also, use your resources. Get on your Facebook page and talk directly to your friends. Use the bully pulpit that is the State of the Union Address. Take the "I know you need health care reform so get on your Congressman's nerves" tour and talk directly to the American people. You're better at it than your opponents and they know it. They're counting on you to be too nice to do it. Prove them wrong.

A year ago today I was among the thousands of folks who froze their tails off to see you make history, President Obama.

If you don't want to BE history in three years, you need to be less Eliot Ness, and more Jimmy Malone.

It's time for the Chicago Way.

Starting Fresh

2010-01-20T21:52:00.002-05:00

To say that 2009 absolutely sucked for me would be the understatement of the year.

My mom spent most of the year in the hospital. My Significant Other lost his job. I lost my job, my car died, and a whole host of other really uncool stuff happened. To make things even worse, I didn't have time to keep up with this blog because of all of the nonsense I had to deal with.

But since we're about to have one heck of a political year in 2010, I did a couple of things:

One, I signed up for a Political Science course as part of my grad studies at Temple University here in Philadelphia. I'm taking a course called Government and Society that's being taught by a woman who says that most reporters get politics wrong. I'm really interested in learning what I've missed.

And two, I decided that some changes had to be made to the one venue that I totally control the political expression on, this blog.

Because of the way last year went for me, I'm in a real starting anew mode. I loved the former design of the M(p)S, but it stood as a reminder to me of the past. While I don't guarantee that I won't switch it back at some point, I needed a new look.

But my style of commentary isn't going to change. I'm still me. I just needed the chance to remember that.

Let me know what you think of the new design. If you like it, say so. If you don't, that's okay, too. Either way, I really want to know what you think.

Dick Cheney, Chris Wallace, and why I left my last newspaper gig.

2009-08-31T17:25:00.002-04:00

Don't get me wrong, I will always love journalism. The feeling of being in a newsroom on deadline day is a drug that requires an extra special kind of rehab.

But after awhile, I got to the point where my patience with newsroom journalism had reached its end. I kept running into folks that seemed to have forgotten everything (and I do mean everything) that they learned in J-School and were content to allow themselves to be twisted like a pretzel to keep advertising revenues and subscriptions flowing.

And don't get me started on the fact that I always seemed to get the one editor, usually a female, who lacked self-confidence, and seemed to have a problem with me because I didn't do the same.

One of those editors, who shall remain nameless, was the person I thought of when I was watching Fox News' Chris Wallace interview former Vice President Dick Cheney this past Sunday. I specifically remembered a conversation that I had with her that became strangely relevant to this particular interview.

When I came to my last newspaper job from the one I had left, I was a much different person. Having to take a different route home, check under the hood of your car for Klan-planted bombs, and watching as police came by your house every night to make sure you made it into the house tends to do that to you. My bullshit tolerance no longer existed and I didn't really care who knew it.

Anyway, I had this editor who was, to put it frankly, a little too "Desperate Housewives" for me. She and I used to go knuckles on a pretty regular basis. (She also used to have this nasty habit of yelling at me which almost got her dragged around the newspaper's parking lot face down by her hair, but I won't get into that.)

One day, we got into a discussion about one of the municipalities I covered. Apparently, one of the township councilmen didn't appreciate the fact that I was covering some of the more ignorant shit that was going on. Mind you, this was a guy that would occasionally say the most ignorant things possible in front of a live microphone, but that didn't stop folks from calling this particular editor and telling her that I was unfair.

I make it my business to get both sides of every story I do whether I believe both sides make sense or not. But what this clown wanted was deference. I don't do deference when it comes to journalism. Facts are neither Republican or Democrat. They're simply plain, old, garden variety, facts.

When I explained this to this particular editor, she told me that I needed to learn how to "kiss a little ass".

Now if you are easily offended, please skip this next section. I don't want to offend anyone, but sometimes when someone has pissed me off to the level that this woman did, things come out. Having delivered this warning, please feel free to continue reading.

Because I'd been a journalist for a lot of years by this point, I understood that in order to get information, you need to kiss a little ass, I told her.

However, I continued, the problem with you is that you don't seem to know the difference between kissing ass and giving head. Giving head is a much more intimate act that I really have to like you a lot in order to perform. Since it is obvious to me that this is what you want me to do for these people, and I don't like them that way, we're kind of at an impasse.

That I didn't get fired that day still amazes me. But while I didn't get kicked to the curb then, it did show me that it was time for me to start looking for another way to do what I love that wouldn't lead to my having to get rid of all of the mirrors in my house.

As much as I hate to admit it, the main thing that I got from watching the Cheney/Wallace interview is the conclusion that quite a few folks in the journalism business seem to be laboring under the same confusion as my former boss.

I can understand that in order to get the chance to talk to Cheney after he's heard the news that Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed a special investigator to take a much harder look at the Bush Administration's torture policy, you had to kiss a within reason amount of ass. This was a pretty big "get" for Chris Wallace. Everyone who used the footage had to give Fox props for getting it.

But Wallace took the wrong turn at Cheney's hip bone and ended up somewhere he shouldn't have. I understand that you had to be really, really, nice to get that interview, but do you have to pretend he's your boyfriend in order to keep him talking? Geez!

What makes this even sadder is that it was a Wallace doing it. Chris Wallace is the son of Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes", a man so terrifying that everything from "Saturday Night Live" to "The Far Side" has parodied his ability to find the truth, no matter how deeply you try to hide it.

What's up with your kid, Mike?

While I can understand that you have to follow the rules of your workplace, you have to draw a line. Even if you work for Fox News.

It might be time for Chris Wallace to realize this.

Or if he chooses not to, it might be time for him to make it less obvious.

The Lion in Repose

2009-08-26T15:24:00.002-04:00

There is no "good" time to get really bad news about people you admire.

But when you're a news geek like I am, you sometimes find yourself getting really, really bad news at 5:45 a.m., like I did this morning.

Last May, we all got the word that Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy (or Ted to his friends and even some of his foes) had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer that would probably take his life within a year or two.

This morning, at 5:45 a.m., the folks at the BBC informed me and the rest of the world that Sen. Kennedy had lost his fight with brain cancer. He was 77 and died surrounded by those who loved him most, his wife Vicky and their children.

He went out peacefully. I was happy to hear that. I'm sure that the more self-righteous among us who would rather be stuck in Chappaquiddick weren't too happy, but I was.

While on it's face focusing on that incident and that incident alone appears disrespectful, you can't really talk about the legacy of Ted Kennedy without stipulating that some of the drama in his life was self-inflicted, starting with Chappaquiddick. Had he called the police when the car he and Mary Jo Kopechne were driving in went into the river, or if he had at least gotten Donte Stallworth's vehicular homicide sentence and did a little time in jail, Sen. Kennedy probably would have been President Kennedy the Sequel.

(Or maybe not. What I'm learning about the more self-righteous among us is that with them you get no second chances. Just ask Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick. If only these folks cared as much about people as they do about dogs...)

But I digress.

But while he was Bill Clinton before Bill Clinton was old enough to be Bill Clinton, Kennedy did more than a few things in his time in the Senate to offset at least some of the mistakes and bad choices that he made as a younger man.

He was one of the forces behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and also allowed himself to get hit by tomatoes in Boston because he supported busing as a means to desegregate the city's schools.

He championed HIV/AIDS research and put together the Ryan White Care Act, which gave local HIV/AIDS organizations the money they needed to provide care and get the word out about prevention.

He pushed for an increase in the minimum wage, an expansion of the AmeriCorps volunteer program, and the Children's Health Insurance Program, all things that provide help to the poor and disadvantaged, people he cared for because he wanted to, not because he had to.

He fought to make all immigrants welcome in this country, not just those from the European continent.

And, and this is a big one, he had to bury his two older brothers, John and Robert, after they were felled by assassin's bullets. He then took care of their families, held the entire family together, and then buried a beloved nephew, John Jr., when he died in a plane crash.

I'd say that merits a peaceful passage all by itself.

When I wrote about Sen. Kennedy's diagnosis last year, it was shortly after he endorsed Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. It was a decision that gave the president some serious street cred among progressive Democrats who were looking for someone to vote for.

All that the Senator wanted in return for his endorsement was a commitment by the Obama Administration to get legislation guaranteeing health care for all Americans passed. He had a shot of getting such legislation passed during the Nixon Administration, but because it fell short of universal, Kennedy said it wasn't good enough.

Sen. Kennedy was honored for his time in politics and for what he had given the nation during the Democratic National Convention. I was sitting in one of the press tents drinking a diet Coke with some of the other reporters and I think that this was when it hit most of us that this was going to be one of the last times that we saw the Lion of the Senate among us.

Although I probably shouldn't have felt this way being a reporter and all, I was hoping that Sen. Kennedy would be able to stay with us just long enough to see the nation swear-in its first African American president. (Having helped his brother John, the first Roman Catholic president, obtain the presidency, this would be a banner moment for him.) When I saw him standing out in the freezing weather with the rest of us, I was happy for him. I thought he was crazy. But I was happy for him.

Sen. Kennedy's funeral will be held on Saturday in Boston and he will join his brothers at Arlington National Cemetery.

But he left one piece of work unfinished, and I'm hoping that Sen. Kennedy's death will get it moving in the right direction.

As I said earlier in this post, Sen. Kennedy had only one request of President Obama when he gave him his endorsement: pass legislation that would provide health care for all Americans.

In case you haven't noticed, that effort has been stuck in the mud of late.

Between Republicans who want to talk about "death panels" and the gun-toting "birthers" they unleash at town hall meetings, Blue Dog Democrats who want to want to see co-ops instead of a public health care option, and President Obama's desire to negotiate with people that seem to be more interested in retaking power than they are with doing the people's business, health care for all seems to be getting further and further away every minute.

Everyone in Congress is going to be sharing their memories of Sen. Kennedy with you on television, on the radio, in the newspapers, everywhere.

If you as an American are really serious about there being health care for all, it's time to shame the Legislative and Executive branches into it. If you're reading this post and have the phone number, email address, or snail mail address to your senator or congressman, send them the message that it's time for them to grow a set, stop playing around, and get health care reform legislation passed NOW!

Otherwise, they're just spouting platitudes.

I think that we can all agree that Senator Kennedy deserves better than that.

I leave you with the speech that Sen. Kennedy gave at the Democratic National Convention one year ago today.

Rest in peace, Senator.

I wonder if Sarah Palin has the same idea

2009-02-17T19:00:00.004-05:00

I thought that Philadelphia's Mayor Michael Nutter was going to have a hard time getting reelected because of some of the decisions he's made, such as trying to shut down a bunch of city libraries and closing some city firehouses.

But Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, might be the only elected official with a more uphill climb to his reelection if he makes a decision he's threatened to make regarding the recently passed $789 billion federal stimulus package.

According to WWL-TV, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, Jindal may not take the $4 billion that Louisiana has been alloted through the stimulus package. His reasons: there may be too many strings attached. I wonder if he'll announce his intentions as part of the response he's supposed to give to President Barack Obama's address tp Congress next Tuesday.

(I also wonder if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the current frontrunner for the Republican Party's presidential nomination is saying "Geez, what a dumb ass! I'm taking the money. I at least want to have a shot in 2012.)

Now I'm guessing that Jindal will say he's not playing partisan politics here. I'm guessing he'll say that he's just doing what he thinks is right for his state because he doesn't want to begin a program with the stimulus that might not be sustainable for the state otherwise. I'm guessing that he's not thinking of refusing this money so that he can say that the 50,000 jobs that the White House says will be created in Louisiana thanks to the stimulus don't materialize, thus smoothing his path, ever so slightly, to the presidency in 2012.

But no matter what his reasoning is, Jindal is being totally irresponsible in my humble opinion.

Why? Because he's the governor of Louisiana.

You remember what happened there a few years back don't you? Hurricane Katrina? Lots of rain? Broken levees? New Orleans turned into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Gulf of Mexico? Lots and lots of drowned and starving folks due to a combination of governmental stupidity and plain old indifference? Anderson Cooper of CNN showing us that he's more than just a great mound of hair and bright blue eyes?

Well, even if Jindal doesn't remember Katrina, I'm pretty sure folks in New Orleans do, mostly because in some places, most notably the Lower Ninth Ward, it never completely went away. That's why Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, has already said that any money Jindal refuses, he'll take.

But even if Katrina had never happened, Louisiana doesn't have enough of a margin for error for Jindal to refuse $4 million. It's one of the poorest states in the union and folks are pretty hard up there.

I get politics. Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible. Most people get into politics because they want to help out their fellow man and find a way to do more for their community.

If someone can tell me where refusing money for your state because you want to make a blatantly partisan point represents the art of the possible, I'd sure like to know.

Somehow, I see a recall election in this man's future.

Or, at least I should.

Wow! That was fast!

2009-02-03T14:18:00.002-05:00

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I knew that Michael Steele was going to catch a little hell from the folks that he now presides over as chair of the Republican National Committee. I even knew that much of that hell would come from within.

I just didn't think that it would take a grand total of two days for the White Supremacist element to rear it's ugly head. And I do mean ugly here. Whomever gave David Duke that plastic surgery should be taken to jail for fraud!

Michael, Michael, Michael

2009-02-02T16:32:00.005-05:00

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First of all, I love the Rachel Maddow Show. She's as snarky as Keith Olbermann without also being a blowhard (which, although I'm also an Olbermann fan, he is a blowhard.)

Secondly, check out this video. It talks about the election of Michael Steele, the former Lieutenant Gov. of Maryland, as the new chair of the Republican National Committee.

(I'm guessing that the RNC is a lot like America these days: so fucked up that they figured it wouldn't hurt to let a black guy run it for awhile.)

As part of this video, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a political science professor from Princeton, talks about why Steele got the nod from the GOP. Apparently, this isn't an attempt to bring blacks into the party....it's an attempt to take steal some of President Barack Obama's coalition building activity. She likened it to going to Krypton to get the Kryptonite needed to defeat Superman.

Apparently, according to Harris-Lacewell, the selection of Steele was more about getting the "lily white" tag taken off of the party and giving it a sheen of inclusiveness.

Yeah, okay. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

But I know that Steele is going to have his work cut out for him.....and most of the issues are going to come from those whom he's been chosen to lead.

There are no people of color in the Senate or the House from the Republican Party. The the only people of color this party seems to attract are people who either don't know what they're doing (former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez) or are easily ignorable (former Secy. of State Colin Powell, although I don't see how you ignore a Four Star General).

Steele almost lost the race to a guy who sent the CD "Barack the Magic Negro" to friends as a Christmas present. And, a new survey of Republicans says they would rather have Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as their leader.

Can someone say "window dressing"? Sure you can.

Once upon a time, I knew a lady whose job it was to bring more people of color into the Republican Party. This was during the time that Strom Thurmond roamed the earth and Trent Lott said that his segregationist theories were the way the country should have gone.

I asked her if she ever felt like telling the members of her party that did this kind of thing "Will you shut the fuck up!? You're making my job impossible!"

She admitted she did. I predict that Steele will utter that particular sentence at some member of the RNC before his tenure ends.

Now the "N" word race really begins: Who will hear it first? Steele or Obama?

A "Ward" of Contradictions

2009-01-28T18:56:00.004-05:00

Have you ever seen a conundrum in person?

If you haven't, please look to the right of my column here and avail yourself of the visage of one Wardell Anthony Connerly.

If you're wondering why I consider Mr. Connerly a conundrum, it's because one minute he can be totally right about something, and on the other hand be totally and completely wrong about something else.

For example, Connerly's group, the American Civil Rights Institute, believes that thinking that discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people is wrong. But the group also believes, as I alluded to on Monday, that the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be repealed because Barack Obama is now the president and because of this, people of color have no more problems utilizing their franchise.

Folks who think that the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s were just the beginning of the struggle for equality for people of color have spent countless hours damn near scratching holes in their heads in an attempt to understand Ward Connerly.

This gentleman has spent most the last 20 years trying his best to pretend that racism and discrimination still doesn't exist in this country. From California's Proposition 200 to Michigan's Proposal 2, this dude's been busy in the name of something else that has made me damn near scratch a hole into my head at times....the notion that white folks have been hurt by people of color asserting themselves into society.

And his next target is the Voting Rights Act. People of color don't need it anymore, you know. One of us is president. (Although in Connerly's world, Obama is only black for the purposes of saying that racism is dead.) There's no more impediment to voting.

That Connerly believes that tells me that he doesn't get out much. Because if he did, he might have seen black students finding a hard way to go when they tried to vote in Florida in 2000. Or he might have seen some of the irregularities that have taken place since when it comes to voting.

You know, if Connerly actually left the Church of the Poisoned Mind that he lives in, he'd probably notice that the folks demanding enforcement of the Voting Rights Act the loudest are white.

Yeah, dude. White. White folks are complaining about being denied the right to vote. Check that out!

There are so many blogs, websites, and other things in cyberspace complaining about the voting system in this country that it's ridiculous. And almost all of them are run by white folks. White folks that saw a guy that they didn't want in the White House go in and stay for 8 years took to the Internets and started logging all of the voting irregularities they saw.

So, Mr. Conundrum, might I suggest before you start assuming that this particular group right needs to go the way of the DoDo, you check out who you'll be tangling with this time around.

Here's an open discussion...

2009-01-26T19:30:00.001-05:00

Ward Connerley, a dude that has made it his life's work to forget that racism still exists and that we may need laws to combat it, has decided that his next mission is to get the voting rights act repealed.

Discuss.

Well, at least I don't live in Illinois

2009-01-26T18:24:00.002-05:00

I live in Pennsylvania, where we have a governor, Ed Rendell, that I really wish would shut up every once in awhile.

Ed Rendell and a live microphone is almost always a recipe for disaster. He tends to do stuff like equate the public review process for the state's budget with "whining", get on national news programs and compare his party's presidential nominee with Adlai Stephenson (who got his ass kicked in a presidential campaign for being seen as "too brainy") and other things too numerous to mention.

But, I can take some solace in the fact that at least he's not Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. While Ed can say and do some off the wall stuff, at least he's not doing stuff like going on The View and begging for his political life.

In case you've been in a bunker somewhere, here's the whole Blagojevich scene: The United States Attorney's Office in Chicago arrested the governor before Christmas on charges that he tried to sell President Barack Obama's senate seat. Since Obama obviously isn't going to finish his term, the governor has the constitutional right to appoint someone to fill the expired term.

While Chicago is famous for it's political horsetrading, I think that Blagojevich has taken it to a new level. Some of the highlights from the tapes include such things as him calling Obama's senate seat: a fucking valuable thing. You don't just give it away...I've got this thing and it's fucking golden!"

Or, my personal favorite Blagojevich response regarding the Obama folks and the "gratitude" they offered if he appointed someone they liked: "Gratitude! Fuck them!"

(It's the Def Comedy Jam of politics folks!)

Despite being asked not to appoint someone to Obama's seat because the person would be considered tainted automatically, he did appoint someone, Roland Burris, and after much saber rattling on the part of Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, he was seated two weeks ago. Granted, he will probably get his clock cleaned in the next election, but Burris is a senator for now.

Naturally, the Illinois legislature, a group that he's been beefing with for quite some time, has issued articles of impeachment because that's what you do when your governor gets indicted and he refuses to resign. The House has already voted to impeach him. The Senate trial is going on now.

Yet, Blagojevich is making the national rounds trying to get the rest of the United States to stand behind him. Personally, I think that the rest of us don't have a dog in this hunt. Blagojevich needs to take his case to the citizens of Illinois...unless they've already decided that they've had enough.

And my guess is that they have.

But they, like us, are going to have to stick with it for awhile.

A conversation about dissent

2009-01-23T16:54:00.004-05:00

This morning, I hopped on Philly.com and read the Daily News like I do everyday. (Yes, I know that it's a betrayal of my status as an ink-stained wretch, but if I'm not in my office first, getting the Daily News just isn't going to happen!)

After seeing that the world hadn't blown up overnight, I read the opinion section of the DN, which is where I'm reminded every day that although Philadelphia has some pretty sophisticated people, it's also got some ignorant assed mothers within its city limits (and within the whole tri-state area) and all of them have computers.

I decided to do something that I never usually do: I read Christine Flowers column this morning.

Now for those of you who don't live in Philly, that name means nothing to you. But for those of us who read the Philadelphia Daily News on the regular, she's one of the DN's conservative voices, and while she's not anywhere near Ann Coulter in terms of making no sense at all (which makes her at least readable at times), she's been known to make me want to ask her "Are you living on the same planet I am?" every once in awhile.

Friday's column was entitled: My Big, Fat, Patriotic Promise and it focused on one of my favorite subjects: dissent. Flowers has promised to use her Constitutionally-protected right to dissent every chance she gets when it comes to President Obama, saying that she won't be bullied into supporting the president when she doesn't agree with him by his supporters.

I agree totally with that. I've already outlined some of the stuff that I don't agree with President Obama on. I'm still pissed off about the FISA vote. I'm wondering why in the heck Hillary Clinton's in his cabinet because if I were him I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her. I'm wondering why he didn't throw up on William Kristol's shoes when he had his dinner with conservative columnists a few weeks back.

I'm glad that I live in a country where I can say stuff like that. To me, the right to criticize our government is one of the most important rights we have in this country. I use it as often as possible.

But what I feel like saying to Ms. Flowers, Rush "I hope he fails" Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and all the rest of the right wing is that there is a certain level of hypocrisy that I see in this demand for your right to dissent. Or did you sleep through the last eight years?

I seem to recall a certain "my country right or wrong" attitude on the part of the right when it came to President Bush and some of the decisions he made, especially after Sept. 11.

Don't think that the USA PATRIOT act is a good idea because it's filled with things that even Richard Nixon didn't try? Shut Up, your being unpatriotic. You want the terrorists to win.

Don't think that the War In Iraq is the right war to fight because the people who actually pulled off the Sept. 11 attacks were based in Afghanistan and that's where we should keep our focus? You don't support the troops! You're unpatriotic. You hate America. (Wanna know how dumb you sound when you say this to an Army brat? Very.)

You don't dig the fact that the United States is spying on its own citizens illegally in the name of fighting terrorism? Our government has the right to do this. They're trying to keep us safe. Shut up you Commie!

See what I mean?

Dissent is patriotic...but it's gotta go both ways. I'm sorry that it required your losing the reigns of power for you to get that, but it is what it is. Maybe if you spent some time reading the Constitution, you know that document that your boy George and his VP Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney spent eight years wiping their asses with, you would have known that and stopped throwing around the word "unpatriotic" like most folks say "pass the salt."

Flowers also asked that the government not impose its views on her. All that I have to say is that for the last eight years, we had a dude in office that you supported who damn near turned this country into a theocracy.

(Which is another thing I'm not feeling Obama on. Can we lose the whole "faith based" initiative thing especially since all it is is a way for religious groups who want to discriminate against gay people to get federal money to espouse their views? I don't want my tax money to go to folks like the Salvation Army, who reserves the right not to hire people because they're gay or lesbian or the Mormon church, who spearheaded the whole Proposition 8 thing.)

Again, I go back to the whole "read the Constitution" thing. All that might happen is that President Obama turns us back into a secular government, which means that if I go to my local CVS and ask for some birth control, the person ringing me up at the counter can't refuse to sell it to me because she believes that I should only be allowed to get my freak on if there's a wedding band on my finger.

But, Obama supporters, I say this to you: look at how you were treated the last eight years and do the opposite. Let those who wish to dissent have their say. They'll make you mad. They may make you laugh. But let 'em have their say. It's the American way.

The next four years are going to be really interesting.

If you want to read Flowers' column, here is the link.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20090123_Christine_M__Flowers__My_big_fat_patriotic_promise.html?posted=y&viewAll=y#comments

Speakin' of FISA...

2009-01-22T18:44:00.002-05:00

Here's something that I heard on "Countdown With Keith Olberman" last night.

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Like I said, I'm still a little pissed off with President Obama over this one. Spying on reporters? Not cool. Not at all fuckin' cool!

The return of civil liberties

2009-01-22T17:00:00.003-05:00

I had to work on a project for my day job today that kinda made me happy.

That project: I had to find an expert that could talk about how the executive order that President Barack Obama signed requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed within a year would impact the war on terrorism and what that means for our relationships with other countries.

Considering that Guantanamo Bay is second only to Abu Ghraib in terms of places that scream "We've got Torture and Shit!", and it was a roach motel where people get locked up, but they don't come back out, I was quite glad to see that the new Head Dude made good on that particular promise.

Now you're probably going to hear a lot of folks say that a year is too long and that these guys should be released, and now. But there are a couple of things that make the year time limit make sense, at least according to the folks that I interviewed.

One, some of these folks no longer have homes to go to, according to Peter Spiro, a law professor at Temple University. The logic on the part of their countries of origin is that if you believe they're that dangerous, why should we take them back?

Somehow, that makes sense to me. If Timothy McVeigh had been put in Guantanamo Bay, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have wanted him to come back here. He gave up his right to the creature comforts of America when he parked that Ryder truck filled with fertilizer in front of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Two, since there's a crisis of confidence with some of the evidence collected against these guys, doing a full-scale federal court thing may not yield convictions...and some of these guys do need to be in a lockup somewhere, Spiro says.

So...here are some of the options that Spiro says we have:

*Start from scratch: Since the military tribunal system has been thoroughly discredited, something must be created that isn't quite the federal court system, but gives the accused more rights than the tribunals did.

*Try those detainees for whom the evidence collected passes the smell test in Federal Court. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University said on last night's edition of "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" that he likes this approach. He doesn't believe that a new court is needed.

*We could transfer the detainees back to Baghram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, but that would be a bad idea, Spiro says. That's because the International Community is already staring at this Air Force base and is ready to pronounce it "Guantanamo: The Sequel!" It wouldn't make sense to open up another place where folks can be tortured when you've just closed a place where folks were tortured.

*Do something similar to involuntary committment for high-value detainees for whom the evidence to convict wouldn't stand up in federal court. Again, if you're releasing folks because they weren't given due process or habeus corpus, this also wouldn't be a good look because it implies force.

So what is Obama going to do? It'll be interesting to watch.

But considering the fact that I'm still pissed off with him about agreeing to the Bush Administration's amendments to the FISA Act, Obama has a really short leash with me on civil liberties issues.

However, I'll give him props for at least making a start.

Niecy Goes to Washington

2009-01-21T19:54:00.003-05:00

Just for the heck of it, I applied for a credential to yesterday's Inauguration of President Barack Obama. I didn't expect to get one because a conversation with the Senate Press Gallery folks gave me the "we have folks from all over the world applying for credentials" line.

Much to my surprise, I got it. I have pictures posted on my Facebook page in addition to the one that is attached to this post.

But being a part of history, while mostly a good thing, isn’t always easy.

I found that out at about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday morning when my alarm went off at my friend Brian’s house in Washington, D.C. He was kind enough to let me crash on his couch while I was in town covering the inauguration.

Waking up at 4:30 a.m. doesn’t make me a happy camper. I’m not a morning person. I’m especially not a morning person when it comes to hopping onto a filled-to-capacity Metro train with hundreds of thousands of other people and being pushed by what Brian refers to as “tour-ons” (a combination of “tourist” and “moron”) being searched and x-rayed, and then sitting out in a field on a 20-degree winter morning.

However, Brian wasn’t trying to hear me complain about this because, as he so eloquently put it, “You’re going to see history. Stop bitchin’!”

Since the nature of my and Brian's relationship is such that we can say really rude things like that to each other and still remain friends, I took his advice in the spirit in which it was offered.

And to be honest, he had a good point. Why complain about the fact that you’re going out into an open air icebox when you know that the stuff you’ll be writing will be part of the historical record detailing the inauguration of the nation’s first president of color?

I still have my ticket, which placed me in Section 8, front row, right in front of the Capitol building. I was the last seat on the right. Don’t worry. You didn’t miss me on television. Believe it or not, I had better seats than Halle Berry and Russell Simmons, but not as good of seats as Bruce Springsteen, Oprah, Samuel L. Jackson, or Diddy, Beyonce or Jay-Z. It was okay, though. I could still see stuff.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have applied for the credential. I’m not real big on crowds these days. I’m especially not real big on crowds of 2 million people who could (or could not) be in a good mood depending on the turns that the weather takes. And I’m really not trying to be in a crowd where some knucklehead from a white supremacist group could decide that he wants to make his bones by taking out the first African American president. (Even though Brian, who works for Homeland Security, says that would have been impossible.)

But I wanted to follow this story to the end.

However, it's not really the end, is it? The fun part is just beginning for the new Head Dude. Let's face it. Former President George W. Bush has left Barack Obama the equivalent of a giftwrapped box of flaming shit in front of the White House to deal with.

So the question becomes: What are you gonna do now? We’ve had hints during the transition, but now those hints must become policy and that policy must become action. What kind of honeymoon is Obama going to get and how long will it last? Will he be judged for your good and bad deeds as just another "president" or will every assessment of him include the word "black" as a cudgel.

And what about Michelle, Malia and Sasha? Unlike the 90s when Bill and Hillary Clinton were able to keep the media somewhat at bay so that Chelsea could have something resembling a normal life, the Paparazzi age is here. Is Marian Robinson going to have to get all "Black Grandmama" on somebody for harassing her grandkids (and you know it'll happen.)Will Michelle shoot some reporter the same "Black Mama Look" that she shot Hillary Clinton during the Democratic National Convention?

The next 100 days are going to be interesting to watch on a couple of levels. However, if the look that Obama had on his face prior to being sworn in is any indication, I think he can handle it.

Now how did he look? He looked cool. Really cool. The kind of cool that says “I’ve got this, people. We’re going to be all right.”

Considering the mess he inherits, it’s a cool he’s going to need. I hope he’s able to maintain it.

What I've been up to

2009-01-21T19:52:00.002-05:00

Geez!

I've been a lazy cuss when it comes to the blog. I haven't posted anything since Thanksgiving. I'm sorry folks. I've been remiss.

I promise that it won't happen again.

It's the Thanksgiving Blog...

2008-11-26T17:22:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, and when you get past the fact that we're celebrating the taking of land from Native Americans by English settlers with turkey, macaroni and cheese and lots and lots of football, it's really not that bad a holiday.

(And don't even get me started about those of us who were forced to cook these grand meals because we were enslaved. That's another post for another time.)

But although Thanksgiving gets short shrift from retailers (it's looking a lot like Christmas in most convenience stores these days) it provides lots of ammunition for folks like me who blog about politics.

Why? The annual Turkey Pardon. Politicians the world over make fools of themselves with this ritual on a pretty regular basis...and this year was no exception.

Let's start first with George W. Bush. He pardoned the last turkeys of his tenure as president, Pumpkin and Pecan, on the White House Lawn today. The turkeys, who stayed in the Blair House hotel in DC last night and were probably treated to a table dance as part of their stay, were spared the indignity of being the center of attraction on the White House table when Bush sent them to Disney World to live out their days and serve as grand marshalls for the amusement park's Thanksgiving Parade. He was actually pretty funny:

And then, there was the turkey that found itself on the short end of a pardon from Alaska Governor (and Republican Vice Presidential candidate) Sarah Palin. Last week, Palin went to a turkey farm in Wasilla, Alaska to pardon one lucky bird for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, that amnesty didn't apply to his feathered friends, one of whom met his fate while Palin was being interviewed on television:

To quote Keith Olbermann: "What is it going to take to make her turn around?" Yikes!

But here's a news flash folks, this isn't going to be the last time that we see La Palin pallin' around with livestock. Because she's an early contender for 2012 and the new face of the Republican Party (whether it likes it or not), we're going to see the Alaska Turkey Pardon every year for the next four.

Hopefully, that won't always be followed with a look at the fate of the poor schmoe who wasn't picked.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is a day during which you count your blessings. This year, I was blessed with the ability to go to graduate school, really good friends, a kick-ass family, and everyone within the sound of my blog, or for want of a better way to put it, you.

I thank you for taking the time to look at my warped view of the political world each week and I appreciate your time. Here's hoping that your Thanksgiving is the best it can be.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with my mom's macaroni and cheese that I simply can't miss!

"You're calling in gay? Now is that the same as a sick day, a comp day, a personal day, or a vacation day?"

2008-11-25T19:09:00.004-05:00

On it's face, the question that I ask as the title of this post probably sounds a little facetious.
But I live in Philly where bureaucrats go to train, so I know that someone is going to get asked that question on Dec. 10, which has been designated by activists as "A Day Without a Gay."
Folks have been asked to, and I'm not kidding, skip work by caliing in "gay".

(I can only imagine how pissed off the folks at Fox News are going to be when they figure out their makeup artists aren't coming in!)

It's also International Human Rights day, which isn't at all ironic in my opinion because it's the denial of a basic human right that led to this most recent interpretation of the movie "A Day Without a Mexican"...the right to get married.

You see, while I was blogging amongst the revellers at World Cafe Live in West Philly on Election Night, I was so focused on the Senate, House and Presidential races that I seemed to have missed the reinforcement with bulletproof glass of another one of America's dubious glass ceilings. Californians passed something called Propostion 8, an amendment to the California Constitution which recinds the right for gays and lesbians to get married.

This was the response that folks, most of whom were encouraged by the Mormon church, had to the California Supreme Court's decision earlier this year that allowed gays and lesbians ranging from Mr. Sulu from "Star Trek" to comediennes Wanda Sykes and Ellen DeGeneres (no, not to each other) to get to the church on time.

(Actually, it was probably more like the Justice of the Peace, but you get what I mean.)

Folks have, literally, been on the streets ever since. I attended a protest in Philadelphia the weekend after Election Day and have seen letters to the editor, columns and all kinds of other stuff on the subject of this ban.

Now I've talked about this issue before on this blog. In fact, one of the women in the picture I illustrated my post with died not too long ago. So I'm not going to repeat myself...much.

But it's starting to become a little annoying to me that a nation that's about to inaugurate a Constituional law professor has seen fit to constantly ignore that document. The Constitution is the basis of our government and it's about time that we started to follow it more strenuously.

Now what do I mean by that? I mean that it’s time that we stopped putting people in prison camps like Guantanamo Bay without charges. It’s time that we stopped telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies through anti-choice amendments that are usually created by guys that no woman with any self-respect would want to fuck anyway.

And it’s time that we stopped denying folks who are gay and lesbian the right to pursue some happiness by getting married.

“We were devastated,” said Myra Taksa, president of Philadelphia's chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays when asked for reaction to the amendment’s passage. “My husband and I have been married for over 20 years. But I took my wedding ring off when the first of these laws were passed. It felt like it was burning my finger. Marriage is a civil right, not a special one.”

Don't get me wrong. There's a lot that the No On 8 forces could have done to prevent this situation. They could have gone out into communities of color and explained to the folks within those communities why the right to marry is an important one. (These groups have been blamed for Prop. 8's passage due to their numbers in support of Barack Obama's presidency.)

Prop. 8's opponents could have also gone into the churches and explained their side of the issue. This isn't "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer", folks. If you walk into a church, you won't spontaneously combust.

But all that aside, I still think that gays and lesbians should be able to have the right to nest legally. Why? Well, the best reason that I can come up with for why same-sex couples should be given the right to get hitched is because none of the reasons that folks have given me for why it shouldn’t be allowed make any sense to me.

One reason that I’ve been given more than once is that churches would be forced to perform gay ceremonies if a law allowing them were passed. No they wouldn’t actually. So, that reason goes out the window.

Another reason that I’ve been given is that being gay or lesbian is a choice, and thus these men and women could choose to be straight and join the rest of us. That makes no sense because for one to just wake up and make such a decision would imply that this person likes to be discriminated against, sometimes beaten, disowned, and all of other “fun” stuff that can sometimes come with being gay or lesbian.

But the reason that I’m given most often by anti-same sex marriage forces is that allowing lesbians and gays to participate in marriage would besmirch the institution itself.

To me, that shit is funny. Mostly because I know straight folks that have done more harm to marriage than gay people could possibly do. I mean, let's remember that Michael Jackson found someone to marry him twice. And don’t even get me started on Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez.

Besides, I’m hard pressed to see what impact allowing gays and lesbians to marry would have on your actual marriage. The sight of two men picking out a china pattern isn’t going to lead to your divorce.

So, it’s my hope that as we start looking toward a change in the country, that we also start seeing a change in a few other things, most notably our national proclivity to break what I consider a golden rule—live and let live.

Especially when it comes to letting folks live as man and wife, or man and man, or wife and wife.

For more information on "A Day Without A Gay" activities in your area, go to http://daywithoutagay.org.

Forgive me...

2008-11-04T23:01:00.003-05:00

but after I tell you what I'm about to say next, you'll understand why I'm I'm about to go all Chase Utley on y'all.

With 284 electoral votes, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

President Obama.

President Fucking Obama!

I think I'm going to join the very loud party going on around me,

Wanna know what song you're gonna get real tired of hearing after awhile...

2008-11-04T22:49:00.004-05:00

"Funky President" by James Brown.

If Obama manages to pull this off, the Inaugural Ball is going to have some of the best music ever. Bet on it.

You're gonna hear such classics as Parliament-Funkadelic's "Chocolate City" and probably Nas's "Black President" on a loop along with "Funky President".

Oh, by the way, Obama just took Virginia. This means he's only 50 delegates from being president of the United States. California should take care of that.

And all before midnight. That means my little nieces and nephews can see the first African American president and still be in bed in enough time to be well rested for school.

Thanks to this election...

2008-11-04T22:35:00.003-05:00

You can now get weeded out in Michigan and Massachusetts.

Massachusetts just decriminalized marijuana and Michigan has made it so you can get your weed on if you have an illness like HIV or cancer.

Expect these laws to be challenged in court, or depending on who is in the Justice Department, maybe not.

But until then, if you see me walking the streets of Boston or Detroit, offer me a hit. I'm totally down.

More Congress

2008-11-04T22:20:00.003-05:00

Mark Warner will be replacing John Warner as Virgina's Senator, Chris Shays, the lone Republican Senator in the Northeast, is going home, and the Senate is creeping closer to the magic number of 60.

If Sen. Obama becomes President Obama and has a Congress with a filibuster-proof majority, it's going to be all the way on!

While we're on the subject

2008-11-04T21:39:00.003-05:00

Let's talk about Congress.

Elizabeth Dole, the incumbent senator from North Carolina, now has to out and find a real job. She lost her seat to State Sen. Kay Hagan. One of Dole's last campaign act was to run an ad calling her opponent "godless". I think that did her in.

Tom Udall will replace Pete Dominici as Senator of New Mexico. Dominici, who was one of the folks involved in the US Attorney firing scandal, is retiring.

Alaska's Sen. Ted Stevens, who is on his way to jail for some malfesance regarding gifts, is about to find himself out of his senate job...and that's without the whole being made to resign due to his ass going to jail thing.

The Democrats, who already control the Senate, may be moving toward a filibuster-proof majority of 60. That could be interesting.

Hey my Ohio People...

2008-11-04T21:36:00.001-05:00

Can you give me some information on turnout or tell me where to find it? If anyone can find that info, send it my way!

Holy crap!

2008-11-04T21:23:00.003-05:00

Obama just won Ohio!

I used to live in Columbus, so I know just how tough it was for that brother to do that. Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus (Ohio State) must have really represented.

And the World Cafe is rockin', folks. People who shouldn't be booty dancin' are. The base is rocking so hard from the DJ that I can feel it in my chest.

He freakin' won Ohio. Ain't that some shit!

Sorry I'm late....

2008-11-04T21:08:00.003-05:00

But it took me a little while to find a place to do the whole Mad Political Scientist thing.

I'm blogging from a place called World Cafe Live, which is on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. It's the only nightclub I've ever been to that has wifi, but I ain't mad at 'em. They are an Ivy....

These folks are happy...real happy. The event is called, originally enough, "Ciroc the Vote", is sponsored by Ciroc Vodka, and will go down in history as the only political event in which you can hear: "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! We don't need no water, let the muthafucka burn!"

By the way, Sen. Barack Obama has won Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Wisconsin, Vermont, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and, of course, his home state, Illinois.

But I'm not going to get happy yet. You see, I've covered enough political campaigns to know that some rank shit can jump off at any time.

Back in a minute...

Because it's been awhile...

2008-10-20T22:21:00.001-04:00

You get a bonus post.

If Keith Olbermann doesn't burst a blood vessel by the end of the 2008 Presidential Campaign, I'll be shocked.

Good night, and good luck!

The General and Rush Limbaugh

2008-10-20T21:37:00.005-04:00

Unless you were in a cave somewhere Sunday, you know that Gen. Colin Powell, President George W. Bush's first Secretary of State and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, endorsed Barack Obama for president.

He did it on "Meet the Press" during an interview with Tom Brokaw. His reasons included John McCain's temperment in the early days of the financial crisis (that whole "I'm gonna suspend my campaign to go fix the economy and avoid the first Presidential debate" thing), his willingness to negative in the extreme (he singled out the obsession with William Ayers and the "Obama is a secret Muslim thing") and his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate as the reasons he threw his support behind Obama.

"It isn’t easy for me to disappoint Senator McCain as I have this morning,” Powell said. “I truly believe that at this point in America’s history we need a president who will not just continue ... basically the policies we have followed in recent years. We need a president with transformational qualities. For that reason, I will be voting for Barack Obama.”

(I'm noticing that most of the conservatives that have thrown their support to Obama have done so partially because of the choice of Palin. Obama has even raised $150 million from people who want her nowhere near the Red Button. Now maybe it's just me, but I'm starting to think that her presence on the ticket isn't having the effect the McCain campaign was hoping it would have. Your VP choice is supposed to help YOU win, not the other guy.)

McCain, with whom Powell has been friends for more than 20 years, took it well. He said that the two just "had a disagreement."

But the right-wing partisans who gin up vitriol for a reason saw Powell's endorsement as one of those "How dare he decide to side with someone other than us?! That ungrateful darky!" moments.

Pat Buchanan, for instance, had me cracking up with his pronouncement that Powell had "betrayed" McCain by "making this announcement as he was taking on water. He didn't have to do that to a fellow Republican.

But my personal favorite came from Rush Limbaugh. (Have I ever mentioned that I can't drive while listening to this guy and that my twin brother listens to him every day? Now do you see why I don't live at home?)

Now if he wanted to endorse Obama because they're both black, Powell could have done that during the Democratic National Convention. Powell says that he was waiting to see how things shook out in terms of the VP choice and a few other things before making a pick. But that didn't stop Limbaugh from hitting us with the bit of know-nothingness for which he's famous.

I expected this from the right, I mean, their favorite darky has gone and gotten uppity and endorsed one of his own.

But what I saw from the left was kind of disappointing, too. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News took this moment to slam Powell for the War in Iraq and his appearance before the UN to make the case for war.

Was I happy with Powell then? No. I believe that when he sat down at the microphones at the UN, he took all of his credibility and threw it into the East River.

But as an Army brat, I get where Powell was coming from. Powell is a military man and as a military man, you don't question orders, you follow them. He was following orders and it cost him. I don't get down on him for that. He is probably down enough on himself because of it. No one likes to see dead soldiers less than one who commands them.

Powell says that he won't rub the endorsement in by campaigning for Obama, but his endorsement was probably enough to make military folks and independents consider following his lead.

Should be interesting...

Do you think that Henry Paulson has their number?

2008-10-08T20:28:00.002-04:00

I saw this on my Facebook page and decided that since I hadn't had a blog post in a minute, this take on the whole financial situation might be a way to break things up.

These dudes ain't nuttin' to, well, you know...

More this weekend. Someone stole my laptop, so I have to figure out where I'm going to write it, but boy do I have Presidential Campaign jokes...

My new favorite YouTube dude...

2008-09-09T00:31:00.003-04:00

is Jay Smooth of the website illdoctrine.com.

Among the things that this dude talks about are the top 10 OTHER things that Martin Luther King said, how to tell people that they sound racist, and the legend of the RZA and the Replicator.

If you get a chance to check him out, you should. So, I'm attaching his take on the power of community organizers. Enjoy!

Revering the Alaskan...

2008-09-08T12:24:00.005-04:00

ABC's Charlie Gibson, one of the two jokers who took two hours of my life from me in April in the name of a presidential debate that focused more on flag pins and preachers than it did on issues, has the honor of being the first non-Fox News media person to interview GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

But after listening to NPR's "Morning Edition" this morning, I don't think that I'll be the next reporter to sit down with La Palin.

Why? Because I only show reverence to one person in this world and she's about 5'1", lives in New Jersey, and answers to "Mom".

According to the report I heard on "Morning Edition", John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, said that the reason why Palin wasn't being made available to the press was because the campaign believed she wouldn't be treated with "respect and reverence."

Now, respect you'll get from me. I respect all of my sources, even the ones that I feel like smacking around. I'll ask you questions based on my research, use the proper addresses and make sure that I quote you directly and correctly.

But reverence? For reverence, you had to give birth to me. Since the only person who qualifies for that is 5'1", lives in New Jersey, and looks nothing like Sarah Palin, Madame Governor is kind of out of luck.

Since reverence is something I've never been asked for from a source, I don't know how to react to this. And what does reverence mean in this case? Does it mean that I have to have my questions come through one of your handlers before I ask them? Do I have to curtsy before I enter the room to talk to you?

Besides, I'm having a hard time seeing why you deserve my reverence, Ms. Palin.

First of all, you're far too cozy with the National Rifle Association. Since I live in a city where guns have killed far too many folks, and the only person I do revere, my mom, knows better than that, you've lost me right there.

Secondly, your policy papers indicate a trend toward abuse of power and wanting to give the government far too much control over my reproductive functions. I believe that if you don't want to have an abortion (or marry a gay person), don't. But don't make that decision for the rest of us. It's presumptious.

And thirdly, it's really hard for me to revere someone who calls themselves "a pit bull in lipstick" yet is ready to pull the "frail female flower" card when it comes to facing me and my fellow travelers in the Fourth Estate. You're running for one of the top two elected offices in the United States, Ms. Palin. If you want to be seen as a true pit bull, might I suggest that you grow a set?!

So, as much as I would love to interview the governor of Alaska, it's an interview I probably won't get.

But you know what i'd like to see? I'd like to see Rick Davis come at Oprah Winfrey with the whole reverance thing when it comes to her being on her show. That would be worth the ticket to Chicago.

No one expects the American Electorate!

2008-09-05T02:02:00.003-04:00

I saw this on LA Times.com and as a Monty Python fan, I just couldn't resist!

He's a lumberjack and he's okay, and he knows what to do with a dead parrot. Besides, it beats the crap out of hearing John McCain tell us how we should vote for him because he's a war hero, despite his having no knowledge of the economy.

And he's certainly more amusing than Sarah Palin, "Fargo" voice not withstanding.

Enjoy!

Tricky Dick Would Have Been Proud

2008-09-04T10:59:00.003-04:00

When you think of nations that imprison reporters for doing their jobs, where do you focus?

Do you focus on African countries like Zimbabwe that are run by strongmen like Robert Mugabe? Or maybe you think of Iran, where free speech is in short supply? Does your mind drift to Russia, China or Cuba perhaps?

But of course you'd never think of America as one of those countries, right?

That's because reporting in America is a Constitutionally-protected job. Under the First Amendment, you're allowed to give people the news and make sure that they know what's going on here. In fact, part of the function of the press is to keep the populace informed enough for them to make decisions on things that impact their lives.

Until yesterday, I believed that you could be a reporter in America without fear of arrest. I believed that you could cover stories no matter how unpopular and not have to worry about being carted away by police.

Then, as she often does, Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica's Democracy Now! showed me that the America I thought I knew, and the real America, are sometimes two different places:

You see, Goodman was one of four reporters arrested at the Republican National Convention Monday. Word got out about the arrests in the mainstream media yesterday. (I read about it on Tuesday via The Nation.) Two of her producers, Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous and a photographer from Philadelphia's Associated Press bureau, Matt Rourke, joined Goodman in the hooscow.

What was their crime? Interviewing protestors and taking pictures of them protesting. Goodman was even less liable: she was interviewing delegates in the XCel Center and was arrested when she came out to ask police why they were taking her producers away. Rourke wasn't charged, but Salazar and Abdel Kouddous are looking at felony riot charges and Goodman is looking at a misdemeanor obstruction of a legal process and interference with a "peace officer" charge.

Geez, where should I start?

First of all, I'm sitting here looking at my DNC press credential as I'm writing this and the one thing that I notice about it is, it's big.

Really big.

Can't miss it if you can read, big.

I have a copy of my press credential from the Republican National Convention in 2000. It was not only large, it was also pink.

So how would a police officer mistake a journalist with a big old press pass for someone trying to incite a riot, especially if said journalist had a pen and pad, a camera, or recording equipment on them?

I don't think literacy is the problem. If you're a cop, chances are you had to take a test for that job. To take a test and pass it, you had to know how to read. If you can't read, and you're a cop, you have bigger problems.

I, personally, think that it's a question of what you can get away with. One thing that I remembered from covering the RNC in Philly is that the Philadelphia Police Department got sued for unjustly incarcerating folks. They'll be paying the lawsuits connected to this clambake off for at least the next 10 years.

But they made the arrests, and even abused some people, because they were given permission. I'm guessing this was the case here as well. Gotta get that "liberal media" back in line, right?

That's why Richard Nixon, otherwise known as Tricky Dick, comes into the picture.

If you've ever wondered where the phrase "liberal media" comes from, you have Richard Nixon to thank. He coined the phrase during the Watergate hearings as a means of deflecting attention away from his misdeeds. He figured that if he could somehow convince the public that his being accused of masterminding the break in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters was some kind of media witch hunt, the public would rally to him.

Fortunately, the public was smarter than that.

But the "liberal media" thing stuck. And because of that, my job, the Constitutionally-protected job that I love, has gotten harder and harder to do....and has become less important to the public despite its necessity.

In fact, a few years back, a study was conducted that showed that there are members of the public who would like to see the First Amendment protections that the press enjoys repealed. There are folks that believe that the press is too free.

(I cried when I read that, by the way.)

What these folks don't realize is that free speech and a free press applies to more than just those who perform the function of journalists. If my right to report the news is taken away, your right to question your government at all or demand information from it is next.

And if you think I'm kidding, I have three words for you: USA PATRIOT Act.

I often feel these days that the fight that my dad fought for 32 years, the fight to preserve this country's freedoms, was for naught. I'm angry for him.

Mr. Scott Heron, the floor is yours.

Sarah Speaks

2008-09-03T23:27:00.004-04:00

If I did nothing else this evening, I wanted to make sure that I was home by 10 p.m. tonight so I could hear John McCain's vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin make her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

After days of hearing about her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, her possible ethics violations (she seems to be particularly fond of firing police officers for not bending to her will) and the controversy surrounding her youngest son, I was ready to hear what she had to say about herself, her vision for the country, and what she had to offer.

So I sat in my car, as I seem to have done for most of the speeches I've heard during the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and listened to Palin's speech. I heard a lot of attacks on Barack Obama. I heard a lot of the usual Republican themes of "The Washington Elites hate us" (although her running mate is among them), "I speak for real people and they (the Democrats) don't" and my personal favorite "What's the difference between a Hockey Mom and a Pit Bull? Lipstick."

(In case you don't know what that last one was, that's the usual sexist reference. That it was delivered by a woman gives it special resonance, I guess.)
I listened to the speech, then I grabbed a copy from MSNBC.com. I read it and read it, and read it again, looking for anything that didn't look, sound, or feel like a McCain talking point. Something that felt like it was genuinely hers.

I'm still looking. In fact, here's exactly what I got from that speech:

(a)While I'm not proud of this, I have to say to you that if the Coen Brothers decide that they want to do a remake of their hit movie "Fargo", Frances McDormand won't have to reprise her role as Sheriff Marge Gunderson if this whole political thing doesn't work out for Sarah Palin. Most of the time she was speaking, I kept imagining this scene:

(b)As a member of the media, I'm tired of politicians with skeleton factories in their closets attacking us when we bring them out. If you don't want your skeletons unveiled, don't make them. If you want us to talk about your experience, have some. Otherwise, take your lumps and keep moving.

and...

(c) During their speeches last week, most of the Democrats pointed out that because the Republicans have either (a) bad ideas or (b) no ideas, they'd go on the attack. Unfortunately, they were right. I saw or heard very few ideas here. But there was plenty of attack, and I expect to hear the same tomorrow when McCain does his acceptance speech.

So my assessment of this speech is that it served one of its purposes: providing red meat to the Right Wing Republican Base, but didn't serve the other, which was to make me think of this woman as anything other than a Hockey Mom with an abuse of power problem.

But at least my assessment is kinder than the one given by a friend of mine. His two-word response: Fuck her!

Feel free to take another look at it and judge for yourself. If I missed something, tell me.