« December 2008 | Main | February 2009 » January 2009 ArchivesJanuary 30, 2009Bayless-baitT.O. doing a reality show. Michael Irvin doing a reality show. Marty Bennett trying to be a rapper. And Mel Renfro is pissed:"On paper, they should win a Super Bowl, but looking at it, there's a lack of dedication, a lack of accountability," Renfro said. "They act like spoiled rotten kids. I'm sure some guys do give their all, but you can't play with a couple of guys. You've got to play as a team."Ugh. I don't know about wins, but the Cowboys will certainly keep ESPN in the black. Bad Things Man...Damn, I loved these commercials. More After the jumpYour family's dysfunctional Caught the second episode of Big Love last night. Since we no longer have a TV, we're dependent on the charity of friends. I don't know if I've said this before, but I think Big Love is pretty fucking great. There's something about Bill Hendrickson that looks familiar...Hmm. Wonder what it could be... Meh, anyone who reads this blog knows me well. I don't come from a polygamous family, but Clan Coates was done different. My Dad has seven kids by four women--the seventh isn't pictured because my mother was actually carrying him at the time. I also count an eighth brother who was the child of my Dad's first wife. I count him because we also spent a lot of time around each other as kids, so much that he calls my father Dad (along with biological father, who raised him). I've taken to calling my family "complicated" in interviews, and while that probably sums it up well for outsiders, it always makes me cringe even as the words come out my mouth. Before I ventured into the wider world, before I left Baltimore, I never thought of my family as particularly complicated. They were just my family. And I loved them like other branches of the Mother (Father?) Tree. Polygamy aside, there's a lot about the show that rings true. Like Bill, my Dad ran his own business and took great pride in this idea of building his own fiefdom here on earth. I don't know if Pops thought of it that way, but he had this "Booker T meets Malcolm meets Emerson" thing about independence and family. Unlike the Hendricksons, my father's kids were impressed into the family business from day one. Two of my brothers, one of my sisters, and my Dad's first wife still work there. I'm obviously not there, but nothing prepares you for the writing life like apprenticing in publishing. Anyway there was a moment in this week's episode that really caught me. Don Embry (probably my favorite character on the show) is having a crisis of manhood. Two of his wives have left (understandably) and taken the kids. Embry is now in violation of "The Principle" and is being barred from seeing his children. He breaks down in front of Bill and tells him that he's failed as a man. Bill picks him up, makes him feel better, and tells him about their mission to establish something independent or self-sufficient so their families can prosper. Against BipartsanshipMatt makes the case:The lesson I would hope the administration learns here is this: He needs to spend less time seeking political cover to mitigate the downside to possible policy failure, and more time trying to implement the best policies he can.Of course there's another kind of long-term politics being played. Obama's trips to Capitol Hill allows him to continue to look like guy willing to talk, while his opponents look like obstructionists. Given Obama's style, I expect to see more, not less, of that in the future. Memories don't live like people doDana Goldstein pines for the old Michelle Obama. Understandable. But it's hard to be the insurrectionist, when your the First Lady.January 29, 2009NFL Open ThreadYou know the rules.The "end" of the culture warPeter Beinart makes the case. I find this part interesting and convincing:n the 1990s, things began to change. Crime declined, welfare was radically scaled back, and affirmative action receded from the political stage, in part because of the deep support it enjoyed from such conservative bastions as corporate America and the military. But the culture war didn't end: It simply morphed from a struggle primarily about race to a struggle primarily about religion. In the 1990s, as the affirmative action, crime, and welfare debates subsided, the void was partly filled by gay marriage, an issue that pits not black against white, but secular against religiously orthodox. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was not a racial battle, but a battle over what standard of public morality would govern political behavior. Bill Clinton's legacy, noted political scientists William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, was to relieve some of the racial anxiety that white working-class voters felt about the Democratic Party but substitute for it a new moral anxiety, felt most acutely by whites who regularly attended church. Ross notes that Obama is more repositioning his forces than ending the war. It's not like Obama isn't making moves on abortion, and I expect that Don't Ask Don't Tell will rise again, and it isn't like conservatives aren't seeing it. Plus, we're living in a time when economic concerns trump all. That isn't exactly the best environment to make a case for a constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage. The dilemma of the modern football fanHow do we love a sport that is taking years off the life of its players? I found this suggestion to be interesting:I'm going to be doing some reporting around this for an upcoming piece. Can't wait to tell you guys what I find. Ted HaggardFor some truly disturbing video, watch a man who once--and apparently still does--crusade against gays, on Oprah talking about seeking therapy to curb his attraction to men. It may not be me right, but I felt enormously sad for him, and even sadder for his wife.A celebrity among celebritiesVia Spencer, John McCain was right...January 28, 2009For barber-shop bloggers in the plaza...I came across this interesting in James Parker's review of Digging For Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB:Dirty's home in hip-hop was the Wu-Tang Clan, where--commercially speaking--NGE doctrine was part of the package, part of the plan. His cousin and fellow Five Percenter the RZA masterminded it on brooding solo walks around Staten Island, N.Y.: In order to conquer the world, Wu-Tang would have to be a world. Nine killer MCs pickled in late-night kung fu flicks, chess lore, Marvel comics, street life, weed cabbalism, and NGE slang eschatology--a hip-hop Middle Earth, with its own legends and grades of being. No other crew could match the sorcerous allure, the smoky Dungeons & Dragons vibe curling off those minimal Wu-Tang beats. "I lived in at least ten different projects," wrote RZA in The Wu-Tang Manual, "and I got to see that the projects are a science project, in the same way that a prison is a science project. ... And in comics, when a science project goes wrong, it produces monsters. Or superheroes."This, to me, was what was so great about the Wu. They created another universe, another mythology and then inserted themselves as characters. I think Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is the zenith of that ideal. For some reason, whenever I listen to that join, all I can think about is The Odyssey--it has this incredibly epic, sprawling, fantastical feel. And it's all layered to standard thug, urban, crack era shit. Think about a line "The first branch, the third leaf,Whoever want it, got beef\I politic, show love, crush those who dare creep..." It almost sounds like a spell, like an summoning or something. This will not sound right--but Wu-Tang, to me, was what I always understood black geekdom to be. Karate flicks, Comic Books (but what about the Wonder Woman bracelet), cartoons (form like Voltron), wrestling (My style broke muthafuckin backs like Ken Patera) etc. They took all of that and then filtered through New York, and through the lense of urban black America, at large. It was a great time. If I'm lucky, one day I hope to write something that moves like Cuban Linx. One day--probably when we're all dead--that album will have its place in the Western canon. EmbarrassingDamn. Was the slickster really that bad? I remember Bobby "The Brain" saying he had that lips like bicycle pedals. Heh. We all that was fucking hilarious. My older brother (Big Bill in those days) laughed about it for days. We were so young.Barack Obama hasn't appointed enough people named Ta-NehisiOr another people who attended HBCUs. Ugh. Jelani on the silly-ass Negro Nitpicking Sweepstakes:
A Deliberative MindSorry for taking some time to link this, I was looking for video of decent quality. I've told you guys before that I'm not the one to be leading any sort of discussion on the Israeli/Palestinian beef, so let me just speak as an ordinary citizen and voter. This interview makes me really, really glad Obama won. I won't know the ends and outs of all of his policy decisions, but what I see here is a man who will think and rethink about those decisions, who is nuanced, and capable of walking and chewing gumOne other point before we roll tape. I think the most important thing that comes across here is Obama's willingness to listen and be respectful of folk. People aren't robots programmed by a few policy points. A little respect goes a long, long way. It opens people up to points that they may not have been willing to be open to before. It clears the way for true dialouge. A course on StarcraftI was always a Warcraft\Total Annihilation\Dark Reign guy. Still this is teh awesome:
Props to my guildies (who shall remain anon!!) for sending this over. People from a distance can't tell who is whoKuros comments:
Yup, I sure did. I don't have a logical defense here. I violated my own standard. So, since I 't don't have a decent rebuttal, I can only give you my thinking. Emotionally, it's a lot easier for me to tune out Hannity, Limbaugh etc. A part of it is that those guys are, let's just say it, nuts. Another part of it is that Williams--unlike Limbaugh and Hannity--is a man who has actually helped this country better understand itself, and helped black people better understand themselves. In other words, I have a respect for Juan Williams, as a thinker, that I simply don't have for most of the clucking heads on cable. There's more. Williams has, of late, been obsessed with gangsta rap and the cultural failings of young black men. Chief among his complaints is how we talk about women. It simply boggles the mind that Williams would then invoke the most ancient of stereotypes about black women. Moreover, it boggles the mind that Williams would actually buy into this idea that Obama is actually some sort of closet radical. As a reporter and as writer--which neither Limbaugh, nor Hannity, nor O'Reilly, nor Scarborough are--I just expect a little more. And then there's one final thing. Look--none of us are clean. But for the past few years we've been treated to older black men holding young black men to a standard, which they themselves have failed to uphold. I get skeptical when I see lazy thinking (be careful about the Cosby/Obama comparisons). I get even more skeptical when I hear people moralizing a little too hard. And I get downright suspicious, when I see people airing everyone else's dirty laundy--except their own. Like I said, nobody's clean. But your past mistakes should chasten--not embolden. I go back and forth between wanting to challenge this stuff, and feeling like it's a waste of time. Blogging is so emotional. Unlike print, there is no screen between us. I try to keep the temperature down around these parts. But the more I blog, the more I find that while that's an important goal, it's impossible to make it an absolute. January 27, 2009Juan Williams is a gangsta rapperAdam really gets at the problem of Juan Williams here. There are people in this world who are offended by the profanity of hip-hop, whose biggest problem is its profanity--its gratuitous use of the word bitch, nigger or fag. But then there are others, I think many of us who love the music, who aren't so much offended by the words, as what's behind them, as what they say about how we feel about ourselves, about the women who raised us when our fathers ran off, about our sisters, about our only partners.But there are plenty of homophobes who don't say fag--we call them Vote Yes on 8. Likewise, there are plenty of sexists who would never use the word bitch--we call them Al'Quaeda. Williams is obviously not a terrorist, but he's a hip-hop scold of the highest order. And yet, as Adam point out, for all of hip-hop's misogyny, I simply can't imagine a rapper insulting Michelle Obama, in the blatantly sexist manner, that Juan Williams did: ...I realized that I've never heard --and I don't think I ever will hear -- a rapper call Michelle Obama a bitch. But you don't have to call a woman a bitch to treat her like one. That's so fucking money. But the truth is that men who run around talking about how they "don't date black women" aren't a scourge on black women--they're a scourge on white women. And this is really how I see Williams. Michelle Obama is the First Lady of the United States, and right now she's got it clicking on all cylinders. Her husband is now the most powerful man on the planet, and arguably the most powerful black man in history. Better yet, think on this. The sisters will be fine. They've seen so much worse than Juan Williams. Ditto for Michelle. What did Gandalf tell Grima? Keep your forked tongue behind you teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm.I would stay still, if I were you... Are you serious?Juan Williams calls Michelle Obama "Stokely Carmichael in a dress," thus proving he knows very little about Michelle Obama and even less about Stokely Carmichael. I have the urge to say something really nasty right now. But I never like those blog posts when I read them a week later. I don't know how to begin to address this dude. I can only say the following--It's a dangerous, dangerous thing to make a living running your mouth.Culture 11 and the War on DrugsHere's David Freddoso for, and Radley Balko against. I think Balko's piece is pretty awesome, and much more substantive. Freddoso comes off better in the bloggingheads below, but I think Balko is just better informed on the topic. I think his federalist approach to legalizing drugs does a great job at moving this conversation out of the realm of abstraction and strawman, to a level of "what would this look like."The Cosby Show and Barack ObamaI keep reading these comparisons between the Obamas and the Huxtables:Yeah, that Karl Rove. Look, I'm not one of those people who thought The Cosby Show wasn't black enough. I loved the Cosby Show, and have seen every episode. More importantly, it holds up as humor--I've seen episodes recently that are just as funny today as they were twenty years ago. That said, nothing says more about the gap between black America, and the people who write about black American, than the fact that, when looking for a precedent for Barack and Michelle, what we get--quite literally--is fiction. The black middle class is a rarely mentioned casualty of our recent race debate. People who read this blog know that I'm deeply sensitive to the issues of the black poor, above all. But in the 90s, we fell into an almost pornographic, voyeuristic obsession with the black poor. Worse the problems of the black poor were conflated with the problems of black people--despite the fact that most black people are no longer poor. America sees itself as a nation of strivers, as a nation built on middle class values. The odious notion that black people don't share in those values has done nothing but further dehumanize us all. Why did I just go off on that ramble? Because the true precedent--from the perspective of race--for the Obamas are Michelle Obama's parents, and Corey Booker's parents who were execs at IBM. It's Colin and Alma Powell. It's the engineering majors I knew at Howard, busting their asses in Founders Library during exams. It's dudes working construction, working plumbing, driving buses. These are people who are make real contact with the broader world, and shape impressions. There are no cameras following them. But they are real--and they're more of them than there are of the dope dealers. In other words, the precedent is us. It takes some stones--and some ignorance--to overlook all that and hearken back to a fictional family that was on television 20 years ago. I cast no aspersions here, but Bill Cosby--like an actor--was playing a role on NBC. This right here, is real. What black people demand of ObamaThere's been a lot of chatter about black people putting too many demands on Barack Obama. Frankly, I've yet to see any evidence of this. Michelle on the other hand:Amid all the praise of First Lady Michelle Obama's fashion choices for the inaugural festivities, the Black Artists Association is taking her to task for not wearing anything by an African American designer. Cofounder Amnau Eele said Wednesday she will make a formal appeal to the First Lady's office on behalf of the BAA. "It's fine and good if you want to be all 'Kumbaya' and 'We Are the World' by representing all different countries. But if you are going to have Isabel Toledo do the inauguration dress, and Jason Wu do the evening gown, why not have Kevan Hall, B Michael, Stephen Burrows or any of the other black designers do something too?" Eele said.Eeele goes on to say, of the inauguration, "this was our moment." Our, as in black designers. Whatever. Like I said yesterday, I've got a visceral dislike of this sort of think. You want something from the world? Go punch somebody in the mouth and then take it. (I don't mean that literally. Stay in school kids!) You want Michelle to rock your gear? Go sell her on it. Don't talk us to death. We aren't the ones you have to convince. We're all conservatives nowAndrew points us to this article arguing that Obama is a conservative:George Bush was not a conservative, but rather a curious hybrid of reactionary and progressive. He was a reactionary by temperament and conviction whose methods were borrowed from the most radical progressives. He besmirched the conservatism that he had forsaken and led it from the corridors of power into the political wilderness.I count not a single issue mentioned there. Last time I checked, being pro-life, pro-war, pro-torture, and anti-stem cell was exactly how you appealed to actual, hardcore conservative voters. But Guantanamo is now laid at the feet of us. Because progressive commentators depict Bush as an arch-conservative instead of the curious amalgam of reactionary and radical revolutionary that he actually was, they remain blind to Obama's conservatism. His senior appointments, the tenor of his inaugural address and his agenda during his first days in office bear the imprimatur of conservatism. Certainly, the cabinet is stocked with a bevy of Clinton administration veterans, many of whom lucratively wiled away the Bush nightmare in the bosom of the same financial institutions whose greed and mismanagement precipitated the present economic crisis. But perhaps more alarming are the appointments of Nancy Killefer to be chief performance officer and Cass Sunstein to run the office of information and regulatory affairs. Certainly the appointments of such exceptionally intelligent people could be embraced if they accompanied a new bold vision for America. But in their present incarnation they suggest that Obama's administration worships at the altar of efficiency and focuses on restoring confidence. Yes. Yes. Because liberals love inefficiency and want the country to have confidence issues. In all seriousness, the piece offers a pretty interesting read of conservativism, but it also is hostage to a very static definition. A lot has been made of Obama's line, "These things are old. These things are true." I guess that's a conservative statement--if you think liberalism is simply the assertion of whatever is new is better. The truth is that, at some point these labels fail, and aren't much use. Martin Luther King argued for radical change, and thus was an anti-Burkean, and yet he drew his power from the old ways. (The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, The Bible) Was he a conservative? I understand the "conservative temperament" argument--but it's bullshit. It could apply to anyone who was thoughtful and deliberative. Let's talk in terms of tangibles--in terms of actual issues. If Obama is a conservative, who are those people out there pillorying him for shutting down Guantanamo? That town needs a better class of bigot This fool--with those lips--is one of three who decided to go out and beat up some black people when Obama won. Incredible. That is some only in New York shit. Where I come from, looking like that is likely to put you on the other side of the baseball bat. But it gets even weirder: Armed with a police-style baton and a metal pipe, they attacked a black teenager, pushed another black man, harassed a Hispanic man and, in a finishing flourish, ran over a white man who they thought was black, leaving him in a coma, the authorities said.Is there anything more to say? Oh yeah. Dumbass. UPDATE: Hyperlink fixt. January 26, 2009Like school on Christmas Day...Roland Burris has no class:"If there was no Martin Luther King Jr. and no Roland Burris, there would be no Barack Obama in the White House today," Burris said to cheers at a Rainbow PUSH Coalition breakfast in Chicago. "We must recognize, friends, that we all stand on each other's shoulders."I have a visceral dislike of people who feel the need to credit themselves. Go pass some fucking legislation, Senator. Go out there and do your job. Surprise somebody. Make something out of that damn appointment. And then kick ass in 2010. Shake up the world, Senator. We'll all be calling you a fucking prophet soon enough. Remember the gay rapper?Round these parts, we love to debate Souljah Boy's influence on the kids, and whether 50 Cent ruined hip-hop. Most of you know I've got little patience for that argument, and here is why. I played Straight Outta Compton the other day. Talk about an album that doesn't hold up. Beats are banging as ever, and Ren and Cube are nasty, but the gimmick is so obvious. Say some hateful shit. Attract a lot of attention. Sell a lot of records.Here's something even more uncomfortable--the ubiquitous presences of the word "fag" throughout 80s and 90s hip-hop. This can't be blamed on gangsta rap, it runs through the entire gamut--I'm talking from "The Message" on ti "Halftime." I'm not writing this to come down on anybody. In fact it's about me--I listened to the music for years with virtually no reaction. I still think Illmatic is pure literature. But this... I got to have it, I miss Mr. Magic ...can't be explained away. It's interesting, because the homophobia bothers me more than the sexism. In hip-hop, women aren't pariahs. They're often talked about in really deplorable fashion, but they aren't untouchables. Quite the opposite. But do you remember the hysteria and finger-pointing around the "gay rapper" rumors? I'm not arguing that you should, or shouldn't, stop listening--I haven't figured that one out for myself, much less other people. I have no idea what goes on in, say, heavy metal. I guess I'm just struck that I missed it, or didn't care, for so long. Moreover, it's another reminder of why nobility through suffering is such BS. Maybe Birth of a Nation really is a "technically great" film. Looking for a way to talk about BattlestarI keep getting notes from people asking me to speak on the series. Here is the problem--I've never watched it. Yes revoke my geek-pass right now. What can I say? I have many realms to administer to--the NFL, black folks, Obama, liberals, X-Men. Sometimes my attention lapses. I have no doubt that this lapse is a grievous one, which I will begin repairing this week. But I want to start from the beginning, so I can't talk about this season.But I know you guys are interested. So here's what we'll do. Once a week, like with the NFL, I'll just open it up and let you guys go. I won't read the comments, so as not to spoil things for me. I will be relying on you guys to regulate trolling. If you see any, e-mail me, and I'll deal. So there it is. Have at it folks. It ain't easy being freeThose Jihadi are a tricky bunch:Friday, a new al-Qaeda salvo attempted to embarrass Obama, a day after the new president announced his plans for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Appearing on the videotaped message were two men who enlisted in al-Qaeda after being freed from that detention center.This, to me, is an interesting question. My perspective on civil liberties vs. security has generally been that you pay a price to live in a free democracy, much like you pay a price to have a "just" justice system. So the presumption of innocence means that some guilty people will get away. We've decided that it would be worse to jail an innocent man, than to let, say, a pedophile go free. I think this is actually a pretty entrenched feeling in the country. But what happens when we start paying the price for living in a free democracy? How bad do we really want to see Guantanamo closed? Enough to see some fool taunting us after having gone back to terrorism? God forbid, but when the next terrorist attack happens, will we be screaming for water-boarding? Bush likes to brag that he kept America safe, and that no attacks (besides 9/11) happened on his watch. Whatever. No one's ever burglarized my house. Must be because Harlem has heard that I pack tool. I'm hoping Obama reminds us of the price of living in a free society, and does it in a way that inspires folks, that takes us away from this "democracy on the cheap" bullshit. Oscar Grant updateAnd the plot thickens.Mrs. JonesSo I spent most of last week thinking, not about Barack Obama, not about history, not about the future, but about Russell Simmons:This wasn't the first time we'd crossed paths. Don't let the door hit you...Was just breezing through the Times edit page, when I saw this at the bottom:This is William Kristol's last column.Kristol never seemed to have much respect for the Times before he got there. That didn't change while he was there. His aspect was that of an overrated draft pick, knowing his time is short, and thus out to bed all he can in the meanwhile. Thus in the parlance of our time I say one great thing came out of all this--Like Bo crushing Bosworth, Bill Kristol has been exposed. On being a liberalI think Andrew should get sick more often; he's been on fire since he got back. But his response to Forbes's haphazard 25 Most Influential Liberals list deserves particular mention. A kind reading of the list says that Forbes thinks anyone who might disagree with Bush is a liberal. A more uncharitable one says that Forbes picked anyone who wasn't likely to vote for Sarah Palin. Anyway, after laying out why he's a conservative, Sullivan says something which (to me) is truly transcendent:...self-confident political groupings seek converts - look at Obama. Failed and failing political groupings seek to punish and list heretics.I think this is a big part of why I wasn't so obsessed with making sure Joe Lieberman got done, or with the "Clintonites" in Obama's cabinet. I wouldn't have cried for Lieberman or for the Clintonites, but it all just seemed beside the point. The GOP has the party they' ve wanted since the days of Nixon, one which bisects the country and is based on the concept of the "other"--the gay, the black, the latino, the urban, and those from the "fake" parts of Virgina. Small town elitism, as they say. The Forbes list really reflects that. January 25, 2009About that mission statementCommenter Brucds:This is a weird-ass blog - old-school black shit, nerdy video games, generic lib politics, hip-hop, cranky generational issues, Reinhold-fucking-Niebhur, football, weekly poetry. WTF ???? Could we at least get a goddam mission statement ? I'm confused.IDK, I think he's about got it. What we don't understand...Commenter Dwayne is annoyed by the poetry thread:There was a lot about the inauguration that annoyed me. Most relative to this, I didn't care for Yo-Yo Ma piece. But my knowledge of music, in general, is particularly limited--maybe I would like it if I understood what I was listening to. Maybe I wouldn't. One doesn't have to like Alexander's poem--plenty of informed and knowledgeable people didn't. But rarely have I heard people confessing their ignorance of the entire genre, and then proceeding to judge. It'd be like if someone leaped into one of our NFL threads and said, "I haven't watched football since I was five, don't much like the game, but I think the Steelers suck.": The Jeezy comparison is apt. People do the same thing with hip-hop all the time. January 23, 2009Because It's Friday...I haven't forgotten you guys. Poem after the jump. Comments will open around 3ish...UPDATE: Comments open guys. I'll give my read in a minute. UPDATE #2: I just wanted to add in that I like this poem, not as much as the Venus Hottentot, but quite a bit. This part really got me: I just think that's so evocative of the moment. Two things bugged me about the piece. I just hate the phrase "praise-song." It feels redundant. Also the dropping of articles is something poets do these days to streamline. But I'm not sure how much it helps Understanding Chicago and Michelle ObamaFor those of you who liked the whole "black-working class-strivers" vibe of the Michelle Obama story, I thought I should pull back the curtain a bit and make some recommendations. First Nicholas Lemann's book The Promised Land is just a monster. I read it a few months before I got the assignment, and was just stunned by Lemann's fusion of on the ground reporting and policy. Barack Obama should read this book (he may have already) because it shows how the failure of brains and good intentions empowers cynicism and cowardice. As a side note, it depicts Chicago's black population in truly loving detail. All the pathology is there--the projects, the gangs, the unplanned pregnancies. But the heart is there too, the sense of striving, the desire to work, the fight to be better. People describe The Promised Land as a tragedy, but I never read it that way. Also Lemann did much of his reporting in this august pages. Here are two links to the original stories.Second, I wanted to reccommend St. Clair Drake's Black Metropolis. I think Drake wrote the book in the 40s or something, but man, does it ever hold up. It's a kind of precursor to The Promised Land, in that it's mostly concerned with orgins of the South Side of Chicago. I read Black Metropolis after I got the assignment, and really got hip to why South Siders had this rep for being so damn bougie. The answer? They had reason to be. But all jokes aside, it's a mighty, mighty history. The South Side is so different than the rest of black America--and yet it embodies just about all of it. I don't know how that can be true, but it is. Anyway I wanted to really recommend those books to you guys. Why are you people here?I was just informed by some very important people that I have to write a mission statement for this blog by the end of business, today. I'll be honest--I haven't the slightest fucking idea what that would be. But you guys might, because, well, you kill a considerable amount of time and, let's be honest, brain-cells, scrolling through here. Why would you do such a thing? What do you get out of it? My hope is to pull something out of what you guys say here. Sorta like crowd-sourcing. But only for my benefit.UPDATE: Closed comments. You guys were making a black man blush--no mean feat. Besides, Romulus wins: "This blog aims to leverage cultural synergies, while moving rapidly to confront the exigencies of life in modern America in a provocative, streetwise and transcendantly classical manner. A core element of our cultural strategy is an open-ended, but engaged, dialogue with commentaters and critics, resulting a free and creative explication of the dynamics of an arguably post-racial America. Crucial aspects of the cultural experience on which this blog is predicated include: the place of sport in the modern consumer experience, hip-hop music reconsidered, the online RPG as social bonding device, the new tribalism, and literature: obsolescent construct or primal signifier" More evidence that Barack Obama is killing hip-hopOr why looking at people like they're chairs, tables or boxes, like nothing changes, like that dude isn't waving an American flag at a hip-hop show, like the whole world can be charted into two dimensions, can be folded into series of if/thens and either/ors, will always fail in blinding fashion.Jigga, being Jigga, has a humanity, and a humor, that all their media accolades can not give them: My president is black, in fact he's half-whiteCan you dig it? Those who love to talk, but hate to listen, can not... Jay-Z My President is black Remix LIVE 1-18-09 from pleasedontstare.com on Vimeo. Argggh....I hate this video, and I'm not even sure why. I think that Neibuhr joint messed me up. The sologaneering burns. The other day I drove past a sign for some children's cause with the slogan, "Because every child is our child" or some such. I thought to myself, "No they aren't." And then I was horrified that I'd think such a thing. It just rang false to me. Anyway, as someone who doubts the primary influence of celebs, and who hopes things stay that way, I think I'm with Patrick. I pledge to be a crumudgeon.The failure of Friday Night LightsI'm reading the book for the first time, having seen the movie and the first two seasons. I probably won't watch the third season, as the second quickly morphed into a southern, working class version of Melrose Place. I'm fascinated by the Southern and the working class, but I can't hack the Melrose Place. But reading the book--late, I know--I never realized that the original town was, presumably, one of the most racist places in the country. Racism runs through the heart of the book--racism towards blacks, racism towards Hispanics. But the writer still maintains an affection for the players, and to some extent, for the town. It's amazing how the story went from a narrative of a West Texas town, viewed through the lens of football, to a kind of quasi-hagiography.In the film, the main sin seems to be that the town is football obsessed. But in the book, the football obsession comes across as a symptom of an almost spiritual vacuum. In the TV show, you're basically getting a soap, as I said. They deal with racism--in episodes, but it isn't a part of the spirit of the town. It's a vehicle to create conflict for Smash. I'll have more to say when I'm done, but I wish the TV and film folks had grappled harder with race. I think it actually adds more to the story. In defense of TNC's grammarAnd John Roberts:
Yeah, I hate language pedants too! January 22, 2009OBAMA, ISRAEL & TALKING TO ENEMIESFrom Eyal PressDid the war in Gaza accomplish anything? Not according to the residents of Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel profiled in yesterday's Times. "So they changed the security situation for the next six months, bravo," a potato farmer said. "They should have gone on longer and finished the job." I heard similar sentiments when I was in Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War: the problem was not that Israel struck back at Hezbollah with excessive force, many people felt, but that the response was too meek. "Tsa-ha-reech leem-chok otam" - "[we] need to wipe them out," a resident of Haifa told me. Given a certain framework of assumptions, such feelings are both predictable and understandable. You're told your enemies will attack you regardless of what your government does. You're told there's no point in talking to them. And you want to be able to work your plot of land without fear of being hit by a missile. Inevitably, some will embrace the 'wipe-them-out' view, despite the fact that even hard-line military strategists acknowledge that obliterating a broad-based, popular movement like Hamas is impossible. What's the alternative? How about, well, talking to them. In the case of Hamas, the response is often that Israel cannot talk to a terrorist organization that denies its right to exist. One thing worth recalling is that the same argument was made, for years, about another organization, the PLO - until Israel started talking to its members. But Hamas is not the PLO - its worldview is more messianic and unyielding. Certainly so, but Hamas is not a monolith, and plenty of people with few illusions and little sympathy for its ideology still favor negotiating with its leaders. One of them is Efraim Halevy, the former chief of the Mossad. Another is Seymour D. Reich, President of the Israel Policy Forum, who, in an op-ed last year coauthored with Geoffrey Lewis, a member of the group's executive committee, wrote: Hamas is the governing authority in Gaza, a reality we can no longer ignore... No progress can be made with a divided Palestinian polity. Israel cannot reach a binding agreement with the Palestinian Authority while at war with Hamas.Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to talk not only to our allies but also to our enemies. He is apparently planning to appoint George J. Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East, an excellent negotiator widely admired for his role in helping to settle another intractable conflict, in Northern Ireland. Both the US and Israel have shown how self-defeating it is to refuse to engage groups or countries based on ideological differences. (The insistence that there was no partner worth engaging led Ariel Sharon to pull out of the Gaza Strip in 2005 without an agreement, even before Hamas was ruling the territory.) Obama must now decide whether to isolate Hamas or support a Palestinian unity government. Though neither policy comes without risks, it seems to me the war in Gaza has only underscored why the first approach is bound to fail. Credit for what you're supposed to do...One last note on that Lowery thread. While I do get why it rubbed some folks the wrong way, let us be careful to not tread into that "I deserve credit for not being racist" territory. We do a lot of people a favor when we we aren't racist--but none more than ourselves. White people who voted for Obama may well have been looking past race, but more specifically they were voting their interest--as well they should. This isn't to single out white people. I'm with Chris Rock on the fatherhood piece. You don't get credit for doing what other hominids generally do--especially since it benefits you, in the long-term. It's the baseline expectation. This country has generally gotten an F minus in race relations. Advancing to "C" is progress--but it's progress to where we really should have been long ago. That is, if we were looking out for our interest.Some thoughts on cable talkI noticed a lot of citations of Morning Joe and Hannity, below, as evidence of outrage at Lowery. I'm still in D.C., and this morning I cut on the TV to see what the talking heads were saying. In short order, I was treated to the morning show people over at Fox replaying a Joe Biden joke in slow motion and attempting to read Barack Obama's body language, and Scarborough asking Andrea Mitchell if Obama was more likely to listen to career CIA professional or a "left-wing law professor from Berkeley."Cable talk is alluring--much like Hostess cupcakes are alluring, but more like how gossip mags are alluring. I get caught up all the time. In fact, one of the reasons I don't have TV is because I was consuming too much of the stuff. A significant portion of these folks' livelihood is based on the threat of loony left-wingers at Berkeley, Upper West Side salon-holders, and Georgetown socialites. It's half journalism, and half drama class. In discussion, let's treat it as such. Also, I'll do my part and stop linking to the stuff. January 21, 2009DumbassesVia Chris Bodenner, stupid is as stupid does:The disease, which struck Europe in the Middle Ages killing more than 25 million people, has swept through a training camp for insurgents in Algeria.I don't celebrate death. But I can't say I'm mourning for people who died from the plague while studying how to infect people with the plague. I know I should be more empathetic but, I just don't have it this time, folks. What did you think he meant by change? Crack reporters from Atlantic media were able to get their hands on some notes scrawled by radical Christian, Marxist Muslim, spawn of the Lich-King, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Handwritten beneath the disturbing stationary logo, pictured above, was the following: 1.) Our new immigration policy shall be the conquest of Mexico. What you thought I forgot about those stamps? Run your country, fool.Mmmmm. Smells like postracialism! UPDATE: Sorry guys. Didn't even realize this was closed. Open now. Packer on AlexanderI'm thinking he didn't like the piece:As for the poet who had the impossible job of immediately following the new President, I'll leave it to you to judge.I haven't said anything because it's going to be our poem on Friday, and I want to discuss it there. I will say this--I liked the piece quite a bit. And I have no idea why they put her after Obama. Seriously, only Lowery can follow with that sort of weight. Joe Lowery and white peopleFrequent commenter KevDog didn't take to kindly to Joe Lowery:Look, everyone knows that we fucked things up in the past. We also know that we can do better. But for crying out loud, all we want is credit for trying. Would that have been too much to ask? This was our day too. This was the country's day.There is a strong temptation to simply say, "Tough. Get over it." Or some such. I think, from a black perspective, we don't expect sensitivity from people who've basically run shit for the past few centuries--especially given that we spent the last two decades hearing about how black people are so sensitive. Moreover, it was a kind of joke, a reversal of that old rhyme about "black get back." Finally, Lowery's a man of a particular era. He was never a nationalist, and is, arguably, the most honorable of King's followers. In the green room at the Newshour, he complimented Gwen Ifill and then told her he knew he was old, because when comes home late now, his wife never asks him where he's been. "Sometimes, I just want to wake her up and say, 'Ask me where I've been!'" he said, jokingly. His wife just sat there and laughed. I guess my point is, if there is any living incarnation of the humanism and broad values of the CRM, it's Lowery. All of that said, I did some thinking, and some sleeping, on this. Certainly, there is a sector of white folks who just want the niggers to get over it. But there is also a section of white folks who, themselves, want to be over it. We never talk about how it must have felt to, say, have been a progressive in the Deep South, who loved the South, but hated the racism. It must have been embarrassing--sort of like hearing the conversation around black life being dominated by the murder rate. Some folks, are just tired of playing the stock villain--especially when they're really just doing what human beings do. Give us the guns and the ships. Would things have been any different? UPDATE: We need a timeout here. Seriously guys. Take a moment to try to understand what your folks on the other side are saying. If you just want to vent, call a friend. I'm not--nor will I ever be interested--in a big "whose fault is it" debate. UPDATE #2: Comments back open. Come on guys. If we can talk Israel, we can talk about this. Don't tempt me Frodo...Has anyone ever taken as long to read 173 pages, as I took to read Reinhold Niebuhr's The Irony of American History? I found myself only able to consume, like, five-ten pages at a time. On my best days, I think I knocked out twenty or so. Thinking is hard work--when I did reporting for the polling piece, I had to lay down for a minute because the minutiae made my head hurt. Same for Neibuhr. I could only take so muchAnyway, the book was incredible on many, many counts. You know you've read a great book when you can think of all the beautiful things you took away, while still clear that you missed quite a bit. I was struck by a lot of things--The irony of securing freedom for the world through the threat of nuclear annihilation. The irony of Marxism, allegedly atheist, as a political religion, a kind of Apocalyptic cult. And then most powerfully how our own sense of virtue and justness is blinding. The worst part about insisting America is always "a force for good" in the world is that it overstates our abilities, and understates our limits. It is patriotism for suckers, analagous to the parent who spoils the child in the name of love. Niebuhr's awesome insight that man's attempt to be the director of history, blinds him to his role as actor, says so much about the world. So even as we talk about making the Middle East safe for freedom and democracy, even as we mindlessly claim that the natural destiny of all mankind is freedom, we are blind to our own selfish motives, our own animal interests. Everything is tainted. And that's beautiful and fine, as long as we can admit it. This brings me to something else. Niebuhr's book is not overly religious until the end, but all through out I could tell I was reading a book written by a theologian. Look, I came up in a house that rejected religion, and so much of what will be normal for you, will be exotic to me. I always thought of Adam and Eve as a way to blame women for the fall of man, and maybe it's that too, I don't know. But I'd never thought of "the Original Sin" as being unchecked ambition, as being an absence of skepticism and self-reflection, a foolish desire to play God--like we just did in the Middle East. I left the book as I came to it--agnostic through and through--but really curious about Catholicism, in particular, and Christianity at large. Life is too short folks. There is too much out there to know. Morning in AmericaMeh, probably not. But I'm feeling better already. When I was young, I was cynical--the sort of dude who would tell you that it didn't matter which party had the White House, or that the Dems as just an extension of corporatism gone amock. I think George Bush did almost as much to mature me, as my parents. And now change begins.Don't ever underestimates teh nuthouseAndrew explains why. We were joking about this yesterday. Never expected it to happen.January 20, 2009When I enter the center, they say, "Yo, yo there he go..."That was me yesterday. This has really been an awesome week. But man, the highlight for me was yesterday when I was on the Newshour with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Rael Nelson James and Joseph Lowery. Most of you guys know how much I appreciate Lowery's courage and willingness to talk straight, even when it isn't comfortable. He was simply awesome today. Frankly, I couldn't really focus sitting next to him. In the words of the God, I was scared I'd press up, and mess up, the scene he'd set. And isn't that the way with all of us coming in the wake of that generation? Who amongst us--Obama excluded--really wants to come after Martin? After Malcolm? After Baldwin?Afterward Lowery jokingly said to me and Rael, "I thought we were going to debate?" Whatever. Maybe when I get another 70 years of wisdom on me. Until then Rev, you got it. Obama as the end of hip-hop cultureThe Corner, following Juan Williams's lead, takes up the case with all the subtlety and nuance you'd expect. I've dealt with this silly, silly argument before. The only thing new I have to add is this: It seems foolish to listen and read pundits in a way that suggests they're talking about actual human beings. I know they claim they are, but they're lying--to themselves, mostly. In reality, the pundit is arguing about two-dimensional caricatures that exist in his head.Only a two-dimensional caricature listens to Tupac, and then decides to be a bad father. Only a two-dimensional caricature sees the election of Obama and then says, "Hmmm, guess this means I can't listen to Jeezy anymore." Only two-dimensional caricatures say, "Hmm, got a black president, better pull my pants up." In the real world, where real people live, and breath real air, a multitude of forces--cultural, social, economic, etc.--weigh on people. Barack Obama will certainly change something about black culture. But anyone who's spent any time around actual people should know better then to act like they know what that is, or how it will play out. These guys are Skip Bayless, telling you who's going to the Super Bowl next year. And then the road not taken...Reaching backThere's a lot of talk about "I Have A Dream" today. But for some reason, I am called back to the following...UPDATE: Found a better version. If ever we needed an open thread...It's today. Consider this your open inaugural thread. I'll be quasi-live-blogging.12:17 I think I've heard too many Obama speeches. I'm unmoved. It's not his fault.He sounds awesome as ever. But I've seen this too many times, I think. 12:05 Oh man. Let's go. 11:35 Dick Cheney rolls through. Que the Darth Vader theme music. 11:31 So what do we think of the dress? 11:16 Clinton looked pissed? Were they just beefing? And whats up with H.W. and Barbara's purple scarves? 11:00 Watching ABC. I don't know how these guys keep talking. 10:57 Kenyatta has announced that she will buy--and fly--an American flag today. 10:54 And now the Obama car. Man look a that motorcade. Pennsy Ave. never looked so good. 10:47 Cheney in a wheel-chair. Not as gratifying as I thought it would be. As soon as I fix the flux capacitorWalking through town this week, I kept wondering what the town would have been like had McCain won. Remember when the Justice League went to like that parallel universe where they were actually super-villains? Or when Spock had a beard? Well, through the wonders of modern technology, we've been able to peer into the shadow universe. Look into the screen. Behold what might have been...January 19, 2009The War & Diaspora JewsFrom Eyal PressWith the war in Gaza on pause, at least for a week, it's worth reflecting on the generational rift it has exposed in a community often assumed to be united in its feelings about Israel: American Jews. As this article in the Canadian National Post notes, while the justness and proportionality of Israel's military campaign was self-evident to the likes of Alan Dershowitz and William Kristol, it was less apparent to a growing circle of young Jewish bloggers: Spencer Ackerman, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Dana Goldstein. Accused by Marty Peretz of hating their inheritance, these writers can more accurately be described as speaking for their generation. As a 2006 survey of American Jews underwritten by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies found, the attitude that Israel can do no wrong has decreased dramatically among Jews under 35, only a small fraction of whom are "always proud" of Israel. A mere 54 percent are even comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state. The Bronfman survey excluded Orthodox Jews, who tend to identify more with Israel, but it also underrepresented Jews aged 21 to 24, leading its authors to speculate that the real level of attachment among young Jews is even lower than what they found. Cultural assimilation - rising intermarriage rates, less participation in Jewish education - explains part of the pattern. So does the fact that, as the work of the above bloggers suggests, fewer and fewer young Jews appear to have internalized the idea that criticizing Israel amounts to a form of self-hatred. Some have even dared to suggest that failing to criticize Israel when its actions are reckless or shortsighted risks endangering the long-term well-being not only of Israelis but also Diaspora Jews. The incursion into Gaza, Dana Goldstein wrote, seems manufactured in opposition to the founding idea of the Zionist project itself -- that the world should be made safe for Jews. And that if the larger world could not be safe, than at least one place -- the Promised Land -- should be... Asking young Jews to fight and die in a ground war, one whose perpetration inflames anti-Semitic sentiments, is not the best way to make Israel, or the world at large, safe for the Jewish people. And sure enough, it is tragic to learn that due to the fighting in Gaza, Jews in France, Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark have suffered anti-Semitic violence and vandalism in recent days.I grew up in a household where merely to suggest such a thing was sacrilegious: Israel fought wars because it had to, not because it chose to. It was reviled because it exists, not because its actions fueled hatred. And if it didn't exist, Jews everywhere would be less secure, dependent on the goodwill of people in other countries. An argument can be made that the war in Gaza was launched against an implacable foe that will never yield to compromise. The much tougher sell is convincing Jews like Goldstein that, with protests erupting throughout the world against a campaign seen as brutal and excessive (all while the Palestinian dream of a homeland remains unrealized), subjecting Israel's conduct to critical scrutiny is somehow improper or unfaithful. And grab the mic like I'm on Soul Train...On Fresh Air at some point today. And the Newshour tonight. I'll update with linx later. If anyone gets them before me. Throw em up.From the annals of Ultra-Racial AmericaWhen I was kid, I always thought it was weird how much white racism, basically, revolved around keeping white women from having sex with black men. I'd be reading some book on black history, where people would be devoting, say, the right of black people to vote. And, inevitably, some white segregationists would say something like "If we let them vote, they'll be marrying your daughters!!! And they'll take over the country!!!" And I think, "Whaaa??" Talk about your non-sequitur.But then I was talking about this with Kenyatta this morning, and it all suddenly made sense. She nodded to Barack Obama and laughingly noted, "They were right." Sam Cooke does it better than youI made it down to the concert, yesterday, on the mall. Was pretty awesome--I thought Garth Brooks was actually the highlight. White music, indeed! Anyway, worst moment was Jon Bon Jovi's take on Change Is Gonna Come. No one should ever cover that song again. Even, Anthony Hamilton, who I linked to a few weeks back. It's no slight to Bon Jovi to say this. He isn't qualified--nor is anyone else on the planet. Moreover, whenever people do the cover, they take the drums and horns that come in at that "I go to the movies part..." The song isn't the same without that. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, let it be. You can only mar it.They aren't who we thought they wereSorry Donovan didn't get it. I can't see the Cards doing in the Steelers. Here's something fascinating. Tomlin is now the third black head coach to get in the Super Bowl--and owes his job to the Rooney Rule, a particularly effective Affirmative Action program. I like the Rooney Rule--it requires clubs to interview minorities, but not hire them. Still the interview puts you in the mix, while not closing out competition. In other words it combats the "old boys club" mentality, but still allows for merit. In terms of coaching, the NFL is really approaching the NBA, which deaded this issue long ago. Props to themFrom the annals of post-racialismLast night at The Root ball, me and Kenyatta are cutting the rug, during the old school set. Biz Markie is on the wheels. And somewhere between the "All Night Long" and "Got To Give It Up" I peep Christopher Hitchens, mid-groove, with some dime-piece on his hip. Philosopher of all things, William Jelani Cobb, who was dancing with his date a few paces away, offered the observation of the week, and the week had just begun...The prospect of Christopher Hitchens getting down to Biz Markie, is only slightly less improbable than the prospect of a black president.Postracial, indeed. January 16, 2009Boomers and race...Fanita asks:Bingo. Well sorta. We have our generational angst--a lot of us wish the CIRC would get lost. But we don't see that as the sum total of our folks' generation--it's just a particular group that lost their mind. A lot of us worship people like Malcolm and Martin. Hip-hop wouldn't exist without Parliament and James Brown. And who doesn't love Muhammad Ali? I think Dave Chappelle's Block Party can't touch Wattstax, and so on... Anti-BoomerismI keep seeing, in comments, people either blaming things on the boomers, or boomers, themselves, taking issue with that. I've done my share of overgeneralizing. My question is, in the age of Obama, does this rankle you guys? Are boomers pissed that we seem to be seeing them all through rather extreme lense of McCain/Ayers/Clinton/Bush?UPDATE: Wow. Hop on a plane to LA, check back in, and what do we have. Prolly the most venomous thread in this blog's undistinguished history. I always sensed this as an undercurrent in the comments. Didn't realize it ran this deep. Nevertheless. I wanted to hear from Boomers, if anymore are out there... Marvin Harrison--O.G.This must be great journalism day. Here's Shaun Assael and Peter Keating profiling Marvin Harrison, who will show you how to do this son:On the rare occasions when Harrison offers a private thought to the public, he quickly clams up. He once told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter that he loved Anita Baker--then refused to divulge his favorite song. When asked to comment for this story, he declined, as did the rest of the Colts organization. ("We're going to honor Marvin's wishes," said a spokesman.) And when Harrison made his 1,102nd career catch, on Dec. 28, moving him into second place on the all-time list, the wideout simply trotted to the sideline, ball under his arm. During an ovation from 66,721 fans, he sat alone at one end of the bench. He accepted a hug from head coach Tony Dungy but said nothing--then or after the game...I have two thoughts after reading this piece--the first more defensible than the second. 1.) As we discussed in regard to Dungy, I think people confuse the morals of players on the field with how they conduct their lives, and vice-versa. Michael Irvin became the poster-boy for a certain type of athlete in the 90s--big talking, undeserving, glamour boys. Surely in his personal life, Mikel was straight ignorant. But on the feild, he outworked everyone. Circa 2001 (now now) it was the same with Ray Lewis. When all the murder trial stuff was swirling around him, a lot of folks let that bleed over into judging him on the feild. But, with a few exceptions, (Ronnie Lott, Walter Payton etc.) I don't know if I've ever seen a more intense, never say die player than Ray Lewis. 2.) This is so wrong. But I'm filled with a silly, childish admiration for Harrison. I'm just a sucker for cats who don't talk, who just go about their business--even criminals. But of course, you know I had my fingers crossedA.O. Scott on the Biggie biopic:..."Notorious" settles into a curious comfort zone; it's half pop fable, half naturalistic docudrama. Not a bad movie, but nowhere near as strong as its soundtrack. It does not explain its hero so much as revel in the memory of his many selves, teasing the audience with a promise of intimacy and understanding much as Biggie himself did, but without the same seductive payoff. The film's tag line could be one of Biggie Smalls's riddling, irresistible refrains: If you don't know, now you know.In addition to not wanting to see Biggie get shot, I don't think I can take the hagiography. CHFF analyzes the playoff alignment problemAnd comes to an interesting conclusion:In the expansion and realignment of 2002, the NFL spit up the lessons in moral hazard it should have digested in the late 1960s. So what we have today is postseason chaos on an even larger scale: a system in which 8-8 teams host playoff games against 12-4 teams, 9-7 teams host not one but two playoff games, 11-5 teams sit at home, and a pair of nine-win teams battle for the right to go to the so-called Super Bowl. Oh how quickly we forgetIn a largely harmless column, Ramesh Ponnuru notes that Obamaphiles can be "a little creepy."There is no recent analogue to the madness--er, hopefulness--that has seized Obama's fans.Hmmm a recent analogue to the madness that seized those who love Obama...Can't think of anything...Straining to come up with examples... The Last ChapterIf you want to know why some folks fear the end of print, read Vanity Fair's oral history of the Bush Administration. Assembled by Cullen Murphy (formerly of the ATL) and Todd Purdum, it really is a stunning act of journalism, which obviously took a ton of man hours. Here's Colin Powell's man, Lawrence Wilkerson setting the stage:We had this confluence of characters--and I use that term very carefully--that included people like Powell, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and so forth, which allowed one perception to be "the dream team." It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president--because, let's face it, that's what he was--was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire. What in effect happened was that a very astute, probably the most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur I've ever run into in my life became the vice president of the United States.The question that beguiles us all is, when paper goes who will pay for that sort of work to get done? Is the future less of the sort of thing Murphy and Purdum pulled together, and more musings by Roger Simon on the oppression Olympics? I'm optimistic. Mostly because I have to be. All of that aside, folks should read the piece just because it really is stunning to see it all laid out before you. Rarely does one see cravenness, arrogance and incompetence married in such expert fashion. I was 25 when Bush came to office, and I never thought it would get this bad. But Purdum and Murphy show how things almost necessarily--from day one--had to go this way. I read this piece on the plane ride out West, yesterday. I got halfway through and couldn't take it, I had to take a break. Finished it just we were coming over Utah, and I was just stunned. Journalism takes a lot of heat on this blog, perhaps some of it undeserved. So it's only right that I call out something when it's well done. Read this piece. Read it. Read it. Read it. January 15, 2009When the boy is on, he's onVia Adam, here's Rev. Al rolling:There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people's bedrooms and claim that God sent you. It amazes me when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being [relegated] into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners.QFT. Wish I had video. From the Verrazzano Bridge to the Golden Gate...I put the pen to the pad and I procreate...Any J-Live fans around? No?Anyway, sorry I've been out today. Was in the air headed west. The Fresh Air piece is tentatively set for next Monday, I think. Will post when it goes up. On another note, I just wanted to say it was a pleasure to read that Israel thread. Not everyone agreed, but people managed to not defame each other. More please. Also, hope to see some of you at Book Passage in a few hours. Peace to Andrew Fly and BelleIsa who came out in Brooklyn last week. I'm bored, so let me rehash something from the primariesLike how race trumps gender in American politics:How come Roland Burris has had such an easy time getting to the U.S. Senate while Caroline Kennedy has had such a hard time? From there, Roger Simon argues that Roland Burris's seating in the Senate, when compared to the hard time Caroline Kennendy is having, shows that race is more of a concern in politics. Man listen, I think Bobby Rush did more to hurt Roland Burris than Blago did. Burris had the law on his side, and Rush through out something that will come back and kill Burris in 2010, and Democrats at large. If I were a Republican, I would have Roland Burris right in my crosshairs. I also think Rush's invocation of God and the CRM were disgusting. But this Simon columnn is the sort of piece that trivializes media. The dude sucks all complexity from the issue. Never mind who Caroline Kennedy is. Never mind that Burris is a career politician. Never mind the specific politics of Illinois and New York. Indeed, never mind that the New York govenor has yet to appoint anyone... Caroline Kennedy got asked serious questions about serious issues, and some thought her answers were vague and inarticulate. Fair enough. Ugh. What a disrespectful peice of writing. Let's not evaluate people on their unique situations and merits. Let's just toss them in broad categories and write about that. Again with the Cheetos jokes...Via Matt, it is a strange world--or maybe just MSNBC--in which I get to see the likes of Pat Buchanan and Co. dismiss blogging as "not journalism" and people "getting it off." Yes that crack reporter Pat Buchanan...There's a lot of status anxiety. And this gets to be its worst, in my view, among the kind of people who do the sort of pseudo-reporting associated with following the President of the United States around. Convention dictates that if I sit at a desk and read a transcript of what the press secretary said and then write about the transcript, I'm a lowly cheeto-eater. But if I sit in the White House press room and transcribe what the press secretary said, and then write about the transcript then that's journalism. Similarly, if I travel around with the president and then read the pool reports that my colleagues write and then write about that: Journalism. But if I read the newspaper account of where the president went and then write about that: Cheetos.Roll tape... Barack makes it easier for white people to tell black people they look like Tiger WoodsOK, so not really. But the Times thinks Obama is making it easier for white people to talk to black people about that ancient divide. Not around these parts. Only black people are allowed to speak over here. I blog assuming that everyone of my white readers has, at one point or another, entertained themselves with a thought of a return to slavery. You're all racist. And you know it. Cracker-ass-cracker. I hate a cracker-ass-cracker!! Except the people who run the Atlantic! They're cool!On a serious note, yesterday I was interviewed by one of my journalistic hereos, Terry Gross. Toughest interview I've ever had, bar none. She was, as she was on the air, not mean but just hitting you with questions that you'd really have no way to prepare for. And they weren't gotcha questions, so much as they were just things that would only occur to her. At one point she asked me about the word "postracial," and, somewhat predictibly, I went on my standard riff about how much I hated the word. But then she noted to variety of the commenters we have here, and how I'm always engaging them, and asked if "postracial" could be applied to this site? It was a good question, one that, in all honesty, I'm actually still thinking about. Dave Meggett has problemsNo seriously:Several months after he was charged with raping a South Carolina woman, former NFL running back David Meggett was in jail Wednesday on allegations of another sexual assault. Wow. It really shouldn't be this way, but you always get this weird dissonance when you see someone you loved watching on the field get accused of doing something truly appalling. Keep on having that party...Via Andrew, Rod Dreher proves himself perceptive as ever:In his latest video dispatch from the war zone in southern Israel, Joe the Plumber accuses an Israeli journalist of not being pro-Israeli. If I were a liberal now, I'd be paying cash money to keep this asinine experiment keepin' on.Hell yeah. And it ain't just him. It's the "writer" who thinks the way to advance the cause is to attack Michelle Obama for wearing fake pearls, or the guy who would be RNC chair who thinks its smart to send of Barack the Magic Negro CDs, or the Bush era "voitng rights" official who likes to crack racist jokes about white people, or the dude who would be RNC chair who thinks gays can restrain their urges to, uhm, be who they are. Roflerz. As a good little liberal, let me do my part and urge these guys on. So go ahead, Joe the Plumber, Ann Coulter, and Magic Negro guy. By all means, Do You. And whatever you do, please, keep on having that party. A Diplomat's ViewFrom Eyal PressI spoke yesterday to Aaron David Miller, author of The Much Too Promised Land and a former adviser to six different Secretaries of State, about the fallout from the war in Gaza and what, if anything, Barack Obama can do to revive the hopes for peace. Few people who sit at the foot of power for this long fail to think through the consequences of disclosing what they've seen, which is why, on the issue of Israeli settlements, Miller's recent admission that in twenty-five years he could not recall one "serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister" about the settlements' damaging impact has caused some jaws to drop. The aftershocks of Israel's war against Hamas will be deep and lasting, Miller told me. "This confrontation will have an enormous impact. A whole new Palestinian narrative is being created - of sacrifice, of struggle, of resistance. You can't kill 1,000 people and not have an enormous blowback." Does this make even attempting to play a constructive role a hopeless endeavor? "The first thing Obama has to do is ask himself a question," he said, "and if he doesn't answer it correctly you might as well hang a 'close-for-season' sign on the door. The question is: do you, Mr. President, believe the Arab-Israeli conflict is a core national priority for your administration? Not an interest, not a serious issue, but a core national priority." If the answer is yes, Miller went on to say, a lot will have to change, starting with the pattern of the US pretending to be an "honest broker" while actually serving as "Israel's lawyer." "Effective brokers reach agreements that reflect a balance of interests," he said. In practical terms, this would mean pushing for a truce in Gaza with provisions that benefit both sides: for Israel, an end to Hamas' rocket fire and a mechanism for monitoring weapons smuggling; for the Gazans, an opening of the crossing points and lifting of the economic blockade (Miller thinks working this out will take months, even if a temporary ceasefire is reached soon). It would mean breaking the twenty-five year pattern he witnessed on settlements. "We've raised the settlement issue plenty [in the past], we've said it's bad," Miller said, "but 'serious' means why are you doing this? Give me a transparent accounting of what you're doing, because I'm not sure even you understand how vast and expansive the settlement project has become." And what if nothing changes? Instead of cutting off aid, which he views as neither warranted nor politically feasible, Miller favors "taking away our auspices" - that is, Obama telling the next Israeli Prime Minister "I am not going to say Israel is committed to peace when you are doing something on the ground which prejudges the disposition of the land you claim to be willing to give away." He believes not even Benjamin Netanyahu would be able to explain to Israelis why, at this price, expanding settlements should continue.        The smart money in Middle East forecasting is nearly always on things getting worse. Miller struck one note of optimism, the Israeli-Syrian front: "it is a doable deal - two states with a track-record of respecting agreements, no settlers, and a benefit that if it works Hezbollah and Hamas are presented with some tough choices." He was less sanguine about the general picture: "Obama's going to inherit a mess. In terms of a conflict-ending agreement - that is, an agreement an Israeli Prime Minister and Palestinian President can stand up and say to their [respective] people, 'it's over,' the chances of that happening are slim to none." [hyperlinks corrected]
January 14, 2009On George Wallace and bigotryA few folks called me out for saying Wallace wasn't a bigot. That's fine. But I just want to be clear that this isn't me doing Wallace a favor. It actually reflects Wallace's political history Alabama. Wallace started out as racial moderate, refused to join the Dixiecrats then switched to race-baiting as a strategy after being, in his words, "out-niggered.' I'm not defending him, in any respect. He was an opportunist and a race-baiter. But "bigot" doesn't really apply to Wallace.The difficult case of Tony DungyNot the football coach, the man. Most of us know that Dungy opposes gay marriage. It's very hard for me to not apply the word bigot to people who hold that position. But I understand that bigot--like racist--has come to be associated with a kind of violence, a kind of torch waving maliciousness. Most importantly, it likely shuts down conversation. I think Dungy presents something that black folks were faced with in the South.There were people, like George Wallace, who embraced racism as opportunism, people who were not bigots themselves, but saw what bigotry could do for their careers. There were others, who would have, say, opposed a lynching, who believed in blacks being able to work and support their families, but also firmly believed God made the races to be separate. Even today you have folks who are friendly with black folks, but would have real trouble with interracial marriage. So there's the recurring theme where you have black folks protesting, and trying to get basic civil rights, but people who were, otherwise, upstanding members of society standing in the way. But these people--whatever their community bonafides--were essential elements of an evil system. It was the veneer of genteel respectability that made segregation tenable, no? With that in mind, I think a guy like Dungy has to be challenged--if, and when, he makes public statements. Of course the question is, how to do it in a way that garners you more allies than it loses you. Obama courting conservativesI think Matt is basically right. I don't see why i'm supposed to be pissed that Obama shared a meal with a bunch of right-wing columnists. I love the shot at bloggers, though. The more I read those sort of backhands, the more I think it's just job anxiety.I saw the best minds of my generation...Folks, I have long--and foolishly--railed against the "advantages" of private school and a top-notch education. You know me well--spawn of the crack age, class clown, kicked out of high school, college dropout, Rakim taught me as much about English as The Bard. I work in a profession in which, at this level, easily half my colleagues are Ivy Leaguers. Amongst the swank company here on the blog-roll, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who didn't go to an Ivy. Moreover, at this point, the number of blacks doing long-form magazine journalism is in the single digits. I say "at this point" but it's not like it was better at some other point. Unlike novelists, poets, newspaper writers etc., there are very very few black writers--if any--who were among my spiritual ancestors, the New Journalists.Often people comment on that fact, and ask me how it feels to be doing what I do, despite who I have been. There is a temptation to take credit, to say that my achievements (whatever their merit) were garnered in spite of "the system," that I wrote my own rules, that I fought the law and I won. That temptation is foolish, and mostly the result of pride, vanity, and a warped sense of the world. If I'm honest with myself, I can say that, for whatever my attributes, I'm a 33-year old writer reading things that my colleagues read in undergrad. I can say that my understanding of grammar reflects the limitations of a kid who stopped paying attention somewhere around seventh grade. I make zero apologies for who I am--it happened the way it was supposed to happen, and I am who I am. But the notion that I should be proud of having, essentially, been a fuck-up for the earlier portion of my life always strikes me as odd. Getting back to the initial point, I spent 17 hours yesterday driving through New England with a single Dad from the projects, here in Harlem, who was trying to get his son into an elite boarding school, for high school. The son already attends a Junior High boarding school, so he's on the right track. Anyway, we toured a few of the high schools. I helped the young man (a great, great, kid) with his application essay. We got stuck in the snow. Both of us got out to push. I'll be telling you more about these folks over the next couple years, I think, but long story short, yesterday, I got to see what a top notch high school education really looks like. It was stunning. I saw one school that was basically the size of Howard University. I saw schools with art studios spanning two levels, with beautiful chapels nestled in the snowy hills, with classrooms where kids weren't lectured to, but sat together in a circle, discussing lessons with a teacher. If I'm honest with myself, I know that while, as young man, I laughed off my school failures publicly. But privately, every time I came up short, I lost a little bit of that sense that all children and young people deserve, that sense that I was capable of anything. I spent the last decade recovering from that. Meh, don't cry for me. I had the sort of family that money can't buy. But yesterday, watching this young black boy from the projects, talking about his love of the Odyssey (and remembering how I devoured the Odyssey in tenth grade), and finishing up his apps to these venerable institutions, seeing all that's really out there, it was a reminder of all that is really out there, and how much work I have to do on behalf of my own son. How will it all turn out? What did the Rev. Lowery say? Who can tell? Who can truly tell? Oscar Grant killer arrestedLooks like they finally got serious. And they're apparently charging him with murder.Every great movement...Have we advanced to the racket phase already? Juliet Macur on change as rank, unadulterated materialism:
January 13, 2009The next big thing...Folks, I'm on the move today spending some time with some folk who I hope will be my next book. Talk amongst yourselves, and remember, only you can prevent thread trolls. Eyal may post today, not sure. I'll be back to you tomorrow.January 12, 2009FoolOh man, Saturday Night Live couldn't have done any better. Here's is Joe The Plumber telling a journalist he isn't pro-Israeli enough, and he's slanting the story toward Hamas. One catch--the journalist is an Israeli. Oh man, you have to watch this. Self-pwnage for the lose. Seriously, I think this guy is a Democratic plant.Dungy goneDamn. I don't think he's an HOFer yet, either. Maybe he'll be back for another stint?African-Americans, Prop 8, and the beguiling art of pollingBefore we get started on this, I want to say that this a layman's attempt to discuss a really complicated issue. Folks who know this stuff are more than welcome to point out the flaws. Alright, let's go..So, in between bouts of Warcraft, and a family trip to Dive Bar to watch the playoffs, I talked to some folks who were smarter than me in regards to polling, Prop 8 and black folks. The biggest takeaway was that journalists/bloggers/writers/pundits need to be a lot more careful when deploying polling data. We should be even more careful when deploying numbers about minority communities, if only because of the sample sizes. And we should be especially careful about drawing broad conclusions based on one exit poll. There are many reasons to doubt that Prop 8 garnered 70 percent approval in the black community, and there are many more reasons to doubt that African-Americans were the ones who killed the gay marriage in California. The first thing to understand is the methodology at work. Exit Pollsters select a group of random precincts which reflect, as accurately as possible, the demographics of the state. Then they approach every nth voter as they leave the polls. Then they do some phone polling to account for absentee balloting. Then, as the returns come in, they weight the results to match the actual vote count, as well as the actual demographics of the polling area. Almost every step introduces the possibility of error. For instance, census data is the only reliable means for understanding the racial makeup of a particular precinct. But how do you know that the racial makeup matches the makeup of eligible voters? Of registered voters? Thus it's possible to get an unrepresentative precinct. "The precinct may or may not be representative," said Patrick Egan, NYU professor and author of the latest Prop 8 study. "A pure sample picks random people out out of hat. But an exit poll is like picking a selection of people and putting into different hats, and then trying to pick out of those hats." Then there's actual execution. David Moore, former VP of Gallup, that refusal rates for exit polls can run as high as 50 percent. "When you have small sample sizes in the case of minorities, exit polls aren't very good predictors," said Moore. "There are so many people who refuse to participate, that you have a response rate problem--and then people who do respond are different than those who don't." Continue reading "African-Americans, Prop 8, and the beguiling art of polling" » Re: "Blinding Tribalism" and the Lines of SympathyFrom Eyal PressShortly after the war in Gaza began, I received an email from a family member urging me to imagine the plight of terrified civilians "living under constant danger of bombs, running to shelters, children in danger of being killed." It's been hard to avoid reading about such things in the past few days, as the news from Gaza grows increasingly grim. But the reference in the email I received wasn't to Palestinians trapped in what the International Red Cross is now characterizing as a 'full-blown' humanitarian crisis. It was to Israelis subjected to Hamas rocket attacks. The suggestion that I hadn't given sufficient thought to their concerns unsettled me less than the unspoken corollary: that no parallel exercise is necessary when it comes to civilians on the other side. That, indeed, it would be disloyal for me or anyone who cares about Israel to think too much about the suffering of Palestinians, particularly when a conflict has erupted and 'our side' needs defending. In an article to which Ta-Nehisi linked last week, Glenn Greenwald described the perils of "blinding tribalism" and argued that the indifference of some Jews to the suffering of Palestinians was rooted in a sense of moral superiority. The belief that "the group with which I was trained to identify is right and good and just and my group's enemy is bad and wrong and violent" leads many people to judge acts on the basis of who did them rather than their moral content, Greenwald maintained. He's right, of course, but in the case of Israel there is another factor at work that fosters a selective sense of sympathy: the belief that one is entitled to reserve one's concern for one's fellow Jews, and perhaps even has a duty to do so, on account of having suffered from exceptional trauma in the past and seen how little the outside world was bothered. Given how few people lifted a finger for us back when Jews were being persecuted and annihilated, the argument goes, why shouldn't we privilege our own suffering? As the son of someone who was born in a Nazi labor camp, I can understand this sentiment. It is an outlook common among survivors. I imagine a vaguely similar set of feelings has impelled some African-Americans to embrace (or at the very least sympathize with aspects of) black nationalism in this country. But saying something is understandable does not make it any less regrettable or dangerous, as some survivors have themselves observed. Many years ago, the Israeli scholar Yehuda Elkana published an essay in which he noted that there were two lessons one could draw from the horrors he'd witnessed as a boy at Auschwitz. The first was "this must never happen again." The second was "this must never happen to us again." Of the two, wrote Elkana, a member of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace-International, a network of scholars committed to ending the occupation and promoting a just settlement of the conflict, "I have always held to the former and seen the latter as catastrophic." The descent continuesJoe the Plumber goes to war. As a war correspondent. Who thinks there shouldn't be war correspondents.For the first time in my adult life...The last chapter in me and my Pops discussion of Michelle Obama. In this one we discuss the differences in terms of being a black woman occupying that position. Weirdly, I tend to think the hardest part (the campaign) is over. I think it's clear I'm somewhat enchanted by this whole thing. But frankly, I really expect Michelle Obama to do well. I think the "angry black woman" bit is overstated amongst journalists looking for a narrative, right-wingers looking for a line of attack, and black people who (understandably) are just afraid.I read a lot of Michelle Obama profiles, in the course of writing this piece, and one thing stuck out--folks were shocked about how much she ribbed her husband. There was a subtext that implied that she wasn't very lady-like. I kept wondering whether the reporters had met any women, ever, or whether they'd ever watched an episode of Alice. How will race complicate things? Who can tell. There's nothing post-racial about me. But I've underestimated white people once. I'm trying not to do it again. Cosby on Meet The PressWorth a viewing. I found very little to object to, save his shot at Def Comedy Jam. But that's fine. What I found much more annoying was David Gregory's questions. I feel bad even calling him out. Whenever I hear journalists--frankly, black and white--discuss African-Americans, it always sound like a group of puzzled scientists discussing Martians. I expect Cosby to be very concerned about the problems of black people--they are, after all, black. If you ever attend one of Cosby's call-outs--and I think everyone should go to one--he sounds more like a pissed off Detroit Lions fan, than a racial scold. I made this point in my Cosby profile. I remember at one call-out he addressed people like me who like to compare black folks to the immigrating Italians and Irish. To which he responded, "I'm black, man. I didn't root for Max Schmeling. I rooted for Joe Louis."That's typical black barbershop logic, and it's fine. It's about what I'd expect from a seventy year old black man. Negroes want to win. Got it. Furthermore, I don't really see a problem with kids getting that message either. It's good to feel like you want to represent. It's good to be proud of who you are. It's good to be competitive. My standard for journalists, however, are different. If the journalist is going to talk about black on black crime, I expect him/her to have some knowledge of violence and crime in cities, amongst various ethnic groups throughout history. If he's going to talk about the current crisis out of wedlock birth, I expect him to know that there were more black women, per thousand, having babies out of wedlock in the 1960s, then there are today. I expect him to know that the number of single women having babies, per thousand, with one major exception (crack era) has declined among blacks, while rising among whites and Latinos. I expect him to be familiar with his topic. Compton's in the houseSo this week I'm headed West, touring for the paperback of The Beautiful Struggle. On Thursday I'll be in San Fran at Book Passage. On Friday, I'll be in L.A. at Eso Won. Holler if you hear me.Ding! Level 80!!I hit it last night in Icecrown while trying to save the Argent Crusade dude infected with the plague. I expect now to be spending some time over at Arena Junkies. For the record, WoW is a lot more pleasant this time around. I think it has to do with joining a guild filled with people my age and older. I've yet to hear anyone call anyone a nubcake ("though I love that word"). I've yet to hear anyone tell another guildie, "Dude, that's so gay." Everything is so much more civilized.January 11, 2009NFL Open ThreadKeep it civil guys.January 9, 2009Cleaner video of the murder of Oscar GrantNot for the faint of heart. This is incredibly disturbing. I still can't, for the life of me, get at what this guy was thinking. Props to Sg for the link.UPDATE: You guys are right. Murder is to strong. I don't know what happened. This is why you cultivate commenters who are smarter than you. They will save you from yourself. Because It's Friday...What you thought I forgot? Ishmael Reed's "I am a Cowboy In the Boat of Ra" is awesome--if only because it has the greatest title ever. Dig in. Poem after the jump. Comments this afternoonUPDATE: Comments open. Go for it Hall-of-Famers left in the NFL playoffsESPN breaks it down. I love LaDainian, but I'm not so sure that if stopped today, he'd be in.UPDATE: I've been pwned. LT's a lock. You guys win. He did it so damn quick. I think this comment explains a lot...It came fairly low in the Prop 8 thread, but it deserved to be higher. We pick up with ECL, mid-debate:
Close your eyes, and hold your breath...Andrew refers us to this analysis of the new Prop 8 Study. I don't find it very convincing. But I learned something the other day from that OED debate--I need to go do my job. Yesterday, I started making calls to do some reporting on the new report, on the original exit polls and the critique of both.There's a difference me playing amateur stat-boy, and me taking some time to gather facts from the pros. I'm aiming for the latter. I invite anyone who's done any research on polling, what exit polls can--and can't--tell us, to use the big "e-mail Ta-Nehisi" button over there. I will respond. I'm not going to get angry. I'm going to get some facts. January 8, 2009Do blacks care about black on black crime?Often when a cop comes under scrutiny for shooting a young black man, I hear some version of the following argument, "Blacks are only angry when a cop kills one of there own. But they don't care about black on black crime, which is way more common."With all due respect to commenter IrishPirate, I knew it was only a matter of time before such an argument was made: It's interesting to me how Irish interprets that Obama's comment. I heard that comment and assumed she was talking about getting shot by someone trying to rob him. But be that as it may, the sentiment that black people are unconcerned about black on black crime is simply wrong. Anyone who lives in any hood, of any sort, has been treated to one of those "Increase The Peace" marches. I date back to "Self-Destruction" and "We're All In the Same Gang --released at the height of hip-hop's black nationalist phase--concerned, not with cops, but with black people killing black people. I spent most of last year following Bill Cosby around to standing room only rallies in Detroit, Birmingham and Baltimore, talking to people who were pissed off by a variety of social maladies. Number one amongst them all--the murder rate among black men. That year, black men in Philly came up with a plan for the community to patrol the corners. It is true that a police killing will draw more headlines--but that has more to do with the MSM considers a story, and what it doesnt, than with what black people care about. The fact that people are pissed that a cop shot a man face down on the pavement, doesn't mean that they also aren't pissed about shit like this. I'm black, and I know I am. Walk and chew gum, people. That's the motto this year. I need to emphasize thisWas reading through the comments below and I wanted to say this again, My position on scapegoating and prop 8, in no way means that those of us in the black community don't have a serious homophobia problem that we need to confront. Put in the most brutal and coldest terms, too many of us dying for us to not take up this fight. One can believe that media got it wrong on Prop 8 and still believe that we've got work to do. Religion explains a lot. History explains a lot. Education explains a lot. But nothing excuses it. We've got work to do. Having been wronged, doesn't automatically make you right. We must learn to walk and chew gum this year.Oscar GrantDon't know if you guys are following this, but a cop in Oakland was caught on tape shooting a man--who later died--while he was face down. The tape is below. The worst part of it all is, unlike in some other cases, this doesn't look a tragic misunderstanding or mistake. The cop simply pulls out his gun and shoots the dude. See for yourselves. The officer has since resigned, lawyered up, and skipped a meeting with investigators. I expect we'll soon be hearing explanations like "the gun summoned itself to the officers waist, unholstered itself and discharged." Meanwhile, protests have turned violent. Postracial, indeed.More MichelleOne of the more poignant moments comes when Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson says the following:"I keep saying this: Michelle, Barack, and my son are not abnormal," Marian Robinson said. "All my relatives, all my friends, all their friends, all their parents, almost all of them have the same story. It's just that their families aren't running for president. It bothers me that people see [Michelle and Barack] as so phenomenal, because there's so much of that in the black neighborhood. They went to the same schools we all did. They went through the same struggles."On some level, that will ring false for some people--these are two Ivy League lawyers, after all. But for those of us who've lived in black neighborhoods all our lives--and probably for black Chicagoans in particular--Robinson's point has a particular resonance. It's not that Ivy League lawyers are walking up and down the street, as much as we see talent, drive, and ambition every day. We see people taking their kids to school, going to PTA meetings, working their jobs everyday. But somehow the worst of it, becomes the most of it--and then the all of it. I think Obama, herself, also got at this at the end of the piece: "People have never met a Michelle Obama," the soon-to-be first lady said toward the end of our interview. "But what they'll come to learn is that there are thousands and thousands of Michelle and Barack Obamas across America. You just don't live next door to them, or there isn't a TV show about them."Anyway, here's another video where me and Pops discuss that aspect. No black senators?Nate Silver's post on why there are no black senators is really good, and has been attracting a lot of attention. But let me begin by quibbling with something:The question, of course, is why African-Americans aren't getting elected in these districts. Racism is undoubtedly part of the answer, but it probably can't be a complete one now that the country has just elected Barack Obama to the White House.I want to agree that racism can't explain it all. Having said that, I also think this is the sort of thing that keeps black people up at night. The problem is that Nate is looking at the racism of right now--i.e. will white people today vote for a black guy. But the worse racism happened yesterday, and it's the worse because we're still feeling the effects of it. Nate, I think correctly, notes that one reason there aren't any black senators is because blacks aren't competing in districts that look like America: I suspect that a lot of the problem, however, is that as Congressional Districts have become more and more gerrymandered, leading to the creation of more and more majority-minority districts following the 1980 and 1990 censuses, the black political apparatus has become more and more 'ghettoized'. Black candidates have not had to develop a message that appeals to white voters, because most of them don't have very many white voters in their districts (about half the nation's African-American population is limited to the 60 blackest Congressional Districts). Nor do they have very many conservative voters in their districts, and so they have not had to develop a message that appeals to conservatives, even though the black population itself is far more diverse in its political views than is generally acknowledged.Leaving aside that raging lefty Harold Ford, gerrymandering isn't the only reason black congressmen tend to come from majority black districts. African-Americans are still the most segregated minority in the country. I can't overstate how much that sort of thing warps a prospective candidate's world. It influences who he meets, what he sees, what he's invited to, who he has drinks with etc. It's not because white people are saying, Nigger don't come over here. It's because these folks don't know each other. That said, there's a Du Bois quote that I love, even though I'm about mangle it. Du Bois, disenchanted with the NAACP, ironically had entered into a Garveyite phase. Speaking on the future of race he told black people,"You didn't create this problem. But you will have to fix it." That's not the exact quote, but it's something like that, and it really captures the best of black nationalism. Du Bois's point was to not so much to dismiss white racism, but to look at the problem and acknowledge that mass white benevolence would not be forthcoming. You know the NAACP is in trouble...When your boy gets nominated for an "Image Award." Man listen: The kid boasts the sort of resume that sends respectable blacks into anaphylactic shock. Let's do a run down here:--Born out wedlock. Check! --Has brothers and sisters by different mothers. Check! --Was kicked out of high school. Check! --Dropped out of college. Check! --Bad grammar. Check! --Happily continued the cycle of having children out of wedlock, Check!! --Lives in sin. CheckCheck!!! --Has not been to church--in, well, almost ever. Check! --Uses the word nigger. CheckityCheckCheck!! --Uses the word conversate, then attempts to legitimize it. Check! If only I'd done a bid, the cipher would be complete. But I'm from Baltimore. I think that counts. There's a part of me that wants to say to the NAACP--Do I look like a role model? But it's a really, really, really small part. The truth of the matter is that I'm highly amused. But the deeper truth is that I'm honored. All I ever wanted to do, was represent for my folk. Now get out here, before I start losing my edge. Someone send me a Bobby Rush clip. Fast. They still make you??Via the awesome Dave Weigel, we see the PUMAS are alive and well, and competing for Hillary Clintons seat. Which PUMAs? That one, of course! Rewind, selector...I think the most egregious part isn't even the "inadequate black male" comment--that's just funny now. The truly fascinating thing is to remember that there were people who actually believed that Obama was going to take Democratic party down the tubes. Christian may be ranting in this video, but she wasn't alone. Remember that cat down South who said he supported Hillary because if Obama was the nominee, every Democrat under him would lose? Wonder where that kid is now... January 7, 2009Added Bonus: Irregardless of what you think, "conversate" is a wordSo a bunch of people noted in yesterday's Ebonics thread that conversate wasn't a word, because it wasn't in the Oxford English Dictionary. Well, I had nothing better to do today, so I decided to call up the OED people and see if I could get an editor to talk to me. Jesse Sheidlower, Editor At Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, was nice enough to bring some knowledge to this most important subject.Ta-Nehisi: So is conversate a word? Jesse Sheidlower: Of course it's a word, the question is, is it acceptable. There are a lot of things that are acceptable in some situations, and not acceptable in others. "Table" is generally acceptable, but "ass" or "fuck" might not be, In some cases they would. It's the same for "hopefully" or "irregardless." They're all words, but it behooves us to be serious and ask, is it acceptable in this context? If you're delivering the State of the Union address, maybe "fuck" is not acceptable. If you're having sex with your girlfriend, maybe it is acceptable. TNC: If a word isn't in the OED, does that mean it isn't actually a word? JS: Our goal is to include things that are in widespread use. We don't care about things like whether they are acceptable, ungrammatical, or offensive. There are times when we have many, many words for the same concept. People say, "We don't need conversate, we have converse." Well then, we don't need hip because we have cool. We don't need illness because we have malady. There are factors that we look at. They include how widespread something really is. How long has it been around? How broad is its use? A word that's in widespread use in many places is more likely to be included than a word that is only used in a small place but is widespread. [MORE] Continue reading "Added Bonus: Irregardless of what you think, "conversate" is a word" » What Israelis ThinkUPDATE: By Eyal PressA couple of readers have asked about the state of opinion within Israel, wondering if there's a greater diversity of views among Israelis than the headlines here suggest. In fact, Israel is one of the most fractious political societies on earth. Israelis tend to stand together when they feel threatened, as people in most countries do, but they also love to argue. Consensus is about as common (and lasting) as snowfall. And unlike in many other Middle Eastern countries, Israelis have the freedom to air just about any political opinion they want. For a flavor, check out the columns in Haaretz, where you will find far more pungent criticism of the Israeli government than in the American press. The recent war might make you think a lot of Israelis have shifted to the right, resigning themselves to the idea that the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be occupied and subjugated forever. But this isn't the case. A majority of Israelis still favor a two-state solution. A great many revile the settlers. The vision of a "Greater Israel" championed by the right for decades keeps losing advocates, and not just on the far left. Last October, in an interview with the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, once a hard-line member of the Likud, conceded that building settlements and checkpoints will do nothing to bring Israel long-term security: We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage [of territory elsewhere]--without this, there will be no peace."Including Jerusalem?" he was asked. "Including Jerusalem," he said. Afterwards, the columnist Gideon Levy announced, "With neither sorrow nor grief it may be announced: The Israeli right is dead." This may be a bit premature. But the right has indeed lost the ideological battle. The problem is that many Israelis on the center and moderate left are conflicted and confused. More and more when I've gone to Israel in recent years, I've spoken to people who unequivocally oppose expending lives and resources to defend illegal settlements, but who also fear withdrawing from the West Bank will only lead to violence and chaos. We don't believe you, you need more people...Harry Reid flexes:Harry Reid needs to take his baby moms advice. Seriously, you want a majority leader who's going to hold the president accountable. But after watching Reid get waxed by Blago, I don't think he's the guy to do it. Prop 8 and blaming the blacksI'm sorry, but this really pisses me off. The problem with getting good numbers is that they invariably take time to come in. In the meantime, people are happy to run off and trumpet their half-cocked theories--unchallenged--to anyone who's listening. I've tried to be measured and sensitive on this. But frankly, the scapegoating of black people for the1.) The 70 percent figure for black support of Prop 8 is wildly overblown, and in conflict with all the other polling done. The study concludes that 58 percent is a more likely number. To put that in context, the study also concludes that 59 percent of Latinos supported prop 8. That isn't one-up-manship--it just means we were about the same. 2.) Black people almost certainly did not account for 10 percent of the voters on Prop 8, they accounted for seven percent 3.) 58 percent is still higher than the 52 percent for the state, as a whole, but that difference is almost entirely accounted for by the fact that no ethnic group in California is as religiously devout as (as measured by church attendance) African-Americans. 4.) Among those who attended church weekly, African-Americans were support for Prop 8 was lower than amongst any other ethnic group. The faultiness of exit polling is well known. But when it comes to blacks, we believe the worse and ask questions, uhm, like never. Look, my fight is clear. Homophobia is bad for my community. I support gay marriage because I believe it is a moral imperative, and the marker of a just society. I support it because, as a black man, I have seen first-hand the value of all kinds of family. In other words, it's in my interest. It's in my son's interest. It's a part of a world, that I hope to live in. But frankly, I have no use for people--gay, straight, white, red, rich, poor--who feel like black people "owe them." I have no use for people who like to trot out their history of supporting "black causes." I have no use for people who want to compare gay racism with black homophobia. With friends like those... There are people in my business who took to the highest hills to decry the betrayal of black Californians, and to this day, are giddily noting that blacks sunk marriage equality in California, who foist the failure of marriage equality on seven percent of the electorate . I will not speculate on their motives. But let's see how loudly they address this study. Let's see how much ink we see spilled revisiting those assumptions. Or will it be on to the next calamity, where the blacks--or the Arabs, or the Latinos--can be trotted out and blamed for the failings of others. For the failings of us all. For people who've forgotten what lynching actually meansThis is late, but it's an important point from Jelani:New rule effective immediately: no politician can use the term "lynching" to describe an otherwise routine political impasse. Nor can it be used for low-grade racial conflicts. Between 1880-1910 African Americans were lynched at a rate that averages out to two per week. These were people who were routinely tortured, shot and castrated before being set afire. Being passed over for a job -- even a job you deserve -- just isn't in the same category as recreational murder.Yup, and when Rush threw that "lynching" card out there, he didn't just disgrace himself, he really trivialized, arguably, the most disgraceful eras in American history. Of course he wasn't the first:
Flawed AnalogyUPDATE: By Eyal PressOn the letters page of yesterday's New York Times, a reader from Haifa asked Americans to consider what their government would do if a terrorist organization in Mexico started launching missiles at Texas. "How long do you think the United States would tolerate having rockets fired at Americans in El Paso?" If you've heard this question raised elsewhere lately, it's no accident. According to Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist for Haaretz and coauthor of Lords of the Land, an important new history of the settlement project, a film has actually been produced that compares Israel's southern border to that of the United States. "Would the United States ignore rockets fired from Mexico into San Diego?" the narrator asks. What's wrong with this analogy? I defer to Eldar, who points out that Israel's border with Gaza is actually different than any other border in the world, notwithstanding its withdrawal from the territory in 2005: Israel controls the entrances and exits, as well as access to necessities such as power and water. Mexico has not spent the last three or more years under an American aerial and sea blockade. Moreover, Israel's impressive victory in the Six-Day War turned the West Bank and Gaza into one ethnic unit. In the peace agreement signed by Egypt and Israel in 1979, the Gaza Strip remained in Israel's hands. The Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians, signed in September 1993, determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are one political entity. This means that as long as the West Bank is under Israeli occupation, so too is Gaza.None of this justifies the conduct of Hamas, which Eldar (like me) would love to see removed from power. But he recognizes that this can only happen through the ballet box, and that analogies to the borders of other countries will prove persuasive only when Israel demarcates permanent borders with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In other words, after negotations resume to end the occupation. On almost taking Michelle Obama for white...I've been leery about talking about Michelle Obama on the blog, while I knew this story was coming out--I didn't want to preempt myself. But I'd like to discuss some aspects of the story now. I'd also like to answer any questions that you guys might have. Anyway, I've noticed in comments that there's a lot of attention being paid to the lede. A lot of that has to do with me and my Dad debating the lede in the video, but also, I think it probably is a bit jarring. Here's the lede again:The first time I saw Michelle Obama in the flesh, I almost took her for white. It was late July. Pundits were taking whispered bets on the fate of Hillary Clinton's female supporters. In part to heal the intraparty rift, and in part to raise some cash, Obama was presiding over a Chicago luncheon for Democratic women. They were an opulent, multiracial, mostly middle-aged bunch, in pantsuits and conservative dresses. Clinton-turned-Obama staffer Patti Solis Doyle waved from the floor when she was introduced. One of Clinton's longtime backers appealed for unity. Only a few weeks earlier, Obama had appeared on The View in a striking black-and-white floral dress. Now, throughout the room, some of the women were decked out in their best version of that number. Obama flashed her trademark sense of humor, her long arms cutting the air, as she made her points. Continue reading "On almost taking Michelle Obama for white..." » The future of the Congressional Black CaucusI think there are serious questions to be asked about where the CBC is headed and what, exactly, its relevance will be over the next decade or so. But it's wrong to say those questions are arising, solely, because of the election of Barack Obama. Those of us who watch these issues know that this is more about the growing ineffectiveness of the Civil Rights Industrial Complex, and its distance from those it was supposed to be repping for. Moreover, this is a really squishy attempt to answer those questions filled with hypotheticals, hedges, and trumped up conflicts.On Israeli and American interestHere's a nice debate I caught on NPR yesterday over what two do when those two things don't line up. And here's Ross and Larison debating about Stephen Walt, one of the debaters, and future of conservative foreign policy.January 6, 2009A really good signSo Obama really is serious about torture? Good to see. Also, dig this piece by Greenwald on Obama appointee Dawn Johnsen, the anti-John Yoo:
So, so awesomeIn roughly six minutes, Ann Coulter asserts that Sean Hannity is more likely to be assassinated than Barack Obama, that the country is teeming with "left-wing violence," calls W. the most persecuted and attacked president since Richard Nixon, and calls Tom Delay a victim of oppression. As I said--So. Awesome. My only beef with this interview was that dude should have let her talk more, and disagreed less. Plus no hits on Michelle Obama. Come on man! More thuggism plz!Brooklyn, we go hardFriends,The paperback of the Beautiful Struggle, my memoir of growing up in West Baltimore during the Crack Age, while addicted to D&D, X-Men and Public Enemy. More to the point I'll be taking a break from Warcraft, and reading at 7 P.M. this evening at the Court Street Barnes and Noble, in Brooklyn. Please come out--but only if you plan to tell me how awesome I am. Life is short. And my ego is fragile. Class Warfare--Negro styleSeriously, I love my bougie people--and some of you are even my literal fam. No Jack & Jillers (yet) but the pink and green reps on my side, and the Delta on Kenyatta's side. I went to Howard, and I know that ya'll are more than cotillions and Martha's Vineyard (and yet you're that too). Plus, when I was a kid, we all thought that hottest chicks (county girls for the win!) were gonna be at your parties. Moreover, I think fully half my readership is made up of future members of the Boule\Links. Don't ever let it be said that I don't got love for my Bougie people.But I gotta drop it on you one time... Conversate--much like copacetic--is a word, and it's word that you'll be seeing on this blog quite a bit. So for all the Carlton and Crystals out there, I have a message--you can't win this one. The Keyshawns have it on the slanguage. Tamika wins the day. Again! A past time hobby about to be... You guys know I love to blog, and I really love conversating (It's a word, dammit!) with the crowd. But very few things (your mind is now free to wonder) exceed the thrill of publishing a piece in the Atlantic. This one is about Michelle Obama. I've been working on it for six months. But frankly, to paraphrase Phil, I've been thinking about this moment all my life. Here's an excerpt.
Changing the equation--Maybe for the worseFrom Eyal PressGreetings to Ta-Nehisi's fans and readers. As my friend and fellow Chimay-lover warned you, I'm here as a guest-blogger to comment on the "all-out war" that Israel has launched against Hamas, which has now stretched into a second week and may drag on for a good while longer. And so, we begin... Rebuffing diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni insisted yesterday that the goal of the operation was to "change the equation" in the region. Since few Israelis openly endorse a permanent reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, her assumption is presumably that a truce will eventually be reached on terms more favorable to Israel, putting a stop to Hamas' missile attacks, and that Palestinians will conclude from the latest round of carnage that they should throw their support behind new, more moderate leaders. The first assumption is debatable, the second illogical and perverse. The 1.5 million residents of Gaza have spent the past eleven days scrambling for cover. Mosques, universities and government buildings have been destroyed. The death toll has climbed above 550 Palestinians. Unless Hamas' supporters have lost the capacity to feel enraged and insulted, feelings never in short supply among them in the past, it's hard to see how witnessing this will lead them to choose more moderate leaders. Or for that matter how it will weaken Hamas, which had seen its popularity among Palestinians decline before Israel's invasion was launched. As the Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab noted in the Washington Post, a survey conducted in November found that a mere 16.6 percent of Palestinians backed Hamas, due largely to the group's intransigence and unwillingness to forge a national-unity government. But that was before Israel's onslaught. To quote Kattub: The disproportionate and heavy-handed Israeli attacks on Gaza have been a bonanza for Hamas. The movement renewed its standing in the Arab world, secured international favor further afield and succeeded in scuttling indirect Israeli-Syrian talks and direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. It has also greatly embarrassed Israel's strongest Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan.We have, of course, been here before. In July 2006, Israel launched an aerial assault on Lebanon to destroy the arsenal of Hezbollah and put a stop to its cross-border rocket attacks. As we all know, the mission failed, with Hezbollah emerging, if anything, stronger (and Israel more widely hated). This time, the usual coterie of pro-war pundits insist, it will be different. The Israeli military is better prepared, the circumstances have altered... Yet the same flawed premise is at work. Like Hezbollah, Hamas is a religious-nationalist movement that cannot simply be expunged by force - and that did, lest we forget, win an election back in 2006. Like Hezbollah, it thrives on the very sort of conflict Israel's leaders somehow imagine will destroy it. Other than boosting the short-term political prospects of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and deepening the anger and misery of the Gazans, it's hard to see what this war will accomplish. Music thread for 2008The AV Club wraps up it picks. Dear Science takes the crown. Love that joint, though I just can't keep up on the music like I used to. Anyway what were you guys rocking this year, mostly? For those who somehow missed out on TVoTR, below is a live performance of Love Dog.More Burris and RushHere I am this morning on NPR. The thing that grates me here is that Rush is basically trying to push Harry Reid to show a kind of political courage which he himself could not show in 2004. It's pretty amazing.Because I said soDon't know how many of you followed this, but last week Zbigniew Brzezinski went on Scarborough's show and basically sonned him. It's a hard thing to not speak out of turn--especially when you're a talking head, or a blogger. There's a lot of pressure to have an opinion on everything--and to speak as though that opinion is deeply informed. One way to do that is to align yourself politically and just parrot the thinking of your ideological allies. Another way is to simply shut the fuck up when you don't what your talking about.Opinion journalism is two parts. The first is combative--you do, in fact, want to be right. And your audience expects you to have the basics of argumentation down, and to make a game effort. But the second part is educational--its about exploration, about learning. And part of learning, is getting sonned by people who know more than you. But television tends to attract the sort of people who are more concerned with combat than exploration. In their hands, opinion journalism becomes a kind of Olympics Of Righteousness, a contest to prove your superior and infallible knowledge. Hence this Scarborough clip below. Scarborough's people don't seem interested in researching Brzezinski's position. They're just looking for evidence that they are right. It's interesting to see them presenting that evidence when the only available to defend Brzezinski is his daughter, who's obviously conflicted and trying to defuse the situation, without dishonoring her father. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy January 5, 2009A black guy and a Jewish guy walk into a bar...I have rule that I work really hard to stick to--I only blog about things I'm prepared to argue about. I try to avoid posting my 3 A.M. rants which come courtesy of a fifth Guinness. I've broken that rule before, and paid for it. Hence the silence around Israel in general, and Gaza in particular. I have my thoughts, and I've read my Tom Segev, my Benny Morris, my Walter Lacquer. But I try to give folks the respect I'd want for me and mine. I don't take kindly to fools who think that a couple readings of Native Son and Colored People makes them an expert on the black condition. I'd never want to make the same mistake.You know what you're going to get from Ta-Nehisi--if you don't like video games, books, hip-hop, sports, the X-Men, black people and/or Worf, you're probably on the wrong blog. Those are my limits. That said, having come here in the wake of Matt's departure, I've been struggling with those limits. When something happens--like what's going on in Gaza--I think it's important to have some sort of discussion here from a progressive perspective, even if I'm not really qualified to lead it. So I have an experiment I'm going to run. For a few posts a week, I'm going to turn over this blog to a good friend, Eyal Press--a fellow writer, a fellow progressive, a fellow beer lover, and a fellow football fan. I wanted him to blog some about Gaza, because, frankly, we've spent much of our friendship comparing notes about the perils and boon of nationalism and identity, and how they play out in our respective experience. What I've always liked about Eyal, is what I like about all writers I follow--nuance without lapsing into "on the other hand"-ism, and strength that doesn't harden into rigidity. The fact and I'm black and Eyal is a Jew has been a sore point--but not as sore as the fact that I'm a Cowboys fan, and Eyal loves the Bills. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he was in the stadium for the Bills comeback against the Oilers, and for their thrashing of the Raiders. I guess, I should offer up some bonafides also. Eyal was born in Jerusalem, and moved to Buffalo, New York when he was a child. Eyal has written for The Nation, The American Prospect, The Raritan Review, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic. His book Absolute Convictions chronicles the abortion wars in Buffalo, to which he had front row seat--his father, an obstetrician, was a constant target of pro-life protests. Dr. Bernard Slepian, who was murdered in 1998, was a family friend. Here's Eyal in his own words: Growing up, I visited Israel every summer, often traveling through the country with my cousin and his friends in Hashomer Hatzair, a progressive Zionist youth group. My attachment to the country runs deep. But I'm also among the many progressive Jews who went to the college when the first Palestinian Intifada erupted and who have come to view the occupation as a calamity. I'm not a pacifist but I've seen enough wars go awry (Lebanon in '82 and 2006, Iraq...) to be deeply skeptical.Israel is a highly contentious and emotional issue. As always, I don't ask that you guys agree with Eyal--I just ask that we all agree to respect each other. I hate to wave the hammer, but I'll be watching the comments, and coming down hard on ad-hominem. If you're looking to exchange ideas come on down. If you're angry and looking to vent, I'd ask that you step outside. Ed Reed is sicker than youHe really is. Often you'll see a great defensive back turn a quarterback's mistake to his advantage, but rarely do you see a play like this. Ed Reed simply creates this. It's true the receiver fell, but this is an freakish interception, and then an incredible run back.ClassGeorge Packer has quite a bit of it.I'm late to this...But Glenn Greenwald has been on it. Here he is tackling Goldfarb:There are few concepts more elastic and subject to exploitation than "Terrorism," the all-purpose justifying and fear-mongering term. But if it means anything, it means exactly the mindset which Goldfarb is expressing: slaughtering innocent civilians in order to "send a message," to "deter" political actors by making them fear that continuing on the same course will result in the deaths of civilians and -- best of all, from the Terrorist's perspective -- even their own children and other family members.Read the whole thing. This is the kind of writing that, for me, deads this whole idea that people who write "columns" are somehow real journalists, while bloggers are just penning screeds. Drugs, jewels and Versace Howard University, over a decade ago, and I was, as you must know by now, the essence of elitist, backpacking player-hatred. I stepped out the womb disheveled, crooked glasses, nappy head, dirty to the world. And I could not change for college--in the hall of heroes and game, I was steady banging "Suspended in Time," chasing girls who looked right through me, toting Walter Rodney wherever I'd go. In Founder's Library, there were pictures of Titans. Ali outside Douglass Hall, Eric Williams in shades, Malcolm and Bayard going a few rounds. I'd visit a few times a week, get charged off tradition, and then walk out out on to the yard, not sure which way to go. Fridays were straight confusion. That was when Mecca shelved their Timbs, and lined U Street, hoping on Republic Gardens and fifty cent drinks. But I was home in my cluttered efficiency, alternating between Larry Neal and NBA Live. Outside, the cars would wheel up 15th, past the corner-hangers, hustling their headache weed. From their systems, always the same ass-mongering anthem pumped--a fat dude swinging on his own dick. I'd shake my head knowing it was the sign of the times, knowing that it was 1995, and Biggie Smalls was fucking up my life. So much time spent on what is and isn't real. I was a wannabee poet failing out of English. No matter, I'd tell myself, classrooms are artifice. The real man must self-reach. I'd troop down to the local open mics--partly to check out shorties so gorgeous they scared me, but mostly to sneer at bad poetry, and feel angry. And feel right. At home in the afternoon, there were Power Rangers on the screen, and I was preposterous swearing that the world has not been the same since the days of Skeletor came to Grayskull. I was nostalgia in the flesh. Never was there a kid, more in need of drink. Never was there a dude who should have pulled, not passed, in the cipher. A fight conservatives are dying to have...That would be any fight with Harry Reid on the other side. Seriously though, when you're leaning on Mitch McConnell for help, you're in trouble. Slate has an argument up for how the Senate could refuse Burris, but I don't see it happening. It is amazing to me that Reid has been outmaneuvered by the sort of overt, hamfisted indentity politics deployed in the 70s:Reid is on the defensive, and not because of the potency of identity politics. He's on the defensive because he did nothing on Sunday to dispel the stories that he preferred a candidate who couldn't win a house seat, to a couple of longstanding members of Congress. I don't want to hear about how Jesse and Danny Davis can't compete downstate in 2010. That is the same sort of logic that gave us Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton back in 2006. This whole situation really makes me sick. But it reminds me of something I learned about Marion Barry, back in the 90s when I was covering D.C. Barry had the Bobby Rush game down pat--he'd make any criticism of him, by default, a criticism of Chocolate City. But the lowness of the tactic would often blind people to a very uncomfortable truth--Marion Barry was a great politician. It's true that Rush and Blago took a cheap-shot. But, likewise, that shouldn't blind us to the greater truth--this time out, they just played the game better. A fight liberals are dying to haveComewiddit:
Now, it goes without saying that Ann Coulter doesn't so much rep for conservatives, as much as she reps for a special brand of thuggery. But it also goes without saying that that brand of thuggery was indispensable to the the GOP, over the past thirty years. Moreover, every once in a while I reserve the right to drop the high-minded act, and speak from the darkest reachest of the soul. In that spirit. I offer the following--I sincerely hope, Ann Coulter's jaw is no longer wired shut. Moreover I hope she gets all the media attention in the world for this book. Although somehow, I think she won't. I think a lot of people are tired. January 4, 2009WeaksauceWatching Harry Reid on MTP. Not a good look. At all. More later.UPDATE: For those wondering what, specifically, I'm referring to, dig Reid's mushy performance below. From what I can tell, Blago is playing this dude like a fiddle. I found his legal arguments to be unpersuasive. Moreover, why Reid thinks telling people that the Senate decides who they'll, seat and who they won't, will play well, is beyond me. But most disturbing, I found his denial about Jesse/Danny/Emil to be not credible. The "I don't remember" part is particularly disturbing. Dude, it was only a month ago. I don't believe that the Illinois Senate seat should be a "black seat." But I also don't think disqualifying three black possibilities, for someone who lost a congressional run, is smart politics. I've always waved off complaints about Reid's relative weakness. I'll have to look harder at those charges now. UPDATE#2: Here's Dick Durbin. Much, much, much more effective. I'm still skeptical, but he was much better. He was better defending Harry Reid, than Harry Reid was. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy January 3, 2009Win or go homeOpen NFL thread. Go for it.January 2, 2009A little humor to lighten the moodRussell Peters on the word that none doth say.January 1, 2009Toward a more oppurtunistic pro-blacknessIrishPirate gives us a nice article on the strategic moral outrage of Bobby Rush:
This puts me in the mind of this article by Jonathan Chait on Bob Johnson. Johnson made a career out of agitating for greater representation of black people in the halls of big business--especially when he was the black person in question. Rush isn't Bob Johnson--not even close--but the technique of selective pro-blackness is the same: As I said yesterday, it is amazing to me that just four years ago Rush wouldn't support either black candidate running for the Senate. But now in '08, it's a national embarrassment that we don't have a black person in the senate. Jelani on boxing and Bobby RushHeh:Lest you be lulled into thinking that the year would end quietly, we have this wonderful bit of gift-wrapped shade out of Chicago. I don't have time to give this the full Timberland it deserves but offhand I think you have to give Blagojevich credit. This is a clutch player. With time running out in the year and all other cynical dealers exhausted, this is the guy you go to. |
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The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Here's my favorite proposal to improve the situation: eliminate free substitution and go back to having the players play both ways. If they had to play both ways, there would not be so many of the freakishly large players on the field who create the lethal forces that endanger others' lives. An added benefit is that it would tilt the game more in favor of the best, most versatile athletes.
Besides, super-specialization is a hallmark of the modern industrial society, along with super-commoditization and super-organization. Sports are supposed to be a way to bring back a taste of the more primitive life we left behind when we all became cogs in the giant industrial machine.