I'm sure someone will pop up and claim that Coulter was making a joke. But it's an awful joke. There's no punchline. There's nothing, except, all Indians look alike to me. This isn't Jeff Ross telling black jokes, at the Emmitt Smith Roast in front of a bunch of black people. This is Coulter slurring one of about five visible minorities in her party, to an audience filled with people who probably have never had dinner with an Indian-American.
I understand that many conservatives hate Coulter. I also think that there's nothing particularly conservative about that slur. But sometimes you see this shit, and when partnered with Michael Steele's crack, you have to believe that a significant portion of the GOP enjoys being the Party Of Macacca. How else can we read this? It's like these guys are stuck on Dice Clay in 86. And every year, fewer and fewer people are laughing. But they keep making the same old cracks.
Denying Unemployment Benies
I think people are laboring under the impression that this is a hand-out to people who don't work. In fact to qualify for unemployment, you have been working and thus have paid money into the very system that you're petitioning for help. It's true that you don't want to create an incentive for people to simply sit home. But there's something sick about attempting to deny unemployment insurance to people who've spent their working lives being taxed for that very insurance:
For people like Henry Kight, 59, of Austin, Tex., the possibility that the money might be turned down is a deeply personal issue.
Mr. Kight, who worked for more than three decades as an engineering
technician, discovered in September that because of complex state
rules, he was not eligible for unemployment insurance after losing a
job at a major electronics manufacturer he had landed at the beginning
of the year.
Unable to draw jobless benefits, he and his wife have taken on thousands of dollars in credit-card debt to help make ends meet...
Mr. Kight and other
unemployed workers said they were incensed to learn they were living in
one of a handful of states -- many of them among the poorest in the
nation -- that might not provide the expanded benefits...
In Mr. Kight's case, he was unemployed for the second half of 2007,
after losing an earlier job he had at a different electronics
manufacturer in a downsizing. As a result, when he applied for
unemployment benefits, he did not have enough immediate work history to qualify.
"I
have worked for so many years, a total of probably 30 years,
contributing to the support system that helps people when they get in a
tough spot like I'm in," Mr. Kight said. "I haven't needed it too much
in the past, but I sure could use it right now."
I don't have the knowledge of economics to really go at this, but it's striking to me that it is the poorest states in the union, that are doing their best to deprive their citizens of federal dollars. What a scene.
I don't think that we can or should rally the troops around Obama
every time a cartoonist goes off his meds and his editor trips over the
boundary between edge and outrage. The reality is that all Presidents
are subject to unfair criticism -- though Obama is the first for whom
that criticism has taken on a racial hue. Carter and Clinton were both
ridiculed as backwater hicks (how often did we see references to
Clinton's libido paired with images of his down-home roots?)
Reagan's advancing years brought with them a harvest of Alzheimer's jokes: Did you hear that Ronnie announced he has Alzheimer's... Again?
Lincoln was ridiculed in Northern newspapers and depicted as (irony of
ironies) part Negro and Andrew Jackson's wife was assailed as a
bigamist in the newspapers of the day...
...All of us, but especially we black folk,
are going to have to develop thicker skin and a shrewder sense of when
we go Al Sharpton on some fool and when we offer the empty-heads only
the tinny echo of their own isolated voices.
As a commenter said in an earlier thread, we need to stop stepping over dollars to pick up nickels.
Billy Dee Williams says, "White People, You May Laugh--But Not That Hard."
But I'm still uneasy about one basic point. Can white people giggle at Steele or should we be biting our tongues?
Heh--If you have to ask, than probably not. Any twangs of guilt likely come from laughing at something else, besides the joke.
All kidding and blog titles aside, you can laugh as much as the rest of us. I don't actually believe it's that hard to detect racism. Even if it is, I'm not sure how much I care. I'm quite sure some of the best jokes in the Steele thread, come from people who don't look like me. Besides, who could ever forget this number. Blacks and Jews FTW.
The Adult Presidency
One way that Republicans (and some liberals) have worked to diminish Obama's victory, is by asserting that Obama is, himself, a conservative. We heard this in the talk about Obama's cabinet coming from the "right wing of the Democratic Party." For conservatives, the upshot of "no difference between Bush and Obama"
is obvious. It allows them to argue that conservative principles didn't
actually lose, and Obama doesn't really represent change. Here it is on full and brazen display courtesy of John Ashcroft, discussing the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri:
John Ashcroft, who was Attorney General when Marri was designated an
enemy combatant, makes no such apologies. Interviewed just before the
Inauguration, he defended what he described as a "sound decision" to
"maximize the national interest," and predicted that, in the end,
President Obama's approach to handling terror suspects would closely
mirror his own: "How will he be different? The main difference is going
to be that he spells his name 'O-b-a-m-a,' not 'B-u-s-h.'"
The Justice Department, in an abrupt change in policy from the Bush
administration, is preparing to bring terrorism-related charges against
a man identified as an operative of Al Qaeda who has been held in a military brig for more than five years, government officials said Thursday.
The charges would move the case of the only enemy combatant to be held on American soil, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, into a civilian criminal court. The Bush administration had argued that he could be held indefinitely without being charged.
Yeah. Obama is Bush. Nothing's changed. Nothing at all.
Notes From CPAC
Courtesy of the American Scene. Tucker Carlson calls for the professionalization of conservative media--and is booed for it. Too bad. He's basically right.
I'm an unabashed lefty. But I understand the difference between my liberal beliefs, and the tools I need to do my job. Being pro-choice is a statement of who I am, and is part of my world-view. But a writer confusing his belief system with the trade of reporting and word herding, is a soldier confusing his flag for his sidearm.
Michele Bachman, professional fool, on Michael Steele:
"Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man,"
This. Must. Stop.
I'm here to announce the formation of DOPE (Distinguished Officials for Proper Ebonics) whose sole mission will be to prevent such abominable phrases as "You be da man." We have sat quietly by, during the era "Oh no she din't" and "Women, be shopping." We have endured the apostasy of Stuart Scott. ("Holla at a player if you see him in the streets!"). We can no longer be silent. The war is on.
Baltimore, a source close to several of their players said, was more likely to sign and retain Ray Lewis and let fellow linebacker Bart Scott walk.
One of those two linebackers entered Thursday evening highly likely to
go to the Jets, and the source said that appeared to be Scott.
Retaining Lewis would be a leadership coup for the Ravens, but the
deals on both men are not done. The source also cautioned that the
situation could change in Friday negotiations, though he said it's
likely, in particular, that Scott will end up in the Big Apple. If the
Jets do sign Scott, expect a deal for five or six years, at about $8
million per season.
I find that interesting, given that Scott is younger. I'm just glad the Cowboys won't be going after Lewis. I love Ray. But that wouldn't have ended well.
Sorry, I love that line. Anyway, dig Santelli asserting that he can call you out, but you can't call him out. Also Notice his man's attempts to change the subject...
Michael Steele's Unwarranted, Unprovoked Attack On Ebonics
You'd think I of, all people, would be sympathetic to Michael Steele's effort to bring some slanguage to the GOP. You know how I do--if at least a third of my readers, at any given time, aren't headed to google then I'm doing something wrong. I've got no problem with speaking in native tongues to foreigners. My beef is simple--From citing ancient rappers, to shouting out "urban-suburban hip-hop settings," Michael Steele is abusing the language I love. The last straw is below where Steele tells Neil Cavuto, "I'm always open for everything, baby."
Dear Michael. For the black in all of us. Please stop now. Talk like a regular human being and stop trying to teach the dun language. You are not prepared.
Yet Obama maintained a distant relationship with the caucus when he was
its only Senate member from 2004-08. That dynamic was on display early
in the Democratic presidential primary, when many senior caucus members
initially backed Hillary Rodham Clinton even as Obama quickly became viable as a candidate.
Really? CBC members actually acting like politicians is evidence of "distance?" A quick note of recall:
As America prepares for a string of primaries and caucuses to determine
who will be its next Democratic and Republican nominees for president,
the majority of the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus who have
chosen to endorse in the race is split 15-15 between CBC member
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
I can't see why that would have been shocking. Put differently, how many members of the CBC would have supported Jesse Jackson Jr. or Harold Ford, had they been running against Clinton? What is the specific evidence of this distance between Obama and the CBC? Look I have my issues with the Caucus (especially over backing Bobby Rush in the Burris flap), but where is the story here? Where is the actual beef?
Red Eyed
Not a particularly smart idea to fly into L.A. and then back out on the same day. I feel like I'm walking in mud. Anyway, some good entertainment for a fraked up day. Sorry we're getting started so late boys and girls. Will try got keep it moving.
With great respect for Megan, and much love, I think it's worth revisiting our debate from a few months back. You can read our banter, here, here and here. I stand by this essential argument:
You don't say. Obama was the next Kennedy. Then he became the next
McGovern. Or was that the next Stevenson? Now he's the next FDR. And
Jindal is the next him--because he's, you know, swarthy. The thing
about Obama that people, apparently, still don't get is that thus far
he has proved himself a damn good politician. He is not simply the
eloquent black dude who won--although he's that too. He's the dude who
reinvented campaign fundraising, who pioneered the use of social
networking, who won Virginia and North Carolina, who ended 50 plus 1.
Put simply: Hazy appeals to precedent are teh lamesauce. Jindal may well recover, and may well ultimately be the man. But it won't be because he was the next anything. It'll be because he's found what works for Bobby.
That Exe File
The tech guys are on it. More info as soon as I get something definite. Avoid that 3rd Bass video, for now.
California Knows How To Party
Folks blogging will be light today as I'm headed West. We'll resume Thursday--assuming I've recovered from what I expect to be a punishing Red Eye back. Talk amongst yourself. Let's hear about that State Of The Union. Heh, and Jindal's "response." Yes I know, liberal haughtiness. Har, har, har! Alright, gotta catch a flight folks.
MF Doom, Pete Nice, and MC Serch--the dancing-est white boy you've ever seen. Is it a mistake that he's Jewish? OK, that was ignorant. No, here's ignorant--All the white kids at our school who hung out with black people were simply called 3rd Bass. I don't know if that's an insult or not.
Anyway, "Gasface" is great, and from a time when it was cool to smile. Makes me think of that great Rae line? "Could it be, and would it be, that we was babies\Catchin, rabies, niggers seem to act crazy..."
Non Nobis Domine. It really is beautiful. This isn't as good as the one I heard Sunday. But you get the picture...
And yet...
I can't stop watching Mary McDonnell. What an infuriating show. Never has heavy-handism been so hard to turn away from.
Some Random Thoughts On The Limits Of Umbrage
I spent Sunday at Abyssinia Baptist Church. It may have been the most "African-American" service I'd ever seen--emphasis on both halves of the hyphen. The service began with the choir singing "Lift Every Voice" and ended with them singing "We Shall Overcome." There was this weird inversion of the past--plenty of whites in attendance, and some Asian cats also. But virtually all of them were seated up top in the balcony, and I was left thinking about the days when blacks had to sit in the balcony for movies and plays. This wasn't intentional, but the the bottom rows filled up fairly quick with regulars, and the top was all that was left.
There was the most beautiful choral music, I mean the sort of choral music that made me wish Primo or Rza were sitting next to me digging for samples. Forgive my fumbling here, I did not come up in the church so words may fail here. What I want to say is the music sounded very Westernized, the sort an ignoramus, like me, would expect to see white folks singing. But it was beautiful, and in fact had been authored by a black woman, "Non Nobis Domine" was the piece, I think.
Butts ripped shop of course. He's an awesome preacher. Maybe there's hope for a heathen like me, yet. But much of the sermon was fixated on Rupert Murdoch and last week's cartoon. And then yesterday, I was in D.C. for a panel at the Aspen Institute, and many of the questions revolved around the Post cartoon, the New Yorker cartoon, and Eric Holder's "nation of cowards" quote. The questions in the air seemed to be, who should be offended and how much? I, mostly, defended the New Yorker, saying I thought the cover was pretty bad, but evidence of a plot was wanting. I didn't really defend the Post, so much as I couldn't find my way into the offensive.
Perhaps I shouldn't address this--for whatever reason bad cartoons just don't boil the blood around these parts. Still, I kept thinking about it, and it hit me when I saw this video below. John McCain tries to knife Obama at yesterday's event. It's not that raising the cost of the helicopter is illegitimate. But that stupid, passive-aggressive grin comes over him just as he delivers the line. We've all seen that grin before--it's usually paired with a "my friends." But later for that, watch Obama's response. Classy. Cool. And funny. He's not concerned with whether McCain is trying to knife him or not. He's beyond it. I think there is a serious lesson for black folks in the manner in which Obama handles opposition--the legitimate opposition, but especially the illegitimate opposition.
More than any black public figure in recent memory, Obama understands the problems with a strategy premised on taking offense. It's not that Obama never takes umbrage, it's that he's careful about what and when he takes umbrage. I don't really know what the line is. But I know taking offense at calling the stimulus bill a spending bill hits people in a way that, say, taking offense at Michael Steele wouldn't.
There a certain sect of the American commentariat which believes black people complain about the country too much. Usually this same sect spends their time complaining about the country even more. I'm not down with that. But I think all of us should think hard about what we take offense, why, and what good ultimately comes of it. Apologies, I guess. I'm not sure that cartoons are worth our time. But governors denying unemployment benefits to tax-payers, in order to build some political cred, certainly is.
Who Does (And Doesn't) Qualify For Unemployment
It's worth remembering who's who. For my part, unemployment saved my ass when I got laid-off. It wasn't much. But it was something.
The Other Black (And Biracial) President
Adam Serwer on Ben Jealous, the new head of the NAACP:
The board's marathon eight-hour debate session lasted until 2 A.M.,
when Jealous was finally selected by a vote of 34-21. Grumpy board
members shuffled out of the meeting to air their objections to the
press -- a marked contrast from just two years prior, when the newly
elected Gordon strolled triumphantly into a room full of reporters.
Many of the board members' complaints -- that Jealous was
inexperienced, dismissive of established leaders like Al Sharpton and
Jesse Jackson, or simply not an active enough member of the NAACP --
were published by NNPA columnist George Curry who, despite being
Jealous' longtime friend and colleague, disagreed with the board's
decision. In a column he wrote about the increasing number of biracial
blacks in leadership positions, Curry obliquely referenced Jealous'
light skin tone, recalling a time when access to social gatherings of
the black elite was often dependent on whether or not one was "light,
bright, and damn near white."
Bond says that the issue also came up in private. During a
closed-door meeting of the presidential search committee, one member
questioned whether the light-skinned Jealous was a good choice for the
voice of the NAACP. Bond was incensed. ("It would be beneath us to
consider it," he says.) The next meeting, he brought in a copy of Time
magazine from 1938 featuring famed NAACP leader Walter White, who was
light enough to pass as white. The subject was never brought up again.
Still the old, stupid demons haunt us--or maybe haunt just them.
Tell your man you'll be home real late, and sing the break...
Matt points us to Jessica's awesome post on "hook-up culture." Never has a phrase more deserved air quotes. I'll leave the gender politicking to my betters. Here's what I know--Every five years, or so, newspapers discover some cultural trend like this, seemingly expressly concocted to scare the crap out of people. Of course said cultural trend is usually just humans being humans, but rebranded.
The idea that twenty years ago, people weren't having one night stands, or that young people today simply never go out on dates, again, simply doesn't smell right. It amazes me that people buy this claptrap. I deeply suspect that at the bottom of it all lay the sexual insecurities of people who wish they'd been a little more carefree in college. I strongly suspect that they don't resent hook-up culture--they resent that they didn't get hooked-up. Wouldn't be the first time. Hell if I knew in college, what I know about the opposite sex now, I'd have been Denzeling fools. Alright probably not. Wait, what was I saying?
Because you need to get through Monday
And more importantly, you need more TV On The Radio in your life.
One final note on George Will
I've been ruminating over the Washington Post's ombudsman's response to George Will's climate change denialism. I think Hilzoy said a mouthful, but one thing still sticks in my craw. Here is Post ombudsman Andy Alexander explaining George Will's fact-checking process:
Basically, I was told that the Post has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible. In this instance, George
Will's column was checked by people he personally employs, as well as
two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates
Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors.
I've done some work for newspapers, and, if I may say, am somewhat familiar with how they work. Magazines (like this one) generally employ fact-checkers, whose entire job involves verifying the veracity of every sentence in a story. Like all writers here at the Atlantic, when I file an article it's annotated with references to every fact in the story. A checker than verifies those facts by checking documents, calling sources, checking notes, watching video etc. The process still isn't perfect and sometimes we fuck up.
But it's important to understand that newspapers, in general, don't have people who "check facts to the fullest extent possible." The fact-checking generally falls on the writer, and when there's an error (unless an editor inserted the error) he takes the heat for it. This is the whole reason why a Jayson Blair could exist--for the most part newspaper editors go on faith. Editors and copy-editors do look out for things that don't "smell" right or raise a red flag. But they don't really fact-check stories.
I've written for New York Times in the past four years, and twice for the Washington Post's Sunday op-ed section, within the past year. I mean no disrespect here, but I wasn't fact-checked on any of those stories. Indeed, I actually made an error in one, which had to be corrected. It may be that the Post is more likely to fact-check a writer, like George Will, who's written for them for years and whom they presumably trust, then they are a college drop-out who's had four journalism jobs in ten years, and lost three of them. But somehow, I doubt it.
I can't speak for who Will employs to fact-check his work. Nor can I, ultimately, speak for the Post's process. But let's just say if I were a newspaper editor, and you told me this story, I'd flag it. It just doesn't "smell" right.
Alan Keyes--Goon
I spent some of my earliest days, as a reporter, profiling writers. It was what I wanted to be, and thus what I was most interested in. One of the more shocking revelations, for me, was the discovery that people who were brilliant on the page, could sound like they were illiterate the minute you put a mic in front of them. Likewise people who could talk like the wind, would write total drivel.The lesson was clear and oft-repeated for me--never confuse the ability to manipulate the spoken word, with wisdom, with deep insights, with original thinking. Sometimes they come in the same package--but often they don't.
I thought about that lesson, when I saw Keyes fulminating against Barack Obama in the video below. Obama, in Keyes eyes, is not the president of the United States, but "an abomination" who must be "stopped." Keyes, a product of the Ivy Leagues, has long been held aloft as some sort of intellectual of the far right. But anyone who's ever seen the wannabe Malcolms coming out of the prison talking "knowledge of self," anyone who's read Soul On Ice, knows exactly what Alan Keyes is--a highly articulate thug.
Behold, if you dare, the demon ramblings of sad, sick human being:
Battlestar Blogging: Endgame
I can't keep going guys. I'm sorry. I did the best I could. I know the show has a lot of fans here. There isn't much point in ripping the show, and disrespecting you guys and what you love. I simply didn't find the story compelling enough to continue.
February 20, 2009
Hilzoy bumrushes the Post
Sgwhite is right--Hilzoy's take on Will's factual manipulations deserves it's own post. Rarely do you see a blogger pwn someone with the very documents provided as evidence of exoneration. Reading this post was a thrill--like watching a mugger get pistol-whipped with his own gun. Here's a quote, but it doesn't do the piece justice:
If Will actually read these two articles, it's hard to see how he's
not being deliberately deceptive by citing them as he did. If, as I
suspect, he just got them from some set of climate change denialist
talking points and didn't bother to actually check them out for
himself, he's being irresponsible. All those people who supposedly
fact-checked Will's article as part of the Post's "multi-layer editing
process" -- "people [George Will] personally employs, as well as two
editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will;
our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors" -- should be fired, either
for not doing their job or for doing it utterly incompetently. These
are hard times for newspapers; I wouldn't have thought they could
afford more than one layer of an editing process that produces no
discernible improvement in quality.
And Andy Alexander? He should read the cites George Will gives him
before he sends them out, under his own name, in support of his paper's
decision to publish Will's piece, if he doesn't want to be embarrassed
like this again.
This is the sort of thing that makes me happy we have blogs.
This started as a problem for Will, his direct supervisors, and the Post's ombudsman. But now that the Post as a paper is standing behind Will's deceptions, I think it's a problem for all the other people who work at the Post.
Some of those people do bad work, which is too bad. And some of those
people do good work. And unfortunately, that's worse. It means that
when good work appears in the Post it bolsters the reputation of the Post as an institution. And the Post,
as an institution, has taken a stand that says it's okay to claim that
up is down. It's okay to claim that day is night. It's okay to claim
that hot is cold. It's okay to claim that a consensus existed when it
didn't. It's okay to claim that George Will is a better source of
authority on interpreting the ACRC's scientific research than is the
ACRC. Everyone who works at the Post, has, I think, a serious problem.
This is true, in some sense, though I think too broad. A great story, broken by the Post, will still be a great story. Still, it's amazing that the Post is standing behind Will. One reason blogs are starting to eclipse edit pages is that there is an independent mechanism to hold bloggers accountable. I can say all the stupid things I want, but I know that there is an industry out there waiting to take me to the woodshed. This is a good thing.
But more than that, as Matt points out, in any form of journalism, a writer arguing that he better understands the research than the actual experts who compiled the research, is suspect. Any editor worth his title would at least throw up a red flag. George Will isn't held to that standard because he's a brand unto himself. The temptation is to think he's gotten away with something. I'm not so sure. Will always enjoyed a veneer of indy respectability, someone who stood out amongst the babbling diarrhea merchants. With this piece, and with his inability to be forthright, Will simply takes another step toward good old fashion hackery.
Rachel Maddow On Michael Steele
I mostly agree with her take--especially the point about no real black electoral representation. But I think it's worth noting that diversifying is a long term process. Michael Steele's awkward and comic attempts are exactly how these conversations start. Still, the real question is whether these guys can diversify their policies. Hiring a black guy won't make the Minutemen go away.
He's not exactly wrong. I just think it's a non-story. More heat than light.
Even The Gospel Vote Is Leaving Burris...
If you're the only black guy in the Senate and you can't hold on to the black church, you've got a problem:
Many of the city's most influential black pastors supported Roland Burris' appointment to the U.S. Senate, even though his name had been put forward by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Now that support may be waning.
A
faction of black ministers plans to ask for Burris' resignation
following revelations that the senator tried to raise money for the
disgraced governor who appointed him, one of the ministers told The
Associated Press on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity
because a meeting with Burris had not yet been scheduled.
Clergy Speaks Interdenominational, an umbrella group that includes hundreds of Chicago's black churches,
will meet Friday to discuss its support for Burris, spokeswoman
Stephanie Gadlin said. For now, the group still supports him and its
leaders are unaware of discussions about asking him to resign, she said.
February 19, 2009
TNC's Gone Till November
Or at least till tomorrow. Headed to Baltimore with Samori, to talk to some kids. I'll do my best to only use standard English. In the meantime, I leave my 80s people with a treat. Stand up ladies. Fellas too. You can't hate on Jerrica...
There's a sign at the door, "No Biting Allowed."
I think Michael Steele's comments speak for themselves. Still, his bout of slanguage fail made me want to offer a hand. The GOP has a lot of work to do, if it's going to become "hip-hop." Can't just begin with Lil Wayne, you know? Anyway, the Juice Crew seems like an appropriate start.
I take you over like a greedy executive...Coming back like I'm avenging my brother's death...Cause rocking a Party, yo it's a small thing...When it comes to money, Yo, Grant's my nigger...
GOP Suicide-Watch
I'm not the Atlantic's resident political analyst, but this looks, well, politically stupid:
A handful of Republican governors are considering turning down some
money from the federal stimulus package, a move opponents say puts
conservative ideology ahead of the needs of constituents struggling
with record foreclosures and soaring unemployment.
Though none has outright rejected the money available for education,
health care and infrastructure, the governors of Texas, Mississippi,
Louisiana, Alaska, South Carolina and Idaho have all questioned whether
the $787 billion bill signed into law this week will even help the
economy.
I don't see this happening. More likely, these guys are trying to save some face.
Eric Holder's Boring-Ass Speech On Race
I'm sure the diarrhea merchants are having a field day with that "nation of cowards" line. I understand the desire amongst white folks to not be typecast as the scheming, sniveling villain. It's simplistic, and dehumanizing. It reduces individuals into an indistinguishable, robotic mass.
That said, you could only be offended by that line if you think "the nation" only includes white people. For the record, given the behavior of a lot of "black leaders"--and black people--pre-Iowa, cowardly ain't exactly wrong. Anyway, I really have no idea what Holder meant, beyond what he literally said. I found his speech unremarkable and vague. But I can only take that line as it was--a statement about the entire nation.
I received the most fascinating note in the mail this morning:
Dear Mr. Coates,
Recently I heard you in an interview and finally found a comparison which explains to me why I object to your use of language. I come from a country where children speaking dialect have had a hard time in school, first because German orthography is pretty close to the spoken word and second for being discriminated against because they are considered to come from uneducated backgrounds
Having said that even though I love dialects for their often much more colorful way of expressing things than would be impossible in High (sic) German (i.e. standard German) there are some heavily accented German speakers I object to and others I do not - I keep asking myself, where's the difference and differences keep popping into my mind all the time - basically it all comes to it somehow does not match or sounds rebellious in a counter-productive way - when I saw that video of that poor black kid from Selma? who blew something, I forgot what, I realized how detrimental it must be for people like him if that kind of language is promoted by role models, people like you who have made it to a decent way of life.
It's funny, I never thought of my accent as particularly thick, but I get this quite a bit. I don't post this to take offense, but to highlight a point of view that's often shared with me. I don't get the notion that a kid listening to me talk about my book, would decide that the primary message is to never learn standard English. I've never met a kid that stupid. But I guess they're out there. Somewhere.
Anyway, this idea that one should learn standard English in order to not be discriminated against is, from my perspective, poisonous. I think about my own kid, and I want him to learn standard English for the same reasons I'd want him to learn any language--because language is way of looking at the world, because it's a way of expressing yourself, because it builds bridges to people who aren't like you, and ultimately, because, put simply, it's good to be curious.
Therein lies the irony--the desire to patrol someone else's accent strikes me as deeply incurious. It is intelligence as artifice, a knowledge garnered to, at best, kowtow to equally incurious people or, at worst, preen over others who aren't as fortunate. Hmm, maybe I do take offense. Not because of anything said about me, but because I deeply resent ignorance that dresses itself up as wisdom.
My siblings, for the most part, came up like me. They mostly talk like me. But all of them also have--like a lot of black people--a kind of second voice, a rather nonthreatening, standardized style of speak. It's key to remove about a third of all bass. I don't dis that second voice--it is the language of their professional world and it should be recognized, and respected. The only reason I never developed one, was because my field never required it. In fact, in my work, it may good to be thought of as less intelligent. The proof, at the end of the day, is in the product.
Your enemies closer: The Joe Lieberman Edition
I meant to blog about the role Joe Lieberman played in getting the stimulus package through the Senate. I wasn't big on dumping Lieberman, but I'm divided on this story. It feels a little too neat--all the people vouching for Lieberman's role are people with an interest in seeing Lieberman redeemed. That said, I still think it was the right call.
...how can publishers lose money amid such incredible sales and record
growth? The answer is simple: They're spending more than they're
bringing in. Game development budgets have ballooned, and publishers
are reeling because they can't keep the costs under control.
Games
weren't always expensive to make: In the early days, a boy with an
Apple II could rule the world. While there are still scads of cheaply
made games on the market, all of today's big publishers employ hundreds
of professional developers per game. These projects take years to
complete, as each new generation of hardware allows for unprecedented
advances in graphics, sound, and everything else. The greater the
complexity of the game, the larger the development team. The larger the
development team, the bigger the budget.
While industry leaders
anticipated that budgets would creep higher, the shift to
high-definition gaming with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation
3 has proved to be more expensive than estimated. At a conference in
the spring of 2006, then-Midway developer Cyrus Lum sounded the warning,
telling his audience that game development budgets could rise as high
as $15 million to $25 million for a single title--previously unheard-of
averages. "We need to rethink how we're financing games," Lum concluded.
One thing I wonder about, from a PC perspective at least, is whether there are diminishing returns for ramped-up graphics. Clearly they help, that's not in dispute--but some of my favorite old video games are still great and enjoyable, mostly because they're great games. Everyone knows WoW isn't exactly pushing the boundaries in terms of hardware. And my kid still enjoys Pac-Man...
February 18, 2009
Battlestar Blogging: I Nominated My Cell-Mate For President
"The Farm" is, by far, the best episode I've seen. Pretty intense. The most captivating characters on display. The least compelling playing the back. No Baltar. No Six. No Ellen Tigh (Thank God). No weak-ass Callie (Sorry, she needs to take some tips from Wee-Bey on how to be calm when you bout to murk a fool.). Adama back at em. Starbuck in effect. The Prez blessing felons. Helo and Sharon doing the rescue thing. Pretty ass-kicking, I must say. Also the doc did a really cool acting job.
It actually reminded of this great GI Joe episode, where Shipwreck is brainwashed by Cobra, and then given the life he always wanted. They even bring back one of his lost loves from another episode. Eventually he finds out it's all a fraud. Dark as hell, and arguably the only Joe episode (short of the great Serpentor movie) that stands up. Don't know why it made me think of that.
Alright boys and girls, I'm rolling with you. If this ends badly. I know who to blame. Cobra-la-la-la-la!!!!111ONE
Illustrious Company
Seriously. Here I am interviewed by Terry Gross. But never mind that. Jane Mayer is on before me. Listen to her first.
About that New York Post cartoon...
Getting a lot of e-mails asking me what I think of the cartoon the Post ran. Meh. I think it is what is. A bad cartoon. And a bad joke. Here's Sharpton:
The cartoon in today's New York Post is troubling at best given the
historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with
monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less
than casual reference to this when in the cartoon they have police
saying after shooting a chimpanzee that "Now they will have to find
someone else to write the stimulus bill.
So say we all. Can we get back to grown folk business now?
The state still formally forbids non-believers from holding public office in its constitution, even though this is unconstitutional at a national level. An attempt to end that anomaly just failed. But it's not as if Arkansans can't move with the times: they did just pass a law to allow people to bring guns into church.
Fifty years ago, the civil-rights movement understood that nonviolence
can be an effective weapon even if--or especially if--the other side
refuses to follow suit. Obama has a similarly tough-minded
understanding of the political uses of bipartisanship, which, even if
it fails as a tactic for compromise, can succeed as a tonal strategy:
once the other side makes itself appear intransigently, destructively
partisan, the game is half won. Obama is learning to throw the ball
harder. But it's not Rovian hardball he's playing. More like Gandhian
hardball.
Irony Alert
I greatly enjoyed my stint at TIME magazine. Met some good people, did some so-so stories, and, for the first time in my life, made a salary that I could support a family on. Good memories. So, with that in mind, I hope no one takes this the wrong. It's probably a bad idea for any magazine--but especially TIME--to make a list of the Five Most Overrated Blogs.
Race War Part Two: Jimmy Shoots The Fair One
Lots of people pointed out that I kinda dissed Jimmy, by selecting a bad version of "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted" yesterday. I went back and listened to the original. It is, of course, fraking great. The weird thing is I'd forgotten how much I loved the harmony and back-up singing. Jimmy's bad, no question, but whoever is singing back-up is murdering. And yeah, murdering is good in this case. The thing about the Joan Osborne version, as much as I like it, is that she completely overpowers everything. Jimmy isn't weaker, but he just melds in to the song.
Hook a brother (or sister) up
Barack Obama has been getting hit for not diversifying the White House enough. From Roland Martin:
But while we hold the media accountable for the need to diversify
their ranks, it's quite telling to see the lack of diversity in the
White House's press office.
I got an e-mail Tuesday listing all
of the various press folks and contact information, and hardly any
African-Americans or Hispanics were listed. Granted, the deputy press
secretary is African-American and the director of broadcast media is
Hispanic. That's not sufficient.
Unfortunately, this shouldn't
come as a shock, because the campaign press staff of then-Sen. Barack
Obama was just as weak on diversity.
Still, if you were expecting Obama to be a shining beacon of diversity
in the upper tiers of the government's elite, you are bound to be
disappointed. This goes back to the age old "chicken and egg" diversity
problem. The most common response to complaints about lack of diversity
is that there just aren't
women and minorities that would be considered qualified for such
leadership positions. But how are we supposed to increase diversity if
we never give anyone but an old, white man the opportunity to lead
something?
Thirty-eight of the 56 appointees (68 percent) are men. (But white men,
representing 46 percent of all picks, fall short of a majority. Nearly 70 percent of these appointees are white, 7 percent are of
Asian or Pacific island descent, 16 percent are African American, and 7
percent are Latino.
I think it's good policy--and good politics--for the White House to hold diversity as a goal. It sends a message of inclusiveness to the country at large, and really to the world. But I'm mixed on this criticism. Leaving aside the fact, that Obama's picks actually have been more diverse then his predecessors, my trouble is that when I think about race and even gender, I mostly think about people who won't ever have chance to serve in a presidential cabinet. What's important to me is that an Obama's administration empower these folks to compete in ways that they haven't been empowered in decades.
I understand that this isn't an either/or--as in either diversity, or good policy. I also agree with Matt--there's reason for concern, given the demographics of the Democratic party and the country, about why there aren't more women in leadership positions. But for my part, I just can't muster much anger over there not being enough black people in the White House to take press calls. Especially given that blacks are overrepresented in the Obama administration. Especially when the cat gave his first post-election interview to Ebony, and his wife gave the first photo shoot to Essence.
The United States Senate Ethics Committee and a local Illinois prosecutor began investigations on Tuesday into the recently appointed junior senator for Illinois, Roland W. Burris, over Mr. Burris's shifting, inconsistent descriptions of how he came to be named to the seat vacated by the election of President Obama.
Mr. Burris, a onetime state attorney general chosen to fill Mr. Obama's Senate seat by Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich
in the final weeks of Mr. Blagojevich's beleaguered administration,
said he had done nothing wrong and welcomed all investigations.
"I will answer any and all questions to get that point across and
restore faith with the citizens of Illinois," he said in a statement
Tuesday afternoon before reporters in Peoria, Ill., where a planned
question-and-answer session was canceled.
Only a night earlier,
Mr. Burris, a Democrat, had provided yet another new, jolting
disclosure about his ties to Mr. Blagojevich's closest allies: In the
month or two before Mr. Blagojevich appointed him, Mr. Burris, 71,
tried, without success, to raise money for the governor, he
acknowledged, at the request of the governor's brother.
How long will it take for the "one black senator" card to played? There's something poetic in all of this. It's not that Burris is dirty--plenty of politicos are dirty. It's that he was amateurish enough to think that, with all the attention paid to this case, he was slick enough to pass. I doubt they'll throw him out. But he'll spend most of his term defending himself, and then in 2010 the Dems will bounce his ass. But hey, he'll always have the honor of being the, uhm, third black senator from Illinois.
February 17, 2009
TNC on Fresh Air Tomorrow
Turn on the radio folks. Gonna be talking about the book. For those who take the recent convo as evidence of my lack of my belief in the two-parent household, I invite you to check out the book. It's mostly about parenting--and what happens when fathers are, and aren't, around.
Race War! Whites Win! Again!!
Jimmy Ruffin vs. Joan Osborne. Jimmy is the original and smooth as hell. But I think I'm partial to Joan's rough-hewn growl. Meh, when in doubt go with the white girl. Sorry, brothers. And sisters. I guess.
A majority of African-Americans surveyed in a nationwide poll this week
reported feeling "deeply disturbed" and "more than a little weirded
out" by all the white people now smiling at them.
First witnessed shortly after President Obama's historic victory,
the open and cheerful smiling has only continued in recent months,
leaving members of the black community completely unnerved.
"On behalf of black people across this nation, I would like to say
to our white brethren, 'Please stop looking at us like that,'" said
Brown University psychology professor Dr. Stanley Carsons. "We're
excited Barack is president, too, and we're glad you're happy for us.
But giving us the thumbs up for no reason, or saying hello whenever we
walk by, is really starting to freak us out."
Added Carsons, "We just want to be able to stand in line at Home Depot without getting patted on the back."
The Watchmen
Yes it's true. I'm the only geek in the world who's never read it. Please feel free to inveigh against me. The situation will be remedied in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, dig on the trailer. I doubt I'll be seeing the movie. But I'm very interested in the graphic novel.
On protesting too much...
Here is Bristol Palin, daughter of proud social conservative, Sarah Palin:
Bristol Palin said she is getting help from many members of her family
with raising the infant while continuing her studies. She told Van
Susteren she has no immediate plans to marry Levi Johnson, who she
described as a 'hands on Dad." Last year, there were reports that the
couple would marry in the coming year.
Bullshit. They weren't fucking "reports." They were the words of her mother speaking on her behalf:
In a statement released hours before the convention opened, Palin and
her husband, Todd, did not say when their daughter Bristol, 17, told
them of her pregnancy. Bristol intends to marry the father, the
statement said -- a move that drew widespread praise from religious
leaders and convention delegates.
Where are those sanctimonious fucks, now? Where is the stigmatizing of Bristol Palin? Where is all their self-righteous howling? These people are not simply proud of being ignorant. They are proud of their arrogance. They are proud of their lack of self-awareness. They're proud of their fraudulence. This is real talk, for real families out there on the frontlines, doing the real hard work of child-rearing. These people want to balance your books, but they're steady bouncing checks the whole way.
UPDATE: Yeah, Frak just doesn't capture the insanity of all of this. Meanwhile commenter Buster offers a more useful frame:
I just wonder if it's not more helpful to frame it this way: Why don't these frauds extend the same decency to everyone that they are to Bristol Palin? Why are some people deserving of respect and others not? Who are those others?
The trouble is that I don't know that they've extended her any decency, as much as they know it isn't in their interest to stigmatize her. I don't think that have any more respect for her than anyone else. She's a prop to them.
Following up on Greg's post below, National Public Radio's ombudsman has penned a column addressing listener complaints about her network's most controversial personality: Left-leaning analyst fire-breathing rightwinger, Juan Williams.
What transgression did Williams commit that so inflamed NPR's listeners? He dared to suggest that Michelle Obama might become a political liability for the White House. Oh, and he appears regularly on Fox News.
And you will know them by their strawmen. For the record Williams called Michelle Obama "Stokely Carmichael in a dress" and then said she tended to "blame America first." Saying that that's the same as calling Michelle Obama "a political liability," is like calling a woman a bitch, and then later claiming you simply meant she had anger issues. Anyway, The Corner is pissed that Williams now can't ID himself as an NPR guy on Fox. Goldfarb, of closet orcs and elves fame, sees the wicked hand of lefty censorship:
Williams appears frequently on Fox News and is typically identified as
"NPR News Political Analyst," which is precisely what his job title at
NPR is. Williams is not on staff at NPR, rather he is an independent
contractor -- and thus presumably free to sell his services wherever
else he pleases. Which raises the question: does NPR even have the
right, as a government-funded network, to publicly condemn an
independent contractor for the manner in which he describes the First
Lady while on his own time?
Meh, I read the column. Neither Goldfarb nor Teh Corner quote a single graph of condemnation or wrist-slapping. Goldfarb actually quotes Juan Williams talking in the piece--not the writer. Man, with foes like these...
But the truly lamest defense of Williams--arguably the laziest defense I've heard of any public official in months, goes to Robin Givhan:
The vitriol has flown at those, such as journalist Juan Williams, who
have suggested that she can be too aggressive or dour in some of her
speeches. And the poor woman who wished in Women's Wear Daily that
Obama had worn an ensemble by a black designer during the inauguration
was verbally pummeled . . . by black designers. She and Williams may
have been wrong. But still, theirs were just opinions.
OK, stop laughing. Let me get this straight--the defense of Juan Williams is that it's "just opinions." Right. The attacks on Williams, also, were "just opinions." So what the frack is your point? Meanwhile, in the real world, opinions should be informed by something--like, you know, facts.
One way to know that these guys are bullshitting you is that not one of them has actually defended what Williams actually said. Indeed, the actual quote doesn't appear in any of these pieces. If you read them you'd be left with the impression that Williams merely suggested that Obama was a bad political surrogate. What I'm waiting on, is for of these cats to actually defend what Williams said--not what they wish he'd said. For your edification, it's linked below.
The math on Black out of wedlock births
Sorry to go here again guys, but this subject keeps cropping up and is totally misunderstood. In the vein a commenter Stonetools writes:
TNC and others disputed that 7O percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Here is one source that supports that figure.
Government statistics reveal that the percentage of all babies born to unwed mothers nationally rose to 32 percent in 1997 from only 5.3 percent in 1960. Among blacks nationally, 69 percent of births were to unwed mothers.
the scholars are united that most black children are in fact born out of wedlock.
In fact, I dispute no such thing. Here is what the commenter is referring to:
The basic conclusion is that the birth rate for unmarried black women is--and has been--declining. In 1970 the birth rate for unmarried black women was 96 per 1,000. In 1980, it was 87.9. In 2005 it was 60.6. There is a huge spike in the late 1980s, but the overal trend is clear--the birth rate for unmarried black women has been declining for almost 40 years.
Something else that should add some context to that 70 percent figure which we all love. The birth rate for married black women has declined way more for married black women than it has for married white women. Also, the birth rate for unmarried women overall is on the increase, but that seems to be being driven by an increase among white and Hispanic women. It's also worth noting that the rate for unmarried black women is still waaayyyy higher than the rate for white women, while lower than the rate for Hispanic women.
I was not a statistics major in college. If anyone wants to debunk these or add context, I'm totally open.
The data to support this can be found here and here. In other words, no one disputes that 70 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock--or maybe they do, I never have. What we dispute are the reasons why. One notion that's gained quite a bit of currency is that over the last 40 years, black mothers have, for whatever reason, decided that they'd much rather be single mothers. But the facts don't back this up. As the data shows unmarried black women are having less, not more, kids then they were having 40 years ago. Furthermore, the number of unmarried black women having kids is declining, while the number of unmarried women--overall--having babies is increasing. From the report:
In 1970 the rate for unmarried black women, 96 per 1,000, was nearly 7 times the rate for unmarried white women, 14. By 1998 this differential was just under 2; the rate for black women fell to 73 whereas the rate for white women rose to 38 per l,000.
The rate for unmarried white women more than doubled from 18 per 1,000 in 1980 to 38 in 1994, and has since changed little (38 in 1998). (The rate for non-Hispanic white women has also changed little since 1994; it was 28 in 1998.) In contrast, the rate for unmarried black women increased about 12 percent from 81 in 1980 to 91 in 1989, and has declined steadily since, by 19 percent, to 73 per 1,000 in 1998 (figure 8 and table 3).
Rates for unmarried Hispanic women are available only since1990. The rate was highest in 1994, at 101 per 1,000, and has dropped11 percent since (figure 8, table 3). The birth rate for unmarried Hispanic women is the highest of any race or ethnicity group; this is consistent with the overall fertility patterns for Hispanic women (2, 4).
Now, you can argue, that double is still too high. What you can't argue is for any sort of "moral decline."
This is a one-man show. Sometimes I forget to put in links, misspell a word or whatever. I've said this before but it bears repeating--if you see an error send an e-mail, please. There is a big-ass "EMAIL TA-NEHISI" button off to your right. Please use it. Correcting in comments doesn't help because sometimes, I don't see the comments until hours, or days, later.
Most Americans have a healthy respect for religious teaching but in
their lives give greater preference to common sense and practical
experience. That includes almost all religious groups as well -
Catholics, in particular, show conservative tendencies. The exceptions?
Evangelicals and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses - who are trained to
forego practical reasoning for abstract truths based on unquestionable
authority. Evangelical Christians are much less conservative than
American Muslims, for example.
The Republican party is not, at this point in time, a conservative
party, as Burke would understand it. It's a fundamentalist religious
party. Until the influence of evangelicals and Mormons is reduced, it
will find these tendencies reinforce each other.
I've turned this notion over in my head a lot lately. I think there's great value on pointing out the changes in ideology. But ideologies change, no? Moreover, in the case of politics, they change to attract votes. I like Andrew's conservatism--privileging what works over abstractions figures very well into the family debate we've been having, here. But his Pew polling aside, I just wonder whether it could get any votes.
February 16, 2009
Obama and incrementalism
The L.A. Times has a pretty well reported piece about Obama's relationship to liberals. The kid's getting it from all sides at the moment. But what worries me, specifically, is this:
Advocates for stem cell research thought Obama would quickly sign an
order to reverse former President Bush's restrictions on the science.
Now they are fretting over Obama's statement that he wants to act in
tandem with Congress, possibly causing a delay.
I'm sure one of my sharp commenters has an explanation for this. I don't have one. I'd love to see an executive order on this.
UPDATE: Link fixt.
Pride in being ignorant
I don't know why conservatives think it's smart to undersell global warming. But making my way through Zachary Roth's utter ownage of George Will's latest, I thought about this gem from the campaign. These guys don't get it. Even the Market for Stoopid is touched by the Recession. In fact, since stoopid is a luxury, it's likely to get hit the hardest.
On another note, this clip reminds me of that great Chris Rock bit about how niggers love to not know--which is weird, and yet also, quite beautiful.
Apropos of Nothing
Here's Marvin Gaye murdering what may be my favorite love song of all time. Damn. Long live the motherfucking king. (Sorry, elders. Fracking won't do.)
Greatest Super Bowl Drives
CHFF does the knowledge. Interestingly enough they include a few that weren't game-winners.
One last word on this
Here's Rod's response to my last post on family values. I highlight the following because I think it outlines something very important:
Like I said, I don't know, and
cannot know, how Ta-Nehisi grew up. From his own testimony, it sounds
like he and his siblings turned out okay. But look: he sees no
particular reason to marry. It is likely that the children he and his
partner have will see marriage as unimportant too. The idea that
marriage is unimportant has real world consequences when it becomes
normative -- look at the high crime, poverty and social dysfunction
rates in the black community in this country, where the overwhelming
majority of children are born out of wedlock, and have been for a
generation. The causal connection between unwed parenthood/broken
families and social dysfunction cannot be disputed. That Ta-Nehisi and
his family appear to have defied the odds is a great thing -- but they
do not refute the statistics.
What you applaud, you encourage. Wisdom, let us attend.
Having children outside of marriage should be stigmatized, for the
common good. To do otherwise is false compassion.
For those of you who care more about the NFL/D&D/Obama than the crazy makeup of my kinfolk, I apologize. There's been a lot of navel-gazing over the past week. But one reason I blog, and the main reason I allow comments, is because the form makes me a better long-form writer. It's like sparring before the boxing match. In the ring you find out who you are. And this past week, like all great blogging debates, has told me a lot about myself.
What you see in Rod's post are the essential reasons why I'm a social liberal--and will remain so for all my days. It's not often that I say something that definitive. But these exchanges have given me some serious clarity. It's probably unfair to offer another rebuttal. I think Rod's statement speaks for itself.
UPDATE: Link Fixt.
That said...
The last two episodes of BSG were very good. There are about three or four before that that just run off the rails (the whole tribunal thing, for instance). But i was entertained by the end. More interested in Helo/Boomer than Baltar/Six (even if "I'm pregnant!" is weaksauce). I know that sounds backwards. Anyway, I'm committed to finishing it out. Whether I'm into it or not, this is the sci-fi epic of our time. If it turns out I hate it, I probably will only have a couple posts, tops. I know a lot of folks here consider the show great. I find it hard to believe I'll agree with that, in the end. But I respect it all the same.
Days of Future's Past
The Times notes that Eric Cantor is taking pointers from Newt Gingrich. Matt points out the obvious, and then some:
the political contexts of the two eras strike me as different in a
number of ways. Bill Clinton's 43 percent share of the popular vote in
the 1992 election made it plausible to believe that the center of
public opinion was amenable to the idea that the President's agenda
needed curtailing. What's more, the Democrats gained zero Senate seats
and actually lost nine House seats. Under the circumstances, you can
see why conservative felt emboldened. And their political strategy had
a clear logic to it--a large number of Democrats in congress were
representing constituencies that had pretty consistently been trending
to the right in presidential politics since the 1960s. With a Democrat
in the White House, the chance existed for a spirit of feisty
opposition to force the voters in such constituencies to align their
congressional preferences with their presidential ones.
That's simply not the case this year. Not only did Obama have a more
decisive win (obviously the absence of a third-party candidate is
important here) but the Democratic caucus is more compact and includes
many fewer outlier members whose constituencies are dramatically more
conservative than the national electorate that backed Obama in
November.
Of course, nobody can know what the results of all this will be, and
objective occurrences in the world will have a large impact completely
independently of the quality of Rep. Cantor's tactical decisionmaking.
But it does seem worth noting that the Virginia Republican Party, of
which Cantor is a part, has not been a huge font of electoral success
in recent years. Instead, the right-wing of the VA party has, with
incredible speed and efficiency, turned one of the most solidly
Republican states in the country into one with a decidedly blueish hue.
When Mark Warner was elected governor in 2001, it was seen as a stroke
of political genius to be able to carry the state. Then came Tim Kaine
in 2005 and Jim Webb in 2006. In 2008, Democrats went from a 3-8 split
of the state's House seats to a 6-5 split. Warner became the state's
second Democratic Senator in a race that nobody paid any attention to
because the state party had essentially thrown the election months
earlier by driving their potentially electable candidate out of the
race and throwing the nomination to a guy everyone knew would get his
ass kicked.
Moreover, as I recall, Gingrichism didn't end well for its author.
February 15, 2009
BSG's Number Six--All weak-sauce. No catfish.
There are many things wrong with this first season--the hokey court-drama during that "tribunal" episode, the long extended nothing of the Helo/Boomer arc (I like Helo, but goddamn, can something actually happen please), the hamfisted War on Terror parallelism. But unquestionably the worst aspect of the show is the acting of Tricia Helfer as "Number Six." My God. Helfer mistake cooing and grinding for sexiness, the way Karl Rove mistakes reading a book a week for wisdom. Here is an actor who has all the externals of her character down, but none of the internals.
It's not just the lack of sexiness--Helfer doesn't project any sense of evil. I watch her scenes with Baltar and feel nothing. No humor. No spirit. No menace. Playing the role of a robot, isn't the same as acting in a robotic fashion. She isn't alone in that--the only Cylon who's compelling, in any degree, is Boomer. Like I said, Helfer isn't the only thing wrong with the show. And she isn't the only case of bad acting--but she is the worst, or maybe the most poorly cast. When, I watch her, I feel weirdly insulted, as a man. Like, "this is what you think men like?" I guess some men do. But come on. Give us something unseen. Something underneath. Something smoldering.
And for God's sake stop playing that dumbass music whenever she appears. It's icing and without the cake. I can't take it. I can't see myself getting through this season.
February 14, 2009
That post below...
...was supposed to wish you guys Happy V-Day. Now it just looks...creepy. Anyway, enjoy yourselves. Hug the one your with. Me and K are hitting the town. You will know us by our beverages. She'll be sipping on the lavender gimlet. I'll have the Ketel-One martini. Up. Olives. No twist.
February 13, 2009
Friday Night Lights
And for my final number in the Baltimore\D.C. area, I'll be appearing at Vertigo Books tonight. College Park, Maryland stand up.
Because it's Friday--And you thought I forgot about you
It's harder than it looks. Here's Toi Derricote's "Black Bottom." Let's talk this afternoon.
UPDATE: Comments open guys.
Jelani on the HBCU experience
Something of a love letter. And one I deeply understand. I think I got a lot of confidence out of my time at Howard. It's not to say everyone will. Just that I and a lot of others did:
I could make a defense of our cause and run down the names that have
come from our halls -- Martin Luther King, Toni Morrison, W.E.B. Du
Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Oprah Winfrey -- but I won't turn this post
into a index. Instead I'll tell you this: if you ask me what I got from
my years at Howard University my answer would require an encyclopedia
- not a W4.
The short version answer to the question would be the fact that I'm
writing this post; the fact that you're reading it. This is no
hyperbolic claim, not a bumper-sticker
if-you-can-read-this-thank-a-teacher shout out, but actual truth. I
blew onto Howard's yard in 1987, outsized and insecure, my demeanor a
laughable attempt to make the words "New York" function as an
adjective. I was the first of my clan to set foot on a university
campus, my head was full of doubts that I was qualified as that
nebulous thing known as "college material." My old man finished three
grades worth of book-learning in a stoplight town called Hazelhurst, Ga
and my mother completed high school, but only after abandoning her
native Alabama for Chicago. I was so shook by the alien prospect of
higher education that I froze during my first in-class essay for
freshman English , convinced that I was not capable of writing a
reasonable sentence -- and certainly not a college-worthy one. I turned
in a blank page.
My professor took pity on me and encouraged me to come to his office
and try again. This time I turned in a semi-coherent offering. He gave
it a B -- a grade I was certain was so undeserved that it should qualify
as philanthropy. But I grew into myself over the next 14 weeks. I
turned in the first weekly essay and received an A -- as I did for the
second and the third. By the end of the month students were requesting
that I proof-read their papers before they turned them in. I ended the
semester amazed that I'd earned 14 consecutive A's. I came into that
class a knot of insecurity. I left it a writer.
I'll also add that for my particular line of work, where race figures in heavily, there really was no better preparation. At Howard, I met black people who I didn't even know existed. We didn't just have half-white, half-black, biracial black folks. We had half-Indian, half-black black folks. We had black folks from cities. Black folks from the burbs. Black folks from the islands. Black folks from the continent. Black folks from Canada. I mean we really had all kinds.
I think seeing that kind of diversity in my collective experience was invaluable, and really animates so much of my writing, and my belief in the diversity/humanity/comedy/dysfunction of black people. It was why I immediately understood that statement by Michelle Obama about Princeton making her aware of her blackness. Half of Howard's campus was made up of young black kids who were tired of feeling that way. It was why I never gave any credence to the idea that growing up in place not known for its black population, made Barack Obama less black. It would have meant that many of my friends at Howard weren't black either. Hell if not for biracial black people, and black people who grew up in virtually all-white environs, Howard would have been bankrupt, like, yesterday.
Cancer
Chana Garcia is responsible for my godless, broken and sinful partnership with Kenyatta. Some day, after we've taken over the world, I'll give you all the details pinpointing her exact role in creating a situation where Samore must now "beat the odds." But for now, I don't want to infringe on anyone's employment prospects.
More to the point, Chana is chronicling a war that began with the following words:
"Sorry dear. Looks like you're going to have to get everything taken out."
I have no context for staring down death in your early 30s. But I'm getting some from her blog. If you're looking yourself, please stop by. Then say a kind word.
February 12, 2009
Extended Family Values
I thought some about Ross's post and I think what I find most interesting in his,and other responses, is the need to argue that the model of seven kids by four women shouldn't be held up as the ideal.
Most American families in which a single man fathers seven kids by four
mothers don't produce engineers, Pixar programmers, and writers for the
Atlantic. And that's why norms matter, why institutions matter -
and sometimes why stigmas matter as well. Not for the sake of
Ta-Nehisi's partner and child - I think things are going to turn out
pretty well for the family Coates no matter what - but for the sake of
all those people who won't be as lucky in their mate and in their
parents.
...there's no way that a family like Ta-Nehisi's ("My Dad has seven kids by four women...")
can or should be held up as normative, no matter how well the kids
turned out. If they turned out fine -- as they seem to have done --
then they beat the odds. Most kids emerging from that kind of broken
family system will not be so lucky.
I appreciate Ross's compliment. But what your seeing here is a slick, if unconscious, changing of the subject. I don't think you'll find me arguing, in any post, that seven kids by four women should be held up as the norm, or as any sort of model. That's the key difference between Ross, other social conservatives and me. I don't believe that my family structure is a solution. Ross Does. I can tell you why I am what I am, to the best of my abilities. But for the actual work of a long-term relationship, for those deep truths that are exchanged between you and yours in the dead of night, I offer no answers. How could I possibly know?
Which isn't to say that I reject norms and standards--it's just that I'm not particularly interested in Ross and Rod's norms and standards. We've all seen the data on marriage, and outcomes. We all know that in the aggregate marriage comes out on top. But this really doesn't help us in this debate, because we don't why. Do married people have better outcomes because of the marriage itself? Or is it that people who are more likely to marry, produce better outcomes? Put differently, I need to see evidence that marriage causes people to raise better kids, as opposed to people who are likely to raise better kids tending to get married. What if we found that atheist, in the aggregate, earned more money, were less likely to commit crimes and more likely to send their kids to college. Should we then stigmatize all believers?
So MSNBCMarc is reporting that Judd Gregg is withdrawing his nomination as Commerce secretary. I think there will be people who will look at this as another failure of bipartisanship. I have a slightly different notion. Bringing Republicans on board will not be achieved simply by inviting them over for drinks--though that is a critical step. It will be achieved by being right. If the stimulus works, I'm betting that Obama will find himself with a lot more GOP allies in Congress.
Think on the Iraq War. Bipartisanship was achieved in a terrible way, in large measure because a lot of Dems were scared of being wrong. They feared a political repeat of Desert Storm. Obama doesn't need GOP support for this bill. He may need it later. What he needs now, is to be successful. Like I said, I'm not the best guy on the economy. But I feel better about my mans and them, then I do about the kids who claims teachers don't actually have jobs. UPDATE: No the taskmasters didn't make me change the credit. I'd just rather give props to one of my own.
Is WoW too easy?
Well no, given that it's still WTFBBQPWNing Warhammer, Everquest and City of Heroes. But Gerald Veloria argues that recent changes to the game have gone too far. Chief among them? The heirloom system which allows you to deed shiny legacy items to your other toons coming up on the server:
At level six my character had more than triple the health of a normal
rogue of his level, and dealt more than four times the damage, not
counting when the fiery enchant on his sword would go off. Just for
fun, I dueled some level 11 and 12 characters who were going at it in
Brill, and it wasn't even close. I was killing characters twice my
level in seconds, while barely getting scratched. No need to stealth.
Just walk up to them and Sinister Strike until they're dead.
Any challenge that I may have encountered while leveling this Rogue
through the starting areas was completely taken out of the equation. I
don't even bother with stealth anymore, instead focusing on the
delicious ham sandwich I'm eating as I cruise through the levels. The
effect is most assuredly more dramatic at the lower levels, since I
have those higher-level enchants working in my favor, but from what
I've seen, the gear all scales rather nicely until level 80.
Lawl. I would have loved to see that duel.
I think the problem isn't that WoW is easy, but that leveling is ultimately irrellevant in the game. In WoW, the endgame is the game. There really is no incentive to go see Stratholme or Sunken Temple, except to get some XP for you Refer-A-Friend toons. By the way, if you already have a toon who's 80, and you aren't using RAF to level your next one, you're insane.
Anyway, the point is that all the good stuff, all the consequential stuff is at the end. Not to take it back, but in the days of Pools of Radiance, I enjoyed going through the slums of Phlan. But in WoW, the game really is at the end. That's where you do arenas. That's where you rack up honor. That's where you do Strand (the best of the battlegrounds). That's where you get those lovely Naxx purples. Leveling in the game just doesn't have much consequence, or bearing on the end.
One thing that might help is having gear that scaled with you as you went up, that was only available at certain (lower) levels. The great thing about a spell like. say, magic missle was that it was always a great spell--from level 1 on.
Juan Williams half-apologizes; blames the Atlantic first
So the folks over at NPR caught some heat after Williams claimed that Michelle Obama had "Stokely Carmichael in a dress" thing going and that her tendency was to blame America first. Folks who want a refresher on what I had to say can see here, here and here. Anyway here's Williams serving up a bowl of lame-sauce, and giving a patented, "I'm sorry if the truth I spoke hurt your over-sensitive feelings" sort of apology:
When I asked Williams about his comments, he initially called it a "faux controversy."
But then he reviewed the tape and realized that "the tone and tenor of
my comments may have spurred a strong reaction to what I considered to
be pure political analysis of the First Lady's use of her White House
pulpit," said Williams via email. "I regret that in the fast-paced,
argumentative format my tone and tenor seems to have led people to see
me as attacking instead of explaining my informed point of view."
That wasn't good enough. Williams went on to say that he was referencing a Politico article and piece in The Atlantic. I can't speak for the Politico, but I've spent some time with that Atlantic profile (That Tanesha Coates girl, she sho can write!) and I'm not sure how anyone would read it and conclude that Michelle Obama is either Stokely Carmichael in a dress, or someone who's likely to blame America first. But that's just me. I've been wrong before.
And Favre is Swayze...
It all feels anticlimactic, no? Let's deal with the immediate: It has to be said that the Jets Favre experiment was a flop:
Favre led the NFL with 22 interceptions and had a 79.3 second-half passer rating.
He
threw two touchdowns and nine interceptions in the final five games.
The Jets were 1-4 in those games and needed a miracle defensive play to
beat the Buffalo Bills.
The Jets released Chad Pennington
to make room for Favre. Pennington led the Dolphins to the AFC East
championship after a 1-15 season in 2007. The Dolphins beat the Jets at
the Meadowlands to clinch.
This really wasn't a hard call. It's extremely rare that a QB, at Favre's age, goes to a new team and does well. I have no idea why people bought into this one.
The longer term question is much more interesting: Where does Favre rank among the greats? The guy is obviously a HoFer. Personally, I've always found his habit throwing INTs at the worse possible moments grating. But short of Reggie White, I don't know that Favre ever played with another great player during his career at Green Bay. It feels wrong to say that, so folks can point it out, if I'm overlooking someone. But nothing is coming to mind.
I think he's above the Troy Aikmens Aikmans of the world, but still below the Marinos, the Unitases, and the Montanas. He's probably below Elway also. Maybe he's in the Steve Young range? The Jim Kelly range? The Fran Tarkenton range? It's tough with Favre to find someone comparable.
That's Racism!!11ONE
No one cares what would happen if Michael Phelps were black--which doesn't mean we aren't above racial hypotheticals. Negro please, you know how I get down--the only thing I like integrated is my coffee. And the Atlantic blog-roll. As long as those checks keep clearing. So here's a hypothetical for that ass, courtesy of one of my readers:
I know you're not big on that Michael Phelps thought experiment --- but here's another one for consideration: How much more abuse would that single mom out in California who the
octuplets on top of her other six kids be subjected to if she were
black?
The reaction could be summarized in three words--Get A Rope. But a much more interesting question isn't what she would be subjected to, but what all the rest of us would be subjected to. In other words, the key difference isn't in the treatment this woman has been getting, (all jokes aside, it's tough to imagine it getting much worse than death threats) but in the fact that if she were black, there would almost certainly be a debate about black people our out of control kids. In other words, Nadya Suleman has the privilege of standing as an individual, of not having the burden--or honor, really--of having to represent. Indeed, we will know we're in the Promised Land when a black woman can have 8 kids, apply for food stamps, start up a website asking for help, and not be used as a cudgel to bash the rest of us.
Heh, Adam busts shots at Micheal Steele. And just for good measure, bystander Maureen Dowd gets touched:
I'm guessing most people reacted to Steele's comments with either
confusion or laughter, which is actually a sign of progress in race
relations. As for Steele, he happens to be the chairman of a political
party that is really desperate for a few black friends, so to them his
reference to "bling bling" must have seemed terribly "hip".
It wasn't only that Americans' already threadbare trust has been ripped by Hank Paulson's
mumbo-jumbo and the Democrats' bad judgment in accessorizing the
stimulus bill with Grammy-level "bling, bling," as the R.N.C. chairman,
Michael Steele, called it.
The fact that Dowd thought Steele's use of the term "bling bling," a
term that became archaic the moment television anchors started using
it, was so cool that she had to quote it says more about her than it
does about the stimulus bill, about which it says less than nothing.
Also, on an unrelated note, it's true. I do listen to The Shins.
A beautiful use of negative space...
This is either the greatest hoax in history, or Joaquin has completely lost it. My sense that it's a hoax is built on the fact that the guy is actively seeking out publicity. Anyway, watch and laugh. Or weep.
February 11, 2009
More family values talk
I probably should stop this because I'm going to wear this subject out. Anyway Ross has another post in this ongoing conversation around making families work. It's very very good. So good, that I want to think on it some before I reply. That said, two things need to be stated.
1.) I used the word artifice in reference to the nuclear family in one of my earlier posts. It read like I was claiming the nuclear family, itself, was artifice. I don't believe that one bit, and it wasn't what I was trying to convey. My point was that the nuclear family without the underlying values that make families work, is, like any family without those values, artifice. I make no claims against marriage, except in my own life. And I certainly make no claims against two-parent households. I'm the product of one, after all, and I'm participating in one now.
2.) I think Ross knows this, but it's important that you guys know this. While I differed with his characterization, in terms of familial confusion, I took no offense at it. I thought he was perfectly respectful, and crossed no lines. I disagreed, and do disagree, about how we talk about family and family values. But that really is about it.
...generalizations matter too. The "artifice" of the traditional family
isn't just an artifice, and the values that social conservatives hold
so dear - monogamy, marriage vows, the idea that every kid deserves a
mother and a father in his life - don't just exist to make people in
non-traditional families feel bad about themselves. In the aggregate, Dan Quayle was right.
In the aggregate, marriage is better for kids than single parenthood.
In the aggregate, marriage is better for men and women than long-term
cohabitation. In the aggregate, divorce is bad news - for your
finances, your health, and your children's long-term prospects. And in
the aggregate, if you're concerned about income inequality or social
mobility or the crime rate or just about any area of socioeconomic
concern, then you should be at least moderately fretful about the long,
slow decline of the American two-parent family - among blacks, whites,
and Hispanics alike.
These aggregates don't capture the lived
reality of millions of American lives, and they can easily become rote
and hollow pieties. But they capture a pretty important reality
nonetheless.
Some more thoughts on a black Michael Phelps
Some commenters have noted that the "If Michael Phelps were black" question matters because of the racial disparity in terms of drug arrests. You guys know where I stand on the drug war, race and weed. But what has to be proven to maintain this line of though is that a successful, black Olympian caught smoking weed would have caught more hell than Michael Phelps is catching right now. I find it nauseating to ask which millionaire--the black or the white one--has it hardest. But to be clear, the question isn't are blacks and whites treated differently in terms of drug arrests, it's would being black really have made things worse for Michael Phelps?
It amazes me that people think they can answer that question. Lawerence Taylor was a known coke-head who was beloved by fans, and largely, by media also. Allen Iverson has been busted, not just for drug possession, carrying a concealed weapon, threatening two dudes with a gun, and maiming by mob. It's true that Iverson has never been popular with the media. But in his prime, he was one of the most popular players in the NBA. Even in his twilight years, Iverson's jersey is the most popular in the NBA.
There is no real debate about blacks and whites and drug policy. We get the short end of the stick, no question. But seriously, atheletes--at least during their careers--are on another planet. Maybe things would have been worse for Phelps if he were black. I really have no idea. But simple-minded, uncomplicated, flat readings of race into every little thing are silly. The dude lost his endorsement. His friends are being hauled off to jail. I don't understand the point of piling on and saying, "If he were black, he would have gotten the chair.' Who the frak really knows?
Obama torture-watch
As a result of George Bush exporting people to foreign countries to be tortured, this is what happened to an Ethiopian man, Binyam Mohammed:
The court papers describe horrific treatment in secret prisons. Mr.
Mohamed claimed that during his detention in Morocco, "he was routinely
beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness.
His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then
used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging
liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been
cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death."
Mohammed is, as he should, suing Boeing for flying him to Morocco to be tortured. George Bush tried to block the suit, under the theory that it would compromise "state secrets." I know of no single area where we need to see more change, more departure from the past eight years, than in our government's craven embrace of torture. In this case, Obama, for now, disagrees:
During the campaign, Mr. Obama harshly criticized the Bush administration's treatment of detainees, and he has broken with that administration on questions like whether to keep open the prison
camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But a government lawyer, Douglas N.
Letter, made the same state-secrets argument on Monday, startling
several judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit.
"Is there anything material that has happened" that
might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked
Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.
"No, your honor," Mr. Letter replied.
Judge Schroeder asked, "The change in administration has no bearing?"
Once
more, he said, "No, Your Honor." The position he was taking in court on
behalf of the government had been "thoroughly vetted with the
appropriate officials within the new administration," and "these are the authorized positions," he said.
I'm not one of these people who was about to scrutinize every cabinent pick Obama made to measure their exact lefty quotient. I don't believe in all of this "right wing of the Democratic party" talk. But implicitly supporting people who would take a razor to man's genitals, is, by the lights of Obama's own campaign rhetoric, disgraceful. Andrew thinks we should slow down, given that we don't know how it all will shake out. I think there may be something to that. But I also think there's something to raising the volume, to making it sure this doesn't slip through the cracks while the country is focused on the economu.
But God willing I'm coming back to you...
Folks,
I'm in the B-more\Chocolate City area promoting my memoir The Beautiful Struggle. Here's the schedule and a dope Mos Def song.
And on Friday 2\13, I'm at Vertigo Books in College Park, Md.
Hollla if you hear me.
Against super-villiany
Everyone here knows how much I love and respect Big Love. I think it's great example of what happens when writers bust their ass and do the hard work of constructing actual characters, as opposed to flat cat-outs which merely push the plot. Which is why, I sorta, kinda, hated the most recent episode. I should start by saying that I'm prejudice. I think I'm the only person on the planet who thinks the following: Chloe Sevigny's character, especially this season, is the lynch-pin in the show, the mark of dissension and divided loyalties in the Hendrickson house, and a breathing bridge to the past. I think it's the most important slot on Big Love. Unfortunately it's also the weakest.
It's very hard to write that, mostly because most of us who tell stories will be lucky if we ever come close to doing anything as well as Big Love has been done thus far. But I believe it to be true. I can't tell whether I object to Sevigny's acting or to the way her character is written or both. This isn't a matter of whether she's likeable or not. Albee isn't likeable. Roman is likeable. The Wire's Bill Rawls is disgusting, but is also one of the most compelling supporting characters I've seen in recent times. Sevigny plays Nikki Grant mostly in one note--a kind of mix between paranoia, anxiousness and irrational anger. You can argue that that's exactly the sort of person she'd be. I don't agree, but that really isn't the point. Watching any actor play the same note over and over is tiring. There has to be more there.
Which is fine. That's my opinion. I've never met anyone else who's shared it. But watching Nikki Grant transform into a super-agent, watching her mother transform into a criminal mastermind capable of outwitting people who's job it is to catch criminals is too much. I don't buy that Bill would have prevailed against Roman. Bill is a smart, savvy dude--but not nearly as smart and savvy as he thinks he is. His tragic flaw is hubris. I thought that scene where he called Roman to gloat was pitch-perfect. What I don't buy is that Bill would lose, because the prosecutor would allow a temp access to sensitive documents, while he's steadily losing witnesses. What I don't buy is that Adaleene--the wife of a man on trial--could bypass security with a stack of towels. What I don't buy is that Nikki is lucky enough to be in the right places at all the right times and overhear the right info, which she can dutifully pass on to her Mom.
We live in an age of naturalism. Our heroes are not good people, who must always be undone by even worse people. I don't have a problem with that, so much as I have a problem with not doing the work to make the end-point believable. I often read people praising a show because it's "dark." But darkness is not, in and of itself, a virtue. Cynicism and earnestness are equally the enemies of art. Bringing down a flawed hero takes time, and shouldn't be done by people so evil that you can almost hear them cackling, or by housewives mystically transformed into super-agents.
Watching this episode of Big Love, I was reminded of the last season of The Wire when the need to show how institutions corrupt everything, how in the end the good guys always get jobbed, just overwhelmed the show, and for the first time, gave us uncomplicated, unmitigated, omnipotent evil. We haven't gotten there yet with Big Love. I'm pretty sure that none of this ends well. I just want folks to take their time in getting us there.
For the Karen-O in you
No vanilla. No margarine. Just Awesome-Sauce. Straight Awesome-Sauce.
That's Racism!
Jemele Hill wonders if Michael Phelps would have gotten it worse if he were black:
In 2002, Rasheed Wallace was given a misdemeanor citation for
marijuana possession. The charge against Wallace -- who was 28 at the
time -- was eventually dropped after he completed community service,
and drug and alcohol counseling. But no way would the Portland paper
have ever written an editorial as glowing as the one that appeared in The Baltimore Sun, Phelps' hometown newspaper.
Wallace
has had a rocky relationship with fans and the media, but that's not
the point. When Josh Howard admitted he and many other NBA players use
marijuana, I don't recall seeing a single column like this one on Forbes.com. I never considered the fact that marijuana use might help professional athletes de-stress. What a novel idea.
Meh. Rasheed had severe PR problems, and Josh Howard was nowhere near the star that Phelps is. More to the point, we have a limited reservoir of "Well, if he was black/white" to dip into. I'd argue that we save it for death row inmates, the unemployed and mothers trying to get off welfare. I have no idea what would have happened to Phelps if he was black. I'm not sure why it matters.
February 10, 2009
"Frack"
Yes I've started saying it. I'm sorry k1, you will have to deal. Battlestar aside, a lot of older black folks read this blog. They think I curse too much. "This is the Atlantic!!! Not Hip-Hop!" as one told me. If it was one of you young punks, I wouldn't care. But I was raised to respect elders. And I'm sensitive to the concept of representing. I know, it's old fashioned and kind of silly. But it's part of me. It won't be eliminated. But I'm trying to cut down.
Idiots and prison policy
California is headed for the worst of all possible worlds:
Federal judges tentatively ruled on Monday that California must reduce
the number of inmates in its overcrowded prison system by up to 40
percent to stop a constitutional violation of prisoners' rights.
"Overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional
conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons,"
the court concluded.
California state officials, including Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, immediately promised to appeal the case to the
U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.
"The governor and I strongly
disagree with this ruling," said Matthew Cate, California's corrections
and rehabilitation secretary. Implementing the court's ruling would
result in up to 58,000 prisoners being released, Cate said, describing
it as a threat to public safety.
He disputed the court's contention that the prisons are unsafe the way they are now.
But in 2006, Schwarzenegger
declared a state of emergency because of "severe overcrowding" in
California's prisons, saying it had caused "substantial risk to the
health and safety of the men and women who work inside these prisons
and the inmates housed in them."
This won't end well. For anybody.
More BSG Blogging
I haven't read James Parker's take on Battlestar Galactica, mostly because I'm afraid to--I'm only in the first season. But that shouldn't stop you from reading it here, and subscribing to the print magazine. You need to know who I am in this. I'm on contract to blog here, nothing else. So I have no direct incentive to push the print on you. Except this: I'm a writer and a reader. And I know that we live in an era where magazines are falling down around us. The Atlantic is one of maybe two or three rags where you can get a profile of Chuck Schumer, an analysis of Battlestar, a meditation on the end of white people, and some guy rambling about Michelle Obama.
Anyway, that's my lecture for the day. Also check out Parker's commentary below.
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If you really want to be depressed...
Watch this video of Pete Rock doing TROY solo. Frankly, I couldn't get through the whole thing--I can't watch Pete dis C.L. and then rock his lyrics, especially not on that track. I think TROY is one of top five hip-hop tracks ever--that rare cut that really shows hip-hop's potential as literature. I played that song over and over, over again when I was working on my book. I wanted that complicated sense of family life that CL conveys--the absentee father, the entreprenurial Aunt Joyce, the car-collecting Uncle Sterling, the departed homie you met fighting in the street. TROY isn't just a beautiful statement on the black family, but on family period. I can't watch Pete--one of the greatest producers in hip-hop (maybe Premier, Dre and Rza were better)--spit anger over that.
Anyway, when EPMD split, they broke my heart. Not the most revolutionary group in hip-hop, but one of the most consistent in their day. EPMD eventually came back together of course. I think the Pete Rock\CL Smooth split is the most depressing of all breakups in hip-hop. The amount of venom they have for each other is amazing, and no one is exactly sure why. Pete seems genuinely hurt in the intro.
But worst of all, the times that they've actually reunited have been magical. I saw these guys absolutely murder live (at the Bowery Ballroom maybe? The joint right off Union Square) back in 2004, at a show with the Roots, Jean Grae, and Little Brother. Jean did a cover of Jay-Z's "Threat" that was just sick, but I'm getting off topic. Anyway, if you want to feel better--or even worse--check out "Da Two" below the live video. Hot track. Dope lyrics. C.L.'s signature flow of one of the great greetings of our time, "Introducing C.L., then face defeat..." I know ya'll don't agree, but I'm going to say it again.C.L. is not "the best whoever did it on a Pete Rock track"--that would be Nasty Nas--but he is one of the most underrated M.C.'s of his time.
Big Love and Soap Opera
Haven't watched this week's episode. I'll have more to say after I do. Until then, Ross has a nice post on the series comparing Big Love to The O.C. and Dawson's Creek. I'd quibble with a couple things in his post. On a micro level, I think the fact that The O.C. and Dawson's were written for kids, changes a lot. But I don't object to his comparison. On a deeper level there's this:
Conservatives who interpret Big Love as an attempt to
mainstream polygamy have it wrong, I think - or at least, they're
missing the bigger picture, which is that the show succeeds because its
portrait of polygamous marriage captures the kinds of familial confusions that post-Sexual Revolution Americans already experience as a matter of course.
The "familial confusions" hyperlink goes to my piece last week on Big Love, and how it intersects with my own fam. I would obviously differ with Ross over the "familial confusions" and "post-Sexual Revolution" characterization of my own family. To the contrary, I'd say if you laid out the basic, traditional values you'd want parents to communicate to kids we had them.
It's true that there are seven of us by four mothers. It's true that we didn't all grow up under the same roof. It's true that some of us did time in the projects, and some of us didn't. But it's also true that I've got a brother who's a civl engineer, another who's a programmer for Pixar, a sister who works for the AARP, a brothers who just graduated and is apping for law school, a brother and sister who work with my Dad at the company he founded in his basement, and so on...
It's also true that I'm the one who spent the most time in a "traditional" two-parent household. But more true, is that out my Dad's kids, I'm the biggest screw-up. I'm the only one who was kicked out of high school--twice. I'm also the only one who didn't graduate from college. I was also the second youngest to have a child. When I dropped out, it was like the world ended for my parents. And then it ended again when Kenyatta got pregnant. And then it ended again when we didn't get married. And then it ended again when I came to New York. And the saga continues...
My point is that while we didn't have the artifice of the traditional family, in terms of values, goals and outcome--to paraphrase Malcolm--we were the family the Waltons thought they were. We were the ones Reagan and the conservatives were waiting for--they were just too single-minded to see.
And this takes us even deeper. I've always believed that whatever confusions we did have, whatever family issues we had to work out, whatever demons we had to exorcise were no different than the demons that haunted more traditional family structures. I'm not psychic. But in my time, I've known people, and from what I can tell, their lives are always a tangled mess. I'm not special. And I'm not exceptional. Indeed, the motivating force behind my work, is that we're all complicated. We're all confused. And we've always been confused.
Sometimes it's just racist...
Seriously, I have no idea what the frack Capcom was thinking, when they went ahead with Resident Evil 5:
One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking
control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something
in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not
infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary
Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since
the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles,
handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the
infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where
Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty
savagery just comes with the territory.
There will be plenty of people who refuse
to see anything untoward in this material. "It wasn't racist when the
enemies were Spanish in Resident Evil 4," goes the argument, but then
the Spanish don't have the baggage of being stereotyped as subhuman
animals for the past two hundred years. It's perfectly possible to use
Africa as the setting for a powerful and troubling horror story,
but when you're applying the concept of people being turned into savage
monsters onto an actual ethnic group that has long been misrepresented
as savage monsters, it's hard to see how elements of race weren't going
to be a factor.
All it will take is for one mainstream media
outlet to show the heroic Chris Redfield stamping on the face of a
black woman, splattering her skull, and the controversy over Manhunt 2
will seem quaint by comparison.
And with Ta-Nehisi's help get that clip of said black woman's skull being splattered!
Seriously though, the whole "it's only a game" defense--which people always raise--is so lame. It's usually raised by the same 35-year old dude who plays video-games, like other people watch TV, and swears that video games are just as legitimate as TV. As a guy who plays WoW, like other people watch TV, and swears that gaming is just as legit as TV, I can relate. But if we're going to allow video games to enter into the world of adults, if we don't want to looked upon as boys in the bodies of men, then we have to be serious. Either this shit is real, or it ain't. You can't ask people to at once respect the creativity of gaming, and then tell them they can't critique it.
One good thing about hip-hop is that the belief that the music is somehow magical (however mistaken that belief is) has empowered legions of fans to argue about its merits. We can be completely insufferable, arrogant, and dead-ass wrong. But if you say that misogyny taints the entire Biggie catalog--as you could maintain--you will get a debate. Some will say, "Meh, it's just music," but many more will actually engage the argument.
Thanks Mike
I'd read about this Michael Steele comment, but didn't realize how stupid it was until I actually watched it. You'd think Steele would have backed off his "not in the history of mankind has government created a job" argument. But he's actually advancing it claiming that government creates "work" and "contracts" which don't count as jobs. Good to know that I'm technically unemployed, since I'm on contract with The Atlantic. Also good to know that my mother, who's worked in the public school system all her life, has never actually had a job.
Look, I get that there's a case to be made against simply doling out money for people to do work that we don't actually need. But this isn't it and Steele isn't the dude to make the case. No one knows more about make-work than him. Steele is operating in this fantasy world where businesses never fail and never have to lay anyone off. I don't know much about econ. But I can recognize a guy who's just as clueless as I am.
Blacks in video-games: More Pew-Pew, Less QQ
Prime takes a look at black protagonists across the pixelscape:
Now, as a black gamer, I don't want to single myself out in saying that
creative black characters should entirely cater to representing me in
whatever fashion. Nor do I exclusively desire to experience the
personage of the black-American. What's even more imperative is the
element of portrayal, seen through the eyes and respective thought
processes of all gamers. This unfortunately, is most commonly based on
worldwide mainstream media and/or simple unfamiliarity. It's no secret
that the game industry-in the Western hemisphere-is mostly populated by
white males, be they designers, artists, programmers, public relations
executives, etc. Fairly and honestly, those in creative positions will
more than not, imagine and implement characters in their likeness. The
same can be said in the Eastern world of development, though what they
are more successful at in doing is designing the white male character,
and they do it often.
What? Madden and NBA Live don't count?? The nigrahs are never happy...
Centrism!!
Rachel Maddow tackles Bill Ben Nelson... UPDATE: Apologies to Sens. Bill and Ben Nelson. I really need to pay attention.
Nice quip in a nice post arguing that Obama is winning:
Paul Krugman, who wants a partisan war on the GOP, and Matt Yglesias, who thinks that bipartisanship's impossible in the modern era, and Tina Brown,
who thinks there's no longterm downside to Democratic ownership of
hefty social spending, have now come out swinging. The consensus
against Obama's new brand of politics is the talk of ... Manhattan.
The case against Chicago
From commenter Charles J:
The big thing keeping me in Harlem is the convenience--the 2/3 line is
a near straight-shot to work. I agree the community is great and
space-to-rent ratio is much better than downtown and Upper East. As a
southern transplant I've been able to adjust to New York winters, but
Chicago is a Different Kind of Cold. I'd be back in Smyrna Ga before
the midwest. No disrespect at all to MW readers, but the weather is a
very important factor.
From GD:
My ex's brother and sister-in-law lived in the Chi (Hyde Park), and
we went to visit them once in January, shortly after their daughter was
born.
I stepped outside to go for a jog like any normal day, and within
five minutes I was certain i was going to die. Charles J is right: that
shit is a Different Kind of Cold.
I'll be testing this out really soon, as me and Kenyatta are gonna take a weekend jaunt out that way. She's from Chicago, so it's nothing for her. We're gonna see how the kid holds up. The thing about New York, though, is that you actually have to walk in the cold--and the heat. As you guys may have picked up from that Michelle piece, I'm kinda in love with the South Side. It's like Harlem's smarter, but less jiggy, little sister. Fine as all hell. You just gotta see past those glasses. And them damn overalls.
We are all classical conservatives now...
I'm still trying to wrap my head around Sam Tannenhaus's extraordinary essay on conservatism. If you haven't read, please do. And then read Andrew's response. which I actually had to print out to make sure I was getting it all. One thing that struck me was the sense that conservatism isn't so much dead, as was what call conservatism has changed. What appeals to Sam and Andrew seems to be not so much a set of beliefs, but a set of values. Here's Sam on Edmund Burke:
Burke's conservatism was based not on a particular set of ideological principles but rather on distrust of all
ideologies. In his most celebrated writings, his denunciation of the
French Revolution and its English champions, Burke did not seek to
justify the ancien regime and its many inequities. Nor did he
propose a counter-ideology. Instead he warned against the destabilizing
perils of revolutionary politics, beginning with its totalizing
nostrums. Robespierre and Danton, the movement ideologues of their day,
were inflamed with the Enlightenment vision of the ideal civilization
and sacrificed to its abstractions the established traditions and
institutions of what Burke called "civil society." They placed an idea
of the perfect society over and above the need to improve society as it
really existed.
My own stab at this
was the distinction between a conservatism of faith and a conservatism
of doubt. Another way to look at it is the contrast between partisan
Republicanism in the past forty years and the classical conservative
temperament, originating in Burke, and celebrated by Kirk and Hart. In
practice, few people on the American right fit entirely within one camp
or the other. But the distinction still matters.
It matters because the core conservative insight is the distinction
between ideology and politics, between theoretical and practical
wisdom.
This is a conservatism that has militancy and radicalism, not liberalism, as its antitheses. It seems to say very little about specific policy, but a lot about how to think about policy. Martin Luther King was despised by the right-wingers of his time, but by these lights, he was likely more conservative than the people who opposed him. Moreover, Obama would be, almost certainly, a conservative. As, I think, would I.
But party coalitions are built around issues these days--not ways of thinking about issues. It's more policy, than philosiphy. Like I said, in that Burkean sense, I don't have much problem calling myself conservative. I just happen to be pro-choice, to believe government should, and can, help people, to be pro-science, and perhaps most importantly, to have a visceral disdain for bigots and people who try to manipulate bigots to suit thier ends. That goes for small town elitist, gay-bashers, and Mooslim haters.
I'll have more to say on the essay in the coming days. I just need to think about it some.
To make bloggers, beat it and scream like Michael...
Damn, kid. They look so happy. Heh, to be young again.
Slowly making my way through Season One. My rough impression is that BSG seems to be what network television should be. If Heroes were this good, I probably would watch it. I don't find the show to be transcendent in that Mad Men/The Wire sort of way. I find the acting to be much less compelling, and the eroticism annoying at times. The cylon chick in the red dress is just annoying, because she's supposed to be sexy, but in fact, she's just trying to hard. I don't know if that's acting or what. But I always thought sexiness was about what was hidden, what was hinted at. But with old girl, it's all out front. Frankly, and I mean no disrespect, but the president--Laura Roslin--is sexier than her.
But that said, Battlestar succeeds, for me, as entertainment. It doesn't leave me thinking about deep philosophical questions, but it entertains. The action is concieved really well--space actually looks like space. There are no thrusters and particle beams and disruptors--there are nukes. The show is probably better than any interation of Star Trek (save maybe TNG) because it doesn't really ooze with sentimentalism. Fuck a prime directive, Adama's trying not to get capped by these Cylons. I like that. I like the central driving idea of "How will they escape?" It's a good show.
And Bill Kristol was a seat-warmer for...
Jack Shafer argues it should be no one. I always feel a bit behind when I read about the hubbub around Kristol and the Times columnist slot. On one level I understand why it's considered a plum job. If you want influence, who can beat the Times. But on another it seems like a nightmare for a writer actually concerned about his work. Putting out two or three columns a week, in a rigid format, where you're expected to represent a particular perspective must be incredibly stressful. What if you have nothing to say that week?
Yes, yes that was often the case with Kristol, but I don't think Kristol much cares about his career as writer. People should see his "journalism" the way they should see Karl Rove's "columns"--unserious missives issues by political actors looking to push their agenda. But for people who want to be serious about their writing, it seems you have to accept that something like a third of what you write every year will suck. That may be true anyway--but it's different reading something back later and thinking it sucked, and knowing, going in, that you have absolutely nothing to say, and are just filling column inches.
For writers, I think this is where the blog outshines the column form. It's much more organic, and allows the form to bend to the writer, as opposed to the writer bending to the form. If you have two words to say on a subject, you say two words. If you have 1,000 words to say on subject, you say 1,000. If someone else said it better than you, than you quote and link to them. And should it all fail you simply make a post arguing the Gza's supremecy over Raekwon. Or you have an open NFL thread Or you just talk about Warcraft. As, uhm, I'm about to do...
Can't do that at the New York Times!
Think of the children
As you can imagine, I can't muster much outrage about A-Rod and roids. There are drugs that would likely make me a more efficient writer. I don't take them because I'm concerned about my health, and because I worry about what they'd do to the shreds of creativity I cling to. I'm always worried about getting busted, now that I've got a family. But I also don't get paid millions to do what I do. If I were, I have no idea what I'd do. That's another world
This doesn't bode well for me and Harlem
The Daily Intel on the middle class and Manhattan. Oxymoronic, I know. This is obviously an old complaint, but it's bracing to see it in print and cold stats. I moved to Harlem because I loved the community, and I stay, mostly, because of the ties my family has made here. There really is no other argument. But Manhattan, on a whole, seems easiest for the very poor and the well-off. Yes, I know. An original observation if there ever was one. But again, it's like you've been dating this high-maintenance honey for the past five years, and you're just realizing that she is, indeed, high maintenance. Man if you continues like this, Chicago here we come.
UPDATE: Sorry guys. Forgot the hyperlink. Fixt now.
Toward a more doctrinaire centrism
Ezra argues that Nelson and Collins aren't actually making specific economic arguments, against specific programs, in these specific times, but rather are just yelling "too big!" and "bipartisan!"
...the gang of job-cutters -- to steal Dean Baker's elegant formulation
-- hasn't justified their cuts on grounds of either size or efficacy.
Why is $900 billion a stimulus package they would have to oppose, but
$800 billion is a stimulus package they can support? There's been no
explanation for the superiority of $800 billion against $600 billion,
or even against $1.2 trillion. Nelson has not argued that the likely
output gap over the next two years has been overstated in CBO estimates
-- and wayoverstated by Goldman-Sachs' estimates -- and thus the stimulus is too large for our purposes.
Nor have they argued that the $40 billion in state aid and $20
billion in school construction will be less stimulative than the $70
billion Alternative Minimum Tax patch, of which exactly 0.5% goes
towards the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution (which are, of
course, the folks most in need of relief, and most likely to spend it
quickly).
In fact, they haven't really argued anything at all. Rather, it's
been a dazzling display of the most analytically bankrupt strain of
centrism: The belief that the right answer lies, by definition,
somewhere between the answers that are already on the table. The
Nelson-Collins bill hasn't been justified in terms of virtues so much
as in terms of abstract numerical positioning. It's a neat trick, and
widely applicable. If one party announced a bill mandating that all
Americans must bathe themselves in mud and brambles, and the other
party opposed the "Mud and Brambles Bathing Act of 2009," Collins and
Nelson would be right there to explain that the American people are
tired of dogma and interest group politics and they have brokered a
compromise mandating that all Americans take a monthly mud and brambles
shower instead.
Mostly because they want to be seen as broad-thinking , diplomatic and practical, all manner of Washington-type are liable slip into centrist-speak. It's not that centrism is, in and of itself, problematic--if you're politics take you to the middle, then they take you to the middle. But an unthinking moderation is an ideology in and of itself. Believing the bike should be split in half is not always the most sensible position.
February 8, 2009
But he kept us safe!!
Below Glenn Greenwald offers a great counter the whole "Bush/Cheney kept us safe" meme. I always hated that notion because it relies on what we don't know, and it pretends that 9/11 happened under some other guys watch. Why do these cats get a free pass for the most catastrophic act of terror ever perpetrated on US soil?
But Greenwald makes a better point. If one concedes that that Bush/Cheney torture regime kept us safe, one must also conclude that Bill Clinton kept us safe, since the first WTC attack happened under his watch, and their were no more after it. This is really the only leg Bush-defenders have to stand on--"he kept us safe." But the last guy did that, and he foibles, while unfortunate, certainly don't rise to the "Heckuva job Brownie" level.
Meanwhile Yglesias, back from vacation, tackles the most hackneyed--and ultimately meaningless--word in Washington. For my part, its kind of amazing, in these times, to watch the same hacks who presided over the last eight years of profligacy lecture us on fiscal responsibility. Even the kid can do a little math.
February 6, 2009
You're a customer
From SeanH:
Ugh. Relax and get well, dude. Toss us a NFL draft/free agency thread and most of us will be happy all day.
Consider it done. I don't watch much college, so my knowledge of this stuff is limited to free agency. I know the Cards have got a grip of dudes coming up.
Radio silence
Whatever bug Andrew had a couple weeks ago appears to have migrated through the net to me. I'm not sure how much I'll be capable of saying today, beyond posting some clips. I'm trying really hard not to move.
The Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps,
who was photographed inhaling from a marijuana pipe, has lost a major
sponsorship deal and has been suspended from competition for three
months.
Kellogg, the food company, said Thursday that it would not renew its contract with Phelps when their deal expires at the end of February. It would not disclose the value of its contract.
Later Thursday, USA Swimming suspended Phelps for three months.
...this absurd ritual takes place in which Phelps has to pretend he
did something dreadful and we all have to tut-tut and frown and furrow
our brows, and the sponsors cluck and the press preens - while the only
conceivable news is that a 23 year-old had a good time at a party,
breaking no professional rules since he was not competing when he was
goofing off.
And, seriously, does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an
unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to
grow up as a culture?
February 5, 2009
I think I'll just remember KRS-ONE like this
Man, this is just awful
Black man convicted of rape. DNA later clears black man. Too late. Black man died in prison. If you can't hear the audio, read here. This is exactly why I can't back a death penalty. I know this man wasn't convicted to die, but the price of being wrong when accusing anyone is high. I'm really waiting for the day when we hear Texas has executed an innocent. It's fucking coming. They need to sue the fuck out of Texas, and the prosecutor (now a judge) should be removed from the bench. What right do these people have to continue on as if nothing happened?
While many people thought it was a fitting touch for President
Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama to have their first
inaugural dance to At Last, Etta James is not pleased with Beyonce's rendition.
During a concert in Seattle, James, 71, told the audience, "You know, your President,
the one with the big ears - he ain't my President - had that woman singing
for him at his Inauguration. She's going to get her ass whooped."
The songstress went on to say, "How dare Beyonce sing my song that I been singing forever. Now I'm going to sing it for y'all."
I guess this could be a hoax. I'm really hoping so. Here's the audio. Definitely sounds like her. The thing that makes me suspicious is she never actually sings on the audio. Anyway, it's being widely reported. I'm not quite sure why Beyonce attracts so much hate.
This video is pretty thrilling. Frankly, I thought all the Illumanati\New World Order\Behold A Pale Horse types were shamed into hiding when Y2K fizzled. Good to see a good old-fashion conspiricy nut arguing that 9/11 was an inside
job, and Obama is just a conituation of the New World Order. There's an
argument for the latter, not the former, and not in the way that KRS
thinks. Man, Self-Destruction was a long time ago.
Sensitive thugs, ya'll all need hugs
That Politco interview is pretty amazing. Cheney has cultivated an image as cold-hearted, single-minded, and unconcerned about the opinions of others. But what I see in that interview is the ramblings of a thin-skinned politician who's upset that he left office with the some of the worst approval numbers in history.
The interview, less than two weeks after the Bush administration ceded
power to Obama, found the man who is arguably the most controversial --
and almost surely the most influential -- vice president in U.S. history
in a self-vindicating mood.
He expressed confidence that files will some day be publicly accessible
offering specific evidence that waterboarding and other policies he
promoted -- over sharp internal dissent from colleagues and harsh public
criticism -- were directly responsible for averting new Sept. 11-style
attacks.
Not content to wait for a historical verdict, Cheney said he is set to
plunge into his own memoirs, feeling liberated to describe
behind-the-scenes roles over several decades in government now that the
"statute of limitations has expired" on many of the most sensitive
episodes.
A man who knows he's right about something this serious, who truly has faith that history will vindicate him, who really doesn't care what other think (remember that "So?" moment) doesn't need to take to the papers barely a few weeks out of office. His conscience is clear in knowing that he did all that he could do, not simply to protect American lives, but to protect the American way of life. I'm not talking about gas-guzzlers and credit cards, but liberty and happiness. That man doesn't try to rehab his image. He knows that this country is freer and safer now, than it was when he came in. That man is secure in himself.
But that man isn't Dick Cheney, and perhaps nothing has made me more thankful to live in a democracy than the past eight years. I have no doubt that if we lived somewhere else, Dick Cheney would go Mobutu. Thank God, he doesn't have that option here.
Many commenters and e-mailers objected to me arguing that picnic has its linguistic roots in the era of lynching. Among my favorite responses:
The notion that the word picnic is derived from lynching is an urban
legend in the black community. Like all urban legends there exists no
proof whatsoever that it is true. I thought the Atlantic was a mag with
standards??
And:
Re: your bullshit etymology, why was "picnic" first used
in print in a letter from Lord Chesterfield to his son -- in 1748?
(From the Oxford English Dictionary). The Chesterfield kid was in
GERMANY at the time, and as a Brit was a long way and more than a
century before the lyncherdom stuff you hallucinate created the word
... WTF are you talking about?
I've been going to picnics since I was in kindergarten and have
never heard this word to have any other meaning or etymology other than
"an outdoor lunch with a basket and blanket" - like Yogi bear.
Anyone? Can I really not use this word anymore?
No you can't. In fact, I don't even want white people looking at me. Direct eye-contact is clearly evidence of latent racism...
Here's the thing. Sometimes I try to be funny. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn't. But if you see me, an avowed agnostic, citing Clarence 52X, and then claiming that picnic hails back to the days of lynchings, and then claiming that black people are calling for their own extermination, and then citing The Secret Relationship Between The Blacks and The Jews, and then claiming that all French people are racist, it's safe to assume it's a joke.
Even if it's a bad one.
I came up blogging the age of Gawker and The Onion. I'm black, but I blog with that sensibility. Throughout my tenure here I've argued for Lando Calrissian as the spokesperson for black people and wondered about dating Ida B. Wells. Perhaps jokes about lynching and urban myth take things a little too far. Or maybe there are lot of folks who are feeling like their time as the stock villian should end, and get p/o'ed at the slightest insinuation. I don't know. But there's the explanation. I'd hate have to start putting things in front of these posts (like IRONY ALERT!!!). Brucds suggest emoticons. Let's hope it doesn't come to that :P
There was always something studiedly vague about Obama's insistence
that he would battle a culture in which "our leaders have thrown open
the doors of Congress and the White House to an army of Washington
lobbyists who have turned our government into a game only they can
afford to play." Obama could not remake Washington anew. His
administration would certainly face unwanted scandal and welcome
proficient rogues.
But it turns out that Obama's words, well, mattered. They made it
harder to ignore scandal, as the Bush administration had done. The
endlessly long vetting forms forcing deep tax and income transparency,
which in turn uncovered embarrassments that would never have emerged
under past regimes. This has made for a more troubled transition, but
will probably also result in a cleaner administration. For all the
embarrassments, this, in a concrete sense, is what change looks like.
It's not an administration that decides to be clean so much as one that
has little choice in the matter.
Uhh White People...
Not trying to offend anybody, but someone in my house (Kenyatta) likes that awful show Rock of Love. Apparently they made reference to something called a "White Trash Picnic." Now I could all Clarence 52X on you and talk about how "Picnic" is derived from the phrase "Pick a Nic" which is derived from "Pick a Nig" which is itself derived from "Pick a Nigger," which is derived from the phrase "Pick a Nigger to Lynch," thus meaning that a "White Trash Picnic" must be code for Klan rally. But I don't think you're quite ready for that level of knowledge.
And so I humbly ask WTF that phrase means. I googled it and came with the most confusing pictures. It looked like a bunch of white people having a cookout--with a few black people no less. Am I missing something, here? Is this like that "Canadian" thing ya'll mofos like to pull? Will you lose "white people privileges" if you tell me? Will banks stop giving you money?
UPDATE: Apparently a few people below think I'm being sarcastic. In fact, I'm dead serious. Picnic clearly is a code-word to call for the
lynching of black people. I've been crusading to keep brainwashed Negroes from using it, and unwittingly calling for their own
extermination. As for snopes, we all know that that's part of the Secret Plot. And why should I trust the French. They lie. They all lie. I'm not being sarcastic at all. No one is ever sarcastic on this blog. We're totally earnest. That is all.
Lafcadio, Jews and Black History Month
This came in the mail yesterday, in response to our convo on BHM:
I appreciated your article on Black History Month because it resembled my own response to the endless Holocaust/General-Oppression history I learned as a child in Jewish Sunday school. Every year from the age of 6 until my Bar Mitzvah at 13 (when I was old enough to say I'm not going to this stupid shit any more), Sunday meant learning about Jewish History which meant learning about some other way or place Jews got the beat shit out of them. Nearly three thousand years of beat-downs and ass-kickings. Babylon, Spain, Egypt...lather rinse repeat. Just look how many of the Jewish holidays revolve around being oppressed: Hanukkah, Purim, Passover. Three might not sound like that much but this is out of like 10 major holidays...
It took me until my mid-20's to realize I had a serious inferiority complex about being Jewish because to me Jews were nothing but losers and chumps. Then I found out Jews were some serious asshole ass-kickers back in the day and now I just resent modern American Jewish identity. It's nothing but victimhood writ large. Pathetic.
Hmm. I'm put in the mind of my man Lafcadio--the Lion Who Shot Back, written, as luck would have it, by one Shel Silverstein. I haven't read the book in some time, but I'll try to get this right. Lafcadio, in Silverstein's telling, is this lion who lives in the jungle. When the hunters come all the lions run and Lafcadio doesn't quite understand why. He's lectured by older lions and told he should just run and not ask questions. Lafcadio, being an eccentric lion, decides to confront the hunter. When he discovers the hunter is, indeed, trying to kill him, he shoots (and eats?) the hunter.
Soon Lafcadio becomes a hero to the lions because he kills the hunters who come to kill the lions--hence, he is the lion who shoots back. In the end he becomes famous, travels the world, gets a suit made out of marshmallows, and, in fact, becomes a hunter of lions. But ultimately he decides that life is ultimately best--not amongst the civilized West--but among his own kind, back in the jungle.
Heh, I loved that story when I was kid. Like I later loved the stories of Menelik II at Adowa, or Nat Turner or Robert Charles. These were Negroes Who Shot Back, or in the words of Robert Williams, Negroes With Guns. Like, I later still loved--in very perverse fashion--the story of Joseph Trumpeldor and that great quote--"No matter, It is good to die for our country." Trumpeldor is the Jew Who Shot Back.
Some time soon I'll get over the fact that this dude is an adult. That will likely happen should this stimulus package fail. But for right now, I'm still recovering from the last eight years of Bush media appearances. Bush would have insisted he was right, and might have even tried to power Daschle right through.
I guess vetting can only tell you so much. Still, it really shocks me as odd that Obama's folks have been blindsided by this. It isn't an unknowable. Same with Bill Richardson. Really weird.
February 3, 2009
About that Ida Wells point
I probably should explain some. In the book, Wells comes off as very much a woman of her time. Thus while a feminist, she buys into some Victorian ideals, and that old South sense of honor, and protecting the, uhm, virtue of women. A big conflict for Wells is that white men exhibit none of that respect, and black men--mostly afraid of being lynched--aren't doing much (from her perspective) to make that respect. Wells repeatedly shames the dudes, urging them to get guns and, basically, be men. In her romantic dealings, which are really well detailed, Wells is demanding on this point. She's not interested in a dude who's shuffling, or who would do less for her than she would do for herself. She was, basically, a bad-ass.
The "beef in the club" point was just a modern analogy and a joke. The Dick Armey\Joan Walsh deal, which you can see below, is of a different order. To my mind, Armey's comment came out getting his ass handed to him by Walsh. He couldn't out-think her, so he decided to put her down. I'm not trying to put-down Ida Wells. I'm not in a competition with her. I'm certainly not trying to take a shot at her. I don't think she was wrong. To the contrary, she's deeply inspiring, and in that somewhat frightening.
What can I say, I'm only a man. If you paint a woman for me fully and completely, then I'm going to see her--fully and completely.
Black History Month. Meh.
I think people who want to get rid of Black History Month are only slightly less annoying than people who complain about Kwanzaa. Yes, it's true--Bob Johnson and Michael Jordan weren't what Carter G. Woodson had in mind. But the true mark of a movement's success is its descent into hackery. Black people don't get to pick and chose what aspects of America we want to integrate into. We have to take it all. White people who complain that there is no "White History Month," much in the way that one might complain that there is no "Black Rapper Show", merit no real response, except that we all look forward to a day when there is one.
Me on the other hand, I tired of black history month, circa 7th grade. True, I did do a recital of Marcus Garvey's "Look For Me In The Whirlwind" at the "Black Awareness Assembly" in 12th grade. But mostly when I think of Black History Month, I think of being made to watch footage of Negroes getting the shit kicked out of them, and then Negro teachers extolling the nobility of letting someone kick the shit out of you. You can imagine how well that went over in West Baltimore at the height of the Crack Age. And then there was, as one of my editors put it, the "I Am Somebody" bullshit, in which you were forced to memorize a litany of black achievement facts. The goal seemed to be to prove that my history took to rote for just as well as anybody's. I too can be reduced into a list of facts, America.
I'm thankful for some of that--Garret A. Morgan is forever etched on the brain. But what sucks is black history, as it was presented to us, was a kind of museum filled wit exhibits dedicated to the effects of oppression. It's been a great relief to read black history as an adult and find much more compelling, human stories. It helps to know that Booker T was a schemer, that Du Bois was arrogant as all hell, that Monroe Trotter was a little off. A couple of months ago, I finished Paula Giddings's incredible biography of Ida B. Wells. What a lovely book and what a heroic, brave woman. Ida Wells rode through the south with a pistol, investigating and reporting on lynchings. But the books true success lies not in extolling Wells's courage, but in this simple fact: When I finished reading, my conclusion was as follows: "Damn. I wouldn't have wanted to date Ida Wells. She's the sort of chick who'd have you beefing with some dude at the club."
That's a very irreverant reaction. And yet it showed, to me, how well Giddings had sketched her subject, had rescued her from "I Am Somebody" narrative and given her some rough edges, a sense of humor, some humanity. In other words, though much of Wells's career was a reaction to white racism, she came across as a fully realized person. If I could change anything about Black History Month, it would be that. Less hero worship. Less empty celebration of achievement. We need more people in our past, and less idols.
My favorite Super Bowl ad
I don't see many ads any more, on account of not having a TV. I think that gave me an extra appreciation of the Super Bowl ads this year. Anyway this was my favorite. Lulz--"It's gold..."
Face it, Tiger...
A great interview with Brian Michael Bendis. Here he is on Spidey's alleged dweeb status:
Doing my initial Spider-Man research, in going back and reading
everything, [I found] for a sad sack this guy was getting laid left and
right. This guy had more girlfriends than I ever had in high school.
Betty Brant was hitting on him. MJ, Gwen. There were girls everywhere.
There is an element of Peter that sees himself a certain way. But the
reality is that he's doing much better than he thinks. That's always
been there. It was only accentuated during the [John] Romita years
where everyone looked real good. Everyone started looking very
attractive and romance comic-y. And my goal overall was to hit the
spirit of the Romita years. That's when I thought the rules of
Spider-Man really kicked in.
I know a lot of people hated this aspect of Spider-Man--they wanted him to be a total nerd. I always liked his inside/outside status, and especially the fact that Peter and Flash eventually developed a friendship. On another note, I really need to read more comics. Evidently, Luke Cage is now a great character.
In 95 we take back Ebbets Field
Sorry, having a Chubb Rock nostalgia moment...
2009 Dubious poll awards
David Moore, author of How To Steal An Election and former VP of Gallup, does the honors. I appreciate this mostly from the perspective of having gained a healthy skepticism of people who cite opinion polls, with no context or qualification.
So I started Battlestar Galatica...
Watched the first episode of the mini on the red eye back east. Who can sleep on those things by the way? Apparently the entire plane, except me. At any rate, I found the plot compelling, the acting pedestrian (was that Julian Bashir?), and the romance grating. I don't think there was one character who really pulled me in--though the plot made me really, really curious. It's a little too "TV" for me ("Why'd you let him die Dad?") but it's also only first episode. I'll know more as I get further in. I have responsibility to you guys to watch the whole thing. It's weird realizing that.
Seriously, I thought that I was beyond the point in life where terms
like "sellout" and "lawn jockey" were part of my racial vocabulary. At
a certain point I concluded that race is too complex an issue and human
behavior too variable and complicated for those kinds of terms to be of
much use. And it's true. Most of the time.
But every so often you come across something so base, so
plantation-esque that it takes you right back to the X-Clan days. It is
in this spirit that I've created the first annual Lawn Jockey award for
those folk who make me want to drape myself in Kente cloth, break out
the kufi and question someone's blackness.
I've disagreed publicly with Juan Williams before but this
drive-by assault on Michelle Obama caught me off guard completely. The
simpleton idea that a Princeton-Harvard educated lawyer and hospital
executive is a "radical militant" is wrong on multiple levels not the
least of which is the fact that Williams isn't even striving for
originality here. It is so faulty, in fact, that it is more akin to the
intercoastal assaults from 90s hip hop than reasoned public
commentary.
I think Jelani was fairer to Juan than Juan was to Michelle. That said, I'm not quite ready to call Williams a sell-out, mostly because I think it doesn't precisely name what he's doing. Williams makes his career on Fox News, where there's a premium on making silly predictions and statements. In Williams' case, many of those statements happen to be about black people.
Hmmm, not exactly making my point here...
Here's what I think. I think Williams isn't necessarily trying to sell anyone out, I think he just can't make heads or tails of the Obamas. In some ways, they represent a kind of unapologetic blackness that I think people have always thought of as counter to what America was, and what Americans would accept. To find that not to be true, I think, has caused some heads to explode. To understand Obama and black folks you need some nuance--a quality that was in small supply amongst 90s era culture warriors like Williams. If you're a pundit who's made a career mistaking Al Sharpton for the whole of black America, than in this Obama era, in the words epic words of Illidan, you are not prepared.
Mr Obama was politely dismissive of Mr Steele when he ran
unsuccessfully for the senate in 2006. Asked what he would say to Mr
Obama now, Mr Steele said: "I would say to the new president,
congratulations. It is going to be an honour to spar with him. And I
would follow that up with: How do you like me now?"
And I think Obama follow that up with: Chairman Steele, Play your position. You lost a senate race in one of the blackest state's in the country, after a particularly racially divisive Democratic primary. Obama is a black Democrat who just won Virginia and North Carolina. At least Mel Martinez had won an election. What's that Clips lyric? You are not him.
Some thoughts on Michael Steele
It's tempting to go all roflerz over the RNC's selection of Michael Steele as chairmen. But I think the proper response is a salute. I have no idea whether Steele will be any good, but I think his selection marks the start of excising the Obama is a M00zlim contingent of the party. I am, perhaps, being too optimistic. But I maintain that you have to begin somewhere. Conservatives have, for years, ridiculed Democratic diversity efforts and some of those efforts should have been ridiculed. There is no question that Geraldine Ferraro, for instance, was a token.
But in the fight for inclusion, like most fights, your persistence is more important than your fuck-ups. The result of decades of persistent Democratic efforts towards inclusion yielded a primary featuring a white woman and black man, both of whom were talented heavyweight politicians--the anti-Ferraros, if you will. Because the GOP, has spent much of the immediate past, celebrating its own homogeneity is way way behind.
