The Ladner Report

Please Support the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement Endowed Chair

2011-10-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

Tougaloo College (Mississippi) faculty and students sitting in at F. W. Woolworth Store, Jackson, Mississippi in summer 1964. Left to right: Professor John Salter, students Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody.

By Joyce Ladner

Tougaloo College in Mississippi, which is my alma mater, has launched a campaign to establish a Mississippi Civil Rights Movement Chair.   It will be the College's first endowed chair[deleted comma] and the first such chair in Mississippi devoted to the Civil Rights Movement. It will be part of a broader movement to solidify the legacy of the civil rights movement in a state whose racial barriers were among the most difficult to tackle. Other undertakings include the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement [deleted comma] and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

First, a word about Tougaloo. My sister Dorie and I transferred to Tougaloo in 1961 after we were expelled from nearby Jackson State College for organizing a civil rights demonstration. We felt that we had died and gone to heaven when we arrived on the campus of this small liberal arts college located in the middle of the most racist state in the United States. Tougaloo is where I discovered liberal education, studied philosophy, literature, and attended monthly Social Science Forums where speakers like Martin Luther King and Ralph Bunche spoke. It was at Tougaloo that I learned the importance of using knowledge to promote social change. Professors at Tougaloo encouraged us to explore languages, the decolonization on the African continent, participate in Crossroads Africa, join the Peace Corps, and to apply for graduate and professional schools. Tougaloo students continue to enter graduate, medical,[add comma] and law schools in disproportionate numbers compared to its peer institutions.

Perhaps no other college in the South played as central a role in the Movement than Tougaloo. Founded over a century ago, Tougaloo was always a leader in human rights. It provided a liberal education to black students not found anywhere else in the state.   In 1961, it found itself at the forefront when the "Tougaloo Nine" students staged the first sit-in in Mississippi at the all-white Hinds County (Jackson) Public Library. Tougaloo hosted civil rights activists from the Freedom Riders in 1961 to the Meredith March in 1966. Prominent leaders and ordinary citizens found safe haven at Tougaloo which was called "an oasis in the desert" because it was the only place where integrated groups could gather. Prominent individuals such as Ralph Bunche, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokeley Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer, Julian Bond, Joan Baez, and Congressman John Lewis spoke at its historic Woodworth Chapel. . Students, faculty and staff were arrested for protesting racial discrimination at segregated white churches, the city auditorium, and were beaten at the F.W. Woolworth store. We students routinely conducted voter registration drives across the state, a boycott against Jackson businesses, and some of us were deeply involved with SNCC, COFO and the Freedom Democratic Party.

Tougaloo paid a heavy price for its involvement. It was dubbed "Cancer College" by whites, and the Mississippi State Legislature's attempted to revoke its charter. Dr. Dan Beittel, its President during these difficult years, was ultimately fired by the board of trustees for Tougaloo's pivotal role in the movement.

In this proud tradition as a leader in the struggle for human rights, it is fitting that Tougaloo College continue its role in the movement by establishing this endowed Chair. It will allow the college to bring to the campus the kind of nationally known scholar the students deserve the right to have as part of their education. Such a professor will be a role model for faculty colleagues as well as students. This endowed chair will help retain an impressive faculty member or to recruit a nationally renowned professor who will provide distinction to the College.   This chair will also enable the College to continue its proud tradition as a leader in the struggle for human rights, as a continuing legacy. I hope that contributing to the Civil Rights Chair may strike a chord with you. You have always supported civil rights for all, including the African American population of Mississippi, perhaps the downest of all America's down-and-out, and this is a wonderful way to continue that support today.

Recently Tougaloo came in tenth in the ranking of all black colleges by US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT. Of all the schools in the top twenty, Tougaloo charges the least, primarily because it serves some of the poorest students in the poorest state.  In addition, all that many young people in Mississippi know of the Civil Rights Movement is "Martin Luther King Jr." And he played only a minor role in Mississippi! Simply establishing a Mississippi Civil Rights Movement Chair will honor and remember a great cause, a magnificent campaign.

My hope is that at this point in our lives, many of us who felt civil rights for all as a priority in our youth (and perhaps throughout our lives) would like to revisit that priority once more. This chair offers an important way to do so.

Please send your contributions or pledges to:

Office of Institutional Advancement
Tougaloo College
500 W. County Line Rd.
Tougaloo, MS 39174

Mark your contribution "Civil Rights Chair."

President Obama, "Speak To Us"

2011-09-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

When President Obama delivers his jobs speech on Thursday, will he continue to ignore his base?

I was talking to a friend recently...a 76 year old black man who grew up in South Carolina and has lived in Washington, DC for many years. He is, by my appraisal, an average educated senior citizen; not an intellectual by any means but very informed. He lives in the inner city by choice, and he talks to a lot of people ranging from his neighbors on the corner to upper middle class friends in suburbia.

As we talked about our mutual displeasure with the way President Obama is responding to a lot of problems, my friend said three words that gave me pause. He said, "Speak to me". I asked him what did he mean. He said he and most of the black people he knows just want the President to acknowledge their existence. He reiterated, "Just speak to us." He said he didn't want or expect the President to make major speeches on the plight of the black community but a simple acknowledgement that we exist, and yes, that we African Americans supported him in record numbers. We gave our hearts and souls to his election and we thought he was one of our own.

My friend talked about an experience a friend of his had. His friend belongs to a black church in the economically depressed area of Southeast Washington. President Obama visited his friend's church, much to the parishioners surprise (it is always kept secret for security reasons). When the President entered the side door of the church everyone was excited to see him. The President took his seat on a front pew and looked straight ahead. When the service was over, he exited without so much as turning around to smile, bow his head in acknowledgement of their thunderous applause, or wave at the audience. Sadly, President Obama didn't even look at his strongest supporters. In other words, he didn't "speak" to them and they felt ignored, pained, and disrespected.

I don't know why President Obama ignores his base -- African Americans, Hispanics, trade unionists, liberals, leftists et al. while wooing independent voters he has to win over to be re-elected. He can acknowledge his base even as he courts independent voters. It appears to me that President Obama is trying to be the most centrist president in history. Could this explain why he keeps trying to mediate with hostile Republicans who would rather see him disappear from the the universe than bargain with him, even when it goes against their self-interests.

They have never mistreated another President or debased the Office of the President as they are now doing. My friend and I agreed that it is painful to watch this proud black man bow down to his arch enemies, and to come out on the losing end of the stick every time he sits down to negotiate with them. Why does he keep capitulating, and why does he keep going back for more punishment? Perhaps we will never know.

If President Obama continues to ignore his base I don't believe he will be able to rally these once enthusiastic voters -- a must for him to be re-elected. My friend and I will vote for him but I doubt seriously that I will go door to door, make hundreds of phone calls, or "give until it hurts" as I, along with millions of others did before. My Washington friend said it is hard enough to get some black people out to vote because they don't feel that politicians are going to help them. In candidate Obama's campaign blacks had tremendous pride that a black man was running a very viable campaign. They gave of themselves because, as my friend said, "we wanted this 'brother' to win". Finally, we had a candidate of our own race, one who understood our problems and who promised to do something for us. The big question is, will the President recognize in time that he has to reconnect with us? Will he speak to us?

The President appears to be isolated from the average voter. He needs advisers who know what the people on the ground feel and think. Sure, he knows that jobs is the critical issue that will decide his re-election. He has economic advisers who can compute the numbers but does he have staff who can get him to talk about it from his heart? In other words, does he feel the pain of the suffering?

He needs to get rid of all the "yes" men and women surrounding him. He needs staff who can convince him that his bus tours need to include inner cities as well as the majority white small towns. He doesn't need to run from us. "We are his people and there is no need for him to act like he doesn't know us," said my friend. Whatever happened to the Obama who connected with the poor and the middle class voters...the man who stopped old men and women on the street and the children in their schools whose needs were great? They want to see the man who said he would fight for them, not the man who has disappeared behind the doors of the Oval Office. They want the passion and self confidence of a bid whist player, not the cool confidence of a chess master. They want to see passion and strength.

Finally, the President is not demonstrating the strength and fortitude of our historic black leaders. Wheres is that toughness and fortitude of people like Ida B. Wells, Thurgood Marshall, Congressmen Adam Clayton Powell, William Dawson, Lewis Stokes, James Clyburn, Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters? Where are the leadership skills of effective leaders like Frederick Douglas, Rosa Park, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ida B. Wells and Dorothy Height? These leaders didn't back down in a fight unless absolutely necessary and then they did it with a toughness that we admired. They knew how to negotiate without giving up the store.

My Washington friend said he feels a combination of pain and anger when he sees President Obama being "dissed" by the likes of Congressman Eric Cantor and the dunce Sarah Palin. "Every right wing white person in public life is rolling President Obama," he said. "We want him to stand up with strong broad shoulders, a bit of anger in his voice and a face that says, 'you'd better fear me because I'm going to kick you into a corner'".

Why can't President Obama call a White House summit of influential as well as ordinary supporters to request their support in fighting back? Why can't he flip the script with the journalists who have also joined the herd in beating up on him? Instead of finding a thousand ways that the President is ineffective, the President can change the focus to one which discusses a re-invigorated President who, with his supporters, are pushing back and changing the nature of the debate in substance and kind. The base is waiting for the President to say, "I need your help".

There is a vacuum in leadership and the President's supporters aren't sure what to do. One thing about power is when you're down even the weakest person will step on you. By now the President Obama has been pummeled so often and so badly that what we see is a man who looks like he is separated from his own spirit. My friend said, "It's hard to fight for someone who looks like he isn't fighting for himself."

Speak To Me

2011-09-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

He didn't look at them. In other words, he didn't "speak" to them.

I don't know why President Obama ignores his base -- African Americans, Hispanics, trade unionists, liberals, leftists et al. while wooing independent voters he has to win over to be re-elected. He can acknowledge his base even as he courts independent voters. It appears to me that President Obama is trying to be the most centrist president in history. Could this explain why he keeps trying to mediate with hostile Republicans who would rather see him disappear from the the universe than bargain with him, even when it goes against their self-interests. They have never mistreated another President or debased the Office of the President as they are now doing. My friend and I agreed that it is painful to see this proud black man bow down to his arch enemies, and to come out on the losing end of the stick every time he sits down to negotiate with them. Why does he keep capitulating, and why does he keep going back for more punishment? Perhaps we will never know.

If President Obama continues to ignore his base I don't believe he will be able to rally these once enthusiastic voters -- a must for him to be re-elected. My friend and I will vote for him but I doubt seriously that I will go door to door, make hundreds of phone calls, or "give until it hurts" as I did before. My Washington friend said it is hard enough to get some black people out to vote because they don't feel that politicians are going to help them. In candidate Obama's campaign blacks had tremendous pride that a black man was running a very viable campaign. They gave of themselves because, as my friend said, "we wanted this 'brother' to win". Finally, we had a candidate of our own race, one who understood our problems and who promised to do something for us. The big question is, will the President recognize in time that he has to reconnect with us? Will he speak to us?

As things stand, there is a vacuum in leadership and people don't know what to do. One thing about power is when you're down even the weakest person will step on you. By now the President Obama has been pummeled so often and so badly that what we see is a man who looks like he is separated from his own spirit. My friend said, "It's hard to fight for someone who looks like he isn't fighting for himself."

Speak to us, Mr. President.

No thanks Kathryn Stockett, I don't want to be "The Help"

2011-08-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

I was a maid in high school. I cleaned white peoples houses on Saturdays and after school. I cleaned, washed and ironed clothes and waxed the kitchen floor for $3.00 and twenty cents, the latter being for bus fare. I came from a family of nine children so this was the only way I could make spending money. There were no fast food places like McDonald's during the fifties for had they existed I would have had a part-time job at one of them to get spending money.

There is nothing glorious about cleaning up after dirty people and nothing like being exploited by people who don't give a damn about you. I have written about this in my memoir that I am almost finished writing. Maids are invisible and their lives are invisible to their white employers. When I was fourteen, I quit a job when the white girl who was my age DEMANDED that I wash her blood stained underwear from her menstrual period. When her mother came home from work she told her that I refused to do so and her Mother lit into me saying I thought I was too good to wash these clothes. Before I left that day I made sure that the pancakes Jo Lee demanded that I make for her included dirty dishwater instead of water or milk, and I fried them with the ring of grease around their nasty kitchen sink instead of lard. Jo Lee praised me for making what she described as the best pancakes she'd ever eaten.

As I stood there and watched her eat, I felt vindicated because I had gotten her back in the only way I felt I could. Had I verbally lashed out at her in a tit for tat her mother could have had me arrested for being uppity or she could have done so on some trumped up charges. It was not inconceivable that her mother could have had some mean men torch our home. I never took pride in what I did but as I held back my salty tears that Saturday morning I couldn't think of any other way to fight back for being called a Nigger and being told that I "had" to wash her soiled underwear. "Who do you think you are?" she had demanded. "You think you too good to wash my clothes? You're just a Nigger!" she shouted. My regret that day was that I couldn't tell her that I had fed her dirty dishwater and grease from the sink.

A year later when Jo Lee and I were fifteen years old , I heard from my neighbor who sent me to work at Jo Lee's home that she had gotten married because she was pregnant. She and her high school drop-out husband were living in a shotgun house in the white people's poor section of town. Can you imagine Jo Lee writing a book about me, my feelings, dreams, thoughts, aspirations and goals? Can you imagine Jo Lee being able to step out of her role of racial superiority long enough to give voice to me and my family? Could Jo Lee ever be interested in where and how I lived, went to school, who my friends were, what we did for recreation, what I studied in school, etc.? Absolutely not. The culture did not allow for a bi-lateral relationship in which this could have occurred. Therefore, how can Kathryn Stockett get inside the head of her characters and truly understand them except from her unilateral and imaginary perspective? She said as much when she said she didn't know anything about her family's maid outside the work environment when she was growing up, and she didn't question it.

It was a rare white employer who had enough humane interest to know the backgrounds and interests of their maids and other black employees. My grandmother was a case in point. For as long as I can remember she worked for a white family. They owned a furniture store. The woman stayed at home and the man operated the furniture store. My grandmother cooked, cleaned, and raised their son and daughter. I was so humiliated as a child when my grandmother went to the daughter's wedding and was seated alone in the balcony. She bought a new dress, hat, purse, shoes and gloves for this occasion and was as proud as a biological mother because she had been the mother to these two children--Joann and Johnny. I remember telling her that I was going to college so I wouldn't have to be a maid. I loved my grandmother very much and I respected her. She was a kind, decent, caring and giving woman to all of us kids and to everyone else.

But my grandmother was stuck in the role of maid because that was the only kind of work she could get. She made $3.00 a day plus bus fare. I was astounded to learn that from this small salary she saved enough money for my cousin that she raised to attend nursing school at Dillard in New Orleans. My grandmother was very disappointed and sad when my cousin chose marriage over college. You see, my grandmother wanted my cousin to achieve what she hadn't been able to accomplish. She wanted to have the vicarious satisfaction of achievement and she wanted my cousin to have a better life than her own. I always regretted that she was denied this because of my cousin's personal choice. So many of our forebears sacrificed so that we could be nurses and teachers instead of maids. Which brings me back to Jo Lee and her racist mother, who called me a Nigger when she got home from work because Jo Lee told her I refused to wash her underwear. She threatened to fire me but that was unnecessary because I had no intention of going back to that job. Although their words stung but didn't break me. I knew I was not a Nigger and I knew that they were one step up from being poor white trash even though the mother was a secretary for a lawyer. She was also his paramour. If anything, their actions caused me to have a stronger resolve to go to college so that I would not have to be a maid.

As I read Kathryn Stockett's book, I was reminded that I knew a lot about Jo Lee and her divorced mother and they knew nothing about me because their white skin privilege made them view me as invisible, a non entity, and if they had to consider me at all, they saw me as inferior, as a nobody. All the maids I knew were familiar with the intimate details of the families for whom they worked. This has been the case since slavery when black women worked in the houses of white people....cooked, cleaned their houses, wet nursed their babies...then their employers turned around and called them dirty and lazy. How can you entrust someone with cooking your food and raising your children and then, like a schizophrenic, make a 180 degree turn and look on them as inferior, alien, and not worthy of knowing anything about them, or humanizing them? This is the history of black people in America... it is the history of black domestic workers. It is why my father told my mother that she would never work for white people. He saw how his mother's employers tried to dehumanize her by commission and omission.

What is needed is a book by a maid or a group of maids on the white people they work for. Now that's a book that would probably be a lot more accurate and insightful, and the dialect would be correct too. Every time I read one of Kathryn Stockett's "I'm on" instead of Imma, or I'm gonna" I got irritated. I hated it when she spelled "Eula Mae" as "Yule Mae". I got downright angry when she described the husbands of at least three maids as no count men who had gone off and left their families. At the same time, the white men in Stockett's world aren't absent or "no count" because they have professional jobs, leisure time, and they have enough money to build separate toilets for their maids. God forbid that a black maid who cooks their food would ever be allowed to use the same toilet the white people use. I guess this explains the fixation segregationists had with toilets.... for in so many public places there were four. One each for black women, black men, white women, and white men. It's no wonder they didn't have money for libraries and good schools. It was all spent making sure that no black person would ever sit on the same toilet a white behind had graced.

I have thought about my conflict with Jo Lee over the years. I have never taken pride in watching her eat pancakes made with dirty dishwater. It was not my finest young hour but racism had a way of dehumanizing everyone. In the absence of racism she and I could have been equals and friends. But discrimination allowed me to be exploited and her to behave in the worst way. I was too young to be a maid and she was too young to be giving me orders. Kathryn Stockett didn't deal with the dirty and raw outcome of discrimination. The people who populate her book and movie are viewed through rose colored glasses where everyone gets along.

Stockett's book has sold millions of copies and made her a very wealthy woman. The movie will make her even more wealthy and will bring her greater status. However, Hollywood would never have given this opportunity to a black author who wrote about black maids in white households especially in the turbulent South during the struggle for civil rights. Moreover, there is no reason to rejoice in the good old times black servants and white employers. The national marketing frenzy for The Help movie has gone wild. It even includes a full day of marketing products on the Home Shopping Network (HSN). The New Orleans chef Emeril has a new line of cooking pots and pans in honor of The Help. Think of how silly this is: to celebrate maid-ing and maid-hood when women made $3.00 a day toiling over pots and pans on hot stoves. No thanks Miz Stockett. I refuse to go back there.

Donald Trump: Leader of the 21st Century Lynch Mob

2011-04-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Donald Trump's racist attacks on President Barack Obama shows that he is the leader of a twenty-first century lynching party.

Donald Trump's racist attacks against President Obama remind me of the racist lynch mobs of my Mississippi youth. Even though his attacks are baseless, millions of Americans will respond to his not so subtle racist phrasing because they are willing to believe that no black man is innocent when accused of a wrongdoing.

Donald Trump is the leader of a twenty-first century lynching party and his mode of attack is vicious words. How could the President of these United States, the leader of the "free world", and the most powerful man in the world have to respond to the most crack pot attacks on his character? I believe it is because he is black. Plain and simple.

Trump doesn't need a hood and robe or a hangman's noose because his words are reaffirming the already-racist views of the "birthers" and others who have never accepted the black President Barack Obama as their president. First, Trump questioned Obama's citizenship. Shown yet another copy of his birth certificate today, Trump, the buffoon, not only took credit for its release but like any good racist, he shifted his attention to questioning how the President got into Columbia University when some of his wealthy friends children and he could not (Trump probably went to the Wharton School on affirmative action). Trump cannot fathom that President Obama has the gray matter to become head of the Harvard Law Review, the signal honor of being the best student in a Law School.

The reason Trump is effective is because he and his ilk believe that an accused black man is guilty and no amount of due process will change it. He is no different than thousands of other black men who only need to be accused to be viewed as guilty. No amount of logical and factual evidence will change the minds of some of the so -called birthers because in their view, President Obama is guilty first and foremost of being black and male. It doesn't really matter to them whether he was born in Nairobi or Hawaii, or if he headed the Harvard Law Review. Although the President produced a second and more extended birth certificate today, the critics are moving with the shifting sand: Trump is now questioning how President Obama was accepted at Columbia and Harvard Universities.

Republicans tend to believe that no Democratic president is worthy of the presidency. Consider the attacks on the character of President Bill Clinton and the manufactured scandals such as Whitewater and Vince Foster's death. I don't know anyone who understood what Whitewater was about. Consider how Newt Gingrich led the vicious attack against President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky case. It was later revealed that at the same time he attacked Clinton, Gingrich was also having an affair with a Capitol Hill staffer in the Department of Agriculture who was about Lewinsky's age. At least Clinton didn't allow Lewinsky to sleep in his marital bed and eat from his wife's china like Newt Gingrich did. Republicans are capable of a level of personal viciousness toward others when they are guilty of even worse transgressions. By the way, Calista the home-wrecker is now Calista Gingrich. At least President Clinton didn't try to make Monica Lewinsky our First Lady, as presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is doing with Calista.

President Obama doesn't deserve the vicious attacks. I hope we who care about truth, integrity and honesty will speak out against the racist Donald Trump and all his minions who refuse to accept the President as the legitimate leader of this country. To turn the country over to the racists, birther, ignoramuses would be to surrender decency as an important personal and collective value. The media must also stop reporting all the craziness of these people. Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman do not deserve to be treated as intelligent and legitimate potential candidates. We should all say enough is enough.

Tone-Deaf in DC

2010-11-06T08:22:00.001-07:00

New York Times
November 5, 2010
By Bob Herbert

Op Ed Columnist

Excerpted

"What this election tells me is that real leadership will have to come from elsewhere, from outside of Washington, perhaps from elected officials in statehouses or municipal buildings that are closer to the people, from foundations and grass-roots organizations, from the labor movement and houses of worship and community centers.

The civil rights pioneers did not wait for presidential or Congressional leadership, nor did the leaders of the women’s movement. They plunged ahead with their crucial work against the longest odds and in the face of seemingly implacable hostility. Leaders of the labor movement braved guns, bombs, imprisonment and heaven knows what else to bring fair wages and dignity to working people.

America’s can-do spirit can be revived, and with it a brighter vision of a fairer, more inclusive, and more humane society. But not if we wait on Washington to do it. The loudest message from Tuesday’s election is that the people themselves need to do much more."

America - He's your President for Goodness Sake!

2010-11-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

By William Thomas
Friday, October 1st, 2010

There was a time not so long ago when Americans, regardless of their political stripes, rallied round their president. Once elected, the man who won the White House was no longer viewed as a Republican or Democrat, but the President of the United States. The oath of office was taken, the wagons were circled around the country’s borders and it was America versus the rest of the world with the president of all the people at the helm.

Suddenly President Barack Obama, with the potential to become an exceptional president has become the glaring exception to that unwritten, patriotic rule.

Four days before President Obama’s inauguration, before he officially took charge of the American government, Rush Limbaugh boasted publicly that he hoped the president would fail. Of course, when the president fails the country flounders. Wishing harm upon your country in order to further your own narrow political views is selfish, sinister and a tad treasonous as well.

Subsequently, during his State of the Union address, which is pretty much a pep rally for America, an unknown congressional representative from South Carolina, later identified as Joe Wilson, stopped the show when he called the President of the United States a liar. The president showed great restraint in ignoring this unprecedented insult and carried on with his speech. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so stunned by the slur, she forgot to jump to her feet while clapping wildly, 30 or 40 times after that.

Last spring, President Obama took his wife Michelle to see a play in New York City and republicans attacked him over the cost of security for the excursion. The president can’t take his wife out to dinner and a show without being scrutinized by the political opposition? As history has proven, a president in a theatre without adequate security is a tragically bad idea.

Remember: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

At some point, the treatment of President Obama went from offensive to ugly and then to downright dangerous.

The health-care debate, which looked more like extreme fighting in a mud pit than a national dialogue, revealed a very vulgar side of America. President Obama’s face appeared on protest signs white-faced and blood-mouthed in a satanic clown image. In other tasteless portrayals, people who disagreed with his position distorted his face to look like Hitler complete with mustache and swastika.

Odd, that burning the flag makes Americans crazy, but depicting the president as a clown and a maniacal fascist is accepted as part of the new rude America.

Maligning the image of the leader of the free world is one thing, putting the president’s life in peril is quite another. More than once, men with guns were videotaped at the health-care rallies where the president spoke. Again, history shows that letting men with guns get within range of a president has not served America well in the past.

And still the “birthers” are out there claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States, although public documentation proves otherwise. Hawaii is definitely part of the United States, but the Panama Canal Zone where his electoral opponent Senator John McCain was born? Nobody’s sure.

Last month, a 44-year-old woman in Buffalo was quite taken by President Obama when she met him in a chicken wing restaurant called Duff’s. Did she say something about a pleasure and an honour to meet the man or utter encouraging words for the difficult job he is doing? No. Quote: “You’re a hottie with a smokin’ little body.”

Lady, that was the President of the United States you were addressing, not one of the Jonas Brothers! He’s your president for goodness sakes, not the guy driving the Zamboni at “Monster Trucks On Ice.” Maybe next it’ll be, “Take Your President To A Topless Bar Day.”

In President Barack Obama, Americans have a charismatic leader with a good and honest heart. Unlike his predecessor, he’s a very intelligent leader. And unlike that president’s predecessor, he’s a highly moral man.

In President Obama, Americans have the real deal, the whole package and a leader that citizens of almost every country around the world look to with great envy. Given the opportunity, Canadians would trade our leader, hell, most of our leaders for Obama in a heartbeat.

What America has in Obama is a head of state with vitality and insight and youth. Think about it, Barack Obama is a young Nelson Mandela. Mandela was the face of change and charity for all of Africa but he was too old to make it happen. The great things Obama might do for America and the world could go on for decades after he’s out of office.

America, you know not what you have.

The man is being challenged unfairly, characterized with vulgarity and treated with the kind of deep disrespect to which no previous president was subjected. It’s like the day after electing the first black man to be president, thereby electrifying the world with hope and joy, Americans sobered up and decided the bad old days were better.

President Obama may fail but it will not be a Richard Nixon default fraught with larceny and lies. President Obama, given a fair chance, will surely succeed but his triumph will never come with a Bill Clinton caveat – “if only he’d got control of that zipper.”

Please. Give the man a fair, fighting chance. This incivility toward the leader who won over Americans and gave hope to billions of people around the world that their lives could be enhanced by his example, just naturally has to stop.

Believe me, when Americans drive by the White House and see a sign on the lawn that reads: “No shirt. No shoes. No service,” they’ll realize this new national rudeness has gone way, way too far.

OCTOBER 2010 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER & LOWER MAINLAND

The ego factor: Can Obama change?

2010-11-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

Politico.com
By: John F. Harris and Glenn Thrush
November 5, 2010

In the anthology of Barack Obama quotations, one of the classics came just hours before the event that made him the hottest property in American politics.

As Obama walked toward the arena at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where he gave an electrifying keynote address, a Chicago Tribune reporter noted that he seemed to be making a good impression.

“I’m LeBron, baby,” Obama told author David Mendell. “I can play on this level. I got some game.”

Those words came at the start of the supernova phase of Obama’s career. But on Wednesday came another quote, not quite so crisp, destined to become an early marker of the crash-to-earth phase.

“This is something that I think every president needs to go through because … sometimes we lose track of the ways that we connected with folks that got us here in the first place,” Obama said toward the end of his post-election news conference, after reporters' repeated questions pressing him to go beyond his clinical descriptions of the disastrous election results and explain whether he felt responsibility or remorse. “Now, I’m not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like they, like I did last night. I’m sure there are easier ways to learn these lessons. But I do think this is a growth process and an evolution.”

Is he capable of growth? And how painful the evolution?

Many Obama observers regard these as central questions about his presidency as he tries to recover from an election debacle that many warned of for a year and that even some sympathizers regarded as a natural comeuppance for an exceptionally confident man who slipped into overconfidence.

The results also served as a reminder that Obama is not immune from a timeless truth: Every president’s defects are in part a magnification of his virtues.

Self-regard can blur into self-delusion. According to many Obama supporters and skeptics alike, it is still to be seen whether Obama shares with his most successful predecessors a capacity for self-critique and self-correction.

A year ago, after Democrats got trounced in off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia — in large measure because of the same flight of independents that helped the GOP triumph in the midterm elections — White House aides loudly and publicly stated that there were no lessons in the results that were relevant to Obama. And for most of the year that followed, they acted on that premise.

This misplaced confidence, by some lights, did not merely lead to political miscalculations. It strained the emotional connection with voters on which the most successful presidents depend. Restoring that connection, and regaining the sympathy to be extended a second chance, require a show of modesty.

“Humility is a great quality, and it’s one that people will respect,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who teaches at Rice University. “Ronald Reagan could be seen as a polarizing presence, but he also knew how to play humble when it was necessary. Where is President Obama’s self-deprecating humor? Kennedy and Reagan could both be very self-deprecating. People liked that.”

"The worst thing that happened to Obama is he’s lost a lot of his aura. Even his friends think he’s thin-skinned and a bit highfalutin," he said.

It’s the sort of complaint that comes to the fore in background conversations with lawmakers, lobbyists and veterans of previous administrations who interact with Obama’s West Wing staffers: that they’ve created a cult of personality around Obama, having followed their boss on his rapid and improbable ascent to the presidency. Many of these devotees do, indeed, feel that he is the political equivalent of NBA phenom LeBron James. The view is based on a belief that Obama’s outsize political skills and uncommon personal poise make him different than conventional politicians and immune to conventional political laws of gravity.

One Obama insider said it is a view that starts at the top. Having triumphed over an early perception by political insiders and many journalists that he could not defeat front-runner Hillary Clinton, Obama, this person said, frequently invokes the 2008 experience and what he believes was its lesson — always stay the course, don’t be distracted by ephemeral controversies or smart-set importuning for a change of direction.

Some believe this is an admirable instinct carried to a dangerous degree.

"Obama would sort of say, 'Look, I'm smart. I know what I'm doing. You'll just have to trust me,'” said Democratic strategist and commentator James Carville. “It was kind of beneath him to explain the reasons behind his actions to people — how TARP really worked, how the stimulus was helping. ... You had a lot of signs — New Jersey, Virginia, Scott Brown — but they thought what they were doing was going to turn out all right.”

Obama’s predicament of 2010 suggests another refrain of the modern presidency: Its occupants arrive in office shaped pre-eminently by experience, with character formed well before leaders reach the White House.

A time traveler who went to Arkansas in 1977 would find plenty of people in Little Rock who would not be the least bit surprised that their newly elected attorney general would become president someday. And these same people would not be surprised to learn of the particular nature of the scandal that hobbled Bill Clinton’s presidency some 20 years later.

Obama, however, burst onto the national scene with such speed and force in 2008 that he may have seemed sui generis, a man untouched by the normal cycles of success and setback.

Instead, what’s clear in 2010 is that Obama is like all presidents a product of his past. Some believe his style is too cerebral. Was this a surprise from a former law professor? Some said he allowed himself to be defined too much by legislative victories and defeats, rather than sketching a higher vision of where he wanted to lead the country. Did people not recall that his most extensive government experience was as a state legislator?

Likewise, the contemporary argument about Obama’s personal style has long antecedents. People have for decades regarded him as having special leadership traits. And some people have observed, for just as long, that Obama sometimes regarded himself as too special.

In author David Remnick’s Obama biography, “The Bridge,” he quotes White House adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett: “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. ... He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. ... So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. ... He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Remnick also regularly cites how even Michelle Obama would sometimes bridle under “his ego and his self-involvement.”

A 2008 New Yorker article quoted Patrick Gaspard, now the White House political director, describing what Obama told him during the job interview: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

It was health care where the self-confidence of the Obama team had the most profound impact. The team produced landmark legislation, even after many pundits assumed last winter that the Democratic reform package was dead, but it just happened to be deeply unpopular with many independent voters who went to the polls Tuesday. A recent poll by POLITICO and George Washington University found 62 percent of independent voters had an unfavorable view of health care.

Rep. Marion Berry, who retired from the House earlier this year, described a White House meeting between Obama and conservative Democrats, who warned the president that the measure was unpopular in their districts and asked him why he thought he could do better with health care reform than Bill Clinton had done. “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me,” Berry quoted Obama as saying.

One Democratic operative active in the health care debate said Obama never wavered — but also seemed not to care — when lawmakers expressed their concern to him about the political hazards of the measure. “The do-the-right-thing is, in itself, arrogant,” this Democrat said. “He thinks of it as noble, as rising above. But the underlying assumption is that you are an unprincipled jerk. And all the people around him have drunk that Kool-Aid.”

Veterans of Illinois politics say Obama’s Washington tenure reflects themes — great talent, harnessed to great ego — that are familiar to them.

During his first six years as a state senator, Republicans controlled the Senate and the governorship. So at the time, to get a bill out of committee, he needed Republican support.

“I think he came into Springfield with an arrogance,” said Dan Shomon, who was assigned by Democratic leaders to help Obama as an aide when he arrived. “He wanted to fix the process too quickly. … He didn’t have ‘time’ to make nice with everybody. … I guess the word confidence and professorial-like is better than arrogance, occasionally a lecturing sort of nature — which I think he’s toned [down]. Over time, he learned to get rid of that where he was, sort of, lecturing.”

Others who knew Obama back then think he came in modest and became less so as he accumulated more power. Mike Lawrence, a veteran GOP staffer at the Illinois State Capitol, sees a different Obama than the young state senator who shared the workload with him on a reform panel in the 1990s.

“He was a guy who could take criticism gracefully. Once, I blew up at him, and he chuckled and said, ‘Gee, Mike, you’re really intense,’” said Lawrence, who first got to know Obama as press secretary to then-Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar in the 1990s. “The difference I see now from a distance is a guy who’s defensive and seems to always be in campaign mode.”

Shomon was campaign manager in Obama’s 2000 House challenge against Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.). He sees parallels between Obama’s predicament now and the loss 10 years ago, which he says was a major setback for a politician who had seen so much break his way. Despite the loss to a powerful incumbent of his own party, in a race no serious observers ever expected him to win, Obama kept quickly climbing rungs on the ladder to the presidency.

“I think he will learn his way out of it, and that’s what he did in 2000,” Shomon said. “He’s very competitive at golf, basketball and politics. He does not like to lose. That sort of knockout quality — the Michael Jordan in him — he’s not going to give up.”

One prominent Democratic strategist expressed hope that Obama will conclude that genuine confidence would lead to a willingness to accept the need for a new governing approach, especially in an era when his party no longer controls all of Congress. “The question is, does Obama have the suppleness of mind, the flexibility, the self-confidence to question basic premises?” the Democrat asked. “And does he have the intuition to know when to take half a loaf and when to stand firm? They don’t teach that at Harvard Law, you know.”

One veteran Obama observer was not impressed with the early signs at the Wednesday news conference, believing that the president seemed impassive compared with the magnitude of the setback.

“Where’s the guy who out-hustled Hillary Clinton?” asked former Des Moines Register reporter David Yepsen, now director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. “I don’t think he realizes the mess he’s in, that he’s staring into his political grave. I was watching that press conference the other day, and I’m thinking, ‘Does he really get it?’ Where are the heads that should be rolling? Where’s the acknowledgment things have gone really wrong? I know he wants to project confidence, but come on.”

White House aides declined to comment for this article.

It may be, however, that Obama is feeling his rebuke more keenly than is apparent to outsiders. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he described his feelings of embarrassment and rejection after the 2000 loss.

“No matter how convincingly you attribute the loss to bad timing or bad luck or lack of money — it’s impossible not to feel at some level as if you have been personally repudiated by the entire community, that you don’t quite have what it takes, and that everywhere you go, the word ‘loser’ is flashing through people’s minds,” Obama wrote. “They’re the sorts of feelings that most people haven’t experienced since high school, when the girl you’d been pining over dismissed you with a joke in front of her friends, or you missed a pair of free throws with the big game on the line — the kinds of feelings that most adults wisely organize their lives to avoid.”

James Hohmann and Ben Smith contributed to this report.

© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC

Do We Want SANITY Or Do We Allow INSANITY to Reign?

2010-10-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show decided to have a march to restore sanity after Glenn Beck, the flame throwing talking head at Fox News hosted a march to restore dignity or whatever it was he said it was for. As a comedian Stewart, perhaps without even understanding its broader appeal, was all for trying to stop the screaming and shouting of the crazies out there including folks like Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, and Christine O'Donnell, who is running for the US Senate from Delaware who said "I am not a witch" in a commercial that made her look like one.

As an intellectual, sanity is much desired. So are decorum and literacy. It seems that the illiterates, semi-literates, and those who split their infinitives are more popular and command more attention than those who have records of achievement. Sarah Palin attended five colleges before she got a degree in something akin to basket weaving (just joking), and doesn't have a good track record for achieving much of anything unless you consider being mayor of Wasilla, Alaska that has a handful of stop signs. Just as she quit one college and transferred to another, she also quit the governor's office for no obvious reason except that she got tired of the job. Short attention span? Desire to cash in on illiteracy?

The babe in Delaware who wore the black suit propped against a black velvet looking background and who, in the television commercial, proclaimed she is not a witch hasn't achieved as much as Palin. Consorting with witches, announcing that research was being conducted to put human brains in mice, not knowing what's in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and using campaign funds to pay her rent are the beliefs and practices of Christine O'Donnell.

Can you believe that these women are in the same Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, George Bush, Sr., Nelson Rockefeller, Olympia Snowe and scores of other men and a few women who command respect for their achievements prior to winning their Senate races? George Bush, Sr. was a Congressman, Ambassador to China, businessman, and a graduate of Yale University (don't hold it against Yale that they also awarded a degree to George W. Bush, the son). In other words, achievement is a decided negative for those who support the likes of Palin and her ilk.

It was only a few years ago that these same people would have castigated those black inner city kids who were opposed to making good grades in school. In fact, much was made of the "down with achievement" attitudes of those kids who bullied good students and who felt that making good grades was a matter of trying to be white. If we applied this same logic to Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell, folks wouldn't be hailing them as leaders or voting for them to become the Vice President and a Senator. So why and how is it that poor kids can be banished as bad people and these white women are deemed national leaders for the same behavior? That's for you to figure out. Jon Stewart has a humorous take on it but in doing so exposes the underbelly of the society to us. He shows us that SANITY is needed now more than ever. It is up to us to demand a restoration to common sense, and to speak out against INsansity by voting for those whose real achievements and views are worthy of respecting.

Restore sanity? Too late for the Tea Party

2010-10-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

Washington Post
By Eugene Robinson
Thursday, October 28, 2010

With their "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" this weekend, political satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are late to the party. This weird campaign has been Comedy Central all along.

The main source of hilarity has been the Tea Party movement and its candidates, quite a few of whom give every indication of being several sandwiches short of a picnic. Whether they win or lose - and yes, there remains the possibility that some might actually be elected - they leave us with mondo-bizarro moments that may require years of psychoanalysis for our collective political psyche to purge.

Chief among them is an all-time classic of weirdness, right up there with those campy 1950s sci-fi/horror flicks like "Plan 9 from Outer Space" or "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers." You've probably guessed that I refer to Christine O'Donnell's incomparable "I'm Not a Witch" television ad.

Much has been written about the "witch" ad, but I'm not sure anyone has done a proper deconstruction. If you regard it as a short film of the kind that might be entered at Sundance or Cannes, it may be a work of genius. The jarring contrast between what is said and what is seen can only be deliberate: O'Donnell delivers one message - not-a-witch - while the image presented on screen powerfully signals the opposite. She sits alone, against a black background that suggests infinite darkness; her makeup and lighting have been contrived to lend her face a ghostly pallor. Clearly, the viewer is being manipulated to think, "If you're not from some Other Realm, lady, you could have fooled me."

And then, after denying witchcraft, the zinger: "I'm you." With that, she switches places with the viewer. I'm pretty sure this is homage to some old "Twilight Zone" episode, but I haven't quite figured out which one.

I could go on about O'Donnell's string of brilliant comic performances - during her debate with Senate opponent Chris Coons, for example, the way she convincingly insisted that she had no idea the First Amendment called for the separation of church and state. But the Tea Party is an ensemble sitcom, like "Seinfeld." One mustn't forget the rest of the cast.

Like Sharron Angle, who has a decent chance of defeating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Angle's approach to comedy is blunt and to the point - or, rather, beside the point, since so much of what she says is divorced from objective reality.

She claimed that Dearborn, Mich., and Frankford, Tex., are instituting Islamic sharia law, and she demanded to know "how that happened in the United States." Well, it didn't happen. There's nothing but good old-fashioned American law in Dearborn, which Angle seems to have singled out because of its large Arab American population. And Frankford no longer exists, having been annexed by Dallas in 1975.

Appearing before a group of Hispanic students to explain her harsh stance on immigration, Angle offered, "I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me." I'd classify Angle's humor as surrealist, and I'm guessing that she must be a disciple of Ionesco.

Then there's the Angry Man comedic style of Carl Paladino, candidate for governor of New York. When a persistent reporter tried to ask him a question, Paladino threatened the man, "I'll take you out!" He has gone out of his way to insult gay people, residents of Manhattan, illegal immigrants and many others, but he seems to hold a special grudge against present and former holders of the office he seeks. He called Gov. David Paterson "pathetic" and a "wimp," and called former Gov. George Pataki a "degenerate idiot."

Paladino's policy proposals are angry, too, in an over-the-top way. He suggests that the unemployed who live on welfare could be housed in underused state prisons. "Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check. We'll teach them personal hygiene . . .the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes."

I'm thinking Don Rickles on a bad night.

And who can forget Rand Paul, with his Monty Pythonesque "Aqua Buddha" escapade? And Joe Miller's in-your-face solution to border security: "If East Germany could do it, we could do it."

Good luck trying to top all of that, Stewart and Colbert. You should have come sooner. The joke's already on us.

Clarence and Ginny Thomas: A couple that keeps on giving

2010-10-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

Kathleen Parker, columnist at the Washington Post just wrote the column below on Clarence and Ginny (Wednesday, October 27, 2010; A23). One would think that Mrs. Thomas would let sleeping dogs lie (pardon the pun) but no such luck. I wonder what ails her. Why are the demons of her husband still bothering her, especially at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning which is the time she placed the call to Anita Hill? We will never know but it seems fair to say that Ginny Thomas is still wrestling with what most Americans put behind them nineteen years ago.

For Clarence Thomas, an ordeal is renewed by Kathleen Parker

In 1991, the world divided itself into two camps: those who believed Anita Hill and those who didn't. I fell somewhere in the middle: She may have told the truth, but so what?

On bended knee, give thanks if you are too young to remember. A brief summary: Hill testified that then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her by verbally sharing his enjoyment of porn films and his sexual proficiency.

Yes, yawn if you must. This was scandalous, of course, because . . . well, I'm still not certain. You see, to be scandalized, one must be deeply sensitive to the mention of anything sexual. Indeed, in this case, one needed to be scandalized for an indefinite period of time.

Hill's testimony came several years after she worked for Thomas at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where the alleged harassment took place. In other words, she didn't protest at the time of these conversations, which were boorish, assuming they happened as she described. Or were they merely lame attempts at humor?

The context has never been clear. In any case, other options available to Hill included telling Thomas to get over himself. Or, at the very least, assuming deep offense, complaining to a higher authority. She did neither, apparently.

In fact, nothing was mentioned until Thomas was nominated to the highest court. Would an African American nominee of the liberal persuasion have been subjected to the same kind of interrogation? Only as precedent to riot.

Clarence Thomas's "offense" had nothing to do with whether he did or did not say something off-color to a subordinate. Rather, his offense was being a conservative black man who had the audacity, among other things, to suggest that affirmative action ultimately might do harm to those it was intended to help.

Now we are revisiting the Thomas hearings, sadly owing to the poor judgment of his wife, Ginni. As all surely know, she recently called Anita Hill and left a voice mail suggesting that Hill apologize for what she did. This jaw-droppingly odd lapse has prompted an unwelcome and sordid review of the past and a deluge of theories to explain Ginni Thomas's action.

For one, the same day of the phone call, a story ran on the front page of the New York Times about Ginni Thomas's new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, which aims to organize the Tea Party movement. She was trying to monetize the moment.

Let's put a pause on nonsense and concede that the Thomas affair remains a painful memory and maybe, just maybe, the justice's wife needs resolution.

Meanwhile, a new player has emerged in the drama: Lillian McEwen, a former Thomas girlfriend from way back, has decided that now is the time to set the record straight. Coincidentally, McEwen is shopping her memoir.

On Monday night, McEwen sat down with Larry King on CNN (where I work) to share her own sexual past with Thomas and her belief that Hill told the truth. She told The Washington Post (where I am a columnist) that Thomas was "obsessed with porn."

McEwen said she didn't mind the porn, she was just bored by it. She also told King that Thomas, who quit drinking while they were together, became ambitious and obsessed with physical fitness.

Thomas's history of drinking is no secret to anyone who bothered to read his memoir, "My Grandfather's Son." He is brutally honest about his transformation from an angry boy abandoned by his alcoholic father, his upbringing by his grandfather and the nuns at his little Catholic school, and his battle with his own demons and lonely rages to become a thoughtful man deeply respected by fellow members of the court. As Supreme Court analyst Jan Greenburg wrote in "Supreme Conflict," Thomas is the quiet force on the bench who brings others to change their minds.

Only the heartless would not be moved by Thomas's description of lying at home in a fetal curl, suffering the public humiliation of his hearing, and recognizing that the only route to survival was humility.

"It had long since become clear to me that this battle was at bottom spiritual, not political," he wrote, "and so my attention shifted from politics to the inward reality of my spiritual life."

The proud Thomas said during those hearings that he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Let's hope he has enough spiritual reserve to survive this second lynching -- and a big enough heart to forgive poor Ginni.

kathleenparker@washpost.com

SARAH PALIN: IGNORANCE AND PROMISCUITY

2010-10-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Helen L. Burleson

Occasionally I receive an email from a friend who forwards the essays of Dr. Helen Burleson. As I understand it, Dr. Burlelson is in her eighties but her age seems to sharpen her pen and her insights. Below is the latest of her missives. ...Joyce Ladner

Statistically, America is now number 23 in the world in educational achievement.
Look to America’s fascination with Sarah Palin and how she has catapulted ignorance into a multi-million dollar enterprise. Americans on her level can’t get enough of her. The more she mocks intelligence and intellectualism, the more she increases her financial value. Not able to articulate a complete sentence, among her followers this is the new norm. As she sputters, sparks incoherent phrases of derision and mockery, the more they love her. She has become a household name, and has risen to the level of the people who are well known by just one name, like Cher, Oprah, Aretha, Bono, Heidi, Marilyn, Einstein, Ike, Mike, Teddy (both the first and the second – Theodore Roosevelt (also known as the rough rider) and Edward Moore Kennedy.

Palin has produced two books written by others and she has traveled the country greeted with admiration as she grows richer and richer. They call it folksy. They call it relating to her base. The more inarticulate she is, they more they love her.

Though she preaches abstinence, she is now the grandmother of a grandchild born out of wedlock, whose teen-aged mother is now capitalizing on promiscuity. On the speakers circuit, Bristol Palin can command in excess of ten thousand dollars telling teens that she made a mistake, and abstinence is the best policy. In other words, the old fashioned, don’t do as I do, do as I say you should do.

This mother and daughter duo are charming the dollars out of the pockets of the lesser educated people who identify with their common touch. Together as a package or solo, they are gold, pure and simple.

At a time when America is far behind much of the industrialized world, and learning and knowledge are the keys to responding to the technology era, the Palins are taking America back to the Stone Age. Remember the Stone Age when cave men were first learning how to use language, they spoke in sputters and single words and used body language to communicate.

We are in a knowledge-based race to develop and train a generation to get ahead in the age of technology and innovation. Perhaps we are on the wrong path. The Palins seem to have found the keys to the kingdom – ignorance and promiscuity. America seems to have an insatiable appetite for both.

Today, the quitter governor of Alaska, whose only aim seems to be to spread ignorance and hatred for the Obamas, took a swipe at Our First Lady, Michelle Obama. Adjudged the most powerful woman in the world, Michelle Obama, a Princeton University graduate, an attorney and a Harvard law school graduate is a beautiful, well poised, articulate and gracious lady. Palin, by contrast took 6 years and 5 colleges before she could earn a Bachelor’s degree in communications, is now the reigning queen of the trailer park crowd. Palin, also by contrast could easily qualify as the most ignorant woman in the world, yet she lashed out jealously at First Lady Michelle Obama.

Palin’s status in life is solidified and personified as the new low in the dumbing down of America. Bristol Palin, a chip off the old block is doing what her mother should be doing. Sarah should be on the speaker’s circuit saying that American women should not do as she did, but should stay in school, get a good education and add to the body of knowledge as the scholarly First Lady Michelle Obama does. Bristol’s message of don’t do what I did is hollow. Her practice abstinence message would be more effective if she had practiced what she now preaches.

The new cottage industry should not be ignorance and promiscuity because that only causes us to fall further behind in the race to the top for America to regain her position as the most admired and most imitated country in the industrialized world. The new cottage industry should be what President Obama proposes in his initiative to elevate the American standard of excellence with his “Race to the Top.”

"WE CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO VOTE!! VOTE EARLY, OR BE SURE TO VOTE NOV. 2, 2010."

EDUCATION: COMMUNITY OR CHAOS

2010-10-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

By Elinor Bowles

The failure of public education in the United States to effectively address the needs of students, or the nation, has been spotlighted by the movie, "Waiting for Superman." Whatever one thinks of its point of view, the movie has made the failure of public education part of the national conversation--a much needed development. Despite the reality, known since the mid-1980s, that the nation's schools are grossly inadequate, there has been a deafening silence about their dismal failure, particularly in relation to the needs of students of African-American descent.

The murder rate goes up, the graduation rate goes down and our youth increasingly end up in the wrong institution . Regrettably, African-American adults and community leaders have been seemingly preoccupied with other problems. It seems to take all the energy most parents can mobilize to take care of the needs of their own children. Scattered group efforts at educational improvement have led to extremely few sustained attempts at change, with varying degrees of success. Education is, after all, a complicated and time-consuming affair.

The discussion generated by the movie has been promoted and highlighted by Oprah Winfrey, MSNBC-TV, numerous news and special TV programs, and an excellent article in the September 30, 2010, issue of The Root, the online news magazine aimed at the black community. Written by R. L'Heureux Lewis, an assistant professor of sociology and black studies at the City College of New York, the article, titled "Waiting for School Reform," provides an overview of the difficulties confronting efforts at educational improvement, including the enormous financial costs and the lack of comprehensive research. However, as noted in a comment by a reader, E. Cederwell, it only superficially touches on "the single most important element explaining the great disparities in any school's ability to achieve educational success: the world outside the classroom, and in particular, the culture each young person is surrounded by." Cederwell states that "the perceived value of learning and education . . . is hugely important. . . . Communities need to be ready to take a . . . searching examination, and, where indicated, be willing to commit to adopt certain values. This may be hardest of all."

Query: What is the general culture and attitude within the African-American community toward the education of its youth, particularly those who are poor and often in great need of love and guidance as well as material things? In using the word "community," we are not talking about a geographical space, but a cultural configuration of persons who have a shared history, values, and life circumstances. This focus elicits a multitude of complications, given the current lack of cohesion in the African-American "community," which many believe is becoming irreparably splintered along economic lines.

The discussion generated by "Waiting for Superman" has focused on the funding of education and the roles of politicians, administrators, principals, parents, and especially teachers and unions. However, it has failed to seriously address the difficult, dominant, and ubiquitous role of the African-American community -- its values, its place in the larger society, and its history. What can African-American individuals, community organizations, professional organizations, labor unions, athletes, entertainers, churches, women's groups, men's groups, and other components of civil society do to send the message to our young people that education is important, that it is cool, that it is vital to the good life, that it is a requirement for an interesting and safe environment, that it can be exciting, and that it makes you a better, more desirable individual, mate and parent? How can we create an environment that convinces our young people that education has more rewards than merely hanging out and, for most people, more concrete rewards than athletics and music and selling drugs?

How can we make education a dominant, outstanding value in the African-American community, like it was in the early 20th century, and like it currently is in several other communities in the United States? Those of us who were born in the early or mid-20th century remember the dictum that "you've got to be twice as good." And we all know the important role of the family in forming character and promoting educational values. But as African Americans we also know that many of our families today have been so damaged by a variety of forces that they do not have the will or the resources to be what we are saying they must be in terms of an educational support system for their children. And while we must do everything possible to help them overcome their liabilities, if their children are to be rescued we must also do everything within our power as a community to compensate for what parents lack.

Despite the seeming lack of involvement of the black community in the education of its youth, many individuals and groups actually are addressing this question. Individuals and organizations are providing scholarships, from the Ron Brown Scholar Program, which contributes close to $800,000 in scholarships annually, to people who contribute a couple of scholarships of $500 a semester to youth in their church. People are becoming mentors and big sisters and big brothers. They act as tutors for specific subjects. Professionals and business people visit schools and lecture about the work they do and how students can prepare themselves for various careers. Others invite students to visit or work in their offices during summer vacation. Churches provide space and material for after-school programs. Contributions of books to enrich libraries, particularly with material on specific ethnic groups, are given to schools. I'm sure readers can add to this list. It's not that nothing is being done, it is instead that we need much, much more and we need to do it more loudly and, in some instances, in a more organized way. We need to find more ways to publicly recognize and reward those children who work hard to achieve. We need everybody to know how important education is.

Perhaps we need a national organization to do for education what the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) did for voting in the 1960s. Maybe we can call it something like "Community Campaign for Educational Excellence" (CCEE). Perhaps we need to clearly explain what is meant when we say that "education is today what civil rights was in the 1960s." We need to make it clear that we are talking about a similar urgency and significance and deterrent to equality, not about tactics like marches or content like legislation. The civil rights movement of the 1960s eliminated the state and local laws that restricted the movement and behavior of blacks. The educational movement of the 21st century must create educational institutions that serve the needs of all of the country’s children.

There are multiple ways the African-American community can change its culture in order to create an environment where education is recognized and honored. These ways are limited only by the imagination. There are, however, three basic requirements: First, we must care about all African-American children and have a burning need to save them from the lives of violence and crime and unemployment and meaninglessness that so many of them are living or facing. Second, we must truly believe that all children can be educated. And third, we must be willing to reach out and touch -- to contribute our time, our energy, and our material resources, however limited they may be, to the salvation of our youth. African-American youth, given today's dominant economic and social condition and trends, are in grave danger. What do we intend to do?

Elinor Bowles is a retired editor and activist. She can be reached at ebowles603@aol.com

President Obama and African Americans

2010-09-22T20:05:00.001-07:00

President Obama speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual dinner

President Obama reminds me of the distracted boyfriend or girlfriend who, upon being told, "You never tell me you love me" asks, "Why do I have to? You know I love you."

A friend said he reminds her of a husband who doesn't buy his wife a birthday or anniversary present because, as he says, "Those material things don't matter. I don't have to buy you things to prove my love for you."

Many African Americans feel like neglected partners who simply want to be shown by the President that they really matter, that he really cares about them. They want to hear him say he appreciates what they did for him, and he feels their pain, what with their disproportionately high unemployment rate.

President Obama doesn't say much about African Americans as a group one way or another. He appears to be afraid that his detractors will hold it against him. The problem is, his detractors don't like him, have never liked him, and will continue to find ways to destabilize, and some of them say, destroy that which he has spent so much time trying to accomplish for everyone, including them. One would think he would have gotten the message by now but no such luck. He did make a direct appeal for support at the annual Congressional Black Caucus dinner last weekend.

In an unfortunate way, President Obama knows that most African Americans are going to vote for him no matter how poorly they feel he is treating them. But that is not a decent way to treat one's most loyal and supportive constituency. No one wants to be taken for granted.

The President's strategy is what's called the institutional approach instead of the more targeted residual perspective. The idea is that good policies will have universal applicability, and will help everyone including blacks, other minorities, and the poor. Hence, greater access to health care will benefit blacks without calling them out by name. This might sound like good public policy go but this indirect approach doesn't work with real live human beings who poured their blood, sweat and tears, not to mention their money, into the President's election campaign. They simply want him to acknowledge their existence.

They want to hear him say they matter in an important way.

They want him to realize that without them he would never have been elected.

They are tired of him treating them like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

Ron Walters Death Signals the End of an Era

2010-09-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

Doug Mills photo, New York Times photo

Ron Walters' death signals the end of an era for black scholars who were influenced by the social movements of the sixties.

Ron Walters, a nationally renowned political scientist died a week ago of cancer in the Washington, DC area where he and his wife Patricia “Pat” had lived for forty years. Ron was not your garden variety scholar. His giftedness came from his ability to join theory and practice in a seamless pattern and applied these to both historical and contemporary issues of race and politics.

I met Ron and Pat Walters in 1971 when I joined the sociology faculty at Howard University. I mention Pat Walters because she and Ron were a remarkable couple. Pat was indispensable to Ron's work for among other things, she typed and edited his manuscripts, and on one occasion I recall her telling me, "Ron and I have to get to work on this book on pan Africanism."

Ron had arrived at Howard a year before I got there. Andrew Billingsley, who was Vice President/Provost at Howard had received a grant from the Ford Foundation to strengthen the social sciences. So, Billingsley set about bringing the best and the brightest young scholars to the university.

There was no better place for a young scholar to work because we had strong support, a thriving marketplace of new ideas born out of the nascent African American Studies movement, and a generation of bright students eager to learn. Ron was at the apex of this intellectual movement that we defined as the black perspective. Ralph Gomes, Robert Staples, Don Coleman, Harriett and John McAdoo, Jeff Donaldson, Tritobia Benjamin, Frank Smith, Skunder Boghassion and many others were part of this movement.

Ron had been an activist for some time before he arrived at Howard. As president of the Wichita, Kansas NAACP Youth Council he and his cousin staged the first lunch counter sit-in in the United States almost two years before the sit in's in Greensboro, North Carolina. After weeks of protests the owner of the Dockum Drug Store desegregated his lunch counter.

We young scholars at Howard were heavily influenced by the civil rights and black power movements and our work including our research, teaching, and advocacy, gave serious consideration to these. Ron Walters contributed a chapter to my book, The Death of White Sociology (1974) titled "Toward a Definition of Black Social Science”, which was a rather ambitious undertaking and title. But we were bold and aggressive in crafting alternatives to the status quo scholarship we had been taught. We not only resented the negative depiction of black life and culture in mainstream scholarship but we also felt that frequently blacks were either underrepresented or absent entirely.

Over four decades Ron reached the pinnacle of an illustrious career and excelled as a scholar, political strategist, commentator, writer of a weekly column, author of six books, numerous articles, and mentor to several generations of devoted students. Ron developed the framework for establishing the Congressional Black Caucus, and was staff advisor to Congressman Charles Diggs, the first chairman of the CBC. He was deputy campaign manager and debate adviser for Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign. He was always available to speak, advise, and volunteer to help others whether they were young school children or national policymakers. It was this modesty and humility that set this giant apart from ordinary scholars.

Ron wrote thirteen books that covered a vast terrain: from pan Africanism to black presidential politics written sixteen years before President Obama was elected. In this book, he outlined the steps a candidate would have to take to be elected. His most recently published book, White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community (2003) described the resurgence of political conservatism by whites in America.

Ron was always prepared, thorough, open to alternative points of view, and an advocate for those who could not advocate for themselves. His proposals for structural changes to ameliorate the problems facing the poor and his concern with identifying ways to politically empower blacks were consistent themes throughout half a century of work.

The last time I saw Ron was a year ago when we both were on a panel at the University of Maryland’s celebration of forty years of its African American Studies Program. We discussed the emergence of these programs and the climate surrounding them. Ron did not disappoint.
He never did.

His death signals the end of an era when a generation of brash black scholars who had been in the civil rights movement worked to change the course of American scholarship. It is up to his students, colleagues and supporters to carry on his legacy.

This is who `we' really is, Glenn

2010-08-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

Miami Herald
Posted on Wed, Aug. 25, 2010

By LEONARD PITTS JR.

A few words about who ``we'' is.

``This is a moment,'' said Glenn Beck three months ago on his radio program, ``...that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. . . . We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place!''

Beck was promoting his Restoring Honor rally, to be held Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King famously spoke there. You'll notice he didn't define the ``we'' he had in mind, but it seems reasonable to suppose Beck was speaking of people like himself: affluent middle-aged conservatives possessed of the ability to see socialism and communism in places where it somehow escapes the notice of others.

If you agree that assumption is reasonable, then you must also agree Beck's contention that his ``we'' were the architects of the civil rights movement is worse than nonsensical, worse than mendacious, worse than shameless. It is obscene. It is theft of legacy. It is robbery of martyr's graves.

We're in an odd moment. Having opposed the freedom movement of the 20th century, some social conservatives seek, now that that movement stands vindicated and venerated, to arrogate unto themselves its language and heroes, to remake it in their image.

Thus, you get claims that ``racism'' is now what Shirley Sherrod said in a speech to the NAACP. And people calling Sarah Palin the new face of feminism. And conservatives touting the likelihood that King voted Republican -- as if the party in 1957 bore any resemblance to the party now.

But even by those standards, Glenn Beck's effrontery is monumental. Even by those standards, he goes too far. Beck was part of the ``we'' who founded the civil rights movement!? No. Here's who ``we'' is.

``We'' is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River. ``We'' is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no. ``We'' is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in. ``We'' is Charles Sherrod, husband of Shirley, gingerly testing desegregation compliance in an Albany, Ga., bus station.

``We'' is a sharecropper making his X on a form held by a white college student from the North. ``We'' is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of Bonanza, lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom.

``We'' is Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Cynthia Wesley, Andrew Goodman, Denise McNair, James Chaney, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson, shot, beaten and blown to death for that cause.

``We'' is Lyndon Johnson, building a legislative coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats to defeat intransigent Southern Democratic conservatives and enshrine that cause into law.
And ``we'' is Martin Luther King, giving voice and moral clarity to the cause -- and paying for it with his life.

The we to which Glenn Beck belongs is the we that said no, the we that cried ``socialism!'' ``communism!'' ``tyranny!'' whenever black people and their allies cried freedom.

The fatuous and dishonorable attempt to posit conservatives as the prime engine of civil rights depends for success on the ignorance of the American people. Sadly, as anyone who has ever watched a Jay Walking segment on The Tonight Show can attest, the American people have ignorance in plenitude.

This, then, is to serve notice as Beck and his tea party faithful gather in Lincoln's shadow to claim the mantle of King: Some of us are not ignorant. Some of us remember. Some of us know very well who ``we'' is.

And, who ``we'' is not.

© 2010 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.http://www.miamiheraldRead more:

Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Martin Luther King, and the March on Washington

2010-08-25T16:11:00.001-07:00

Glenn Beck is sponsoring an "in your face" March on Washington

Dear readers,

I have taken a six months hiatus from The Ladner Report but am going to give it another try. Other priorities took over but I keep getting this nagging feeling that I should write my thoughts instead of continuing to swear at the television set.

Today an MSNBC commentator said, "The fact that this clown (Glenn Beck) and Sarah Palin are going to stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is the most repulsive thing I can think of." If you haven't heard, Glenn Beck, ( who said President Obama hates white people) is sponsoring a right wingnut rally on the same steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the forty-seventh anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Yes, Beck, his side-kick Sarah Palin and other right wingnuts will stand on the hallowed ground where Dr. Martin Luther King (SCLC), Roy Wilkins (NAACP), John Lewis (SNCC), Whitney Young (National Urban League), Dorothy Height (National Council of Negro Women), and of course, the venerable convener, A. Phillip Randolph stood.

Beck, who is trying to get 100,000 people to come to his March on Washington, said, his march will "reclaim the civil rights movement" because "Martin Luther King's dream" has "been distorted" and "massively perverted" by progressives. Beck also suggested that he and his followers are the "inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement." In Beck's words, they will "take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place."

He goes on to say, “This has everything to do with, ‘Who are we?’ There is profound change happening in America, and there is a window of opportunity that comes in the lifespan of every republic, every civilization — a window of opportunity to reach for that brass ring or to miss it. We’re not the people that we’ve allowed ourselves to become.”

When it was pointed out that his march is taking place on the same date and at the same place as the historic March on Washington, he feigned ignorance and said it was providential. If he didn't know this was the anniversary of the March, then he is too ignorant for words. However, I feel he deliberately scheduled his march because he wants to redefine the meaning it holds for people who love equality and freedom, and he wants to desecrate King's words on that fateful day.

Sarah Palin, who has endorsed every wingnut running for office who asks her, recently joined forces with right wing radio commentator "Dr." Laura (whose doctorate is in physiology) and urged her to reload instead of giving up her "advice" show. "Dr." Laura was probably pushed out because she badgered a black caller who complained that her white husband's friends deliberately made racially offensive comments in her presence. To show how racially insensitive she is, "Dr." Laura repeated the word nigger eleven times as she tried to convince the caller that she was too sensitive.

Now Palin wants her to reload so she can say nigger as often as she wishes? "Dr." Laura, who has the empathy of a piece of steel said she was going to step down to reclaim her first amendment rights. Are you following this convoluted logic? She wants to be able to say nigger with impunity.

I was at the March on Washington. In fact, I worked on the March staff in the summer of 1963 under the very able direction of Bayard Rustin. We worked out of a Harlem brownstone, and I saw the comings and goings of some of the great people in the civil rights world. I was a student at Tougaloo College in my native Mississippi, and a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). I had already spent a few weeks working under Charles Sherrod's direction with the SNCC project in Albany, Georgia. He is the husband of Shirley Sherrod of USDA fame.

My job on the March staff was to raise money to bring as many black people from the South as possible. Each time I went out to speak to an audience in the metropolitan New York area I brought back enough money to rent another bus. I wanted people like Fannie Lou Hamer to come to Washington to petition the government. They were enduring so much racial violence and other forms of discrimination that we wanted them to join forces with people of all races around the country and abroad so they could be re-energized for the struggle ahead.

I don't remember Dr. King's I Have A Dream speech as being the highlight of that day. Perhaps I was more concerned about now-Congressman John Lewis being able to give his speech without censorship as he was being urged to do. The Washington area Archbishop refused to speak unless John delete a passage from his speech. He objected to John saying that unless there was federal intervention in the South, we would have no choice but to march through the deep South the way General Sherman did during the Civil War, scorching the earth around us. In the end, John modified his speech by adding "nonviolently" to that statement.

What I also remember from those forty-seven years ago is the huge crowd of some 250,000 people of all races and backgrounds. I also remember seeing Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Josephine Baker who came from Paris, James Baldwin, Charlton Heston, Bobby Dylan, Joan Baez, Dorothy Height, Mahalia Jackson and so many more civil rights supporters. Remember, this was before there was popular support for the movement. This was the first time there was such a concerted effort to organize massive support and it was the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom".

Back to Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and "Dr." Laura, who have absolutely nothing in common with those of us who petitioned our government to protect civil rights activists, enact federal legislation, and provide jobs for black people across the nation. The leaders met with President Lyndon B. Johnson after the March with specific requests.

What does Sarah Palin have in common with John Lewis, Dorothy Height, Martin Luther King, Jr., SNCC workers, southern Black folks and their northern supporters? We were there to ask President Kennedy to send more FBI and Justice Department officials to protect civil rights workers and local blacks who were being lynched, shot, beaten, and whose homes were being shot into and burned to the ground because they wanted to exercise their right to vote. What do Glenn Beck and his minions want from the government? Surely, it is not racial equality because surveys indicate that the typical Tea Party member is a well-off educated white male.

Will Beck and Palin invoke the words of Dr. King? Will they attempt to claim his speech as their own mantra and screw it up with their right wing racist views? Will Beck and Palin speak about their own dreams?

I sure hope not.

Historic Health Care Reform Bill Passes Despite The Tea Party

2010-03-23T17:29:00.000-07:00

"We are not a nation that scales back our aspirations. That is not who we are".

President Barack Obama

I once had a colleague who wrote a book titled The Ordeal of Civility. I recalled the title, though not the substance, of this book recently when I thought of the increasingly uncivil discourse in American social and political life. As President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many others worked hard to avoid scaling back aspirations on health care reform, protestors in front of the U. S. Capitol were showing how nasty they could be. Nothing looked worse than the Republican Congress men and women including the right wing Michelle Bachman haranguing the crowd. As the crowd below called one black Congressmen "nigger," spat on another, called the openly gay Congressman Barney Frank "fag" and a Hispanic Congressman "wetback," these Congressmen and Congresswomen regaled the crowd as though they were standing on the balcony of a rich Mississippi cotton plantation baron. Their minions were all too happy to do participate in the call and response. "Get the niggers, fags and wetbacks" is so consistent with the white racist culture of my youth in Mississippi where the prominent people egged on the Ku Klux Klan to carry out their dirty work.

Yet, President Lyndon Johnson was called all kinds of names when he got the passage of Medicare. He lost much of the Southern Democratic constituency with the passage of social legislation including the voting rights, public accommodations. It was all about race back then and it's all about race now. Class plays a role too, but the most virulent protesters cannot fathom being led by an African American president. They will continue to fight President Obama even when the legislation will benefit them, like the protester in one of the town halls last summer who, after having a heart attack at the rally, did not have health insurance for his own treatment. People like him will be helped even if it is against their own beliefs.

Each time these despicable events occur, the predictable responses from the Republican leadership and a lot of mainstream pundits are that it was an isolated incident. Isolated my foot! It is a set of patterned responses based on the values and beliefs of racist Neanderthals who do not accept racial equality as a matter of law, religion or culture. I have not seen this much racism in the Congress since Mississippi Senators Eastland and Stennis took to the House floor to filibuster civil rights bills.

That is why the passage of the health care bill is so important. It was critical to denounce the Tea Party people whose behavior in town halls last summer were unbelievably racist. Some of these folks don't even have health insurance, however their racism against President Barack Obama was more important to them. And, if I hear the word Socialism one more time I am going to scream. My conservative friend who wouldn't know socialism if it hit him in the face, and who cannot spell the word keeps harping on the President being a socialist. Calling President Obama a socialist is like calling him an alien person; one who does not share their beliefs; one who is, in a word, black. These same people receive the fruits of the government's "socialism" in the form of Medicare and Social Security. In fact, the elderly here in Florida carried signs that referred to Obama being a socialist on one side and "Leave my Medicare alone" on the other. How schizophrenic can they get?

I hope that those who need health care will be able to get it, and I hope those who keep voting against their own interests soon realize that they are merely "pawns in their game," to use Bobby Dylan's lyrics about how Southerners were used as pawns by the elite. As for the rest of us, we will long remember that we witnessed a time when we as a nation did not scale back our aspirations.

What has President Obama accomplished?

2009-11-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/89446-nope-he-hasnt-done-anything.htmlA Grade for Obama by Robert Watson

I am repeatedly asked to grade the Obama presidency thus far. In place of a grade, here is a list of Obama's accomplishments as of August 2009.

Robert Watson, Ph.D.

Coordinator of American Studies

Lynn University

1. Ordered all federal agencies to undertake a study and make recommendations for ways to cut spending

2. Ordered a review of all federal operations to identify and cut wasteful spending and practices

3. Instituted enforcements for equal pay for women

4. Beginning the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq

5. Families of fallen soldiers have expenses covered to be on hand when the body arrives at Dover A.F.B.

6. Ended media "blackout" on war casualties; reporting full information

7. Ended media "blackout" on covering the return of fallen soldiers to Dover A.F.B.; the media is now permitted to do so pending adherence to respectful rules and approval of fallen soldier's family

8. The White House and federal government are respecting the Freedom of Information Act

9. Instructed all federal agencies to promote openness and transparency as much as possible

10. Limits on lobbyists' access to the White House

11. Limits on White House aides working for lobbyists after their tenure in the administration

12. Ended the previous "stop-loss" policy that kept soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan longer than their enlistment date

13. Phasing out the expensive F-22 war plane and other outdated weapons systems, which weren't even used or needed in Iraq/Afghanistan

14. Removed restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research

15. Federal support for stem-cell and new biomedical research

16. New federal funding for science and research labs

17. States are permitted to enact federal fuel efficiency standards above federal standards

18. Increased infrastructure spending (roads, bridges, power plants...) after years of neglect

19. Funds for high-speed, broadband Internet access to K-12 schools

20. New funds for school construction

21. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is being phased out

22. US Auto industry rescue plan

23. Housing rescue plan

24. $789 billion economic stimulus plan

25. The public can meet with federal housing insurers to refinance (the new plan can be completed in one day) a mortgage if they are having trouble paying

26. US financial and banking rescue plan

27. The "secret detention" facilities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere are being closed

28. Ended the previous policy; the US now has a no torture policy and is in compliance with the Geneva Convention standards

29. Better body armor is now being provided to our troops

30. The missile defense program is being cut by $1.4 billion in 2010

31. Restarted the nuclear non-proliferation talks and building back up the nuclear inspection infrastructure/protocols

32. Reengaged in the treaties/agreements to protect the Antarctic

33. Reengaged in the agreements/talks on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions

34. Visited more countries and met with more world leaders than any president in his first six months in office

35. Successful release of US captain held by Somali pirates; authorized the SEALS to do their job

36. US Navy increasing patrols off Somali coast

37. Attractive tax write-offs for those who buy hybrid automobiles

38. "Cash for clunkers" program offers vouchers to trade in fuel inefficient, polluting old cars for new cars; stimulates auto sales

39. Announced plans to purchase fuel efficient American-made fleet for the federal government

40. Expanded the SCHIP program to cover health care for 4 million more children

41. Signed national service legislation; expanded national youth service program

42. Instituted a new policy on Cuba, allowing Cuban families to return "home" to visit loved ones

43. Ended the previous policy of not regulating and labeling carbon dioxide emissions

44. Expanding vaccination programs

45. Immediate and efficient response to the floods in North Dakota and other natural disasters

46. Closed offshore tax safe havens

47. Negotiated deal with Swiss banks to permit US government to gain access to records of tax evaders and criminals

48. Ended the previous policy of offering tax benefits to corporations who outsource American jobs; the new policy is to promote in-sourcing to bring jobs back

49. Ended the previous practice of protecting credit card companies; in place of it are new consumer protections from credit card industry's predatory practices

50. Energy producing plants must begin preparing to produce 15% of their energy from renewable sources

51. Lower drug costs for seniors

52. Ended the previous practice of forbidding Medicare from negotiating with drug manufacturers for cheaper drugs; the federal government is now realizing hundreds of millions in savings

53. Increasing pay and benefits for military personnel

54. Improved housing for military personnel

55. Initiating a new policy to promote federal hiring of military spouses

56. Improved conditions at Walter Reed Military Hospital and other military hospitals

57. Increasing student loans

58. Increasing opportunities in AmeriCorps program

59. Sent envoys to Middle East and other parts of the world that had been neglected for years; reengaging in multilateral and bilateral talks and diplomacy

60. Established a new cyber security office

61. Beginning the process of reforming and restructuring the military 20 years after the Cold War to a more modern fighting force... this includes new procurement policies, increasing size of military, new technology and cyber units and operations, etc.

62. Ended previous policy of awarding no-bid defense contracts

63. Ordered a review of hurricane and natural disaster preparedness

64. Established a National Performance Officer charged with saving the federal government money and making federal operations more efficient

65. Students struggling to make college loan payments can have their loans refinanced

66. Improving benefits for veterans

67. Many more press conferences and town halls and much more media access than previous administration

68. Instituted a new focus on mortgage fraud

69. The FDA is now regulating tobacco

70. Ended previous policy of cutting the FDA and circumventing FDA rules

71. Ended previous practice of having White House aides rewrite scientific and environmental rules, regulations, and reports

72. Authorized discussions with North Korea and private mission by Pres. Bill Clinton to secure the release of two Americans held in prisons

73. Authorized discussions with Myanmar and mission by Sen. Jim Web to secure the release of an American held captive

74. Making more loans available to small businesses

75. Established independent commission to make recommendations on slowing the costs of Medicare

76. Appointment of first Latina to the Supreme Court

77. Authorized construction/opening of additional health centers to care for veterans

78. Limited salaries of senior White House aides; cut to $100,000

79. Renewed loan guarantees for Israel

80. Changed the failing/status quo military command in Afghanistan

81. Deployed additional troops to Afghanistan

82. New Afghan War policy that limits aerial bombing and prioritizes aid, development of infrastructure, diplomacy, and good government practices by Afghans

83. Announced the long-term development of a national energy grid with renewable sources and cleaner, efficient energy production
84. Returned money authorized for refurbishment of White House offices and private living quarters

85. Paid for redecorations of White House living quarters out of his own pocket

86. Held first Seder in White House

87. Attempting to reform the nation's healthcare system which is the most expensive in the world yet leaves almost 50 million without health insurance and millions more underinsured

88. Has put the ball in play for comprehensive immigration reform

89. Has announced his intention to push for energy reform

90. Has announced his intention to push for education reform

Oh, and he built a swing set for the girls outside the Oval Office!

Ok, go ahead Righties, rip into all of that and say its nothing
__________________
Its one thing to be an idiot, its a whole different thing to open your mouth and prove it to the rest of the world

Senator Edward Kennedy: Civil Rights Advocate for All Citizens

2009-08-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Senator Kennedy
and his sons at a Roxbury school in 1980.

I am a child of the civil rights movement of the sixties. Therefore, I cried when I heard Senator Edward Kennedy had died because he was one of the most dedicated allies we had.

In its remembrance of Senator Kennedy, the Boston Globe wrote:

"Nearly four months after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Senator Kennedy gave his maiden speech on the topic of civil rights, urging support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Barely two years into his term, he authored an amendment to eliminate the Poll Tax, which had been used to block some from voting. The amendment was defeated, but months later, the Supreme Court declared the tax unconstitutional.

Kennedy was a chief sponsor of voting rights legislation, and in 1980, worked to establish a national holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In keeping with his family legacy, he continued to pursue key civil rights legislation throughout his career ."

I cried for Senator Kennedy, but I also cried for myself, my son, my nieces and nephews, my siblings, and for everyone who understand the breadth and depth of changes he brought about.
The civil rights community does not have a replacement for him.

Senator Kennedy's rare qualities of optimism, empathy, and hard work were what set him apart from others. I think this is what enabled him to never get more than one step away from the suffering of humankind. He turned his personal pain into a commitment to help those who, because of their powerlessness, could not advocate as effectively for themselves and whom other politicians shunned: minorities, the disabled, immigrants and women. Senator Kennedy was that powerful ally who understood our needs and felt, like the perennial optimist, that there was always sunshine ahead if only he fought a little harder.

My tears were also shed for the finality of a period in American history that we are unlikely to see again. Senator Kennedy's era, and our own, was defined by a deep concern for empowering people to vote for the first time, to run for political office, to use public accommodations without regard for race, Headstart and Job Corp for the kids and Medicare for the elderly, ramps for the handicapped, special education, unemployment insurance, expanded Social Security benefits, child health care, student loans, and much much more.

Senator Kennedy believed that health care is a fundamental right for all citizens and not just for those who can afford it. My era and his was also bracketed by the sit-in's, marches, pickets, and yes, the murders of civil rights workers and ordinary citizens alike. While his brother, President John F. Kennedy, advocated for civil rights because of political expediency, Teddy believed in the equal value of all women, men and children.

His optimism, empathy and dedication made him a marathon runner, and not a sprinter. That is why his passion to fight for the little people continued until his death. Undeterred by those hostile forces who say they "want their country back," he realized that the society he helped to shape for almost half a century is more just for those very immigrants, blacks, Hispanics, and others who make up the society they now want back. The tidal wave of reforms he led has made it better for everyone, including the "haters" who want to return to some imaginary idyllic time --translated before we elected a black president.

I wish the sixties could have existed forever, but Teddy showed us that the struggle for human dignity is a marathon that cuts across decades and generations. It is not for the weary or the faint of heart. He left us with a road map on how to continue his work. It is up to us to follow it by making health care reform with a public option a reality for starters.
.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Generational Narrative by a Black Woman on the Life and Legacy of Senator Edward Kennedy

2009-08-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

By Ruby Nell Sales
Founder and Co-Director of the Spirit House Project
Columbus, Georgia.

This morning I awakened to the sound of news reporters telling the world that Ted Kennedy died just as the night turned into morning. As I heard Senator Edward Kennedy’s voice booming from the television the words “For those whose cares have been our concern… The Hope Still Lives, The Dream Shall Never Die…” when he lost his bid for president in 1980 - my eyes filled with tears that carried with them the hopes and dreams of a generation and community of people of all colors who imagined a new day in America and worked hard to achieve it. As I thought about this man who lived a life committed to “making a better world,” it touched the grief and celebration that run throughout the lives of my generation who rode and still rides a long train towards justice. In many ways, his life reflects the hills and valleys of our lives... our “victories and our defeats.”

This morning in a very special way, I remembered my young brothers and sisters in the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee and local communities throughout the South who worked unrelentingly to advance democracy during the heat and violence of White supremacy without thinking of money or benefits. We lived and worked from freedom houses that lacked hot water, inside bathrooms and sturdy foundations to protect us from the violence and terror of White night riders. Most of us were young. We were idealistic. We were Black, White and Brown. We were determined. Despite generations of America’s broken promises of democracy, we still passionately believed in the dreams of our mothers and fathers: that America was large enough for everyone regardless of race, sex, class, color or creed.

Believing this, we put our youth on the line to make real their dream. We were wounded at the core of our young selves under the weight of White lies, White racism and White violence. America's bad faith, violence and oppression fractured us into tiny unclaimed bits which lay on the road from Mississippi to Alabama to Washington to New York to Los Angeles. Yet, like Ted Kennedy, many of us did not die or lose our will to struggle. We kept on believing, working, and struggling despite hearts that were broken by White men who killed our relatives and murdered our friends. I admit that sometimes we did not always carry our grief well or wisely. However unlike the Trumpet blowers of White Supremacy and injustice, we harmed ourselves more often than we did others. Unlike them, love rather than hate stirred our passions and ignited our imaginations. Even as we watched right wing communities vigorously and intentionally roll back the gains of the Southern Freedom /Civil Rights Movement, like Senator Edward Kennedy, we “kept the faith” and found it over and over again despite the hopeless despair that the right wing communities spread throughout America like a dirty blanket. Because their language and ideals lacked hope, moral authority and meaning, they stole our freedom language. They called death squads in Nicaragua freedom fighters. Even in the midst of this grand theft, we knew like Senator Edward Kennedy that they might steal our language and images, but they could not kill this dream that still burns in us.

My reaction to Senator Edward Kennedy’s life and death this morning caused me to reflect on my own life. It moved me to ask what is it about a White upper class senator’s life that touches me as a Southern Black woman who grew up during segregation and economic exploitation and who came into radical adulthood at Tuskegee Institute now Tuskegee University and the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee on the bloody fields of Lowndes County, Alabama where my white young seminarian friend Jonathan Daniels saved my life as he stepped in from of a bullet aimed at me by a White Klansman.

I am moved by how Senator Kennedy as other freedom workers refused to be broken or incapacitated by slander or even by personal struggles. In the face of much pounding and demonization by members of right wing communities, Senator Edward Kennedy carried the banner for ordinary people who faced the fires of injustice in America. He stood up for immigrants, people of color, workers, lesbians and gays, women, and youth. He stood up in the raging storm of neo-conservatives and right wingers who distorted the people’s struggle for justice and used it to inflame passionate resentment and rage in many Whites and their allies of color. He stood firm as a liberal as members of right wing communities decried liberalism as a big sore that contaminated the federal government and oozed pus throughout America that ruined, destroyed and betrayed the lives of ordinary White people by giving handouts to undeserving colored peoples. He stood firm as the right wing community demonized him and used his name and image to stir up hatred in people while feeding on this hate and resentment to move forward their own careers and their rigid ideological positions. The great irony is that Ted Kennedy fought more vigorously for the rights and welfare of ordinary White people than these right wing preachers, politicians, news pundits and their allies ever did.

As I survey the American landscape that is raging with racism, economic injustice, and cries of some White Americans that they want their country back, I hear the voice of our dear brother, uncle, father, Senator Kennedy’s peer and long distance runner for justice, Vincent Harding reminding us that: “There in Ohio and in here in D.C. it can be our statement, our announcement that we refuse to be overcome by the difficulties of the current moment. It is our way of declaring that, we've come too far to turn back from this peace-making path. Surrounded as we are by a host of ancestors who have gone before us -- including our ancestor Jesus -- we will continue to sing. We will continue to build. We will continue to believe. We will continue to hunger and thirst for righteousness. We will continue to love. We will continue to run. We will continue to hope, continue to dream. For we believe with Langston (Hughes) that we were not meant to be broken–winged birds. As a matter of fact, when we are at our best, we believe that we were meant to rise up on wings like eagles.”

This morning as I placed Senator Kennedy’s life and legacy within a history and context, I salute this powerful and compassionate eagle who flew above the constraints of class to connect with ordinary people, who flew above the constraints of heterosexuality to connect with lesbians and gays, who flew above the constraints of Whiteness to connect with peoples of color and who flew above the constraints of his own individual challenges to strive to become more fully human. We salute you, Senator Edward Kennedy, not because you were perfect and not because we always agreed with you, but because you tried to treat others right on this journey even in the face of great personal hardship and travail. We salute you Senator Kennedy, because you stood with us when standing with us was a liability.

Fly on Senator Kennedy as you join that mighty cloud of witnesses/ancestors whose lives lift us and remind us that we are not alone -- that we are passengers on a long train moving towards justice. For those of us who remain as remnants of Movements for Justice in the 20th century, let the words, uttered at the 2008 Democratic Convention, by our brother, Senator and long distance worker for justice, Senator Edward Kennedy, resonate and hold us through this unsteady leg of our journey. He said: “I have come here tonight to stand with you - to change America and to restore its future - to rise to our best ideals and to elect Barack Obama President of the United States... Together we have known success and seen setbacks - victory and defeat - but we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a newer world.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Dream Shall Never Die

2009-08-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy and and Senator Edward Kennedy

This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, "that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American...will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege."

For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it's always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years. — Ted Kennedy

Clyburn: Town Hall Protests Like Horrid Anti-Civil Rights Demonstrations

2009-08-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

The third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives on Thursday compared the disruptive protesters at recent health care town halls to people who unleashed dogs and spat on civil rights demonstrators during the 1960s.

By Sam Stein
Huffington Post
August 13, 2009

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Rep. James Clyburn, (D-S.C.), said that there was "absolutely" an analogy to be drawn between the horrid experience that he went through as a civil rights leader and the boisterous conservatives who have disrupted health care forums.

"I have seen this kind of hate before. I have seen this discussion before," he said. "I have seen snarling dogs going after people who were trying to peacefully assemble. I have seen the eyes of people who were being spat upon."

"This is all about activity trying to deny the establishment of a civil right. And I do believe that health care for all is -- a civil right," the House Majority Whip argued. "And I think that is why you see this kind of activity. This is an attempt on the part of some to deny the establishment of a civil right. (click to read rest of article).

When Are WE Going to Get Over It?

2009-08-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

The post below was sent to me by a friend. The author, Andrew M. Manis, is associate professor of history at Macon State College in Georgia and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph. This courageous author's comments merit national distribution. Therefore, I hope all of my readers will forward it to others. The burden of responsibility for the race problem usually falls disproportionately on blacks. The author takes a different point of view.

By Andrew Manis

For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it?

Now I want to ask:

"When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?

Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk."

Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent.

Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes.

Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president.

But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?"

How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us?

How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?

How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?

How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?

How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?

I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?

How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?

How long before we starting "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red, brown, yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?

Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.

But here's my three-point plan:

First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.

Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice,
"We HAVE overcome."

It takes a Village to protect our President!!!

The Henry Louis Gates Affair

2009-07-27T11:14:00.001-07:00

Mug shots of Henry Louis Gates after arrest for disorderly conduct. wbz photo

I am reminded of James Baldwin's book, Nobody Knows My Name, when I think of the thousands of black and brown men who have been the victims of racial profile.

I haven't logged on for more than a month because I got tired of writing on the same old same issues. However, the Henry Louis Gates arrest by the Cambridge police officer deserves a comment.

It is unfortunate that any man, be he white black, brown or yellow, is arrested while trying to enter his own home peacefully. Police officers should exercise restraint when faced with a potentially volatile situation. When Gates showed Officer Crowley his identification, the matter should have ended. However, it gets murky from then on with a disagreement between Officer Crowley's written report and Gates's description of what occurred. If, as the office said, Gates told him "Your mama's outside" (see police report) when he asked him to step outside, the cop should have bitten his lip and left. They are trained to ignore such things. Maybe, on this hot day the officer didn't take kindly to Gates playing the dozens with him. Who knows? We are not mind readers.

I am reminded of James Baldwin's book, Nobody Knows My Name, when I think of the thousands of black and brown men who have been the victims of racial profile. Unlike Skip Gates, these men have no outstanding credentials or media friends to report their arrests on the front page of the New York Times. There is something inherently wrong when the arrest of a nameless Joe Blow ends up only on the police blotter.

I would hope that Skip uses his arrest as an honest way to bring attention to the problem for the thousands of black and brown men whose names are not known by the national media. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the affair ends with the White House beer drinking party hosted by President Obama for Gates and Crowley. President Obama was in hot water for referring to the Cambridge police department as "dumb" without having all the facts. Looking for a way out of the mess that I don't think he should have been involved in from the start, he called Officer Crowley, who suggested he invite him and Gates for a beer at the White House.

Anytime the President speaks on a volatile issue, it takes him off message. The passage of a health care reform bill is more critical to the nation than the arrest of Skip Gates, as President Obama soon learned. Now, I hope the right wingnuts will leave the whole affair alone and the rest of us can get back to health care.

How Henry Louis Gates Got Ordained as the Nation's "Leading Black Intellectual"

2009-07-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

Counterpunch
July 27, 2009

By ISHMAEL REED

Now that Henry Louis Gates’ Jr. has gotten a tiny taste of what “the underclass” undergo each day, do you think that he will go easier on them? Lighten up on the tough love lectures? Even during his encounter with the police, he was given some slack. If a black man in an inner city neighborhood had hesitated to identify himself, or given the police some lip, the police would have called SWAT. When Oscar Grant, an apprentice butcher, talked back to a BART policeman in Oakland, he was shot!

Given the position that Gates has pronounced since the late eighties, if I had been the arresting officer and post-race spokesperson Gates accused me of racism, I would have given him a sample of his own medicine. I would have replied that “race is a social construct”--the line that he and his friends have been pushing over the last couple of decades.

After this experience, will Gates stop attributing the problems of those inner city dwellers to the behavior of “thirty five-year-old grandmothers living in the projects?” (Gates says that when he became a tough lover he was following the example of his mentor Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka as though his and Soyinka’s situations were the same. As a result of Soyinka’s criticisms of a Nigerian dictator, he was jailed and his life constantly threatened.) Click here to read rest of article.

Police: McNair girlfriend behind murder-suicide | Jacksonville.com

2009-07-08T16:49:00.001-07:00

Police: McNair girlfriend behind murder-suicide | Jacksonville.com

Shared via AddThis

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

2009-06-25T17:52:00.001-07:00

Michael Jackson recording We are the world.

There will never be another one like him. As a young boy from a working class family in Gary, Indiana he grabbed our attention like no child singer before him. He was a ground breaker with an extraordinary gift for music. As a singer and dancer, he had no peers. Remember the moonwalk? He had charisma and genuine talent. Long before the modern music studios came into existence, Michael and his brothers of the Jackson Five showed us what real talent is all about. You could hear their beautifully stylized lyrics and you could dance easily to their beat. Their music was sweet, beautiful, and peaceful. It evoked happier times and an optimistic future.

I can see see Michael's fancy footwork now, as I did one night at the Robert F. Kennedy stadium in Washington, DC. It was his "Thriller" concert tour and it was worth every bit of effort it took me to garner tickets very close to the stage for my ten year old son and my twelve year old niece. I was a generation ahead of Michael but he had a way of bridging my generation with my son's. We all had happy feet that night as we danced to Michael's music.

In the days ahead every Tom, Dick and Harry will show up on the front pages of the tabloids to "scandalize" Michael's name. Countless lawsuits will fly as people try to get their claws into his estate. But as for me, I will follow the simple dictum: If you don't have anything good to say about the dead, then say nothing. I am not interested in the rehashing of his sexual and other deviance. Enough has been said about that already.

Let's remember the sheer joy he brought us when he performed the broad range of songs. Also, let us remember the social consciousness he practiced in his early career, as symbolized by the organizing role he played in producing the historic song, "We are the world."

Go in peace young brother. You brought us a lot of joy. Thank you for leaving all of us with a song in our hearts. Your legacy is ensured into future generations.

Nana, I Want To Be A "Celebrity"

2009-06-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

Spencer and Heidi Pratt on "I'm a Celebrity...Get me out of here."

Being A Celebrity is not something to which young people should aspire, especially if their role models are dimwits.

A friend told me recently that she asked her ten year old grandson what he wants to be when he grows up. Not missing a beat, he said proudly, "I want to be a celebrity." In other words, he wants to become well known for no particular achievement, goals, or accomplishments. He just wants to be famous. She said she used this as a teachable moment, and vowed that it will become a teachable day, week, and year for she will need this much time to rid this child of what is, apparently, a career "goal" for an increasing number of young people.

We have sunk to an all time low when it comes to celebrityhood. I had never watched any of the television survival reality shows primarily because I hate the outdoors and the dirt and grime that goes with it. However, I became hooked on the show, "I'm a Celebrity...Get me out of here" over the past two weeks because of the two twits- Spencer and Heidi something or the other who fulfill the little boy's idea of a profession. If ever there were two people who should turn all of us against celebrityhood, it is this couple. For example, Spencer declared in one scene, "I am the king of America," and she, who spent all of her time gabbing about how much she loves Jesus, turned the show into one sordid mess as they lied, engaged in deceit, and strutted around the set throwing verbal brickbats in the paths of the other contestants. He even allowed Steven Baldwin (the brother of actor Alec Baldwin) to baptize him in a creek on the set. Steven said he is a born again, nondenominational, charismatic Christian, whatever that is. After the baptism that shouldn't have been a baptism, Spencer commenced to talking about the demons that had been cast out of him. His wife, Heidi, talked about the demons in their midst.

I have never watched the reality show, The Hills, but Heidi and Spencer are or were apparently in the cast. Spencer became a "celebrity" by attacking people as the bad boy. Heidi talked about Jesus and cries a lot, or engages in nonsensical gibberish when asked a direct question. For example, Al Roker, the NBC Today Show weatherman and host tried to interview these dimwits this week. When he asked Heidi if she was proud of her behavior on I'm a Celebrity...Get me out of here, she stammered, smiled, tried to engage in doublespeak...(no, she's not smart enough to have two thoughts at the same time), and tried to avoid responding to his question.

Roker asked her again if she was proud of her horrible behavior on the set in Costa Rica. Her atrocious behavior included leaving the set twice, once due to illness, and she spent a night in the hospital. Then, she accused NBC of torture because she said her illness was a direct result of how she was treated on the show. A family member said she was considering suing NBC. That's what Roker meant when he asked her if she was proud of her behavior. Roker later said they aren't accustomed to having to answer direct questions, which means they aren't used to accepting personal responsibility for misbehavior, lying, deception, and doing anything to be "famous."

Moving right along with these celebrities who are so vacuous that a logical thought never entered their minds, Spencer and Heidi parlayed their "disgust" with Roker by referring to him as "just a weatherman" and Miss Heidi said women should be careful if they intend to be interviewed by him. Careful of what? Did I miss something?

I am glad my friend asked her grandson what he wants to be when he grows up, and I urge all of you who have children and grand kids to do the same. You never know whether pea brains like Heidi and Spencer have influenced them.

Michelle Obama's Abbey outfit: stacked like a wedding cake – but nice colours

2009-06-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

Okay. You be the judge. The Times of London ran this picture with a pithy article.

The Times Online
June 10, 2009

Jon and Kate Plus Eight Exploited Little Children

2009-06-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

John and Kate Gosselin and their eight children

I promised myself that I wouldn't write about reality television shows but Jon and Kate Plus Eight has gotten under my skin. If you haven't watched the show on TLC (The Learning Channel), it features a young couple in their early to mid thirties who have eight children: a set of eight year old twins, and five year old sextuplets. I started watching it a couple of years ago when the parents were struggling with how to cope with the day to day pressures and joys of having a house full of very small children. Kate, the nurse turned homemaker, spent her days being exceptionally obsessive compulsive about every spot and stain on the kitchen table and barking orders to her then compliant husband.

I could see back then that all was not well in Paradise because Kate was always bossing Jon around. She had no mercy on her husband. He couldn't do anything right, even as she messed up all the time without ever acknowledging that she wasn't perfect. The most horrible scene occurred in a K-Mart store when she yelled to the top of her lungs, "Jon, get over here and stop playing with the toys" or something to that effect. He told her how embarrassed he was for her to treat him that way in public. Always unflappable, Kate simply dismissed his protests. She has a curt disposition, and is not given to apologizing or saying "thank you" to anyone for anything. It is as though she feels that her womb produced eight tons of gold and the public is supposed to bow down and acknowledge her superiority. Seriously folks, the woman is a trip.

Well folks, Jon bolted and cut loose from his dominatrix and I don't blame him. She spends her time on the road selling her two books (I doubt seriously that she wrote them) and running what she calls the "family business" while Jon is the house husband. That is, when he is not slipping out of the house at midnight and later to meet friends at a local bar. The word is, he also has a girlfriend, and he has moved out of their bedroom to a room above the garage in the multimillion dollar house they now own, thanks to TLC and her "family business." Also, it is rumored that her handsome bodyguard is also her lover.

Where do the children fit into this scheme? Clearly, their welfare is not front and center because if it was they wouldn't have a camera thrust in their faces every day of the week, chronicling their every move. I wonder what the children will say when they are old enough to watch themselves in some areas that they may find difficult to fathom. Will they lash out at their parents for denying them a "normal" life, or will the "family business" have made them so rich that it won't matter? I will bet on the kids turning on their parents when they're old enough to understand the concepts of privacy, intimacy, etc. What do you think?

RNC slams Obama for romantic date with Michelle in New York

2009-06-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

Christian Science Monitor
By Jimmy Orr
May 30, 2009

Sure, it’s one of the worst songs ever written. But perhaps President Obama and First Lady Michelle are closet Air Supply fans and are simply “Keeping the Love Alive” by enjoying a date-night in New York City tonight.

As we told you earlier, the Obamas are spending a presumably romantic evening together with dinner and a Broadway show this evening in the Big Apple.

If the RNC are fans of Air Supply as well, perhaps they believe the Obamas are “Lost in Love” because flying off to New York while the economy is tanking is just not right they say.

“As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan’s theater district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills,” RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said in an email this afternoon.

That’s not all from Gitcho. She then added a snitty, “Have a great Saturday evening — even if you’re not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense.”

Fung Wah

Well, you can say the Obamas are at least trying to keep the costs down. They downsized the transportation opting not to take the normal Air Force One 747.

It’s not like they took the $10 Fung Wah Bus either though. They just hopped on a smaller plane. Although it is still called Air Force One, it’s just part of the fleet.

The plane they took this afternoon is an Air Force Gulfstream V (C-37A) — a 12 passenger aircraft. (H/T Mark Knoller). And there are no plans to circle the Statue of Liberty.

Snazzy

It looks like they’re ready to hit the town too. Reports are that they’re all snazzed up. According to the Associated Press, Michelle “…wore her hair up, heels and a sleeveless black ruffled dress that fell below the knee while he went tieless in a dark suit and white shirt.”

No details yet on the restaurant of choice. Although we are surmising that’s it’s a notch up from the hamburger stand the president visited yesterday (nothing against hamburger stands).
As for the Broadway show? They are heading to the Belasco Theatre for a performance of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”.

Valerie Jarrett: No. 2 Woman in the White House

2009-06-01T17:29:00.000-07:00

By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 1, 2009

The framed, inscribed photo of President Obama on a table in her office says it all, more than any fancy title: "The best of friends . . . Thanks for always being there for us. Love, Barack."

Valerie Jarrett is not simply the highest-ranking woman serving in the White House these days. She has the kind of power that comes with long history and deep friendship, a voice in the room that confidently reflects her 20-year Chicago-based relationship with Barack and Michelle Obama. The Obamas ate their first family dinner outside of the White House at her Georgetown apartment, and there are ample photos in Jarrett's office of her daughter, Laura, a student at Harvard Law School, with the president.

"I think we have relied on each other at different points in our life," Jarrett said in an interview in her White House office last week. (Click to read rest of article)

Attacks Against Judge Sotomayor

2009-05-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

A smiling Judge Sonia Sotomayor appears at the White House announcement of her nomination to be the next member of the United States Supreme Court. AP Photo

A smiling Judge Sonia Sotomayor appears at the White House announcement of her nomination to be the next member of the United States Supreme Court. AP Photo

I never thought I would see the day that a bigot like Rush Limbaugh would call a distinguished judge, Sonia Sotamayor, a racist simply because she said that one's background has an impact on the decisions she and other judges render. Her specific statement was:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

For that one sentence that was also taken out of context, Judge Sotomayor has been likened to David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. Karl Rove, the sleight of hand trickster who helped to steal the first election for George W. Bush and who has committed all manner of transgressions against our code of morality (and possibly against the law) had the nerve to say that Judge Sotomayor does not have the intellectual ability to be a Supreme Court Justice. Another critic said she got her judicial appointment because of affirmative action.

Puh-leez.

Never mind that Judge Sotomayor graduated with honors from Princeton; was a member of the Yale Law Review and; has more judicial and legal experience than anyone who has sat on the United States Supreme Court.

For anyone to object to Sotomayor's statement that she has a greater understanding of people like her is nothing more than stupidity, and a denial of reality. Surely, these men would object strenuously if she said she could understand other white powerful and privileged men as well as or even better than Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, or Rush Limbaugh. They would be ready to call her impudent and full of herself.

When I was in graduate student I studied what is called urban ethnography. A key component of ethnography is participant observation methodology in which one attempts to "take the role of the other" to understand more fully the experiences and lives of the people I studied. This was a natural for me because it involved empathy (the word President Obama said he recognized in Judge Sotomayor), and it gave me a far better and more in-depth understanding of the teenage girls I studied in the Pruitt Igoe public housing project. What helped me in my research is the underlying assumption that there is no value free sociology because all of us have values, attitudes and assumptions. My task was not to agree or disagree with these adolescents on what they believed or did with their lives, but rather to understand them. What is lacking in the right wing talk machine is the inability even to understand how others view the world.

Judge Sotomayor was trying to say exactly that but her opponents have used it as a sledge hammer against her. Rush Limbaugh has values and so does Karl Rove. There is no way a judge can hear a case without their own values intruding, whether they agree or disagree with the behavior of the person standing before them. Most important, the fact that one has a value preference does not mean that one will rule unfairly and against another. Far from it.

The idea that justice is blind is a goal to which the nation aspires, but we see too many cases in real life in which Lady Justice turns a blind eye to the grievances of the poor and powerless. Throughout history justice was not given to slaves who subsequently became second class citizens without the right to vote. Nor is justice granted to those who were subjected to the three-strike rule of law for possession of crack cocaine while those possessing powder cocaine were not given sentences as harsh.

I am reminded of a passage from a book, The Challenge of Blackness, by historian Lerone Bennett:

George Washington and George Washington's slaves lived different realities. And if we extend that insight to all the dimensions of white American history we will realize that blacks lived at a different time and a different reality in this country. And the terrifying implications of all this is that there is another time, another reality, another America... By and large reality has been conceptualized in terms of the narrow point of view of the small minority of white men who live in Europe and North America. We must abandon the partial frame of reference of our oppressors and create new concepts which will release our reality , which is also the reality of the overwhelming majority of men and women on this globe...

Although Bennett published this almost forty years ago, Judge Sotomayor and all the other previously voiceless people are saying to the likes of Rove, Gingrich and Limbaugh that they have a lot to learn about the way so-called minorities in this society view and respond to the world. They need to go back to school and take ethnic awareness and understanding courses.

When White Women Accuse Black Men of Abducting Them (and it turns out to be a lie)

2009-05-30T10:10:00.001-07:00

Mug shot of Bonnie Sweeten, Orange County Sheriff's Department/AP

Susan Smith, who falsely accused a black man of abducting her two boys.

Posted: 30 May 2009 11:22 AM PDT

Why is it that in this so-called post-racial society, we see vestiges of terrible historical racism on television that represent psycho-sexual fantasies and fears? Take the case of the white female who, a few days ago, called 911 to report that her car was hit from the rear by "two black men in a Cadillac" and she and her daughter were taken hostage. She said she was calling from the trunk of the car somewhere in Bucks County, outside Philadelphia. It took a short time to determine that she was lying because she was later found at Disney World in Orlando. What this woman doesn't appear to realize, or doesn't care about is that black men have been lynched for doing far less to white women. To use a phrase coined by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (I never thought I would quote him), "high tech lynching" still occurs. The kind of lie she told could have caused Philadelphia cops to stop, harass, and place in line-ups every black male driving a new Cadillac. Fortunately, she has been arrested but not before she evoked the images of brutish black men out to harm a white woman.

The reason this story is important is because, tragically, it points to some of the vestiges of racism that have existed since slavery when black men were mutilated and lynched for allegedly "lusting after" white women. The white Southern woman was placed on a pedestal for all to see and not touch. At the same time, the symbols of black manhood as "bestial" and "animalistic" were also conceived by white males who, in dehumanizing him, made it easier to control him in the Southern plantation economy.

Fast forward to the present. The notorious Susan Smith case in South Carolina where a young white mother accused a black male of kidnapping her and her children gripped the nation for days until it was discovered that she had murdered her children by driving her car into a river, allowing the tots to drown. Smith appeared tearfully on national television begging for the black man to bring her children home. This case was pivotal in spawning a cottage industry of the "helpless white woman" who have been accosted by the "brutish, dangerous black man." Nancy Grace, whom I would not deign to call a journalist, uses air time each night to zero in on the white women and children who are lost, missing, murdered, beaten or Amber Alerted. Some of these claims are valid and others like Susan Smith and the Philadelphia woman who said she was in the trunk of a Cadillac driven by black men are bogus, and just plain wrong.

Instead of officials, Grace and others rushing to say "Oh, she must be mentally ill," these women should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (Susan Smith was sentenced to prison). Are these people inferring that only a "sick" white woman who does this type of thing? Or, are the trying to find a way for them to avoid prosecution? We have seen that even when the so-called mentally ill white women go off the reservation, they target the "black male as the culprit.

Unfortunately, black women and children who are abducted, beaten, and murdered do not get the same preferential treatment. The horrendous murders of an untold number of Chicago children receives far less media attention. We have yet to see the national public so outraged as they are when danger allegedly strikes the white females. I cannot remember when I last heard an Amber Alert issued for a black child. Are black children not abducted? And what of the black women who were abducted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? We heard very little about them, and Nancy Grace's "Damsels in Distress TV" show, nor has the nation been gripped by these tragedies.

I do not make light of these tragedies when they occur against women and children, no matter their race or class. What I do dislike is the distinction that is made between females on the basis of color.

You are subscribed to email updates from The Ladner Report
To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. Email delivery powered by Google
Inbox too full?
If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: The Ladner Report, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

An Empathetic Puerto Rican Woman for the U.S. Supreme Court

2009-05-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

U.S. President Barack Obama nominates Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor (R), to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, at the East Room of the White House in Washington May 26, 2009. (Reuters)

I am glad President Barack Obama named a woman of color to be the next Supreme Court justice. While I wish a black woman had been nominated, I am happy that a New York Puerto Rican woman from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals is the nominee. Judge Sotomayor has an examplary record. The knives of the right wing have already been sharpened to go after her. This ritual of attacking the record of Supreme Court nominees has become an unfortunate ritual, and the faint of heart need not be considered for they will surely be slashed to bits.

The Republican leadership in the Congress is going to have difficulty launching an attack against Judge Sotomayor. The number of Americans who identify themselves as Republican continues to shrink, especially among the young and among those who do not live in the deep South or in one of those states located far, far away from the mainstream: the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, you get the picture. The Republicans need the Hispanic/Latina vote desperately. How can they oppose the first Hispanic/Latina nominee to the high court, and still expect to gain voters in Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, Texas and California? Their base has become so purist that only those who pass the litmus test developed by Rush Limbaugh can be endorsed for dog catcher and beyond.

In the meantime, raise your glasses for a toast to President Obama who had the courage to appoint someone with all of the "official" qualifications, as well as that other qualification he said he considers extremely important:

HERE'S TO EMPATHY!!!

NAACP Endorses Judge Sonia Sotomayor

2009-05-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

Below is an open letter from Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP

I was at the White House this morning when President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court -- and it was a thrilling moment.

She is a brilliant legal mind and a distinguished judge -- and she would be the first Hispanic, and the third woman, to serve on the Court.

At the NAACP, we are excited to have a nomination that brings us one step closer to the inclusive democracy that is the hallmark and promise of our nation.

I am writing now to ask you to help ensure that she is confirmed. Here is what you can do:

1. Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
2. Ask to speak with one of your senators.
3. Once you are connected, tell the person answering the phone that you "urge the Senator to ensure that Judge Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation is swift and fair."
4. Do the same for your other senator.

The nomination of the first Latina to join the Supreme Court is a moment that we should celebrate. Judge Sotomayor has the life experiences, as well as the judicial temperament and legal mastery, to be a successful and effective Supreme Court justice. She also has an established and proven commitment to civil rights.

You have probably already heard about her life story: she grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx, her father died when she was nine, and her mother worked two jobs. She went to Princeton and Yale. She can understand the reality of all Americans from diverse backgrounds.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings first; once they have recommended her, the full Senate will vote. Please call (202) 224-3121, ask for your senators, and tell them to confirm Judge Sotomayor.

Thank you for your support!

Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP

What Is Wrong With Dick Cheney?

2009-05-21T20:25:00.001-07:00

When I lived in Washington I got used to the different color coded alerts that were issued by Attorney General Ashcroft. They were supposed to put us Washingtonians on notice that danger lurked behind every building, pothole, and it floated through the air like viruses that would wipe you out. We were never told what the colors meant, therefore it was never clear as to whether red was a higher level of alert than, say blue. One time I got so agitated that I combed my pantry and kitchen cabinets for all the canned goods I could box and save for Armageddon.

My "adopted" son and my close friend looked at me with pain in their eyes. They didn't want to tell me that I looked like a fool, especially when I inspected the garbage room as a possible hiding place should one of the alerts turn out to be a genuine "terrorist" threat on Washington, DC.

I lived between one and two miles from the White House. I tried to plot an escape route because we were told by the Attorney General that we needed to have a pre-planned escape route to get out of Washington if the big one hit us. The problem is, no one knew how to do it because the transportation arteries couldn't handle the traffic. Plain and simple. That fact alone, that we couldn't all get out of town if Cheney and his Fear Industry, wanted us to brought me back to my senses. I realized we were all being conned and I never listened to another color coded warning.

Fast forward to today when Dick Cheney, who used to go into hiding to parts unknown and certainly unannounced to the public , gave a less than logical speech on the state of the "terrorist" industry. He has spoken out far more since leaving the White House than he did when he was Vice President. Now, the man whose approval rating is problem minus zero
(-0), is leading the opposition to President Obama's plans to close Guantanamo Bay.

I can't figure out what Dick Cheney is up to. I try to analyze things as logically as possible but this one stumps me because he makes no sense whatsoever. Does this man really fear his shadow, and does he see a bogey man behind every rock? Is he trying to whip up the fear industry because he wants the company he formerly headed to keep getting contracts worth gazillions of dollars? Does he think people are taking him seriously? If so, he needs a reality check because part of the reason his Party was voted out was because people got sick and tired of being told they needed to be scared out of their minds by Darth (Cheney) Vader?

I don't know the answers. I can only raise the questions. Sound off, dear readers because I really want to know what you think this man is trying to do.

The Meaning of Michelle Obama

2009-05-21T20:19:00.001-07:00

Time Magazine
Thursday, May. 21, 2009
By Nancy Gibbs and Michael Scherer

It was just two days after the Inauguration when an e-mail went around to Michelle Obama's staff, instructing everyone to be in the East Room of the White House at 3 that afternoon. The First Lady's advisers arrived to find the room filled with ushers and plumbers, electricians and maids and kitchen crew gathered in a huge circle, and Michelle in a T shirt and ponytail, very casual and very much in charge.

"This is my team that came with me from Chicago," Michelle said, pointing to her communications staff and policy people. "This is my team who works here already," she went on, indicating the ring of veterans around the room. Many of the household staff had served for decades; some had postponed retirement because they wanted to serve an African-American President. And so the two groups formed concentric rings and spent the next hour or so making sure that everyone had a chance to meet everyone else. I want you to know that you won't be judged based on whether they know your name, Michelle had warned her advisers. You'll be judged based on whether you know theirs. (See pictures of Michelle Obama behind the scenes.)

The White House became as much Michelle Obama's stage as her husband's even before she colored the fountains green for St. Patrick's Day, or mixed the Truman china with the World's Fair glasses at a state dinner, or installed beehives on the South Lawn, or turned the East Room into a jazz lounge for a night or sacrificed her first sock to the First Puppy. Of all the revelations of her first 100 days, the most striking was that she made it seem natural. She did not spend decades dreaming of this destination, and maybe that's the secret. "I'm not supposed to be here," she says again and again. And ever since she arrived, she has been asking, "What are the things that we can do differently here, the things that have never been done, the people who've never seen or experienced this White House?" (Click to read rest of article)

— With reporting by Jay Newton-Small and Karen Tumulty / Washington

From Munich To Mississippi

2009-05-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

Dr. Ernst Borinski, who was my mentor, with a group of Tougaloo College students in his Social Science Lab where he held his famous Social Science Forums. Speakers included Ralph Bunche, Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, and John Kenneth Galbraith.

Jewish Week
May 6, 2990
by Eric Herschthal
Staff Writer

A year before Joyce A. Ladner graduated from Tougaloo College, a historically black college in Mississippi, she nearly dropped out. The civil rights movement was reaching its height and Ladner wanted to devote herself to the cause full time. So, in 1963, she left school to become an activist. She and a few like-minded friends tried to desegregate a white Methodist church in Jackson, where Tougaloo is located, but they were immediately hauled off to jail. “We kept telling [the police] that we were there to worship, but they said we were disturbing the peace,” Ladner recalled.

From her prison cell, the first person she contacted was Ernst Borinski, a German Jewish refugee who taught her sociology class at Tougaloo. Not only was he well connected — she asked him to invite Ralph Bunche, the first black American awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, to fight for them — he was also a close confidante. Borinksi invited his students over for dinner, introduced them to classical music and the humanities, and brought to campus figures like John Kenneth Galbraith and Eudora Welty. He told his students to aim higher than what the Jim Crow South expected of them. “He was the most powerful intellectual force in my life,” Ladner said.

Ladner, who holds a doctorate in sociology and was the first woman president of Howard University, was at the opening last week of “Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges,” a new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

The exhibit tells the story of Jewish professors stripped of their university posts by the Nazis who then fled to the United States to find work. The ones with international reputations, like Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, found positions at better-known schools. But many others were denied jobs because of institutional anti-Semitism or the simple lack of funds. A small few however — some 50 of an estimated 1,200 scholars who left Germany before the war — ended up at black colleges.

Not all of them lived out their careers there, but the ones that did had a profound influence on their students. Many students like Ladner went on to become professors themselves. Others became doctors, lawyers and educators. The artist John Biggers studied under the painter Viktor Lowenfeld at the Hampton Institute; the poet Calvin Hernton met Langston Hughes with the help of his Talladega professor Fritz Pappenheim.

The relationships were reciprocal, too. Jewish professors often came to the States without their families, so their students and colleagues became family. Ladner spoke about the rumors that circulated about Borinski’s past, like one that his wife and children had been killed in concentration camps. Despite his close relationship with his students and colleagues, which lasted 37 years at Tougaloo until his death in 1983, he never mentioned a word about his family’s past.

The details are still unclear, said Bonnie Gurewitsch, the exhibit’s curator. Though it appears from Borinski’s diaries that he was not married, his mother and sister apparently stayed in Germany despite his advice for them to escape with him. No one knows what happened to them. “There was a bitterness that no one heeded his warnings,” Gurewitsch said. “I imagine that that was a tremendous source of pain for him.”

The exhibit grew out of a PBS documentary that aired in 2001, but it stems from a different racial context. In 1994, the Nation of Islam spokesperson Khalid Abdul Muhammad gave an anti-Semitic speech at Howard University that demeaned Holocaust survivors: “The Holocaust lasted 10 years; ours lasted 500,” he said, “How can you compare, buddy?” It was one of a series of highly publicized spats that grated against an already fragile black-Jewish alliance.

The filmmaker Steven Fischler was following this story when he came across a letter to the editor in The New York Times that reminded readers of “the helping hand stretched out by black colleges and black scholars.” The writer was a man named John Herz who was living in Scarsdale. Fischler thought there might be more to his story, so he tracked him down. Herz became a subject in the documentary, and now the exhibit, since he was himself a German Jewish refugee who had spent years teaching at Howard. With the help of a 1993 book entitled “From Swastika to Jim Crow” by Gabrielle Edgcomb, the director and his partner Joel Sucher completed their film.

“What has struck me is how much things can change,” Fischler said in a recent interview. The exhibit appears eight years after the film originally aired, and almost twice as long since Fischler and Sucher began the project in the mid-1990s. A black president is in the White House, and the racial climate in America has never seemed sunnier. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll released last week, two-thirds of Americans say race relations are generally good, with the number of blacks that said so having doubled since July. To be sure, racial prejudice is still a salient fact of American life, and, as the public reaction to Rev. Jeremiah Wright proved last year, national bonhomie can fade fast.

Even if the exhibit dovetails nicely with the current racial climate, it does not shy away from untidy facts. It notes that some professors were initially skeptical about the intellectual capabilities of black students. They were educated at European universities where pseudo-sciences like phrenology — which held that the size of one’s skull determined one’s intelligence — occasionally held sway, and newer fields like anthropology were rife with racist assumptions. Gurewitsch told the story of a German Jewish professor “who couldn’t overcome his own racist assumptions and left because of them.”

Black students often had never met a Jew before either, which could result in awkward or insulting displays of ignorance. They sometimes assumed Jews were actually black because of a similar history of oppression. Both groups’ prejudices, however, “were not characteristic,” said Gurewitsch. “These misconceptions tended to disappear as they got to know each other.”

Creating the exhibit challenged Gurewitsch’s own preconceptions, she said. She had assumed that many of the black students who had gone to these colleges were ill-prepared for the rigors of higher education. But in fact, she learned that many students, though poor and provided with sub-standard primary schools, came armed with middle-class values. Hard work, self-sufficiency and the ability for education to determine one’s success in life had been instilled in them since their youth. In the exhibit, she gives ample credit to the professors for their students’ later achievements. “But certainly a lot of that has to do with personal ambition, talent and having that talent validated by their families at home,” she said.

Donald Cunnigen, a former student of Borinski and now a sociology professor at the University of Rhode Island, is a telling example. In grade school, he received a small award from a statewide math competition in Mississippi, but since he was black, he was not invited to the official awards ceremony. Though he came in second place, his name was not on the calligraphy-penned paper announcements. He received his award, which is on display at this exhibit, in the mail.

Cunnigen appeared at the exhibit opening to talk about his memories of Borinski. The summer before his freshman year, Cunnigen picked up a course catalogue belonging to his brother, who was already a student at Tougaloo, and decided to write a letter to a professor whose course looked interesting. Borinski was on the receiving end and sent back a lengthy letter and a copy of a book called “Perspectives on Black America.” He wrote Cunnigen, “When you come to campus, come by my office.”

Cunnigen did, and over the next four years Borinski became a close mentor. Cunnigen was something like the professor’s personal assistant — “a glorified gofer,” Cunnigen called it — typing Borinski’s letters, helping him prepare for his much anticipated Social Science Forums, where Welty and Galbraith came to speak. He remembered how Borinski told his black students to sit among white guests to encourage interracial dialogue. When Cunnigen decided to apply for a doctoral program in sociology, Borinski wrote him 27 letters of recommendation. Cunnigen ultimately enrolled at Harvard.

“He taught us that people must work to achieve success rather than have it handed it to them,” Cunnigen said about Borinski. “He encouraged his students to do bigger things than the state of Mississippi expected us to do.”

“Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges” runs at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust through the end of the year. The museum is located at 36 Battery Park; call (646) 437-4200 for more information.
Back to top

Ordinary People Who Do Extraordinary Things

2009-05-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

President Obama delivered his first commencement address last night at Arizona State University in the midst of the controversy that erupted when the University's trustees and adminsitrators refused to give him an honorary doctorate because, they said, he had not achieved a substantive body of work. In true Obama style, he took a lemon and turned it into lemonade.

Some would have refused the invitation, however the President has an uncommon way of reaching deep inside himself to transcend the moment. He called on the nation to return to the old fashioned values of honesty and integrity, and to become a nation that values substance over appearance, character and integrity.

In an inspiring speech to the graduates, he said "I know starting your careers in troubled times is a challenge, but it is also a privilege. Because it is moments like these that force us to try harder, to dig deeper, to discover gifts we never knew we had -- to find the greatness that lie within each of us."

President Obama reached beyond the mundane, and challenged the students and the nation to achieve success in the context of decency and honesty- aoncient values that have been in short supply here of late in the midst of scandals at the highest levels of government and finance.
He used the controversy over the honorary degree as a "teachable moment" for the nation, and in doing so, he demonstrated that a life's work can be achieved in a number of ways. (Arizona State has given honorary degrees to Pearl Bailey, unknown or disgraced government officials, as well as a Nobel prize winner or two.)

I am sure he struck a responsive cord with all the university's trustees and top administrators who decided he hadn't achieved enough to justify bestowing on him an honorary doctorate. I wonder how many of Arizona State's trustees and officials would qualify?

President Obama told the audience, “In recent years, in many ways, we’ve become enamored with our own success, lulled into complacency by our own achievements. We started taking shortcuts. We started living on credit, instead of building up savings. We saw businesses focus more on rebranding and repackaging than innovating and developing new ideas that improve our lives.” (I am glad he hit this "branding" notion that seems to be the buzz words for people who lack substance.)

This shift in perspective, he noted, should refocus our sights on ordinary people who do extraordinary things instead of the (my words) celubutantes like Paris Hilton. Think also of the titans of Wall Street who produced no tangible product, made no critical innovations that advanced human welfare, yet paid themselves the biggest salaries in the history of humankind for their own failures.

Ordinary people who did extraordinary things like those who helped runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad, people like Cesar Chavez who fought for Chicano worker rights, or people like the Google guys and Bill Gates who developed new technology and transformed the world. He mentioned those who rescued people from the fiery furnace of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. These are the kinds of measurable successes the nation should embrace.

He said, “A whole bunch of them didn’t get honorary degrees but they changed the course of history and so can you. That’s what building a body of work is all about: it’s about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime, to a lasting legacy.”

Amen, Mr. President.

Poetry Slam Makes A White House Debut

2009-05-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

President and Mrs. Obama host "An Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word" in the East Room of the White House.

The slaves who built the White House must be rejoicing in jubilation because President Obama and Michelle Obama have turned up the lights and let the sunshine in. Even the ghosts of our ancestors are probably dancing to the sounds of poetry and music.

It is such a joy to have an intelligent POTUS (president of the United States) because those of us who have been starved intellectually for the past eight years can now sit back and live vicariously like never before. Sweet Honey in the Rock sang for Black History month, Stevie Wonder was feted at a dinner, and now we have a poetry slam. Slamma jamma! They know how to engage our sensibilities, and they really know how to pull off a good party that is oh, so elegant.

White House social secretary Desiree Rogers promised that she would find ways to "open up" the White House so that it would be inclusive in ways it has not been. So far, I give her and Mrs. Obama an A. All of their public events appear to be designed to open up the place and get rid of the staid, overly pomp and circumstance of the past. In so doing, they have redefined its use without sacrificing one iota of dignity of the House. I love it!

Now comes information about the Poetry Slam they hosted last night. This must have sent a lot of the old guard running to "google" the words "poetry slam." The most delightful and cutest picture is the Obama girls sitting at their very own dining table. Presidents Carter and Clinton invited their children to attend these high faulting events, so it is a joy go see these little princesses enjoying these opportunities.

They invited students from American, Gallaudet, Georgetown, and Howard Universities to participate in the event. What an experience this must have been for these students. Additional information from the White House website state:

Tonight, the President and the First Lady will host an evening celebrating poetry, music and the spoken word. This event is designed around the theme of dialogue, showing how dialogue is important in every aspect of who we are as Americans and as human beings, and demonstrating how communication is a constant throughout the ages. The hope is also that this evening's gathering helps ensure that all voices are heard, particularly voices that are often not heard. We are fortunate to have a wide variety of upcoming and legendary performers such as Joshua Bennett, James Earl Jones, Eric Lewis, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Mayda Del Valle and Esperanza Spalding.

Look at those killer earrings. Girl, where did you get those? And that outfit is a killer.

White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers looks like she's sayig, "I knew it would be a great event."

Esperanza Spalding, 24, a 2005 recipient of the Boston Jazz Society scholarship for outstanding musicianship.

The sweet little White House princesses, Malia and Sasha Obama are not likely to forget these wondrous experiences.

Vice President and Mrs. Biden make their entrance at the White House poetry slam.

Eric Lewis, aka ELEW, performs for U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama during An Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word in the East Room.

Thinking About My Mother

2009-05-09T19:14:00.000-07:00

I miss my Mother today, as we celebrate Mother's Day. I think of her almost daily even though she died in 1995 after spending three months in a hospital disabled by a stroke. She was an unusual woman-strong, independent minded, tenacious, courageous, no-nonsense, with a wry sense of humor. She was also loyal to a fault, a "do-er" in the tradition of generations of black women before her who made a way out of no way, as the expression goes. Mother, whose name was Annie Ruth, bore nine children, eight of whom are still living. I am third oldest of her children.

Mother was a task master when I was growing up. She could delegate as well as an army commander, all the while overseeing her older girls to make sure we were learning how to do all that would be necessary when we matured. Her lessons were legion: manners (when you go out practice decorum like young ladies and you are never to be loud and boisterous), dignity (always carry yourselves like ladies), respectful of others (treat adults with respect), courage (always look white people in the eye and don't blink) and a host of other rules and lessons. We lived in Mississippi and that is why she felt it so necessary that we show courage in the face of racial segregation and discrimination. Mother didn't permit whites or blacks to disrespect her, and she taught us the same. "Just because they (white men) think they can make a pass at you doesn't mean you allow them to," was one of her frequent expressions.

Annie Ruth's legacy lives on in her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was My My to my younger siblings and to her grandchildren. Playful, a hugger, a teller of jokes and a sixth sense that she called "mother wit" were some of the ways we described her. This proud woman pushed her children to dream beyond the artificial borders erected around us, and to achieve our very best. She had no idea that we would do so well, but then again, she must have known that all of her sermonizing was sinking in even if we sometimes looked like we'd rather she lay off the lessons. She loved all of her children but she was especially proud of her girls because we survived and thrived in a place that made it difficult to do so.

So, as you celebrate Mother's Day tomorrow, remember what your mama taught you and be sure to pass it on to those who probably need to hear some words of wisdom, as well as words which uplift the human spirit.

Women Who Live In The Spotlight Are Human Too

2009-05-07T18:15:00.001-07:00

Michelle Obama's $540 sneakers she wore to help out at a homeless shelter

We women can get out of kilter and need to be reminded of how to get back to a sense of balance or, as a good friend of mine says, learn to have "equanimity under duress." Sometimes most of us need to be reminded of what doesn't look or sound good. Take the case of Michelle Obama whose heart is definitely in the right place when it comes to helping those least able to provide for themselves. She has a natural empathy that many people in high places either do not have or do not express in public. Working with military families, poor children, homeless individuals and families are only some of the interests she has shown.

However, last week Mrs. Obama and over a hundred wives of Congressmen went to a Washington DC shelter to help at mealtime. All the good she did has probably been undermined because she wore a pair of sneakers that are valued at $540.00. As millions of families and individuals struggle to make ends meet, $540 can feed a family of four for a month if it is supplemented with coupons

Elizabeth Edwards book titled Resilience describes her husband's affair

Then, there is the case of another woman I admire: Elizabeth Edwards. She just wrote a memoir of sorts, Resilience, about her struggle with terminal cancer and with her unfaithful husband, former presidential candidate John Edwards, whose affair with another woman is said to have produced a child. I always thought Elizabeth Edwards is far smarter than her husband, She is downright brilliant whereas he is not. I thought she would make a better candidate and a better president.

Her book is likely to be very controversial because she comes off sounding like a whiner about the woman with whom John Edwards had the affair. She lashes out at Rielle Hunter but acts silly by getting Oprah Winfrey to agree that Hunter's name was not to be uttered by either of them in the interview. Hello!!! Rielle Hunter is the elephant in the room and no amount of pretending to ignore her changes that fact. Moreover, she criticized Hunter for making a pass at John Edwards as though he had no role in the whole thing. Rielle Hunter did not put a gun to the head of John Edwards. She did not force him into an affair. That is on him.

She thumbed her nose at Hunter when she said "I don't know people like that." Hello!!! I'll bet you do but they haven't told you that they have behaved that way. We all know someone like that. To put Hunter down that way was Edwards's way of elevating herself in the eyes of the public. Instead, she cheapened herself and came out sounding like a snob.

I don't think all women whose husbands cheat should be kicked out. Marriage is a very personal and private thing between two people, and outsiders should remain outside unless invited in. Edwards invites the public to examine not only what she writes but the motivation she had for writing this book. Michelle Obama invites us to examine her values: expensive sneakers worn at a homeless shelter. Both women deserve to be embraced lovingly but they also need to know how they appear to us.

Michelle Obama's Personal Style

2009-04-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

Taking a page from Jackie O's fabulous style, Michelle Obama looked classy and graceful in an ivory tulle tweed coat made especially for her by young New York designer Thakoon Panichgul and a black Michael Kors dress as she and president Barack Obama depart the White House in Washington on March 31, 2009, for a trip to the United Kingdom to attend the G-20 Summit.

Looking sleek in black, Michelle Obama showed off her toned arms while accompanying her husband at City hall in Baden-Baden for the NATO summit’s 60th anniversary. To see all of her styles click here.

Michelle Obama's personal style is still evolving, but is different from the safe choices she made during the presidential campaign. She still prefers dresses to the Washington woman's uniform - a conservative suit. Essence magazine fashion editors were surprised when she refused to wear the clothes they brought for the photo shoot. Instead, she wore her own. By sticking to her own clothes, she is not endorsing any particular designer although she does wear the clothes of a lot of young designers. Former First Ladies have favored prominent designers. Not so for Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama's First 100 Days

2009-04-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
Associated Press Writer

updated 11:30 a.m. CT, Mon., April 27, 2009

WASHINGTON - The 21 women nervously mingling at the White House were among the best in their fields.

They had achieved Olympic gold, Grammy awards and four stars in the Army. One had orbited the earth aboard space shuttle Endeavour. Some had reached the highest outposts of corporate America, or had earned kudos on stage or on the big screen.

They were together for one reason: Michelle Obama.
As a candidate's wife, as it became increasingly clear Barack Obama might win the presidency, she had dreamed about a day like this, when she could bring together such a talented group and send them off to give pep talks to kids in the public schools.

As first lady, she realized she could make it happen.

"I couldn't have imagined this a year ago," Mrs. Obama said. She was speaking one morning last month to the other high achievers she had invited to the blue-and-yellow Diplomatic Reception Room in the basement of the White House.

Something else seemed unimaginable a year ago, too. Read entire article

Most diverse Cabinet in history still incomplete

2009-04-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Three months after taking office, President Obama will convene his first Cabinet meeting on Monday — still one seat short of a complete Cabinet.

Eager to promote budget-cutting efforts by all federal agencies, Obama will hold the meeting a day before the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to vote on his last nominee, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as secretary of Health and Human Services.

OBAMA'S CABINET: Who's who

Outside experts say Obama's Cabinet is among the latest to be filled since Inauguration Day was moved up six weeks, to Jan. 20, in 1937. The delays were caused by ethics problems that forced his first nominees for the Commerce and Health and Human Services departments to withdraw, and the more extensive vetting process that followed.

If she is confirmed by the Senate, Sebelius will complete a Cabinet that experts say is the most diverse in history. It will have seven women and nine racial and ethnic minorities among its 21 members — and only eight white men. Average age: 54.

"He has a majority-minority Cabinet," says Paul Light, an expert on presidential appointments at New York University. "In terms of white males, they're in the minority now."

Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, had five women and six minorities in a first Cabinet that he said "looks like America" — one more in each category than George W. Bush had. Obama has shattered those numbers:

• There will be seven women with Sebelius, led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

• There are four African-Americans, including the first as attorney general, Eric Holder. There are three Asian-Americans and two Hispanics.

• Seven Cabinet members are in their 40s, eight in their 50s and six in their 60s. The youngest is Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who just turned 40. The oldest is Eric Shinseki, 66, who heads the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• The closest Obama comes to having a southerner is former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, the U.S. trade representative. Three each hail from California, New York, the District of Columbia and Obama's home state of Illinois.

• The president has a preference for previous office-holders. His Cabinet includes four former governors, two ex-senators, and three former House members.

• Obama's effort to have a bipartisan Cabinet was set back a bit when his second Commerce secretary nominee, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, withdrew because of ideological differences. That leaves former GOP congressman Ray LaHood of Illinois as Transportation secretary and Robert Gates, a holdover from Bush's administration who considers himself a Republican, as Defense secretary.

The delay in completing the Cabinet hasn't stopped Obama's major initiatives. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's confirmation was stalled because he underpaid federal income taxes for several years, and his top deputies still aren't confirmed. Yet the administration pushed through a $787 billion economic stimulus package and other recession-fighting measures.

Obama called for overhauling the nation's health care system for the first time since Clinton's failed effort in 1994, without the benefit of a Health and Human Services secretary. His first nominee, former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, withdrew because of tax underpayments.

The delay is the longest in at least 20 years. Dick Cheney became President George H.W. Bush's Defense secretary in March 1989. Janet Reno became Clinton's attorney general in March 1993. "Any organization works better when there's somebody sitting in the first chair," says Calvin Mackenzie, government professor at Colby College.

Who's who in Obama's Cabinet

President Obama holds his first Cabinet meeting on Monday, but the Cabinet still isn't complete. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services is scheduled for a Senate committee vote Tuesday, which could lead to Senate confirmation this week. That would complete the Cabinet:

Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Could These Men Stand Trial For Torture Policies?

2009-04-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney

If you're wondering Vice President Dick Cheney has been all over the media lately it might appear that he wants to set the record straight on the Bush administration’s role in torture. He told Fox news pundit Sean Hannity, who sees a communist plot behind every action of President Obama’s, that he wants the records released that will prove torture was effective in eliciting information from detainees at Guantanamo. I don't think Chaney cares one whit about what the American public thinks of him. He has never been influenced by public opinion.

I believe he is speaking to potential jurors who might have to sit and hear the case against him, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and even President George W. Bush if the Department of Justice brings charges against them for directing federal employees to use torture. Karl Rove appeared on Fox news last night and he was very emotional about the whole thing. I kept wondering why was he so concerned about what the new administration might do. If he's innocent, there is nothing to worry about.

President Obama is against punishing those intelligence agents who carried out the policies of the Bush administration. He came under a lot of heat from the public who accused him of trying to block the prosecution of the Bush administration officials who created the torture policies. Now he has changed his tune:

"As to who made these legal decisions, I would say that this will be a decision of the Attorney General within the limits of several laws, and I do not want to prejudge. I think there’s a lot of very difficult issues involved.”

It matters little what President Obama thinks about these matters. He does not have the power to decide whether the torturers and those who made the policies will be charged. That is left up to United States Attorney General Eric Holder. This is a great example of separation of powers in the government.

So keep your eyes on what the Justice Department does about this because the power is in the hands of Attorney General Holder.

What He Overcame - A Pulitzer Prize Winner

2009-04-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

ONE of my favorite columnists is the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson. He is an incisive writer with razor sharp powers of observation. Yesterday, it was announced that Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for "his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture." He beat the economist Paul Krugman who won the Nobel Prize last year.

I thought it would be useful to post one of his best pieces written last year. It might be useful for us to remember the obstacles President Obama overcame, as Robinson so eloquently describes below.

What He Overcame

By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post Columnist
Friday, June 6, 2008

There will be plenty of time to chart Barack Obama's attempt to navigate a course between the exigencies of the old politics and the promise of the new, between yesterday and tomorrow, youth and experience, black and white. For now, take a moment to consider the mind-bending improbability of what just happened.

A young, black, first-term senator -- a man whose father was from Kenya, whose mother was from Kansas and whose name sounds as if it might have come from the roster of Guantanamo detainees -- has won a marathon of primaries and caucuses to become the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. To reach this point, he had to do more than outduel the party's most powerful and resourceful political machine. He also had to defy, and ultimately defeat, 389 years of history.

It was in 1619 that the first Africans were brought in chains to these shores, landing in Jamestown. That first shipment of "servants" did not include any of Obama's ancestors; it's impossible to say whether some distant progenitor of his wife, Michelle, might have been present at that moment of original sin. Ever since -- through the War of Independence, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the great migration to Northern cities and the civil rights struggle -- race has been one of the great themes running through our nation's history.

I'm old enough to remember when Americans with skin the color of mine and Obama's had to fight -- and die -- for the right to participate as equals in the life of the nation we helped build. Watching Obama give his speech Tuesday night marking the end of the primary season and the beginning of the general election campaign, I thought back to a time when brave men and women, both black and white, put their lives on the line to ensure that African Americans had the right to vote, let alone run for office -- a time when Democrats in my home state of South Carolina were Dixiecrats, and when the notion that the Democratic Party would someday nominate a black man for president was utterly unimaginable.

Tiresome, isn't it? All this recounting of unpleasant history, I mean. Wouldn't it be great if we could all just move on? Bear with me, though, because this is how we get to the point where, as Obama's young supporters like to chant, "race doesn't matter." No one will be happier than I when we reach that promised land, and we've come so far that at times we can see it, just over the next hill. But we aren't there yet.

This is a passage from an e-mail I received in April from an Obama volunteer in Pennsylvania: "We've been called 'N-lovers,' Obama's been called the 'Anti-Christ,' our signs have been burned in the streets during a parade, our volunteers have been harassed physically, or with racial slurs -- it's been unreal."

Yet the amazing thing isn't that there were instances of overt, old-style racism during this campaign, it's that there were so few. The amazing thing is that so many Americans have been willing to accept -- or, indeed, reject -- Obama based on his qualifications and his ideas, not on his race. I'll never forget visiting Iowa in December and witnessing all-white crowds file into high school gymnasiums to take the measure of a black man -- and, ultimately, decide that he was someone who expressed their hopes and dreams.

When historians and political scientists write books about this extraordinary campaign season, surely they will seek to assess what impact Obama's race had on his prospects. But they will also devote volumes to exploring how he put together a fundraising apparatus that generated undreamed-of amounts of cash, and how his organization drew so many new voters into the process, and how his young supporters made use of social-networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and how his delegate-counting team managed to consistently outthink and outhustle everyone else. It will be written that Obama's nomination victory owes as much to adroit management as it does to stirring inspiration.

Will Americans take the final step and elect Obama as president? Should they? Is this first-term senator up to the job?

We'll find out soon enough. At the moment, to tell the truth, I don't care. Whether Obama wins or loses, history has been made this year. Maybe there's more to come, maybe not; but already -- after 389 long years -- it's safe to say that this nation will never be the same.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Dr. Martin Luther King's Children Are Selling Him To The Highest Bidder

2009-04-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

Bernice, Dexter and Martin Luther King, III.

Dr. King must be turning over in his grave because his offspring are selling his words, his image, and anything else that is not held down with concrete.

A few days ago the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the offspring of Martin and Coretta King sent a bill to the Martin Luther King Memorial committee for some $800,000 for use of Dr. King's words and images. The Black Entertainment Television online newsletter wrote "King Kids Demand $800,000 from Memorial Fund" with the operative word being kids. My first reaction is one of anger, but then again I have had numerous occasions to get angry with these God-forsaken people because every time I turn around they are suing someone or an organization because they used Dr. King's likeness without their permission. This has been going on since the 1990's when Dexter King, the youngest offspring, began licensing use of his father's words. In one downright scandalous case he sold his father's words spoken at the March on Washington in 1963 to a corporation that superimposed them against the corporate logo. A friend said they want their dead father take care of them. I would add, "whether he wants to (in death) or not."

Why don't these over-grown, middle-age people go out and get jobs like everyone else? Why don't they stop desecrating their father's memory and his work? Do they ever stop to ponder what their father might say about them selling him out to the highest bidder? Have they noticed that the descendants of Malcolm X do not hustle his likeness? Do they feel short-changed by a father they barely knew, and are making him pay up for rarely being home, and for abandoning them in his death? This is some heavy stuff, but it would be interesting to know what's going on in their psyches. It would be like rumbling through an old attic with lots of cobwebs and the residue of many battles. They don't appear to have found any kind of peace within themselves, at least the kind of contentment most people attain. It's as though they're trust fund babies (they created their own trust fund with their hustle) who are entitled to live well without earning the money to do so.

I'll bet that had Dr. King imagined the possibility that his children were going to sell him out for their own edification he might have been tempted to give up the movement and stay home to impart his values to them. Never before have I heard of such a dysfunctional bunch of siblings. Why do they presume that the public should take care of them by virtue of the gene pool they come from? None have achieved much in their own right and on their own terms. The youngest, Dexter, didn't even finish college. It seems that all they do is sit around looking for their next mark... who can we sue next so we'll have some more money? They made millions when they sold copies of his papers to Morehouse College. I understand that they still own the papers and that they must approve their usage. If I am wrong, please let me know because I would be glad to correct these comments. Bernice, the youngest, has degrees in divinity and law but I don't know if she earns a living from her job as a preacher at the mega church, New Birth, in Atlanta. Marty, who is his father's namesake seems to be a nice low key guy. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council for a lot of years where he must have earned a salary. He heads his own organization now but I don' t know if it pays enough for him to support his family.

What I do know is the offspring of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are not receiving royalties for their likenesses, and these men's memorials are sitting right there on the mall with the Lincoln memorial and the Washington monument sitting between the U. S. Capitol and the White House. Dr. King's statue will be on the mall.

Why then do the King offspring (I refuse to refer to them as "children") behave so badly? Why don't they honor their father's legacy by adopting his values? They are acting like the Beverly hillbillies--uncouth, filthy, vile, and spoiled. As my late mother used to say, "not worth a hill of beans."

Arizona State University Says No Honorary Degree for President Obama

2009-04-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., waves to the crowd after delivering his convocation address at Howard University in Washington, Friday, Sept. 29, 2007. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Earlier this month the Arizona State University announced that President Obama will speak at its commencement next month. At the same time, they stated that he will not be given the honorary degree which is why most people agree to speak at graduations. Their reason: he has not yet achieved enough to be given this award. After a firestorm of criticism they just announced that ASU will name its most prestigious scholarship for the President "out of the greatest respect for him as an individual and world leader." Still no honorary degree even though he is a world leader!

“I apologize for the confusion surrounding our invitation to President Obama to address ASU students at commencement,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “The entire ASU community has been electrified with excitement since we learned of his participation in our commencement ceremony. We hope that the recent discussion of honorary degrees will not detract from the honor and thrill that ASU – and indeed all of Arizona – is experiencing in anticipation of his visit. I am honored, as are our faculty, staff and students, that President Obama will give his first commencement speech as president of the United States at ASU.”

I looked through their list of past degree recipients. A lot of academics, Native American and Hispanic leaders, at least one Nobel laureate, political leaders such as Barry Goldwater and Mo Udall. One could argue that many of these people achieved a lot in their fields and that President Obama has yet to make a big mark on the world because he hasn't been in office long enough. As an academic person, this is the kind of reasoning a group of pointy heads would make.

However, the biggest problem with such faulty reasoning is one never uses this yardstick by which to measure the President of the United States. He is in a league of his own. He is not a scholar who has written a dozen books like Dickey or led a movement like Caesar Chavez, a politician like the disgraced Henry Cisneros, or a philanthropist like Stewart Mott.

What did President Obama accomplish? He convinced a wary public that they should vote for him because of his race, age, and his upbringing in a female headed household. He convinced Americans that his bi-racial birth status that came from having a "foreign" black African father who abandoned him, and an independent minded white mother, were not character flaws but strengths. He convinced voters and supporters the world over that having been a poor community organizer who worked with poor blacks and whites in housing projects gave him insights that would be important for a president to have. In doing so, he restored the luster to this grass roots activity. Most of all, he knocked down more barriers than any previous presidential candidate in history. All of his markers should have caused him to fail. Instead, he redefined them as strengths to be respected. Shouldn't that count for a little something, Arizona State?

How is ASU going to remedy its public relations problem? Listen to what the President of the university: "Naming this scholarship program after President Obama that will affect the lives of thousands of students is an honor befitting, not only the president’s exceptional achievements, but also his values as an individual. The President Barack Obama Scholars program will be a legacy that will endure and inspire others for generations to come.”

Sounds like the ASU trustees and high level administrators threw this scholarship program together at the last minute. Why did they have to make things worse, like pouring gasoline on an inferno? The inference is that President Obama is not worthy of one of their little stinking honorary degrees (they gave Pearl Bailey one for God's sake) but he is worthy of naming a scholarship for him. Why didn't they name scholarships for some of the folks on their list of degree recipients like Nobel laureate Leland Hartwell?

They should live with their poor decision and stop the let's make nice stuff. Next time don't invite the President of the United States to speak. I can't help wondering if they would have refused to bestow this honor on President George Bush (laugh out loud). If they gave Pearl Bailey one, then surely President Bush was deserving. tsk tsk.

Leave My Tea Bag Alone!

2009-04-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

Cookie Johnson struts the catwalk at Victoria Rowell's annual High Tea at Noon fundraiser, May 18, 2008 in Beverly Hills, CA.

The Republicans have gone mad. They are hypocrites. Today many of these "mad" and irresponsible folks rallied all over the country in their tea (bag) party against taxes. This is coming from the very lawmakers who allowed President George W. Bush to do everything except loot the national treasury in his eight years in office. Where were they then? Hello?

Now that they have destroyed their party (notwithstanding having a black chairman in Michael Steele who, by the way, is a former brother in law of boxer Mike Tyson), and they won't be getting another irresponsible tax cut, they have set out to find other ways to remain relevant in an age when they have no appealing ideas to sell. How can the governor of Texas who appeared on national television today issue a call to arms in a "Hell no, I won't go" press conference reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam rallies forty years ago? Is he going to refuse to pay taxes? Are Rush Limbaugh, Dick Armey and the very silly and downright dumb Fox news Sean Hannity who make more money than most Americans going to hold onto their wallets? Give me a break!

Do they want the poor who are now homeless and hungry to pay their taxes? Are they trying to stoke the fires among the "right wing extremists" who are said to be on the verge of organizing against the first black president to occupy the White (some of them say black) House an illegal immigrants? If this is one of their motives, they have struck an all-time low even for a party that exists only in the deep South and small mountain states like Utah. It is unlikely that these same old tired men who couldn't care less about the average American's issues and needs will become more appealing. Perhaps they should implode. That would be a good thing for the vast majority of Americans who want to find real solutions to the pressing economic problems these rich fat guys helped to create by supporting massive deregulation of every industry that wasn't cast in steel.

The only "tea party" I want to attend is one where my girlfriends and I will dress up in our hats and white gloves an go to the nicest hotel in town. They call that high tea!

Architects Chosen for Black History Museum

2009-04-15T17:25:00.000-07:00

Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup
A design concept for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

New York Times
April 15, 2009

By RANDY KENNEDY

A dream almost a century old moved another step closer to reality on Tuesday as the Smithsonian Institution chose a team led by David Adjaye, the celebrated Tanzanian-born architect, to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open on the National Mall in Washington in 2015.

The winners of the design competition — which also include the Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond and SmithGroup — were chosen over five others, including well-known architects like Norman Foster and Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

The museum is expected to cost $500 million and will be built on a site near the Washington Monument after a three-year design period to turn the winners’ idea into a workable blueprint. The museum was established in 2003 by an act of Congress. And although it does not have a building yet, it has already begun collecting artifacts and conducting seminars and other events, including a recent two-day program on the Black Power movement. Read entire article here.

2009-04-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

A White House clothesline for the Obamas?

By Susan Reimer
© Baltimore Sun
April 13, 2009

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are trapped in role model hell, what with her off-the-rack dresses, his new international humility, their intact African-American family, the rescue dog search and, of course, the vegetable garden.

And now Alex Lee would like them to add a clothesline.

The founder of Project Laundry List, an effort to get Americans to give up their clothes dryers and the energy it takes to run them, hopes the Obamas will hang out their laundry - not dirty, just like household linens - along with the rest of the country next Sunday on National Hanging Out Day.

A Dog Named "Bo" - The Luckiest Dog in the World

2009-04-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

Bo, the Obama family dog, pictured above arrived yesterday. His selection and arrival has taken about six months. Malia and Sasha named him Bo. Mrs. Obama was delighted because her late father's nick name was Diddley, after Bo Diddley.

2009-04-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

President Obama is so hip! He shakes the hand of a black policeman at 10 Downing Street on his recent trip to London.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

NYC Easter Hat Parade. 5th avenue, Midtown Manhattan, March 23, 2008, Flickr photo

Some of my readers have checked in to ask why I haven't been writing here of late. I took a vacation because I am working on a book. The manuscript is taking all of my waking hours, more or less. I began blogging during the presidential campaign and never had any intention of continuing it after the election. In the meantime,I will try to post on a weekly basis.

The Easter season is, for me, a time of reflection when I focus on my spirituality. I had a friend many years ago who prayed all day on Good Friday. She didn't answer her phone, see visitors, or go out of her home. She simply prayed for others. I really miss the Good Friday services at my old parish, Trinity Episcopal, in Washington, DC. Nevertheless, I will don my Easter bonnet and a beautiful suit tomorrow and go to Easter services. For me, is a time for the renewal of my faith.

Happy Easter to all who celebrate it.

Mr. Penn Goes To Washington

2009-04-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

Kal Penn goes to Washington.

I wrote a lengthy piece on one of my favorite young actors, Kal Penn, but it was gobbled up by my computer because of my lack of attentiveness. Suffice it to say that he has taken a job at the White House as liaison to the Asian community. He will work with senior presidential advisor, Valerie Jarrett. I was quite taken with the young Mr. Penn when I saw his film, "The Namesake." Will write more about him at a later date.

Oh yes! He is highly qualified. He is an intellectual actor, and he did voter registration work on college campuses. He also campaigned all over the country for President Obama.

Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges

2009-04-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

I was very fortunate to have had a wonderful college mentor. His name was Dr. Ernst Borinski, a Holocaust survivor who taught at Tougaloo College (Mississippi) from 1947 until his death in 1985. Only a few Jewish intellectuals like Albert Einstein who fled Hitler's war found work in elite American universities. Some, like Dr. Borinski, went South where they found jobs teaching in mostly private black colleges. This history was brought to the public's attention by Gabrielle Edgecomb, whose book, From Swastika to Jim Crow (1993) laid the groundwork for a PBS documentary in 2000. Later this month the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York will open an exhibition that delves even deeper into this subject. It focuses on the relationship between these Jewish intellectuals, their black students, colleagues, and the segregated communities in which they lived. Some got involved in the civil rights movement. JL

John Biggers (1924-2001), The Gleaners, 1943, oil on canvas, 27 1/4" x 40", signed. Influenced by Millet's classic painting, Biggers' gleaners are picking up pieces of coal that dropped from the trains, to save the cost of 25 cents per bucket for heating fuel. John Biggers was a student of Viktor Lowenfeld’s at Hampton Institute.

© Estate of John T. Biggers; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY. Art © John T. Biggers Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

NEW YORK, NY.- In 1935, an article in the Afro-American paper stated: “We rejoice that our newspapers condemn German Nazi atrocities. It’s a good sign that they may yet discover the Nazism which is outside their own doors.” The relationship between two disenfranchised groups—Jewish professors who fled Nazi Germany and African-American students — and the unique bond that grew between them is the subject of the powerful new exhibition Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges, opening at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust on May 1, 2009. The exhibition will be on view through January 2010.

Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow will tell the story of Jewish academics from Germany and Austria who were dismissed from their teaching positions in the 1930s. After fleeing to America, some refugee scholars found positions at historically black colleges and universities in the Jim Crow South. The exhibition will explore what it meant to the students to have these new staff as part of their community, how the students were affected by their presence, and what life was like for white, European Jews teaching at black colleges and universities. The exhibit will look at the empathy between two minority groups with a history of persecution, some of whom came together in search of freedom and opportunity, and shared the early years of struggle in the Civil Rights movement.

To read more

Give Me My Bailout Package Too!

2009-03-16T15:38:00.000-07:00

The more I hear about these anonymous titans of Wall Street getting millions of dollars in bonuses from the government money our children's children will have to repay, the more I want to go to Washington to ask for my money. Wouldn't it make sense for the average citizen to go to the Capitol to demand that the Congress and Senate give us our bailout too? This is eminently more sensible than giving millions to those men and (a few) women who are responsible for this catastrophe, the likes of which we have never seen before.

At least we are more honest than the zillionaires who falsified their records to show profits that don't exist, and by stealing from the public with impunity. I don't believe in rewarding mediocrity and that is exactly what the government is doing when it allows these crooks to take their so-called bonuses off the top of the trillions given to the financial sector.

Photo of participants in the Memphis protest for better salaries for sanitation workers.

I am reminded of another time when citizens camped out in Washington to demand their money too. It was in 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) called for the federal government to address economic injustice. Dr. King and the SCLC initially waged an economic justice campaign in Memphis, Tennessee where black sanitation workers made only $1.70 per hour wage. The SCLC's goal wanted the city of Memphis to pay the workers a minimum wage of $9.00 her hour. After the passage of legislation that gave blacks the right to vote and to use public facilities it became crystal clear that economic power eluded the poor and blacks.

This is a flyer used to recruit people for the Poor People's Campaign. This flyer was distributed in Mississippi and belonged to civil rights activist Victoria Gray Adams.

King's Poor People's Campaign organized a "multiracial army of the poor" that started in Marks, Mississippi and would end in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, King was asssassinated before he and the marchers arrived in the nation's capitol. The goal of King's last campaign was for people to petition the government for passage of a poor people's bill of rights. He wanted the government to rebuild America's cities, and to launch a massive governmental jobs program. King, undoubtedly still disappointed with how little the federal government had done toward solving the race problem, had by this time gotten increasingly radical. He accused the government of expressing hostility to the poor while it was guilty of appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity", but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

Rev. Ralph Abernathy and other SCLC members building a tent on the Capitol Mall

Poor People's Campaign protesters marching in front of a federal agency in June, 1968

Dr. King's most serious campaign of the civil rights movement took on greater fervor after his death. Protesters erected tents on the Capitol mall and engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience. Perhaps this is a good model for us to consider. Let's go to Washington and demand that the Congress pass tougher regulation against banks and other financial industries. The massive deregulation that ran amuk shows us that greed overtook ethics and common sense. Besides, we can also see the Cherry Blossoms on the Mall.

Rupert Murdock Agrees To Meet With The NAACP

2009-03-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous

Protests can and do matter. When the New York Post published a racist cartoon that depicted President Barack Obama as a monkey, the NAACP branches throughout the country protested. NAACP President and CEO, Benjamin Todd Jealous just sent the following to NAACP members and supporters:

"It's thanks to activists like you, who sent 30,000 emails to Mr. Murdoch and organized over 55 protests at Fox stations country-wide, that News Corp has agreed to meet and work on making the much-needed changes in its newsrooms to prevent against racial bias and insensitivity in the future.

In this, our centennial year, we're bringing our work to ensure diversity in all media to the FCC. We'll also continue to pressure Washington to pass legislation to protect our homes and neighborhoods, bring accountability to unfair law enforcement practices, improve our schools, and end discrimination in the work place. I'm so glad to have you with us.

Thank you again for standing with us, and for being such a critical part of our half-million member movement fighting for civil and human rights for all people. "

Sarah Palin's Daughter Breaks Up With Her Baby's Daddy

2009-03-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

Bristol Palin who was pregnant and Levi Johnston, her baby's father, during the Republican convention.

It's hard to be a role model because if you fail in your endeavors you fall harder and faster than an ordinary person. It's even worse to be a public role model for then the entire audience to whom you are supposed to appeal are deeply disappointed. Such is the case of a reluctant couple of young people who were thrust onto the national scene by the governor of Alaska. Yes, Sarah Palin pushed her daughter Bristol Palin and her boyfriend and father of her new baby, Levi Johnston onto the political stage for political reasons.

Last summer during the Republican National Convention, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was so anxious to appeal to everyone that she used anyone and everything to help advance her cause for the Vice Presidential nomination. Palin thrust a pregnant Bristol to the stage and told us we should accept this pregnant teenager because she was going to have her child and not have an abortion or place the baby for adoption. Ordinary Bible thumping Republicans and other conservatives were suddenly talking about the positive attributes of being an unmarried teenage mother. And all the while I kept thinking, "If this was a poor black girl from a large city, she would be castigated instead of celebrated."

We were told that Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin were engaged to be married and that he was an electrician's trainee on the North Slope. A few months later Levi was photographed back in Wasilla and he was, presumably, no longer training to be an electrician. One report stated that Levi was actually living in the Palin household. No word as to whether he was sleeping with Bristol. Quite frankly it is not our business but Sarah Palin's sanctimonious way of forcing Bristol, the baby, and Levi down our throats made it a public affair. The one thing Sarah Palin never considered was that these young people no longer had any privacy, and that they would have to live with the consequences of Sarah's actions. What if she and John McCain didn't win. What if Bristol and Levi broke up? Besides, teen parents are highly unstable. Why did Palin think this would have a fairytale ending?

It's not right to pimp your child. This should be the lesson Sarah Palin learns from this episode. However, I doubt she has learned anything from this unfortunate set of events because she isn't the type. Just as she pushed pregnant Bristol and her infant son who has Down's Syndrome onto the Republican convention stage, she would find someone or something to thrust into the lives of the public in the future if she thinks it will advance her career. The losers are those people whom she exploits. Ce la vie.

To Rhianna: "He Will Beat You Again"

2009-03-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

Rhianna photo taken by police. She has a bloody swollen lip and bruises. Chris Brown is also said to have bitten her and told her he was going to kill her.

I would hate to be the mother (or father) of the young pop star, Rhianna. Her parents are probably pained and frustrated for not being able to reach their daughter by phone or, if they do reach her, not being able to talk some sense into her stupid head about going back to her confused, bully batterer boyfriend, Chris Brown. I can imagine her Mother has tried to convince her that if Chris Brown hit her once he'll hit her again, and again, and again. But Rhianna is too young and she thinks she's too much in L-O-V-E (i.e., addicted to the conflict between her and Chris) to be able to go cold turkey and kick him to the curb. It sounds like Chris is Rhianna's crack cocaine and she is so addicted and in such denial that she needs an intervention immediately. He is probably addicted to battering her either emotionally or physically because that's his concept of manhood. How pitiful.

Young love is a jumble of confused feelings and emotions. It's a lot of panting and hyperventilating, rapid heartbeats and obsession with the other person. It involves jealousy because in the complicated process of establishing one's young psychological identity, one wants, one needs to be accepted by the person she has chosen to be her love, her boyfriend. Perhaps it is too painful for Rhianna to accept the fact that he really doesn't love her for if he did he wouldn't beat her. You don't willingly hurt the person you profess to love. Maybe that is why she is in denial, denying that he will do it again because he told her so, he has wined and dined her, and bonded with her all over again. I wouldn't want to be twenty-one again (Rhianna's age) because it can be a jumble of painful emotions as in the case of Rhianna for she is caught up in some of the most critical issues she will ever face. And, none of what she is going through is logical. It is emotional and that's why it is so hard to get through to her.

The passion between lovebirds Rhianna and Chris Brown is clear.

Years later, if she's lucky, she will be able to look back on this time as one of lost opportunities. She will wonder why she chose to reconcile with a boyfriend who, is equally or even more confused about his identity, beat her mercilessly, bit her, and threatened to kill her. In a deeply Freudian way, I wonder who in his life did she symbolize when he said he wanted to kill her. It wasn't her but could it possibly have been his stepfather who beat his mother? Could it be his mother because he felt she should have stood up for herself, and she should not have chosen such a man to expose her young son to? We will never know. What we do know is that two famous immature young people who are rich and confused are in a very bad situation. And they need psychological intervention.

Rhianna after the beating. Photo by Associated Content

A lot of the emphasis has been placed on Rhianna's need to embrace victimhood and to reject the nineteen year old boy who pummeled her face as though she had gone through a meat grinder. Chris Brown also needs a lot of help because his concept of manhood is grossly distorted. Posturing, threatening to kill his girlfriend, beating her to the ground while being "the man" in his group of "yes! men" and adoring pre-pubescent girls is as far from responsible manhood as he can get.

Rhianna and Chris Brown always show a lot of touchy feely passion.

It is so sad that teenagers are now beating their girlfriends as evidenced by the fact that thousands are now victims of physical and emotional abuse. This is a relatively new thing. When I was in college, a girl who lived in the same dorm used to leave with her boyfriend each weekend --from Friday evening to Sunday evening. She was a beautiful girl from a well-to-do family. That did not fortify her fragile self esteem from allowing her boyfriend to bring her back to the dorm with a black eye and bruises all over her face. She tried to conceal her bruises with make-up, sunglasses and a head scarf pulled close to conceal her bruises. I always felt sorry for her because even at my tender age I realized she didn't have the strength of will to resist him. I was glad he left her for another girl--one who didn't appear to be the type to allow him to abuse her but I don't really know. I also hope she didn't choose another abuser.

When I was a kid, I heard my Mother and Grandmother talk about how terrible it was that some women they knew explained that their men beat them because they loved them. As in a parent telling a child that he/she was getting a spanking because the parent loves him/her enough to discipline and make them better children. All I could think at the time was, I didn't want a boy to love me that much!

"Bad girl" has its consequences especially if her partner is an abusive boyfriend.

Poor Rhianna. With all her confusion and jumbled values and emotions about her relationship with a boyfriend whose fuse is so short that he is absolutely going to beat her again, she is incapable of making the right choices. What she can do is listen to all the people who have reached out to her to tell her they support her. She has to hear some of the entreaties of the thousands of people who simply want her to get off this treacherous path to destruction at the hands of a boy who doesn't have a clue as to who and what he is. It bothers me, as it must bother her parents, that she has thus far refused to listen to all of those who have had experiences similar to her own. Her hard head will ensure that she find herself on a merry-go-round of abuse at the hands of Chris Brown or other boyfriends in the future.

He will beat her again. She can count on it!

2009-03-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

Now that the nation is broke, let us look to the beauty of flowers like the vase of irises above. Yes, I am serious.l

Rush Limbaugh vs. Michael Steel: You Be The Judge

2009-03-03T17:59:00.000-08:00

Rush Limbaugh speaks at CPAC

I didn't think I would see the day come so soon when the Republican Party would be at war with itself. Last Saturday at the The American Conservative Union talk show host Rush Limbaugh could commandeered at least an hour on the cable network news airwaves. Giving his "State of the Union" address, the dap daddy Limbaugh did himself proud, dressed sexy in a black suit and open collar black shirt (OMG).

I haven't heard such dribble against a sitting president in a long time. Here of late, Rush Limbaugh has taken to campaigning against President Barack Obama's agenda and his political fate. Limbaugh famously said he hopes President Barack Obama fails!! Yes folks, he wants to see our President, who is trying desperately to lead the nation and the world out of one of the most critical economic crises in modern history, fall on his face. At least the thrice divorced, drug addicted Limbaugh went easy on moral values. However, he was so far out in right field that other "responsible" Republicans are playing a dancing game the likes of which we haven't seen since before black senior citizens started doing the "Lek-trick (Electric) Slide" at every social event they attend.

These Republicans, especially elected officials, are afraid to say they don't want the President to fail, yet they are scared to death that dap daddy Rush will have his constituents defeat them at the polls. They must be cussing Karl Rove at every turn for creating those right winger true believers who would rather see the Republican Party and the nation go up in smoke than have a liberal black President.

Some of the people I saw on television at this love fest (with each other) are so far gone that they need to be placed in a witness protection program to be deprogrammed before they are allowed to re-enter conventional society. What bothered me was how young some of these folks are....far too young to be so close-minded. I can't help but wonder how and where were they socialized to become such zealots that they see Limbaugh as their leader. Don't they care that this man makes his living delivering zingers (sound bites)? Or, that they are following a man who is accountable to no one? Don't they care that the nation is on the brink of disaster and they will also go down the tube if the economy tanks? Why else would they want President Obama to fail? Idiocy!!

Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, made good on stoking the fires when he called Rush Limbaugh the head of the GOP. Ahhh, there's nothing like seeing Karl Rove's carefully crafted Party go up in smoke. I always knew it would. I just didn't know if I would live to see it. Poetic justice? You got that right!

Michael Steele, Republican Chairman, and former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland

The plot thickened when Michael Steele, the first black GOP chairman added his two cents. He told the comedian, D. H. Hughely on CNN, "Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh—his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it's incendiary. Yes, it's ugly." Whoa! I was pleasantly surprised to hear Steele speak the truth. Perhaps he had gotten some starch in his spine and was going to call it like he sees it. A credible Party chairman can't be scared of a talk show host. Dealing with people who disagree with each other is part of his job description. He can't rebuild a party by being afraid to call a spade a spade. Right?

Wrong! Hardly a day passed before Steele made an about face and, in effect, apologized for having misspoken about what Limbaugh does. Steele said, "There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership," He continued, "There are those out there who want to look at what he's saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That's what I was trying to say. It didn't come out that way."

In other words, Stelle didn't really mean to criticize the big dude who stole Johnny Cash's black suit and shirt because the big dude has twenty million listeners-- I mean constituents- who will help him bring down anyone he wants to.

So get that Michael Steele. The die was cast before you took the impossible job of trying to unify a herd of GOP'ers who are all over the place. Better that the anemic sounding Bobby Jindal (I swear it's hard to believe he's a Rhodes scholar), or Governor Sarah Palin (I can shoot a herd of moose in my designer original suit) take the job.

On the other hand, they didn't want the job. They want you to help them to become president.

That Pesky Monkey Just Won't Go Away

2009-03-03T16:40:00.000-08:00

Race matters to the average African American. We have such a long history of suffering in various ways because of our race that sometimes the slightest thing sets us off. The most recent is the call for a boycott of Barnes and Noble book store. The reason: a store window featured books by and about President Barack Obama. In the center is a book with an ape on the cover. This comes on the heels of the New York Post's cartoon that linked President Obama's Stimulus bill with an ape that attacked a woman in Connecticut. In real life, the ape was killed by police. One assumes that the cartoonist had that in mind when he used violence in his cartoon.

I tracked down the Barnes and Noble story and, thanks to the people at The Defenders Online who investigated the incident, the staff did not put the ape book in the window. They concluded, after an exhaustive internal look into the matter, that it had to have been put there by an irate customer who does not like the President.

I'm glad there is not yet another boycott, however, we must continue to be aware of these kinds of racist incidents when they do occur.

Just Checking In

2009-03-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

One of the most interesting commentaries on President Barack Obama's fight to change the paradigm in the U. S. was published by Wayne Brown in the Trinidad Express Online.
He writes:

Three decades ago, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher between them put paid to the economic and financial world of FDR's New Deal. In short order, they broke the power of unions, deregulated their financial systems, destroyed most of their countries' welfare safety nets, and unleashed the dog-eat-dog, weakest-to-the-wall philosophy of laissez faire capitalism.

The impact of the Reagan-Thatcher philosophy represented a fundamental change not only in England and the U. S., but also in the former British colonies with Trinidad-Tobago being among those. It would be beneficial for us to review their models to privatize, globalize, and otherwise diminish the size of government. Globalization was a big issue in the presidential campaign but it appears we have gone over the threshold and cannot plug the dike. The chasm between the wealthy and the poor increased not only in the U.S. but global poverty is now the order of the day.
Mr. Brown writes:

That whole orgy of looting was what came crashing down last September with the collapse of the US financial system, followed hard on its heels by the current sweeling-towards-ruin of the US economy. And it was clear that, from the start, Barack Obama saw the chance this would give him as president to administer its coup de grace. (read further)

The average poor person cannot say that they are better off today than they were one or two decades ago. President Obama should keep reminding the Congress and voters that he inherited the mess--it was on his table when he got the keys to the White House. He must also remind them that he received a mandate for change--one that comes along every generation if we're lucky. I am glad he is at the helm of government. Our recent history shows that a less caring, competent person would possibly lead us to further disaster.

No matter how often the racial slurs are repeated by those who should know better, President Obama has to suck it up and keep a stiff upper lip. He cannot be side-tracked by racists who don't understand why associating him with a monkey is wrong, or why a mayor doesn't know that an association between watermelons and a black president is insulting. I have never before seen such nastiness toward a President and First Lady. Their detractors appear to think President and Mrs. Obama don't deserve to be in the White House.

Even if Fox (Faux) News refuses to address him as "President" Obama, we know who won the election. We also know that the power of consumers is a mighty force. No president has ever endured the denigration, dehumanization, demystifying of the presidency, and an all out effort to diminish him. We can handle these problems while he takes care of health care, jobs, our standing in the world, education, and a myriad of other issues. We've got President Obama's back and we must organize, speak out and write about these issues.

African American Female Flight Crew

2009-02-26T13:19:00.001-08:00

When I posted this story yesterday I should have expected that it would draw a lot of traffic in the blogsophere. You see, these young women in the airline industry made history without even trying. Through serendipity they all ended up in the same place....in places few other black women have gone before. Count the number of black female pilots you have read about or flown with. I can probably count those I have flown with on one hand. Ever so often we look around and marvel over the fact that our young Sisters have quietly moved into yet another area that was off limits to most who came before them. We are very proud of you and we wish you well!

FA'a Robin Rogers and Captain Rachelle Jones of Atlantic Southeast Airlines

We operated flight 5202 from Atlanta to Nashville and flight 5106 from Nashville back to Atlanta. The crew included CPT Rachelle Jones, FO Stephanie Grant, FA's Robin Rogers and Diana Galloway!

Atlantic Southeast Airlines crew

2009-02-26T10:49:00.000-08:00

Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (February 26, 2009) |

Signed, Sealed And Delivered, I'm Your's

2009-02-25T21:09:00.000-08:00

Obama (Right) greeted Wonder (Left) to the formal East Room on Wednesday to receive the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, named for the American songwriter George Gershwin. -- PHOTO: AP

Stevie Wonder appeared at the White House tonight to receive the 2nd annual Gershwin Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Library of Congress. The entire event will be broadcast tomorrow night on PBS as part of its "In Performance at the White House" series, according to a White House press release. It coincided with Black History Month that the Obama family is celebrating by bringing to the White House many students, ordinary citizens and the well-known who would not ordinarily be invited to the White House. Hallelujah! Never thought I'd live to see this happen at the White House!

The man whose song, "Signed, Sealed and Delivered," was a theme song on the Obama campaign was honored by President Barack Obama tonight. President Obama said that Stevie Wonder's music was "the soundtrack of my youth." He said Wonder is also a supporter. In Wonder's music the President said he found "peace and inspiration, especially in difficult times." On a lighter note, he said "I think it's fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me. We might not have married. The fact that we agreed on Stevie was part of the essence of our courtship." They included Stevie Wonder's love song, "You and I" in their wedding program.

The President said, ..."Millions of people around the world have found similar comfort and joy in Stevie's music, and his unique capacity to find hope in struggle, and humanity in our common hardships. This gift that music affords us, transporting us from the here and now, relieving us of our burdens, even if it's just for the length of a song. And this gift given to us by artists like Stevie is something we can all share."

Other artista in attendance included Tony Bennett, will i am, and Martina McBride.

Halle Broke The Barrier And Viola And Taraji Walked Through The Door

2009-02-25T18:44:00.000-08:00

Academy Award nominees Viola Davis and Taraji Henson