CBS gives it the FOX touch

I don't know if it's the low ratings or the fact that they laid off some folks awhile back, but ... um, CBS News? Your bias is showing.



Wow. No one will mistake these people for "Dan Rather" liberals. I only say this though because of how Hillary Clinton's "Fact Check" piece went.



Gee? Notice a difference. Hmm ... maybe CBS felt guilty because of all the attention, negative or otherwise, they'd given Sen. Clinton, but methinks that's not it.

Recently CBS took an amazingly right wing slant on a FISA update story.



The reporter, Bob Orr, chalked everything up to "partisan" caterwauling. He didn't go into any depths about how this was all being held up by the Republicans who are refusing to acquiesce immunity for AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and the rest of the telecom giants. That this "endangering" of America is all so the telecoms can't be sued. Of course if they haven't broken the law why would anyone be suing? Unless the government, by process of elimination, is saying, "Yeah, we broke the law."

The story also flubbed all over the fact that the White House's threats were one big mulligan by failing to report that only the Protect America Act, which caused this telecom nightmare, would be affected and that FISA is still in effect. That existing wiretaps are still being monitored and that the original version of FISA worked fine from 2002 (after 9/11) until 2006, so say several former and current Bush Administration officials.

So basically George W. and Co. are asking us to just "trust them" when they say that they'll only look at the "terrorist" data, ignoring the fact that the telecoms don't give them solely the terrorist data.

They give them everything.

But none of that really came up in CBS's report. No civil liberties issues. No really pissed of Libertarians. No people with legitimate concerns, just Katie Couric n' the gang chalkin' it all up to "partisan bickering" instead of partisan cock blocking to protect the president, the White House, the NSA and the Telecom's from having to admit that, "hey, we might have done something illegal" and "hey, we might have to go to jail for this."

No BIG, CBS!

But the Obama thing is pretty alarming considering for months it's been nothing but kid gloves at CBA with the man, and the minute Hillary looks like she's about to go down for the count the preemptive knives come out. No warning. No nothing, just a lot of "look at that shady black guy with the shady church and the shady dealings with the shady Rezko and what's Farrakhan doing there? Hey, that looks sinister. And look at these pictures of Barack in creepy apparal from Islmo-fascists R Us." I half expected them to drain the screen of its color and show Barack walking in slo-mo while that "To Catch A Predator" music under the footage.

I hate being right.

I don't say out-loud how the press out of sheer boredom will begin to spin rumors and innuendos into truths and out right lies into grand spectacles of entertainment presenting the art of character assassination as theater, I don't say this because I want these things to come true. I just care so much, far more than I cared during during the Clinton years when eight years of lies and character assassination went on and that was with white people, not with cruel sting of racism overt and covert. It's not going to get better. I've seen this movie before. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but the agents of intolerance will be satisfied with nothing short of unmitigated surrender and suppression and the press will happily film it all, live at 11 for the ratings.

I know that none of this is new. But I never enjoy it. I know what is coming and it rhymes with a "T" and ends in an "e" and it's being bankrolled by the friends of the Republican National Committee.

Well, if it were easy to get there we'd all be president.

No words

Just when I thought you posing as a high fashion hobo was enough you top yourself.

From Gawker.com:

Kanye West: King of Lazy but Edgy Hip Hop Fashion

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

I know that people are sick of music industry's over-exposed, "L'enfant terrible," Kanye West, creator of awesome beats and forever of bruised ego, but people should do what I do - buy the albums, watch the performances and look at the pictures. Just block out all the random ridiculous that flows out of his mouth. Ignore the pointless gossip. It's not like he's chasing after jailbait or shooting up the place and his music is a welcome diversion from the death cult that rap music has turned into.

So yeah. I'm a fan. That's right, I still LIKE Kanye and I don't care who knows. And "Stronger" has the greatest beat I ever heard in my life and is definitely the greatest use of a sample. Who cares if he's whiny and temperamental? A lot of creative people are. He can at least make fun of it.


BTW: I hate the SNL site. It is everything the Daily Show archive is not. It's like they make it hard for you to enjoy their clips on purpose.

Since I'm still working on my latest chapter in the Michelle Obama Fashion Retrospective I thought I'd analyze the fashion of Ye who is in Paris, France with his fiancee, Alexis, taking in the ritzy fashion shows.

Kanye, despite the goofiness is a "fashion forward" guy. I checked out his fashion/style blog via Gawker today and was somewhat impressed with what I saw. It's flawed and kind of pretentious, but it's different in a good way, demonstrating that the rusty wheels in his noggin are a-turnin' and burning with inspiration.

And 'Ye is willing to wear that inspiration in the form of attire that might make other men flinch. His look is on that border between "nerdy" and "edgy," much like Pharell Williams. And I do enjoy how both musically and fashionably he likes to bring the strange-o, the Po-Mo and the retro at any given time.

So let's go to France and check out the couple along with (of all people) Rihanna and Vivica Fox as they appear to be the only black pop stars at Paris' Fall/Winter 08 fashion week.

The fashion of "I don't give a Yankee doodle. It is raining outside!" at the Stella McCartney Show.

I call this style "dressing in the dark." There was no planning. There was no effort to be sophisticated or novel. They literally picked up what was lying on the floor, sniffed it to see if it was funky then threw it on. A good part of high fashion is dressing like you don't give a shit if people see you in old man emerald green pants and a gray hoodie.

Again with the sunglasses. Never satisfied with just wearing a suit Kanye goes once again for the kitsch of "I don't care" by rocking a pair of those infernal white '80s era sunglasses with a ten cent Goodwill eyeglasses strap. Hee and Kim are pictured here at the Roberto Cavalli party.

All right. Who invited Vivica? Does she even still work for a living?

A gray trench and a white bow tie. Very downgrade swanky. It was like he wanted to tip toe up to the edge of posh and decided to stop just shy of "eccentric trust fund baby." The glasses, which are identical of the ones my dad has worn for 35 years because "they were the cheapest," really push this further into the eccentric column, which was likely the intent. This look also makes me think of Christian Bale in "American Psycho" meets Taco from "Puttin' on the Ritz."

I thought this was kind of cute until ...

I saw that it was a gaudy, over-sized sweatshirt with royal blue shoes. The shoes are cute as they remind me of a pair of blue shoes I had when I was 12. I loved them because they looked great with my blue stockings, matching skirt and festive holiday shirt. With my hair flowing down my back, free from the ponytail and braids jail it was normally in, I felt stunning at my piano recital. Sure I'd barely practiced for, but I still looked as fierce as a 12 year old in 1990 could. Fleur de Lise be damned! But my point to Rhianna is she is not me at 12 and this is not 1990. She looks cute and in a way she's kind of pulling off the tights as pants with a sweater being worn as a dress, but it screams "I tried really hard" as opposed to Kanye and Alexis' effortless, natty meets lazy chic.

Vivica Fox is proof that even a marginal celebrity who hasn't worked in a while can still wiggle her way into lush fashion parties in Paris brimming with free alcohol and swag. She looks so aspirational in this pick. It's like she's saying, "Yes! You too can make it from a marginal character on 'The Young and the Restless' and a failed sitcom with Patti LaBelle and fake your way to the top!"

Harrassing old people does not help the "Obama supporters are a loony cult" meme

Georgia Rep. John Lewis recently switched his super delegate vote from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama, but now some are saying Lewis was pressured by threats and harassments by pro-Obama supporters.

I understand that people want their representatives who are super delegates to support Barack Obama but threatening them, harassing their families and generally making an ass of yourself goes against everything the Obama campaign purports it stands for.

Like "a new kind of politics" or fostering "hope." Not terrorizing your elders!

From Politico.com:

“African-American superdelegates are being targeted, harassed and threatened,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a superdelegate who has supported Clinton since August. Cleaver said black superdelegates are receiving “nasty letters, phone calls, threats they’ll get an opponent, being called an Uncle Tom.

“This is the politics of the 1950s,” he complained. “A lot of members are experiencing a lot of ugly stuff. They’re not going to talk about it, but it’s happening.”

After civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) switched his support from Clinton to Obama earlier this week, other black superdelegates have come under renewed pressure to do a similar about-face. A handful have bowed to the entreaties in recent weeks, including Georgia Rep. David Scott, but many say they are steadfast in their support for Clinton and resent strong-arm tactics to make them change.

Rep. Diane E. Watson (D-Calif.), a black lawmaker and Clinton backer, said the intense lobbying for Obama would not alter her vote.

“I’ve gotten threatening mail,” Watson said. “They say, ‘Your district went 61-29 Obama and you need to change.’ But I don’t intimidate. I can hold the ground. … I would lose my seat over my principles.”

Um ... not helping! This will really kill those "Obama followers are a cult" stories or the "Obama is being backed by scary, threatening black folk" rumors.

I know I'm in the minority here but I'm just not mad at people for supporting Hillary Clinton. I'm not. If Obama is good enough to win the nomination, which he is, he can get it with or without the support of certain members of the Congressional Black Caucus. But at the end of the day because these officials are Democrats, if Obama is the nominee they will back him. So seriously? Why do this? What does this achieve but bad blood and scarred emotions?

If someone thinks Hillary Clinton is the better woman for the job then let them go support Hillary Clinton in peace. Obama has plenty of support. He will be fine. Black people fought and died so we could have a choice, not to blindly follow each other out of skin tone alone. It is simply divisive and counter-productive to do this to people who have dedicated their lives to the black people they represent.

To accuse people of being "Uncle Toms" when none of these people were Uncle Toms a year ago is asinine. No one had a problem with these people when they were demanding hearings on Hurricane Katrina, fighting for the black vote that was disenfranchised in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 and getting money for their rural and urban districts in the means of scholarship funds and development grants.

They backed Hillary and not Obama. I mean, get over it. That isn't a sin. That's just them being loyal to someone they already know while practicing CYA at the same time. This idiocy in the from of intimidation is the matter racists point to when they argue that we can not lead. Actions like this demonstrates that we're petty, immature and foster violence. That we will reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator turning into a political version of the Bloods and Crips. That we are headless, mindless monolith that can be manipulated and pushed to brink of our own moral and physical destruction.

I find it difficult to fathom that Sen. Obama would want to be associated with such foolishness even if it did net them John Lewis at the end, because what did they gain? A bullied old man, cowed and intimidated by those he served for years? This wasn't needed because in politics as in Civil Rights it is the ending that matters. At the end of the day all of these people supporting the Clintons will work together for the betterment of blacks and the Democratic Party.

These irruptions of idiocy remind me of that old joke about how people love Jesus but can't stand his followers. I'm for Obama but I have a problem with the uncouth, recalcitrant behavior of a motley few in his good name.

I'm not fond of authoritarian hierarchies or monarchies. I don't see our black US Representatives and Civil Rights leaders as an ecclesiastical papacy who dictates to the masses when to stand up and when to kneal, but I do have respect for those who stood up for me for the last 29 years of my life and short of a conversion to satanism or a membership the Klan, I am not going to throw dirt on their graves at my year 30 because they backed Hillary Clinton. One Clinton isn't enough to break up my family. And that's how I view this. This is a generational family fight. These individuals, whether we agree with them or not, are our family. If they don't want to be with us on Obama, let them loose. Obama is will get where he is going just fine and I've said it before and I'll say it again, but at the end of the day they are ALL going to back the Democratic nominee.

It literally hurts my heart to hear black people harm one another when we are in the midst of something so historical and exciting. I too balked at the insults and slights of individuals like Rep. Charles Rangel and Andrew Young who argued it wasn't Obama's time. But I don't get calling those same people sellouts because they're backing some Democrats we all voted for twice in the 1990s.

I'd get all the outrage if they were backing George W. or John McCain, but Hillary and Barack have virtually identical political platforms. In the last two debates they were arguing over percentage points in their health care proposals. And the necessity of this brutish behavior would be more plausible if Obama was being treated unfairly within the party or was at a disadvantage, but he's winning. He's successful, surpassing his opponent in delegates and soon to smother her in pledged/super delegates.

And perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't believe in calling people Uncle Toms. In Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Uncle Tom dies at the hands of cruel slave owner Simon Legree because he wouldn't sell-out runaway slaves. It's a perversion of the abolitionist novel, taking Uncle Tom, a genial old man who loved him some kindly white folks, a labeling racial sycophant with a "House Negro" mind, but when it came to the bloody end, where he's an innocent Christ figure getting bludgeoned to death with a cane, he would not give those other slaves up.

My elders are not hurting me by backing Hillary Clinton. Clinton and Obama play for the same time. But you are hurting me though if you launch into crazy Muslim flavored attack ads against Obama perpetuating falsehoods and engaging in dirty politics. Or if black people fall into the "crabs in a bucket" paradigm where we fall into the violent lust of destroying one another, adopting the jaundiced views bigots spun to Whites to foster distrust in black politicians and Civil Rights leaders.

I am bothered (and exhausted) by this black-on-black folk, racial jerk violence. I wish I had megaphone to black America to chill out before we bury ourselves in our own hubris and vanity.

Tyra Banks brings the crazy like no other

From Circus Hour:

On last night’s episode of (America's Next Top Model), Tyra apparently had the contestants pose with homeless youth and emotionally professed that she understood what it’s like to be homeless because — get this — she pretended to be homeless for a day on her talk show.

You know, I totally understand what it’s like to be homeless, too! I was once forced to vacate my dorm over winter break, with nowhere to go for a whole day. I’m shocked my story never became a Lifetime Movie of the Week.

This right here makes me almost wish I hadn't given up on "America's Next Top Model" two years ago. This is friggin' off the wall. Posing with the homeless? Claiming to be down with the homeless because you slummed it for a day on your crappy talk show? That is worse when she wore the fat suit and cried and the actually over weight women on the show had to console her!

And now she's stealing fashion ideas from "Zoolander?" Attack of the ego! I love you, Tyra, the lowest model of the super models I love totem pole.



FYI: Naomi Campbell and her masterful cell phone throwing skills and her talent for underling abuse is my crazy black supermodel queen.

"Racism? What racism?" says Europe, yet again

I'm not a big racing fan, NASCAR or otherwise, but I couldn't avoid feeling all kinds of pissed over the treatment of British Formula One racer and fellow person of color, Lewis Hamilton.

I know that America's European buddies tend to view the US as a backwards racist behemoth that has oppressed it's black community for decades. (And that's true) But at least in America we're aware that there are racists, much like drunks in racist AA, smoking the cigarettes and drinking the cold coffee of shame.

This is unlike in Europe where people still pull that "it was all in fun" crap on immigrants and minorities crying "you're too sensitive!"

From The Guardian:

British driver Lewis Hamilton should have expected the taunts he received from Spanish fans during testing earlier this month, according to former team-mate Fernando Alonso.

In an interview last month, Hamilton said Alonso showed him "just how not to behave as a world champion" when the two were team-mates at McLaren last season. But Alonso has told Cadena Ser radio station that Hamilton had no right to say such a thing and that these comments led to the abuse. "The very next week they whistled him in Spain for saying that," the Spaniard said. "That's the other face of the situation. If you talk, it's normal that they whistle."

Hamilton - fomula one's first black driver - was abused by spectators shouting racist slurs and wearing dark make-up, black wigs and T-shirts saying "Hamilton's family" at the Montmelo circuit on February 2. The sport's governing body the FIA is investigating the incident.

"If in the end it has been done, then you have to condemn it sharply," Alonso said. But he claimed the reports of racist behaviour had been exaggerated, adding that he was treated harshly by fans in Monza after winning the Italian grand prix last year. "When I did my lap of honour, people were [making obscene gestures]," Alonso said. "That's sport."

So it's HAMILTON'S fault that the SPANIARDS were racist? He somehow asked to have racial epitaphs flung at him including people in black face with afro wigs just because he mildly criticized some other racer? Wow. I mean, wow. So apparently my ancestors wanted to get hung and mutilated. That's what they get for "existing." She "deserved" get raped, her skirt was short. He deserved to get mugged for walking in the park at night. Seriously? Blame the victim?

Jeering is fine. Booing is fine. But being racist is crossing the line.

American learned the hard way that racism, in any form, is dangerous because it could lead to violent suppression and rampant discrimination. Even if this incident had happened in something as "good ol' boy" southern as NASCAR, someone was going to get "banned for life" from attending a race. It's not that NASCAR doesn't have racists, but in America it's considered to be poor taste to be racist in public.

News service AFP reports that Motorsport's governing body FIA "has warned that Spain may lose its Formula One Grands Prix this year over the incidents."

May lose it? I hate to break it to you Spain, Formula One, douche bag hater Fernando Alonso and the rest of Europe but you ARE as racist as America. Now get yourself into some diversity training workshops before its too late.

BTW: I also think that some of this Hamilton "hateration" is based on the fact that he's good at what he does and he's amazingly attractive. I think they're a little jealous of The Sexy. Don't cha think?

Yes, yes. That's very nice.

Fight Together

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., walks across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2007. At the far left is Sen. Barack Obama. They were there to mark the crossing of the bridge to Selma, Ala., a seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

See? This is why you don't throw your grandparents under the bus. Grandpa can learn to adapt. Grandpa isn't going to stand on the "wrong side of history."

Especially when Grandpa Lewis' district had spoken. US Representative and Civil Rights leader John Lewis said over 75 percent of his district in Atlanta, Ga. voted for Obama. The old man, accused of being "out of touch," decided he could not subvert the will of his electorate for the sake of an old friendship.

From the Associated Press:

Lewis came under intense pressure to get behind Obama after his constituents supported the Illinois senator roughly 3-to-1 in Georgia's Feb. 5 primary, and about 90 percent of black voters statewide voted for Obama, according to exit polls. The support among black voters nationwide to Obama's candidacy mirrors Lewis' Georgia district.

His change of heart follows a similar move by Rep. David Scott, a black Democrat who represents a neighboring district. It also comes a week after the Rev. Markel Hutchins, a young Atlanta minister, announced he would challenge Lewis in the Democratic congressional primary this summer.

Hutchins, 30, has seized on Lewis' waffling in the presidential contest as evidence that the 68-year-old congressman is out of touch.

"Today's announcement by Representative Lewis was clearly prompted by political expediency," Hutchins said Wednesday. "It is time for a change. It is time to send somebody to Congress who is actually willing to represent the district."

In an interview Wednesday on MSNBC, Rep. Lewis said the decision to switch from promising his super delegate vote to Hillary Clinton to Obama was harder than his decision to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge on March 7, 1965 where he and 600 other Civil Rights protesters were beaten with billy clubs and sprayed with tear gas while trying to cross the bridge in a march to Selma, Ala.

Lewis, infamously, get his head bloodied and bashed.



I found this interview very fascinating because Lewis appears to be truly conflicted about the issue, and while the interviewer expressed surprise that deciding to switch delegate support was harder than deciding to catch a beat down for history, I could see where he was coming from.

During the Civil Rights Movement, for those who decided to answer the call to fight for the rights of black Americans, that call was about life and death. It was about righting an injustice that was part of America since its inception. It was easy to pick a side.

Fight together or perish separately as fools.

The enemy was clear. His name was Jim Crow. Open and overt racism was rampant and acceptable in most parts of the United States. Various southern politicians did not tarry to refer to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as "Rev. Martin Luther Coon" on national television.

This was a classic battle of good versus evil. This battle is slightly different. The Clintons, despite their disastrous attempts to beat Obama, including a "scorched earth" policy that came back to burn them via the black vote, are still friends with many of the blacks in the Congressional Black Caucus who worked with both Bill and Hillary throughout the 1990s and later in the Senate with the former First Lady. The CBC has never had this particular problem before - having to chose between friends and the thing Lewis got his skull cracked open for.

Your friends or history, that was John Lewis' choice. It is the same choice of every Civil Rights Era "freedom fighter." The Democratic Party became the party of inclusion and that inclusion has lead to the first ever viable black candidate running for president.

I know a lot of black people my age and younger (and older) are pretty pissed off that this would be a hard decision for the people we have long admired. You'd think that someone who was willing to die so a day would come when an "Obama" could feasibly be the next president of the United States would be able to come to this decision with ease. But it isn't easy when the political is wrapped up in the personal.

Therefore, I don't get out of whack because the likes of Reps. Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters and others hooked themselves up to the Clinton bandwagon early on, because at the end of the day, if Obama is the nominee I know that they will support him. They will defend him and they will fight to make him the next president of the United States.

Because they will have no other choice, just like they didn't have one in 1965.

Fear of the outcome can not dictate the nobility and the righteousness of this cause. Fear of the repercussions, of the racism that may come our way can not sway us. Ego and vanity, pride and cowardice can not cloud our judgment. Just as it was in 1965 it still remains today, we as black people must choose to either fight together or perish separately as fools. Jim Crow may not be alive today, but his ghost still lingers.

It's time to vanquish that demon in all his many forms.

Satire: The World's Worst Boyfriend

Satire
BLACK AMERICA DEMANDS WHITE AMERICA TO STOP "MESSING AROUND" AND JUST MARRY HER ALREADY.

SCAN News Service
Athena Le Trelle Hemmings, long time girlfriend of the United States of America, threatened to dump her famous beaux after he refused to marry her.

Friends of Hemmings said the break-up happened suddenly when America came up with another excuse not to bring Hemmings home to America's birth place of Boston, Mass. to meet his family.

"She said asked him if it was because she was black and he said it wasn't. Then he said he was just waiting for the right time," said one source close to Hemmings.

It was then Hemmings reportedly threw one of America's law textbooks at his head, nearly hitting him and began screaming about how she worked hard to put him through school and had given him more than 36 million children and was "tired of the bullshit."

America then told Hemmings she should just "go back to Africa" if she hated him that much. Sources say Hemmings then stormed out of their Sommerville, Mass. apartment screaming that he should perform an unspeakable sexual act upon himself.

This was the latest setback in a decades long relationship. While staying at her sister's house in Washington, D.C. Hemmings only said that she was "tired of him telling his friends that she was 'a friend of his sister or something.'"

Sources close to the couple say this was an improvement as in the past America was known for passing off Hemmings as his "maid" ... (to read full story on the SCAN site, click here.)

The Wrath of the Farrakhan Question

Video from Talking Points Memo. The Root also has an article about the Farrakhan Question.

I watched some of the debate last night on MSNBC and was pretty disgusted with the gall of Tim Russert's "Farrakhan" question. Mostly because it made absolutely no sense and seemed to only serve the purpose of reinforcing the giant crazy black Muslim meme the Right and some in the press want to wrap Obama.

I don't get Tim Russert. Farrakhan? Seriously? Are you going to track down every person with a specious past who vaguely notes that Obama seems like a nice guy and whack Obama over the head with them? This would be different if Obama was cozying up to Farrakhan, calling him up all the time, and taking pictures with him eating bean pies, plastered on the front of the Final Call. But, um, he isn't! And no one asks any Republican candidates to dump their resident loony toons. They only get in trouble when they get too close to them, like that Cunningham guy who blew up in John McCain's face Tuesday.

But last time I checked, Farrakhan wasn't opening up an event for Obama. Farrakhan is not on the stump with Obama. He's not one of Obama's advisers. They don't even know each other. So why was this question brought up if only for a "gotcha" television moment? This question wasn't about Obama, it was about Russert and his ego.

And about racism.

This is just a glimmer, a portent, of what's to come. Farrakhan is a divisive, even hated figure among most American whites and Jews. Black people either like him or don't really think that much of him at all. (Often it depends on your views of Islam or if you think the Nation of Islam was behind Malcolm X's assassination.) But picking fights with Obama over points like these are part of a larger effort to get Obama to distance himself from black people while prejudicing the white people against him at the same time.

It's started with the "not black enough" garbage, then warmed up to the Muslim boondoggle, that lead to "Obama's church is lead by a crazy black nationalist", followed by "State of the Black Union-gate" which bumped up to the "denounce and repudiate Farrahkan" question.

They will try to paint the most mainstream of men in the colors of a "scary," black radical Muslim until Obama is covered in a red, black and green "Kill Whitey" flag. And they are going to make him denounce everything about black people that is deemed imprudent or bad. By the time this is done they'll be calling for him to account for and denounce Jesse n' Al, Dick Gregory, Kanye West, "gangster rappers", Black History Month, the NAACP Image Awards, the NAACP, the Black Congressional Caucus, Chuck D., Nat Turner, Kwanzaa, BET, black Greek letter organizations, Dave Chappelle, pastors who claim Jesus was a black man and your grandparents who still toss around the slur "peckerwood" a lot.

The goal is to weaken Obama. It's to make him blacker than black to scare off whites. To get black people to reject him as he's forced to reject the people and organizations, the culture black people value.

Well, I'm assuming all this effort must be for the white people because black people have seen this before. It happens whenever a black person runs for office locally and nationally. The black candidate is forced to run the gauntlet of throwing other blacks and black organizations under the bus while trying to get them to still limp to the polls for them afterwards. Black people know this and are prepared for the variety of litmus tests and repudiations of old anti-semitic men and "scary" black nationalist groups. Unlike Cunningham and McCain, I doubt Farrakhan will say anything at all. Obama wants to get elected. Black people want to see him get elected, therefore black folks are not going to get in the way. That's why people jumped all over Tavis, he didn't get the "get out of the way" memo. No one wants to hurt Barack's campaign. We know Barack is a black man. We know he loves and supports his people. We'd love it if he came to the event, but everyone but Tavis seemed to understand why he really couldn't be there.

So while it annoys my mother every time Barack has to "denounce" some marginal figure in the African American diaspora, I don't really care. Throw Farrakhan under the bus if it means you'll get elected. Just don't forget about the rest of us black folk once you get there.

Goodness. How many more months do we have of this?

The View defends Whoopi, who was totally snubbed by the Oscars

Video from Defamer.com

In case you haven't heard, during an Oscar montage of past Oscar hosts on Sunday four-time Oscar host Whoopi Goldberg was not included. Never mind she was the first woman, first black and first former Oscar winner to host the Oscars. Who cares. What's touching is how you can tell how hurt Whoopi is over this and she's not exactly big on being that kind of emotional. But it was nice to hear her fellow hosts on "The View" defend their cohort over what was a huge, rude snub. And I don't care that the Academy put her in the Oscar winners montage. They stuck Steve Martin in the hosts' montage and he only hosted one time and bombed. Whoopi hosted FOUR TIMES! What the hell, Academy? Like or hate, Whoopi, no one who worked as hard as she did to make it as a comedian and actress deserves to be treated this way. She was in "The Color Purple" for goodness sake! A little respect, please!

Obama smears bogus; mainstream media lame as ever and Keith Olbermann pisses me off

Ditto everything Air America's Rachel Maddow said. I almost never disagree with her. And way to check that whole news story about the RNC holding focus groups to see how close they could get to RACIST! without being called out as a racist on Obama.

Countdown was good last night save for the story then did on SNL's lack of a person of color to play the first black man to run for president.



They kind of brushed it off as this display being a sign of progress, that a non-black man could play a black man. Look we've advanced! Right back to 1910 when vaudeville was filled with white people in black face, the role of "Othello" was traditionally played in black face (no Negroes allowed in Shakespeare. Heaven forbid!) Then we have the 30s, 40s and 50s, where white actresses would play tragic mulattoes with "Egyptian" shade pancake make up to make them "darker."

Um, what the fark, Keith, paragon of "White Liberal Guilt?? SNL has been shoddy for DECADES when it comes to minorities in their cast. They have a two black person quota (which is normally a one black person quota), no Asians (Sorry John Cho and Margaret Cho - not related), a handful of Latinos in the last twenty or so years and dear God, never any Indians or Arabs (Sorry Kal Penn!). Heaven forbid!

Having a white man play a black man is not progress when racism STILL exists in show business and you can't believably claim there are no black men in New York, Hollywood or the places inbetween who can do an effective Barack Obama. But we auditioned a lot of people, Lorne Michaels cries. Yeah, bullshit. You auditioned a ton of people just to pick a guy in-house. Wow, black folks haven't heard THAT one before.

Don't you know how all this looks to us Negroes, Keith? SNL is a cultural icon. When you have this kind of legitimacy and this checkered past with black talent folks are going to fucking notice when Barack Obama, first black candidate with a viable chance at the presidency in the history of our racist country, isn't played by a minority. Why not cast the part of Martin Luther King Jr. with Bill Murray? Have Nicole Kidman play Billie Holiday? Give Jesus blond hair and blue eyes? Oh wait. They already did that. There are SO few parts in Hollywood for minorities so you want to take what should have been a gimmie (black president = broke black comic gets to eat this month), to just do what has been in done in Hollywood since there was a Hollywood?

If Lena Horne weren't old and resigned from the limelight I would send her down to your studio with a handful of "Egyptian" pancake and slap you and Lorne Michaels across the face with it. I know MSNBC doesn't want to diss NBC's comic darling, but dude, as the most guilty white liberal on television I expect better than the brush off of every black person who's had a part, a job, a script magically turn into all white folks because no one wants to watch us ... except when they do.

When political love goes too far

When Clinton supporters go bad: Jose Ortiz, 28, of Philadelphia, Pa.

From The Carpetbagger blog, courtesy of the Democratic Underground: Brother-in-law stab another in voting dispute.

People, people! Love Barack or Hillary but take your battle to the polls. Not the kitchen floor. If you're loved one is teasing you because you picked Team Hillary back in Feb. 07, that does not give you the right to stab them. Bad political lovers! Bad!

From Philly's KYW Newsradio 1060:

One Montco Brother-in-Law Stabs Another in Voting Dispute

by KYW's Brad Segall

The race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination continues to heat up -- but in one Montgomery County, Pa. household, the debate turned violent.

Prosecutors say that two brothers-in-law tried to settle the presidential race on the kitchen floor of a Collegeville, Pa. home.

Jose Ortiz, 28, is now behind bars on felony assault charges after prosecutors say he stabbed Sean Shurelds inside a home in the 100 block of Honeylocust Court.

District attorney Risa Ferman says a heated debate over the candidates escalated into violence:

"One is a supporter of Barack Obama, the other is a supporter of Hillary Clinton, and an argument of words turned bloody when one brother-in-law tried to choke the other and the victim then responded with a knife and stabbed his brother-in-law in the stomach.”

Shurelds was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Ortiz is jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail. Police found the knife in the dishwasher.

If Ortiz is convicted of the felony charge, he won’t be able to vote. And voter registration records reveal that Ortiz, who supports Clinton, is registered Republican.

It's official: Everyone gives away awards now

Yes. That's right. You're not high. That's Snoop and George Lucas.

Did anyone know that the Hip Hop Summit Action Network had its own awards? No? Anyone? They call them the "Action Awards." They're shaped like shooting star. And it's their fifth annual awards event. Hmm. Still not ringing a bell? Well they had their awards last night in NYC honoring Snoop Dogg (why?), Ciara (again, why?), Doug E. Fresh, Chris Lighty, Jim Jones and Mellody Hobson.

Snoop was in almost every shot of Johnny Nunez's reel on Wire Image. Here he is with Doug E. Fresh who was the illest when I was in the fifth grade.

Like the blinged baby offspring of the NAACP Image Awards, the event is a fund raiser for HSAN's non-profit work. For those who don't know, HSAN is the group founded by everyone's favorite hip hop airhead Russell Simmons and activist Dr. Benjamin Chavis, who's job I've always assumed was to lend HSAN some credibility - like how George W. used Colin Powell in the first four years of his presidency. EURweb.com claims the group "utilize(s) the power of hip hop for positive social change. Each of the Action Award recipients has made an outstanding contribution to the empowerment of others and to their communities."

On HSAN's Web site the group has the motto "Taking Back Responsibility." I'm going to try to hold back the chuckles on that one. I don't mean to pick on HSAN but Barack Obama kind of blew them out the back door in the race to get young people to register to vote. And other than their voter registration drives, various summits to heal "rifts" in the rap community and occasional defense of the "poets**," I honestly don't know what the hell they do. But they had an event last night where they gave out some awards for charity work.

Pharell Williams (who I both love and can't stand) with Bryan Michael Cox and Dr. Ben Chavis.

Ciara with friend. Ciara's outfit was hideous, but what do you wear to an awards show that's not being televised? It's not like anyone is going to see this anyway. And I'm assuming she couldn't bring her boyfriend Fiddy lest his ignorance disrupts George Lucas' "Force."

LL Cool J on what looks like a Blackberry and Dame Dash appearing to be nosy.

Leor Cohen and Chris Lightly

** As a bonus, I'm posting one of my favorite rebukes to Russell Simmons' defense of the "poets," as in hip hop like Lil' Jon and Fiddy Cent's right to call me a "bitch" and a "ho" in a metaphorical sense. There is also a reference to "reality flavored cheeseburgers" on the clip. It was the greatest hip hop criticism piece I'd ever seen from Jay at illdoctrine.com, who I totally wanted to marry after he said this.

It originally aired during the Imus debacle last year.

Something Stupid

Watching Hillary Clinton's latest bipolar attempts at campaigning it made me think of this song popularized by Frank Sinatra, "Something Stupid.



Of course, Clinton's version, unlike Sinatra's droll stroll would be more like what I cobbled together below:

I know I stand in line, until you think you have the time
To go to the primary
And if I go someplace to campaign, I know the refrain
No delegates for me

And afterwards we sat for a quiet chat
On CNN, a debate or two
And then I go and spoil it all, by saying something stupid
Like, "Hey, here's a picture of you in Somali clothes and you're full of empty rhetoric and that was not a concession speech after the debate, oh and by the way, I fucking hate you!"

Crazy things in my blog reader

Republicans worried about being labeled bigots - The Carpetbagger Blog (this one is hilarious)
How To Strike It Rich As A Black Conservative - from Gawker (about a story on The Root, also hilarious)
For all your post-Oscar needs (because I totally didn't watch it) - Young, Black and Fabulous, some highlights were Whoopi's Oscar host history snub and that hideous thing Jennifer Hudson wore.
CNN Re-Legitimizes 'Scurrilous' Obama Email - The Huffington Post

I saw CNN's report and it's garbage. I don't care that if Drudge and FOX report, you can't just throw up your widdy-biddy hands and cry, "What could we do? We just had to report on those defamatory lies that we otherwise would have ignored! FOX did a story on it. You know? That bastion of high brow journalism? It was news, we say! We just HAD TOOO!"

Just because FOX reports it does not make it news. All the other networks seem to be aware of this. And I've seen in-depth reports by FOX on the plague of topless chicks at Mardi Gras and documentary hit pieces on Minority Report style child predators on "Dateline." Yet I don't see CNN bringing drunk Spring Break co-eds to a suburban house in Atlanta where NBC's Chris Hansen is waiting inside with a track of Jello shooters to ask you whether you think the Dems are going to "cut" or "run" in 2009.

Terrorism chic

I started noticing this male fashion trend a year ago when Kanye West's video "Can't Tell Me Nothing" came out. In the video he's in the desert, doing his "I'm trying to be really fucking deep" thing when I noticed the over sized printed scarf around his neck, donned like an oversize bandanna. I thought to myself, where had I seen that look before?

I got it! Terrorists!

The last shot is of Justin Timberlake. I'm not implying that he's a SexyBack terrorist. He just dresses like one who wears really expensive clothes.

After that video I started seeing the oversize bandanna everywhere in urban fashion. Jay-Z. Pharrell Williams. Usually accentuated with some sort of bling, rocked over expensive urban couture. It was outlaw fashion. Terror chic. And it made sense that the coolest of the cool would be attracted to a look sported by rebel fighters living along the Pakistani border with Afghanistan and in the besieged territory of Gaza.

Nothing says both fey and badass like a revolutionary, even terrorist scarf.

Hot with every paramilitary, militia-loving Zapatista-uprising or FARC, PKK, PLO bomb maker, the look is the no. 1 accessory for all terrorists and revolutionaries from Hamas to Hezbollah. The scarf has been hot since Fidel Castro took Cuba from Batista and the upper class. A mainstay since the Viet Cong made it hot in the Mekong Delta. Basically, if you're a rebel with a murderous cause, you can't live without your scarf. Not only can it serve as a mask, but it can keep the sweat off your face, the bugs out of your mouth (if you're in the jungles of Colombia) and keep the sand out of your nose (if you're in Saudi Arabia).

It's a must have.

Nothing gets between them and their rebel scarves.

Of course the Madhi Army and the original gangsta of all radical jihadis, Osama bin Laden, aren't rocking Kanye's Louis Vuitton model. Mostly because they 1) despise our narcissistic, hedonistic capitalism, mixed with our imperial desires for global domination and 2) are not going to pay $100 for a scarf. You know they probably get those two-for-one at the flea market.

That's comparable to wholesale clothing prices.

His scarf is better than yours. You could buy one, but you can't afford the charge.

And Kanye has to take it even more uptown. He's not going to any jungle or desert anywhere to kill anything. He's from Chicago, USA. He's not interested in getting his ass blown up. Rather than fight the man, he just adds a pair of matching gloves and color-coordinated custom kicks to pimp that look out a little more.

War urban chic isn't a new idea. During the first Gulf War in 1991 desert camouflage was all the rage among the hip hop set. While shouting out "Peace in the Middle East" lazily at the end of a track there were the tell-tale military style boots, desert cami baggy cargo pants and a crisp white T-shirt with a platinum chain dangling.

This subject has been broached before (I was just slow to read anything about it.) Gawker blogged in 2006 on the phenomenon. Also Men's Flair online in 2007 calls the look the male pashima or "the desert scarf." They are also called Palestinian scarves, Afghanistan scarves or "shemagh" scarves. The Village Voice blogged on a mini-controversy over Urban Outfitters selling the "Yassar Arafat," Palestinian style scarf also in 2007.

Jihadi is the new metrosexual.

Now color coordinated for the most fastidious urban hipster.

I'm too sexy for Gitmo.

Mama, I like to dress like a terrorist. You may say I look a mess, but all the homies see is S-U-C-C-E-S-S.

I'd be interested in reading any serious fashion discussion on how wars affect the wardrobe. I mean, we've been in the Middle East for almost five years now and I've never had the urge to rock a burqa (although the naked chick dancing in the scarf on "Can't Tell Me Nothing" comes close).

Despite the weird places we often go to find fashion, I actually think the terrorist scarf is a good look for the fashion-forward hip hopper. And temper tantrums notwithstanding, I like the way Kanye dresses. His look brims with inventiveness and originality whether it's a simple, preppy backpacker look or princely rock-rap regalia. And then there's all the foolishness. Like those retro '80s glasses he wore for his video "Stronger" and at the Grammys. Those were so ugly they were awesome.

But keep in mind how I also like how Andre 3000 and Prince dress. And Prince is flawless yet delicately fey. I'm not going to apologize for it. I like black men who take fashion to absurd, queenish territory. Men who aren't afraid of dressing all crazy because they're comfortable with their sexuality. It's like, "Hell yeah I got a $400 dollar scarf on, butt-out jeans and a veil. So what? Call me names. Whatever. I'm still going home tonight with a woman that's fine as hell. You can't tell me nothing."

Below, here are some more fashion moments with Kanye and his new favorite accessory.