America Will Never Know what Offends Black people If They Never Get to Know Black People

This morning a friend of mine sent me a photo that had supposedly been taken of a book display in a Barnes and Noble store in Coral Gables, Florida. The display featured a number of books on President and Mrs. Obama, and it also featured a book on monkeys. Someone at the store probably thought this was hilarious. Why would someone do something so offensive? As I continued the talk with my friend I said, “I just don’t know why white people don’t know us. I have lived with my husband for 15 years and I know what ticks him off. We have been here for 400 years and they still don’t know us.” She replied “they don’t know us they “tolerate us”, and therein lies the real issue. When you tolerate someone you do not make the effort to get to know them. If you work with them you do your job and at the end of the day you just run in the opposite direction.  This week we saw a mayor of a California town send an email that said the upcoming Easter Hunt was being replaced by a Watermelon Roll. He was surprised that some of the readers thought the email was offensive. It is hard for me to believe that someone would not know that this would tick not just black people but most people off.  Hopefully, we will not have to spend the next four years reading and seeing things that anger us, but the only way this will stop is if we get to know each other and stop just simply tolerating each other.

Is this the Future of the GOP? Bobby Jindal the Liar and Michael Steele the Cheat

On Tuesday night Gov. Bobby Jindal the hope of the GOP delivered the national rebuttal to President Obama’s speech.  In the speech he described something that happened to him during the Katrina disaster. Jindal said “during Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad? He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go – when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’ And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’ Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.” This is indeed a great story the only problem is he is lying. He was never there. So this is the future standard-bearer of the party. He is already embellishing the truth and it is 3 years before the next presidential election year. One of the GOP’s other new star is Michael Steele and he too is involved in controversy. He is being investigated for campaign funds that were directed to his sister’s company and to other companies that were engaged in state business during the time he was lt. governor of Maryland. Steele has not been charged with anything but there is a cloud over him. Jindal and Steele were both supposed to represent the new face of the GOP well the new face really does not look too different from the old one.

 

Matt Lauer Calls Out CNBC’s Rick Santelli on the Today Show

Last week CNBC reporter Rick Santelli was the man. He called out President Obama and set off a firestorm. He took a page out of the old movie Network and basically said “I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore”. His rant was in response to the White House efforts to help struggling homeowners. He asked the traders “did they want to help pay for their neighbors homes, and they responded by saying “no’. He said the President needs to listen to them. He was a ranting, raving caffeine hyped messenger and his message went immediately viral. Well, what Santelli forgot that for every action there is a reaction and that is where we pick up this morning on the Today Show. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called him out by name and said maybe next time he can type his rant out and read it before he shouts it from the rooftop. Santelli said today he took the response as a threat. He was upset that the White House had called him out by name. He wondered why they didn’t just say that “cable guy” or something like that. When you mess with the big dogs you better expect to get bit. Santelli enjoyed his 15 minutes of being the voice of the frustrated, but he does not seem to be enjoying the backlash nearly as much. This morning Lauer said to him that when you call somebody out you need to expect to get called out. Lauer said he did not feel the White House was actually threatening him.  Bottomline is that if you call somebody out you better expect some repercussions and it seems that Santelli never learned the childhood lesson of if you throw a stone you better duck.

 

John Sanders, Baltimore Reporter Fired For Creating Racist Video that Targeted John Gibson of Fox News

John Sanders was the Technology and Web Reporter for WBAL TV in Baltimore Maryland. His job was to tell the audience the new web trends. Well he lost that job when it was discovered that he doctored a video tape of featuring Fox News reporter John Gibson. The story has to do with the crazed chimp and a description of his anatomy. Sanders tape had Gibson making a reference to the anatomy of Attorney General Eric Holder. I saw the tape last week and it sounded funny to me, but I could not put my finger on the problem. When I heard it I thought Gibson was off the chain and could not believe that even Fox News would let him cut up like that. Sanders said it was all in fun, but the Huffington Post picked up the clip and posted it as if it were a substantiated news story. The Chicago Tribune reported “ driving the video’s popularity is the nature of the words that Sanders inserted and their potential racial and political implications. Sanders took the voice track of another Fox anchor who had been talking on-air about a runaway monkey and using the words “bright blue scrotum” to describe a distinguishing characteristic of the animal, and edited them into a video of Gibson talking about Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the first African-American to hold the Cabinet post. Sanders said he thought the edited video “would sound funny.” Needless to say no one found this funny and least of all John Gibson who felt he was targeted. Gibson has said his share of disturbing things but no one wants to see him held accountable for something he did not say. In this post crazed chimp cartoon era this is not a time when this would be considered funny. The scary thing about this is it shows how with today’s technology your reputation can be destroyed with the click of a mouse.

Tavis Smiley Returns to Tom Joyner’s Show to Hype the State of the Black Union

This morning while driving to work I heard the familiar voice of Tavis Smiley on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. He was on to hype his upcoming State of the Black Union which will be held this Saturday in Los Angeles, CA. He slid into his familiar refrain of accountability and the need to hold our new president accountable. The interesting thing is Smiley said this is what he was trying to say last year,  but it seems Smiley is like the Republicans is engaging in some revisionist history. Last year Smiley was hyper-critical of then candidate Barack Obama and the fact that Obama did not bow down and kiss his ring since he was the self-anointed spokesperson for Black America. We all believe that the president should be held accountable, but we believe that all of our public leaders need to be held to the same standard and that is not what Smiley was espousing last year. Last year Jesse Jackson Jr. was quoted as saying to the old guard of black leadership that you don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of history. Well, Smiley is the poster child for that concept and now he is on the outside looking in.

President Barack Obama Says There is Still Hope

Over the past few weeks we have felt like the witch in the musical The Wiz, we simply wanted to say “don’t go bringing me no bad news”.  America has had to cope with our new reality which includes bank bailouts, job layoffs and home foreclosures. This is a very somber time for our country so when we heard from the president we wanted to believe we would get through this, and that is what he did. He did not try to sugarcoat the situation, but he did provide hope. He said “we will rebuild”, and that is something we as a country have got to believe.  President Obama makes you believe that he believes every word he says. One viewer put it this way “He exudes a kind of self-confidence that I don’t think we’ve had for a long time. He kind of carries you along with it.” He makes you believe that this too will pass because ordinary people will and can do extraordinary things.  We are all grown ups so we were not looking for the president to come out spreading fairy dust, but America did need to hear from the hopeful warrior that we elected, and last night we got the opportunity to hear from him, and that is something the country needed.

The Media Crucifixion of the OctoMom

Over the past few weeks we’ve watch the saga of the octuplets. When they were first born we saw over 40 doctors smiling broadly and sharing the story of their birth with the world. They were so proud and this had the look of a real feel good story, but over the past few weeks this story has taken a nasty turn. Initially we heard from a publicist as she shared the feelings of the mom, but once more of the details of her life were revealed we could literally feel the tide turning against her. We learned she was a single mom living with her mother. We learned she already had six children and then we saw her. The media became obsessed with her looks. They started saying she looked like Angelina Jolie. We started seeing old pictures of her and the media started speculating that she had been surgically augmented to look like the movie star.  We have seen both her parents declare that she is unbalanced.  We have seen a man emerge this week claiming to be the biological father of the children, but we have not heard whether or not he has any plans to help support the children. Yesterday, we knew we were in a circus when Gloria Allred big-footed her way into the situation. She is now appealing to the state for intervention on behalf of the children and now the mother is being threatened with the possibility of losing these children. We have witnessed a woman go from being celebrated to being vilified because she does not fit the mode. This is not Jon and Kate plus 8. This is a single mother with no job, living in a home that they might lose, her parents have pretty much called her a loon and now the state is threatening to intervene. The reality is we might not agree with her decisions, and we might resent paying the cost of supporting her family but this woman did nothing illegal. We saw the tide turning against her when she gave her first interview to Ann Curry. Curry has handled families with multiple births before and her tone has always been very loving and deferential, but when she questioned Suleman she did it like an investigative journalist questioning a criminal, and after that the octomom was simply raw meat thrown to the hounds.

The NY Post Finally Delivers A Real Apology

After almost a week of protest the NY Post finally delivered a real apology. No I’m sorry if you were offended, but if you were that’s your problem. This time they released a full-throated apology that came from the top. Rupert Murdoch said “the buck stops with me.” He went on to say that he is “ultimately responsible.” He did not take the opportunity to take a swipe at the protest leaders like the semi-apology that was released last week.  Do I really believe that the Post actually understands the furor this cartoon created? No. What I believe is that the post was on the receiving end of a lot of negative press and Murdoch acted as a businessman today and told the people what he thinks they want to hear. So they finally said they are sorry and it is time to move on, but what will really change? The same editors that approved the cartoon are still on staff. What is going to make them more sensitive to their reading public? Sadly, there was no one in the room when that cartoon was being released to say “hey wait a minute we might need to re-think this on”, and if that void still exist don’t put your protests signs in the attic you might need them real soon.    

Slumdog Millionaire is just Another Hollywood Fantasy

Last night Slumdog Millionaire was named best picture at the Academy Awards. The film is riveting and one can not help but be affected by the poverty of this region in India. Last night the entire cast was at the event. The child actors beamed at getting their taste of the good life. This morning they showed the people in their neighborhood rejoicing as the film picked up awards in almost every category that the film competed. On the Today Show they said this film originally was going straight to video but after securing financing it was able to be shown in theaters. The film has made a fortune world wide. It cost only 15 million to make and it has already made over 100 million dollars. The child actors were paid a mere pittance for their performance and by now they are on their way back to the slums where they were discovered. Yes it was the feel good movie of the year I just wonder how do the children feel as they return to their stark reality which for a brief moment was the Toast of Tinsletown.

 

Will the People Revolt if their Governors Say No to the Stimulus Money?

Over the past few days we have seen some Republican governors say they are thinking about saying not to the stimulus money that is designated to come to their states. Two vocal opponents are Bobby Jindal (LA) and Haley Barbour(MS). Jindal has stated that he is interested in running for president in 2012 so some of this is political posturing for the conservative base, but at what cost to his own state? This is a state that has never fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina so to hear the governor saying he is uncomfortable accepting federal funds sounds a little ridiculous. Mayor Nagin of New Orleans has said if the governor does not want the money send it to him. Gov. Rendell (PA) has said the bill is not perfect, but it is a start. Our country is in a situation that it has never been in and we have to do something to solve this crisis. The definition of insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results. I have to wonder are the opponents of the plan speaking for themselves or the citizens of the states they represent. If they don’t they might encounter a rebellion in their states of citizens that could have benefited from some help from the federal government.