Friday, November 04, 2005

No real theme here

Awhile back, I wrote about how a big grocery store was closing in the area. Last night, I was at the nursing home visiting Three Cool Old Guys and they were talking about all the changes that they'd seen in our area. It was a really long conversation and I got home and crashed.

Elaine called me today to ask if I was getting e-mail about not blogging? I wasn't but she's gotten some. I've been mentioned in some of those and I'll plead my laziness and being tired as well.

Why tired? Honestly, working with The Third Estate Sunday Review is not just fun, it's also draining because I'm not a night owl like they are. They always work real hard to make sure Betty and I get done early because we have church on Sunday mornings.

Besides having fun, I think I learn a lot from working with them. So if any reader here has a problem with my absences, I'd ask if you'd prefer I just do the same sort of entries or stretch?
Just listening to Ava and C.I. debate sentences and jokes for their TV reviews is an education.
Like Kat, I never set out to have a daily blog so if that wasn't clear, let me state that now: Cedric's Big Mix is not supposed to be a daily blog.

In terms of daily blogging, you've got Rebecca, Mike and Wally. In terms of multiple times in a single day, you have C.I. And, if you didn't notice, Seth blogged Wednesday and today.

I go to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings and Wednesday nights. I usually visit the nursing home on Sunday afternoons, Tuesday nights and Thursday nights. Since I work a full time job, there's not a lot of time I have left so this isn't a daily blog.

If I stuck to doing a "mix" like I planned when I started this site, I'd probably be able to blog more often but I really like to have something to say when I write.

Thursday night, there was a lot to say and I listened as Three Cool Old Guys explained how there used to be real jobs in our city and we used to make stuff but now we just sell stuff that's made overseas and "retail clerk" is about all that most people will ever be able to aspire to.

That brought home how awful Wal-Mart's anti-union policies are. If these are the jobs that we'll have in the future for most people, we really need a union presence to make sure that the jobs pay enough to make a living at and to raise a family on.

Wal-Mart is a store I won't shop at. I don't like the blue smocks, I don't like the way most of my friends (African-Americans) report being followed around in the store. That includes my preacher who went in one day in his sweats. If he'd been stopping in after a service, he wouldn't have been followed. But he was wearing sweat pants and he was followed around.

News flash for all retail stores, African-Americans are shoppers too. You may see us and think, "Shoplifter!" but we are shoppers. I'm sure there are a number of shoplifters, as there are in any race, but we are also shoppers. Following us around and starting at us doesn't make us feel welcome in your stores and results in your losing shoppers.

Three Cool Old Guys remember when blacks shopped one place and whites shopped another. In my area now, we're pretty much mixed and there aren't many shops that are in an exclusive white area. So retailers should learn to be more welcoming to everyone.

But what really bothers Three Cool Old Guys is that our country doesn't make anything anymore. They say we've become a nation of shopping malls from sea to shinging sea. It's like we're a tourist attraction with all these shops to buy souveniers in but we've got a Bully Boy who's blackening our image around the world so don't count on anyone being too keen to visit.

The e-mails I have gotten have been about Rosa Parks and people saying thanks for remembering her. Three Cool Old Guys can't believe how little reaction from the "white" web her death caused. They think it's a case of young white kids not realizing how important she was as much as it is outright racism.

I told them about the e-mail I got asking how they were enjoying the net and they say they love it and are learning more each day. They've mastered e-mails and copy and paste, they surf like pros. Best of all, they're grandkids are e-mailing them. That really means a lot to them.

If you've got someone you know, friend or family, in a nursing home, I'm going to repeat that you may plan to call, write or visit and then get busy. But your family member or friend is still in the nursing home. They're not tired from battling traffic and no one's stopped by to invite them to go to a movie most likely. So although you're busy, that's probably not the case for them. If you're not making any efforts, they are going to feel forgotten.

I don't care if it's clipping out Boondocks from the paper and tossing it in an envelope, everything does matter. Something as small as that or a Dear Abby column lets them know that they are at least thought of.

Christmas will be here soon and it's tempting to buy a really nice present to make up for the guilt you have for not visiting. Instead of giving from your wallet, the best gift would be to give some of your time. If you're too far away to visit, sit down and write a letter or pick up the phone and call.

From what I see, mail means a lot. They will hold on to letters and clippings and carry them around with them to show. They may show their friends a letter or a clipping six times. When I walk through the entrance to go visit my three friends, there are always a few ladies who want to show me a photograph they were sent or a letter. Those things matter to them.

Without any kind of contact, it's like they're in Guantanamo Bay. So as the holidays come up, don't just think, "What can I buy?" You should think about making time. A visit would mean the world to them and there's a bit of a competition in the nursing home my friends are in to see who is visited and who isn't. But letters and phone calls matter too.

Don't worry about what to talk about. Things will come up. I got an e-mail from one of the Three this evening and he said they were talking about Kat's review ("A Time To Dance") all day. They haven't heard Stevie Wonder's new album. But they loved Kat's review and love her writing. We've never had a problem finding something to talk about, we've always had a problem having enough time to talk. So if you think there's nothing to talk about, you might want to wonder if that "boredom" you're worried about has to do with you and not with them?











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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Talking about the news review

Did you really yell at C.I. over the phone? Yes. I was asked to by C.I. I called C.I. Sunday everning about a project my niece is doing for school and C.I. sounded worse than when we were all working on The Third Estate Sunday Review. C.I. had just gotten home and was about to go straight to sleep for "a nap" but was worried the "nap" would last more than a few hours. C.I. wanted to be sure if that was the case, that it didn't go on forever. So I offered to give a wake up call. There had been no sleep over the weekend and C.I. warned me, "Cedric, you are going to have to yell or I will pick up the phone, set it aside and go back to sleep." So I did.

I was getting up at that time and C.I. always helps me out so I was happy to return the favor.

Jess covered the protests that were brewing over Bully Boy's upcoming trip at The Third Estate Sunday Review this weekend and I saw something I wanted to note on that. This is Alan Clendenning's "Protesters March Ahead of Americas Summit :"

Arriving in buses and minivans at the seaside resort of Mar del Plata, the demonstrators gathered at a drab concrete sports complex several miles from the luxury hotel where leaders of 34 Western Hemisphere nations will meet Friday and Saturday.
"This is a chance for the real people to hold their own summit," said Wayra Aru Blanco, a 33-year-old Bolivian Indian, beating a calfskin drum as brightly dressed South American Indian women played reed flutes.
Protesters will spend days airing grievances from the Iraq war to free trade policies they say enslave Latin America workers. They are hoping to draw 50,000 people for their highlight event -- a protest Thursday as Bush arrives on Air Force One.

Three Cool Old Guys say that the news review The Third Estate Sunday Review does is one of the highlights of their weekend because it catches them up on some stuff they might miss and puts 'em a little ahead on some stuff coming up. They wondered about that and how we figure out what we're each going to do? We aren't assigned topics. We come up with our own. Lately, I've been offering the Bully Boy spin in a sarcastic way and then this weekend I did something serious because of Rosa Parks. But I always get to pick what I want and then if I need help, Dona and Jim will help me find stuff. Most of the time, I don't and just go with what Jess' parents and I can find. That's because I usually go fairly quick. Usually, I'm right after Jess.
Jess flies blind by going first and I thought that was brave and still do, but I also know from what I do that C.I. is right there with you. There's no rehearsal and this weekend, Dona and Jim were going, "Is he done?" because I just read a poem by Langston Hughes. I was done and C.I. had already figured that out and was giving a trnasition from my piece into the next one. Jess will tell you the same thing goes with him. His reports are rough up until C.I. says, "Now we go to Jess . . ." and Jess is not always sure what he's starting with until that moment. But he knows if he's not clear on something, C.I. will pitch in.

I'd really hate to go to last. To me that's the hardest because Dona's saying, "Cut one minute" or more to you as she's watching the time. Ava and Ty will strip their stuff to the barebone to make sure Kat gets as much time as they can spare. And that's usually while Betty's on that they're figuring the time which is why C.I. and Betty always do their conversations during the news review. Rebecca usually goes right after that and she'll cut her own stuff to the bones. Elaine and Mike have their thing going and that's because they're talking all week figuring out what to cover at their sites so it works real well for them to team up. I've done some stuff with them and they're great but they're on their own wave length.

I'm going to note Wally's thing later this week.

But I want to note this because Three Cool Old Guys think Wal-Mart gets away with a lot.

C.I.: Thank you for that report Wally. For news from the world of entertainment, we go to Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man. Betty, what do you have for us this morning?
Betty: C.I., no one wants to talk too much about it but for the fifth week in a row the show that America supposedly had to watch is down in the ratings: ABC's Desperate Housewives. 30 million watched last season's ender, 28.4 million watched this season's debut. Each week, this year, has seen erosion in the viewership and it's now down to 25.2 million. In the who the hell asked for it department, the otherwise unemployed Sylvester Stallone will make his sixth Rocky film and his fifth Rambo film. While Republicans punch their fists in the air and holler, 13 and 14 year-old boys ask, "Who?" As Robert Greenwald's Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices readies for release, Wal-Mart's trying to offset the Greenwald documentary with their feel good, Up With Corporations response film entitled Why Wal-Mart Works: And Why That Drives Some People C-R-A-Z-Y. The fact that they spell out crazy demonstrates how out of it the store that no self-respecting teen would purchase clothes at is. I spent time with my teenage nieces this weekend and apparently the must-say insult in their crowd is anything having to do with Wal-Mart. From, "Where'd you get that shirt? Wal-Mart!" to "Where'd you get that weave? Wal-Mart!" the corporation that just won't go away is fast becoming the punch line to any insult.
C.I.: Betty, Kat wants to jump in on this. Kat of Kat's Corner (of The Common Ills).Kat: Sorry to butt in but as someone a bit older than Betty, I'll note that it's a similar process to what happened with K-Mart. It stands for cheap goods and as a new group of teens comes of age that's been lugged to Wal-Mart once too often, they turn on it. If Betty's nieces are knocking it for non-political reasons, Wal-Mart should worry more about that than Robert Greenwald's documentary. I'll jump back out now.
Betty: That's a good point that Kat made. The teen years are all about what's hot and what's not for many and when something gets bad word of mouth, there are problems. With my nieces, they're not commenting on Wal-Mart's practices of hiring or insurance or wages. They're commenting on the store being uncool. As Kat points out, once that rep starts getting around, it's very hard to recover. You lose the teen girls, forget it. Greenwald's film opens in select markets on November 4th and can be purchased online. George Takei, known to millions as Mr. Sulu on Star Trek, came out this week. Takei, who's been in an 18 year relationship with Brad Altman, said, "The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay. The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young." Demi Moore teams with Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins, Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan for Emilio Estevez's upcoming film Bobby. Estavez will appear in front of the camera but he'll also be directing from a script he wrote. Finally, this coming Tuesday, Lifetime's Real Women will remember Rosa Parks with an Intimate Portrait featuring commentary from Ruby Dee, her late husband Ossie Davis and Gloria Steinem among others. Following that, Lifeteime Telivision will broadcast The Rosa Parks Story starring Angela Bassett as Parks and Cicely Tyson as her mother.

And you can also check out C.I.'s "'Labor Dept. Is Rebuked Over Pact With Wal-Mart' (Steven Greenhouse)" from this morning. The link Betty gives to the Wal-Mart film provides a trailer so you should check that out.



























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Monday, October 31, 2005

News review

Sample of the news review at The Third Estate Sunday Review. Click here to read it all.

Jess: As noted on Democracy Now!, on Wednesday over 15,000 rallies took place around the nation to note crossing the 2,000 mark for US military fatalities in Iraq. Quite a large number for a mid-week event and one that required getting the word out quickly.

C.I.: Thank you, Jess. We now go to Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix.

Cedric: As most will know already, Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer who refused to give up her seat on the bus when ordered to do so which led to the a city wide, bus riders strike, passed away Monday. I've thought about what to say to note the death of a leader and toyed with a biographical sketch or a timeline. But one of the books we read for this week's book discussion offered something that I felt summed up things better than I ever could. From The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son:"

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

C.I.: Thank you Cedric. Again, Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son." Rosa Parks passed away Monday at the age of 92. The following day the US military fatality rate for those killed in Iraq reached 2,000. For news on Iraq, we go to Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz and Mike of Mikey Likes It. We started with Mike last weekend, so Elaine, why don't you start?


Elaine: C.I., the official fatality count for American troops in Iraq stands at 2016. When the count reached 2,000 this past week, over . The official count for American troops wounded in Iraq is 15,220.


Mike: Three of the 2016 who've died in Bully Boy's war of choice are from yesterday, two from a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad and one died near Baiji.


Elaine: While the causes of death in those cases are clear, another military death is less so. The Associated Press reports that an unnamed American soldier was found dead Friday. The cause of death is under investigation. Al Jazeera reports that in Huweder, a car bomb has killed 26 Iraqis.









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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Rosa Parks

I had thought I'd be writing about churches tonight but that was before I saw "Rosa Parks: 1913-2005" at The Common Ills before going to bed last night.

I'll note this from Democracy Now!:

Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks 1913-2005
Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks has died at the age of 92. It was 50 years ago this December that she refused to relinquish her seat to a white man aboard a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested and convicted of violating the state's segregation laws. Her act of resistance led to a 13-month boycott of the Montgomery bus system that would spark the civil rights movement. The boycott would also help transform a 26-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King Junior to national prominence. In 1958 King wrote "no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.''' Parks had been involved in the fight for freedom since the 1940s. She was active in the NAACP, helped raise money to defend the Scottsboro rape case and attended trainings at the Highlander Folk School of Tennessee. The Rev. Jesse Jackson said yesterday ''She sat down in order that we might stand up. Paradoxically, her imprisonment opened the doors for our long journey to freedom.'' Henry Louis Gates Jr called her "the Harriet Tubman of our time." After he was freed from jail Nelson Mandela recalled how Parks had inspired him and others in the South African struggle against apartheid. We'll have more on Rosa Parks in a few minutes.

Just a tip for white bloggers out there that are pushing a Democrat already for the 2008 race. The fact that Tuesday you noted no death today or noted a death today and it wasn't Rosa Parks didn't go unnoticed. In fact, one blogger who wrote that nothing has been the same since Paul Wellstone died resulted in 30 e-mails alone.

So when it's time to trot out and prop up their candidate, don't be surprised when you're wondering why "those blacks" aren't interested in hearing your lame opinion.


Rosa Parks died. Some of you blogged last night, some of you blogged this morning. Those who didn't note Parks death but chose to note the death, three years ago!, of Paul Wellstone or someone else, it was noted.

Though probably not noted the way they hoped.

Some of the e-mails are using terms like "racists" to describe these bloggers. I don't know if they're racist, I just know that they're stupid.


They can dig back three years to note Paul Wellstone but somehow miss that Rosa Parks died yesterday?

We get it. We see the "Whites Only" sign posted outside now.

Message received, as Ruth would say.


By the same token, we also noted who was there. That includes Democracy Now! which did an incredible job and reached into the Pacifica archives to find rare audio interviews with Rosa Parks. Delilah of A Scrivener's Lament is a name that got praised in e-mails. I'll give credit to John Nichols for noting Rosa Parks at The Nation.


I give no credit to a web site that provides links and at noon Tuesday had over 187 links on display but only one of the 187 was about Rosa Parks.

It sends a message.

So does a link to the hideous article entitled: "The Blue Tint of Indian Country; Democratic administrations have been kindest to Native Americans -- and come election time, Indians remember." The stereotypes are insulting the concept is patronizing and insulting. "We remember who took care of us."

African-Americans are supposed to play little children to the big Democratic Party too. Whites never seem to grasp how insulting they are when they use headlines like that.

So in the white white white world of the blogsphere today was a little whiter.

Now whether you call yourself "black," "Black," or "African-American" (I use the latter) or what, you've noticed that the death of John H. Johnson wasn't dealt with by most of the "left." That time they hid behind the fact that Peter Jennings had died. That was their excuse then.

What will the excuse for today be?

Back then they offered things like, "I didn't even know about John H. Johnson." Will they trot out the same excuse now?


Micah e-mailed me to tell me about a point Amy Goodman was making on WBAI today. It's basically, watch and see who devotes time to Rosa Parks and who doesn't. How your big media will give you 30 seconds top. I think that can be applied online too. Most shocking to me was how many didn't even see the point in giving her 30 seconds.


Who was Rosa Parks?

I can tell you who she was to me. I remember being told about her. I was looking at my mother and thinking that some man was making my mother get out of her seat and wanting to know why? My mother explained it was a white man.

I still didn't get it. That's because a lot had changed in the time since Rosa Parks took her brave stand. Yes, I was a little kid, but things had changed enough that I would even have to ask about it.

Rosa Parks was one of the trailblazers who fought fights that made things better. So much better that it can be hard to picture what it was like before the civil rights movement. You can try to put yourself in that time but you have to try hard.

Racism still exists. It's still around. It's not as open and in your face as it used to be. There's enough shame in society that the racists know they can't be as overt as they once could. But it's still around.

And it's there when someone feels that the most important thing to write about death wise is that Paul Wellstone died three years ago and not that Rosa Parks died yesterday.

The thing they don't grasp, trapped in their white white white white world, is that Rosa Parks' struggle is a struggle for everyone. It advanced the rights of one group, true. But with that advancement everyone came closer to being part of the human experience.

Listening to Democracy Now! today, I winced when I heard Rosa Parks speaking and she made a point of saying she wasn't sitting in the white section of the bus when she was asked to move. That's how far we've come. Today we think of what she did and we think that she refused to give her seat up to a man. At the time, she had to take pains to point out that she was in the black section.

But maybe we haven't come that far? The black section obviously still exists. That's why when a Johnson or Parks passes, it's not news. It's a story for black people. But when a Peter Jennings die, it's a story for everyone. That's the message that's sent out.

They are full of excuses online. "John H. Johnson? I didn't know he was big with your people!"
"Ossie Davis, uh. . .. " If the so-called left web wants to be inclusive, it needs to be inclusive.
Otherwise it's just empty talk.

I had huge hopes for this entry mid-day but I'm still angry. But as Three Cool Old Guys pointed out when I visited them tonight at the nursing home, I've got a right to be. We all have a right to be.



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Monday, October 24, 2005

Prison and the economy

Here's something I heard on Democracy Now! that I wanted to share:

U.S. Prison Population 2.3 Million, Largest in World
And new Justice Department statistics show the U.S. prison population grew by nearly 2 percent last year to nearly 2.3 million. According to the International Center for Prison Studies in London, there are more people behind bars in the United States than in any other country. Federal prisons in this country are now at 40 percent over capacity.

As C.I. always says, we've got a Bully Boy economy. I guess it's no surprise that while everyone else is laying off, the prison system is booming. I have three grocery stores in my area. Two real close and the other's about two miles away. Everyone needs to eat, right? So that should be a pretty good business, pretty safe.

All three are big chains, national stores. Last week, one of them announced it was shutting down at the end of this week. Even though they do business, they're not doing enough now that the energy prices are going up. The other one close by is turning off lights two hours before they close. Not all the lights, just enough that it's semi-dark in there if you go shopping late. First time that happened, I thought they'd changed their hours and were about to close.

I was hurrying around and I bumped into a stocker who told me I still had plenty of time but because of the cost of electricity, the store wasn't using all the lights the last two hours. So the lights in the frozen food cases go off, some of the lights in the produce go off, it's like the store's about to close.

But we're supposed to be pretending that the economy is going great. It's not going great. You can see that all around you. Take the grocery store. Tomatoes keep rising, milk's gone up, coffee's gone up. So when I read or hear someone saying, "The economy is doing good" I know right away that he or she doesn't shop for their own groceries.

Here's the scary part, this is fall. When winter gets here and you factor in heating costs, things are just going to get worse.

In 2008, we'll have had eight years under the Bully Boy (barring an impeachment) and so far, it's like we've lived six of them in denial. We're in denial about the war, we're in denial about the outing of Valerie Plame (Bob Somerby's really in denial), we're in denial about the economy.

Some people are cleaning up, no question. But that's not most people. If you're Halliburton or you own a prison, you're probably doing great. If you're a working stiff trying to make ends meet, things ain't so hot.

Here's a section of the news review from The Third Estate Sunday Review:



C.I.: Thank you, Jess. And to clarify, Brian Conley is an un-embed reporter with Boston Indymedia who is now reporting on Iraq from Iraq at Alive in Baghdad. As bird flu continues to be in the news, we turn to Rebeca, of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, to help us track the latest developments.
Rebecca: C.I. Britain's The Independent reports that "Armed police are to guard stocks of drugs used to fight bird flu." Geoffrey Lean and Francis Elliott report on this as England experiences its first case of bird flu. The bird, a parrot imported from Suriname, has resulted in a call by the British government for the end of importing wild birds to Europe. The Suriname government denies that the parrot contracted bird flu while in Suriname.
C.I.: Rebecca, if you or I wanted to visit England and we had a dog, our pet would be held in quarantine. Was that the case with the parrot?
Rebecca: Yes, in fact the parrot died in quarantine. The parrot arrived in England September 16th and had been held in quarantine until its death along with other birds from Taiwan. Australia is proposing thermal screenings of airline passengers and any flight suspected of carrying someone with bird flu would be quarantined for up to six days. The government of China has announced that the discovery of any case of human-to-human transfer of bird, or avian, flu will resort in the closing of its borders. Sweden has reported their first case of bird flu, a duck who died Friday. In Ha Noi, six million vaccines that will be used on birds to prevent the bird flu arrived from China. Delaware Online, The News Journal, reports that the migratory patterns of birds lead scientists to belive that North American birds will mingle with birds from Asia and transmit bird flu.
C.I.: Thank you, Rebecca. We'll note that on Wednesday, Democracy Now! devoted the hour to a discussion with Mike Davis on the topic of the bird flu. Davis noted, among other things, that flu is endemic with birds but that bird flu, unlike others they carry, is actually killing the birds. With news of Iraq, we now go to Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix.
Cedric: Well the trial for Saddam Hussein began last week following the successful turnout for the referendum on the Iraq Constitution.
C.I.: But Cedric, the trial's now postponed until November, a lawyer's been killed and the referendum results are being closely examined due to questions of fraud as a result of some areas reporting that over 90% of the population voted?
Cedric: C.I., that is true, but don't say it too loudly. The Associated Press' Mariam Fam is pimping both events as milestones. Friday, in The New York Times, I-Saw-It-All-In-Falluja-But-Kept-My-Mouth-Shut Dexter Filkins wasted 22 paragraphs analyzing the election returnsthat are not yet verified.
C.I.: We should note the headline to that "award winning" reporting by Filkins which was, "Iraq's Sunnis Voted In Large Numbers This Time, Officials Say." "Officials say" being key to the headline, to the report and to all that's wrong with The Times.
Cedric: C.I., the press is having a tough time pimping the latest Operation Happy Talk phase. Fam and Filkins obviously want to let loose with the rah-rah reporting but the trouble this time is that serious questions exist and the days when Filkins could turn a slaughter into a video game and actually win a report for it appear to have passed. But still they press on, those brave embeds, thankful that Judith Miller exists to take the heat off all of them.
C.I.: Cedric, thank you for that perspective piece. With more news on Iraq, we now go to Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz and Mike of Mikey Likes It! All week long, they pair up to select information from Democracy Now! to spotlight at their respective sites. Readers of The Third Estate Sunday Review prefer them paired up for the news review. We started with Elaine last week, so let's start with Mike.

I included Rebecca's part because of the bird flu and with the topic of this post being the economy, I think that's needed. If we have an outbreak of bird flu, we'll see that it effects one group of people one way, and another group another. Why? Money. If you've got it to blow, you'll probably be sitting pretty. If you're struggling to make ends meet, you'll be out in the cold with the flu.















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Saturday, October 22, 2005

Digital Divide and Betinna Throws A Party

I had a date last night and took the night off from blogging. The plan was to do a long thing today. I did. Once, twice, three times, four. Everyone gets lost.

I'm sick of Blogger. I'm trying one more time and this will be a short post. I'll note two things I really enjoyed this week. One made me think, the other made me laugh. That's all I intend to do blog wise today because I'm getting pretty frustrated at losing stuff each time I try to post.

First this from The Common Ills:

Eli suggests that Eddie check out Stephen Labaton's "A Bill Advancing Digital TV Is Approved by Senate Panel." Here's the most important sentence in the article:

More than half of homes now have no digital signal and no intention to get one, according to Stewart Wolpin, an analyst at Points North Group, a research and consulting firm.

Why do I say it's the most important? Because no one wants to comment on it, let alone mention it. That includes a "brave" watchdog that's pissed Eddie off -- we don't link to it -- because they did a rah-rah, "New World Coming" report that forgot to mention that for a significant portion of Americans, the new world isn't coming.
The article is a typical Times' article meaning it sucks up to big business (and doesn't discuss the Times' own interest in the legislation -- maybe Labaton is unaware of the Times' TV division?). But buried deep in the article is a fact that "brave" watchdog took a pass on.
This is going to be a big issue to people in some areas, to the poor and the working poor in all areas. Right now you want to watch Desperate Housewives (I wouldn't recommend it, but to each their own), you turn on the TV. You don't need cable, you don't need satellite. You turn on the TV and watch for free.
As the industry abandons analog and moves to digital, it will be a huge issue for a significant portion of Americans. But no one wants to talk about that. No one wants to acknowledge that even if we had a good economy (we don't, we have a Bully Boy economy) a lot of people would be left out of "the revolution."

Eddie's right to be upset about this. I'm upset about this.

Eddie's right to be upset about this. I'm upset about this.

I'm thinking about women I know who have kids and are struggling to make it. Now they want to take cartoons away from them?

Your cable bill may only be thirty bucks a month but there are a lot of people who are already stretched to the limit. Now you're going to take away TV? You want to be there in the home when some parent has to explain to their kid why they can't watch Aruthur or whatever?

Now if you can afford digital cable, maybe you can also afford to go to the movies? But for a lot of people, the TV takes that place because there's no money in the budget for entertaining. This is a very serious issue.

I also want to note that Betty has Betinna throwing her first dinner party. I think it's hysterical. Here's a quote:

I put on some Sade and the guests made small talk while Thomas Friedman kept following me around insisting that if I had to do take out, Mickey Dees has a perfectly suitable dinner menu.
Needing a break from his whining, I lied and said I didn't think Rebecca was wearing a bra tonight.
I didn't see him for a half hour which gave me just enough time to warm everything up and set it out. As I did, Gail Collins saddled up beside me and whispered that she thought Ron had "a Newland Archer quality." Having heard that he was single, I tried to suggest she go talk to him.
"Oh dare I?" she asked giddy with excitement. "Dare I, Betinna, dare I? Can you imagine the passion that could exist between us? The type of passion one only comes across in the novels of Edith Wharton."
"Uh-huh," I said counting the water glasses.
"He would be mad for me, mad, mad, mad. And I for him. And then we would steal away for a private moment."
Private moment?
Who knew Gail Collins had it in her?
I was all ears waiting for the naughty bits to begin.
"He would press his cheek to mine and I would press mine to his. Oh Betinna, the moment could be so magical. And then I would look at him with longing and regret as I declared that for us to stay together would kill what I loved in him most. Just like the Countess tells Archer."
"Damn it, Gail," I said frustrated since she long ago exceeded the sell-date on her own Age of Innocence, "you're not the lead in a period novel. You're a grown woman. You have urges."
Gail giggled nervously as a blush crossed her cheeks and she bowed her head.
Ignoring her, I announced dinner was ready and everyone took their assigned seats.

I'll note that Betty has me as a guest at Betinna's dinner party. It's a funny entry.
















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Thursday, October 20, 2005

My great aunty had to have hip surgery and it wasn't planned. She knew she was going to have to have it at some point but Monday morning she was walking to her car from the grocery store and she tripped. Ended up skinning her knees and hands and breaking her nose. She swears she didn't faint and just tripped. But she is getting up in the years and since they took her in an ambulance to the hospital Monday she went ahead and decided to have the surgery she'd been putting off.

Her doctor scheduled her for Wednesday and I didn't even go to church Wednesday night because we were all trying to be at the hospital as much as possible for her. She's the oldest person in our family and I was real glad to see that everyone made time to visit before the surgery and after the surgery. She seems to be doing well but if you're wondering why I haven't been posting it's because this came up and it wasn't expected. I put pretty much everything I could on hold to make sure I could be there as much as possible.


If that hadn't happened, I would've been noting a great column by Jasmyne Cannick earlier this week. This is from The Chicago Defender and the title of the column is "Pimpin ain't easy: The new face of the Black Church:"


"We're not just a church, we're an international corporation. We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation. You've got to put me on a different scale than the little Black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering." Bishop Eddie Long, New Birth Missionary Church, August 2005.
The sad thing is, he's right.
Today's New Black Church is the offspring of the civil rights era but can easily be identified by its debatable and sometimes laughable theology, superficiality, greed, materialism, heavy involvement in politics, tricked-out arena sized church, ten thousand or more member congregation and of course, its superstar pastor.

Cannick's got a lot of guts to speak it straight with no effort to pretty it up. The church is not supposed about the pretty shoes TD Jokes has or all the money he's amassed. It's also not supposed to be about bowling lanes. It's supposed to be about a relationship with God but too many preachers and pastors and congregations seem lost in the very bling-bling thing they scream and yell at rappers about.

All they seem to care about is money. How much do I got? How much can I get?

I think a church is about doing the kind of work Jesus would do. That means you help out the less fortunate. That doesn't mean it's your goal to build the biggest (and ugliest) church in the city or to be the richest man in the world but check with some of our black preachers. Not what they say but how they're living.

Nothing wrong with making a decent living. But the only thing anyone should ever get rich on from a church is God's love and their understanding of Jesus Christ.

For all the griping they do about rappers lowering the standards, I look around and see a lot of black preachers who are lowering standards a lot worse than any rapper ever could. Why is that? Because we expect leadership from our preachers in the community. And they aren't providing it. A lot of them are close to becoming as morally bankrupt as they are rich.

It's disgusting.

I e-mailed C.I. to note the item and said I planned to write about it and hoped to write about it Tuesday night. As always I want to thank C.I. because I didn't have time on Tuesday. But C.I. linked to it at The Common Ills. I'm sure some visitor probably already complained about, maybe more than one, saying it had no place up there or some nonsense.

This issue matters to me. I'm tired, my eyes are narrow slits and I just wanted to crawl into bed when I got home tonight but this is an important issue and all week I've meant to note it and hope that people would think about it.

So I'm putting it up here and wish it weren't so late in the week.




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Sunday, October 16, 2005

Iraq's constitution

Helped out The Third Estate Sunday Review and you should check them out. Their edition isn't "done" yet. They are holding the editorial until we can all get back together. That means Betty and me get done with church tonight.

I've got about ten minutes before I'm out the door but Three Cool Old Guys are furious. They feel C.I. was ripped off. (I feel the same.) They start naming the person who ripped C.I. off and I'm like "But you guys just got online a few weeks ago ... How did you ..." Because they'd figured it out. One of them signed up for some alerts at a web site and one of the things he got late this morning was an announcement about the rip-off artist's story. They said ___ better start doing some soul thinking because the road ___ is on will take ____ straight to hell.

I had to hear about how ____ was a thief. Lots of other stuff as well. I saw them this morning at church but I was tired and they said they could tell so they didn't bring this up there since I visit after church.

They wanted me to put up their thoughts.

1) ____ is a thief.
2) ____ has no shame.
3) ____ better "get right with God" quick.
4) ____ should be outed.

They wanted to know why we didn't just print ___'s name at The Third Estate Sunday Review? C.I. didn't want it. C.I. feels it could be a coincidence. C.I. also says ____ is a little vindictive thing and loves a pissing match so we shouldn't feed into it.

I explained that at length and am not free to do so here because since ___ isn't being named, I won't drop clues. But ___ really is a pyscho when it comes to others and as I detailed that they understood. They also had read Rebecca and took a lot of comfort in that.

This ain't over. They know that and that makes them happy.

They are total Common Ills members now. It's really great to see their enthusiasm. They'd told everyone at the nursing home about ____ ripping off C.I. and were showing them the thing at The Common Ills, the thing at The Third Estate Sunday Review and the thing by ____. I walk in and expect to say my hello to the ladies and the other men but instead I keep getting stopped by residents telling me how disgusting ____ is. This is topic number one at the nursing home.

Now let me put in my part from The Third Estate Sunday Review's news review. Jim wants all of us who participate to do that. A) It's an easy entry if we're short on time. B) It promotes The Third Estate Sunday Review. C) It let's people see another side of us since we are doing that under pressure and time limits.

C.I.: Thank you, Jess. We now go to Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix with a report on the Iraqi constitution.
Cedric: C.I., the Iraqi constitution will give every Iraqi their own iPod, their own swimming pool and streets of gold.
C.I.: Really?
Cedric: Well, it will enshrine the rights of all.
C.I.: Really?
Cedric: The honest truth is that with various versions, most voters had little idea of what they were voting for. The charter continued to change days before the election and this after the "official version" had several versions. Electricity was out Saturday morning in Baghdad. Riverbend of Baghdad Burning reported Saturday morning that: "The referendum is only hours away and the final version of the constitution still hasn’t reached many people." Many people have no idea what they're being asked to vote on and Riverbend makes the point Elaine made which is that suddenly this isn't the Constitution, it's open to more revisions and alterations. Riverbend compares it to the phoney elections of January and notes:
Areas with a Sunni majority are complaining that there aren’t polling stations for kilometers around- many of these people don’t have cars and even if they did, what good would it do while there’s a curfew until Sunday? Polling stations should be easily accessible in every area.
Cedric (con't): We'll no doubt hear that it was another triumph for "democracy" and that there was a huge turnout but the reality is people weren't provided with the Constitution in time to read it and that the voting places aren't accessible to all. We've got a new spin cycle for the adminstration to launch another wave of Operation Happy Talk. The Iraqis have gotten screwed again.
C.I.: Thank you, Cedric. And we'll note that on The Laura Flanders Show Saturday night, we were all reminded that the January elections featured a lot of photo ops of purple stained fingers and only after the spin was in place was it noted that all the photos came from the same polling stations. We now go to Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz and Mike of Mikey Likes It! for a joint report on Iraq. Elaine, I'm guessing, you have the fatalities figure, so how about we start with you?


I'm adding 2 blog links. The first is Wally who's been a great friend to me and a great member of The Common Ills community just started The Daily Jot. The other is Ron of Why Are We Back In Iraq? who C.I. told me had added my site to his blog roll. I'll say thank you to Ron. I know his work from the early days of The Common Ills and he didn't have to add me. Lots of people don't. One thing about Ron that he may not get credit from in the blogsphere is that he is concerned with representation. That's in terms of color, in terms of gender and in terms of sexuality. A lot of people talk the inclusive talk but Ron really puts it in practice. I'd say that if I wasn't added. But I'd argue that I was added because of that attitude on Ron's part.









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Thursday, October 13, 2005

Condi




Rebecca did a thing with links to some of Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts comics. "Three cool old guys" (as they want to be known) loved going through the comics and they picked the one that's up here now.

They chose it because they say Condi Rice has blood on her hands and while they used to long to see a brother or a sister in position of power, she wasn't what they had in mind.

This may not seem like much to you but it does to them. They are pre-civil rights. They lived through it all. They lived through segregation, through the civil rights movement, and the things they've seen are pretty incredible.

But they say it is an affront to MLK and his memory that someone like her hasn't been fired. They think she's as bad as gangsta-thug shooting up things in drive bys if not worse. The minute she took a job with the administration, they feel, her focus should have been on representing the ones who laid down so much that she could get to where she is. Instead they think she's become the white man's puppet and embarrassed herself and her race.

They are so offended by her. I'm offended and embarrassed by her but it's one thing to hear and read about all the work that took to get us this far. It's another thing to have lived through all those struggles.

The worst thing is that we have struggles ahead of us still because we haven't achieved equality and someone like Condi is no help to us. She'll remember her skin color when she's getting an award for "black achievement" but she'll never do a thing to help us. She's the token who's happy being the token.

That doesn't surprise me. But it didn't bother me anymore than Donald Rumsfeld did. Talking to them tonight I realized how severe a disappointment to her race Condi Rice is.

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Monday, October 10, 2005

Sonia Bock

C.I. noted this and my friends at the nursing home, who want to be called "Three Cool Old Guys," said I should note it too. So Three Cool Old Guys were watching Democracy Now! on the main TV and they saw the last story, "Sonia Bock 1897-2005: Amy Goodman Remembers Her Grandmother, a Woman of Three Centuries," and thought it was pretty moving. I think so too. I don't have much time tonight but when my friends want something, they've got it.


Amy Goodman's grandmother, Sonia Bock, died October 5, 2005 at the age of 108. She was born in 1897, in Ruvno, Poland. She lived through the pogroms of Tsarist Russia, the Bolshevik revolution and the Holocaust.
I'd like to take this moment to thank everyone who wrote in last week to express sympathy on the loss of my grandmother. Sonia Bock died October 5, 2005 at the age of 108. Yes, she was indomitable: a woman of three centuries.
She was born in 1897, in Ruvno, Poland. She lived through Tsarist Russia, the Bolshevik revolution, the Holocaust. Though many in her family did not. Two of her brothers and their whole families perished. I remember my mother telling me the wail. The wail that went up in the bungalow colony that my grandparents my mom and her sister went to every summer. The wail when my grandmother got the news that her family had been killed. She came to America by boat in 1929. In 1930, she gave birth to my mother in Harlem with my grandfather, an orthodox rabbi.
In her fifties she contracted cerebral meningitis and was sent to a sanatorium in the Catskills. Not expected to live, she cut everyone's hair and was out in two years. She was an unusual mix of old fashioned in her views of women. "You must always be independent," she would say. "When your husband comes home meet him with a hug and supper, then give him the newspaper to read, but you should have already read it. Then discuss it with him. Communication is everything." She was the eternal student. She spoke four languages: Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, English and was always taking conversation classes in French. At about 4 foot 10 inches tall, she was a pint size fireball. A life force. My heart. I'd like to share a poem that I also read when my father died. I don't know who wrote it:

Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a
thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on
ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning s
hush, I am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circling flight. I am the
soft star that shines at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not
there. I did not die.
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Thursday, October 06, 2005

On churches

Monday, someone asked me what I liked about church in an e-mail.

The easiest way I can explain it is to ask you to remember that slogan Hillary Clinton used to believe in, "It takes a village." Betty and I aren't the only church goers in the community. The Common Ills has a vareity of religions represented by members and certainly Kat and Mike are known Catholics. Betty and I are Protestants. So since we're both church goers and we're both African-Americans (Betty prefers the term "black"), I thought I'd call her up and we discussed this Tuesday night.

For both of us, church is our village. We were raised in it and the extended family it represents to us is very powerful. Somebody's always going to have a squabble in any large group but what I was wondering was about her church's leadership because mine is steady but I have friends who go to "white" churches or "black" churches and have heard horror stories about them running off preachers or pastors or ministers. I've heard stories of battles over who controls the church bank accounts. I've heard of choir directors who tried to take over the churches and when they couldn't, they split off taking parts of the congregation with them.

One friend, Tim, who is white, tells about how he gave up on his church because it was steady until he was in high school and then it became this huge power struggle. To make sure that the new choir director had the votes, they started dropping members, who had been baptized in that church, for any excuse. A blind man who was in his eighties was dropped because he only came once a month when his daughter was in town and could bring him to church. Other people were dropped because they only came on holidays.

The choir director was a real nightmare and had been dating a girl who disappeared and ended up found months later when she was dead. Tim feels that was a shock to the choir director who suddenly found religion and started going to his parents church. He was made choir director within two months and then all the nonsense started. He got his drinking buddies to start showing up with their children and wives and girlfriends. The church make up changed and some of the old people stopped going as often because of it.

But within a year, the choir director and his new group had taken over the church, fired the preacher and taken control of the accounts by intimidating all but one of the elders of the church.

This one old guy was tough and Tim said he refused to take his name off the account and without his co-signature, they couldn't write checks. The choir director was using the church as his own personal playground. He would invite friends over to play volleyball and if members drove by and saw a game and stopped, if he didn't like you, he would tell you it was a private gathering and you needed to leave. Tim saw all of this because his parents' home was right across the street from this church. He'd grown up in this church. He stopped going and so did his parents because the choir director and his friends were falling down drunk every Saturday night and staggering into church Sunday morning to talk about "evils."

When the last holdout, the elder, died, there was no stopping this crowd. They were already dropping by the church all the time to use the phone for long distance calls that the church would pay. With the last man who could stand in their way out, suddenly church funds were used to send the choir director and his friends and their children to amusement parks and on other trips.

None of this was about spreading the word of God and it wasn't open to all church members. The choir director, who'd made himself preacher at this point, would pick who could go and who couldn't. His sister was in the church, his whole family was, but his middle sister was in the church and he didn't like her or her kid and so they'd find themselves not eligible to go on certain events because he just didn't like them.

He and his male friends would hang out at the church after Sunday evening services for three to four hours drinking in the parking lot.

That's the worst chuch story I've ever heard of, where members are stripped of their membership and a coup takes place so that a church can be used for someone's own personal amusment.

When I was telling Betty about this she wanted to know what the religion was. I told her but I don't really think it matters (and don't think it represents all churches that practice that religion). I've heard many other horror stories though none as bad.

I'm not someone who walks around with a Bible or says, "Well I was praying last night." My beliefs are known and if someone asks me, I'm happy to talk about them. But I firmly believe you provide an example, not a lecture.

So with new friends who don't go to my church, religion usually comes up about a month after the friendship begins. I've heard great stories and I've heard horror stories.

But, and this is what I wanted to check with Betty on, the worst thing in my church is when you get two women bringing the same dish to a lunch and they're mad at each other. Betty said that was about the worst thing in her church as well. There were some members who didn't care for one another but it wasn't an open war and they'd just avoid one another unless one of them was in need at which point, like them or not, they were there for one another.

Here's another horror story a friend who grew up in the south told me. His church turned the front pew over to a drug dealer. The priest knew, the whole church knew. But the guy had money and he could show up every Sunday and be treated like a hero. I couldn't believe that or that a priest would hold up such a person to the congregation (we call them congregations in my church, Catholics may use another term and no offense intended if they do). What does that say to the little kids and teenagers coming to the church?

We're not all saints in my church but if someone's doing something illegal, they need to come in, sit in the back and stay out of everyone's way. God, my belief, wants to help everyone. But my preacher did ask one man to leave. His parents and grandparents had been in the church, his parents still were but his grandparents were dead. The guy had faced some problems and ended up a pimp. That's not what the church is about. And the guy was showing up and acting flashy and the precher told him that he was sending the wrong message to the children in our church.

At my church, no one cares about your private business or follows you around. If you have a problem and ask for help, we pray for you and try to help you and know that a problem couldn't happen to any of us. But there are problems and then there is a living a life of crime. Betty agreed with me that our churches had kept people we grew up with away from crime and at a time when there is so little for many African-Americans in the way of economic opportunities, I believe that should be one of the fundamental aims of the black churches: making sure that wealth isn't held up as God.

I think TD Jokes misses that point. I've seen him on TV go on and on about his shoes and how important his shoes are. I think it's a little bit Little Richard-like honestly but if it was just the shoes, that would be one thing. The fact that his church, my opinion, seems to exist to make himself rich and to pass on false messages (like "Jesus was a businessman") digusts me. Most people of any race in this country are not going to end up rich in worldly goods. The church should especially work hard to get across the message that wordly goods are not going to bring happiness or provide anyone with salvation.

So those are some of my problems with some churches.

What binds me to my church is the fact that we are focused on working together. My mother, for instance, always knew if there was an emergency, she could count on anyone in the church. I'm sure some liked her better (and us) than others did but they were always there to help out when the need arose.

If I was acting the fool or showing out (and I did all the time once I became a teenager) and someone from my church happened to see that, they'd call me out on it. By the same token, after my father died especially, if I had a big track meet or was doing something outstanding academically, members of my church would turn out to show their support and when you have that kind of faith behind you, it really helps. It helps you believe in yourself and it helps you feel like you have some value in this world. That's something that the African-American community could stand to hear a lot more of.

My uncle tells me today reminds him a lot of when he was a kid in the early seventies. He says every other movie made for African-American audiences seemed to be about a pimp or some other criminal. He looks around at the bling-bling music videos today and the direct to home video crap put out by Master P and just finds it disgusting. He says that at least there were some alternatives and he'll list Stevie Wonder or Aretha or someone like that and talk about how they were keeping it real. I think kids are lucky to have Kanye West and I'd add in Mary J. Blige because she's come along a way. She could always sing but with each album, she's grown and really tackled some deep themes. Jill Jones is another example. Back during The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill she (and the Fugees before that) were providing a strong alternative to Money is god.

I'm not calling for censorship where the government decides what gets played on the radio or on BET but I am wishing that listeners and viewers would reject that crap that debases us. The church has historically provided an uplifting voice to the African-American community and when I see a TD Jokes who seems determined to not to lead but to be another Pat Roberston sitting on millions of dollars and all about how rich he can't, it really bothers me.

If we lose our churchs, I'm not sure what we have left. They have instilled in us a belief in our own good and our own worth and that's not a message we've gotten very often from the larger society.

I get e-mails about religion all the time. I'm answering this one because it seemed sincere. Last week I got one about Seth. This visitor was up in arms that I had "promoted" Seth's site. I did promote it. I'll promote it whenever I can remember to. If you haven't check out Seth's site, the visitor was offended that Seth was gay.

That's not an issue with my church. With Betty's church, AIDS has finally begun to help them address the issue. For me, it's not an anything to be ashamed of. I don't know if Seth's religious or not but if he is he may feel, as I do, that God makes you in his image. God made Seth the same as he made the visitor, the same as he made me. I am attracted to women and Seth is attracted to men and that matters as much to me as whether or not Seth likes cherry soda or yogurt.

I like Seth's site. I like Rebecca's. I like Mike's. Mike has written about his balls and everything else at his site and I've never had anyone e-mail to gripe about Mike. But if Rebecca talks about guys, I get some jerk having a fit that a woman would talk about that. If Seth writes about guys, I end up with a jerk like the visitor today.

Seth is Seth and Rebecca is Rebecca. They are individuals and they have value and I'm glad to be in the same community with them. If Seth were a member of my church, there wouldn't be an attitude of "He's gay, don't talk to him."

I realize that some southern black churches are still struggling with the issue and Betty can tell you that her church went through a period that AIDS made them snap out of. But whether it was AIDS or something else, it was not an issue when I was growing up in my church. It's about as important to my church as whether or not you're eating pork or shellfish or shaving. They are not issues.

I really like Seth's site and hope he blogs for a long time because there are jerks like the one who e-mailed me about Seth. I think a lot of ignorance is out there and hopefully Seth writing about whatever interests him that day will slowly help even jerks see that gay people are not weird or something to be hidden or shunned.

I have a cousin who is a lesbian and that's never been an issue. She and her partner go to our church. When you're not stuck with stereotypes but with actual exposure you realize that people are people. And hopefully the jerk who wrote, if he keeps reading Seth's site, will have a better understanding of at least one gay person.

A friend played something that had been sent to him in an e-mail. He thought it was hilarious. It was this African-American preachers screaming about gay sex. Just putting gay men down, he didn't mention lesbians. My friend thought it was funny the way some liberals will supposedly listen to Rush Limbaugh for laughs. I told him I didn't find it funny.

I don't. I don't think a preacher screams and yells about a people. I think it's really sad that the preacher was African-American because in this country, white preachers often hid behind their professions to scream about African-Americans and to argue that slavery was right or that we were stupid or depraved or whatever.

They can't get away with that as easily as they once could. So it disappoints me that someone of my race would turn around use the name of God to preach hate. Julian Bond and Coretta Scott King have been leaders in the African-American community on the importance of seeing each other as people and not demonizing gays and lesbians. I was really impressed with Al Sharpton in the 2004 race for making similar comments. At one point, my youngest cousin had some friends over and he mentioned Rev. Sharpton's statements about tolerance and acceptance and one of his friends refused to believe it. Kept saying Rev. Shaprton would never say that. We had to pull it up online to convince him.

I wish more of our leaders would take the lead on this because I think one thing God judges you on is how you handle your experiences. For African-Americans who've been demonized historically as sex craved or rapists or what ever stereotype you want to toss out to not have learned from that and to turn around and do it to another group is something that I personally believe God does not look favorably upon. My opinion is He knows we know what that's like and He expects more from us than to do to others what was done to us.

I asked Betty what her thoughts were on the gay issues regarding the black churches and she thinks it's at the root of where we will be in twenty or thirty years. We will either have the strong community that we've always maintained or we will have chapters of hate across the country turning from the lessons of God's love and embracing the same right-wing nonsense that's overtaken many (but not all) white churches. She said she sees it as the issue because it goes to whether the historical role of the black church will continue or whether we'll splinter into some who continue to speak out for social justice and others who want to preach hate.

I think Betty's right. I'll even thank the jerk for his e-mail because it's been a non-issue to me because it is a non-issue to my church. It was dealt with before I was born (or at least old enough to remember). Betty's church has had to start dealing with it due to the AIDS crisis in the African-American community.

Splintering will weaken the historical role of the church in African-American lives. It will also lead to a loss of good people, some gay, some not, who can't support intolerance and can't reconcile hatred with what the church has always represented to our community which is hope and a place of acceptance.

I've tried to answer the e-mailer, the sincere one, and hopefully this did. My church is important to me because it is a family and not just on Sundays when you're sitting in the pews, but throughout the week. We help each other and we support one another. We work to uplift and that's more important as every other cultural message hitting us seems to be about "bling-bling" or being a gangster. My uncle's looking around for the next Marvin Gaye and not seeing him. I hope that he, or she, is already among us and ready to restore the humanity to popular music because we need a voice like that today.










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Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Todd Purdum

Jim of The Third Estate Sunday Review has one peeve with C.I. of The Common Ills and it's that some of C.I.'s best work is buried within a post. I had an e-mail from Jim and I knew right away, before I opened it, what it was going to be about. I'd read The Common Ills this morning and when I got to "NYT: "Mixed Review of Bush Pick in Oversight of Gambling" I could just hear Jim saying, "You didn't even put Todd S. Purdum's name in the title."

C.I.'s reply would be, based on past replies, that there's not enough time for perfection and if there are going to be entries up at The Common Ills, they just have to be what they are. (Which can be shorthanded to Kat's "It Is What It Is" motto.)

I understand both points of view. Jim wants the best stuff to really be noticed and C.I.'s feelings are that the posts are for the members and there's no point in attempting to cater to outside the membership.

Jim wants it to be the best because Jim's a member of The Common Ills and thinks it's an amazing site (I do too). But the reality is C.I.'s too busy to worry about "Will this get attention?" or "Will this add readers." C.I. doesn't care. The site is a resource/review and any member can tell you it's about helping you find the voices that speak to you.

C.I. truly doesn't give a damn what people outside the community think. And that's probably why the membership is so huge. Kat would say it's "organic" and that's what speaks to people.
But Jim's a friend and he feels like C.I. had some criticism that was both needed and humorous. He was looking at action alerts and media criticism today and found that Robin Toner and Elisabeth Bumiller are the focus of the Tuesday criticism of The New York Times.

Todd S. Purdum embarrassed himself again. C.I. called him on it. No one else has that Jim's seen.

My friends at the nursing home who just became Common Ills members would disagree with Jim. They were raving over this morning's entries and talking about when Todd popped up in the middle, it was a "gut buster" and provided needed laughter.

That might be, intentionally or not, what C.I. was going for. Jim thinks in terms of a journalist filing a single report and C.I. thinks more in terms of film.

But I'm tired and when I called Jim I told him I could excerpt the section. Which I'll do in a minute. But here's my thoughts on whether or not it would have made a difference if C.I. had made Todd a single entry. It wouldn't have made a difference. First of all, The Common Ills is known at this point. It's been mentioned on NPR and all over the web. Second of all, a lot of the Democratic sites refrain from calling Todd out because he's married to a Democrat from Clinton's administration. So I don't think it would have made a difference. (And Dona was agreeing with me, I could hear her in the background while Jim was on the phone.)

The Common Ills is too independent to be noted. C.I.'s too pro-peace, too pro-choice, too-pro minorities, too . . . It's not a site for the centrists or the middle of the roaders. It never will be. Sometimes "helpful" bloggers will e-mail C.I. saying "Don't write about that" and the only thing that does is make C.I. write about it more.

It's not an echo chamber of talking points. Nor is The Common Ills trying to shore up weak spined Democrats (no spines?) just because there name is "Harry Reid" or whomever.

I started my site to draw attention to the community and all the great sites coming out of it. I understand Jim thinking, "Okay, well if it had just been about Todd . . ." but the reality is, it wouldn't have been linked to then. We, members, know who links and who doesn't. We know who highlights and who doesn't and we're very aware that one site in particular doesn't anymore. (Which is why The Third Estate Sunday Review dropped it a few weeks back.) C.I. says, "Don't try to get it linked" and we get the lecture from C.I. in the gina & krista round-robin, then a few weeks later, someone e-mails to tell Gina and Krista about a site (like the one that Third Estate dropped) that didn't link when they'd e-mailed. (Eddie and Ryan are usually the two who will pay attention to C.I.'s lecture for about two or three weeks and then try for links.)

But, and this is something I've realized since I started my own site and started getting e-mails, it doesn't matter. The Common Ills is a big community. And most of members didn't see a link somewhere and become members. We had someone we know pass it on to us. The community built through word of mouth and that's really how it continues to build.

Don't e-mail me to gripe about that because I'm not excusing one site in paticular that no one goes to anymore for a reason (one that Kat will be delinking from either tonight or tomorrow because Jim called her this evening and she didn't even know she had the site on her blogroll).

But I started my site, Seth's started his site and we've got another member soon to start their own site. There's really no need to go outside the community.

If people are concerned with social justice and with issues that Democrats are supposed to stand for, they'll find the site. If they're not, they won't.

I'm not excusing the sites that have certain members upset. I was one of the people saying "Delink from ___" because that person a) insulted Isaiah (which enraged the community) and b) always wants to be mentioned at The Common Ills but when Billie checked that site she found out that he never mentions The Common Ills at his site. A member will notice that the same way that a member will copy and paste and send something through the community.

But we've go the round-robin, we've got The Common Ills of course, we've got Rebecca, The Third Estate Sunday Review, Betty, Mike, Elaine, Kat and now Seth. There will be a new site shortly. We're not getting smaller, we're getting larger. Last Friday's poll in the round-robin is something C.I.'s taking very seriously and thinking about.

Right now, there's the weekly (sometimes more) gina & krista round-robin and nine sites. The Common Ills isn't even a year old. That its launched so many voices in so short a time tells you that with or without someone scared that The Common Ills is too left or too into minorities or too into pro-choice or whatever the excuse is, the community just continues to build.

I see Jim's point but I think he's wrong. (He knows I think he's wrong.) There were times when I felt like he did before I started my site. I'd be upset that a really great entry that was on something important wasn't being noticed. (By mid-day, had anyone else noted Ralph Nader's complaint against Harriet Miers from today's Democracy Now!? Not that I saw and that's pretty important. She refused to comply with a request that she's bound by her office to comply with.) But now that I'm getting e-mails from members, I'm really getting how big the community is. I should have grasped that from the round-robin but I really didn't.

The Common Ills doesn't spit out talking points and because of that, or the decision not to push Harry Reid as the great savior or whatever, it's not noted by those working from a playbook of talking points.

I ended up doing things differently than I planned here. I was going to do a blog report. That was what the Big Mix was going to be. Instead, I've written about the elderly and some of their issues, about race and other things. C.I. told me that the only rule was that there were no rules.
And the result is that if you're independent, you're voice has more value. There are people who never get e-mails and that's probably because they're running down talking points.

I couldn't imagine making time in a schedule with no time at all to just repeat what everyone else says but there are a lot of sites that do that. The fact that The Common Ills doesn't is why all of us value it so much. And it's why Jim likes to think that, for instance, if the Todd S. Purdum comments had been in their own entry, they would have gotten attention from outside the community. But that's not the way it works.

I don't know if there will be changes to the permalinks (C.I. doesn't call it a blogroll) anytime soon or not but I do know that C.I. has read the complaints and is taking the poll from the latest round-robin very seriously. In some ways, its our fault because we follow that stuff, C.I. doesn't. C.I.'s lost in the e-mails and if we'd raised this issue sooner, it might have already been dealt with. Coming on the heels of the continued ignoring of Rebecca, it is something C.I.'s taking seriously. But C.I. didn't know about that until we started bringing it up.

I want to note my good friend Isaiah who had "Celibacy in the City" today, his latest The World Today Just Nuts comic strip. That was hilarious. We were passing it around at work and Isaiah does great work. Ignore ___ who is an idiot who just wanted to use the community and not give back. But Natalie told C.I. about the insult to Isaiah a week after it happened and C.I. asked Isaiah if it bothered him. Isaiah said not really. It's one of those things that festers and it does bother Isaiah now. More importantly, it bothers the members. ___ is no longer linked. Whether we'll have to hear "I was reading and wanted to share" comments in entries anymore or not, I don't know. (I would guess not.)

But members had followed ___ in the copy and pastes and for him to slam Isaiah and also to be saying, "Great post and I wrote about this if members are interested"? Billie went there and if it's a great post, why wasn't it noted?

If a member took the time to provide ___ with raw data for research, why wasn't that noted as well? (That data now goes to Mike.)

So the point is that we take care of each other in the community. We stood by West, who wasn't even a member when he got attacked. Eddie forwarded the e-mail from the attacker and we don't go to that site anymore (C.I. had already delinked from it). It was bad enough what was done to West but to find out that the jerk was e-mailing trying to get dirt on West was offensive.
West was just a high school kid who spoke his mind and got attacked for it and threatened with delinks if he didn't apologize. Then his apology wasn't good enough. That was bad enough to turn us all off that organization. (And give credit to Rebecca because she got the e-mail from West and wrote him back immediately saying, "Call me." She then stood up for him and others didn't. C.I. did. But others didn't. And we note that as a community.) But when the round-robin published the e-mails by the jerk trying to get information on West that so offended the community. He wasn't a member and hadn't even written C.I. at that point. But C.I. and Rebecca didn't play (as some did), "Oh too bad, that's your own personal problem." Their attitude was, "You liked our work and we're not going to pretend like what was done to you was okay just to have a link." They spoke their mind and that's why the community is tight and strong.

I still can't believe that the jerk and his boss got away with what they did. You'd think the organization would have told them, "Look, you were out of bounds. You need to apologize." Because that didn't happen and West never got an apology (for the attacks or for the attempts to go behind his back, a day before the attacks, and pry into his life) and members have never gone back to that site. We never will.

I had an e-mail from Brenda wondering how I searched online and I don't have time to write back so I'll put an answer in here. I'm using the same hub that other members are using. The one that integrates the software that we all purchased and then added the add on from UK Computer Gurus. I don't understand the "hub" talk either but I think it means that we're routed. I'll pass the e-mail onto the UK Computer Gurus because they're back from their September vacation and we should have a newsletter from them this weekend.

Here's C.I.'s latest on "Todd Purdum's Stinky Jock" (my title):

Todd Purdum and Neil A. Lewis file "Miers Known as a Hard-Working Advocate for the President" which is full of "news." Here's one example:

It has been a long time since Ms. Miers lacked encouragement, and for the last 12 years she has had the support of an important patron.

Is Todd trying to get a job at People? "It has been a long time since Ms. Miers lacked encouragement!" The first clause of the sentence screams for an exclamation point. Breathless writing?
You bet. Who can breathe when the fumes from Todd S. Purdum's smelly jock are wafting all around!
It gets better!

Ms. Miers has been a go-to person for Mr. Bush ever since, first as his appointee to the Texas State Lottery Commission, which she helped clean up; then as White House staff secretary, directing the flow of . . .

She helped clean it up!
Uh, Todd, get your fingers out of your jock and pick up the morning edition of your own paper.
Blumenthal's a little less sure than you are. Todd. Todd! Quit sniffing your fingers and read Blumenthal's article.

She is known among friends and associates as a hard-working and thorough advocate, someone staunchly loyal to Mr. Bush and possessing an unusual ability to remain calm and out of public view in the glare of the White House.

Friends don't trash her? It's "news"!!!!

What she is not known for are her personal views on the hottest legal and political issues of the day.

Has a more awkward sentence appeared in the Times this week? Well you can't type with two hands when you're sniffing the fingers of one. Purdum's grooving on his own funk, people. Cut him some slack.

"I think she's conservative in the sense that most lawyers are conservative, that she looks at the issues in that case," said Linda S. Eads, a professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, from which Ms. Miers graduated and to which she returned as an adjunct professor. "I don't know her to be an ideologue."

Linda S. Eads. She's what, Todd?
Diane Ragsdale (an African-American woman) is identified as a "liberal Democrat" but all the white folks get a pass? Is that how it works, Todd?
Linda S. Eads. Served under Corny John Cornyn. Which means she served under Bully Boy. Why is she treated as impartial? Just a law professor, apparently. One who also fiercly supported Priscilla Owens but the article doesn't tell you that either. So she supported Owens and she was in the attorney general's office under Corny, under Bully.
Todd's surpassed himself today. He must have worn a cup, and not just a strap, while writing this one. Probably gathered all the other kids and went behind the fence with them so he could show off his jock and cup.












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