Noose Boys At Our Jena 6 O’Clock

At the southern end of Los Angeles County, the African American Longshore Coalition along with civil rights activists led a protest-- two weeks before Christmas, mind you--because some of their paler and paler-minded peers decided it was funny to hang nooses from their trucks—just like the Jena 6 jokesters of last September.

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Transcript from the non-existent trial:

Your Honor Sir,

You, have to understand history: Our great granddaddy’s use-ta kill your great granddaddy’s at will.

In the good ole days, my ancestors used to lynch black folk whenever they realized just how poor they were, or whenever they lost a job, or whenever they were just feeling lower than a dog’s belly. And now, whenever I feel just as low, trashy, and lost as they musta felt way back when, I just think that their solution...well....it was a hoot! I can’t stop laughin’ at the very though of all those black men swinging from trees like the strange fruit they are. It makes me feel better.

So, I got my ten year old to make me a hangman’s noose and I hung it from the rear view mirror to remind me to laugh at life. A buddy o’mine, he got him one hanging from his rear bumper so he can laugh and people driving by can laugh too.

Why, you can think of us as doing a kind of...public service...you honor...sir....uh yeah.

A white dock workers explanation to a black judge on how
the noose hanging from his rear view mirror is

1)“just a joke”

2)“how it’s not a big deal” and the

3)“real problem with this world is that everybody is too sensitive & politically correct

***************

Los Angeles isn’t the sole home of the copy cats. The New York Times reported a while back that their have been as many as 50 to 60 such noose incidents in this country since the September protests in Jena.

The escalation of this kind of race baiting from the self-hating is always
the direct result of a lack of accountability.

.

The noose boys of Jena should have been processed through the justice system as the little hate criminals they are. The 50 to 60 comedians that came later would saved the noose jokes for family and friends that dared to visit them on the wrong side of the tracks

(It’s an assumption on my part that it is the trash, of the poor and pale variety, who display these nooses. But who else but low-self-esteem-having, low-lifes would hang nooses so as to stand on someone else’s back in order to feel better about themselves? Still, it must be the middle-class to rich low-lifes that keep giving these jokers a pass. And, they are the real problem.)

So, the first answer to the problem is more judges with more common sense than sensibilities about “political correctness.”

A joke about your great granddaddy killing my great granddaddy over nothing or something you know perfectly well your cousin did (but you won’t acknowledge) isn’t funny. And when you tell me you hung the noose because you think it’s funny, I think you want to go back to the good ole days--and that makes you a threat to me. You aren’t just offensive and un-funny as h***

Since members of the dominant culture, who predominantly run our institutions, have a problem following this line of thought, a more direct answer to the problem is
more African American judges.

Black people (who know they’re black) can follow the logic that people who think its funny that they are descended from people who hung other people because they were “different- from me” are the soil in which killers of people “different from me” grow in.

The problem with the absence of justice, is that a percentage of the
affected and offended have nothing to lose
and start thinking that the back up of the back up answer is vigilantism.

That’s why the teenage boys in Jena “went off.” They were subjected to all sorts of race based offenses, the last of which was NOT the noose incident, but that incident was a jail-able offense, as it was a hate crime--and the noose-boys got off with barely a slap on the wrist.

The back up answer never works out that well for those doing the vigilantee-ing, but you have a hard time explaining that to a male teenager who usually has to
DO SOMETHING about an offense RIGHT NOW!

I’m glad I’m not a parent of one of the black boys jailed in Jena. I mean, what could I say about how little justice has been done in regards to those who instigate these kinds of incidents. The noose boys crimes have been emulated across the country because of a lack of highly visible accountability for the executors of hate crimes.

If their had been highly visible and immediate punishment for the executors of these kinds of hate crimes, the African American Longshore Coalition (AALC) wouldn’t have had to host a protest. I'm looking forward to the day when groups like the AALC will elect to host a press conference congratulating their employer on having the criminals arrested.

Even so, I’m not sure I’d have the hate criminals should go to jail (for more than a few days) for such offenses as they are instigatory in nature. Instead...

1) I’d like to see them get a suspended sentence on a felony charge.

2) Then (if I was in charge of the world) I’d have them be unable to vote
for a period of ten years

(instead of forever like real life ex-convicts “who have paid their debt to society” and will continue to pay forever in this forgiving Christian country—phew off my soap box now)
3) AND THEN I’d like to see their votes handed over to a black institution who’d vote for Barack Obama -IN THEIR NAME!

It cou’ happen! It could. All we have to do is...

***Speak up!*****Shout!*****Vote!***

Then, we’d be the ones laughing last.

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Sicko in Real Life?

Nataline Sarkisyan, only 17 years-old, died shortly before Christmas when Cigna initially refused to approve a liver transplant. Her story reads like it was lifted right out of Michael Moore's Sicko.

In case you missed the documentary in the movie theaters, Sicko was about America's health insurance industry and people who DO have health care coverage but can't get their health insurer to pay. England, France, and even Cuba appear to have better day-to-day coverage than we do. Cuba!

Frankly, I was fully prepared to hate the greedy so-and-so's that run the major health insurance companies, but I have a few questions about Ms. Sarkisyan's case--that I haven't seen answered in the main stream media.

1) Why did the doctor's wait to give Nataline bone marrow transplant until after she'd been "battling leukemia for three years"?

Her liver failed due to a complication arising from the bone marrow transplant, but my question is this: Was she weak from battling the leukemia already? Could she have had the bone marrow transplant earlier and would that have given her liver a better chance at dealing with the stress of the bone marrow operation? And was Cigna involved in that decision as well?

2) Why did the doctors take Nataline off life support?

Cigna reverse its initial decision and decided to pay for the transplant after they'd stopped her life support. Were the doctors not expecting the decision to be changed? Was Nataline required to be able to breathe on her own in order for the doctors to do the operation.

3)Why does Cigna need independent experts to second guess the doctors involved in Nataline's case?

Are these "independent experts" doctors or accountants or a set of both?

4) Who was going to get the liver if Nataline wasn't going to get it and were they much, much healthier or was this liver going to sit on the shelf for a few more hours, days, or weeks?

5) Why can't the doctors involved in her case be the ones to make the decision? And why shouldn't complications from the first operation make you an automatic approval for a second?

If a health insurance company approves the first procedure, they should approve everything arising from it. The only thing that might give me pause about continuing to do the best you can to keep a patient alive is that her chances for survival are small and she'd be taking a healthy liver that someone else needs with her.

Without answers to these questions and more, who really knows if Nataline should have gotten that liver transplant (in a timely fashion) or whether she should have had the bone marrow transplant earlier. But I do know that someone other than Cigna (or the "independent experts" that Cigna pays?) who is in business to make a profit ought to be making the final decisions on what health care is needed. The gatekeepers for keeping our health care costs down need to be separated from the profit maker, Cigna, on one side and the emotional decisions of the doctors and families involved on the other.

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Till He Appear'd And The Soul Felt Its Worth

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
or yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!'
O night divine, the night when Christ was Born;
O night, O holy night, O night divine!

(Excerpt from the hymn O Holy Night)

I wish I was better at sharing my faith, not only because I'm supposed to, but because I truly feel like the soul is supposed to "feel its worth" and agnostics and atheists don’t seem to feel their soul’s worth—if they’re even know they have a soul that’s not some conglomeration of feelings that they’ve had which have a biological basis. Consequently, it seems so very wrong of me not to make sure that everyone I come into contact with knows that they have a soul and that it is worth something, and that its condition is worth considering.

In Oneness: Great Principles Shared By All Religions, the Dalai Lama says, “Every major religion of the world has similar ideas of benefiting humanity through spiritual practice, and the same effect of making their followers into better human beings. "

Christianity has the or should have the “effect” of making its followers into better human beings but that’s not the goal in and of itself...As I infer from the Dalai Lama’s statement the effect is supposed to be the result of making changes within. Furthermore, I believe the concept of the book, Oneness, and the Dalai Lama’s statement is true: Most, if not all, of the major religions have much truth, but I believe that Christianity has all of the truth because of its realistic view of humanity and its inevitable failures.

In my mind, Buddhism, the law of Moses, and the law of Moses fulfilled in the New Testament might all battle for first place as morality programs for living in this world--if there was no God, but I thank God that that's not the point. The Jewish Pharisees of the old testament and the Christian Crusaders that came later prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Living by a strict code only shows the intelligent person how impossible it is to be anything but good enough when compared to others--and usually that's only in your own mind. And that makes for a small accomplishment because it's truly a minuscule goal.

Christianity is the only religion that requires you understand that you fall short of perfection in almost every way and that you need help to reconciled to a perfect God in order to become a member in good standing. Already good (enough) people need not apply.

I came to heal the sick, not the healthy--Jesus

Acknowledgment of your imperfection is required, not so as to make God feel good about your humility, but so that you are willing to walk into the forgiveness He’s offering through Jesus Christ. Christians believe, even though they don’t always act like it, that God is offering forgiveness to the whole world. Through His son Jesus God’s hand is extended to everyone. All you have to do to take the forgiveness that’s being offered is raise your own hand to take His. And all you have to do that is be willing to acknowledge that you need it so that you'll be inspired to move forward to take His hand.

Luke 12:48: When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required. (NLT)

In the New Testament, we are told that King David, Noah, and other spiritual giants are in heaven now, forgiven by God, though they lived before Jesus and therefore Christianity. The New Testament also makes clear that mentally challenged people and children are also forgiven by God though they may not directly understand what Jesus offers them. Consequently, through my faith in God’s goodness and fairness, I have no doubt that people raised in other countries in other religions will be provided a chance to accept the forgiveness that God offers. They've been given less and less will be expected--it's not that nothing will be expected but they'll have different chances to accept Jesus than I had, than most people in this country have had. Rather, it's those of us who have been given every chance to accept God's forgiveness that ought to be worried.

In his book Speaking My Mind, Tony Campolo tells a story about a monk he met in some Far East location. While he was telling the monk about Jesus Christ, the monk came to understand that this Jesus was the one who he’d been talking to for so long in his daily prayers. The monk later said that the he heard Jesus’ voice saying something like “He’s talking about me! He’s talking about me!” while Campolo was witnessing to him.

On a more personal note, I have a friend who was raised in a non-Christian home who was always begging her parents to take her to church—since about the age of five. Somehow, she’s known Christ from birth without a human being on this planet telling her about Him—as far as she remembers.

And, one of my favorite writers, M. Scott Peck, famous for writing The Road Less Traveled, came to Christianity, through Zen Buddhism which he said made his mind able to absorb the paradoxes within Christianity.

Consequently, I have no doubt that all people will have the chance to accept God as He is and to figure out what that means for themselves. Furthermore, the book of Revelations says that there will be believers from many tribes. And I know that there are all kinds of Christ believers—Evangelicals, Catholics, Messianic Jews, Iranian Christians, etc. Regardless of the disagreements we have amongst ourselves, only when we are in Heaven will we know which “religion” was most right about the nature of God. And I’m okay with doing the best I can, striving to do better while not always knowing I’m on precisely the right path; I can learn more and change my mind (or God can change my mind)

One thing that I am sure of is that God doesn’t grade on a curve, that He has a true nature whether we figure it out exactly right or not—it’s our efforts that count, and that I as a Christian believe that we cannot meet God where He is on our own.

If one believes that sin (falling short of doing your best good at all times) exists and that this matters to God, then belief that Jesus died for our sins should be inevitable. Therefore, I am equally sure that the only people who will wind up where God is not (hell) in the life after this one are people who have decided they can’t stand the idea of answering to a higher soul or spirit, a higher intellect, and a goodness vastly superior to their own—and therefore can’t even attempt to struggle with understanding Christianity’s many paradoxes. They will not raise their hand and take God’s offered hand of forgiveness. They will refuse that forgiveness because they are ‘good enough’ as they are—and how dare anybody—even God—question this.

Yet...all people have Gods laws written on their hearts because they were created by God.

Romans 2:14-15 (NLT) says Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right.

This explains why I know atheists and agnostics that seem to better at being moral than a lot of Christians I know (in my estimation not necessarily God's) And it is this genuine superiority of theirs that leads them to their superior attitude that leads them to reject God. That is, they are moral and kind but they aren’t very often willing to be humble--it seems to me. Maybe that means that they are kind, intelligent, and moral but not very wise? I don’t know and I wish I did. I’d know better what I am suppose to say, how I am supposed to witness to them.

Selfishly, I want to keep my friends forever—literally. My fall back position is to understand that there will be good people that will ultimately refuse to accept Jesus and I hope I always want their mortal life to be as wonderful as it can be for as long as it lasts.

I do worry, too much at times, but I don’t think that my failures to witness to others will make the ultimate difference in whether someone believes in Jesus or not before their death or upon death because I don’t think that God needs me. I think that He wants me. And I think that He wants me to do what He tells me to do for my own sake, my own growth. So, if I fail to witness to Sally on Monday, then maybe He’ll have Barry do it the following month. Maybe the only thing that will have been missed is my opportunity to learn whatever it is I am supposed to learn---and maybe Sally’s life will be more difficult than it needs to be for a whole extra month, or extra year, or extra decade until Barry gets to her... Maybe?

Obviously, I don’t know how much I affect the Sallys of the world—that is, how much we affect one another--but I do know that we do and that our effect on one another is significant. Evidence of this can be seen in Jesus’ statement that the two most important commandments are 1) Love God with all your heart and mind and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself (And you can list all ten commandments under these two) Most of the Bible, especially the New Testament, is about how we are to love one another and what dire consequences there will be for us and others if we fail. And since God doesn’t seem to be One to talk for the sake of talking, even if I lived as a hermit in a cave and didn’t have newspapers and anecdotal evidence to tell me so, I’d still have to assume that our affect on one other is profound.

So I hope this Christmas essay helps at least one person to feel their soul’s worth. Understanding through your heart that Jesus died for you...

--like Kyle Reese died for Sara Connor in The Terminator,
--and like Jean Grey died to save the X-men in X-men 2
--like Neo died to save the last of human kind in The Matrix
--like little Frodo walked into a place that looked like hell, sure that he would die, to save Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings

...is the biggest leap of faith you need make.

All the movies and stories we take in, they are able to move us so deeply because they are retelling our own soul’s story. I believe that each of us recognizes that someone else’s willingness to die for us, with all our short comings, is the most profound act of love there is.

In real life, I hope that all people will realize that God sent his only Son, Jesus, to make the ultimate sacrifice by suffering for our sins and dying in our place—so that we may live on once this life is done.

I hope your celebration of Jesus birth on Christmas Day will always be as awe inspiring as I try to make mine.

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Sunni: Kurd::Colonist:American Indian

Comparing Colonial America to Iraq Today


It never made sense to me that some people were outraged that Hussein "bombed his own people.” There were plenty of things to be outraged about in regards to Hussein and his off-spring, but that was never one of them…not for the average U.S. Citizen anyway.

This is obvious if you think about it just a little bit, but let me help you along.

STEP 1:Imagine an Iraqi taking a ride on the time machine to Colonial America.

He asks the first colonist he sees, “How can you shoot, deliberately starve, then give smallpox infected blankets to your own people?”

The Colonist’s reaction to the question: “Huh?!”

STEP 2:Bringing the lesson into the 21st century

Colonist is to American Indian as Shiites/Sunnis are to Kurds

Step 3: Deeper Comprehension

Yes, Saddam was evil, but …Iraq now is American 120 years ago.

And, if the American Indians had moved to the northern third of the country, then foreigners had come and occupied the lower two-thirds, provided a no-fly zone over them, and protected their border then 90% of the American Indian population might have survived the 19th century instead of being 90% wiped out.

Therefore, the Iraqis, even those that would kill off all the Kurds, aren’t anymore evil or misguided than we were then-- or even now.

The only thing Iraq has to do with terrorism is that every terrorist in a 5000 mile radius went running there in 2003 just so they could shoot American soldiers. If we could sneak our soldiers and the Iraqi civilians out over night, we could nuke the place from orbit and wipe 95% of the terrorists from the face of the earth. That's how you win the war on terror in nirvana.

We should never have gone to Iraq, now how do we get out?

Let's look to colonial America, once again, for the answer
The borders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico were established by a series of wars. We killed one another until we got tired of the killing. The United States went on to have a civil war would have killed five million people if it had happened last year.

The Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds separate themselves by religion instead of race and language like us. Maybe they haven’t had a chance to kill enough people to establish their borders yet. The English Empire stopped them from doing so at the beginning of the 20th century by establishing borders for Iraq that suited the English not the people that lived there. Then later, dictators like Hussein stopped them.
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The problem is the world can’t allow the Iraqi’s to establish new borders the American way—genocide or something close to it. Nowadays, wiping out your enemy involves more than muskets and cannons. Now nuclear devices can come into play. Eeeew!

So, either the evil dictator was the cork in the bottle. Or, maybe this is Iraq’s time to separate into three separate countries. These choices are bad and badder still.

We better hope that Iraq’s plan to have a three part government (Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd) with a loose center comes together soon.

Maybe if we kiss enough butt, we can get France, Germany, and some of the surrounding countries to take over stabilizing the body of what we decapitated until they get finished regime changing, yes?

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The Deadliest Formula on Earth

Ingredient 1: Un-checked Fear
Ingredient 2: Too much power compared to all other countries
Ingredient 3: A weak and/or incompetent media. Specifically...

"The failures of the American media to slow or stop the descent into the Iraq War are the greatest media failures of our current era."

Jeffrey Sachs, Earth Institute Director

As Christians, most of us look inside and know we won't always like what we see. We say this in our hearts daily and say this from our lips as least weekly that we thank Jesus Christ for getting between the person God would have us be and the person we really are with all our mean spiritedness, pettiness, over-reactions, and the desire to choke the ever-living-crap out of so-and-so who so richly deserves it.
I don't know too many Christians who examine their own motives, or know that they should be, or at least giving lip service to it. But somehow that doesn't always translate to looking inside our group-self. That is, we aren't nearly as willing to looking inside our country and deciding that we don't always like what we see there either. Some of us will even go so far as to call that disapproval unpatriotic. And that's just so obviously backward and upside-down. Regardless of what conclusion you come to on the Iraq war or any other foreign policy debacle, taking the periodic look inside is a requirement for any human being with any integrity, Christian or no.

We all know that those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it, but some of us also know that those who fail to evaluate current events will meet their doom even faster. So,
I hope the following excerpt, from a speech by Jeffrey Sachs, Earth Institute Director, will help some of us take another look inside.

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We will live or die in the 21st Century according to whether we can co-operate globally. Our problems - ranging from climate change to species extinction to failed states - are global and require global co-operation to solve them.

The touchstone of my Reith Lectures this year were the words of President John F Kennedy in 1963 as he sought peace with the Soviet Union in order to pull the world back from the nuclear abyss.

President Kennedy said:

"Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.

"It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process - a way of solving problems." *

The Risk of Fear

The media can play a unique role in that global problem solving. When I gave the Reith Lectures, I knew that the lectures could, at least potentially, reach hundreds of millions of people.

There was simply no better venue for a global discussion than the BBC World Service.And indeed from African villages, to passport counters and airport check-ins, to corridors of power, I met people in all parts of the world that were tuned into the Reith lectures and were debating them within their families and communities.

The core underpinning of global co-operation is that we have a sufficient degree of trust so that representatives of different societies can reason together in peace.
The central risk is that morbid fear overtakes us, with fear degenerating to hate and
conflict.

Will we be an open global society or a group of fearful and closed societies poised for war?


Fear today is pervasive, especially after terrorist incidents. We know that such incidents can lead to a general conflagration.

A terrorist shot in Sarajevo provided the pretext for German aggression which started
World War I. 9/11 was used by the Bush Administration to launch the Iraq War.

In both cases, trigger-happy leaders exploited the incidents for their own political
purposes.

In both cases, the national media played along. The failures of the American media to slow or stop the descent into the Iraq War are the greatest media failures of our current era.

Our major media transmitted with little questioning the lies of officialdom and they
editorialised in favour of the war.

The war coverage itself was overtly propagandistic, with reporters sending home patriotic messages that dehumanized the Iraqi population on the receiving end of the US bombs. Everyone killed by a US bomb automatically became an insurgent or a terrorist.

It is interesting that the lies leading up to the war were more aggressively exposed and discussed by the new media of the internet than by the established media, who were constantly looking over their own shoulder with concerns about listener approval, government regulators, and corporate advertisers.

The problem with the internet, of course, is that it transmitted considerable flakiness alongside pithy truth telling. Blog sites, for good and ill, are unfiltered and unaccountable.


Our survival in the 21st Century will depend first and foremost on one core human skill: empathy. Co-operation depends on trust.

Trust depends on believing in the common humanity of "the Other".

Appreciating our common humanity depends on empathy, the ability and moral bravery to see things through the eyes of the other, even of one's adversaries.

The Bush Administration's belief that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq was the opposite of empathy. It was unbridled and ignorant hubris.

What then can the media do? Three things will be most important.

First, the media can present people of other cultures and political leanings, so that we can hear what they think.

Such cross-cultural exchanges should be respectful and truth seeking, not insulting and point scoring. They need not veer away from tough questions and hard challenges, but they should not be games of "gotcha," to humiliate or expose "the Other" in wars of propaganda.

Second, the media can intensively scrutinise our own governments, which operate on the logic of power-expansion and self-preservation.

Paths to co-operation

In short, almost all governments lie and lie relentlessly. Yet governments can be made to lie less frequently by being exposed and held to account by the professional media.

It is a media function that fails in authoritarian societies where journalists are locked up or murdered.

It is one that can fail in our own societies, in the United States or the United Kingdom, through self-editing, or the allure of power and access, or the fear of government reprisals through regulatory retaliation.

Third, the media can translate science to the general public, and the public's concerns back to the scientists.

We need to give scientists and technologists a key role in the challenges that lie ahead, because today's challenges and our best options - regarding climate, biodiversity, water scarcity, desertification, extreme poverty, emerging diseases, and demography - require a solid understanding of science and technology.

It was a wonderfully wise decision for the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to award half of this year's Nobel Prize to the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, since the IPCC, as it's called, represents the most ambitious and successful global process to bring complex scientific understanding to the broad public.

In short, we need professional journalism more than ever, to tell - with detail,
expertise, accuracy, accountability and sensitivity - the stories that can help the world to avoid the abyss.

We need journalism of the highest standards and ethics to help us to understand other
societies, the science and technology that define global risks and opportunities, an the paths to global co-operation rather than wider war.

We need professional journalism to sort out the gold and the dross that are found on the internet today.

John Kennedy put our hopes this way: "For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

That is the most urgent story that needs to be told in the 21st Century.

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Biased Movie Review: This Christmas

The advertisements had me thinking this movie was about the antics of a Black Brady Bunch adjusted for a 2007 audience that considers itself more sophisticated than the 1970s audience. I was righter than I would have liked in a couple of instances, and I heard one ho-ho-ho joke too many about the sister that sleeps with a guy on the first date, but I still loved this movie.

Yet, I can’t figure out how I enjoyed it when some of the images it presented bothered me so.

HOT HEADED BLACK MAN WITH A GUN

As I left my stop watch at home, I’d have to guess that it took all of 90 seconds before This Christmas showed two black men with guns chasing another black man, one of the main characters—one of the brothers, out of a darkened bar. Later in the movie, another of the brothers pulls a gun on someone that offends his woman.

It’s as if the powers that be in Hollywood believe that the audience will be confused, won’t find the characters “black enough” if there isn’t some gun play between a couple of the characters—and often on the heels of some issue that’s stupid and/or petty.

News Flash: If a character, of any race, is supposed to be one of the good guys/one the heroes, then he’s not supposed to have a gun or get a gun when he’s angry about something—not unless that character’s a cop. Why? This is not hero-like behavior. Denzel Washington, Danny Glover, Forest Whitiker, and Morgan Freeman all seem to be able to be in movies without having to resort to thug-like behavior and still be identified as black.

BLACK WOMAN WITH HOT PANTS

One of the sisters in This Christmas sleeps with a guy she barely knew in high school on the first date.

There are all of four black actresses working regularly in all of Hollywood, therefore each and every performance they do is “representational.” That is, until there are more black actresses in variety of roles, every performance by a black woman could-- shouldn’t--but could make a permanent mark on the psyche of the public at large as to who black women are.

News Flash: For every black woman presented as ho on film, there should be twenty shown as upstanding citizens. You don’t have to be a math wizard to know that this would mean that the public shouldn’t see another female black hero of a movie sleeping around until BET, MTV, and VH-1 all go off the air or refuse to show rapper videos forever.

A DEACON LIVING "IN-SIN" WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND

The patriarch of this movie is sleeping with the “pure” mother figure. This is anti-Black Brady Bunch Behavior. Very.

News Flash: Too much 21st century reality is a bad thing. I hope this kind of “reality” is rare, but even if it isn’t, it’s a dirty-laundry kind of a story. It was in bad taste and unnecessary.

BUT SOMEHOW, I STILL LIKED THE MOVIE.

I suppose it’s because it was a comedy and it WAS FUNNY

The bumbling criminals were black and had guns but these types of characters are supposed to be packing heat and they provided comic non-family relief; I wouldn’t have missed these two dudes. The interracial relationship wasn’t central to the movie, and it was handled in the stereo-typical manner, but it was worth a laugh or two. (One shouldn’t be looking for too many surprise laughs in a Black Brady Bunch movie anyway)

The black men, the brothers and boyfriends, were all handsome in their own way. ??? ??? is an import via England like ??? ??? of Inside Man fame. The two of them are enough to make a girl re-think her citizenship. England can’t be as cloudy and rainy as they say it is—can it? And, Chris Brown is so charming on screen, you could watch that boy brush his teeth for fifteen minutes while he made faces and you’d probably laugh. You’d be glad to see Brown come to pick up your daughter for her first date—right up until you found out he was a singer. (We all know how singers get over, don’t we?)

The three sisters were all beautiful as well. There was one ho-ho-ho joke too many about the business woman sister, but other than that they all played well together with the meatiest role of the movie left in the capable hands of Regina King.

I think I’ll get this movie when it comes out on video if I can clean it up.

CLEANING UP THIS CHRISTMAS

There used to be a company that “cleaned” movies. That is, they removed the four letter words from movies so they could be shown in homes of conscientious parents and daring schools who want to show movies like Crash I think it went out of business, so I think I’ll create another company that does the same thing only it will also remove the black stereo types that reinforce poor behavior in other races, especially within the dominant culture. (Example of poor behavior--Two or three white men per year approach me for “a date.” I’d need another stopwatch to measure the time it takes for them to get to a seriously offensive sexual innuendo.)

As far as This Christmas goes, I'd leave in the gun play that involves the bumbling bookies. It’s central to the story. Or maybe I’d leave them in and cornball it up have them shout non-four-letter-word expletives at eldest brother when they are chasing him down to get their money.

I’d also delete the sisters sleeping with boyfriends---adults can guess that they’re “doing it” if they’re old enough to know such things and those who aren’t old enough to know such things simply won’t guess.

As for the patriarch and the mother sleeping together—if I had to leave it in, as it’s the 21st century, then I’d simply change the patriarch’s job. He would not be the Deacon of a church. That was simply unnecessary and making the father figure a Deacon wasn't just an airing of dirty laundry, but an airing of the dirtiest of piece underwear--of a revered institution, the church. That wasn' just bad taste or disrespectful, but it almost seems like somebody was trying to make some sort of point. I can’t help but wonder if the director or producer did it on deliberately. The father figure's job description as “Deacon” didn’t add thing-one to the story.

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A Friendship at Five to Midnight

When a friendship ends, in life and in the stories we read as children, there is always a clear reason for it, especially when the story is about a female. If one of the friends doesn’t move away or something similar, then one of the girls involved is presumed to be selfish, controlling, or mean-spirited. Or maybe one of the young women involved begins to use drugs or alcohol. Barring physical separation, when a friendship ends one woman is presumed to have remained right and good while the other seems to have gone wrong, off track. It seems constantly implied that friendships are supposed to last forever; that they would last forever if only both people involved would simply behave, but as one gets older one knows that keeping a friendship alive isn’t always easy or even always desirable.

* * *

I met Marianne in 1993 when we were in Missouri for a training class. Being hundreds of miles away from home, we, like most people training there, were hoping that we’d find someone to hang out with over the next six months. I would never have expected to find someone who thinks so much like me that we’d wind up making the same bad jokes, the same bad puns, at exactly the same time. We spoke in unison so often during a dinner we went to on the very first night that people asked us where we’d met before as we were from opposite coasts.

My friendship with Marianne has always seemed like destiny, and that’s not a word I’ve ever put much stock in.

After many more dinners, movies, late night talks, then meeting her fiancé, studying together, and deciding to share an apartment for three months until school ended, we were close friends. Successfully completed our training program, Marianne was assigned to work near her home in southern California while I was assigned to work in central California, 3000 miles from home--as planned.

Despite being without my military-brat training in long-distance -friendship maintenance, Marianne was as good a friend to me via phone and in-person visits as she had been when we were living together. Knowing I was far from home, she made sure that I was at her house for multiple family birthdays including my own, Thanksgivings, and Christmases whenever I managed to get off work. Marianne, being the nurturer she is, took good care of me.

In the wedding party, I was there when she got married to her rich boyfriend, a man whose East Coast family probably came over on the Mayflower, a man without a career or a plan in his late thirties, a man who we both knew to be abusive.

“That’s the way men are.”

This is a statement often traded between single female friends. Therefore, I thought nothing of her saying this to me, in a myriad of ways, over the months leading up to her wedding. By the time she’d said this to me regarding her future husband’s tendency to come unglued, start screaming, and calling her names, my older sisters had me well versed in the hot-tempered ways of men that couldn’t be expected to be as strong and secure as our mythical father, who had died when we were too young to truly know him.

In other words, I mostly agreed with Marianne’s view of men. I believed that all but a precious few males on the planet can be provoked to verbal violence by very little and that a small percentage of them can be further provoked to physical violence too. The only thing that confused me about Marianne was that she voluntarily married one of the worst. Not only was he capable of going into a rage over almost nothing, like my sisters’ husbands, but he was using foul language on her, his own wife, and couldn’t even control himself in public.

Eventually the 3000 miles between me and my extended family (and their attitudes) provided space for other kinds of people, other kinds of male people, to enter my life. I began to understanding ‘that’s the way men are’ applies to the men that some of us attract, applies to the men that some of us allow to stay in our lives—not to all men, not even to most men.
By the time Marianne’s marriage counselor had described Raymond as Machiavellian, I had begun preparing for Marianne’s weekly calls with titles of books that discuss boundaries and abuse rather than with my own stories of woe in regards to single men.

Years later, after having moved to New York to live near his family, Marianne gave birth to their only child. She called me, with all the sisterly devotion and love one could ask for, from her hospital bed to tell me Amy had been born. Yet, my sympathy for Marianne began to wane that very day and in direct proportion to its attaching itself to her new little girl.

Having established better boundaries for myself, I found that I was increasingly less willing to listen to Marianne on the optimistic days when she’d tell me stories of victorious victimhood, victorious because she’d suffered his abuses in silence, telling nobody but me. I found that I was increasingly less willing to listen to her on the pessimistic days as well, when nothing she did was right, has ever been right, or ever will be right again, just before asking me why she was stupid enough to marry him.

Weary of hearing how badly my friend Marianne was being treated from the only person with the ability to put an end to it—Marianne, I stopped visiting her as often. I got tired of trying to get her to save her own sanity without saying too much. I got tired (and angry) hearing how worried she was about her daughter’s increasingly agitated behavior while she did nothing.

Then, I got tired of being tired. I quit suggesting books and told her that Raymond wasn’t the only one in their marriage with a problem. I told her to go see a therapist for her, not for her marriage.

Her phone calls to me became less frequent after that, and I was sad at first, but then I was glad. The stories of how Raymond would scream at her daughter for being right about something that he’d mislaid or broken himself would make me angry, not at him, but at Marianne. The myth of motherhood says that mothers are supposed to protect their children from all comers. Knowing that Marianne’s childhood desperation to have a father was driving her, creating her willingness to put up with anything for the sake of her child having a “father,” couldn’t keep a small part of me from beginning to hate her. Talking to her less often relieved me because it made that awful feeling abate.

When Marianne told me she was divorcing Raymond, she also told me something that she’d hidden from me earlier. Raymond had physically abused her while she was pregnant, enough to make her bleed. My sympathy-dial moved only for her daughter on that score, but for Marianne I was genuinely sad about the death of her marriage because she was sad. However, I was ecstatic that Raymond would soon be out of the house. Or, so I thought.

Raymond quit his job soon after the divorce; he’s rich and he doesn’t have to work. Despite Marianne’s having full custody of Amy and Raymond having fairly limited visitation rights, he’s at the house more now than when they were married--and just as easily enraged.

Someone once told me that a person should have always have three kinds of friendships in his or her life: some where you are the student being mentored; some where both friends are equal; and some where you are the mentor and the other is the student. Marianne and I, our friendship seems to go through these friendship models like they are phases instead. She has been my mentor and my equal, but she’s refused to be my student. Just last month, she asked me for more advice to ignore in regards to her daughter’s increasingly poor behavior.

I worry about Marianne’s need to learn everything the hardest way, over the longest route, but I especially worry about the rocky road she’s leaving behind for her daughter to follow.

Nevertheless, I can’t change Marianne or even influence her in any significant way. I don’t even suggest a good therapist anymore; nobody can influence someone who knows everything already.

Marianne is a good person. She’s not intentionally selfish, in any way mean-spirited, or so controlling you can’t get her to back off. Yet, I feel certain that this friendship has nearly run its course. She’s nurturing toward me even now, but while I am not the mentored, the equal, or the mentor, there’s no place left for me to stand within the relationship. And, I am so tired.

If we can both remain grateful for what we had, I think, I hope the end will involve cards and phone calls on Thanksgivings and Christmases forever.

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Who Cares About Imus?

Imus, who is back on the air in a new WABC radio show, has spent much seeking forgiveness for the racial remarks he made about Rutger's female basketball team-- remarks which wound up getting him fired and a 20 million dollar settlement from CBS.

I can't speak for all "nappy-headed ho's" everywhere, but all it would take for me to get over Imus' racial remarks would be for me to hear that Imus was willing to show me the money. All he would have to do is show me that he has donated to charity* every dollar, euro, and peso that he received from CBS.

Now that he's so remorseful, he must know that firing him was the right thing for CBS to do.* Now that he has been the error of his ways, how can he stand to keep his ill gotten gains? I'm only thinking of him. I just want him to be able to get the beauty sleep he so desperately needs.

Regardless of what Imus does or doesn't do, the truth is, I've heard worse comments on the radio than the ones Imus made. And, I've heard them on Christian Radio here in Los Angeles.

One morning last year, on a station I no longer listen to, the person who announces the Through the Bible series seemed to be making a list of what "we" as Christians should stand against. One of the things on this list: "...some minority group trying to change our values."

Here in the United States, in this context, the words 'minority group' usually means 'non-white group', which means "us" is most definitely white.

Obviously, announcer on this "Christian" radio station was/is trying to appeal to the baser nature of its largely republican audience. (Evidence that we're talking about a Republican Radio station in Christian Clothing: Anne Coulter was on the station a few weeks back talking about how some pastor she spoke to said his congregation would vote for Beelzebub before they'd vote for Hilary Clinton. A politically neutral radio station would never broadcast such a thing)

But I digress...

People don't get fired for statements like "some minority group trying to change our values" but it's statements like this that really count--not "nappy headed ho's". Why? Because the lesser white people that utter the first racist statement and lesser white people that receive them without flinching perpetuate institutional racism. (And it's white racism that's troublesome, as opposed to the racism of others, because whites are the largest semi-homogenous group; and it is they that are predominantly in charge of the institutions that are allowed, encouraged to be racist.)

The Imus-es of this world are offensive but at least they're obvious. Therefore, what I should do is also obvious.

I should listen to Imus' new show on Citadel's WABC for a week, make a list of who advertises during his show, stop buying their crap, and send an e-mail out to everyone I know and advise them to do the same. I should wait a year, then do the same thing again. I can make it an annual event. I can only hope that ABC gets hit in the pocketbook too.

Again, I will be believe Imus has repented when he shows me the money--all 20 million dollars of it in someone else's pocket.

As for the "Christian" Radio Station, I feel that this kind of racism is much more insideous, but I don't know what to do about it. Racist people posing as Christians is something black folks have been trying to figure out since the days of slavery. Martin Luther King was one of the few that who willingly went to work on their consciences, and look what happened to him.

I wrote to the station in question, and they ignored me. Surprise,right? I was only one of ten African Americans listening to the station in the first place--so my refusing to listen to them anymore did absolutely nothing.

Next time, maybe I'll write to someone outside their organization about the remarks and see what happens. The FCC? Other Christian Organizations? I don't know, but I'll figure something out.

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Biased Movie Review: A Rose By The Name of Demon

a.k.a. The Golden Compass

Because I like to have a story unfold before me, I usually make sure I don’t read anything about a movie before I go to see it. I hate having even half the highlights told to me before I see a film. However, in the case of the Golden Compass, I accidentally read part of an article on the film because the article was located outside the movie review section of the newspaper that I carefully avoid every day.

The part of the article that caught my eye was about a Christian and an Atheist up in arms about the content about the movie—which neither had seen yet. I turned the page of the paper without reading much more. Christians raising Cain over some movie they haven’t seen yet is nothing new.

The entire Da Vinci Code controversy surrounds a picture of Jesus sitting next a feminine looking John at the last supper. We find out it’s not John but Mary Magdalene sitting next to Jesus because she’s his wife. (Huge leap) However, even in the fictional story the picture is a painting not a photograph. And, the painting was done by Da Vinci many hundreds of years after Jesus was crucified, not during the last supper --unless Da Vinci had access to a time machine.

The author saying he believed his own fictional story was probably the best marketing ploy of this or any other century—especially since the author blew the ending.

Christians, who are as weird about sex as non-Christians can be greedy and cheap about it, protested Jesus’ dreaming about having a wife and having sex(?) in the movie The Last Temptation of Christ. Like Jesus wouldn’t have preferred enjoying the gift of sex that he gave humans over going to cross to be tortured on our behalf. Christians protested that when they should have been protesting how wimpy Jesus seemed while crying ALL the time. (Somehow the crying didn’t come off as compassionate. I’m not a film major. I don’t know why. I just know it didn’t. And there were plenty of other things to debate about in that movie.)

The atheist raising Cain without seeing the movie? That was new to me, but I wanted to see the movie for myself, so I didn’t read the article despite my curiosity.

In the theater, the movie begins

*Narrator on screen says something like:

Blah blah blah
“... in most worlds people have their souls inside their bodies”
Blah blah blah
“...in this world people have their souls outside their bodies...
Blah blah blah
“...and their souls look like animals.”

*My thoughts:

Oh Wow! How unique---and the animal part is so appealing to children. I love the sci-fi fantasy thing. I can already tell this is going to be great!!!

*Narrator on screen says:

Their souls are called demons”

*My thoughts:

What?! Did she say “demons?” What did she say?! SOMEBODY HIT REWIND! What did she say?

*Narrator on screen says:

blah, blah, blah
“Demons....”
blah blah
“...and their demons....”
blah blah
“...with her demon....”
blah... blah... blah...
“demon...demon...demon”

*My thoughts (eyelids blinking rapidly):

????????????
????????????
????????????

I don’t think I heard a thing the characters were saying for next three minutes despite Herculean mental effort on my part.

Having grown up watching Bewitched, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, and the Wizard of Oz, I am used to good people and good magic people in my fiction. And, I know that they can’t be both good and victorious if there aren’t evil people and mythical evil magic creatures to battle--emphasis on the word “mythical.”

I didn’t know there were people labeled as “witches” in the bible until I was grown. Moreover, as a child raised in a Christian household, I wasn’t allowed to dress up as a witch because they’re generally understood to be evil—so I was told at the time. (I’m going to have to call my mother and ask her if she knew about the bible thing or what.)

Even after I did know witches were mentioned in the bible, in my mind “witch” still equals fictional creature in my head. Yet, there are things in the bible I simply obey on faith though I don’t think there’s much to them.

For example, I have a hard time believing anybody’s talking the dead using a ouija board, but I’m a Christian and I’m not even supposed to try—and one never knows, does one? I have a hard time believing in fortune tellers too, but I notice I always want to go see one “for fun” when I really, really want something or someone to come my way really bad and Jesus hasn’t been too forthcoming in the delivery department—and lucky for me 99% of the time that I don’t get what I thought I wanted.

Logically speaking witches should fall into this same category as ouija boards and fortune tellers in that I don’t worry about them, but I don’t screw around with them either. I don’t do some things because in God, we trust and with Jesus, we do not mess. Therefore, I guess I have something to figure out in the “witches” department.

But, identifying with a hero, imagining myself in the place of a hero that has a soul called a “demon” is different. VERY. That’s just plain frightening, if not repulsive. The word demon or daemon comes from the word demonic. Demonic refers to the devil, lucifer, satan, beelzebub...you get the picture.

A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

As I remember the joy I felt during the first two minutes of this movie, I had to wonder why the author would call the souls outside the body a demon? Even if you aren’t a Christian, the step from the word “demon” to “demonic” is a short one, and we all know that that word means evil. So I had to ask myself why would the author do this? I remember thinking that this could have been a cute movie if he’d named the soul something else...until the evil corporate people trying to dominate the world were so clearly based on the church.

Usually basing the evil powerful group on the church, as it was during the crusades, doesn’t bother me either. It’s getting old and it’s indicates a lazy brain on the part of the writer, but it’s accurate. However, being African American that part of a story doesn’t often touch me because I fully understand the difference between Christ and evil people who call themselves Christians.

I remember the crusades the same way everyone else does, but as an African American, I also remember stories about missionaries in Africa. I remember African-American U.S. History and that includes the biblical justifications of chattel type slavery. I remember that the first whites to stand up with African Americans during the civil rights movement were Christians (and Jewish), but I also remember that white Christians (and white people calling themselves Christians both) were the first to create “private Christian” schools in order to avoid integration.

I know my own people, Christians, regardless of the color of their skin, then and now.

However, this movie, and the book it’s based on, is different. The author of the book this movie is based on chose to make the people running his church, The Magisterium, look, not so much callous, arrogant, greedy, and therefore evil, but devilish and irredeemable in Christian looking garb. This, after he’d already named the souls of his human looking creatures “demon.”

Then came the witches that don’t usually bother me. There were numerous flying witches and they looked evil, nothing like Sabrina or Samantha. They were dressed in long flowing colors you’d associate with a rotting swamp, and their faces were done up to look hard and shadowy—as they fought on the side of the heroine.

I’m not sure, distracted as I was by the demons, but I don’t think this epic breadth movie had the epic depth to go the distance. The heroine’s friends aren’t before you long enough, in their normal environments, for you to care about them once they were in peril. I simply wasn’t engaged. And while it wasn’t boring (the worst of movie crimes), it wasn’t good enough to make most people happy to wait a year or even a month to see the next installment—not nearly.

In the final analysis, I know that Shakespeare is wrong in this case.
A rose, or a soul, by another name does not smell as sweet.

Still, the elements of this movie are not evil in themselves. I still think that this could have been a good story had it not been for the choices of words, labels, costumes, and darkened images of things associated with Christianity. These things all reflect the attitude of the author of the book, maybe the producer, and maybe the director as well toward Christianity.

Many people can feel it when somebody is staring at them. I hope Christians can feel it when somebody, or multiple “somebodys,” filled with hate has them in their cross- hairs.

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Back In The U.S.S.R. & Litany Against Fear PT 2

When removing “inappropriate material” from our sight becomes more important than exposing inappropriate behavior in our midst and stopping it cold, you have to wonder if you even recognize the country you’re living in. When a company like You Tube can dismiss, or remove from sight, inappropriate behavior executed by people (police officers) who have the right to deadly force when and if it truly is appropriate, you have to pinch yourself and make sure that you’re really awake as you wonder if you’re living in the U.S.A. in 2007 or in the U.S.S.R. in 1977.

I’d like to believe that this You Tube disgrace is an isolated incident and consider its actions an American embarrassment, but it may be they are only following the example that has been set for them at the highest levels of our government.

This White House has been called the most secretive administration in recent history by in numerous articles by numerous main stream newspapers and periodicals:

1/30/2002 Dallas Morning News: The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, notified members that it will sue the White House for task force records of meetings with people and groups outside of government, including executives of the now-disgraced Enron Corp. It would be the first such lawsuit in the GAO's 80-year history....Waxman added, "I regret that the White House is insisting on secrecy." (GAO plans to sue White House for energy panel documents, David Jackson)

3/25/2002 Christian Science Monitor: Backlash grows against White House Secrecy, Robert Dallek

1/03/2003 New York Times: “The Bush administration has put a much tighter lid than recent presidents on government proceedings and the public release of information, exhibiting a penchant for secrecy that has been striking to historians, legal experts and lawmakers of both parties. (Government Openness at Issue As Bush Holds On to Records, Adam Clymer)

3/31/2004 Washington Post: "Everyone's got a theory, evaluation or behind-the-scenes report on the big retreat. The common theme: This is a highly secretive White House that gives ground only when it has to." (Behind the About-Face, Howard Kurtz)

10/30/2005 San Francisco Chronicle: “Leaks, lies and Libby, Secrecy was White House's Holy Grail -- and its undoing” (THE CIA LEAK CASE: A Presidential Aide Indicted, Martin F. Nolan)

2/16/2006 San Diego Union-Tribune: It has been said often enough that this administration is abnormally secretive, suspicious and surreptitious in its dealings with the world; but really, it's much worse than that. They have so closed themselves off from any position or idea not their own that they have become almost an American-style budding Kremlin. (A White House That Is Built On Secrecy Georgie Anne Geyer)

10/14/2007 The Boston Globe—Shadow government: Inside the Bush administration's sweeping, often secretive efforts to expand the power of the presidency, David Gergen)

And the current administration doesn’t like “inappropriate material” a.k.a. disturbing images anymore than You Tube does.

Remember Tami Silicio? You might not remember her name, but she’s the woman who was fired for taking photographs of caskets containing OUR troops---thus displaying the human cost of the Iraq war.

Our in-bedded press, however, has been much more cooperative with Washington. Embedded with the troops in Iraq, our free press has yet to take, or publish, or report on a highly disturbing photograph from Iraq despite thousands upon thousands of people, including our own soldiers and Iraqi civilians, having died there. (I’m talking of pictures like 1972’s little Vietnamese girl running from the napalm in the background--that kind of disturbing—not the too little, too late 2004 Abu Gharaib pictures.)

And for all the blood that's been spilled we haven’t secured any Weapons of Mass Destruction, Iraqi Freedom*, or even cheap oil and gas.

Furthermore, the initial televised bombing of Iraq looked more like a video game than anything else. And if the bombing of Iraq was used by You Tube as a basis for what is “appropriate” for the American public to see, then no wonder they removed the videos of police beatings from their website.

We need to decide what we’re most afraid of, take time out to think, then hold on to the right fears. And I hope one of our right or correct fears is a healthy fear of the abuse of power in all its forms. I hope we’re afraid enough of “the bad police” to remove them from their jobs (at the very least) and from society (into jail) when circumstances call for it.

I also hope Back in the U.S.S.R. is strictly the title of a Beatles tune and not a label for the direction that America appears to be drifting in.



*Iraq cannot be considered "free" when the person voted into power in Iraq says, 'Blackwater is out of here' ( for shooting 17 civilians) and our president, not Iraq's, but our president can say something like--'Oh no they ain't. Hold your horses.'

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