Like Fathers, Like Sons

How many times must we walk this terrible path until we see the pattern of loss and injustice transcends race and calls upon us to do the same not symbolically but in reality?

When the O.J. Simpson verdict was read, I remember white people crying and a group of black students who cheered. They felt justice was served against a terrible legacy of injustice. I felt sick, like a killer had gotten away with murder.

I also remember Fred Goldman's face.

He looked as if someone had reached into his chest and pulled out his heart. I remember thinking that man is going to fall dead any second now. I hoped I would never be the owner of that countenance and I hoped that I'd never see it again. Well, I did.

On the face of Trayvon Martin's father, Tracy Martin.

No one wants to talk about these two cases. People want to say the Simpson/Goldman murders are old news. Tell that to Fred Goldman who never got to see his son marry and have kids. Tell that to Tracy Martin who's now in that same living hell. Or tell to me, who just got off the phone with his son reminding him that his worth as a human being is not decided by criminal cases or the perceptions of society.


There are many murders in our nation. The media decides which ones are presented to be national news but we the people decide which ones actually become those national concerns. Zimmerman's case grabbed us all because it is a clear reflection of something that I had hoped was no longer true: apparently, we still hate each other.

The Civil Rights Movement gave way to Political Correctness, this code of fake civility intended to never make anyone feel bad.  But what it also did was taught bigots and other evil people to hide and it left everyone in a field filled with landmines, where saying the wrong word could cost you your livelihood. And the arbiters of this social justice is our media, which has as much integrity as Chinese steel. (See? I shouldn't have said that)

The races have integrated but it was a social integration not a personal or spiritual one. We are better than we were, but do we really know each other? Do we actually care? Or do we just say what's expected, what's safe, then secretly get with people who are just like us and vent our anger and frustrations?

Technology is pushing us all further apart as we trade actual conversation for sending tweets. As a result, the fringes of both races and ideologies are working hard to keep us apart, because without continuous animosity, none of them know how to make a living. (This is where I see Al Sharpton and Ann Coulter working at a diner arguing over how dark to make the toast)


I want all of the people protesting the Zimmerman verdict to think of Ron and Fred Goldman in your righteousness. I want you to resist splitting hairs and using lawyer analysis to make differences in the cases so you can always be right. Because there is no right here.

Ron Goldman was just as precious as Trayvon Martin. And Tracy Martin is just as worthy of justice as Fred Goldman.

I want all the people who support Zimmerman to consider that you have picked a criminal and a miscreant as the poster boy for gun rights, self defense or whatever it is this man is supposed to represent.

Think how you felt about the Simpson verdict and know that others now feel that grief.

Think of O.J.'s smug-ass face as he smiled and danced out of the courtroom over the headless corpses of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

Then think of Trayvon Martin dead on his back 180 degrees from where Zimmerman said he landed, with no DNA from a bloody fight and no fingerprints on a gun he grappled for.

Zimmerman is just as guilty as O.J. And neither case was about justice but the failings of our still struggling society. We will not talk to, argue with or fight each other about race, so we hide behind political correctness and use these media cases to do it for us.  Here's a big revelation: No one is winning.

And if you think either of these killers is innocent because of his race, our racial history as a nation, the bias of the media or the legal system, then you just oil the machine that keeps producing this filth and these empty, heartbreaking verdicts.

Also, you need your head examined because they both, black and white, got away with it.

©2013

"North" by North West

©2013

BLACKS, VOTES & MURDER

So often I have said that America cannot prosper without its living soul, the descendants of the slaves who help to build this nation then suffered another century of atrocities on the path to equality. This week, we can see very clearly that this journey is far from over, that the value of America's black citizens is still very much in question.

Paula Deen, George Zimmerman and the Supreme Court's decision on the VRA illustrates how far we have to go and why we are still a very racially divided nation.

Paula Deen engaged in offensive and degrading behavior toward black people for years and no one said anything. She is not a bad person to be sure but that she saw nothing wrong with Plantation Weddings and comparing a black assistant to a blackboard ("Move away from that board, Hollis we can't see you.") speaks volumes about how arrogant she was about race relations. 

The Supreme Court defended equal rights for gays to marry but the day before sent a gut punch to blacks for whom the voting rights act was written. If we had not seen widespread voter suppression in the last election, no one would care but the same concerns that lead to the law being passed are still very real concerns today. And a day before that, SCOTUS dealt another blow to using race as a factor in college admissions. 

And George Zimmerman is on trial for murdering a boy because he was black. The Zimmerman case is the worst news of all because it devalues black life to the maximum degree. He and his attorney have actually pinned their hopes on their belief that the fact of being black presents a threat for which an appropriate response is death.

All of these events are connected by the issue that does not exist in a colorblind society: race.  and yet, here we are with voter suppression, a celebrity career in ruins and a man on trial for his life all because we have not and will not solve an issue that divided this nation into bloody conflict.

Even as our media tells us that race doesn't matter as much as it did in the last generation, race is causing seismic shifts in every area of life. The jails teem with black men, the black unemployment rate is twice the national average, the black family has been decimated and the black marriage rate is at an all time low.  Even our black President smacks us on the head and tells a crowd of black male college graduates to "be responsible."

We are over nothing, people.

Race still divides if not defines us here. And we can sweep it all under a rug until the bulge is as big as a mountain but that will change nothing. Paula Deen is now a villain for saying a word that's said a thousand times a day on radio. Southern states have already moved to uses age old tricks and deceptions to deter certain groups from voting.

And Trayvon Martin is still dead.

THE COWBOY'S REVENGE

The American cowboy is back with a vengeance, just as manliness is taking a beating.

My father loved a show called Gunsmoke, which was for a long time, the longest-running show on TV.  My cowboys were violent and ruthless. They didn't wait to shoot a bad guy and damned sure wasn't interested in taking him to prison like  Sergio Leon's Man With No Name Django and Trinity.

The cowboy disappeared for a long time until Clint Eastwood (who played the Man With No Name) brought them back with the oscar winner, Unforgiven. Then slowly, the cowboy returned to  films like Tombstone, Wyatt Earp and The Cowboy Way.

In the meantime, the moral ambivalence in our TV heroes had changed into full-out villainy. The TV show The Shield was a game-changer for TV cops. It's hero was a dirty cop whose morality was as fragile as the tin star he wore. Don't get me wrong, The Shield is a great show because it contained good men and women who were cops but it brilliantly focused on a man whose morality was a reflection of a society whole values had changed. At the same time, the cops and hoods in The Wire raised this theme to cinematic poetry.

But now there are some new sheriffs in town.

Justified's Raylan Givens, Hell on Wheels', Cullen Bohannon, Django and Longmire's Walt Longmire all have the best of the old and the new.  The are strong, kind, moral and take no shit.  But they also understand society's river of darkness and how their job navigates it. And whenever they need to, they will dip into those waters and then--look out.

In stark contrast to the many anti-heroes on TV, you know, the vampires, werewolves, serial killers, drug dealers and dirty cops, the millennial cowboys echo John Wayne, Gary Cooper as well as Vic Mackey and The Man With No Name.

And judging from the previews of the new Lone Ranger movie, the man behind the mask is out for revenge and bringing hell with him.

And the cowboy has come back just in time to slow the decline of masculinity we are now seeing in American culture.

In the western-themed movie, No Country For Old Men, Tommie Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Bell gives this long speech about dreams he had of his father, telling us that his kind, the hero, is going to pass on, leaving us with the psychopath Anton Chighur are our new alpha male.

I think the new cowboys in that picture above would disagree with that.

And so would I.

THE POLITICS OF MAYBE

All over the web, I see the most extreme, angry and ugly comments concerning politics.  There is never any attempt to understand anyone with a different idea and of course, we only like those who think just like us.  Anyone else is a complete idiot.

People of both ideologies accuse the other of being racist, fascist, evil and un-American.  And both Bush and Obama were compared to Stalin, Hitler and the Antichrist.

And while we are busy with our petty jealousies, arguing about guns, debt, abortion, God and all the other convenient distractions, so certain that we are the "good" ones, our government steals the world from us.

So I dare all of you to consider something terrifying and completely unheard of: Consider that maybe the other guys are right.

Maybe our government has gotten too big, maybe it's not big or progressive enough.

Maybe Boehner is a real patriot and maybe Obama is too. Or maybe they are both liars and idiots.

Maybe our families are crumbling because we have turned away from faith and maybe we need to let go of ridiculous biases based on fantasy, fear and hate.

Maybe the GOP is trying to save us from ourselves and maybe the Democrats are trying to keep us from repeating the failures of our past.

And maybe, just maybe we should all dial down the hate and intolerance for just a moment and consider that we are all Americans, that liberals and conservatives put freedom and God before differences and built a nation that rivaled those of old, that white men died in the Civil War to free black men and black men died in all the subsequent wars, boldly defending the nation which had once enslaved them.

We are the heirs of that great and heroic nobility and no matter how flawed, this is still our country.

Maybe we need to remember that.

©2013

The Stench Of The Onion

More Than A Tasteless Joke, The Attack On Quvenzhane Wallis Proves That Our Problems In America Are Bone Deep.

The Onion, those masters of satire, often strike at big targets like the President, Congress and the rich and famous. But what made them sink so low as to call a 9 year old girl a cunt.  Well, I'll tell you and you can disagree and call me names if you like, I don't care. 

They did it because she is black.

Never in the history of the Oscars, has a black actress so young been nominated for the highest honor in acting land.  And never has anyone dared to call a child this or any other vile name. Until now.  

Why not Tatum O'Neal, Ellen Page, Abagail Breslin, Linda Blair, Quinn Cummings, Mary Badham, Patty Duke, Jodie Foster, or the many others?

Since Obama was elected President, there is this belief that people can now throw away their political correctness and white guilt and just treat us like everyone else. Because you know, a black President makes up for all that other shit. That's fine, but everyone else was not called a cunt, were they?  

I submit to you that it is not some sense of social equality at work but a subversion of the very notion it purports to defy, that this fake colorblindness is the new racism. Now people can say what they really feel about the races, they can air their unbridled contempt and filthy bigotry about how their fellow Americans of African descent deserve nothing but that unbridled contempt.

And these few individuals bring holy hell down on all white people because so many of us are quick to indict everyone when one asshole goes off.  Stupid shit like this only confirms in the minds of black people that all white people have unstated hatred for them for no other reason than the color of their skin.  We know this is not true, but we do not live in a nation where our media will report the many acts of kindness and civility between the races.  All we see is the dirt.

Do we really have so little regard for one another, that we can't even feel protective of an innocent little girl?  How would you like to be the one to have to tell her what that word means and why she was called it?  

I know this seems like a big reaction, I know it was "just a joke."  I was so upset that I said fuck the Onion in every human language. But it's the small things, that determine the path of a society and the way we treat the most vulnerable dictates who we are.  Today, we have all fallen down.

And the thing that kills me is The Onion had a right to say it.  This is after all, America.  But we have a right to turn our backs on them.  But I know that we won't.  This will blow over by the end of the week and we will be nose-deep up some Kardashian's ass by Monday.

And for all the people who defend The Onion, that's your right, but you only feel that way because your daughter is a cunt.

See how funny that is?

©2013

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

If you look up the word tragedy, you will see that the death of Christopher Dorner and those he killed fits the definition. 

Our hungry media could not even find a picture of this soldier where he wasn't smiling. How did he turn into a killer?  Was he sick? Was it PTSD?  And did he come home like so many soldiers to find his nation still plagued by age-old problems which even combat in war cannot dissolve?

There was a time when men marched in to war thinking that they were defending freedom, liberty and human principles worthy dying and killing for. There was a time when black men demanded to be allowed to fight and die for a nation that would not even grant them the status of human being in the hopes of being judged worthy of full citizenship.  America was an ideal, and she would never send men to die for anything but true nobility.

Are we still that nation?

Were we ever that nation?  

I don't have the answer and of there is one, I am sure it's very complicated. But I do know this: Dorner was one helluva a soldier, a warrior who turned his skills against perceived enemies at home. He killed innocent people and in the end, would not be taken alive. His aggression was against a police force with a past that can only be described as evil at times.

And I also know something else.  Soon, another 20,000 or so soldiers will come home from Afghanistan, tired, stressed out and well-trained.  

How will we greet them?

copyright 2013