OLYMPUS HAS (REALLY) FALLEN

A lot is being written about my beloved Detroit. It is sad, harsh and undeniably true. But what worries me is not what they are saying. It is what they are not saying.

They allude to it, using phrases like “racial issues,” “social conflict,” “underlying resentment” and the like. What they are really talking about is the fact that blacks and whites in Detroit have hated, resented and fought with each other for decades over the fact that God made us with different skin.

The wounds that have healed in other cities (or at least have scabbed over) remained fresh in the D for years. There’s a lot of blame to go around for this and naming names is just useless now. We all know the players and many of them are dead. What started as hot blooded odium turned into cold, impenetrable and muted antipathy over the years. And after a while, no one even talked about the history of it; it became axiomatic, a basic truth: the white people were racist and the black people were unworthy of respect.

Let me be clear: Detroit has fallen because black people and white people could not find their way to humanity over their history of violence, racism and oppression.

Don’t get me wrong; all the other factors are relevant, too. The economy, mismanagement, globalization and NAFTA all played a part but in the end, the choices that sacked the city were not made by political parties, laws or economic theories; they were made by men and women.

And what governs the hearts of people? Love, compassion or the lack thereof.

When blacks took the city by political process, electing its first black mayor, there was a sense in the community that we had won, defeated white people at their own game. We had suffered two riots and countless acts of bigotry, violence and legal discrimination. It was a victory won by courage, faith and built on the dead bodies of slaves, revolutionaries and sainted men.

And out of this grew pride and more than a little gloating. “And the white people will fight us, we thought. They will stand in our way, hope for our failure and do everything fair and unfair to see us fail.”

In white communities, there was panic, fear and anger. “How dare those inferior people take the city that we built, these workers who cleaned our toilets and shined our shoes just a generation ago.” The blacks would fuck it up they thought, they don’t know anything about running a city. In the end, their true nature would win out and Detroit would come to ruin.

They were both right.

Blacks could not find it in our Christian hearts to forgive the past and build for the future and Whites could not accept a shift in power to dark faces and turn away from a history in which they were superior to others.

Many of us tried. Some blacks and whites tried to work together but it wasn’t enough. Mostly, the brothers in Detroit waited for the whites to come back to the city.  And while we waited, we kept a man in the mayor’s office for 30 years who made sure that would never happen, a man who lacked the vision and the temperament to take us into the new millennium. 

But we had no idea that whites would rather build citadels out of farmland and forests than live and work with us. Oakland County grew to the nation’s fourth richest, while Detroit turned into a municipal husk.

And for my people, the black people, we have far worse things to worry about than who lives in Manoogian Mansion. We are at the lowest point in our culture since the Civil Rights Movement. Our families are destroyed and our children turned asunder. Much like a black President, our symbolic ownership of Detroit did nothing to stop our slide into our current social abyss.

So go on and think the black “city manager” means that race is not a factor in Detroit’s takeover. Go on and think Governor Snyder and his team did not set out to end black power. Keep denying what is before your eyes and we will be doing this again in 2113 when the black and whites lose the city to the Latin-Asian majority.

And for me who watched the tanks roll in ’67, watched the Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings become multiple champions, who loved Faygo and Better Made chips, Buddy’s Pizza and Bill Kennedy, I say goodbye to the town I grew up in. You were loved but love doesn’t keep a city alive.

Love for your fellow man does.

© 2013

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

THE BEAUTY OF STANDARDS

At What Price Beauty and At What Sacrifice Denial?

The enmity coming out of the Olympics which has pitted some women against each other is so troubling that it has stopped my brain and left one of my characters stranded in a flying 7-11 (long story). When this happens, I have to go all non-fiction and get it out of my system.

The world has many beauty standards but I concern myself only with the one we’ve built here in America.  I say this because there’s always someone who wants to point out that in Kwasafroland, they worship fat women with bald heads. Well, in America if you look like that you’re the trailer park homewrecker on the Jerry Springer Show.

Beautiful people as they are defined are probably less than 1% of our population.  Beauty, outer beauty, is not earned.  It is inherited and so there is a definite lack of respect that goes with it from the non-beautiful.

And yet, we exalt beauty and why? Because we need to. 

Beauty excites the pleasure and euphoric regions of our brains and this is an inborn instinct that has been with us since we were writing on cave walls.

And yet we are all full of shit when it comes to what is beautiful. We lie and try not to hurt people’s feelings. We fall into political correctness and get vague when we want to compliment someone who hasn’t won the gene pool lottery. "Oh your baby is sooo pretty."

And we all want to believe that good-looking people have it good, that they shit money and fall ass backwards into pools of happiness.  And whenever some nice looking person complains about their lives, we resent them, believing that they should never complain about anything.

Which brings me to LoLo Jones and the other two runners who criticized her behavior and her non-medaling performance. Publically, people have said “they are all beautiful” but privately people have said far worse things, like one of them looks like Wesley Snipes.

Why can’t we just say they are not as nice looking as LoLo and that’s why she gets the endorsements because her beauty stimulates our brains and makes us want to buy the crap she’s hawking?

We can’t because we never want to acknowledge that we have a standard and that most of us are not in it. Well, if that’s the case, why not change it? There are more of us than them, right? Then why can’t we just flip the script on this and put Gabourey Sidibe in a Speedo and have her sell us sneakers? (If you're laughing or cringing right now then I rest my case)

Well, we’re not going to do it. We’re not because we really do want to believe that real beauty is on the inside and that it is more significant than outer, inherited beauty. But mostly we won’t do it because we can’t. We are naturally predisposed to be attracted to beauty according to the societal (if not human) standard and opposed to anything outside of it.

So let’s say that LoLo’s criticizers are just as pretty as she is and let’s laugh at her because she didn’t win the race.  After all, she won the Fine Ass Lottery, right? Let just keep lying until our neighbor with the ugly baby really believes the kid doesn’t look like a potato.

Or we could be honest and let people have all of their assets inherited and earned and accept what life has given us and admire what it has given to others. And I'm not saying that we should be mean. We can still spare feelings so no one will have to tell that one Kardashian sister she has a jaw like Jay Leno. But it won’t happen because it is not who we are as a species. God don't like ugly and apparently, we don’t either.

Copyright 2012

THE REAL LIFE OF PI

The New Town Tragedy Is Not Unfathomable; It's Temporal.

Adam Lanza's father and mother were stockbrokers. Then Adam was born and it was apparent that there was something wrong with him, the father left them. He was a man with money and options and a son that God deemed should be born with a deficiency. So he split and left them the house and over $250K a year in support. 

But no amount of money can compensate for a father who loves and supports you and so the mom struggled without him-- and so did the son. The family fell apart as the bond, the covenant was gone.  Adam plunged into violent psychosis, and his mother, money and all, could not help him. 

And all you divorced and never married moms and dads, I don't wanna hear your story about how this is an unfair analogy and how you're a good parent despite the circumstances. I'm making a much bigger point here.

A mother loves a kid in a way a father can't. She had the kid as part of her body and her connection to him is soul deep and her judgment about him is that much more skewed in the kid's favor. A father loves his kid but his connection is not the same. He can love but he judges the kid with a little more, shall we say, parental objectivity.

Who knows but if the father had stayed, the kid may have found his way back to peace or maybe the mother's love and the father's objectivity would have combined to lock his ass up when he got older and more violent.

When people get married, who the hell do you think you are making those promises to? To each other? That is the arrogance of us now, that another human being promises loyalty and fidelity to us and our pathetic capacities. No, you are making those promises to much higher powers and if you break them, then you invite the consequences and not just for yourself... for all of us.

And if you have a baby without the wedding, don't think that lets you off the hook. Marriage is a man-made religious ceremony. It memorializes a spiritual promise. Have a baby and marriage or not, you have made the same convenant with God.

There are 2.4 trillion seconds in an average person's life, as many as the digital expression of life's most famous number, Pi.  A trillion little moments, wherein a choice can change your life and the lives of everyone on this planet. One person makes a choice, a baby is born. He makes another and 26 people die; 50 trillion moments are gone, one of which could have cured cancer, become President or made a discovery that took us to the next level of humanity.

How much clearer could the urgency of our social mandate be? If we do not fix the little things, then the bigger consequences, the fruit of those choices, surely come.

Let us all choose wisely.

Copyright 2012

NATURAL BLACK ASS

Why Are Idiotic White Men Fixated On Michelle Obama's Ass? Just Stop Looking At It-- If You Can.

Here we go again. Another moron has said something negative about the First Lady's posterior. “Fat Butt Michelle Obama,” said Bob Grisham, a high school football coach who was surreptitiously recorded by one of his students.  (He was suspended later) Add to that Rush Limbaugh and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican, who both commented about FLOTUS' assets and you get a notion of what's in the minds of these men. But guess what?

I'm with you fellas.

Not in the way you said it, but in what motivated you. Michelle Obama is fine. Oh yeah, us fellas all know it but we are respectful because she is married, a mother and a symbol for the world. But since you brought it up, she's hot, man. And I know what you think when you see it. "I could not handle that!" And you would be right. Which is why her husband is the President, the man who can handle it, who got it, and kept it.

Underneath this levity is something all of us dark types know but do not discuss a lot. The sexual history of our women with white men is deep, dark and has built part of the complex relationship between the races. But just like "Scandal" everything must come to light. Sure, these men are supposedly insulting Ms. Obama but like my mother would say: "What you doin' looking in the first damned place?"

Let me be clear, ALL WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL but my appreciation for women began with women of color and so my mind was focused on their particular attributes. I like what I see in the mirror and so I naturally sought out my compliment in the manner of a woman. It is what most people do. Most races stick to their own but men and women develop an appreciation for all forms of beauty and in the end, we all know love humbles us all and changes everything.

Still, why you lookin' at Michelle Obama's ass? 

Because she is 5"11 and that's a lot of female real estate, it is formidable and awesome and you're a man who thinks about sex 85% of the damned day.  You want it but you're not sure you won't get lost in it so you insult her like that fox who couldn't reach the grapes on the vine.

Michelle Obama has the body of a healthy 48 year old black woman. And so the unstated mandate that she have the body of Heidi Klum is ridiculous, bigoted and shows how little respect you have for women. 

Still, I know you like what you see and so I am giving all men permission to enjoy the visual treat that is black women and their God-given pulchritude. And that goes for you too, black men who have fallen off your admiration duties. 

We shouldn't have to keep defending a body type to people who are intent on being assholes but this bears discussion. The first black First Lady has reshaped the way the world sees black women, their history their beauty and yes their asses.  And so detractors are pulled by their hate into insults the reveal their secret desires and shortcomings.  

So, I see this as more evidence of what we always knew was true.  These angry men should free themselves, stop dogging FLOTUS and reach out to that black female co-worker you've been afraid to have coffee with.  Get rid of your secret cache of black girl porn and go find a real black girl to make porn with.

There's a saying in black culture: "Kiss my natural black ass." It is an insult sure but "natural" is the part I'm concerned with. The saying refers to the fact that we acknowledge who we are, what we look like and anyone who doesn't like it can fuck off.

So angry men, stop embarrassing yourselves.  Stop revealing how concerned you are with your own fantasies.  Stop acting like a big butt offends you.  Be good to yourself and admire what God has made for us men to see.  And if you don't like Michelle Obama's backside, you can kiss her natural black ass.

Then again, I bet you'd like that. 

© 2013

OBAMA BUSH

Our 43rd and 44th Presidents are alike in one very startling way.

People believe there are marked differences between George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama. One's black, the other white. One's liberal, the other conservative. One's loved, the other vilified.

But historians will see it differently, at least when it comes to foreign policy and national security. They will see the glaring similarities between the two men. After promising to abolish all of the "power grabs" of his predecessor, Obama has abolished few of them and in fact as extended many, like the FISA law and created new ones like banning assembly at government buildings. On the foreign policy front, some have noted that there are 100 ways Obama is like Bush.

Whether Obama broke promises or not is at times debatable. What is without question is the fact that Presidential policy and the U.S. Global Initiative changed on September 11, 2001 and so our world agenda had to change.

Obama supporters say that this is because Bush created a new brand of foreign policy that effectively bound the new President (and future Presidents) to his political will.

Obama detractors say the President is at best weak and at worst, the leader of Bush's third and fourth term.

Presidents leave deep footprints in history and new Presidents don't so much chart new passages as they modify old ones.

Still, no progressive is happy with the situation and the conservatives pretend to be mad but notice that they are not angry about any of the wars, military actions or other aggressive moves by President Obama.

The President's second term goals have been stated. They include gun control, gay rights, immigration and the continuation of the aforementioned global policy.

So, if you're waiting on a big change, then you'd better start thinking about 2016. And how creepy will that picture look when Hilary Clinton's face is morphed in.

© 2013

OBAMA UNCHAINED?

A Second Term President Reveals Who A Man Really Is. 

So, now what?

Barrack Obama has been sworn in for a second term and after the parties and the parades and Beyonce what's gonna happen?

There was always the hope that the reserved man of the first term would give way to a more rambunctious President, one who would embrace progressivism and run with it. But judging from his speech, that's probably not going to happen. But I am making a direct appeal to the President.

Go Django.

Well, not in the literal sense. He should not try to erase his enemies, although would any of us miss the legitimate rape guy?

No, he should do it in the metaphorical sense, stop trying to please people who will never like or respect you.  Dr. King didn't want to be loved; he wanted people to embrace the policy of love but he was resolute in his beliefs and if you didn't like him, that was cool, just get out of the way.

I never expect any President to do anything by himself.  The Presidency is really very symbolic and so the President should stand for something, not just the circular politics of our time. He should stop declaring wars on concepts and inanimate objects and speak candidly about how people are losing ground.

But even if the President cannot be more Django-like, we can do something. We can unchain our minds against the things that have kept us enslaved to hopelessness, self-hate and discord. And for that we need no permission, no leadership, just will.

So, let's all say goodbye to Miss Candie and get it done.

©2013