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