Thinking Seems to Have Stopped

I think that I have been thinking. But I think that my thoughts have been either non-conclusive or circular.

Like the past week's political ad that had the McCain campaign trotting out blonde bimbos and somehow linking them--or at least their celebrity--to Obama. And Paris Hilton's mom didn't appreciate it.

Then there was the coverage about Ludacris's song and somehow that Obama has responsibility for the rapper's lyrics. Hunh? (Nas has a much better joint, anyway.)

Then there was the senior pictures. How did it happen that my first-born posed for his senior pictures. And he looks like a frickin' man.

He has been spending the summer at the pool, lifeguarding. The pool is about as far away from us as some of my friends in the 'burbs can imagine. He is guarding at a pool in Anacostia. Right by here.

One friend said that he would never allow his kid to go to that pool. But he has never been there. And he has not driven past the neat single family homes on those quiet streets. The kids playing with their sweet, funny, goofy pit-bulls in the park next to the pool. He probably hasn't had the chance to see the most beautiful sky in Washington, D.C. as you drive up South Capital Street along the Anacostia River. Crazy clouds lit from behind to your left and the lights from the stadium straight ahead. As you cross over the river, the stadium is on your right, and you look up ahead and there's the Capitol.

Sometimes you have to look close to see what is really there. You might need to look with your own eyes. And sometimes when you look closely, when you dig past the surface, you can really see.

Zip It, Idiot

Received a text from the Sib late Thursday morning.

Jesse Jackson is an idiot.

Yeah, that seemed to be true. A page 4 story in the Post had alerted me over my morning coffee to what would be the "news" of the day--bigger than the floods (which led the cable news to loop through the same images of water in the streets and not too much in commentary, I mean it was too much water, what's to say?) but a little smaller than Imus (cable-fest big contrast with the old white guy versus young black women with some of the same commentators).

So, we got someone making a disparaging comment about a rival/peer. Makes you kind of hate recordings, because if Jesse had made the comment without the salacious evidence, there would be NO STORY. As it was, it was a non-story that spun and spun and spun until it finally sputtered all over itself.

Colby King from the WaPo got it right this morning when he wrote

The reverend brother was simply fat-mouthing....Jesse Jackson was sitting on the TV set next to a brother talking trash, selling wolf tickets, being verbally aggressive when he knew full well that he wasn't about to do anything but dis Obama (presumably) behind his back.

Hey, that's not news. It's what people do. It's me talking about my boss doing something dumb. Or someone who calls me boss (or parent) talking trash about me. So what. It portends nothing of importance. And that he got "caught" just causes group pain as we relive and rehash, rewind and recoil the non-story.

This fake drama that doesn't improve big city education, provide appropriate medical care for soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, or help us remember the discussion we almost had after Katrina.

Yeah, Jesse is an idiot, for feeding the idiot media for our idiot consumption.

Wrong Headline, Wrong Story

In the ongoing effort to make the 2008 Presidential Election all about race and increase readership or ratings or something, today's Washington Post has the inflammatory front page headline "3 In 10 Admit to Race Bias" and chronicles the trouble Barack Obama is having in getting the (play dramatic music) White Vote.

If you read on to paragraph 9 on the second page, you will discover what I found to be news. That is, Democrats running for president have been having trouble with the (play dramatic music) White Vote for the past few election cycles--and according to the article, this trend has been going on since Jimmy Carter ran in 1976.

This is hardly the first time a Democratic candidate has faced such a challenge -- Al Gore lost white voters by 12 points in 2000, and John F. Kerry lost them by 17 points in 2004 -- but it is a significantly larger shortfall than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton encountered in their winning campaigns. -- Wash Post

Somehow, though, the Post acts like Obama is having a problem with the (play dramatic music) White Vote because he is black. That's not what I see in the data.

Hey Post, I think that if you actually read your data--to make it easy I made a graph with a trendline--you would agree that the story is either

1. Dems have been in trouble with white voters for a while, OR
2. Obama's race doesn't seem to be having much of an impact on the voters--so far.

The Post piece is NOT good thinking.

Sticks and Stones II

Hurry, hurry, hurry. You don't want to be the last of the sappy, hopeful idealists who still believes in the Obama message of hope and unity. Why believe and work for change if cynicism is just around the corner?

Yes, I mean you David Brooks and others who were fawning all over Barack Obama just a few months ago. You were excited about the potential of a transformative leader. About the promise of a post-Bush future tackling issues of today's and tomorrow's America. About breaking from the old liberal/conservative debates from the 60's 70's, and figuring out new solutions and a new coalition of people from left and right for a new, and united, United States.

It's like Cook Hand Luke. The other inmates idolize Luke's bravery--that he challenges the status quo. They egg him on to take risks while sit back to enjoy--and exalt--his strength which gives them hope. When Luke shows that he is just flesh and blood like them, his former fawners show their disappointment with Luke--and with their own cowardice--by turning their backs on him. They won't take the risk, but are excited that he does. And reject him rather than take up the mantle.

It's easier to say that he isn't who we thought he was, rather that to see that we aren't who we wish we were.

'Bout Times

Looks like the NYTimes got cyber-religion.

After two-years of blocking off their money-columnists from non subscribers, and after two years (to the day, they say) of making any article more than two weeks old unavailable, the New York Times realized that this was not such a good idea.

Like people were not reading their columnists. And like the columnists didn't like this so much, either.

I was a Times Select subscriber for the first year. I thought that I couldn't live without Maureen Dowd, David Brooks and Frank Rich. Or without being able to retrieve an article from last month.

But what happened instead, was I left the NY Times as my primary news source and turned to the Post. Even though I had already paid. Weird.

It was like as I was trying to keep track of my columnists and getting my money's worth the Times lost value to me. I can't say why, but it did.

So when time came for my renewal, I didn't renew my subscription. I soon discovered that if there was a column that got my attention that I wanted to read, all I needed to do was search and I could find it.

The Times wants to regain those search eyeballs. Maybe I will read Dowd again. But maybe I have moved on.

White Guy Can't Rap

To the category of over-developed sense of importance I would like to add the white guy who wrote about how if he didn't buy those hip-hop joints with bad messages, then hip hop would clean up. You know, less guns, less drugs, less 'hos and the n-word all because he--and other influential white folk--are going to stop buying it.

Hey, Dude, you didn't invent the Internet, either!

While you can listen to hip hop, that doesn't mean you make it. And while your $16 for a CD adds to the bottom line, hip hop don't need you. You need hip hop--for whatever has been drawing you to it for the past 20 years.

Stop whining about the fact that your 3 year-old can't listen to your IPod. Duh. It makes sense that you listen to music--see movies, read books, and partake in other adult activities--that you wouldn't share with your children. You are the grown up.

Did you hear Nickelback's Rockstar? It follow the classic, formula rock song about the dreamlife of drugs, big cars and houses, and easy women. But you don't classify that as a problem--why is the problem rap not rock?

Is it okay because white people are not susceptible to "bad" music messages aimed at them? Are whites only immune to the plight of poor, urban African Americans? Don't we also ignore poor whites, Latinos, Asians and, of course, Native Americans?

Here you go, that's the way you do it!



Practically, did you know that most artists don't make money on record sales? The record companies do. The artists make money on tour and from merchandise. So you can put away your white man's wallet and skip the CD and not make a penny's worth of difference to 50 Cent's bottom line.

BTW 50 has decided that the market is too hot for "hard-core" joints, with the Don Imus thing and all. So he released the "softer" Curtis CD. You know more family-friendly songs like "My Gun," and respectful lyrics like "We got to share the same b*tch, okay I go first."

White Guy, it's okay for you to buy--or not buy--whatever you like. It's okay for you to be offended by music you like. I, too, have cringed at lyrics that escape my lips. But you can probably do more to make a difference in your community by doing a good job doing your job--don't sweat the music, and good luck.

Remember the Good

Disbelief, shock, sadness, horror, grief mix together in thinking about the murders at Virginia Tech. And the 32 victims who family, friends and strangers mourn, 32 innocents.

The people identified by Va Tech to date are Ross Abdallah Alameddine, Christopher James Bishop, Brian Roy Bluhm, Ryan Christopher Clark, Austin Michelle Cloyd, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Kevin P. Granata, Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, Caitlin Millar Hammaren, Jeremy Michael Herbstritt, Emily Jane Hilscher, Jarrett Lee Lane, Matthew Joseph La Porte, Henry J. Lee, Liviu Librescu, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, Lauren Ashley McCain, Daniel Patrick O'Neil, J. Ortiz-Ortiz, Minal Hiralal Panchal, Daniel Alejandro Perez, Erin Nicole Peterson, Michael Steven Pohle, Jr., Julia Kathleen Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema Joseph Samaha, Waleed Mohamed Shaalan, Leslie Geraldine Sherman, Maxine Shelly Turner, and Nicole White.

These are the people that will be remembered by their loved ones. But the rest of us, those who don't know them, will forget their names. They will become, for most of us, "the victims" or the "people who were shot."

I don't know if there is anything that we can do about that. But there is one thing that I have decided to do. I refuse to learn the name of the man who took their lives. I won't let him become part of my memory. I won't let him be like murderers before him--people who ruthlessly killed hundreds in Oklahoma City, boys and young men in Chicago, or our brothers and sisters in New York, D.C., and Shanksville Penn., on September 11, 2003. I don't care if they are "infamous"--they have more of our brain space than they deserve.

I am very angry that NBC--followed rapidly by their disrespectful media siblings--have given the wicked shooter time. I can't stand that they promoted his pathetic tapes, pictures, ravings. I am not going to be an accomplice to his narcissistic desires for people to know who he is.

I don't care about him. I don't care to know about him. I don't want to aggrandize this shooter. We don't have to give him what he wanted. Leave him a place in the history books, but just call him the shooter.

The names, the histories, the hopes of the victims are what we need to remember. Google them. Find their Face Books. Learn about them. Leave the shooter in ignominy.

You can leave your condolences here. My thoughts and prayers to the entire and extended Virginia Tech community.