Lord, Christopher Maurice Brown, aka C-Breezy, aka Chris Brown on Sunday night’s annual BET Awards had somewhat of a meltdown.
Well, he had a full meltdown actually.
He gave one of the best dance performances of the night and clearly killed his tribute to Michael Jackson with his dance moves. Perhaps his moonwalk wasn’t the smoothest, but damn, the performance was on point. And then he came back out to sing and he didn’t get one decent note out. All of us were just sitting waiting for him to belt out one good note and he’d be good from there and he never quite found his footing, ergo a complete meltdown.
So, now the listening public was left trying to figure out if this was sincere or some grand PR stunt. It’s a fair question. We’ve experienced plenty of PR stunts in the past from celebrities to make us more than leery at the end of the day. However, Chris Brown has left an interesting taste in our mouth, and a funky after taste over the last year or so since the Grammy’s last spring. We’ve endured, and I do mean endured the following:
First his orange shirt apology joint that got parodied endlessly.
His CNN Larry King interview where he looked like Baby Smurf
And when his album sales didn’t move like he wanted, he went off on Twitter and then he deleted his account only to get it back up again. Not to mention he got banned from doing concerts in the United Kingdom, which to a 20/21 year old artist has to be demoralizing (particularly since the UK hasn’t banned plenty of other artists with egregious offenses of the law).
Now this.
His performance prior to the breakdown was the Chris Brown that everyone had fallen in love with (as a performer and dancer, let’s be clear) and Chris Brown’s talent speaks for itself as it should. That’s my advice for him: let his talent do the talking.
On the other hand, none of us have ever walked a mile in his shoes. Its interesting how sanctimonious and self-righteous we can get when we start the celebrity bashing. Yes, some of them are pure damn fools you just can’t help but go, for real? what were you thinking even when you weren’t snorting blow. But in this case, I mean not at all excusing his behavior, but the fall out, could any of us imagine dealing with our hurts and pains in the public spotlight at the age of 20? I remember five years ago and frankly, I think CB handled it better than I would have.
That being said, I hope he has turned over a new leaf. I’ve long been a Chris Brown supporter with regards to give him a fair chance to be rehabilitated and reconcile himself to the public, so I hope this is a sign he’s turned over a new leaf and can be given a second chance. However, if he messes up again, fie upon thee!
Do you think Chris Brown’s performance was good? Was his following break down a fake or was it a sincerity of being caught up in the moment?
In typical 5-4 decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court of the United States in McDonald v. Chicagoessentially forced the City of Chicago back to the drawing board with it’s handgun ban. The law in the city of Chicago bans handgun ownership prior to the early 1980s. It is illegal, well, it was illegal to purchase a gun and own it in the city of Chicago. This simply meant that many gun shops crossed the city border and persons found easy loopholes and still purchased guns from there.
My parents don’t own a gun. I’ve only seen a gun up close once, and that was my cousin’s department issued piece when he worked for CHA police and I was definitely a kid at that time. I’ve certainly never held a gun either. Am I afraid of guns? Well, let’s say I have a healthy trepidation for them. How I really feel about it is that municipalities and states have a right to, in church lingo, “govern and act accordingly” as they see the need. As both in Washington, DC and Chicago both cities have over the years seen countless deaths due to gun violence. The Justice Department released stats that say two-thirds of homicides by firearms were by handguns.
In the words of my president, “let me be clear”: I don’t know where I stand on this issue because I think both sides have a fair and just argument. On the one hand, I feel that a homeowner should have a right to own a handgun and shoot any would-be intruder in their house especially because said intruder may be armed and ready to shoot to kill as well. Why bring a knife to a gun fight? On the other hand, in metropolitan cities, gun violence is terrible enough as it is, why are we giving a green light to put more and more guns in the hands of the citizenry–law abiding or not.
Despite my “on the fence dealings” with this issue of handguns, I get nervous anytime I hear about a win for gun lobbyists. I swear gun lobbyists and organizations such as the National Rifle Association make my skin crawl. They seem like a bunch of rich racist white males who are sitting around preparing for the time to “take their country back” Tea Party style. I know that’s a VAST and probably unfair generalization, but I’m sure they’ve made plenty of prejudicial generalizations about “those animals” in the inner cities killing each other–so now we’re even.
I mean, honestly, this isn’t the end of the world for the city of Chicago and handgun ban proponents. There is this clause issued in the majority opinion about “reasonable” regulations concerning the ownership. Such ideas would be requiring insurance of the gun in order to purchase it (which would lead to better tracking of the gun) or even gun training courses. Most other major cities have some form of handgun policy on the books, Chicago just damn near took a wild west approach and essentially said no handguns allowed in the city limits.
While some studies have shown that in some municipalities that home invasion has gone down as a result of that famous Texas law that allows homeowners to shoot and kill intruders but not face manslaughter charges, I just want to know if accidental discharge rates have gone up, or how many more stories has the news reported about 8 year old Jimmy shooting himself in the face playing with daddy’s gun. This a problem and an issue that gun lobbyists and these rabid 2nd Amendment fools rarely deal with. It always seems like they have some underlying cause to wanting to own guns that goes past merely trying to protect their homes from riffraffs.
Another unsettling issue at play with this for me is this conservative meme about “states’ rights” that they holler about ad nauseum and ad infinitum. I do think that this one should be left up to the states as how to handle it, and even the justices feel the same way as evidenced by their “reasonable” regulations wording. This just means that yet more and more court rooms will be filled up with lawsuits challenging this “reasonable” asking will this work? what about this? have you tried it this way and what not. I just think that the states rights argument is bollocks now. These conservative proponents only want decry states rights when they don’t get their way and what they perceive to be their “God-given rights” are being infringed upon. This even means their their privileges and rights supersede that of other groups in this country.
My memory of the states’ rights argument goes back to the John Marshall decision that allows for constitutional law to supersede any state law. But this notion has always been challenged resulting in Supreme Court decisions. I mean, it’s not coincidence that of top five major Supreme Court decisions that are at the forefront of the American consciousness, three of them are directly related to race? [1] States’ rights was the horse ridden by southern states in the ante-bellum and Jim Crow south in favor of slavery and discrimination. I wouldn’t be shocked if there are still people in some of these states, as they clutch their guns referring to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.
Finally, if I can put on my Huey Freeman hat for a moment, I’m just a bit more concerned about what are we doing with all of these assault rifles that are out on the streets. These assault weapons that are out there, I want to know how are they getting in our country? I ask the same about these hardcore drugs. I mean we watch the news about the latest million dollar drug bust, about border patrols trying to stop drugs being smuggled in from Mexico and other places south of the border and we hear about the latest shooting, but we watch with a benign passivity just happy it didn’t happen to us or it wasn’t in out backyard. Honestly, our fight isn’t just with individuals taking responsibility for their own actions, but damn, they didn’t just go to the neighborhood gun shop and pick up some Russian assault rifle–or did they? I guess that’s for another blog.
The saying is “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Well, if they didn’t have a gun, they probably wouldn’t have killed them.
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Solicitor General Elena Kagan facing confirmation hearings with Sen. Jeff Session, R-Ala. on the left and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Ver. on the right., 6/28/2010
And these words ring hollow in the face of the fact that William Rehnquist had no judicial experience and that five of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s nine nominees had no judicial experience. But I guess, since she’s clearly going to get nominated barring her effing anything up herself, Sessions has nothing to lose when he says what he says.
Go for it sir.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
[Editor's Note: This is the second of five installments of character case studies on characters on creator and writer Aaron McGruder's comic strip now turned animated series on Adult Swim, "The Boondocks." I feel that each of the characters epitomize a particular social and political archetype or stereotype that is represented in some aspects within the black community.]
[Another Editor's Note: I'm writing this as I miss the famed summer BET Awards or as some dubbed the EBT Awards and the now famed Crenshaw Elite Glee club.]
Huey Freeman is the older brother of Riley and the two Freeman grandkids live with their grandfather Robert “Grandad” Freeman out in the suburbs of Chicago. Huey appearance has been evidenced heavily by his large afro that dwarfs his entire body. The show’s writer and creator Aaron McGruder lets us know that Huey was named after Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton which automatically gives the backdrop for much of Huey’s character and motivation.
I actually feel sorry for Huey because he seems to be the embodiment of a “bitter chastening rod, felt in the days when hope, unborn had died.” He’s always on point with his critical social and political analysis of a situation, nor does give into the usually childish whims that his very much misguided brother, Riley, seems to do. However, given the permanent frown etched into Huey’s face like an epitaph on a gravestone, Huey’s character comes off as cynical and downright depressing. This cynicism stands in diametrical opposition to the running social and political commentary he usually prattles off with ease, Huey comes off with a type of hopeful nihilism that I think is rather prevalent in the black community.
A hopeful nihilism is the perfect marriage between cynicism and being a realist. Blacks, as a collective group recently had this notion tested with the election of Barack Obama. Many expressed the hope of a black man holding the office of the presidency, but many expressed nihilistic disillusionment that many of those with darker skin in this country have attained over the years of seeing hopes dashed on all accounts at the intersection of black culture and the American political landscape. Even after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, from the Jesse Jackson campaign of 1984 and 1988 to watching a Jesse Helms win a South Carolina election on the issue of racial quotas and being against affirmative action.
Essentially, blacks want to see the glass as half full, but too often, life taught us that the glass is always half empty.
Huey also embodies the revolutionary characteristics associated with Black nationalist movements, particularly taking a nod toward his namesake. This results in Huey almost completely dismissing characters who fail to see life through his particular worldview. To drive it home, I’m sure Huey would have been a member at Trinity United Church of Christ and thought Jeremiah Wright was a prophet–no questions asked–if he believed in Christianity. Much of this fuels Huey’s duality; inspired by strong revolutionary thought, but depressed by the reality of the revolution not coming yet.
Contrary to popular opinion, I know my “Huey’s” than I know “Riley’s.” When I posed these character questions to some persons, people have been quick to attach the label of “stereotypical black male” when speaking about Riley and speak with archetypical language when describing Huey. I think the gotcha-gotcha is that we’re made to think that there are more “Riley’s” walking around than “Huey’s.” As shown on the show, Huey’s quiet revolutionary tendencies usually play second fiddle to Riley’s antics which get TV news interviews occasionally. Or that Huey feels the need to team up with Rev. Rollo Goodlove to publicize his hunger strike in the episode “The Hunger Strike” which parodied BET and was never played here in the U.S.
Or maybe we all have a bit of both in us: one side revolutionary, the other side ready to give into the whims of the world simply because it’s easier. Huey certainly takes the road less traveled, and it’s certainly a lonelier path in life that he’s forced to lead, but his ability to think independently for himself is a trait that I see exhibited in most of the young black males that I’ve encountered in my life.
This ability to think independently will always be portrayed as a negative image within the contexts of mainstream media and various other image outlets. Rare is the image of black males (and black females for that matter) shown in a positive light. But I think some of the image problems we face is intraracial rather than what mainstream media directly puts out there. We watch the images of Chicago violence, then we automatically assumer blacks in Chicago are just more violent than the rest of inner city blacks; we’ll see images of hip hop culture on TV and automatically get scared when we see a black male saggin’ his pants or with a baseball cap on–we actually believe the hype.
Similarly, we love to tear down the positive images that do exist in the mainstream media. We’d rather embrace “Riley” and dismiss “Huey” all together negating the fact that both need our attention for a plethora of reasons. For example, we no longer just criticize the Popes of Blackness (Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson) but we tear them down. It’s one thing to offer sound criticism, but we operate on the surface so easily: we can deal with the outward appearance of Riley’s chains, outfit, how he talks, but it’s harder to deal with the what he talks when it comes to Huey.
Honestly, if you’ve read more than just Cornel West’s Race Matters please let me know.
If you’ve picked up any of Michael Eric Dyson’s numerous publications or either of Tavis Smiley’s books, I’m much more inclined to listen to you, otherwise its much easier for me to dismiss your argument because a) you’re not wholly informed on the subject matter which you speak on and more scary for me is b) you don’t care that you’re ignorant of some facts.
Once we’ve engaged in the actions that force us to choose between the two, we’ve lost the fight. We can’t negate one for the other, because we really are our brother’s keeper.
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Sidenote: I wish that they had brought Riley’s counterpart from the comic strip Michael Caesar to the cartoon show. Caesar, as he’s always called, is the optimistic side of Riley. Usually agreeing with Riley’s political positions, he just tends to add some brevity to the air.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
[Editor's Note: This is the first of five installments of character case studies on characters on creator and writer Aaron McGruder's comic strip now turned animated series on Adult Swim, "The Boondocks." I feel that each of the characters epitomize a particular social and political archetype or stereotype that is represented in some aspects within the black community.]
For a quick background for those totally unaware of “The Boondocks” who are reading this, check the Wikipedia link.
Riley Freeman, is the younger brother of Huey Freeman and both live with their grandfather out in the suburbs. In the cartoon, Riley always has cornrows and his outfits usually embody stereotypical “hood wear” which could be a simple wife beater and jeans, chains, oversized jackets and other over-sized shirts. What sticks out about Riley is the fact that he easily becomes the poster child for what Average Bro and many others simply call “Negro Nonsense.” Riley’s grammar is fractured (he can’t seem to get the concepts behind conjugating “to be” when he speaks), he is enthralled with the “gangsta” lifestyle to a fault.
The redeeming qualities of Riley are few. At best Riley’s innocence does come through at times, or the fact that he’s still a child. For example in season three’s “Smokin With Cigarettes” when faced with the reality of a gun while dealing with Lamilton Taeshawn, or the many instances that their grandfather actually is heard giving Riley a spanking for his behavior. While Riley may give off a larger than life persona, he’s still just a kid and all of that comes out at the right time.
For the sake of this character case study I’ve embarked upon, I want to highlight the latest episode “Pause.”
The show opens up clear that this show is about parody Tyler Perry and probably Tyler Perry plays. A woman dressed much like Tyler Perry’s main character “Madea” come out on a stage and the name has been changed to “Ma Dukes” and he/she’s carrying a pistol and shooting played by Winston Jerome. And you can hear what’s probably Riley in the background snickering at the play.
Turns out to be true.
Robert “Grandad” Freeman is going to audition for a casting call of 50+ older black men “who are not allergic to baby oil” and clearly Huey is giving the whole Winston Jerome play and Grandad a second look over as if to say “WTF?” So Grandad stands up and the following exchange ensues:
Robert: I gon’ really let him have it. Show him my stuff. Give that man everything I got. Riley: Pause. Robert: Pause? Pause what? Riley: You said somethin’ gay, so you gotta say “no homo” or else you a homo. Robert: But what did I say gay? Riley: You said you was gon’ give this dude everything you got. No homo. Robert: That’s not gay. I said I was gon’ give the man everything I got. Riley: Pause, Granddad. If it sound gay, its gay and you gotta say “no homo”. How I know you not a homo Granddad, if you don’t say “no homo”. Robert: I’m not sayin’ “no homo”. Riley: Okay, you a homo. Robert: Stop callin’ your granddaddy a homo! Riley: Then say no homo! Robert: I don’t wanna say “no homo”! Imma homo yo’ ass, if you don’t stop sayin’ pause! Riley: . . . . Pause.
Frankly, I laughed. And I laughed pretty hard.
But then I started wondering, was I supposed to laugh? Was I supposed to think critically about this and not laugh, but rather be saddened by the sheer absurdity of Riley’s homophobic response?
I did my post about “pause” and “no homo” within the last month or so and for me there’s no way around it because when you say it, it places homosexuals and supporting members of the LGBT community into an “other” category that breeds homophobia and does nothing for bridge building.
This episode just laid the homoeroticism on real thick. But, I think a point that I haven’t heard much discussed is how the black Christian religious life was at play here. The Tyler Perry being gay rumors aside, I just think the writers gave an interesting commentary on the complete interweaving of sexuality and black religious thought. This was evidenced by the fact that when Winston Jerome asked Jesus for guidance that as Jesus appeared as quite white, with blond hair, that he was to acheive this goal of writing plays to women by using “sexy men” and “crossdressing.” To which a befuddled Robert says “I didn’t know religion worked that way.”
And the one liners also aided in the interesting juxtaposition of religion and sexuality within the black Christian religious community is evidenced in the one liners
When talking to one of the young ladies on the stage set she said “Now I only give up the ass for Jesus–and his homeboys.”
Winston Jerome claims to hear from Jesus about kissing Robert in the play, and naturally Robert balks at the thought, Jerome takes him into his study and says “Jesus wants us to be actors first, and heterosexuals second.”
And from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” parody of “Time Warp” the song “It’s Alright to Crossdress for God.
Not to mention that Robert hears the “womp womp” similar to the adults in the “Peanuts” comic strip when prayer is going on, or that the cast members are portrayed as zombies who had left their families to join up with Winston Jerome; this one lady in her two lines, she finishes each statement “I’m get me some kool-aid.” The final scene really shows that Winston Jerome made this all up just so he could sleep with men.
Yup.
So, Riley, who doesn’t have the world’s biggest role in this episode acts as a mirror image of how some of the homophobia is interpreted in the eyes of the black male community, particularly a black male demographic that has some innocence still attached to it. We see that innocence come through when he and his brother without question go to rescue their grandfather, and even when Riley without question hugs his grandfather before they leave him to pursue his own dream of fame and stardom–to which he adds “No homo.”
The question posed asks to the homophobia of Riley or is it simply comedy.
I think the safe answer is both. We live in a society where blunt truths have been very hard to swallow, and comedy has proven to be a way to deal with them. The racial comedy of Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle (hmm, where are the women?) has all used sheer comedic genius. One of my followers @stupiddopemoves on Twitter observed, correctly I might add, that the funnier the comic, the more true the joke probably was. The more we laughed at the one liners, and the word plays, the more real the show was for us. Yes, comic relief is fine, but one needs to allow the comedy to transcend the moment and become reality.
I think most comedians know what they’re doing–hell they wrote the jokes. And in the case of Aaron McGruder and his character of Riley, he’s forced to walk that thin line between buffoonery comedy and comedy that makes you laugh, but feel guilty at laughing because you know better.
So the next time you watch “The Boondocks” and you look at little Riley, push past the in your face stereotypes and try and deal with the seriousness of the situation. Ask yourself what have you done that has contributed to the homophobia that has allowed colloquialisms like “no homo” and “pause” to be so prevalent in young black males. Such shows require us as black American viewers to operate in a dual consciousness that some of us already do automatically and others do so painfully.
Perhaps the real question is what is Tyler Perry’s reaction?
What is your take on the question? How do you feel about Riley Freeman?
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
So, two seconds before I went to write the title of this blog post, it hit me to do a case study, from an Uppity Negro perspective of the hit show on Adult Swim entitled “The Boondocks” created by comic strip writer Aaron McGruder. Initially, I was just going to write about the previous episode that rocked Twitter so much that half of the worldwide trending topics were Boondocks related. But, instead, I think I’ll do a mini-series on the title characters of the Boondocks show of the following characters in the following order.
Riley Freeman
Huey Freeman
Grandad
Uncle Ruckus
Mr DuBois/Jasmine
I will address the appearance of the characters, their main character flaws and their main character positives. From there, I’ll take one episode, as a case study and just give my general armchair assessment as I normally do, from the comfort of my laptop.
My initial encounter with Boondocks was the comic strip of course. It ran in the Chicago Tribune, and it seemed a bit more cutting edge than some of the other black comic strips. My parents bought the Chicago Sun-Times, so I didn’t get a chance to read it often, but I remember when a Trib came in front of me, I was most certainly flipping to the comic section to see what Riley and Huey had gotten themselves into this day.
By 2005 when it was certain that a television show was in the works, crunk wasn’t the word to explain my level of excitement. It was as if another quality black television show was about to debut. I remember the night it first came on and me and one of the other guys in the dorm were already talking about it with anticipation. Even so much so that we kicked someone off of the TV in the common area (we didn’t have cable in our rooms, thanks HBCUs) who was watching an early season NBA game. And I remember that after the first show, watching it on a week to week basis brought in as many people to the common area as a Super Bowl game. In fact the girls would walk across campus to the boys dorm to watch because the other girls were watching Lifetime or something.
What bothered me was that the majority of the people seemed to be more interested, or rather comically stimulated by the blatant and frequent use of the word “nigga.” When in the first season, I think it was the Stinkmeaner episode (fact checkers where are you?) and they introduced “A Nigga Moment” and the entire room went up in cries of “Oh shit” and “Awww damn” to the point that shushing was necessary to actually hear what was said. Till this day, I don’t know what dialogue ensued after the Thuglicious kiss because the entire room erupted.
I personally felt that the gratuitous use of the n-word somewhat diminished the socio-political message that McGruder namely, and whoever else had began this project. At the time I was ready to call McGruder a sellout of the worst kind because I was under the impression that the show was going to do more harm than good. I felt that the first episodes didn’t really contain the real sharp and poignant political satire that could cut like a hot knife through butter in the comic strip. Yes the satire was clearly there, but in the comic strip, you knew that McGruder was going for the political worldview point, but on the cartoon show, u didn’t know if he was going for laughs or thinking.
Case in point is season one with “The Return of the King” where Martin Luther King, as an octogenarian speaks in front of a crowd of rowdy people and he liberally uses the word “niggas” to describe the crowd. Frankly for me, it was a sad state of affairs and something worth damn near crying over, but everyone else took it as pure unadulterated comedy. I really felt that the message behind it was completely lost on the crowd.
But, again, I thought “Coming To America” was buffoonery at it’s best.
Personally, I think the episodes “The Hunger Strike” where and the “Uncle Ruckus Reality Show” were of the best, but Adult Swim didn’t air those two because of the possible slander lawsuits against BET. And I was able to see “The Hunger Strike” on the DVD set and I was able to see that this show figuratively “pulled back” and left a hard punch by saying BET was purposely set on the destruction of black people.
Really? No ish?
This season three proves to be the best for me because already, three of the aired episodes have dealt with current events. The season opener “It’s a Black President, Huey Freeman” dealt with the election of Barack Obama and even included caricatures from the famed Jeremiah Wright. The second one was “Smokin’ With Cigarettes” that invoked the images of real life Latarian Milton.
Seriously, if you’ve seen that episode, these Youtube clips make ALL the more sense now.
And now the famous “Pause” episode with the whole Tyler Perry caricature that just came out this past Sunday all lend a hand toward Boondocks being relevant and dealing with cultural phenomenon that is germane to our everyday existence.
So stay tuned and sit back and watch what I have to say.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
The confederate flag flies over the State capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina
Within the past year or so, Americans have heard the words “South Carolina” and “Representative” or “Congressperson” in the “Lieutenant governor” and “Governor” same sentence and phrasing. Nothing really odd about the “Representative” or “Congressman” but really, we’ve been hearing a lot about South Carolina politics. South Carolina state politics are like that of New Hampshire and Iowa, we only really hear about them in the caucuses and early presidential primaries once every four years. But the fact that in the recent months the state of South Carolina and politics have reared its ugly head has caused me some concern and worry.
Let’s take a look at some of the likely suspects.
Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.
Governor Mark Sanford (GOP) — Just this past weekend, Sanford disappeared and turned a normal weekend into a three day vacation with no one where he was on Monday. The governor’s office reported that he had merely extended his Father’s Day weekend. Sanford became famous when last year he left the office without telling his Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer (who I’ll get to shortly). It was initially reported that he went hiking on the Appalachian Trail, but it was found out that he was with a lover in Argentina. He and his wife are summarily divorced. The LA Times blog reports that Sanford and his Argentinian beau had a Floridian get away last month.
Lieutenant Gov. Andre Bauer (GOP) — In January of this year, during a town hall meeting, Bauer made the following statement:
My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals…You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
Of course this was a typical response from a GOP party headed by head oompa-loompa (gobble-dee-goo) Michael Steele himself that is repeating this rhetoric about breaking the cycle of dependence on governmental aid. Suffice it to say, the metaphor was an epic FAIL. Comparing poor people to “animals” who “breed” should never go over well, and naturally no real consequences were experienced. The news cycle of this story is over and soon to placed high on the closet shelves of our collective political memory only to yellow and collect dust like an old hat weathered by the sun day in and day out in grandmas old room.
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C.
U.S. Representative Joe Wilson (GOP) — Seriously, I shouldn’t even know Joe Wilson exists, nor should President of the United States, but Joe Wilson famously declared during a joint session of the Congress to the president “You lie!” prompting a formal rebuke from the House. But past that no real consequences were meted out for such blatant disrespect toward a sitting president. Honestly, I really think if anybody had done that while Bush was speaking that Bush would have laughed knowing that behind him Cheney would have pulled out a 12-gauge and aimed directly toward Joe Wilson and wouldn’t care how far the spray went–good ol’ collateral damage.
But, a quick Wikipedia search (“my father used to sell wikipedias”) shows that Wilson was an aide for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond and he was against Thurmond’s daughter Essie Mae Washington coming forward thinking that it would tarnish the image of Thurmond. As if his image wasn’t already tarnished in the minds of many Americans. Knowing that Wilson used to work with Strom Thurmond, one can’t help but feel Jimmy Carter had a point when he said on MSNBC that Wilson’s response was “based on racism … [t]here is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”
S.C. State Senator Jake Knotts (GOP) — This is the fool that referred to gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley as a “raghead” and the POTUS as a “raghead in office” as well. This is his way of making disparaging remarks toward Haley, namely because he had thrown his support behind Andre Bauer. I’m pretty sure he didn’t like women in office, let alone a non-white woman at that. That this country is probably going to hell in a handbasket as well…you know all the good stuff.
Raghead?
Really sir?
Magically, the actual audio of these comments don’t exist. They were made on some program that mostly does Podcasts, and Rep. Knotts dismissed the comments as a joke, of course, and described the talk show as a political SNL.
Really sir?
Gubernatorial Candidate Nikki Haley, R-S.C.
Gubernatorial Candidate Nikki Haley (GOP) – First of all, she’s not white, she’s Indian. Let’s start there. She was born Nimrata Randhawa as a U.S. citizen in the state of South Carolina. There was a clip from ABC World News Tonight that showed that overall, South Carolinian voters were willing to not let religion play a role in how they voted. Now yes, Haley said that she was a Christian and although she had been born into a Sikh family, she was indeed “born again.” Those in the Bauer camp were pressing her to use the word “Christ” and to answer as though she were in some confirmation class, or before a deaconate board of examiners, but nonetheless, she won the GOP nomination.
That’s all just fishy to me.
Sorry, I can’t help but be wary of someone who has this avowed religious past of being born to Indian parents (yes, here in the U.S.), being raised Sikh, but supported by the Tea Party and garnering endorsements from Mitt Romney and even Sarah Palin, BUT, this same group of Tea Partyers will NOT quit the discussion saying that Barack Obama was born overseas, and that he’s indeed a Muslim. I mean I really wonder do these same people then in turn believe that Obama is a Christian and he was born in Hawai’i?
It’s an odd pill to swallow that in a state where issues of the Confederate flag flying at the state house are pertinent issues of the day that this lady, running fourth early on, and an unknown was able to come in and grab the nomination. For some reason, I think voters closed their eyes, squinted enough and made her look like Sarah Palin in their own image and was able to vote for her regardless.
I’m just sayin.
U.S. Senate Candidate Alvin Greene (Dem.) — Seriously, this man is a joke. No joke. Real talk, this man can’t put together a coherent sentence. The now famous Keith Olbermann interview explains it all.
I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, but it’s sheer comedy, I love it.
Tons of blogs, newspaper articles and members of the mainstream media are all left scratching their heads asking “who is this man? and where did they find him?” Some reports have it that this guy was a plant by the GOP party to offset the vote in the general election in the fall with GOP voters voting across party lines for the sake of sabotage and others have alleged he did better in the white communities than the blacks, yet again more sabotage.
U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn (Dem.) and House Majority Whip has alleged Greene was a plant , as have been other plants in the past. There’s even been the fact that other’s thought he was Al Green, you know the singer?
Right.
Doesn't Al Greene even look like a gump in this Wikipedia profile picture? smh.
What’s at big play is where is getting campaign money from? Honestly, the fact that it hasn’t come out yet makes me really wonder what the hell are they doing down in South Carolina. The South Carolina Democratic Party can find no way to invalidate the election results which Greene won by 59% of the votes between him and his only opponent, Vic Rawls (who will sadly be a footnote to a footnote in the annals of history). I mean, no one can even verify where the hell he got the money to pay the $10,000 filing fee, but he has to have a public defender to fight obscenity charges.
This man makes Sarah Palin look like a true college grad.
Betwixt obscenity charges and signs of illiteracy and evidence of not being a resident of this planet and time-space continuum (I mean honestly, this is a TRUE space cadet we’re dealing with) I just really don’t have words for this man, and why South Carolina seems powerless to do anything about it, I can’t imagine.
And there you have it, South Carolina politics.
Honestly, I’ve never heard South Carolina talked about so much in the public media. But lets be honest, when the prejudicial and bigoted remarks of both State Sen. Knotts and Lt. Gov. Bauer reach international airwaves, it causes yet another nick in the pillars of justice that teeter so precipitously on the foundations of righteousness and morality. If nothing else, it just doesn’t look good and it sends the wrong message. This anger is compounded both and home and abroad when we watch “members from their own party” who essentially stand aside and say nothing and do nothing.
Hell, in professional sports members are fined for their off the court behavior that is not considered becoming. NBA players catch a technical foul for bad language and the famous “unsportsman-like playing.” Now without going into the interesting dynamic of David Stern and the NBA, players can get suspended for racking up enough technical fouls. Understandably, we’re a democratic-republic and our officials are elected, and without someone filling their seat, a certain citizenry is not represented fairly, but when we, as an electorate rarely hold our elected politician accountable for their actions, its an indictment against us, not them.
I’m sure Joe Wilson isn’t worried too much about re-election. And even if he lost, he has a platform and he’ll never have to worry about where his next meal is going to come from.
We, specifically speaking about African Americans, don’t like them because they put up with this bullcrap. Notice a pattern in the names that I listed. Aside from Al Greene (just sounds better than Alvin Greene) all of those person are associated with the Republican Party.
I swear I didn’t make that up.
Contrary to popular opinion, this isn’t playing a perpetual role as a victim, but calling out B.S. where it is. We need to just be honest as say the actions of all of these persons are all symptomatic of hegemonic thought that this country breeds. It fully embraces the Descartesian ideal of “I think, therefore I am” which makes one highly egocentric at the expense of the larger community. The comments and actions of the elected officials are spoken with impunity because they know that they are never truly going to have to atone for such comments.
Sanford got a divorce, but is still with his mistress and going on vacations in Florida.
Bauer, Wilson and Knotts both got the equivalents of slaps on the wrists, nothing that tarnished their image.
Nikki Haley, nee Nimrata Randhawa, bought into the American ideal that she “Americanized” her name for simple and daily use like a kitchen appliance ”as seen on TV” which means, yes, I’ll say it, it’s a form of “selling out” and a definite assimilation and acculturation.
As far as Al Greene, well, only God knows what that’s about.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
[Editors Note: So I wrote the majority of this post by 11:30am this morning and by the time I returned around 3:00pm, McChrystal had "resigned" and Gen. Petraeus had been appointed by President Obama.]
Our president, Barack Obama made it clear in April of 2008 that he was a politician and that he was all about political expediency: that which advanced politics as usual. He summarily threw Jeremiah Wright and Van Jones under the bus; he put political insiders on his White House staff namely Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs; even Desiree Rogers has found herself without a job; he backpeddaled on the Henry Louis Gates situation…
…shall I go on?
I just read the entire Rolling Stones article “The Runaway General” where reporter Michael Hastings was embedded for a month with Team America, the name given by General Stanley McChrystal of whom the article’s central focus. The reporter, clearly of the liberal sort takes issue with some of the politics behind the war in Afghanistan clearly, but also covers this whole idea of counterinsurgency nicknamed COIN. According to the Rolling Stones article:
From the start, McChrystal was determined to place his personal stamp on Afghanistan, to use it as a laboratory for a controversial military strategy known as counterinsurgency. COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps. In 2006, after Gen. David Petraeus beta-tested the theory during his “surge” in Iraq, it quickly gained a hardcore following of think-tankers, journalists, military officers and civilian officials. Nicknamed “COINdinistas” for their cultish zeal, this influential cadre believed the doctrine would be the perfect solution for Afghanistan. All they needed was a general with enough charisma and political savvy to implement it.
From what I gathered in the article, McChrystal was a general who had to sell this COIN idea to Obama, meaning that essentially he was going to have to convince Obama it was a good idea to send more troops to Afghanistan. Not to mention, sell the idea to Washington that we may be entrenched in the war much longer than anyone ever imagined. There’s also the structural problem that the military is facing on the Washington political side of the spectrum and Hastings makes sure to point it out.
While McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration players compete over the Afghan portfolio: U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to mention 40 or so other coalition ambassadors and a host of talking heads who try to insert themselves into the mess, from John Kerry to John McCain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectively allowed McChrystal’s team to call the shots and hampered efforts to build a stable and credible government in Afghanistan. “It jeopardizes the mission,” says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supports McChrystal. “The military cannot by itself create governance reform.”
Part of the problem is structural: The Defense Department budget exceeds $600 billion a year, while the State Department receives only $50 billion. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama’s top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a “clown” who remains “stuck in 1985.” Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, “turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful.” Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal’s inner circle. “Hillary had Stan’s back during the strategic review,” says an adviser. “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’ ”
Well, not gonna lie: I can imagine his frustration. The article goes on to show the level of mixed morale that the troops on the ground are facing given the new strategies that McChrystal has implemented. For example, McChrystal has set forth new rules of engagement that attempt to limit the number of civilian casualties, or the infamous “collateral damage” phrase that for every civilian killed, it creates yet another family willing to fight against the Americans and join Al-Qaeda. Or calling for troops to patrol areas that aren’t as high risk, which results in soldiers feeling that they’re not being asked to fight.
For me this poses the eternal conundrum when living in a state of war: how does one determine victory? Traditional empirical approaches is a clear militaristic defeat and resulting occupation, it is then the job the occupying to state to institute a government and new rules of governance. We saw the rules of war change in Western society in the 19th century when these ideals of democracy and republic began to emerge and we moved away from this autocratic form of government be it a king or some form of dictatorial rule (think Roman emperors to the various kings and queens of Europe throughout the ages).
So now, there is this notion of warring for the sake of those who can’t fight for themselves, or because of some altruistic reasons. For example: the Civil War was fought to keep the union together; the U.S. allied with Britain to defeat the Germans prior to their entrance in the Pacific theatre; Vietnam was fought for the sake of spreading democracy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are against terror. Over the years the reasons for fighting have gotten more and more ephemeral and psychological, but the militaristic approach, in my arm chair assessment, hasn’t changed that much.
Our soldiers are trained to be killers and to destroy human lives. Let’s be clear about that. Soldiers don’t operate in nuances, and McChrystal is asking soldiers to be nuanced in their approach and clearly this poses a problem. Interestingly enough, many Americans can’t grasp their minds around a military that is nuanced in their approach: either the military needs to be there and do what they do, or they don’t. Period.
That’s why the general public is either saying “yes, McChrystal should be fired” or “No, he should keep his job and call out the president et. al. for their B.S.” Well, yes, McChrystal I think has two big questions on his record, the Pat Tillman incident where he signed off on some documents saying former NFL player Pat Tillman was killed by enemy fire when it was indeed friendly fire (although some conspiracists are conspiring that it was murder **rolls eyes**) and that McChrystal’s name came up in some detainee abuse and torture allegations with various prisons in Iraq. To me, that means he shouldn’t have had the job in the first place.
But since he’s in the position, I think Obama’s best bet would be the Keith Olbermann approach.
The comments were inappropriate. As inappropriate as the Seattle police officer punching out the young girl was, an immediate removal from the office is not the right response. Given Olbermann’s run down of the general’s that were replaced underneath the Bush administration, maybe the problem with this Iraq and Afghanistan war is that we’ve been replacing all the leaders. Many reasoned that one should vote for George W. Bush in 2004 because it was wartime and that we should not be changing leaders.
That’s perhaps advice that may still carry some merit in this instance.
Honestly, what would it really profit Obama or McChrystal by accepting his resignation or outright firing him from his position? Granted McChrystal should have never been in the position in the first place, and both men should have recognised that from the start, but that’s the proverbial water under the bridge.
As Olbermann said, make McChrystal fix the mess he created with the COIN strategy. So if Obama replaces McChrystal with Petraeus, does this mean that Petraeus is going to undo what has already been done in the past months and years under McChrystal–or is Petraeus just going to pass out and go unconscious?
Perhaps his passing out is emblematic of the military mite of this country: unconscious due to lack of hydration and unable to stand questioning from the people it says its defending.
What a sad state of affairs.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
I had initially planned to write a blog entitled “The Crisis of Leadership” back almost a month ago to really examine just how President Barack Obama was handling the oil spill. I remember listening to one of his press conferences around the time the conservative media was really pressing the connection of the candidacy of Joe Sestak to that of being offered a White House job and I was going to talk about how Obama needed to get control of that situation.
This was going to be the time I would speak about how I felt Obama should have been a face on the ground much sooner than the Memorial Day weekend that he went down there. Essentially for me, I felt Obama had somewhat dropped the PR ball. However, hindsight is 20/20 because who would have known that the oil spill would have lasted as long as it had.
But I missed that opportunity to write about that.
And since then Obama’s given two more press conferences, and we’ve seen oil executives hauled before House committees for Capitol Hill hearings, the Brits getting into an uproar feeling that Obama was maligning their beloved “BP” which is the biggest company in Great Britain and we’ve even heard an Oval Office speech from our esteemed president. But, what finally made change the title of this blog was really Obama getting BP top executives to promise $20,000,000,000 in an escrow account to victims.
The Obama administration has reached a preliminary agreement with BP executives that would see the oil company pay $20 billion over several years into an independently controlled escrow account to be established to compensate Gulf of Mexico residents affected by the disastrous oil spill, and BP’s board of directors has eliminated the company’s stock dividend, at least temporarily.
The agreement on the escrow account was negotiated in a meeting at the White House on Wednesday morning, the first face-to-face gathering between President Obama and senior BP leadership. A White House official said that, under the terms of the deal, the fund would be administered by attorney Kenneth Feinberg, currently serving as the special master for executive pay under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Feinberg ran a fund that compensated victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
WOW!
It’s my understanding, from my business acumen, that BP is a “for-profit” company and that essentially their job is to maximize their profit at all costs and to provide the largest dividends to their shareholders possible. This deal cut by the WH and BP top execs also results in dividends not being paid out.
Heads are indeed rolling now.
Yes, it’s a slap in the face of the “small people” who are surviving off of $30-50,000 a year and the missing of one or two paychecks puts in them in the poorhouse, and this company is measuring yearly profits in the billions of dollars. But what really is irking me on this one is the opposition, or shall I say the conservative voices.
Then we heard the rat pack of conservative media Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh call for Obama’s head by simply saying what they’ve always been saying: that’s he’s inept and essentially not qualified to handle a situation like this and what the government needed to do to step in and what not.
Yes, these windbag conservatives were saying what the federal government’s response should be.
What was even scarier was to listen to the rhetoric of these loofthwarts as they sidestepped at great cost to their arguments trying to shuffle any direct blame onto BP. Whatever it was, they placed blame on the Obama administration from governmental regulations to trying to say Obama was covering his tracks when he so-say fired the former head of the Mineral Management Service–never saying that BP dropped the ball here with their drilling practices and oversights and corner-cutting techniques.
Then some said Obama wasn’t being tough enough toward BP and finding someone responsible since it was clear that the federal government and specifically the Obama administration wasn’t in possession of some magic butt-plug that they just drop into the pipeline. So Obama dropped the phrase “…so I know who’s ass to kick” in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer.
Then they said that was too much.
At the House Energy and Commerce hearing on the gulf spill, Representative Joe L. Barton, seated right, called a $20 billion fund a White House "shakedown."
Even his own party members made him apologize for his apology.
And now the conservative pundits are having a field day with this $20 billion in victims funds. They’re saying that this is evidence that the Obama administration has gone too far and overstepping their boundaries, and that even one Fox News article is essentially suggesting that the victims file a group action lawsuit. Really? Do you know how long that litigation would take and how many folks would be bankrupt by the time they’d see any money? This is in the face of opinion polls that still say the vast majority of the American public feel that Obama is not being tough enough with the spill.
So how is this all pointing to the genius of Obama?
That they will take care of the victims by making BP pay. Even though he said BP is going to set aside this $20 billion dollars for victims, checks weren’t cut until nearly 20 years later for those that suffered in the Exxon spill outside of Valdez, Alaska. And through great litigation which BP is sure to pursue, payouts dropped precipitously 80% from original numbers to only 1/5 of what they were promised.
Obama promised 90% of the oil was going to be contained within the coming days and weeks. Aside from “coming days and weeks” being nebulous as hell, all previous methods have failed, and since the majority of us don’t have engineering or oceanographic degrees, we don’t know if all methods have been tried or not.
Obama called for a 6 month moratorium on deepwater drilling. In reality, the moratorium was on new permits for deepwater drilling, and drilling at existing wells is still continuing.
Right, like George W. Bush, or Sarah Palin did. **rolls eyes**
The true genius of Obama is that he still has his job. Or maybe that’s just the genius of all the men that have held his position, all of them maintained their job in the face of severe opposition. And Obama has still another solid 12 month calendar year to go before he begins his campaign process for re-election begins. I think the calls of comparing him to Jimmy Carter are a bit premature, I think I’d entertain that argument going into the campaign season. Moreover, Carter’s presidency will always be known for the Iran hostage situation, that anyone with half a brain would recognize that some serious backroom dealings with the GOP’ers went down arranging for the hostage to end as soon as Reagan was elected.
Additionally, Carter was running against an Obama-esque character in the charismatic form of Ronald Reagan. Not unless the GOP is able to find a charismatic candidate, their pool does not have the same charm that Obama is going to still have when he begins the campaign process again.
Moreover, the guy is a smooth talker.
Even if he’s giving us B.S. like he did with his Oval Office address, he sounds good doing it. The problem the GOP has is that their rhetoric comes off as classless and just downright tacky.
What’s resulted is that Obama is damned if he does something and then damned if he doesn’t. The genius behind being in that position is that he can do what he wants, when he wants and how he wants, and we’re powerless to stop him.
This should be a short post, I don’t have much to say about it, but anyone that tries to attempt to racialize this incident needs to be arrested and punched in the face for sheer dumbassery.
According to the video, that’s as clear as you can get, there was one single officer who was trying to do his duty–give a citation to two young females who had refused to show their ID according to documents. The officer then was going to arrest them for failure to show ID, which I’m sure is a misdemeanor that would have them released of their own recognizances in a couple of hours. Instead, the two resist arrest and do so violently enough that one of the young ladies, the one in the pink, felt compelled to “break up” what the officer was doing–arresting the one in the black and teal.
So Officer Friendly, did an unfriendly thing and punched the crap out of the girl in the pink.
The video goes on to show that the officer spent the majority of the time trying to arrest the girl in the black and teal. She didn’t want to put her hands behind her back and the crowd kept getting closer and closer, and by all tell-tale signs–the officer was by himself with no backup or support.
Now provide the rest of this post to do some speculation:
The more and more I think about it, I’m glad homegirl in the pink got stuck in the nose. Now, I’ll admit I’m not too happy that it was a cop who did it, let alone a white male, BUT, the you-know-what was running her mouth and clearly was going against the law. The biggest speculation that I’m making is that if an officer felt comfortable enough to ask two young women for ID to issue a citation for jaywalking that it’s probably common practice in Seattle for cops to give out jaywalking tickets. Lets say if this were Chicago, I would think this might be harassment. But, something in my gut tells me that these girls knew what the deal was, but they decided to make a scene and make a big deal out of it.
As far as the policemen, at most he should be suspended with pay, or be assigned to a desk job for a couple months. It was excessive force. But, as much as I hate being pulled over, and have had my one instance of what I felt were Cobb County officers doing too much pulling me and my friend over (in a Neon of all cars), lets be honest, cops have gotten guns pulled out on them and do get shot at by rogue citizens. Yes, it irritates the living crap out of me the two times I got pulled over and the cops had their hands on their guns ready to take it out of the holster at a second’s notice, but, cops have families that they want to go home to as well.
Moreover, this policemen was by himself.
If I was a black cop, and had that many people, black or white, standing around me and I was trying to make an arrest of two young females who needed they asses beat on GP, I’m sure it would have been hard to keep calm.
Now, yes, at the end of the day I’m taking the typical conservative approach to this one: this would not have happened had these two girls took out their state ID or their drivers license and just taken what probably would have been no more than a $50 ticket and been about their business.
Should the cop had laid into the girl? No. He shouldn’t have and he should be properly reprimanded.
While cops are forced to take sensitivity training and other things to allay racial prejudices and profiling, maybe citizens should be required to take police officer sensitivity training. Maybe we should be learning how to deal with police officers and how to set aside their own fears. As far as I see it, this was a situation that probably could have been prevented on two fronts: 1) The young ladies should have just taken the citation and been done with it. 2) The officer shouldn’t have punched her.
Or maybe jaywalking shouldn’t be a crime in the damn first place.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
My previous post about the media’s love affair with Chicago and it’s current violence and how it’s linked to current President Barack Obama led me on a journey down a dark corridor of my hometown’s history of violence just in my life time.
I had intended to call the names of some of the young who had been killed and while trying to remember the name “Yummy” Sandifer, who’s full name was Robert Sandifer, my 25-year-old mind was yanked back 15 years into the dark and dismal stairwell of hopelessness, much like the one Girl X was found, that was the late 1980s and early 1990s.
This morning I stumbled upon the grim statistics that showed that Chicago, like much of the rest of the country saw a spiked increase not just in crime, but murder victims that were closing in on the 4-digit mark. The blood curdling statistics however was that as high as 15% of the 929 murders in Chicago in 1994 were committed by persons between the ages of 14 and 16 and this number was down from 943 in 1992.
Enter Dantrell Davis.
Dantrell Davis
In 1992, Dantrell Davis was shot by a sniper’s bullet in the morning hours as he was walking with his mother to school. Gone. Just like that. Like a candle in the wind. The rest of the nation was forced to mourn the innocence of a seven year old on the way to school. I don’t know why I happened to remember this name, but I think it was because as the same age as the victim, I remember hearing the name Jenner Elementary, which was the school in Cabrini-Green where Dantrell was attending. Even six years later when I started high school in Lincoln Park just north of Cabrini-Green, I remember driving down Halsted Street and passing Division Street looking to the right and still having memories of a seven-year old from years earlier gunned down while walking to school.
The city tried to figure out what went wrong, and how could this happen. But Dantrell was only one of 61 other children killed in the calendar year of 1992. Yes, 61. Such stark numbers pointed not to a pathology of a people, but a failure of a system. The system had failed for Dantrell’s shooter Anthony Garrett where he felt it was okay to spray a walkway of people only to hit one person, Dantrell Davis and kill him. This incident and senseless murder did nothing but lay down a foundation of a cycle of violence that begets violence.
Enter Robert “Yummy” Sandifer.
I remembered the name Robert “Yummy” Sandifer vaguely from my youth. More so that it was a name associated with a murder and a kid at that. I mainly remember it because of the last name of someone at our church and my mother said “Wasn’t that the name of the boy Yummy Sandifer that got killed?” and she shuddered at the thought. Probably at the thought I was was Yummy’s same age and that very well could have been me. This was one of those crimes, wrought in the cycle of violence that pervades violence that captures the news cycle but until the funeral is held.
This young one, faced abuse at the hands of his mother even before his 3rd birthday and was in and out of the juvenile detention center, and ultimately by the age of 11 had been arrested countless times, but because of his age no prosecution to get him off the streets could be done. In a gang initiation, shoots another girl on his block, and then in fear of being turned in, fellow gang members shuffle him from house to house. Finally, a fellow 14 and 16 year old brother take him out and shoot the 11 year old execution style from behind.
Such a horrific story provided the entry paragraphs for a Time magazine article in September of 1994 entitled “So Young to Kill, So Young To Die: The Short Violent Life of Robert ‘Yummy’ Sandifer.”
Robert "Yummy" Sandifer
On a bright September afternoon last week, the mothers of Chicago’s South Side brought their children to a vigil for a dead boy they had never met. They wanted their kids to see the scrawny corpse in the loose tan suit lying in a coffin, next to his stuffed animals, finally harmless. The big kids dragged the little kids up to look at the stitches in his face where the bullets fired into the back of his head had torn through. The only picture the family could find for his funeral program was a mug shot. “Take a good look.” said the Rev. Willie James Campbell. “Cry if you will, but make up your mind that you will never let your life end like this.”
Parents hoped to haunt their children; maybe fear would keep them safe. Lynn Jeneta, 29, took her nine-year-old son Ron. If he got scared enough, she decided, “maybe then he wouldn’t be lying there himself one of these days.” She pushed him right up to the coffin. Ron tried to stay calm. “Some kids said Yummy looked like he was sleeping, but he didn’t look like he was sleeping to me.” What exactly then did he look like? “Kind of like he was gone, you know?” His composure melts. “When Mama pushed me forward, I thought I was going to fall right in the damn coffin. That gives me nightmares, you know? Can you imagine falling into a coffin?”
As I was entering the fourth grade, another young black male was getting buried. This crime so horrific and such a flashpoint for inner-city violence and all that is wrong with America, Yummy Sandifer will live in infamy because he even has a full Wikipedia entry!
The story of Eric Morse in the same year also gripped the nation. Less than two months after the death of Yummy Sandifer, Chicago was gripped by the death of five year old Eric Morse who was dropped out of the abandoned highrise of Darrow Homes just south of Ida B. Wells housing developments. It was a 10 and 11 year old, one by the name of Jesse Rankin who participated in this interview just two years ago after growing up in jail.
Or as the years went on, Chicagoans couldn’t forget the story’s of Girl X, a nine year old girl who was found nearly dead in a stairwell in Cabrini-Green having been poisoned, raped, beaten, graffitied and strangled, left for dead in 1997 or the Ryan Harris murder in Englewood in 1998. And since I’ve been gone, the names of kids such as Starkeisha Reed and Blair Holt or even an Aiyana Jones fill our memories.
The ultimate question is why.
Why does all of this happen? Why are innocent children, even in the case of a Yummy Sandifer, left to kill and be killed as such? Why are the perpetrators of this violence kids themselves? What happened? What went wrong?
Actually, nothing went wrong. This is actually going according to plan. Particularly in the cases with Eric Morse and Dantrell Davis that took place in housing projects, the grinding poverty that was producing poverty places people at a precipice of having nothing to lose. This nothing to lose mentality allows those that live in such conditions to rationalize even at 10 and 11 that it was normal to hang a five year old kid outside of the window, and even if you dropped him, no big worries. That for an eleven year old, that it was okay for him to be a menace to the neighborhood, to a point where one grocery store owne went on record saying they “should have hung him in the middle of the street.” This nihilism, utter sense of hopelessness that has black and brown faces at the bottom of the well has me saying Goddamn America.
Goddamn America for perpetuating a system that keeps blacks as a permanent underclass.
Goddamn America for allowing crack and cocaine to enter black communities–as if we owned planes that was carrying the drugs from outside of the country into our own.
Goddamn America for still not apologizing for slavery.
Goddamn America for perpetuating the myth that we are in a post-racial society when still disproportionate numbers show that blacks and Latinos are lagging behind in education, and in homeownership numbers.
Goddamn America creating a culture of apathy and nihilism.
Goddamn America for thinking that we can go overseas and commit crimes against humanity, but get indignant when the same terror hits our own backyard.
Goddamn America for being an empire.
“Well, how can you goddamn America and you live here too Uppity? Love it or leave it.”
I hear you, and I understand you, but the moment we fail to realize our complacency in a system that has left our country with entirely too many “least of these” than should be, then we can have that conversation about “love it or leave it.” Goddamn America for having an emblem synonymous with the American empire with the words inscribed on it “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door” and still many are locked up in jail, tossed out onto the streets, and have been so tired that they don’t know what rest is.
The phrase “Goddamn America” contrary to popular opinion is not some colloquial curseword for the sake of getting one’s sermon played in soundbyte loop, but rather a resignation of reality. It’s really a way of placing the situation back in the hands of God to indeed do something about the situation.
So I say to God, to damn America, because we’ve missed the big picture. Our myopia will be the ultimate death of us.
Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL
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