Sorry, y’all. I am one of the poor people that doesn’t have internet access at home and I messed around and got snowed in. But if y’all ain’t seen this nearly hour and half long exchange with the President and the House Republicans, you really need to. It is one thing to know the president is brilliant, it is quite another to see it in real time. They knew the brotha was coming and they knew his purpose was to engage them in serious dialogue. They brought less than nothing to the table. These are the fools the good people of Massachusetts sought to empower through the election of Scott Brown. The Republicans are revealed here in all their ostentatious glory as the ignorant, obstinate, and fact challenged dilettantes that they are. The president is nothing short of amazing. This is the president that I voted for.
Embracing his inner Jimmy Carter, President Obama revealed a heretofore hidden personality yesterday: deficit hawk. Green eyeshade firmly affixed, the president has the audacity to believe that his proposed $477 billion dollar spending freeze in the middle of the deepest recession in more than twenty-five years is something that will work. It never has. He coulda asked President Carter. Better yet he coulda looked in the mirror and asked himself. Candidate Obama campaigned against John McCain’s spending freeze.
To the consternation of many, President Carter insisted on spending cuts to domestic discretionary programs as unemployment remained stubbornly high. Like Obama, he had an electoral mandate that he squandered and Democratic majorities in both houses that he wasted. He produced no lasting domestic policy accomplishments and presided over a large defense buildup that Reagan continued and took credit for. Ideologically, President Obama, like Jimmy Carter, has been all over the map and it’s hard to keep track.
Obama was against the war in Iraq and then took office and escalated the war in Afghanistan. He railed against the greed on Wall Street and proposed a targeted tax on the banks, but facilitated the bailout of the worst hedge fund speculators and the unconscionable greed of investment banker con artists. He has done next to nothing to confiscate or put the breaks on record bonuses and payouts to the banksters as they tighten credit to small businesses and profess a let them eat cake attitude to the victims of their predatory loan schemes.
Both Presidents are decent men. Both are gentlemen and scholars with a flair for the written word. They also have a moralistic predilection for making self-defeating statements or addresses like Carter’s Malaise speech or Obama’s statement that he’d rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. We’ve seen this movie before and this is one celluloid disaster flick I’d rather not sit though. For the sake of the tender feelings of my dear Elie, I’m, not the only one that thinks so.
In his continually futile attempt to be all things to all people and to just simply be liked, Barack Obama has embraced the conservadem me-too approach that has helped many blue dog democrats blur the lines between Democrat and Republican and appeal to fickle independent voters unhappy about the sad state of the economy and the nation’s burgeoning debt.
That is a loosing proposition. No matter what he does, the Republicans will scream bloody murder, call him a socialist, and blow dog whistles to the troglodyte right. The Republicans are the enemy. Period. The President should stick to the somewhat progressive platform he campaigned on, get off his damn knees, stop kissing arses and tell the Republicans and their conservadem handmaidens to go straight to hell. He does not have to submit to the hazing of the corporate media and the right-wing. He controls the message. Its time the Obama White House acted like it. I pray for all our sakes that they stop channeling a dazed and confused Carter Administration.
I remember it like it was yesterday. In the fall of 1994, I was an intern for the North Carolina Democratic Party. The 1994 elections were a watershed of fear, racist projection, and ignorance. The election night parties were full of tears and slack jaws as damn near everyone went down. I went home with my tail between my legs.
Devastated by the previous evening’s events and looking for solace I stepped into the HBCU counseling center office of my play mom, Ms. Chisholm. A South Carolina native, she made everyone feel like family but wasn’t a stereotypical, syrupy sweet, southern Mom. She looked up and saw the newspapers I had collected announcing the Republican sweep and said gravely, “we’re in Hell.”
This week has felt like that as a veil of ignorance and fear descended over Washington in the wake of Scott Brown’s election to the United States Senate in Massachusetts. A wake up call to be sure, it provoked some interesting reactions and farcical moments. As the president finally located his stones and called for a broad tax on the predatory banks to recoup the trillions in bailout largess they extorted from the U.S. Treasury, the Supreme Court reversed a century of precedent and plunged the United States back into the Gilded Age of Robber Barons and monopolistic trusts.
President Obama only had a year-long window to make any kind of change and he squandered it by trying to compromise with the Republicans, the banks, and the insurance companies. Everything from here on out will be filibustered unless Harry Reid uses reconciliation. But even that handy little tool will be useless with the new toy the Supreme Court has given our corporate overlords.
Campaign Finance Reform, an issue I care deeply about but never discuss was front and center yesterday as the Supreme Court struck down any limits on corporate independent expenditure campaigns on free speech grounds. They now have the power to use their general treasuries and their billions in profits to buy every friendly politician in sight or mount saturation level campaigns targeted at their political enemies.
Scared by the browning of America and the Presidency of Barack Obama, the Supreme Court finally pulled the trigger on fascism, shredded the constitution under the guise of interpreting it, and effectively destroyed our Democracy. The Republicans will finally be able to rely on an endless tsunami of cash to fund their campaigns and elections will be nothing more than contests to see who can most effectively whore out to the corporations.
I refuse to participate in, to borrow a phrase from Keith Olbermann, a “farcical perversion.” I will finish this election season out and work for the candidates I have committed to but this is Skeptical Brotha’s last campaign. I’m done. I am going to do what I should have done years ago and finally learn Spanish and French. I am going to leave this country and go somewhere that doesn’t elevate the rights of corporations over the rights of people. I love my Momma. I love my Daddy. I love my family, but I refuse to stay here and be a slave on this corporate plantation.
Her Imperial Majesty Queen Martha I, Empress of Massachusetts
Your Imperial Majesty,
On behalf of the 45,000 Americans without health insurance who may die this year because you sat on a 30 point lead. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of the dozens of unemployed men I pass on the way to work everyday that viewed Ted Kennedy as a hero and needed another one to look out for the rights of unemployed workers. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of those who revered Teddy Kennedy as a progressive champion and are thankful to God for his 47 years of service. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of the Kennedy Family—particularly Vickie and Teddy Jr. who deferred campaigns of their own and instead wasted their time raising money for you and cutting television ads on your behalf. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of all the judges Barack Obama could have appointed to reverse the right wing B.S. that reigns supreme in the federal courts had you won. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of the struggling taxpayers at the mercy of the banks and credit card companies that could use a consumer protection agency that will never materialize because you were to %*& # busy vacationing in the middle of a special election campaign. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of the struggling homeowners who were targeted by banks and mortgage companies as suckers to saddle with predatory loans. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of those sickened by the smiles you put on the faces of racist miscreants like Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh for making their dreams of total Republican obstruction come true. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of those who saw through Scott Brown’s campaign of fear and ignorance because they know that mindless obstruction is no substitute for creating jobs, and standing strong for peace and economic justice. Thanks, Byotch.
On behalf of those who took the time to vote for your imperial candidacy even though you couldn’t be bothered to actually come up with a coherent campaign theme and tell people who you were and what you stood for. Thanks, Byotch.
Questionable Role: Pat Robertson’s un-be-weave-ably happy darkie co-host on the right wing 700 club.
KRISTI NEEDS YOUR HELP
Age: Old enough to know damn better.
Sex: Female
Date she left reality: The day her stupid arse went to work for Robertson’s talabangelical network in 1999.
Race: Black (Kristi’s membership in the race is under review.)
Latest Incident: Sitting there like a lobotomized coon while Pat Robertson attempted to discourage charitable giving to Haiti by spinning a fictitious tale of Haitians making a pact with the devil to gain independence from the French.
Height: 5′6″
City Last Seen: Virginia Beach
Weight: 140 lbs
State : Virginia
Hair: Weave
Country: United States
Eye Color: Brown
What You can do: Apparently Kristi doesn’t know that slavery is over and that she is free to leave Pat Robertson’s racist plantation network at any time to find legitimate work that doesn’t prey on her people’s religiosity and steal their hard earned money. Your generous contribution will help assist a team of professionals that will plan and execute an intervention on Kristi. They will show her that she doesn’t have to be Pat’s fuc*ing slave girl and that Christianity is not synonymous with the GOP. Should they fail to persuade Kristi, they’ll just beat her damn arse like she stole somethin.’
HAT TIP: By PATRICK WALTERS, The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — Teddy Pendergrass, who became R&B’s reigning sex symbol in the 1970s and ’80s with his forceful, masculine voice and passionate love ballads and later became an inspirational figure after suffering a devastating car accident that left him paralyzed, died Wednesday at age 59.
The singer’s son, Teddy Pendergrass II, said his father died at a hospital in suburban Philadelphia. The singer underwent colon cancer surgery eight months ago and had “a difficult recovery,” his son said.
“To all his fans who loved his music, thank you,” his son said. “He will live on through his music.”
Pendergrass suffered a spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the waist down in the 1982 car accident. He spent six months in a hospital but returned to recording the next year with the album “Love Language.”
Pendergrass later founded the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance, an organization whose mission is to encourage and help people with spinal cord injuries.
Pendergrass, who was born in Philadelphia on March 26, 1950, gained popularity first as a member of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.
In 1971, the group signed a record deal with the legendary writer/producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. The group released its first single, “I Miss You,” in 1972 and then released “If You Don’t Know Me by Now,” which was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Pendergrass quit the group in 1975 and embarked on a solo career in 1976. It was his solo hits that brought him his greatest fame. With songs such as “Love T.K.O.,” “Close the Door” and “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” he came to define a new era of black male singers with his powerful, aggressive vocals that spoke to virility, not vulnerability.
Pendergrass is survived by his son, two daughters, his wife, his mother and nine grandchildren.
The humanitarian crisis enveloping Haiti is the largest natural disaster since the Tsunami in Southeast Asia 5 years ago. The fears in the first responder community are that this disaster could rival the massive Chinese quake that killed more than 240,000 in 1976. If the spirit moves you to help, these are the organizations equipped to do it.
Yele Haiti, 212-352-0552 Wyclef Jean’s grassroots org
Text Yele to 501 501 to donate $5 via your cellphone
The U.S. State Department Operations Center said Americans seeking information about family members in Haiti should call 1-888-407-4747. Due to heavy volume, some callers may receive a recording. “Our embassy is still in the early stages of contacting American citizens through our Warden Network,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement. “Communications are very difficult within Haiti at this time.”
For those interesting in helping immediately, simply text “HAITI” to “90999″ and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill. (More information)
Finally, the FBI urges people who are looking for ways to help with earthquake relief to be wary of solicitations that could be from scam artists.
“Past tragedies and natural disasters have prompted individuals with criminal intent to solicit contributions purportedly for a charitable organization or a good cause,” the FBI said, in passing along these tips:
Ignore unsolicited e-mails, and do not click on links within those messages.
Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims or officials asking for donations via e-mail or social networking sites.
Be cautious of e-mails that claim to show pictures of the disaster areas in attached files, because the files may contain computer viruses. Open attachments only from know senders.
Decline to give personal or financial information to anyone who solicits contributions.
Make contributions directly to known organizations, rather than relying on others who claim in e-mails that they will channel the donation to established groups.
The FBI says anyone receipting an e-mail that appears to be a scam should forward it to this website: www.ic3.gov
Moreover, untold numbers were still trapped after a powerful earthquake Tuesday crushed thousands of structures — from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the local U.N. headquarters.
As nations around the world mobilized to send help, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told Reuters that he believed the casualties would be “in the range of thousands of dead.”
Soon after, however, Bellerive told CNN that “I believe we are well over 100,000″ dead, while Haitian Sen. Youri Latortue said it could be 500,000.
…Aid workers reported widespread destruction and suffering.
“It’s the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen,” Bob Poff, a Salvation Army worker in Port-au-Prince, told MSNBC. “We have to get food and water” quickly, he said, in describing conditions that range from stifling heat to numerous aftershocks. “We’re trying to stay alive.”
…People pulled bodies from collapsed homes, covering them with sheets by the side of the road.
…Tens of thousands of people appear to have lost their homes and many perished in collapsed buildings that were flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions.
…U.N. peacekeepers were distracted from aid efforts by their own tragedy: Many spent the night hunting for survivors in the ruins of the local U.N. headquarters, where more than 100 people are missing.
Writing of Harold Ford in the past, I have made snarky references to the fundamentalist end times theology in the book of Revelations about the Antichrist and the Omen trilogy of horror films. I make no apology because the evil that the corporate whore from Tennessee represents cannot be understated by my use of a provocative rhetorical device.
That said, I think if somebody were to check underneath Harold’s fade, I sincerely believe you’d find a 666 birthmark in the back of his head. The way Harold has effortlessly revived his political career in the most cutthroat place imaginable and become a contender for New York Senate seat is, to be frank, fu*#ing scary. He pushed up and outmaneuvered the top dog in New York politics, Chuck Schumer, like a seasoned ward heeler.
The last several months of maneuvering reads like the script from the Omen. To review, the son of Satan is “born” to an influential political family and the minions of the devil eliminate all obstacles and kill off all people that seek to thwart his rise to the presidency and his eventual dominion over the earth.
Yesterday’s nakedly political and deeply disingenuous reversal on Same Sex Marriage is just further evidence that Harold Ford Jr is a congenital liar that will say or do anything to beat Kirsten Gillibrand’s political career to death.
In October of 2006, right in the middle of his fevered Tennessee Senate Race, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously that gay unions had to be recognized under the state’s constitution. A majority of the court left it up to the legislature to design what shape the recognition would take. After the decision was announced, Harold Ford Jr released the following statement:
Harold’s position, as wrong as two left shoes, was unequivocal. Gillibrand’s people have done some good work in poisoning the well against Harold because of his positions on choice and same sex marriage. He finally responded. On the Today Show the demonic spawn said, “My support for fairness and equality existed long before I moved to New York.”
Bull*hit
He continued spinning the lie after being asked if this was a major change. He said, “Maybe in the language.” “…But I’m a believer that benefits should flow to same sex partners and if indeed the fiction of the language, the title, should be changed, much like Chuck Schumer who changed his mind on it and Bill Clinton’s evolved, I’m of the opinion now that nothing is wrong with that.”
The following clip must be seen to be believed. It puts to bed any notion of Harold’s veracity.
The Whore must defeat NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand because she stands in the way of Harold’s nefarious designs on the seat of ultimate power. Moreover, he is running to put himself into a position to one day become President.
Everything seems to be falling into place in the complicated chess game that is New York identity politics.
Last week, according to the New York Times, Al Sharpton and Ford, “chatted warmly for about 10 minutes. Mr. Sharpton did not seek to discourage Mr. Ford from running, and recommended that he begin to reach out to the state’s black leaders and clergy.”
They end the article by telling us, “Mr. Ford will be the keynote speaker next month at the conference of the state’s Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators.” And that the organization’s leader believes Harold will encounter a “receptive” audience as he debuts before the state’s Black and Latino establishment.
Taken together, these developments are a bad omen indeed.
The blackface minstrel the Republican Party installed as its chairman has had the audacity to call on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resign. Yesterday on Meet the Press, the preeminent Salon of Sunday talk, Steele was asked if Senator Reid should resign for saying Barack Obama was a viable Presidential candidate because he was “light-skinned” and because he did not speak with a “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
I refuse to defend Harry Reid, but even an idealist like me knows the difference between a Majority Leader who advances the agenda of a black president and a Majority Leader who defended segregation.
Steele said, “[F]rom my perspective, whether he steps down today or I retire him in November, either way, he will not be the leader in 2011.” That is mighty curious statement because The Steele Sambo felt differently when Trent Lott found himself in a similar predicament.
The Politico has the scoop:
The Washington Post reported on Dec. 14, 2002: “Lt. Gov.-elect Michael S. Steele said last night that he was personally upset by U.S. Sen. Trent Lott’s praise for Sen. Strom Thurmond and his segregationist past, but said Lott should not be forced to relinquish his leadership position in the Senate. ‘Trent Lott apologized, but he needs to keep apologizing because this is a very sensitive issue to the black community,’ Steele (R) said at an event celebrating his election as Maryland’s first black lieutenant governor. ‘I know Trent Lott personally, and I know that this is not his intent. But it’s still unfortunate. And I think he needs to apologize a little bit more.’”
The New York Times quotes Steele:
What’s interesting here is when Democrats get caught saying racist things, an apology is enough,” Mr. Steele said. “If that had been [Senate Republican Leader] Mitch McConnell saying that about an African-American candidate for president of the United States,” Democrats would be “screaming for his head, very much as they were with [Former Senate Republican Leader] Trent Lott.
What the record proves, what it always proves, is that when Republicans say racist things an apology is usually enough and The Steele Sambo will be there to back them up.
Perhaps y’all remember this little tidbit from last year in Politico:
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an“entertainer”whose show can be“incendiary.”
My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.
Class, let’s review what The Steele Sambo has enormous respect for.
[On Justice Sotomayor] “So here you have a racist. You might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist. And the libs, of course, say that minorities cannot be racists because they don’t have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone, because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he’s appointed one.”
At every turn, The Steele Sambo has used his race and status as a Republican leader to defend the most aggressive purveyors of the racism he now claims to be offended by. In the blogosphere we called creeps like The Steele Sambo concern trolls. It is a delicious epithet because they damn sure ain’t the least bit concerned about whatever they comment on. And they are almost always an ugly wingnut troll. To be fair, Michael Steele is not ugly, but the racism he consistently defends as the Chairman of the Republican Party is.
While I am no fan of Barack Obama’s safe establishment politics, I hope The Steele Sambo’s book and his rancid political agenda fails.
The “news” broke yesterday that former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford Jr’s three year effort to revive his flagging political career in the cesspool of New York politics has borne rotten fruit. Since leaving the congress, Ford has kept busy with a few media gig’s on Fox News and MSNBC as a “political analyst,” Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, and most important, a corporate executive at Bank of America Merrill Lynch—a bank that acquired the largest predatory lender, Countrywide. These corporate entanglements coupled with his unabashed support of estate tax repeal for the wealthiest among us make it clear to all sentient beings that Harold Ford Jr is nothing but a shameless corporate whore with an insatiable lust for power.
The day began with an appearance on “Morning Joe,” MSNBC’s corporate sponsored Salon of establishment propaganda. The Whore played coy as Mika and Joe held forth on the NY Times story detailing Harold’s courtesan seduction of powerful and prominent Jewish fundraisers and corporate heavyweights in an effort to line up enough cash to mount a serious primary challenge to Hillary Clinton’s designated successor, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
The Whore even got Mayor Michael Bloomberg to say he would “take a look” at supporting him. Y’all can believe what you want to believe, but the Whore is serious about this sh*t. In one fell swoop, he has damn near neutralized Chuck Schumer, a man not to be trifled with.
Schumer considers himself the godfather of New York Politics and certainly the top Jewish pol. When he couldn’t control Mayor Bloomberg, he put his wife, Iris Weinshall, in his administration as one of Bloomberg’s commissioners. Former Governor Spitzer was Schumer’s top rival and his downfall in a tawdry sex scandal was relished with glee. Harold is playing this political game of chess like Bobby Fischer.
All of this inside baseball is important considering his unmistakable fingerprints in clearing the field for Gillibrand. As a former Senate Campaign Committee Chair, Schumer modis operandi is to clear the field for his favorites and to dry up the money for their opponents. Threats are exchanged and favors extended. It always worked. It worked for Gillibrand up until now. Steve Israel and Carolyn Maloney dropped their bids after being passed over for appointment after being threatened by the White House at the behest of Schumer.
But after looking at the love in these two men’s eye’s, I seriously doubt whether a call from the White House will be forthcoming this time.
Can we give Serena Williams a little love? If you are an ESPN junkie, as I am, coverage over the past few days would lead one to believe that Serena had been financing a dog fighting ring, or running a drug operation, or using enhanced interrogation techniques against orphans and widows.
If any of you good people watched her semi-final match in the US Open, then you saw what the rest of the tennis world saw. During a critical point at the end of the match, a line judge called a foot fault against Serena. Not only is a foot fault NEVER called, but Serena didn’t even commit one. That horrible call—-the single worst I’ve seen in 30 years of watching tennis—put Serena a point away from defeat. So she blew her top. She lost her cool. She told the line judge that she wanted to “shove this ball down your f#$%ing throat.”
To be sure, Serena’s actions were over the top. But it’s the first time she’s thrown this kind of tantrum in 11 years of professional tennis, in a sport where infantile tantrums are the norm. Why exactly is the sports media blowing this incident out of proportion? Why is it receiving wall-to-wall coverage when Roger Federer’s misbehavior two days later has barely been mentioned? Why is she condemned as the second coming of Jeffrey Dahmer when John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were celebrated as “brash” for their bad boy antics?
Perhaps it was the sight of an enraged, 6 foot, heavily muscled, dark skinned sister from Compton, that set the tennis world on edge. This was not what Grand Slam officials envisioned when they decided to allow women to play professionally. Venus and Serena serve as hard as the men, and Serena could kick most of their asses. They have kept the lid on their “blackness” for their entire careers. And when they’ve been interested enough to practice, they have wiped the court with the competition. The tennis world has accepted them because, for the most part, they’ve been gracious winners. But Serena apparently violated her unwritten contract with professional tennis, by losing her temper and acting a fool. It’s okay for Martina Hingis or one of the petite country club girls to throw a tantrum, but Serena has to keep it in check.
Perhaps this is the jolt Serena and Venus need to re-focus their energies on tennis, and bring home some more Grand Slam trophies. And this time they can bring those trophies home to Compton, where they are still respected and revered.
As a member of the Senate since 1962, Senator Kennedy had a long career fighting for those forced to live in the underbelly of a capitalist society. Over the last 47 years, he has done it better than nearly any politician in American history. African-Americans were among the many beneficiaries of his passionate life’s work, and for that, we will always be appreciative.
In a multitude of areas including housing, income, civil liberties, and equality, Ted Kennedy has been on the front lines. His brother John introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, considered to be one of the most impactful pieces of legislation ever produced by our government. After John’s death, Ted and his brother Robert were instrumental in seeing that the bill was passed.
Senator Ted Kennedy then went on to help pass one law after another to support the rights of the elderly, the sick, the poor and the incarcerated. He introduced the Americans with Disabilities Act, The Civil Rights Act of 1991, The Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, among others. He also helped to amend the Fair Housing Act, and has fought relentlessly for those who’ve never known the comfort of attending an Ivy League University.
I can’t believe that this consumate politician full of passionate eloquence and masterful legislative skill is gone. I am undone.
“It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.” –Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
My best friend thinks she has my number. She believes that I have profound issues with death and that it is something that I fear or cannot handle. The truth of the matter is that I’ve seen death up close several times because I’ve worked in nursing homes and hospitals. I’ve held the hands of the sick and dying, washed down their lifeless bodies, and prayed for their souls to be welcomed into the embrace of the Father. I posses a healthy respect for death’s inevitable finality. We all walk this earth in the knowledge that today could be the last day of our lives. However, the longer we live, the longer we expect to live and we go through the motions of life forgetting to actually live for today.
What I can confess to is a vulnerability to anything that reminds me of my favorite Uncle who was taken from us a few days before his 52nd birthday. His wisdom and guidance helped compensate for the absent father that has thankfully re-entered my life. He shared so much of himself with me. It’s humbling to look back on it now. His hulking presence gave me a healthy respect for authority and kept me on the straight and narrow. In the last days of his life, before pancreatic cancer manifested itself, he drew me closer and imparted all of the wisdom of a rich but unfinished life. There was so much living yet to do
As the realization of death’s approaching advance came crashing down on him, he spent almost all of the service connected benefits he fought 30 years to obtain as if it would give him more time. When he finally told me his terminal diagnosis, I cried for weeks.
Part of me believes that Michael Jackson was trapped in that cycle because of the way he lived cocooned in the protective amber of secrecy and wealth. His physical pain, whether real or imagined, was one distraction in a long list of distractions that rendered him helpless in dealing with the cause of his emotional pain. His profligate spending, which was the conscious manifestation of a burning desire to help others, almost seems like my Uncle Jim’s subconscious bargaining with God for more time.
Michael’s death brings all of that back for me and it is a painful reminder that I need to deal with my own bullshit so that I can be free to live whatever life God has planned for me in all of its fullness. I refuse to be a prisoner of other people’s expectations or of my own insecurities because tomorrow is not promised.
The King of Pop is dead. What an incredibly tragic ending to an epic life.
When TMZ announced Michael’s death I just sat there slack jawed. I knew it was true because they’re always right, but I didn’t want to believe it. I had been surfing the web madly for several minutes when I saw it. From the initial reports I could tell that the end was near. Now that it is over I am just numb.
The world’s most legendary living entertainer has died at the young age of 50. We admired the showman, the incredible dancer, writer, singer, and composer, but we never really knew him. Behind the entourage, security, screaming fans, and the outlandish and palatial estates, was a tragic and reclusive figure that never seemed to thrive despite his fame and success. That Michael, the fragile tentative soul that millions never got to know, is gone forever. I mourn for him. Many judged him by the farcical dysfunction and the over-the-top-lifestyle. Some judged him by the salacious allegations of abuse. Others took his measure by looking at his entire life. What I saw was a tremendous amount of pain and a hole in his spirit that could never be filled. We never got to see what caused his pain, but we could all see that it was there. The sweet, shy little boy whose music defined my generation is gone and I will miss him deeply.
While Oprah Winfrey got credit early and often for the more than $300 million she has donated to various charities, Michael Jackson, who was a celebrity before Oprah was in High School, equaled her in his donations to charity making the pair the biggest black philanthropists in U.S. History. The chief patron of the Heal the World Foundation, which he started, also made the 2000 Guinness Book of Records for being the pop star with the most charitable commitments. All told, Jackson was a patron to more than 39 organizations:
AIDS Project L.A.
American Cancer Society
Angel Food
Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles
BMI Foundation, Inc.
Brotherhood Crusade
Brothman Burn Center
Camp Ronald McDonald
Childhelp U.S.A.
Children’s Institute International
Cities and Schools Scholarship Fund
Community Youth Sports & Arts Foundation
Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)
Dakar Foundation
Dreamstreet Kids
Dreams Come True Charity
Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation
Juvenile Diabetes Foundation
Love Match
Make-A-Wish Foundation
Minority Aids Project
Motown Museum
NAACP
National Rainbow Coalition
Rotary Club of Australia
Society of Singers
Starlight Foundation
The Carter Center’s Atlanta Project
The Sickle Cell Research Foundation
Transafrica
United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
United Negro College Fund Ladder’s of Hope
Volunteers of America
Watts Summer Festival
Wish Granting
YMCA – 28th Street/Crenshaw
Katie McKoy of Examiner.com has compiled an impressive list of Michael’s philanthropic accomplishments. Go on over to her page and show that young lady some love. Try and keep your mouth closed while you read the list. I bet you can’t, I couldn’t. It is amazing how one of the most lonely celebrities in the world was able to give back to the less fortunate some of the love and adulation of his fans gave him. His compassion seemed boundless. It is all the more amazing to realize that had Michael not given away this massive fortune, he would have been financially secure. Rather than focus solely on himself, he lavished attention and love on others.
The tragedy of Michael’s life is that his career, family and philanthropy weren’t able to help him heal the deep emotional scars of a lost childhood. Michael is free now, free from the burdens of celebrity and free from the pain of scandal and loss of innocence. Mourn his passing but remember the richness of his legacy. Lift up Rebbie, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, La Toya, Marlon, Randy, Janet, Mr. Joe, Miss Katherine, and little Michael Joseph, Paris Michael and Prince Michael in your prayers.
Michael Steele: Concern Troll
Tags: Barack Obama, blackface minstrel, Concern Troll, Harry Reid, Michael Steele, Politics, Race, racism, Racist Comments, Republican Racism, Right Now, Right Now by Michael Steele, RNC, Rush Limbaugh, Segregation, Sonia Sotomayor, The Steele Sambo, Trent Lott, U.S. Senate
The blackface minstrel the Republican Party installed as its chairman has had the audacity to call on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resign. Yesterday on Meet the Press, the preeminent Salon of Sunday talk, Steele was asked if Senator Reid should resign for saying Barack Obama was a viable Presidential candidate because he was “light-skinned” and because he did not speak with a “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
I refuse to defend Harry Reid, but even an idealist like me knows the difference between a Majority Leader who advances the agenda of a black president and a Majority Leader who defended segregation.
Steele said, “[F]rom my perspective, whether he steps down today or I retire him in November, either way, he will not be the leader in 2011.” That is mighty curious statement because The Steele Sambo felt differently when Trent Lott found himself in a similar predicament.
The Politico has the scoop:
The New York Times quotes Steele:
What the record proves, what it always proves, is that when Republicans say racist things an apology is usually enough and The Steele Sambo will be there to back them up.
Perhaps y’all remember this little tidbit from last year in Politico:
Class, let’s review what The Steele Sambo has enormous respect for.
Rush Limbaugh has said:
At every turn, The Steele Sambo has used his race and status as a Republican leader to defend the most aggressive purveyors of the racism he now claims to be offended by. In the blogosphere we called creeps like The Steele Sambo concern trolls. It is a delicious epithet because they damn sure ain’t the least bit concerned about whatever they comment on. And they are almost always an ugly wingnut troll. To be fair, Michael Steele is not ugly, but the racism he consistently defends as the Chairman of the Republican Party is.
While I am no fan of Barack Obama’s safe establishment politics, I hope The Steele Sambo’s book and his rancid political agenda fails.