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Oh No He Didn’t!

erin.evans — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:03:56 +0000

Brüno: Is It Too Mean?

In Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s flaming fashionista serves up the Botoxed embodiment of America’s deadly sins. Hilarity ensues. But is it too mean?

teresa.wiltz

In Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s flaming fashionista serves up the Botoxed embodiment of America’s deadly sins. Hilarity ensues. But is it too mean?

In Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s flaming fashionista serves up the Botoxed embodiment of America’s deadly sins. Hilarity ensues. But is it too mean?

07/10/2009 07:56

Brüno, the latest entrée in Sacha Baron Cohen’s quest to dismantle American idiocracy, is raunchy, ribald, riotous, risqué, over-the-top, obnoxious and brutal, smashing cultural conventions with all the zeal of a 2-year-old let loose in the middle of a Chuck E. Cheese. It’s that chaotic and that funny to watch—funny in the oh-no-he-didn’t—kind of way.

Except that some times, watching Brüno, you wish that he really didn’t. Or hadn’t.

This is humor on steroids, humor with a savage wit, with an emphasis on savage. Yes, it is very, very, very funny. And it is also more than a little mean.

Brüno, directed by Larry Charles and written by Baron Cohen, picks up where Borat (2006) left off: Clueless naïf takes on America in a quest for stardom, stumbling and bumbling through both big cities and burbs, playing with unwitting “real people,” poking and prodding until their hypocrisy is laid bare. This time around, the clueless naïf is a horny, gay Austrian rather than a horny straight Kazakh.

Brüno, a talk show host with a penchant for wearing lederhosen that exposes more than his legs, is faced with a crisis of identity: He’s been kicked out of the fashion world—tearing through a chi-chi poo fashion show while wearing a Velcro suit didn’t help—and dumped by his Pygmy lover. He’s been, to coin the parlance of Heidi Klum in Project Runway, “Aufed.” So he decides to quit fashion. Not that the fashionista has much choice. His new quest: “To be the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler!”

With Borat and the Ali G show, Baron Cohen played the equal opportunity trickster, exposing mendacity and perfidy—or just plain stupidity—wherever he found it, from the hoi polloi to the powers that be. But here, perhaps because Baron Cohen is now famous, and that much more recognizable, he’s got to cast a wider net to find fresh new dupes. Which means that there are fewer famous folks to take down—so he goes after the little people: an all-black audience at a Maury Povich-style daytime talk show in Dallas; a crowd of wrestling fans in Arkansas; desperate stage parents at a casting call; Islamic terrorists hiding out in a sleeper cell. As with Borat, reality and fiction are blended until one is undistinguishable from the other. Though, watching Brüno trying to make a sex tape with Ron Paul (“Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Enrique Iglesias?”), we’re pretty sure that the onetime presidential candidate wasn’t in on the joke.

With Brüno, Baron Cohen takes on celebrities adopting African orphans; the cult of celebrity and our obsession with celebrity “bump watches.” (His answer to the bump watch mania: Celebrity Ultrasound.) But he’s most concerned with taking on homophobia, using as its leitmotif anal sex jokes. Brüno is obsessed with the backside of life, from acrobatic sex with the aforementioned Pygmy to oral sex with the ghost of Milli Vanilli, employing all sorts of creative props as a stand-in for the real thing. And it goes the full monty. Close-up.

Yes, he goes there.

As performers go, Baron Cohen is fearless, not afraid to look ridiculous in pursuit of the laugh and his larger point. He’s all open-mouthed, blow-dried greed, the Botoxed embodiment of the seven deadly sins, served up with an extra helping of the second sin—lust.

But after a while, the humor feels mean-spirited. You’ve already seen Baron Cohen take on the redneck bigots in Borat. To see him revisit this territory again feels like a cheap shot—a classicist cheap shot. Without question, Baron Cohen is laughing at them, not with them. You, too, will most likely laugh, and laugh until your sides hurt. But you’ll be left with a nasty aftertaste.

Teresa Wiltz is The Root’s senior culture writer.

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Slumming it in Mumbai

Chasing Michael Jackson

Eyes Off the Prize

erin.evans — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:27:38 +0000

Why We Don't Need a Michael Jackson Resolution

Yes, we should mourn Michael Jackson. But the Congressional Black Caucus needs to focus on more important issues.

sherrilyn.ifill

Yes, we should mourn Michael Jackson. But the Congressional Black Caucus needs to focus on more important issues.

Yes, we should mourn Michael Jackson. But the Congressional Black Caucus needs to focus on more important issues.

07/10/2009 07:20

Like millions of others, I’m still deeply moved by the wonderfully rich memorial service for Michael Jackson. But I can’t help but wonder whether Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, is doing Michael Jackson, her constituents or black folks a favor when she promises to bring to the floor what will be a controversial resolution deeming Jackson a “national legend … music icon” and “international humanitarian.”

Certainly, Michael was all of that. But he was also a highly controversial figure in the last 20 years of his life. He was embroiled in an ugly trial in which he was charged with child molestation. Jackson was acquitted of those charges, but his increasingly unsteady behavior and horrific appearance, along with his now-apparent addiction to various prescription drugs, left his reputation deeply scarred. As is so often and sadly the case, it was only Jackson’s death that resuscitated the public’s appreciation of his enormous talent and humanitarian efforts.

But the attempt to pass this resolution, which no doubt will be resisted by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who recently derided Jackson as a “pervert,” may do more harm than good. (Given reports of prodigious contributions by Jackson fans to a fund to stop King’s re-election—he may come to wish that he had refrained from trashing the King of Pop.) Although well-meaning, Jackson Lee’s resolution is likely to unleash a debate on the House floor that will only rehash the most troubling parts of Michael Jackson’s biography, banishing the enormous goodwill generated by Tuesday’s memorial service.

More importantly, don’t Rep. Jackson Lee and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have a few other priorities right now? Recently, former U.S. representative Cynthia McKinney was taken into custody by Israeli military officials while she was on a humanitarian mission to provide aid to the ravaged Palestinian citizens in Gaza. Forcibly removed from an aid boat in international waters, McKinney, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan-MaGuire and others on the boat were held in detention for days. The CBC made no comment, even when asked by reporters.

Discussions over the so-called “public option” in the president’s proposed health care initiative are raging throughout the media, with almost no attention focused on how the proposals currently under consideration are likely to affect African-American patients, doctors and hospitals serving African-American communities. Where is the CBC in the ongoing health care debate?

And another black community newspaper has folded. The Bay State Banner in Boston announced that it will suspend publication. The current financial crisis is closing newspapers all over the country, but the plight of black community newspapers has barely made a blip on the radar of those bemoaning the travails of the Boston Globe and the Baltimore Sun. But black newspapers are a critical source of information, education and analysis of critical issues affecting the black community. Are there legislative initiatives that can help save these critical resources?

Next week, confirmation hearings will begin for Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. There are no African Americans on the Senate Judiciary Committee—and only one African American in the Senate. (Heaven help us, it’s Roland Burris.) Given the fact that the Senate is virtually a whites-only club, the Congressional Black Caucus should press hard and publicly weigh in with their views on the first Hispanic judicial nominee—especially because much of the Republican strategy to resist her confirmation will focus on condemning Judge Sotomayor for her decision to uphold the effort by the city of New Haven to the promotion of blacks in the city’s fire department. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has taken to posting a “Daily Question for Judge Sotomayor” on his Web site, seeking to outline his plan of attack at next week’s confirmation hearings. It’s a clever organizing and educational tool for anti-Sotomayor folks in Texas. Wouldn’t it be nice if Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee posted “Answers” or “Questions about the Daily Question” on her Web site, to take on her state’s senator and provide alternative account of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination?

I’m not interested in dictating the agenda for Rep. Jackson Lee, nor do I object to acknowledging and honoring Michael Jackson’s extraordinary accomplishments and contribution to the world of music, videos and human rights. But politicians, black politicians especially, do best when they keep their eyes on the prize. There’s plenty of time in the coming year to honor Michael Jackson with a congressional resolution. But Rep. Jackson Lee and the Congressional Black Caucus have more than enough on their plates this summer without hosting a distracting debate about the very complicated life of Michael Jackson.

Sherrilyn A. Ifill is a regular contributor to The Root.

A Reversal to the Right

Chasing Michael Jackson

To the Michael in All of Us

Now He's Home

Studying War Some More

erin.evans — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:42:17 +0000

Review: The Hurt Locker

'The Hurt Locker' is a brilliant movie that shows why we need to get over our addiction with starting and fighting wars.

nicholas.charles

The Hurt Locker is a brilliant movie that shows us exactly why we need to get over our addiction to fighting, and sometimes starting, wars.

The Hurt Locker is a brilliant movie that shows why we need to get over our addiction with starting and fighting wars.

07/10/2009 05:23

The Hurt Locker is not a great war film. It doesn’t glorify combat or condemn battle. It does not try to explain why conflict exists. It does not salute the dead or mourn their deaths.

It’s an explosive and honest rendering of what happens in war zones. The film, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, focuses on the experiences of a group of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. In the prologue, New York Times reporter Chris Hedges says, “… war is a drug.”

Then we meet the addicts—two casual users and a junkie. But sitting there, screening it in the dark with three friends and a room full of strangers, I suddenly realized that many of us are enablers, if not pushers.

When the biggest box-office hit of the summer is a fictional Armageddon between out-sized machines and the human race (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, over $200 million in box-office receipts in the first week), and when some game-making mental midgets decide it’s OK to design a video game around the very real, very bloody 2004 battle of Fallujah (Six Days in Fallujah, which thankfully has been shelved), I think we have reached a societal acceptance of war that condones and promotes it.

Bigelow’s film points no fingers and presents no grand metaphor. Nothing about winners and losers, victory or defeat, missions accomplished or left unfinished. Every day the soldiers of Delta Company go out and try to detect, defuse or detonate bombs. Besieged Iraqi citizens, themselves victims of the same bombs, dispassionately observe the efforts.

The trio at the center of the film—Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)—are soldiers we rarely ever see or witness. James is the wildcard who parachutes in when the original bomb tech is, well, blown up. The shy Eldridge, who barely gets out alive, is along for the wild ride. He’s not addicted to the potent cocktail of arms and violence like James and Sanborn. And as pumped as Sanborn can get, he is an amateur compared to the adrenaline-embossed, reckless James. Is James trying to commit suicide when he breaks protocol while dealing with explosive devices? Maybe. But you can’t take your eyes off of him.

There is an undertow of testosterone and racial animus in the way James and Sanborn consistently clash. But it never colors the story. Critics of the film say there is not enough narrative, and Bigelow, who I’ve been a fan of since 1987’s Near Dark, has just strung a series of disjointed scenes together.

But that is war. There is no coherent narrative. If you try to impose some grand design, you will have committed a deadly mistake. It’s something the late Robert McNamara learned way too late.

Nick Charles is a regular contributor to The Root.

Images

hurtlocker2.JPG

Flipping the Script

Shrunken ‘Violet’

Oh No He Didn’t!

Put a Ring On It!

Saaret — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:57:34 +0000

Women's Pro-Football: The DC Divas Take On the Boston Militia

For this women’s pro-football player, the road to redemption has one more stop at this Saturday’s conference title game: D.C. Divas vs. the Boston Militia.

jordyn.

For this women’s pro-football player, the road to redemption has one more stop at this Saturday’s conference title game: D.C. Divas vs. the Boston Militia.

For this women’s pro-football player, the road to redemption has one more stop at this Saturday’s conference title game: D.C. Divas vs. the Boston Militia.

07/10/2009 06:37

On a warm, breezeless July night in suburban Maryland, a football team runs drills on a high school field: 7-on-7, blitz packages, pat and go.

If you pulled over to take a closer look, you’d be surprised to see that the players beneath the pads and helmets are women. The 60 of us are members of the D.C. Divas women’s pro-football team.

We are mothers, professionals, students, all ages and races. Some of us fought rush-hour traffic to make practice in time; others packed a shower bag and change of clothes to leave practice a few minutes early to make the night shift. Some of the most feared competitors on the field might have their 6- and 7-year-olds in tow.

We spend eight months out of the year like this, running, lifting, sweating, hitting, hurting and bleeding for the game we love. And it’s all for the moment we will experience this Saturday, when we battle for the Eastern Conference championship against the Boston Militia.

None of us do it for the glitz or glamour. Our injuries—sprained ankles, broken toes, torn ACLs—may slow us down or temporarily take us out, but as soon as our bodies can handle it (sometimes even a little sooner) we get back out there.

We definitely don’t do it for the money. Our average salary is hundreds of thousands less than the average NFL salary (which amounts to roughly $0). Our manager, coaches and medical staff (one sports doc, two chiropractors, a podiatrist and a physical therapist) receive the same modest salary. And every day at least one D.C. Diva, be it a rookie or a nine-year veteran, is faced with the task of convincing a naysayer or non-believer that women’s full-contact football does in fact exist.

When the Divas won the 2006 World Championship against Oklahoma City, there were rings, but no parade. There were no endorsement deals, even though a candid shot of any player could easily be used as an Under Armour or Nike ad. But that didn’t take away from the glorious feeling of being on top. That year we easily defeated every opponent who crossed our path.

We had similar success in the 2007 regular season, but that, however, bred a sense of false security. When we lost in the first round of playoffs to a then-powerhouse team from the South, it left us all scratching our heads.

In 2008, the league got bigger, and the teams got tougher. We fought hard, losing no game by more than six points, but still only finished with a .500 average. The disappointing end to the season made us more determined, and at least a dozen players who swore that last year was their last year suited up again in 2009 to defend the Divas’ name and put D.C. back on top.

This year, we have a new coaching lineup that introduced us to an improved structure and a more rigorous work ethic. Our new head coach knew we had all the right weapons to be champions; we have a skilled quarterback, powerhouse running backs, lithe receivers, aggressive linebackers and corners who can backpedal a pass route better than most receivers can run it forward. All we needed was the will, effort and desire to get back where we deserved to be—among the ranks of the best.

So far it’s worked. We climbed back to the top in 2009, which is turning into our redemption year. We have regularly dismantled last year’s formidable opponents. When we played the reigning champions from Detroit, their coach asked the referees to “just call it” at halftime to avoid continuing the 35-0 slaughter that had ensued in the first 30 minutes. We beat both Pittsburgh and New York in all four match-ups by more than 10 points.

This weekend, one team still stands between us and another championship run, and that’s the Boston Militia. And the name fits; they are a conglomerate of three New England football teams and fierce competitors.

The Militia already started counting chickens by their trash talk that appeared in the Boston Globe and elsewhere around the Web.

I’m guessing they might reconsider when they see how bloodthirsty the Divas are for a win. In our minds, this is no chance encounter; the stars have aligned themselves in our favor to give us this opportunity to redeem all of last year’s ills. This game could’ve been against any other team; a different rating, an unexpected defeat or any other number of possibilities could have made us miss this opportunity. But now we have the chance, in one season and one fell swoop, to right every wrong and nullify every “what if” from seasons past.

Only time will tell if our road will continue on to Austin, Texas for the Super Bowl. Either way, I’ll be suiting up next season to do this all over again—hopefully with some new jewelry.

Jordyn White is a writer in Washington and plays linebacker for the D.C. Divas.

Images

football.jpg

That's Why I'm a Linebacker

Marion Jones, Role Model?

The Football Giants

Young, Gifted and Slack

erin.evans — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:51:14 +0000

What Sarah Palin Has in Common With Al Sharpton

What Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber have in common with Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan.

david.swerdlick

What Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber have in common with Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan.

07/09/2009 11:32

“Do your job.”
—Lt. Cedric Daniels, The Wire

Gov. Sarah Palin isn’t using the title “Reverend” yet, but that could be her next move. She’s well on her way to becoming a conservative Rev. Al Sharpton in whiteface. At least she’s not known as “Sarah the Fisherman.” (Unless she forgets to take down the “Gone Fishin’” sticky note on her office door in Juneau ...)

Joe the Plumber isn’t looking to join the Nation of Islam any time soon. But since he’s already dumped his slave name, “Joe X” doesn’t really seem like that much of a reach.

And Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele might be surprised to learn that some of his closest associates think he’s Washington, D.C.’s real “Magic Negro.”

However, none of them is using their high-profile, public platform to actually do the hard work of consensus-building and shaping public policy. Instead, they’ve all opted for the steadily withering and oversubscribed role of unelected, unaccountable representatives.

New Jack Pity

A new generation of African-American elected officials, including D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Newark Mayor Corey Booker, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Alabama Congressman Artur Davis and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick are taking their cues from the Barack Obama school. They’ve accepted the hand-off of leadership from the civil rights generation by asking their constituencies to trust them to use the reins of government as a primary means for advancing the interests of their communities.

Meanwhile, Palin wants permission from her constituency to become more famous and less accountable. Just as mainstream black civic leadership is becoming fully invested in working within, rather than confronting, the political system, Palin is going in the other direction—trading the rigors of day-to-day governing for a 24/7/365 license to ill on behalf of presumably fed–up, “family-values” promoting conservatives.

But as the Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, Palin’s self-conception as catch-all representative of these “real” Americans is a fantasy conjured up by conservative elites that only works “if you think that most of working-class America is as f***ing inept as Sarah Palin.”

In fact, Palin is a classic example of the “Peter Principle”—she’s actually benefitted over and over again from the slack she’s been cut, mostly because of her personal appeal.

So when Palin blames a media double standard for her inability to govern, it’s akin to Sharpton suggesting that the media’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s death has been a racist double standard—it only means anything if you factor in that the whole point is to generate more media attention. The difference is that Sharpton actually knows how to deliver a good sermon—“a genius that dealt with a freaky situation,” indeed.

Get Off the Bus

In another life, Joe could be the Republicans’ counterweight to Sen. Al Franken.

The plumber should be the perfect congressional candidate—a prototype citizen legislator as envisioned by the founding fathers. If he put on a coat and tie, sharpened his focus on the tax issue that made him famous and started quietly making the rounds in his own community, he’d be a shoe-in to win a congressional seat in 2010.

Instead of working his way up the ladder of the House GOP caucus, he’s content to be a T-shirt wearing, tea-party keynoter. His political role model is really Minister Louis Farrakhan—a Minister-without-Portfolio standing in for an amalgamation of poorly defined grievances.

The Curious Case of Michael Steele

The Young Republican Federation meets in Indianapolis this weekend to choose a new leader, amid controversy surrounding Audra Shay, a contender for the top YRF post, for recent comments in postings on her Facebook page that contained racist jokes.

Some conservatives, like Hip Hop Republicans’ Lenny McAllister, came out unequivocally condemning the comments. But Steele, who campaigned for the RNC chairmanship against an opponent who distributed “Barack the Magic Negro” CDs, has been pretty quiet about the incident, raising the question: What is he even there for?

There are more seasoned political players, more stalwart conservatives and more prodigious fundraisers who could have been installed as GOP chair other than Steele. But he’s a jocular, semi-credible good soldier who’s also black. He really only brings value to his position if he takes a crack at changing the Republican culture from the inside out. He hasn’t done it yet, and if he can’t do it from the bully pulpit he has now, then he was a lame duck from the start.

Once upon a time, a few undemocratically self-anointed individuals spoke (and spoke, and spoke) for black America. Black participation in government and the elective political process was stunted, and Middle America nurtured a perception that African Americans were content to stay permanently outside of the political mainstream.

That’s finally changed in the Obama era. But while the old leadership model is rapidly declining in the black community, it’s being revived among the tribe of disaffected cultural conservatives whose most visible leaders now are young, gifted and slack.

David Swerdlick is a regular contributor to The Root.

Images

swerd-palin.jpg

America’s Sarah Palin Dilemma

Bailin’ Palin

Sister Sarah She Ain't

Young Bucks Get the Big Bucks

erin.evans — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:52:25 +0000

NBA Draft Focuses on the Young Ballers

The NBA veterans have long highlight reels. But teams should be looking to the future with the young ballers.

martin.johnson

The NBA veterans have long highlight reels. But teams should be looking to the future with the young ballers.

07/09/2009 06:28

Back in the day, baseball statistician and writer Bill James wrote that it’s better to spend money on new publicity instead of on old publicity. Clubs were better spending money for players who have most of their highlight clips in their future rather than in their past.

It has taken baseball personnel bosses a decade or two, but they seem to be figuring out the wisdom in James’ common-sense message. The early stages of the NBA free-agent signing period suggest that basketball execs are coming around, too. The free agency signing period began July 1st but contracts didn't become official until July 8, when the salary cap is established and precise amounts for the mid-level exception (a contract that teams over the salary cap can offer to one player) will be set. If there’s a good explanation for why these events don’t coincide, I haven’t heard it.

The big news in the early days of this summer’s free agent period has centered on young players. Ben Gordon, 26; Charlie Villanueva, 24; Marcin Gortat, 26; and Trevor Ariza, 24, have all received five-year deals. Shorter deals have gone to veteran players: Rasheed Wallace, Jason Kidd and Ron Artest. Only the Toronto Raptors blundered badly, inking Hedo Turkoglu, 30, to a five-year deal. Let’s look at the action off the hardwood so far.

The Detroit Pistons got off to a fast start by removing the stench from their 39-43 campaign in ’08-’09 by signing Gordon and Villanueva, two of the best young players on the market. Although I have reservations about giving Gordon $11 million per season until 2014, he will be a valuable addition as a sixth man and the third backcourt player in three-guard sets. Whenever a player excels in the playoffs, he gets about 40 percent more than his actual market value. I’m sure Gordon’s clutch play for Chicago in this spring’s memorable playoff series against Boston raised his value. Villanueva is a good replacement for Wallace. The Pistons’ streak of six straight conference finals appearances ended this year, and they have a lot of work to do before than can reasonably forecast going that deep into the post-season again, but they have made their team younger and more athletic.

The most intriguing move of the off-season so far has been the “swap” that resulted in forwards Ron Artest and Trevor Ariza changing teams. Ariza was miffed that the Los Angeles Lakers offered him a contract only in the range of $5.8 million a year and went shopping for other offers. The Lakers, figuring they had lost their starting small forward, moved quickly and signed Artest, formerly of the Houston Rockets, to a three-year deal worth $18 million. Meanwhile, Ariza signed with Houston for five years and approximately $36 million.

The deals help both teams. Artest is a stellar defender, an important factor given that the Lakers’ title defense likely takes them through several teams with exceptional weak side forwards—most notably, Richard Jefferson of the San Antonio Spurs, Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets and possibly some guy named LeBron.

The risk is twofold. Artest is a notoriously volatile player, and he’s not an efficient one, often jacking up shots on whim. Last season with the Houston Rockets, he used 24.7 percent of his team’s possessions. He’s replacing a player who used only 16.7 percent of his team’s possessions. Maybe Artest will adjust; maybe not. I did mention he’s volatile, right? It’s a big risk, but it’s one I’d take.

Ariza makes the Rockets younger and more athletic, and if he continues the improvement he showed in the playoffs, then the Rockets will have another cornerstone toward a team that isn’t so dependent on the oft-injured Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. The Rockets took an interest in Ariza when it appeared that their conference rivals, the Dallas Mavericks, had worked out a deal with former Orlando reserve center Marcin Gortat. Gortat played very well backing up Dwight Howard and was due a long-term contract. He will likely receive five years from the Mavericks.

Gortat, Ariza, Gordon and Villanueva are young players and offering them five-year deals makes sense. Barring injury, each will still be at the peak of their athletic prowess toward the end of the contracts. That the Toronto Raptors and Portland Trail Blazers played tug-of-war to offer former Magic swingman Hedo Turkoglu a five-year deal is just plain silly. Turkoglu turned 30 in March, and players with his skill set typically decline in their early 30s. There is no need to clog precious cap space with players on the verge of their decline years.

It’s unusual for players deep into their 30s to reverse their decline, but guard Jason Kidd, 36, did that last season and was rewarded with an extraordinarily lucrative three-year deal by the Dallas Mavericks. (I think Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is still trying to justify the deal that brought Kidd to Dallas for all-star Devin Harris.) Boston must be hoping that Rasheed Wallace has some of Kidd’s mojo. Otherwise. their two-year, $11 million deal with him is wasted money.

The fact that the news in the first week of free agency even involves a player like Wallace, who turns 35 just before camp opens, is a sure sign of a weak market. Most teams are sitting tight, and some are conserving money for next year’s free-agent market, which will be full of star talent. Two of the best moves so far this summer came from Utah Jazz teammates Mehmet Okur and Carlos Boozer. Each could have opted out of their contracts to become free agents, but sensing greener opportunities next summer, both decided to stay on for one more season in Salt Lake City. In this market, thinking outside the box means avoiding risks, not taking them.

Martin Johnson is a regular contributor to The Root.

Images

johnson-draft.jpg

Some Marquee Names Showing Their Age in the NBA Playoffs

NFL Draft: The Big Lie

The NFL's Rookie Mistakes

Go Global, America!

erin.evans — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:10:57 +0000

Americans Must Go Global to Improve Our Nation's Image!

To help President Obama improve America's image in the world, Americans must learn more about the world outside their nation's borders.

charlayne.johns...

To help President Obama improve America's image in the world, Americans must learn more about the world outside their nation's borders.

07/09/2009 07:05

During his trip to Ghana, President Barack Obama will deliver a major address celebrating democracy. The speech comes at a time when the president’s efforts to improve America’s image in the world seem to be paying off. But if Obama is to succeed in turning around those negative perceptions of America—the consequences of which Americans living abroad must deal with all the time—Americans at home have to help.

And that simply means Americans have to be better informed about people beyond the nation’s orders. This is a tough task when the foreign news that reaches most Americans rarely goes beyond the four Ds—death, disease, disaster and despair. Living and working in Africa has affirmed that for us. The Africa portrayed in Western media is almost unrecognizable to those of us who live there.

It is important, for example, for Americans to know that Ghana is one of a growing number of countries that refutes the claim that poor countries cannot afford democracy. Last December, Ghanaian voters removed the incumbent party in a hard-fought, but peaceful election—with an impressive 70 percent turnout.

It was Ghana’s fifth successful national election since the return of civilian rule in 1992, affirming a national consensus that politicians should play by the rules established by a constitution and upheld by a strong independent electoral commission. Ghana is also a soon-to-be major oil producer surrounded by countries of conflict, so its democratic development is also internationally significant.

Yet few Americans were aware of Ghana’s election in the midst of our own historic campaign. But for Ghanaians, many of whom live in America, their intense interest in the U.S. election was rivaled by their interest in what was happening back in Ghana. Americans, for too long, have been comfortable in a world where others know more about our society and politics than we know of theirs.

President Obama would do well to challenge Americans to become more informed about the world—the opportunities as well as the dangers. And he should encourage Americans to look for ways to be better informed and more engaged citizens—of their own country and of the world.

Even as the number of foreign-based, American reporters has fallen from 188 to 141 between 2002 and 2007, and major papers such as the Chicago Tribune are now closing many of their foreign posts, Americans can still remain in touch with the world.

While working in Africa, we have been impressed by the information explosion, including the thousands of African news bloggers at home and abroad. Moreover, there is also a reservoir of grassroots information appearing on the Web from the 4 million Americans working and living abroad. The number of young Americans studying in other countries has risen 150 percent since 2000 to nearly 250,000—many more now in Asia, Africa and Latin America. And many of them are blogging. It is vitally important that this pool of citizen reporters be heard.

If President Obama is to succeed in getting our global neighbors to love us, it is important for us to love them in return. We need to know that not every Muslim is a terrorist. We need to know that even the poorest African mothers and fathers have the same ambitions for their children as the wealthiest American parents. To do that, Americans must work harder at understanding the world beyond our borders, exerting a little more energy than is required for channel surfing or sticking with the one channel that shares your point of view.

President Obama has laid out a vision for bringing about international cooperation to contain extremism, advance peace with justice, and to better manage the global economy and the environment. But Americans need to hold him accountable for making that vision become reality.

Forging principled partnerships with young democracies such as Ghana is a welcome compliment to his recent efforts at improving ties with traditional allies and former adversaries, as well as his historic appeal for greater respect and understanding with Muslims around the world.

But none of this can succeed without the backing of a public that is better informed. We live in a global neighborhood, and it’s time we got to know our neighbors.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a Johannesburg-based journalist and author of New News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance.

John Stremlau is formerly Head of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and a frequent commentator on international affairs.

A Bitter South African Divorce

China's Long March Across Africa

Mr. Obama Goes to Moscow

Hung and Stung

erin.evans — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:04:04 +0000

How the Media Emasculate Asian and Black Men

From the nutty mass murderer to the stereotypical street thug, how the media emasculate Asian and black men.

annie.chuang

From the nutty mass murderer to the stereotypical street thug, how the media emasculate Asian and black men.

From the nutty mass murderer to the stereotypical street thug, how the media emasculate Asian and black men.

07/09/2009 07:57

Ahem. In case you didn’t notice, the cold-blooded killers behind two of the worst, most shocking shooting rampages in recent times—Jiverly Wong, responsible for the lives of 13 at an immigrant services center in Binghamton, N.Y., and Seung-Hui Cho, who took down 32 at Virginia Tech—had something in common.

And let’s not forget Haiyang Zhu, who stands accused of beheading a fellow student inside an Au Bon Pain cafe earlier this year on the Virginia Tech campus— while it was still raw from Cho’s 2007 outburst. Chai Soua Vang may not be a household name for those who don’t live in the upper Midwest, but many of us remember Wisconsin’s 2004 “Hmong hunter case,” in which Vang killed six hunters and wounded two in a dispute that included a trespassing dispute and racial slurs.

The mainstream media and people in polite company tend to dance around the issue, but I can tell you that Asian Americans don’t forget for a moment what these four have in common: All are Asian-American males. The black community likewise was chagrined when the D.C. snipers, John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, turned out to be two of its “own,” and the Muslim American community braces itself every time any act vaguely resembling terrorism is perpetrated.

Do the faces of severe mental illness and inexplicable murderous rage have a color? They shouldn’t, right?

It’s unsettling to focus on the Asian origins of Wong, Cho, Zhu and Vang—just as it is to confront crime statistics in which black men are disproportionately represented. These loosely defined groups, Asian-American men and black men, have been given starkly contrasting portrayals of masculinity, as they both struggle to find their place as men in a society that marks them as “Other.”

“Though it seems Asian men and black men are so different, they both get, in a sense, emasculated by racism,” Daniel Y. Kim, author of Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow and an associate professor of English at Brown University, said in an interview. “The similarity is that there is a reduction of these men to their bodies.”

Kim quotes the filmmaker Richard Fung, who puts it more succinctly. “Whereas Fanon tells us, ‘The Negro is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis. He is a penis,’ the Asian man is defined by a striking absence down there.”

Recent headlines have drawn more attention to the plight of Asian males, but their mainstream demonizing is nothing new. A long history of mockery, of equating Asian men with deviant masculinity, traces back to 19th-century yellow peril. More recently, depictions of Asian males still rely on sexually freakish, broken-English-speaking caricatures like those of the North Korean dictator on Saturday Night Live and the 2004 movie Team America: World Police, according to sociologist Nadia Kim in an essay in the Racism Review entitled: “Why Kim Jong Il Jokes Aren’t Funny.”

All of this takes a toll on real Asian-American men, how they are perceived and how they perceive themselves. That doesn’t justify the violence, of course, but rather is a way of understanding the undeniable influence of race, power and masculinity on all of us.

For black men, Daniel Y. Kim argues that in these exaggerated portrayals, the hypermasculine male is ultimately “castrated”—by lynching or self-destruction, in a gun battle with rival gang members or with police.

For Asian men, that slaying of the proverbial dragon occurs in such characters as Fu Manchu. The fictional master criminal represented a threat to whites but was also a simpering, effeminate character. The heroes, Smith and Petrie, always thwarted him.

The struggle for men of color to claim their masculinity in the shadow of mainstream media depictions was the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Byron Hurt. I saw “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” in April 2007 at Hampton University, a historically black college in Virginia. By coincidence, Hurt showed his film about violence and masculinity in rap music the same day that NBC released the disturbing video and photo “manifesto” that Cho sent to the network before carrying out his murderous scheme.

It was impossible, watching the film, not to think of Cho.

“If you’re a young man growing up in this culture … but you don’t have a lot of real power, one thing you do have access to is your body and your ability to present yourself physically as someone who’s ‘worthy’ of respect,” Jackson Katz, an anti-sexism activist, says in the film.

“That’s what accounts for a lot of this hypermasculine posturing by young men of color,” he says. Then, as an image of Donald Trump flashes on the screen, he continues: “Men who have more power—men who have financial power and workplace power and other forms of abstract power like that—don’t have to be physically powerful because they can exert their power in other ways.”

Indeed, in Cho’s manifesto, he holds guns in both hands with arms outstretched, and then pointed at the camera, reminiscent of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Two years later, Jiverly Wong would also pose for photographs holding his gun and gun license before going on his murderous rampage.

Another thing all the aforementioned men share, other than being Asian American, is that they were all immigrants or refugees—some more recently arrived than others, but all hovering in some way between identities and homes.

Immigration—or even more so, the experience of being a refugee, which Wong was—makes most immigrants feel “low and small,” as Wong’s sister described to the New York Times. It is not uncommon for former doctors and lawyers to become janitors and busboys, and for high school- or university-educated men and women to have their communication abilities reduced to those of a small child, without the cute factor.

As many immigrants learn, a voice and the ability to communicate have as much power as a gun in this society. In fact, the voice may be the nation’s other most important phallic symbol.

Andrew Lam, an editor at New America Media, wrote in a post-Binghamton commentary, “For some who feel powerlessness and marginalized but desiring change, the gun can be seductive. It provides power. It speaks in a language everybody understands.” Whether with bullets, spoken words or—nowadays—multimedia manifestos sent to television stations, men who feel low and small desperately reach for their weapons to claim something for themselves. Only when we all, as Nadia Kim suggests, take media stereotypes seriously can we understand their damaging legacy. Armed with that awareness, we can hope that men of color will seize power in ways that do not lead to the annihilation of themselves and others.

Angie Chuang is an assistant professor of journalism at American University School of Communication.

If 5-0 Shoots...

Still Shooting At Us

Guns Kill, But Poverty’s the Trigger

Hollywood Stars Join Fans for Jackson Tribute

erin.evans — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:49:59 +0000

Hollywood Stars Join Fans for Jackson Tribute

About 20,000 people packed into L.A.'s Staples Center for an emotional memorial service for the man they hailed as the world's greatest entertainer.

lisademoraes.as...

About 20,000 people packed into L.A.'s Staples Center for an emotional memorial service for the man they hailed as the world's greatest entertainer.

About 20,000 people packed into L.A.'s Staples Center for an emotional memorial service for the man they hailed as the world's greatest entertainer.

07/07/2009 16:39

Hollywood stars joined family, friends and fans from across the nation in bidding farewell to Michael Jackson today in a public memorial service in Los Angeles that featured emotional tributes to the man they hailed as the world's greatest entertainer.

The star-studded memorial extravaganza at the Staples Center followed a private funeral service attended by Jackson's family and friends at a Hollywood Hills cemetery this morning.

"Michael was the biggest star on earth," one of the speakers, Queen Latifah, told the audience of about 20,000 people in the Staples Center from a stage overlooking Jackson's golden, flower-covered casket. Tributes such as hers were interspersed with musical performances by stars including Mariah Carey, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder and Jennifer Hudson.

Read the rest of this article on the washingtonpost.com.

Images

wash-michael.jpg

Chasing Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson Memories

The Untouchable Michael Jackson

Now He's Home

erin.evans — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:45:34 +0000

Michael Jackson's Beautiful Home-Going Service

Michael Jackson may have had a strange relationship with his blackness, but his memorial put all the questions to rest. He was black.

jimi.izrael

Michael Jackson may have had a strange relationship with his blackness, but his memorial put all the questions to rest. He was black.

07/07/2009 18:59

In a tribute to his status as a global icon, Michael Jackson’s memorial was streamed all over the world, but if there was ever any doubt, we know with absolute certainty that he was, in the end, a black man.

The memorial turned the Staples Center into a home-going like the world has never seen, the biggest black funeral ever. Commentators on every channel seemed bemused and flummoxed at the same time. (“No reports of any incidents,” they said with great surprise.) But I could look at the screen—from the gospel choir to all the tales out of school about the deceased. And the obvious: Middle America got dosed with a little black church on Tuesday. There was no denying, as evidenced by all the black royalty that lined up to pay him tribute, that Michael Jackson belongs to black America.

With all of his problems, we were right there for the ride. We have known that while white America is quick to love a singing and dancing black man, it has been just as quick to hang him out to dry at the slightest provocation. Michael’s soul never recovered from allegations of child molestation, and many were reluctant to believe his side of the story. Blacks ribbed him, but didn’t take kindly to jokes from others. We never gave up on him, never turned him away. It was ironic to watch the coverage, to hear all the testimony, and see Michael Jackson humanized in death more than he was in life.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press did a study in which it was revealed that most white Americans have no idea why Michael Jackson’s death is such a big deal. After all, said Rep. Peter King, “… this guy was a pervert.” I’ve heard that sentiment expressed in certain hipster circles, and I realized that for much of America, he was just the skinny black guy who looked like a skinny white guy.

For some of us though, even with all the shots we took at him, he was a child of the Midwest—where dreams go to die—who dared to take his show on the road. He was a little black child with a dream almost no other black child could imagine. Michael was an ordinary man with extraordinary talents, but he possessed many of the same frailties and foibles as the rest of us—the same propensity to make bad choices and missteps, the same uncomfortably, dichotomous relationship with the reality of race. It may be that black people will miss the man and that white folks will merely miss the music. Because he is a black American success story, with most of it still yet to be told.

We didn’t “discover him,” like white folks did with America and breakdancing and Dave Chappelle. It seems like he was always with us. Like many other black celebrities, we know on a first-name basis, Michael grew up in our households. He was as eccentric as any other cousin at the dinner table.

We all have that family member with strange, hard-to-articulate ways. We love to make fun of them, but strangers better not, because love them we do and love them we will. No matter how they treat us, we’d never deny them a thing, whether they are just out of jail or out of the hospital or off a nod, they are still family. Our people. And you love your people, no matter what. That was Michael Jackson—our people.

He was strange, funny-acting at times, and even if we weren’t always sure where he stood, we never stopped standing by him and claiming him as our own. We loved him first, best, last. And always.

He was not just the most exciting entertainer in the history of popular music, not just a song and dance man, not merely the embodiment of human conflicts and contradictions. He was all of those things. He was loved all over the world.

But Maya Angelou did not spit any verses for Farrah Fawcett. If there was ever doubt that he was black, it’s gone now. Now we know for sure.

He’s home now.

Jimi Izrael is a blogger for The Root on The Hardline.

Chasing Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson Memories

To the Michael in All of Us

The Untouchable Michael Jackson

The Two Childhoods of Michael Jackson

America’s Sarah Palin Dilemma

erin.evans — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:46:09 +0000

Like It or Not, Sarah Palin Is the Embodiment of Modern Feminism

Many Americans can't wait to see Sarah Palin leave the stage, but say what you like about her, she is the embodiment of modern feminism.

sophia.nelson

Many Americans can't wait to see Sarah Palin leave the stage, but say what you like about her, she is the embodiment of modern feminism.

07/07/2009 14:41

America has a love-hate relationship with Gov. Sarah Palin. Ever since she burst onto the scene in August 2008 as the most unlikely vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Palin has been the victim of some of the most elitist, vicious and downright sexist attacks I have ever seen leveled against an American political candidate.

Say what you like about this perky mother of five turned mayor turned governor, but she is a pioneer. And like it or not, she is the embodiment of modern feminism. Palin is the fulfillment of the dreams of my mother's generation, which encouraged their daughters to get educated, have a profession, pursue their dreams and successfully balance marriage and family life.

As a Gen Xer myself, I am very excited by what Gov. Palin represents. Truth be told, I disagree with many of her political positions, but as a fellow professional woman, I see in her life all that I have aspired to achieve. She is married, she has children, and she is very accomplished in her own right. Isn’t that what the feminist manifesto was all about?

To diminish the significance of her professional accomplishments, as many have, is to be an elitist and political snob. I have been appalled by the outright savagery that the media and political establishment have heaped on her.

Since that time, the governor has been called “Caribou Barbie” and a “slutty airline attendant.” People have even suggested that her youngest son, Trig, is not her own biological child. I’ve personally listened to friends and colleagues in Washington denigrate this woman’s intelligence and abilities in ways I have never heard them do to anyone else.

Whether you agree or disagree with her, she is entitled to be treated with dignity and worth. Now that Gov. Palin has given a few post-resignation statements and interviews, we know that she is not a quitter, but someone who simply made a decision to protect her family and her constituents.

Can you imagine going from being a very popular, yet nationally obscure governor of a large state to all of the sudden being thrust into the national spotlight, being dissected by the national press corps over what you wear and how much it costs and being caricatured by SNL? Not to mention the governor says she has $500,000 worth of legal bills as a result of the ethics charges that surfaced when she became a national candidate—charges that her detractors refuse to admit have all been dropped or found to be baseless.

I believe her when she says that she did not want to burden the citizens of Alaska with endless investigations, which require staff resources that come out of the taxpayer’s pocket. I also believe her when she says she has no idea what she will do next—whether she runs in 2012 or simply serves in some other way.

In the final analysis, Palin’s story is a deeply American story, much like that of our president, first lady and countless other men and women who rise from poverty or working-class roots to achieve great things beyond what even they could have imagined for their lives. We don’t have to agree with Gov. Palin’s politics or her choices in life, but we can and should celebrate the fact that she got into the arena—and that she had the courage to run for vice president of the United States and endure with grace the most unbelievable scrutiny that comes with being only the second woman in history to be nominated for the post.

Sophia A. Nelson is editor-in-chief of Politicalintersectionblog.com. She is also a contributor to NPR, Huffington Post, BET and Fox News.

Images

sophia-palin.jpg

The Album That Saved Pop Music

Chasing Michael Jackson

The Two Childhoods of Michael Jackson

The Untouchable Michael Jackson

The Two Childhoods of Michael Jackson

tsamuel — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:15:25 +0000

Michael Jackson Saga Reminds Us of the Curious Case of Benjamin Button

He burst onto the scene as a minature adult and proceeded to grow more childlike over time.

michael.ericdyson

He burst onto the scene as a minature adult and proceeded to grow more childlike over time.

07/07/2009 10:12

When Michael Jackson gave up the ghost recently, we may have witnessed an eerie embodiment of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel and in the Oscar-nominated film version starring Brad Pitt, Benjamin Button ages in reverse: Born a shriveled old man, he dies a newborn baby.

As an 11-year-old prodigy, Jackson burst into the public as a miniature adult, seemingly immune to small talk and child’s play. His singing erupted into a volcano of sound and buried his youth beneath an implausible, though irresistible sophistication. If he knew too much for his age, he may have also known too much for his own good.

Jackson’s art opened a window into emotions he couldn’t possibly have understood. As he got older, he repented of his precociousness and took refuge in a childlike persona that amused before it provoked pity and horror. By the time he died, Jackson was both loved and loathed by millions because he refused to grow up. To twist Fitzgerald’s words, Jackson proved that there are no second childhoods in America.

The truth may be that both his childhoods were imagined—the first one snuffed by the inspiring and imperious demands of his father; the second one carved from a sometimes dangerous nostalgia for the youth he largely missed. But in both, Michael Jackson changed America.

The Jackson 5 was signed to Motown Records in 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Their string of hits starting in 1969 helped to usher in a post-civil rights version of blackness that exploded on record with their electrifying performances and their fashionable expression of race pride. The Jackson 5 didn’t have to give speeches or attend rallies to certify their authentic blackness; the way they grew their hair and moved their bodies spelled love of their people in bold letters.

Michael was a chocolate, cherubic-faced genius with an Afro halo. He and his brothers offered an image of black masculinity that had all the style of the Black Panthers, but the broad appeal of Tony the Tiger, which is why their animated artistry helped to integrate Saturday morning television in the early ‘70s with their own cartoon series. Sure, it was bubble gum, but their Blow Pops were spiked.

Coming a little more than five years after the Moynihan report famously concluded in 1965 that the black family was in shambles, the Jackson 5 presented an intact unit whose image of togetherness was as revolutionary as what was happening in the courts and streets. Blacks and whites rode Michael Jackson’s vocal cords into the soft racial catechism of Motown universalism without protest or resistance.

As Michael grew older, his voice and face changed. He no longer belted out R&B tunes in a blues-drenched melisma. Instead, as a solo artist, Jackson spiced his undulating tenor with sonic hiccups, parenthetical yelps, falsetto sighs and melodic grunts, all akin to musical Tourette’s. Jackson created a set of pop songs that transformed American music and evaded the racial pigeon hole. Embellishing disco, fomenting funk and dabbling in light rock on his superb 1979 album Off the Wall, Jackson reached his commercial peak on 1982’s Thriller, the best-selling album of all time.

Jackson’s image was also undergoing rapid transformation: His Afro got relaxed and curled, then straightened, his nose got smaller and sharper, and his skin got lighter and whiter. But none of that spared his racial travail. In 1980, after a Rolling Stone magazine publicist declined Jackson’s request for a cover story, he fumed, “I’ve been told over and over that black people on the cover of magazines doesn’t sell copies ... Just wait. Someday those magazines are going to be begging me for an interview. Maybe I’ll give them one. And maybe I won’t.”

In 1983, Jackson and his music label had to put the screws to MTV to air the video for his landmark single “Billie Jean,” opening the door for other black artists and giving the fledgling music channel cultural cache. Jackson essentially had to beg MTV for the opportunity to help make it rich and successful.

In the midst of his success, Jackson fought desperately to salvage the childhood he felt he never had. He eventually flaunted a penchant for sharing his bed with children, leading to accusations of molestation. Although he was legally cleared, Jackson failed to persuade millions of skeptics in the court of public opinion. He reshaped his face in his own image. Jackson grew to believe that he was too dark and that his nose was too broad. His relentless self-mutilation through reconstructive surgery was, in part, a bitter projection of the self-hatred that slices the black psyche. Although Jackson claimed to suffer from vitiligo, the disease that causes one to lose pigment, he may have sought to bleach his skin to rid his face of its offending blackness. Jackson deconstructed his African features and color; his face became a geography of distorted faces, a fleshly region of racial ideals invaded by spooky European traits that rendered him ethnically opaque.

What wasn’t difficult to see was the blackness and greatness of his music and the broad humanity of his globally popular brand of entertainment. Michael Jackson didn’t get from his father the nurture, love and unconditional affirmation he wanted in his first childhood. At times, he recklessly pursued them in his failed second childhood.

Still, he offered the world a glimpse of an extremely disciplined genius who was willing to share his gifts with millions of others because he couldn’t enjoy them himself. That may not qualify him for martyrdom, but it does make him a remarkable, if tortured soul who transformed his suffering into transcendent song and dance.

Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University.

To the Michael in All of Us

Chasing Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson Memories

The Untouchable Michael Jackson

Bailin’ Palin

erin.evans — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:58:11 +0000

Sarah Palin Steps Out of the Spotlight. But Why?

Did she finally get the memo to get out of the spotlight? Or was national politics just too nasty for Sarah Palin?

lawrence.bobo

Did she finally get the memo to get out of the spotlight? Or was national politics just too nasty for Sarah Palin?

07/07/2009 07:54

For now, the great Republican joke of 2008 has decided to step off the public stage. At least that’s how I read this weekend’s announcement from Alaska governor and former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. What will late-night comedians do? Will Tina Fey still have a job?

Of course, some time ago, I concluded that Wasilla and the Palin family were essentially a comedian’s Full Employment Act, the trailer park that keeps on giving. From unwed, teenage motherhood and OxyContin dealers to televised turkey grinding and pointless belly-aching about the humor of late-night talk show hosts, the Palin clan managed to keep themselves in the headlines. But suddenly, the heady mix of media attention, mass adulation, criticism and biting humor seems to be too much for the one-term governor.

How should we understand this unexpected declaration? One possibility, of course, is that she really means it. This is it for Sarah. Perhaps electoral politics at the national level is a test of endurance, too brutal and unrelenting for Palin and her family. “Politics as usual” was just too nasty.

But, it seems unlikely that she has actually withdrawn permanently from politics. Even given her rambling remarks and misattribution of a quote to Gen. Douglas MacArthur; it was actually Maj. General Oliver Prince Smith who said, “We’re not retreating; we are advancing in another direction.”

Each new spin on why she made the announcement only digs a deeper hole. The whole episode called to my mind Walt Kelly’s immortal Pogo, who liked to say, “The further we go, the behinder we get.” Or better still, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”

Perhaps, however, what really happened is that Palin finally got the memo. No doubt many Republican consultants and advisers have been recommending that she step out of the public eye for a while. She should, as a phrase might have it, “pull a Nixon.” Declare yourself out of politics in order to get some private time to re-invent yourself.

Doing so is probably especially important for Palin. While she clearly lights up the most conservative segments of the Republican base, she has shown no capacity whatsoever to reach beyond this loyal but narrow following. If her long-term ambition is to make a serious run for the presidency in 2012, then Palin needs to take meaningful steps to shore up the obvious deficiencies seen during the general election campaign and over the subsequent months.

Perhaps most central to remaking her image is the perception that she is an intellectual lightweight, unsuited to occupy the White House. Exhibit A in this case against Palin remains her disastrous Katie Couric interview. A recent Vanity Fair exposé only amplified this problem, revealing the extent to which even a number of high-level Republican advisers feel Palin is fundamentally out of her depth on the national stage.

Of course, Nixon called timeout after losing the 1962 California gubernatorial election. He did not walk away from a sizable chunk of an elected term of office. After Palin’s announcement, John Weaver, a high-ranking adviser to Sen. John McCain, told the New York Times, that she “falls further into the weirdness category; people don’t like a quitter.”

Palin’s sudden departure may signal, however, something deeper about her character. If Todd S. Purdum’s treatment of Palin in Vanity Fair is correct, then this impetuous resignation was not unpredictable. It is just another vainglorious act by a former beauty queen, someone who genuinely seems to believe that a pretty-girl smile, the wink of an eye and a kick from a pair of Naughty Monkey high heels should be enough to make any problem go away.

It was a calamitous bit of bad judgment on Sen. McCain’s part that first elevated Palin to prominence on the national scene. What troubles me most now is that there is no sign that she is serious about becoming better informed, or a more serious and reflective thinker. Instead, it seems she will line her wallet with major book-deal cash, surround herself with loyal sycophants and set about solidifying her grip on the Republican right-wing, evangelical base. This will be enough, sadly, to keep her on a national stage where she clearly has never really belonged.

The only pleasure I can take from this is the certainty that Republicans will remain confused and divided and, most of all, Tina Fey will still have plenty of work to do.

Lawrence Bobo is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Sociology and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Images

bobo-palin.jpg

Sister Sarah She Ain't

Palin and McCain Dun Got 'Em, Boss

Pit Bull Palin

Get Over the Obama Marriage Fantasy

erin.evans — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:45:14 +0000

Knowing Why Michelle Chose Barack Won't Help You Find a Mate

Knowing why Michelle chose Barack won't help you find a mate.

marjorie.valbrun

Knowing why Michelle chose Barack won't help you find a mate.

07/08/2009 06:42

If you are one of the legions of people sick to death of all the commentary about the state of black male/female relationships told through the Obama Example feel free to bypass this essay. If you’re among those sick to death of seeing single, professional black women blamed for the sorry state of those relationships then read on.

Let’s start with President Barack Obama, the admirably great husband and dad in chief. If he is going to be the standard around which the debate around black relationship revolves, then here is one pertinent question not being asked enough: Why did Barack choose Michelle, and not, say, a Halle Berry or Beyoncé?

After all, Michelle doesn’t fit that stereotypical ideal. Many black men would find her dual Ivy League degrees threatening. Her self-confidence and assertiveness? Emasculating. The fact that she put Barack through many paces and required him to earn her love and respect? Bossy and demanding. Not so for Barack. Few could argue that he made a smart decision. Yet, we’re supposed to believe that Michelle, the prototypical highly accomplished black woman, has a rare level of wisdom that eludes other black women when it comes to choosing a mate?

Let’s be real. The reason that many black women with backgrounds similar to Michelle Obama’s aren’t married is not because they would not give similarly skinny, big-eared, smart guys a chance: It’s because there aren’t enough of those guys to go around. Smart women are smart enough to snatch them up. That’s why there aren’t millions of Barack Obama clones walking around wondering why no black woman will have them.

There’s also a larger point being ignored. The Obamas live in a rarified world that 99.9 percent of us will never experience, so we need to get over comparing their lives to ours.

Still, tons of black couples who are neither famous nor married to famous people have made similar smart decisions about marriage. So let’s not reduce this issue to some silly five-and-dime psychoanalysis about overeducated professional black women and their overly demanding psyches. The sad reality is that we are living in very difficult times for black coupling. More of our men are in jail than ever before. Huge numbers of them are unemployed or underemployed. More black women than black men have college degrees. More black men than black women are dating outside of their race. It would be nice to pretend these factors don’t matter, but they do.

The sad result is not that black women have become too picky; it’s that many have become too desperate and not discerning enough.

As for the rest of us, it’s just not true that we’re working against our own self-interests in our quest for the perfect mate. Jenée Desmond-Harris’ piece, which appeared recently on The Root, is being cited by black male bloggers and posted on black-oriented social networking sites as some sort of open letter, or cautionary tale, to black women to adjust their attitudes or suffer the consequences of remaining alone and unattached.

While I’m sure the piece represents some personal truths and was not intended to speak for or about all black women, it certainly does not represent my truth or those of many other professional black women who are not holding out for that non-existent “Obamaesque” Prince Charming.

The truth is that many of us would be happy with a good man who simply loves and respects us and who has enough in common with us to sustain a healthy relationship. This is not an unreasonable expectation.

We should also remember that black men have had some role in creating these troubled relationship dynamics. They aren’t just sitting on the sidelines like helpless sheep waiting for black women to find them worthy of attention. To believe that is to ignore that many single black men are holding out for their idealized versions of Princess Charming to step into the role of their picture-perfect wife.

Can we at least acknowledge that the men with the best prospects—and I don’t mean high-powered jobs and fat bank accounts, but those who are employed and able to help sustain a household—are already married? Can we also agree that having realistic expectations and being able to compromise are useful qualities for both black women and men to have?

If black men want black women to give them more love, they should show us more love and less resentment. They should judge us as individuals and not as a group. Let’s start talking to each other instead of about each other.

Marjorie Valbrun is a regular contributor to The Root.

What Single Women Can Learn From Michelle

What Single Women Can’t Learn From Michelle

SBF Seeking Her Own Barack

The Untouchable Michael Jackson

erin.evans — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:42:09 +0000

The Untouchable Michael Jackson

I once thought of giving Michael Jackson a hug, but celebrity had put him outside of my reach. I believe that’s what killed him in the end.

rebecca.walker

I once thought of giving Michael Jackson a hug, but celebrity had put him outside of my reach. I believe that’s what killed him in the end.

07/07/2009 07:39

I met Michael Jackson in 1984. We were both guests of Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg at Amblin, Spielberg's production company on the Universal film lot. Whoopi Goldberg was preparing to play Celie, the protagonist in the film version of The Color Purple, a book written by my mother, and was giving a private stand-up performance at Spielberg’s request.

Michael and I sat in the front row. He was wearing his by-then trademark red bandleader jacket with epaulets and gold rope loops at the shoulder, trim black slacks, white socks, black shoes, and yes, a glove. Whoopi was hilarious, and at one point singled me out for audience participation. She asked a few questions and pulled me onstage. I gamely played along, enjoying the attention.

Why Michael approached me in a room full of superstars after the show I will never know. Perhaps because I was the youngest in the room, and at 14 didn’t have a big name, a big career or a powerful company. I was a kid, easy, with few expectations. I was not old enough to demand, even silently, that he live up to anything. Perhaps he felt that with me he could be, in a sense, free.

I remember his body language. He moved slowly, like a very cool cat, hesitant, but smooth. And then, in the softest of voices, he asked how I was able to do the impromptu bit of comical business. He could never do something like that on the spot, he said. He’d be too nervous. I remember laughing and chiding him. You’d be great, Michael! I said. He shook his head and out crept a smile so open and vulnerable that I wanted to hug him, and probably would have, if he weren’t Michael Jackson.

But he was, and I had no way to reach across the boundary of celebrity that put us on opposite sides of an invisible fence. Michael was, as he described himself in a song years later, untouchable. I believe that is what killed him. A human being can only live so long without the touch of another and can only breathe manufactured air for so many minutes.

We are left with music, memories and the shame of our own narcissistic voyeurism. As it was for so many of us, Michael’s music was a running soundtrack for my life, a powerful influence that helped shape my identity. As a young girl, I kissed a boy furtively as Michael’s song, “Rock with You,” played on my cassette player. My first real boyfriend stood for hours in front of a full-length mirror in my bedroom practicing his Michael Jackson dance moves. In quieter moments, we lay on my bed listening to “She’s Out of My Life” on the record player, both of us close to tears and full of reverence for Michael’s heartfelt emotion.

Later, when I was old enough to go out dancing with my friends, we’d all scream when we heard the rumblings of his sultry dance groove, “Don’t Stop Till You get Enough” and head to the dance floor for some serious getting down.

After college, I wrote my first memoir about growing up biracial and drew sustenance from the video for his song, “Black or White,” in which Michael portrayed race as fluid; the models in the video morphed from African to Indian to Italian to Swedish to Mongolian and back again. And he told the world that love is what matters, not skin color.

But then the nose narrowed too much, and the ever-lightening skin grew hard to stomach. The lawsuits began to surface, one after another, and then the trial and the faces of the young boys with sorrowful tales of abuse. I sat transfixed before the television and trolled the Internet for sordid news. I watched, ridiculed, judged and tried to hold on to the unsullied image of the man I met. But the stage had been set. Michael’s life was already one giant Rorschach. I sat on the sidelines with my popcorn, projecting hope and desire, fantasy and fear onto his increasingly frail body, waiting for the next set.

I will not forget the moment I heard Michael Jackson had died. I was driving on an island road, with rows of sugar cane on either side. The sun was bright and yellow and hot. I pulled over onto a patch of grass, in shock and disbelief. Michael Jackson is dead? I kept asking my husband over and over. Dead? I groped to put it in context, to read the moment, to see what it meant for him, but perhaps more important, what it meant for me. A part of me was dying, I decided. The part that hoped Michael could survive the tremendous burden he carried, that I carried. The part that held the memory of his precious innocence: my precious innocence.

That night I watched one of Michael’s breathtaking performances of the song “What About Us” on YouTube. In the beginning, Michael emerges from a giant earth, surrounded by children and proceeds to build the song to a feverish pitch. The lyrics ask all the right questions: “What about sunrise? What about rain? What about killing fields? Is there still time? Did you ever stop to notice, all the blood we've shed before? Did you ever stop to notice, this crying earth, this weeping shore?”

As the song soars toward the crescendo, Michael asks again and again, “What about us?” “What about us?” People in the audience scream and weep. At the end, spent, victorious and miraculous, he gathers the children, and they walk slowly back into the giant earth at the center of the stage.

Initially, I was speechless, overwhelmed by his mastery of his form and the power of his message. And then, without thinking, I turned from the computer and said out loud, “What about us? What about him?”

Because that’s the real story, isn’t it? It was always all about us. Who came with that level of passion and commitment on Michael’s behalf? Who offered their lives to him the way he offered his to us?

But even in the question, we glimpse the conundrum. We use his death, as we used his life, as a mirror. There is no room for Michael. It is still, tragically, all about us.

Perhaps that is Michael Jackson’s final song, his parting gift. We must have a bigger heart, a bigger vision.

It’s not all about us.

Rebecca Walker is the author of Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence.

To the Michael in All of Us

The Album That Saved Pop Music

Chasing Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson Memories

Shameless Joe Jackson

To the Michael in All of Us

erin.evans — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Why Michael Jackson Was More Everyman Than We Think

The King of Pop could not distinguish between self-definition and self-mutilation, but we've all had those moments. His problem was a matter of scale.

Kai

The King of Pop could not distinguish between self-definition and self-mutilation, but we've all had those moments. His problem was a matter of scale.

07/07/2009 07:28

I never got the joke. Not the Wacko Jacko puns I was supposed to riff on as a tabloid headline writer. Not the corny late-night TV gags I was supposed to sneer along with. Certainly not the glee with which everyone gawked and cackled at Michael’s grotesque appearance and Peter Pan fantasies. I never found any of it the least bit funny. To me, the King of Pop’s descent into madness was more familiar than bizarre; he was more everyman than carnival freak.

Sure, he was a spectacle. Michael could put on a show like nobody else, and so it went with his self-destruction. But at the core of it all, to my eyes anyway, was a glaring inability to distinguish between self-definition and self-mutilation—and that’s hardly unusual. We’ve all had those periods, hopefully brief and contained, when we’re the only ones who can’t see how much we’re hurting ourselves. I’ve lived it. Haven’t you? Michael’s fugue was unique in scale alone.

It was also more tragic irony than farce for me because his rise and fall seemed rooted in the same gift: a refreshingly unselfconscious absurdity. He reigned not just over pop music, but also over the band of free spirits that defined late ‘70s and ‘80s pop culture. Prince, Madonna, Freddie Mercury. Pick your icon. They were united by a willingness to let it all hang out. Even the hip-hop personalities were more camp than street. They were all drag queens of a sort, giddy in their exaggerated expressions of an otherwise inexplicable inner self.

So like countless 30-somethings, I holed up in a favorite bar on the night the news broke and drank and danced the memories back to life. We huddled around iPhones to watch and rewatch videos. To pine for the days when cool was defined by a grown man in silver-glitter socks and tight high-water pants. When musical gangs choreographed their fights rather than angrily posturing at one another. When hip was neither ironic nor tough but earnest and playful and glam and beautiful. To hell with thugs and players. I want pretty young things back.

But now the king is as dead as the unrestrained kingdom he ruled. Some say he was gone a long time ago. Maybe. I say he was lost, like so many of us, in a search for self-expression that had veered terribly off course. I never gave up hope on his return, and I still won’t. No, I’m not claiming some sort of “Elvis Lives” conspiracy. Michael’s life is gone for good, but I’m waiting for the day when his cultural legacy comes moonwalking back into the mainstream.

Kai Wright is a senior writer for The Root.

Michael Jackson Memories

Chasing Michael Jackson

The Album That Saved Pop Music

Shameless Joe Jackson

The Root's Summer Book List

erin.evans — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:12:41 +0000

The Root's Summer Book List

Whether you like to spend the summer escaping with some juicy drama, learning tips for self-enhancement or getting caught up in beautiful wordplay, Books on the Root has compiled 30 reading suggestions to match any speed.

fapride

Books on The Root has compiled 30 reading suggestions to match any speed.

07/08/2009 07:09

For many, summer is one of the few times of the year when life slows down a little. And for many, it is one of the few periods when there’s actually time to sit still enough to read an entire book. So whether you like to spend these precious moments escaping with some juicy drama, learning tips for self-enhancement or getting caught up in beautiful wordplay, Books on the Root has compiled 30 reading suggestions to match any speed.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier

By Percival EverettGraywolf, June 2009

Few writers could pull off the premise of Everett’s new novel. After the sudden death of his smart yet “certifiably crazy” mother, Not Sidney Poitier (that is what his Mama named him) is a parentless adolescent. He doesn’t know who his father is; his mother neither confirmed nor denied that it is the actual Sidney Poitier. He’s invited to live with Ted Turner in Atlanta. Yes, that Ted Turner. Turns out, Not Sidney’s mother wasn’t just smart; she was also a shrewd investor who poured her life savings into Turner Broadcasting, which made her son filthy rich. Although Ted makes it very clear that he isn’t Philip Drummond and that Not Sidney is not Arnold Jackson, he is one of Poitier’s only friends and the closest thing he has to a father.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of fun at the expense of Not Sidney’s name, which makes him the butt of many jokes (and because Everett is so good, you laugh every time) and fairly unpopular among peers. He does have a skill—the ability to “fesmerize,” or hypnotize, people—that he learned through his bookworm ways. It’s an ability that comes in handy to see Jane Fonda’s breasts and eventually to gain protection for his life. He’s also a dreamer, and his dreams allow Everett to place Poitier in different points in history, from slavery to the Jim Crow ’50s. While some of these visions add unique texture to the story, others slow it down.

Eventually Not Sidney drops out of high school, which is partly prompted by the antics of a sexually harassing teacher. Bored, he enrolls at Morehouse College after donating a large sum of money to the university. There he meets Percival Everett. Yes Everett has written himself in the book. Well, sort of. As a professor at the college who wrote a book called Erasure (sound familiar?), this Everett teaches the “Philosophy of Nonsense,” basks in ridiculousness and spouts both foolishness and wisdom. “People,” he tells his student, “are worse than anybody.” He, too, befriends the young man.

During his college days, Poitier, who begins to look more and more like the actor, manages to date a girl briefly, only to be confronted with her baggage when he visits her light-skinned, class- and color-conscious family for Thanksgiving.

Still feeling confused and unfilled, Poitier leaves college to head back to the Los Angeles house where he grew up. Along the way he meets some nuns, agrees to help them build a church and solves a murder of a young man who looks just like him. Does he find himself in the end? Not really, but then most of the rest of us don’t either.

Through this seemingly absurd plot, Everett throws in politics, racism, commentary on identity, shots at Bill Cosby and BET, sarcasm, wit and humor, lots of it. Most importantly, he makes all the elements play nicely together for a surprisingly meaty novel that will have you laughing out loud wherever you go this summer.

And for those with more time on their hands, here are additional titles to make you forget how quickly summer goes by:

The Thing Around Your Neck

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Knopf, June 2009

In her first short story collection, the acclaimed Nigerian writer tackles class, assimilation and broken ties in Africa and America.

The Hakawati

By Rabih Alameddine

Anchor, June 2009 (paperback)

This novel, whose title means “the storyteller,” fuses classic Middle Eastern fables with the tales of a past and present-day Lebanon embroiled by war but held together by family.

In the Kitchen

By Monica Ali

Scribner, June 2009

Using the intense, hot and multicultural environment of a London restaurant kitchen as a backdrop, the packed novel centers on a troubled chef.

The King’s Rifle

By Biyi Bandele

Amistad, March 2009

Published originally in the U.K., the novel focuses on black African soldiers who fought in WWII, a story that until now has been severely overlooked.

Up at the College

By Michele Andrea Bowen

Grand Central, April 2009

The Essence best-selling Christian fiction author returns with her fourth novel about two souls searching for love, happiness and faith.

Sisters & Husbands

By Connie Briscoe

Grand Central, June 2009

Briscoe returns with her brand of love and life fiction in this anticipated sequel to Sisters & Lovers.

Jericho's Fall

By Stephen L. Carter

Knopf, July 2009

What comes out when a former CIA head and Wall Street mogul is on his death bed? Secrets, foreign involvement and betrayal.

The True History of Paradise

By Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Random House, July 2009

Once out of print, this debut novel by the award-winning author of The Pirate’s Daughter has been brought back to life and tells the story of three women living in the harsh yet beautiful paradise that is Jamaica.

Life is Short but Wide

By J. California Cooper

Doubleday, March 2009

The treasured writer continues to impart wisdom, joy and relatable struggles through the colorful characters who inhabit a Midwestern town from the dawn of the 20th century.

An Elegy for Easterly

By Petina Gappah

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2009

Called a “rising star of Zimbabwean literature” by J.M. Coetzee, the lawyer-turned-writer has penned a debut short story collection that portrays the lives of characters not often seen as they struggle to survive under Robert Mugabe’s regime.

Incognegro

By Mat Johnson, Art by Warren Pleece

Vertigo, May 2009 (soft cover)

Recently released in paperback, this graphic novel mixes politics, the American South, lynching, murder charges and racial passing in a neatly packed mystery.

Obama’s BlackBerry

By Kasper Hauser

Little, Brown and Company, June 2009

Written by a comedic team, this parody of what the president’s BlackBerry would read includes silly text messages from his staff, crazy news alerts and funny e-mails from foreign officials.

Down Home with the Neelys: A Southern Family Cookbook

By Patrick and Gina Neely with Paula Disbrowe

Knopf, May 2009

The collection of recipes from the Food Network’s lovable cooking couple may motivate carryout aficionados to whip up something.

Too Much of a Good Thing Ain't Bad

By Clarence Nero

Broadway, June 2009

The sequel to Three Sides to Every Story follows the conflicted love between Johnny and James, who, having met in prison, try to maneuver their new worlds in Washington, D.C., after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

No Matter What!: 9 Steps to Living the Life You Love

By Lisa Nichols

Grand Central, April 2009

A contributor to “The Secret” DVD, the motivational speaker has developed a plan to teach you how to flex your “bounce-back” muscles and capture your dream life.

White Is for Witching

By Helen Oyeyemi

Random House, June 2009

The young and highly imaginative novelist returns with her third book, a tale about twin girls, a haunted house and family secrets.

Black Noir: Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction by African-American Writers

Edited by Otto Penzler

Pegasus, March 2009

The proprietor of New York’s The Mysterious Bookshop has gathered a signature cast of past and present black wordsmiths— like Paula L. Woods, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Gary Phillips and Edward P. Jones—for a collection of writings that he believes “transcend race and genre to fulfill their primary purpose—to inform and entertain.”

Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend

By Larry Tye

Random House, June 2009

The former Boston Globe reporter turns his attention to the myth, truth and mystery behind Satchel Paige, the Negro Leagues pitcher who never really got his proper due.

Carpentaria

By Alexis Wright

Atria, April 2009

Written by an Aboriginal activist, this award-winning novel illuminates the heartbreaking yet resilient lives of Australia’s indigenous people.

They Just Keep Giving

Classics to devour (again) this summer.

Another Country

By James Baldwin

Escape to Greenwich Village in the 1950s.

Parable of the Talents

By Octavia E. Butler

Bask in the genius of the late, great Octavia Butler.

Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad

By Bebe Moore Campbell

The touching story of the bond between father and daughter that’s strengthened during summers.

The Alchemist

By Paulo Coelho

Following one’s dreams seems like a reality for anyone, including a young shepherd in this well-crafted literary fable.

The Souls of Black Folk

By W.E.B. Du Bois

Is an explanation really necessary?

One Hundred Years of Solitude

By Gabriel García Márquez

An undeniable sweeping novel for epic-lovers.

Disappearing Acts

By Terry McMillan

Love is beautiful but not easy in this non-romanticized romance.

Song of Solomon

By Toni Morrison

Magical, memorable and Morrison.

Othello

By William Shakespeare

How many can really serve oh-no-he-didn’t responses like the original king of drama?

The Coldest Winter Ever

By Sister Souljah

The street-lit book that other street-lit books wish they were.

Felicia Pride is the book columnist for The Root and the founder of BackList. Her most recent book is The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip-Hop’s Greatest Songs.

The Root's Fall Book List

The Root's Global Book List

Page Burners

Welcome Back, Maxwell!

erin.evans — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:09:05 +0000

Maxwell's BLACKSummers' Night Revives R&B Music

It’s been a rough summer for black music. Maxwell’s latest album is the elixir we need, arriving just in the knick of time.

john.murph

It’s been a rough summer for black music. Maxwell’s latest album is the elixir we need, arriving just in the knick of time.

07/07/2009 08:05

Two weeks after the untimely death of Michael Jackson and the embarrassing coonery that became the 2009 BET Awards, which in part gave a cringe-inducing tribute to the King of Pop, and, to a lesser degree, the demise of Vibe magazine—all of which occurred eerily during Black Music Month—the R&B world is in great need of a refreshing summer jam that will restore our faith in contemporary soul music, something that is sensual, smart and Auto-Tune free.

Maxwell’s hotly anticipated BLACKSummers’ Night (Columbia Records) is that elixir, arriving just in the knick of time.

Now, it won’t wipe away the tears from losing Jackson. In fact, the bittersweetness of most of BLACKSummers’ Night will bring more tears. Indeed, the disc makes you feel good even though it’s not a “free good” album. Witness the wistful lead single, “Pretty Wings,” one of the most exquisite kiss-off songs to come from R&B in awhile. Even when Maxwell’s falsetto laments the rueful, “You played me dirty your game was so bad/You toyed with my affliction. Had to fill my prescription/Found the remedy/I had to set you free,” the song’s spectral arrangement and emotional tug give off a cleansing sensation.

His gift for couching somber sentiments in lovely arrangements shines again in the tender “Playing Possum.” Set against Hod David’s plaintive guitar accompaniment, Maxwell pours his heart out to a stoic lover, searching for some true emotion, even though verses such as “Express disappointment, speak your regrets” hint that he’s probably the source of her frigid demeanor. Nevertheless, when he pleads, “I'm begging you, sugar, have some leniency/Call the president and ask him, baby, to pardon me and bring you back to me,” it’s difficult not to root for Maxwell because of his gorgeous delivery and emotional conviction.

Heartache runs deep in other songs such as the blues-drenched, mid-tempo romp “Cold,” on which Maxwell’s grainy tenor croons out the spiteful verses: “Hell hath no fury than the flurry of your snow/Global warming ain’t got nothing on this chick she's not to play with,” and on “Fistful of Tears,” where he laments the stress of staying committed to a mentally unstable paramour with the chorus: “Cause I, I go insane, crazy sometimes/Trying to keep you from losing your mind/Open your eyes, see what's in front of your face/Save me my fistful of tears.”

The wounded romance that surges through BLACKSummers’ Night recalls the tortured soul Marvin Gaye conjured on his 1978’s salty masterpiece, Here, My Dear (Tamla Records) and Al Green’s 1977’s defining The Belle Album (Hi Records).

Conversely, the album does have its cheerier moments, as illustrated on the steamy opener, “Bad Habits,” in which Maxwell tells his lover to “prove it to me in the nude” and the slightly apocalyptic “Stop the World,” in which he argues that lovemaking will protect him from the harshness of the outside world.

Considering all the buzz surrounding BLACKSummers’ Night, Maxwell’s first album in eight years, and all its delayed release dates, Maxwell keeps his ambitions in check, preventing the album from delving into esoteric erotica that made his 1998 sophomore disc Embrya so baffling. His song writing strikes a delicate balance of sounding personal and heartfelt but with universal clarity. The disc also ups the ante on the musicianship, relying mostly on instrumentation indicative of ’70s soul but not falling prey to threadbare treacle.

The disc concludes with “Phoenix Rise,” a curiously upbeat instrumental that functions as a nice cliffhanger for the next chapter in BLACKSummers’ Night reported trilogy. And in some way, it promises brighter days for R&B itself.

John Murph is a regular contributor to The Root.

Music for Grown Folk

Who You Callin' ‘Grown & Sexy’?

Eminem's Stunted Growth

Mr. Obama Goes to Moscow

erin.evans — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:51:02 +0000

Mr. Obama Goes to Moscow

The Obama White House understands how badly America needs Russia's help in fixing the world's problems.

spencerboyer.ja...

The Obama White House understands how badly America needs Russia's help in fixing the world's problems.

07/06/2009 07:29

Today, President Barack Obama arrives in Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, for a three-day summit. It will be their first face-to-face exchange since meeting in London in early April, when Obama was in Europe for the G-20 and NATO summits. After a frosty U.S.-Russian relationship during most of President George W. Bush’s term in office, this summit offers an opportunity to show Russia and the rest of the world that the new U.S. administration is serious about making a fresh start and is willing to put some substance behind that much-talked-about “reset button.”

While Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and missile defense will be on the summit agenda, the main issue will be replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which is set to expire in December. President George H.W. Bush signed START in 1991, after nearly a decade of negotiations led by the Reagan administration. The treaty significantly slashed warhead deployments in both countries and is largely credited with reducing Cold War-era nuclear tension. At home, START has long been a bipartisan goal, with support from both Democratic and Republican foreign policy experts.

A replacement treaty would mark the first time in almost two decades that the two countries, whose arsenals make up more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, have negotiated a binding and verifiable agreement to reduce their nuclear arms. Such a treaty would facilitate the reduction of nuclear stockpiles and help secure existing Russian nuclear material. A reduction in nuclear stockpiles would, in turn, reduce the risk of theft or illicit sale to criminal or terrorist networks. It would also reduce the risk of an accidental launch, like we almost saw in 1995 when Russia mistook a Norwegian weather satellite for a nuclear attack and almost started a nuclear war. Furthermore, without START, the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) would be gutted because it depends on the verification mechanisms of START. In other words, it’s a big deal.

But any gains from possible agreement on START replacement go beyond arms control and nonproliferation. The U.S.-Russian relationship is still recovering from the nadir of post-Cold War relations that was reached during the most recent Bush administration. Both sides have their grievances; Russia strongly objects to the Bush administration’s missile defense program in Poland and the Czech Republic, U.S. recognition of Kosovo and U.S. criticism of Russia during its war with Georgia. The United States objects to Russia’s attempts to expand its sphere of influence and bully its neighbors. An agreement on a START replacement could provide an opportunity for the two powers to build some momentum in trying to repair their tattered relationship.

Improved relations are crucial because, quite frankly, we need Russia; few global challenges can be addressed effectively without Russian participation or at least cooperation. Immediate areas where cooperation is vital include the situations in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. Longer term issues include global climate change, energy security, recovery from the economic crisis and terrorism. The new U.S. administration understands the need for Russian input.

In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President Joe Biden said, “It is time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should work together.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up with the presentation of a symbolic reset button. And when President Obama met with President Medvedev in London during the G-20 Summit, the two agreed to pursue a revived, pragmatic approach to arms control. A new progressive strategy vis-à-vis Russia, detailed in a just-released Center for American Progress report, would also recognize the need to encourage Russian development while, at the same time, addressing the challenges posed by an increasingly assertive Moscow. In particular, the Obama administration should focus on:

· Helping to integrate Russia into the international community, which would provide greater accountability and further integrate our common interests.

· Encouraging democracy and rule of law in Russia, which is consistent with both our values and interests.

· Bolstering our energy security and helping our allies become less dependent on Russia.

· Securing regional stability in the post-Soviet states by proactively working to prevent Russian interference in the internal affairs of independent countries it still sees as part of its sphere of influence.

None of this will be easy to achieve. But Presidents Obama and Medvedev have a historic opportunity to develop a pragmatic working relationship, one that would be beneficial to both countries—and the world.

Spencer P. Boyer is the director of international law and diplomacy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank.

James Lamond is a policy researcher at the National Security Network.

Images

boyer-russia.jpg

Mr. Obama in London

Mr. Obama's Washington

Mr. Obama's Sweet Potato Pie

Air McNair's Fatal Crash

Saaret — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:40:12 +0000

NFL player Steve McNair dies in Nashville condo on July 4th.

Steve McNair was the black QB from an HBCU who made it big and became an inspiration to many. The NFL has lost one of its iconic figures.

martin.johnson

Steve McNair was the black QB from an HBCU who made it big and became an inspiration to many. The NFL has lost one of its iconic figures.

07/06/2009 07:11

It’s not unusual for former pro-football players to die at an early age. The violence of the game, the ravages of maintaining an NFL-ready physique take a toll on routine longevity, but none of that could have prepared anyone for the shock of Steve McNair’s death on July 4.

McNair, only 36, and Sahel Kazemi, a 20-year-old female friend, were found shot to death in Nashville on Saturday. The police have released few details, but many signs point to a murder suicide.

The causes and the events leading up to McNair’s death will be the subjects of much speculation and intrigue in the coming days, but it’s indisputable that the world of pro-football has lost a pivotal figure; one of the great black quarterbacks of this era is gone.

Steve McNair began his NFL career in 1995, a time when black quarterbacks were still considered a bit of a novelty. Despite the Super Bowl heroics of Doug Williams and the consistently high level of performance from Warren Moon, there were few African-American signal callers and except for Randall Cunningham, no running quarterbacks. (Debate raged over whether a mobile black quarterback could be successful despite the example of several white athletes such as John Elway and Steve Young.) By the time McNair retired last summer, he had become the archetype for a quarterback who could make good decisions, possessed a strong arm, ran hard and led by courageous example.

McNair was born in Mount Olive, Miss. and was a standout athlete. In his senior year of high school, he was drafted by the Seattle Mariners baseball team and several major NCAA schools recruited him for their football teams. However, the larger schools wanted to convert him to defensive back, so McNair opted for Alcorn State University, a historically black school. As Alcorn’s quarterback, McNair put up eye-popping numbers, averaging 400 yards a game in total offense as a sophomore, then as a senior he ran and passed for more than 6,000 yards. The Houston Oilers drafted him with third overall pick in 1995, and he took over as starting quarterback in the 1997 season, the franchise’s first after relocating to Tennessee.

In 1999, when the Oilers finished a difficult transition and adapted the name Titans, McNair had his first great NFL season. He fought through several injuries to lead his team to the franchise’s best record, 13-3. Then, after a heralded win—the Music City Miracle--in the wild card round—McNair led the Titans to consecutive wins on the road at Indianapolis and at Jacksonville for a berth in the Super Bowl XXIV. The Titans were huge underdogs as their opponents, the St. Louis Rams, featured the most fearsome offense in NFL history. St. Louis dominated the first half of the game, but they only led 9-0. After an early third quarter touchdown to make it 16-0, many feared that the rout was on, but McNair calmed his Titans and led a comeback. The Titans tied the game in the fourth quarter only to see the Rams strike back immediately to take a 23-16 with less than two minutes to go.

That set the stage for one of the greatest plays in Super Bowl history. Faced with a third down near midfield and less than 30 seconds to go, McNair dropped back and was forced to scramble. He eluded several Ram defenders while looking downfield for a receiver. Finally, two Rams seemed to have him in their grasp, but he escaped and found Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson at the Rams 10-yard line for a long gain, which brought the Super Bowl down to a final play. On the game’s final snap, McNair completed a pass to Dyson who was tackled one yard shy of scoring a tying touchdown.

In 2002, McNair fought through injuries so intense that he was unable to practice for many weeks, yet he led his Titans to the AFC championship game. In 2003, he shared NFL MVP honors with Indianapolis QB Peyton Manning. After that season, it seemed that injuries had taken their toll on McNair as his effectiveness declined, but in 2006, he signed with Baltimore Ravens and started all 16 games as he led them to a 13-3 season. McNair left the game having passed for more than 31,000 yards and rushed for nearly 3,600. Yet the biggest part of his legacy was his leadership; he was a powerful man who led by his own courageous example, refusing to let physical pain get in the way of elite performance. He set the bar very high for all quarterbacks following him.

By the time McNair retired last summer, there was no longer a question of whether a black man could be a successful NFL quarterback, the question was: Could he be as successful as Steve McNair?

Martin Johnson is a regular contributor to The Root.

Images

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Steve McNair, Football Star, Killed in Nashville

Tased to Death

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Steve McNair, Football Star, Killed in Nashville

tsamuel — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:12:34 +0000

Steve McNair, Football Star, Killed in Nashville

Murder suicide suspected in the death of the former Tennessee Titans quarterback.

TheRootStaff

Police say McNair was shot multiple times. A 20-year-old woman he had been dating was also found dead. She had one gunshot wound to the head.

07/05/2009 08:05

Former Tennessee Titans quarterback and Alcorn State University legend, Steve McNair, was killed in an apparent murder-suicide with a young woman who worked at an Opry Mills restaurant and had been dating him for months.

McNair, a hometown hero who did extensive charity work in Nashville, had several gunshot wounds, including one to the head. He was found on the sofa of a Second Avenue condominium that he rented, police said. Sahel Kazemi, 20, was found on the floor near him with a single gunshot wound to her head. A pistol was found near her body.Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said investigators were not actively looking for suspects Saturday night but had not ruled out any scenarios. He stopped short of calling the deaths a murder-suicide, but said the police should be able to classify the deaths today after autopsies and forensic work.

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Happy Fourth!!!

tsamuel — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:24:20 +0000

Happy Fourth of July!

Why having a black president makes this Independence Day so special to me.

sophia.nelson

The election of Barack Obama brings us closer to the ideals laid out in the nation's founding documents. That is something to be proud of on the Fourth of July.

The election of Barack Obama brings us closer to the ideals spelled out in our founding documents. That is something to be proud of on this Fourth of July.

07/04/2009 07:16

Last week I had the opportunity to tour George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. My nieces, 11 and 6, and I spent the day learning about Washington's life, viewing historical artifacts, visiting the mansion and the gardens and, most of all, marveling at the model of integrity and leadership he established as our nation’s first president.

However, I was most struck by an exhibit titled “The Dilemma of Slavery” and the slave burial ground which was officially dedicated at Mount Vernon in 1983. At the time of his death in 1799, Washington owned over 315 slaves. This bothered me in much the same way that visiting Monticello did in 2000, when I saw Thomas Jefferson’s grave and the burial place of his slaves.

I am conflicted about these two great men, true American patriots without whom we would not have become the great nation we are today. I've wondered how they could have been so noble and courageous as leaders of the American Revolution while engaging in the enslavement and abuse of other human beings.

Both men freed their slaves on their death beds. The Mt. Vernon slave gravesite is just down the hill from Washington’s tomb, and it’s marked by his words from his will: “It is my Will & Desire that all slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom.”

At one point my 6-year-old niece asked: “Why did George Washington own slaves when he was the president?” A profound question from a small girl. My response was that when the nation started, it did not live up to the promises made in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. I explained that in America, all men are to be created equal and endowed by God with certain rights and that we had made great progress toward that ideal when we elected our first black president last November. She smiled.

As I walked the grounds of Mt. Vernon, I was overcome with a series of emotions: humility at the price paid by Washington and others for our freedom; anger for the slaves who were stripped of their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness and now lay buried in unmarked graves; and great hope at the fact that I lived to see a black man become president, the symbol of our great nation around the world.

This Independence Day is special to me because I can see the story of America redefined for a new generation. I can see the wrongs of the past being righted by the promise of tomorrow. Despite my political disagreements with the current president, his election was rendered inevitable by the self-evident truths on which the nation was founded, and I am proud that we are living up to those truths.

Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and others got it wrong back in 1775 when they were drafting the Declaration of Independence, because they allowed the nation to start half-slave and half-free. But America should pat herself on the back this July Fourth weekend because the ideal of who we could become has been fulfilled in the election of a young man, ironically half white and half African, to the presidency of the United States. As he likes to say, only in America is such a story possible.

Sophia A. Nelson is a regular contributor to The Root.

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TV's Golden Age of Rage

erin.evans — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:44:35 +0000

O'Reilly, Hannity, Olbermann and the Age of White Rage on Cable Television.

O'Reilly, Hannity, Olbermann and the rise of white rage on cable television.

cord.jefferson

O'Reilly, Hannity, Olbermann and the rise of white rage on cable television.

GALLERY: 12 Angry Men

O'Reilly, Hannity, Olbermann and the rise of white rage on cable television.

07/06/2009 06:41

This is the modern face of cable television news: angry, emotional, mouth agape in the midst of some hateful monologue. Oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, the worst purveyors of cable news rage are all white men over 40. The era of the angry white man is officially here.

There’s Bill O'Reilly, commanding "bad Americans" to "shut up" or shoving his index finger into people's faces and yelling, "Bull!" There was Sean Hannity, accusing guests of saying they would "stand by" while women around the world were raped. And over there was Glenn Beck, dousing a staffer in pretend gasoline before hovering a match over the pleading young man's head—conveniently, Beck's horror show was passed off as a metaphor for the way Barack Obama was going to incinerate America, instead of what it actually was: a gruesome theater spectacle that belonged not on a news network, but in an old-timey street revival.

Fox News gets credit for perfecting this particular brand of madness, but they certainly didn't monopolize it. Eventually, the spittle-flicking caterwauling entered and corroded each of the top cable news networks.

On CNN, the station's local anti-immigration zealot, Lou Dobbs, was caught saying that economists who support immigration are "jackasses," while curmudgeon Jack Cafferty designated all Chinese goods "junk." Over at CNBC, in a now-famous screed from the Chicago Stock Exchange's trading floor, business reporter Rick Santelli proclaimed that people who can't pay their mortgages are "losers." His “populist rant” caused an eruption of cheers from the brokers on the floor. Then there's Keith Olbermann, the most infamously angry newsman not on Fox, and also FNC’s mortal enemy. Every night, the MSNBC host blasts someone as the "Worst Person in the World" and once advised President George W. Bush to "shut the hell up!" If nothing else, at least anger is bipartisan.

But now, try to think of a single African-American newsman who's exhibited—and gotten away with—the type of antics their white counterparts do each and every day on America’s top news channels. Don’t feel ignorant if you can’t. There aren’t any. But why?

Can you imagine the outcry if a black news anchor performed a mock-burning? Imagine a black news anchor flippantly saying of an abducted boy who hadn't escaped fast enough that he must have been having "a lot more fun [with his child molester than] he had under his old parents." Imagine a black news anchor telling an anti-war protester whose father died in 9/11 to "shut up" before cutting off the young man's microphone.

American society wouldn't stand for some raging, ranting black maniac shouting people down night after night. For proof of this, simply look to the first family.

All it took for Michelle Obama to be branded as "angry" was one remark at a campaign stop in Milwaukee: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Fox News commentator Cal Thomas immediately dubbed Michelle a stereotypical angry black woman. He then went on to list her sisters in rage: Maxine Waters, Cynthia McKinney and all the black mothers who have "had a son who has been shot in a drive-by shooting."

President Obama’s scolding came after he suggested John McCain’s remarkable wealth might put him out of touch with the average voter. The Obamas didn’t even have to raise their voices.

GALLERY: 12 Angry Men

To be sure, none of this is rage is new. It started in earnest with notorious '80s talk-show firebrand Morton Downey Jr. Combative and loud, Downey would strut about the Spartan set of The Morton Downey Jr. Show, screaming right-wing rants and occasionally squaring off with guests, even the female ones. If he ever pulled the cigarette from his mouth, it was usually to tell people to "zip it" or "go to hell," or to decry someone as a "pablum puking liberal." Low ratings forced Downey off the air after only two seasons, much to the dismay of his cult following, the "Loudmouths." But not before he had gotten the ball rolling on a new era of television. Anger had already set in.

And had it remained relegated to The Maury Povich Show, which routinely highlights sexual partners arguing about paternity tests, this rage might not have been so bad. It became downright frightening when, like lead into the water supply, it leached into the news programming.

And like lead, anger can be poisonous in the sufficient quantities. It’s difficult to not see a correlation between the recent murder of abortion doctor George Tiller and Fox News’ history of condemning the physician as a “baby killer” who would be struck down come “Judgment Day.” And it’s easy to see a correlation between Fox News and the distress of Holocaust Museum killer James von Brunn, who had targeted FNC for attack in his personal writings.

Of course, correlation does not equal causation. But how long can these shows trend toward blubbering insanity before we turn to another important axiom: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Will it take another shooting death or similar disaster before we throttle back to facts and rational information instead of inflammatory opinion on our news stations?

Cable news networks, once upon a time, attempted to be informative and substantive, and for a while they employed reporters who usually sought to be little more than stoic vessels of information. But with the rise of rage came the screaming heads.

In 1996, five years before he died of lung cancer, Morton Downey Jr. appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live and admitted that he was deeply ashamed of some of his more outrageous moments. A visibly sick Downey then added: "It just isn't worth it to entertain someone on the back, on the heart, on the stomach, on the bowels of another human being. Not worth it."

So why are so many of us watching?

Cord Jefferson is a writer living in Brooklyn. Some of his other work has appeared in National Geographic, The Daily Beast and on MTV. You can contact him here.

GALLERY: 12 Angry Men

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Save Pat Buchanan!

Saaret — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:07:31 +0000

Why Republican Pat Buchanan is not our worst enemy.

Why the jolly, red-faced Republican hitman is delivering the best news for black folks on television.

adam.serwer

Why the Republican hitman is delivering the best news for black folks on television.

Why the jolly, red-faced Republican hitman is delivering the best news for black folks on television.

07/06/2009 06:03

Pat Buchanan is a man of many bigotries. He’s praised Hitler’s “courage,” argued that black folks should be grateful that slavery took them out of Africa, fretted that Hispanic immigrants would cause the U.S. to “lose the American southwest,” compared homosexuality to alcoholism and appeared several times on a “pro-white” radio show. Buchanan’s incendiary views prompted Jamison Foser of Media Matters to ask, “What would Pat Buchanan have to say to get himself fired from MSNBC?”

The thing is, Pat Buchanan shouldn’t be fired. His rants, while offensive, aren’t persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already agree with him. But they discredit the notion that the Republican Party has entirely moved on from its regressive views on race.

For the most part, people have been inclined to shrug off Buchanan’s unapologetic racism, seeing him as a relic of an earlier era. As a commentator on MSNBC, most of Buchanan’s views are unremarkable, but sometimes they’re interesting.

It’s on issues of race and identity that Buchanan becomes most objectionable, and recently, his objectionable half has won out, driving his commentary on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor—who would, if confirmed, be the first Puerto Rican justice on the Supreme Court. Buchanan has questioned Sotomayor’s intelligence, temperament, even her ability to speak English. (However, this critique quickly boomeranged. Appearing at a conference with white nationalist Peter Brimelow, Buchanan mocked the decorated judge under a banner that misspelled the word “conference.”) And in his compulsive focus on her since-reversed ruling in an affirmative action case that denied white firefighter Frank Ricci a promotion, he has appeared a man possessed: He used her one-page bench opinion to argue that she is a proponent of “tribal justice.”

Few people understand tribal justice better than Buchanan, who seems to view competition for success and prosperity as a battle between whites and non-whites. If Sotomayor had ruled in Ricci’s favor, she would have been disregarding precedent—exactly the kind of “activist” behavior Buchanan claims to abhor. Buchanan’s objection, therefore, was not on the same legal grounds that the Supreme Court has since used to strike down Sotomayor’s decision, but on the grounds that it hurt a white man like himself. Or in his words, “What is happening now to white men right now is exactly what was done to black folks for years.” As he wrote in his 2006 book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, “Race matters. Ethnicity matters. History matters. Faith matters. Nationality matters. While they are not everything, they are not nothing. Multiculturalism be damned, this is what history teaches us.”

Further, over at the conservative Web site Human Events, Buchanan proclaimed that "one prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated 'with the base alloy of hypocrisy.'” Of course, there’s plenty hypocritical about a slaveholding nation being founded on the principle that all men are created equal. But none of that matters. It would probably be more truthful to say that Buchanan prefers “the old bigotry” because it wasn’t directed at him.

But what makes Buchanan most interesting is that he’s no blind partisan—he’s his own brand of traditional paleoconservative. Most of the time, he tells it pretty straight. Buchanan hasn’t been shy about praising Obama or criticizing the GOP when he believes it’s warranted. When Republicans like Bill Kristol and John McCain were clamoring for Obama to antagonize Iran’s leadership in the wake of protests throughout June, Buchanan supported President Obama’s strategy of undercutting Iranian hard-liners by taking America out of the equation, saying he thought Obama was behaving “like a president of the United States.” There’s also Buchanan’s tendency to be startlingly frank about what he’s thinking and what he believes. Later in the same segment, Buchanan shrugged, “I put democracy far down the line. I think a devoutly Christian, conservative, traditionalist country—even if it’s a monarchy—is fine with me.” Scary, but really kind of refreshing at the same time.

And, though Buchanan has long been, as the president is fond of saying about petty dictators, “on the wrong side of history,” that doesn’t mean one can ignore his cultural heft. Buchanan is also arguably one of the most important living American political figures—he served in the Reagan, Ford and Nixon administrations, and it was his mind that helped develop the racially divisive Southern strategy that would become a successful Republican blueprint for years to come.

So is there anything Buchanan could say to get himself kicked off the air? Probably not. As long as his prejudices are expressed in relatively polite fashion—without the use of an obvious racial epithet, for example—he can skate by.

And really, that’s why MSNBC should keep Pat Buchanan. Not despite his regressive views—but because of them. Social pressure has expelled the expression of ideas like Buchanan’s from polite company, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people who agree with the things he says. He remains on the network because, sadly, there’s still a market, an audience for his views that nod knowingly whenever his pensive scowl appears on the screen. And Buchanan says what a lot of these slick, groomed Republican press flacks are really thinking. Many of these conservatives won’t cop to believing, as he does, that America is “committing suicide” through the abortion of white babies and an influx of “Asian, African, and Latin American children;” there’s a silent minority that agree with many of his views. (A good example of this projection is the bromantic camaraderie between Buchanan and Hardball host Chris Matthews over the Ricci case—Matthews invites Buchanan to talk affirmative action precisely because he can express the kind of white resentment that Matthews himself might get in trouble for admitting.)

In recent years, the GOP has made attempts—some sincere, some not—to reach out to communities of color. These have failed, largely because a substantial amount of the GOP’s shrinking base sees the nation the way Buchanan does, as being destroyed by outsiders who aren’t real Americans. This remains true even as American demographic trends promise certain doom for the party as it currently exists. As long as that’s the case—and as unpleasant as it may be—progressives should hope those reactionaries have a voice. To the extent that Pat Buchanan is hurting someone, it isn’t liberals, Democrats or even people of color. It’s the conservative cause. If anyone should really want Buchanan to be fired from MSNBC, it’s the leadership of the Republican Party.

I say keep him.

Adam Serwer is a writing fellow at the American Prospect.

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Can You Hear My T-Shirt Now?

erin.evans — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:43:22 +0000

What Happened to T-Shirts That Meant Something?

How one woman is trying to make T-shirts politically active again.

nicholas.charles

How one woman is trying to make T-shirts politically active again.

07/03/2009 06:35

T-shirts are a powerful form of American expression. The ’60s, ‘70s and ‘80s were chock full of chic, racially specific slogans and images on T-shirts that amounted to an ongoing protest rally. Who can forget “Black Man’s Time”? Or the equally iconic: “Happy to be Nappy”?

But in the 1990s, that sort of in-your-face, activist statement became less visible, overtaken by shirts sporting images of snarling hip-hop artists. And now the dominant contemporary image on tees is the face that of President Obama.

But Renee Cox wants to make them racial and radical again. Cox is the founder of Maroon Rebel, a new Web site that hawks shirts and history, and she is challenging the notion that we have entered a post-race moment.

“I found it disturbing that the media was making references to watermelons on the White House lawn and comparing Obama to a gorilla,” Cox said. “However, due to the fact that we are in a ‘post race’ age, I choose to view their actions as ignorance instead of racism.”

Cox was at the center of a cultural firestorm more than a decade ago for her re-rendering of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, “Yo Mamma’s Last Supper,” which featured her as a naked Jesus.

Cox, who was born in Jamaica and now resides in upstate New York, insists that the messages on his shirts are about reclaiming history and is convinced that African history and African-American signifiers are being repressed and forgotten, even by many black people.

“All the shirts have historical prompts, and that’s the point. I prefer to open up a dialogue about race using Maroon Rebel T-shirts,” Cox said. My hope is that people will actually look up what the slogan means.”

One shirt says “Hey Baby,” and in the small print below adds: “Emmett Till Died For This.” Another one, full of echoes, says: “Coloreds Only” with the tag line, “That Means Everyone,” in smaller type. Cox says it’s because some people don’t get the historical reference. “The word is no longer seen since Jim Crow, and people can’t even pronounce it anymore because it’s no longer PC. It’s been taken out of circulation. I don’t understand who said we should forget about it and just move on.”

As a message medium, T-shirts have worked and have been widely successful. Listen to my T-shirt, it’s telling you what I’m thinking.

Nick Charles is a regular contributor to The Root.

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