Monroe Anderson

Obama Luck--a Three-Minute Fiction

2012-11-05T09:39:47-06:00

I've been planning to try my hand at NPR's Three-Minute Fiction since it first started. Each time, before I knew it, the deadline had come and gone. It almost got away from me this year. But on the day of the deadline, I sat down and in a little less than three hours of writing and rewriting produced this short story. I named it "Obama Luck."

Obama Luck

Slipping off to sneak a smoke was the first of The Man’s secret habits. Only I knew about the second.

I learned of this compulsion on Day Two after I was summoned into the Double O.

“Where can we go in this place if we want a little privacy?” The Man asked.

I knew what he meant. I was one of the first agents assigned to Renegade’s detail, shortly after he became a candidate and the death threats started flooding in. I was one of the few agents who hadn’t kicked the habit so we’d sidle off, away from the prying press, to some secluded place.

“Flynt, I’ve got a top secret mission for you,” The Man said on Day Two.

“Yes, Mr. President,” I answered, perplexed. Secret Service never gets any secret missions. The Langley spooks keep them all for themselves.”

“Whenever the Powerball tops 200 mil, I want you to buy 7 quick picks.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I want you to buy 7 Powerball quick picks whenever the lottery hits 200 million or more. Privileged. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good. Now where can a couple of guys go for solace and a smoke?”

“I’ll scout around the Castle, sir.”

“Thanks. I’m still trying to find the privy.”

Last November, when I handed him his quick picks, The Man looked me straight in the eye. “Michelle doesn’t know I’m doing this.”

I shrugged; surprised he’d share that with me. Our relationship wasn’t close, really. I hadn’t told him that my wife had left me or that my house was underwater.

“If she knew, I’d never hear this end of it.”

I nodded.

“She’s funny that way. She believes there’s only so much luck to go around. After I won the Senate seat she insisted I kick the lottery.”

“Sir?”

“She said I’d spent my share of luck. I shouldn’t tempt fate.”

“Yes sir.”

“In a superstitious sort of way, I went along, just in case she was right. That was until Roberts swore me in.”

“Sir?”

“The more I learned about what I’d inherited, the more I knew I wasn’t that lucky.”

So that was why I’d been running those errands for The Man for the past three years. No matter where we were, if we were in country, whenever the Power Ball went big, I’d drop by a different Seven Eleven, liquor or grocery store and make the pick up.

He smashed out the butt, and then sighed heavily.

“Flynt, I’ve got a major, major dilemma.”

“How major, sir?”

“Two-hundred and fifty major.”

“Sir?”

“That Powerball winner…the one who hasn’t stepped forward in the past three months to claim the winnings.

I nodded. The ticket was purchased at the convenience store I’d bought his seven from. At first I thought it was coincidence but as time passed by, I’d begun to wonder.

“I’m the winner.”

“Wow!”

“Do you see my dilemma?”

“I see a lucky man.”

“If I come forward, Republicans will have a field day. I’ll be as rich as Romney. I’ll lose the votes of half the Americans who dreamed of winning with that ticket.”

“If you lose, Mr. Obama, you’ve got a quarter bil to fall back on. If you win, you can claim your $250,000,000 and happily…”

I was about to say, “retire,” but kept it to myself.

Obama nodded and I grinned before lighting his cigarette. I knew it would be our last smoke. My luck had changed. I was about to cash in on my pension and a big paycheck. I had a secret to share.

Enquiring minds would want to know.

I admit this piece of fiction is whimical. I think of it as a bit of O'Henry meets Hemingway. The 9th Round winner, who was announced on NPR yesterday, was Marc Sheehan. His story, The Dauphin, was just as creeative but touched on a heart-breaking challenge for many Americans. I faced this heart break with my mother for years before she died five years ago.

Sikh Slayings: White Anxiety Gone Extreme

2012-08-10T10:34:38-05:00

Here's my Root commentary on the Sikh tragedy. No more commentary here. It speaks for itself.

Sikh Slayings: White Anxiety Gone Extreme

America's browning drives a backlash that found its most virulent strain in Wade Michael Page.

By: Monroe Anderson | Posted: August 10, 2012 at 12:26 AM

(The Root) -- When Wade Michael Page walked into a Wisconsin temple last wesek, murdering six Sikh worshippers and critically wounding three others, it was an incident waiting to happen.

As the neo-Nazi loser marched through the temple randomly shooting one Sikh after the next, perhaps the "14 words" motto of white supremacists was running through his warped mind: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

To the insecure and frightened haters in our nation, the end of white dominance in America is increasingly inevitable. Besides being red, white and blue, the good old US of A is steadily becoming brown, black and yellow -- a majority-minority nation.

During a 12-month period that ended July 2011, for the first time in America's modern history, more minority babies were born than white babies. Casually referred to by white supremacists as members of "the mud races," Hispanic, black and Asian newborns made up 50.4 percent of the nation's births during that period. Just 22 years ago, minority births accounted for a much lower figure -- 37 percent.

"White supremacist groups have been having a meltdown since the Census Bureau predicted that non-Hispanic whites would lose the majority by 2050," said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitored Wade Michael Page in particular for the past 12 years, and hate groups in general for much longer than that. "The demographic change in this country is the single-most-important driver in the growth of hate groups and extremist groups over the last few years," he told ABC News.

Last year Potok's organization reported that hate groups in America had exploded to more than 1,000 from 602 at the beginning of the millennium.

Domestic terrorist Page, a 40-year-old U.S. Army reject, who died from a self-inflicted wound during the Oak Creek massacre, could take credit for some of that growth. For more than a decade, Page had been playing hate music. He played with white-power heavy-metal bands affiliated with Hammerskins Nation, and he led a couple of bands of his own, Definite Hate and End Apathy. His music appealed to other young white losers, creating new haters every day. It also raised money to help bankroll other hate groups like the National Alliance, the violent hate group that inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up a Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, which also monitors America's white supremacy groups, the names of these racists bands reveal what's on their minds and in their hearts, names like Grinded Nig, Jew Slaughter and Aggravated Assault. "In keeping with its attempts to reach out to young people, one label, named Resistance Records, even markets a white supremacist video game, 'Ethnic Cleansing,' " the ADL reports on its website. "The game is a first-person-shooter in which the player takes on the role of a white warrior in a future 'Race War,' who must kill all nonwhites to ensure 'the survival of your kind.' "

Although these virulent, malicious white supremacists, who wear their hate on their tattoo sleeves and everywhere else, are more or less a limited group of bigots, they may merely be the underbelly of a larger phenomenon.

When the Tea Party and other conservatives cry, "We want our country back," it doesn't take much imagination to translate what that means as the nation's demographics and culture continue their colorful shift.

Mainstream conservatives have been spewing coded, dog-whistle racist messages since Ronald Reagan's "Welfare Queen" speech in 1976 and the Willie Horton ad employed in the George H.W. Bush 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis. More recently, the billionaire Koch brothers and their right-wing organization, Americans for Prosperity, were accused of buying a North Carolina school board in an effort to resegregate the Wake County school system.

So I wasn't exactly shocked when conservatives attacked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano when she issued a report in April 2009 warning that right-wing extremists threaten American security. The nine-page report, titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," documented the smoldering hate among the nation's extreme right-wing groups, warning that some individuals might commit violent acts. "If such violence were to occur," the report said, "it likely would be isolated, small-scale, and directed at specific immigration-related targets."

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin posted a blog with this headline: "Confirmed: The Obama DHS Hit Job on Conservatives Is Real."

Another conservative website, Alex Jones' Prison Planet, is headlined, "Homeland Security Report Lists 'Liberty Lovers' as Terrorists."

And then-top Republican of the House Intelligence committee, former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, charged "unsubstantiated conclusions and political bias," worthy of a House investigation.

I would like to attribute all this hate to good old-fashioned American exceptionalism, but I would be wrong.

A year ago, Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik went on a shooting and bombing spree that left 77 people dead, many of them teenagers, almost all of them Muslims. Like his brethren in the U.S., he hated Muslims, he hated people who didn't look like him and he hated cultural diversity.

I fear this is just the beginning. Not only are some white Americans threatened by the encroaching "mud races," but there is a quickening recognition around the planet that the world is yellow, brown and black.

Less than a quarter of the world's population is white. By 2060, fears conservative Pat Buchanan, that percentage may dip into the single digits.

Cyber columnist Monroe Anderson is a veteran Chicago journalist who has written signed op-ed-page columns for both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and executive-produced and hosted his own local CBS TV show. He was also the editor of Savoy Magazine. Follow him on Twitter.

What would Allah say about Chick-Fil-A?

2012-08-02T11:28:29-05:00

    I’d heard about Chick-Fil-A long before I tasted it. It was being touted by a few of my friends as so good it would make you want to slap your momma.
    Last year, while driving out east, my wife, Joyce Owens, and I stopped at one of its franchises and much to my surprise, I discovered Chick-Fil-A tasted like, well, it tasted like....chicken.
    It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t special either. Harold’s Chicken Shack on the South Side or Marcello’s chicken on the North Side both serve a tastier bird.
    So when I noticed that a Chick-Fil-A had opened a couple of blocks off the Mag Mile, I made no beeline to grab a bite. And, when there was a call to boycott the fast food chicken chain because its CEO, Dan Cathy, exposed himself as being anti-gay, it was as easy for me to ignore as to not vote for Mitt Romney.
    But when Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Joe Moreno started making noises about cancelling Chick-Fil-A’s order for a second restaurant in Chicago, my interest was piqued.
    The two Chicago pols took it beyond the boycott to the political stage. Should a restaurant be barred from doing business in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood because Cathy--who takes prides himself in being a good Christian and family man--is a bigot?
    There would be no easy answer if Cathy’s bigotry was just a matter of religious belief. But this man puts his money where his mouth is. In 2010, the fast food chain donated nearly $2 million to anti-gay groups.
    The bottom line: Cathy’s nearly 2,000 restaurant chain is funding bias against gays.
    And while there is no proof that any Chick-Fil-A has refused to take money from homosexuals, the contributions speak volumes in and of themselves.

All you have to do is look at it a little differently.

Instead of Chick-Fil-A CEO being a family man and a Christian, let’s imagine that he was a family man and a Muslim. As a good Muslim, let’s say he bragged about being anti-Israel, rather than anti-gay. Let’s think of what the reaction would be when it was discovered that he contributed money to anti-Israeli groups. Not terrorists groups but pro-Palistinian groups.

I wonder how important it’d be that Chick-Fil-A had no record of discriminating against Jews. And I wonder if the same people who flocked into the Chick-Fil-A Appreciate Day would be lining up to show their support and contributing to record sales.

There’s that old axiom about not discussing religion or politics at the dinner table. Dan Cathy might want to make it his food for thought.

Obama's straight walking, double talking Urban League speech

2012-07-26T13:06:45-05:00

T he Root called me last night to ask if I could do a quick turnaround commentary on the president's speech at the National Urban League. The is what I wrote.

Obama's Careful Urban League Speech

The president kept his message all-inclusive at the civil rights group's annual convention.

By: Monroe Anderson | Posted: July 26, 2012 at 12:06 AM

(The Root) -- President Barack Obama walked a narrow line in his speech to the National Urban League convention in New Orleans Wednesday night, attempting to fire up his most enthusiastic base while giving his most rabid enemies as little ammo as possible to fire back at him.

It was no easy task. There has been some grumbling in the black community that the first African-American president was taking the last-hired and first-fired community for granted. That sentiment grew stronger this summer after Obama sent Vice President Joe Biden to address the National Association of Black Journalists and the NAACP. So Obama arrived in New Orleans for the annual Urban League meetup possibly fearing that African Americans might not show up in large enough numbers at the polling booths in November.

The president's speech to the venerable civil rights organization hit on the three most critical challenges in the black community -- violence, education and jobs -- while deftly managing to broaden the scope enough so that conservatives wouldn't have an easy shot at labeling his remarks as for blacks only.

With the exception of announcing that, by executive order, he was establishing "the first ever White House initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, so that every child has greater access to a complete and competitive education," the president's speech was pretty much all-American for all Americans.

The POTUS ticked off measures his administration has done to help black students, such as increasing Pell Grants and pushing colleges and universities to cut their costs. But imbedded in those boasts was an unspoken truth: This is good for the rest of our fellow citizens, too.

The same tactic was employed for jobs. "We don't believe government should be in the business of helping people that refuse to help themselves, and we recognize that not every government program works," Obama said. "But we do expect hard work to pay off. We do expect responsibility to be rewarded. We do expect that if you put in enough effort you should be able to find a job that pays off."

Obama also deftly merged the Urban League's mission of equal opportunity into values of the middle class, where prosperity should be broad-based. But in speaking about the tragedies brought on by the senseless deaths from gun violence Obama really integrated his message. "Violence plagues the biggest cities but it also plagues the smallest town," he said. "It claims the lives of Americans of different ages and different races, and it's tied together by the fact that these young people had dreams and had futures that were cut tragically short."

The president spoke of praying for the victims of the massacre in Aurora, Colo.: "We also pray for those who succumb to less publicized acts of violence that plague our communities in so many cities across the country every day. We can't forget about that." Obama's sleight of hand was not just a black-and-white narrative. He delicately drilled deeper into the gun-violence plague without once mentioning gun control.

"I also believe, like other Americans, that AK-47s belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities," he said. Then he went on to say he was going to talk to members of the House and Senate to seek "a consensus around violence reduction." That was another hidden message. I read it as this: "We all know all this gun violence is insane, but I can't afford to rile up the gun nuts right now. I've got an election to win."

Discouraging Development: Republicans scheme to suppress vote

2012-07-25T15:08:39-05:00

The conservatives are up to their old tricks. I'm calling them out in my latest commentary for The Root.

Déjà Vu in Texas Voter-ID Fight

The Lone Star state is among several places where new legislation will hit blacks hard at the polls.

By: Monroe Anderson | Posted: July 25, 2012 at 12:57 AM

(The Root) -- If you're a strong believer in coincidence, the outbreak of voter-identification laws across the nation just might make sense. If you're a student of American politics and history, on the other hand, you see it slightly differently. In that case, what you see is what we've got: voter suppression.

Thirty-three states, almost all of them Republican-controlled, now require some sort of voter ID. A decade ago, none did. A decade ago, there was no evidence of massive voter fraud. Today, there remains little evidence of voter fraud.

But there is clear evidence that the rash of voter-ID laws could have a profound impact on African-American participation at the polls. As Attorney General Eric Holder pointed out at the NAACP convention earlier this month, recent studies show that 8 percent of white voting-age citizens lack a government-issued ID, while 25 percent of black voting-age citizens lack one. Considering that Barack Obama received 95 percent of the African-American vote in 2008, if you think Republicans might be interested in suppressing that vote, you might be right.

Take the Lone Star state, for example. Since 2002, there have been only two documented cases of a Texan being convicted for voter impersonation fraud. But last year, a voter-ID law was passed as an "emergency item." Under the proposed Texas state law, concealed handgun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo ID while student IDs would not. Some voters would need to travel 100 miles in Texas, particularly Hispanics, to designated government offices just to get their photo IDs; others would be hard-pressed to pay for the documents needed to get the IDs. The currently contested law, if implemented, would make it easier to buy a gun than to cast a ballot in Gov. Rick Perry's state

Texas is one of 16 mostly Southern states with a history of discrimination required by the Voting Rights Act to get pre-approval from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court in D.C. for changes in voter procedures. Understanding that Holder would be a bad bet, the state is gambling on the District Court in D.C. ruling in its favor. After a weeklong trial, a three-man panel will announce its judgment later this month on whether Texas is up to its old voter-discrimination tricks.

Unfortunately, the Lone Star state is not alone in adopting restrictive voter-ID laws as a tactic to discourage African-American and Latino voters from showing up at the polls. As is the case in some of the problems Americans face today, we can blame it on George W. Bush. In the aftermath of the Florida fiasco that led to the Supreme Court declaring Bush president, Americans became desperate for measures that might stem voter fraud. Halfway through his first term, Bush signed the Help America Vote Act into law, which required first-time voters in federal elections to show some form of ID during registration or at the polling place.

Although voter identification had little to do with the problem of hanging chads, Republican-controlled Indiana saw its possibilities, then upped the ante. In 2004, Arizona passed a law requiring voters to bring a state-issued photo ID to the polling place. The next year, Indiana's Republicans pushed through a law requiring that a photo ID be shown before a voter could cast a ballot. Civil rights groups and the state's Democratic party challenged the law, arguing that it unjustly targeted poor and minority voters without any evidence that in-person voter fraud was taking place in the Hoosier state.

The same fab five right-wing activist justices on the Supreme Court who ruled that corporations are people also gave Indiana's ID law a nod. Like dominoes falling, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have followed with restrictive laws requiring voters to show up with photo IDs in hand -- even though in 2007, five years after the George W. Bush administration launched a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department found virtually no evidence of organized efforts to influence federal elections with ineligible voters.

A study by New York's Brennan Center for Justice last week reported that 1.2 million eligible black voters and 500,000 eligible Hispanic voters in the nation live more than 10 miles from their nearest ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. It also reported that "these voters may be particularly affected by the significant costs of the documentation required to obtain a photo ID. Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25 ... By comparison, the notorious poll tax -- outlawed during the civil rights era -- cost $10.64 in current dollars."

Just why would Republicans want to make minority voters, who don't have and don't need photo IDs in their day-to-day lives, cough up extra cash or go far out of their way in order to exercise their civic duty?

And why, oh, why are the Republicans hand-wringing over non-existent voter fraud? Let's see. As polls have consistently shown, President Barack Obama and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney are locked in a dead heat. Depending on who's counting, there are 10 to 12 swing states that will determine the outcome of November's election. Among those battleground states, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and North Carolina are heavily populated with either Hispanic or black voters who could make a difference. But that's only if they show up and are allowed to cast their ballots.

And, as we all know, stuff happens. Let's just make sure it doesn't happen to us.

ObamaCare The Game could battle the evil Echo Chamber

2012-06-29T10:57:35-05:00

While attending the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week in New Orleans, I came up with an idea as to how the Obama Administration could help us understand the historic health care law. I wrote a column about it for The Root website.

'Obamacare,' the Video Game?

This writer says that the repacking of the president's accomplishments would keep his message in play.

By: Monroe Anderson | Posted: June 29, 2012 at 12:48 AM

(The Root) -- The Saturday before the 2010 November midterm elections, President Obama's campaign strategist David Axelrod was a call-in guest on a radio show I was co-hosting. Team Obama was already bracing for a shellacking, since for months one Republican after the next had lip-synched right-wing talking points, accusing the POTUS of having accomplished zip.

I knew the Republicans were playing fast and loose with the truth. I knew that, like it or not, in his first two years in office, Barack Obama had scratched more off his to-do list than any other U.S. president since Lyndon Baines Johnson.

So I asked Axelrod why so many voters were so clueless as to how President Obama had spent the first two years of his first term. I dare not try to reconstruct the entire answer from the president's then senior adviser, but I will repeat two words that jumped out at me: "Information gridlock."

That's right. Axelrod's defense for a failure to communicate was that Obama's accomplishments came at such a breakneck pace that the White House press office didn't have the time to make sure that everyone following could keep up with the score. Maybe. Maybe not. But it would seem that the one achievement that is the most momentous since LBJ pushed Medicare and Medicaid through Congress in 1965 might have gotten a little special treatment: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

It hasn't helped that from its conception through passage until now, the right-wing echo chamber has been in superdrive, dogging and demonizing the president's health care law. But I've got an app for that: Obamacare the Game.

Rather than trying to run down all the complicated bennies and perks hidden in the 2,600-page law, a computer game would have players racing through level after level, virtually discovering the rewards or penalties for either being or not being enrolled in the health plan.

It wouldn't matter whether it was a strategy, simulation or role-playing game, as long as it was available for a free download on the Obama-campaign website for every system from iPad to Xbox to desktop -- Facebook, too. The gamification of the president's historic accomplishment could quickly and easily be a mind changer, slaying the stream of poison that the right keeps spewing. With the flick of a click, Americans would be able to go from unenlightened and turned off to informed and engaged.

How to beat the right-wing smear-and-fear machine came to me while I was in "The Gamification of News" session at the National Association of Black Journalists' convention last week. Although the panel was focused on a cutting-edge tactic for engaging readers and viewers in complex news stories, my mind quickly leaped from there to politics.

Since then I have interviewed two of the gamification panelists, Manuel "Mani" Saint-Victor and Scott Anderson, to see what they thought. They both agreed that it could be done and suggested how to do it.

"Have people walk through the process of being a different person with a different illness -- [the] Sim [City] approach," said Saint-Victor, who is a former psychiatry resident physician at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital and a founder of Marveloper Media. "Let them walk through and let them see it with the Obamacare version and without the Obamacare version, not telling them which is and which isn't."

Scott Anderson, who is my firstborn as well as the co-founder and lead programmer at Enemy Airship and one of Game Developer Magazine's top 50 game developers for 2009, had a similar idea. He thinks the game should be "how to survive without health insurance." In his version of Obamacare the Game, "You have all these setbacks, and you have all these crazy things people will have to do to survive," Scott said. "It might not be fun, but it'll be effective. People will say, 'Oh, wow'; if these things happened to me, I'd be screwed."

Although gamification hasn't come to politics in a big way yet, it is already being played out in advertising through reward cards and loyalty systems, Saint-Victor said. Of course, almost everybody is familiar with the SimCity games, and there's even a game called Cut Throat Capitalism, which explores the economics of Somali pirates and why they do what they do. "You basically pick what ships they go after and how you'll treat the hostages," Anderson said.

The Supreme Court may have upheld the individual mandate on Thursday, but hold up on the high fives. Just how badly the Obama administration and campaign need to get beyond the information gridlock is patently obvious.

A majority of Americans -- 54 percent -- still believe that Obamacare should be repealed. Republicans have spent three times more money bad-mouthing the president's health law than Democrats have spent explaining it. Right now there are 3 million small-business people who qualify for a health care tax credit.

A mere 170,000 have applied.

The POTUS sings the blues, Blue marries his bass player

2012-02-22T14:00:23-06:00

Barack Obama sang the blues last night.

I saw it coming. When Chicago’s blues icon Buddy Guy started egging the president to join in on Sweet Home Chicago, I figured I was about to witness an encore singing excursion, a follow-up to the “I’m so in love with you” debut performance last month. This time, instead of the Apollo, the president was playing the East Room at the White House, singing a duet with “The King of the Blues,” B.B. King, and a gaggle of other blues stars as back up.

“This is music with humble beginnings -- roots in slavery and segregation, a society that rarely treated black Americans with the dignity and respect that they deserved. The blues bore witness to these hard times. And like so many of the men and women who sang them, the blues refused to be limited by the circumstances of their birth,” President Obama said in his opening remarks for the Black History Month celebration concert as it was live streamed over the Internet.

“The music migrated north -- from Mississippi Delta to Memphis to my hometown in Chicago. It helped lay the foundation for rock and roll, and R&B and hip-hop. It inspired artists and audiences around the world.”

One of those artists who was inspired by the blues was there and featured: Mick Jagger.

His presence struck a sour note for me. Watching the lead singer of “the world’s greatest rock and roll band” headlining at a blues concert in the White House made me instantly think of Dr. John’s lyrics “I been in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time.”

Here we had an English rocker pretending to be a blues performer in America’s House.

It was a bad juxtaposition for me: my friend, Sugar Blue, would have been a better choice.

Blue was the harmonica player on Miss You, the second song Jagger sang last night at the White House and my favorite Rolling Stones hit. When you listen to the 1978 recording, the song’s driving, defining beat is Blue’s harmonica rift. When Mick sang the song last night, I missed Blue.

Across the threshold photo by Maggie Reid

As fate would have it, five days earlier I had attended Blue’s wedding right here in Sweet Home Chicago at the Chess Studios, home of the Chicago Blues Foundation and Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven.

The Wedding Reception. From left to right, Billy Branch, Wayne Baker Brooks, Sugar Blue, Billy Boy Arnold, Iltaria Lanteri, Eddie Clearwater, Deitra Farr, and Paul Benjamin (Photo by Monroe Anderson)

Ilaria Lantieri and Sugar Blue cutting the wedding cake (photo by Maggie Reid)

Sugar Blue’s was no ordinary wedding.

First of all, his lovely bride was Ilaria Lantieri, his band’s bass guitarist who is also an MD in her native Italy. Their wedding was a three-layered affair. It was a conventional wedding imbued with a Native American Smudge Ceremony followed by the jumping of the broom. The guests were their extended blues family--Blues greats Billy Branch, Detra Farr, Corky Siegel, Jimmy Johnson, Eddie Clearwater and Billy Boy Arnold were present as were the children of Jimmy Reed, Howlin Wolf and the grandchildren of Willie Dixon.

Following the ceremonies on Chicago’s South Side, we all went to Rosa’s Lounge, the blues club on the city’s near northwest side. That’s where the bride, and her Grammy award-winning groom, took to the stage to play some blues. They were soon joined by many of their other talented blues guests.

And while the White House celebration was a sweet way to spend a couple of hours, Rosa’s rocked the night away.

Mr. and Mrs. Blue jamming at Rosa's (Photo by Monroe Anderson)

Ten years after 9/11, America needs 911

2011-09-07T10:50:54-05:00

On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, the Chicago Sun-Times assigned all its Sunday op-ed columnists to write on the subject. Below is what I wrote. I've cut and pasted it from a wingnut website, Free Republic. If you'll notice, I got honored with a very grown-up "Barf Alert."

Well, five years have passed. We're Bush-free but still stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We're also still afraid.

We can't catch a flight without going shoeless first and we're more than likely to have to show our private parts to a TSA agent before we're allowed to board. Osama bin Laden is dead but his terror lives on. So does his toll on American freedom and finances. We've spent ourselves into a hole by occupying two countries in our pursuit of invisible men. While we've been blowing things up for the past decade, China has been building and building and building.

We're still stuck in the quagmire with President Obama afraid to pull the plug, rightly fearing that the Republicans will successfully label him our soft on terror, anti-American, pro-Arab, freedom-hating commander-in-chief.

Ten years after 9/11, we're still nation-building in the Middle East while the Midwest in our nation is falling apart. So, for this next presidential election, I think Obama should be making a 911 call for America--we need the emergency services.

Just in time for elections, Bush campaigns on fear (BARF ALERT)
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | September 10, 2006 | MONROE ANDERSON

Posted on Sun Sep 10 09:47:18 2006 by Chi-townChief

Just in time for elections, Bush campaigns on fear

by Monroe Anderson

Five years after the 9/11 tragedy, the kingpin of Abraham Lincoln's party is still dead set on fooling most of the people most of the time.

President Bush and his chorus of Republican pols, Cabinet members and neo-con sycophants would have us believe we're safer or, depending on political expediencies, not that safe. According to the president's pre-9/11 anniversary speeches on the progress of the war on terror, we're safer than we were before the attacks but not yet safe enough to steer clear of his failed stay-the-course strategy. As Bush explains it, al-Qaida's leadership is decimated but remains dangerous enough to destroy the entire civilized world.

There he goes again.

With midterm congressional elections less than two months away, the Bush subterfuge machine is in full spiel and spin. Too incompetent to manage problems that are all too real to mainstream America, such as high gas prices, 45 million citizens without health insurance and a sliding income for middle-class workers -- or capturing Osama bin Laden for that matter -- the president and his forces are back to wheeling and dealing terror. They're playing the same fear-mongering three-card monte game that worked so well in the 2002 and 2004 elections: See if you can find the terrorist threat under here or here or there. Find Saddam Hussein's ethereal weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Watch the politically timed color alert rise and fall on cue.

There's a book just out with a title that sums it all up: Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. Authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn report that Bush hated Saddam so much that he privately let loose expletive-laden tirades against the dictator. In March 2002, months before Bush asked Congress for authority to attack Saddam, he bluntly exposed his true intentions in an unguarded moment with two aides. When told that White House correspondent Helen Thomas was questioning the need to oust Saddam, Bush snapped: ''Did you tell her I intend to kick his sorry m - - - - - - - - - - - - ass all over the Mideast?''

The president's anger was understandable. ''After all,'' Bush said six months later while speaking at a fund-raiser in Houston, ''this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.''

I think that's admirable that Bush 43 loves his dad, Bush 41, enough to try to revenge Saddam's botched assassination attempt in 1993. I loved my late dad as much as Bush loves his, and while I too would have been livid if the Iraqi dictator tried to whack my father, I wouldn't have set into motion a wave of international shock and awe that would result in the deaths of more than 2,600 U.S. military men and women and more than 41,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.

I also love my two sons as much as I'm sure he loves his twin daughters. If we're really in danger of Apocalypse Soon, as Bush keeps insisting, then we ought to act like it. The president should re-institute a mandatory military draft. I'll tearfully send my sons off to war, right after Bush tearfully sends his daughters to sign up in our co-educational military. If the war against Islamic terrorists compares to the fight against Nazis, as Bush insists, and if a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would lead to its conquest by our nation's worst enemies, then we ought to have a military reflecting that clear and present danger. There were 16 million Americans fighting to keep the world safe for democracy in World War II. There are 130,000 in Iraq.

I'm afraid Bush's plan to save the world from Islamic fascism is way too modest. He wants Congress to pass his terrorist surveillance act and authorization to try the al-Qaida detainees held in his secret CIA torture prisons. For reasons too simple for many Americans to understand, he's not interested in following the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to shore up security at U.S. harbors or keep a close watch on checked airplane luggage. Those measures, which would obviously make America safer from the inevitable al-Qaida strikes in the future, would cost big business big money.

But what fool would want to take those measures when it's so much more politically practical to scare most of the people one more time?

'Fox And Friends' Defends News Corp. In Phone Hacking Scandal (VIDEO)

2011-07-15T14:07:44-05:00

Fox and Friends clumsily defended News Corp. on Friday morning, inaccurately defending the company as a victim of hacking instead of the one that did the hacking. Host Steve Doocy said, “It’s too ...

Fox and Friends clumsily defended News Corp. on Friday morning, inaccurately defending the company as a victim of hacking instead of the one that did the hacking. Host Steve Doocy said, “It’s too ...

Dilenschneider also said that News Corp has done "all the right things" in its response to the scandal. He then likened News Corp. to companies that have been the victims of hacking, such as Citigroup, American Express and Bank of America. It was an odd analogy, given that News Corp is not a hacking victim, but has been found guilty of hacking others.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Looks like Rupert Murdock is going down. It's about time. But Fox and Friends are making a clumsy attempt to defend the big bad boss and the evil media empire's unethical practices. Is Doocy right? Is this much to do another nothing? Or should the MSM keep reporting on this and should the Justice Department make sure it gets to the bottom of the barrel of rotten apples.

Carol Moseley Braun: A mayoral foot race?

2011-01-14T12:42:30-06:00

The Root asked me to write a piece on Carol Moseley Braun's run in the Chicago mayoral race. I talked to half a dozen Chicagoans who are hip-deep in the city's politics. None had anything glowing to say about the campaign of the woman who was the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. I called her press secretary, Renee Ferguson, a good friend whom I've known since college. I'm still awaiting a return call. I called Braun's campaign office. I'm still awaiting a return call. So here's the commentary I wrote for The Root.

Since I didn't have any positive feedback from anyone, I ended up writing a not-so-positive piece.

Carol Moseley Braun's Quixotic Bid for

Mayor of Chicago

The former Illinois senator wasn't the first choice of the black power elite to take on Rahm Emanuel in the crowded mayoral race. Or the second.

Getting the nod as the black consensus candidate for next month's Chicago mayoral election worked like a charm for Carol Moseley Braun -- the third time around.

The first time the coalition of the Windy City's self-appointed black power elites met to bless one of the half dozen or so African Americans vying to replace the unexpectedly retiring Richard M. Daley, Braun was not the first choice, or the second. Those honors went to the Rev. James Meeks, an Illinois state legislator who boasts ministering a mega-church with 20,000 faithful, and Larry R. Rogers Jr., a prominent personal-injury attorney and commissioner of the Cook County Board of Review (property taxes).

Nor was Braun the first choice the second time around, after Rogers opted out, and when the reality set in that many of Chicago's white and Hispanic voters might just not be that into the anti-gay, pro-school vouchers Meeks. During Round 2, Rep. Danny Davis was crowned the one-who-would-mostly-get-most-of-the-black-votes.

The second decree of the coalition of aldermen, business leaders and community activists worked just fine for Davis -- but Braun, not so much. Mission unaccomplished.

Finally, after a year's-end intervention, with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson summoning both candidates to a late-night meeting at Rainbow PUSH, Davis stood down on New Year's Eve. That left Braun, who had the support of two of Chicago's most prominent business titans -- John W. Rogers Jr., chairman, CEO and chief investment officer of Ariel Investments, and real estate mogul Elzie Higginbottom -- as the last viable black candidate standing.

The notion that Braun, the first and only black woman to serve as a U.S. senator and a former U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, was a viable contender, and the belief that a black consensus candidate was a viable strategy, both lasted for about 3½ days -- and since then, it's been one "oops" moment after the next.

As a harbinger of missteps to come, on Dec. 29, just two days before Week 1 of her "The One" campaign began, Braun got into the first of her two pissing matches with folks who buy their ink by the barrel.

In response to a critical column by Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times, Braun lashed out at the columnist during a news conference to outline her public-safety platform, stating that, "He is a drunk and a wife beater, and that's a matter of record. I didn't make that up. It's the truth."

Steinberg, in his column headlined, "Carol, I Miss You Already," had facetiously claimed, "part of me wishes she had a snowball's chance in hell of becoming Chicago's next mayor," because he'd have so many things to ridicule in a hypothetical Braun administration.

On Jan. 5, when asked to discuss her problematic personal finances as she appeared at the scene of a South Side shooting to decry city violence, Braun took on the mainstream media again, flippantly responding, "Some of you may work for the Tribune or the Sun-Times, and last time I looked, the Tribune was in bankruptcy."

This miscue followed a bad answer two days earlier, when she was asked why she was refusing to release her tax returns, as the other candidates had done. Her response: "Because I don't want to."

Not 24 hours later, Braun flip-flopped, releasing some of her tax returns. It's understandable why she didn't want to.

Her tax returns and personal financial statements did not speak well for a candidate seeking to manage the $6 billion annual budget of the nation's third-largest city. In 2009, Braun claimed a net income of $15,954, all of which seems to come from her public pensions as a former U.S. senator, Cook County recorder of deeds and Illinois state legislator.

Her 2008 federal income-tax return showed that she lost more than $225,000 that year -- $200,000 of it in what she called a "net operating loss" that she did not bother to identify on the form. She would, though, indicate to reporters that her financial troubles stemmed from Ambassador Organics, her spice-and-tea company.

The next day, Braun released new pages from her tax return, showing that she had a loss of $120,000 from her public-speaking business, CBM One Corp. Just days after Braun's pointing out that the Tribune is in bankruptcy, the newspaper reported that she was late in paying property taxes on her Hyde Park home -- which she has on the market for $1.9 million -- five of the last six times her bill was due, and that she had paid more than $3,400 in late penalties.

Unfortunately for the 63-year-old Braun, this is not the first time she has found herself mired in misdeeds and money problems. Her one term as a U.S. senator was tainted with controversies concerning campaign finances and a visit to Nigeria to meet with military dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.

And while none of Chicago's other black mayoral wannabes come close to matching Braun's résumé, it's understandable why she wasn't the coalition's first choice. In a Tribune-WGN poll conducted last month, former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was backed by 32 percent of voters, followed by 30 percent undecided. Gery Chico, a Hispanic who is former schools chief, and Rep. Davis each had 9 percent, while Meeks had 7 percent. Braun polled at 6 percent.

Even Braun's support among the city's black power elites mirrors her recent polling. Mellody Hobson, the president of John Rogers' Ariel Investments, has signed on as the co-chair of Emanuel's mayoral campaign. And former White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, John Rogers' ex-wife and the mother of his daughter, hosted a sellout fundraiser Tuesday night for Emanuel, featuring Jennifer Hudson, at Chicago's House of Blues.

With six weeks left until the nonpartisan election, it's still possible that the coalition's default candidate could become a contender. If Emanuel falls short of the 50 percent-plus-one vote threshold -- as it now looks like he will -- and Braun garners the second-largest number of votes, she could conceivably rack up all the "anybody but Rahm" votes during the April runoff.

But in order to do that, Emanuel, who is running a Rose Garden campaign, would have to falter big time. And Braun would have to move her campaign from stumblebum to fleet of foot -- while making sure it stays out of her mouth.

Cyber columnist Monroe Anderson is a veteran Chicago journalist who has written signed op-ed page columns for both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, executive-produced and hosted his own local CBS TV show, and was the editor of Savoy Magazine. Follow him at http://twitter.com/#!/MonroeAnderson.

This commentary was also reposted on the websites of NPR and WBUR.