I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that we black people ran out of real problems and only had mock outrage to deal out over a bunch of girly-girls in Southern Antebellum Era, fantasy-fetish colored hoop skirts and stupid wide brim, ruffled bonnets.
Montgomery, Ala. (WSFA) -- They're part of a long standing tradition that will soon become a part of Presidential history.
The head of the Alabama NAACP, however, wants Mobile's Azalea Trail Maids to stay home on Inauguration Day, claiming the group reminds him of slavery.
"These are not just regular costumes. These are the costumes that remind someone of the plantation in Gone with the Wind," Edward Vaughn said in a phone interview.
Vaughn went on to say the group would be the laughing stock of the Inauguration. County leaders say nothing could be further from the truth.
"We want everyone to know that these young ladies do not need to be identified with slavery," said Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine.
The Rebel Flag -- the stars and bars of the Confederacy battle flag -- is an offensive symbol a destructive, bloody Civil War waged by selfish, wealthy land owners who wanted to protect their "Peculiar Institution" by destroying America. Never mind that it involved the former enslavement of an entire group of people for having African heritage.
The great General Robert E. Lee, who passed over fighting for the Union to join the Confederacy, was not fighting for Miss Ann's right to dress like a wedding cake. This was not the "way of life" of which they spoke, considering most Southern women couldn't even afford the damn thing and it had nothing to do with slave owning. A stupid frilly dress is simply a stupid dress no matter what fictional Southern movie heroine wore it.
I hate to tell the genius at the Alabama NAACP this, but ... um ... free women of color wore the stupid dress too (if they were of means, especially in the Louisiana Territory), because, you know, it was the FASHION AT THE TIME! Invented by the Europeans! Inspired by the Victorian Era! And these dresses to be worn in the parade aren't even accurate. They're some Barbie doll nightmare version of them. Their only sin is that they are kind of ridiculous looking, reminding me of that crochet toilet tissue topper Granny Snob has at her house in Newport, Ark.
And some of these "offensive" throwbacks happen to be black girls (eight of them, in fact. Two others are Native American and one is Asian American) and the only crime I see here is the crime of being a little over the top.
Now, offensive would be if the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan got to march a "Southern Heritage" banner down the avenue in front of the motorcade, but if period clothing is enough to inspire Don Imus-level offense then everyone needs to stop wearing cowboy boots right now. I could have swore they were popular with the people who settled the American west driving countless Native Americans off their land and eventually into reservations, to the brink of extinction.
But strangely, you know? A cowboy boot is just a pointy-toed boot popular in the South and American West. Not a symbol of brutality. Neither is a stupid dress.
A noose. A burning cross. A Rebel Flag. A Klan hood. Those are the symbols of the South's tragic, violent, racist past (and in certain cases, present). Sometimes a dress is just a dress. The only thing oppressive going on is that corset underneath which once conformed Southern ladies to an unnatural standard of tiny waist size making them more prone to fainting.
Stories like these imply that there are no serious issues left to tackle involving blacks and racism in America. They also unfairly push the stereotype that only the South has racial hangups and dirty laundry. (Um ... What's the City of Boston's excuse? Do they have a frilly dress situation there too?) Petty complaints like this imply that all we have left are word police and now, fashion police in Blackland. An unarmed black man was shot and killed in Oakland, Calif. on New Year's Day and it spurned riots. Poverty and poor education plague our cities and many parts of the South, including Alabama. We just elected our first black president, president of color, non-white president, biracial president and THIS IS THE FIGHT WE'RE PICKING?
WITH POOFY DRESSES?
Picking fights over gauzy symbols of bygone femininity will not bring us any closer to equality. Perhaps they could focus on the OTHER 99 problems (but a dress ain't one) that trouble the African slave descendents of the great state of Alabama.
Pride is the center of racial identity, and some white people seem insulted by a perception that Obama is rejecting his white mother (even though her family was a centerpiece of his campaign image-making) or baffled by the notion that someone would choose to be black instead of half-white.
"He can't be African-American. With race, white claims 50 percent of him and black 50 percent of him. Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all," Ron Wilson of Plantation, Fla., wrote in a letter to the Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
Attempts to whiten Obama leave a bitter taste for many African-Americans, who feel that at their moment of triumph, the rules are being changed to steal what once was deemed worthless _ blackness itself.
"For some people it's honestly confusion," said Favor, the Dartmouth professor. "For others it's a ploy to sort of reclaim the presidency for whiteness, as though Obama's blackness is somehow mitigated by being biracial."
Then there are the questions remaining from Obama's entry into national politics, when some blacks were leery of this Hawaiian-born newcomer who did not share their history.
Linda Bob, a black schoolteacher from Eustis, Fla., said that calling Obama black when he was raised in a white family and none of his ancestors experienced slavery could cause some to ignore or forget the history of racial injustice.
"It just seems unfair to totally label him African-American without acknowledging that he was born to a white mother," she said. "It makes you feel like he doesn't have a class, a group."
1) People should be allowed to DEFINE THEMSELVES. Barack Obama is an American. He is biracial, but traditionally our country has viewed anyone with African heritage or appearance is a black person. A lot of this happy talk is talk. People are still bombarded with ethnic politics where biracial people are asked to "pick a side." More are fighting against it, but the reality is still there.
2) Being black does not mean you don't have white blood or that you're denying your white background, especially since the vast majority of black Americans are "mixed" to some degree.
3) Obama has already said he views himself as a black person, as an African American. So, seriously, why is this even being debated? Obama already had this internal debate and made the decision years ago. He's a black person of mixed heritage like ... gasp ... nearly every black person in America. He simply has more immediate ties to Africa.
4) Did I mention that biracial and multi-ethnic people should be able to define themselves and that race is an illusion created to separate people? Because it is.
5) You can't have it both ways and you can't change the rules in the middle of the game. Individuals who would never see Obama as anything but black are lying to themselves (and others) when they say things like, he could say he was white if he wanted to. Or, he's more white than black. Ahem ... how do you even measure the quantities of white ethnicity in a person? And this is America. Are we just going to pretend like the past 250 years didn't happen? Because Obama isn't and neither is any other person with black heritage that I know. Even if they prefer other labels, like mixed or biracial or multi-ethnic, they know the politics of ethnicity in America. It is what it is. Don't play naive and pretend like it could be something else.
There are jobs that people take on, like becoming a police officer, firefighter or soldier, where you know there's a good chance you could die while at work. You know this. Everyone knows this.
That's why there are fund raisers for the families of those who have lost husbands and wives in shootings, fires fights or in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were doing dangerous work that saves and protects people. You could say you can never pay someone enough for that.
Then there are the jobs that aren't worth dying over -- for anyone. Your minimum wage, "not my problem" jobs. Horrible, sometimes hard, sometimes mundane jobs that happen to many people at some point in their lives. There are no benefits. The hours can be brutal. But you need the cash for yourself or your families, so you put up with it. And if someone ever put a gun in your face for the register you give them the cash because -- seriously -- you're not dying for $7 an hour.
But the reality is many people working low paying service jobs do find themselves, unwillingly, in the line of fire and some do wind up dying for simply showing up at work that day. And it is in these tales of ordinary people who get killed working mundane jobs where you learn why and how corporations, and people serviced by them, get their reputations as being cold, soulless entities.
In March of 2006 she was stocking shelves at a Dollar Tree in Fairfield, Calif. when a man came into the store and shot and killed her. According to California law, businesses have to pay death benefits to the families of people who lose their lives while on the job, with an exception for employees killed by individuals they have a "personal" relationship with, i.e. spouses who kill their husbands or wives at work. But Dollar Tree contested paying Talley's 11-year-old son death benefits because Talley is black and was killed by a white man who said he was looking to kill a black person that day.
He just happened to choose Talley.
In the eyes of the lawyers for Dollar Tree and their insurance company, that counted as a "personal relationship." That act of extreme racism that lead to murder was tantamount to an abusive spouse executing their not-so-loved one. Now facing a boycott, a court case that they stand a good chance at losing and some extremely ugly press, Dollar Tree is offering to pay the full benefits.
Of course they are. It only took them two years.
In a statement Monday, Dollar Tree said it was acting voluntarily because "we feel this is the right thing to do." But a lawyer for Talley's mother and guardian of her 11-year-old son said the company was clearly responding to the public anger that followed news coverage of the case.
"I think they would like this to be done with," attorney Moira Stagliano said. "The media helped settle this claim."
Stagliano said she's optimistic about resolving the case but isn't there yet. "What they have offered is not quite the full value," and negotiations are continuing, she said. (San Franscico Chronicle)
Then we have the more recent tragedy of Jdimytai Damour, the temporary worker trampled to death on "Black Friday" at a Long Island Wal-Mart.
The store was set to open early at 5 a.m. but not early enough for the shoppers who smashed the glass doors and ran right over Damour to get their discounted Nintendo Wiis and digital cameras.
His death was so profound for Wal-Mart that they had to close for a few hours, but somehow were able to put the grief aside and ... those brave little soldiers ... reopen the store when Damour's body wasn't even cold earlier that same afternoon. Who knows if the other employees working that day even got to grieve in those few hours the store was closed. Never mind the fact that some shoppers refused to stop shopping as Damour's body remained on the floor. Even when the cops asked them to leave they were indignant. They'd been waiting outside all night, after all, and needed to buy their cheap crap. Who cares if someone died in their pursuit of manufactured bliss? He was just a temporary worker with family and friends who loved him and affectionately called him "Jimbo" for short.
Obviously not human.
Or at least not deserving of any dignity and humanity in death. Not when the game of death for dollars is being played in America. Four other shoppers, including a pregnant woman, were also injured in the melee.
Damour's family is now suing Wal-Mart because ... well, who can blame them? They obviously weren't prepared to handle the 2,000 person mob that spelled Damour's demise. Many believe he was placed at the door because he was so big and tall (Damour was 6-foot-5 and weighed 270 pounds), and that his death was a combination of "mob mentality," poor crowd control and Wal-Mart's low, low prices.
(Terry) Hemeyer, who also teaches marketing, public relations and advertising at the University of Texas at Austin, places the onus on retailers to prevent such accidents. He said that throughout history, consumers have been attacking each other to get sale items that are in short supply, even when people are lined up waiting for the doors to open.
Hemeyer, who made a point not to attack Wal-Mart, said if store managers don't understand the "herd mentality," then they are not doing their jobs.
"In other words," he said, "if you do something that the doors open at 8 and that's when the sales start and it's a limited supply, I think that's a formula for a problem because everybody has to be there at the same time." (Houston Chronicle)
Pictures of Damour, a 34-year-old Jamaican, were rarely seen as this story was reported on in the press. Even online it's hard to find an article about him. Most stories focus on Wal-Mart or whether our society is decaying because people are dying for cheap Chinese-made goods at big box retailers. But people have always died working retail. It doesn't happen often, but ask anyone who works at a gas station, liquor store, late night diner or fast food restaurant or 7-11 how they feel about their safety and you'll know that you don't have to be a police officer to face death at work.
I just hope Wal-Mart, which doesn't have the best record on this, does the right thing in Damour's case. If not out of the goodness of the heart I know Wal-Mart doesn't have, out of the the good PR they would get in a time where Wal-Mart is blamed for pretty much ever evil in our society. It's true he was a temporary worker, but he died for their dollars.
Black professional party girl Genevieve Jones with Alex Logsdail and Kate Werble at the Guggenheim Young Collectors Council 2007 Artist's Ball, New York, 13 December 2007. (Photo from Art Review by Tyler Coburn)
Yes, Virginia, you CAN Rent-A-Negro for your holiday party! Yes you can!
Now that Obama has been elected, a tipster inside a PR firm tells us, clients are demanding "an increased number of African Americans added to the guest list" at their holiday parties. In the spirit of hope! The email can't really be "verified," but appears genuine and is just too important not to share. This firm has even assembled an official internal "Diversified Holiday Guest List," in which they rank the top 10 acceptable black socialite attendees, in order of desirability. Uh... yes we can?
Yes. Bringing your new, sparkly, hopeful (and paid for) black BFF to a swanky holiday function is now the fresh, dope, chill thing to do. After all, you can't purport to live in the post-racial era if it's still just you, Heidi Montag and the rest of the Gossip Girl crowd at the party getting tipsy on Cosmos, Mojitos, Mochatinis and Manhattans. That's not post-racial at all. But paying black socialites Genevieve Jones and Maggie Betts to hold back your hair while you hurl is the bee's knees! No one will ever accuse you of being racist again. And how could you be? You paid black people to be at your party! You're the Rainbow Coalition and a United Colors of Benetton ad French kissing Barack Obama rolled into U2's "One!"
All of this made me think of Damali Ayo's oft misunderstood, satirical/socio-political Web site and book, both entitled "How To Rent A Negro." On the site Ayo offered rates for blackness rental for everything from having living proof that you can't be racist because you have black friends to charing $100 for "hair touching."
Created back in 2003, it's almost like Ayo fortolled of the Obama era, where black people would finally be paid for answering annoying questions ("Do you tan?") and being told you look just like that one other black person the clueless tool you work with knows.
On my Facebook page I described this all as falling back into the appropriation of ourselves for our "uniqueness," re: "not whiteness," we have going. I basically said we're furniture. Black people have a history of being treated like furniture (or horses or luggage or pick your object that can be bought and sold), but it's only been in recent history where we've been able to cash in on this phenomenon. So, like Ayo joked -- half seriously -- if people are going to appropriate your cool the least you can do is get a check out of it. Think of all the times we were the only Negro at the party for free?
But remember these wise words from a fictional stripper named Diamond, my would-be rental social black butterflies -- make that money, but don't let the money make you.
Now if you don't mind, I need to put up my "Rent A Black Snob" service where I will gladly go to your parties and insult/mock your blackness impaired friends, all in a faux upper crusty accent!
The Chicago Tribune'sExploring Race blog has posed the question "What if Michelle Obama was white?" This "well, duh" question has already been explored by most black blogs and the universal answer is that he wouldn't have even been a senator, let alone president.
But they asked anyway, you know, for poops and giggles I suppose and they will likely get some passionate responses (and passionate responses to those responses), but the reality is despite all of our progress in the better acceptance of interracial couples, it's hard to get elected to office when you are a black person married a white person.
Case in point:Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. who I wrote about earlier this year. A member of our quasi "black aristocracy" (as in he comes from a political family of influence and means), Ford reached prominence on his family name and good looks, then ran a campaign for the senate where he lost by a narrow margin. Some say he was hurt by his religious pandering. Others say he was hurt by a Republican backed commercial that portrayed Ford as a white woman chasing, playboy bunny hound.
Which was kind of, sort of true, but mean/racist because what did that have to do with being a senator? Then Ford married Emily Threlkeld and ALL. KINDS. OF. HELL. broke loose in "Blackland."
"I think he has not given his political career any thought. If he runs for any office again, surely he won’t win. You don’t carry the black vote and marry white. I will never vote for him again."-- Pat, Memphis
"The reason so many blacks are upset is because Harold Ford Jr. has always courted the black vote and black people except when it comes to his marriage. I am sure when he is running for office and goes into the black neighborhoods he will not take his white wife along. This also gives black women the assumption that as black men progress their appreciation of black women decreases. It also gives the impression that they are saying “I have made it and here is my trophy”!!!!!" -- Connie, Memphis
"The only use Harold had for blacks period in the 9th Congressional Dist was votes. After 10 years of his representation we ALL need Anus Reconstruction Surgery. He did a number on us. This young man took Self Serving Politician to a new level." -- Anonymous
And there is this long, over-the-top, angry note which pretty much sums up how well this all went over with some blacks. It essentially accuses Ford of treason, then slaps him around for a perceived slight against Martin Luther King, Jr.:
You don't have to be an sociologist or a psychologist to figure out that despite our progress there are a still a lot insecurities in the black community and nothing brings them out more passionately than that shunted feeling black people (especially black women) get when black men who "make it" marry outside their race.
When you're used to getting kicked around it's hard not to take it personal. Even I get that feeling from time-to-time and I like to considering myself pretty egalitarian about the issue. I'm almost two people about it with the logical side of my brain saying people should be judged by their character and can marry whomever they want because their marriage is about them, not me and I wouldn't want someone nosing in my personal business, casting judgment on my intentions.
It's insane because Tiger Woods is not my personal property, so what do I care? Yet I do. This is because I grew up watching black women get unceremoniously dumped all the time. Or seeing them not in the running at all as viable mates. I can't help it. I take it personal, but I temper my response, my logic reminding me that this is NOT about me.
Plus, being a trophy wife isn't exactly an ideal thing, considering a lot of it is hedged on your appearance, but it's the wanting to be desired that gets us. Everyone wants to be desired. Everyone. Especially black women. Hence why being married to a white person, particularly a black man married to a white woman, is a death knell to getting the black vote.
Black women and older black voters make up the bulk of the black vote and they are the ones most likely to not approve due to that giant "I've been personally affronted!" feeling they would have every time they'd see someone like Emily Threlkeld's smiling face. And any smart person running against someone like Ford would use this rift against him, never quite saying he was a sell-out, but would repeatedly question his loyalty to his constituents, arguing that Ford would only serve his own interests, not that of the community.
It just wouldn't work. All things aren't that equal in Blackland yet.
Not that white people are 100 percent comfortable with this notion either. There's a reason why a lot of politicians are as personally boring as possible (straight, married to someone who is not "exotic" in any kind of way, Christian, usually with some kids), because that's what voters what. There are exceptions to the rule (Jeb Bush is married to a Latina -- but then he was governor of Florida, so that probably helped him), but for most politicians the rule of the day is to be married, preferrably within their own ethnicity and religious sect, be Christian, be heterosexual and not to have any kink in the closest that could come out to haunt them.
(Like paid hookers or interns or Euro sex clubs or nasty text messages or cocaine or secret half-black, out-of-wedlock children or male pages or hook-up trolling in airport men's restrooms.)
None of that stuff. Can't have it. Americans are both notorious freaks and prudes all at the same time, hence all the politicians have to at least be able to appear as close to June and Ward Cleaver as possible. People want the fantasy. They will vote for the fantasy.
For many in Blackland, a white woman is simply not part of that fantasy.
PITTSBURGH - A McCain campaign volunteer accused of making up a story about being robbed and assaulted in Pittsburgh by a man who disliked her McCain bumper sticker will enter a program for first-time offenders.
Under the deal announced in court Thursday, 20-year-old Ashley Todd will be released from jail and required to undergo mental health treatment. Her record eventually will be expunged as long as she goes to treatment, stays out of trouble and keeps authorities apprised of her whereabouts.
Todd, of College Station, Texas, has been jailed since Oct. 24, when police say she admitted making up a story about being robbed near a Pittsburgh bank and then assaulted by a man who scraped a backward letter "B" into her cheek.
Once again, none of this is funny -- even if for the first time since never no black men were corralled off the street and roughed up in an effort to find Ms. Todd's phantom attacker. Anyone who is familiar with American history or just recent history knows Todd is not the first white woman to cry wolf and claim a black man assaulted her leading to the harassment, arrests and in many cases imprisonment or deaths of black men. And I'm not even going to get into the times when one false cry lead to black settlements and towns being burnt to the ground causing the murders of men, women and children. So if black people seem a little chippy about this and just can't find the funny anywhere go Google Susan Smith or check out a copy of 100 Years of Lynching and tell us where you find the funny. (Originally found via Gawker)
“If you go to a white neighborhood in the suburbs and ask them, ‘How would you feel about a large black man kicking your door in,’ they would say, ‘That doesn’t sound good to me,’” said Democratic political consultant Paul Begala. “But if you say, 'Your house is on fire, and the firefighter happens to be black,' it’s a different situation.”
I'm not going to start singing "We Are the World" yet, but if this is the election that brings folks back to voting their interests and not on race or cultural controversies that'll be worth several attaboys alone.
Widow Myrlie Evers grieves the death of her husband, NAACP activist Medgar Evers, who was killed for his role in pushing the integration of the University of Mississippi, as well as fighting to end Jim Crow.
White racial supremacists were pushed to the fringes of society years ago, but just because they can't operate and recruit with impunity or hang a black person in broad daylight anymore doesn't mean they're dead. They still exist, in the prison system, on the down low and on the internet. The smart racists with the money and the clout abandoned the Klan to go mainstream years ago, leaving an unhinged, poor, ignorant vacuum to fill the ranks of their former organizations. But while you don't need to join the Ku Klux Klan to get into West Virginian politics like Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd did long ago, these organizations still exist and groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center still track them.
While most of the time they can barely get a decent prison riot off the ground, they are more than capable of inspiring a lone shark or two to take their words and finally turn them into deadly action.
In July 1999, a man with ties to Illinois white supremacist group World Church of the Creator went on a three-day shooting spree resulting in the deaths of two people and the wounding of nine others targeting blacks, Asians and Jews. The Columbine killers were inspired by a lot of things, but Hilter's birthday seemed like a good day to kill a lot of innocent people. And while not associated with any hate group, the sociopathic killing spree at Virginia Tech was the work of an individual.
It's hard to game the system for one or two rouge nuts, hate group affiliated or just members of the hate fan club.
"They said that would be their last, final act - that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama," Cavanaugh said. "They didn't believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying."
On one hand, great job ATF on accidentally busting up what potentially could have been a killing spree by two Neo-Nazi skinheads. Theirs designs could have resulted in the deaths of many people, specifically the black people they wanted to target, and the possible murder of Obama as their coup de grâce.
On the other, every plot foiled makes me think about what I don't want to think about -- that one, really motivated, hate-filled, fame-lusting nutjob who wants to get his or her name in the history books. That one with their shiny gun and worst laid plans. That one nut that no amount of police work can prepare for because there is no way to know what darkness lurks in the heart of the individual.
I typically don't worry about Obama's safety. Not because it isn't an issue, but because this is the life he's chosen. He and Michelle knew that if he ran for president he was going to attract attention and some of it was going to be of the "kill the nigger" kind. It kept Gen. Colin Powell from running, his wife worried both about their private lives being scrutinized and about the death threats they began receiving when just the notion of him running was being bandied about.
There is a reason racists react so strongly every time minorities made inroads. It was the ultimate, last resort (or first resort in some cases) way to terrorize us all back into our places. As long as tyranny could rule, everyone -- white, black, male and female -- would remain in check, not causing any trouble that would upset the racist order of things.
But challenge the order and someone will challenge you. Therefore I spend a lot of time focusing on the positive, on the ins and outs of the campaign and not any visions of violence taking the lives of the innocent, of the senator's family or of himself. No one knows what tomorrow will bring and there's no use in living in fear of that tomorrow. Obama isn't, so we shouldn't either.
That said, when I first heard this story the first person I thought of was Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden. As many may recall, it was many moons ago when Biden, then still Obama's opponent, suggested that the Secret Service start working security for Obama, fearing the large, unregulated crowds that swarmed him at events. Maybe that was one of the factors why Biden was picked as Obama's vice presidential nominee over everyone else.
Even as rivals, Biden had his back.
Lastly, if anyone falsely believes that because there are those who would threaten Obama's life as president that we should "spare" ourselves and his family some grief by not voting for him, you -- sir or madame -- are a fool.
If Obama can live his life without fear the least we can do is vote without fear. If we historically had chose to not engage simply out of fear of death I'd be somewhere back in Mississippi chopping and picking cotton for the low, low price of free. Never get so complacent that you forget what really matters -- progress. No person, man or woman, has ever died in vain in the fight for it.
Hey, 99 percent of the time blaming an anonymous black guy works, but if you're going to whip out "the black guy did it" card you better hope the cops don't ask any follow up questions. Follow up questions really unraveled this farcical story of a John McCain volunteer who claimed she was assaulted physically and sexually by the "big scary black buck" stereotype because of her support for John McCain.
Never mind the guy who allegedly attacked Texas A&M student Ashley Todd sounds like a composite character out of a Donald Goines novel with a hard-on for some "hope" with a side of "change." (Whoreson? Is that you?) She said he carved a "B" onto her face ... backwards, oddly enough. To think, it was malarkey like this that got thousands of people killed and their homes burnt to the ground in places like Rosewood, Fla. almost 75 years ago.
PITTSBURGH - A John McCain volunteer in Pittsburgh who said she was robbed and sexually assaulted because of her political views has admitted to fabricating the story, police sources told a TV station.
KDKA TV added that one source said Ashley Todd would face charges.
Police have not formally announced the fabrication, acknowledging only that detectives in the case were meeting with the force's public information officers.
Todd, of College Station, Texas, earlier agreed to take a polygraph test due to inconsistencies.
Among other things, police said photos and bank card information from an automated teller machine where the college student claimed she was robbed do not show her using the machine at the time, police said.
Police said the Todd, who is white, told them she was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night.
Other differences in her accounts are whether she lost consciousness, whether she remembers handing over money and how the man assaulted her, police said.
In her initial account, Richard said, Todd attempted to use the ATM when the man approached her from behind, put a knife with a 4- to 5-inch blade to her throat and demanded money. She told police she handed the assailant $60 and walked away.
Todd told investigators that she suspected the man then noticed a John McCain sticker on her car, became angry and punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground and telling her "you are going to be a Barack supporter," police said in a statement.
She said he continued to punch and kick her while threatening "to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter," police said. She said he then sat on her chest, pinned her hands down with his knees and scratched a backward letter "B" into her face using what she believed to be a dull knife.
The woman told police she didn't seek medical attention, but instead went to a friend's apartment nearby and called police about 45 minutes later.
As Michelle Obama's no. 1 fan, I do a regular Google Alert search on her name daily to keep abreast of Michelle news (and I read Michelle Obama Watch and Mrs-O.org). But I also get a lot of anti-Michelle news that grates my nerves. Mostly because I can't believe the level of stupidity going on. Sometimes I'll be irked enough to actually click on one of the links and respond. But I realize that the majority of the time it is not worth wasting my mad typing skills. These individuals choose to be ignorant (and both vaugely and overtly racist), but that doesn't stop me from sharing with you the top 10 things I'm tired of seeing in my Shelly O. Google search.
1. The mythical Michelle Obama "whitey" tape:Stop insulting me. Unless you're George Jefferson, black people DO NOT call white people "whitey." What the hell does that even mean? That's like calling me "blackie." That's an insult?
Black people call white people a lot of things. For instance, if you're from Arkansas, as I've pointed out before, the word is "peckerwood." In some parts of Africa it's "ofay." The stray "cracker" will sometimes pop out, but most black people just call white people "white people." Not "whitey."
That and ... THE TAPES AREN'T REAL, MORONS!
2. Michelle Obama and the lobster v. terrorist caviar debacle: Page Six recently admitted that the story of Michelle ordering up not one, but two lobsters, lobster based appetizers, champagne and some "Iranian" caviar for room service recently was not true. Despite the strong whiff of fake coming from that yarn Page Six and the bloggers ran with it.
My favorite quote/comment on Gawker about the subject comes from Jill7:
Page Six: "We regret reporting erroneously that Michelle Obama ordered Iranian caviar, two whole lobsters, a lobster hors d'oeuvres and champagne from room service at the Waldorf Astoria. We have since been informed by very reliable sources on the internet that she had Iranian caviar, North Korean kimchee, whatever the hell Venezuelans consider a signature dish, fried chicken, watermelon, and malt liquor while staying in a crack house. YOU CAN TRUST US THIS TIME."
And I'm tired of the smear, once again, of every country with a Muslim population as a bunch of terrorists. I have a neighbor who's Persian. As a teen I babysat his kids. He worked as an Engineer for Boeing and enjoys soccer. The guy will actually sit and talk to Jehovah's Witnesses for hours even though he's a Muslim (he enjoys a good conversation). He's probably the nicest man I know and loves America despite the fact that he had to deal with some unpleasant crap during the first Gulf War and we weren't even verbally sparring with fighting Iran then. If we did go to war with Iran it would directly affect him because the majority of his family still lives there. I worry that he can't go visit because the climate being what it is between the two countries he's likely to be arrested as an "American spy" like many other US citizens of Persian descent were.
I became a better person for knowing this man, his kindness and his family. I also went to school with (and have worked with) Muslims from here, India, Pakistan and Malaysia, Muslims who are black, white, Asian and Middle Eastern. I really wish the ignoramuses would stop bashing entire groups of people and their countries of origin. If Colin Powell says to chill on the Muslim/Arab/Iranian bashing, maybe you should effing chill.
3. Michelle Obama "proud of American" moment meets Michelle Obama "racist college thesis:" I don't even bother clicking on these.
4. What if SNL made fun of Michelle Obama?: My favorite bigot, Patrick J. Buchanan allegedly brought this up in a recently penned column, pondering what would happen if Saturday Night Live lampooned Michelle Obama. Um ... here are some OBVIOUS answers WHY the not-ready-for-prime-time-players haven't touched Michelle.
They have no female African American cast members. They don't even have a racially ambiguous person like Fred Armisten to darken up with some light Egyptian pancake, or Maya Rudolph anymore -- who despite being biracial and as not dark as Michelle could probably do a good Michelle (and Condi Rice and her Beyonce and Whitney Houston were on point).
Michelle Obama isn't running for president (or vice president). SNL hasn't made fun of Cindy McCain either and she's rife for parody (the clothes alone are worth it). Kristen Wiig would do a killer Cindy McCain (or a non-knocked up Amy Poehler) but they haven't because CINDY MCCAIN ISN'T RUNNING FOR ANYTHING!
SNL would love to do a Michelle Obama skit. Write them and tell them to steal Mad TV player Debra Wilson to join the cast. I love Debra Wilson. She's so diesel, yet funny. And her Oprah was better than Rudolph's Oprah (and Rudolph did a damn good Oprah). A matter of fact, notice that Mad TV actually employs at least two Negroes on a consistent basis and one of the grossest Asian comics in history, Bobby Lee (who plays John McCain, of all things). Catch a clue SNL. Diversify your cast and you'll maximize your funny.
5. Michelle Obama rips into a racial tirad to "African Press International:" Once again -- FAKE. Show me the reports!Show me the tapes, bloggers! I realize that while Michelle is my shero, she's the opposition's new "chocolate" Hillary Clinton dominatrix meant to whip the "whities" of the world into submission. That she's going to borrow Condi Rice's black, high heeled stormtropper boots and start beating grown white men demanding that they shout "I'm black and I'm proud" a la "The Players Club," but these bloggers need to get their minds out of their pants. Michelle is not Sapphire. Sapphire is not Michelle.
6. Michelle Obama hates white people: Does that mean she hates one half of her husband? Or one quarter of her daughters? Or her in-laws? Or the Bidens? Or the campaign staffers?
I could go on and on.
I get crazy Barack stuff too, like how he wasn't really born here and is therefore ineligible for the presidency ... (even though, per the constitution that point is moot -- his mother was an American citizen therefore he was born an American. Tis the rules people).
Never mind, I'm pretty sure Hillary would have brought that fact up during the primary if it were true. Just like all the Ayers flap and the other garbage the internet is en fuego with in light of Sean Hannity not supplying enough of their crackpot Obama news. Gee, don't these people think that if Sean Hannity could get his hands some Ofay hatin' tapes he would play them non-stop? What is wrong with these people! How you take the most Carlton Banks of non-Republican of black men and his brainy, brassy OBVIOUSLY American wife and make them out to be black Zapatistas is beyond me. But if you need an excuse not to vote for the future, I suppose you can find some weak excuse here in the fictitious flaws in Michelle Obama's moral character.
A roadside billboard sprung up in West Plains, Missouri, recently, featuring a caricature of Barack Obama wearing a turban along with the message "Barack 'Hussein' Obama equals more abortions, same sex marriages, taxes, gun regulations." While some members of that community are shocked and disgusted—the Obama campaign dismissed it as "a distraction"—other locals are of the opinion that if you don't like that sign you can drop dead.
Thank you for not disappointing me with your racism and ignorance, Missouri. Makes me feel right at home (and put in my place as a Negress). Kudos to you, ignoramuses!
What have I become, my sweetest friend Everyone I know goes away in the end You could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt -- Nine Inch Nails, "Hurt"
When Sen. John McCain looks at himself in the mirror does he like what he sees?
I've never been a fan of the senator, but there was a time when I didn't loathe the man. I was disgusted over his push back of a federal holiday for Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1980s, but time passed and by 2000, I was so blinded by my utter distaste from the inarticulate, "reformed" frat boy slacker seed of George Herbert Walker Bush, that McCain seemed endearing. Refreshing even. He was a champion on ethics and campaign finance reform (largely out of the hard lessons learned during to the Keating 5 scandal.) To the media, who he once affectionately called his base, couldn't get enough of his accessibility and loquacity and his affinity for "straight talk."
There was this sense that John McCain was letting you in on what was really going down within the Republican Party. There was even a time, after getting trounced in 2000 by George W. Bush, when he was actively being sought by Democrats to at least become a dependent or switch sides altogether.
He entertained the notion, but like Sen. Chuck Hagel did recently, he declined.
The race in 2000 was devastating to McCain on all fronts. His wife was verbally abused and assaulted for her painkiller addiction. His adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget was used as a smear to insinuate that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. He was accused of being a traitor to his fellow POWs. He was accused of being unfit for command due to post-traumatic stress and a bad temper. Karl Rove's minions all but branded the man as insane.
McCain, never good at hiding his true feelings, hated Bush. He might still hate Bush. The 2000 South Carolina leg of the Republican campaign was dirty. The man turned tail on the red hot Confederate flag issue. Bush's team humiliated him. Other conservatives hated him because his ethics reform dogma interfered with being a true GOP party man.
When he endorsed Bush in 2000 after being destroyed by the affable man-child, he could barely contain his bitterness and he spat out several times in a row:
I endorse Gov. Bush! I endorse Gov. Bush! I endorse Gov. Bush! I endorse Gov. Bush! I endorse Gov. Bush!
He said he didn't want the vice presidency. His body language said he didn't want anything to do with him.
What a difference four years make.
After years of being bitter, after the smears, the lies and the obfuscations, Sen. John McCain found himself on a stage helping out a man he hated. Mired in a tough 2004 presidential re-election campaign McCain lent his credibility and brand to Bush, famously captured in the photo of that enthusiastic, but awkward embrace. This snapshot demonstrated McCain had decided if he could not beat them, he would join them.
All was far in love, war and politics.
Old enemies became tepid friends. Bush had an incredible team who could raise funds and get him elected. The both had similar views on the rectitude of the war. The Republican Party was known for rewarding individuals when it was "their time" to be the nominee. McCain was finally willing to capitulate, finally willing to play ball.
Finally willing to bend over and sell his soul in one tender embrace.
It is the defining moment of John McCain's political career: The Hug. George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign needed help. After four years of a surprisingly radical brand of conservatism, Mr. Bush needed some moderate bona fides. After a campaign of fiction and falsehoods that led us to war, Bush needed a credibility transfusion. After the Democrats nominated a certified war hero, John Kerry, Mr. Bush (who famously avoided serving not only in Vietnam but even in the Alabama National Guard) needed a warrior's support.
And so John McCain gave him The Hug.
In embracing George W. Bush that August afternoon in Pensacola, Florida, John McCain embraced Mr. Bush's agenda, his policies, his principles, and his manipulative, mendacious brand of politics. And McCain embraced him with gusto.
This wasn't an irrationally exuberant Sammy Davis, Jr., spontaneously wrapping his arms around Richard Nixon. This was a calculated, choreographed commitment. The John McCain most people thought they knew would never have hugged George W. Bush. More likely, he'd have punched him in the nose. And for good reason.
Put yourself in McCain's shoes. Someone benefited from (and, some believe, orchestrated) the most savage attack on your sexuality, your sanity, your marriage, your wife, and your daughter. He smirked as his supporters attacked your honor, your dignity, your manhood, and your innocent child. What would you do? Seriously. Some of us might have shunned someone who'd treated us that way. Others might have cursed them. Still others might have kicked them in the shin or kneed them in the groin. But not John McCain.
John McCain hugged George W. Bush.
What about forgiveness? you may ask. Good point. But forgiveness starts with confession and contrition, and neither Mr. Bush nor his top advisers have ever manned up and confessed to smearing McCain. Indeed, as recently as 2007, Karl Rove aggressively challenged a questioner who alleged he had "helped spread the false story" about McCain's daughter. "That is absolutely not true, and I take offense," Rove replied to the questioner at Troy University in Alabama. "If you have any bit of evidence that anybody connected with the Bush campaign was involved in that, you bring it forward, because it is a reckless charge."
So why would John McCain embrace George W. Bush? Not to be too simplistic: He wanted to. He believed in the Bush agenda and wanted to advance it into a second term.
But I'd take this one further with Begala.
John McCain embraced Bush for John McCain. Not for the country or ideology or party solidarity. He embraced him because he believed it benefited him and his cause. It gave him leverage. Now W. owned him one. If he became the nominee in 2008 that meant access to W.'s people, donors and team. The same individuals who successfully brought down him and Sen. John Kerry.
No longer the "outsider," he would be in that inner circle by the oldest political deception -- the marriage of convenience.
The base loved Bush, not McCain, and he would never see the White House without the support of the base. The 2000 race had taught him that. So many enemies became friends like Bush, McCain found himself kissing and making up with old adversaries like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the numerous Republican operatives who spread those defamatory tales.
McCain began selling it all away -- his morals, his integrity -- the minute he decided that power trumped all. In his self-prostitution he decided he could make it up to the country later.
If he was the right man for the job, and he'd believed he was, America would understand.
The ends justify the means.
Yet what I've seen lately is a man who has sold so much of himself for victory he is running out virtues to markdown. These last six months John McCain has been hosting a morality fire sale. All items must go to insure the presidency.
Straight talk? Gone. Integrity? Gone. The high road? He's on the low. Experience? Gone with the Palin. Why try substance when you can pull stunts? Why bother with talking to the best of Americans when you can rile up the weak base by appealing to the worst? Let's bring back the ghost of Jesse Helms to reach out with his white hands and snatch the White House away from a steadily advancing Obama.
Early this summer we learned that Sen. Hillary Clinton's fired adviser Mark Penn wanted the Senator to push hard on Obama by painting him as "the other." He wanted her to bring up former Weather Underground founder and 1960s counter-culture activist/reformed domestic terrorist William Ayers, by pushing harder on his "exotic" upbringing, by painting him as unAmerican.
Clinton was accused of a lot of things throughout the 2008 Democratic Primary, but in this one situation the-woman-who-would-not-be-queen said no. She had to draw a line somewhere. Calling Obama a dangerous foreigner was it.
McCain started out the general election, disowning individuals who demagogued Obama for having a Muslim name or those who used racial slurs. He said he was going to run on the issues, but the issues were not in his favor.
McCain tried a lot of things to "define" Obama, but none of them stuck. He's inexperienced! He's a celebrity! He's an elitist! He eats arugala! A lot of the false outrage rang of hypocrisy. McCain, while being in the senate for 26 years had no more executive experience than Obama. McCain was infinitely more wealthy than Obama by virtue of his rich second wife, Cindy's, inheritance. He was a sub par student who got into and got by in the academy trading off his father's well-respected name.
He gained some ground when he pulled out the politrick of picking Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, but in a matter of weeks (and a few nightmarish interviews), he was down again. The thinking class of the Republican Party were already writing his obituary, leaving him alone with the disparate fractions of a broken political apparatus.
Columnist David Brooks of The George Will Revolt (growing larger with every passing day) called McCain's vice presidential select "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party."
Then McCain was struck by his Achilles' heel. Not his temper, but his other Achilles' heel -- the economy.
When the market crashed he was found flat-footed. He gambled again on an "in-name-only" campaign suspension to work on the crisis. He came off as harried and erratic compared to Obama's calm, unflappable demeanor.
He'd done all he could, he sold all he could to get to where he is now. Maybe in his mind he could justify it. He could make it up to America later. He was the right man for the job and Obama wasn't so it was OK. Maybe that's what he told himself when he looked in the mirror before joining in with the angry, fearful mob shouting out "terrorist," "off with his head" and "kill him," during rallies. The mob that was fuming and thrilled every time Sarah Palin pounded Obama for a trumped up relationship with Ayers.
Like a not-so-secret recipe of hate -- add one part Ayers, one part black, one part "secret Muslim" and one part "Hussein" -- no one in the McCain campaign would admit what their alphabet soup was spelling, but his supporters could easily read fill in the blanks.
Terrorist. Dangerous. Manchurian candidate. Foreigner. Black. Bad. "Not one of us."
It's been done since forever and many times it has worked. But this is a different candidate, a different election and a different electorate. Dog whistles are one thing. The tubthumping of Palin, John McCain and a suddenly "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" Cindy McCain, were leading a rallying cry for the natives to grab their torches and pitchforks.
Who did this Obama fellow think he was anyway?
Many people, like pundits/politicos David Gergen, Chris Matthews and Joan Walsh of Salon.com, pointed out that this was going in a scary, old school Strom Thurmond/Richard Nixon, "Southern strategy" direction. MSNBC host Rachel Maddowwondered if this talk bordered on inciting violence. The Secret Service and FBI were already looking into a few more verbose individuals.
Some scoffed at this notion. Especially certain conservatives like Pat Buchanan who thinks almost any smear against a Liberal or a Democrat is fair game. Even if it's a terrorist laden, racialized smear when our country has a history of murdering black people under the most suspect and flimsiest of circumstances.
No one is expecting a return to Bombingham, but the theatrics did not make McCain look good and at the end of the day, in the most recent debate, he couldn't even fling those smears he so forcefully promoted on the stump and in commercials to Barack Obama's face.
McCain had a choice: bite down hard and bend over if he really wants this presidency by any means necessary or try to put out the fire he started?'
The episode reflected the intensity of the anger that many McCain-Palin supporters have for Obama -- anger that was stoked, in large part, by McCain itself. It also underscored just how difficult a situation McCain has walked himself into. Hours before he attempted to calm nerves, the Senator's campaign sent out a statement to reporters defending the remarks of its crowd members.
"Barack Obama's attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn't understand regular people and the issues they care about," read a statement from spokesman Brian Rogers. "Even worse, he attacks anyone who dares to question his readiness to serve as their commander in chief in chief. Raising legitimate questions about record, character and judgment are a vital part of the Democratic process, and Barack Obama's effort to silence and shame those who seek answers should make everyone wonder exactly what he is hiding."
He tried to do the later and got booed. His base. His Muslim fearing, fear of a black presidency spewing base turned. They never could trust the bastard anyway. Did John McCain want this thing or not, hard right critics asked? George Bush, the son or the father, never let a little demonization get in the way. What was McCain's problem? Why couldn't he pull the trigger?
After his first debate with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), both spectators in the hall and commentators on TV noted that McCain had deliberately avoided looking at his rival.
A close McCain friend said the reason is clear: McCain is miserable about having to run a campaign that’s antithetical to his persona.
“He is basically having to be somebody that he isn’t,” said the friend, who remains strongly supportive. “He is just not a guy that goes on the attack in public. For him to be on the attack constantly, attacking Obama’s character … McCain is uncomfortable with that, and it’s made him grumpy.”
That's why when I hear McCain speak and sound lost. When I look into his eyes and see confusion, frustration and exasperation that leads him to Bob Dole-esque flourishes of "Where's the outrage?" in calling Obama "that one." When I watch his campaign oscillate between "straight talk" and "hate talk," I see a man of two minds. One that remembers what he sold of himself to get here. Another that wants to win by whatever it takes.
In his wrestling with the devil we already know who's winning. This leaves the other side to look into the mirror and wonder what has he become. Things have come full circle and he is McSame -- but not for Bush's policies or his ideology -- but because he has become the thing he once hated.
The war hero is now the villian in the story of his life.
But I see McCain looking in the mirror, telling himself it'll all be worth it because he's not doing this to win, not for himself, but for the country. He's simply the better man for the job.
He blocks out the fac that he is steadily morphing into a charicature of Gollum from "Lord of the Rings." McCain nakedly desiring for "his precious" -- the power that comes with being biggest man to walk into any room.
The self-hate and the anger is there. But he will not divert from the path he has embarked. With a soldiers rectitude he will see this through even if the experience leaves nothing resembling the old John McCain behind.
The potential of absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Sometimes you just feel like being a show-off. That you somehow you're the bigger Obama-ite because you've carved his visage onto the back of your head or you or you rock the "Dunk On McCain" T-shirt all-day, everyday. You've got an Obama ringtone of "Yes We Can." You've got the words "hope" and "change" tattooed on your knuckles. Good for you. For the rest of us, maybe we're looking to show our insane Fanhood of the Traveling Changelings and our esteemed respect for the Great Black Hopemongerer with something a tad more nuanced.
But for every harmless "I (Heart) Obama" contraption like these cute bits of ridiculousness, there is something that makes you go "Wow. That is totally racist."
You know something is racist when you can tell just by looking at it. Take Obama Waffles. They're like Aunt Jemima's, only instead of a head scarf he's rocking a turban/head wrap of some kind with references to Mecca. It was supposed to be a joke with its creators repeatedly explaining that it's "political satire" to a reporter with the American News Project in the above clip. They explain it is not racist if the box reminds you of Aunt Jemima because Aunt Jemima is a preferred product of the creators. So it's a compliment!
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The "waffles" were unveiled during the Value Voters Summit which featured marquee speakers like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mitt "Mittens" Romney. The Associated Press picked up on the racist breakfast item and how event organizers quickly tried to play things down, getting the hotcakes out of there not wanting the potential bad press, no doubt.
They claimed they had no knowledge of how Obama Waffles were dancing on the edge of Little Sambo.
Once again, Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.
The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.
David Nammo, executive director of the lobbying group FRC Action, said summit organizers were told the boxes were a parody of Obama's policy positions but had not examined them closely.
Never mind the fact that this unfunny breakfast treat is ignorant and plays on people's fears over Obama, probably the least scary black man in America this side of Will Smith, but it once again demonizes the religion of Islam as if praying towards Mecca was a gateway drug to suicide bombing.
I want to inform bigots such as these that Islam, Christianity and Judaism share a patriarchal origin in Abraham. That they differ in many respects, but share many of the same core principles. That Muslims actually like and admire Jesus Christ. Islam is a religion. It isn't fair to slander an entire group of people who are members of one of the largest faiths in the world, any more is it for me to condemn all Christians because a few anti-abortion extremists blew up abortion clinics and murdered doctors in the 1980s and 90s.
Every religion has good and bad apples in it. Every religion, at some point, has gone terribly, terribly wrong, abandoning its tenants. (Like the Inquisition, for example.) It's wrong to take peaceful, decent people of all ethnicities and backgrounds and conclude there is some failing in their moral fiber because they are the minority in a Christian/Secular majority culture.
Really. Grow up. Scoring political points is not an excuse to play on xenophobic, bigoted fears.
The "Straight Talk Express" has taken a hard right turn. And personages in the party of Abraham Lincoln are using language left behind in the 1960s.
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., was chewing the fat with reporters in the U.S. Capitol and was asked to compare Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama.
"Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Senator Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks they're uppity."
"Asked to clarify that he used the word 'uppity,' Westmoreland said, 'Uppity, yeah,' " the newspaper The Hill reported.
OK. Who wants to start the countdown for when folks start dropping "darkie," "buck" and "coon" in casual conversations and interviews? They have to start off low on the offensive scale. They're going to save "nigger" for late October.
Places please, Negras! We can't have you all running around thinking you're free and shit. Someone needs to bring the cotton harvest in!
This latest incident should dovetail nicely with the overt, not covet, in-your-face, sit-down-and-shut-up bigotry Michelle is dealing with. How dare she be black AND have a vagina? Obviously she deserves our scorn.
I can now see why sister hits the gym so hard. She's prepared to take a mutha down if her Secret Service detail falls short.
“Michelle” is referred to as a “goddamn bitch” by one of her two white slaves and the “grand dragon” of the NAACP ("National Association for the Annihilation of Caucasian People") is introduced, replete with a black hood and robe. And the dreck doesn’t end there.
If this were a simple parodist jaunt it would still miss the mark by a thousand feet. See? When something is racist there is very little room for debate. Racism can be covert, but this is "knock you over with a two-by-four" obvious. If you don't think this is racist I got a DW Griffith film to show you.
Some of the black characters are played by white actors with make-up, particularly those characters who were required to come in contact with a white actress. The person playing the Cameron's maid is not only clearly white, but is also obviously male. ("The Birth of a Nation," Internet Movie Database trivia)
Some shit never changes. This is what happens when black folks forget their place!
JUST LIKE the Obama girl, Obama has a crush on Obama.
Barack Obama always was a larger-than-life candidate with a healthy ego. Now he's turning into the A-Rod of politics. It's all about him ...
A convention hall isn't good enough for the presumptive Democratic nominee. He plans to deliver his acceptance speech in the 75,000 seat stadium where the Denver Broncos play. Before a vote is cast, he's embarking on a foreign policy tour that will use cheering Europeans - and America's top news anchors - as extras in his campaign. What do you expect from a candidate who already auditioned a quasi-presidential seal with the Latin inscription, "Vero possumus" - "Yes, we can"?
-- Joan Vennochi, "The audacity of ego" (Boston Globe)
And Massa said, "Who let you in here? Yes, you. With that inconveniently independent mind armed with facts. With your standing up straight and talking white, looking The Man directly in the eye. Just who do you think you are? Because you're not me. You're nothing like me who is better than you. So you are an insult to me. You refute my long-held beliefs about you so you must be proven wrong.
"This is a trick. This is a gimmick. This is a game. I am the fleet of foot and you are the beast of burden. I placed shackles on your feet so that you would never get off the ground, yet there you are, an indictment of me, flying high above me, doing me one better, twice better, thrice better over and over again. Who released you from those chains because someone like you could have never figured out how to get out of them yourself.
"Who gave you the right, the permission, the clearance, the verification and insinuation that you are free? Who did this? Who taught you to read? It was against the law and you are too obtuse to understand the meaning of these words, yet you insist on speaking them. Yet you insist on looking me in the eye and demanding that I address you by your name. Who do you think you are and who let you in here? I said, who let you in here where the sign said niggers and women need not apply?"
---
They lost their shit. All of them.
Since this election cycle began, since all the eyes were fixated, for good and for bad, on a woman and black man, and now, just the black man alone. The charismatic yet serious senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, is a magnet who attracts the adoration and the fears. And in those fears he is the sum. He is their devil, the fiend, the infiltrator, the agitator, the infuriation, the Antichrist or one better, the "uppity Negro" -- the man who would did not know his place.
Some black people make terrible slaves. Like Frederick Douglass who kept running away even after his first attempt failed. He stole himself, that's what the Fugitive Slave Act would later say. He was the dish and the spoon, the commodity, the property tossing the burden off his back running away. Like the song, steal away, he stole himself away, reclaiming himself, becoming the providence and property of himself and himself alone.
Like Harriet Tubman, Du Bois and thousands of lesser known others looked at their situation and said, "Not me. Not ever. I don't know about you, but I'm making break for it." Like my mother's great grandfather, Grandpa Ben, who remembered his father and a gaggle of relatives, sisters and brothers and mother, all sneaking out in the dark of night, hidden in wagon, covered in a cloth. Absconding away from Mississippi, never to return again. My mother does not know what was the principle event that caused her great-great grandfather to decide he had to get his entire family, cousins and all, out of Mississippi. Did Massa die and were they facing being sold and separated? So many things can cause a slave to run, but in the end he needed no specific act to justify his actions. They chose the great unknown over the known. They went down the road less traveled. They were horrible slaves.
Barack Obama is not the decedent from slaves. Unlike most black Americans he has a place in Africa that has a name that he can claim as his own. But he was born and raised an American, taking in all the benefits and disadvantages of being brown in a white world. He could have taken the easy road. He could have simply be a lawyer and live a quiet, nice, noble but unremarkable life. But like all people who are filled with an ambition burning hot inside, a mix of righteousness and ego, brilliance and manifest destiny, he reached for the heights and ascended, looked from his perch and rather than be content and satisfied as the second black senator to be elected from Illinois, he looked at his accomplishments and had the audacity to say, "More."
Who let you in here? Who do you think you are?
His head is too high and his neck is too straight. He looks people in the eye. He speaks the words and knows their power and meaning. He is the center of the attention for good and for bad because he is what his opponent is not. He is attractive, he is sleek, he is young, he is new and he is making history. For the Democrats he is the completion of their perceived redemption as the antagonists and tormentors of "Segregation today. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever." For others he is their worst nightmare. A black political wunderkind.
"[W]ho is he and who ... the heck does this guy think he is, is becoming a real issue for Barack Obama." Buchanan then accused Obama of "act[ing] like, you know, he thinks he is the Lord's gift to mankind." -- Patrick J. Buchanan, Media Matters
Who were we to think we could drink out of the same water fountain?
Everyone is talking about that uppity Negro, that uppity nigger who does not know his place. "Places, Please!" shouts the establishment at Barack, Michelle and any other high-minded son-of-a-bitch who has the nerve to think they could rule the world. There is nothing more insulting that a precocious black child talking back to his elders, his superiors, his supremacists. There is nothing that enrages them more.
With his campaign for president, Obama is acting out, showing out, insulting them with his talent and skill. The best they can do is call it "narcissism," like Joan Vennochi did in her column for the Boston Globe.
"A presidential candidate is supposed to get bigger on the national stage. That doesn't mean his head should, too," she wrote.
Hubris, they shouted, is a charge every politician in the history of government can be accused of. It is an arrogant thing to believe that you are the one who can lead. But one wouldn't want some sullen, broken-backed, mouth-breather nervously negotiating our contracts and legislation.
There’s an inherent arrogance required in thinking you can govern a country of 300 Million people. But the folks behind the stories on Obama’s “arrogance” seem to be plainly offended at the idea that Obama is seriously running for president, because apparently some people thought he was just here to make them feel better about race.
But I also think it’s possible for them to overplay this card. When I see Joe Lieberman on Meet the Press repeating “good young man” like he’s been practicing it in a mirror, ( I guess that’s what they say in Connecticut instead of “boy”) and CBS mocking Obama for having a nice campaign plane, (Word? Not everybody’s wife has their own plane, CBS.) I start to wonder whether they’ve been playing this “uppity” card a bit too much. Most people care more about being accused of being racist than actual racism, but I think people also generally recoil when the racism of a particular remark becomes obvious. Aside from Gergen, media critic James Rainey in the LA Times is also pointing out that the “arrogant” storyline is ridiculous. Of course, we all know what they’re really saying.
Many writers and bloggers pointed out the uppity paradox, where anything Obama does can be spun into brazen gall. Author Ishamael Reed also took notice of this in his analysis of the insensitivity some white feminists and white male commentators had towards blacks and Obama's campaign, tying it in to a recurring storying line of "uppitiness." Blogger Field Negro proclaimed this was a case of Americans loving that their presidents were "elite" until the black elite came around.
When Mrs. Clinton, during a debate, commented that voters found Obama more "likeable" than Mrs. Clinton, Obama said that Mrs. Clinton was "likeable enough." Obama's reply prompted an Ante Bellum white man, Karl Rove, to refer to Obama as "a smarmy, prissy little guy taking a slap at her." ...
I submit to you that A-merry-cans wanted their Presidents to be elite. That is, until, this potential President. This one, they don't want to be elite. "There is nothing a white man with a penny hates more than a nigger with a nickle." Sorry "O" man, no elitism or uppity behavior from you. Here in A-merry-ca we will not tolerate an uppity black man.
Places, please! It's getting out of control, the Obamas' faces on every magazine. It was too good to be real so they searched for the lies. In Salon, Edward McClelland, an author and former correspondent for the Chicago Reader, wrote that Obama was once a cold stiff who liked people to know he was from Harvard. He repeated the line that Obama wasn't "black" enough for the South side of Chicago and that the senator had to earn his "ghetto pass." He was too high for the perceived low of blackness. He didn't speak the language was the essence of McClelland's piece. He had no rhythm. He was an elitist and dull. The smug man drinking out of the white water fountain was too incredulous to be real.
Obama just couldn't -- or wouldn't -- loosen up. The dignified demeanor that had won him a state Senate seat in the university community of Hyde Park did not translate to the district's inner-city precincts. His internal rhythm was set to "Pomp and Circumstance." "Arrogant," scoffed a South Side radio host. Even his body language signaled he was slumming.
McClelland writes that as Obama transformed over the next four years into the politician he is today he voted for him twice, amazed by the brilliant speaker before him, but the written words still sting, still follow the meme of "twice as good" being too good. MJ Rosenburg of Talking Points Memo writes that the uppity smear is a winning strategy for McCain, painting Obama as the elite "other," proclaiming that, "Racism dies hard in America." On the blog Being! Or Nothingness the author notes the very "Southern" attitude critics have taken to Obama,
"Imagine, a black man who thinks he's better than you! Why, that uppity negro needs to be put in his place."
Just who do they think they are being bright and beautiful and ubiquitous? Who opened the door and let them in the master's house? They're sleeping in his bed and drinking his wine. They've made themselves comfortable and at home and it looks like they're not leaving anytime soon. Their adorable daughters playing in the yard. And the Kennedy allusions make them sick.
"The fashionistas have already noted Michelle Obama's affinity for channeling Jackie. And it's hard to watch the Obama daughters 'Access Hollywood' interview and not think about Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr. back in the days of Camelot," wrote Vennochi.
His wife Michelle is routinely decried as not good enough when she surpassed "good enough" decades ago. Shouting about her inferiority and alleged defects does not make them come into fruition. Wishing for the Obamas to fail does not guarantee that they will. So ahead of the curve they've left orbit. There was no lie in the statement when Obama insinuated that a lot of this angst, sturm und drang, was over him not looking like the men on the money, the former slave owners on the money. So many blacks can be bought off with the money. They could be made content. They could stay on the plantation happy with their SUVs and glittering idols. We were the people who could be bought off with a Cadillac and a bucket of fried chicken. Why wasn't the plantation enough?
And Massa said, "Be ordinary. Be happy with what you have. Do not question. Do not fight back. Do not lift your head, it's not worth it. Punks jump up to get beat down, and we will beat you down. With clubs and fists if necessary. Nooses and crosses aflame. Because you need to know your places.
"There was a time good colored people knew their place. Now they're in your face and everywhere. They are bragging, boasting loudly of their feats. They are succeeding and excelling and becoming us, replacing us, but no one can be us. We are special, we are real, we are the archetype, the origin of the species and your existence is an indictment of our judgment. Our judgment of you. Because we are judging you. We are always judging you and we found you guilty before proven innocent. And there is nothing innocent in your intent. I am disgusted with the thought of saluting you, of yielding to you, of submitting to you, of turning on the TV and seeing you speak on behalf of me when you are not me. You are not one of us. I say, 'Places, please!' because you are out of place. You must know your place or I will make you know it.
"Bad things happen to those who don't know their place. What do you love more? Your life or your freedom? I've cut the cards and now you must draw. Learn your fate. Learn your place."
Black brother, think your life so sweet That you would live at any price? Does mere existence balance with The weight of your great sacrifice? Or can it be you fear the grave Enough to live and die a slave?
I hate to tell the genius at the Alabama NAACP this, but ... um ... free women of color wore the stupid dress too (if they were of means, especially in the Louisiana Territory), because, you know, it was the FASHION AT THE TIME! Invented by the Europeans! Inspired by the Victorian Era! And these dresses to be worn in the parade aren't even accurate. They're some Barbie doll nightmare version of them. Their only sin is that they are kind of ridiculous looking, reminding me of that crochet toilet tissue topper Granny Snob has at her house in Newport, Ark.
