Cobb

Why I Hate The Prius

"If you don't make electric cars that are better than gasoline cars, what's the point?"
-- Elon Musk 

The Prius is a remarkable success as a product vehicle for very cool technology. I was well aware of the risk that Toyota took when it decided to put its Hybrid Synergy techology together into a production car. And while other manufacturers took risks in other directions, notably Nissan decided to go big with its Titan and Armada trucks, the Prius has been the most popular and successful of all of the hybrid vehicles.

It has done so, I think, because of its styling and marketing as an anti-car. In other words, the Prius is a success precisely for those people who have no love for automobiles, but find them a mere device to get them from point A to point B. And as Hitchens often said of religion, once you buy into the truth of a fundamental lie (in this case that the best car is an anti-car) then every illogic follows. 

What I want to make fundamentally clear is that the Prius, like any car, is not the only way to package a technology. The Prius as an energy saving transportation device is better or worse by design. Not by category. I don't hate efficient automobiles, hybrids, pure electrics or fuel cell cars because they are environmentally friendly - even though I hate most environmentalists and their ridiculous demands upon the auto industry. No, I hate the Prius not for what it originally stood for, but for what it became and now what it is in the marketplace and what it stands for now. It is the anti-car.

Still, I have my prejudices, and it would be sufficient for me to hate the Prius for being the darling of the Greens. Interestingly enough, when the likes of that lamer Ed Begley Jr, had his airhead thralls climbing fences and picketing the termination of GM's EV-1, I didn't necessarily hate the EV-1. I didn't hate the EV-1 any more than I hate CNG powered city buses, of which LA has hundreds. The EV-1 was weird in the same way that Saturn was weird, admirably weird.

First of all, the Prius has a stupid name.

Secondly, it's ugly. It is ugly in the very same way that the Pontiac Aztec was ugly, and the Aztec was probably one of the all time ugliest vehicles. It is ugly like the Citroen BX and the Chevette Hatchback. It has this butt ugly, large butt with no hips. It's shaped like a bad wedge, not an aggressive sporty wedge like the Fiat X1/9 or a techy boxy wedge like the MR-2, but a weenie roundy wedge, blunt-nosed porpoisey wedge.

Thirdly, the interior tries too hard to be other-worldy. The ergonomics were specifically designed to take you out of your comfort zone and prove to you that you are in no ordinary automobile. Even Toyota had to acknowledge that they were doing it all wrong. The newer models are alien, but still spacey.

Obviously, the car doesn't perform. The market that emerged doesn't want performance from the Prius. The price/performance ratio was all skewed from the beginning. Well, at least in the market that Toyota has ended up cultivating through the cult of Prius. You see the expansion the great technology of the Hybrid Synergy drive that improved in about every way over the years was spread to other products in the Toyota and Lexus brands. Some offered high performance instead of mileage. Others put higher mileage in old familiar cars. But the price never made it worth it; in fact it had never been economical to purchase the Prius or other hybrids based on the improvement in gas mileage. There have been plenty of other cars that get the same mileage for 10 - 12 thousand dollars less - a difference that would never be made up by fuel economy. But that wasn't the point for Prius owners, it was to be seen as green, not economical that drove the purchases. So Toyota has had to eat its inventory of hybrid SUVs, Camrys and Lexuses. In the future, only the Prius will get the hybrid engine, and so it will be expanded to a number of vehicles, one of which might even be sporty.

Here in California, Priuses managed to get some semi-exclusive access to carpool lanes by being low emission vehicles, but they were not as low emission as a real car pool. Not much of a point against the car as against the shallow attraction to the vehicle as a planet saviour. 

Most people I talk about are aware of the green contradiction inherent in the manufacture of the advanced batteries that the Hybrid Synergy system requires. Again, not so much a knock on the car, but on the premises enabling its sale. It turns out that the battery pollution story was overblown but then again we've all seen Prius commercials in which flowers bloom as the Prius drives by. Which is a bigger lie? 

That doesn't much matter because I'm a car lover, and the Prius is an anti-car. The Tesla is the car for a man like me, and that's about all there to say about that. 

The Whitney Analogy

The saddest woman in the world is Cissy Houston. 

If you have to ask Wikipedia who Cissy is, then I forgive you. But really, that's all I really had to say to a small group of wonderful but unimportant people, whom I love dearly but hardly ever see any longer. They are my snobby black brothers and sisters who know who they are. There's an old cliche, borrowed of course but the bon mot nonetheless that you can always tell an Alpha man, but you cannot tell him much. I'm an Alpha, a member of the same fraternity as MLK, WEB and Eugene Kinckle Jones. If you have to look them up, I understand and forgive.

You see, I found something out about myself the past weekend, which was that I was expecting entirely too much of my people. And because they never satisfied my expectations, I dismissed their dreams. My people are certainly not a nation of millions, nor an ethnic minority within that nation. My people are a very certain selection of a very few who tend to know a lot about a few things and not much else. I can go to my cousin and she can tell me who Whitney used to hang out with, and we could also trade stories about Don Conrnelius as well. And although I hope he's not the third, I could tell you about some other famous black entertainer whose name is not important right now. What's important is that I'm the kind of guy who could hang out for a while with Greg Tate or with Elvis Mitchell because I have. And just last week I was hanging out with some folks who work on Wall Street but come from that same small exclusive village that I do. It was easy. I knew where to go, and I wanted to and I reconnected just like that. But most of the time I don't bother. 

I'm sad that Whitney died before her time, but in the way I'm connected to my little village, I knew it was coming. We all did, I mean, common sense and TMZ could tell you that. But she was trying to be more than she could be and succeeded. That makes you paranoid, especially when you realize how close you are to your little village. Hard to explain, that. But when all the people seem like little people, especially the ones you are supposed to love and respect - the ones you are supposed to keep in mutual check, power, wealth and fame are deadly. It's hard to resist doing the unthinkable when your success is singular. When everybody buys the package, you become immune to their thinking. And that is what has happened to my people. We got away with it. From Denzel on down. Well, I don't really mean Denzel, I mean Skip Gates. I mean the caretakers of The Positive Black Image.

You see, it happened. Everybody wanted it to happen. Everybody wanted Whitney to be what she wasn't - she wasn't Dionne Warwick. Whitney wasn't a complete pig; the lipstick worked. The Positive Black Image was credible, not just for Whitney but for a generation who saw Bill Cosby as Dad. It went from Sidney Poitier to Bill Cosby with Eddie Murphy in the middle. Eddie didn't have to care, and so he didn't try so much to keep up appearances - which was why his Dr Doolittle was so brilliant and good. But maintainers of the Positive Black Image needed Whitney, in the same desparate way they now need the Obamas even more.

But there's a loose and somewhat disaffected cadre out there in fine clothing and smooth diction who slip in and out of the dialect without straining. And I hope, as long as I've ignored them, that they are robust in their ability not to take themselves too seriously, but love what they have. Whenever I post a picture of my family here or on Facebook, I'm indulging that Old School select village privilege. I used to talk of aggregation and thought as most of us did, that we would all hang out by Nisky Lake in the ATL and swap Boule stories like some blackified Bohemian Club. Yes, my brother what are we taking over this year? It's happening, and it's not. 

My boy (well, he used to be my boy) was just at the White House the other day. I caught the photo on Flipbook. My other boy (well, one degree of separation) is running for DA of LA. We're not actually running things according to any plan, but we're running things. It's a fragile network. It's a good word. It can easily be broken, like speaking out of school - a school that almost exists. Yes I've always called it the Old School, and like balls, strikes, racism and gay marriage, it's all socially constructed. Real but not real. It's just a conventional understanding of things that you shouldn't really take too seriously, nor should you ignore it for too long. 

They said, back in 1968, that all I have to do is be black, pay taxes and die. But it turns out that two those things can actually be ignored, and Jesus has a promise about the third. The conventions we attach to them are ephemera, but we're always curious to know how are you going to live in spite of them? What's going to be your image, and how seriously are you going to play the role? As Cobb readers know, I tend to be about *do* rather than *be*, but in this matter the Stoic takes over. After all, with those inevitables you are going to do them one way or another. So attitude matters. How do you feel about all this? Are you going to be alright? 

The Old School. The maintainers of the Positive Black Image, the exclusive village of the Talented Tenth origins and keepers of all things dignified and uplifting suffered a catastrophic symbolic earthquake with the death of Whitney Houston. But we knew it was coming, and we know it will come again when the manipulations of our social capital are revealed again as they will be in the future. But it's OK, because we really never needed to change the whole world. We just aimed for it. We will be revealed to be frail, damaged and all of the glory about us that people wanted to believe beyond the limits of our gifts and ability to perform, well that glory will fade. And we'll all be a little bit more sad, and a little more real, and then we can finally be only but always what our true talents fated us to be. There will be only ordinary drama and normal tragedy, simple success and standard victories. That's what equality will feel like.

So I am recovering the ordinary dreams of ordinary successful black Americans with a cold eye but a warm heart. There's always something good to appreciate about talent, but we can all do without the symbolism. Whitney Houston is dead. Dead like Elvis.  May their estates continue to sell records, but not sociology. Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. What's wrong with that?

American Meritocracy: Bunny Slopes & Black Diamonds

What could be more ambitious, I was asked, than democratization of access and genuine objective meritocracy?

It must be the ambition of any rational people to establish and maintain such institutions that guarantee these goals for their citizens. But I want to overemphasize the necessity for leagues and limit the attention spent on the ideal of equality. I say you don't want one level playing field, but several. And those several level playing fields are classes. 

When I brought this up with The Brothers the other night, Doc made it crystal in one phrase: That's what neighborhoods are for. 

• You don't want to get into the ring with Mike Tyson.
• You don't want to try to hit fastballs from Randy Johnson
• You don't want to get into an argument with a lawyer who gets paid 2 million a year.

 

The Fungibles

Edited by M.D.C.Bowen last updated January, 2003

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The following is a list of the only black people that count in America. You know it, I know it, so let's just get over it and admit it. You want details of why? Check out the Isbell Theory below. You want it more scholarly like? Try Bell's Rules.

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OJ Simpson	Johnnie Cochran	Colin Powell	Thomas Sowell	Shelby Steele	Michael Jordan	John McWhorter	Bill Cosby	Condi Rice	JC Watts
Alan Keyes	Maxine Waters	Louis Farrakhan	Jesse Jackson	Al Sharpton	Khalid Muhammed	Cynthia McKinney	Spike Lee	Charles Barkely	Denzel Washington
Halle Berry	Barry Bonds	Willie Horton	Will Smith	Puff Daddy	Tupac Shakur	Cornel West	Skip Gates	Oprah Winfrey	Tiger Woods
Ward Connerly	Chris Rock

Each of these individuals represent some opinion, character flaw or character strength against which all African Americans are judged.

The Isbell Theory
Charles Isbell October 1995 
There is a Black Leadership vaccuum... but it's not for Black folks, it's for White folks. The leader and messiah being sought is *not* being sought by Black people, but by White people. The mainstream wants a national Black leader--a spokesperson really--so they can have someone to point to, someone to reason with, be angry at, hold onto, respect, hate or whatever, but make no mistake, it is a leader for *their* sakes, not for the sakes of Black people. By contrast, Black America is happy to go on being the non-monolithic people we've always been and to address our issues locally, individually and internally. I don't think we have a messiah fixation or a particular desire for a national leader.

Sure, Jackson is respected for having done something and some folks will follow him, but that does not a Black National Leader(tm) make, as should be obvious. Farrakhan is respected as the head of an organization that has shown some concern for the community and has actually made some inroads in addressing a particular set of problems and some folks will follow him, but so what?, that still does not a Black National Leader(tm) make. Colin Powell? Oh, please. Cochran? Oh, he won one for the gipper, but a spokesperson? Sorry, I don't want one, I gave at the office.

Having said that, I should point out that what Blacks do seem to searching for is a symbol--not a person--that makes our oppression clear. The Rodney King beating is a symbol that says "SEE! We told you about the cops!" but nothing more. Mark Furhman serves the same purpose. It is important to realize that this is a search for an event so powerful that White folks cannot ignore what we know is true; it is *not* a search for a leader, a Moses, a Messiah.

Now, to the extent that an individual can articulate our frustration, our fears and make the event clearer, we are grateful, but I don't think we're really searching for a person to do that because, well, there's no leadership vaccuum we need filled.

Why is all this important? Well, it says something about the way the nation views its Black population. We are, essentially, aliens, a group whose experiences, culture and world is so foreign--and monolithically so--that the rest of the country needs some person to bridge the perceived gap.

Sadly, there is a gap of perception, but there isn't a person who is going to articuate it for America and make it plain (especially since this isn't even what the country wants; the country wants a Black leader who will make Black people understand the country, not the other way around). The only way to fill this gap is to listen to the masses and what they are saying in common and in discord to you everyday, not to look for one voice to provide you with a soundbite. The only way to deal with this gap is accept your own responsibility in bridging it.

As to the MMM, its center role in all this is ironic. For Farrakhan, this may have been about White America--I don't know and I don't care, really--but for the rest of the folks there, this wasn't about White folks at all. It was about Black folks. I don't think we were sending a message to White America, though there is one there for White America, we were just talking amongst ourselves. America, we were just talking amongst ourselves.

 

American Spring (October Edition) & OWS Update

I have been thinking about how awful I would be to the hippies of OWS. But then I would only be throwing rotten tomatoes. They like vegetables, right?

Of course everybody who is 'occupied' is not a hippy. But I cannot seem to get out of a particular bubble. I think my G+ account has been spammed to that crowd. I know, unsubscribe. But I need to know what everybody thinks. Nevertheless, I've been thinking about the nature of this protest and comparing it to the LA Riots, where people were ready to burn down buildings. Well, actually they did burn down buildings. That's the level of street action that gets results. Militancy. 

So now the Kadaffi is dead, it's probably a good time to take inventory and compare America to the Middle East. 

Iraq: Saddam: Dead
Libya: Kadaffi: Dead
Egypt: Mubarak: Deposed
Yemen: Saleh: On the ropes.
Pakistan: lots of dead ex-leaders

In good old Washington DC, Barney Frank is still chilling, and journalists like Wolf Blitzer are looking mighty fine in their silk suits.

The Tea Party has been shown up a little bit. But their ruckus has been a bit more long in the tooth than the new OWS peasants. My favorite stories from OWS ground zeroes reveals that my cynicism has gotten the better of my skepticism. In one, some dude with felony warrants was hanging out in a tent at Z. Park because he knew he could score drugs and get free food. In another, some poor fool woman who thought she could just go out and sleep in the same tent with a stranger was sexually assaulted. 

Tangentially, there's a big CNN story about how many Americans end up behind bars in the Prison Industrial Complex. There's a reason for that: we have lower tolerance for people who have felony warrants and sexual assault. In other countries, those people are free to roam the streets. 

So I continue to compare OWS to football. Football is still producing more concussions and injuries. Football is still getting more people to yell and shout in a community. Football is still producing more concrete winners and losers that people can objectively track on a weekly basis. 

I hear that the movement is planning a bank run on BAC. That is really interesting. I wanna see how well they do. I heard from Rick Santelli recently because I was on East Coast time. But I don't have time for his pith. That's a long show - too long to record and watch.

Never Learned to Swim

I do not know if my late grandfather knew how to swim. But perhaps if I researched my family history I might learn a lesson of oppression. I doubt it however. That's because my grandfather was orphaned by the flu epidemic of 1918, and no matter what is said about the conditions of blacks in Connecticut in the 20s, it was certainly worse for foster children. Not that I would take any such stories of oppression to heart. It's not like me, and it surely would not be what Chico would have wanted me to consider at length. 

But since I've been talking about the lack of the Southern Negro and in parallel never shy to criticize any lack, weakness or dysfunction calling itself 'black', I thought I would update and exemplify a lack that doesn't require a degree in comparative anthropology to comprehend. It is a story that might be familiar published in the wake of the Olympic victory of the now forgotten Cullen Jones.

Nearly 60 percent of African-American children cannot swim, almost twice the figure for white children, according to a first-of-its-kind survey which USA Swimming hopes will strengthen its efforts to lower minority drowning rates and draw more blacks into the sport.

Stark statistics underlie the initiative by the national governing body for swimming. Black children drown at a rate almost three times the overall rate. And less than 2 percent of USA Swimming's nearly 252,000 members who swim competitively year-round are black.

USA Swimming is teaming with an array of partners — local governments, corporations, youth and ethnic organizations — to expand learn-to-swim programs across the United States, many of them targeted at inner-city minorities. One of the key participants is black freestyle star Cullen Jones, who hopes to boost his role-model status by winning a medal this summer at the Beijing Olympics.

I introduce this as a family matter as a typical tactic of the political Right. You remember the old axiom - the Right uses the strenghts of the family as a defense against the dysfunctions of government, the Left uses the strengths of the goverment to overcome the dysfunctions of the family. While I suppose we could always meet in the middle in the form of institutions and charities and those old 1000 points of light, I must say that I'm always biased in favor of self-determination. 

Like any other gripe of the emergent, it is easy to cite statistics and point fingers and come up with a perfectly logical activist agenda. It's not so easy to accept the equilibrium as it stands. But I think this simple case illustrates the differences in approach. Clearly there is something amis that can be corrected, but how? Now let's see how deep a fight we can get into over this.

Azn

I grew up in Crenshaw, which was everybody knew, a black and Japanese neighborhood.

Freddie and Keith were my first Asian buddies. Keith was Hawaiian and Freddie was Japanese. I knew Keith in the first grade and Freddie somewhat after. Keith was all smiles and full of energy and popular. Freddie was chubby, shy and laconic. Freddie and I lived on the same street, his was a single mom, and he rode a tricycle a little bit longer than anybody else our age. I never knew where Keith lived, and never saw him after school, but Freddie and I were closer friends. I don't know why and I don't know how long into our friendship, I hit Freddie. He ran home, told his mom, and I never saw him again after school. Well, maybe once or twice, but that was basically the end of it. 

There are probably more short stories like this I could tell end on end, but maybe they have that same theme. The friendship between blacks and Asians in LA is as varied as the number of different types of Asians, and yes everybody hates Koreans. At least, they used to. But on the whole the relationship is genuine and fragile. Whenever you try, you really can't make anything of it. 

I think there is a kind of social capital that black Americans have gained in a completely different way than whatever Asians have gained. When I think of Asian Americans, I almost never think of them as multicultural compatriots in a shared struggle for social capital. That has worked and can continue to work with Latinos, especially those who called themselves Chicano. But there has never been an Asian Chicano. Well, there's Margaret Cho, and that's about it. It's something I have variously found frustratingly disappointing and oddly attractive. But one thing I have long understood is that worse than blacks and worse than browns, Asians have never managed to be the authors of their own social acceptance. Asian culture was and remains all in the eye of the beholder, not in the aim of the creator. It all gets swallowed up in perception.

Here in SoCal, there are so many Asian groups that every place else seems freakily devoid. The idea that I might turn on a radio station and never hear Mandarin, Japanese or Korean on the AM dial seems uncivilized, as does any person who can't tell those languages apart. But let's face it. All us gringos care much more about the food than the people, that is except for the dudes with jungle fever, be they our dudes or their dudes. 

Almost all Asians I have known have attempted to compensate for a lack of social capital via ultra competence. I have never been able to determine, not that I care much, whether this is a personal matter, something that bespeaks a particular tradition, or was merely a reaction to racial stereotypes. It is not an intimation which I have been privy. I have known Keiths and Freddies. They either make it, or they don't, but either way, the intimacy has been lacking. 

I have known Asian men to get riled about banana chicks in their midst. I have known Asian women to find their roles stultifyingly austere. But I cannot know if I get that particular flavor of complaint straight, or through a black man filter.  And of course I have gotten my share of discussion about the 'model minority' role - whether real or imagined. What I haven't gotten much is a sense of Asian Americans to their native countries, if they have anything more than a passing familiarity with them. I notice this much more for the yellow Asians than for the brown Asians. Indians, are a completely different sort with which my experiences are more extensive. I know what Indians act like around Indians. So let me speak in broad general useless terms about that for a moment.

Once upon a time in Las Colinas, I was working for one of the most successful Indian companies in America. It was chock full of Indian nuts, and had some informal claim as the highest per capita PhD in Texas, if not the Fortune 500. So one day we were having a big meeting and one of the project managers was late, and we were sitting around waiting. Somebody asked who was he? And the answer was "oh. some white guy named Bob". It was funny, because that description suddenly made it easy, in this company, to identify him. But what was even more striking to me at this company was the extent to which the Indian social hierarchy, heretofore invisible to me, made itself visible. And since that day, although I have not given it more specific attention in a pattern-matching way, I have noticed how quickly such hierarchies are established stateside. It is my estimation that Indians here in America on work permits, are quite appreciative of the extent to which they are accepted into our creaky meritocracies. But really, I'm not talking about them here and I don't consider them Azn.

The Azn I wish I knew better are my associates from highschool, most of whom tread a fine line between conspicuous invisibility and innoffensiveness. Every once in a while I'll find an Asian dude my age driving a fabulous car, and I get this feeling that he's a cool, competent fellow I might knock back a few drinks with. But he's just on his way somewhere. These men have not become the sports announcer on TV, the over solicitous real estate agent, the friendly guy at the end of the bar. One of them, however is my General Practitioner, a Felix Unger type who wears his gloves and washes his hands a bit too often. But this fete manque doesn't bother me much - it's an empty spot like that trip to Berlin I never made. I was just going to be a tourist anyway, but it would have been nice to know I was welcome to learn the language and make friends. 

The problem with Asian Studies is the same problem as with using multiculturalism to solve the Race Problem - fighting fire with fire. There's always some esstialism involved. You always have to invoke some ancient Chinese secret to overcome the 'gaze'. There's always some black magic the Negro must use, some Judo for the Japanese. And for what? To get in the White door, as if it led someplace. There are always a hundred doors and a hundred keys. The problem is the fixation. Well, actually the problem is that the fixation is over-productive. You see Asian Studies, and American Studies and multiculturalism all work. They all work like that pill in the recent movie "Limitless". They work like Robert DiNiro playing a confident, powerful guy with the capacity to get in your face and make you suffer. They work like hammers and nails. 

One of the things you never hear about when these discussions come up is what to make of Asians who are Christian. I have never set foot inside a Korean or Philippino Christian church. But I know they are around. In Gardena, two towns west of where I live, I'm sure I could easily find a dozen Christian churches with Asian congregations. Where is the exchange? What does it mean to all of these racial and cultural signifiers we are trying to make sense of if and when there is that fundamental sameness? One of the favorite project managers I have worked with was a Taiwanese army seargant (boy you could tell) who sent his son to the same private Catholic highschool I attended. I remember so many times he would be shouting at the kid over the phone in Chinese. I felt sorry for the kid, rather the same way I feel sorry for any kid whose parents *and* teachers are Catholic. Where is the forgiveness? Where is the Christian fellowship? I suspect with some conviction that these might as well be different sects, as wholly other as Mennonties and Mormons. Yet I also suspect that there is a great story waiting to be told that will come from Thomas Sowell before it comes from Bill Moyers.

At bottom there will have to be a kind of studied indifference by the keepers of the culture that will inform our best sensibilities. I have found that kind of attitude works best when people get bent about American identity. Until then, we will have to stock our mental inventory with Dat Phans and Margaret Chos and Amy Chuas and a half dozen other riffs to satisfy the idiot level of stereotypes. We have to let all of the seminars take place, and try to reconcile Connie Chung and Tiger Woods. We'll have to have that conversation with the guy at the end of the bar, or commiserate/brag about our idiot/brilliant kids with the dad at the Friday night game.  It will become American, whatever that means, and then we'll talk about the bad old days when it was so difficult to watch the remake of the Green Hornet. And in the end it will all mean exactly what it's supposed to mean, nothing. Until we go to war with China. 

Speaking of which, I am reminded of the bottom line of Dr. Frayser, my dad's old friend. He is one of the kindest individuals I know, a real old school gentleman - the kind of man you expect to meet on a sunny day on Martha's Vineyard with his walking stick, straw hat and dog, knowing he as retired from fixing hundreds of human babies in his hospital. And because he was so absolutely gentle, his dictum was striking in its finality. He said, you know the reason why we respect Japanese and buy all of their products? Because we know they will fight us to the death. In the end, the only way to accept another human is to know that they can and will do anything you think you can and will do. The implications are simple and clear, and reiterate my indictment of Asian Studies. 

If the purpose of any study is to cultivate respect, admiration, acceptance and to break whatever is holding up that glass ceiling, then you enter a particular room with a particular shape and use particular tools to get a particular result. The problem is with the definition. You and I know what an Azn is. But that man is actually nobody in particular. 

 

 

 

 

The Next Investigation - Beyond the Gordian Knot

I have determined the necessity of war. Next I will start studying Napoleon. This is because I want to understand what it takes to wipe the slate clean and establish a new and clear set of laws in the wake of an overturning of the old and sclerotic. I seek to find out the prospects of a new sort of revolution and then will assess the possibilities of these coming from the post-hacked and assymetrically destabilized West. 

Where to start? 

Black Class Revisited

Starting back in the late 80s when I decided to allow my intellectual curiosity rule my life rather than settle into the square pegs of upscale, buppie, Talented Tenth modalities, I had already formed some reckoning of the class differences between African Americans. I was quite comfortable back in the day dealing with five classes. It was solidified by my recognition of Oliver & Shapiro and Massey & Denton. 

I was fascinated with the 'geography is destiny' theory of American Apartheid, and I must say that it still holds significant sway on both the positive and negative side. You are where you live, goes the wit. And so since I had begun to consider myself a traveler of some experience in my early 30s, I considered at length where I would ultimately want to live and where, not coincidently were the best places for black Americans to live. According to my simple theories, convinced that there was not one 'black community', I split African America into five classes: projects, ghetto, hood, burb and hill. With data from the 2000 census, I started slicing and dicing the population and came up with my own ranking.

It had always been important to me to be able to say something credible about black Americans that I felt had not been said, or said loudly or properly enough. But I have not been disabused of that concern, and it is because I have recognized over many years of dabbling among the chatting classes, that nobody is disciplining the troops. So splitting matters even further, there are those who believe in race and those who don't. Among the believers there are politically correct and incorrect factions, afrocentrics, race traitors, multiculturalists and racial realists to name a few who are compelled to always color their moral pronouncements, if for not their own justifications than to explain to those they say must be properly schooled. And split mostly on the side of the believers are those who explain race in terms of culture. I say split to give some benefit of a doubt, but I've never heard of anyone who give credence to 'black culture' whose explanations don't center around the very same stereotypes as the most vulgar understanding of black race. IE, blacks run fast because ______. Insert 'cultural' explanation. Nobody cares a whit to explain the black cultural proclivities toward either side of the Bacon vs Shakespeare controversy, but there's always someone making apologies for Basketball. In other words, black cultural commentary rarely goes beyond the immediate concerns of race. 

This is a sad state of affairs that I think owes a great deal to the pretenses of hiphop and the commercial success of the New Jacks, ever in opposition to the great orations of Bill Cosby on the one hand, and the prating of that unctuous class of post-modern academics and their vertiginous phrases. All of them going after the singular prize of 'the' black voice which must ever respond to the ironic and idiotic call: "What do you people want?" It comes as no surprise that nobody knows, because those involved in this cultural production like to keep matters open. Accordingly there is the eternal internal question "Who are we as a people?" and its corrolary "What should we be demanding, as a people?"  That is the core existential dilemma, neatly wrapped around a DuBoisian duality, hidden inside a Woodsonian re-education , expressed quixotically in an MLK oration. The best answer, of course is to question the question. But that only works for perhaps the smallest fraction of all, those who put no stake in race whatsoever. 

It is perhaps ironic that my energy spent in pursuit of being such a vessel of the proper black American cultural voice has so disabused me of having any stake in race. On the one hand, to believe in culture, or to believe in religion, or to believe in any such thing people have reduced their worldviews to over history should squeeze racial reasoning out. One can only conclude that, for all of this cultural babble, that the subject remains racial is the enduring testament to racism in America. Americans are always inventing neologisms for the same tired dynamic while claiming to be beyond race, while admiting that most everyone else is more racist than they. Even this essay falls into that category, technically if not spiritually speaking. But if one truly does find racial reasoning being squeezed out, (which I don't care to claim, having really nothing to try to prove there) one finds a curious lack of attention. In other words, the solution to race has always been to abandon it without any effort to remap it. Americans however, want the impossible which is to redefine race and then somehow claim a racial victory over racism. In the end some race is always on the hook. 

There should always be some fraction of all of us Americans, by the mere fact of any understanding of race that we are bound to it. But for me, to look at class is the simplest solution. Naturally this position betrays my interpretation of the predations of racism. What I would loathe the most of racism would be its ability to eliminate all class distinction between myself and those I would be associated with by race. Or put simply that any class distinction I aspire to in the larger society would always be qualified by my race. Yet this is the same bucket I volunteered into and projected onto black America with my five layer cake of projects, ghetto, hood, burb and hill. I should say that there is a Talented Tenth prerogative buried in that which elevates in class among blacks that is not considered significant to class in the larger society, ie the distictions between black fraternities or black undergraduate schools. What difference does it make to be called King of the Jews in the eyes of crucifying Romans? It matters if you really care to be King of the Jews, and enforce that standing with Jews. So it matters what kind of black American you are if you intend to stand tall as one projecting such status over the rest, as I said - a Talented Tenth prerogative. 

I can recall back in the days when Ron Brown was considered by all to be the most likely first black American President. I went to a conference of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation where he was the keynote. Around that time, circa 1992, the CBC itself was under attack as not worthy of receiving Congressional funding because of its special interest. Percy Sutton was in attendance among notables, as were personal friends of mine from LA's Black Women's Forum including the recently departed and greatly loved Lilian Mobley - the woman Maxine Waters could have been were she not... well..that's another story. All of those important people were important to black America in that special sense of their figuring in the poltiical calculations that were the vanguard of 'what we as a people should be demanding'. But in the end, the CBC was defunded and all of the politics of the 'digital divide' fell by the wayside. Nobody was disciplining the troops. There might have been true black strategies, but they never materialized.

I happen to believe that is a permanent pattern because sooner or later, black American individuate. The black shroud fails to cover the toes or the nose, and theories fall apart. Race loses its power to corral and define, despite so many hopes and ideas and theories and wishful thoughts. The prerogatives of American class take over. There are the Americans who get it, and those who don't. 

Today is the end of Julyteenth, my attempt at sustaining some conversation about Cobb and race. There hasn't been a headline in The Root that resonated with me quite yet. The writers write and make sure they put 'black' in the headline - the black of self-selection, the black of the audience that becomes something just by being there. Black as the flash mob of something pronounced black, a black ad-hocracy, which becomes self-sustaining merely by repeating the existential questions and never coming up with a satisfying answer.

Anything is black enough. Anything.

So my conclusion is that it all gets diluted, all that blackness. What black people wanted, some black people got - and so satisfied ran out of questions to ask, leaving some ever-diminishing fraction behind.

The Meaning of A Punch In The Nose

For a long time, I have had the category 'A Punch in the Nose'. I use this blog category to virtually slap around some idea or activity that I find distasteful, immoral or stupid. But it has deeper associations for me. 

I happen to be one of those people who firmly believes that a certain amount of chivalry is necessary. By chivalry, I mean a code of honor among free men that allows them to adjudicate matters of dispute independently of institutions of law. The aim is not to counter the law, but to uphold its spirit without enduring its tedium and expense. 

Americans remain fascinated by television shows that dramatize small claims courts. I've watched a few episodes of Judge Judy and Judge Joe Black and I sense that the intended audiences are to bring their own judgments into sharper relief. Watching is an ethical exercise. We all judge. Do we judge well?

If a society is to have liberty then there must be balance between the freedom of the individual and the oversight of the republic. I sometimes question whether American society is sufficiently grounded, on the whole, with the proper amount of good sense to uphold a reasonable common law in the breach of official enforcement. It is not that I think we are essentially too barbarian. On the contrary, I think we have accepted too much policing and lawyering, and having done so atrophied our native civil abilities. Because of this long held belief on my part, I have always been of the opnion that a punch in the nose is better than a lawsuit. If I would have my way, the blood in the streets of America would come more from fists than from billy clubs. 

I readily admit that it is a complicated matter. Between the extremes of Hobbes and Rousseau, I can be a bit confused. Let me go back... 

For your edification, I grew up in what I would call a 'knuckle-up' neighborhood. One in which bicycles were abused in the manner that give birth to what we now call 'extreme sports'. There was a certain amount of violent action in several dimensions of life that we no longer find socially acceptable, for one simple example, roller derby. My theory is that the suppression of this acceptable level of violence and action has changed our patterns of dealing with risk. IE people who feel safe because they wear helmets might drive faster, or having eliminated risk in one area of activity balance it out with a completely new risky activity. My own one-off experience says that people who grew up with Tom Sawyer's expectation of and experience with fistfights doesn't generally need to go rock-climbing for adventure. And my own slightly biased opinion is that people trade sex for violence  - which is to say we have traded away a society where arguments could be settled with a chivalric punch in the nose instead have one in which the most childish disputes engage attorneys.

If it can be said that I prefer a masculine society, then I must agree.  

 

 

 

The Answers

(from the archives)

 

Today Means

Today means small things in practice, and great ideas in theory. Great ideas that a large number of us do not fully understand. We pursue without really grasping the ideal of happiness. But we are happy enough.

I used to spend a great deal of time puzzling over what America is, how it operates, what it means. But it was only when I started to read more philosophy and history that I came to a reasonable conclusion. That conclusion is that we are a people more wed to our history than we know, and that history is of a more elevated character than we say. So we complain. We are people who have time to complain, meaning we are not defeated and we expect better for ourselves. 

This morning I picked out a paragraph from The Root, a publication of constant complaint. In The Root's consistency, they have re-published an article from one year ago today saying that it is just as relevant:

What, to a black American in the age of Barack Obama, is the Fourth of July? I answer: the day that reveals to him, more than any other, how much America owes to blacks and their struggle for freedom. If it hadn't been for people like Frederick Douglass, this would not be a country worth living in. The lofty ideals of the Founding Fathers would have been no more than stirring but empty rhetoric.

What I understand about this is the rigor with which my generation of black Americans view the world through the lens of inherited Struggle. We have aggregated every pain and triumph into an existential philosophy of lure and loathing. America. What does it mean for *us*? That is the question we love to endlessly turn in our heads. To settle for an answer that does not result in some strain of complaint is to admit a false comfort. We have in America, a permanent home as symbols of man's inhumanity to man, and it is such a powerful symbol that it is unlikely to ever be eclipsed. Except of course that our Spartacus has become Ceasar. 

We might have spent an eternity, were it not for Obama, speaking of Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong, and Sojourner Truth. We might have spent 10 political seasons, were it not for Obama, speaking of Michael Steele, Colin Powell and Ward Connerly. All these proxies of fate, will in time, fade from significance, because of what America actually is, and who we actually are in it. Americans are only believers in the creed of liberty. That is all we ever were and it is all we ever will be. We are devotees, no matter where our location, to a set of clear ideas that we uphold like a flag in the wind only pointed with fleeting accuracy at its North Star. Whenever we tire, someone else picks it up, and the march continues. 

It has been a long time since I've listened to Premature Autopsies. But I never forget its observation that nobility can come from anywhere. 

Some people might ask, "What is this man doing talking about nobility? Doesn’t he know that this is a dragon-spawned and blood-encrusted century? Doesn’t he know that the dragon breath of our time is breathing down the neck of the year 2000? Doesn’t he know that this is the era of flash and cash?" I will say to them that the interwoven labyrinths of greed and manipulation are as old as the FIRST lie, When you lie you are trying to manipulate; and when you try to manipulate for false profit, you reveal your greed; and when you swallow that dragon dust cooperatively you reveal yourself as a chump, a sucker, one of those folks Barnum said was born every minute. But I will answer them also by saying that nobility is always born somewhere out there in the world, and when you live in a democratic nation you have to face the mysterious fact that nobility has no permanent address, you hove to face the fact that nobody has nobility’s private phone number. Nobility is not listed in the phone book. Nobility is not listed in the society column, nobility shows up where it feels like showing up, and where it feels like showing up might be just about anywhere. If it could rise like a mighty light from among the human livestock of the plantation, you know it can come from anywhere it wants to. You see, nobility is listed though. Yes, it is listed. Nobility lists itself in the human spirit, and its purpose is to enlist the ears of the listeners in the bittersweet song of spiritual concerns.

That doesn't sound like a complaint when you read it, but when you hear it played to the accompanyment of the New Orleans dirge in the cadence and accents of the black minister then you know - it is the bittersweet song of spiritual concerns. 

I am constantly reminded of the irony of those backhanded compliments such as the Root constantly replays when speaking of the Founders. You don't often hear many such complaining African Americans speak of their duties to lead with love the ever benighted white boys. The word 'us' is not often enough broadly employed. What does today mean to all of us? That is the question that should be turning constantly in our heads. If we were to forget all of the foolish self-serving rhetoric of identity, then we might recognize how many of the world's people believe in the creed of liberty.

I have brought my family to reside at the coast of the Pacific. When I was climbing my mountain, my throat was dry. When I reached the peak and saw the promised land, the waters of justice were still frozen in the snow. I recognized them for what they were and did not resent their color. Soon I saw the trickle, the stream, the mighty river, and I joined with all to find the mighty sea. I remember when I was parched and climbing, but I was destined as are all men, to rest here.  We are not truly Americans until we believe in liberty and justice for all. 

Sex vs Violence

The news is that some supreme court, perhaps even the Supreme Court wrote an opinion that generally stays regulating and censorious hands from videogame production. In general, and in keeping with my political orientation, that's the sort of opinion I like and live comfortably with. If you don't like the sex and violence in videogames, learn how to fish, you moron. Which is rather like me saying if you don't like Alabama, move to Kentucky - understanding that the argument augers poorly for the government role (or the elite's role) in keeping pornographers in their place, and tough beans if you can't afford a bus ticket to Louisville.

Here's the thing. Have you ever seen real people shooting at each other? How about a compound fracture? Have you ever videotaped ugly people having sex? These are all distasteful matters that serve no narrative purpose. They would be like War TV. The portrayal of sexual or violent acts for the purposes of entertainment are very different from the real thing. We could probably air several seasons worth of Mythbusters on porno alone. While the research is still out for establishing some Clockwork Orange standard of human revulsion, there is something that I know to be true. There are things that we might watch that will give us the creeps and by them we will know immediately what is off limits. 

Let us call that moment disgust. 

In fact there is research on the human emotion of disgust, and if I've read that small bit I've encountered correctly, we associate disgust with either anger or fear. Both of these emotions, according to that research are correlated with harsher moral judgment. When we are angry or afraid, we tend to be more harsh judges - like the intimidated poor woman in the nice shop who more harshly hushes her child.  

So does the offensive portrayal of sex make you angry or fearful? Do you want to go in and slap that person or do you shudder and screw up your face? Eww! That's disgusting. Does looking at it make you want to vomit? Interesting how morality is informed by your physical reaction. 

Every true gamer will remember the first time playing the legendary Call of Duty recreation of the Normandie invasion. You get killed so many times over such a short period that it breaks your expectation of the powers you are expected to have in a videogame entertainment. The same is true of Silent Hill, a horror title that was perfectly uneventful for a good 15 minutes of gameplay, lulling you into a false sense of security but keeping you tingly all the while. In San Andreas, I resented that the game kept rewarding me for being evil - the only way to win is to do bad, in a purely unsentimental badass fashion. These are variations of extremes that push the envelope. But how often was the experience disgusting?

Well, that depends. Comedian Louis CK cracks wise on 'white people complaining'. The man who whines that the Starbucks barista has got his coffee order wrong. The situation in which people can gain sympathy for having their airplane flights delayed. I too am very much aggravated by the whining of the dainty. In fact they disgust me more often than not.

I say we are obligated to criminalize that which is immoral to the extent that it is reasonable to police society. In our history of common law, I think we have a fair handle on what kind of sexual or violent behavior requires us to call the cops. Beyond that, I'm afraid that other social institutions and individuals have fallen down on their jobs. And it is a right and a good thing to bemoan that failure, but that doesn't make it appropriate to add a greater burden on policing. 

Getting Truth's Pants On

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Winston Churchill

I was explaining to Jake the other evening. Explaining to Jake is one of the world's great pleasures. Why? Because Jake gets it. If I have any claim to intelligence, it is only that I am recognized by other people that I find intelligent, and I don't have to wear my sociable skin. That counts for Brinkman and it counts for Ro when I'm talking about systems. It counts for Jimi and it counts for Courtney when I'm talking about people and character. It counts for Benzon and Yllona when I'm talking about music. It counts for my man in Florida when it comes to power and the evil that men do. And it counts for Gerard most of the time when I'm talking Epicurean. But I never get to talk to all of these people enough. I'm spindrift without an institution to gather me mateys and so I drift towards that 20th century sulk, the mind it its garrett.

These days I get weary. But I was explaining to Jake that I don't have an elevator pitch for my Peasant Theory, and I'm not sure I've ever required myself to make it more clear. So tonight's essay is to explain all that and update where I am.

I quit The Barbershop because I kept feeling 2007, and I still do. 2007 was when gas prices went ballistic and I was commuting over 100 miles a day but not really caring because I made that much money. 2007 was when I seriously considered buying a Hummer because it was just that audacious. But then I suddenly stopped wanting to be audacious and actually become sensitive to how much I exhibited various forms of lifestyle bling. It occured to me that it is a sensible thing for a rich man to drive a pickup truck when times are hard for the working man. It is a lesson I learned from observing the Christianity of a man who orders Budweiser in a French restaurant. Even though I prefer to remain a lot cooler than he, I took the lesson to heart. And so when it came to the Barbershop, I realized after a bit, that there were people who needed to advance their career in media more than I needed a cool high profile second life. I didn't really want to half-ass a media spotlight and so I couldn't see myself arguing just for the sake of argument - at least not in the format I was afforded.

But I also realized that I didn't quite care as much, and I had to get back to my own basics.

Peasant Theory came about primarily from the realization that war is always with us. And when you realize that, then you come to appreciate that you ultimately will have to choose sides. Whom do you expect to defend your life, and that of your family in wartime? In lesser degrees we all have that problem. Who cares what you know? So who will defend all the truth you possess? Do you even have a purpose and a reason to get to the truth? Does anybody even care if you know the truth? These are the fundamental questions I think most Americans do not ask themselves because we are cozy enough in a nation without starvation or slavery. But then there was 2007, and I had to start thinking about good reasons to do without. 

So Peasant Theory is about the difference between the free man who knows enough truth to recognize those fragile things upon which his freedom depends and the other man who doesn't think enough about the truth to realize his position in society is completely leveraged. The first man understands the conditions under which his flexibility is compromise, the second man beleives that flexibility is a skill. The second man is a peasant because he is always at someone's service.

Let me get into that for a moment. If you've read much of the writing of people who lived under monarchs, you recognize how obeisance to the feudal hierarchies establish one's station in the lives of yore. You had to believe, of course, that your leige served Truth and God. So to bend one's ways to one's lord was, hopefully to bend toward The Lord of Lords, etc. And this is all the honor afforable. All honor came from living the truth of one's masters. And before the Reformation and the Revolution this was all most of humanity knew. Feudal. 

Today we are largely feudal, because we have a slimy layer of corruption in the Baby Boom Generation and they haven't loosened their grip. So it is no surprise that all American journalists want to be Woodward & Bernstein because all American politicians want to be Nixon and Kennedy and as David Brooks so astutely noted, they're all bush league observers of the Wealthy who get away with everything. So the pols and journos establish the narrative of American life, bullshitting the masses who still tend to believe, unlike more wary Europeans, that their betters are actually running a meritocracy or anything actually resembling an ethical McMansion. 

You can take this as a roundabout way of saying that there is some fraction of Obama's aims that make sense. On the other hand he shouldn't have won because he really had no idea... more on that another time. Having gotten into it for the moment, this is what you should take away. All who follow do not follow truth. Your station in life, borrowing from Neil Simon, isn't all you think it is, American. And that is because you're not as American as you believe yourself to be. That is precisely because you are a follower. You are an urban dweller, skill seller and you buy your clothes off the rack and your food in a box.

--

It wasn't a great disappointment to find that the American Right is full of half-assed reactionaries. It took me only two years to find, love, tolerate and get sick of Hugh Hewitt. But Dennis Prager is as wise as he has ever been, and Dennis Miller is still the man. So when I consider the fact that I probably will not read Mamet nor Breitbart's books, there was a point some time ago when I knew the moment would arrive. I would understand the American Left and the American Right and become disgusted with both, but not in the way that Dawkins' Dorks are self-righteously disgusted with all religions. They can only be that way because they are peasants following Dawkins. Peasants follow and they mark their progress ll the time. Peasants must always have something to prove, which is why they are only half fully human, and why they pay attention to the Kardashians and the Hiltons. The Wealthy get away with everything - they represent our understanding of the power of Will, something peasants do not possess. Peasants possess the power of Want. 

Peasants Want to be like Mike. Peasants Want to get into Harvard. Peasants Want world peace. Peasants Want meritocracy. 

'Power to the people' should hereby be pronounced. Markets to the Peasants. Peasants never get any real power; they wouldn't know what to do with it. Peasants only know how to get what it is they want, such as they are allowed and or encouraged to do so by their superiors. If you are unclear about how this operates, then just stop and listen to the Narrative of American pols and journos. The 'answer' is out there somewhere. And somebody clever will tell you what it is for a small fee, and then you will Want it and you'll find a way to get some small fraction of it (or the designer version if you are an affluent peasant). 

Aside from all that, Peasants don't want any real power anyhow, because that would necessitate killing people. When you understand this, you recognize that you are a peasant because you want your Lord to do your killing for you. Remember what I said? War is always with us. All you get to do is choose sides, or by degrees, choose who will defend all you have come to be with your flexible version of the truth. 

--

So it has been a couple years since I was on the air discovering the hard way how much attaches to the various Peasant cults of Wanting. Nothing seems quite so lame today as Will I Am's "Yes We Can" video. Go ahead. Watch it. I dare you. It's not about what anybody can do, it's all about what peasants want. That's the bottom line.. you have to wait and listen to it, after all the poofy phrases. Hope for change that the peasants will actually get more of what they Want. Peasants always can get what they want, but it's never enough. What never changes is that true power requires that you kill your enemies and frighten your rivals into submission. It's a lesson that peasants stubbornly refuse to learn and that is why all they ever have is hope. Hope that they can get enough so that the wanting goes away. 

 

Can you smell the paradox? I mean all humans desire something. But only peasants organize their Wants and pile them all into one giant Grinchbag of narrative. Or policy, or manifesto or declaration or some other whereas filled gripe with fancy dropcaps. The Wealthy get away with everything and they don't bother to write it down for posterity. 

There are in America, Republican and Democrat cults of Wanting and they keep offering us miniature Lords and Ladies for us to idolize and subsequently serve. They're not doing us any favors. They're all just trying various methods of Acting Presidential without getting caught up in a Gate of some slimy sort. But really that's all peasants want is that endless churn. A peasant cannot stand to be reminded that there are free men out there... so watch your back.

--

So there it is, basically.  It takes a bit of precarious hopping around on one foot to get truth's pants on, because a peasant will run out of the house in a New York minute with the latest new song on their lips. It's a catchy tune not because it is, but because you want it to be. 

No Pledge of Allegiance

In the news are a couple items which remind me of the issue of loyalty. 

The first is the news that I have had my resume picked out of a pile to do some of the grunt work for a very large and popular company. Let's call it Bazillion.com. At the first news I was quite impressed with myself for having done nothing whatsoever to deserve their attention. But I guessed that somewhere in there was somebody who needed my skills and was reaching out. So I had a temporary high that has lasted about a week, and I took a moment to consider what I might do at such a place. It turns out, however, that it was something of a cattle call and they are likely to be singing that famous Flava Flav song to me after the formal process is complete. I can't do nothing for you man.

Still, given the operation of Chris Rock's Rule, a man is as decietful as his opportunities permit, I did give the alternatives some consideration. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that all I want to do is the exact same thing. For me it's all a question of funding and time. Can I get the time and money to build those things I want to build? Can I get the space and opportunity to create those things I wish to create? 

Such are the fundaments of loyalty. 

I stumbled across an interesting definition today. It's the idea of legal positivism. The Wiki says:

Legal positivism is a school of thought in philosophy of law and jurisprudence. The principal claims of modern legal positivism are that:

• There is no inherent or necessary connection between the validity conditions of law and ethics or morality.
• Laws are rules made, whether deliberately or unintentionally, by human beings

I don't quite understand why the second bullet point needs to be said, but that's aside. The very idea that there need be no necessary connection between the validity of a law and ethics or morality is a striking statement, especially given the number of lawyers in this country. They must have learned the term within the first semester of law school, and there must be no equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath for the likes of the JDs. What a setup. Such knowledge makes me want to exploit my own skills in amoral fashion, just to get ahead of the grip of law before the legal crew can understand what they are suing me for. 

That might lead me to cracking beyond mere hacking. But Anonymous has an object lesson of dying by the sword as their realm of anarchy descends into chaos. 

War rages between competing factions within the hacker collective Anonymous after this weekend's drama-filled takeover of the main Anonymous IRC server network. That network, used by Anons to plan and conduct attacks, was taken over by one of its own, an IRC moderator known as "Ryan."

His attack has sparked a debate over the "leadership" of Anonymous.

Hacking the hackers

The main Internet chat servers used by Anonymous have been run by a group called "AnonOps," which provides communications platforms for the group. Pointing IRC clients at anonops.ru or anonops.net would connect anyone to the servers, where they could then join channels like "#OpSony" and participate in various Anon activities.

Though Anonymous is often described as leaderless, factions like AnonOps by necessity have a loose structure; servers must be paid for, domain names must be registered, chat channels must have at least some moderation. Ryan was one of those IRC mods, and this weekend he proceeded with an attack that seized control of the AnonOps servers away from the small cabal of leaders who ran it.

As I said not long ago, the problem with Wikileaks and all such ultra-libertarian organizations is that everybody thinks they are equal and submit to no authority. And so without the rule of a moral law, people come to the daft conclusions that everyone can be equally right which is not only a logical fiction but the beginings of every political nightmare. 

Where are your allegiances, and how often do you renew your pledges?

Trombone Shorty

Saw him yesterday. One of the best live performances I've ever been to. He straight rocked it out, funked it up, and blew the crowd away.

Two Harvards

I don't know that I ever wrote about a particular day that I can still remember clearly. It was the day that I went to the Harvard Business School orientation seminar at the Airport Hilton some time back around 1985. I had become something of a star at Cal State, making Dean's list, holding 18 units, having gotten my third internship at Xerox, being the chapter secretary for my frat, national officer for NSBE and the Engineering School's rep to the Student Finance Committee. And my girlfriend was bangin' too. I saw the future with perfect clarity, and I knew my path.

Now this HBS seminar happened to be given by one of the black Harvard organizations, and it was led by a young woman who was in the Public Health specialty. And I learned some very important lessons that day. The first was that there was a (light skinned) black woman who felt her duty to tell all of us perspective masters candidates that racism was alive and well in Boston and at Harvard. She told the tale of unendurable pain of being questioned all of time about whether or not she was an actual Harvard student. 'They take one look at me and assume that I'm from Northeastern'.

I was sitting in the front row and I turned around to see the reactions of the others in the room. I caught two reactions and that was all I cared about. My own impression, as you might guess, was to do all I could to suppress a verbal slap. Here she was at Harvard and she had the nerve to complain. WTF! 

The first reaction was something I didn't expect at all, but man was I happy about it. There was a super cute girl who was from Spain in the room. If you can imagine Rosie Perez with firey red hair done up 80s style, that would be close. She was like an Almodovar bombshell and she was giving me the eye. Holy smokes. We exchanged big grins. Man was I going to enjoy Harvard. 

The second reaction was from a black man who looked to be soemwhere between 28 and 32. He was wearing a suit, although I seem to remember him in a vest and tie with his jacket over the back of his chair. Or maybe he was wearing braces, like many MBA types did in the mid 80s. Either way, he was shaking his head slightly. At the end of the seminar I spoke to him. He intimated to me that he was running something on the order of a $400 million budget at Ford Aerospace. I was tremendously impressed, and although he had other reasonable things to say I heard all I needed to hear. 

I knew that at my school, there were seven year students who were officers in the Black Survival Union who had no compunction in telling anyone who would listen how corrupt the system was. I just never expected to hear the same kind of noise out of Harvard. It reinforced something I realized. Sometimes people are their own worst enemies, and Joni Mitchell never lied. 

Sometime later, I fell off my own fast track and never made it to Harvard. It wasn't until six or seven years that I got a chance to actually live in Boston, and I spent some time poking around Cambridge. By that time I had the twin experiences of having someone with an MBA report to me, and having had Microsoft recruit me, both being rather dual-edged. Watching 'The Social Network' last week reminded me of running through the streets of Cambridge and making social connections from a different perspective. Remind me to tell you some Boston stories...

To that dude and that babe. Thank you. You reminded me that I always have me.

A Review of the Cobbian Litmus Tests

Somewhere around 2003, seven years ago when all of the cells now inhabiting most of my body had yet to exist, I wrote a set of litmus test answers. Let's see if I still believe the same fundamental things. I'll only comment on those things which I think I'd tweak today. Today's addenda will be in italics.

abortion
i am principly against abortion, but it's one of those very ugly things that are part of civilization, like armies. just like a nation has to have armies to protect the freedoms that we all deserve (and we hope we never have to go to war), a society which values the freedom of women has to have abortion to protect them. i am also strongly against politicians or religious evangelists telling doctors what medical procedures to do. human beings have every right to make life and death decisions.

I'm generally in favor of allowing states to decide. I think I would like to see a state take a stand and make it illegal. It goes against my prejudice and better judgment against social engineering, but it's how I feel. 

affirmative action
is never going to cure the problems of racism or equality in society. substitute zip codes for race, and you have the same thing. it's integration, it works. don't ask don't tell. don't get all bent out of shape about it. but most importantly, don't try to reinvent the civil rights movement with your weenie opposition. you only make yourself look stupid.

animal rights
animals have no rights a human being is bound to respect. humans have no rights animals are bound to respect. bacteria will win in the end.

america
is the world in microcosm. it has a million times as many people in it as you have in your little black book, so stop pretending you understand it.

art
that doesn't make you laugh or cringe is just creativity.

black republicans
will triple in number over the next decade, if i have anything to do with it.

class warfare
there is nothing wrong with a little class warfare. the rich and powerful should retain nobless oblige. the poor and desparate should periodically get militant.

civil rights movement
is over and did a good job. vigilance on the back burner is appropriate.

conservatism
conservatives are the brakes on the engine of society. when society is moving backwards, they are useful and necessary. when society is moving forwards, they are annoying and counter-productive. when society is stable and peaceful, they look for trouble and invent reasons to stop thought. when society is wreckless and nihilistic, they are the saving grace of reason.

Too many changes to cite here. That's basically lower case conservatism which is almost meaningless. Conservatism without an ideological pedigree is worthless. 

corporations
are more civilized than armies in that they are less capable of direct, concerted action. they therefore, by their nature, allow their membership greater freedom and autonomy. they are amoral and capable of doing anything people will do for money.

Corporations are less civilized than armies in that they are incapable of disciplining people to transcendent moral standards involving matters of life and death.  Armies are cruel and desperate organizations whose existence is both regrettable and permanent. 

death
american culture loves violence. american culture hates death.

death penalty
human beings have every right to make life and death decisions, including the right to punt off that responsibility to the state. but a state which is irresponsible and sloppy revokes its responsibility, as do human beings who are irresponsible and sloppy. the death penalty in america is administered in an irresponsible and sloppy way. find a gulag until the system is reformed.

decentralization
will be the greatest force of change in the 21st century. human organizations will become smaller, smarter and more mobile.

This is, by the way, the way towards war. Economic decoupling in Europe might just be the seed.

deportation
it is a privilege to live in a nation as advanced, beautiful and comfortable as the united states. those who would destroy our civilization do not deserve to live here. we should work out an arrangement with more anarchic nations by which we send certain convicts.

Now more than ever.

economics
awaits an information revolution. theory will yield to empiricism.

empire
the united states of america is an empire. it is possibly both the greatest empire in world history, and the most capricious and irresponsible empire in world history. i don't expect to find out in my lifetime, but i do hope that it works out.

It ain't working out. Depends on the dollar.

fate of the negro
nobody in any other nation cares about the fate of the american negro any longer, so you had better buy yourself a senator, because that's as good as it gets.

feudalism
this is where the uppper middle class is heading iff it is heading in the right direction. the alternative is the world of devolution and hollywood morality - at least here in the states.

fox news
i don't watch any television news.

god
exists wherever you find human souls.

golf
(see humility)

globalization
is inevitable so long as information about free market economics is not strictly controlled. the only way you can keep every human in the world from competing is to destroy every copy of 'the wealth of nations'. oops, too late.

That's overly simplistic. Information about free markets is too vast, deep and complex for the masses to comprehend and most governments to be responsible to. A new class of global economic rules must emerge.

gun control
is futile, but worth the effort.

Gun control, like any kind of control, is all too often done in bad faith.

health food
is one of the great re-discoveries of the 20th century.

But it ain't what you think, peasant.

humility
is the single most necessary condition for the attainment of wisdom.

immigration
i am sympathetic to good people everywhere who wish to live and work in the united states, and having driven many times across the great southwest, there is no question in my mind but that we have room for them. our greatest hedge against the infidel is crossover.

information technology
democratizes literacy, decentralizes power, enables panoptic oppression.

.and is kludgy as all get out. 

internal third world
america must determine if its empire will be inclusive or exclusive. an inclusive empire means that we will need to accept the necessity of poor states within which poor people will constitute majorities. our laws and communities must accomodate them and defend their every freedom. an exclusive empire means that americans must be smarter, stronger, faster than everyone else. despite what most people believe, inclusive is easier than exclusive.

iraq
the people of iraq are on the the long slog to independence as a second world democratic republic. our involvement has shown the cost of conversion. it is slightly less expensive than traditional war and uses many of the same tactics. given what chechnya has been to russia, the decision to pre-empt has been wise.

Things fall apart.

israel
the people of israel are behaving like abused children, replicating the abuses of their parents. since the deposing of rabin, i have had very little confidence in their governments. there is no excuse for the abuse they heap on palestinians, nor for their ever expanding property grabs and housing developments. there should be a second, pacifist jewish state in the middle east.

The people of Israel remain governed by a reasonable if siege mentality government. The stateless Palestinians have embraced radical and unproductive politics and subversive puppet political parties. 

law
law is a labyrinth of words made real. the walls of the maze are plastic.

libertarianism
is impossible in today's world, and is largely irresponsible.

liberalism
is the fundamental philosophy of modernism. if you believe in anything but predestination, you are a liberal. see how useless that is?

literature
is the currency of civilization.

love
love is overrated and underpracticed.

management theorists
zuboff, drucker & deming rock; hammer sucks.

Who cares?

marriage
"The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God's will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God."

middle east 
i am sick to death of hearing the unending news of every body and bomb that falls in that excreble place, as if it were the locus of human suffering on the planet. i have no reason to care a whit more about palestine and israel than i do for siberia or timbuktoo. i ignore it to retain my sensitivities and perspective.

A crass provocative statement unworthy of the man I should be.

moralists
bill bennett, stephen l. carter yes; laura schlesinger, deepak chopra no.

Eww.

nation building
should be the first priority of the united nations, and should be the framework for the lion's share of g7 foreign aid.

nature
is indifferent. the planet is alright. (see animal rights)

palestine 
the people of palestine are behaving like screaming children, expecting that they can escalate their tantrums and bomb their way to independence. arafat is surely one step away from symbolic dictatorship over the palestinians and his inability to rule, his willingness to associate with hamas and other radical militant cells not only cripples the peace but may paves the road to undemocratic rule of any palestinian state.

Yeah but does this kind of talk help?

patriotism
is a good reason for heroism, but no excuse for lies.

porno
is good. pornography is bad. (see violence in entertainment). don't defend porno itself, just defend people's right to create it.

A bit more libertarian than I actually am.

pornography
is bad. porno is good. hugh hefner is porno, pictures of children being raped is pornography.

It's all sin.

police brutality
undermines the rule of law and should not ever be tolerated. nor should citizens ever fear police.

profanity
is the voice of passion. if it's not worth cursing about, then let highschool debate teams decide.

punch in the nose
should be the basic currency of passionate disagreement, as contrasted to small claims court.

race relations
is only a subject of discussion in racist nations.

racial integration
the first american political philosophy that succeeds in making large numbers of nonwhite people successful and rich wins.

Done.

relationships
there is marriage, and there is everything else. if you are not married, and you are not my child, please don't expect me to care.

religion
religion is the pedagogy of spirit. it is our first education.

Is more complicated and useful than most cynics are willing to admit. 

religious fundamentalism
is only acceptable in small towns and small economies, so long as they have open borders.

republican party
isn't what it used to be, ain't what it will be. it has fallen on bad times and has no business being so crudely populist.

But it's like that and that's the way it sadly is.

rock music
rebellion for its own sake is self-destructive. if it's not rebellious, it's not rock, it's pop. therefore no good rock band (or rap artist) can last.

same sex marriage
is oxymoronic. activists for the cause are disingenuous, solopsistic and mendacious. you don't get my blessing.

sex education
if you can look at your parents in the eye and believe they are the best people in the world to teach you about sex, you may be homeschooled. the rest of the world should get the straight dope, from doctors in public school.

spectator sports
no, not really.

sustainable development
is the ecology of civilization. learn it or die.

taxes
taxes are the cost of doing business in america, the greatest society in the world for the management of capital. greedy rich people (especially those who inherit) and stupid corporations should get off the tit of tax abatement. i support a flattened progressive tax.

video games
are superior to television in every way.

violence in entertainment
is sustainable in a literate and critical society and paves the road to hell everywhere else. not all america is literate and critical.

violence in general
old people should be able to walk to church, period.

technology
becomes more necessary in a society of people with poor manners. it is coercive. 

world government
is impossible. don't sweat it. the larger the government, the more corruptible it is. a world government will have loopholes the size of australia. besides, technology will decentralize autonomy. nations will become federations of distributed networks of power.

worship
is the subjugation of the self to nothingness. i don't do it.

youth culture
is retarded by definition. it is the direct result of insufficient parenting, surplus capital and arbitrary creativity (see art).

---

So there. I'm about 65% the same. 

Thanksgiving Haps

Thanksgiving is one of those days that is very telling in that it's also the one holiday that nobody can do for you. I have found that you really can't wish people a happy Thanksgiving, they either have something to be thankful for, know it and are given comfort by that or they don't. Every Thanksgiving wish is therefore a dual-edged sword, because you can't really evade the fact that there is nothing else to do but look to your family and assess what life has brought you. 

Christmas has been externalized to fit every different shape. You can objectify it and get through it without having to deal with its deeper implications. If you're Jewish, you probably have a tradition of eating Chinese food. If you're an atheist, or a materialist you can do the unreformed or reformed Scrooge act according to your mood without bothering to think about Christ in the Spirit of Christmas(tm). If you're a harried parent, you can get caught up in the busy work of it while getting more or less satisfaction depending on your budget and mall traffic. New Years Day, you can get your kiss at midnight and party like it's 1999, or just watch the ball drop eating cheetos in a bean bag chair in your underwear. It gets easier now that Dick Clark has finally become the ghoul he has avoided appearing in the prior century. On the Fourth of July, you don't have to call it Independence Day. On Memorial Day and Veteran's Day you're not expected to *do* anything but take the day off. They've changed President's Day and MLK to fit the schedules of ski venues, and the white sales of JC Penney. But while Black Friday gets more and more like Wall Street's triple witching hour, Thanksgiving still has that unavoidable weight and presence. You *have* to think about giving thanks and family. There's not much else you can do except be with your intimates and deal with the your measure of gratitude.

Dennis Prager and I share a definition of happiness in that we recognize that it cannot be faked. Happiness is the end result of accomplishment. It is in a three legged stool with gratitude and goodness. You cannot be happy if you are not grateful. You cannot be happy if you are not good. These are two qualities that I cannot wish for you or grant you. They are things you must accomplish for yourself. So in that way, I cannot really wish you a happy Thanksgiving, if you are not grateful and good, then you won't have happiness on this or any other day. While you might be able to fake some cheer on the other holidays, and there is something to be said for having that positive attitude because at least you are spreading cheer, Thanksgiving makes you think seriously about what you have to be happy about. 

All that sounds like an elaborate excuse for me to be stingy with my holiday greetings, and to be honest, that's how I started off. I mean I just wrote about North Korea and Neil Farage, two rather in your face bad news subjects. So I said, well so many people are wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving, oh crap I better write something. But what am I doing, and why is my Thanksgiving going to be happy no matter what people say? Aha. Happiness. 

There are not happiness chicklets dropping from heaven in my happy Thanksgiving so much as there are happenings in my life that are more or less under control that are contributing to my sense of accomplishment. Some fraction of those efforts are bearing fruit and I am grateful for that. So I will be happy, and now is the time to recognize. Every day should be the time, but today is the day to speak up and share that recognition and that means recognizing how the people around you have contributed to that sense of achievement and real accomplishment. Our better selves know this and live in the moment, recognizing real accomplishments as they happen, championing them along their curve to success and anticipating that success by spreading cheer before the fact. 

So the haps are good. I'm learning again. I'm enjoying good health, although I really need to check a few things. I'm finding ways to stay home and stay here as my kids finish high school - the most important matter of all. I'm finding satisfaction in simple things.

I'm grateful for the attention I get here and for the opportunity to share. I'm grateful that my car didn't break before I paid it off (fingers crossed, one more payment on the Transporter). I'm grateful for the backup on my files, and that I have a record of my children's early lives. I'm grateful for the good things people see in me - that I've been able to turn my obsessions into knowledge and work and that work has helped others accomplish what they desire to. I'm grateful for all of my baseball caps sitting over in that box. I'm grateful that I can afford my electric bill and that nobody has come over to my house to steal the things that use all those kilowatts. I'm grateful that my children are mine, that I possess them and that they possess me. I'm grateful for my wife, for that woman who was patient with me and that we made it work 22 years now. I'm grateful for the teachers who work hard to discipline this community's children. I'm grateful for the gifts of the intellectually generous, and for the spirit of people whose faith in humanity encourages us all. I'm grateful for my cultural inheritance - that I have music to hum to over a dinner whose ingredients we all know, speak it in a word. 

I know in every way how I have worked to make all of those things work - that I have no right to it, but that I made efforts that might not be fruitful to attract those virtuous blessings towards me and mine. It's all a part of something we all control and I know that. We do for us. We've done pretty well. So I believe we all have something accomplished. So I just ask you to look at what your work has done. 

 

 

I'm going to say something else here that I have come to understand, I think. It would be easy, and I almost did it on reflex to say 'All things work together for good for those who love the Lord'. That trips off the tongue a bit too easily. My Christian education helps me understand a great deal, but I also know that I cannot impart that education on others. If I could only speak English then I would never speak anything else. If I could only understand Christian ethics then I would speak only in that dialect. But I am beginning to know things beyond that and with any luck will be able to communicate beyond that argot. So I call attention to the spirit of God in every man even to men who do not see it as God's grace or doing. In doing so I am aiming to be consistent to the ends of faith and reason and the laws of the universe, all as one, all that is seen and unseen.  All ends of proper faith and proper reason are the same. 

And that's what's happening today. I wish you the peace you require.

There Are Always Bacteria

I'm thinking about something Michael Pollan said about Twinkies. In the first dimension, via the film 'Zombieland', and in the second dimension via the film 'Phantom Menace'.

In the Phantom Menace, Qui Gon Jinn says "There's always a bigger fish." It makes for a very good aphorism despite the fact that there isn't always a bigger fish. After the whale shark, there literally is no bigger fish. So what kills a whale shark? Smaller fish that outnumber him. Or even if he dies of old age, he will rot. Rot is not spontaneous decomposition, it is the active process of hungry bacteria eating cells that no longer fight back. Keep that sentence in mind when people talk about the decay of society.

Pollan said, there is a reason why the Twinkie on his shelf is still squeezably soft after two years. Hungry bacteria aren't interested in stuff that is not nutrient rich. Keep that in mind when people talk about what's permanent.

In Zombieland, the character Tennessee is looking for Twinkies, and he has to shoot his way across the country through leagues of the undead in order to find them. At times, he despairs. But the Twinkies are eventually found, even at the twilight of civilization. He needn't have worried.

Thus is born Cobb's Rule #30

There are always bacteria, and bacteria never sleep.

Open Thread Thursday

And some fragments.

Stuxnet Worm - Target's Iran's SCADA

Obama's Wars - Woodward is at it again.

 

This Blog Is Not Important

I don't know you people, and I don't care about you. So why do I do it? If I answer that question I may return.

But I doubt it.

Basic Capitalism

Basic capitalism will never change. Check it out and remind yourself. http://www.prosper.com

Two Black Intellectual Stories

A thoughtful reader writes:

1. I think the pathology of white racism impacts Black folks in various degrees depending where you are on the ladder both income and color of hue.

2. To many Black folks are still wounded from the pathology of white racism in America and as a result it makes them create and develop a low self esteem and as such you get this need to seek validation, affirmation from the very forces that wounded and fractured your cultural, self and community and..

3. Black intellectuals who for some reason refuse to create and advance their own paradigms simply then parrot and mimic the paradigms of white intellectuals

4. I would argue that few Black folks have cross this barrier and have the capacity to actually create new paradigms entirely removed from the blueprint and constructs of white folks..

And I respond.

On point 1, yes. I agree that many black Americans do internalize White Supremacy. It's kinda how they know they are still 'black'. And the constant racism chasing done by various parties keeps them assured of their place in society - which they are perversely comfortable in.  Money and light-skindedness are just two ways they offset that. Money is more real, but then it has to be real money.

2. Yes. That's absolutely right. The big problem is, of course, that people believe falsely about who 'white' people are, how they get and how they maintain their power. After enough time of looking at all power as a corrupt white hustle, these black people do themselves in. They doom themselves to powerlessness because they never learn the lessons of what real power is. It's like the man who only looks at women as objects because he's never known a truly good woman and all the ones who answer to 'bitch' are well.. just that. So that's all he knows. That's all he gets. He's doomed.

3. I think we, speaking for myself in this, have put too much faith in somebody special to explain it all to us. On the one hand it's true that we used to lack for enough righteous education and we needed our own leaders. But that's not really the case any longer. After all, it has been almost 50 years of public accommodations. And the fact of the matter is that if you really read Carter G Woodson or James Weldon Johnson, you'd realize that the answers are all out there and they're old answers. The problem is that people have been convinced that their freedom isn't real unless everyone in the race is free. That's foolishness and the Klan talking. See Point 1.

There doesn't need to be a brand new paradigm. The whole of revisionist history 'for' black poeple is wrong, which is what I hope Jelani Cobb was implying in his piece. People need to understand the whole of real history, not the self-esteem steroid version. Christianity is sufficient.

Let me take this tangent for a moment because it's kinda important and personal.

I'll tell my story about Nell Painter.
Nell Painter wrote the definitive biography/history of Sojourner Truth. I met her around 1991 when she joined the faculty at UCLA. So one day I'm on campus and she's being introduced to students and she talks about Tubman and being glad to be in Los Angeles. Then one of the students pipe up. What do you think is the solution to the problems in the black community? And of course, Painter, being an honest peson, can't asnwer. She's not from LA and she doesn't know what's going on in this black community. She's a little flustered but the answer that comes out is essentially, hell you live there, you should be telling me!

I'll tell you another story: of Derek Walcott.
I bought his epic poem Omeros when it came out. I was reading Moliere at the time and digging it, but thought I should perhaps pay attention to some blackness. So every once in a while, you could catch me with his book trying to rap it. And I would do so in cafes like the young pretentious aesthete that I was trying to be at the ripe old age of 29, just loud enough so people could ask me what I was doing. And I would explain that Derek Walcott was the darling of the intellectual set (and he was) and everybody acknowledges what a painstaking act of genius it was to take the story of the Illiad and translate it into a black Caribbean metaphor. Have you never heard of Derek Walcott?  He won the Nobel Prize in Poetry. But he didn't solve the problem of the black community. And nobody in the black community reads anything by Derek Walcott.

The black community is its own problem. Black Intellectuals who try to solve its problems always fail. Black Intellectuals who don't try are not long considered Black Intellectuals. So it basically comes down to this point. Who's down with The Struggle and who's not. 

Now the difficulty with The Struggle is that it has been hijacked by people who can't think their way out of a paper bag. And that's because the Real Struggle has already been won and the architects of that struggle have moved on. The laws of the most powerful nation in the history of the planet are now not against you based on the color of your skin. And in case you haven't noticed, thousands of people from halfway around the planet have come here in the past 20 years to work in an industry that didn't even exist until 20 years after those laws were changed. So why are there more Indians than black American in Silicon Valley? Was there ever an apartheid of computers? No, of course not. But the Black Intellectuals didn't go in that direction - they all wanted to rewrite history as academic department heads, not through private enterprise. The Struggle is a farce. It's about getting police officers fired. It's about getting comedians to apologize. It's about getting 20 year olds into undergraduate programs. That ain't power. That's middle class meddling.

So The Struggle is all about getting people out of ghetto depravity into middle class mediocrity, which is the essential component of Christian Missionary work in deepest darkest Africa. Teach 'em some hymns. Not that it's an entirely bad idea, lord know some of those pound cake thieves could use a lesson in Christian ethics. But it doesn't take an intellectual to effect such a program. Just a big bleeding heart and gobs of patience, which could easily be substituted with condescension - your mileage may vary.

Now might be a good time to go back and watch Sanford and Son. A father raised his son. Lamont Sanford didn't turn out so bad.

On the Necessity of Knuckleheads

(from the archives July 2004 )

You know, I gotta admit when I am wrong, and I think I've been caught in something of a dilemma. That being the case, I tend to think the subject is exhausted. I keep torquing the nut until it doesn't move, then I back up off it a half-turn. And so I have to talk about it.

Spence, whom I salute again, mentions the following:

It was the knuckleheads that taught me the dozens--the value of using wordplay as a means of attack and defense. The knuckleheads taught me to stand up for what I believed in. The knuckleheads taught me what it meant to be confident in myself when all around me doubted. And it was the criminally minded knucklheads that taught me the value of having game even as they gave me strong anti-role models.

There's talk, now and again, about how many black middle class parents feel the necessity of sending their kids to live with their grandparents down South for the summer, or to stay with their ghetto cousins for a spell. Assuming these parents aren't complete idiots there is a reason I could agree with although I'd probably try to accomplish it a different way. That reason is to toughen up their otherwise dainty suburban offspring.

I know my kids ain't black. And when it comes to their adulthood, they won't need to be. They're brown - like the zillions in Africa, India and South and Central America. That's a good enough sample, and it's only skin color. They can't be black like me because my blackness was born of the times, not an essential, inescapable box, but a response to a condition. But so much of who I am is locked into that alternatively golden and grim experience. I wish I could teach them things I learned the way I learned them. I cannot send my kids back to the neighborhood I grew up in, but I understand why somebody might want to.

In the three-bedroom house I was raised in, we had Measles, Mumps, Chicken Pox, Rubella, Impetigo and Roaches. Every one of us five kids who bunked there survived them all and most of us, excepting my sister and I, grew taller than six foot two. In my neighborhood school, "Meet me after class" was most likely followed by "so I can kick your ass". I've played bicycle chicken with the Ice Cream Truck and been chased by more stray dogs and gangbangers than I care to think about. My sister swore to me last week that we used to jump from rooftop to rooftop. I don't know about that but we did make zip lines from the transformer level of power poles and hogtie each other for fun. I've talked about all kinds of ghetto games from suicide to slapboxing to stomp - but I never really wrote about 'Hide & Go Get It'. Use your imagination.

One of the reasons I don't back down about talking about my Black Nationalist roots is because, like my neighborhood, all that shit made me tough. And yes it was shit. You can't get that just by reading Ulysses. You get it from surviving the risk and the danger. Perhaps the Baby Boom was the lone exception in the struggles of life, and perhaps that cannot be compensated. Perhaps some folks feel the need to run with bulls in Pamplona, but I don't. Don't get me wrong, I got out of my hood before the Crack Wars. I would have needed a different kind of level of toughness, one perhaps completely incompatible with the life I live now, were I stuck back with Frankie, Mountain, Boo, Tissino, White Jerry, Nudie, Twin (and Twin), Shabazz, Ralphie, Rabo and KK. But I learned, and I overcame.

What do we owe our adversaries? What do we owe those thugs, knuckleheads, triflin' niggas (yeah that's what we called 'em), skanks and skeezers? We owe them not to punk out. They couldn't take us out of the game, so we shouldn't quit the game. I'll get mystical for a moment and talk about Lord not taking away my stumbling block. I don't thank God for creating temptation, but I understand purpose in the overcoming. But back from the abstract to the people. What do we owe them? I think we do owe them a little bit of respect for forcing us to deal with their reality.

After all, we know that achievement is real because we look at those who fell off. We faced the same choices they did and our choices landed us standing. And we've learned that the good are punished and the bad escape because of those knuckleheads. But we also know what works in the long term.

Clotheslines Between Tenements

My daughter is starring as Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof, and somebody asked what is America to do with its new poor, the people who have worked a lifetime to make an honest living. So I'm thinking about the old poor.

Why do we need a bigger government to fix what the free market has not? Because there are people who honestly believe that money solves every problem - the only question is who they trust with the money. State capitalists. Now I get to use Chomsky against the Left. I just ranted the following over on Facebook.

I think Desmond is thinking of a bigger solution than corporatism can create, which means creating a bigger state with more power of fiat to create the proper job/occupation/lifestyle/grave for the masses.

On the other hand, my grandfather grew up as an orphan and managed to teach himself Latin. Which is to say that quality of life doesn't come from employment and the political impulse to provide the masses with "meaningful employment" is merely evangelism of a godless sort.

If I were an academic, I would spend time looking back to the literature and quality of life in the slums. Yes slums. Before urban renewal and eminent domain destroyed the Little Italies and Little Polands and Little Irelands of the world and created a great de-ethnicized, mainstream, whitebread white middle class, there was *something* of value there. And anybody who pretends to be a serious multiculturalist says so all the goddamned time. Not to mentions saving the indigenous people of the world.... See More

I'm saying that an underemployed America can be an urban indigenous zone without any need for a safety net or the requisite taxation. A deflated negative growth GDP could take us to that child-growing village some people always claim to desire, and the desire for the nanny state is inherently conflicted with belief in the human spirit.

What is a police state but a nanny state with boots?

My more complete point is that I am thinking of the romance I have with my spiritual connection to old mensches who grew up playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn. I am thinking of the feeling of longing I got reading about gardens in the city in my first grade Ginn Readers knowing that little grew in the dust of my backyard - but somewhere in New York, even the New York of Bugs Bunny, there were little gardens between brick tenements.

While I'm at it, let me go there, back in time to when we kids at Virginia Road School used to brag and boast about which Ginn Reader we were in.

1. Little White House
2. On Cherry Street
3. Around the Corner
4. We Are Neighbors
5. Friends Far & Near
   
6. Roads to Everywhere
7. Trails to Treasure
8. Wings to Adventure
   

In one of those books was the story I'm talking about, and yes I do remember way back to elementary school 40 years ago - back when Mrs. Byers used to curse our parents too poor to send us pickanninies to school without our own pencils. I didn't know - the school always used to provide the big fat blue pencils and the parallelogram erasers upon which we drew mag wheels turning them into Dan Gurney's Lola GT.

We had a garden in the third grade, and next door Mrs. Arnold grew her own greens. All three kinds. It was called the horticulture class, but none of the Arnold kids needed it because they grew tomatoes already. That's how you fed a family with eight kids in 1969. They were from Texas. People still come from Texas with horticulture skills don't they, or do they just fly planes at their enemies because they can't find the right kind of engineering job so that they can afford, AN AIRPLANE.

I have lived in Southern California for too long, two steps ahead of a non-English speaking minority with little or no skills that somehow managed to survive and move into my old neighborhood without the benefit of police protection or welfare. It seems I remember too much of the old days and the old ways, when kids cracked bicycle frames from jumping them off wooden planks sitting on wooden milk crates without the benefit of helmets. And the boys bike frames didn't swoop down in front of the seat like girls bikes so we crushed our nuts on bad landings and *then* cracked our heads on the sidewalk. 

We grew up believing that President Kennedy wanted us to do pushups and run miles so we could get to the moon first. We had ashy knees and hardscrabble values. And just in case we ever got soft, every year we'd watch the Grapes of Wrath when it came on TV. I cannot imagine, I cannot *even* imagine that being shown on broadcast TV. I think it would remind us that Progress, bought to you by Congress is not actually nor were they ever a sponsor. I seem to recall that Alcoa and US Steel were the sponsors. But I could be romantically misremembering, after all, this is just about what I grew up believing.

When Bugs Bunny fell off a roof, there was always a tangle of clotheslines between tenement building. Old ladies clothes would be between him and the ground, and every few stories he'd end up in a corset or a dress or a petticoat before he landed in the dirty garden on the first floor. There's a class of people out there today who give a lot of lip service to the organic bonds between humans, and yet when money runs out for government entitlements, they think we're going to crater as a society. I don't think so. I think that the urban poor will survive. They'll survive without socialism. You have to forget a whole lot of American history in order to believe otherwise.

The Rules of Popularity

According to Facebook, I have 501 friends. (According to Levi, I have 501 jeans). According to Dunbar, I can only maintain real relationships with 100 -150 or so of them. If you want to know the honest to God truth, I think I have about 3, excluding my immediate family. A friend is somebody who comes whenever you call, according to me right now. According to Twitter, I have 150 followers, but I inflate. On none of these scales do I come remotely close to Tiger Woods.  

I've always said of myself that I am unlike Tupac or any pop star who only wants and needs 17 dollars worth of respect, the price of a CD from a million people. Given the choice of 17 million dollars, I would rather have one million dollars worth of respect from 17 people. Whenever I attempt to be popular or market myself, something goes wrong with my motivation. One of my lifetime's favorite quotes went like this: 

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

I've always wanted to be the author of the noble, logical diagram. It is why I am a programmer. The integrity of the artifact - its order and beauty were always the aim. I have striven to create order out of chaos, but the ordered thing wasn't me, it was my creation. My perfection comes from my ability to perfect. So if I had the admiration of 17 millions, I want their dollar to be the price of admission into the place I built, I sure as hell don't want them to come ogle at me. I'm having steaks and bourbon with my 17 closest friends.

This is the context by which I am saying that Tiger Woods gets whatever is coming to him and deserves it. There is a point at which one capitalizes on one's friends, or followers and so is in their debt. That is the price of fame. Fame is sticky. Once remembered you cannot easily be forgotten even though once loved you can easily be hated. 

'Fan' is short for fanatic. And so one must conform one's expectations of a fan base to a mass of fanatics. To gather people unto yourself who only care about your life because of the deficits in their own is to open one's house to friendly thieves. They come in full of compliment. They inevitably leave jealous, and if you live long enough, betrayed. And so they will take back what is rightfully theirs - all the furnishings financed by their overwrought attentions. 

Cobb's Rule #24. Only be a fan of the dead.

Cobb's Rule #25. You ultimately get the audience you deserve.

Go Ahead and Ask

I've been challenged by not having *any* free time over the past month. I mean like getting home at 10pm at the earliest when I know I have to get to bed by midnight at the latest. So my last few entries have been a rush of too many things said at once.

I've added a new feature which will allow me to miniblog - somewhere better than Twitter but not quite to a full 500 plus words. So in the top corner on the left banner, you may ask, and I will answer.

To Them What Got Racial Issues

i used to dream militant
dreams of taking
over america to show
these white folks how it should be
done
i used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers
of correct analysis
i even used to think i'd be the one
to stop the riot and negotiate the peace
then i awoke and dug
that if i dreamed natural 
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman 
does when she's natural
i would have a revolution
---

 That's Nikki Giovanni. And for all the non-liberated negroes of the world, the message is simple. As long as you are a Negro, your life will be pain and suffering under the intentional and unintentional slings and arrows of people no more powerful than drunk suburban adolescents. Because they are They and you are Other, and you cannot think your way out of that bag. Pity. Pity. Pity. 

Maybe that's why you're still unloved. 

I wonder with doubt if the peasant generation of negroes, without the benefit of literacy, will ever achieve beyond this self-pity they call 'sensitivity'. It's the ignorance of the echo chamber - you know. Only babysitters respond to baby whining, and babysitters are paid to *mind* you. So crawl out the back door and learn to walk.

Stand up. Run. Run away from that little old hovel you complain about being a hovel. Get fledging. Drop to the forest floor and work them winglets. You may not grow up to be a raptor, but at least you could fly. Do you believe you can fly? Do you believe you can touch the sky? Then think about it every night and day until you can spread your wings and fly away. 

Skip Gates - Keepin' It Bourgie

The Black Man's Guide to Living Large - Part One

In 1995, I was in the middle of a contract for my own business. I took the day off because I could. I decided to wear a suit and so I took a stroll in downtown Atlanta in the middle of the week. I came to the sudden realization, I suppose rather late in the career of someone determined to live large, that the experience put me in an entirely new realm.

The fun part was knowing that I had all my bills paid and the money was rolling in and I had lots of cash in the bank. My net worth was all good. So I walked down by Morton's which I had only been to once before several years back all impressed knowing that now I could go get me one of those monster steaks if I wanted. Or I could buy another suit. Instead I walked through the mall at Little Five Points and window shopped in every store. I impressed myself. I bought nothing.

At the same time I noticed the people noticing me. Working people with no free time in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. They were the kind of folks I had once been, wondering how the hell anybody could afford anything in these crazy overpriced shops and restaurants. I recall that not four years before I had my first $100 date in New York City, and I was amazed at the fact that I would spend that much money as a single man and not put any pressure on the young lady to put out even though that was the expectation all around. I recall being a freshman in college the year that alfalfa sprouts and avocado became popular sandwich ingredients and that it took me two hours pay to afford such a sandwich. That afternoon in Atlanta, the Black Mecca, I thought about all of the previous moments I had reflected on the times that I poked my head through the decidedly low ceilings.

How high is the glass ceiling by the way? It's relative to your expectations, and expectations vary like crazy.

It turns out that yesterday I had one of those moments, except I played it like I am more likely to play it now. So let me explain how I play it now and why. In that, there is another tale with which some Cobb readers may be familiar. But to my way of looking at the existentials of being black, the only thing missing is millions of dollars. And while there are plenty of old money black families who remain so fussy as to eschew outreach,

About five years ago, I had something going on called the China Deal. To make a long story short, I had guessed that I had stumbled onto that particular job that made me feel like this was the one I always was looking for. Some days it feels like a set of circumstances that were too good to be true, but you know they say that you cannot cheat an honest man. So I didn't get cheated. Nevertheless, although the opportunity didn't pan out, I was there. You know, that place you get to when you know your hard work payed off. When you say "I've got it made" and now everything else is gravy. That's where I was - mentally. It was very satisfying to look back at my life and say with confidence, I'm a success, so what do I feel like doing today?

Having been through that moment, it has been easy for me to relax and let the goodness flow through me to others. I am validated and prepared to deal with new opportunities. I look at myself and I say, why shouldn't I be happy? And I am. Happy for me, and thus sometimes a little bit lazy. This is very different, however, from the feeling I had in my last days of being single. Back then, I felt unleashed.

'Unleashed' is very much like 'off the chain' meaning apt to do anything just because I can - nobody can hold me back, especially not me. It's the energy of feeling not responsible to anything or anybody because you are not the stereotypical person you think other people think you are. So you have this kind of snarky mocking attitude towards everybody. That was me before I got married and had kids.

Now I'm married, survived the seven year itch, have kids who are succesful and bright and have taken on much more responsibility than I get paid to take. I'm not unleashed at all. I have leashed myself to a new set of restraints on myself, just going above and beyond, responsibly, also because I can. I'm at a point at which I think I honestly can do a little good in the world. Imagine that. But what I'm not going to say is something like, 'pretty good for a skinny black kid from the ghetto'.  Why? Because those were never really the standards by which I wanted to be judged. Even when I was a skinny black kid from the 'hood, I had more self-esteem than anyone thought I deserved, which was what got me in trouble with people who thought a skinny black kid from the ghetto is all I could ever be.

So that is the point of departure for the idea that's been bubbling under the surface for a couple weeks which has something to do with why there is no black men's magazine that you could possibly imagine that would be edited by Denzel. And why I kind of sneer at Steve Harvey's new book. And while I'm at it, let me repeat the deepest thing I every heard about hiphop. Hiphop is a success because young black women are that desparate for men in their lives. And it reminds me that the market for literature for young black straight men is tiny. All the books published in the past 10 years could be locked in the trunk of Suge Knight's Escalade and never heard from again.

--

What happened yesterday is that I met Sam, a very bright and successful young black man. Funny as hell. We share a black Catholic school background, and although I can't tell if it bothered him much, at some point in the day I felt a certain confidence given to me. You know the kind, the code switch in the lowered voice, the voice that indicates some fraction of embarassment and perhaps even pain. It's the pain of being beat by Biff and Chad, the pain we sometimes take out on Becky if we can roll like that. Sam's not ugly, I know he could do that kind of roll. So could I. But Sam reminded me of another cat who actually did. He was the man who called himself a 'nouveau nigger' drove a Ferrari, wore polyester three piece suits and only dated Beckys. Blonde, blue bombshell Beckys. You can imagine him parking the red 308 on Rodeo Drive, making her stay in the car and getting out of sight just to watch everybody wonder who was the owner of the ultimate boy toys. Then he'd pimp walk, loud-talking, beep the alarm and burn rubber giving the bird to the jewelry store owner who had him followed.

I cannot remember the last time I wanted to make white people pay. I guess it was the day before Nelson Mandela was freed. I've spent a long time, the greater part of my life, indifferent to the majority of white Americans and their racism in practice and much more time to their racism in theory. Just like the Catholic priest who never bothers to stand on a soapbox at Venice Beach, I don't fear the apocalypse. I don't await the second coming of Malcolm X or secretly thrill at the threats of Farrakhan. Ordinary whitefolks never hurt me. Then again, Biff and Chad aren't ordinary. Biff and Chad walked in doors we honestly thought we ought to be able to walk through and couldn't. And so Biff and Chad were never the hopheads in front of us, they were a kind of spirit transferred. Because wherever it was we discovered a bigger fish, there was surely somebody trying to be Biff and Chad there.

I don't know how long it was after I had been watching golf on TV as a kid that I realized that there was someplace called Augusta and that place never had a black member (if that's true). I don't know who it was that told me the best scuba diving was in the Red Sea and in Belize and it made me both proud and jealous. Proud because I've got black Belize and most Americans aren't welcome in the Red Sea where rich Russians tend to gather and jealous because as much as I dig Jacques Cousteau I had no idea about these places. You grow in sophistication and then you find someplace more exclusive and you know Biff and Chad are not cluing you in. How long does that eat at your soul until you get all frustrated and feel the need to bogard - to put on the dark glasses and smack up the nearest innocent white boy?

Every black man has at least one whiteboy he can beat up on. It doesn't take much, I mean we're all Americans here and black men and whiteboys in my generation learned to drill early. Eldridge Cleaver wrote the book. He wore his mask. Steven Weed wore his, as did Bernie Goetz. Even the sweet deals were stereotypical. I didn't ask to be shown that movie about Gayle Sayers and Brian Piccolo, but we all knew that our Christianity was insufficient just three years after 1968. But is that what we really want to be, as thinking men? No we don't. We're all too complex for that. And yet sometimes we feel like we have to be unleashed instead of merely free.

Up From Freedom is the name of my autobiography if I get to write it. I don't think I will have achieved anything like Frederick Douglass, but somehow along the line enough of America forgot old Frederick so that MLK had to repeat the obvious, and a new generation had to come up with a new name for 'Free People of Color' and enshrine their own heroes and new schools of thought. And so for my little piece is something that wasn't taught to me which is how to comport oneself on the other side of that Mountaintop MLK kept talking about. How to be cool, if cool was the thing to be, in the face of people you fear to be Biff and Chad even if they are not. I'm talking about how to sublimate the cool pose of fake manhood and experience life with the sunglasses off, with the music turned off, with the hostility turned off, with the fear turned off.

I'm talking about being happy.

Kindle Me Baby

It is true that I gather a couple nickels in syndication. Perhaps even more may be coming my way as the new Kindle Store ignites. It turns out that you can subscribe to Cobb using Kindle. So just click on the icon and get with the highest tech program of all. For a measly 99 cents a month? C'mon. That's an irresistible bargain.

Obligatory Seriousness on Chris Brown

Right now, aside from the obvious which is the way he looks, there is basically no difference between Chris Brown and Brittany Spears. I'm not sure if that is the official rule of the household, but I'll check with BD to see what her opinion is, because quite frankly I wouldn't know the first song he did. Not all of the dreck on teen pop is indistinguishable, but in the end as they go down the path from fame to douchbaggery aren't they all finally?

Now if I remember correctly, BD liked Rihanna as well. So she may have a pitched opinion. On the other hand, she's doing her own bit of show business, plus she has a very good eye and ear for American Idol. So she might already be completely blase about the entire blowup. She's got her own bit of talent and hangs around folks with performing talent. It's likely to make her less susceptible. Or see more tragedy in it. I'd ask now, but she's still backstage at the theatre around the way - this being her second weekend in Little Shop of Horrors.

The theatre company she belongs to, Belasco, does Little Shop, Pajama Game, The Wiz, How To Succeed in Business, Annie, Damn Yankees and a couple other productions whose names escape me. With middle schoolers and high school teens, there's really good quality productions and a great showcase for talent. It's an entire dimension of growing up that guys like me missed back in the day. We had our radios, we had our favorite DJs, we had our mixtapes. That was about it. Showmanship had to be expressed in different fora, which is why basketball became so theatrical. Well, that's my theory anyway. So I have an interestingly odd sense of pride watching her and her little sister on stage. There isn't much echo back to the 70s Broadway. We had Ren Woods and Stephanie Mills do Dorothy. We had Alphonso Ribeiro as the Tap Dance Kid, and Jennifer Holiday doing Dreamgirls. That's about it, except for the cast of Fame, in my generation. With apologies to Hansberry, Baraka and Wilson there was nothing else entertaining on the stage. Don't ask me about Pippin and Purlie and Porgy. I don't know.

So I expect that as another wave of pop stars get flushed that at least there are some kids with some understanding that all of show business isn't corrupt and that there's more out there than just what's new.

Now as I write this, it occurs to me the Jimi Izrael was being timely and riffing when he asked if it's alright to hit a woman. Big question. The basic answer is no. The extended answer is 'it depends', and what it depends on is your chances in court. I am inclined to believe that the average dame who smacks a man is not doing a face slap against his rogueish advance. But I cannot think of any occasion when such a move is not proper - slap him then walk. It works in the old movies that everybody has seen and we all know what it means. That shouldn't be too difficult to parse. I think the average dame is thinking she might knock homey out or at least do some real damage. It works in the new movies that everybody has seen, but we should all know that's fake. But some of us fools don't. 

My advice to the average dame is this. If you don't play football, don't ball up your fist and expect something to happen when you hit a man, unless what you expect is to get decked. My advice to the average dude is this, grab her wrist and take it behind her back. Apply pressure but do not strike. Frogmarch her out the door and lock it. Then stay away from the windows.

Nine times out of ten it's the man's fault. Which is why nine times out of ten a slap in the face will suffice.

Cobb's Seven Rules of Love

I woke up this morning thinking about love.

Real
Love must be felt, not simulated, not imagined or faked. This is the first and most important thing about love.

True
Love must be singular. There can only be one object of your loving affection. Love must be faithful, gladly.

Free
Love must be voluntary and not coerced. You should not feel obligated to love but genuinely desire to love.

Pure
You must love the person for who they are and who they want to be, wholly. Not because of their car. Not because it feels good to be in love. Not for whom you wish they would be.

Hot
You must desire their physical company. You physically change in the presence of your lover. 

Deep
Love must affect you profoundly, make you willing to make sacrifices. You cannot merely turn it on and turn it off, it must be something near the center of your life.

Long
Love must be something you want to hold on to, not something to experiment with or just to pass the time. 

Who's Got Your Back?

A thoughtful reader just asked me about a strange situation where she was losing sleep over a knucklehead. And another commenter just spoke about one of the panelists on BMR who was just wrong. You know it's true, speaking of Pookie, that sometimes we have to deal with people who are just foul. What to do?

Cobb says do what your instincts tell you to do, but do it smartly. Your guy instincts tell you smack the sucker down. Your gal instinct tell you to find a guy to do some smackin'. The dumb way to do it is have ordinary tough guys handle the business, the smart way is to have your cousin the cop give the warning.

Don't know a cop? Why not? Don't you know a soldier or an airman, a marine or a sailor? Don't you know somebody somewhere whose job it is to protect you? Why not? A prosecuting attorney? A bailiff? Any officer of the court?

The Cobbian angle is simple. Take advantage of the fact that you live in a free society. Take some initiative to recognize people who defend liberty and justice. They're out there. There is no excuse to be completely organic when in fact our civil service is so honest. 

Jiggy's Man

Jiggy writes:

I'm 44 married for 1 1/2 years . My husband won't get a job. He fill trapped by a 9 to 5 job so he willing to do hustle jobs instead. But that does not always turn out. He pay only half of the rent only. What should I do? Or how can I make him see pass that?

There are lots of ways to go with this one Jiggy, but my instinct says punt, which is to say one day you have to get up, look in the mirror and admit that this isn't going to work, and start working on a new plan and a new man.

I respect that you expect your husband to work a steady job. If you're going to stay married it is wise to keep your man on that track. You need stability, he needs stability. When you're both stable, the marriage has that big advantage. But if he wants to take risks, and you are not ready for those kinds of risks, then you're in your rights to say that it won't work for you. Tell him straight out that you need a boring 9 to 5 kind of man, and you would make it worth that kind of man's while, because I know you will. But if he can't play that role for your love and your hand in marriage, then he doesn't deserve it. He needs the kind of woman who is willing to ride the financial roller-coaster.

There's nothing wrong with the hustle if you're ready to be a hustler's wife, but if that's not the kind of drama you can handle, it's time to set your sights elsewhere. He can handle the risk.

On the man side of things. Well. It's got to be my house. I pay the rent in my house and I make the rules. When the wife brings in money, then it's all gravy. That goes for the nice curtains and paintings on the walls, copper bottom pots, scented candles and extra fluffy bedspreads. You know, civilized stuff, and sometimes an extra steak when she feels like cooking one up for me. And yes she has her own bank account and yes that's her business. But I handle my bills in my house, that way it's always my house.

There are days when I look at my checkbook and say, damn. If I didn't have all these bills and I didn't have to pay for all these bedrooms, I'd have 600 dollars for this weekend. I could have a lot of fun on 600 dollars. But I know I work for my family, not for me. That's what being married means. Ball and chain and the whole nine yards, and I take 95% of my pride out of that because that's where I want to be. When I wasn't married, I took my pride in making other kinds of things work, but that was then.

When I'm the man, the first thing I have to decide is if I'm going to have a small house, medium house or big house. But whatever size, it's my house. So sometimes when the hustle ain't working you just can't live large. You've got to have some things in the bank, and running the big house with marriage and kids, that takes a whole lot of energy. And if you're not ready to put out for all that... well, you got to live like a mouse for a while. And guess what, the chances of coming back to all that are slim, like going back to school. You may as well treat it like a one way decision.

I hope all that helps Jiggy. Best of luck.