Cobb

The Second Soul

"There are times when all the world's asleep and questions run too deep for such a simple mind"
-- Supertramp

Hermione Granger had an hourglass pendant that allowed her to stop time temporarily and be in two places at once. These are the first two things that pop into my head, my bald black man's head in fretting over the fact that I cannot within decent internet time, come up with 2000 words that could rebut the navel gazing of the Anchoress in asking what, prey tell, is American culture. But I'm going to start writing now just in case I can pull something together today.

See the first thing I know about American culture is that I know all about American culture and you haven't heard any of it until you've heard it from me. That's a black man of my generation talking because we, and our parents and our grandparents have been scrutinizing this beast for three generations and we're still improvising on it. It is the necessity of our improvisation that legitimizes that which is ossified. Just as it is this black man quoting Supertramp and JK Rowling. American culture starts with English. My English, my jiveometrical, hoop-jumping stupefyingly awesome English. Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good.

Until you capture the soul of a people in language, you don't have a culture worth speaking about. So I ask myself, how do people ask themselves questions about themselves. They don't, that's why so much of America is somewhat soulless. It's why we depend so heavily on our iPods and our Oprahs to say the things we wish we could say when we're falling in love and we want to tell somebody about our soul. We turn up the radio - and sometimes the first plaintive wail starts "Hey DJ.." So somewhere at the crossroads somebody sold his soul to the devil so he could sing the blues and guess what - he grew another soul in doing so. America's second soul is the language of the blues.

We have a violent temper because we kept it all bottled up. Them damn people on the other side of the Atlantic, they sold us. They kicked us out. We were captured in the Kamby Bolongo, we were Roundheads in the wrong part of London, we were Jews in Germany and we were potato famine refugees and they all sold us out and kicked us to the New World curb to take our chances among the dragons off the flat edge of the Earth. And some of us had hope when we came, and some of us had no choice but to come, and all of us were mad and tired and destined to find a second soul because the first soul was sold out. And we tried to keep it bottled up. But we couldn't.

When your mother comes home and she's pissed off you know you better start picking up your clothes and putting those dishes away. When you get nervous and somebody is staring down your throat, you start to scrub. And you scrub your English and you scrub your manners and you even try to make your toilet smell lemony fresh. And when you are halfway between getting over the pain of losing your soul and only vaguely aware that a new one awaits, you start scrubbing your environment and trying to make your dingy-ass curtains look presentable. And you try to make your daughter appear more chaste and sensible than she actually is, no matter whose head you have to bust. And you try to make your priest more holy than he actually is so that you can stand up and stare down somebody else with your Protestant ethic. And you point to all those other dirty niggers because there's always a nigger somewhere dirtier than you. And you don't stop pointing and you don't stop beating and you don't stop pretending until you grow your second soul.

To be born in America is to be born into a humanity somewhere between the past and the future because nobody is confident enough to build statues of people anymore. We over here have institutions. This is not a country of men and women -- oh we want it to be and we pretend that it might one day be, but there is no King, there is no Queen, there is no real poet laureate. Even John Wayne wasn't John Wayne and Lauren Bacall, no matter how confident she talked, was always wearing too much makeup. There is no real man of the country whose health is our health. But there is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and there is Zero Percent Down (OAC) and there is always something a two day priority UPS ground shipment away that can satisfy the gap between your first and second  souls.

What kind of car would Abraham Lincoln drive? Probably not a Lincoln.

American culture is motion. It is the 4/4 time of the clackety clack of the railroad track. No wait that was a sesquicentennial ago. It's the hiphop bhangra beat drumming your chopsticks on formica in anticipation of a snack served by a waitress wearing something cute. See her? She's winking over her shoulder and you catch her peering over your sunglasses. You're wearing sunglasses because you're cool and when you're cool you are in a superposition of states, in between souls. You can't look at me in my eyes when I am on the street - I don't have no time for you man, I got places to go, people need to see me. Important people. Sexy people. Cool people like me. In your sunglasses you can dance in your underwear, you can drive fast in your convertible, you can wear a suit like Sammy Davis Jr and dangle a square from your lips like Bette Davis. You are moving out of this bohunk town on the way to Easy Street. But you don't show the whites of your eyes until you have your second soul.

America delivers, in the modern day to everyone she bequeathes a fine first-class engineered automobile, on blocks. We sit in the drivers seat on daddy's lap unable to comprehend that we're not rolling anywhere, blind to the technology of the undercarriage and suspension. We are born in the driver's seat of a great beast we don't even understand, but we know it's a Cadillac. We know it's supposed to be the best in the world even though we don't know how it works. We just need to know how to work it. In the meantime we make motor noises with our mouths and damn anyone who dare charges us too much for gas, because its our right. We have a right. We have a right to everything, and why not? We invented rights, so why stop? We got a right to have more rights. You need more rights when you are in between souls.

There are gay men in $4,000 suits who produce music for 16 year old girls in America. We live too long. That's why we pretend we don't need to be wise.

But sooner or later we get wise and we grow our second soul and suddenly all the traffic slows to a crawl. We finally see. We finally know. We finally feel. And finally we grin and let it all go - we forgive and try to forget and blame it all on impetuous youth. We sing the blues in our gruff hacking, and smile through whiskey stains.  Smile and wave boys, smile and wave, and still your eyes fog over a bit for the asskicking energy. You've found your second soul and you're living in liberty and you never had to doubt yourself and you ran and you romped and you brought all these children into your world. And they shine and they have straight teeth like the straight lines in the roads, as flat and perfect as the line between Dallas and Ft. Worth.

And then you put on your dad pants particularly because they make you look uncool, and you walk the sidewalks just for the pleasure of bumping into strangers and enjoying the contact. And you go to a church you've never been to before just for the pleasure of dropping a twenty in the basket - and you smile in the face of kids whose parent's last name remains unpronounceable. And you lean over the mall mezzanine to watch the ice-skaters wobble and spin with their scrubbed up faces realizing its your big watch and V8 automobile that's making them scrub up. And you walk down the hallway of the office building listening to the promptly answered ringing phones and through the little kitchens with five cabinets full of plastic stirrers and non-dairy creamer and the refrigerator with the handwritten note that says it's cleaned up every Friday.

America is a fishing pole in a big muddy river. It is the perseverance of hope through the powerful opaque. Our soul has grown deep.

No, I'm not finished, because I'm only just over the hill and my daughters haven't wed. But I know America has a culture, a flavor a soul which is robust and shows no sign of whithering away. Oh we have our doubts, but we never doubt that there's an answer and that somebody's going to find it and make a fortune, and be the new rising star and make us all change our favorite color. Somebody's going to tell us if it's good to drink red wine every day, and we keep listening to make sure we get a good spot in line. In the meantime, we're chilling in the living room. Because everybody has got a living room and we're listening to the singers on the loudspeaker singing them soulful songs.

We're always adding up inches more soul until the day we're full.

Black Politics At The Tipping Point

In 1989 Spike Lee's monumental film 'Do The Right Thing' featured a video by the group Public Enemy called 'Fight the Power'. You remember the lyrics. Chuck D. said, "We've got to fight the powers that be."  Today the following African American candidates are running for high office. They have the opportunity to be the powers that be, but I think the black electorate is still thinking the old way. And so the fate of the following five hangs in the balance.

• Michael Steele: US Senate - MD
• Deval Patrick: Gov. of Massachusetts
• Harold Ford Jr: US Senate - TN
• Lynn Swann: Gov. of Pennsylvania
• Ken Blackwell: Gov. of Ohio

What will the black electorate do to get them there? Not enough if this editorial from the Huffington Post by Lamell McMorris illustrates what's on their minds. (Emphasis mine)

In this midterm, black candidates have been garnering success by detaching themselves from the traditional trappings of black leadership. According to a USA Today cover story from last week, they are eschewing civil rights discussions, and valuing "pragmatism over ideology" in their campaign strategies.

I ask you, in this quest to be embraced by mainstream society, what is our community giving up?

A chance to help those who really need it.

Black men are foundering. A New York Times article printed in March of this year cited that half of all black men in inner cities do not finish high school. Seventy-two percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20s were jobless in 2004, and by their mid-30s, 60 percent of dropouts had been incarcerated. The numbers are completely disproportionate to those of other ethnic groups - and they continue to climb.

In Deval Patrick's stump speech, how much can he talk about the plight of black males? If he did, would he still be the candidate for all of Massachusetts? Can Barack Obama talk about not just hope, but also crisis in the inner city? Can Harold Ford Jr. march around Tennessee and address this topic?

None of these candidates are rookies. They have the qualities and experiences that have gained them the trust, support and money from their parties to be the leading candidates for these important offices in a mid-term election that is one of the most contested in decades. They aren't on a 'quest to be embraced by the mainstream', they're at the top of their game. They are seeking to be the top dogs of their states.

This seems to be beyond the ability of some to recognize. The expectations of these top dog politicians to guide the functioning economies of these states and to shape US policy is subordinated to the needs of those desperate few clinging to rhetorical hope?

This kind of position raises an important question about the crabs-in-a-barrel factor of black politics. Is African America at this point in our history willing to abandon support of these men for the sake of those who cannot graduate from highschool? I think that there are plenty more able candidates that will come forward in the years to come, but this year is a referendum on whether or not they should seek the support of the apparently sizeable fraction of the black electorate who see themselves in a zero-sum contest with the mainstream, whose focus in on inner-city crises and want to march and march and march.

Chances are that all those guys aren't going to realize their ambition to lead in the offices they have chosen to pursue. It won't be because they are not qualified. It won't be because they are black. But it may be because they don't have the support of an overwhelming majority of black voters. If so, it could be the death knell for black racial politics as we know it. Clearly, black folks are not united behind black candidates. The voices are clear who are saying that there should be different standards by which black candidates are judged and rewarded, and those voices are coming from the black electorate. That voice is saying, forget your America, deal with my America - the America of inner-city dysfunction. But the ghetto is not black America. That's a sad place for black political demands to be tied, especially considering that the majority of African Americans are already in the mainstream of the middle class. Apparently, there's not quite enough pride in that accomplishment, which is why folks like Lamell McMorris speak as they do - to remind black candidates, with a black voice, that the ghetto calls.

Civil Rights is done. Voting Rights are guaranteed. If anyone should know it, it is Deval Patrick who is not running for Civil Rights Commissioner, but Governor. He's already been in the Civil Rights business under Clinton. And now that Harvard lawyer has moved on. Shouldn't the rest of the black electorate?

There is a time and a place for everything under the sun. According to some blackfolks, the time for African American candidates to lead the country will not come until the ghetto is no more. Instead of being championed as leaders in the greatest nation on Earth, these candidates are rejected for not playing ghetto games. I think blackfolks will all come to regret the day in November 2006 when so many sat home pouting in antipathy to the uppity Negroes who dared to be great.

Hot Wheels

Every morning I wake up with a song in my head. About half the time I can remember some parts of my dreams. This morning both the song and the dream were about Hot Wheels. The basic definition of a sad childhood in America is if you grew up without having ever owned a Barbie or Hot Wheels. It's a psychological burden that obviously some of the monkeys at the office have never surmounted. You know who they are. Say what you will, but I count myself among the blessed because my father bought me this, The Ontario Trio.

This was THE toy for Christmas of 1971.  I still find it hard to believe that I got exactly what I wanted that year.  Well, now that I stop to think about it, I had several perfect Christmases in that regard. We never got the Big Wheel Christmas, but we did get the Bike Christmas, the BB Gun Christmas and the Skateboard Christmas.

So I'm going to be Googling and eBaying all morning until I find the real object of my dreams, that El Camino - like car with the two removable surfboards. The Deora. Oh my god.  I had no idea that there was an actual design story behind it. It could have made production. The world is full of surprises, neh?

But on my way guess what I found? Sizzlers. Fat Track. Juice Machine. I had a gold Angelino, a Sizzlers Race Case and so much hot wheels track around the house that my mother used to spank me with it. When I think about kids today obsessing over video games, that's nothing compared to how we used to freak out over the latest Hot Wheels. And don't forget the Saturday morning cartoon with the Jackrabbit Special.

I'm a child of the Space Age, there can be no doubt about it. Just the other day I found and purchased one of my all time favorite flicks, Colossus: The Forbin Project. How deeply we dreamed of finding a way out of the Cold War. Those were the days when scientists and engineers were still highly respected professions rather than some brain-commodity function to be outsourced to Asia. Well, I'm here to say we gearheads are still around, we still like to drive fast and we still dream of beauty in design.

Also check out these guys: The Collectionary

Irons vs Woods

I may have figured out something this weekend. I am an irons guy, not a woods guy.

It has been quite some time since I've hit the golf course. This weekend, out of pure frustration and boredom, I went to the Dominguez driving range for the second time in a week. I'm going again on Friday.

I'm making it a new priority to pick up a used club once a month from Play It Again Sports. Why? Because I'm really, really bored. So last week I got a sand wedge. I kinda like the idea of a sand wedge; it's an urban club. Now that I have it in my trunk, along with a couple range balls, I get the idea that anywhere I park, I can drop a ball into some dirt or weeds and smack it. It gives me an interesting kind of outlaw feel to be in a relatively abandoned part of town and bang a ball a hundred yards and not care where it lands, not that I can hit 100 yards with a wedge, but you get the picture.

I can smack the ball fairly consistently with my 5 iron though. Nice and easy, I'm hitting it consistently 150 yards to the first bounce in about 8 degrees on either side of dead center about 80% of the time. Half the time it flies dead straight. The rest of the time I top the ball and it dribbles 30 yards. But that was just yesterday. The first time I got out there, after a 5 or 6 year hiatus, I was killing my right hand with the vibrations and fading the ball way right. Still, I know I'm pretty good with the irons. It's the drivers that make me crazy.

I've only had a few golf lessons and I've never been particularly impressed with who can hit the ball the furthest. Plus, when I started, I heard enough grumbling from the purists about Big Berthas and whatnot to shy away from all that. So I really never developed a good swing with the drivers. They just seem way too long and when I use them I never get any lift on the ball. So yesterday I heard for the first time, somebody mention an Iron swinger vs a Wood swinger. Iron guys swing down, wood guys swing out. Call me Iron Mike.

I'm rather susceptible to such criticism because when I was in college, I bought into the idea that within the swing sports you could only be good at one; the swing sports being racquetball, squash, tennis and golf, all of the bourgie sports we never played growing up in the hood. I chose raquetball because it was the most athletic of the bunch, and I became good enough to beat 'B' players on a good day. I also had an extraordinary amount of energy back in those days and could run most  players down. The most shocking part of my physical fitness at my age is how sorry my aerobic energy is. I can still take the punishment and pain, it's just that I bonk way too early. It makes me feel very pathetic, and I'm conflicted about whether or not I should do something about it. On the one hand, I hate feeling pathetic. On the other hand, sports are not nearly as interesting to me as they used to be, I don't really care if I'm good or not - that is as long as I'm off the field. Get me near a competitive activity like soccer or clubbing and my mind is as sharp as ever, I am engaged in the strategy and tactics, and I'm plotting victory... vicariously, dammit. So my focus is to win in what I know I can win in, which is in the case of the swing sports, racquetball, but I haven't played in a coon's age. Besides, all those new huge racquets are so gay.

So now I'm turning towards golf, because it still allows me to smack something with ferocity and I don't need other people around to perfect my game. Plus it has a modicum of brass rail appeal. I expect to find people worth talking to on courses. Still, I'm not going to catch the fever. My intention is to have a very strong urban game. I'll be happy in the traps and rough. I'll be good in the short game and leave the driving to somebody else.

BTW, I'm also thinking about shooting again.

Valley Forge

After a couple of months, I have finally put my mountain bike on a mountain. A couple of other dads and I took our 12 year olds up Highway 2, the Angeles Crest Highway up to Red Box this weekend for a bit of dirty fun. We packed up our bikes on a couple of SUVs and headed to the nearest trail we could find. I remember the old dirt road to the Valley Forge campground from when I was a kid so we drove up, and it was still there. Blocked off to motor traffic, the road goes about three miles down hill.

The trip down the mountain was exhilarating. A few basics, like outside foot down in the turns, had us racing through the silt and rocks. I kept thinking I was going to hit a sharp rock and catch a flat, but my tires held out fine. Suddenly all the squishiness I hate in the street was a welcome relief, but I do like my hardtail and I did some nice lowside action in the soft stuff. There weren't many jumps which I suppose is just as well, I got a bit too ambitious a couple times and that raised the adrenaline, but I didn't fall once. I was glad to have brought my gloves and my shoulders took a pounding, I was glad they were in shape, of all of my body parts. My wrists took some beating too, but I'm all good and typing with ease this morning.

Next time I'll be a bit smarter and make sure that whatever track we take, that we go uphill first. I bonked about halfway back and basically had to push my bike up the hill walking. I felt like Sisyphus pushing that god forsaken boulder, which was in this case, that cheap, heavy 'mountain bike' I bought for my son this summer. That thing must weight 30 pounds, which is fine when you're tooling around in the neighborhood, but not climbing up hills in the dirt. The uphill climb was frustrating and tiring, but we were completely refreshed by the time we sat at the trucks for five minutes. No damage, just exhaustion.

Last night the Saturday trek finally caught up with me. My right quad was pretty sore from switching bikes and sitting pedaling when I should have been standing. My gears are also pretty tall compared to others, so if I get serious that will be one of the first things I mod on the Marin. All in all, a great father son trip. We'll do that again. Up first.

Shinya Aoki

From Wikipedia:

Shinya Aoki born on the 9th of May 1983 is a Japanese Mixed Martial Arts fighter and grappler from Japan. Shinya Aoki is the current Shooto Middleweight (167lbs) champion in Shooto after defeating the former champion Akira Kikuchi in Febuary of 2006. In August of 2006 he made his Pride debut in Bushido 12 by submitting american fighter Jason Black in under two minutes with a triangle choke.

Shinya Aoki holds a black-belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Yuki Nakai and also a black belt in Judo. He works as an instructor at Paraestra Kasai but represents the Paraestra Tokyo head-school when competing.

Fascinating sport. Interesting Champion. 

One of the things I've learned over the past several years, both watching events surrounding the GWOT and commentary about it, as well as Doc's stories is how easy and difficult it is to kill someone. Even watching YouTube reminds me that there are people on this planet who devote themselves to truly arcane and mindblowing skills. I am thinking not only of the martial arts but of trivial mastery, yoyos, street climbing, bmx, card tricks, close up magic, pen twiddling and the like. It gives us a thousand unknown reasons to respect those we don't know. And so it goes for the skills of combat, of which very few of us are acquainted. Shooto has rules, and it is by purusing those rules that you get the outlines of the things that keep it a sport and not actual combat. It takes a lot to really hurt someone, unless you know what you're doing:

The aim in a shooto match is to defeat the opponent by a knockout (to which a 10-count is applied) or a submission, but fights can also end in a referee stoppage or by a judge decision. Legal techniques include general grappling, chokeholds, joint locks, kicks, knee strikes, punches, takedowns and throws. Illegal techniques include biting, elbow strikes, eye-gouging, forearm strikes, hair pulling, headbutting, pressure point techniques, kicking or kneeing the head of a downed opponent, small joint manipulation and strikes to the groin, spine or throat.

When I was a kid, like most kids raised on Westerns, it was difficult for me to believe what Bruce Lee could do. We had Superman and Batman, Batman more realistic. It seemed inconceivable at first that Kato could whoop the Green Hornet, but we knew it was true. Suddenly, all the old fistfights seemed ridiculous. I imagine that there are many such revelations in store for Americans, dainty as we have become.

When I was in Sydney in 2000 at the games, I was struck by how few Americans attended the wrestling events. They were superb and some American contestants did well, but the Eastern Europeans were dominant. It was refreshing to see such a pure sport and its devotees, a welcome relief in my eyes from the yuppie affections of the American chatting classes. I might even go as far as to tie this back to John Kerry's ill-fated remarks of the prior week - the distance we have gotten from the rough and tumble of common men.

If there is anything to the Republican revolution that goes right past the eyes of the opposition unnoticed, it is the actual ingredients of the the common man who cares little for the patronage of political correctness. We are not a nation of pretentious sophisticates, in fact we are a nation of simpler folks all trying for a bit of upward mobility. We're still mostly Protestants and most of the Protestants are not Evangelicals or Pentecostals. We're still mostly urban, car driving people who aren't interested in buying a Prius, rather a good truck that will last for 10 years. And I think most of us have a passing acquaintance with the violence of contact sports tied directly to our basic humanity, and our appetites for that are not nearly as proximate to moral oblivion as some would have you believe. This is still a football nation, and we still love a good tackle. We know the difference between a clean and a dirty hit.

Best Political Ad this Season

Michigan Two

Affirmative Action is back in the news. This time it goes under the truthful and unmarketable phrase 'racial preferences', and Michigan has a proposition on the November ballot that says no more racial preferences.

I have been somewhat blindsided and mostly non-plussed about this issue. Some thoughtful folks sent me some emails in defense of the preferences but I paid them no mind, mostly because of the exclamation points. But today I have come to learn that Ward Connorly is defending the KKK and that John McWhorter is voting down Affirmative Action as well. Connorly, I can dismiss. McWhorter I cannot. Interestingly enough I wrote just this week that colorblindness has political advantages over multiculturalism as the defacto anti-racist medicine for America. It is not strong medicine, rather it is like a good diet, it can be preventative, all things being equal. How you feel about colorblindness basically depends upon how sick you think America is and how well it needs to get. How do I feel?

I think that the Michigan legal cases about Affirmative Action several years back were decided wrongly - that the racial preferences should have been granted at the undergraduate level, not at the graduate level. And nothing has really changed about my principled stand weakly in favor of Affirmative Action. I'm basically going to watch how this goes down, and I'm not going to get exercised about it one way or another. In fact, I wish I could take a pill and not wake up until this election season was over.

Bottom line. Affirmative Action can be done smartly and economically. I have no doubts in my mind that it can be done right. But Affirmative Action, whether done smartly or dumbly will always involve a racial preference, and there's no right-minded moral political majority that can or should maintain racial preferences over more than one generation.

As a black power partisan, I will not go to the mat over Affirmative Action, it's way too weak an enabler. Since we can be sure that Ward Connorly is not going away, nor are PC multiculturalists going to concede their defense of 'diversity', Michigan won't be the end of it. It's a battle of the bozos, and I don't have much of a dog in that fight.

Since I'm thinking of Malcolm X these days, I will predict what he would have said when the Michigan proposal to end Affirmative Action wins. "The white man giveth and the white man taketh away."

More Steele

In case you haven't figured it out right now, of all the candidates in every race, the one who most represents the Old School is Michael Steele. I think he has run an admirable campaign and he shows himself to be the class act I've known and expected him to be. And yes I'll take him over Barack Obama and Harold Ford.

Stabbing Aftermath

Young Black Male With Knife

Rainbox Six Vegas

I didn't think that it was possible, but I'm finding the game playing experience of the demo of Rainbow Six: Vegas to be very exciting. Even thought there's a bit of sloppiness when it comes to hugging a wall in the new feature of firing from cover (as compared to the crispness of Splinter Cell), I'm very impressed with the look, the feel and the new dimensions of navigability of the game. The ability to invert rapelling is worth it alone. Having finished the single player mode of the newest Splinter Cell Double Agent in less than a week (damn), I'm already looking forward to R6. That and Gears of War. Man, November is going to be cooking!

OAAU Lost

It is interesting to ask what exactly Malcolm X had in mind when he formed the OAAU in Harlem 40 years ago. Specifically, I wonder what he had in mind for the endtimes. That is to say how far did the vision of freedom go and how would people know that the magic moment had arrived. Knowing that Malcolm was not of the sort to compare himself with Whitefolks, as various commandments would suggest about the sins of coveting, I don't believe it would be any level of integration. But what then is the destiny of the Afro-American as Malcolm would have us?

I am struck by the relative brevity of his paragraphs on politics and economics at the formation of the organization:

IV. Politics and Economics.

And the two are almost inseparable, because the politician is depending on some money; yes, that's what he's depending on.

Basically, there are two kinds of power that count in America: economic power and political power, with social power being derived from those two. In order for the Afro-Americans to control their destiny, they must be able to control and affect the decisions which control their destiny: economic, political, and social. This can only be done through organization.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity will organize the Afro-American community block by block to make the community aware of its power and its potential; we will start immediately a voter registration drive to make every unregistered voter in the Afro-American community an independent voter.

We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party. I can prove it. All you've got to do is name everybody who's running the government in Washington, D.C., right now. He's a Democrat and he's from either Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, from one of those cracker states. And they've got more power than any white man in the North has. In fact, the President is from a cracker state. What's he talking about? Texas is a cracker state, in fact, they'll hang you quicker in Texas than they will in Mississippi. Don't you ever think that just because a cracker becomes president he ceases being a cracker. He was a cracker before he became president and he's a cracker while he's president. I'm going to tell it like it is. I hope you can take it like it is. : We propose to support and organize political clubs, to run independent candidates for office, and to support any Afro-American already in office who ansvvers to and is responsible to the Afro-American community.

We don't support any black man who is controlled by the white power structure. We will start not only a voter registration drive, but a voter education drive to let our people have an understanding of the science of politics so they will be able to see what part the politician plays in the scheme of things; so they will be able to understand when the politician is doing his job and when he is not doing his job. And any time the politician is not doing his job, we remove him whether he's white, black, green, blue, yellow or whatever other color they might invent.

"The economic exploitation in the Afro-American community is the most vicious form practiced on any people in America." In fact, it is the most vicious practiced on any people on this earth. No one is exploited economically as thoroughly as you and I, because in most countries where people are exploited they know it. You and I are in this country being exploited and sometimes we don't know it.

Malcolm goes on and on about what he won't do but not the first thing about what he would do. We are left to ask, is that all there is? In fact, there's got to be more I think than the problem child of the Nguzo Saba, Ujamaa. If so, where is it and who's working on it? What are the benchmarks and what is the progress to date? I ask these questions for two purposes. One is facetiously, to the extent that Afro/African-America has economically surpassed some fairly wild dreams simply by changing the law - and I harp on the fact that the Civil Rights Movement did just fine, thank you. The other is more seriously to assess the extent to which the bold bogarding beyond middle class standing for African Americans might still be inspired by Malcolm's vision, despite his own shortcomings.

Now I have mentioned before, in these pages, the vision of John Hope Bryant. If I were to answer my own question, then I would say that his financial program to boost the rate of black savings and home ownership is the most broad-based program for the black masses conceivable. But I don't actually believe it is the most powerful. The most powerful would be one of fairly well disciplined aggregation, one that unleashes some hardheaded black capitalists on the American fertile fields of business rather like the world-class wrecking crew of KKR. Let us try not to forget that this is precisely the capitalist engine that made Reggie Lewis, Our Billionaire.

I'll wrap this up quickly. My conclusion is that what blackfolks want and need is 'the sound of the drum'. That is to decolonize their minds so they can be free to actually pursue wealth and power in the ways free people have done since the beginning of time. To the extent that we don't we remain Negroes, Others, Objects, Victims and the otherwise Plantationified persons for which uppity unleashed individuals like me have so much passive contempt for. The little white men inside their heads still sends them coded messages ('Harold, call me') that unravels their nerves and shakes them into blubbering inaction, submission and impotence.  Yes, for them RACISM is the greatest enemy in the world. They have not overcome. How I can manage to make light of their plight is what I suspect continues to be my fatal flaw in the eyes of my harshest black critics.

But I have Malcolm X, and other vectors of black mental liberation, and so does everybody else. What can I say? I'm educated. I suffer no illusions that I can force such education on those who refuse it and thereby live in relative poverty. Raise your hand if you think uneducated, unliberated and living in the ghetto is the way you ought to be.

But let me not get too off track. Part of the notion that birthed this essay was my perception of a distinctly uncoordinated black effort across black banking, education and labor to, piece by piece target and take over an industry as X alludes to with regards to politics. I mean now is the time to watch the Democrats descend like locusts on black communities and remind them how horrible their lives are going to be next week if they do not return Democrats to power in various contests. When has that kind of coverage ever happened by a college professor, banker and busineman to say hey we're taking over all plumbing in this neighborhood?

What happened to all the black maids, waiters, cooks, chefs, domestics and delivery boys? Why did they never unionize and form an institute of hospitality at Atlanta University Center? What is the name of the music school that every black gospel singer knows she has to attend to get to the very top of that part of the entertainment industry? Why is black labor and capital a diaspora?

The most cogent and hopeful response to those questions is that the Afro-American need not seek any distinction outside of the belly of the American beast. That had we followed X and Nkrumah, we'd be no better off than the poor slobs in Liberia, Kenya or Zimbabwe. But the alternative is that where there was one Reggie Lewis, there might have been 50.

Imagine that.

Times vs Bush

In an unsigned editorial, the NYTimes pats itself on the back and says the President is living in a fantasy world. Amazing.

As President Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he’s settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behavior. Since he can’t defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies.

In Mr. Bush’s world, America is making real progress in Iraq. In the real world, as Michael Gordon reported in yesterday’s Times, the index that generals use to track developments shows an inexorable slide toward chaos. In Mr. Bush’s world, his administration is marching arm in arm with Iraqi officials committed to democracy and to staving off civil war. In the real world, the prime minister of Iraq orders the removal of American checkpoints in Baghdad and abets the sectarian militias that are slicing and dicing their country.

In Mr. Bush’s world, there are only two kinds of Americans: those who are against terrorism, and those who somehow are all right with it. Some Americans want to win in Iraq and some don’t. There are Americans who support the troops and Americans who don’t support the troops. And at the root of it all is the hideously damaging fantasy that there is a gulf between Americans who love their country and those who question his leadership.

There's nuance for you. But since when has a dialectic been a bad thing for society? Clearly the Times has picked sides. I haven't much weighed in on this whole Conservatives vs NYT thing, and I still think it's beneath me, but I understand where defenders of the President are coming from. But I think the broader picture is MSM vs Blogosphere and I'm satisfied with that codependent rivalry as it stands. Nobody needs to assist the Right in getting its messages out there so, really I'm not concerned.

What concerns me are the issues of collaboration, resolution and rectification. Neither the 'sphere nor the MSM do a decent job of leveraging the literate population towards those ends. I hope to be part of that process going forward, and I expect that my professional background will be of a great deal of assistance in that regard. Stay tuned, I've got my Ruby working.

   

NiggaSpace

Yes it's true. There is a niggaspace.com. I'm going to pretend to be surprised and outraged. CWCID, Jack and Jill Politics, who unfortunately are expecting help from the NAACP.

The proprietors are hiding behind Whoisguard. But maybe some enterprising individual will find out what's up, not that we at Cobb would really spend much time thinking about it. Well, actually I did read the FishbowlNY blurb on it.

Whatever.

Halo: Late

Peter Jackson sez:

As was previously confirmed, we deeply regret that both Universal and Fox did not choose to move forward with financing the Halo film under the original terms of the agreement. At this time Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, along with their partner, Microsoft, have mutually agreed to postpone making a feature film based on the Halo video-game universe until we can fulfill the promise we made to millions of Halo fans throughout the world that we would settle for no less than bringing a first-class film to the big screen. We are fully supportive of director Neill Blomkamp's vision of the film. Neill is a tremendously gifted filmmaker and his preliminary work on Halo is truly awe-inspiring. While it will undoubtedly take a little longer for Halo to reach the big screen, we are confident that the final feature film will be well worth the wait.

I'm glad that Jackson is sticking with Blomkamp. His work is really exciting and the verisimilitude is perfect for Halo, not the glossy stuff like in The Island, or the semi-gloss of Star Wars. In fact, it was very reminescent of 'V'. Anyway, it looks like we're going to be stuck like Star Wars fans waiting for-goddamned-ever to see what we want to see in theatres. They should try Mark Cuban instead.

 

Rogue Warrior

This, I guarantee you, will be an absolutely great game.

Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, today announced its plans to publish Rogue Warrior™, an authentic, tactical first-person shooter based on the best-selling book series by Richard (Dick) Marcinko, former U.S. Navy SEAL and founder of both SEAL Team Six and Red Cell. Rogue Warrior is being developed for the Xbox 360™ videogame and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and Windows by Zombie Studios in conjunction with Bethesda Softworks. Rogue Warrior is scheduled for a fall 2007 release.

I'm a big fan of Demo Dick in the most basic, little boy growing up with a slingshot and marbles in his back pocket kind of way. So say what you will about macho BS, I'll cop to it when you're talking about Marcinko. But what's going to make this game awesome is Bethesda's tiling.

You see when you play Oblivion, you can basically run for miles and miles without lag or reloads. You have an almost limitless open area which is chock full of plants and critters and NPCs and monsters and it's completely seamless. There have been many times when I've been playing Oblivion just wishing that other players could be in there with me, not that the native AI is bad, just that the environment is so good. I have no doubt that Bethesda's involvement is going to take FPS to the next level, and I can't wait.

In Rogue Warrior, you play Dick Marcinko, leader of an elite SEAL unit trapped behind enemy lines in North Korea on a covert mission to assess the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. When war breaks out between North and South Korea, you must try to lead your team back into South Korea while greatly outnumbered and with no support and limited resupply. Your journey will take you through a variety of never-before-seen environments inside of North Korea, including submarine pens, shipbreaker yards, prison camps, and more.

They're going to give Rainbow Six a run for their money. I mean is it just me or does this Vegas thing seem hokey?

P.W. Botha: Dead

Ding Dong!

There are few people whose death is more welcome than this duplicitous son of a bitch.  Botha was in just about every way the quintessential bad guy. He was ugly looking, he had an awful temper, he openly defied reason, and his voice... ahh that. It was so unmistakably defiant, so arrogant.  He seemed to strut around all the time with thinly veiled contempt for every political demand that crossed his path. I picture him, all red in the face blowing virtual steam out of his ears. Not only did he never back down until the end, but he backbit and sabotaged all the way down after he was forced out.

Typical of his rule was his 1985 "Crossing the Rubicon" speech, a policy speech in which Botha was widely expected to announce new reforms. Instead, he refused to give in to pressure for concessions to the black majority including the release of Nelson Mandela. His defiance of international opinion in this speech led immediately to further isolation of the country, calls for economic sanctions to be applied and a rapid decline in the value of the rand. The following year, Botha also declared a state of emergency.

I'm really surprised that he wasn't poisoned that he got to die in his own country rather than in exile. There will be no state funeral for him. Good. I hope they name a swamp after him, and spread his ashes somewhere around it unmarked. Serves a crocodile right.

Chance Kelsey: Crackpot Racialist

One of the strangest ironies is that while I have decided to out racists on the net, there's been a highly suspect candidate right here under my nose. And now I have finally had my fill of Chance Kelsey.

Of Chance, who forthrightly asked for an honest assessment I said a few months back:

I find Chance to be a highly motivated individual whose pursuit of questions of race have taken him all over the map. Right now I think he has bought into some crackpot ideas about essentialism, that he is a genetic racialist. I don't think he is either an extrinsic or intrinsic racist - that he particularly attributes moral value to genetic race or believes that governments should assign classes of citizenship to genetic races, but that he holds out for further scientific evidence validating genetic race.

I'm not sure if he recognizes the corrosiveness of genetic racial theory to the principles of individualism, modernity and democratic institutions. I hope he comes to recognize, even in the face of further scientific evidence of genetic race, why it is much more important to maintain the non-racial standard of civil equality. I can only recommend what I believe to be the classic treatise on such matters, which is Huxley's Brave New World which examines the threat to liberty inherent in a scientifically validated genetic class system.

I find Chance's writing style to be a bit awkward and confusing at times, but I have always found him to be civil, open, honest and particularly personable, not only with me but with others on the web. I prefer a more formal debating style in all my online interactions because I write not only for my own benefit but for that of posterity, so Chance is one of several people who annoy me by defeating that purpose, but I bear no personal animosity towards him. (I guess I exemplify this by writing about him rather than to him, as I am doing now.) Still, as he represents a point of view (racial essentialism) which is an important theory in debates about race, there is no question in my mind that his presence in such debates raises their overall level.

But now I've lost patience with his commentary and his essentialist ideas all over my website, and I have decided with to ban him. I am further convinced that he's not raising the level of debate here at Cobb. It was this comment of his which has finally pushed me over the edge.

I agree and many of are once agin black and on skid often means on drugs, blacks have smaller brains than whites and the sutres on a black brain close and whites remain open which helps in the potential development of more intelligence. So blacks should not be doing drugs and drinking alchol for these reasons alone.

The cranial sutures are more simple than in the white type and close together earlier. So blacks need to stay away from drugs all racial groups do but blacks we get it bad and with smaller brains the decay show fast in blacks so blacks leavce the drugs and alchohol alone.

I cannot, in good conscience let such racialist tripe go unchallenged, but I also do not have the patience to explain how wrong it is. So I'm taking an easy and irreversible decision. Chance is out. His ideas are poison, and I don't want them published here. You may find him elsewhere on your own time.

Malcolm X: Religious Conservative

Yesterday I spent a lot of time looking for a decent quote from Malcolm X in support of direct action and dealing with people who are blatant enemies as opposed to closeted enemies. I did so in support of some flogging of my Internet Hunt over at P6, the best I could do was insult the denizens there as 'voodoo practitioners'. Interestingly enough, I did find this quote over at Blackprof, a site I've been neglecting of late. The context was how 'subtle racism' has found a home in the GOP because of 'code words'.

But values can be a code word for many things

The game is over at this point. From here on in you will hear only what you want to hear. If you decide that certain phrases are code words which have hidden meanings that you know how to correctly interpret, then conversation is a waste of time.

It's no longer Ernest talking to you, it's you talking to yourself.

If I had the presence of mind of that poster, KT Cat, I'd have said as much as the Internet Hunt got off to a rocky start.

Nevertheless, in searching to find the right Malcolm, I found little more than misappropriated Malcolm. One most notably here on Google Video edited and grafittied to remove the context of Malcolm's words and almost all of those of his interlocutors, by none other than Xyborg, the nutcase  who wants the African Bomb following the example of Kim Jong Il (!!). Elsewhere there are excellent more scholarly disciplined sites like this one, however there is very little content to be found.

But there was one very interesting clip that I located which served to remind me of Malcolm's split with the NOI and prompted me to write the following over at Blackprof:

Liberals try to use the power of the State to insulate against the dysfunctions of family and community. Conservatives try to use the power of family and community to insulate against the dysfunctions of the State. Most everything follows from that.

From a black perspective, I think the salient choice is determined by a thoughtful consideration of what your family and community situation is. I think there can be no clearer illustration of this difference in black than the paths of Malcolm X and MLK, keeping specifically in mind that Malcolm X' split from the Nation of Islam was a direct result of his discovery that Elijah Muhammad was the baby daddy of EIGHT illegitimate children.

Malcolm X did not support Affirmative Action. He was a religious conservative. This is the big open secret few black Democrats ever debate or consider.

Malcolm opposed Affirmative Action. He called it a 'trick' of the white power structure used to dissuade the masses via the employment of upper middle class Negroes who would convince the masses to 'slow down'. He categorically dismissed integration as an avenue towards freedom. He saw irreconcilable differences and characterized the black masses as on the verge of explosion, something he said would 'break the furniture' in the house of the white power structure.

Freedom is bigger than middle class status. It is something towards which we should all strive, and we should be similarly committed to act as free men, to assume our freedom and fight any and all that would stand in the way of our rights to it. Malcolm understood this implicitly and articulated it persuasively and cogently. That is why his voice resonates clearly to this day. He dealt honestly and with integrity with the fundamental elements of human struggle towards liberty.

I am under no illusion that the masses of blackfolks today are continuing to struggle with Malcolm's terms and scope in mind. Most of the agitation of blackfolks is aimed squarely at middle-class status in America, nothing more, nothing less. And to a certain degree it is disappointing. But not so much when one considers how well America has accommodated those who have assimilated and integrated, and equally how well America has supported and sustained those African Americans who have gone above and beyond that call. It was perhaps unthinkable in Malcolm's time that a black man would run Sears, Time Warner or American Express. And yet today they are captains of all three at once. So somebody must have been aiming that high. And while someone in my generation finds such achievement daunting, I expect that my children will find it less impressive and perhaps reach even higher. Still, I'd be happy for a doctor, a lawyer and a teacher. That's goodness, alas not greatness.

What made Malcolm great was that he had great faith and tied himself unswervingly to his religious discipline in ways that seem extraordinarily rare to us these days. He displayed an uncommon unity of mind and spirit. He embodied a kind of integrity we don't often see in public life. But he was also very clear about the work that he saw blackfolks needed, and it was very much in the vein of personal responsibility. I recall my brother's metaphors of the the past week. He works as a beat cop on Skid Row and he said of the indigent homeless that they do not wash their faces. They remain dirty  because they have cut themselves off from society seeing no hope of ever fitting in. But of folks with hope, we wash our face every day because we expect to fit in. The culture of despair begins when one decides not to wash your face, when you decide to be dirty, and it is catching. Similarly, the dysfunctions of the black community Malcolm sought to address started with us washing our faces, of acknowledging our value in the eyes of God, of negotiating our respectability in society starting by cleaning up our act. To wit:

The platform that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, our religious leader, stands on is the platfrom of complete freedom, justice and equality for the 20 million black people or so-called Negroes here in America. And he teaches us that because of the seriousness of the condition that our people now find themselves in that it is absolutely impossible to solve our problems with means other than religion. And he teaches us that the religion of Islam is the only religion that will instill within our people the incentive to stand on our own feet. And instead of trying to force ourselves upon whites or force ourselves into the white society or blame the white man for our predicament and constantly beg him for what he has, he says that the only way that we can solve our problem is to unite together among ourselves, among our own kind, clean ourselves up, rid ourselves of the evils that we've become addicted to here in this society and try and solve our problem ourselves.

The emphasis is mine, and this is a Conservative principle, and I strongly believe that it is an Old School principle that has always attended the success of African Americans. We tend to forget the days when blackfolks asked nothing from Congress and survived nonetheless. So there is only so much cred I can assign to people who are resigned to the contradictions and corruptions of the political parties. On their best days, with their best pols, they only approximately represent Conservatism and Liberalism, as well as a crypto-Leftism I still can't quite understand from the actions and positions of assorted Organics and Progressives (is it Socialism? is it Populism? is it Anarchism?). Whatever the failings of the GOP, I know they are trying to be Conservatives and that the actualization of Conservative principles stand a much better chance under their administrations than that of the Democrats.

Since I have confidence in the Old School and in the unity of mind and faith and much less in the machinations of government social programs, I fall on the side of Conservatives with very much the same skepticism of white liberals as Malcolm X. But that goes to my highest aspirations which lie far beyond middle class dreams. Still, I am much more respectful of American and global middle class aspirations than I have ever been. So I advocate, in the context of what Bush has explained in the terms of the Ownership Society, for adequate assimilation and integration into the broad American mainstream. I think every American should do so on their own terms and at their own pace with no assistance, guidance or interference from so-called 'social conservatives' who are mostly nosy and paranoid Evangelicals and fundamentalists still unable to quite get their heads around the ultimate implications of Liberty and Justice for All.

America must, among its highest priorities, be a nation that imposes no restrictions on the free exercise of religion, because that freedom will inevitably produce such minds in unity with spirit as was exemplified by Malcolm X. We can only hope sooner rather than later.

My Conservatism Vs Yours

As a moderate conservative and civil libertarian, the biggest problem I have with my fellow GOP mates is their shameless ass kissing of the Christian Right. It often borders on fundamentalism, and of course I have no doubt that there are fundies in the big tent. I also have a problem with GWBush's inability to lead by example from the bully pulpit on much of a force of personality, and while he doesn't preach, I know a lot of folks of the Christian Right get warm and fuzzies from his personal spirituality as a born-again. So I wait patiently for folks of the bearing of McCain, Giuliani, Whitman and even sometimes Arnie, to take center stage. Oh yeah, one more gripe I have is for the no-op Congress that hasn't been pulling its weight and leading by example (discounting for the moment the great conviction of Patrick Leahy).

Particularly in Congress, I never liked either Dick Armey or Tom DeLay, and I happen to believe that their strongarm tactics to be a degeneration of the spirit Newt Gingrich started. They basically killed the ideological appeal of Conservatism in Congress, and put us back on the path of government bloat, if only for their own special interests. I am probably as guilty as any Republican of not looking enough past my own tax bill to watchdog the OMB, but I do care and not for nothing do I call myself a fiscal conservative. So I can't speak to more than a sense of unease and distaste as those two fatheads wielded power, but listen to what Abiola has uncovered:

..small government is fundamentally incompatible with "socially conservative" meddling with people's private lives, and a party intent on keeping advocates of small government and social conservatives within the same tent is one too ideologically incoherent to be a party of ideas. Reagan squared this circle by paying mere lip service to the nanny-state moralists, and what Bush Jr. has done has been essentially to take the opposite approach, which is precisely why you have a situation in which two big-government parties are reduced to exchanging inane sexual innuendos in lieu of substantive arguments.

Exactly.

Two Minutes of Fame

Once upon a time, when I had a flat stomach, I was the network admin and P/A for one of the largest existing client-server networks in the business world, if not the planet. I just happened across a picture of me that I submitted for DigiBarn, the online history museum of obsolete but interesting computer technology.

One of the reasons for my ever-present arrogance, is that but for a series of unfortunate events, I might very well be one of those pre-internet millionaires. I was *that* close to the managers of the Xerox Systems Group who famously fumbled the future. I am long over my ex-Xeroid bitterness, but every once in a while I like to cogitate on what might have been. Instead of general computing and networking, I have stuck pretty close to my theme of computer-augmented decision support. One of these days..

LAPD Blog

I've been a subscriber to the RSS feed to the LAPD Blog for a couple months now and I have to say that I'm very pleased so far. It has kept me right on time with the local crime and notable incidents without the lurid ghoulish fascination of the 6 OClock news. High fives to the officers and professionals making this possible. That's responsibility to your community. Good Job.

There still haven't been any major events that have kept us all riveted like the shooting of Devin Brown or the arrest of Stanley Williams, so the blog has yet to pass its first trial by fire, but I expect that if LA is LA, we'll be seeing something major before next summer. Fingers crossed.