Cobb

Malvo and Marion Jones

Well, this is disappointment day. In the news, DC sniper Malvo says there was a bigger plot afoot to kill innocents in their rampage. And Marion Jones, who I used to love, has now disgraced herself by admitting that she was on steroids.

To hell with you Marion. You are an embarrassment. And Malvo you poor tragic idiot, I almost feel sorry for you. Don't try to write any children's books. I hope we can forget you.

Better?

As one of the people trying to be informed about what happens in Iraq, and a supporter of the mission, I think I've done my fair share of reading. To that end I've read the following books in the wake of 9/11.

• Fiasco
• The Man Who Warned America
• The Looming Tower
• America Alone
• Breakpoint
• The Pentagon's New Map

It was Fiasco however that told me the most about what I was wanting to know. How was the American army doing on the ground in Iraq and what could we learn? I've continually rejected the Baby Bin Laden Theory and I've continually said that we would get better in CT on the ground. That was because I understood from reading Fiasco that the generals in Iraq, especially Petraeus, would not leave lessons unlearned.

When I look at this chart, (numbers provided by Spook86), it says a lot about the kind of progress I have expected. It's not dramatic, but it's real and undeniable. The American military is proving itself adaptable to the conditions on the ground. This is what I always expected and I am glad we've had a President with the patience, if not the foresight, to see it through this far.

No No Notorious

It turns out that my cousin is doing some of the casting work for a Fox Searchlight biopic on none other than the Notorious BIG. In this movie will be roles for Biggie, Puffy and Lil Kim. Casting calls have been going on for weeks, and there's a very big one this weekend in NYC. She's telling me that it has been absolutely outrageous.

I want you to imagine, fellas, that you are a casting director for the role of Lil Kim. And I leave you with that thought for the day.

Iranian Gratitude

Crazy A shows his gratitude for his invitation to speak to Americans:

Referring to his speech at Columbia University, President Ahmadinejad said, "The Zionists wanted to turn the event into a trial of the Isalmic Republic of Iran, but with help from the Almighty God, the plot turned into a scene in which nations could express their hatred with the rulers in the White House. The behavior of the government and media in the US shows that there is dictatorship in that country and people are not allowed to know the facts," said the president.

Thanks to The Belmont Club.

Isiah or Clarence?

Question: Which famous black American came from humble beginnings to become a nationally respected success and was found guilty of sexual harassment? I'll give you a clue. His last name is Thomas.

Aint that a knockout? Like most folks I thought Clarence was mostly guilty and Isiah was mostly innocent. Says a lot about common knowledge doesn't it? Well I'm going to shutup and let this roll on. Quite frankly I don't pay enough attention to the NBA or the Supreme Court to have much of a dog in either Thomas in the news of late. As it happens, by the way, I don't think of Clarence Thomas as particularly representative of black conservative opinion, and that is primarily because he never has anything to say. He's a judge. He writes decisions not op-ed.

Butterfield 8

For the first time in a while, I tried something new, which was to watch a film I've only vaguely known to be good. It was free from the In Demand network in my corporate apartment, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Butterfield 8 is a morality tale. It is the story about the value of sex and marriage and self-worth of honesty, passion and abuse. It is the story about living with lies and what it does to the psyche, of the difference between friendship, lust and love. It's about class and money, control and freedom. It's an awful fabulous lot in an old movie, and it's the sort of movie they don't seem to make any longer. Perhaps today's directors and screenwriters know better than to tread in this territory.

The film is not very well edited and there's not much panache in the direction, but the acting is good - done for the sake of dialog and not empty emoting or beauty shots. it's the kind of film that begins like something cheesy, develops interestingly and ends perfectly. It is a modern tragedy of timeless values and therefore a classic. In some ways, I cannot imagine not having my soon to be teenaged children watch it. It's the right caution.

Some days ago, I happened to be listening to a late night radio talk show. it was the night that Halo 3 was to be sold at midnight. I missed the sale but I caught the radio talk show. The host was talking about how we make an enemy of our conscience when we indulge ourselves. We do wrong and we begin to despise the part of us that makes us feel bad about it and instead we welcome the kinds of people into our lives that want to share in our badness. We call the drug dealer our friend and we get angry at our true friends - we can't wait for good people to abandon us so that we can abandon ourselves into the arms of abuse.

But at some point in our lives, because most of us live long enough to regret, we realize how we have done ourselves wrong and have undone others in the course of it. We wonder if we can ever make good, if we ever deserve the sunshine on our faces, if we can ever pay the price for our betrayal. That is our moment of humanity, and there is always an opportunity for that moment to come. I say that is the very shape of our minds that does it, the nature of God in us. It's as true and simple as pain. Pain is our way of knowing that we are in trouble and it is only human to want the pain to go away.

At this moment I think of Alter Call. The proper minister always knows an Alter Call is always necessary. We always need to be reminded that we can make the pain go away, that we can return to conscience and that we might someday deserve the sunshine.

Butterfield 8 was an answering service in the film. A cutout conduit between two people unable to face the truth about themselves. So long as they used that underground channel of communication, they could enjoy their complicit deceit. It wasn't until they were ready to deal with their own true feelings, their own real consciences, their own reputations and psyches that they could ditch the conduit. And yet it stood, always something there to remind them, an indelible memory.

One day, we'll have real-time translation of all the voice messages and films and literature of today's recorded digital world. We could InDemand it and watch it at our leisure. But I think all that diversity of information won't matter - it will be the shape of the stories like this one that count. They will be few, but they will be evocative of the real truth about our souls. We can only hope to be watching the right channel.

Another Long Way Moment

I can't remember what year it was when Jack Kemp first started talking about Enterprise Zones, but it was probably about 20 years ago. Plenty of business minded blackfolks took notice. Here was a Republican meeting with black folks and talking about community reinvestment. It seemed completely out of character for the GOP, and yet there he was, talking the talk and walking the walk.

It was around 1982 when I started paying attention to Thomas Sowell and black conservatives. I can remember a lot said about a cat named Clarence Pendleton. It was a big deal back then. I remember the article in Harper's Magazine that started the career of Shelby Steele. I can remember Randall Kennedy's publication 'Reconstruction' at Harvard Law - I still have some issues of that in my library. So by the time Kemp came around, Then of course there was Alan Keyes. I can remember scratching my head about him, as well as about Condi Rice when she first spoke at the GOP convention. But over the years there have been many milestones which America have marked along the axis of black politics and the Republican Party. The refrain has been constant, very much like that associated with racism in America: There's been progress, but we still have a long way to go.

Black America remains hungry. I recall the joke response to the age old question: "What do you people want". The answer is "anything worth having", implicitly, anything we perceive whitefolks as having that we don't have. And so the ambition grows and the edgy dissatisfaction remains - this time at Morgan State.

This time, in contrast to the photo-op at somebody's church, Republican candidates showed up for a debate. Historians may have me beat on this score, but I'm not sure how many times this has happened in the past. I tend to recall very specifically when Christy Todd Whitman ran for the governorship of New Jersey, a certain GOP strategist got in a lot of hot water for allegedly paying black ministers so they wouldn't complain when she didn't show up at their churches. It became a hot button for me. In fact, it launched my Boohabian crusade. That was just the kind of disrespect I thought to be at the root of all sorts of political evil in America.

Readers of Cobb know I wrote an open letter to Fred Thompson regarding his decision not to show. I've not received any satisfaction on that score, and I don't expect to get any. The event went strictly to the second rank candidates. Of the second rank, I like Duncan Hunter most, and I hope he becomes the next governor of California, for what it's worth. But as much as I would to have liked to see Thompson and the rest of the front runners attend, I cannot ignore the progress.

I know I will not ignore the progress because I watch lots of things the Republican Party does and I have a history of doing so. I see the good and the bad. I see the progress and the frustration. So let us mark this moderate showing with some history in mind and give one cheer for the GOP. Hip hip hooray, and better luck next time.

We all know how progress in race relations is made in America when it comes to blackfolks. Nobody is satisfied until the black man or woman completely dominates the are of endeavor, then everybody says "I told you so". Progress means nothing because people only look at history when it's convenient. Remember when Tiger first won the Masters? That's when we started taking black golfers seriously, but not a moment before. And now of course, we've forgotten all about the Charlie Siffords of the world.

The one day didn't come for Colin Powell, but one day it is inevitable that there will be a signal moment for the GOP when all of the incremental progress will make the critical mass for the critical masses. They will likely forget Kemp and those candidates who did show up at Morgan State, basically half the field. Folks will continue to talk about the Southern Strategy and continue to make up false theories about Republican Antipathy to Civil Rights. And I suppose that I'll be the one that responds, since I don't believe that blackfolks actually confront Republican bloggers on their websites.

I'm Not Boohab

I don't feel like going in to work this morning. So I'll write this essay and then go to work.

Some dude wrote the following:

Given the fact that were it left up to white conservatism, there would have been no civil rights legislation and blacks would still be official second class citizens, why are black people like Cobb so offended by liberalism and multiculturalism?

Maybe they actually enjoy being slaves.

Despite the fact that this argument fails Syllogism 101, it is a common error. Common enough so that imagine that I must address it head on. Of course that wouldn't be very Cobbian. I have to jump up in the air and shoot it from above, drop a diversionary bomb to the right of it then sneak around behind it and melee it, assassination style. That's what a weekend of playing Halo does to your mind.

Once upon a time, I was Boohab, aka 'The' Boohab. And the boohabian imperative was to be a persistent black object. To go everywhere on the internet and throw down the provocative hardline on race. Interestingly enough, when I was doing that during the mid 90s, the biggest complaint that blackfolks gave me was that I was spending too much time among whitefolks. The fact that I had an in-your-face confrontational attitude with whitefolks on the internet was completely offset by the perception at the time, that the Web itself was a domain of white privilege.

During that boohabian period, I was mostly progressive. But progressive politics were not an end in and of themselves, it was just suitable armor for attacking white liberals and white conservatives. My allies were people who called themselves progressive, and I took some special comfort at befriending the white 'race traitors' online, although in person two-thirds of them gave me the creeps. I must say however, I remain quite impressed by one of the dudes who resembled nothing more or less than a craggy, barrel chested Harley rider from the Vietnam era as we paused for a moment of silence atop a mountain which marks the grave of Owen Brown, son of John Brown.

I think that typifies the lengths I would go to in order to gain allies in anti-racist struggle. It is from that length and distance I find myself perplexed at the insults thrown at me, now that I'm wearing different gear, hiking a different mountain.  When I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how race operated in America, I learned pretty much everything there is to know. The trick was putting it all in perspective, and that is the gift I have received by dint of researching and arguing my positions in public. In the end, after about 4 years of doing the Boohabian thing, I killed off that personality and handled other business. And yet I retain the wisdom of those years while I don't express it overtly as I rather imagine some dudes would like me to do.

I did compile a list of books that pretty much encompassed what any race warrior would need to know. I've got it around here somewhere. OK here. Hmm. That doesn't seem like much. In fact, it doesn't compare with my list on black mental liberation. Well, anyway that's all water under the bridge.

When the Washington Post did its study on black men (everybody has to study black men, for some reason), I wrote that the most difficult thing about being a black man in American society was precisely that study. Nobody takes black men as they are. And the more you individuate yourself, the more you deviate from a set of stereotypical ideas, the more people question whether you are indeed a black man. This is not a disabling problem. We all just deal with it. But it is this sort of problem that haunts black men who write about race and don't end up chanting with the crowd.

Speaking of which, I should suggest you read White Flight Friday. That's one part of my Rodney King / LA Riot story. What I remember is being called to the stage at Times Square and invited to pump up the crowd with some angry rhetoric, it's the second time I failed at that. The first was a union rally at the Shrine Auditorium, but that's another story. Everybody says they want intelligent sophisticated black men until they have to deal with the uncomfortable feelings of actually dealing with one. I'm not your Ken doll.

So part of the difficulty in being a free man, aside from the obvious economic difficulty, is being responsible to yourself and managing other folks' expectations. For me the answer has been putting on the masks of a writer on a mission. I know it pisses people off that my current gear is about Conservatism, and they struggle to find out where the 'black man' is underneath all this Cobbian verbiage. But I can't assure anyone that the black man they are seeking to find is going to be there. I can only tell the truth about what I'm doing and where I've been.

So what must be especially troubling to some is that I've been on the race man's path and worn a hole in it, and now I'm done learning, instead I'm shooting from a somewhat disinterested hip. I'm one of those people who does not believe that African America's fate lies in its ability to negotiate race relations. I've assessed all the racism in America and I find it insufficient to stop blackfolks. It just slows some of us down and it's damned inconvenient. So I dismiss a lot of racism. Nobody died. There's only so much care a reasonable person can afford, and I shed my tears long ago. So I'm not going to re-boohabify myself or my writing. Considering my path and prospects, I should add 'ever again'. Race relations is a bore and an unproductive bore at that. There's only two ways to come to that conclusion, one is having climbed the mountain and forgotten half the details, the other is to take it on faith from someone who has.

I climed the mountain but I'm not a serial climber. I'm off to greener pastures. If you want the details of where I've been, check out that old part of my website.  I'm not mad at folks who get me wrong. I think they're merely impatient. But I can't be running backwards to satisfy their shallow desires.