Cobb

The Next Stop on the Race Train

Dunbar Village. All ashore that's going ashore.

I wrote a little bit about this particular horror soon after the story broke and of course thought that was the end of it. And now I see that somehow, for reasons I haven't really bothered to investigate, it has resurfaced. I wonder how many folks who have expressed their outrage over the racially incindiary remarks of Wright at our last racial crossroads are going to continue on their own trains or switch trains to this one.

For any number of reasons we Americans are on different paths based upon the amount and quality of information we take in. Being on the list for the Kwaku Network I know what a large number of black Americans are processing right about now. It will be this outrage, not for any race hustling reasons, but because that's the news we get *in context*.

VDH is dismissing this context, and I think to a certain extent he does have a valid point.

Obama’s evocation of “context” is the new/old defense that one suddenly hears to excuse extremist language against whites, moderate African-Americans, Italians, Jews, America, Israel, the WW II generation, etc. as in:

(1) The Wright slurs were just snippets; or
(2) Came in a context of historic oppression; or
(3) Were part of unique protocols of expression in black churches; or
(4) Were more than balanced by prior good works; or
(5) Were just rhetorical flourishes and hardly offensive; or
(6) The right-wing noise machine is using the Wright sound-bites for the political embarrassment of a Democratic candidate rather than due to genuine anger over his racism.

While some of these mitigations in theory might have some merit, what the Wright defenders—most prominently Sen. Obama himself—don’t realize is that the classical liberal tradition always argued that absolute standards trumped relativism and that situational ethics were never an excuse for extremism.

A clear discussion of the dangers of such relative morality is found in Book III of the historian Thucydides. There the violent revolutionaries on ancient Corfu claim they had cause to destroy the framework of the law and natural decency —and then found no such shelter when they in extremis were in need of it.

The Wright apologia is insidiously tearing down the accepted norms of public expression (sermons in a pulpit merchandised on DVDs qualify as the public domain). And the pastor will sorely miss them should he find himself the victim of racist outbursts against his person that will be inevitably excused by his own contextual contortions.

He's right. We should have absolute standards, and my favorite quote on the matter is found in 'A Man For All Seasons'

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Ahh but we have no law on the matter of racist offense. Moreover, we have no equal society in which those who might apply their ethics would find refuge. If there was a conversation in society anywhere near as consistent as the application of law, then there would be a refuge for those whose conventions have coalesced. But there is no such conversation. At least it is clear that the liberal and the conservative, the black and the white diverge. The forest may have been planted in the Civil Rights Era, but the trees are still saplings and there hasn't grown much shelter.

It is why we're all a bit raw and tender over this and why we cannot really talk about Dunbar Village, or Duke, or Imus or Tookie or OJ or Katrina. There are at least two societies of dialog, separate and unequal whose trains cross not quite often enough for much to arise but pain and regret for opening one's mouth in the first place.

I mention all this, not out of a desire to have any dialog, but I guess to show that I can still remain fearless in that storm, and out of some hope that some stand of saplings will grow to their full height in the fullness of time and provide all of us the shelter we deserve.

And so I expect that those who have spent their inordinate amount of time drubbing Wright will not care to take their outrage to Dunbar Village. Then again, I'm not particularly interested in going there myself.

The Geopolitical Smoking Gun for Hillary Clinton

There have been occasions upon which I have considered that the world might be in better hands with Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama. Now I am certain that I cannot abide the possibility. Hitchens closes the door once and for all here in Slate.

Let me quote from Sally Bedell Smith's admirable book on the happy couple, For Love of Politics:

Taking the advice of Al Gore and National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Bill agreed to a proposal to bomb Serbian military positions while helping the Muslims acquire weapons to defend themselves—the fulfillment of a pledge he had made during the 1992 campaign. But instead of pushing European leaders, he directed Secretary of State Warren Christopher merely to consult with them. When they balked at the plan, Bill quickly retreated, creating a "perception of drift." The key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have "deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000 people.

I can personally witness to the truth of this, too. I can remember, first, one of the Clintons' closest personal advisers—Sidney Blumenthal—referring with acid contempt to Warren Christopher as "a blend of Pontius Pilate with Ichabod Crane." I can remember, second, a meeting with Clinton's then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin at the British Embassy. When I challenged him on the sellout of the Bosnians, he drew me aside and told me that he had asked the White House for permission to land his own plane at Sarajevo airport, if only as a gesture of reassurance that the United States had not forgotten its commitments. The response from the happy couple was unambiguous: He was to do no such thing, lest it distract attention from the first lady's health care "initiative."

The first thing I ever did to approach blogging was to try to keep track of the situation that led to America's involvement in Bosnia. I will endeavor to find that particular little piece of my website. At the very least I still have my open letter to a Serb. One thing I do not forget is our failure at Srebernica. This is the failure that made me understand that America had the power but lacked the will to engage and intervene in the prevention of genocide.

To skip over this tragedy at the express direction of having a zero sum game with Clinton's health care is unforgiveable.

The Algebraist: First Look

I did a little bit of reading this weekend. So I am struck by the universe of Ian M. Banks finally. I was bored to tears by Canal Dreams so many years ago, but The Algebraist is cooking my braincells.

There is but this simple idea. What does a race who lives millions of years do? They float around in gas giant planets, tired of conquering the universe, or bored with it perhaps, and hunt their young.

Ruling the universe is for people who dress up in scary costumes. What do they do? They establish massive hierarchies. It has occurred to me how massive are our hierarchies. I am stuck on Chris Rock's story. He thinks he loves his wife, but he has to risk everything he has to come to that realization. That's learning the hard way. So what if you don't matter? What if your ambition is a curse? What is the point of learning anything at all? Why not simply hunt your youth? I don't know how Banks is likely to answer those questions, but I am well-prepared for his history of the distant future which encompasses millions of light years and billions of years. The loss of a million lives is oil for the greatest events. In that way you might be useful. The best thing that might happen is that you see it coming.

Black Writers: The Disappeared

Some time ago, it was 1991 I think, I can never seem to remember exactly in calendar terms, I moved to Brooklyn. I had been a performance poet in the LA scene and along with my fairly mature programming skills I was adding writing skills. I would bet there was even a time when I considered going to one of those writing programs. In retrospect, it's rather a good thing I didn't considering the life I have, but then again who's to say I'd want this one had I gone? Still, there were few things more exciting to me than landing in the Big City of Dreams with a book of rhymes and a heart full of passion.

Like most people I knew, I read the Village Voice. Like few people I knew, I read The Nation. Having not gone to Boston College or some such, I rather wished that The Nation ran personal ads. It was very difficult for me to find the right kind of mate. Yet and still, I managed to begin to ingratiate myself into that which I assumed to be the most intellectually advanced and progressive literary scene in the New World Afrikan diaspora. If there was a MA beneath your dreads, I was bound to get your phone number.  Like most folks of this stripe, I read Greg Tate on the regular. As well, Lisa Smith's words tugged at me. It started when I began reading Toni Morrison a couple years earlier - an old story I'm sure I've told here too many times. I wanted to be a part of the great black literate scene. I ended up in Boston a couple years later trying to do multimedia and then gave the whole thing up when I recognized what hiphop had done to the egos of people in the proto-digital studios of the world. There was no way I was working for those fools. I soon realized it was the case for all creatives even though De La had spelled it out clearly years earlier - it's a full time era. Part timers like me were not welcome.

If I learned anything from those years it's that only critics write for free. In that respect, you get what you pay fore and you can dismiss the whole of the internet. And it is this axiom that best explains why at this late date that I feel strangely isolated from the world of black literary geniuses I loved so much 20 years ago. The only place I've met Stanley Crouch is in the aggregations of Booker Rising. And I don't expect that I ever will, because this is what I firmly believe: black writers cannot afford to write for free and that's why Jimi Izrael's blog gets shorter and shorter. That's why Michael Thelwell, a man whose writing blew my mind in an anthology by Gerald Early, has disappeared from sight. That's why Brent Staples, the man I really want to hear say something about Trinity Church is silent. Ain't nobody paying him to say so. Why would any of those writers condescend to write for free on the Internet?

Well, once upon a time I thought it would be for the love of writing, but apparently Sting's aphorism doesn't apply. If you love something, don't set it free, pimp it out.

Every six months or so I feel the itch. You know, to completely abandon the Web and write a book - take a year or so and get that game on. But I don't have that kind of time because I have a real job. And yet I think of men who have written thirty and forty books. In the end, it's a matter of what's important.

I'm a salon kind of guy. I love good company. And I think some days I'd like to have my own. If I had *that dinner* I can imagine sitting down with Jimi and Farai and Albert Murray and a bunch of others to hash things. I'd have to have Elvis Mitchell there and maybe Delroy Lindo. They say talk is cheap, but attention is very precious. It's all but impossible to get that kind of attention in one place to talk for free. Somehow I expected that to happen in black salons on the web, and as much as I love hosting Cobb I can't help but think somedays that we're across an insuperable gap.

I have been thinking about the extent to which it is a foolish vanity to have a certain quote about me in my intro. The Good Doctor and my friend Lester Spence has called me the Ralph Ellison of my generation. It is perhaps regrettable, I'm not sure that I have earned that, nor is it clear to me that my generation needs a Ralph Ellison. At the very least Ellison was formally published and I am not. So I'll remove that with no disrespect, and much thanks for the sentiment.

So this weekend, I looked at my 'incredible hyperbio', a collection of about 180 phrases about my life split up into 10 periods and began to flesh out the 180 stories behind them. It's time to admit, I think, how my life has led me to become the Lonely Man that I must finally admit that I am. The working title of my book is 'Up From Freedom' and I hope to illustrate how, at long last, I have acquired the mental liberation I believe that I possess. In short, it is a process of unlearning and appreciating from a distance - of becoming unblack in order to truly and reflectively appreciating what blackness is rather than staying in the grip of blackness and wishing yourself and all other blacks into impossible contortions. The hypocrites have company, I have a copy of 'The Magic Mountain' unread on the shelf. I know where I'm from and I have a feeling that I'm going into my old age with very few friends precisely because I have decided to make my life make sense to me. There will be contradictions.

I think in that way, black writers disappear. If my book would have a poem as a preface it would certainly be Nikki Giovanni's Revolutionary Dreams. This week people have been talking about LeBron James and whether or not he was posed properly for the cover of Vogue Magazine. Last week people were complaining about whether we should take Barack Obama's preacher seriously. I don't need a third sign to tell me that my generation does not need a Ralph Ellison. I simply cannot care about race any longer. I am now simply negotiating whether or not it has been a waste of time in my life. Writing must be an elevating activity in and of itself and if it works one must finally be rid of the covered subjects or be faced with the failure of writing. Either alternative is harsh but at least there is a lesson learned. And I believe that all of the black writers disappear from the dark subjects or remain living in the past. Spence illustrated that clearly of Amiri Baraka in consideration of his first generation mau mau politics. And now Kwame Kilpatrick has sealed the tomb of black power. It's overcooked. It's overwrought. It's over.

For me, I will be good for a half generation. And then, like Ellison perhaps, I might live to see myself irrelevant. I am to be a bouy around rocks in soupy seas to be sure, but I expect the trade routes of race to change and what I fathom to be eventually only curious. The black writer disappears in the same way the black bourgie disappears to the ghetto. He cannot survive talking about what he is to those who are not. That's sick and twisted. He must be amongst the living, no matter how small those square feet might be. Let the critics retrace my steps. I have a future to face.

Preparation

Nuke Notes 1

From Dennis Prager this morning, Gwenyth Cravens speaks up about nuclear energy. As a proponent, I am beginning to take notes. I am surprised to learn new things about this fascinating option.

Firstly there have only been 59 deaths from Chernobyl.

Secondly, all of America's nuclear waste (and we do practically no recycling) since the beginning is 50,000 tons. That could be stored in a volume the size of a big box retail store. In comparison, we dispose of 160,000 tons of batteries every year.

Come Together With Your Hands

It started with a simple question in 2004 in Atlanta. I remember the very first time I heard Spoonman by Soundgarden. So I asked. The guy I asked was Bret Busch. He knew the song. I think he's in Australia now, or that's what he told me. I said that I liked the new rock but there was only one Soundgarden song I knew and loved, the popular one. And he told me this was Soundgarden. I've been hearing only half the lyrics and knowing a fraction of the song. I keep hearing 'save me', but it's about something else - someone else. Artis the Spoonman. And today I recover that bit.

The Federal Reserve, Bear Stearns & The Global Economy

I'm late getting to this subejct because of Obama drama. Let's talk about what's going on with the Fed, the price of gold, the dollar vs the euro and how changing liquidity is affecting the economy. What's going on here?

Tibet: On the Radar

When I read Thomas PM Barnett's 'New Map' I was very much in mind of saying of Volvo-driving peaceniks that they would very well be for peace in Tibet, but would rip the 'Free Tibet' bumperstickers if GWBush would bother to send troops.

So now comes news that makes me pause. There is endless trouble in this big old ugly world, and Tibet has gotten way too much, and I now seem to grasp the whole of it. China has been bullying Tibet for as long as I can remember, and I've always thought of it as one of those smoldering conflicts which involve little skirmishes with perhaps a hundred casualties a year. Something like all the noise next to Israel, or perhaps the continuing harshness in Kashmir. But never have I bothered to pursue an accurate tally of the the dead in Asia. Yesterday however Prager put some numbers in my face that smack me like shiny kiddie bomblets.

As an aside, back in my 20s, as I was growing accustomed to my newly minted white collar comfort and Nordstrom wardrobe, I would be periodically annoyed by junk mail and telemarketers to my office. It was a novel sort of privileged bother to have some guy from Prudential Bache call me to ask if they could manage my 401K. But one of the solicitors was Amnesty International and for the sake of that moral cache, I opted in. Within no time I got my first official newsletter whose subject was Namibia, and I then discovered this new nation which supplied about half the world's uranium. It was essentially a territory of the pre-ANC South Africa in which blacks slaved in mines providing energy for a Nationalist Nuke and the electricty of the free world without so much as a vote or a decent wage. And so I was hooked and attempted to enlighten my colleagues about the tempests of Walvis Bay. Few cared, fewer still recognized my new vocabulary and geography and moderate outrage. I would go to black activist rallies and add my two cents about the travesty going on in a country the size of California that nobody knew.

And so began the beginning of my understanding that battles over Affirmative Action were small peanuts in contrast to world affairs. With my black network and college political associations, I was in the thick of the heated discussions of how evil corporations refused Affirmative Action bolstered by the hostile rhetoric of the second Reagan Administration and what bourgie Negroes such as myself on the inside owed the community on the outside. And yet when I spoke about the positive influence of American corporations that employed many many blacks in South Africa as part of George P Schultz' arrangement of Constructive Engagement, all I got were cold stares. American corporations giving jobs to blacks, taking them out of ghettos and making them bourgie in America: good.  American corporations giving jobs to blacks, taking them out of ghettos and making them bourgie in South Africa: bad. I couldn't abide such twisted logic, and thus began my gradual estrangement with the liberal sentiments of the Talented Tenth who were stuck as targets bearing all the responsibility for political leadership in 'the' black community.

It wasn't long before I got my second Amnesty International newsletter. This time I read about shiny kiddie bomblets. In my life, never before had the horror of terrorism been made more clear to me. I can still remembering how my little bourgie life was shattered that day that I discovered them. Militants in Afghanistan made IEDs and attached them to small pieces of brightly colored plastic or mirrors - shiny things that small children would be attracted to. They made the little bombs less than lethal purposefully so that they would only maim and not kill. Parents would be reminded every day caring for their limbless children of their subjugation. Amnesty International saw, and now so did I.

It was more than I could stand. I had to unsubscribe. I could not maintain any sense of perspective as a young man trying to make my new purchase on the full benefits of American life, heretofore denied my own parents and still living grandparents. How could I be right if I gave my heart over to such concerns? After all, the work I had done to arrive where I was was not inconsequential. Nevertheless, I knew in my heart of hearts that I could never again heed the protestations of my American fellows who wanted to drive white collar automobilies cursing their blue collar jobs and the evils of Reaganomics that forced them to eat at hamburger instead of steak. Still, I closed my eyes to the big world. Maybe one day I will be master of enough of American life to make a difference, but today none of my volleyball and wine cooler buds, nor any of my red, black & green brothers in the struggle were prepared for Afghanistan and Namibia. Amnesty International was obviously for rich liberals, not for me.

And so this morning as I sit in my pajamas, I consider the moral consequences of giving my heart over to the concerns of Tibet, sick to death as I am over the minute points to be made over the character of Barack Obama. I have just purchased for my newly 13 year old daughter, an 8 megapixel camera for her birthday and drove her to school in my sock feet and BMW. My world is stable and amply comfortable if not prosperous. I don't take perverse pride in the moral oneupmaship of 'taking the right position' on a conflict half a world away. You'll not see those kinds of stickers on my Chevy. Nevertheless, as a writer, I have taken on certain responsibilities and they are basically to be perceptive and articulate. I cannot avert my gaze forever. But looking will not be an act to assuage any guilt. I simply know now what I know and that is that millions are under militant threat, and there are YouTubes out there with graphic scenes.

I am about to go there. I am about to look. I pause and reflect today on this last day of innocence.

The Last Word on Obama's Character

I am convinced that Obama is pursuing a sort of liberal radical chic acceptance. That this half-black Harvard grad has gone all Patty Hearst on us. That he deliberately chose the most distressed blackfolks in his ambit to align himself with their desperate hopes in a paternalistic way in order to develop the kind of credibility and ‘authenticity’ he believes that he needs as a politician.

Both he and Michelle are very clueless as to what their privileges in America mean, and the fact that they keep bringing up the “He could have had a Wall Street job but instead came to work in the projects” is their story and they’re sticking to it, like missionaries in the jungle trying to convince themselves of the righteousness of their mission. They expect to be respected as long suffering souls who have made their sacrifices for the most noble of causes, and believe me they want the rest of us to sacrifice too - they’re after that tax.

Black politicians have accused Obama of cherry picking, and that is what I take to be his career. He was made by an old school first generation black pol, and took all the glory.

Yes, there is a fraction of the desperate black electorate who are in a strange psychological state and who need ‘get whitey’ to get through their day. I think Obama has taken 20 years to ‘feel their pain’ and speak their language and understand their frustration and that this is very deeply his connection to his blackness - that ultimately he is alienated from both communities he straddles and does not truly believe in either.

You know in black upper middle class circles, there are parents who grew up in the ‘hood who despair that their kids are growing soft. I’ve heard the confessions that they want to send their kids back to grandma in the South to toughen them up on grits and okra, or back to the ghetto to get ‘real’. I happen to be one of those who finds little ennobling in poverty itself, I don’t believe that the poor in spirit will inherit the earth. I’m not down with this sort of immersion program, but I recognize that there are millions of Americans who have no idea how wealth and privilege can be moral in its own right. Surely the Obamas haven’t done the hard work of meeting a payroll, what with board memberships paying their bills - they are strangers to all but academic hard work. They actually needed to see what the meritocracy of Wall Street was all about. Oh but they’re making sure that their kids don’t grow up overprivileged. They are professionally slumming.

Half-white, growing up in Hawaii, Harvard Law, light skin, non-jive talking Barry would be absolutely devastated by the label of Uncle Tom. His relationship with black demagoguery is absolutely crucial, but does he believe it? About as much as Oxfam volunteers believe in the witch doctors in Africa they feed. If Barack Obama had married Shaniqua instead of Michelle, I’d take his attraction a lot more seriously, but now I think he’s managing his obsession quite well.

Spivak on Obama: Cherry Picking in Chicago

Best story I've seen on Obama in a long time. Check out this passage:

Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor's office as well as both legislative chambers.

The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James "Pate" Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.

Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama's. He became Obama's ­kingmaker.

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio ­program.

I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:                                        

"He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"                                        

"Oh, you are? Who might that be?"                                        

"Barack Obama."                                        

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

"I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."

Whew!

Understanding Obama

I've been thinking that some folks are considerably puzzled by Barack Obama. I don't think I am, and so I offer my take on who his constituents want him to be, and therefore the direction in which he has driven his ambition. It inevitably takes him across people like Wright, not because Wright is whom he is, but because he's a liberation theologist and that is a well-know checkbox on the list of Boule prerogatives.

Obama has obviously come across the political imperative of the Talented Tenth. It's hard to say exactly where or when but it is clear to me that this is the case. I believe that he has been drafted into black leadership in rather the same way all gifted black individuals do in this country. I cannot imagine that he didn't get through Harvard Law without some notion that he could succeed in accomplishing the lifting of all boats in ways black predecessors had not. As Spengler says, you may find Obama in his women. That is something I do not doubt. Michelle Obama, unquestionably gets Barry the proper profile - she is Felicia Rashad to his Bill Cosby. If he was ever confused about his blackness, as callous as it sounds, Michelle is the trophy wife to get him into the right circles of the liberal black upper class where Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas have their caberet cards cancelled.

There has to be some enormous temptation for Obama to swoop in and inherit the legacies of great black leaders and continue the Struggle that lives on in utopian dreams of millions of black Americans who feel unheard in the current political system. Temptations such as these will lead one to great black political churches like Trinity.

As I said before it is well understood that in the common black political parlance, dealing with 'social justice' and 'inequality' are the among the strongest ideas. The conceit, which is not entirely unearned, is that only a radicalized young population is capable of energizing the nation to address unmet needs, of the dreams of the poor and the oppressed. Racial identity plays into this but it has little to do with the endgame. To speak of race, always implies what to do with those outside of the mainstream. "America is a racist country" should be interpreted as whitefolks run the corporations, blackfolks live in the ghetto, this is not an accident. Social justice means 'leveling the playing field', 'black power' etc.  It being a black power movement however means that blacks have every right to achieve this on black terms, not mainstream or 'white' terms. Only the latent threat that black folks weild, all the way back to slavery, by this reasoning, is capable of moving the most powerful nation on earth. It is moral blackmail, and it won't be satisfied until Reparations are paid or Obama is elected. (I think the goalposts would move again, but that's another story).

The temptation to reduce the reasons for the isolation of ghetto folks to white racism has always worked, but Obama is too smart to believe it's the only reason. But that doesn't change the fact that he commands the devotees to the liberal cause of 'social justice'. Social justice is an end to itself, and is not providing cover to some black racial supremacist or separatist agenda. It is a cover for multicultural patronage, pure and simple.

I once wrote that the black electorate always wants more government because our history is that we got none. And so there is a perception that only when blackfolks step up and demand government concessions will they ever get treated equally. This is taking the rhetoric of politicians very seriously, especially those associated with unions and machines. Blackfolks are hungry for patronage, why not get their share? It's all dirty. And that's what politics as usual means, and if the majority of politicians are white, well then obviously whitefolks are getting their patronage. If Cheney can have Halliburton and Iraq, why begrudge Obama and Wright? It's not like we're killing people to steal oil and get rich. Any documented corruption in American government is subject to such reasoning, where is black people's payoff?

Obama is therefore on the hook to deliver some genuine black patronage to his constituents, those he directly works for and those blacks who have adopted him symbolically. And thus he is obligated to take on the mantle of blacks who speak truth to power and demand some ethnic grease. But today that is done in the politically acceptable language of multiculturalism. Obama is in the position of answering the questions once and for all "What do you people want?" Everybody knows it.

So if social justice can and equality can mean proportional representation in colleges for blacks and latinos and all other underrepresented minorities, the Obama has to be the man to deliver those. In every aspect of Obama's policy, one can interpret that it means more for those who never got their 'fair share' of government largess. If you have to tax the rich white bastards, so what? They've already got the American Dream, we live the American nightmare. Sure it's self-serving, and Hillary Clinton is not?

The employment of Wright and Wright's church serves the purpose of keeping such principles of 'social justice' in mind and letting Obama know what kind of flack he's going to get for enabling it. And everybody who has a gripe against social justice, just because a black man is giving it to black Americans is going to have to face the wrath of Christian ministers who are not afraid to call America on it. From a purely Christian perspective, America is evil. This is not unpatriotic, it is the disambiguated 'America' of power, wealth, corruption, and world domination. This is America from the perspective of people who have hardscrabble jobs and have no idea how the economy works except that it doesn't give them a break. All of Ron Paul's people have the same idea. You have to do something radical to give the little guy a break, and only a new kind of politician can do that.

If you care about 'social justice' and 'equality' then Obama is your man. And you know the System is going to try any way it can to beat him down. Is this the politics of resentment? Yes. It is also largely the politics of impatience. There remains a presumption that there is a polycarbonate, transparent aluminum ceiling established for those who don't sell out the poor and powerless in America. Not so much that there is some absolute deprivation in lower middle-classness or minority exile, but that such Americans would do better if they had *their* president in power, who could arbitrarily stop the war, lower gas prices, get us all free health care or otherwise do whatever he wanted as the People's President. That is a sentiment that will always have a constituency in America, and Obama is their draftee. It's the job he really wants.

Everything that every American doesn't participate in equally is suspect in this liberal framework, and Obama seeks to adjudicate this. He is prepared to believe that all resistence to him is prejudicial and misguided, and he has ample precedent as one of the black upper class to believe that to be true. Does anyone believe that Thurgood Marshall would tell him any different were he alive today?

I am convinced that Barack Obama is playing a role that has been classically defined and is well understood in the context of the African American upper class and the Talented Tenth imperative. His actual faith in Wright's rhetoric is something of a distraction - it is his way to have the common touch with the herrenvolk of black outsiders, to the multicultural social justice rank and file, and to a new generation of voters. It's just one play amongst many, a hail mary pass to the long forgotten left wing wide reciever at the expense of his old reliable upper-class tight end. Wright has been called for unsportsmanlike conduct. So what? As long as Obama scores the winning touchdown, he expects to defy all resentment. It's his team, he calls the plays, and he won't disown any of his players.

Cone Speaks

And more.

Comments to come..

The Middle of the End of Obama

This past week marks the hardening of the lines drawn across Barack Obama's future prospects for leading the country as president. I can't speak for those who support him, but for those who don't the negatives are piling high - to insuperable levels. The prospects for McCain are rising as he has taken the benefit of the independents' doubt away from Obama.

Obama, who was forced into a litmus test on race, misjudged his audience and prepared a dissertation instead. He was put in a position to have to explain to all of America where he is on race and America wasn't happy. That is to say the greater fraction of America, the fraction that would make the most difference for him, dismissed his explanation. It is apparent to me that there are folks who take race and racism seriously as a complex subject and there are those who treat the whole area as a fire swamp, never to be navigated and generally to be avoided. While Obama might be content to wrestle with the racist rodents of unusual size, the Americans whose support he needed most were not impressed. And now faced by his skeptical audience Obama gave the distinct impression that he was quite capable of living happily in that fire swamp forever undaunted although not unscarred by its beasts. That's no way for a prince to behave, and so much of America has been revulsed. That is the Republican half and the Hillary quarter. Poor pitiful farm boy.

Above and beyond that, among the chatting classes I have encountered over the long weekend, there is a second arrow in Obama's chest, and that is he simply cannot fight and win. Obama, whether or not he sees himself as a soothing balm for the bareknuckle politics has backed himself into that peace-loving corner. And so the common wisdom says that Hillary's machine is going to rip him to shreds, if he doesn't self-destruct first. Obama would self-destruct by proving he can knuckle up like an old school Chicago pol, proving once and for all the lie that perhaps always was - that he is a new kind of politician above mendacious means, expedient tactics and selfish strategies. In the end, really the most charitable thing that could be said about Obama is that he is too naive and green. Perhaps he should run for the head of Health and Human Services. He's too nice to be president.

And so in a short period of time, Obama has been knocked to the canvas and all of his supporters have drawn the ire and disrespect of the rest of the electorate. Not only is Obama considered a fool, but Obama voters are thought to be driving with one wheel in the sand.

I can't smell concession quite yet. But I see the smoke in the air.

Why Race Talk Doesn't Work

R6V2: First Look

I have been playing Rainbow Six Vegas for a week in anticipation of ganging up with my old buddies for the new release. Who knows, we might even become a devastating clan. So last night was the first time I played the game and it looks new and interesting.

The four biggest differences are all important.

1. Tight Maps
Everybody will tell you immediately that these maps force you to think. Open areas where you might have just dashed across in Ghost Recon or Call of Duty - don't even think about it. The enemy is deadly and they don't miss. You simply must use your tactics. I've been on just a few co-op terrorist hunts and everybody right now is calling out positions and thinking about their load outs. That's because when the AIs are lurking twelve feet from you behind cover, they're ready to pop you quickly.

The maps are claustrophobic and you get the feeling that there is an enemy around every corner, it's not as tight as Splinter Cell, but this is definitely and indoorsy game. Sure there is lots of outdoor action but busting down doors and hiding in cover is really part of this game because there are few wide open spaces.

2. Sprinting.
I can't tell you how annoying it has become to play R6V after playing Gears of War or Call of Duty or Frontlines. It just seems way too slow by comparison. But part of that pace was its appeal because you had to think your way around, not just run and gun. Well now you can run and guess what. You still have to think. In fact you have to think more, because the accellerated pace of this game, which was already way more deadly.

The great new aspect of gameplay makes this game really cool and it took about a dozen online 7 on 7 matches for me to see the magic. Running short distances and slamming into cover in R6V2 now approaches the excitement of doing the same in Gears of War. It's more difficult to accomplish in Rainbow, but the tactic is immediately familiar and the way that the new tight close combat maps work, this is how you can inch your way to the enemy stronghold. That's excitement. I was practically spawn killing using this technique.

3. Armor
Armor makes a much bigger difference in this game. I can remember the frustration of the old R6 when spawn killing was a problem and you could dance around and pump people full of lead and people would dance on their left joystick and not die. Now, there can still be a little bit of dancing, way more than R6V, but only when they are wearing armor. In combination with sprinting, it makes for a more dynamic part of gameplay because you can change up armor on each respawn. The less armor you wear, the longer you can sprint. Adjusting your armor for different maps adds a real dimension I really appreciate right away.

4. ACES
In Project Gotham Racing 4, the Kudos system finally reached perfection. I think that can now be said about the ranking system in R6V2. I love it. The fact that you accumulate your points in co-op whether you win or lose is very cool and the three categories of achievements are stellar. I''ve never been one to accumulate internal rankings for more than just the big guns, but these are actually fun in a non-fanboy way.

A few other things I've noticed. The interiors of some of these maps are very sweet looking. Almost to the quality of Splinter Cell. Putting the ROE on the Back button is a little bit annoying - it's one of the things I use a lot, especially when I want them to flash & clear and then engage weapons free.

Enemy AI seems improved slightly and now there are two weapons they have and you don't that are to be feared and respected. The SPAS 12 is back, and deadly as ever, but now they have the AUG Para. That bad boy is nasty.

Pith & Wit Friday

"I'm a stubborn fellow got a mind to burn.
Don't tell me to be cool, you can be cool when it's your turn."
-- Bootsy Collins

"I don't need praise for my ego's sake.
I need praise to quiet the people with the nerve to doubt me."
-- Me

An Open Letter to Victor Davis Hanson

As a recent reader of most everything VDH in this medium, I am a bit surprised to hear you judge Obama as many would want him to be judged. I usually look to you to give me a deeper insight into the historical precedents for things we observe on the contemporary scene. Alas in your latest pronouncement on the failure of Obama, you have failed to even investigate the history of the man's church. It thus seems to me that you are thus suggesting Obama is a phenomenon existing outside of history, a freak of nature with no deep connections to anything but the present and his own ambition. You default.

I have heard many arguments denigrating him as an empty suit. He's more than that but we can all see he is prone to semiotic slickness. At bottom, it's clear from his record that he is firmly in the MoveOn Left, or as I've written, Barbara Boxer in a black man suit. If indeed Obama is something of a fraud, we should keep in mind that nobody can cheat an honest man. The flimflammer succeeds because he promises something that sounds too good to be true, and his pigeons buy into that confidence because they want that thing to be true. But no honest and thoughtful voter should assess the qualities of that new black man suit and judge that Obama's campaign is a referendum on American race relations. Similarly, no honest and thoughtful critic should upbraid him on the basis of race relations. The office of the President of the United States has no such Constitutional responsibility - that is on us as individuals to overcome the eternal threat that tribalism poses to liberty.

I've never heard the phrase 'post-racial' so much in my life until Obama proved himself to be something other than that. But post-racial is the fantasy of people who look towards messianic figures to do their moral thinking for them, to give them a yellow brick road to paradise, to be their Oz and demiurge of utopian post-racial dreams. Nobody has ever been that and nobody ever will be. We each have to recognize our own brains, heart and courage to do so, then we will find our way home.

Instead we have let guilt by association lead us to a character assassination that demonstrates the shallowness of those false expectations. People who decried multiculturalism two weeks ago are now straining to tell us how this gaffe has permanently alienated white male working class voters. There's racial realism for you. The absolute rejection of any comparison between a white grandmother and a black minister shows how phony certain age, gender and colorblind protestations have been.

For Americans who truly understand and support the premises and promises of equality, no such demographic prompting is necessary. We should see a policy and a candidacy for what it is, not for what identity suit it wears. And while the common wisdom now says that Obama harbors racists much in the way that Saddam harbored terrorists the "who knew what and when" boilerplate goes on - well one degree to Wright. But the investigation goes nowhere to the substance of the Christian faith of Obama and dares not ask why someone who was destined to be Muslim became Christian instead or exactly what kind of Christian he is. The Christian commonality evidently was not enough, and so the politics and identity politics of difference prevailed. Those investigators reveal that they actually believed that a good racial reconciliation was indeed too good to be true, for certainly this black man should not be judged according to the strength of his character to resist and reject racism. Not that anyone besides the McCain campaign has been chartiable on this particular debacle, but I would consider it appropriate to assume that the millions of Obama supporters had already accepted the premise that he was a decent enough man who raised no probable cause to suggest he was a racist or race hustler. Indeed how many of us did not really have some racial burden of proof for the man? How many of us truly accept and support the premises and promises of equality? Where has the benefit of that doubt gone? Now what becomes the burden of proof? I think it has now descended to the Don Imus standard. Offensive rhetoric is as far as investigations go, not to religious or philosophical principles. Rapper Kanye West famously said 'George Bush doesn't care about black people.' Now we know by that same standard 'Barack Obama doesn't care about white people', and to hell with deeper analysis.

Obama in his chastened state has made what some are calling the most honest assessment of race relations of any major candidate. That's not a very high standard either. But he did get one thing right, his campaign is not going to make the difference of how we Americans perceive each other. Indeed we are the people that we need to be, and we should stop waiting for someone else to tell us so. Isn't it interesting what we have shown ourselves to be with Obama as, finally and tragically perhaps, the American Rorschach test on race? I think we have been less than honest and have cheated ourselves.

TDub of War

It's interesting what a few minutes of cruising around YouTube can do to stimulate the mind.

This morning I have been thinking about our education system, and reviewing the statements made at the Fairmont Conference by Sutton, Sowell and Friedman. On the one hand, I think Sutton was being a bit short-sighted, but that's beside the point. Friedman was quite interesting in that he looked at a number of issues that are still remaining problems for the underclass, but at the top of his list was education. And yet our educational system remains fairly weak in many places and quite frankly inverted in other high places. This week, Boy went with the California Jr Scholastic Federation, in which he is a member by dint of being on the honor roll, to UCLA. And so now I have begun to think about the hundreds of thousands of dollars I will need to earn for my kids continuing education.

I take a moment to note that I make too much money to get a Cal Grant, and nowhere near enough to feel comfortable in spending 25k/year (times three) on my kid's tuition, room and board at UC. Also that the Pell Grant Program, which I'm also probably too affluent to qualify for, spends an average of about 12 billion a year, providing 5.3 million students with scholarships.

At any rate, I found this video by Thomas Sowell, in looking for other materials related to the Fairmont Conference in which he suggested rather pessimistically last summer, that it may take a military coup to save America from itself if our politics and educational systems continue in the miserable way they have in recent years. Sowell thinks we are cruising on accumulated capital which is bound to run out unless we get busy generating the sorts of wealth that keeps nations growing. I'm sure his is no idle speculation. He thinks Iran will go nuclear and that there will be hell to pay, but we may sit and twiddle our thumbs.

The idea has crossed my mind on several occasions that the most honorable folks in America seem to be the military brass, and that there's something a little bit freaky about McCain as President. More specifically 'War President'. I've also noticed that a number of 9/11 Democrats like Dennis Miller tend to be a little bit too obsequious at times. And I've already told you the story of

For some reason I cannot fathom, perhaps because of some similar interest by the person who posted the video, there was an associated video of a kid who is five foot nine inches tall, who does extraordinary dunks with a basketball. This kid, TDub is phenomenal. Like most folks, I am impressed by the skill and determination that goes into what this guy does, but I'll probably be more likely than most folks to call into question its value. You cannot look at what TDub does and not think to yourself, it's hard for me to believe a human being can do that. It looks like the stuff of video game and cartoon physics. And so I think to myself, what if this guy were a warrior?

Immediately I think of the novel and film 'Timeline' in which the author describes how quickly mideval warriors were with heavy swords on horseback. If you consider for a moment the extreme lengths to which people will train and push themselves it's not so amazing that a kid can dunk like this, or that a man could swing a 30 pound sword faster than you can blink. Why that's not the same kid is a question relating to what our society motivates us to do.

For a number of years I have been writing about the direction of black politics, but the subtext is how African Americans are or are not integrating into society. At a certain level there is no issue. We *are* integrated into society. Black culture is transparent (although perhaps certaing black churches are not) and everybody is more or less exposed to the same culture. But what our culture motivates us to do is often not in the national interest and that keeps us spinning out efforts into awesome, yet futile behavior. Today, we 'naturally' expect to find someone like TDub and we expect that they will display skills of a certain type. TDub and the dunk are indeed stereotypical. There's nothing wrong except that this sort of entertainment does not work towards our national purpose. I'm not saying that art and entertainment should, I am talking about the zero sum game of individual skill development. What kind of men and women are we to be, and how can we comport ourselves to not be dismissible in the grand scheme of things. One soldier, one doctor, one farmer can make the difference between life and death, one basketball dunker never will - or if he does, then we have come to a sorry state.

I am as bored with middle class achievement as anyone, and I would hardly wish it upon blackfolks and black politics that we all become accountants or soldiers 'for the survival of the race'. But I think we might all do a little more thinking about how we develop our skills for the sake of the challenges America is apt to face over the next 20 years, which might indeed mean war. I've seen the Underarmor commercial and I know the George Carlin bit - we are a warlike nation, we like war. In all of us there is a taste for combat, but that's a different thing than being prepared for it. Democracies in fact hate war and we always prefer to vote against it. But we must always be prepared for it.

Sometimes I get the feeling that we have a generation of men who are prepared to leap tall buildings with a single bound but only for the applause.

Cobbler Meets

So now there are at least two semi-official Cobbler meets this year. The first is going to be at the Long Beach Grand Prix on the weekend of April 18-20. Me and some crusty old gamers, especially the guys who like driving games, are going to hang out, drink beer, smoke cigars, curse and tell dirty jokes, and try to get close to the fast cars and greasy pits. If this sounds like your idea of fun, hookup here and on Facebook.

The second is going to be at the Gibson (nee Universal) Amphitheatre on June 14. That's going to be the Return to Forever concert for which I'm probably going to have to fork up some dough ahead of time to buy a block of a dozen or so seats. I imagine it will be a less raucus affair and we'll probably do shrimp and wine coolers beforehands.

Altogether it would be my extraordinary good fortune to meet some of you fine folks face to face. So mark the dates. I will be there for sure.

German Economic Fakery Behind Renewable Power

I desperately tried to find something worth watching on TV last night as I downloaded new stuff for my XBox whose video input dominates the tube. I landed on a PBS science show, Nova I think. Since my kids, going to Southern California public schools are inundated with environmental information some of which is actually useful, I do my part to give them some perspective. Incidently, I gave Sprite a copy of the latest Imprimis on nuclear energy and she sternly told me that she's not concerned with global warming, just air pollution. Excuse me.So I figure it would be worth watching.

Well it turns out that Germany has this deal in which they guarantee to fix the price of electricity generated from solar for twenty years. As a homeowner you buy electricity for .20/kWH and you can sell it back to the grid for .50/kWH. Not a bad scam.

I now recognize how vulnerable children are to the promises of science and environmentalism - it is because they have no concept of economies and the extent to which this small interesting tidbit of capability fits into the realms of possibility. And while this Nova program showed very reasonable soundbites about how renewables are never going to handle much more than peak demand (Duh solar power doesnt' work at night), it was fascinating how quickly they went over to Germany saying that one man is making a difference and got that country to get 20% of their power from renewables, 'and it could go as high as 30%'. Then after that breathless prose they explain the details of the 20 year deal with the government.

The first word out of his mouth was anti-nuclear. Anti-fossil I can understand, and actually have some sympathy for. But the politics of energy are pretty interesting. So now I have decided to forget about healthcare completely. It's all about the energy, baby. I'm the pro-nuke guy.

Other Unnerving Things

Enough Already
I am sick to death of thinking about what other people are thinking about Obama and then writing about that and then having people wonder what I'm thinking. If he and I were standing near a cliff, I'm not so sure I wouldn't push him over for all the grief he's causing.

Bear Stearns
My buddy Mr Jones has been a bit unnerved by what's going on in capital markets these days. I hear that second hand from the Spousal Unit, and that's disturbing because Jones has basically been dismissing the entire housing market correction. We all know that BSC dropped from 30 to 2 bucks over the weekend and got some specific federal bailout, but something deeper is afoot and I need to find out. So I'm piqued.

Arthur C. Clarke
Dead. I first considered myself truly intelligent when I read his classic 2001 when I was in the 6th grade. Well, it was technically the summer after I graduated from the 6th grade, but the feeling was genuine. Clarke was my first, although he had a big boost from Danny Dunn. But then came Bradbury and all the other great science fiction writers and my impeding obsession with nuclear energy. I owe that to Clarke - he made me believe in the strength of my own mind.

Television
I am annoyed with television. I can't make it find what I want to see, and I really don't want to see what I've found in normal 4x3 normal definition. I want to see all the best movies in hi-def on a massive flat screen just for the visual excitement of it all. Which is why I am becoming a NASCAR fan. But I have neither the hi def nor the super audio. Every time I scroll through the onscreen guide I become more and more frustrated and disappointed.

Obama: Not Magic

Barack Obama already lost when he took the stage in Philadelphia today. But he acquitted himself as admirably as any Democrat possibly can. If I were a liberal and a supporter of Barack Obama, I would feel fully vindicated.

I think Obama has exposed everyone who nominated him to be the Magic Negro and he put it right back on them. if he were a Republican, he would have couched the exact same reversal in terms of personal responsibility and not a prerequisite to 'us' solving problems of health care, but the reversal was made. It is not Barack Obama's job to clean up the racial mess in America. It is your job. And every American from this point forward who wants to paint Obama in the colors of racial reconciliation is lazy. Period. No excuses.

Article A

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

 

Article B

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

 

The great charade of this debacle is that critics and fans from the left and right have placed the burden on Obama to be their magic negro, to prove once and for all that Americans are capable of bridging racial gaps. Obama certainly was willing to take on that mantle as the leader of the free world, and why wouldn't he? The president is many things to many people. But when push comes to shove, there is only so much of that symbolism any reasonable man can shoulder, and Obama has demonstrated a bit of wisdom in shrugging off that responsibility today. He disowns no one, and takes no responsibility for their dysfunctions. That's on you.

There's really nothing left to say.

Barack Obama Doesn't Care About White People

I have been unable to post any comments over at Protein Wisdom today. Odd. Here is the post I have been trying to get published over at the Pub, with some extensions...

It was suggested at the Pub that Obama is trying to sell a watered down version of liberation theology to whitefolks and that his nebulous mouthings are really a trojan horse for his core beliefs which are driven by Jeremiah Wright (hater & traitor). I countered that it is not fair to suggest that of Obama because nobody suggested that GWBush was a stealth agent of his church and reverend, whomever that may be and that his Compassionate Conservatism, a direct manifestation of his Christian ethics has done nothing to pervert the Church / State boundary.

It may surprise many of you to know that I am in favor of Bush's compassionate conservatism and that I think there is something monumentally important in the 'under God' phrase in the pledge of allegiance. God help us lest we become godless commies. And so I expect fully that there is some measure of transcendent morality present in those who run our secular state who understand implicitly that they have a moral responsibility beyond the ability to perfect government itself. Government should not be our Leviathan, but our own moral selves subjected to an even higher authority beyond what government can see. Otherwise if our morality is only secular and defined by government oversight then it becomes our duty to legislate morality, perhaps even panoptically. But I don't think that GWBush pushed the statist envelope - even the most cynical opponents said more about Halliburton than whatever GWB's church was. America essentially gave GWB and Jimmy Carter for that matter, the benefit of the doubt. JFK didn't have it and overcame. Romney didn't have it and did not overcome. Obama has now lost it and may or may not overcome.

I have no reason to believe that Obama is any more beholden to his minister than Joe Lieberman is to his rabbi whomever that may be, and I'm not going to go digging around to find out. (Andrew Sullivan has the right idea) That is because there is nothing in the man's policy or proposals that suggest to me that he must be. I think the presumption is prejudiced and it is one that I would not entertain. What's to stop us from asking for a dossier on everyone's spiritual advisor? Why stop there? Why not check up on their doctors and mental health? I'm not the legal expert but I think some measure of probable cause has been defied here.

Beyond that, on its face, what is the point of selling black liberation theology to white voters? Can anyone suggest with any credibility that those things Obama believes to be true about black victims does not inform his appeal to whites? It seems to me quite obvious that if you can remediate black dysfunction you learn more about human dysfuntion than you do about 'black' humanity. Where is the evidence that Obama would suggest a dual-track racialized approach to policy? It's one thing to say that his Christianity is victim-centered, it's another to say that it is racialized as well. Either is a good enough reason to doubt him, but I find it difficult to believe he is hiding a racial agenda directed by the more extreme soundbites we have heard - there being no better evidence than the fact that everyone recognizes how different Obama is from the class of race hustlers we already know.

Consider Baldilocks on Shelby Steele. I am thus inclined to believe that Obama is in fact purchasing some blackness in a rather radical chic way. But we all know how easy it is for stunned middle-class people to be aghast at Patty Hearst.

I welcome any and all critique on Liberation Theology. Having adopted some piece of that during a polytheist point in my own life, I understand something of its purchase on progressive thinking. Think of it as advanced multiculturalism, religious division. But I think anyone would be hard pressed to get James Cone on the phone and trip him into admitting what all the newbs seem to be swallowing, that he is a black supremacist. Again, this is all part an parcel of ministry to the sick, the friendless and the needy.
--

You might all do well to find out the nature of African American opinion that is not knee-jerkily seduced by Obama's rhetoric or candidacy. I for one have been a McCain supporter since Fred Thompson quit, but it doesn't change my feeling that a large number of Right critics have protested too much. As I have said, no honest supporter or critic of Obama should view his candidacy as a referendum on American race relations, and yet here is the full bloom of dishonest 'disinterest' bending over backwards to demonstrate absolute faith that Wright is a prima facia racist and that black strains of liberation theology is the coming of the Fourth Reich. Is there anyone serious at all in this criticism, people who have, perhaps read Obama's book?

Calmer heads will realize that the materiality of Wright's bigotry is nothing more or less than offensive speech for oversensitized people who feel like they have to claim their race and gender victimhood validated. All those who last week were telling us that Multiculturalism was crap are now reminding us that they are white men.  I said to hell with those afraid of Imus and I say to hell with those afraid of Wright.

It is an embarrassment to see people who have in the past three years, written perhaps 1000 words or less about the black church in America suddenly appear so prescient.

All that said, while I am not particularly interested in the worst soundbites of the past two decades played out in excruciating detail any more than I am in finding out what Spitzer's professional paramour actually looks like - I do recognize where the outrage is coming from. Jeremiah Wright is outrageous. As somebody who has spent several years asking whitefolks if they were willing to make racism illegal, I understand fairly well what people consider crime and what they consider piling on. Some consistency would be in order. This is class three racism. Next.

Just wow. One final thing. There is some part of my interest which is vested in the symbolism of Barry to shake some cobwebs out of both black and white heads about what's possible and likely in this nation specifically to bring to the fore what the cream of my generation of black men is like (I am two months older than Obama). To the extent that he has been forced to make his big race speech with this burden is a disappointment. That some fraction of America requires an explicit disclaimer means that the presumption is that this black man, of all people, is suspected of having a hidden racial agenda. It's stupefying to me and it must be absolutely humiliating to Obama. The honeymoon is ending real hard. It is patently obvious that a good number are determined to label him a racist and have done with him. Anybody remember Kanye West?

Mutant Ninja Techniques

(from the archives, June 1999)

Fishbone - Chim Chim's Badass Revenge
It surprises me how often people relate or don't relate to Fishbone in the terms of ska, but there it is. Clearly this is the album which would test such a narrow view of what the band has proven itself to be. On the same album with tracks like Love..Hate which boasts of some of the most sophisticated horn phrasing and rythms ever associated with electric guitar in any genre are old, old school favorites Beergut and Alcoholic going back to the days at Al's Bar in downtown LA in the early 80s.

But they push again as only an LA band can, with Riot, Rock Star and Monkey Dick, Fishbone breaks out with some serious hardcore thrash which makes you rethink what thrashing is all about. This is not adolescent rebellion, this is real rebellion and you can feel the weight of lyrics lived with the kick ass committment of a band that lives it. Fishbone is the anti studio-gangster, running the stopsign to get a piece of your mind with working words that aren't the shallow ejaculations of numb-nuts hardheads, but the heartfelt shouts of hearty love warriors.

But what has changed about the band as reflected in the longer cuts, especially Love..Hate and Nutmeg is the kind of (dare i say it) orchestral presense of a group of musicians who seem on the edge transcending the form. Taking off on the groove of Love..Hate and riffin on the lyric is magical, evocative of the ways you remember exactly where, even in the long versions of their songs Marvin would scream in Give it Up, or George would in One Nation Under a Groove, then turn around into a funkafied fanfare. Extraordinary. It's funk and rock and ska and poetry and rap and jazz, composed into a smooth frenzy that makes you jump, and then listen again and again.

NutMeg finally is the Anthem and it is something that bears repeating in these days of sellouts and poseurs, that there remains true, subtle yet passionate spirit behind that thing we call Rock, which is not all about cynical despair and other suicidal visions. Fishbone continues to bring the proper energy, humor, vituosity and gutbucket granduer to the front. This homie salutes, nyah better yet gives a sly wink and remains at peace with my inner Chim - I celebrate the birth of the babyhead... ahahahhha!

I'm a wild headed  brother pushing 40 and this is my music. I crank it up and live.  

Falwell's Roosting Chickens

A lot of people forget this:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson set off a minor explosion of their own when they asserted on television on Thursday that an angry God had allowed the terrorists to succeed in their deadly mission because the United States had become a nation of abortion, homosexuality, secular schools and courts, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Liberal groups and commentators denounced their remarks yesterday, as did President Bush, who has long enjoyed the political support of the two evangelists.

''The president believes that terrorists are responsible for these acts,'' said a White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius. ''He does not share those views, and believes that those remarks are inappropriate.''

Yet Mr. Falwell's and Mr. Robertson's remarks were based in theology familiar to and accepted by many conservative evangelical Christians, who believe the Bible teaches that God withdraws protection from nations that violate his will.

Several conservative theologians and evangelists said in interviews yesterday that they agreed with the basic notion but rejected the idea that mere humans can ever know which particular sins lead to which particular tragedies.

The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and a friend of Mr. Falwell's, said, ''There is no doubt that America has accommodated itself to so many sins that we should always fear God's judgment and expect that in due time that judgment will come. But we ought to be very careful about pointing to any circumstance or any specific tragedy and say that this thing has happened because this is God's direct punishment.''

Who has been sitting in Falwell's church for 20 years?

The Smartest Obama Drama Reading Today

Baldilocks has two:

One referencing Spengler at Asia Times:
Spengler at Asia Times gives a short overview of the Black Liberation Theology subscribed to by Jeremiah Wright's TUCC and, allegedly, by Barack Obama:

One referencing Shelby Steele:
I did read Steele’s A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win--and I got his descriptions of the two personality masks that black people wear around white people and how few people—black or white—appreciate it when a black person takes off his/her mask. However, I didn’t really understand his description of Obama until this Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC)/Jeremiah Wright brouhaha began to heat up.

Spence has one slightly tangential:

Obama’s chosen a novel strategy to deal with the media furor over his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. But if he’s not able to somehow get families like the one above to see beyond the soundbites, none of this will matter. For what it is worth I don’t think he has it in him. The model of post-racial politics he is pushing simply does not have enough progressive heft to it for him to make the types of innovative leaps required to bring to life a new conception of American citizenship.

MC calls Liberation Theology out:

I’ve begun making a case that to understand Barack Obama, it is important to understand that he is informed by Jeremiah Wright (it’s amazing how fast some entries in the Wikipedia are updated isn’t it?) and further, that he is informed by James Cone (and other more significantly Marxist black intelligentsia like Cornel West and Anthony Pinn).

For Obama to pretend that Wright is like a sometimes bumbling uncle, and that familial disagreement is really all there is in reference to the controversial videos that most of us have seen in the last few weeks, is disingenuous. Jeremiah Wright is not a singular voice, he voices the sentiments of those who founded Black Theology, and those who follow it, and his praxis explicates what he has been taught and what he believes.

It Can't Happen Here

Now that I am pretty much officially thinking like an old man, I will speculate about a particular fear. That fear is that America becomes a military dictatorship. Why? Because only men like John McCain understand and respect the idea of sacrifice for higher purposes.

Two things have to fail of course. One is the moral courage of the elites that run things today, and two is the belief by the military in the sanctity of the Constitution. I think we're a long way from both of these situations, but I may be looking at the wrong indicators. So my fear may or may not be justified and the threat is not clear or present. The problem is that I keep seeing the same things Gerard does, and I get fed up.

I want to hate the lazy slobs of our public and retreat to some corner where sweet reason if not prevailing is at least present in heaping gobs. Why do I feel more and more like Colonel Jessup?

The Bank Job

The Bank Job is an excellent meditation on information theory. Who knows what and when? As secrets come to light, who is affected and how do they react? Who knows the power of information and how do they use it? There is an excellent passage in this film where over the course of an hour (in film time) the blackmailed becomes the blackmailer. The difference is actual possession of information and understanding what it means.

Other than that, the pace and editing of this film was all off. As a complex film, it wasn't done nearly as well as Guy Ritchie might have, but it was a satisfying albeit somewhat more predictable film.

Statham plays something of a nice guy in the way he does. A ne'er do well with promise to keep to a pretty young girl. Not so much a fighting and action film here, and the intrigue is not handled with much more depth or aplomb than with the Oceans films. But adequate. A couple really good laughs, some decent suspense. I'd wait for the DVD or the downloads.

Obama, Wright, The Black Church & America

Old School Fishbone

What you don't see is this picture of a black man in his mid forties wearing black boots, an olive green duster and a porkpie hat flying around in circles in a mosh pit. It's on film somewhere and some forensics might be able to identify that man as me.

I forgot what it's like to need that physical need to throw oneself into the flow but I remembered it all last night. I got a good workout which was exactly what I needed. The Fishbone show was old school and I'm sure I looked as ridiculously right on time as George Clinton. Cholly. Alcoholic. Lying Ass Bitch. Party At Ground Zero. Beergut. Hide Behind My Glasses. Ma and Pa. Everyday Sunshine. Bonin In The Boneyard. Let Dem Hos Fight.

Fishbone is, without question in my mind, one of the greatest rock bands of all time. It is also without question that if I were to be a rocker, I would be like Angelo - he is a balls out performer and the only man in the world who rocks with a theremin.  The energy at Fishbone concerts is awesome, and this was no exception. The Key Club in Hollywood, where the above video was filmed, was thumping until one in the AM. I left sweaty.

If you've never heard or seen Fishbone, you're in luck that two of their best songs, Servitude & Fight the Youth are up on YouTube. I have this rolling debate between myself and Shay Riley about who's better between the 'bone and Living Colour. I can understand why women generally stay away from the Fishbone concerts, though there were plenty enough last night to fill the stage on an extended bump and grind version of Hide Behind My Glasses. Fishbone is red hot. Still.

The Return of Return to Forever

Rolling Stones? Whatever. The Eagles? Yawn. Return to Forever? WHAT!?

I would say that Return to Forever is without question electric jazz's number one supergroup, and that it would have to be among the top ten jazz groups of all time. The fact that they are coming back after 25 years makes me realize how old I am.

It was when I was just out of high school when I started listening to jazz on my own which wasn't just a contact high from Pops' collection. Stanley Clarke's Modern Man was, after Joe Sample's Carmel, the very second jazz album I ever purchased. Yeah I did some Tom Scott, and even Deodato, but when I heard Clarke's bombast, I was hooked. It wasn't until 1982 that I actually discovered Return to Forever. And from the very first listen, The Romantic Warrior became my constant companion. I wore a hole in that tape. In fact, I joined a fitness club and timed my workouts to that song.

This tour is so awesome that I'm even considering going to see it in a city other than LA, just to get an intimate setting. But I see that they're offering a VIP package which I'll probably get. Any one of these guys is worth a concert, but to have them all on the stage at once is incredible and tremendous. As a matter of fact, I'm just going to get all my LA buds together and make a huge party out of this thing. I'm digging this to the most ut.

Black Church vs Black Politics: The Double Duty Dilemma

Barack Obama has got his foot stuck deeply in a controversy from which it may very difficult to extract himself. He may yet, but I'm not holding my breath. What I do expect is that one way or another, 'white supremacist' conservatives will be blamed. But in fact the blame falls squarely on the role of the Black Nationalist Church in black politics.

• First of all, Jeremiah Wright is someone I've dealt briefly with before.
• Secondly, Jodi Kantor has written about the two of them before.
• Thirdly, Obama knows when to diss his boy.

I think it is unfortunate the Obama campaign has to bear the burden of an important discussion about the evolution (or not) of black nationalist politics in America and the role of the black church in it. But it's like that and that's the way it is, and in the end I think this, more than anything will be how Obama's blackness will be judged. That is because the rhetoric of Wright, decontexutalized as it may be, is immediately recognizeable as the subtext of black politics for the past 40 years. You cannot talk about 'Amerikkka' and be forgiven, but all black activists know somebody who talks just like that.  Dennis Prager was all over it this morning. Rush Limbaugh was all over it as well. I wonder if The Field Negro will be keeping his head down.

The problem is very simple. Pretty much all black church activism is liberal / black nationalist activism. The black church has bitten off more than it can chew, and every American who doesn't understand the subtleties of that nexus and where it does and does not break is going to be perplexed and skeptical about how (and if) Obama can wriggle out of it. I say he can't because Wright married the man, and Michelle Obama's UCLA speech is the first 1 of this equation. 1 + 1 = 2. Michelle Obama + Jeremiah Wright = Unpatriotic. And don't be surprised when Wright is labeled racist. There is no escape here, there is only confrontation. So how does one distinguish doing good for blacks from doing good for America when so much of the rhetoric of black self-help is unpatriotic? That's the question Obama, of all people, somebody very fresh to the scene, is going to have to answer. Or else.

What do I think he'll do? I think he'll pull a Cablinasian trump card out of his pocket. And I think people who already support him will grudgingly accept it, people who never did will dismiss it and people who oppose him will call it an evasion. That will substitute for a substantive discussion on race. However, somebody ought to get Jeremiah Wright an hour on primetime TV.

As for the duality of the black church where the meat of this discussion oought to lie, I am hopeful that Obama's inevitable concession to the mainstream will help black ministers recognize their insufficiency as political leaders. I hope black churchfolks' willingness to take political cues from black ministers is diminished by this episode. Here again is Obama doing the right thing the right way as a mainstream political candidate and he's going to have to focus. That means that Wright will get the same treatment as Tavis Smiley. It will be tougher, but if I know Barry as a BAP, this is exactly what he's going to do. And Jeremiah Wright is going to have to sit down, shut up, and hope for an invitation to the Rose Garden someday over the rainbow...

On Jeremiah Wright, Geraldine Ferraro & Obama's Best Blackness

Patterico sez:

Tom Bevan:

Brian Ross’s report for Good Morning America on Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is potentially a huge problem for Obama. In the piece, Ross has clips of Wright delivering sermons in which he says we should not say God Bless America, but God “Damn” America, in which he calls America the US of KKKA (referring to how racist the country is), and in which he says about September 11 that America’s “chickens have come home to roost.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, Mark Halperin has a Youtube of Wright in which he says Jesus was a black man killed by rich white folks and he drops the N-Word in reference to Hillary.

Jeez.  This is Obama’s “spiritual advisor”?

I knew Wright had said supportive things about Louis Farrakhan, and that’s bad enough.  But I had no idea it was this bad.

Unless our news media is totally in the bag for Obama, I think Bevan is right. He’s going to face increased scrutiny on this, and it could be a real problem for him.

He's right. And what he is going to discover, if Barry is the kind of brother I think he ought to be, is exactly how deep the rabbithole goes with regard to the amount of lipservice blackfolks give in defense of our weaker bretheren.

To wax theoretical for a moment:

I was listening to a talkshow the other night and the host couldn't figure out if Obama ever wrote about being damaged by the n-word. If Barry were to concede that it's so hard for a black man like himself today, he's going to get dissed far and wide. He won't. So it's difficult for some whitefolk to understand how or why superstars like Barry should give 'victimology' any play whatsoever. So here is what whitefolks need to hear (and I'll make a video too) which they always get when it is explained to them this way in person.

OK. This is for you white dude. I want you to go back you highschool memories and think of your first crush. You can see her face, her blonde hair, her blue eyes, the way she walked, her voice and how a mere glance from her turned your insides to jelly. She never touched you, she never even spoke to you, but you spent so much time thinking about her. You loved her and hated her at the same time. There are still songs that take you back to the moment. One day she actually spoke to you and told you that you were lower than toad poop. You never forgave her, and you never will.

For some blackfolks, this is what the first racist experience is like. For you, maybe it was the first time you saw your father hit your mother. The first time a bully smacked you in the face and gave you a bloody nose. The first time you flunked a class. The first time you wrecked your parents' car. You had nightmares.

Now grow up and get over it. Easy right? For some people yes. For others there are decades of reading self-help books and going to therapy and strange obsessions. For some blackfolks, racism is like that. On the surface, the stupid act of a stupid person and in the context of world history, less than a drop in the bucket - like your job, your marriage and your kids. A mere nothing. Disposable minutia in the great scheme of things, like a night with a hooker.

So. Will Obama ever admit that it hurts to be a black man in America? No. But will he play to the politics that caters to the victims of America? Of course. He's a 'new' politician. So Jeremiah Wright is the baggage - he's the man responsible for saying 'bad things happen to good black people, and it's not your fault'. And this is the kind of fellow traveller Democrats need because they are holistic, and Obama is holistic. Like Bill (and unlike Hillary) Barry feels your pain, especially if it's black pain of the sort mentioned above. It's real.

I don't think that area is proper to bring into politics which is why crusty, impersonal characters like Cheney don't phase me. I don't need the guy to pretend like he likes me and can relate to me on a personal level. Which is another reason Obama doesn't sway me outside of his policy positions. (see here).

Tom Bevan:

Brian Ross’s report for Good Morning America on Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is potentially a huge problem for Obama. In the piece, Ross has clips of Wright delivering sermons in which he says we should not say God Bless America, but God “Damn” America, in which he calls America the US of KKKA (referring to how racist the country is), and in which he says about September 11 that America’s “chickens have come home to roost.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, Mark Halperin has a Youtube of Wright in which he says Jesus was a black man killed by rich white folks and he drops the N-Word in reference to Hillary.

Jeez.  This is Obama’s “spiritual advisor”?

I knew Wright had said supportive things about Louis Farrakhan, and that’s bad enough.  But I had no idea it was this bad.

Unless our news media is totally in the bag for Obama, I think Bevan is right. He’s going to face increased scrutiny on this, and it could be a real problem for him.

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The Compartmentalized, Networked Life

BAP Memories

It has been a long time since I did the Bappie thing. I was never entirely comfortable with it, but I much preferred it to the alternative. And now thinking about Mr. Phillips, some smack Brother Brown tossed my way and the new website Stuff Educated Black People Like, I thought I'd interrupt my otherwise boring afternoon to write down some embarrassing semi-factual autobiography.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, BAP is black American prince. It's just what you would suspect. I had two out of three of the attributes when I was a whippersnapper. The three would be money, looks and brains. And I STILL ain't got no money and I get uglier every day.Oh well. To tell you the truth, it has been a long time since I actually paid much attention to the African American section of the Barnes & Noble, so there might be a chance that this all sounds very Terry McMillan or E. Lynn Harris. I wouldn't know but it comes from the real place.. and so I slip into the wayback machine.

It's a summer morning in 1988 and I'm 27. In fact, it's my birthday and I'm feeling kinda old. So I get up early and slip on the bike shorts. I've got the ankle socks and my Fishbone T-shirt. Yeah that'll work. On the wall of my bedroom is an ANC poster "Women Unite" it says. Directly across from it is a Spike Lee poster. I got it from the private screening of School Daze at Bovard Auditorium on the USC campus. Ha. That was a cool night. I went with frat and we all sat together.

My bed is a queensize directly on the floor with no frame. The linen is from Urban Outfitters and there are a half-dozen pillows of various sizes over the crumpled black comforter. There's not much Kente in my room, but Ezeilo did get me a deal on the real mudcloth. It's not a very large piece but it set me back 300 bucks. It's a fertility symbol with a very obvious phallus in the print. You just don't know how that works just above the bed. Which reminds me, J is coming over tonight for enchiladas. I do a quick nervous check around for signs of other females. Ahh, whatever. I'll take care of that after the ride.

I walk out to the kitchen, my roommate Ken is making another mixtape. Every Mardi Gras he heads down to Caracas and brings back a bunch of soca tapes. He has been trying to mix De La Soul and Soul 2 Soul  with soca all week. It still doesn't work. At least he has the headphones on, but the TV is blasting. It's Jeff Smith - the Frugal Gourmet, known to us as 'Frug'. Rule number one. Whenever a babe comes over for the first time, have a videotape of the Frug on the TV. It's all part of the Killing Fields. Kenny is an accountant taking his Pepperdine MBA classes at night, but he's got the Caribbean bug. He wears his hair short - I joke that he looks like Lester Holt, the anchorman, but think he secretly wants to dread. Me, I got the severe fade with a texture. I grab a banana off the kitchen table and fill my water bottle with Super Socco.

I pull my Trek off the hook in my bedroom and roll it out the front door. I've got on the black fingerless gloves and a yellow bandana. I put the banana in my little drawstring backpack, slip on the Persols and put my feet in the clips...

On Elliot Spitzer

Of all the questions one might pose to a man who uses prostitutes, the most ridiculous one is 'why'.

Obama Defaults on Europe

Over at Booker Rising, I'm squabbling over my smack talking about Obama as a foreign policy newbie and weakling. And so Brother Brown, who normaly has possesion of his faculties when he steps away from the Obama Soul Glow said:

Politics of the new millenium is going to be about conflict resolution. (At least, this is what younger voters want.) You do that by being open to talking to your enemies. Gorbachev had to be willing to talk to Reagan as he reformed the former Soviet Union, and Reagan had to be willing to talk back.

For all this bluster about experience being the key qualification, for me, it is the approach to problem solving that is the key qualification. On that count, Obama has Clinton and McCain beat by a mile.

Yeah right. He doesn't even talk to our friends, even when it was his job.

From TalkLeft

..Barack Obama acknowledged he hadn't held a single hearing on Nato and Afghanistan during his year as chair of the European Affairs subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because he was running for President..

Hillary makes this point:

"My opponent likes to talk about what he will do, but there was a perfect example last night about the difference between talk and action,” she said yesterday, per NBC/NJ's Athena Jones. “He was given the responsibility of chairing what's called a subcommittee in the Congress responsible for the European countries and our alliance with them and as part of that responsibility was NATO… [W]hat you learned last night is he's never held a substantive hearing or meeting to look at what is going on in NATO, to take a hard look at what's happening in Europe and in fact the reason he hasn't as he said is because he got the assignment when he started running for president. Well, I don't think that's an adequate excuse.”

Anybody who thinks this lapse is not going to get hammered by John McCain is drowning in koolaid.

Justice vs Social Justice

I'd like to jump into this discussion because I think the distinction is very significant. I would simply argue that there is no such thing as 'social justice', that there is only justice. 'Social justice' would then be the satisfaction of revenge as directed by a distinct group within a society. In other words, social justice is not always just - it is extralegal. Systemic justice is not always just either, but it has the advantage of having formal checks on its power, whereas the only check on 'social justice' is the wisdom of citizens to ignore its demands.

Thoughts?

Monday Hot Buttons

Stuff x-Americans Like
I was interviewed briefly this morning on the phenomenon attending the Stuff White People Like blog and my own followup here. Is this an entree into something serious? Hmm. I'll write extensively on that this week.

Prose About Hoes
Elliot Spitzer is on the spit, roasting before our very eyes. I think this is an interesting moment to think about the personal as political and exactly which ways does character count. My take? Somebody ratted him out, and a rat is still a rat.

Catholics for McCain
The *other* Christians on the Right are speaking up, and they have a point.

Toyota Wins at NASCAR
With a Camry. Nothing is sacred.

Charles Phillips

Charles Phillips is President of Oracle Corporation and a member of the Board of Directors. He is responsible for global field operations including consulting, marketing, sales, alliances and channels, and customer programs, as well as corporate strategy. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Phillips was a Managing Director with Morgan Stanley in its technology group. Prior to his career on Wall Street, Mr. Phillips was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps. Mr. Phillips holds a BS in Computer Science from the United States Air Force Academy, an MBA from Hampton University, and a JD from New York Law School and is a member of the bar in Washington D.C. and Georgia. Mr. Phillips is on the boards of Viacom Corporation, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, and New York Law School.

Christopher Bracey: First Look

All day I have been listening to Winston Churchill's history of the Second World War and although it is not astonishing that I hear it, nevertheless I am braced by the extent to which I find the laxity in leadership of any modern nation capable of reducing its quality until such point that it is unable to stand in its own defense. I daresay I am more attuned than ever to that precarious balance. And so it is with that in mind that I offer my first daring critique of Christopher Bracey's new book Saviors or Sellouts, having only read short way in and briefly browsing for my own and contemporary mention.

Within the first few pages Bracey makes it clear that he is, while earnestly attempting to be open-minded and fair in his investigation, rather beholden to the concept of racial empowerment. It seems that there is very little else any black partisan can do of moral import from this perspective other than pursue the aims of a sort of equality that is presumably measured in percentages. I may mischaracterize his premises, and only a complete reading will tell, but so far it appears that he has rigged the game, or at least defined the choir to which he intends to inform. Of course it is reasonable in some  ways to presume his intended audience is most concerned about the implications of race [group] relations. We certainly don't lack for multiculturalists, but I'm afraid I must complain about this aim as a benchmark for the evaluation of black conservatives - or at least make an exception for myself.

For I have been born into a generation and raised in a class which has prepared me to consider the brotherhood of blacks and non-blacks with relative ease and think in a critical way such as to regard all racial traffic with suspicion. Not merely because of some lighthearted aspiration to colorblindness, but rather to a clear appreciation of the perversion of our accumulated wisdom which is availed by entreaties to racial empowerment of any sort. So while I am apt to find much to be admired in the demeanor of the first Philadelphia Negroes and of Booker T's admonishments to blacks to live righteously, it is not that same exact paternalism which causes me to criticize my liberal and progressive fellows, black and otherwise. It is, rather, my appreciation of the crimes of Hitler and Stalin, not coincidently brought to my attention by conservative scholars, which enjoins me to cast my opprobrium.

It must be said, that having converted slowly and lately to the form of conservatism I now profess, I am struck by the extent to which my perennial cries for 'social justice' had blinded me in my selfish quest to see American blacks equal American whites in every way to the abhorrent crimes perpetrated man against man in the whole of world history. The way some black partisans wail, one would think there were no greater victims of treachery than our own forbears 'through 400 years..'. Even considering the grave horrors of the transatlantic slave trade's middle passage, what manner of justice can be had today? Indeed, are we aiming for some cosmic adjudication, or perhaps someone to finally come to power in America to exact the toll in proper pounds of white flesh?  Our complaint can only be minimal. Were we to properly enjoy and defend that liberty which is our birthright, our righteousness would lead our quest for true justice in more pressing realms, and not heed the putative vengeance of long dead  ancestral ghosts of 'our race'. Every day someone else calls for such 'social justice' is another day of retardation.

Nevertheless, I hope to finish both Churchill and Bracey by this time next week and will surely have more reflections on his assessment of the black conservative movement of which I am some small part. I can't say with any certainty that I am not a savior or that I am not a sellout. Only time will tell. 

PC Coward Samantha Power Drops From Obama Squad

For calling Hillary Clinton 'a monster', one of the most vaunted members of the Obama foreign policy wonks has issued an act of contrition:

"Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign," she said. "And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."

Only proving that neither Obama or his hirelings have the gumption to even handle opposition to the Ice Queen, much less those who are not merely power-hungry bitches, but bitter megalomaniacal enemies of liberty.

Obama is proving himself both too kind and too gentle to drive the United States. He *is* the non-threatening pseudo black man.

Cranky Geeks

Once a week, and sometimes twice depending upon how sleepy I am, I take my iPod touch to bed and watch the video of John C Dvorak's Cranky Geeks. It is, without question, my favorite show on TV.

Last night I met David Spark, who is a part time comedian, but is also very well versed in the statistics around the search industry. I really like the way his discussion allows us to block and tackle what's what. He's gone video however and his video website allows for no RSS reading. Isn't there somebody somewhere who is creating a tagging format for video so that we can do the equivalent of video-browsing of vodcasts and such? I mean, Charlie Rose does exactly that at the beginning of his hourlong shows, we get a provocative highlight at the top of the hour that shows what's to come. C'mon Google, get with the program.

Anyway, I love Cranky Geeks and it's the center of my tech brain these days, even though I hate it when they have the young dorky millionaires on.

Jury Nullification vs Plea Bargaining

While it's true that this little piece got me thinking about jury nullification, and nullification in general, it's a bit more interesting to consider that other alternative that is making some mockery out of the jury system. It seems to me that one's right to a fair and speedy trial is being abridged by the fact that so many people don't really care enough to serve on a jury, and those that survive voir dire are essentially tools of the trying attorneys.

Radley Balko has an interesting piece on jury nullification in drug cases. I'm torn. On the one hand, you have to obey the law even if it's a bad law--unless it actually requires you to do something monumentally unjust. On the other hand, laws preventing people from deciding what they can do with their own bodies are pretty monumentally unjust, and they have massively increased the incarceration rates, and subsequent unemployability, of poor black men--so how could I follow the law and help perpetuate that injustice?

Ahh the poor black man. He's a drug abuser and he abuses himself. There's really no crime in that is there? Ahh but when Becky abuses herself with drugs it's a great tragedy, no?

Dogs, Donuts and Sausages

The greatest thing about Google and the power of the net is that it puts people back in touch with things thought lost and never found. Right now I'm in a bit of ecstasy after having identified and found two artifacts from my childhood through a combination of searches.

The first is and most exciting was this old song by Cat Stevens. Was Dog a Doughnut? This was, in my mind among the first songs that got me hooked on electronic music. Among the others were Billy Prestons' classics Space Race and Outa-Space, and of course the brilliance of George Duke, Bernie Worrell, Larry Fast and W. Carlos, all many years before Kraftwerk.  Oh yeah, and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

The second and even more unexpected was a camp song from my childhood that I had begun to think was a figment of my imagination. It was one of those you only have the nerve to sing when you are drunk and around drunk friends.

Mister Johnnie Verbeck!

On the Necessity of Doing Too Much

I have determined that I am not doing enough, and so therefore have to do too much. The lightbulb went off in my head. I have to go through a million things and disappoint excitable people. This is superior to trying to get an extraordinary commitment from a few. As Ralph Malph said in his moment of epiphany this is 'volume babysitting'.

So I'm doing a whole bunch of things and not really worrying until I can't take it. I am inspired by John McCain, of all people. This man who cannot raise his hands above his head, is as old as my father and has said that he can work 18 hours a day 7 days a week for four years. I have no excuses.

So I'm going to work on The Raven Group. I'm going to work with Citibank. I'm going to work with Applied OLAP. I'm going to study DISC. I'm going to work with Mr. Reed. I'm going to work with Mr. Gillespie. I'm going to get The Brother's Cup rolling. I'm going to write Managing Essbase Projects. I'm going to keep playing the bass guitar. I'm going to keep designing the Tabletop metaphor. I'm going to keep blogging at Cobb and more at Cubegeek. I'm going to learn OBIEE and Dodeca. I'm going to learn how to raise venture capital. I'm going to continue to speak at NPR and I'm going to keep correcting my kids' homework. I'm basically going to break my neck. And if I spread myself too thin, then I'll let them tell me. But the fact of the matter is that I don't think any of them have any idea of what I'm capable of which is why I'm still not running half as much of the planet as I should be.

I'm energized about what's possible and I have too many BBs to be plinking.

Daisy Head Thing 1 Lorax Horton in a Hat I Am

Sprite is greedy for all the glory on Seuss Day. Sometimes I wonder where she gets it from.

The Beginning of Obama's End

I'm writing this at 10pm Pacific on the day of the Ohio and Texas primaries and it reflects something I've been thinking about all day but haven't had time to write, which is this: If Hillary wins the nomination, the Democrats definitely lose. That is because there is no way that those people who have been pumped up by Obama are going to switch. AP has declared (for what it's worth) a Texas win for Clinton after she has clearly clinched Ohio. And so this is perhaps, the beginning of the end.

The meme which has gained strength on Right Radio is that there is a vast left-wing conspiracy to give the brother a break, but that the Obama honeymoon is ripe for a smackdown. This real-estate scandal is just the kind of thing that counts in dirty politics. When Clinton exploits it, it will not backfire. Obama supporters will be livid. Blue Dogs will chuckle but Republicans will have the last laugh.

The analogy I've been thinking about all day is Obama as Mike Tyson. In the beginning, everybody thought he was unbeatable. In the end, people saw him truly outclassed and then wondered how they ever came to think he was all that. I don't think Obama self-destructs like Tyson, but in the end the result will be the same. A bunch of 'if only' apologetics.

I'm not saying that Obama is destined to lose, I'm saying how that scenario goes down.

What is obvious is that Obama is MoveOn's choice. Which means that he's a lefty lefty. How it is that people think that lefty policy is going to unite the country demonstrates the kind of wishful thinking often associated with populist candidates. The fact is that Obama policy-wise is Barbara Boxer in a black man suit. One scandal will be sufficient to erase the magic, and then it comes down to politics as usual. How well does Obama fare when he has to operate with the level of skepticism accorded ordinary politicians? Starting Wednesday, we will begin to know.

The free lunch line is closed.