Uppity-Negro.com

Like I'm listening to Christopher Priest:

This nation has had a lot of experience with leaders who put saving face above saving the nation. Bill Clinton put this country through enormous pain and turmoil and, indeed, set the stage for this very scary man to succeed him, by simply not admitting, waaay back during Paula Jones's suit, that he'd had inappropriate conduct (if not quite legally provable sexual intercourse) with a White House intern. George Bush before him spent billions of dollars to bring us to Saddam's door and then turned and went home, and then proceeded to squander a 90% public approval rating to be beaten by an Arkansas governor we'd never heard of.

Richard Nixon sentenced tens of thousands of teenage boys to die in the jungles of Southeast Asia because he wanted to win reelection in 1972 and because he didn't want to look bad, or be the first president to "lose" a war. We fought in Vietnam for a principle, to protect our values and our way of life from a tiny, impoverished nation that we pretended was the linchpin to Soviet world dominance so General Dynamics and Bell Helicopter could make a fortune.

The piece is about our current President, and titled, "OJ Stupid." Nice shorthand phrase, that.

I am suggesting that they [the current administration] are stupid. Very stupid. Or perhaps they are OJ Stupid: pretend to look stupid, leave blood trails, drop gloves, low speed Bronco chase, so the defense goes, "You can't possibly think he's that stupid? It's a frame up!" which makes OJ Stupid a very smart maneuver. The public loves a good mystery. While most police officers will tell you, the most obvious criminal scenario is often exactly what happened, the American public has been conditioned by Matlock to look for complexity where none really exists. So Clinton was the victim of a vast right wing conspiracy, OJ was set up, and this Iraq business can't possibly be about the 2002 elections because that possibility really is just too ridiculous and obscene.

Which, to me, means the Bush White House is either Stupid Stupid or OJ Stupid. Stupid Stupid if they are genuinely protecting vital US interests while not muzzling Rove and Card (and not hiding a clearly uncomfortable Colin Powell). OJ Stupid if all of that chaos was meant to make us suspicious of the administration's motives, while dismissing the obvious because it's just too skeevy to be contemplated.

He's a cool guy. I don't agree with everything he says -- can't think of anyone I do feel that way about -- but he makes it clear that he's just writing his informed opinion, and that there's the distinct possibility that he's wrong.

Don't do that nearly well enough myself.

I'd also say his opinions fall well within the mainstream of African American politics, and might even be a wee bit on the conservative side of 'em. That's a dangerous thing to say, though.

After all, I didn't think Harry Belafonte's comments were way out of line either, and David Horowitz is taking up a collection to send him out of the country.

Harry Belafonte doesnt speak for Black Americans. He speaks for the radical left. [. . .] I am planning to run ads in college papers across the country with this Message to Harry. The Message To Harry campaign is going to expose his thinly veiled attack on America. It will also challenge the lefts ongoing cynical appeal to American Blacks to betray their American birthright.

Thanks (if that's the right word) to Horowitzwatch for pointing that out. I try to avoid Front Page Magazine unless I'm looking for something extremely stupid to make fun of.

Y'know, like taking up a collection to send someone out of the country for expressing an opinion. Or yet another example of kindly coservative/libertarian white folk explaining what we believe, and what our best interests are. So good of them to take time out of their busy schedules to do that, really. I should send them a gift basket.

The name of this little crusade, by the way, is, "Message to Harry: Respect African-Americans Who Love Their Country Or Leave It."

I can think of several messages I'd like to send to David (we're on a first-name basis here, apparently), but they may not fit on that little card that comes with the basket. . .

Well, ok, he's raising money for the ads, not a plane ticket. This obviously needs work. It may vanish and be replaced with Hello, Kitty animated gifs. Please stand by.

Posted by Aaron at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBacks (0)

Actually, I'm not sure where Longview/White Oak are. Ain't never been to Texas, and although I love Dru like a stepsister I got no plans to visit any time soon.

11-21, local: Police find 17 sex toys in local woman's car during DUI traffic stop

A Longview woman who sells sex toys has been charged with felony obscenity after White Oak police found some of her wares in her car during a traffic stop

The arrest report describes the 17 items as "obscene materials and obscene devices," but Police Chief Charlie Smith said the items were mostly lotions and objects defined in a dictionary as having the shape and often the appearance of the male genitalia, used in sexual stimulation.

Only saw the story this morning, in the blogdex feed in Straw. Many thanks to Team Murder for pointing the program out, and to Michelle for adding a syndicate link when I whined about it.

The sources page on blogdex shows this was actually discussed on MetaFilter yesterday. Haven't really been there since I moved.

Skimming the comments now, I see that Longview is in East Texas. But any time's the right time for Ani, so the title stays. Management apologizes for any confusion.

Posted by Aaron at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Which is a bit difficult for me when I'm reading fucking Right Wing News.

It's Time For The GOP To Go After The Black Vote:

I've always thought that we in the GOP have not worked hard enough to pull in the black vote. That rational has always been "why spend all kinds of time and money trying to convince blacks to vote for us when we know that they're going to go 90/10 for the Democrats no matter what we do?"

[. . .] Most polling data I've seen seems to suggest that roughly 1/3rd of all blacks are Conservatives. It's crazy for them to be voting for anyone but the GOP and we need to work hard to show them that's the case and make them feel welcome in the party.

Uh-huh.

Reading the comments made me feel really welcome.

The problem is there is so much crap being fed to inner city blacks that our message is ignored.

Blacks as blacks see themselves as adversaries of civil society and look to big government to be their ally against the rest of us. It should not be this way, but it is. We may hope that conversion will occur one black man or woman at a time, but we cannot outbid the other side to pay off the professional black leadership. What could we possibly offer them? More affirmative action? Slavery reparations? There are no ducks to be hunted here.

I agree, even if the # of votes gained appears to be miniscule, quite a bit can be gained just by reducing black turnout and the effectiveness of Dem GOTV efforts.

Anyone want to tell me what GOTV stands for, by the way?

There's also a Trackback link from UnFossilized titled, "The GOP In The Ghetto?"

Because, you know, that's where those people live.

And again I say, I've lived too long.

Posted by Aaron at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh, that wacky Darmon Thornton.

Jesse Jackson doesn't speak for all black Americans, and many blacks (including myself) are fed up with his fraudulence.

A new group is kicking it up a notch by suing him.

This new group he speaks of "includes a former head of the Kentucky Republican Party," and the suit was actually "filed on behalf of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny."

BOND's statements about themselves:

BOND Mission Statement
“Rebuilding the Family By Rebuilding the Man”

BOND Vision Statement
To Help Men and their Families, Particularly in Major Urban Areas find Spiritual and Personal Freedom through our Personal Development Programs and Community Outreach and Renewal Efforts.

And here I thought I got wacky with the random caps. Silly me.

Anyone wants to translate those into English, please feel free.

Oh, and that new group? They call themselves "African Americans Against Exploitation." Again, I cannot satirize material like this. It's like kicking a puppy.

BOND, according to their FAQs page, isn't new:

Q: How long has BOND been around?

A: Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, the Founder and President of the organization, started BOND twelve years ago. At that time, the purpose of the organization was to help black men, as they have had disproportionate problems since giving up their position as leaders in their families years ago. However, all races and both sexes were drawn to BOND as the problems encountered by the black man were and are common to all people. Now the organization is open to men and women of all races and ages.

Uh-huh. And the last white guy to get shot by the NYPD because they mistook a wallet for a gun would have been. . . sorry. Couldn't resist.

Darmon's post, incidentally, was titled, "Hit Him Where It Hurts."

And here I thought I was immature and needlessly hostile. Silly me.

Bonus Round: Daniel T. Griswold on Immigration Politics on National Review Online:

Second, Hispanics are "up for grabs" politically. Despite their Democratic leanings, they are not monolithic the way black voters unfortunately are.

I'm certain Darmon sent a note informing Mr. Griswold and the editors of the National Review of black Americans' un-monolithicness.

Bonus Round (extended): From the July 9, 2002 O'Reilly Factor transcript linked in Darmon's entry:

WALTER FIELDS, THENORTHSTARNETWORK.COM: Well, I think the lawsuit's a little silly. It's akin to me suing the Christian Coalition, that, as a Christian, I don't believe they represent my views. So I think the lawsuit on face value is a little silly.

On the larger question of credibility of black leadership, perception is everything in politics. Jesse Jackson is perceived to be a leader, not just a black leader, mind you. Jesse Jackson got 30 percent of the vote in 1988 in the Democratic primary. So there's a question of whether or not Jesse Jackson has ever described himself as a black leader.

Clearly, if this group has issues with Reverend Jackson's leadership, it has every right certainly to criticize Reverend Jackson, but to file a lawsuit on this basis, in my opinion, is very frivolous.

Darn. Guess I don't have to satirize this particular piece of stupidity after all.

Update: edit for clarity. Where "clarity" means "so it maybe makes sense this time."

Posted by Aaron at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (1)

Ronn continues to follow the Central Park 5/Jogger case far more closely than I. Well, he's getting assistance from Ray these days. . . Any road up, there's a new(ish) piece up at The Village Voice: Features: A Journey Through the Tangled Case of the Central Park Jogger by Sydney H. Schanberg:

Every now and again, we get a look, usually no more than a glimpse, at how the justice system really works. What we see—before the sanitizing curtain is drawn abruptly down—is a process full of human fallibility and error, sometimes noble, more often unfair, rarely evil but frequently unequal, and through it all inevitably influenced by issues of race and class and economic status. In short, it's a lot like other big, unwieldy institutions. Such a moment of clear sight emerges from the mess we know as the case of the Central Park jogger.

All of which applies to other cases equally well, but I think you can mention these issues in this context with less hysterical shrieking from the right-wingers at this point.

I could confirm this by checking, say, InstaPundit or one of them other fools, but it's getting harder to even feign interest in what they have to say. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Giles hit the locktician yesterday, but (apparently) declined to add color. How am I supposed to know how it would look on me if he doesn't do it? So inconsiderate.

Can't really use my sister for comparison, she's all peanut-butter-colored. . .

The Good Twin also makes with the link to Nerve.com - Babes, Beer, Gadgets, Hair Color by Mark Morford:

   Oh yes. Say it like you mean it. Maxim. Hair color. For Men.

   Maxim — as in the thick glossy winkingly sexist wildly successful men's magazine, as in the beer 'n' sports 'n' cars 'n' dumb airbrushed chicks-you-will-never-ever-attain publication no one you know actually admits to reading — recently launched its first major spin-off male grooming product. Because it's just that kind of a world.

   Maxim for Men is over-the-counter hair color in a bottle, the very same insanely popular scalp-boiling Agent Orange byproduct normally sold to untold billions of women for twelve bucks a pop at the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart at two a.m. Usually this occurs after you and your girlfriend had a whole lot of cheap tequila and your girlfriend decides she's sick of being a dishwater blonde and has always wanted to try life as a neon Goth redhead porn star — or maybe just, you know, an ash blonde.

. . .

Nah. Too easy.

Update: kd comments, and kd posts. Because she's just That Damn Cool, in case you hadn't noticed.

There would be something here about gender differences in marketing hair dye, cosmetic surgery rates and body image issues, but the coffee is wearing off. Remind me to write something up later.

And remind me to try to meet up with überchick while she's in Chicago. Think she's here until the 16th.

Oh. Right. Coffee.

Also, work on developing basic social skills.

Posted by Aaron at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Understandable in a way, since it came out in the late '80s, and I've not re-read it since, but normally I'd remember at least the plot. . .

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, "As pretty as an airport."

Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and their architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colors, to make effortless the business of separating the traveler forever from his or her luggange or loved ones, to confuse the traveler with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumablu on the grounds that they are not.

From The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams.

Posted by Aaron at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

So Gunn tries to show more love for kd than me, including a link to Hermann Goering, on war. Which sent me off looking for selected excerpts from Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem -- you can follow the logic here, yes? -- which search brought me to Reid Collins on Banality of Evil:

If Adolf Eichmann's "absence of critical thinking" led Hannah Arendt to her famed conclusions about the "banality of evil," then John Muhammad and his sidekick Malvo provide supporting evidence. Their leisurely death-sweep of America demonstrates a lack of focus more difficult to deal with than any hard-etched ideology. Barring some further evidence of deeply rooted intent, some formed philosophy, their casual commitment to homicide also represents far more of what has happened to America than the hard-core beliefs of, say, an al-Qaeda. It may be that they have no hard-core beliefs, that they are members of a vast militia floating on the social scene, whose anonymity makes them as dangerous as they are ubiquitous.

It was this formlessness, plus a generous dose of cupidity on the part of authorities, that made them so difficult to catch. Instructive is the swiftness with which the "task force" of federal state and local officers attached themselves to one eyewitness who gave them the celebrated "white box truck." Another witness would later help them morph the box truck into a "white van." A growing class of "profilers" imprinted the belief that the perpetrator was a white male, acting alone, an angered loser in search of recognition. This made it simple for two black men to drive unmolested from slaying scenes in a dark blue sedan, perhaps inconvenienced only by the long lines of traffic produced by police roadblocks scanning the public highways for a white-truck-van.

And it had to be made simple for them to do this, because you know those people ain't none too bright.

Not quite what I was looking for.

It was as though in those last minutes he [Eichmann] was summing up the lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

That was the one. I don't think Collins got the point, but he would probably say the same about me.

Oddly, M.W. Guzy at TomPaine.com uses almost the same title ("The Banality Of Evil") for a piece on the same topic (the snipers).

I still haven't looked up zeitgeist. Good thing, that.

Posted by Aaron at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (1)

In a parallel universe where Marxists rise to high positions in the US military and government, Family.org declares:

Powell Creates Stir Among Christians Again

During a recent speech to a gathering of Muslim Americans, Powell said, "We must not listen to the siren song of the bigots, extremists who cloak themselves in false spirituality in an attempt to divide and weaken us."

Powell seems to be taking on social conservatives like the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Dr. Pat Robertson, who have spoken out against the dangers of Islam.

Bill Lind, of the Free Congress Foundation, isn't surprised by Powell's remarks, but he is disappointed. He believes it's Powell's vision to essentially wipe Western culture off the map.

"What we're seeing on Powell's part in these lies is cultural Marxism, and Powell is very much a cultural Marxist — using any other force, however poisonous, that is itself an enemy to our traditional western Judeo-Christian culture," Lind said.

Spock has a beard on their Earth, too.

Funny thing is, I was looking on Google news for a story about Bob Woodward's claim that Mrs. Powell prevented Colin from running for the Republican nomination back in 1996, due to fears for his safety. Hardly new(s), that, but I thought I heard something on the radio about it.

Oh well. More Negro paranoia, if it's true. Everyone loves him.

Especially Christians. But they love everybody. It's part of their beliefs, after all.

Posted by Aaron at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not sure how I ended up at PopPolitics.com. But this resulted in Cynthia Fuchs goodness, namely The Race Reason:

As antic as the images [in an animated sequence in Bowling for Columbine] may be -- crowds of little white folks running from one section of the cartoon map to another, waving their weapons, with stricken looks on their flat little faces -- the point is made. Much fear in the United States is racially based. Moore goes on to point to a variety of examples, some more clearly related than others -- "Africanized" killer bees, racialized designations of the "evildoers," Willie Horton, Susan Smith (who accused a "black man" of carjacking the children she killed), Charles Stuart (who accused a "black man" of murdering his pregnant wife), and the ongoing fear of perps "of color" inculcated and promoted by the long-running series Cops.

and also "Breaking News" - Reflecting on black men as snipers:

Still, several major newspapers (among them, the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Baltimore Sun) have run stories on reactions of "black community" members to the news that the suspects are black. Black call-in radio shows (like Tom Joyner's) were inundated with responses, as was BET.com (read the messages here); Tavis Smiley plans to do a show on the subject, and it's a good bet that Ed Gordon will do so as well. (Johnny Cochran, however, has already begged off the case, telling Donahue that he felt "fear" when in D.C. during the period of the attacks, so he's no longer objective.).

This is a discussion that "white community" members will never need to have. They don't feel that a Timothy McVeigh, an Eric Harris, or a Ted Bundy represents them, that others will perceive them differently because someone of their race commits atrocities. Rather, white folks tend to see these criminals as "evil," deviant or otherwise not like them. 

So that's a plus.

Got to the Saturday Night Live Transcripts by way of digital down low. Specifically, this entry, and naturally I went straight for the Racist Word Association Interview transcript. Which I have a feeling I've either linked or at least mentioned before.

And I have a horrible feeling I'm forgetting something, and will look very rude for having done so.

No, other than thanking Inez for the link. I'm quite consistently rude about neglecting to do that.

Posted by Aaron at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (1)

See, I got the link from Giles, and. . . aw, skip it. From The Atlantic | December 2002 | Interracial Intimacy:

Over the years legions of white-supremacist legislators, judges, prosecutors, police officers, and other officials have attempted to prohibit open romantic interracial attachments, particularly those between black men and white women. From the 1660s to the 1960s, forty-one territories, colonies, or states enacted laws—anti-miscegenation statutes—barring sex or marriage between blacks and whites, and many states ultimately made marriage across the color line a felony. Such laws crystallized attitudes about interracial intimacy that remain influential today, but all were invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, in the most aptly named case in all of American constitutional history: Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia.

Be nice if the story ended there. No such luck, of course:

The great but altogether predictable irony is that just as white opposition to white-black intimacy finally lessened, during the last third of the twentieth century, black opposition became vocal and aggressive. In college classrooms today, when discussions about the ethics of interracial dating and marriage arise, black students are frequently the ones most likely to voice disapproval.

I could break this down by class, gender and orientation, but that would involve research, since Randall Kennedy didn't bother to do it. There is quite a bit of background for those utterly unfamiliar with the subject, but it's all very old news to those of us who've lived it.

There's also a bit (well, a paragraph) on Native American/white and Asian-American/white marriages, but like Giles (and a while back, Laura) points out, that's a rather limited view. . .

In actually interesting news, the Ripper category at WHEDONesque links to an article saying the show is still possible.

And everyone remembers Olivia, right?

Posted by Aaron at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

You know, if I read blogs that I'd de-linked, and am never, ever going to link to again, I'd note that Scottie-Too-Hottie is still running off at the mouth.

But I don't read AMCGLTD anymore. Because it's not linked.

Which reminds me, Martin Wisse, for your failure to properly appreciate Buffy, consider yourself officially de-linked.

Know I never linked you before because I suck, but now it's official.

Update: And I'm officially, retroactively de-linking BlahStuff as well, since he asked nicely.

Anybody else want some of this?

Posted by Aaron at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Coincidence, I'm sure, but there's an interview/article up at Bitch with/about Jessica Abel and her current series, La Perdida:

“I wanted to do something that was well outside the area I’d been working in before in Artbabe, where I was writing about sort of middle-class, mid-20s/mid-30s hipster people in Chicago worrying over their little lives,” Abel says. “I felt like people were starting to identify me with that milieu, and they long had thought of my work as ‘hipster stuff.’ I had always felt like I was working on portraying relationships, not on portraying hipster life. I just happened to create those characters because those are the kind of people I hung out with. I definitely wasn’t trying to say anything in particular about being a hipster or being into rock or any of that sort of stuff, but that’s the milieu I was used to, so that’s where I set my dramas.

“After awhile, it was limiting because some people, I know, dismissed me out-of-hand, thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t identify with that milieu, therefore I won’t like these comics.’ And even if they were wrong—in a lot of cases people would write me and say ‘I thought that these comics were just for hipsters and I read them and I was wrong,’ and that’s very flattering—it means a lot of people aren’t picking up the book in the first place. So although that’s a sort of audience-oriented way of making a decision, it really felt like I wanted to prove to myself and other people that I could do something that felt less specific.”

If you hit the link to the article, you'll see why I tried to tie the first actual sentence -- that bit I quoted appears a bit further into the piece -- into a reference to Erika. Couldn't make it work, though, and worried that it sounded vaguely insulting.

Most things sound vaguely insulting when I post them here, apparently. I'd like to think it's the domain name, but it's probably me.

I'd also like to say I'd give it another go after more coffee, but why lie?

Since, as linked over at die puny humans, the brilliant Justine Shaw has Nowhere Girl Part 2: Better World up. Meaning I'll be off reading that rather than editing old posts or creating new ones for a while.

Which is why there's nothing really tying this entry to the zeitgeist one a few days back, which is what the title refers to. Coffee. Right.

Posted by Aaron at 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Seems like many moons and memes ago people were talking about BlackPeopleLoveUs.com:

Chelsea Peretti, 24, a struggling stand-up comedian who is one of the site's creators, said: "It really shocked us how quickly this site took off. We were expecting a huge response, but not this huge."

Ms. Peretti, who wrote all of the site's content, and her partner (and brother), Jonah Peretti, 28, who designed the site, describe blackpeopleloveus.com as a form of social activism, a way of examining the infinitely complex subject of race relations.

"Because the site is funny, we knew it would reach people who might not ordinarily think about these issues," said Mr. Peretti, an adjunct professor of digital design at the Parsons School of Design and the director of research and development at Eyebeam, a nonprofit arts organization in New York. "We wanted to promote dialogue, to get people talking about these issues."

So the New York Times article on the site and site creators, Black-White Harmony: Are You Kidding Me?, may not be of interest.

Plus, y'know, humor is idiosyncratic. And some people do get touchy about racial issues. Hard to believe this, coming from me, but it's true. Really.

But many visitors to their site will probably wonder what gives the Perettis the authority to speak on behalf of African-Americans. Not having actually experienced the frustrations they ridicule, are they qualified to spearhead this discussion?

Yes, the siblings argue. "There is a mistake that people have made about the division of labor," Mr. Peretti said. "It's like racism is something only people of color can think about. Feminism is something only women can think about. But it's important for white people to get involved in the critique too."

A friend of the Perettis featured on the site, José Germosén, a black Dominican, insists the siblings aren't suffering from a case of white liberal guilt. "I don't think they set out to defend the Negroes; they just had a genuine interest in sparking dialogue," said Mr. Germosén, 26. "A lot of white people of the hip-hop generation are a lot more sophisticated about how this game got started and they're just as interested in freeing up the blockage as we are."

There would be some pseudo-intellectual justification here for me liking this site, but despising that "How BLACK Are You?" quiz, but I really don't see a contradiction. . .

Update: Laura asked about Black Folk linking to the site a while back, and I failed to comment, because I suck.

Giles, who does not suck, did chime in. I'd encourage others to do so, but seeing as I still haven't myself yet, um, I'm thinking about not posting this. . .

Posted by Aaron at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

So, the search function is working again at blogdex. And, fool that I am, I looked up this place.

The fuck was I thinking?

Back in early August, Eric Olsen wrote:

"Say It Loud, I'm Black and Hateful"
Aaron really is a nightmare: an intelligent black man who somehow still buys into the "identify with our suppressed brethren in the Middle East via the American Black Muslim door because they are Muslim and Black Muslims are Muslim [of a sort] and I am black so when they are done with my Palestinian and Iraqi brethren they may come after me."

You are an American, that's all that counts. No one else would identify you with any non-American unless the term "African-American" ties you to that continent. This race to identify with the "suppressed underdog" anywhere on earth regardless of heinousness of ideology went out with the Black Panthers. Let me guess: favorite poet - Amiri Baraka?

Let us not be blind to victims but let us also not seek victimization as a shield from personal responsibility. Lastly, how dare you imply Dawn is racist when racism oozes from your every pore? So much to offer, so little to say. Were you beaten by your white keepers as a child? Fight the power, fool.

UPDATE
No, it isn't the site name (which I thought was funny), it's the mixture of self-pity and contempt dripping all over everything. And you can quote George Wallace and David Duke and it wouldn't mean squat. View people as people and drop the race card.

Somehow I missed this at the time. Probably best for all concerned, really, and I'm not certain bringing it up again now is a good idea.

My keepers might start beating me again, after all.

And then there's an update, as I realize what I found annoying about this.

Not the arrogant whiteboy bullshit. I've grown quite accustomed to that over the decades, thanks. It's the second person bits. Like I said, I only saw the thing this morning.

I suppose Rebecca covers the proper way of addressing an entry to someone. Emailing the entry itself, or a link, to the person you're supposedly speaking to?

I just wrote Eric, at the address given at Blogcritics. We'll see what, if anything, he has to say about this.

Don't hit the archived/comments link on that entry at Tres Producers, by the way.

We should all try to remember the good things about Daily Pundit.

You know, like. . . well, there's. . . help me out here, people.

Posted by Aaron at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)

Trust me, this is as odd as Alan Keyes doing it.

From Minority report: Marvel series tells 'The Truth' :

Marvel's president, Bill Jemas, says the comic is more about honoring contributions made by countless African-American men and women in the war effort than it is about Tuskegee or the iconic character of Captain America. Still, Jemas admits the company has suffered a minor backlash. Some comic book stores are refusing to carry the book and Marvel continues to receive angry e-mails denouncing the book.

"I can't tell you how many e-mails I've gotten recently that begin with 'I'm not a racist, but ...' What they really should be saying is 'I'm a racist, and ... ' Damn it, let America react to this the way they will. Yes, Captain America is an icon and it's worrisome to some that we would monkey with an icon. An icon has got to be relevant, though," Jemas says.

Not that I plan to buy the thing, despite the Kyle Baker artwork. Don't think I've bought a comic since the last issue of Transmetropolitan. . .

Want to know more?

That's nice.

Update 11/22: My apologies. If you want to know more, Jason makes with the review and the links, and Dru makes with the observations.

They'll be handling the comics section at wimmenandminorities.com, you know.

Posted by Aaron at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (2)

The Stars Our Destination is easily the best science fiction, fantasy & horror bookstore in. . . well, it's in Evanston now, but they used to be on Belmont in Chicago proper. And if you remember the location on Clark, you're old. . .

The Stars My Destination is a novel by Alfred Bester.

As their newsletter announces, you can order The Computer Connection by Mr. Bester as an eBook from Fictionwise. Unfortunately, it's only available for Microsoft Reader, which I've never been able to get working under WINE. Not that I've tried very hard. . .

Luckily, the Mary Soon Lee stories I've bought from them come in platform-independent flavors, as do the ones from Harlan Ellison.

I really don't read that much SF, though. Or watch it, seeing as I quite deliberately missed Firefly on Friday.

Along with the overwhelming majority of the viewing public, apparently.

Update: which last, just-added link points to the descriptively-titled article, "'Firefly' Cancellation Looming."

Start your petitions now, children.

Posted by Aaron at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

And I'm too distracted by the snow to look it up. Or read through The Princesses of Porno Power: Women's Erotic Comix over at Scarlet Letters, or A Lady's Guide to Reading Comic Book Porn over at Sequential Tart.

I'll just mention that I kind'a liked the chapters of Lost Girls I read way back when, when it was serialized Taboo, and look for a link to a better review.

Where "better" just means "more in tune with my personal tastes," that is.

Want to know more? There's a few panels of Melinda Gebbie's art for the series up here and there. Images.Google.com is your friend too, y'know.

Update: Oh good, the snow is melting.

Navigating the typical comic book store, complete with trolls, trivia fiends, teenage boys, and two-dimensional gigantic tits, is intimidating for those lacking an X chromosome. It's rare to find a store that carries many, or any, comics by women or independent publishers. The marvel of generic superheroes carries limited excitement for females who don't identify with damsels in distress or submissive secretaries.

Writes Kara Maia Spencer in that first link. Some shops are worse than others, of course.

In the second article, Colleen Coover explains:

I had thought, when asked to write this article, to give a list of recommended adult comic titles, or maybe a brief history of pornographic comics. I am not a comic book historian, so I'm not really qualified to tackle the history. I decided that a list of my own favorites would be not very useful, and would be a rude imposition of my personal tastes. Instead, I'm going to offer up some opinions, give some advice, on what makes for quality comic book adult reading. I'm going to start out with some basic assumptions: that lust is a naturally occurring human state of being; that variations of sexuality exist, so what may be good for some, may be bad for somebody else; and that pornography is a valid sexual entertainment.

If you disagree with any of those, you should probably avoid the article.

And try therapy.

Posted by Aaron at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry, the logic kicked in again. InstaPundit tells us:

WHY COLLEGES ARE SHORT ON MALES: It's a "hostile environment" for men.

The link is to a piece titled "Why Males Don't Go to College."

Other than a ritual mention of "the problems of low-income and minority males," we forget the silly notions of class and race, and get to the actual thesis:

[R]ampant anti-male feminism has made college campuses a place where many males feel unwanted and unwelcome. To use a feminist term, our universities have become "hostile environments" for young men.

There follow stories of man-hating, castrating militant lesbians ritually slaughtering innocent men on the Quad of several universities nationwide.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

There follow stories of "bigotry." "sometimes subtle, sometimes slap-in-the-face prejudice," and how the author "did sometimes protest in Ms. Smith's class and others, but a 6'2" male confronting a female educator about her bigotry, however politely, is quickly perceived as a sexist bully."

Brings a tear to the eye, don't it?

Want to know more, you glutton for punishment? Have a look at GlennSacks.com:

Glenn Sacks is the only regularly published male columnist in the US who writes about gender issues from a perspective unapologetically sympathetic to men and fathers.

You can come back and explain to me what the fuck "unapologetically sympathetic" means.

Update: Sweet creeping zombie Jesus.

October is Domestic Violence "Awareness" Month

Feminists use Domestic Violence "Awareness" Month as an opportunity to demonize men in the media and pretend that domestic violence is synonymous with wife-beating. In reality, a mountain of evidence shows that women are as likely to be violent towards their male partners as vice versa, and that women use weapons and the element of surprise to compensate for their smaller size.

I mean, true, VASpider quoted an article saying the same things a few days back, but somehow the one she chose didn't have the sinister undertones.

Perhaps if they'd tossed in the odd "pretend," "mountain of evidence," "demonize" and sneer quotes.

Posted by Aaron at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (2)

Oh, I see what time it is.

Because I see that Scott at AMCGLTD.COM (which will never, ever be linked here again) mentions that, um, he's still linked here. Well, I tell you, brother, if wasn't busy taking my vitamins, saying my prayers, and trying to get Debian working again (big thanks to Team Murder for the heads-up on a simple fix), I'd hack that JavaScript referral script to remove him! In fact, I guarantee that by the end of Survivor Series this Sunday (order the webcast, or check with your cable provider), that link will be gone!

(Aa)Ron Simmons, formerly known as Faarooq Asaad
(likes vowels)

Posted by Aaron at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ici
il ne s'est rien passé

Well, the blog didn't exist then. Neither did I, if it comes to that.

Warning to j. brotherlove, George and Jason:

Joe Boxer dancer to return

Joe Boxer's boogie guy is making a repeat appearance in Kmart Corp.'s new holiday marketing campaign. Vaughn Lowery, who danced in the first round of Joe Boxer ads for Kmart, is back again as the discount retailer focuses on getting consumers to "Get More Gifts, Spread More Cheer." Kmart, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, is hoping the marketing campaign will help boost much-needed sales during the crucial holiday season.

Happy Holidays!

Exhibit A, courtesy of VASpider:

"[The upcoming television show Mr. and Mr. Nash] is a murder mystery show and these guys are going to be smart and will hopefully be doing some stereotype-busting," [Scott Seomin, GLAAD's entertainment media director] told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network. "Stereotypes are based in truth and humor. We as a community can laugh at ourselves and others better than any other minority."

Exhibit B from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago would have its first openly gay alderman under a political deal in the works that has touched off a civil war in the gay community.

Ald. Bernard Hansen (44th), who has already announced his political retirement, is planning to resign from office before the Feb. 25 aldermanic election. That would pave the way for Mayor Daley to appoint Hansen's handpicked successor, Tom Tunney, and give Tunney, the owner of Ann Sather's Restaurants, a leg up on his opponents.

The problem is, Lake View's gay activists have already pledged their support to another openly gay candidate, attorney Richard Ingram.

They call the Hansen-for-Tunney swap a backroom deal that has the potential to divide and conquer gay voters and pave the way for a straight candidate to claim the 44th Ward seat.

"He's being looked upon as an Uncle Tom,'' said Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, one of the largest gay and lesbian rights groups in the Midwest.

Emphasis added. Because there might be a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not capable of coming up with anything right now.

And I liked the vegetarian chili at Ann Sather, for what it's worth.

Posted by Aaron at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Not exactly unprecendented, this.

Death threats to Dalai Lama blamed on rival Bhuddist sect

In the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile has its headquarters, posters threatening to kill the Dalai Lama have appeared. They say he and his followers in India will face death if they do not leave the country.

Police suspect a Tibetan cult, Shugden, is behind the threats against the Dalai Lama, who fled to Dharamsala from Tibet in 1959, and have tightened security around him.

The article goes on to describe Shugden, in terms which may be perfectly accurate but sound just a wee bit sensationalist to me. It also includes this bit:

Kelsang Gyatso and his followers in NKT accuse the Dalai Lama of selling out Tibet by promoting its autonomy within China rather than outright independence, of expelling their followers from jobs in Tibetan establishments in India, and of denying them humanitarian aid pouring in from Western countries.

Some context, if you're confused about this:

Dalai Lama Wants Self-Rule for Tibet

The Dalai Lama denied Chinese assertions that he seeks independence for Tibet, saying during a trip to neighboring Mongolia on Thursday that he would settle for autonomy.

The exiled Tibetan leader made the comments during an appearance at Mongolian National University to accept an honorary degree. About 200 academics and Buddhist monks were in the audience.

``I am not seeking independence. I am seeking self-rule. I think that benefits both Chinese and Tibetan people.'' he said in English. He did not elaborate, but has previously appealed for greater Tibetan cultural and political autonomy.

Which covers the autonomy vs. independence notion, anyway.

And the answer to the question posed in the title is yes.

Update: Linked unprecendented above to a previous entry. As I'd meant to do before posting this.

Attention conservation excerpt:

On July 18, the 13th Kundeling Tagtsha Jetung, who the Dalai Lama refuses to recognise as the head of the Dorje Shugden sect, accused the Dalai Lama of committing atrocities against rival Tibetans and with carrying out anti-China activities in Nepal.

I'd check to see if the Chinese are bankrolling the Shugden, but that seems far too obvious.

Posted by Aaron at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Since Mozilla let me visit Lileks dumb ass:

Bin Laden needs to do something big, something bold. I think he should go to Cuba. Set himself up as Fidel’s successor. Shouldn’t be hard; they both have famous beards; they both hate America; they both hate gays - Osama would have them stoned, Fidel puts the AIDS-infected gays in barbed-wire camps.

Clearly, there's nothing in the browser keeping me from seeing certain sites.

Oh, and not that it matters:

In Cuba, HIV Entails Quarantine No More

St. Petersburg Times Online (01/27/98); Payton, Jack

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Cuban government quarantined HIV-positive individuals, crediting the measures with keeping the country's AIDS rate lower than that of any other country in the region. As of 1997, Cuba had registered less than 1,700 HIV cases, despite having a population of more than 11 million. The country has extensive HIV testing measures, routinely screening pregnant women, blood donors, hospital patients, government officials, and "risk groups" for the virus. Meanwhile, due to the expense of isolating HIV-infected individuals and the possible influx of other infected persons from tourism, the nation began reexamining its HIV policy several years ago. Today, Cuba no longer quarantines HIV patients, offering treatment and counseling instead. Part of the new strategy includes a Health Ministry effort to distribute condoms free of charge and increased cooperation with international groups like Doctors Without Borders.

But the fuckhead got it wrong.

Coincidentally, VASpider has an entry about folks who really hate gays:

Their sexual orientation was more important to the U.S. Military than you being safe from terrorists. During a shortage of translators, these valuable servicepeople were dismissed for their orientation and their orientation alone.

God, I hope I run into Lileks when I'm back in Minneapolis visiting.

"Run into" has multiple meanings, mind.

Update: Say, you don't think Lileks was suggesting that only gays contract HIV up there, do you?

Nah. He couldn't be that fucking stupi--

Ok, that's what he was saying. Somebody better help me get the dents out of the Focus afterwards, that's all I'm saying. . .

Posted by Aaron at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Not much of a trick, that. And it is Mojira, after all.

Darmon Thornton's blog breaks down into line noise after a few screens, not unlike a small victory. Anybody else getting this, or did those wacky open source developers finally perfect the "you probably don't want to do that" function?

Ronn's place comes in just fine, even with the redesign. And he continues to follow the Central Park 5 case far better'n me.

On, and <Vinnie Mac Voice>I'm serving notice, right here on Google Smackdown!, that AMCGLTD.COM -- Where Cats, Science Fiction, and Anger Come Together! will never. . . will never. . . will never be linked from this site again.</Vinnie Mac Voice>

Now play my damn theme music.

And ignore the referral script links.

Oh, and I take it back. Since InstaPundit still comes in:

UPDATE: Reader Laurence Rothenberg writes: "What would happen if someone painted, 'Self-portrait in Blackface?'"

Clearly, the "dumb shit you probably don't want to read if you want to retain what precious shreds of your sanity remain" filter ain't quite got all the bugs worked out.

Couldn't work this into the WWE-style trashtalking: My results from Googlism.com are utterly unimpressive.

Some of the people who drop by here, though. . . y'all scare me.

Posted by Aaron at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Hanne ponders a switch to Movable Type. Seeing as I use only a fraction of the Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Personal Publishing System, I'm hardly the person to persuade her to do so.

I'll just resort to peer pressure instead.

Changed the link over yonder to the current page of her journal, for mysterious reasons of my own.

And removed Ginger, with regret.

And removed non-Buffy watching scum with extreme prejudice.

Why should Jason be the only one who gets the de-linker drama in his life?

Posted by Aaron at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Which line makes no sense when used for a story from a print publication, but the coffee and two cups of tea are wearing off. Perhaps I should try sleeping instead.

Picture swiped from Web used in porn ads

A 26-year-old graphic artist from Chicago got a surprise after posting her picture on an Internet personals site.

She found that someone had lifted her mug and attached it to dozens of ads with pornographic descriptions.

In one ad, she was a Denver 23-year-old who expected "breakfast in bed" after the first date. In another, she was "Chocolate--Starfish--0" who asked men to "send me your e-mail and a pic of yourself. Who knows, maybe I'll make you explode."

"You have no control," said the woman, who did not want her identity revealed. "That's the hardest thing to deal with. You have no idea who's seen it."

Not that the Chicago Sun-Times is a tabloid or nothing. I mean, it is, in form, but that doesn't mean the content is. . . aw, skip it.

Elsewhere, they report that Belafonte defends 'slave' comment in Chicago visit:

Entertainer and longtime human rights activist Harry Belafonte told a gathering of Chicago liberals Wednesday he would not back down from his criticisms of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell for being ''house slaves'' doing the bidding of President Bush. ''I didn't say anything you haven't been saying,'' Belafonte told the gathering, who responded with chuckles and applause. He spoke at a private breakfast at the Gold Coast penthouse of Bettylu Saltzman, former chief of staff to Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).

More than 50 like-minded people paid $100 to hear Belafonte at the gathering, which was a fund-raiser for the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights. Guests included former alderman and radio talk show host Cliff Kelley, DuSable Museum founder Margaret Burroughs and activist and media consultant Marilyn Katz.

And to think.

I used to avoid reading the Tribune because the bias was so evident.

Posted by Aaron at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dru links to Your Negro Tour Guide, but do I have one? No. Because I suck.

I use humor. I use it to diffuse the stereotype of the angry black bitch and to stunt my hate-filled, presumptuous and bigoted growth. I guffaw to keep from screaming.

Seth wanted to rub my head. He should've asked first. The answer still would've been a hell no. But I deserve the option.

Kathy Y. Wilson, on the other hand, rules.

This has nothing to do with the discussion of sexism going on over at Dru's place, by the way.

Oh, and there should be some Shakira lyrics here, but that gag's been done to death, I think.

Posted by Aaron at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone who's interested has seen The Gift by now, right?

Ben lies there, gives a pained cough and smiles painfully but still doesn't move.

BEN: I guess we're stuck with each other, huh baby?

He breathes painfully. Giles comes over and kneels beside him.

GILES: Can you move?
BEN: Need a ... a minute. She could've killed me.
GILES: No she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later Glory will re-emerge, and ... make Buffy pay for that mercy. And the world with her. Buffy even knows that... (reaches into his pocket, takes out his glasses) and still she couldn't take a human life.

Shot of Ben listening.

GILES: She's a hero, you see. (Giles puts his glasses on) She's not like us.
BEN: Us?

Giles suddenly reaches down and puts his hand over Ben's nose and mouth, holding them shut. Ben struggles weakly as Giles keeps him still. Giles keeps his calm expression throughout.

George is back, by the bye, with a link to

Business Week Online, Alexandra Starr, "Playing the race card -- over and over" (a September writeup of Jeremy D. Mayer's "Running on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns, 1960-2000" that claims that Richard Nixon was once a card-carrying member of the NAACP.)

Interesting selections of word and fact throughout the piece, starting with the first few sentences:

The divide between black and white America is nowhere more evident than in Presidential elections. In 10 of the past 11 showdowns for the White House, Republicans have won the majority of white support, sometimes by vast proportions. Blacks, in contrast, are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party.

[. . .W]hen Martin Luther King Jr. was briefly incarcerated in Georgia, Kennedy telephoned King's wife to express sympathy. This calculated gesture motivated a majority of blacks to vote Democratic.

[. . .] Such cynical maneuvering left the Democratic Party ripe for an internal or third-party challenge. . .

Emphasis added, of course.

I won't blame the author for the title of the piece. I'm feeling charitable.

I also won't blame the Business Week copyeditor/web lackey, since Giles gets touchy about stuff like that, and he'll kill your ass in a minute.

Right after he calmly, rationally explains why it's necessary for him to do so.

Posted by Aaron at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyone else having trouble reaching Giles' place at the moment? Figures this would happen right after Jason finally realized what's up with the nickname.

This means I can't check if he quoted the following bit of A New Light on Skin Color:

One of the important implications of Jablonski and Chaplin's work is that it underlines the concept of race as purely a social construct, with no scientific grounds. DNA research has shown that genetically all humans, regardless of skin color and other surface distinctions, are basically the same. In an April 2001 article titled, "The Genetic Archaeology of Race," published in the Atlantic Monthly, Steve Olson writes "the genetic variants affecting skin color and facial features are essentially meaningless —they probably involve a few hundred of the billions of nucleotides in a person's DNA. Yet societies have built elaborate systems of privilege and control on these insignificant genetic differences."

Jablonski and Chaplin view their work as relevant to how we get along with each other. According to Jablonski, many people are "happy and relieved" when they hear about this research. "All of a sudden their own coloration isn't something that was just handed to them," she says. "It isn't a social stigma. It's something that evolved in their ancestors for a good set of biological reasons. And it takes the wind out of racism and bigotry. It's a fairly simple and beautiful explanation for one of the most obvious characteristics that distinguishes humans."

Like I said, not news. Not especially interesting for me, at this point, either.

Now the 25th Anniversary of the Muppet Show?

It's been more than 20 years since Kermit, Missy Piggy and company have appeared regularly on TV. But that's about to change. A new special, "It's A Very Muppet Christmas," is scheduled to air on NBC the day after Thanksgiving; and there are plans for a new Muppet show on Fox.

News. And interesting.

Or my priorities are fucked.

Right, back to Debian stuff. . .

Posted by Aaron at 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't add unstable or testing to your sources.list if you aren't prepared to face the consequences.

Current consequences:

error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

When running apt-get or dselect. And there was that funny thing a few minutes ago, when X locked, and the Caps and Scroll Lock lights on the keyboard started flashing. . .

So remember, kids, if someone offers you libstdc++2.10-dev_1%3a2.95.4-14_i386.deb or libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_1%3a2.95.4-14_i386.deb, do like Nancy Reagan said and Just Say No.

At least I'm guessing, in my own uninformed little way, that one of them is the problem.

I shall research this. Which means ignoring politics for the time being. Darn.

Posted by Aaron at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

I'm not the target audience for Thomas Sowell's little pearls of wisdom.

Democrats know that one of the reasons for their disappointing showing in this year's elections is that they failed to get out the black vote in the numbers needed, especially in the South. Since Democrats have nothing to offer blacks, now that they do not control any branch of the federal government, their only way to get out the black vote in 2004 is by arousing fears and resentments.

The race card was played recklessly and shamelessly during the 2000 elections -- and successfully, with 92 percent of the black vote going to Al Gore. One television ad even tried to somehow connect George W. Bush with the dragging death of a black man in Texas.

The Democrats couldn't pull that kind of smear this year, with the president's approval ratings so high. But they have two more years in which to come up with something else, and they have long demonstrated fertile imaginations, unhampered by the truth.

Republicans, of course, would never, ever think of arousing fears and resentments, and couldn't imagine playing the race card. It would be beneath them.

Like the interview in the previous entry, this link was found at BlackElectorate.com. Not sure if I only visited them because I was in a foul mood, or if the mood came afterwards.

Long as I'm at Jewish World Review for Sowelll's piece, may as well check out some of the other towering intellects of our time, like Walter Williams:

Let's look at the recent election campaign. Whether it was a Democratic or Republican candidate, for the most part, they won votes by promising to spend the money of their constituents "on the objects of benevolence." They promised to violate the rights of some Americans for the benefit of other Americans. They promised to take money from younger Americans to buy prescription drugs for elderly Americans, take money from non-farmers to give to farmers and take money from wealthier people to give to poorer people. In a word or two, politicians campaigned on an unstated promise to ignore any oath of office to protect and defend the United States Constitution and instead go to work on undermining it.

Yep, that's gonna cheer me up right quick.

Say, that paragraph couldn't possibly arouse fear and resentment towards the elderly, farmers or poor(er) people, could it?

Because that's how Democrats act. And it's Wrong.

Posted by Aaron at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've mentioned my tendency to forget that Farai Chideya's Pop + Politics site even exists, yes?

Back on the 8th, the woman herself interviewed Meshell Ndegeocello on AIDS, Music, Revolution:

Meshell Ndegeocello fights AIDS and ignorance with song. On Monday, November 11, Ndegeocello will peform with and music direct some of America's most talented musicians, including Cassandra Wilson, Stephanie Mills and Bilal. The venue is none other than the famed Carnegie Hall, and the proceeds go the 21 year old organization GMHC, whose clientele is now two-thirds people of color. By the year 2010, half of New York's AIDS cases are projected to be women.

[. . .] With AIDS rates in several major cities--DC, Newark, Jersey city--reaching 5 percent, what needs to be done to reach urban and black Americans? Do you believe existing messages haven't targeted or reached African-Americans in particular? What would you like to see done differently?

AIDS plagues the African and African American communities, mainly due to lack of access to sex education and health care and all the myths about AIDS being a "gay disease." I think that all HIV/AIDS organizations need to work hard to educate in communities of color and to partner with mainstream educational institutions to break down stereotypes. Unfortunately, lack of HIV/AIDS awareness in communities of color and homophobia are walking hand in hand-- at this point we have to stop the ignorance because all of our lives depend upon it. And if we can let our kids watch movies and play video games where people's heads are getting blown off, we should certainly be able to talk with them openly about sex. If the epidemic is going to be halted, it starts with kids. It starts with open and honest dialogues so that young people don't feel the need to be secretive and on their own.

How do you believe U.S. AIDS policy influences the international community? What would you like to see changed?

Well the US influences the world because of its economic and military importance; meanwhile, healthcare around the world is far more humane and ethical than it is here. Of course I think it is reprehensible for any drug company to not make helpful HIV/AIDS treatments available in critical and impoverished nations. I think there is value in exploring the way that Cuba has isolated the disease and the way it has worked to keep its HIV/AIDS community connected to their families, but because of the political relationship between the US and Cuba, this has been under-researched.

What I'd really like to see is an integrated international team of researches with the type of financial resources that the US throws into fighting baldness and impotence. Then we might move further along in finding holistic, humane treatments.

Which statement should not be taken as minimizing the importance of confronting the serious threats of baldness and impotence.

And I don't know. Perhaps I'm just getting old.

Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) is a not-for-profit, volunteer-supported and community-based organization committed to national leadership in the fight against AIDS. Our mission is to reduce the spread of HIV disease, help people with HIV maintain and improve their health and independence, and keep the prevention, treatment and cure of HIV an urgent national and local priority. In fulfilling this mission, we will remain true to our heritage by fighting homophobia and affirming the individual dignity of all gay men and lesbians.

There was a time I'd try making a joke about dispelling the myth that HIV/AIDS is a "gay disease" at a fundraiser for an organization called Gay Men's Health Crisis.

This was news, briefly. Some of you might remember the months before Everything Changed on 9/11.

Half of all new infections among men are among Black men. According to a recent CDC study, nearly a third of Black men who are gay or bisexual have HIV before age 30. Some communities have greeted the news of these infection rates by blaming the victims — demonizing us and characterizing Black men as sexual predators or declaring that African American men who have sex with other men cannot be reached with effective solutions. It's an old, familiar song, the same thinking that makes it hard for us to get a cab in New York City, makes white folks cross to the other side of the street when we walk by in Pittsburgh, forces white women to clutch their pearls when we enter an elevator in Chicago, gets us stopped and frisked by police on the New Jersey Turnpike, or shot in Cincinnati. Black homosexual men are still Black men. And, Black men, if we are seen at all, are seen as problems.

That's from Black Men and HIV, by Phill Wilson, from way back in June, 2001.

We all have much more pressing issues to be concerned about now.

Moving even further back, there's (the Archive'd version of) a Village Voice series from 2000 you could check out:

In a six-part series the Voice will explore many issues that cloud understanding of a complex public health crisis which disproportionately affects black communities in New York State. Even as AIDS deaths decline among other groups, the disease remains the leading killer of African Americans aged 25 to 44. The series will highlight the efforts of community leaders working to stem the rise in cases.

If you want to know more, that is.

Posted by Aaron at 6:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (1)

Assuming she's not finally starved to death after this last months-long period of being ignored. Some of us aren't meant to have children, or even real houseplants or pets. Hard to kill the virtual ones through negligence, and no pesky calls from DCFS or the ASPCA. . .

Elsewhere, Toys in Babeland has a gallery of Heather's work, under the "Photo Gallery" link. If you're not familiar with them (something I don't expect to be a problem for regular readers here), they describe themselves thusly:

Toys in Babeland is a sex toy store run by women whose mission is to promote and celebrate sexual vitality by providing an honest, open and fun environment, encouraging personal empowerment, educating our community, and supporting a more passionate world for all of us.

If this isn't safe for work, you're probably working at the wrong place.

And I don't think they carry Neopets merchandise, but it couldn't hurt to ask. Or just browse through the catalog. Up to you, really.

Posted by Aaron at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

People. All us fucked-up people,
What are we gonna do
With ourselves
And our addictions
And our desire to kill each other?
And special things, your own dreams?

People. All us fucked-up people,
Can't we see behind the pain of losing?
I had a dream of love and colors,
And all the while it seemed real,
And in this dream, we were unique.
Couldn't it be? I wasn't cryin' Before he died,
He died so young
And I can't see you anymore,
'Cause there's no answers here,
There's no feeling.

People. All us fucked-up people,
Can't we see beyond the pain of losing one another?
I had this dream of trust and beauty,
And all the while, it seemed real,
And in this dream, we were not fighting.
Couldn't it be? You gave it up,
You lost your reason. You never saw
You are unique. You spread your wings
And cut 'em off. You're only hurting.

People, all our fucked-up smiles
We quit dreaming long ago and our
Distrust and our addictions and our desire
To kill each other makes all the sense in the world
You just fucked up for a moment. You're only hurting
That's just like me
That's just like me
That's just like me
I had this dream of love and colors.

Of love and colors, lyrics by Lisa Germano, from the Geek the Girl cd.

Jason isn't the only one finding it easier to express thoughts with lyrics lately.

Posted by Aaron at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Uh-huh.

Klez.E is the most common world-wide spreading worm. It's very dangerous by corrupting your files.
Because of its very smart stealth and anti-anti-virus technic, most common AV software can't detect or clean it.
We developed this free immunity tool to defeat the malicious virus.
You only need to run this tool once,and then Klez will never come into your PC.
NOTE: Because this tool acts as a fake Klez to fool the real worm, some AV monitor maybe cry when you run it.
If so, Ignore the warning,and select 'continue'.
If you have any question,please mail to me.

I love getting large attachments when I'm still on a dialup. Especially when they're from people I don't know, for operating systems I'm not using, and carry explicit warnings that they may cause anti-virus software to wig out.

Tonight's Buffy better be good, that's all I'm saying.

Meanwhile, every email message I've sent to an AOL account today has thrown back a "transient non-fatal error." Probably because them and Earthlink ain't on speaking terms. Bastards. Don't they realize that when elephants fight, the grass suffers?

On a ligher note, Statia, in a comment over at kd's place, said:

Men see boobies. We give money to charity. I get to go to Florida. It's a win win win situation!!!!

(Hit the link for context, obviously)

It's worth noting that Heather and Sabrina are currently in Florida.

I'm not saying nothing, but anyone (Dru) who wants to (Dru) should feel free.

Oh, and Dru mentions:

Jim Munroe was managing editor at Adbusters before writing the novels Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask and Angry Young Spaceman, and runs the indie publishing resource site nomediakings.org from his home in Toronto.

His new book about the year 2036, Everyone In Silico, contained so many mentions of corporate brands that he decided to invoice them for product placement. When they failed to respond, he wrote pointed and amusing Past Due letters. He will be reading them aloud at the free and Pay-What-You-Can events in the following cities:

[. . .] Chicago, IL (w/ Todd Dills, Joe Meno)
Fri. Nov. 29, 8pm, Quimby's (1854 W North Ave.)

(far more complete list available in the link, natch)

And I probably won't be in town that day. Plus, they're skipping the rest of flyover country, where I probably will be, and heading from Chi straight to Portland. Bloody typical.

No idea why I decided to visit Dru's site just then, by the way.

Finally, Michelle and Belinda are headed to Columbus tomorrow. Readers in Columbus are encouraged to phone every hotel in town looking for Michelle, to rescue her from hotel food. Because you know the girl ain't gonna order no veggies, and they'd be pretty awful if she did. . ..

There's a bad food/hospital joke in there, but I figure Dru can handle that one, too.

Posted by Aaron at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Things change.

A crucial difference between the Old South and the New South has to do with public attitudes toward murder and lynching. In the pre-civil-rights South, white men in the more primitive communities were more likely to be punished for misdemeanors than for killing a black man even in plain public view. Lynchers were rarely brought to trial. Those whom the system could rouse itself to indict were exonerated by all-white juries. Black witnesses to these crimes often avoided the courtroom, fearful that testifying against a white man would bring their lives to an end.

That's from the registration-required New York Times, from an editorial titled The Murder of Emmett Louis Till, Revisited. I won't insult your intelligence by reviewing the details of the case; anyone who gives a care must already be familiar with it.

Including the fact that no one was ever actually convicted.

Two men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were acquitted of the murder, even though they admitted to a sheriff and his deputy that they had abducted the boy. The acquittal sparked demonstrations across the country and gave an urgency to the civil rights movement in the South. But the killers and their collaborators were never brought to justice.

A new documentary by 31-year-old Keith Beauchamp could well cause this case to be reopened. There will be a private screening of the film, "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till," on Nov. 16 at the New York University Cantor Film Center. A discussion by experts will follow. Mr. Beauchamp, who grew up in Louisiana, was 10 or 11 when he came across a picture of Emmett's mutilated body in Jet magazine. Faced with a curious child, Mr. Beauchamp's mother and father delicately explained the inconceivable.

Determining why this would be inconceivable is left as an exercise for the reader.

After all, some things don't change.

Some of the fear that ruled black life in Mississippi 50 years ago still hovers in the air. One local man, trying to prevent Mr. Beauchamp from filming, told him that he was putting people in danger because "the people who did this killing still live around here." Two witnesses asked to be filmed in silhouette, out of fear that they might be hurt or killed for talking.

Some things don't change a bit.

Posted by Aaron at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Eh, what's the worst that could happen if I do?

Hanne tempts, but doesn't deliver.

And I am going to stop RIGHT NOW before I get onto a rant about making men accountable for their own assholism, rather than forcing women to modify their lives in order to present the fewest possibilities for said men to make an excuse for their own assholism, i.e., "She was wearing a [insert type of garment here], she was asking for it!"

Which, given the subject matter, is probably a poor way of expressing. . . did I mention there are no decent coffee shops, or stores which sell that Fair Trade I liked, anywhere in the immediate vicinity?

Will have to buy several dozen pounds of beans at the Wedge in a few weeks. Otherwise, I might start getting loopy or something.

Posted by Aaron at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The Cannon Song, also known as The Army Song, music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Bertolt Brecht.

John was all present and Jim was all there
And Georgie was up for promotion
Not that the Army gave a bugger who they were
When confronting some heathen commotion

Chorus:
The troops live under
The cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar
Moving from place to place
When they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skins are black or yellow
They quick as winking chop him into
Beefsteak tartar

Johnny found his whiskey too warm
And Jimmy found the weather too balmy
But Georgie took them both by the arm
And said "Don't ever disappoint the army!"

Chorus repeat

John is a write-off and Jimmy is dead
And Georgie was shot for looting
And young men's blood goes on being red
And the army still goes on ahead recruiting

Chorus repeat

Apologies to any visiting warbloggers who find the lyrics disgusting.

The Nazis didn't like them either.

And I'm just this side of having put "old Nazis" in the previous sentence. Really not caring for you mother fuckers right now.

Posted by Aaron at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Fucked if I can see it though. White Guy Glenn Reynolds links to Xtreme White Guy James Lileks discussing "why right-wingers (according to The New Yorker) disapprove of interracial friendships":

Explicitly racial attacks on Rice and Powell from the left - be it Belafonte or the radio host in Florida - are irrelevant, since the left at its heart believes in goodness for Blacks in general. The “right wing” puts up with Rice, but when they get together to sew sheets and pre-soak the cross wood with lighter fluid, you have to know her name comes up.

Like I said, there might be a point buried somewhere in there. Maybe. If you squint a little. And I'm sure both these gentlemen have a number of friends who aren't white.

Again, it will come as a surprise to the people in question that they're considered friends, but what's life without surprises?

Even rather disturbing ones.

Moving rapidly towards the "fuck all you assholes" school of thought here.

Posted by Aaron at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

From Danny Schechter, your news dissector:

I heard no talk of any plans for a new memorial for the war we now getting ready to fight, or even any talk about all the dunderheads who two decades ago denounced Maya Lin’s moving memorial insiting that it be accompanied by a more traditional statue who noone has ever referenced since the day it was built to assuage the right-wing Veteran groups from earlier wars who never fought in Vietnam. We are living in the United States of Amnesia where history is dead and context is also conspicuous by its absense.

Remember, he who lives by the grammar/spelling flame, usually gets bit in the ass by instant karma.

As for that other statue:

The controversy over Maya Lin's abstract design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial led to the inclusion of this figurative work, erected two years after the Wall's completion. This bronze work is in a grove of trees near the west entrance to the wall. See whole view. Three servicemen, wearing the uniforms of the various military and naval branches, represent the racial diversity of the troops.

You may now boo the politically correct concept of "racial diversity."

Want to know more about The Three Servicemen Statue?

As debate raged over Maya Lin's design, opponents suggested throwing it out and starting over again, while members of Congress registered their disapproval. James Watt, Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan Administration, refused to issue a building permit for the memorial. Under the threat of losing their memorial, the veterans, their supporters and their opponents met to find a compromise. They decided to add a statue and a flagpole. These would symbolize in a more traditional manner the patriotism and heroism that some of the veterans and opponents thought was lacking in Lin's design.

In the end, the compromise of the Three Servicemen Statue and flagpole fulfilled a purpose of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial--to help heal the nation's wounds. Citing pain as "a necessary part of...the healing process for the wounds of Vietnam," a former design opponent, Milt Copulos, confessed that although "the wall of the memorial could have been a wall between us," it instead "became a bridge."

Didn't think so.

Posted by Aaron at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Currently linked seven times according to blogdex, it's another amusing 'net quiz. This one asks the musical comedy question, "How BLACK are you?"

Your 3 favorite accesories include:

• Cornrows, Eminem CD, MaryJane
• Dice, fried chicken, and a 40
• Top hat, cane, hos
• Tie, briefcase, glasses
• Gold teef, low rider, .45

Oddly, my sides aren't splitting. I must be too politically correct to see the humor. Darn. I really feel like I'm missing out.

The first link at blogdex, View From The Hill, adds this comment to his results:

Now to await the call from Jesse Jackson cussing me out for putting this up on my blog. Or maybe it'll be Al Sharpton this time.

I don't think I'll bother following the rest. Probably either variations on that, or worse. One of them is at Amish Tech Support, after all.

This is going to be a good week. I can feel it.

Posted by Aaron at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (1)

Old white guy expresses disgust with nigger/jungle/black music. You can dig up a comparable article about blues, or jazz, or R&B, or rock, and with a quick global search and replace get the exact same column. If it weren't for the contemporary reference to the snipers, I'd swear that's what Bob Levey did with this:

If you're new to this column, you've missed my many rants about this form of musical expression. My major complaint: It isn't music. My second: It isn't expression. My third: It's amazingly vulgar. Not to mention juvenile, sexist and misogynistic.

Rap is a litany of half-formed thoughts, laid over half-formed percussion. You can't hum it or dance to it. Half the time, you can't understand it.

In 20 years, do you think there'll be a radio format called Golden Oldie Rap of the '80s and '90s? No chance, because the stuff isn't singable or memorable.

No sense mentioning that classic rap shows already exist, I suppose. Why let facts get in the way.

He works for the Washington Post. I expect he has many black friends who work there. Might surprise them to find out they're his friends, true. . .

Posted by Aaron at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Didn't used to check BlackElectorate.com so often. Not because they didn't have interesting material, but because usually it only annoyed me. Like this article, "Racial, ideological issues split black, white voters" from USA Today.

Clear ''racial and ideological divides'' between African-Americans and whites ''characterize the 2002 political environment,'' the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies concluded from the results of its National Opinion Poll on political issues, which was conducted in September and October and released last week.

The news is not that whites and African-Americans see some things differently. That has pretty much been the case since the first slave ship docked in the country back in 1619.

What makes this report remarkable is how this gap has widened since the Joint Center conducted its last poll in 2000. Then, 56% of African-Americans and 57% of whites believed the country was moving in the right direction. Two years later, 40.6% of whites still hew to that belief, but only 23.9% of blacks now agree.

It does get down to some very limited specifics (how favorably Bush and Clinton are viewed, for example), but ignores class and any groups outside of black and white. So, annoying and hardly informative.

Unless you really haven't been paying attention. I imagine the right-wingers are either shocked by this, or busy "proving" that the supposed divide doesn't exist.

They may even speak to an actual black person in the course of this.

Doubtful, I know.

Posted by Aaron at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jason, who doesn't hold his liquor nearly as well as kd, fairly recently asked about favorite songs, and why they rated. Dunno why I'm in a Cowboy Junkies mood today:

He left his dead in the cottonwood trees
the ground grown too hard with the years
Falling down was not what it used to be
the ground grown too hard with the years

He told his children those little white lies
the truth would only paralyze them
He told himself those little white lies
the truth would only paralyze him

Lay it down, lay it down

He sold most of what he cherished,
the rest he let them steal
Shot his dog out in the open field,
the rest he let them steal

He broke all of his promises,
under a sea green sky
They never thought to ask him why,
under a sea green sky

Lay it down, lay it down

Please bury me in the cottonwood trees
the ground grown too cold for me
Going to sleep tonight in a warm feather bed
the ground grown too cold for me

Lay it down, lay it down

Might be Margot Timmins' phrasing, which glides gently all over the place carrying the melody. It might be the way the band gives the rhythm room to grow on you. Or it's just warm and overcast.

Michelle claims unjustifiably to be ancient because of her radio presets. Which reminds me that I've got an entire set of Twin Cities presets I should change to something else at some point. Since there was already a set for Chicago, there's hardly any rush. And I might be driving around when I'm up there later this month.

You know, visiting people I didn't bother telling I was leaving and that sort of thing.

VASpider needs sleep. Linking to a guest commentary by Dinesh D'Souza in the National Review is not a good sign. Despite the fact that I just did the same thing. Well, she started it.

George is busy NaNoWriMo'ing. I didn't say I was going to do that, did I? Because I was lying through my teeth if I did. Hanne's effort looks good compared to mine, and she's grooving to the new Sigur Rós rather than. . .

Hang on, may have a new favorite song soon. Disregard this entry.

If anyone regards any of them.

Update: Oh, what the fuck?

Finally, the Democrats could become the party of moral degeneracy. In recent years the Democrats have not embraced moral degeneracy outright. They have contented themselves with hiding behind the slogan of "liberty." If accused of encouraging pornography, the Democrats have said, "No, we are for liberty of expression." Charged with supporting abortion-on-demand, the Democrats insist, "No, we are the party that gives women freedom over their own bodies." Caught distributing sex kits and homosexual instruction manuals to young people, the Democrats protest, "We are merely attempting to give people autonomy and freedom of choice."

Dinesh D'Souza, ladies and gentlemen.

Sex kits?

Homosexual instruction manuals?

And what pornography were they meant to be encouraging?

Sorry, that last was an accusation. The previous two, they were caught doing. Shame there are no footnotes or those hyperlink things the kids are all into these days, I'd like to know when they were caught doing this.

After all, National Review would never publish unsubstantiated allegations. Fucking bastion of journalistic integrity they are.

Posted by Aaron at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

It's one of those phrases like "political correctness" as far as I can tell. Very rarely meaningful, and generally just an emotionally-charged shorthand for an actual argument.

Playing the Race Card:
Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson

The black man suffering at the hands of whites, the white woman sexually threatened by the black man. Both images have long been burned into the American conscience through popular entertainment, and today they exert a powerful and disturbing influence on Americans' understanding of race. So argues Linda Williams in this boldly inquisitive book, where she probes the bitterly divisive racial sentiments aroused by such recent events as O. J. Simpson's criminal trial. Williams, the author of Hard Core, explores how these images took root, beginning with melodramatic theater, where suffering characters acquire virtue through victimization.

The racial sympathies and hostilities that surfaced during the trial of the police in the beating of Rodney King and in the O. J. Simpson murder trial are grounded in the melodramatic forms of Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Birth of a Nation. Williams finds that Stowe's beaten black man and Griffith's endangered white woman appear repeatedly throughout popular entertainment, promoting interracial understanding at one moment, interracial hate at another. The black and white racial melodrama has galvanized emotions and fueled the importance of new media forms, such as serious, "integrated" musicals of stage and film, including The Jazz Singer and Show Boat. It also helped create a major event out of the movie Gone With the Wind, while enabling television to assume new moral purpose with the broadcast of Roots. Williams demonstrates how such developments converged to make the televised race trial a form of national entertainment.

When prosecutor Christopher Darden accused Simpson's defense team of "playing the race card," which ultimately trumped his own team's gender card, he feared that the jury's sympathy for a targeted black man would be at the expense of the abused white wife. The jury's verdict, Williams concludes, was determined not so much by facts as by the cultural forces of racial melodrama long in the making.

In my opinion, of course. Reasonable people may disagree about this, as with other things.

That's almost the entire description, by the bye. Meant to cut it off at the second paragraph, but the bit about Darden pulled me in. Anyone have any instances of the phrase which predate the Simpson trial? I'm pretty sure Darden and the other participants didn't coin the thing, but don't remember hearing it tossed around with such abandon before that.

I'm also not sure it means the same thing to everyone. After all, I wouldn't call Belafonte's comments about Powell a "slur,", yet The Washington Times (a bastion of journalistic integrity, if you were wondering) headlines a story, "Black leaders hit Belafonte for slur."

The leaders in question are Charles Rangel and the Al Sharpton, if you don't feel like hitting the link. Wouldn't blame you if you didn't:

Mr. Belafonte last month called Mr. Powell a "house slave" for working in the Bush administration and later said that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was the same, "but more so."

Mr. Sharpton declined to criticize Mr. Belafonte explicitly, but said he thought Mr. Belafonte "could have chosen different language" in the assessment of Mr. Powell. "I respect Colin Powell's achievements," Mr. Sharpton said.

The statements were the first from the liberal black leadership to support Mr. Powell. "I am friends with them both," Mr. Rangel said. "And this was something that, if Harry would have said that to Colin at a party, Colin would have just laughed. But it was made into a national story.

"Colin Powell is a military guy, and he doesn't care who he works for, he just salutes," Mr. Rangel continued. "And he does it so well that he is respected by the commander in chief."

The headline makes it sound far more interesting than it actually turns out to be. Go figure.

Posted by Aaron at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Look, maybe the guy is actually a reasonable human being in person, but Laurence Simon's online persona is a damn good impression of a bigoted little shit who has no time for anyone who's the wrong color or might currently be observing Ramadan. So I don't even want to know why Amish Tech Support is in the list of referrers at the moment. Guy wasn't exactly the nicest of guests the one time he decided to post here, either.

And I never knew why I was listed under Minnesota Blogs even when I lived there. And since I currently don't, ain't no excuse for that shit.

Meanwhile, back in what's jokingly called the real world:

In October 2002, I drove to the Plymouth County Jail to see Leo Felton. It was a bright fall Saturday, and the drive was long, so it gave me a chance to ponder what I already knew about him. I am a journalist for The Boston Globe, and Felton was an assignment, then he was a hobby, and then he became something else altogether. After his arrest for counterfeiting, robbery, and conspiracy to bomb what authorities said were Jewish or African-American targets, I had mapped out the paradoxes of Felton's life: how his mother, a white civil rights activist, raised him in a liberal, openly gay household. How his father, a black architect living in Canada, refused to believe his son had become a racist.

I had combed court records of Felton's offenses (drugs, petty theft, including stealing groceries out of a woman's car). I had learned that he had attended schools for emotionally troubled children and had shaved his head during his rebellious teenage years because he liked the skinhead music scene. I had researched the road rage incident that prompted Felton to fight a taxi driver, beating him so badly that Felton was sent to prison at age 19. I struggled to understand what led Felton, during his years in prison, to join a violent underground movement that opposed his very existence - and my own.

Like Felton, I am biracial. I, too, grew up in a world of black and white extremes, getting by on the lexicon of not-quite and in-between. "Where are you from?" strangers invariably ask me. "Boston," I sometimes answer casually, although I'm sure that is not what they really want to know. "My mother is black, and my father is white," I sometimes say. It's better to put the facts on the table.

From Boston Globe Online / Sunday Magazine - Leo Felton and Me by Farah Stockman.

The real world is entirely too complicated for many Minnesotans, or Mr. Simon, to deal with.

Posted by Aaron at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, that's a relief.

From UPI by way of Google News, and actually from a few days ago:

United Press International: Army Fort Bragg study faces scrutiny

The Army report on the Fort Bragg killings and suicides cites marital problems, increased stress in a post Sept. 11 environment and "flawed" systems for helping troubled soldiers and their families as common threads in a string of five homicides near Fort Bragg in a 43-day period during June and July 2002. Three soldiers involved had been deployed to Afghanistan. Two of those soldiers also committed suicide.

Soldiers and their families are afraid to report or seek help for problems because it is a "career ender," the report said.

And here people were worried that one of the soldiers' meds was the cause of this. Nope, just your average, everyday murder and murder/suicide. Nothing to see here, folks.

Just, y'know, some women killed by their husbands. Not a sniper or anything impressive like that. Hardly even news, really.

The Feminist Majority Foundation expresses concern, but that's probably just the typical liberal lack of support for our troops.

Their story is headlined, "Fort Bragg Report Urges Change in Military Culture."

Yeah, because desegregating the military improved the civilian culture so fucking much.

And while I'm venting:

Last month, US Congress approved Senate Amendment 4447, sponsored by Sens. Paul Wellstone (D-MN), Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), including $10 million to fund domestic violence programs on military installations in the final version of the Defense Appropriations Bill. The bill, H.R. 5010, became Public Law No. 107-248 on October 23, 2002

Seeing Wellstone's name attached to that, and noticing that all the sponsors were Democrats, makes me even more enthusiastic about the upcoming session of Congress.

Posted by Aaron at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

"Indeed."

That's Glenn Reynolds expressing his opinion of a piece by Vinod Valloppillil, after quoting the following excerpt:

If Saddam were a white guy named Milosevic, the entire friggin' EU, NATO, and US military would already be in the country saving the populace from this him. Alas, Milosevic didn't have the Race Card, the Religion Card, and the Anti-West Cards working for him. The usual Euro/leftist voices of humanitarianism fall strangely silent when dealing with "brown tyrants for brown people."

Yep. I can see these guys running the country, and therefore the planet, is gonna be real fun for the rest of us.

The brown people in Iraq, for example, who might, possibly, get rid of one tyrant only to have him replaced with one who lacks those nasty Anti-West impulses.

How hard could Finnish be? Just randomly toss umlauts over every other vowel when speaking, I'll be all set. . .

Posted by Aaron at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Molly Ivins' reaction to this sign (can't remember which book this piece was in) was a single word: Keep?

Laura made with the redesign thing, as has blogdex. Michelle and Jason did so a while ago, and VASpider has the whole logo thing going on. I'm starting to think this place could use some work. Lick of paint, maybe some images. . .

Or I'm procrastinating again. Ah hates doctors.

Molly Ivins?

It's not as though it weren't already painfully clear the Bush administration is both opposing and undermining all efforts to clean up corporate corruption, but do they really have to make a mockery of them, as well?

The headline in The Wall Street Journal read, "Criticism Mounts as Pitt Launches Probe of Himself." SEC chairman Harvey Pitt has just made himself immortal: Pitt, inventor of the self-probe. It sounds painfully rectal.

Her I like.

Posted by Aaron at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Since their vote is being actively courted by both the Democrats and the Republicans, figured I'd look in on recent Hispanic Business to find out what the cool minorities are up to:

MIAMI (BUSINESS WIRE) -- To commemorate 40 years of unparalleled success, "Sabado Gigante" will air its anniversary special on Saturday, November 9, 7-11 p.m. / 6-10 p.m. Central.

"Sabado Gigante" holds the Guinness Book of World Records' title for the longest running program in the history of television.

Creator/host, Mario Kreutzberger, popularly known as "Don Francisco," will host "Aniversario Gigante," a special edition of the popular variety show that has become an undisputed ratings phenomenon with over 100 million loyal viewers in 42 countries.

The special opens with the red carpet arrival of international superstars including Oscar de la Hoya, Pedro Fernandez, Lucero, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Rocio Durcal, Ezequiel Pena, Edith Gonzalez, Vicente Fernandez Jr., and Sofia Vergara.

Don Francisco together with the show's co-presenters, Javier Romero, Rashel and Sissi, look back at some of the most memorable moments in the show's 40-year history and up the ante with a $5,000 prize for every contest and game. For the grand finale, "Fiesta Gigante de Gala," Don Francisco thanks the many entertainers who, through the years, have contributed to the show's unprecedented success.

You can tell I'm still on dialup, because I ain't link every name up in there. Do your own research, kids.

You can find out more at Gigante.com:

SABADO 9…. GRAN FIESTA DE GALA POR LOS 40 AÑOS DE SABADO GIGANTE. Todo el público invitado a disfrutarde esta jornada de estrellas. Cuatro horas en el aire.

If you want to know. Or add to the journal. Or something.

And since I'm now in a state that acknowledges the large Latino community, I can actually see the show. Don't think there was an affiliate in the Twin Cities last time I checked. . .

'course, me and Heather remember when channel 44 (currently one of many Spanish stations in Chicago) was English-language, and showed Felix the Cat and suchlike. Some would say this makes us old.

Others would wish to live, and remain diplomatically silent.

Posted by Aaron at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Not a good day -- hell, not a good year -- to be part of the BlackElectorate.com:

Democrats Need to Value Their Base And Stand For Something by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

[. . .] Starting in the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., black leaders have warned the Democratic Party to deliver on that check returned to black America stamped "insufficient funds."

In fact, in a recent CNN analysis of the black vote, the current Senate Democratic majority is traced directly to the black vote of 1996, 1998, and 2000 - the election cycles that produced the current 50 Democratic seats. CNN's conclusion: had no blacks voted in any of those years, the Democratic majority would have disappeared to no more than 37 Democratic Senate seats. Yet, in a Joint Session to confirm the 2000 Presidential Electoral vote no Democratic Senator would rise and object to the Florida electors, which would have given the objecting Congressional Black Caucus two hours to debate the 2000 Florida debacle. The Democratic Party must do more to deliver the spoils of victory to its base minority communities or else, the Democratic Party will experience many more defeats.

The cheap shot, all I'm capable of at the moment, is that Congresswoman McKinney is something of an expert on defeats.

And my first sentence is at best misleading, at worst insulting. The fractional part of the black electorate that votes Republican must be thrilled.

Guess I could look up how fractional that fraction is.

And find out when Cook County ballots did away with the straight ticket option. Real time-saver, that, but the local Republicans -- all three of them -- hated it.

Anyone out there still have such a thing?

Posted by Aaron at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Not that I live there no more or nothing, but I was curious about the Senate election in MN. And ain't thrilled to find out that Coleman defeats Mondale:

Republican Norm Coleman emerged early this morning as the winner in his brief, intense battle with Democrat Walter Mondale for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Paul Wellstone. Results in the race were delayed for hours as supplemental and absentee ballots were tallied by hand.

It's a pretty good article. Detail and context and all those things we're not meant to have time for in today's fast-paced world.

Mind you, all these Republican victories mean I have to stop by the passport office later today. Or never leave Illinois, which mostly went to the lesser of two evils.

Suppose I should check the right-wing sites to see how they're reacting to the results.

Or I could do something useful, like clean the Hello, Kitty and Batz Maru floor mats in the car.

Posted by Aaron at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Or much of anything else at the moment. Jason still may have hate in his blood, even though it has been a week -- I'm still catching up on things, I'm afraid. And Dru brings the not-hate-filled-more-hate-on-the-side-as-a-garnish chumbawamba lyrics, even as she announces a temporary hiatus.

George, in contrast, reminds us to mind the ballots. Which I would, if I hadn't been (apparently) struck from the rolls. In Cook County. Go figure. My paternal grandparents are probably still on the rolls, and they both passed away years ago.

Did manage to find a Voter Address Notification card from 1997, so maybe I'll brave the rains and give it another try. It'd help if I actually liked any of the candidates, or thought choosing one of them over another would make any difference whatsoever.

Or I'll follow a trackback link at Jason's to Anil Dash's links, leading to Harry Allen's Village Voice piece on the late Jam Master Jay and the one Anil wrote. Hardly setting an example of civic responsibility doing that, though.

Wait, that's right, I'm not a role model. Never mind.

Earthlink asks for two to four weeks to switch the DSL, since, you know, it's just one guy, and he has to carry the cable from Minnesota to Illinois on foot. Obviously, any suggestions on how this might be expedited (excluding bribes) would be appreciated.

And if anyone knows of a business in or around Chicago seeking a new hire with no marketable skills, a distinctly undergrad-looking wardrobe and a personality which competes with sandpaper for the photo next to "abrasive" in the dictionary, drop me a line.

Lord Shagariffic, drop me a line. Hotmail, as usual, is useless, and your actual email address is on a computer that's boxed and buried somewhere.

Off to deal with surly election judges. Again. Joy.

Posted by Aaron at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

"In wise love each divines the high secret self of the other, and, refusing to believe in mere daily self, creates a mirror where the lover or the beloved sees an image to copy in daily life."
- W B Yeats

Which quote starts off this morning's DivaNation list mailing. Show announcements, the continuing quest for a roomate at Casa de Preston (don't start. Just don't), and the distinct weirdness of LifeGem:

A LifeGem is a certified, high quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique and wonderful life.

The LifeGem diamond is more than a memorial to visit on the weekends… it is a way to embrace your loved one's memory day by day. The LifeGem is the most unique and timeless memorial available for creating a testimony to their unique life.

I'm not sure if this is beautiful and touching, or just weird. Am still trying to settle in, and have to keep reminding myself that the Chicago shows mentioned in DivaNation's show list are, in fact, local, and not an 8 hour drive away.

Unless it's rush hour. In which case, I will bring a book.

Still haven't read all the stories in Shameless, for a start, and I find this extremely embarrassing.

However, unlike a number of other extremely embarrassing things, I'm willing to mention this one publicly. And I like one of the Eight Hanne-Approved Bagels (poppyseed, always good on those mornings you have drug screenings), so I'm sure she won't hate me too much. . .

Update: Debated whether or not to link "extremely embarrassing things" in the actual entry, and decided against it. Which is why it's not there.

Posted by Aaron at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Just because.

Permalink later today (on their site, if not here) for this morning's Morning Edition:

He's created dozens of classics, from "Folsom Prison Blues" to "Ring of Fire." More than 1,500 songs in 50 years, and Johnny Cash is still on the hunt for more. Tuesday on Morning Edition, host Bob Edwards talks to the legendary Johnny Cash.

I only caught the tail end of the interview. They played a bit of the U2 cover, if you like that sort of thing. And if you don't, there's something very wrong with you.

Posted by Aaron at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, I'm still working out that whole sleep patterns thing, but in the meantime George provides excellent reading, as always. Plus, a link to The United States of America, According to My Racist Aunt, and (again, unlike me) manages to choose just one entry from the scary-prolific Dru, and. . .

. . . and I'm confident Heather will be writing a summary of the road trip soon enough, for anyone curious about such things. There were relatively few cries of "Cow, cow!" and no truckers came anywhere near the car, so I can't imagine there'd be much interest.

Oh yeah, and there's a $50 charge from Earthlink to change the DSL over to the new address/phone number. Naturally, I hadn't budgeted for such a thing, so imagine me rattling tip jars in an annoying fashion and promising a much better update schedule if people donate enough for me to make the switch.

Um, where "better" means "more frequent," and does not imply any sort of quality, obviously.

Posted by Aaron at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)