Remember when Morgan Freeman fixed racism in Mississippi schools (at least the issue of segregated proms)? Well, turns out that even the President from Deep Impact can’t get the Deep South to at least try to pretend like they know it’s the year 2010.
I thought the election of Barack Obama would have made a difference by now. I thought that a biracial presidency would have helped improve historically distorted attitudes and perceptions of reality. I thought that white American conservatives might learn to respect black leadership. I thought that white American liberals might finally reconcile the fabricated social guilt that they walk around with. I thought that American blacks might desensitize a little. I thought that all Americans, Hispanics and Asians included, might be able to better reconcile common racial and ethnic distortions. I was naive. [Read more →]
Back in the days of shields and spears whoever won the contested ground would erect a trophy. This would not be an impressive sight to us, it would be a collection of arms and armor and banners piled upon and hung from a tree or a stake in the ground. What made it significant was, of course, that the glittering bits had been taken from brave and well armed men at the cost of their lives demonstrating, say, the Athenians superiority over the Corinthians. But more importantly this quick and dirty memorial would always be raised on a field of victory and was largely a challenge to the defeated to come tear it down. Any offense to the trophy was an act of war, all sides would understand this. Often the first overt act of a war would be a public destruction of the trophy that ended the last war or battle. But many a trophy stood, rusting and rotting, for decades on the road to a once great city, now reduced to a village. The project to build a mosque within a call-to-prayer from New York’s open mass grave is best understood as a trophy. [Read more →]
A page from Malcolm Gladwell’s moleskine:
I haven’t slept for days. No idea when I last ate. My mind is on fire. Synthesizing all that data has turned my head into a furnace. Seriously, my ears feel hot. Correction: my hair is on fire. I must have nodded off on the stove again. It looks like my snap decision to work in the kitchen today was one of those snap decisions with adverse effects. Which only confirms my thesis: Sometimes the decisions made in the blink of an eye have positive outcomes, though, in certain cases, the outcome is negative. That’s the “50/50 Effect.”
Or consider it this way:
The last week gave us one of the most entertaining audio/video clips to ever grace the HTML code of YouTube. We saw a scrawny little fellow stand on the corner, screaming about killing crackers, their babies, and hollering at a black fellow who was/is dating a white woman. We saw his General, lawyer, and Chairman defend him and the idea of killing white babies (in certain contexts) in an interview that was almost equally hilarious. These two men have sent millions of people into a state of stunned disbelief, followed by riotous laughter and great mirth.
Why?
Sorry for exposing some of you to Glenn Beck. He is a bit fire and brimstone in a Paul Revere - Joe McCarthy sort of way. If you watched the first 10 minutes of Monday’s show you saw him imply that America is in deep peril, and that only a spiritually inspired revolution would revive America. He even asked, “where is our next George Washington,” referring to Peter Lillback’s Sacred Fire, a book about Washington’s faith and it how it seeded a nation.
However, in suggesting that someone (like Washignton) or something (like a religious awakening) needs to jumpstart American prosperity again, Beck perpetuates a misperception that he would probably prefer not to. This misperception is that Americans are the beneficiaries of America and its politics and not the other way around, and it has lead to American mediocreism over the last 20 years. [Read more →]
I’m sick and tired of reading about liberals attacking Rand Paul as a racist ( 1, 2, and 3 ) when his views could just as easily be seen as advocating for the freedom and the rights of Morehouse College, and other historically black colleges and universities, to serve whomever they wish to serve. It’s the kind of hypocritical political nonsense I think we’ve all come to expect from the Two Main Parties. It really makes me want to vomit.
So I’m going to discuss some thoughts I had that were generated by a quote from a book that came up in conversation. It’s from Edward “Father of PR” Bernays’s Propaganda (1928).
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
10. “My money’s on Wolfman to win the Palme d’Or.”
9. “I wonder if Tim Burton had any influence in creating that new category, Best Weird Johnny Depp Movie.”
8. “Look, it’s Jabba The Hutt!… Nope, just Kevin Smith.”
7. “I’m confused. I thought all these films were supposed to be about cans.”
6. “I hear that new movie, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, is very derivative.”
5. “Our flight was almost cancelled due to the plume of smoke over Woody Harrelson.”
4. “Is Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience being shown out of competition this year?”
3. “Uh-oh, Woody Allen’s headed for the nude beach!”
2. “I was hoping some Na’vi would show up this year.”
1. “All About Steve– c’est magnifique!
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
There’s so much going on in the world of Mixed Martial Arts these days. When I watch my monthly UFC bouts on PPV, I always think about how interesting the sport is and how lucky I am to live in these times. The last generation that got to watch anything like this actually knows When Fell the Coliseum. If MMA is a symptom of the downfall of our society, than I say burn baby burn, because it’s a great watch, and MMA is destined to stand in the pantheon of popular sports.
Sitting, as I am, at ground zero for the modern know-nothing movement — that’s Arizona, the Grand Canyon state to you non-news-junkies — I have a certain less-than-impressed perspective on the latest wave of jingoism. For starters, while the state’s recent directive to law-enforcement agencies to drop everything else they’re doing and focus on harassing brown people draws wide support, it strikes me that it enjoys an especially enthusiastic reception among all the snowbirds who settled here after they got tired of waiting for global warming to creep its toasty way north and finally render Minnesota more habitable than the surface of Mars. They upped stakes, bought houses in Phoenix, and woke up one morning with the disturbing sensation that everything around their new domiciles is a little spicier, more colorful, and suntannier than it really ought to be.
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China is rapidly becoming a world superpower, if it hasn’t achieved that ranking already. But with around 1.5 billion people, it is inevitable that you’re going to find a few short bus riders amongst the group…
So someone left a car bomb in Times Square. The immediate questions that come to mind are who, why, what was its capability, how can such things be prevented from happening again?
Well, first of all, it would be “Imagine if the Tea Party Were Black,” because the verb would be in the subjunctive mood. But leaving that aside for a moment, imagine if someone took the punchline from a pulp legal thriller that was treacly and hackneyed ten years ago and turned it into a way-too-long post about how Tea Partiers are a bunch of racist redneck rubes.
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The following post was originally published by When Falls the Coliseum’s West Coast Bureau in Vancouver, Wash. It’s reprinted here with the author’s consent. All rights reserved. TM ©
I desire to become leftist journalist. I want to unravel the flap blanket of KKKorporate AmeriKKKa — the quilt of its malfeasance. I am anxious to sniff out corruption in the lower drawers of elitism.
Charlie Crist’s having a rough stretch. Florida’s governor is seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate and finding opponent Marco Rubio much tougher than expected in a race that isn’t volatile so much as manic-depressive, with Crist having both led and trailed by over 30 points in the polls. Crist has been deemed too liberal by much of the party base, putting a man who once fancied himself a future President on the verge of a likely career-ending defeat. Oh, and many people believe he’s secretly gay. [Read more →]
I enjoyed the first episode of HBO’s The Pacific, but my enjoyment was somewhat marred by hearing Tom Hanks, one of the miniseries’ producers, state that the war with Japan was based on racism, which he then compared to the current war on terrorism.
10. “No, that’s my shillelagh, but I’m still glad to see you!”
9. “But I love the taste of Bailey’s Irish Cream!”
8. “Every time I see you, somethin’ starts Dublin in size!”
7. “What’s this I hear about Meredith Baxter practicing her Gaelic?”
6. “Because of you, my Irish thighs are smiling!”
5. “I’ll show you who’s hung like a leprechaun!”
4. “They don’t call me Lord of the Pants for nothing! ”
3. “You’ve made my sham rock hard!”
2. “It’s those two Irish smoothboys: Patrick Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzpatrick!”
1. “Oooooooooooooooooo! Danny Boy!”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
As we draw closer to that special time of year — readying ourselves for parades from Peoria to Paris, why don’t we take a closer look at the real scope of influence that emanates from this Celtic island about the size of Maine . . .
5. Ever wonder why so many kids have Irish surnames as their first names? I personally know multiple Logans, Ryans, Shannons, Dylans, Kennedys, Finns, Connors, MacKenzies, Barretts, and even Rowans. They’re everywhere. Why? Why are those names umpteen times better than Hans or Neville or Snur? How come nobody wants to cuddle a little Vlad? Sad little Vlad.
At some point in past years I have had students in freshman writing courses read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and, more often in classes devoted to persuasive writing, his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Aside from the obvious historical importance of these works, there’s plenty to learn about writing by studying them. Of course, with speeches, good delivery helps. So here’s the famous speech, in case you haven’t listened to or watched it in a long time. But also read the letter.
I have been more than a little slack in my blogging in recent weeks. But, sometimes, the actual world will do that … make demands upon the time you would normally spend in the virtual world. Such was the case with me for the better part of two weeks this month. Sure, at times, it was tiring and annoying … but it was also educating and inspiring … and it reminded me that the best way to shut out the hectic hustle of the holiday season might not be shutting one’s self into a darkened and sound-proofed room but, instead, to go out into the world to serve, to accept added tasks and responsibilities.
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The article screams “Obama wants stimulus projects to hire more minorities, women”. One quick glance at that headline tells you pretty much all you need to know about the information presented in the article. For the people who only read headlines, it’s a pretty good one at communicating the message. [Read more →]
Saw this bumper sticker here in Houston this week, and I cannot help but applaud that sentiment. Over the last decade or so, Americans have felt increasingly threatened by Christianity. You would have thought the September 11th attacks were masterminded by Jack Van Impe, or that we had a few hundred thousand troops in Vatican City, by all the bias and mockery of Christianity in pop-culture and media. [Read more →]
If you’re like me and consider watching reality television a full-time job, then you’ll be setting your TiVo for the second installment of Jersey Shore tonight on MTV. It’s arguably the worst that television has to offer these days, which is why I love it and cannot wait for tonight’s episode. In fact, it’s so bad (and by “bad”, I mean brilliant) that I’m considering skipping the TiVo and watching it in real time. [Read more →]
This New York Times story caught my eye today because of the the linguistic choices in the headline — “US Agrees to $3 Billion Deal in Indian Trust Suit” — as well as many within the story’s body. Some examples of the latter:
The tentative agreement, reached late Monday between Obama administration negotiators and lawyers for some 300,000 individual American Indians[…]
“This is an historic, positive development for Indian country[…]” said Ken Salazar, the Interior Department secretary[….]
Under the settlement agreement, the government would pay $1.4 billion to compensate the Indians[…]
Until Thursday, I was perfectly happy to be the tail wagging the very, very end of the Baby Boomer dog. But, apparently, I am in reality part of the lamest-ass generation since Generation Y (how sad are those afterthoughts?)
That’s right, Generation Jones. What does it mean, you ask? How is it that one surname can so succinctly encompass the dreams and lives of those born between 1954 and 1965? [Read more →]
I feel more than a little sympathy for President Barack Obama when it comes to the criticism he has received over ‘the bow’ and what it represents to a new generation of virtual, international Miss Manners out there. [Read more →]
As you might have seen elsewhere and as the New York Post reported, a “prominent Columbia architecture professor punched a female university employee in the face at a Harlem bar during a heated argument about race relations.”
The professor, Lionel McIntyre, is black and the woman he punched is white. Read the Post article for details. Or google Lionel McIntyre. As you can imagine, some bloggers are probably having fun with how much race relations have improved in the age of Obama. Others are surely asking whether the public outcry (is there one?) would be greater if the race roles were reversed — if a white man — a prominent man in a position of respect — had punched a black woman. Some have asked if this should be considered a hate crime. All fodder for bloggy sniping back and forth that we love so much. So have at it if you’d like.
But since the puncher is a professor of architecture and not of English, let those of us who profess to teach writing pay attention to the way words are used. [Read more →]
A couple in Louisiana was refused a marriage license by a justice of the peace due to the fact that they were an interracial couple. My favorite part of this story is this quote:
“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.” [Read more →]
At least 60% of Americans have a Vitamin D deficiency. As we avoid the sun more and more for fear of developing skin cancer, we may be creating an even bigger problem. Vitamin D is absolutely essential for our bodies and 15-45 minutes of direct sunlight each day is the best way to get it (the darker your skin, the more time you will need in the sun).
When an adult does not get enough D they can experience the following: aches and pains, lowered immunity to disease, bone softening, increased rates of cancer (especially breast, prostate, and colon cancers), heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and high blood pressure. Men, age 40-70, with low levels of Vitamin D have a significantly higher risk of heart attack than men of the same age group with normal D levels.
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