Federal Response Weighed in Wake of Sean Bell Decision

The City of New York and the NYPD may become the focus of a Federal probe as politicians step in to address the real issue of the Sean Bell case - the repeated shooting of unarmed African-American citizens by policemen.

US Rep John Conyers (pictured left) chairs the powerful House Judiciary Committee. He joined other New York politicians including Rep Charlie Rangell in filing a request for the Department of Justice to investigate civil rights violations of Sean Bell, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman.

In the wake of Judge Arthur Cooperman's dismissal of all charges against the three NYPD detectives who unleashed 50 shots into a car with three unarmed suspects killing one and wounding two, the civil rights division of the Justice Department and the FBI's New York field Office announced they will investigate the facts of the case.

For all of Judge Arthur Cooperman's legal interpretations, the real truth is an unacceptable trend continues. Where the New York court system routinely absolves officers of any responsibility for the use of excessive force in cases where they felt "threatened" or that "their lives were in danger" ( a definition so broad it overshadows logic and common sense) and as such felt the only option was to open fire.

It may be 2008 but it smells like 1908.

NYPD Off the Hook in the Shooting of Sean Bell

17 months after Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield were shot outside a Queens nightclub hours before Bell was to be married the State Supreme Court in Queens handed out a sentence of not guilty to the NYPD detectives who pumped 50 shots into a car full of unarmed African-American men.

Right now the Brian Leherer show is discussing the results of the trial, but in all reality what's to discuss?

The facts are now all too familiar to New Yorkers.

Once again three members of the NYPD pulled out their weapons and shot an unarmed African-American man and injured two others (one of the bullets went through the window of a local resident's home, another hit the local Air-Tran station) - and no one was convicted on any charges.

Detectives Oliver, Isnora and Cooper (Pictured above) face no charges and walk away as if nothing wrong happened. There's something wrong about this - there's something disturbing about a system that doles out acquittals to members of the "most highly-trained" police force in the world every time they shoot an unarmed back man in the city of New York.

As an African-American male I am outraged and I realize that I, and others like me, are essentially less than human in the eyes of the law-enforcement community who are supposed to "serve and protect".

Despite the fact that I pay taxes, graduated from college, am a working professional, have never been convicted of a crime or arrested and always go out of my way to assist strangers of all races - in the eyes of the NYPD I am the enemy and I am to be feared and my life means nothing.

As a human, a citizen of the United States and a resident of New York I am devastated and can only imagine what the victim's families are feeling after this perversion of justice.

Judge Cooperman, in rendering the verdict said to the packed court, “the police response with respect to each defendant was not found to be criminal.” My faith in the justice system of this city is totally shattered.

McCain Gets Tough on Katrina Response, But Will the Media Be Tough on John Hagee/

It's been interesting watching the mainstream media's reaction to John McCain openly courting the support of controversial Pastor John Hagee

In some ways, John Hagee makes Obama's former Pastor Jeremiah Wright seem tame by comparison. Hagee heads up the 18,000 member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.

His bigoted comments are a matter of record, he believes that the Book of Esther in the Bible foretells a US invasion of Iran and the media seemed to all but ignore the fact that he blames the Katrina disaster on the city of New Orleans itself.

CNN's article talks about the media blitz of sorts McCain created when he took a 20-minute stroll/photo op through the hurricane-ravaged 9th Ward of New Orleans; part of his efforts to breech the Democratic strongholds in an effort to prove he's not just another GOP flunkie.

To be fair to McCain, he blasted the Bush administration and the Federal government for their pathetic response to the plight of thousands of impoverished citizens. But the CNN piece doesn't even mention John Hagee until the second to last paragraph!

Is that fair and balanced media analysis? Excerpts of recordings of Jeremiah Wright's explosive comments were repeatedly payed on radio, television and the Web in conjunction with links to Obama.

John Hagee is on television twice a day and what are we hearing about his views on homosexuals and immigrants, or that it's our religious destiny to invade Iran?

As Columbia University Graduate Journalism professor Thomas Edsall opined on the Huffingtonpost.com Website - the mainstream media is more focused on embracing the Clinton campaign's message that Obama can't carry the general election because of his race, than they are turning the spotlight onto John Hagee's record.

Hillary's not just openly playing the race card - she's got many members of the mainstream media playing the game too.

White Supremacist Kevin Strom Sentenced to 23 Months for Possession of Child Pornography

In his role as the leader of the white supremacist National Vanguard movement, Kevin Alfred Strom (pictured left) was widely considered one of the nation's leading right-wing Neo Nazi "intellectuals".

On April 21st a Federal Court sentenced the father of three to 23 months for possession of child pornography. Strom has been in jail since January 2007 after FBI agents raided his home and searched his home in response to allegations he'd been stalking a ten-year old 5th grade girl who was friends with his step-daughter.


Strom tried to defend himself claiming the kiddie porn was "unwillingly" downloaded onto his computer. Such statements contradicted reports by his wife Elisha who testified under oath that she secretly videotaped her hate-monger husband naked in front of his computer masturbating to child porn images on at least 25 occasions.

She noted that he had superimposed the heads of the Neo Nazi 14- year old blond-fraternal twin music duo from Bakersfield, California, Prussian Blue onto the nude bodies of adult porn images and masturbated to them.

The "stay-at-home" mother of the brainwashed young blond devotees of Adolph Hitler, April Gaede was an active member of Strom's National Vanguard movement. Her daughters were linked to the group as well.

As recently as 2005 former KKK leader and white supremacist David Duke openly gushed about this convicted pedophile on Duke's Website during an interview Strom conducted where among other things the two discussed their passion to be involved with a movement filled with people "motivated by love of their traditions and their values and their freedom."

Apparently those "traditions" include stalking young girls and trying to entice them to have sex. Fortunately Strom is "free" to think about it for the next 23 months - happily far away from pre-teen girls.

Will She Stay or Will She Go?

The world was pretty tough on Katie Couric (pictured left) last week.

From the time stories began circulating about internal rumblings over her precarious position as the news anchor for CBS News, the media wasted no time pouncing on one of their own.

After I paused to read the April 9th online article posted on TV Week's daily online feed online article about the speculation surrounding Couric leaving the news desk at CBS, I read two interesting reader comments and got sucked into the debate immediately.

I posted a first response then came back later and dropped a follow-up response after a very nice woman seemed to bristle at the thought of a group of misogynistic male bloggers picking on poor Katie.

This was by far the story of the week in New York. Rarely has the word 'Katie' been splashed on the cover of the New York Post with such abandon. Of course it was all over the Web too, I thought I the best media coverage was the WSJ online article.

We'll see how it plays out. The CBS brass aren't just going to sit there while their television news product resides in third place. Remember this is a brand journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather helped create.

Black Rock was quick to fire out a press release announcement on April 10th trumpeting their 'Victory' over Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS and Viacom. The last thing the 'Eye' network needed was any kind of spillover affecting their annual broadcast of the Master's this weekend.

The sparks should continue this week. The story has everything to do with how our culture perceives and interprets the stories and events that filter through the media pipeline.

Does it have more to do with the actual truth surrounding these events, or our emotional reactions to them?

Florida Woman & Two Mentally Disabled Friends Beaten for Refusing to Pay Money for Being White

The depraved depths of bigotry and ignorance no bounds, be they racial or moral.

On March 30th the Website of Channel 6 WKMG, in Orlando reported that four African- American men were being charged with a hate crime after a 62 year-old white woman and two mentally disabled men with her refused to pay the suspects a "fee" for being in Kaley Park and being white.

Is stupidity the only thing that's color-blind in this country?

April , 2008 Vogue Cover of LeBron James & Gisele Bundchen - Racist Imagery?

The monthly cover of Vogue magazine will never be confused with a bastion of multicultural imagery by any means, so it's hard to find fault with the world's elite fashion book when it finally puts an African- American male on the cover.

But the April, 2008 cover (pictured left) has generated a surprising amount of nationwide media coverage and public commentary; most of it negative.

The image of Cleveland Cavalier's basketball phenom LeBron James with model Gisele Bundchen cradled in his left arm continues to draw the attention of local and national media in print, on the Web and on television - where the Today Show had quite a debate.

In an article posted on the fashion industry trade magazine WWD's Website, some black editors and media critics pointed out that the picture points to the larger issue of the way mainstream media portrays African-American men in visual images. Many have even suggested it's sub-conscious reference to King Kong carting off the terrified blond female.

The Garden State's nj.com Website quotes a University of Maryland professor as saying the image only serves to reinforce long-held stereotypes of black men, particularly black athletes as savage brutes; the image depicts the laid back James with an intense, scowling open-mouthed snarl as he dribbles a basketball in one hand as he clutches the demure Bundchen with the other.

The controversial image also stirs comparisons to age old myths and hysterical fears about black men threatening white women with their sexuality - myths that once led to the lynching of thousands of innocent black men in this country.

To be fair, James himself seemed unfazed and dismissed criticism of his Vogue cover photo taken by Uber photographer Annie Leibovitz as one of many shots depicting a range of emotions. Maybe, but we see which one hit the stands.

No matter where you stand, it does illustrate an important issue that impacts our collective culturegeist - does the media intentionally manipulate images of black men to play on stereotypes?

Remember it wasn't that long ago that Time magazine presented OJ Simpson's arrest photo on the cover of it's June 27, 1994 - and editors intentionally darkened his skin color from the original photo to make him seem more menacing. Skeptical? Check it out, judge for yourself.

Or maybe people are just envious that James got to spend the day taking snapshots with one of the hottest women on the planet?

As Roy Johnson, editor-in-chief of Men's Fitness observed in the WWD article:

"It's a reminder that as African-Americans, we have come very far to have an African-American male featured on the cover of Vogue, but we have very far to go to continue to educate people within our industry regarding the power of images and the potential impact they can have on their readers."