Republican presidential candidate John McCain obviously marches to his own beat. His surprising selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has generated a lot of publicity in print, online and across radio and television - unfortunately, for the most part it's not the kind of publicity the McCain camp was looking to create.
Opinions in the blogosphere run from puzzlement to genuine anger. Some conservatives believe he all but conceded the election by overlooking GOP VP candidates with far more experience including former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
It was risky, but you can see the logic in his thinking. More people (38 million) tuned into watch Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's speech than watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing. Obama is making history as the first black candidate for the White House with an honest chance of winning and his acceptance speech in Denver was one of the most inspiring I've ever heard from a politician - McCain had to do SOMETHING to gain back the momentum.
Many have commented that McCain's selection of Palin nullified his own ability to critique Obama for his lack of foreign policy experience; Palin is essentially the most unexperienced VP candidate in modern US history.
What's interesting to me is how quickly Palin's being a woman has become an issue for the media. As a mother of 5 children, the perky librarian-like Palin comes off as a ripe target in the political sense and some wonder if Joe Biden and Obama will have to temper their attacks leading into the fall. I think it's way too early to make conclusions like that.
Palin is no pastry puff and her selection does tap into the female vote and might even sway some of Hillary's 18 million supporters. But to hear some of the political pundits on CNN and MSNBC, you have to wonder if the media will treat her differently because she's a woman.
Click on the video on the right side of the page and listen for yourself; no asked Obama if HE will be able to take care of his young daughters and still be an effective president.
Last night Senator Hillary Clinton, proudly sporting one of her patented pantsuits, stood tall before the spotlight of the national media on the stage of the Democratic National Convention and urged her supporters to cast aside the last curtains dividing the Democratic Party and throw the full force of their support behind Senator Barack Obama.
She addressed the country and obviously the convention, but she was clearly speaking to the entrenched hardcore Hillary supporters who are still seething over the results of one of the hardest-fought Democratic primary seasons in modern US history. The media has captured, photographed and editorialized every single move of the emerging battle between Obama and McCain - but I haven't seen much mainstream media coverage of another thorn in Obama's side; 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney (Pictured above left).
McKinney is the controversial former US Representative from Georgia's 11th and later 4th District who made her voice heard on Capitol Hill railing against Bush's complacency in 911, calling for sealed records in the Tupak Shakur case to be released to the public and more famously, getting into a physical alteration with Capitol Hill security guards when they refused to allow her to enter the building because she was not wearing the House of Representatives pin all members are required to wear to gain entry past security. She punched the Capitol Hill police officer who tried to stop her and later apologized on the floor of the House for her behavior.
McKinney was inspired to enter politics by her father Billy McKinney, one of Atlanta's first black policeman who later served in the Georgia state legislature. Days before his daughter's primary defeat in 2002 he made headlines (and political enemies for him and his daughter) in front of a local TV news camera by opining: "That ain't nothin'. Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-E-W-S."
She herself has faced multiple accusations of anti-Semitism, blocking support for Israel in Congress and courting the support of people known to be affiliated with organizations that support Hamas and other radical Islamic groups.
If McKinney accepts money from them, why wouldn't she accept money from someone like Roger Stone, the Republican insider who managed and channeled money to support Al Sharpton's failed bid for the presidency in the 2004 election in order to strip votes from John Kerry?
These are critical times we live in. Not since the depression-era election of 1933 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the first of 4 terms in office have registered American voters stood on the cusp of a more significant opportunity to affect change in the very fabric of this society.
Hillary Clinton spoke directly to her most hardcore constituency when she asked them why they were in the race, for Hillary? Or for the working and middle class people of this nation in need of health care and struggling to make ends meet as they live check to check with nothing left over to save.
It's a question this alignment of "progressives" and Clinton supporters need to consider. Are they seriously going to cast a vote for an anti-Semitic, liberal extremist candidate with absolutely no chance of winning the 2008 election, or worse; vote for John McCain just to SHOW Barack Obama how bitter they are?
Will they honestly risk four more years of an unimaginative, elitist Bush-lackey like John McCain occupying the White House, because they are still irked over the primaries that ended months ago?
If their logic is related to policy stances with Obama's/Democrat's platform then they need to step back and acknowledge that no candidate in this race is perfect.
Progressives are only kidding themselves - and the only ones laughing will be the Republicans who've driven this nation into the ground in the past 8 years as the "progressives" of the Green Party strip away votes from the only presidential candidate committed to honest change for ALL Americans.
Tonight was something of a contrast in terms of the media's coverage of the myriad issues affecting our cultural fabric. Clearly the story that resonated across the media was the DNC convention; and one speaker in particular generated a lot of interest.
Tonight Michelle Obama (pictured left) the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama took center stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in what was a barely veiled nationally televised coming-out party for a possible future First Lady.
I watched the touching introduction by her older brother Craig Robinson, a graduate of Princeton University and the head coach of the men's basketball team at Oregon State University. Michelle's speech came from the heart, honored the character of a father who suffered from MS and clearly spelled out the Obama's desire for change, love of this country and broad appeal.
The accounts of her and her brother's upbringing by a working class father who worked for the city of Chicago and a strong stay-at-home mother clearly struck a chord with the crowd and I suspect did much to show Americans that the Obamas are exceptionally bright people cut from the mainstream cloth of the United States. Far from the simplistic, radical stereotypes peddled by the right wing conservatives and right wing media outlets like Fox News throughout the course of the battle for the nomination process.
To me the speech hammered home the need for change, the courage to embrace a vision of a better America and the courage to be an optimist in the midst of what is unquestionably one of the most challenging times in the modern history of the nation.
But amidst the sense of hope this evening conveyed, I was reminded of the fragile state of race relations in this nation and the cultural realities that must be addressed if we are to evolve as a nation.
News reports indicate local and Federal authorities reported that four people were under arrest under suspicion of plotting to kill Obama. There have been a variety of similar threats against the 47 year-old Senator from Illinois. Sadly this one comes in a time when the nation looks to the candidate for hope in the midst of the socio-economic devastation of the past 8 years, high oil prices, continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and rising consumer prices.
This is the world into which Barack Obama has stepped. A world where hate crimes are on the rise as I blogged about last night. Not just here either.
The Daily Mail (UK) Website reports that Mohammed Al-Majed, a 16 year-old student from the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar was savagely beaten and killed by a drunken group of four men and two women in the British seaside town of Hastings in East Sussex. Accosted along with other foreign students after leaving a food stand, the racist attackers beat Al-Majed then repeatedly stomped on his head inflicting massive injuries to his skull.
He died two days after being admitted to the hospital. According to the Daily Mail article, one of the reasons he was in the United Kingdom was to learn more about the language and the culture and to appreciate the need to live in harmony.
It's been a hot summer in Los Angeles and not just because of the fires.
The mainstream media isn't really devoting a whole lot of coverage to the recent rise in Latino-African-American tensions in the Los Angeles, CA area. Probably because a lot of the victims and perpetrators are minority gang members, but also because it seems as if there is this sense that the growing violence between Latinos and blacks isn't related to a larger national trend of increased hate crimes.
A lot of the problems in LA specifically, including physical assaults, vandalism and shootings stem from the large increase of Latino immigrants, legal or otherwise, into the LA County region in recent years. Black residents who have lived in economically-challenged areas of LA, like Compton and Watts for years are now seeing enormous spikes in Latino populations in areas that were once largely African-American.
The statistics highlight some alarming trends. Of the 763 crimes that were reported, 50% of them were committed against African-Americans. Also disturbing is the fact that there is a growing diversity in the hate crimes being committed.
The city of Los Angeles is one of the most diverse communities in the nation. For years ethnic tensions between the various cultures who live there have made headlines in the national and global media.
In the 60's the world watched as many of the nation's urban communities, including LA, erupted in violence in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Why aren't they watching the smaller scale violence that's happening right now?
In the latest racist sports embarrassment for Spain, photos of the Spanish Olympic basketball team (pictured at left) posing together using their fingers to pull back their eyelids in an insulting racist caricature of Asian eyelids is causing outrage amongst Chinese people around the world.
What an insult to the global cooperative spirit of the Olympics and their Chinese hosts. Spanish soccer fans have repeatedly demonstrated their contempt for black players with racist insults during an era in which the cultural fabric of Europe has changed to include peoples from middle east and Africa.
Sadly this behavior isn't limited to Spain either. This 2004 article from the Washington Post chronicles a number of incidents of racist behavior by European soccer fans as well as anti-Semitic taunts against teams with ties to the Jewish community as well.
This low rent garbage isn't confined to Spanish soccer stadiums either. British Formula 1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton, who is of African descent, was subjected to racist taunts and slurs by obnoxious Spanish F1 racing fans while his team was testing his car and preparing for the opening of the 2008 Grand Prix season at the Circuit de Catalunya track in Barcelona back in February, 2008.
So much for Spanish culture. As "anon" wryly observed in the reader response section in response to a Huffingtonpost article on the incident:
China beat the moronic Spanish hoop players 67-64 by the way. Perhaps the Spanish should quit wasting their time acting like juvenile racist assholes and focus on preparing themselves for competition.
Robert Downey, Jr. in the 2008 film Tropic Thunder
According to an LA Times interview by Chris Lee, actor Robert Downey Jr. was excited at the prospect of working with actor-director Ben Stiller on the comedy Tropic Thunder, but he looked at playing a role in black-face with trepidation.
Downey, (pictured left in character) plays the intense, self-absorbed Oscar-winning Australian Method actor Kirk Lazarus, who darkens his skin to completely immerse himself in the role of Sgt. Lincoln Osiris.
As far back as March, 2008 the images and promotional stills from the movie's trailer were fueling speculation about the possible backlash from a white actor in blackface in a comedy.
White actors portraying African-American characters in films, or performing in blackface isn't a new phenomenon by any means.
In 1927 entertainer Al Jolson performed in blackface in Hollywood's first feature-length musical, Warner Brother's hit The Jazz Singer.
If you've never seen it before, check out this brief clip of Jolson singing 'Mammy' in blackface that was typical of the period.
More recently, the decision to cast Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl, the mixed-race Cuban-American wife of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, in the 2007 movie Mighty at Heart stirred some controversy.
Particularly among critics who expressed confusion as to why an actual biracial actress like Thandie Newton, who'd demonstrated screen presence, range and ability in successful films like Crash and Mission Impossible II wasn't offered the role.
Especially given the lack of juicy parts that are available for an actress of color in mainstream Hollywood releases.
Angelina Jolie (right) as Mariane Pearl (left) in the 2007 film Mighty Heart
My take is that people who might be quick to react negatively towards Tropic Thunderbecause of Downey in blackface should step back and remember it is satire.
The entire point of having Downey's character choose to play Sgt. Lincoln Osiris in blackface is to lampoon the entertainment industry executives who routinely make the kinds of casting decisions that put white performers in roles that should arguably be played by an actors of color.
Downey is intelligent, socially responsible and hugely talented (If you haven't seen his performance in Chaplin put it on your Netflix queue right now) there's no way he'd take on a roll in blackface without knowing it was intelligently written, or that the black-face itself was an organic component of the story, character and script.
The film takes a comedic swipe at Hollywood actors and filmmakers who create war movies, in particular some of the over-the-top seriousness with which they prepare for fictional roles as soldiers and the assorted idiosyncrasies of the studio heads, producers and directors who bankroll and make these films.
Black-face is just one component of entertainment director/co-writer Ben Stiller lampoons in this film. I don't necessarily think it's inappropriate to use blackface in social satire, as Downey himself observed in an Entertainment Weekly interview:
This isn't the overtly racist minstrel-type of art of the late 19th and early 20th century. Minstrels were white performers who dressed up in black-face to lampoon the physical characteristics, dress, habits and lifestyles of African-Americans and more importantly; play upon and reinforce racial stereotypes.
But remember there were black minstrels too!
Black performers in blackface lampooning themselves to entertain audiences. What's wrong with that picture?
Director Spike Lee explored this question in his 2000 film, Bamboozled
What did blackface and minstrel imagery in entertainment and media look like?
Mostly from people who haven't even seen the movie.
It reflects the unhealed pain of this imagery - which was commonplace in America and other countries for years and has inflicted a lot of internal psychological damage to the psyche of black people.
Personally I think Downey's role is a positive thing, one of the ways we evolve culturally is to develop the capacity to look at ourselves, and view the past honestly.
There's nothing that turns my stomach more than a hypocrite country music singer who on one hand claims to support US troops in Iraq and waxes philosophic about America's greatness, but then goes on a television and radio media blitz to display his dim-witted racism and hill-billy ignorance for the entire world to see.
Last week on the Huffingtonpost Website Max Blumenthal wrote an excellent piece on country music buffoon Toby Keith's emergence as an advocate for John McCain, lynching and unbridled simplistic assumptions about African-American behavior, demeanor and language.
The stereotypes of black Americans are so prevalent and ingrained in our culture that many people (of all races) like Toby just assume that all blacks talk the same, dress the same, listen to the same music and think alike. I'm black and I was raised in the suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland outside Washington, DC. My mom was born in Philadelphia and my father in Conway, North Carolina.
My parents were college educated and we did not speak in a manner oft-described as "Ebonics".
Remember the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" ? Well my family was more like that in mannerism, dress and speech than say, the Evans family on "Good Times".
I find it absolutely fascinating that I've had both whites and blacks tell me I "sound white" over the years. What does it mean to sound white? What does white sound like versus the sound of black? When I was 3 I knocked out my front teeth while playing and for years, I lisped words.
So my mother would constantly correct my speech, it became so ingrained that to this day I enunciate every syllable of every word, I'm an actor and I have a beautiful speaking voice and no trace of any kind of accent. Drop me a note at culturegeistny@yahoo.com, I'll send you my voice-over demo oif you want to hear what I sound like.
Just because I don't sound like 50-Cent, doesn't mean I am not African-American; believe me, when a cab drives right past me to pick up a white passenger, I'm black. But when I read a speech I'm white?
During a July interview on Glenn Beck's radio show, Toby Keith made the suggestion that black people think Obama sounds and acts "white". Take a listen to the clip for yourself"
What that suggests to me is what I term a form of "linguistic racism". Why?
It's a sweeping assumption that if you sound educated, well-read and intelligent, which I am; then you sound like a white person. But if you speak in a broken English vernacular that you might hear on an urban ghetto street corner, then you're black.
It's incredible how judgmental our society can be. I don't assume that Toby Keith is a redneck because he speaks with a country drawl; oh speaking of rednecks, just check out the lyrics for Toby's song "Beer for My Horses", Keith's nostalgic look back at the way things were back in his dear old "Grandpappy's" day":
Well a man come on the 6 o'clock news said somebody's been shot somebody's been abused somebody blew up a building somebody stole a car somebody got away somebody didn't get to far yeah they didn't get too far
Grandpappy told my pappy back in my day, son A man had to answer for the wicked that he'd done Take all the rope in Texas Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys Hang them high in the street For all the people to see
That Justice is the one thing you should always find You got to saddle up your boys You got to draw a hard line When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune And we'll all meet back at the local saloon And we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses
We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds too much corruption and crime in the streets It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground Send 'em all to their maker and he'll settle 'em down You can bet he'll set 'em down...
I blogged about lynching here in July, 2007 when a group of activists re-enacted the bloody kidnapping/murder of two African Americans couples near the Apalachee River in Georgia on the night of July 25, 2007.
You're intelligent enough to make your own conclusions about these lyrics. Just remember, Toby Keith sang them on The Stephen Colbert Show, and will sing them on the Jay Leno Show and other mainstream media platforms in the coming days as he promotes his own peculiar sort of patriotism and the crowd claps along to the beat.
It was almost 3 months ago when Immigration Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials raided an Iowa meat-packing plant and arrested more than 300 Hispanic workers accused of a variety of immigration violations including the use of falsified Social Security numbers and document forgery.
Today the Yeshiva World News Website reports that Kosher meat-packing giant AgriProcessors issued an official response to the charges levied by the US government, denying that it knowingly hired underage Hispanic workers - even citing evidence it fired underage workers after their HR department discovered they were under 18.
Back in 1987, Brooklyn resident Aaron Rubashkin (pictured above with white beard) caused something of a stir when he purchased a large meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa to produce Kosher meats. He sparked tensions with local residents when he brought in a mix of Hispanic workers and Lubavitch chasidim from the Hasidic Jewish communities in Crown Heights Brooklyn as well as Russia according to an Associated Press report.
It was a troubled start for AgriProcessors, the largest Kosher meat-packing plant in the United States. An empire that today controls 60% of the $300 million-a-year Kosher beef and poultry industry. They were fined $182,000 by the Iowa Division of Labor for 39 health and safety violations in March, 2008.
In 2004 a PETA member videotaped the inhumane treatment of cows in slaughter areas of the plant; The EPA was forced to clean up an Allentown, PA mill owned by Rubashkin which was later destroyed in an arson fire; He and his son Rabbi Moshe Rubashkin, who did a year in Federal prison for bank fraud, were accused of collecting worker's union dues then illegally pocketing the money from Cherry Hill Textiles, Inc.
But interestingly, the May, 2008 Postville, Iowa arrests at the AgriProcessor plant also sparked many people, including large numbers of local Postville, Iowa residents to protest the ICE tactics. A number of Iowa residents consider the immigrants hard workers and essential to the local economy which some say has boomed with their arrival.
Regardless of the Rubashkin's ethically questionable business tactics both Iowans and immigrants marched together peacefully to protest the arrests at the AgriProcessor plant.
It's a positive sign for the culturegeist when residents of America's heartland can see past GOP-created anti-immigrant hysteria to welcome the cultural changes that come with the integration of immigrant populations into our own culture.
I'd like to make a cultural observation that's frankly left me puzzled. There's rarely much analysis written about it in the mainstream media but there's often a palpable tension or almost imperceptible negative energy directed towards black Americans that seems to emanate from some Pakistanis and Indians who live here in the United States.
Not just in the States either. Back in January, 2008 I blogged about the Indian cricket player Harbhajan Singh (pictured left) who faced charges for repeated racial epithets and obnoxious on-field actions against black opponents during cricket matches.
I've experienced it many times while riding in or trying to hail Yellow Cabs here in New York City (that's a blog site unto itself). I've felt and experienced it in bodegas and delis as well. Most recently I experienced it last Sunday, August 3rd in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey while visiting my mother's house.
She lives in a nice subdivision of interconnected town houses that sits off a two lane semi-rural road about two miles from the crowded Route One corridor in South Brunswick. The local area is comprised of a mixture of dwindling farmland and sprawling neighborhoods of recently- built Toll Brothers homes that look too large to be sitting next to each other on the heavily-taxed 3/4 acre lots they sit on.
Many areas of central New Jersey have seen huge increases in the population of well-educated Asian professionals and families settling into the suburban communities for the school systems and access to both New York and Philadelphia as well as the large corporate presence in and around Princeton.
Many have moved into the sub-division where my mother lives and often times, they stare at us. Now I know the difference between a cursory glance at someone you see in a neighborhood and a lingering stare and it's the latter.
Almost a disassociated observation with little concern for tact. If it sounds a rather un-definitive and abstract notion, it is.
Subtle, not in your face but you can feel it in looks and cars that seem to slow down for the occupants to look at you. My brother was driving me back to my apartment on Sunday afternoon and as we drove towards the exit of the sub-division he hopped out of my mom's 2007 Honda SUV to see if his glasses were in the trunk. A woman in a sari driving a grey four-door Japanese sedan drove by and slowed as she passed.
My brother spends a lot more time out there than I do and he noticed her watching him right off, it annoys him. Bugs me too. My mom has owned the townhouse she's lived in ever since my father died of cancer in 1996 and we sold the house we'd built in West Windsor, New Jersey.
We were both raised in middle-upper class neighborhoods; our parents were both professionals with college degrees - my brother has an undergraduate degree from Rutgers, a degree from the Princeton Theological Seminary and is about to start his dissertation at Columbia. My older sister was Merit Scholar who went to Brown. I graduated from Penn State, played football there and was also an NFL player. We trace our family tree back to a slave brought to the United States in the 1700's - but all the woman who drove by us saw was our skin color.
Bear in mind I harbor no resentment towards Indians and Pakistanis. There's no anti-Hindu or Muslim feeling behind this post. I'm just sharing something I know exists that I never see US media cover - and I am far from the only African-American or person for that matter to notice this.
Is it scorn? Is it resentment? Or perhaps the product of cultures that have long-held and deeply ingrained simplistic assumptions about skin color and a mind-set forged from a rigid caste-system mentality that survives in various forms in India to this day.
As my mother has often told me, we all bring baggage to the door when we date someone; it seems there are people bringing cultural baggage with them to the doors of the United States.
Strange that certain members of these cultures direct such feelings towards African-Americans when racism is still directed towards both Indians and Pakistanis in places like England; as in the recent case of Indian actress Shilpa Shetty.
Given what had happened that morning, I don't think many people would be surprised to learn that US fighters DID shoot down Flight 93 rather than risk it crashing into the Capitol Dome in Washington, DC.
Not sure about the veracity of the clip, you can fudge anything these days, but it seemed authentic enough.
My take is that Rumsfeld is way too intelligent to "misspeak" about something like that. There's been so much discussion in the media on the strategic implications of terrorism that I'm not sure how much we really pause and think about how the collective culturegeist of the WORLD changed on that day.
I've never really blogged about 911. It's still something of an unhealed emotional trauma for me and I think I am still processing the reality of what happened and the images broadcast from around the world from the media's non-stop coverage. I'm still not ready to watch Oliver Stone's movie about 911 - the trauma, for me, is still to real.
Like millions of others I was living here in New York on September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Center's towers were destroyed in one of the most horrific incidents of violence and terror ever perpetrated upon the people of the United States.
I was off that Tuesday and I sat in my living room for hours with tears in my eyes watching the hellish vision unfold before me on television; scarcely able to believe what I was seeing.
In the eerie silence during the days that followed, many things about our cultural awareness were permanently changed. Differences in nationality, skin color or religion were rendered irrelevant in the face of the blood spilled from over 3,000 innocent people. Those people came from all facets of life, all races and religions; speaking languages from across the globe.
Perhaps the lives of those on board remind us to strive to make a difference in the short time we have here - if the entire population of the Earth were crammed onto a flight that was going to crash, we'd find a way to get past the cultural issues that divide us.
Shouldn't that desire be just as sincere and urgent knowing we're lucky enough to be here, alive in this moment?
