Yardwork, Brown Man Style

There wasn’t much TV watching or newspaper reading or web surfing going on this weekend in our house. I didn't get to see the man who wanted Lindsay Graham come out of the closet, although I had no idea he was even in a damn closet, or watch the endless hours of billowing ash clouds shown over and over that obviously touched the inner child inside of the cable network news producers fascinated by the idea of a real live volcano, or catch the clip of El Dumbo Rusho blaming the volcano eruption on the black man who lives in the White House, or listen to the incessant chatter from political pundits about the Supreme Court nominees as if they were contestants on American Idol.

Nope, this was one of those weekends where instead of cobbling together an extended profane political polemic like “Goldman Sachs Got 99 Problems But Telling Lies Ain’t One”, S. and I were eagerly working in the yard, cleaning away dead leaves, pruning trees and bushes, and spreading a black velvet colored mulch around the yard. Okay, “eagerly” is probably the wrong word for the attitude I had. It was probably more like “why the hell am I, a well documented life-long allergy sufferer, outside in all this damn pollen?”

The yard does look a lot better, although I am still itching and sneezing. I guess “yard” is probably the wrong word too – there is no grass (hallelujah!!) at all, just a couple of narrow, mulch covered areas between the house and the street. The only topiary are bushes that ring the red brick colored pavers of the turnaround and the perimeter of the front, bushes that are now like old friends whose hair I cut every week with scissors-like shears.

A friend of mine from across town showed up Sunday afternoon with his two boys and their friend after attending a soccer game just around the corner. Two four year olds and a nine year old, they were the Three Musketeers – one mini afro, one mini fade, and one Mini Wheats colored shock of blonde hair that kept disappearing around corners and behind cars, at least until the kids from next door came outside.

The family next door are Russians, as in Russians from Russia, with heavy accents like they have in the movies and an insane obsession with cars. Their daughter is in the second or third grade, and their son, who speaks a totally unintelligible polyglot of Russian and English fragments, is three. In twenty minutes, I’d gone from being a lone field negro bagging dead leaves while breathing through a makeshift turban to starring in a cast of characters that included S. with the dog, a bowl of popcorn, three pre-testosterone boys following the Russian princesses every move, and a three year old I had to do sign language with who hollered every time he saw a bee.

Needless to say, a good bit of that pile of mulch remains right where the truck dropped it off. For in the midst of all this chaos, my buddy remembered the brace of cigars he’d brought over, and pulled them out of his pocket. A word to the wise - if you ever get to choose your friends, choose the kind that are apt to pull a handful of Romeo Y Julieta double coronas out of their pocket . They are even better than the occasional bottle of hooch when it comes to making a friend's flaws recede into nothingness.

By the time this was all over, I had been forced to pull out my Super Soaker to defend my manhood. The kids had dropped so much popcorn on the paving stones, the dog had simply given up trying to eat them all. The pink Barbie Escalade had run out of power after careening around the cul-de-sac loaded down with passengers. And young Master Mini Wheats surprised himself by yelling “I love you” to the Russian princess from the backseat of my friend’s truck as he pulled off.

As I write this, there is a Thank You note on the table from another pair of kids who live a few houses down. They are likely to be of Russian origin themselves, although their families have been mainstream Americans for a few generations. The note reads, “Dear Miss S. – Thank you so much for our candy filled pumpkins, We are so happy that you live in our neighborhood!”

I thought about all of these things later, while S. and I and that handy Romeo Y Julieta I was puffing on began to start spreading the mulch over the deweeded, deleafed areas. I thought about the disconnect in America between our brownskinned president of the United States and those Americans who feel so strongly that he does not belong in the White House, that he is not their president, that he cannot be trusted to talk to their kids. I thought about all of the people I live around, who most of whom are white, to whom S. and the dog or me and my cigars and my hedge clippers are as ubiquitous as the pine trees are in the subdivision we live in. Why can't the crazy folks across America I didn't get to see on my TV this weekend see what my neighbors see? I mean, S. is tall, and is a lawyer, like Michelle. And I like to talk a lot, and I'm biracial myself, just like the president...

...okay, maybe being half black and half Geechie isn't exactly the same as being half black and half white - more like half black and half rice - but you get where I'm going with the general theme. Smart, well educated, well behaved, well mannered black folks like us and practically every black person who reads this blog have been goodwill ambassadors before anybody even knew who the Obama's were, bridging the gap between the ignorance of stereotypes and the reality of our existence.

I thought about the disconnect between my neighbors, who expect to see me and know who I am, and the weekenders touring the neighborhood whose eyes often jump when they see me trimming hedges in my “Obama” t-shirt while puffing a trusty stogie. I think of the one weekender in particular who saw me coming out the garage a couple of years ago and slammed into reverse. It took three months for the paint he scraped away from the bumper of his brand new car when he hit the stone wall ringing the cul-de-sac to fade away.

Meanwhile, a stubborn subset of white America continues to embarrass their saner, more normal brethren on an almost hourly basis these days on my TV. It's almost enough to make me want grab one of those choice Romeo Y Julietas my buddy brought me and head outside to that slowly dwindling pile of mulch and get to spreading.

Then again, I could just smoke the cigar and think about doing some work.

Obama On America's Mind

Barack Obama at lunch in the White House

Barack Obama almost made me forget my mother's birthday was today. It is a date that is hard coded into my memory banks. But even though I've talked to my mother several times this week, it wasn't until Friday that I felt like I was forgetting something, and even then, it took awhile to burrow through all things Obama swirling about in my head to finally retrieve that information.

Obamamania has practically eliminated all the overdone hype for the Super Bowl we normally have to live through this time of year. I didn't think about the game until yesterday, when I saw three commercials for it in a five minute span. Maybe its the fact that its the Arizona Cardinals versus the Pittsburgh Steelers that has contributed to the diminished level of anticipation I normally have for the game. In some ways, the inauguration and its surrounding festivities were the Super Bowl, with all the same type of hoopla, fan hysteria, and musical performances - except you already knew what the outcome was going to be, and the winners were not going to Disney Land.

And like the Super Bowl, there comes a point of saturation - a point at which you start getting tired of hearing "the first African American president" from the announcers on TV, a point at which you begin to resent all the needless attention that is being paid to Michelle Obama's wardrobe, or her hairdo, or her makeup, or any one of the other fifty stupid things lazy media producers insist on using to compare the First Lady to Jackie Kennedy.

One of S.'s friends came over for dinner on Friday. We were all hungry by the time she arrived, so during the brief moments before the meal was ready to be served, with the news announcer reeling off one story after another than began with "President Obama", "Obama" or "the Obama Adminstration", I asked our guest a question. "Are you about tired of all this focus on Obama?"

"Yes, frankly I am," she said.

Then we turned off the TV, sat down to eat, and all proceeded to talk happily, in one way or another, about Barack Obama or Obama-related stories for the next three hours.

The power of this one thing is so great it seems to have the strength of a nuclear chain reaction, which releases several million times the energy of the initial reaction in the ensuing self-propagating reactions. The campaign, election, and inauguration of Barack Obama has unleashed something powerful, especially among us who are African Americans, that only seems to grow stronger with each day.

It is as if there has been a shift in the axis of the entire world, changing the angle at which the world rotates just enough to lessen the pull of gravity - because right now, not only does almost everybody seem to be walking a little taller, and holding their heads a little higher - it looks like we all intend to stay that way.

Inauguration Show And Tell

The Great Uploading of all the pictures that were taken at the inauguration of Barack Obama earlier this week has been going on since Tuesday.

I've been tooling around the blogosphere, checking them out. A couple of photo essays stood out over at Daily Kos - they were a great blend of artfully composed shots and well written commentary. And the monologue by my man at AverageBro.com is hilarious - it sounds like the kind of blow-by-blow recap my buddies give me when they get back from a special trip.

Thanks to the photographers for giving me permission to link to their photos, and thanks to AverageBro, who always appreciates a few more visitors to his blog.




First up is "JJ from VA", who made this trek with his wife to the Mall on Sunday.

"This was one of the most amazing experiences of my lifetime. I've never been surrounded by so many happy, truly happy people of every imaginable race and ethnicity."

JJ from VA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Flickr Daily Kos

CLICK HERE to see JJ from VA's entire photojournal at Daily Kos.




From my blogroll, which I like to use as my custom built internet newspaper to see what's happening in cyberspace, I read a VERY entertaining account of Inauguration Day from an AverageBro who was just a few hundred feet away from the Ground Zero of the podium.

EXCERPT:

After awhile, ABL and I got antsy and started walking around the Section 11 (which prolly contained 10,000 seats alone) to see who else was around. In no time we ran into Common (nice guy), Tracee Ellis Ross (looks better on TV), Bill Bellamy, Evander Holyfield (sitting waaaay in the back and apparently not happy about it), Stephen Spielberg (nice guy, who oddly had to also sit in the back), Alicia Keys (far away, I only got a glimpse of her), Bill Cosby (also seen from afar), Wyclef (sitting just in front of us in the Green Zone) and finally.. brace yourselves fellas... Halle Berry.

She was dressed down (hat, big shades, no makeup), but well, it's Halle Berry. Do you ladies realize how many male-male debates/discussions have begun with the words "Well, what if Halle Berry...." over the years? She was too far from the aisle for me to ask for a photo (and she had well-disguised security, something few other celebs had), but this still made my day. 50 years from now, my kids will ask me about Inaug Day, and all I'll say is "Good Lawd, Halle Berry!!!!".

Average Bro

CLICK HERE for the entire article at AverageBro.com




Mal Harden also made the trek to D.C. with his wife.

"You may think you can imagine what a million people looks like. You can't. You may think you can imagine what a million gloves clapping sounds like. You can't. Between 20-40 baseball stadiums worth of people. Loud, enthusiastic people. :-) "

Mal Harden

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CLICK HERE to see Mal's entire photojournal at Daily Kos.

The Steps You Take Are Not Yours Alone

The mass of people on the National Mall who gathered to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States on Tuesday was simply stupendous. The anticipation seemed to reach around the globe. The announcers were all falling all over themselves to remind us that Barack Obama was about to be the nation’s first African American president. As we watched the Obama family settle in behind the lectern, I thought back to this time last year, when the frenzy had just begun over this one term Senator from Illinois with the million dollar smile.

How far we had come.

To some people, Barack Obama was simply a man running for president. For others of us who were African American, he was more than that. He was a man who not only looked like us, but remembered us, and sounded like he was going to work to continue to connect to us even after he joined the most exclusive men's club in the world.

In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama recognized the small village that was the birthplace of his father as a part of his heritage, but to many of us watching, he was from Alabama and Mississippi and South Carolina and Maryland and California and Illinois and Georgia and Florida as much as he was from Kenya or Kansas or Hawaii.

The president's steps and the first lady's steps as they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue during the parade weren’t just the steps of two people - they were the steps of generations of men and women denied full participation in American society by the color of their skin, the steps of millions of peoples of color who live in America today whose lives are just beginning to resemble those of our paler brethren, the steps of their long dead ancestors, and the steps for their own children, who may very likely get the chance to live as adults in a world that sees them more for who they are than any generation of brown-skinned people in the history of this country.

Some of us are almost there already. Some of our neighbors are white. Our friends are multicultural. Our educations have been obtained from the best schools in the land.

But this is not the mass of black Americans. Too many of us are still struggling to connect intimately with other cultures. Too many of us are still rolling our eyes at the thought of higher learning. Too many of us are now bound more from within than without, more from our own narrow worldviews than how the world now views us.

Those steps down Pennsylvania Avenue that Barack and Michelle Obama took yesterday, after the inauguration ceremony – they were for the mass of black Americans too. But they are not going to walk up to your home, knock on your door, then come in and take a seat on your couch. You’ve got to meet them halfway.

Barack Obama did not slide into the White House on his silver tongue. He trained his mind to think wider, deeper, faster, and longer than the competition. He took advantage of the best university system in the world. And he remembered, even after deciding to more fully embrace the African side of his heritage, to never forget how to connect to the rest of America that he grew up in.

So conjure up your own parade in your mind. Throw your shoulders back. Hold your head high. And when you walk, whether it's down the street, or in the grocery store, or the locker court, or the mall, remember that the steps you take are not yours alone – that you have just as many ancestors and forebears and modern day cheerleaders who are counting on you to stride into a future filled with all the good things America has to offer.

America Is Finally Growing Up

Inaugurating Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America was like being in a civil rights march without an opposing force; like watching the Apollo moon landing without the need for a telescope; like the end of apartheid, with all of the tears of joy.

America is finally growing up. When we all can acknowledge our entire history, not just the attractive parts, when we all can accept completely the existence of perverse injustices that dominated our pasts - when the entire story of where we came from and how we got to here as a nation is recognized, fully and without restraint - the affirmations we cry out in celebration will ring truer, and the declarations we shout to the rooftops in commemoration shall carry more weight than they ever have before.

Indentured servitude, slavery, segregation, integration - Black America 5.0 is upon us, but even as it includes all of these things, it is bound by none of them. Collaboration is the last mile, the final steps in this journey to be equally accepted into all aspects of American life. Black America 5.0 will be tricky - there are going to be times, in fact, when you will wonder where you end and the rest of the world begins.

Change is good. But it is not quite as simple as flipping a switch in a dark room, instantly turning on the light. I don't know exactly what the steps are that we need to take to travel this final mile, or what order they need to be executed in, or how much the process will demand of us. But what I do know is two things: it will take the willingness and determination of the majority of this country to get there, and we already have all the tools we need right now to get started today.

Congratulations, America, on reaching a milestone for the ages.

Baracksploitation Is In Full Effect

Baracksploitation is in full effect, and I'm not talking about the vendors in Washington who are selling Obama memorabilia. The major networks and cable news outlets are working overtime to manufacture one Obama story after another.

As I watched commentators on every channel stare expectantly into the camera and mouth the words "first African American president" over and over last night, I thought about those little brown children all across the south in the fifties who were the first black students to integrate their local school systems, eyes from around the country trained on each and every step they took.

The nervous tension inherent in these final moments before the swearing-in ceremony, like the heightened level of anxiety you see conveyed in the faces of practically every anchor person on every channel right now, doesn't stem from Barack Obama's history making quest, but from those who have been complicit in its denial until now. It is as if the network brass have decided to make their on camera personalities sell a product whose capabilities they aren't quite sure of yet themselves.

Journalists like Soledad O’Brien, who have traded on their “maybe I’m white, maybe I’m not” brand of racial ambiguity all their lives, are almost giddy with excitement because they don’t feel like they are on the outside looking in – being able to publicly appropriate the dark roots they have downplayed all their lives looks almost liberating as I observe the extra sense of knowingness in their faces.

And for the masses of my brownskinned brethren who have never been mistaken for being anything other than African American, whose omnipresence on every stretch of space in downtown D.C. has transformed the atmosphere of the nation’s capitol into that of a family reunion, there is no part of the Barack Obama story that doesn’t deserve to be blown up to larger than life proportions.

The thing that all this attention has done is force the mainstream media to focus on the darker part of our nation's history in a way that they never have before. Listening to the news announcers in prime time talk about the historical significance of the slave labor that was essential in constructing the nation's capital, including the White House itself, it sounded to me like they were practically wading through the pages of our history books, elbowing the accepted narrative aside to finally make room for the entire truth of our country's complete heritage.

I don't see a thing wrong with this kind of Baracksploitation if it will continue to help expose America to the whole truth of its past, and connect this past to the imperfect reality of today that those odious legacies spawned.

The Trifecta: King, Obama, and You

If he is nothing else, your new president is TV ready. Obama works a camera like he's Denzel Washington,one of the many celebrities who feted the new First Family last night at the Lincoln Memorial.

I am dusting off the DVD player today. We need to get some recordable discs, but its been so long since we’ve recorded anything that I can’t remember what kind to get. Actually, I think we’ve only tried to record one thing a couple of years ago, and I didn’t set the timer correctly, so I will be testing things tonight.

There are already a lot of people in D.C. - by tomorrow, it will be a veritable ocean of humanity. The vendors must be having an absolute ball, because half of the people on camera seem to be wearing knit caps with "Obama" woven into them.

Sometimes, when you are a one man show, like I am here at Brown Man Thinking Hard, you can only do so much at a time like this, when we have Martin Luther King's birthday AND the inauguration of Barack Obama back to back. So even though I will probably have more posts than average for the next few days, I'm going to point you in a couple of different directions this morning, so you can get a little bit of the old and the new.

The gang over at Jack and Jill Politics are having themselves the time of their lives - they are posting several updates a day from ground zero on the Mall in Washington, and coordinating with their team members who are running the site this week to post video interviews, pictures - all kinds of stuff. They have been a HUGE influence on me, and I always enjoy getting in the mix with their blog community.

Here in the ATL, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr., a friend of mine who is a columnist for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Gracie Bonds Staples, has a front page article today, "Foot Soldiers Of Movement Are Grateful", that highlights the people in the SCLC who made it possible for King to be a civil rights icon.

I have read two daily newspapers my whole life - first as a child, when my parents subscribed to the local and state papers in South Carolina, and then here in Georgia, where I have vacillated between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times as the companion to our local Atlanta newspaper.

So as an avid newspaper reader, I am happy to see Mrs. Staples on the front page. It's about time the AJC started putting more of their black journalists on stories that feature black people - in a town like Atlanta, you would think that this would be an obvious strategy. Looks like change is finally coming to our local print news.

The media focus for the next two days will be on the memory of King and the realization of the Obama presidency. The images of these men is resonating with so many Americans right now because they are a part of a triumvirate, a trio that includes the American individual - you, me, and three hundred million others - standing in between the two of them.

What a trio!

Interview: Author Of "Inaugration Ball" Email

Illustration By John Mavroudis

There is an email circulating around the internet has been forwarded to me almost everyday this week called "Inauguration Ball 2009". It is one of those emails that you have to scroll down through five levels of email addresses to read, because no one will take the time to cut and paste the actual message into a new email.

The text of the email is deceptive - it seems simple enough at first, the description of a dream about the ghosts of legendary African Americans mingling about at an inaugural ball held in honor of President Barack Obama - but as you read on, you start to realize that the author has done more than string together a few famous names. The make-believe world he creates captures perfectly the nuances and reactions you would expect to see in such a surreal setting.

It spoke directly to me, because I've been in that room.

We've held two Black History costume parties, gatherings where we asked our guests to dress up like someone of African American descent who has some sort of historical significance. It wasn't as hard as we thought to talk our friends into trying it the first time. It was a small gathering, but it was fun, with people coming as Oprah, Don King, General Benjamin O. "Chappie" Davis, Martin Luther King Jr, Zora Neale Hurston, Bill Pickett, Diana Ross, Condolezza Rice, Cleopatra, Colin Powell, and the Brown Man himself as Frederick Douglas, complete with the crazy hair.

Don King talked trash. Oprah gave away Matchbox cars. Diana Ross batted her eyes at the General. Martin left early because he needed to be in church the next morning. Condolezza and Zora, in an irony of ironies, talked about their kids. Malcolm X didn't have a lot to say, and the half black, half Asian guest who came as Tiger Woods brought his real life white wife.

We ate, drank, and laughed at the details of the costumes we dreamed up. It was hilarious.

In 2008, we did it again, teaming up with some friends to put it on. It seemed that everything was heightened because of the tension in the air surrounding the candidacy of Barack Obama for president. By the time we had the party in late February, Obama had vaulted into the lead for the Democratic nomination. This time around, we had a bigger, broader cross section of guests, who came as Mahalia Jackson, Angela Davis numbers one through six, Bob Marley, Bumpy Johnson, Beyonce, Billie Holiday, Althea Gibson, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, a fully dressed Buffalo Soldier, Louis Farrakhan, Harriet Tubman, Josephine Baker I & II, Claire Huxtable, two overall wearing sharecroppers, Tina Turner, and yours truly as George Washington Carver.

We milled around, just the way Kenyada describes it in "Inauguration Ball", imitating the figure we'd chosen to emulate, sharing little known stories about our characters that we'd picked up while putting our costumes together. As the house began to fill, you could feel the energy between the guests as they heartily greeted each other.

The crescendo was reached about midway through the evening, when the surprise guests of honor arrived. Except there wasn't a hush that spread over the house. I was in the basement, and heard someone cry out after opening the front door. The cry grew to a roar, but it was a jubilant sound, screaming and yelling mixed with laughter.

A few minutes later, someone in a blue suit and a earpiece came down the stairs to the basement, stopping at the landing that opened into the room to announce "the next president of the United States, Barack Obama."

Then the guests who came as Barack and Michelle Obama turned the corner and all hell broke loose. Tall, skinny, with wheatish colored skin, short cropped hair, an elongated face and lips that he had blackened with costume makeup, our Barack Obama lookalike was dressed in the same blue suit you saw Obama wear all last spring. Accompanying him was a woman who could have been Michelle Obama's cousin, with the same long legs, long arms, short torso and a wig that brought out the broadness in her cheekbones, just like Michelle's.

Barack Obama high fived Farrakhan. He shot pool with the Buffalo Soldier. He drank liquor with Mahalia Jackson, admired Josephine Baker I's handmade costume, and took pictures with everybody.

I thought about all this as I looked at the picture above this morning. Then I reread the email. The link at the bottom had "dailykos" in it after the author's name. I'm a member myself of the Daily Kos, a progressive political web portal, so I figured I could at least get the name of the author straight before I wrote about his amazing email. A few seconds later, I had his email address and a website address for him. Two clicks later, I laughed out loud - Mr. Richard Kenyada was right here in Atlanta!

Since I'd come this far, I said to myself as I explored his websites, why not shoot him an email and do a quick interview with the man behind "Inauguration Ball"?

An hour later, I had his response in my inbox.

Mr. Richard Kenyada is the author of "Inauguration 2009", which will be included in his new book titled "Reflections in the Dark Room: The Black Essays". Mr. Kenyada is a community activist in his own right, blending his technology background with a sense of service to operate "Mr. Kenyada's Neighborhood, Inc.", an organization dedicated to promoting computer literacy and computer ownership in the African American community. He also runs a discussion forum called "The Drum", a Society of Voices.

Mr. Kenyada, you have certainly got the internet buzzing over your piece.

Kris, the response has been overwhelming. I was in the middle of putting the final touches on my new book, Reflections in the Dark Room. Like everyone else, I was caught up in the election and the early voting in Georgia. The long lines simply thrilled, and fascinated me. I'll never forget... it was October 29th - 6 days before the election.

I edited a shorter version of the Inauguration Ball 2009, and I called it "Inauguration Ball" instead of Inaugural Ball so that it would be easier to track down using Google. I really wanted to see how much of a buzz it would cause. I knew it would hit the right chord with people because I wept some when writing it.

When I posted it on Daily Kos, the response was immediate and exciting. I started receiving e-mails from all over the world including two reporters from England. There were emails from teachers asking permission to use the piece in their classes. Emails from social workers who wanted their senior centers to experience the piece. And many more people just wanted to thank me.

In fact, I still receive 2 or 3 emails a day, some asking for a copy. So I had a small poster-sized print made up and I send prints to those who are very interested. When the book is available in a few weeks (early February), I'm sure that the essay will sell many copies because it includes the FULL version of the essay.

With all the famous black people in our history to choose from, how did you decide who to spotlight in your piece?

I started out with two famous people - Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X. They have always been the two angels on my shoulders, and my dream of them sharing a laugh together was the foundation of Inauguration Ball 2009. From there, it took off in all directions - politics, entertainment, science, civil rights - all pioneers in their own right. Editing the piece down for the Internet posting was the hardest thing to do because everyone belonged there.

You yourself are a community activist, operating "Mr. Kenyada's Neighborhood". Do you see any potential for the Obama presidency to inspire more African Americans to get involved at the grass roots level?

Yes! As soon as President Obama takes his seat in the Oval Room, he will be an inspiration to millions of people all over the world, but particularly African Americans, who often have self esteem issues. Obama has always stressed personal responsibility, and that's why I admire him so much.

He understands that the greatest debt owed to African Americans in the aftermath of slavery is the debt that we owe to ourselves. We have internal work to do, and it must be accomplished at the most basic levels - in our homes and throughout our neighborhoods.

The dream motif is a strong part of the African American culture. Do you think modern day Americans allow themselves to dream enough?

We all dream, but few seek seek to wake up and do the work necessary to implement those dreams. Many see Dr. King, for example, as a "Dreamer," but the reality is that his greatness lies in the fact that he rolled up his sleeves and did the work. He was much more than a dreamer; he was a doer. Black men, in particular, need to follow the lead of accomplished African Americans throughout history and step up to the challenge.

I've read in comments by you about the piece that this is the short version - the long version is in your book, "Reflections in the Dark Room: The Black Essays", which is supposed to be available this month. When will it hit bookshelves, and where can we get it?

In late January or the first week in February. The new book will be available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, but those interested will be able to come to my website, www.kenyada.com/forums where I will have a link taking them to my publisher's page for my books. And if they contact me directly, I will send them an autographed copy.

Is there anything else you'd like to say about the way "Inaugural Ball 2009" has gone on to become a viral phenomenon?

Well, it's a double-edged sword, really. It's gotten so popular that a few people have even removed my name from the emails and replaced it with their own, claiming ownership of the piece. That's a form of flattery that I could probably do without. But overall the experience has been a great one.

My 83-year old Mom in New York City received a copy, and re-read it over and over again, exclaiming to anyone near..."That's my son!" Kris, it doesn't get any better than that. I only wish my Dad, who actually marched on Washington back in 1963, had lived to see this day.

Of course, I also hope that President-elect and Mrs. Obama get to read it. I could not be more proud of their accomplishments, just as I imagine that they are proud of the accomplishments of the icons mentioned in my essay.


Richard Kenyada

Comedian Paul Mooney Sums Up Christmas

"Santa Claus was good to everybody this year. He gave the black folks Obama and he gave the white folks O.J."

Paul Mooney

Sometimes it takes a comedian to tell us what's really going on. Right now, if you watch the news, it seems like we live in two Americas. Half of the country is afraid to even imagine what calamity could befall us next. They are petrified about the economy, hysterical about the Middle East conflict, and terrified of the unknown number of terrorists who are hard at work somewhere, plotting to attack the country.

The other half - well, okay, lets call it a third - this third is euphoric right now. It is as if they are wearing blinders that allow them to look past the economy, the fighting in the Middle East, and the terrorist threats to see the end of a bona fide rainbow. The light shining from the inauguration proceedings for Barack Obama has overcome the darkness of these perilous times for these people.

I am one of them.

And within this third of the country that is ready to celebrate the installation of our newest president next week, there is a sizable brown skinned contingent whose chests are swollen with pride. Whose minds are so focused on Obama's date with destiny next Tuesday in front of the U.S. Capitol building that they could care less about O.J., or Michael Jackson, or R. Kelly.

I am one of them.

Even though I laughed when I read it the first time, the thing Paul Mooney's joke gets at is the notion that white America needed to rebalance the traditional racial equation that the Obama campaign had thrown out of whack. That they intended to get this "bad negro" off the streets for life because he was found "not guilty" in the Nicole Simpson murder trial.

It wasn't so long ago, though, that O.J. was one of the most famous and beloved black people in the country.

His legendary commercial for Hertz Rent-A-Car, that showcased his record setting NFL legs in motion as he hurdled luggage strewn across an airport corridor in a suit with a briefcase, was so ubiquitous I still feel like running through the airport like he did whenever I am late for a plane.

"The Juice" had his own action figure. I got one for Christmas one year, complete with removable cleats and a washable Buffalo Bills jersey. It made me forget all about my G.I. Joe with the kung fu grip.

O.J. has seen hard times since those days. The "Trial of the Century" was so big that it spawned a legion of legal analysts. Almost all of the analysts who filled the airwaves this year with their analysis of potential legal dilemmas for the Obama campaign got their start fifteen years ago covering the O.J. trial.

Now we've got this new brother, Barack Obama, who has got us all - black white, latino - mesmerized. He is the toast of the town today. But there are going to be times, in the not too distant future, when he is going to make some decisions that will have comedians like Paul Mooney calling him "O'Tomma" instead of "Obama".

Don't get me wrong - I thought the joke was hilarious. I will be telling it for the rest of the week. But it was the picture above, with the black soldiers and the children of black soldiers standing in for the Obama family, that really underlined for me how easily many Americans could substitute in their minds one favorite black person for another - especially when the favorite black person began to rub them the wrong way.

I hope Barack Obama doesn't become the punchline of this same joke by next Christmas.

Obama Will Be Split Screen President

The best thing about this Tuesday is that we will only have to hear the phrase “there’s only one president at a time” for one more week. Mr. Obama, it seems, is still swaddled in the folds of his gift wrapping, while Mr. Bush appears to be ready to tear the last handful of pages from his desk calendar all at once.

The second best thing about this Tuesday is that Jack Bauer, the hero of the show 24, will finally be able to get himself some rest after a two night, four hour marathon of shooting it out with the bad guys and double crossing the good guys

S. is addicted to 24.

I pretty much only watch the Falcons, the playoffs, and old movies on Turner Classic Movies.

But the Redemption episode of 24 came on after a late afternoon Sunday game last month, and the visuals of the inauguration of a new president hit too close to home for me to turn it off.

So I watched the show, not as the writer intended, but as I wanted to see it, substituting Barack Obama for President-Elect Taylor whenever she appeared on the screen. There’s only so much a writer can do with the script when the hero can’t die. So a lot of the scenes were pretty predictable.

Last night, as I watched Jack Bauer do more with a handgun, a trench coat and dress slacks than the entire squad of commandos outfitted with automatic weapons who were shooting at him, I had to shake my head as he escaped, just in time to get to the next crisis.

But I didn’t leave the room, because the thing the director did, just often enough to keep it interesting, was come up with a three way split screen that showed all the storylines unfolding in real time in a way that highlighted the connection between them.

I slipped back into multi-track mind mode as the bullets rained out from a FBI parking deck into a DC street in the middle of the day. I pictured a relaxed Barack Obama at Ben’s Chili Bowl, holding a half smoke aloft as he guided the end of it towards his mouth, in the northwest corner of the screen. I saw a masked Middle Eastern man in the next frame, directly opposite Obama, carrying a rocket on his shoulder during a rally in the Gaza Strip, the end of the rocket coming straight at us just as Obama sank the legendary D.C. hotdog into his mouth.

And I saw a scene from Congress that filled the bottom half of the screen, congressmen milling about the floor as a speaker passionately spoke about the need to rein in Israel while her colleagues ignored her.

By the time the show had gotten to its final cliffhanger of the week at ten o’clock, I had gotten to like the way the split screen on television had inspired me to think about other scenarios Barack Obama might be finding himself in during the coming weeks.

I saw Obama in a section of the screen, taking questions at a press conference about the passage of his stimulus package, juxtaposed beside a scene on the courthouse steps of a Midwestern city that featured a courthouse employee reading off the list of foreclosed properties for sale, both of them above the bottom half of a screen that was filled with a long conference table surrounded by the governors of the Federal Reserve, their faces looking as if they had seen the ghost of the Economy Past.

The way the world was changing so fast these days, I mused, maybe we all needed to start looking at the world as if it were a multi-screen montage. Maybe the visual evidence of the interdependence between a hotdog, a rocket, and an appropriations bill might help us get past the politics of polarization, beyond the dogmatic fervor for single issues that has come to define "business as usual" government.

We might only have one president at a time, but our next president will have to deal with more than one problem at a time, and often simultaneously with his efforts to lead and inspire the nation. Whether you said "Yes We Can" or "No He Can't" during the election doesn't really matter that much anymore - it's Americans who can think about issues from multiple points of view who will create the kind of national mood and mindset that can help our next president get the country headed in the right direction again.

Our Magic Wands In The Age Of Obama

I was cooking up some pancakes yesterday morning when S. turned Meet The Press on. Bill Cosby's face filled the screen as he stared at the camera while David Gregory, the show's new host, asked him a question about his book Come On People. When I saw Alvin Poussaint, Maxine Waters, and Adrian Fenty around the table, I shook my head - this would have been a good day to have cereal so I could watch the show in peace.

It didn’t hit me how much I had enjoyed watching them until S. switched to George with George Stephanopoulos, who had a half hour interview with the man himself, Barack Obama. I looked up from the last pancake I was frying and took in the scene I was a part of with pride.

One brown man cooking pancakes. Two brown skinned teenaged girls eating pancakes at the other end of the kitchen island. One brown skinned woman reading the paper at the breakfast table. One brown skinned president elect on the TV droning on about his plans for America. And one brown haired dog staring up at all of us, hoping someone would give him a piece of sausage.

"Maybe", I said to myself, "these two girls are already starting to feel some of the positive vibes from having an African American president about to take office."

That notion was quickly dispelled when they got up to put their plates in the sink.

"Mom," our resident diva said, "do you think Obama's cute?" She and her friend giggled as her mother raised her head to peer over the top of her glasses at the TV screen, as if she didn't know what Barack Obama looked like.

As Stephanopoulos trotted out his Sunday regulars – George Will, Newt Gingrich, Peggy Noonan and Thomas Friedman, after the Obama interview, I tried to figure out just what it was that really made watching the panel of black people pontificate about America's ills on Meet The Press more enjoyable than watching the panel of white people do the same thing on this show.

The obvious answer, that I had an affinity for the group of black commentators and activists because I was black, didn’t carry a lot of weight. To me, Alvin Poussaint could have been a black version of George Will. I thought Maxine Waters was trying too hard to show that the Black Caucus would still be relevant to an Obama Administration. Fenty was so smooth he made Obama sound like a country bumpkin, and Cosby could wander off topic at a moment's notice.

It wasn't until I pushed the plate away after eating my pancakes that I figured out what it was. It came to me when Peggy Noonan made an offhand comment on the Stephanopoulos show – "its getting tough out there" – as if "out there" was a part of a different world than the one she inhabited. The real difference between these panels was in the way the two groups talked about America.

The black group, for all its shortcomings, referred to the black community and larger society in a way that said "we stand amongst you as fellow human beings." The white group, by contrast, seemed to be annoyed by all of us out there, white and black and latino alike, with an arrogant disdain for those masses of us who did not inhabit their particular rarefied slice of the universe.

I went back to the images from Meet The Press as I began to clean up the kitchen alone, since everybody else had mysteriously disappeared after eating. It seemed like more and more black people were talking about serious issues on TV these days. This was the beginning of the next new thing, I figured, that black people en masse would begin to adopt as they caught on to the trend.

I was snatched from my revere by a local show called I.Q., a modern day version of the Quiz Bowl program here in metro Atlanta that pitted area high schools against each other in a knowledge contest. The North Atlanta suburban high school represented on the show turned out to be a school a couple of miles away from me. All of its contestants were white students. The South Atlanta high school represented was on the other side of town. All of its contestants were black students.

I thought back to the news shows that had been on earlier as I finished wiping down the counter. The abstract notions they had been arguing over, the children that they had been so concerned about, the educational systems they had all complained about – it was right here on display. The I.Q. commentator's questions flew. The students pushed buzzers. They gave their answers. And by the time they got to the final round, the white students had pulled so far away from the black students it was like a scene about racial stereotypes that had been pulled straight off of Good Times.

I thought about some of the answers I'd blurted out while waiting on the kids to respond. These were not things that I had learned by osmosis growing up. A lot of it came from supplemental reading materials that exposed me to art forms and philosophies and theories that we don’t naturally talk about at the barber shop or while watching the game. Or hour upon hour spent at the library when it was too hot to play outside.

I thought about the things that we as a people do not know, not because we don’t have the capacity to retain the knowledge, but because we have not taken the time to be exposed to it. If you have a sense that this "Age of Obama" we are entering is going to change your life because someone waves a magic wand, you are absolutely right.

The thing is, we already have that wand in our hands. And the someone who will be waving it is you. We've had these magic wands all along, just like Obama did back when he had nothing but time and opportunity. Those kids on that quiz show have a magic wand in their hands too, one that I hope they will use to reach out to the parts of life they don't know anything about yet so they can play the game of life at its highest levels.

Even Obama Must Be Getting Tingly These Days

This is getting to be like the week before Christmas, when you start to have presents lying under the tree - watching Barack Obama get off of the presidential plane on Monday, then seeing him yesterday, meeting with all the ex-presidents at the White House, it is starting to feel realer than real that this black man will be the president of the United States of America in less than two weeks.

Even Obama, "Mr. Cool" himself, has got to be getting a little tingly right about now.

The Super Bowl is usually the event that gets the big build up in January, but not this year. People are starting to get that far away look in their eyes when you say "January 20th", like they are about to go on a vacation they’ve been saving for all their lives.

I myself am getting restless, like an overfed tiger at the zoo. I'm walking a little taller, like I've just discovered how to stand up straight after all these years of slumping my shoulders. I can't even watch my favorite political pundits on TV lately, since they all seem like they are just killing time arguing over the Obama appointments until the Big Day arrives.

And as I read the jubilant messages from that select group of people across the blogosphere, who are not just going to be in D.C. next weekend, but are going to be there with the actual invitations to the Inauguration Ceremony that they have begun to receive, I start to wonder - am I missing out on a big part of this if I am here at home in Atlanta with my party hat and my noisemakers on the biggest Tuesday of the year? Should I try to talk S. into making this once in a life time trek to the nation's capital to join the millions of other black people who will line the streets around the Mall?

Unless someone from Oprah's staff calls me with some tickets and a room in the mansion she's renting for the week, on January 20th, I'll be in the same VIP section I sat in on Election Night - right here in the basement in the ATL. With a bathroom, bar, and big screen TV - three of the four "B's" that normally satisfy 80% of a man's urges - you would think I should be happy to watch history unfurl itself with my remote control in hand.

If you are fortunate enough to be going to D.C. next weekend, pack plenty of longjohns and enjoy yourself. And email me some pictures.

If you are among the super fortunate, who have received an invitation like the one in the picture above that allows you to attend the actual ceremony – I'm greener than the Incredible Hulk right now, but please - email me some pics anyway.

And if you are going to be in your hometown, or in your basement, or at work, you can email some pictures too.

I will post them all.

Now where do they sell those black balloons with the "O" on them?

Rick Warren Invocation Doesn't "Speak Volumes" To Me

I’m tired of reading the phrase "______ speaks volumes."

I’m weary, by the time I finish reading the paper these days, of the phrase "_______ sends a message", or "_______ sends a clear signal."

Barack Obama’s choice of Rev. Rick Warren to say a five minute prayer before Obama is sworn in as the next president of the United States doesn’t send me a message, Morse code, or smoke signals.

Picking Rick Warren to give the inaugural convocation didn’t “send me a message” because I really don’t know who Rick Warren is.

I know his name, because he has been mentioned on the news a lot. Off the top of my head, I can state with certainty that he is an overly jolly looking white guy, he preaches and probably collects lots of money at a church called Saddleback, and he interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain about religion, interviews that I did not watch, either live or on Youtube.

When I ran this by S., she said “he’s the guy who wrote that book The Purpose Driven Life – the one that was a best seller.”

My eyes shifted upward for a second.

“You know,” I said, “I don’t think any of the guys I know have read that one.”

The "guys I know" are the kind of guys who boil things down to the basics. When they look at a car, they see through body to the motor. When they look at a house, they see through the stucco and the trim to the joists and the foundation. When they look at a woman – well, let’s just say I wouldn’t waste time asking them what color her blouse was.

These guys are most of America, the kind of people who are not overly concerned with anything unless it affects them directly. They let the common sense they’ve developed over the years, like most Americans do, dictate what is an important issue to them.

Our friends who make up the media, by contrast, are in the advertising selling business, so the easiest way to get your attention is to throw common sense out of the window and push an innocuous idea like Rev. Warren giving a prayer to the most extreme conclusion possible.

I can guarantee you right now that Rev Warren’s prayer will not be the most important thing that happens the week of January 20th. It won’t even make the it into the list of Top Ten news items. What has happened, though, since Obama has put this outspoken opponent of gay rights on the national hot seat, is a moderation by Warren of his stated positions on the gay and lesbian lifestyle.

Gay and lesbian rights are not an issue that keeps me up at night, but for those to whom they do matter, I would hope they could get beyond their emotional reactions long enough to see how putting the spotlight on Warren will push him closer to the center philosophically than the next ten protest marches. We cannot continue to stay in our own corners, whether we're black or gay or devoutly religious or anti-war, duking it out with all who oppose us, if we hope to achieve any different results than we've already gotten.

But back to this idea that the populace is able to rely on their common sense to guide them past make-believe issues that are just time wasters. I would speculate that Barack Obama has the same kind of common sense my buddies have. He knows, like they do, the difference between the thing people see on the outside and what is really on the inside of an action he takes, especially something like this invocation, which can't take more than five minutes tops.

I'm sure the selection of black civil rights icon Rev. Joesph Lowery to give the benediction at the inauguration is going to offend somebody too.

Right now, it's those future breadlines, not these Rick Warren headlines, that we need Obama to be worrying about.

When You've Got The Name And The Looks

The children of Martin Luther King Jr. have always said “Marty got daddy’s name, Dexter got daddy’s looks.”

Jessie Jackson Jr. got both.

I myself got two colorful monikers, one Arabic, one Hindu, preceding my English surname, two names as far away from my father's utilitarian "Fred" as you could get. I quickly boiled them down to "Kris" the way "Barack" boiled his name down to "Barry" for the exact same reason he did - to avoid being different from everybody else.

When I was younger, I used to ask my father "why I wasn’t a 'Junior'?"

"Because I didn’t want you to be burdened with it if I didn’t keep my name clear."

The things that men like Jesse Jackson Sr. and my father and other highly motivated black men across the South went through to get to college, then to go out into an America that was in such racial turmoil in the sixties and be somebody was a part of a crossroads in time.

Jesse Jackson Sr. protested against the goverment.

My father went to work for the government.

So when your father runs for the presidency of the United States of America, even if it is a symbolic campaign, you don’t have a burden to be carried, you have a bar to be raised.

Since I didn’t know much about the younger Jackson, I decided to see for myself just who was the man behind those flashing eyes and that hungry smile. It quickly turned into a bona fide internet research junket when I clicked on a link to his wife, Sandi.

The most striking thing about Jesse Jackson Jr. that jumped out at me after reading through several biographical accounts of his life is the sense that this is a young man in a hurry. “Hyperactive” is what they called him at the military school he attended when he and his brother Jonathan proved too much for their mother and their Chicago school to handle.

In Jesse Jackson Jr.'s short career, he has chomped at the bit to run for mayor of Chicago as well as the U.S. Senate. He bypassed local politics altogether at the beginning of his career, against the advice of his father, jumping right into his first congressional race when Congressman Mel Reynolds was caught soliciting a minor.

He is still hyperactive.

He only misses TWO floor votes in thirteen years in Congress, a feat in and of itself.

He does his homework on the issues before he starts talking.

He sponsors constitutional amendments instead of special interest bills.

He knows the rules and the protocol of Congress inside and out.

He opposes President Bush ideologically but maintains a personal relationship with him.

He’s got three degrees – bachelor of science, master of divinity, law degree.

He has co-written several books, and authored one about why he is who he is.

But - he’s never had a job outside the family business, never been ordained, never taken the bar.

Jackson Jr. HAD to at least talk to Rudy Blagojevich. So did Obama's people. ANYONE who wanted a real shot at getting the Illinois Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama would have. Valerie Jarrett only escaped her own in person meeting or phone sessions because she probably wasn't a real candidate anyway.

But Jackson Jr.'s hyperactivity may have worked against him this time.

When he described Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention this summer, he said “he doesn't always tell people what they want to hear. He tells them what they need to hear."

So Jesse Jackson Jr., I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.

Slow all this apologizing down for something you say you didn’t do. WAY down.

DO NOT concede your bid for the Senate right now – all the facts are not in yet.

Figure out how to tone down that prickly, thin-skinned edge you exude a couple of notches.

Estimate how much of the truth you think we can handle - and tell it before the other guy does.

You’ve got your father’s name. You’ve got more than a passing physical resemblance to him. Now, what we need to see is some of that famous Jesse Jackson Sr. charisma, some of that magnetic, plainspoken charm that used to allow us to see your father for more than he was.

Because in the end, that’s what a real leader is – someone who projects their greatness into our lives in a way that helps us believe a little more in ourselves, and trust a little more in you.

I Might Have To Take My Shoes Off

My buddy calls me yesterday, during the game.

I don’t answer the phone.

He calls back later.

S. comes looking for me. “Can you call him back? That’s the second time he’s woken me up looking for you.”

I pretty much only talk to my parents and my brother on Sundays – years of working on the phone during the week have resulted in my designating Sunday as a day without talking on the phone unnecessarily.

I call my buddy back during a commercial. He is spitting fire as he tells me “somebody threw a shoe at the president.” My mind is elsewhere – the Atlanta Falcons had already won their game, and I was dozing off during the one-sided mismatch between the lackluster Denver Broncos and the highly motivated Carolina Panthers.

“What shoes?”

“Didn’t you hear about this? It’s got to be all over the news.”

‘Didn’t I tell you I was watching the game?”

My lack of interest in any details ratchets my buddy’s level of exasperation up. His impatience is literally dripping from his voice as he tells me “an Iraqi reporter at a press conference in Iraq threw his shoes at President Bush! Can you believe that? This shit is crazy.”

There is silence, because I am trying, while I am listening to him, to see what happened on the last play. I move to pick up my remote to rewind the action, but realize it will be a waste of time until I hang up the phone.

“So the president got hit with a shoe.”

“Man,” my buddy yelled, YOU DON”T THROW STUFF AT THE PRESIDENT! He’s the president. He’s a head of state. I’m not talking about people off the street – this guy was a member of the press!”

In the middle of a nice, quiet, relaxing Sunday afternoon, I’m supposed to be worried about George Bush? And after I think about it for a minute, I add Barack Obama to the list – I can’t worry about him all the time either.

I don’t know what triggers my response, but it is sudden and unrestrained. “WE BLEW UP THEIR ENTIRE COUNTRY AND WE EXPECT TO BE GREETED WITH OPEN ARMS? What did we liberate? I’ve been following this closer than you have, I guess.

We blow up everything. We wipe out a big chunk of their economy. We kill people by the thousands.

THEN we show up and tell them we will help them rebuild everything we just blew up. Waste a HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS – do you hear me – A HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS doing a half-assed job of that, and now we’re leaving. Oh yeah, and we had no business doing any of this in the first place. I’d be feeling real good about America right now if I was that reporter.”

“But it’s the PRESIDENT, man. The PRESIDENT of the United States. You just can’t do that.”

“Why not? He wasn’t in the United States. That’s their country. We don’t run shit over there.”

“Man, you’re crazy. You DO NOT do that to the president of the United States.”

Our American government plays at a kindergarten-level of diplomacy, a kind of posturing at international relations pomp and circumstance we revere as if we really mean the things we say, while we are very, very likely to be killing someone, somewhere, in secret, at this very second.

Our rhetoric speaks of spreading justice and democracy around the world when what we practice is a doctrine of control of sovereign nations and what we perpetuate is the continued existence of global inequality. If even one tenth of what has gone on in Iraq had happened here, millions of us would have choked to death by now on our own rage at the inhumanity and barbarism of our attackers.

Thank God my buddy didn’t call me back during the Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game.

I might have had to take MY shoes off – and I wear size 15.

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Christmas Tree Surgery Harder Than It Looks

I spent last night performing surgery on our Christmas tree. It's one of those artificial ones, the kind that comes in three pieces and has the Christmas lights already strung around the limbs. It weighs a lot, and is a little unwieldy to handle while you are putting it together, but once you get the three parts assembled all you have to do is plug all the cords for the lights into their assigned receptacles and the whole thing lights right up, ready to be decorated with ornaments. That's how it has worked for the last eight years. This year it's a little more complicated.

I normally don't pay much attention to any of this after I get the thing assembled. S. is the tree decorator. She starts with a basic arrangement of ornaments and adds a few everyday as she remembers where she stashed them away. Some are mementos, given to her by friends. Others are sentimental keepsakes that have been deemed much to valuable to store with the run of the mill ornaments, so their whereabouts are often a mystery that she has to solve, poking in the bottom of closets and the backs of drawers to eventually ferret them out.

But it seems this ritual can't begin until the tree itself is squared away. Which is why last night I found myself tracing individual strands of lights down intricately twisted paths over, under and around the stiff wire branches that were covered with fake pine needles, looking for burned out light bulbs, because two of the eight strands surrounding the Christmas tree won't light this year.

As I took the blackened glass bulbs from out of their plastic chassis and reattached clear bulbs I'd cannibalized from a new strand of icicle lights, I thought longingly of the football game I'd turned on down in the basement.

By the third quarter, the tree was in post op. My fingertips, tender from bending and rebending delicate wires around the tiny plastic pieces, were wrapped around a cold beer as I finally settled in to watch the Chicago Bears host the New Orleans Saints on Thursday Night football.

"I'll bet Barack Obama has NFL Network," I said to myself, because the only way you could see this game was if you were a subscriber, something I was still mad about ever since I'd signed up. "I'll bet Barack doesn't have to mess around with any old Christmas tree. Come to think of it, he's a big Bears fan - he's probably watching the game right now." The whole idea of imagining Obama sitting at home in Chicago, watching the game just like me, brought on a feeling of spiritual kinship so strong that I completely missed the action of the next play.

Then a Coors Light commercial came on.

I was still lost in my "Brown Man is watching the game, just like Obama is watching the game" reverie when I noticed, about a third of the way through the commercial, that there was something about the black woman sitting on the couch that was vaguely reminiscent of Michelle Obama. She didn't look exactly like her, but there was something about her professional demeanor, something about the look in her eyes as she said something to the black guy in the shirt and tie sitting next to her who was holding two Coors Light beers in his hand-

"Wait a minute," I said to myself as I sat up, grabbing the remote to rewind the action. "Since when does Coors have only black people in a commercial?" When I watched it again, from the beginning, I saw that the woman had come home from a hard day at the office, and told her husband, who was sitting on the couch in a still crisp blue dress shirt with his tie loosened, that she "just wanted to vent." He said "so do I. Let's vent together." and disappeared into the kitchen. The wife began to complain about her day, until her husband reappeared with a smile on his face and two cold beers. "We can vent together," he said with smile. The camera cut to his wife. An exasperated look appeared on her face and she left the room.

The camera cut back to the husband, cheerily watching a football game, holding an open beer. he looked up and yelled over his shoulder, "honey, am I going to have to start venting without you?"

A smile came over my face for a second as I thought about just how powerful that simple commercial was, mostly because what it wasn't doing was showing two African Americans slapping each other five, or hand jiving, or yelling "whasssup!" into a phone while they slouched on a couch in sweats.

Then my lips flattened as the real game came back on. They were flattened because I was back to imagining "Brown Man is watching the game, just like Obama is watching the game", only this time, what I imagined was probably more realistic.

"What do you mean you want to watch the game, Barack? We need to start looking at the list of movers, we need to-"

"Baby,baby, I'm just trying to catch the Bears game."

"Mr. Obama - you mean to tell me, as smart as you are, that you can't do this and watch the game at the same time?"

"Baby, I'm not just watching the game. I'm trying to enjoy the game."

"I thought football only came on during the weekend?"

"Barack Obama and I probably have more in common," I said to myself, "than I originally thought." Which can be a good thing, because some times there are things I need to be doing besides watching a football game.

My imagination kicked in again later, after the Bears terrible offense had turned the ball over, and their legendary defense was on the field, swarming all over the Saints offensive line in search of the ballcarrier. Barack Obama was probably wishing he could get the Bears defense to blitz Rod Blagojevich the same way they went after the Saints, dropping him in the political backfield before he could get started trying to cut a deal with the prosecutor.

The game went to overtime. I did not. I woke up a couple of hours later, twisting and turning on the couch to find the remote because I must be lying on it, the way it was changing the channels-

"You fell asleep." I jerked my head and there was S., sitting in the chair next to the couch,remote in her hand, flipping through the channels. She paused on SportsCenter long enough for me to see that the Bears had won, then kept clicking until she saw Anderson Cooper's pained face next to a picture of Chris Dodd speaking before the Senate.

The network switched to another camera that showed most of the Senate chamber, where it looked like the middle of a regular work day, except it was almost 2 AM.

The graphics superimposed over the scene read "Bailout Expected To Fail The Senate".

As the commentator started with the now familiar litany of ills that awaited the economy without the passage of this bailout, S. and I soberly listened to the news.

I thought about the real people whose lives were being messed with because a group of grown men who were still embarrassed about how easily they gave away 700 bllion dollars, 335 billion of which has already disappeared, were too proud to admit that they had been wrong before, and were willing instead to make the auto industry the whipping boy for their own shortcomings over a lousy 15 billion more dollars. They probably weren't worried right now about the lights on their Christmas tree, or the vagaries of the NFL Network.

Christmas tree surgery is harder than it looks. But I took a five dollar strand of lights and got a tree we paid two hundred dollars for to shine like it was new again.

The auto bailout is easier than it looks. 15 billion dollars is just TWO lousy percent of the 700 billion dollars that just got authorized for who really knows what, since all of our banks seem to have forgotten how to actually loan money to new customers.

To all the Congress people who voted against this bill, who are smugly going home to enjoy the holidays in their warm, cozy abodes - I sincerely hope Santa drops 15 tons of coal on top of each one of your houses this Christmas.

The Swords Are Being Sharpened

I read the crazier parts of yesterday’s indictment of Governor Rod “Whatever His Name Is” to my buddy when he was driving home and he thought I was pulling his leg. Then he fell back into lawyer mode, his voice dropping an octave to his serious professional tone. “What kind of exposure does Obama have?”

“Were you listening to what I just read? ‘I’m supposed to give Obama’s pick the Senate seat and all I get is appreciation? Fuck him!’ Does that sound like quid pro quo to you?”

“Alright, alright.”

“On the flip side, though, they have been investigating this guy for years, so who knows what else might come out. Your boy Kwame Kilpatrick didn’t go down for anything he did this year – it was the coverup of stuff from the past that did his dumb ass in.”

This governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, must not have watched The Sopranos. Even school kids these days know better than to talk on the phone about stuff they don't want anyone to know when they think it’s being recorded by the coppers.

Reading through the portions of the transcripts from the wiretaps that the prosecutor decided to include in the indictment, I started to fell like I was reading a Bernie Mack monologue. Bernie couldn’t work his favorite expletive as hard as Rod “What’s His Name” did. When I got to the part in the indictment that included profane commentary from the Governor’s wife about the way the Chicago Cubs were being managed, I shook my head as the earthy voices of Tony and Carmella Soprano cursing vociferously at each other came back to me.

The latest issue of Essence magazine had come in yesterday. Barack Obama’s confident eyes were staring at me from the cover of their special issue. The subtitle, “Celebrating the Dream”, was in red letters superimposed over his chest. I looked at it for a minute with a wariness similar to the caution that had crept into my buddy’s voice when he imagined that Obama might be facing some kind of danger.

I hope the phrase “ethics of responsibility” that Obama emphasized to Tom Brokaw in Sunday’s interview with Meet The Press is something that he lives by, because the political swords against him are being sharpened as I write these words.

Despite the worldwide jubilation over this historic election of the first African American president, there are those who have not given a moments pause to destroying Obama.

Obama Backs Labor In Chicago Layoff Dispute

Barack Obama has done something today that I can't see any other recent president-elect doing. He put out a statement yesterday about the workers who are staging a sit-in in a Chicago window manufacturer where they were recently laid off.

From the Chicago Sun Times

"When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right," Obama said Sunday at a news conference announcing his new Veterans Affairs director. “What’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy."

"When you have a financial system that is shaky, credit contracts. Businesses large and small start cutting back on their plants and equipment and their workforces. That’s why it’s so important for us to maintain a strong financial system. But it’s also important for us to make sure that the plans and programs that we design aren’t just targeted at maintaining the solvency of banks, but they are designed to get money out the doors and to help people on Main Street. So, number one, I think that these workers, if they have earned their benefits and their pay, then these companies need to follow through on those commitments."

"Number two, I think it is important for us to make sure that, moving forward, any economic plan we put in place helps businesses to meet payroll so we are not seeing these kinds of circumstances again,’’ he said. “Have we done everything that we can to make sure credit is flowing to businesses and to families, and to students who are trying to get loans? And to homeowners who have been making payments on their homes but are still finding their property values so depressed that it becomes very difficult for them to make the mortgage payments?"

"That’s where the rubber hits the road and that’s going to be the central focus of my administration."

There was no legal shuffling, no middle of the road reticence in Obama's "I think they are absolutely right."

Maybe you might think this is of little consequence, but if you watch your national news tonight you will see an ad that General Motors ran today in the trade journal Automotive News, an unsigned open letter entitled "GM's Commitment to the American People" that almost took my breath away when I heard it on cable news at lunch. "While we're still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you," the ad said. "At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs became lackluster."

If you read Sunday's post here, titled "Obama Says Big Three Exec Pay 'Out Of Line'", then you may recognize the words in the sentences above - they practically mirror Obama's comments to Tom Brokaw about the auto industry's woes.

Make no mistake about it - this will not be "business as usual" in America. Our commander-in-chief sets the tone for the entire nation. I would imagine that Merrill Lynch's CEO would like to take back his demand for his 10 million dollar bonus now.

But back to Republic Windows. It looks like they tried to pull the okie doke on their employees, but they just happened to have the wrong bunch to mess with. Check the facts out for yourself below.

[Compiled from several national news sources]

Workers occupying the Republic Windows & Doors factory slated for closure are vowing to remain in the Chicago plant until they win the $1.5 million in severance and vacation pay owed them by management.

Management claims that it can’t continue operations because its main creditor, Bank of America (BoA), refuses to make any more loans to the company. After workers picketed BoA headquarters December 3, bank officials agreed to sit down with Republic management and UE to discuss the matter at a December 5 meeting arranged by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill), said UE organizer Leah Fried.

BoA had said that it couldn’t discuss the matter with the union directly without written approval from Republic’s management. But Republic representatives failed to show up at the meeting, and plant managers prepared to close the doors for good — violating the federal WARN Act that requires 60 days notice of a plant closure.

TRACO has announced the sale of its residential vinyl replacement division to Echo Windows LLC. Echo Windows will assume all TRACO residential vinyl manufacturing and sales operations, and will continue manufacturing TRACO’s Sienna Series and Power Two composite vinyl/aluminum windows in the Red Oak, Iowa, facility, which was purchased as part of the agreement.

“The decision to sell our vinyl division was a difficult one for us, as TRACO was founded by my parents in 1943 to service the residential market. But, we are certain that we have chosen the best fit for our long-term residential customers,” says Robert P. Randall, president and chief executive officer of TRACO.

Sharon Gillman, who shares an address with Republic President and CEO Rich Gillman, is listed as an officer of Echo Windows & Doors LLC, which was incorporated in Illinois on Nov. 18, according to secretary of state records.

Neither she nor Rich Gillman could be reached for comment on Sunday. A secretary who answered the phone at the Iowa plant purchased by Echo said Rich Gillman was not in on Sunday, and that she did not know when he would be in.

An "echowindows.com" Internet domain has been registered, but no content has been placed on the site. The administrative contact on the domain registration is Amy Zimmerman—the same name as the vice president of sales and marketing at Republic.

Zimmerman could not be reached for comment on Sunday, but said last week that, "Banks are in the business to make money and at some point they have to make a business decision and that's what this is."

Echo Windows officials told employees at the former TRACO manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa, on Thursday that the workforce would be doubled from the current 50 employees because they have production orders lined up.

On Sunday night, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan said her office plans to investigate the sudden closing of Republic Windows & Doors Inc. The move came after the office received requests for help from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union, Madigan said in a statement.

Negotiations are set for Monday, December 8. Whatever happens, however, the workers have already sent a message to employers that if they violate workers rights and the law, they can expect a fight.

While I was putting my thoughts together, and looking around for the latest news on this whole thing, the press release below showed up. It looks like the Gillman's public relations firm is going to have to earn their money today - the narrative on this situation has practically been set in stone at this point, without any significant input from Gillman other than the standard blanket denials that larger corporations rely on to help them weather a crisis.

I thought it was interesting that they included their financials - it looks like they are trying to push back on the storyline that they were planning to leave their old employees in the lurch because they were greedy.

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The management of Republic Windows & Doors today announced the following chronology of the company’s discussions with its lender Bank of America."


10/15/2008

■ Informed Bank of America that Republic had a 10/24/08R buyer for the existing Note for ±$3.0M, discount of $1.5M.

■ Offer rejected by Bank of America stating they believed they were “over” collateralized.

■ Bank of America demands plans for “orderly” wind down Republic.

10/16/2008

■ Republic presents plan for “orderly” wind down including ceasing manufacturing in January 2009. INFORMS BANK OF AMERICA OF POSSIBLE WARN ACT NOTICE ISSUES AND VACATION PAY.

10/18/2008

■ Bank of America rejects plan and demands a shorter wind down period.

10/27/2008

■ Republic responds with a new plan to cease operations January 2009.

10/29/2008

■ Bank of America rejects plan.


11/25/2008

■ Republic requests permission from Bank of America to issue vacation pay to all employees.


11/26/2008

■ Bank rejects Company request to make vacation pay.


HISTORY

1998

■ Republic moves to new headquarters on Goose Island.

2002

■ Company reports first loss in history.

■ Loss history

2008/Q3 $5.7mm
2007 $5.5mm
2006 $7.2mm

Results from Previous Management Team

2005 $21.1mm
2004 $5.7mm
2003 $3.7mm


2006 - 2007

■ Richard Gillman, previously a minority shareholder buys out all other partners assumes all debt obligations and adds ±$2,200,000 of his personal funds to add capital to the business; installs new COO from outside of the company.

2006 – 2007

■ Fixed expenses are reduced $18.9 mm, or 47%.

02/2007

■ Productivity increased ± 30%.

02/2007

■ Gillman secures new capital.

11/2008

■ Gillman family forms Echo Windows, LLC.

Despite inheriting a company bloated with overhead and lacking any type of manufacturing discipline and/or productivity, the company makes significant improvements only to encounter and unprecedented decline in new home construction, which led to a decline of company sales to new construction of 80%. This placed the company in the impossible position of not having the ability to further reduce fixed costs, coupled with severe constrictions in the capital debt markets and an unwillingness of the current debt holder to continue funding the operations."

It will be even more interesting to see if they drag a company lawyer out next to explain why they did not comply with the WARN Act, especially when they seemed to be fully cognizant of its requirements.