The Brown Man's Mother Goes Back To College

I haven't been able to get my mother on the phone yet tonight to talk to her about the proceedings at her induction into the Half Century Club for graduates of Benedict College. It is probably because she is on the phone with her sisters, whose SIXTIETH college reunion has either just taken place or will be happening soon.

This is waaay back -- before the seatbelt was mandatory, before unleaded gas was popular, before King and Malcolm X and John Kennedy had each taken a bullet for the human race, before Pampers and airbags and cassette tapes and VCR's -- before practically everything that you see now existed, if you are under forty years of age.

I guess I'll get to talk to her a little later -- actually, this post is in its own way a method for me to kill some time until she and her sisters get off the phone, but they are talkers. In fact, we are all talkers, the way some people are chain smokers, or binge drinkers, so I am sure that I need to keep writing, to keep thinking up a few more lines to entertain both you and me until I think the line is clear.

If you have old school parents like mine, who are from the Deep South, you know how unlikely it is that they will click over when they hear the phone beep.

My mother is a Jay Leno fan, so I am sure when we talk, we will touch on tonight's guest of honor, Sarah Palin, and ruminate about what Jay might have up his sleeve to make her look bad -- not that it would be hard for a third grader to make Sarah look bad, but still, thinking about Jay's antics will take up a few minutes.

We'll talk about Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley, and both of us will say "what is wrong with Tavis?" in the same cadence, because I learned from her how to be exasperated at the kind of dumb shit certain egotistical, limelight needing black people will do or say when they think someone is paying attention to them.

What we won't talk about, but what I will write here, is the irony of her accomplishment -- to come back to her undergraduate alma mater after teaching school for thirty eight years -- in light of the recent statistics that show almost HALF of African American high school students do not graduate these days.

Congratulations, Mom, on a life well lived!!

Making The News

My mother went to Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina back in the late fifties, when black Americans were protesting segregation and joining together in protest marches all across the country. So when the documentaries begin to air in January and February, she often shares a favorite story.

"We used to get dressed up and do our hair, then go to downtown to one of the places that had a lunch counter. We'd stroll right up to the counter and take a seat. We'd sit there until the word got out and the newspaper reporters and the TV cameras showed up. Then we would race back to the dorm to see if we could see ourselves on TV." She would laugh as she recalled the scene. "Man, if you went at the right time, you could make the news everyday."

A lot of the things I saw on TV last night were about people who were "making the news". About people who were mugging for the cameras like my mother and her college buddies used to do.

Fidel Castro's recent pronouncements about race and America, Mitt Romney's criticism of the McCain campaign strategies, and of course, Mr. James Harris, the black guy calling himself a conservative whose infamous performance at a recent John McCain rally has become a youtube.com classic, all had something in common - a desire to make the news.

So who did I see on CNN last night but THE James Harris,who turned out to be - guess what? A radio talk show host - with a big cheesy grin on his face as he fielded questions from commentators. The thing that made it even more surreal to see Harris basking in his 15 minutes of fame was the fact that I had just watched the movie Head Of State with Chris Rock. Some of the things Rock had played for laughs were actually taking place in the real live presidential campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

With the final presidential debate coming up in two days, even as voters have been casting their ballots in many states for over a week, in some ways this election is beginning to feel like the Georgia Dome during the fourth quarter of an Atlanta Falcons football game - vendors cleaning up, people streaming out of their seats, security directing traffic, all while the game is still in progress.

The professional commentators on the cable news channels look like they are getting tired. The liberal squawkers seem triumphant but fearful. The conservative talkmeisters appear to be combative and embarrassed.

In the next 48 hours, the Obama campaign will announce its September fundraising totals. With the planned ad buys that have already been announced, the expectations are that the total will surpass 100 million dollars.

I am glad to be back. Unlike a lot of my Atlanta Falcon fans, when I go to the Georgia Dome, I stay in my seat until the clock expires, even if one team is running up the score.