Two Chump Change Looking Negroes With A Nightstick Scare White America?

Two chump change looking negroes with a nightstick have the entire right wing of American politics in an uproar?

Is Bill O'Reilly serious?

Two ridiculous looking negroes who would be laughed off of a rap video set for looking like fake-ass black power advocates have got the FOX News "Bimbos With An Attitude"'s thongs all in a knot?

Is Sean Hannity stupid?

Watched FOX last night with a friend for some laughs - FOX is NUTS over this New Black Panther thing - but who the hell are they?

And why should I care?

The way Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly are acting, you would think there were 20 million black folks running amok amongst the rest of the 300 million plus people in the U.S, instead of a group so small 99.999999999% of all black people in the country can safely say that they have never seen a real live member in the flesh.

I guess I’ve been in my own fiction writing and rewriting bubble the past week or so, because I can’t believe how much press these punk looking black pantherites in PA are still getting. I mean, you would think Tweedle O'Reilly and Tweedle Hannity (tweedle dee and tweedle dum for those of you who are still caught in the glare of the FOX tractor beam that zaps your IQ 40 points) were talking about Timothy McVeigh types or something, AFTER he blew up the federal building in Oklahoma.

Fuck Malik Shabazz, better known as Paris Lewis to his momma, and the TV camera loving studio thugs he calls the New Black Panther Party. The only thing blowing up on these Nubian nincompoops are their cell phones. But the more important question, since I am sure there are emails circulating with a BOLO style warning amongst all the RedStaters and Michelle Malkin zombies, is this – just how many New Black Panthers are there?

Does anybody know?

Can I get a witness?

The New Black Panther website says they have 27 chapters. Other sources claim 35. Several of these are purported to be in foreign countries. And no where can I find a number of registered, dues paying members – not even an estimate. Not even an educated guess.

I jokingly said to my buddy last night that FOX gets its angry blonde newscasters from Hooters, but maybe its true, since they don’t seem to understand or care that their story is very, very light on verifiable facts. We all know that the Cracker Nation FOX caters to don't feel right unless black bogeymen are handy to blame.

So FOX delivers fresh negro madness daily.

You can't say they don't bend over backwards to please their audience.

It wasn't until two o'clock in the morning that I read something on the internet that made me want to call my buddy right then. But I though better of it, and waiting until morning to tell him that the black dude who proudly says he's running things at the New Black Panthers Party is a fellow Howard Law grad.

My buddy sounded so glum after I told him this, I started to feel sorry for ruining the start to his day.

"I heard their was some radical brother who was there after I left. That's him? Damn."

There must be a website somewhere, or a service like Rentboy.com where black people with apparent following, a convoluted personal and social philosophy that wasn't even relevant fifty years ago, and a burning need to be on TV every night can go and post their pictures and bio. Maybe its called BlackBogeyman.com

Anyway, I'm back in the land of the sane, although there is still a bit of that right wing demagogue taint on me. Watching FOX News is like getting sprayed by a skunk - three days later, you still have trouble getting rid of the stench.

As far as I'm concerned, FOX can keep these deranged black people they lift out of obscurity. Take 'em home with you, Sean. Adopt 'em, Bill, like Angelina Jolie. You make 'em famous, you have to live with 'em should be the rule.

A shalom alaikum

Obama Controversy # 137

When I click around the internet, checking the latest the latest political tidbits, I know I can count on two things – a condescending potshot at Sarah Palin on Huffington Post and a blaring anti-Obama headline at The Drudge Report. The latest treat from Matt Drudge is this Monday morning mouthful:

2001 OBAMA: TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT

I guess the next big revelation will be “Obama Point Shaving Scandal During High School Chess Tournament”.

You will be hearing excerpts from this four minute youtube video for the next few days. Phrases that look to become Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh favorites will likely include the text in the video that is being shown while the audio portion plays, things like "Obama wants to redistribute your wealth to African Americans".

Now for some facts.

Barack Obama made appearances as a guest on Odyssey, a talk show produced by Chicago Public Radio. Obama, then a State Senator and Senior Lecturer at the Law School, was on the program 3 times between 1998 and 2002. According to Josh Andrews, who produced the shows, "when he joined us, he was more than willing to set aside his political persona and put on his academic hat.

Obama participated in discussions on the evolution of the right to vote, the politics of electoral redistricting, and the uneasy relationship between slavery and the constitution in early America." The excerpts in the youtube video were taken from this hour long audio recording made January 18, 2001 from a program entitled "The Court and Civil Rights" hosted by Gretchen Helfrich.

What did Obama really say on the air? See for yourself:

OBAMA: "You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order - as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that."

HOST: "Let’s talk with Karen – good morning, Karen, you're on Chicago Public Radio."

CALLER: "The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical – my question is – with economic changes – my question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place?"

HOST: "You mean the court?"

CALLER: "The court, or would it be legislation at this point?"

OBAMA: "You know, maybe I’m showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor. But I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

You know, you just look at very rare examples where, in during the desegregation era the court was willing to, for example, order, you know, changes that cost money to a local school district – and, the court was very uncomfortable with it, it was very hard to manage, it was hard to figure out, you start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time."

OBAMA: "You know, the court’s just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just its very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So I mean I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could, could come up with a rationale for bringing economic change through the courts."

What seemed to be the more interesting excerpt, at least to me, in this program was a comment by Obama about the seemingly contradictory relationship between liberal political ideology and the traditional African American approach to religion and politics.

HOST: "Let’s talk with Joe (I guess this must be "Joe the Liberal") – good morning, Joe, you're on Chicago Public Radio."

CALLER: "Good morning. What I'd like to know is, considering that the civil rights movement was fought very much on moral grounds as much as legal grounds, and therefore religious grounds - I mean, Martin Luther King was a reverend, after all - what impact is that having now on the Supreme Court, and perhaps, with Ashcroft being nominated, in the future."

OBAMA: "Well, you know, I think its an interesting question, you may be pointing out, sir, what has been a longstanding contradiction, not just in the Warren Court or liberal lawyers, but, sir, the liberal community generally, and that is the contradiction between on the one hand basing many of its claims for justice on moral and ethical grounds, and at the same time being suspicious of church encroachment into the political sphere.

That's been less of a contradiction traditionally in the African American community, and for whatever reason psychologically, the country has always been more comfortable with the African American community's marriage of spiritual and, and political institutions.

But I think that is a genuine contradiction that exists, you know, I think in the ideological makeup of the left in this country that hasn't been entirely resolved."

My father has always maintained that integration was doomed to have limited success because "they didn't integrate the money". Neither he nor Obama were calling for any kind of reparations. They were simply acknowledging out loud what a lot of black Americans knew all along - that without adequate access to capital for investment, our community was guaranteed to struggle along. Its not like we were asking for 700 billion dollars - just some real access to capital to go along with all that freedom we had.

But even more ironic than that is the frenzied hate over this latest "finding" that will be harbored by people who have nothing to redistribute but negligible equity in their homes credit card debt and virtually empty 401(k) accounts. This has to be the greatest Jedi Mind Trick of all time - rich elites have the broke "Joe SixPacks" who comprise their base of supporters championing their cause.

For people who love to call the Democrats socialists, it is the most collective ownership ideology out there. "If you tack a picture of my big house and nice cars on the wall of the house you can barely pay for, you can call yourself a capitalist. Just don't be late to work, cause I need you to make me some more money, Joe."

Racial equality without economic equality is like having a car with no gas - at that point, it just becomes something to look at and polish once in awhile so you can remember what it used to look like when back when you first got it. The even funnier thing about all of this is, "Joe the Plumber" has more in common with "Jamal the Plumber" than he realizes. But you can't tell Joe that.

All I know is, if I run into some Joe SixPack or Joe the Plumber who starts sputtering about how Obama is going to "redistribute" wealth he probably will never have to "African Americans", I am liable to tell him the same thing Cuba Gooding said to Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire when he told Cruise his future depended on Cuba staying with him - "all he's got to do is 'show me the money, baby!'"