I’m about to share with you the most humiliating moment of my life. This morning something deeply disturbing happened to my 13 year-old nephew, Christopher. He got a text message, which had been forwarded around from person to person, from one of his best friends, a girl we’ll call Ashley. It went something like this: America has elected a nigger.
Read moreWow. Didn’t see this coming. Yesterday: FOX News VP John Moody said that “If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.” Today: Police: McCain volunteer made up robbery story. There you have it, in black and white (as it were). But still, McCain? Race-baiting? I declare, I
Read morePart two in a series. There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence – Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” When all is said and done, nothing communicates the racism and knee-buckling stupidity of all-too-wide swaths of our nation quite like video. So if you don’t trust
Read morePart one in a series. Listen to the victim, abused by the system The basis is racist, you know that we must face this In 1991 Pop Will Eat Itself produced one of the most damning comments on racism in society in the history of popular music. “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” was specifically aimed at anti-immigrant racism in Europe, but
Read moreAn interesting man said an interesting thing the other day. Unfair, you say? Voters shouldn’t judge a candidate by his skin color. Maybe, but is it any more unfair than, for example, saying that because McCain and President Bush are both Republicans that a McCain administration would produce a third Bush term? No, it isn’t. Ummm … you’re kidding, right?
Read moreI’m beginning to get a bad feeling about Campaign ’08. A nasty, sinking feeling that we’re a’fixin’ to spend the next three months obliterating ever record for dirty, dishonest, unethical, immoral electioneering in the history of American politics. I don’t say this casually. I remember the Bush I “Willie Horton” ad. I lived through multiple Jesse Helms campaigns in North
Read moreOn his outstanding Prodigal Son CD, North Carolina folk and blugrass legend Mike Cross presents us with a high-stepping little ditty called “Bill is in His Grave.” Bill, it turns out, was a scoundrel of the first order, and he’d been recently deceased. The narrator is asked to say a few words at the funeral, a task that proves daunting
Read moreAs I said a couple weeks ago, let’s yank the hood off racist America. Seriously, we know you’re out there, so let’s get it on. As Matt Stoller reports, Texas Republicans have apparently answered the challenge. At least partly.
Read moreFirst, watch this:
Read moreIf you’re following America’s electoral theater at all, you know that we have a candidate with a preacher problem. And that the candidate in question has been put in the uncomfortable position of having to repudiate some of said preacher’s remarks (while not alienating those voters in the flock who actually, you know, agree with what the Reverend was saying).
Read moreWalt Whitman once said, “I see great things in baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.” You could look it up. – Annie Savoy I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand
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I guess there’s probably nothing Earth-shattering about revelations that FOX News “journalist” Sean Hannity was BFFs with a white supremacist. I mean, even if you don’t expect it, it’s not the sort of information that’s going to turn your whole worldview upside-down, you know? But the latest screed from Pat Buchanan almost buckles the knees. We don’t exactly look to
Read moreNo, this isn’t a rhetorical question. And it’s not one I pose lightly, either. But since Bill seems to want us to ask it, let’s review the evidence. In case you missed it, O’Reilly stirred it up again recently by commenting on his dinner at a black-owned restaurant in NY called Sylvia’s. After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant
Read moreHow much do you trust your local neighborhood law enforcement authorities? Hopefully a lot, and hopefully with good reason. Today, though, events at a John Kerry speaking engagement at the University of Florida have sparked another round of debate over the conduct and capability of police officers (both those on the scene and in general) and the conversations I’ve seen
Read moreThe wait is over and the inevitable has happened: the University of Colorado yesterday formally dismissed Professor Ward Churchill. Interim President Hank Brown explained, in an open letter to the school’s donors: To help ensure that accountability, we cannot abide academic misconduct. More than 20 faculty members (from CU and other universities) on three separate panels conducted a thorough review
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lullaby pit 