Monday, April 09, 2012
Chuck D Speaking TRUTH!...
This is an interview and essay by Chuck D of Public Enemy. Hip Hop is now "Hip POP," and lost its original meaning. The OGs of hip hop are into Spoken Word or [authentic] Christian Rap Music. The garbage we're supposed to digest...
Monday, April 02, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
Old Tapes...
The inspiration for the pieces “BWB” and “Self-Portrait”
“Old tapes”: that’s an anachronistic phrase in the era of I-pods, You Tube and downloads. CDs are almost going the way of the 8-track or cassette tape (ask your parents).
I was fourteen, growing up in Winston-Salem, NC. I pulled out a pick to comb my afro (had one then). It was one of those folding-handle jobs: one side red, the other green, Black Nationalist colors. I was too young to know that or how it mattered. What I was doing was fixing my “do,” getting my ‘fro right, looking at model cars and toys in King’s Department store as my mother shopped for clothes; reminiscing when this was my whole focus in the world.
He was big: bald receding hairline, hair on the sides like Larry of “Moe, Larry and Curly” but greasy and laid flat with flakes of dandruff. He had a pot belly lapping over his large belt buckle. I was a little over five feet tall and 110 lbs. He was over six feet and outweighed me by about 200 lbs.
“What you doing, boy?”
I was startled, and turned around. I was as respectable as my parents had taught me to be in situations like this: “Nothing,” I said, and turned away.
“What’s in your pocket?”
“My pick!” and frankly, that’s all that was in my pocket. This man, who hadn’t announced who he was or why I was getting the 4-1-1, was beyond annoying me.
“Up against the wall!” he barked.
The wall was again, a shelf of model cars and toys only kids would like. “This isn’t much of a wall,” I quipped.
I was grabbed by the throat and left arm, shoved hard into the toy shelves. An avalanche fell on my ‘fro denting my styling. At this point, I was in shock.
“Who are you, man!?”
“Store detective…” He flipped me like an omelet. I was being bodily frisked…against my will.
“I didn’t steal anything,” I said, “the only thing in my pockets is a pick you prick!”
“SHUT UP, boy: I knows nigras steal!”
Bad English and an epithet! Outweighed and outmanned, I went “Michael Evans (Good Times)” on him, trying to engage him in “the dozens”: “’Knows’ isn’t the proper verb tense, and it’s ‘Negro’ in 1976!”
“Boy, don’t you sass me!” A fat finger wagged in my nose as he jerked me to meet his eyes.
Turning me back around, to continue this unauthorized search, I spied four white kids in the shoe department donning four pairs of Keds and robbing Colombo/Col-DUMBO blind!
“Err, you’re missing something…”
“Boy, I ain’t missing nothing!”
“I’ve had it with boy, I’ve had it with insults, and I’ve had it with YOU!” Luckily, my mom showed up, because I didn’t necessarily have a plan, I was just fed up.
“What’s going on?”
“I was frisking him.”
“For what,” my mother asked.
“I think he stole something.”
“YOU THINK?" To me: "Did you steal anything?”
“No ma’am. I was picking my hair, and he grabbed me and pushed me into this wall for nothing!” Her arrival made my words leap out staccato; the emotions made my voice crack. It also made her crack.
“YOU,” she pushed her finger into his fat navel and made this man-mountain wince in pain, “GET me the store manager NOW!!!”
Fat boy had some speed. He ran and got the manager, who knew my mother, and knew me since I was born. I’d never seen her so upset, and I to this day never heard my mother SWEAR so beautifully, if there’s such a thing. By the time Mildred Dean was finished dressing them up one side and down the other, they were both sweating mightily; the fat mall detective’s matted hair dripped water and oil on his cheap store-brand polyester shirt.
“I…I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
“Better be. By the way: am I paying for this?” My mother held up a dress.
“No. No! Please take it as compliments of the store,” the nervous manger replied. My first example of leveraging a situation…
*****
King Department store closed soon after that, something about losing too much revenue in items stolen from the store (not by me). Security cameras have replaced rude, blind-as-a-bat racist mall cops but technology hasn’t changed the human heart.
In post soul America, there’s no black/white music charts, American Bandstand and Soul Train. You can see teens sharing music through their two-terminal ear buds; no discussion as at my prom whether and how much Top 40 music or black music would be played. They’ve thankfully, blended into their own culture, and if any are of the Neanderthal attitudes of the past, it was taught to them by parents afraid of a global, uncertain future; romanticizing a secure white picket fenced past that except for a 1% privileged few never really for most existed.
My tapes, however were not imagined, they were as real as my sister going out to Civil Rights marches and rallies and my four-year-old body racked with terror that each time she walked out bravely to be spat on, kicked, punched, hosed, dog-bit and jailed would be the last time I’d see her.
It’s supposed to be a post-racial America after the election of the nation’s first black president, yet the Southern Poverty Law Center states the number of hate groups in 2011 reached 1,018, and their rhetoric is reinforced by talk radio hosts that can tweet/sound bite the familiar southern dog whistles and hide behind the worn excuse: “I’m just an entertainer.” Targets on web sites can get Gabrielle Gifford almost killed and disabled for life; and a teenager can die for a hoodie, an iced tea and a bag of skittles because of a “stand your ground” law in 31 states that puts a target on every teenager’s back, specifically African American male teenagers because they “look dangerous” wearing their hoodies in the rain, or picking their hair.
My Valkyrie left me peacefully in 2009, joining my father ten years after his death. I miss them both.
I am Trayvon Martin.
“Old tapes”: that’s an anachronistic phrase in the era of I-pods, You Tube and downloads. CDs are almost going the way of the 8-track or cassette tape (ask your parents).
I was fourteen, growing up in Winston-Salem, NC. I pulled out a pick to comb my afro (had one then). It was one of those folding-handle jobs: one side red, the other green, Black Nationalist colors. I was too young to know that or how it mattered. What I was doing was fixing my “do,” getting my ‘fro right, looking at model cars and toys in King’s Department store as my mother shopped for clothes; reminiscing when this was my whole focus in the world.
He was big: bald receding hairline, hair on the sides like Larry of “Moe, Larry and Curly” but greasy and laid flat with flakes of dandruff. He had a pot belly lapping over his large belt buckle. I was a little over five feet tall and 110 lbs. He was over six feet and outweighed me by about 200 lbs.
“What you doing, boy?”
I was startled, and turned around. I was as respectable as my parents had taught me to be in situations like this: “Nothing,” I said, and turned away.
“What’s in your pocket?”
“My pick!” and frankly, that’s all that was in my pocket. This man, who hadn’t announced who he was or why I was getting the 4-1-1, was beyond annoying me.
“Up against the wall!” he barked.
The wall was again, a shelf of model cars and toys only kids would like. “This isn’t much of a wall,” I quipped.
I was grabbed by the throat and left arm, shoved hard into the toy shelves. An avalanche fell on my ‘fro denting my styling. At this point, I was in shock.
“Who are you, man!?”
“Store detective…” He flipped me like an omelet. I was being bodily frisked…against my will.
“I didn’t steal anything,” I said, “the only thing in my pockets is a pick you prick!”
“SHUT UP, boy: I knows nigras steal!”
Bad English and an epithet! Outweighed and outmanned, I went “Michael Evans (Good Times)” on him, trying to engage him in “the dozens”: “’Knows’ isn’t the proper verb tense, and it’s ‘Negro’ in 1976!”
“Boy, don’t you sass me!” A fat finger wagged in my nose as he jerked me to meet his eyes.
Turning me back around, to continue this unauthorized search, I spied four white kids in the shoe department donning four pairs of Keds and robbing Colombo/Col-DUMBO blind!
“Err, you’re missing something…”
“Boy, I ain’t missing nothing!”
“I’ve had it with boy, I’ve had it with insults, and I’ve had it with YOU!” Luckily, my mom showed up, because I didn’t necessarily have a plan, I was just fed up.
“What’s going on?”
“I was frisking him.”
“For what,” my mother asked.
“I think he stole something.”
“YOU THINK?" To me: "Did you steal anything?”
“No ma’am. I was picking my hair, and he grabbed me and pushed me into this wall for nothing!” Her arrival made my words leap out staccato; the emotions made my voice crack. It also made her crack.
“YOU,” she pushed her finger into his fat navel and made this man-mountain wince in pain, “GET me the store manager NOW!!!”
Fat boy had some speed. He ran and got the manager, who knew my mother, and knew me since I was born. I’d never seen her so upset, and I to this day never heard my mother SWEAR so beautifully, if there’s such a thing. By the time Mildred Dean was finished dressing them up one side and down the other, they were both sweating mightily; the fat mall detective’s matted hair dripped water and oil on his cheap store-brand polyester shirt.
“I…I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
“Better be. By the way: am I paying for this?” My mother held up a dress.
“No. No! Please take it as compliments of the store,” the nervous manger replied. My first example of leveraging a situation…
*****
King Department store closed soon after that, something about losing too much revenue in items stolen from the store (not by me). Security cameras have replaced rude, blind-as-a-bat racist mall cops but technology hasn’t changed the human heart.
In post soul America, there’s no black/white music charts, American Bandstand and Soul Train. You can see teens sharing music through their two-terminal ear buds; no discussion as at my prom whether and how much Top 40 music or black music would be played. They’ve thankfully, blended into their own culture, and if any are of the Neanderthal attitudes of the past, it was taught to them by parents afraid of a global, uncertain future; romanticizing a secure white picket fenced past that except for a 1% privileged few never really for most existed.
My tapes, however were not imagined, they were as real as my sister going out to Civil Rights marches and rallies and my four-year-old body racked with terror that each time she walked out bravely to be spat on, kicked, punched, hosed, dog-bit and jailed would be the last time I’d see her.
It’s supposed to be a post-racial America after the election of the nation’s first black president, yet the Southern Poverty Law Center states the number of hate groups in 2011 reached 1,018, and their rhetoric is reinforced by talk radio hosts that can tweet/sound bite the familiar southern dog whistles and hide behind the worn excuse: “I’m just an entertainer.” Targets on web sites can get Gabrielle Gifford almost killed and disabled for life; and a teenager can die for a hoodie, an iced tea and a bag of skittles because of a “stand your ground” law in 31 states that puts a target on every teenager’s back, specifically African American male teenagers because they “look dangerous” wearing their hoodies in the rain, or picking their hair.
My Valkyrie left me peacefully in 2009, joining my father ten years after his death. I miss them both.
I am Trayvon Martin.
Self-Portrait (repost)
Langston Hughes said: “I, too sing America.
I am the darker brother.”
I am the one
Burning under the hot sun
You derisively nicknamed
“Buffalo soldier”
Because of my Afro?
I am also the Cherokee:
Befriending the runaway,
Giving my daughter to him in marriage,
Joining him to my tribe,
Creating the Seminole.
I am the Irish overseer:
Bursting into the slave quarters,
Raping my own great-great grandmother,
Siring Julius Goodwin and a host more mulatto children.
I am the offspring of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming:
Some of us destined for the last class,
Others hair so straight; skin so bright to crossover as white
So, when you call me “n----r”
You obviously
Can’t see
You vituperate
A pureed pedigree
As everyone has had
Their piece of African me!
As would be the case
Someone related to Egyptian race
Would decipher the hieroglyph
“America”
Into three distinct words:
“I am race?”
Check your attitude!
For pride in
My negritude
Allows me to enlighten your case
As you point your
Jeering finger
At me through space,
You will inevitably
Pimp-slap your own damn face!
Without me, though you wouldn’t hear it
Would you have the hairstyle “The Bo Derek?”
Would dreadlocks, locks and fades have left the east side venturing to the west side?
And hip hop become hip POP?
Forced here in chains and cargo crates,
It was you who gave me great chase
Bring me to this place
That by GOD’S
Grace
The cane came together
Where Ezekiel’s dry bones
Dotted the landscape:
“Son of man: can these bones live? O Lord GOD, thou knowest! *”
I am the darker brother:
I am the Mende; the Ashanti; the Yoruba; the Igbo.
I am the Seminole; the Cherokee; the Choktaw; the Sioux;
I am the Irish; the Italian; the German; the Arab; the Jew.
I am the melting pot: I am all of you!
As Langston Hughes said,
I say again to you:
“I, too sing America.
I too am America.”
I, too!
For Trayvon Martin. Photoshop art by Cynthia Manor, Austin, TX
* Ezekiel 37:3
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
BWB...
Driving While Black…no, he was
Walking While Black…
Being While Black…
Trayvon Martin’s crime was
Iced tea and a bag of skittles, the riddle of walking
In a hoodie in the rain during an intermission of the NCAA All-Star Game.
His English teacher said his major was “cheerfulness.”
Other than his hoodie that most teenagers wear,
George Zimmerman became Klansman and executioner,
The 2012 version of Emmett Till’s asthmatic whistle that got him tragically killed.
Mamie Till allowed an open casket view
To look at the ugliness that they’d visited on her son.
That brave act steeled backbone in the Civil Rights Movement;
A personal tragedy in a pre-racial reality.
Now, in the post-racial reality of having a
Black president, Trayvon’s spirit cries out for justice,
And the DOJ has a black attorney general, the force of law being:
“Hate Crime” – defined as “a traditional offense like
Murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias.”
For the purposes of collecting statistics,
Congress has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense
Against a person or property motivated in whole or in
Part by an offender's bias against a race, religion,
Disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." (FBI.gov)
Every black and brown parent hugs their kids closer tonight;
Every black and brown child hides their Obama t-shirts and posters,
Else flirt with disaster.
These were the fights they’d see only in February/September-October
– once-a-year – in Black and Hispanic History (Month), or You Tube reels.
The young would roll their eyes and say:
“that’s old; it don’t happen anymore.”
Well…
Trayvon’s blood was spilled on a police department’s
Floor as his father called his cell for THREE days
And NO ONE answered until they got their “story” straight.
They’d protect Invader Zimm through Florida’s
“Stand Your Ground” law, because if they
Prosecute Zimmerman, they risk [for themselves] lawsuit!
Trayvon’s blood calls out to God as Abel’s
Did for Cain’s slaughter of him.
And just to remind you – Trayvon’s “sin” so to not long ponder this riddle:
Driving While Black…NO, he was
Walking While Black…
Being While Black…
...with the deadly weapons of a hoodie, an iced tea and a bag of skittles!
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Bootleg, II
 |
| Prohibition |
Chinua Achebe would say “Things Fall Apart” (still):
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell
Speaking his intentions to make the young president
And his beautiful family “one-term residents”
In the Presidential Mansion affectionately to its
Previous supremacist management known as: the “White” House.
“I want my country back”; “I want Obama to fail”:
The incessant wails of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh,
Two right-wing talk show hosts that as standard bearers
Of “conservative family values” are two jokes: Beck – 2nd marriage,
Limbaugh – 4th, with Elton John making a million-dollar payday
At the reception with his lifelong beau in tow…
Both men had issues with drug and alcohol abuse as
They railed at others’ abyss; both dropped out of college,
(Beck has a boondoggle online for a fee),
Rush couldn’t even pass ballroom dancing,
Yet these Neanderthals dictate to a gullible electorate
What THEY should say, act, think or be! Glenn Beck
Actually got too crazy for FOXNEWS – imagine that?
And Rush seems to have it in for pretty white females
That obviously eclipse his intelligence! Sandra Fluke
Executed her constitutional right to address congress and
This Troglodyte called her a “slut, prostitute”
And more, eventually forced to apologize as his
Sponsors dropped from his once burgeoning list like migrating fireflies.
Sarah Palin was still game-changing when she placed
Targets on her web site and announced: “don’t retreat: RELOAD!”
Resulting in an unstable member of our human family almost
Ending the life of Gabriele Gifford and Christina-Taylor Green (9)
Born on September 11, 2001, the full-circle of a short life of tragedy.
Yet, she offered no apology, only reinforcing the narrative that as a
VEEP barely vetted; she wasn’t ready for prime time or the office of president.
Big government bureaucrats became Tea-bagging impediments,
Killing legislation that in elation they once sponsored: “hell no!”
Exclaimed the-then House minority leader John Boehner
(which, if you haven’t added him, one of Words’ alternatives is “bonehead”),
Moments after the phrase “President-Elect”
Began sinking in to the sinking reality their
Former standard-bearer left them.
An economy crumbling – a byproduct of libertarian
Laissez faire myths of “trickle-down” that even David Stockton
Disavows, the once-mighty “rubber-stamp”
Congress defeated in 2006 midterms – “impeachment is off the table”
The only negative appraisal I have of former
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 562 laws versus “bonehead’s” 12:
Girlfriend got it done!
And we will be undone if the current four horsemen of a
Red apocalypse bootleg the same stale stance, should one
Perchance win the nomination and whitewash the
White House again – with inane theories and ignoring
Science as the world globally warms, wars and rumors of – and spins.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Tribute
© 11 February 2012, the Griot Poet
She gave us a reason to love ourselves,
Emerging in the 80s post-Civil Rights, post-loss of
Medgar, Malcolm and Martin, if Michael was the “King of Pop”…
She was definitely “Our Queen.”
What 1980 male college freshman
Didn’t calculate that we were just
One year older than the voice that
Belted from her lithe frame, fantasize
“What we’d do” with 5 minutes of our
Best Mack if we had a chance
(Past her Bodyguard) to step to her,
As if she was “saving all her love for []”…
Her faux feud with Maria Cary set the
Diva pattern for Rihanna, Beyoncé, Jennifer, Latifah and Eve…
Yet, didn’t we laugh (instead of pray)
When she married Bobby, and starred in a
So-called “reality” show, showcasing her
Private demons for public display?
Post-Bobby, with the baby (Bobby-Christina),
She could never hit “the notes” she used to,
Her interviews shaken versions of
Her star’s former hue.
The human voice has depth and range
That cannot be enhanced or explained
In a digital software mix program or
Corporate studio...
Some things of exquisite beauty are
Born in choir robes, Sunday solos and
Christmas shows,
Before the Clive Davis’ discover angels,
Among us,
When NAPHESH kicked first breath
In Eden
And Deity pronounced self-awareness
To a creation with mind, will, imagination,
Emotion and intellect – defining the
Earthiness that we would call…soul…
The best of Adam’s rib performs now…celestial shows.
Whitney Houston, 1963 – 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Friday, December 16, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Ouroboros
© 21 November 2011, the Griot Poet
Elizabeth Warren is the thorn in collective political,
right-side assets, scourge of the 1%, they lobbied her
out of her job for Consumer Protection Advocate;
professor and author, compared to Scott Brown:
intelligence versus centerfold Cro-Magnon, yet...
Not a single hedge fund manager has been charged for
crimes against humanity:
tanking the global economy and sending 10 million souls
here and overseas into poverty.
Yet, they spray kids at UC Davis cavalierly with weapons grade pepper spray.
Sprayed hoses, batons and dogs were used a generation
ago on young people following a dreamer’s dream:
from Selma to Birmingham to the first genuine March on Washington DC.
These are the grandchildren that sit down now at the
“table of brotherhood”;
Arab Springs/American Winters are sparked by the
democratizing force of technology. The irony:
the hub-spoke model of military communication was replaced
by the Internet spider’s web such that destroys one node,
another takes over, like cockroaches or vultures.
“Get a bath; get a job” works in alternate universe dimensions,
like impeaching presidents for stained blue dresses while
simultaneously diddling the next missus on your list while
married to the second, and calling it “patriotism” when
your salute was Viagra-inspired!
Now, this book-pimping squire is a front-runner in the GOP.
The Venn diagram of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party
only intersects at dissolution and disappointment at
government leadership (an Oxymoron): they diverge that
one was local; the other global.
We have a two party fundraising system that only thinks
of the next election, it costs a billion dollars
to run for president. It cost one-hundred thousand dollars
just to set up an office to start running for the
senate or congress.
47% of our representatives are members of the 1%,
that don’t have any “dogs in the hunt” of the rigged
game being fair for the rest of us.
Yet they spray kids at US Davis cavalierly with weapons grad pepper spray.
We were downgraded not because of our economy; the drag
on it is from a do-nothing-but-argue-for-the-sake-of-argument
congress that’s only more popular than Fidel Castro,
and less than the notion of the nation going communist!
And a few in Congress are held unconstitutionally by a pledge
to not raise taxes by Grover Norquist,
Further stressing the system that’s on the brink to where class distinctions between 1 and 99 percent will soon be quite irrelevant.
Ragnarok: “the Norse version of Armageddon, the death of the gods
and a great battle foretelling the occurrence of various natural disasters,
and the subsequent submersion of the world in water.
Afterward, the world resurfaces anew and fertile, to be repopulated by two human survivors.” Ouroboros eats its tail...
For our sakes: I hope to only see Stan Lee’s 2012 Avengers movie exploiting the same theme!
Elizabeth Warren is the thorn in collective political,
right-side assets, scourge of the 1%, they lobbied her
out of her job for Consumer Protection Advocate;
professor and author, compared to Scott Brown:
intelligence versus centerfold Cro-Magnon, yet...
Not a single hedge fund manager has been charged for
crimes against humanity:
tanking the global economy and sending 10 million souls
here and overseas into poverty.
Yet, they spray kids at UC Davis cavalierly with weapons grade pepper spray.
Sprayed hoses, batons and dogs were used a generation
ago on young people following a dreamer’s dream:
from Selma to Birmingham to the first genuine March on Washington DC.
These are the grandchildren that sit down now at the
“table of brotherhood”;
Arab Springs/American Winters are sparked by the
democratizing force of technology. The irony:
the hub-spoke model of military communication was replaced
by the Internet spider’s web such that destroys one node,
another takes over, like cockroaches or vultures.
“Get a bath; get a job” works in alternate universe dimensions,
like impeaching presidents for stained blue dresses while
simultaneously diddling the next missus on your list while
married to the second, and calling it “patriotism” when
your salute was Viagra-inspired!
Now, this book-pimping squire is a front-runner in the GOP.
The Venn diagram of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party
only intersects at dissolution and disappointment at
government leadership (an Oxymoron): they diverge that
one was local; the other global.
We have a two party fundraising system that only thinks
of the next election, it costs a billion dollars
to run for president. It cost one-hundred thousand dollars
just to set up an office to start running for the
senate or congress.
47% of our representatives are members of the 1%,
that don’t have any “dogs in the hunt” of the rigged
game being fair for the rest of us.
Yet they spray kids at US Davis cavalierly with weapons grad pepper spray.
We were downgraded not because of our economy; the drag
on it is from a do-nothing-but-argue-for-the-sake-of-argument
congress that’s only more popular than Fidel Castro,
and less than the notion of the nation going communist!
And a few in Congress are held unconstitutionally by a pledge
to not raise taxes by Grover Norquist,
Further stressing the system that’s on the brink to where class distinctions between 1 and 99 percent will soon be quite irrelevant.
Ragnarok: “the Norse version of Armageddon, the death of the gods
and a great battle foretelling the occurrence of various natural disasters,
and the subsequent submersion of the world in water.
Afterward, the world resurfaces anew and fertile, to be repopulated by two human survivors.” Ouroboros eats its tail...
For our sakes: I hope to only see Stan Lee’s 2012 Avengers movie exploiting the same theme!
Friday, November 18, 2011
Civil Rights and #OWS
I am reading Why We Can't Wait, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spurred largely by the familiar tone struck on the budget debacle, and trying to pass laws to create jobs.
I was struck by the similarity of the police clashes, the blood on faces: all they are missing is the 21st Century version of "Bull Conner," biting police dogs and fire hoses.
I embed a resource, and the third chapter of "Why We Can't Wait": Letter From Birmingham Jail:
I was struck by the similarity of the police clashes, the blood on faces: all they are missing is the 21st Century version of "Bull Conner," biting police dogs and fire hoses.
I embed a resource, and the third chapter of "Why We Can't Wait": Letter From Birmingham Jail:
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Baal Out (Gangster Oligarchy)
Inspired by Glenn Greenwald: WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful
Friday, October 07, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
The god of this world
© 30 September 2011, the Griot Poet
“Satan runs Wall Street!”
“One day, the poor will have nothing left to eat BUT the rich!”
Signage rants scream out silently
of a protest impolitely not covered/ignored by the
limp-prick-no-help-from-Viagra media:
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED,
after this year’s demise of Gil Scott(Prophet)-Heron,
selectively missing smashed heads, broken ribs and cameras;
mace and pepper spraying demonstrating innocents
(save for You Tube witness),
as the same actors who sent our country over a ditch
BEGGED US for BAILOUT,
and like GM, instead of graciously building in the US,
after research into greener cars and better batteries:
their next manufacturing plants (and jobs) will be…in China!
(Our real benefactors’ address...)
If this was a “Christian Nation”:
it would not be based on oblation
and worship of the Sino-Phoenician god Mammon.
“One Market Under God,”
opined by Thomas Frank that
the market “had become deity,” and
the wealthy high priests of its altar.
One lawmaker on MSNBC without blink,
falter or apology stated:
“I can’t feed my family on just $400,000/year”
(after expenses for his business!),
and God bless, Bill O’Rielly may QUIT TV if he
has to pay one penny above the rate before the
1st Bush tax cuts in 2001 at
Clinton-era levels…when we HAD a surplus!
Warren Buffet is their reluctant saving grace,
and public enemy #1, as he threatens their fun
by pulling down the veil between the outer court
and the “unholy of un-holies”:
- pin-striped Lear jets,
- five mansions and million dollar
New York Penthouse apartments,
- hedge fund managers’ daily cocaine habits
- and visits to the “Emperor’s (prostitution) Club”
expensed as “market research!”
Like modern-day Marie Antoinette’s,
they berate the frustrated, “tired and poor”
hordes, camped out “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
(and be employed) with “let them eat cake!”
Like Arab springs, they light the candles for an
American fall and soldier winter that their best
Creel Commission public relations firms could not handle!
In my dénouement, I restate (with chagrin from the 99%):
“Satan runs Wall Street!”
“One day, the poor will have nothing left to eat BUT the rich!”
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Honey Bee * Prophecies
© 10 September 2011, The Griot Poet
We neglect the prophecies of fur coated wild men
eating honey, crickets and bees, voices calling
in the wilderness, modern day seers created by
Theodore Geisel1 east of Who-ville
called “The Lorax,” whose command of scientific
environmental facts did not once impress Once-ler
oligarchs bent on harvesting Truffula trees and
other commodities,
Enriching his Grinch-looking family members who
could not remember a sunrise without “smog-shine,”
I am inclined to believe that Frank Drake’s equation2
looking for SETI was statistical prophecy when so-called
civilizations become dumbed down by their own technology –
their ability to change their environment and enrich their
pockets with other people’s money leaving their economies
wrecked while their planets tear themselves apart with
-hurricanes,
-tornados,
-earthquakes
and tsunamis?
Is anybody out there?
Maybe flying saucers only exist as Frisbees in parks for
overweight kids using diabetic syringes to keep them alive
after a rousing day of video gaming addiction instead of
playing...oh! I forgot: smog-shine alert!
Stay in all day.
Don’t go out to play.
Text mommy cause you’re bored.
Be afraid!
Pedophiles, underground sex market slavers may steal your
child...does anyone remember when we had a Star Trek/Jetson
HOPE for the future?
Does anyone remember when you went outside to play...ALL day...
in smog free sunshine and played in water from lead free fire
hydrants? Our memories have been supplanted by million player
online realities, avatars and virtual lives we’re caught up in:
Deux ex machina, god out of the machine...
warned about by Quintus Horatius Flaccus (A.K.A. Horace, Roman Poet)
in Ars Poetica, programmed in the 21st Century by Horus
of the “all seeing eye” $1 bill at the 1% apex of the pyramid
oligarchy owning ninety-nine percent of the wealth, and he can’t
stand it when you’re either too poor to pay for your “fix” or actually
pick up a real BOOK, READ it and UNDERSTAND it!
And, if you happen to be a Harvard Law school graduate, in the south
you might be considered “uppity.”
Because the Ministry of Truth of cable news can’t have you using that
fatty, grey tissue between your ears: you may want rights, life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Hell, they gave you flat telescreens above your wall mantles and
charging cell phone cellblocks on your laptop sockets:
“where’s the beef?”
If we had warp drive,
we’d arrive at distant worlds to find husks and dust bowls like
Mars with remnants of seas.
The small number of smart “Little Green Men” bypass our oasis of greed.
Maybe the cloud the Lorax lifted himself through was a wormhole that
tunneled an Einstein-Rosen Bifrost bridge to some other parallel reality
where
love,
sacrifice
and sanity
were the only prevalent currencies!
1. Theodore Geisel = Dr. Seuss.
2. Drake Equation: R* fp ne fl fi fe L
a. N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
b. R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
c. fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
d. ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
e. fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
f. fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
g. fe = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
h. L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Elite by the Numbers (in 3 parts)
Elite 1 a : singular or plural in construction : the choice part : CREAM
There are 435 members of the (now) infamous House of Representatives and 100 Senators (both numbers fixed by law). There are nine members of the Supreme Court and regardless of political party: one president and one vice president.
According to the CIA World Fact book, the US estimate of population in 2009 was 307,212,123.
Looking at this mathematically (in a deck-of-cards analogy), the odds of getting to be:
President/Vice President: 3.2550798784721135500241961480146e-7 ~ 3.3 x 10-7%
307,212,123: 1
Supreme Court: 2.9295718906249021950217765332132e-6 ~ 3.0 x 10-6%
34,134,680: 1
Senator: 3.2550798784721135500241961480146e-5 ~ 3.3 x 10-5%
3,072,121: 1
House of Representatives: 1.4159597471353693942605253243864e-4 ~ 1.4 x 10-4%
706,235: 1
NBA Athlete: 0.03%
3546: 1
Other than white male president: 2.2727272727272727272727272727273~2.3%
44:1
My last category I specifically made “other than white male president,” because prior to the 2008 presidential contest, the odds of a white male in the Oval Office was 100% regardless of political party.
The presidency of Barack Obama has opened up the category “other than” so that Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Herman Cain despite their political views in anathema of his have the same odds – albeit slim – to win the presidency. Prior to his, it was a big, fat goose egg! Secretary Hilary Clinton, had she become the nominee and president, would have accomplished the same feat.
******
To be a black man in America is to be under [mentally] a constant state of “siege.” On the one hand, you have the peer pressure in your urban neighborhood regardless of the era of being “cool.” Cool then was Super Fly, impossibly high platform shoes, leopard skin coats, smoking reefer, selling it, graduating to cocaine like [crack cocaine] Ricky Ross; making a million dollars to “ride off in the sunset” (the end of Super Fly), and the obsession of a few friends that tried and failed: one executed; one waiting on death row. Cool now seems to be similar, updated music with the addition of sagging britches and You Tube reinforcement.
When you have an interest outside of sports, a talent for science, math, writing, thinking, literature, you know who “Jacque Cousteau” is, and up on his weekly undersea show, you might get labeled: weird or “white boy.” Cute girls ignore you, your solace being books, tools a microscope, a telescope and a junior chemistry set.
Making some academic attainment, you end up in areas where you are “the one” or “the first” to arrive. That’s not entirely true, just that a concentration of members in the National Society of Black Physicists or National Society of Black Engineers typically happens at conventions; not companies. Getting on elevators illicit purses shifting; catching cabs proves difficult despite lacking any criminal record.
Siege is a bubble you exist in: jowls clenched tight after swallowing hard at work at off-color humor – the psychological reason I wear a night guard; rants about “reverse discrimination” took less than a decade to legitimize when introduced in the lexicon, pointing out obvious unrighteousness marks you as “playing the race card,” successfully trumped by this Joker.
The other things you hear in the siege bubble are phrases like “meritocracy,” “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps,” “stop living in the past,” “post-racial” and my favorite: “a colorblind society.” Mouthed by most conservative talk show hosts, it’s a phrasing meant to sound agreeable allowing real conditions to be disagreeable, and essentially unchanged. Our society is a pyramid where equality and monetary wealth is enjoyed by the 1% oligarchs at the Eye of Horus: the 99% are left to divide ourselves into political parties.
A quick Google search yields this answer to the question: “how many blacks have run for president in the United States?”
Shirley Chisholm (Democrat) 1972
Jesse Jackson (Democrat) 1984
Dr. Lenora Fulani (Independent) 1988
Alan Keyes (Republican) 2000
Carol Moseley Braun (Democrat) 2004
Al Sharpton (Democrat) 2004
Barack Obama (Democrat) 2008
Forgive me when I make this admission: on seeing him on stage, after six predecessors, I just wondered “how long would this one last?” My confidence after six was somewhat jaded; not enough African Americans voted for the six previous black candidates, though they may have silently admired each one’s chutzpah. Senator Obama distinguished himself as being the first presidential candidate needing Secret Service protection while still a candidate in the primaries. It was not a forgone conclusion that he would win the Democratic primaries or ultimately the Oval Office.
The attacks became visceral and vitriolic: charges of “palling around with terrorist,” “terrorist fist bumps,” “socialist,” “racist” (against white people – despite the affection for his mother and his grandparents), death threats, vocal threats at rallies of “off with his head” and “kill him.”
Then, and now: I see a man in the “siege bubble,” having to be conciliatory to unreasonable forces that have sworn his defeat before his administration got beyond “President-Elect.” Questioning the qualifications of a Magna Cum Laude Columbia graduate and first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review; snubbing his intelligence as “too professorial”; labeling him “elitist” while ignoring every public official is. Bumper Stickers appeared saying: “Impeach Obama” before his January 20th inauguration. He has to grit his teeth, see his hair turn gray, his skin wrinkle, bear its weight else he be labeled “radical,” as was his former pastor when the majority world suddenly realized an inequitable system might produce a different archetype from majority evangelical churches that never experienced slavery, Civil Rights, church bombings or Jim Crow.
*****
Why I will support the reelection of President Barack Hussein Obama.
Rick Perry has thrown his hat in the ring of the GOP contest for the presidency, and he’s catapulted to the front of the pack. He’s aligned himself with the New Apostolic Reformation Movement. He’s essentially the male version of Michelle Bachmann/Sarah Palin and Dominion [ism], a hyper-spiritual form of Christian Nationalism that dominates the Republican Party. They take their mandate from the book of Genesis, where God says “[have] dominion over the earth,” and for these groups that means everything, inclusive of government, arts, science, technology…domination.
The Way Things Used to Be:
1954: Brown versus Board of Education, a 9 – 0 vote in the Supreme Court (when they were actually non-partisan) that mandated schools be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.” That swiftness didn’t occur for me in North Carolina until 1971.
What was introduced on our currency in 1955 was the phrase “In God We Trust” along with the flag of the rebel south in state flags like South Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas, hearkening to the war between the “Godless North” and the “Christian South.” Desegregation caused two phenomena: white flight to the suburbs and “Christian Private Schools,” an audacious attempt to exempt their children from integration with the benefit of tax exempt status.
Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann in her youth surprisingly worked on the campaign of President Jimmy Carter – a Democrat – for the notion of electing “one of their own,” making Carter our country’s first evangelical president, former nuclear engineer and peanut farmer. When he eliminated the tax exempt status of the Christian Schools to foster integration, they turned on him in 1980 electing Ronald Reagan.
Being the ever cognizant actor of B movies, it was easy for him and his speechwriters to sprinkle his wordsmith with calls to an America that Republicans and Reagan Democrats remembered: before 1954.
The Right co-opted religious rhetoric after the 1988 campaign of Bush I and Dukakis: noting the substantial mailing list of Republican Presidential hopeful and [still] 700 Club head of Pat Robertson: millions of “snail mail” addresses, pre-Internet, they peppered their speeches with what white evangelicals longed to hear: a return to the country they “knew” before 1954.
Fast forward to the present: it is no accident that Michelle Bachmann has appealed to not just Tea Party and evangelicals – the new word entering the lexicon is “Teavangelicals.”
It is no accident that Rick Perry staged a day of prayer in Houston, Texas to secure his bona fides with the most divisive group in Christendom that calls for execution of gays in Africa, that calls the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon” and want every government program to help the poor turned over to: the churches.
I am not voting for Barack Hussein Obama because I am a socialist; I am not voting for him because I am a capitalist; I am not voting for him because I think he’s done a fantastic job in office; I am not voting for him because he’s a black man. And, I am not voting for him as “the lesser of two evils.”
I am voting for him because of Democracy itself that is under current clear and present danger of extinction, and something he said (quoting FDR): “make me do it.”
I think we miss out on “We the People.” We instead look for the avatar in every election cycle and forget we have a considerable amount of leverage to bear up our man in office.
Make him do it: the rallies that the world saw from the Tea Party during the healthcare debates were not matched by rallies from the energized left that opposed almost everything Bush proposed, every expansion of the security state, every death in Iraq and Afghanistan. All that energy disappeared. So…you don’t have a public option; you don’t have single payer: because you didn’t “make him do it.”
The “Community Organizer-In-Chief” needed our backs, and we turned our backs to the 5:1 ratio of corporate lobbyists to senators and congress members that have their and his ears. Corporations have organized AstroTurf rallies to look like grass roots, when we actually were not done working November 4, 2008. That was just the beginning.
Politics in the era after 2009 and the current Supreme Court’s oxymoronically named “Citizen’s United” ruling, giving corporate America not just clarified “personhood” under the 14th Amendment – ironically designed to give personhood to former chattel slaves – it gave them unprecedented power in our lives, the ability to flood money to any candidate of their choosing anonymously as “free speech,” elections can no longer be bench sport/armchair athletics: if democracy matters.
They are awash with money, making few loans to homebuyers or small business owners, and have no interest in creating jobs in the US since they have free rein to ship them to cheaper countries; they pay little or zero taxes; they do not invest in education here because they have no interest in paying salaries, benefits, and 401(k) plans to a continuous supply of replacement workers that they would eventually have to pay for their retirement.
“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity; do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”
With a President Obama and an active citizenry post-election, I think we can “make him do it.”
Or…we can go backwards beyond 1954…not as a third world nation, but worse: a new Northern-Strategy/Southern-Strategy class cultural divide in the 21st century, and make the title: “UNITED STATES” of America… an oxymoron.
“Because the finance man's gonna be at your house on Saturday, right? That's exactly what the company wants - to keep you on their line. They'll do anything to keep you on their line. They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young; the black against the white - ANYTHING to keep us in our place,” Yaphet Kotto, as Smokey James in the movie “Blue Collar.”
Addendum Analysis:
1. Since the sample size is rather large, occupying the Executive Branch, Congress or the Supreme Court takes a considerable amount of chutzpah and some healthy narcissism to think one’s ideas could satisfy every person in the 307,212,123 sample size, which is getting far more diverse and bigger than anyone ever imagined. Because it’s such a small group, the system probably encourages the same types from the same colleges to run for the same political parties. Families therefore are encouraged by the system to establish dynasties in a democratic electoral system. By definition: rising to occupy any government position in such a system is elite.
2. Since meeting the needs of almost 1/3 of a billion is kind of daunting, lobbyist with lots (and lots) of m-o-n-e-y are probably easier to digest and manage. Since “Corporations are people, my friend,” (Governor Romney) I assume you kind of punt and hope for the best, or muddy the waters – say what you think people want to hear – and hang on for the long haul.
3. It is statistically easier to become the first African American president than an NBA athlete (see 4 for the corollary). A pun on sample sizes: President Obama is number 44; “of the almost 156,000 male, high school senior basketball players only 44 will be drafted to play in the NBA after college.” See link above.
4. Conversely, there is a 97.7% probability of “other-than-other,” i.e. a white male of either party occupying the Oval Office either in 2013 or 2017.
5. Because the odds were once zero, and so small even now, the odds of “other than” repeating itself (after 2012 or 2016) are rather remote.
I sometimes wonder: if the people holding up signs at Camellia sinensis caucuses actually “crunch the numbers” before the inevitable painted signs titled “IMPEACH TEH MUSLOM?”
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)