………….”COON”?!?!?
Young Blacks using the word “coon” to jokingly describe the activities of each other????
Nah. No way. I REFUSED to believe it when Richard Prince told me, but here it is.
Category Archives: newspaper
Are You Tired Of Thomas Friedman Yet? Me, Too! So's……
…………Norman Solomon, who started my day by providing a hearty laugh. And a great dose of truth.
I think Friedman, The Master of Glib, means well, but his power to set the nation’s intellectual agenda about the nature of globalization is, well, woefully disproportionate. And, and Solomon points out, his lack of concern about oppressed peoples and others who will not be saved by the “new” (?) world capitalism is disturbing, to say the least.
Channeling Thomas Friedman
by Norman Solomon
Published on Monday, October 23, 2006 by
CommonDreams.org
Get ready for a special tour of a renowned outlook,
conjured from the writings of syndicated New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman. As the leading media
advocate of “free trade” and “globalization,” he is
expertly proficient at explaining the world to the
world. If we could synthesize Friedman’s brain waves,
the essential messages would go something like this:
Silicon chips are the holy wafers of opportunity. From
Bangalore to Bob’s Big Boy Burgers, those who
understand the Internet will leave behind those who do
not.
I want to tell you about Rajiv/Mohammed/George, now
doing awesome business in Madras/Amman/Durham. Only a
few years ago, this visionary man started from scratch
with just a vision—a vision that he, like me, has
been wise enough to comprehend.
So, Rajiv/Mohammed/George built a business on the
digital backbone of the new global economy. Now, the
employees fill orders on a varying shift schedule, and
time zones are always covered. Don’t ask what they’re
selling—that hardly matters. They’re working in a
high-tech industry, and the profits are auspicious.
This is the Future. And it is good. Fabulous, actually.
Traveling the world as I do, I understand that the
world is best understood by people who travel the world
as I do.
The future is innovation across borders. The
entrepreneur who finds a good Web designer on another
continent really impresses me. Have I mentioned yet
that the Internet really impresses me? It really does.
Those who aren’t suitably impressed by IT will be left
behind.
As a journalist who visits one country after another, I
feel intoxicated by the Internet. And why shouldn’t I
be upbeat? I’m not one of the dead-end-job workers who
can look forward to mind-glazing drudgery in front of
computer screens as far as the eye can see.
For me, and for investors and managers who take me
around, what’s not to like? Commerce is about selling
things, providing services, expanding markets. All that
is so good.
Let’s face it—at this point I’m a rich guy, and I
work for a newspaper run by guys who are even richer
than I am. They’re gaga about what we like to call
globalization. So am I. We’re a perfect match.
As a matter of fact, just about any big media outlet in
the USA is run by managers who work for owners who’re
gaga for globalization. We don’t mention that there are
significant limits on our enthusiasm. Of course we
don’t want to globalize labor unions! We don’t want to
globalize powerful movements for environmental
protection! We don’t want to globalize movements
against war!
Speaking of war: I cheered the invasion of Iraq and
kept applauding for a long time afterward. I lauded the
war effort as glorious and noble—and, on the last
day of November 2003, I even likened the U.S.
occupation of Iraq to the magnanimity of the Marshall
Plan.
And if U.S. troops had been able to kill enough Iraqi
troublemakers early enough to quell the resistance, I
would have remained an avid booster of the war. There’s
no business like war business—that’s why I recycled
my clever slogan “Give war a chance” from the 1999 air
war on Yugoslavia to the 2001 military assault on
Afghanistan.
But I like winning. That’s why I kept praising Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he looked like a winner,
and now I keep deploring him because he looks like a
loser.
Overall, I get to boil down the world to metaphors of
my own choosing. If I were one of the
anti-corporate-globalization people and I used the same
kind of simplistic metaphors, I’d be the object of
derision and scorn. But I’m not—so get used to it!
 
Never let it be said that leading U.S. pundit Thomas
Friedman has to live with the consequences of his
punditry. I think great thoughts, and I’m seriously
glib about them, and that should be more than enough if
the world is smart enough to grasp the opportunities
that are low-hanging fruit of the digital age. I can’t
expect everyone to get it, but at the very least they
should try.
The paperback edition of Norman Solomon’s latest book,
“War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep
Spinning Us to Death,” was published this summer. For
information, go to http://www.warmadeeasy.com/Â .
Kate Moss In Blackface?
Okay, I get that The Independent was trying to get attention for its coverage of Africa, but c’mon………….
http://www.nowpublic.com/uks_independent_newspaper_goes_red_with_kate_moss_cover
Couldn’t the editors have found another way to do this? IÂ mean, where was Alek Wek?
Watching All This Coverage Of Media Coverage……
……..is really bugging me. Yet I do it anyway.
There is NO ONE ON EARTH more media-centric than me 🙂 , but c’mon……..
A whole episode of “Charlie Rose” about ex-President Bill Clinton’s “FOX News Sunday” interview?
Wall-to-wall cable coverage of The Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward coming out with a book explaining the inside story of what we knew all along?
THIS IS NEWS?????
Powerful white men go on white Tee Vee shows and discuss (read: promote) books written by other powerful white men about the actions of a third group of powerful white men (and how Condi and Colin help that third group). Meanwhile, aren’t there people still dying in Darfur right now?
Oh, sorry. Election year. Never mind.
But I’m sure I’m just jealous that we no longer have Black men who directly influence American public policy in ways that help the oppressed and scare the oppressor. I mean, we all know what happened to the last brother who did that successfully, don’t we? 😦
As a Black male would-be nonfiction author who still occasionally pretends to be a Washington, D.C.-area journalist, I also feel left out of this public-policy-book thang. (I was about to ask what happened to writing this kind of stuff for magazines, but I guess authors are tired of just making $15,000 from Esquire and Vanity Fair when they can now grab $150,000 in advance. Maybe it’s always been this way and I’m just now paying attention.) Did ALL of our top political correspondents take buyouts? Where are OUR books on the state of the nation and the world? Have any Black journalists ever met anybody in garages? LOL! 🙂
ROLAND S. MARTIN: CBC Foundation Blows Another Great Opportunity
From Roland S. Martin.
ROLAND S. MARTIN: CBC Foundation Blows Another Great Opportunity
For the last four years I’ve traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate as a panelist or moderator of a workshop during the annual legislative conference put on by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
An annual event for the last 36 years, the four-day confab brings together thousands of people, namely African Americans, to meet with the black members of Congress and discuss a wide variety of issues in the various “brain trusts” and seminars that are offered. Washington, D.C. hotels are packed, entertainers and celebrities blow through for a ton of receptions and parties, and attendees go back full of bubbly, food and lots of conversation.
And nothing ever really gets accomplished.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I have a great time. Being able to converse on a panel dealing with marriage and money, as well as talking to nearly 200 young leaders, was wonderful. We shared great ideas and got a chance to dialogue, but does the conference ever produce any lasting change for Black America? Nope.
A lot of this isn’t the fault of the attendees. My position is that you always make the best of a situation and keep on moving. The problem? The repeated failure of leadership by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to fully understand what to do with the thousands of people who attend.
Between last year’s legislative conference and this year’s event, I didn’t receive one e-mail related to any public policy we discussed last year. The purpose of the caucus foundation is to “focus on education, public health, economic development and African globalism. CBCF is the premier organization that creates, identifies, analyzes and disseminates policy-oriented information critical to advancing African Americans and people of African descent towards equity in economics, health and education.”
So what’s up with the lack of communication? I have no clue who gets their e-mail blasts and public policy positions. You would think those who have attended past events would at least get regular updates on bills that relate to the overall mission of the group.
Then again, why should I expect to get an e-mail blast when the effort isn’t even made to drive the thousands of attendees to the U.S. Capitol to meet with their elected leaders? The way I see it, when you register, they should print on your nametag your U.S. House representative and the two U.S. senators where you hail from (be honest, a lot of us have no clue who represents us in Congress). That way, when you visited the Hill, you would meet with your rep first and then visit with others.
But the foundation must make this possible by setting aside one day to call on members of Congress. My suggestion? Make it Thursday. Members of Congress get out of town on Friday, so send folks to Capitol Hill on Thursday morning to drive home the agenda of Black America.
Other groups do it. The NAACP, Delta Sigma Theta and Alpha Kappa Alpha sororities do variations of this, so you would think that the foundation affiliated with the 43 black members of Congress would have this figured out.
Not.
And what about those great sessions? If you didn’t a chance to travel to D.C., at least make them all available as podcasts. It’s cheap and easy, and folks all over the world could benefit from the great information that is disseminated. Lastly, send the attendees home with a real agenda. This year’s theme was “Changing Course, Confronting Crises, Continuing the Legacy.” Fine. But when I got on the plane Sunday, I didn’t have a list of initiatives and talking points that reflect the agenda leading up to the next gathering. How can you speak of a “Black Agenda” but never present one?
This has often been the failure of many organizations — and not just those led by African Americans. We are the “meetingest” folks in the world, but what is accomplished out of these gatherings? Is there a collective agenda that is advanced, worked on and implemented?
I’ve shared my frustrations with multiple members of Congress, including Reps. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Mel Watt, D-N.C. (the outgoing and incoming chairs of the CBC) last year. What happened? Nothing. I’m not holding my breath expecting next year to be any different. And that’s a shame.
But at least the chocolate cake at Morton’s Steakhouse was good. That was about the only thing I savored the whole weekend.
Roland S. Martin is general manager/executive editor of The Chicago Defender, the nation’s largest Black daily newspaper. His columns are syndicated to newspapers nationwide by Creators Syndicate and his commentaries appear on the TV One Cable Network. And he can be heard daily from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Chicago’s WVON-AM/1690 or http://www.wvon.com/ . He is the founder of BlackAmericaToday.com. He is also a contributor to The Paradox of Loyalty: An African American Response to the War on Terrorism. He can be reached at rmartin@chicagodefender.com or roland@rolandsmartin.com .
R.I.P. "Boondocks" (THE COMIC STRIP, *NOT* THE TEE VEE SHOW)
Hmmm……
NOT surprised—neither by the news, nor how he chose to make the break.
I prided myself on reading EVERY McGruder interview that ever came my way. In virtually every one that went beyond than 200 words, I remember him complaining about how grueling it was to do the strip. (Here’s the most in-depth profile of McGruder I’ve yet seen.) To do a comic strip was my original ambition, so I both sympathize with him AND feel he was whining all the way to the bank.
I guess in the 21st century, everything is just a platform to another platform; every spot someone gets is just a temporary space to nap while preparing their next (upward, hopefully) hustle. Ed Gordon and Tavis Smiley use National Public Radio as a forum to keep their very public profiles while setting up their television vehicles. Hiphop Gen stars Queen Latifah and Ananda Lewis were among many that fell into cookie-cutter syndicated daytime Tee Vee talk shows that came and went, but at least their demos haven’t forgotten them, Heaven forbid. 🙂
Ultimately, McGruder—who wrote in the introduction of one of his “Boondocks” anthologies that he wanted to continue the strip because it kept a foot in The Man’s @ss—didn’t want to be Charles M. Schulz or Garry Trudeau. He had always wanted to leverage the characters and the concept into a Tee Vee deal, and he got a very successful one. So why kill yourself? I guess he thought.
And, to be real, for the most part, it’s not like he wasn’t phoning it in for the last couple of years.
If you are going to miss the strip, get this collection and you’ll be straight. It’s the best of the early ones—those made when his full attention was on the task, the ones that came before the Tee Vee show jumped off.
Speaking of the Tee Vee show, here’s the first-season episode that I rank as one of the best Black half-hours of Tee Vee ever.
As these characters become more and more multi-media, we’ll see some of the characters he created that had yet to make the strip. We’ll see, but, sadly, we’ll no longer read.
Obama 'Endorsed' By Biography Channel? And Why Don't Women Get Better Political Roles On Tee Vee?
An interesting CampusProgress.org article that I thought you’d want to read.
Biography’s Unnatural Women: On and off TV, men get better political roles than women
By Sarah Laskow, Yale University
Wednesday, September 6, 2006The names are already familiar: Clinton, McCain, Condi. Inevitably, the next presidential election will be about celebrity: The media has already begun obsessing about the details of the event with all the ebullience of E! before the Oscars.
Unexpectedly, that media includes the Biography Channel, which seems to have implicitly endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Recently a series of paired profiles aired under the rubric “Then & Now,†and with a heavy hand matched Obama with John F. Kennedy. The all too obvious implication was that Obama is a sort of inevitable President.
The Biography Channel trades in celebrity; naturally they would prefer that the candidate with the handsomest face win the nation’s highest office. But the “Then & Now†series distinctly understands what it takes to be president, and demonstrates why Obama has a better chance of being elected in 2008 than either of the high profile women who might run.
There’s a key moment in each hour-long Biography program, and it comes precisely at the 30-minute mark. This juncture always portrays pain or absolute triumph, as when, in a typical Hollywood bio, Vivian Leigh (best known as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind) becomes mentally ill. Right before the half-hour, after the usual obstacles to success have been overcome and accolades won, a wide-eyed picture of the subject will take up the screen as the emotion intensifies. The camera will close in just a bit more. At this moment, the text of the inane narrator ceases to communicate anything at all (though he’s still talking), because the only thing that matters is the pair of eyes on the screen. From the still frame, the celebrity gazes out, and for that one moment, succeeds in telling his or her own story.
This moment works wonderfully in Biography’s profiles of politicians. President Kennedy and Senator Obama, when playing their roles well, are idealists who might actually accomplish some of their goals. With all of the real political compromise edited out and only the personal motivation left standing, you can read into their eyes all the hope in the world.
Another Fiore Cartoon I Like……..
……….because we need an easily accessible record of Bush’s insanity.
Enjoy! (If that’s the proper word).
Katrina Kartoon Kicks…………..
………………well, you know. 🙂
Like all of us every day, sometimes Mark Fiore hits the mark, sometimes he doesn’t.
This time it’s the former.
Doing For Self (More Katrina From The Prism Of Black Media)
Here’s the press release and trailer link to the Nation of Islam’s Katrina documentary.
The provocative new documentary ‘The Unmasking of New Orleans’ includes exclusive, never-before-seen coverage and reports revealing the true nature of events in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) August 22, 2006 — On the eve of the one-year anniversary of what is the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, the provocative new documentary The Unmasking of New Orleans, produced by Final Call Incorporated (FCI) Broadcasting was released.
The ongoing struggle of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina is being swept away from the minds of the public as swiftly as the floodwaters washed away properties and lives when the levees breached. Is there truth to the numerous reports of rapes and murders? Who is going to tell the story of the heroic acts of the young men and women portrayed
as senseless looters by the mainstream media? It is important to obtain the truth.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan commissioned a crew from The Final Call newspaper to travel to New Orleans and film this documentary about the conditions and concerns that our people face since Hurricane Katrina, which the world must not be allowed to ignore, as we near the one-year anniversary of what is the worst natural disaster in U.S.
history.
Included in the documentary are insightful perspectives from New Orleans Councilman Oliver Thomas, Author Michael Eric Dyson, community activist “Mama D” as well as the nameless and faceless residents whose stories have not been told in this way before.
Bonus footage includes a visual tour of the Lower Ninth Ward featuring a conversation between Minister Farrakhan and New Orleans residents.
To view a trailer for ‘The Unmasking of New Orleans’ go to
http://www.finalcall.com/katrina.
Interviews and perspectives are available upon request.
Drums in the Global Village 
