Jared Ball, Black Power Media and “The Penny Trick:” What I Thought About Peacock’s “Lowndes County and The Road To Black Power”

As usual, I’ve gotta come here to fix my many goofs! The “her” I’m talking about @ 00:27:00 is Melissa Haizlip, director of the Mr. Soul film and the niece of the Soul! host/producer.

An Attempted Deadline Poem About The Democratic National Convention: “Love’s Booty Call (a.k.a. Crazy In Love)”

Hill2

Love, American Style / Truuer than the red, white and bluuueee!
It’s the song from an old TV show
Back when Hill was shifting from Goldwater Girl
To ambitious law student seeking writ, not revolution

Last night, she moved into the place
Banishing the ’08 failed entitlement
Taking a village, indeed!
Barack, Michelle, some pork-chop preachers
(the latter Deese Negroes Cooning)
Black People To The Rescue!
Too bad Santa and Superman didn’t show
Wanted to hear their testimonials about puppies, truth and justice
If balloons, CVs, Alicia Keys and Katy Perry produced trust, Hill has won
But I would count the change she makes
before walking out the store

Hill and Kaine were proud of how
white-bred boring they are
And how they are, like, real grownups
(“A man you can bait with a Tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons”)
But we can trust you to bomb from above
Because that’s what America has become
Available in Marvin and Tammi flavors
As Blacks dance with Joe Biden down the “Soul Train” line
Arguing over who gets to play Crockett and who’s stuck with Tubbs

*******

Hill: “America is great because America is good”
Yeah, there it is, white supremacy slipped in with the beer
But why were so many Black people cheering?
Did they know that while they were integrating
The Sister Prosecutor of the cops who killed Freddie Gray
Threw up her hands because of a rigged system?
Or did their inclusion into the Party turn their cheers to Nyquil?

Wow, even Trayvon’s and the other moms are riding the donkey
Black folks have had their turn at the Prez bat
And now want their old, good jobs back
Leaving the Party with the Black cat far behind in history
As caution or model

Blacks love Dems, treasure their booty call status
Knowing the platform is a fake prenup
But showing it off
Like a gold-plated engagement ring

Not like those crazy Bernie people
Dumb to democracy
Not accepting just half of freedom
Cheering and booing at will
Trying to not choke at the Clinton’s historic s/triangulation
SmallPOX News (*cough* devils *cough*)
Produced their Hill Hate Card in an interesting way:
Spent a lot of airtime on the Burned Out
Before they split the scene
(With their YUGE, inflatable doobie!)
Searching for an abstract freedom
That freezes imperialism

News Flash: The RNC will never nominate
Kermit The Frog or the ghost of Fred Rogers
Maybe that thrown-away vote
Will one day hit the right person between the eyes

Makes me want to
Cross at the Green not in-between
This fall
Or just mark “X”

*******

The conflict is clear
Amiri Baraka, critiquing Jesse’s ’88 DNC’s crossover joint, said it best:
“Both the slave and the slavemaster can’t be right”
But this is what Obama has wrought
Confusion disguised as progress
The Obamas are the fulfillment of so many dreams
I just don’t know whose

Hill’s great advantage?
That maddening Trumpet wailing on the other side
Archie Bunker sitting on a pile of cash
Dialing the Russians on his iPhone
America Ferrera had it right: “He’s making America hate again”
The DNC’s mentally colonized will be put to good use just this one time
To judge this unpopularity contest
Just leave Steve Harvey home this time

Daddy-O, aping Reagan
Applied select crayon to Norman Rockwell
Weaving the strands of American struggle
In ways that would make Howie Zinn’s ghost weep
(MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: Dems convention had “eaten the Republican Party whole”)
But a clear thought did emerge:
This is, Daddy-O explained, a “fundamental choice of who we are as a people”
(As usual, he meant American, not Black)

So the POTUS-to-POTUS pass has been made
And Black people were included in every respect and aspect
Which makes empire acceptable
Because when Black people love
It’s for real

Boomerang-ing while chomping Peanuts
Hmm: Lucy never gets Schroeder, Sally never nabs Linus,
Charlie Brown ducks the Little Red-Haired Girl
And Linus never catches up with Miss Othmar
Snoopy, wearing Panther shades, is the only one who’s free
He kicks on the door to demand his reparations
And after getting what he wants
Leaves the gang to their dysfunction

I hope Blacks ultimately remember
That unrequited love is freer than a dollar-store midnight raid
‘Cause it’s just pain smoothed over by denial
A love hostage with an unpaid ransom
It’s a perversion of Carter G.
Going in the FRONT door
But only to babysit, and to be thanked
With only $10 and a kiss on the forehead.