3.18.2008

Obama and the OJ factor




Being white I am expected to bear the brunt of racial issues… the guilt, the reasons and be cautiously reflective. While confronting modern equality I’m to remain aware that what some may do I may not, cause being a white devil is my due and while it would be wrong to either celebrate or exploit such whiteness, I must meet in silence the Black Entertainer Awards, the Congressional Black Caucus , National Association of Black Owned business… some are more equal than I. So Black clergy can damn my nation with impunity as their anger is to be understood.

Racism comes from divides, from unlevel playing fields and of higher expectations for some while others have none. Excuses are not what will heal such divides, rather responsibility. Each man and women responsible for their actions, words and deeds… regardless of color. This is my issue with the type of behavior Obama shows in action and thought. It’s not honest in this day and age and frankly to me change would be honesty for once. Honesty; under which true equality would need no excuses... and OJ would be in jail.

2.14.2008

"You fools seem to forget the end of Theo Van Gogh"


"COPENHAGEN - Danish authorities arrested three people yesterday on charges of plotting a cartoonist's assassination for his depiction of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban that enraged Muslims two years ago.

Three of Denmark's largest newspapers said they would reprint the cartoon today to show they would not be intimidated by fanatics. It was one of 12 Mohammed cartoons published in 2005 and then again in 2006 that led to protests in Muslim countries."


Believing whole-heartedly the God created us not to kill each other in order to get a piece of ass once we reach "heaven", I will never forget a person like Theo Van Gogh. His film "Submission" should be carried in every Blockbuster and aired each anniversary of his murder. The subject matter was how Islam treats women, the sin was allowing women to hold a conversation with God.

I will also never forget Mohammed Bouyeri who murdered Van Gogh, shooting him 8 times in public and then trying to decapitate him in the name of what some try to position as a religion of peace but is in reality a political ideology of world domination.

I will not forget that the Islamic world rioted over cartoons, books and valentine cards. Each murder does little to convert me as the sword used is shrill in its ugliness and brutality.

I will not forget the right of free speech.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

1.30.2008

Rigged Show


We have a problem in the modern world's beacon of democracy. Instead of allowing this light to guide us we have treated it as the glitzy introduction to yet another game show. The same talent behind "let's make a deal", "american idol" and "are you smarter than a 5th grader" are more or less presenting us with this show. The show "American Primary", is getting good ratings, advertisers fall all themselves to
be part of it. Pundits of all shapes and size bring their entertaining temperaments to this stage. The money money being spent by those who promise us a better life and fair life could in fact pay for such things...

Like all games shows however this one is rigged. God forbid you used your conscience and registered as not affiliated with either of the two main broadcasters as this game show had no room for you. Your voice was gone as if Simon Cowell took offense at it. You faced rules that are biased toward the DNC which would allow you to register with the proper broadcaster on the day of the show as opposed to the other
broadcaster which found entry refused because of buried rules of procedures hidden in some earmarked piece of legislation most likely called the save "kittens from trees bill"... a bill that did nothing for kittens but likely allows illegal immigrants to sleep in your guest room.

A few people in a few states are making the decisions we the people will have to live with... and sadly most of us have stopped watching the show, accepting that American politics is like the WWE, scripted down to the last insult and scandel.... just the right amount of entertainment to keep us silent.

Lady Liberty has become a whore, painted and pimped by Special Interests.

1.27.2008

Hell



I don’t believe in eternal damnation. If a deity could spend the amount of effort needed to create the big bang, dark matter and the strings of quantum physics, wrapping it all up in a bow of kittens and rainbows, I just can’t see it frying someone or thing because it missed an obfuscated clue to its reason for being.

I do however believe in good and evil and at times when faced with the latter I wish there was a hell. The Westboro Baptist Fundamentalists are one such evil. I can understand free speech, will fight for it and turn my head and hold my nose when a parade of Nazi’s use it. I can understand bereavement , something science has shown Neanderthal man could not. A life has ended and we will never see that person again, whatever the sands of chances, redemptions and glories filled that persons timer has ran out. At this time privacy and decency are both a right and necessity . This time comes not at our choosing and is reached only once.

The Westboro Baptist Fundamentalists offer supporting evidence that those that gather as such hold more in common with neanderthal man than that of homo sapiens , it fact it could even be argued that the very word homo is the thing that prevents them from evolving into humanity as they must hold a deep suppression that without their pubic flagellation they would all fall into an orgy of improper polarization.

It is not a right to disrupt our grief or last change to say goodbye, be it to those that fought for freedom or those that entertained our freedoms. Just as much as I would fight Sharia in any form so too will I fight what Westboro represents, a gross insult to the evolutionary gains of modern society.

1.17.2008

Finding Your Voice Amoung illegals


Nevada holds most of its politics as it does much else on a 7.2 mile stretch known as "the strip". As we get ready to caucus this weekend I think Mitt dropped by for 10 minutes, at least hitting the hotels next to the airport. Hillary and Obama camped here and clearly what happened is not to be kept here. Obama even went door to door, in some neighborhoods. Kudos to him as it just might have worked. Hillary on the other hand started airing ads that let us know that in the last couple of weeks she has "found her voice", she thanks us and informs us she is of course speaking for us... our voices being that one she lost. The same day the ad started airing she met with illegals and declared that no woman can be illegal so I’m thinking that voice she found is not so different from that shrill one we’ve heard during the last 35 years in which she been training herself to be the agent of change. Women and men can be and are illegal if they break the law, as such they don’t vote and should not be the first people you reach out to in an election… at least not a fair one.

Speaking of fair, Bill is in town as well and having a red-faced rant over the fact that the culinary union has backed Obama and have been allowed to set up voting areas in the major casinos in insure that voter turnout is high. As long as the vote is legal I’m for anything that increases turnout. In as much Hillary has found her own voice, Bill’s is the one reminding Nevada that much is still scripted in the Clintonian Dynasty of old.

Being new to Nevada I discovered I screwed up. I registered as an independent. To vote GOP I’d have needed to switch to the party 30 days ago. To vote Democrat I can do so in 1 day. Guess Reid came up with the rule which is insulting to those of us that are tired of party-line politics. But I’m gonna vote, and dang if it will not be for Obama cause IMO it’s where my vote will measure my disconnect with politics as usual… and judging from the buzz around here the smart money agrees.

1.10.2008

White Linguistics Burden


“HONOLULU - Golf Channel suspended anchor Kelly Tilghman for two weeks on Wednesday for saying last week that young players who wanted to challenge Tiger Woods should “lynch him in a back alley.”
"Tilghman was laughing during the exchange Friday with analyst Nick Faldo at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, and Woods’ agent at IMG said he didn’t think there was any ill intent.”
“While we believe that Kelly’s choice of words was inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner, the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate,” Golf Channel said in its statement. “Consequently, we have decided to suspend Kelly for two weeks, effective immediately.”
“Tiger and Kelly are friends, and Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly,” Steinberg said Tuesday night in a statement released by Golf Channel. “Regardless of the choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no ill-intent in her comments.”

Our words define us, peg us politically, by gender, by age, by location, by race. They are also the largest instrument in our ideological and reasoning tool-kit. Some of us seek to be edgy, perhaps hip and most importantly relevant. It is when entering these waters that we encounter one of the last and greatest racial divides, for in the land I shall refer to as “urban” awaits many minefields for those of pale skin. With most other divides conquered and in the presence of our diverse field of friends we tip our spears of satire and blurb exchange with wondrous new verbiage like generations before us. After all who in today’s society knows or cares how words like; Klutz, Putz, Sqaw, Chinga, or Culo get into our conversations. We watch the Sopranos and before you know we are talking like patrons of Bada Bing, human see human do... to a certain extent, after all we are not monkey's. Lynching was about force and denial of freedom, a brute ignorant hatred and regardless to Al Sharpton claims, includes all races at the end of such rope. Like burning at the stake or crucifixion, lynching is more about those who have lost their humanity than the color of the victims skin. Beyond seeing things in such shades lays the return to humanity as after all even the poignant “Strange Fruit” took a Jew to write, and a Black to sing.
Black culture like any other has contributed to our language, they like racial identities before them have taken insults and turned them around. Many of my Jewish friends are quick to use a word for themselves I find as bad as the dreaded N word (after all institutional slavery like institutional genocide gives one pause). Carlos Mencia starts his show calling himself a "Beaner", and I have several Irish friends that greet each other as "freakin Micks". Overall, in the family of man we seem not all that different, one way or other we greet each other as follow SOB’s. As the family of man gathers it should be expected that at times, lines as long as they exist, will get crossed. Having witnessed more than one wife, husband, son or daughter say something they know will hurt the one the love the most, I can state that our communication delivery systems are much more advanced than our communication intent systems. If found one among us that has never said something they did not mean, bow down people for you have met a God.

However today the gods of political correctness still stuck in a "Whiteman’s Burden" mindset have created an atmosphere in which race hustlers flourish and free speech is stymied should any fuzzy thin web-like line be crossed. Like the South of the 1940's when we speak we have institutional separation. Listening to Hip Hop feeds us with urban images that some of us are free to repeat but others will be punished for, regardless to how much the artists promote such imagines. In Boston a long time ago I had friend who used the N word preceded by White to express his anthropologic thoughts on my race on many occasions... distilled his comments were you white N's are crazy and his conclusion like mine is regardless of the cultural differences, the similarities of the human condition hold the most weight. Working with Belarusian programmers in New York I was amused to discover that Gregory who was my age and grew up under the nightmare of nuclear oblivion and Soviet rule found solace in the music of the Beatles and to this day carts his large collection of classic rock, to stubborn to give up either his youth or vinyl. He refers to himself a "commie" at times as his love of socialism is another old cart his stubborn nature can’t let go of, but then in reality he differs little from other Democrats.

Maybe we are crazy, maybe we make mountains out of molehills and pay too much attention to the hypocritical. But then unlike others I can't see where Kelly commented a punishable race issue, rather I see that race baiting Inquisitors have become a fashionable frenzy. In the racks of the media they twist their victims till crucible like they have the proper gnashing of teeth as they burn their fires brightly into the night, lynching human expression on the rope of their self importance.
Regardless of race or color, and every group has a word for it, to be human means that at one time of another, anyone of us will spend time with our head up our arse... to use this fact to keep the cultural wall between the Black and White world's is frankly my given example.

1.06.2008

Of Heroes and Their Deeds


It is not often we get to share in something truly extraordinary, that for a fleeting moment we stand shoulder to shoulder with the giants among us. Although, in many ways it makes us feel small... much like standing in a grassy field on a starry night and feeling the hugeness of creation bearing down.

Never has the power and the consociation of the internet been more apparent than it is on this day....

"What I don't want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.) I had a pretty good life, as I noted above. Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I've enjoyed in my life. So if you're up for that, put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984), grab a Coke and have a drink with me. If you have it, throw 'Freedom Isn't Free' from the Team America soundtrack in; if you can't laugh at that song, I think you need to lighten up a little. I'm dead, but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact."


I know it's hollow in scope but Mr. Olsted, thank you...

http://andrewolmsted.com/archives/2008/01/final_post.html