What’s Love Got To Do with It?

That’s the question about relationship abuse. So what if there’s some love. Listen sister girlfriend, your life may be in danger. Your old man may kill you and then he’ll cry at your funeral. That’s what folks are trying to say to Richana. Chris Brown may be a good guy, but good guys have problems too. Unfortunately, children learn what they live. Chris lived to see his mom abused by his step father. He thought he could avoid it, but the example was ingrained.
Too often we know what’s going on and we sit back helpless. We know that victims will jump on us and end the friendship before they admit that a man ‘going upside her head’, is not a love tap.
All of hollywood knew David Ruffin lead singer of the Temptations had issues, but no one stopped Motown lead singer, Tammy Terrell from constantly going back. David hit Tammy in the head with a hammer. She developed a tumor, numerous surgeries and she finally died.
Then of course there was Tina. Tina was whipped by Ike on a regular basis. Then some folks can’t understand why Tina didn’t go to Ike’s funeral. Give me a break.
The bottomline is everyone will know that you are catching hell. They may even know the details, but unless you make the first move, everybody will stay on sidelines. Because we know you’ll go back and blame us for interrupting your suicide or murder.
I hate to agree with Oprah, but folks who handle problems by hitting, won’t change without professional help. Real men don’t hit.
Rihana nor any other girl did nothing to deserve being beaten. We all hope and pray that Chris Brown will get the help he needs.

Expanding the Culture

Obviously some folks are ignorant about African American culture. How else can you explain someone sending out a card with the White House covered with watermelons instead of eggs for the annual Easter Egg Hunt?  Luckily, we don’t have to depend on ignorant fools to tell us what black culture is.  We have the Obamas for that. And they are doing it up in style.

First, Obama had a superbowl party which was bipartisan.  His team Pittsburg won in a tight, heart-stopping game.  The President showed he understood America’s sport culture.

The first lady was not to be outdone. She celebrated Black History in style. She had a group Sweet Honey in the Rock entertain 200 6th and 7th graders in the East Room.  The culture of call and response poetry, acapella singing, and drama came to life for the kids and the nation.  Only covered intermittenly by the media, it still changed the Black History celebrations forever.

Next the Obamas showed they could hold a formal dinner, black tie with the best of them. They hosted the Governors of all 50 states for a formal state dinner.  The Obamas were gracious to the Governors and their spouses, including Jindal of Louisiana. (We now know he exaggerated and lied in his rebuttal to Obama’s press conference, but then we all knew he wants Obama’s job in 2012.)

But what really put the icing on the cake was the Greshwin award for Stevie Wonder.

Obama played the role of “first fan” at the Wonder tribute, and opened up about his and his wife’s common enjoyment of Wonder’s music
He gave Stevie credit for getting Michelle to date him.

“As Stevie knows, I’m a huge fan. And he has been a great supporter,” Obama said before presenting the award-winning singer-songwriter with the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress.

He said Wonder’s songs “became the soundtrack of my youth” and that in them he “found peace and inspiration, especially in difficult times.”

While some attending the even sat straight in their seats. The President and First Lady were jamming:  clapping, snapping their fingers and singing along.

The bottomline is we know the haters will keep drawing monkeys and watermelons and just trying to get attention, but the Obams wiell have the last work on what black culture and American culture is for the next four years. They are expanding the culture and making int clear that the Cosby Show’s Huxtables were just a hollywood ideal for black families, but the way it is for so many. 

So the haters will hate and we will let them know that we do not suffer fools gladly.  Even Rupert Murdoch himself had to apologize for the monkey joke, the watermelons were met with swift protest and Rush Limbaugh has taken some hits for wanting Obama to fail.

It will continue, but for those of us who’ve waited for black culture and art, music, song and style from the cut of his suit to her short sleeves not that what the Obamas do, not what the haters say, is defining black culture and expanding America’s.

Obama presented the medal to Wonder, then wrapped the singer in a bear hug. As the media were led out of the room, Wonder struck up “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours,” which was a staple of Obama’s campaign rallies.

Where is “24″ going?

   I love 24. My son, a sophomore at the time, got me hooked on this action television drama.  Agent Jack Bauer was with the first (television) black president, which I believed helped lay the foundation for a diverse population become accustomed to a black man in that role.

Jack is suspected this season of being a rogue agent.  Teh character is someone who will do whatever is necessary to save the coutnry from terrorists.  This season the terrorists are Africans.

We are supposed to believe that an African Hunta, can send his agents into the U.S. to wreak havoc.  They pay U.S. officials from the F.B.I. to Congress to betray the country.  On top of that , next week the terrorist general, (close to home because some African Presidents were once military leaders) comes to the U.S. and kidnaps the president in the White House.

These aggressive activities against the U.S. by a hostile African nation justifies the U.S. military going into the coutnry.  The problem is that the show maybe predicting the future.  The boottomline is that the show has seemingly been predictive before, and if it is now it could mean that the U.S.’s new Africa Command is going to at a moment’s notice go in an takeover.

That’s been a fear of some African nations, who would not agree to house the new command.  It’s been operating out of Germany, while looking for a home.

What about the increasing number of African oil producing countries, now up to ten, including new discoveries in Ghana.  What if the U.S. feels that its interests are threatened and that the military ruler is a tyrant.

See what’s being portrayed is not going into Rwanda, or Darfur to end genocide, but going into somewhere like Nigeria, to secure resources.

I love 24; it’s action.  I really loved when David Palmer was the president.  But truth has been stranger than fiction before.  I just hope that this season’s storyline is not a forerunner of things to come. 

What do you think?

Atlanta’s Police Convictions in Neal Street assassination

    When undercover cops broke in an 92-year-old woman’s house in Atlanta in 2006, they claimed that three of them were shot.  The media instead of questioning the information, reported that 3 cops had been shot.

    No matter where you went, from the braid shop in West End ot the black bank, nobody believed the report.  The surrrounding community had said foul immediately.  

As more questions came, and one cop retired.  The cops started changing their story.  The news media reported that black families and individuals were shelterin drug dealers. There was a sketch released of someone, rumored to have stayed with Ms. Kathryn Johnston, who allegedly was dealing drugs. 

        Reports claimed drug had been found in the house.  But the truth is that none of that was true.  The police went in the womena’s houwe with a no-knock warrant. She got her little pee shooter of a un, and tried to scare away who was breaking in. They emptied their guns at point blank range and then shot each other to cover up, what has not been called, but was an assassination, or execution.

      Today three cops, all white, got sentenced. The longest sentence was only ten years and the shortest term was only five years.  The cops all changed their pleas and confessed that the pressure of meeting a quota for drug busts led them to lie.

     Now there are so many things wrong. It’s almost hard to know where to begin.  The family of the victim, got the youngh Reverned Markell Hutchings   to be their spokesman. He questioned the police raid and procedures.  Their story fell apart, under just a likttle scrutinly. 

     It is good that the cops have apologized and been sentenced.  But is it fair. OJ Simpson got more time, for trying to recopu his own memorabilia.  The black teenager, who accidentally shoots their elderly neighbor would probably get life.  The bottomline is that extenuating circumstances do not help black folks even in cirmes of passion, like when the abused wife stabs the husband.

    I just wished justice was equal and fair for everyone.  I just wich the whole community acknowledged, in a day of mourning that what happened to Ms. Johnston is not an isolated incident.  It happens all the times. Consider the California case, where a copy said he meant to taser a young man, being held down on the ground and cuffed, but instead shot him at point blank range. 

     There is a national problem with how cops, black or white, treat black suspects. There needs to be a national requirement for multi-cultural and black sensitivity training. 

       Ms. Johnston was sitting in her own home, minding her own business, when cops took her life.  Her blood cries out for justice and the sentences these Atlanta cops got is not propottionate, when considered against the sentences black folks get.

       My young cousin shot a drug dealer in her yard. She’d told him to leave, then went inside and got her pistol.  He bled while riding around the county, not seeking medical assistance. She got 10 years for a first offense.

        Cops are trained to protect and serve.  These Atlanta cops did neither. Their sentences don’t send the message that black life is just as valuable as anybody else’s.

Black Jokes Prove nation is not yet Postracial

  The New York Post’s cartoon of a monkey shot dead by police with a caption about the economic stimulus is not only distasteful, but is provocative of racial stereotypes.                              

It comes from a time not too long ago, particularly when black soldiers were in Europe in World War II, where whites told European women, blacks had tails.  Then there were the justifications for slavery, which suggested that blacks were dumb creatures like apes.

And in the midst of that controversy, my fellow Columbia alum, Eric Holder, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head.  He said:  “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder said at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. “Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial.

“This is truly sad. Given all that we as a nation went through during the civil rights struggle, it is hard for me to accept that the result of those efforts was to create an America that is more prosperous, more positively race-conscious, and yet is voluntarily socially segregated.”

Folks have gotten hot over Holder’s remark.  To me that is because the truth hurts.  We are voluntary segregated, just get up on Sunday and go to two churches of the same denomination on the opposite sides of town.

We are not yet comfortable discussing race, if we’re over 22, and I can say that because I think the Millennial generation talks openly.  Although, they still have tensions, they do talk. 

The rest of us still, as Andy Young says, “bear the scar of the Civil Rights movement.”  We have the knowledge of how we were raised and what the times were like. 

As a child I remember my Grandmother insisting we go to the bathroom, because when we went to town the courthouse had ”white only” signs.  At the time, I just thought my grandmother hated public toilets and water fountains. I didn’t know  she was sheltering us from racism.

I also remember going up North from my homestate Georgia, to Philadelphia or D.C.  We would take a car trip that include cooking fried chicken, making sandwiches, packing drinks and planning whose house we’d visit on the way. I thought we planned our visits with friends and relatives, stopping in North Carolina, because we wanted to see them.  I didn’t know it was because there were few hotels where we could stay and even less facilties we could use. 

That’s only been 50 years America. We are a young country. That we have tackled head on issues of race and differece that still divide countries hundreds of years older than the U.S. is admirable. But tackling them, even voting for a black man to be President, doesn’t mean we’ve overcome. Not yet.  We aren’t post racial yet. But, we’re moving in that direction. 

All we need to do now is check the folks like the New York Post, who think making racial jokes, is funny.  As the song ”Jacob’s Ladder” puts it “every rung goes higher and higher.”  It means we get closer to postracial everytime we, none of us, find the jokes funny.

Graves Disease and Hyperthyrodism

  The first thing I noticed was that my left eye bugged out.  It looked like I could have been one of the bugs in the film.  I was actually at the movies, when my eye felt like something was in and it was so dry I had to leave and wet it. 

I knew I was reading a lot, at work and on my dissertation literature review, but I honestly thought it was my eyes.  Then I noticed that I had a rash or fungus ring around my waist. So now I think I’ve got two different illnesses.  So I go to the Gynecologist about the rash and she says stress. I knew the anti-fungual wasn’t working and sometimes it itiched.  So I kept trying cremes. 

Not solving the rash/fungus issue, I decided to work on my eyes. Afterall, they were the more important item, on a scale of what people could see.  (The rash could be covered up.)

Then I went to the Opthalmologist.  He told me I probably had Graves Disease.  Now that’s named for the discoverer of the illness.  It’s caused by too much thyroid hormone. It gives you a bug eye and a squint  or lazy eye, in my case.

My heart races, my pulse is fast and I huff and puff and pant just walking a small hill.  Plus, I lost 30 pounds.  That may have been the only bonus.  My metabolism has been racing.

So I finally got to an endocrinologist.  He confirmed what the opthalmologist and gynecologist suspected. I had an overproduction of thyroid homorones and my thyroid was going to have to be treated.

So after much discussion, searching the Internet and trying to figure out what works for my lifestyle, I’ve chosen radioactive iodine.  This means that I’ll ingest it and it will bascially shrink my thyroid down to nonethingness.  I’ll then take thyroid medication the rest of my life.

I guess in a choice between the devil — antithyroid medicine and the deep blue sea–radioactive iodine.  I chose the latter. 

My kids are hoping I’ll glow in the dark; I’m praying that the promise of the 23rd psalm will help. “Thy rod and thy staff will comfort me.”  I will be counting on the prayers of family, friends and strangers to add their voice to mine for strength in numbers.

Anyway, this saga continues………

Abstinence Only: An Option not a Commandment

Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, says abstinence only doesn’t work. “It’s unrealistic,” she says. Too bad she didn’t tell her Mom that before she imposed that type of sex education on all the kids in Alaska.

My kids went through this abstinence only education mandated by the Bush administration. It taught such things as condoms have a 15% failure rate. Never pointing out the 85% success rate. The result, according to federal studies is that kids waited a year longer to have sex and then had it without protection.
The moral is abstinence should be taught as an option, not as a commandment with “Thou shalt….”
The fact is that kids are curious about their own sexuality and each others. The first thing my two and a half year old son noticed about his little sister was that she was missing a part. (Or so he thought.)
Kids know that their parents drive and that they can’t until they get a certain age. It doesn’t matter how tall they are or bright; they can’t drive until they’re old enough. Maybe that’s a better way to approach sex education. It’s not that they can’t do it, but that they shouldn’t do it.
Way to go Bristol, after dropping out of highschool and having a child out of wedlock, you’ve found out what your mother of six still doesn’t know.

BAD BOYS

  The list of bad boys in the news goes from sports with Michael Phelps and A-Ron at the top of the list, to entertainment where Chris Brown is taking the lead.

Now A-Ron is the oldest and he simply admitted what most folks have said for years: he sued steroids.  The joked on the Tom Joyner show was to call him A-Roid.  He didn’t mention the affair with Madonna, which broke up both their marriages. But the real question is with his confession can Barry Bonds be far behind?  Bonds has an old sample that was positive, so look for him and his attorneys to perform some aerobic linguistics, trying to talk their way out of this.

Chris Brown surrended on Sunday for suspicion of making a criminal threat.  It seems that he and his girlfriend Rihana had a spat, which the rumor has it was about an STD.  Now we generally teach our sons to never hit a girl, but this is an incurable disease.  The gossip shows for entertainment claim she isn’t pressing charges, but the DA in L.A. wants more info.  Too bad about the whole situation.  Two nice kids just starting out and they want to fight like David Ruffin and Tammy Terrell. That’s old school. If you don’t know about it; look it up.

Now last but not least, is Michael Phelps. Someone took a picture of him at a party smoking pot. True, it was afte the Olympics and true he was just hanging out. But didn’t he learn from Michael Vick to beware of the company you keep.  Phelps was probably hanging out with his friends just like Vick.  He may have somked that pipe on a dare. But now he’s paying with Kellog canceling his contract and others sure to follow.  Still, he probably won’t end up in federal prinson like Michael Vick, so he should count his blessings and learn his lesson.

Obama’s No Pushover

Obama getting tough on Capitol Hill

Obama has done it. He’s gotten both the House and Senate to Pass the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the Economic Stimulus package. As he put it, “the bottomline is that we did not get in this situation overnight and we won’t get out of it overnight.”                           

The Commander-and-Chief had to get on in primetime last Monday and break it down for the nation. He explained that just because he wanted bipartisanship, didn’t mean he was going to let the Senate stop a plan to put Americans back to work. He let the Republicans know it was their fault. He pointed out that the folks, who had presided over the largest deficit in the nation’s history, under George W. Bush, had no room to be nitpicking a bill to buy American and build infrastructure. It’s about jobs.
In the end, only 3 Republicans were willing to put the people first. But Obama had taken to the road and airways, campaigning as effectively as he did to win, to get the stimulus done. And while, some were criticizing things like how many black reporters asked questions and how many questions, he took, the deal got done.
Now we know that when the going gets tough, the tough Obama will come out. He knows how to lead and he is not afraid of fight. In case anyone doubted it, they now know for sure, the President is no push over. Well done, Mr. President.

ETTA –Please

Did you hear what Etta James said. In case you missed it. Here it is:

“You guys know your president, right? You know the one with the big ears? Wait a minute, he ain’t my president, he might be yours, he ain’t my president. You know that woman he had singing for him, singing my song — she’s going to get her ass whipped. The Great Beyonce. I can’t stand Beyonce. She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol’ president day, singing my song that I’ve been singing forever.”

Rumor has it James couldn’t sing because she was dealing with complications from gastric bypass surgery she had in 2003.

So here, with all due respect are a few words to Miss Etta:

The bottomline, Miss Etta, is most folks didn’t know who you were, hadn’t ever heard your song and wouldnt’ have give a flip about you, unless the Great Beyonce sang your song. By singing “At Last”, Beyonce put your career back on the map, not hers; she’s flying high and definitely a DIVA. Unfortunately, Ms. Etta the comments confirm that you just have N.C. No Class At All.

Oh and by the way, Miss Etta, unless you’ve given up your passport, Barrack Obama, yes the guy with the big ears, he is your president too.

You should send them both thank you letters, for making it possible the rantings and ravings of a has been got on the front page.