Nothing Worth Saving

I was driving by Gateway Bank here in St. Louis, Missouri late last Friday and saw something seriously unusual.  It was about six in the evening, when the small parking lot next to the building is usually void of any vehicles.  But on that day, the lot was full of a fleet of what looked like rental cars.  Each car was new, freshly washed, and conspicuously generic.  My first thought was that the bank was on the verge of collapsing and the FDIC was swooping in.  I can’t remember the last time I saw a security guard monitoring this bank.  But on this particular day there must’ve been at least four guards protecting the cars and the people.  As I drove by I saw two of them standing on either side of the front door.

Not too long ago I heard an article on NPR about the FDIC and the way they move in on banks to try and keep them from going completely under.  They typically move in on a Friday night, flash their badges, and start their work auditing the bank to get an exact picture of where the bank stands.  In order to keep customers from making a run on the bank and making the situation worse, the FDIC moves with as much secrecy as possible and does its best to keep everything as normal looking as possible.

But it’s truly hard to hide the fact that an army of accountants and auditors and banking experts, not to mention a few security guards thrown in for good measure, just descended on this lone bank late on a Friday night.  My curiosity piqued, I took the time to drive around the block to take a closer look.  On the second pass, I saw guards three and four standing in the parking lot.  One would escort people arriving at the bank inside, the other stayed and watched over their cars.  There were a lot of white people showing up at this privately held bank in the heart of the black community.  That in itself was noticeable.

Early the next day, the scene was repeated.  The bank’s normal operating hours on a Saturday is something like nine o’clock to noon.  The parking lot was bursting at the seam with generic cars again.  I parked my car and approached one of the guards.  After I explained that I lived nearby and couldn’t help but notice the cars, I asked the guard for what the deal was.  Dude must’ve been bored and ready for any kind of conservation because he didn’t hold anything back.  He confirmed that the FDIC had arranged for the bank to be sold to an outfit on the other side of the state in Kansas City.  The bank was about to go under new management, but the FDIC was managing the transfer.

Gateway Bank was one of those success stories in which the black community had fought long and hard to make.  If you were a black person living in St. Louis during the sixties, you weren’t getting hired by the dominant community’s banks and you weren’t getting a loan to buy that dream house or that car you wanted.  Back in 1963, civil rights activists in St. Louis began protesting over Jefferson Bank & Trust Co.’s refusal to hire blacks for jobs.  Prospects for financial advancement in St. Louis were pretty slim for blacks.

Disenfranchised blacks opened up a bank with a mission that it would not discriminate against black people.  They soon were able to gain the support of the chairman of the board of the First National Bank of St. Louis.  With support from the white community, Gateway National Bank opened in 1965.  It was a collaboration between people in both the black and white communities.  Today, Gateway Bank’s single branch is now a branch of Central Bank of Kansas City, Missouri.  Gateway Bank had a troubled financial history and was on the FDIC’s list of problem banks since 2006.  The transfer of ownership cost the FDIC over nine million dollars.   This morning, it is business as usual at the bank that still has the name Gateway on its side.

Right now the number of bank failures this year is one hundred twenty three, indicating the worst financial climate in decades.  As the economy has soured with unemployment rising and home prices falling leading its only a natural result that loan defaults would rise as well.  And the FDIC expects bank failures to continue to cascade.  Banks have been especially hurt by failed real estate loans.  But banks that cater predominantly to the black community are especially at risk.  They are sucker bets for failure in an age where people in the black community are told to exercise self reliance.

The historic Gateway Bank could have survived with just a tiny sliver of a fraction of the funds the government gave to such institutions as General Motors and Bank of America and the like.  We know that those institutions, steep in their significance to the dominant community, are way too big to fail.  Institutions like Gateway that play a significant part of the black community don’t even come close to being something worth saving.

Joseph Paul Franklin

Joseph Paul Franklin is a serial killer convicted of several murders.  He is the man who admitted that he tried to kill Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and advisor to former President Jimmy Carter and civil rights activist Vernon Jordon.  This man is believed to be a drifter with a love of violence who wanted to kill people he considered inferior such as blacks and Jews.  His primary target of choice was mostly black men with white women.  Despite being partially blind he was a proficient marksman, and killed most of his victims from a distance using a rifle.  He would plan his murders in advance several escape routes and techniques in which to leave no evidence.  He killed at random.  He was a follower of Nazism and held memberships in the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1977, he started his murdering spree.  In August of 1977 he fatally shot Alphonse Manning and Toni Schwenn, a black man and a white woman.  Joseph Paul was trying to get away from a bank robbery he committed in Madison, Wisconsin, when he wound up behind a car being driven by Mr. Manning.  Wanting a speedy get away and was frustrated with the pace of Mr. Manning’s driving.  When Manning stopped and got out of the car, Franklin shot him and the woman he was with.

In October of 1977, Joseph Paul Franklin hid outside Brith Shalom synagogue in Richmond Heights, Missouri and used a Remington 700 hunting rifle and killed Gerald Gordon and injured Steven Goldman and William Ash.  After his capture and conviction, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection in the Potosi Correctional Center in Potosi, Missouri.

In March of 1978, he claims he used a rifle to ambush pornographer Larry Flynt and his lawyer Gene Reeves in Lawrenceville, Georgia.  He claimed that it was in retaliation for an edition of Mr. Flynt’s Hustler magazine that featured interracial sex.  The confession came years after the shooting and there is no evidence to support his claim.

In July of 1978, he killed Bryant Tatum, a black man with a white girlfriend, with a shotgun.  In July of 1979, he killed Harold McIver, a black man who Franklin believed was trying to have sex with a few white women.  In August of 1978, he killed a black man at a Burger King in Falls Church, Virginia.  In October of 1979, he used a rifle to kill a mixed race couple, the black Jesse Taylor and the white Marian Bresette, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  In December of 1979, he killed the white fifteen year old prostitute Mercedes Lynn Masters in Dekalb County, Georgia, with a shotgun for having black customers.

He went on to kill a black man in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He killed Rebecca Bergstrom with a handgun in Monroe County, Wisconsin.  He tried to kill Vernon Jordan, Jr. after he had seen Mr. Jordan with a white woman in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  He killed fourteen year old Darrel Lane and his cousin thirteen year old Donte Evans Brown in Bond Hill, Cincinnati.  He killed the mixed race couple Arthur Smothers and Kathleen Mikula in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  He confessed to killing two hitch hikers he picked up, Nancy Santomero and Vicki Durian in Pocahontas County, West Virginia after one of the them admitted to having a black boyfriend.  He killed two black men as they jogged with white women in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Joseph Paul Franklin was captured when he went to give blood at a blood bank, the nurse recognized his tattoo and called authorities.  He received several life sentences for his crimes in several states.  But in 1997 he was sentenced to death in Missouri.  This man has been linked to twenty murders, six aggravated assaults, sixteen bank robberies and two bombings.  He has confessed to eight murders, and has received several life sentences or death sentences for others.  He is currently being held on death row at the Potosi Correctional Center near Mineral Point, Missouri for a crime he committed more than thirty years ago.  He was recently featured on the MSNBC television program Criminal Mindscape where Veteran FBI criminal profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole interviewed the serial killer who admitted his mission was to start a race war in America.  He is still awaiting execution.

In October of 2002, John Allan Muhammad and his seventeen year old accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo started a twenty day crime spree that resulted in the murder of ten people and injury to four more.  The two men were arrested in connection with the attacks on October 24, 2002.  John Allan Muhammad was a member of the Nation of Islam in 1987 and later changed his surname to Muhammad.  His was put on trial for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers on October 9th of 2002 in Prince William County, Virginia back in October of 2003 and he was found guilty of capital murder the following November.  Four months later he was sentenced to death. On November 10, 2009, at 9:11 PM Eastern Standard Time, John Allan Muhammad was pronounced dead at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia.

A Day Of Rememberance For Our Veterans

Silly Superstitions

One of the most frightening things about the old African traditions is its association with voodoo.  The word voodoo here is not a reference to the many variations of the African based religions that developed throughout both American continents and throughout the Caribbean islands among African slaves and their descendants.  Indeed, as a practitioner of a Yoruba based belief system, I have to confess that technically my family and I participate in this spirituality.

The voodoo I refer to is the more superficial based on silly superstitions without much in the way of facts to support such beliefs.  This bastardized and overly dramatized version of the African belief system gets played in Hollywood with such films such as the Believers, Eve’s Bayou, Serpent and the Rainbow, Skeleton Key, and the James Bond film Live and Let Die.  Playing on people’s fears of African spirituality, many people are quick to prey on our collective superstitious and are quick to portray African traditions as something evil and better left alone.  As a young Christian in Sunday school I was taught that anything African was to be avoided if you wanted to stay in god’s good graces.

As I grew older I began to realize that a lot of what I was hearing was just plain silly superstition.  But that was back in the early stages of me questioning what I was being told to believe and my relationship with Christianity began to wane.  As I started to grow in my African based spirituality, I began to earn a better understanding of how the honest reality of African traditions can be manipulated into the silly superstitions that became so popular.  While I may not believe the superstition that laying a broom at the door of your house will keep spirits out at night, I do believe that there are spirits.

I have to admit that there are things that I do not fully understand and yet I believe.  But it’s not fully necessary for me to understand how things work to believe in them.  I don’t understand how microwave ovens work but I believe that they will heat my food when I push that little button.  I have faith that someone else understands how they work and my personal experience with microwave ovens gives me faith that I can take to the bank.  The same thing is true with my beliefs in the Orisa based spirituality.

Now, with all of that said, I had to laugh the other day when I saw my old landlord driving a rental car.  It seems the woman had an accident and her relatively brand new car was in the shop being repaired.  My first thought was karma.  We moved out of her apartment building at the beginning of September.  Because of a post office mix up, despite how many change of address forms will fill out, our mail continues to go to her apartment building.  The woman occasionally calls and tells us we have mail waiting for us to pick up.  Whenever she calls, we apologize and go pick up our mail.  Her house is practically in our backyard so we see each other often.

Well, last month we were expecting one piece of mail that was pretty crucial.  It was a notice regarding my son’s health benefits that needed immediate attention and quick reply.  We were trying to beat a deadline.  Instead of forwarding the mail to us as usual my landlord sent it back to the sender.  She said she thought it was too important to forward.  By the time we found out what happened we had missed the deadline.  Now, for the next year at least, we are paying an extra two hundred fifty dollars a month out of our pocket to replace his lost benefit.  That’s an extra three thousand dollars that we need.  The misses was upset.  I said she’ll get hers.

But the misses wasn’t content just knowing that karma would address the issue.  She took the case to Baba Esu and asked for some tangible justice.  She didn’t want anything drastic.  Just something that would make her life just as inconvenient as she had made ours.  Just a couple weeks later, we now see her driving her rental.

The misses felt bad.  I continued to laugh.  She said that she asked for something bad in a fit of anger and now regrets it.  I advised her in the future to make sure she’s calm and rational whenever she asks for such things.  She asked me if I ever wished for something to happen to somebody.  I said of course.  And if whatever I asked for comes to past I will simply say thank you.  If somebody pisses me off to the point that I’m asking Orisa to step in on my behalf and take somebody to the tool shed, then chances are pretty good that I felt that they deserved it.

Besides, there is nothing to support the fact that what happened to our landlord has anything to do with us.  It’s not like our old landlord has never wrecked a car before.  I think in the year and a half since we’ve been here she’s already had a couple fender benders.  This is just the latest.  Besides, I’ve been asking Baba to help us win the lottery and that never happens.  I’m pretty sure that asking for something bad to happen to somebody in a fit of anger doesn’t work either.

But nevertheless, I think I’ll buy Baba Esu something nice today.  You never know how the spiritual realm operates.   And I’d rather err on the side of caution.  Wouldn’t want to piss Baba off, even if I do think it might be nothing more than silly superstition.  I might want to do some more superstitious stuff sometime in the future and I would like to stay on Baba’s good side.

Jesse Jackson Is Going To Get You

“If the police had detained her against her will for safety reasons we would be hearing from jesse jackson about violating the right of black americans women. The national media needs to get the word out and the police and fbi need to find this young american woman asap, regardless of her race.” – A comment from betier in response to Mitrice Richardson Is Just Another Missing Black Woman

Is it just me or do a lot of people want to perpetrate the fraud that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton wield a lot of influence in American culture?  Anytime somebody tries to call attention to some disparity that happens to fall along racial lines, somebody is quick to say something like if some racially generic institution that is heavily controlled and influenced by white people tries to do the right thing then Mr. Jackson or Mr. Sharpton will be quick to jump down their throats like the wrath of god.  This begs the question, what has either one of these men done to instill such fear into the dominant community?

When the news broke that Rush Limbaugh was about to participate in the purchase of the St. Louis Rams, a number of people on all sides of the racial divides came out to protest the move due to Mr. Limbaugh’s reputation as a race baiter.  But to defend Mr. Limbaugh and his insensitivity toward racial issues, people attacked Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson as two of the most racist people in America.  Why has either one of these men done to earn such a reputation for racial division from the dominant community that inspires people to want to give a racist like Mr. Limbaugh a free pass?

If people take a long, hard, honest look at Mr. Jackson’s and Mr. Sharpton’s long, distinguished careers, what have they really said or done that has significantly helped the black community?  Sure they have helped to sue people and bring attention to certain issues of racial discrimination.  But other than the high profile complaining the good reverends don’t really deliver much to the black community at large.  Mr. Jackson formed his Rainbow/PUSH organization.  Mr. Sharpton developed his National Youth Movement.  Both of these organizations do much for the black community.

But they also do much for the dominant community as well.  Mr. Jackson is on record fighting to keep the plug from being pulled on the believed to be brain dead Terry Schiavo.  Mr. Sharpton regularly does his appearance on television on shows like Boston Legal, New York Undercover, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as well being a special commentator for such shows as Meet the Press and This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  Both Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton have made a lot of money participating in institutions near and dear to the heart of the dominant community.  Both men have done very well financially speaking.

People need to wakeup and take a look at who really benefits from Mr. Sharpton’s and Mr. Jackson’s theatrics.  People want to point to such incidents as Mr. Jackson calling New York City Hymie Town for all the Jews that reside there and Mr. Sharpton participating in the discredited Tawana Brawley case.  Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton are not two super heroes working for truth, justice, and the black community’s way of life.  In all honesty, these two men have benefited greatly from the status quo.  And people who benefit from the status quo are less likely to honestly participate in its true abolishment.

Some people think that these two men are sitting and waiting, ready to pounce when some institution steps out of line and treats black people unfairly.  But in all likelihood, these two reverends rarely go into one of their high profile theatrical productions without careful consideration of the impact to the status quo.  Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton might work to bring attention to some individual heinous acts.  But they really don’t do much, have done little to change the plight of the black community.

High profile civil rights activists worth millions of dollars probably don’t want to do anything that would really jeopardize their high dollar earning potential.  And so when people say silly things about police not wanting to do anything to upset Mr. Jackson or Mr. Sharpton and bring down their wrath, who are they trying to kid?  Jesse and Al are so far from consideration it isn’t even close to making a difference.  Neither one of these men, and no one else either, is some kind of boogeyman that the dominant community needs to fear.

This is not to say that if I was being unfairly treated by authorities I wouldn’t welcome the help attention from either one of these reverends would bring to my case.  But I also know that if I’m being railroaded by some racist machine, I seriously doubt if I could count on help from Mr. Sharpton or Mr. Jackson.  These two old school civil rights activists are pretty careful with the cases they select to stick their reputation on.

Regardless, to blame these two for the dominant community’s inability to interact with the black community with common sense, compassion, and sensitivity is truly inappropriate and totally inaccurate.  These reverends are in no way, shape, or form responsible for the police mishandling the arrest of Mitrice Richardson or Rush Limbaugh not getting the Rams or any of the other racially disparate events people want to give the dominant community a pass on.

Suspicion of Hatred

I find it frustrating to be constantly accused of being a person who hates white people. While it is true that I don’t care for people who are blatantly racist or people who may collaborate in the subjugation of black people, I hardly think that I can be summarized as someone who simply goes around hating white people. I don’t believe there is a logical explanation for such a conclusive jump based on assumptions that don’t even scratch the surface.  I believe that to accuse me of racism is to avoid taking an honest look at the issues of racism at hand and recognize that many people are synonymous with being blatantly racist against dark people and are just much too willing to participate and/or tolerate the subjugation of people based on nothing more than the color of skin.

It is a matter of fact that the dominant culture is controlled tremendously by a mindset that is sensitive to issues from the majority of white people’s perspective. While it may go without saying that many people who fall into this category are in fact white there is a growing number of black people who have adopted a white oriented mindset, a way of thinking and analyzing issues that protects white privilege, in a variety of issues that may clash with perspectives from the black community. The perspective of the black community that runs contrary to the dominant culture is often scorned and minimized as much as possible in order to reduce its impact on the larger community.

One of the most glaring examples of this phenomenon that immediately come to mind are John White and his family versus Daniel Cicciaro and his family, the conflict between the black students and white students in Jena, Louisiana, the difference in perspectives when the two cultures look at what happened to Martin Lee Anderson, Genarlow Wilson, Shelwanda Riley, Shequanda Cotton, Henry Louis Gates, the Katrina disaster, Don Imus, Duane “Dog” Chapman, and such. In each of these examples the majority of black people who bothered to give any thought to what was going on found themselves at odds with the dominant perspective of the issue at hand. And the excuses people provide for this disparity between the two communities are truly lame.

While many people in the black community felt that John White was treated unfairly many people from the majority  mindset would say that Mr. White is a murderer who got his comeuppance. While black people reflect on what happened in New Orleans, Louisiana in the aftermath of Katrina as a public disgrace of the federal government, people from the majority mindset will dismiss all the people suffering through the storm and the resulting flooding as nothing more than an unfortunate set of circumstances. While the black community may have enjoyed a small victory with Don Imus being fired, the dominant culture compensated Mr. Imus for being a “victim” of a company that had the audacity to listen to black people. Not only did Mr. Imus get his voice back on the airwaves, he was awarded a multi million dollar settlement for his troubles.

Any one of these fore mentioned issues would generate consternation by its lonesome to anyone with honest compassion for the black community. But these issues, compounded by many more, are a constant reminder to the black community that our position is not from one of strength or from one of righteousness but from one of suffrage and weakness. Our position is not one of a people who feel part of the whole but of a people dominated by the whole. This is a fact that many will dispute as fiction. Many people will argue that black people are indeed treated fairly, but the fact of that matter is that the black community is ill prepared to compete in the employment market with white people. And, even though these people believe that this is the case, they make the choice to do nothing to correct the imbalance.

Does this mean that all black people are a victim? No. Some black people thrive very well in this system that favors white people. Black people who demonstrate their willingness to adopt the idea that this “race based disparity is okay” mindset and participate in the defense of the status quo that allows the more dominate white community to flourish and the subordinate black culture to languish will do well from a financially perspective.

But everyday we get a reminder of our true place in America’s collective eye.  Every now and then we see instances of what America thinks of her black population.  Take for the example the Long Island contractor who had to audacity John White who crossed the line and actually thought he was somehow immune from ever being perceived as little more than another common black man.  Dude had the nerve to defy the community he was permitted to live in, thought he had the right to defend his house from some drunk white teenagers, and killed a white man’s son who was in the middle of committing a crime.  And dude paid the price for forgetting his place.

In the larger picture these black skinned people are part of the black community’s problem. Many of these black people would defend the white subjugation of black with more vigor than most white people could ever muster. This is part of the reason why you will see Juan Williams, Jason Whitlock, Clarence Thomas, Charles Barkley and other black people who protect the status quo and give their support by voicing their allegiance to the system on a regular basis fronting for subjugating policies.

Does this mean that all people in the dominant community are equally guilty? No. The behavior of the dominant community runs the gamut just like the behavior that can be found in the black community. Many people from the racially generic pool will actively work to keep black people in their proper place. Many others are complacent happy not to disturb the status quo that protects their inherited advantage. Not exactly a subjugator but nevertheless supporting the subjugation by not doing anything to stop it and tolerating its existence.

However some people are compassionate enough to put aside any racial prejudices that they may harbor and give black people a fair chance to participate in the procurement of materialism and wealth that is an absolute mandatory in America. And believe it or not some of these people who do offer jobs and opportunities to the black community do so without the requirement that black people shuck and jive, conform and submit, and show their unfailing devotion to the status quo rules.

Do I hate white people? The answer is a resounding not at all. Do I suffer from suspicions and think that the racially generic people are more likely to contribute to the subjugation of me and the rest of the black community? Unfortunately I have to confess that I do. But do I walk up to every white person that I see and saddle them with my suspicions before I even get a chance to know them? I’m happy to say no. I am constantly putting my prejudices to the side and give strangers the benefit of doubt. Unfortunately I have to say that many times over my suspicions are confirmed.

When I started working at my current job I greeted every person I met in the hallway, break room, or wherever with a hello or some kind of acknowledgment that I see that they exist. I quickly learned who will reciprocate acknowledgment of my existence and respond. After the umpteenth time of not getting a hello back you learn why bother.  It is rare to see black people at the office that will ignore me or look the other way when I speak to them. But a lot of white people are hateful enough to make the choice not to say hello when I speak to them. After several attempts at making eye contact and saying hello and watching them look away or start looking at their feet or anything to not respond, I have to leave them be. Maybe this is a person that doesn’t speak to anybody. But then I will see these people open themselves up and speak to somebody else in the hallway or somebody else in the break room. The fact that they will speak to other white in the office only helps to confirm my suspicions.

Chances are a white person is more likely to be the type of person who will choose not to acknowledge a black person as an equal, as competent, as a human being who deserves the courtesy of a greeting. That doesn’t keep me from speaking to and acknowledging white people. Despite what I may think and what I have learned I will give each person that I meet the first time the benefit of a doubt. All too often my suspicions about white people are confirmed. And this is what happens when I say hello. Imagine what would happen if I had to apply for a job.  White or black or anything in between, I don’t hate anyone because of the color of the skin.

The Disgusting Truth

A New Round Of Political Games

The dust has settled in the struggle between conservatives and liberals and we are beginning to see the changes in our political landscape.  Yesterday, the Republicans Party picked up the governor’s office in Virginia and New Jersey, even though President Barack Obama had campaigned a bit for both of those state’s Democratic nominee.  Yesterday’s results may call attention to the fact that Mr. Obama is not able to overcome the rest of the Democratic Party’s inability to appeal to their Democratic base.  This should be a warning to all the Democratic politicians facing reelection next year, two years into Mr. Obama’s administration, at all levels of the government from the local to the national.

It is a safe assumption that most of the Democrats have safe seats.  But a good percentage will face strong competition from Republican or conservative challengers.  Over the next year, these politicians will have to decide how closely they want to align themselves with Mr. Obama’s agenda and the rest of the party leadership.  Their constituents are watching their choices and actions very closely.

But it isn’t all roses for the conservatives.  Republican Party politicians suffered their own share of setbacks.  An upstate New York district that the Republicans have controlled for more than a century went to Democrat Bill Owens won a special election after conservative activists went public with their political bickering.  Staunch conservatives pressured the Republican nominee to quit the race and supported a third party candidate.  Indeed, every incumbent should take note that the voting public is ready for change, any change in the political climate, if they feel their representatives, regardless of party affiliation, aren’t working for the public’s benefits.  The voting public is more cynical now than ever.  People want tangible, real solutions to the problems facing the country and not just hard line dogma that does nothing but inspire people to dig their heals in.

What all of us should have learned from yesterday’s elections is that issues can trump ideology.  Issues like the three Gs, god, guns, and gays, take a back seat when the entire country is in a recession.  In polling-place surveys, the overwhelming majority in Virginia and New Jersey said they were worried about the economy.  And even though there are signs of economic recovery, good jobs have not returned just yet, and trouble looms if people are still not seeing some kind of improvement in their bottom line by the next time they go to the polls.

Yes people were ready for change last year when they elected Mr. Obama.  But people are still waiting for that change and if the Democrats that were so overwhelmingly elected last year aren’t able to produce the change they promised then maybe they need a reminder that they only have so much time to dither in their political roles before they too will be replaced.  It isn’t so much that Republicans can win as Democrats can lose and they can lose big.  The biggest advantage the Democratic Party had in previous elections was the record of former President George W. Bush.  But Mr. Bush wasn’t going to stay the albatross around the conservative’s neck forever.  And as much as people might like Mr. Obama as a person, he alone does not a party make.

Today the airwaves were thick with conservative politicians and analyst and political pundits and party leaders bragging about their party’s political victories.  The blue state and red state numbers aren’t really going to change that much.  Numbers wise, there should be little impact to the legislative agenda.  But from an incumbent who should want to stay in his or her job’s perspective the impact can be earth shattering.  In order to appeal to a broader political base, Democratic contenders might try to move more to the center and abandoning their own political base.  Such a move is bound to deflate their core constituents and no matter how much a Democratic candidate might try to look conservative, the Democratic can’t out conserve a conservative.

The truth of the matter is that this should be a wakeup call for both Democrats and Republicans to do more to work together for the benefit of the people.  It might sound like a common sense concept.  Every politician promises to work across the aisle for the benefit of the American people.  But in practice, the politician that is ready to do what is best for the people is truly a novel concept.  There will always be a tendency for the politician to do only that which protects the politician’s job.  Sincere change for the better will always be hard when half the people in politics can benefit more by gumming up the works and keeping the status quo.  Every year we hear how the people want change and the political spectrum changes because people want the bums out.  This year is no different.  Next year will just be more of the same.

Raising Cash

Blockbuster superstar movie maker Nicolas Cage has found himself in what’s been described as catastrophic financial circumstances.  The actor attributes his situation to his former shady money manager for which he is suing to recoup his losses.  Mr. Cage actually had to sell off his castle in Bavaria.  He has put a couple of his houses in New Orleans on the market.  They’re both worth over three million dollars.  Mr. Cage is also selling off deep pocket properties in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

How could one of Hollywood’s highest paid actors find himself in deep money troubles?  In his lawsuit, Mr. Cage claims that his former business manager financially enriched himself with several million dollars in fees while Mr. Cage’s finances were taking a turn for the worse.  With all that poor management, it is surprising that Mr. Cage could scrape up any money to buy German castles and mansions and other pieces of real estate all over the country.  In the court papers filed in Los Angeles, Mr. Cage says he relied on his manager to handle his financial affairs to ensure that he and his family would have a financially secure future.  But now, poor Mr. Cage is forced to sell major assets at huge losses and it is entirely his manager’s fault.  What’s a super mega star to do?

Just a few days ago there was a story floating around about Antoine Walker, the former mega basketball star, who earned nine figures over the course of twelve years of running up and down the court, but is now deep in financial trouble and falling deeper.  People were ready to say straight up that Mr. Walker had a lavish lifestyle that was bound to put him in the poor house.  And everybody was ready to believe Mr. Walker was financially irresponsible.  We are ready to believe that it was his own fault.

And yet, when we hear something similar about Mr. Cage, buying house after house and living on the edge in a similarly reckless rush to financial ruin, many of us are ready to believe that there is a logical reason for his situation that might resolve Mr. Cage of all or at least most of the blame.  He may have been culpable, but there are extenuating circumstances.  He needed all of his high dollar homes.  He deserved to live a life worthy of any here today gone tomorrow rapper featured on MTV Cribs, but now wants to cry foul because it was his manager’s job to watch out for the Cage family’s financial future.

With enough clout to demand about twenty millions dollars to do a movie, Mr. Cage is a virtual money making machine.  It is estimated that in the past year alone he has earned something in the neighborhood of forty million dollars.  But rumor has it that right now he’s in debt to the IRS to the tune of more than six million dollars.  He’s having a sale in order to stay in the good graces of the national revenue collectors.  And even if his take home was only twenty million dollars it seems that such an income wouldn’t have that much trouble raising six million dollars.  So this begs the question what responsible person burns through that kind of cash so quickly?

Whether or not Mr. Cage is worth all those houses and a bag of chips is besides the point.  There is little difference between Mr. Cage and the previously mentioned Mr. Walker.  The point is that there may be a perception that Mr. Cage may have been duped and is somehow deserving of a little compassion while people could not care less about Mr. Walker.  But his manager didn’t force any mansions down Mr. Cage’s throat.  Mr. Cage pulled that off all by himself.

There is little doubt that Mr. Cage will bounce back from these financial woes.  A quick glance of his future filmography shows that Mr. Cage is scheduled to release six movies over the next couple of years and there is little doubt there will be more after that.  Although he might be broke now he will recover.  This too shall pass and relatively quickly, unlike the financial woes of a has been with no future like Mr. Walker.  There’s little doubt Mr. Cage would live anything like his character portrayal of trailer park trash H.I. McDunnough in Raising Arizona.

But hopefully he’ll learn from this experience.  He might be a little smarter and resist the urge to buy some castle in the Alps simply because he heard it’s for sale.  If it truly was his manager’s fault that he went on his buying spree, then maybe he should be thanking his manager for opening his eyes and showing Mr. Cage how living so close to the edge could be disastrous.  Even mega stars like Nicolas Cage would do well to learn to live well within their means.

Who Elevates The Naysayer?

It was reported in Yahoo’s news website that Rush Limbaugh called President Barack Obama immature, inexperienced, in over his head, offering the country radical leadership, and laying siege to the American economy.  The comments were made as part of an hour long Fox News Sunday featuring Mr. Limbaugh as the lone guest.  Mr. Limbaugh was interviewed from his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Obama administration has labeled the Fox network as the voice of the radical right wing of the Republican Party.  The Fox network has made its contempt of the Obama administration plane long before Mr. Obama was elected and long before he took office.  On Mr. Obama’s inauguration day, while all the other networks were celebrating a new President of the United States and all the events associated with a changing of the executive branch, Fox bucked the trend and focused on former President George “Dubya” Bush as he returned to his Crawford, Texas ranch as a civilian.  The Fox focus was on Mr. Bush’s last trip on Air Force Once and the small assemblage of people who came to the airport to welcome Mr. Bush home.

Since that January day the Fair and Balanced station has been heavy on the negative criticism against Mr. Obama.  There has been no balance of reporting anything from a positive perspective.  So it is no surprise that Fox would give any high profile character willing to express disgust at Mr. Obama a forum to spew that rage.  So it is no surprise that Fox would feature Mr. Limbaugh.  But what is surprising is the fact that so many other broadcasting networks want to get onto this story and report what Mr. Limbaugh said about Mr. Obama as well as if it was news.

With all the attention given to Mr. Limbaugh, the news reporters trying to stir controversy will ask Mr. Obama’s closest advisors for a comment on what Mr. Limbaugh said.  Of course, the advisors will dismiss Mr. Limbaugh’s criticism as nothing important.  In fact while making an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, David Axelrod, the Senior Advisor to the President, said that Mr. Limbaugh is an entertainer while the President has to run the country.

With all that said, a lot of people are criticizing the Obama administration for taking their eyes off the national prize in order to respond to people like Rush Limbaugh.  The question some people are asking is whether or not Mr. Obama and his staff are better off ignoring the negative criticism coming from the Fox network.  To be seen as engaging in some kind of argument with Mr. Limbaugh is interpreted as diminishing the office of the President and elevating Mr. Limbaugh as something closer to an equal.  And if that’s the case, then why asks for a comment to something Mr. Limbaugh may have said?

Mr. Limbaugh is much more than a simple entertainer.  While it may be true that he holds no political office and he is paid handsomely for his ability to attract an audience of conservatives to listen to his radio show, his special brand of entertainment wreaks of editorials and commentary meant to influence his audience’s opinion and consequently to influence politics.  When Fox gives Mr. Limbaugh an hour long forum to broadcast his disdain for all things Obama, it is trying to influence politics as well.  And to allow such influence to foment without a retort simply invites a dip in favorability ratings and public opinion.

The idea that the President or his staff elevates a political naysayer when they respond to criticism is not true.  The naysayer is elevated when they are given carte blanch to influence the public when he or she is given a public forum to broadcast a messages of derision.  When the Fox network made the decision to put Mr. Limbaugh on to criticize the President, they made a step to elevate Mr. Limbaugh.  When the other networks reported what Mr. Limbaugh said and prompted the President’s closest advisors to respond, they helped to elevate Mr. Limbaugh.

When people say that the Obama administration is playing into their political opponents’ hands by responding to the questions asking for a response, they are helping to elevate the story, they are helping to elevate Mr. Limbaugh, and they are helping to stir controversy and diminish the office of the President.  In fact we all contribute to this equivalency when we give baseless criticism a chance to spread like gossip at a barber shop.  It diminishes the President to defend his character, his position, his office against a lower life form given free reign to spread unwarranted criticism?  That is very doubtful.