Antoine Walker And Money Didn’t Mix
A fool and his money are soon parted. And if that’s truly the case I seriously doubt if there are many people who would call me harsh for calling Antoine Walker one of the biggest fools the world has ever seen. Supposedly, in the twelve years Mr. Walker played in the NBA, the man made more than one hundred ten million dollars. That’s nine figures. You could take my salary multiply it by a thousand and still come up miserably short to that sum. Of course dude didn’t take all that to the bank. Subtract taxes and management fees and the like and still, Mr. Walker took home something way north of fifty million dollars. That is still a handsome king’s ransom.
And yet, what do I see on the net this morning? Mr. Walker is flat busted and sinking fast. The once multi millionaire athlete is being pursued by multiple financial institutions for unpaid debts. He’s been charged with passing rubbery checks in Las Vegas somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars. According to the Boston Globe he owes more than four million to creditors. Where did all of that fortune go? It’s not like it was confiscated for running an illegal kennel in his backyard.
Mr. Walker loved to live large. It wasn’t enough for him to drive a Bentley, he had to drive two. And it wasn’t enough for him to drive two Bentley’s. A Bentley is already custom built to its owners specifications. It’s one of the reasons why the car’s starting price is something like three hundred thousand dollars. But Mr. Walker had to take both of his custom built Bentley’s and have them customized even further with tricked out paint jobs and one of those global satellite enhanced sound systems that can compete with the best technology that NORAD has to offer. And to supplement his automotive taste, rumor has it that there were two Mercedes-Benzes, a high end Range Rover, a Hummer, and a Cadillac Escalade for when he wanted to slum around.
His entourage was large. His jewelry was large. Mr. Walker bought diamonds for his diamonds. The ring on his finger looks large enough to be used to scramble eggs on. He built a mansion for his mother complete with an indoor pool and ten bathrooms. I don’t care how active your bladder is, ten bathrooms is just a bit much. And despite all of this investing in all these material goods and then some, Mr. Walker didn’t invest a dime into anything that could’ve made money in the future when his basketball diary would eventually come to a close.
But now those days are long behind him. That picture you see with his name and number on his back was truly prophetic. Despite all the cars he had in his past Mr. Walker is now a walker. And that number twenty four under his name means that no matter what time it is during the day, twenty four hours a day he’s walking if he wants to get there.
It’s easy to see the folly of Mr. Walker’s ways. But more often than not we the lower life forms on the economic ladder do virtually the same exact thing with the relative pittance (compared to Mr. Walker’s salary one upon a time) that is our paycheck. Too often when we make our purchases we want to spend money like we don’t have a need to save. Need a car? Go to the dealership and buy the most car your credit score will allow. Some fashion magazine says that a new look is the new rave and many people make the choice to discard good clothing simply because it might be just a tad out of the latest style. Some of us try to buy diamonds and pearls and other ornamental jewelry like we had Mr. Walker’s taste. And let’s face it, part of the drain on the economy can be squarely contributed to people who bought way too much house for what they needed. It may not have ten bathrooms but too much is too much no matter how you look at it.
It is easy to point the finger of disappointment at Mr. Walker and say something like that would never happen to me. But it happens to many of us more often than what we think. People wake up one day and realize that they’re about to retire and their savings are woefully inadequate if they exist at all. Corporate America has made it easy for us to live beyond our means and we make the choice to take advantage of their low interest wares each and every day.
We don’t have to live like a multi millionaire to end up in the poor house. We can make the same foolish choices right where we are with our four, our five, or if we are so blessed, our six figure salaries. It’s not necessary to live at the very edge of your means. Tamp it down a bit. Live comfortably and save for a comfortable life in the future. That way, none of us will be one of the people sitting around years from now wondering what happened after we’ve spent way more than we should and asking why wasn’t more done to prepare for the time where income isn’t coming in the way it used to.
The Future Looks Bright For Ford
The first car I ever owned was a 1977 Buick LeSabre that met its untimely demise on a lonely Indiana highway one dark and dreary night as I was driving home from college when my body thought it was a better idea if I started sleeping. I’ll save that story for another day. The second car I ever owned was a 1975 Ford Pinto Pony. And despite all the jokes about Pintos exploding at the slightest provocation, I really loved that car. It was my first manual. And with all the abuse I gave that little machine, and the way it kept coming back for more, the car earned its space of endearment in my heart. And because it was a lowly Pinto, I drove the shit out of it and I never gave a real damn about its welfare.
My third car was a 1985 Ford Mustang GT. It too was a manual and I loved that car as well. But being a young adult with dreams of a wealthy future I decided to start saving any pennies I could and decided life would be cheaper if I quit paying exorbitant insurance premiums and premium fuel prices to satisfy the car’s insatiable thirst. But shortly after I sold that car I regretted getting rid of it. And after a couple months of being without a car, I eventually replaced my 1985 Ford Mustang GT with a 1987 Ford Mustang GT. That was the last Ford I ever owned. It was also the last domestic automobile I owned until the family bought the 2005 Chrysler Town and Country last year.
In the years since giving up my second Mustang the domestic car companies have rolled over and exposed its belly to the foreign competitors. Lowly Hyundai that couldn’t make a car that could compete with a Ford Pinto when it brought its products to the United States market back in 1986 is now at the top of the automotive charts while Chryslers are ranked dead last in the latest reliability survey. If our experience with the Chrysler minivan is any indication I can see how Chrysler ranks dead last. That’s another story for another day.
The point is that the reputation of the domestics has been severely tainted with stale, poorly executed products long overdue for replacement while most of the foreigners are enjoying reputations for quality and products that represent forward thinking in the world of automobiles. And as a case in point, as the nation’s economy took its turn for the worse, the domestics took their hats in hand to Washington in order to get a little help through this downturn. But while General Motors and Chrysler took their bailouts, Ford managed to play things a little more smartly.
With a little more foresight about the future of the automobile market, Ford was able to position itself a little more smartly with its product lineup. Gone are the days of excesses typified by Ford’s shortsighted dabble with products like the Excursion, one of the few products aimed at consumers that could dwarf a Hummer H1. Ford’s reputation is being built on products like the relatively new Fusion and the brand new interpretation of the Taurus. The Ford F-150 has always been the car company’s bread and butter and Ford paid careful attention in the latest execution of this particular staple. And most of the other products in the Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln lineup are displaying similar signs of revival.
Ford’s lineup isn’t completely out of the woods of mediocrity. The Ford Focus is the automotive equivalent of Methuselah and I believe it is still a couple years away from being replaced. The Ford Ranger is another product that has soldiered on virtually unchanged for decades. The Crown Victoria wins the crown for the most ancient. And Lincoln takes an Expedition, dressed it up like a harlot, and throws it out there as a Navigator. There’s still a lot of work to be done.
But Ford is clearly on the right path. According to the latest annual survey by Consumer Reports, of the fifty one models marketed by Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln, forty six were ranked average or better in reliability. Several of Ford’s models are consistently scoring above perennial leaders Honda and Toyota. In some respects, Ford is now making some vehicles with true world class quality status.
Yet, that less than stellar reputation for shoddy work is the albatross that still hangs around Ford’s neck. While Mercury was the only domestic brand to finish in the top ten, the Ford brand finished sixteenth out of thirty three competing brands and Lincoln finished twentieth. Clearly it is going to be a challenge to change people’s impression of how they think about Ford. It’s helpful that Ford has started with the basics like designing and taking care when building their products. When the time comes to replace the Town and Country, we just might have to give Ford another look. Who knows? I just might get my fourth Ford.
Blacks Against Mad Mothers
Six black students walk into a bar on a Saturday night. Although that might sound like the beginning of a joke, this is a pretty serious example of racism, as well as the insidious nature of racism and its ability to hide in plain sight. An employee at the bar tells the black student that their clothing is inappropriate. The black students are told that their jeans are too baggy and the bar has a dress code. The black students have no choice but to leave the bar. But in an experiment to see if their race had anything to do with the decision to not let them in, one of the students exchanged his clothing with a white student. The white student wearing the previously inappropriate jeans walked into the same bar right past the same employee. Suddenly, without black skin to taint their appearance, the baggy jeans become acceptable. It turns out that it wasn’t the bagginess of the jeans that was unacceptable, but the blackness that the jeans were being associated with.
This incident happened a few days ago to students of Washington University here in St. Louis, Missouri, that was participating in a senior class trip to Chicago, Illinois. The students were trying to get into a nightclub called Mother’s Original Bar. Representatives of the bar said security concerns and not racism guided their decision to deny access to the black students. The bar people say gang violence was common nearby and was merely erring on the side of caution. But it is rather noteworthy to see those security concerns evaporate when they see white students. The bagginess of the jeans was just an excuse used to turn away students who looked naturally thuggish, code word for too black, in their attire. The black students have filed a civil rights complaint with the Illinois attorney general’s office. A similar complaint has been filed to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations as well as the United States Justice Department. Click here to read more on this story at the Chicago Breaking News Center.
Obviously this is a case of race based discrimination. By the white student donning the jeans and walking into the bar, clothing can be eliminated as the distinguishing factor between admission and no admission. No mention was made as to whether or not the alleged nearby crime violence was perpetrated by black people or what percentage of this crime activity was committed by black people. Nevertheless, by citing the supposedly gang violence happening nearby, the bar is trying to say that it is safe to assume that the black students may have been part of that violence and is therefore a threat and at the same time, safe to assume that white people pose no threat. Because one or some black people commit crime, it is now safe to assume that all black people have the potential to commit similar crimes. But by the same token, all white people are never held in suspicion when one or some white people commit crime. That is by definition race based discrimination. This is a first class example of racism.
But the insidiousness of this case that is truly appalling is the number of people who continue to defend such racism. Many of the comments that accompany the article mentioned above show people’s willingness to label the black students as thuggish in appearance with nothing but the judgment of the bar’s employees to go by. One comment says something to the effect that black honor students don’t have the common sense not to dress like thugs and yelling like simpletons for help because they are being repressed. Another comment implies that these black people got bent out of shape and want to act like idiots. People are quick to label black people as idiots for standing up for their rights and challenging race based discrimination as idiotic behavior. People make no distinction between the black people who commit the alleged crime the bar employees refer to, and the black students who simply want to be accepted as equals in society’s eye.
But if these honor students learned anything is that in the judgment of many, they are not the equal of white people. All it takes is a pair of baggy jeans to take their standing on our society down a peg or two. All it takes is a pair of jeans that are hideous and threatening on their black flesh but at the same time are rendered benign and innocuous on wholesome obviously white skin, before they are collectively labeled thuggish and unacceptable. Some black person somewhere is a criminal and therefore, it is socially acceptable to view them as thugs as well. Their grades don’t matter. Their attire doesn’t matter. The fact that they may have never been guilty of any crime in their lives doesn’t matter one bit. All that matters is that some black person somewhere can be considered less that socially acceptable. And as long as that type of black person exists, all black people are cut from that same cloth unless proven otherwise.
Detroit’s Need For Greed
Detroit, Michigan just had an auction of real estate property that the city holds. A lot of the property has been seized from owners who have abandoned them. A lot of the property has been seized from owners who have seen hard times and simply couldn’t afford to continue to pay the taxes. The properties run the gamut of conditions of decay from a modern interpretation of ancient ruins to the fairly pristine. And a lot of people wanted to attend an auction held to sell off all this property.
On the auction block was almost nine thousand homes and lots, the remnants of Detroit’s property market. The properties seized represented an area the size of New York’s Central Park. But it is rumored that the total vacant land in the motor city now occupies an area almost the size of Boston. And what little remains of the good stuff was being picked over by deep pocket speculators from around the country leaving the more downtrodden parcels of land to the locals who have more of an incentive to rebuild neighborhoods.
Many potential homeowners that the city so desperately needs to rebuild communities judge the auction process unfair. Investors from California and New York were competing with each other to claim the relatively few livable properties. People looking to buy properties for their families and make the investment to rebuild neighborhoods have to compete with investors who have never even laid eyes on the properties they are buying and have no intention to ever see them let alone live in these homes and make the commitment to help restore the city.
The story of Detroit’s real estate auction reminded me of my own ordeal with trying to buy abandoned property here in St. Louis, Missouri. The Peacemaker family spent the better part of a year and a half looking for a home to buy. We wanted one of the old school construction jobs. We wanted an all brick house built a hundred years ago when a house was built to last pert near forever. House after house that we saw and a few we tried to buy only to hit road blocks. Many times we were too late. We would try to buy a home only to be told that the house we wanted had been sold to an investor.
We were watching the four family house right next door to the apartment we were renting. We saw that the building was recently abandoned and we knew it was just a matter of time before it would come onto the market. We called the police when people broke into the home. We tried to protect it. And the very morning the building hit the market we were told by our real estate agent that it was already sold to an investor. That was almost a year ago. That house continues to sit abandoned and a blight to the neighborhood to this day. The city takes responsibility for keeping the yard from getting too far out of hand. But the city typically waits until whatever passes for grass looks like prairie wheat and weeds grow into bushes before getting someone over there to do a half-assed job of maintaining the yard. They don’t even pick up the trash before running across the lawn.
But somebody made a nice investment and will no doubt make a little money whenever the market comes back. In the meantime, the neighborhood has to deal with one more house that’s unavailable. Not only is it unavailable, it is one more blight in a community full of blight. And the more blight in the community, the less incentive residents have to stay and help rebuild. And the less incentive residents have to stay and rebuild, the more opportunities investors have to invest in foreclosures and abandoned properties and the like.
All an investor needs is one local real estate agents who doesn’t give a damn about the community. The same is true about a real estate auction intended to get land off the city’s books. If someone in New York has the money to pay for services then it doesn’t matter if a building or piece of land gets used or continues to decay from neglect. All that matters is the short term benefit of immediate enrichment. The long term, socially responsible gains associated with making sure that people have access to housing and a community has a strong foundation of neighbors who care about being good neighbors.
The American way has become a selfish way. Instead of people working together in a socially responsible way we continue to embrace a philosophy that leaves ourselves open to be plucked by carpetbaggers who don’t give a damn thousands of miles away. Those people who invested in those Detroit homes will do very well whenever the city is able to turn its self around. But in order to turn its self around, somebody has to be able to make a commitment to live in the city. That can’t happen as long as investors keep buying up all the good places. At this rate, the city is unlikely to turnaround any time, neither sooner nor later.
A Debate Should Never Keep A Plane From Landing
“Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking. We just wanted to let you know if you look out the left window you’ll notice that we’re over one of the Great Lakes. It looks like we’ve managed to over fly our destination just a bit. The first officer and I were having a heated discussion. The tower’s been trying to contact us for the past hour or so but we forgot to turn our radio on. There’s nothing to worry about. This is totally understandable. Those military aircrafts flying around us are going to escort us to our destination. We’re going to reestablish contact with the ground and get some instructions so we can turnaround and go back about a hundred fifty miles or so. We should’ve been on the ground thirty or so minutes ago. We’ll be on the ground shortly. Flight crew prepare for landing.”
The cockpit crew of Northwest Airlines Flight 188 says they were having a heated discussion about airline policy or some nonsense. And at no time did the pilot or copilot go to sleep. We’re supposed to believe that the cockpit crew were so engaged in making their points that they forgot they were sitting at the helm of an Airbus A320, forgot that they were responsible for the lives of about a hundred fifty people, forgot that they were supposed to keep in radio contact in case they needed to receive any unexpected instructions from the FAA. I mean, after the terrorist attack on that fateful day that made September 11th so infamous, anybody flying a plane should be prepared to receive instructions to suddenly land. All I can say is that if it was a debate that kept them from landing that plane it must’ve been a debate with the Sandman.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport Police were first to meet the jet’s crew and reported the pilot and copilot as cooperative, apologetic and appreciative. Both the pilot, Timothy B. Cheney, and the first officer, Richard I. Cole, submitted to a breathalyzer and the results were a flat zero for the detection of alcohol. When the authorities boarded the plane, the cockpit cabin door was open, but the flight attendants said that there was no interaction between the cockpit and passengers. The lead flight attendant told authorities that she was unaware there had been an incident aboard. Supposedly there is no obvious explanation for why the airplane was flying for seventy eight minutes of total radio silence at 8:00 PM eastern time the past Wednesday night. The investigation being conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board was hoping the plane’s cockpit voice recorder would either confirm or deny the cockpit crew’s account. But the device is good for only thirty minutes of audio. But the voice recorder was capable of recording only thirty minutes of audio. The plane was in the air for another forty five minutes after radio contact was restored.
There is no obvious explanation for the incident except the fact that the cabin crew fell asleep and is now trying to cover up their mistake. And even if they didn’t fall asleep, even if their story is true that they simply forgot that they were flying a plane full of people traveling hundreds of miles an hour through the air at an altitude of tens of thousands of feet, the two are still seriously irresponsible. These two can no longer be trusted to keep the welfare and safety of the passengers and the plane their paramount concern.
But let these two hold on to their claim that this was nothing but the result of a series of unfortunate incidents. A discussion about airline policy was all it took to send a plane a hundred fifty miles off course and put the FAA on high alert. In fact, some people want to question the actions of FAA personnel under investigation because they didn’t call NORAD to send military planes to potentially shoot the wayward plane down. The aftermath of all those planes being used as missiles has really made us jumpy. If people don’t leap at the first sign of trouble and smash that kill button at then they need to be investigated. People need to learn that here in America we don’t live in an age where we can afford cooler heads prevailing.
And how it look if we are going to hold FAA personnel’s feet to the proverbial fire for not calling the military to potentially shoot down a wayward plane, but then buy the heated discussion excuse of a couple of pilots who overshot their destination by a hundred fifty miles. It’s my opinion that whoever was in that cabin when that plane flew over that airport should lose their pilots license. It doesn’t matter if they were sleep or in a debate. The only excuse we could buy is that somebody broke into the cabin and actually interfered with the crew or the controls. Doesn’t sound like that happened. The only thing I can say is that if they were arguing about what should happen to pilots who fail to do their job, they are about to find out.
News 4 Awake Is 4 Sale
This morning I did the usual. I woke up at least an hour before the crack of dawn. I did the usual get up and get ready for work routine with a shower, shave, and shine. I meandered up the steps, turned the television on, and started making my breakfast. Things have been extremely busy lately and the Peacemaker family hasn’t had much of a chance to do any grocery shopping. So my choices were pretty limited. I settled for a bagel and a vanilla protein shake made with orange juice.
My usual morning television fare consists of news. I had just missed the CBS network news and had to settle for the local news from KMOV-TV Channel 4. Here in St. Louis, Missouri the only network news available after five in the morning is ABC. But their commercials are so peppered with previews from Maury Povich with his investigative reporting looking for baby daddies. The previews show women devastated from the news that some man is not the father of her brand new baby. The previews are full of over the top urban drama. It’s hard to take the news from such a network that would tout such garbage seriously. I make it a point to avoid such dishonest social programming.
Bagel and shake in hand I sat down at the kitchen table and fired up the laptop. I had just started surfing the net when news anchors Virginia Kerr and Mark Cox concluded their story about an overnight fire at an abandoned building and started their next story about a new cell phone being sold at Walmart stores. It was a prepaid cell phone available for the unbelievable prices of just thirty dollars with no commitments. After a couple more sentences about the phone, the two anchors started their fill the empty space banter about how the phone was such a good deal and how they planned on getting one. And this was news?
For more than the past year I have had a pay as you go Net10 cell phone that I purchased from Target for the unbelievable price of just thirty dollars. The phone came with no contract commitment and I can purchase additional time by going back to the Target or by visiting the Net10 website. Buying time for my phone runs for a flat ten cents a minute. However, about two or three months ago the Target store was discounting the phones and the previously thirty dollar cell phone was going for less than twenty four dollars. This was perfect timing because I had recently lost my phone charger and to buy a new one was going to run fifteen dollars. I could buy a new phone that comes with a charger for twenty four dollars, and each new phone came with three hundred minutes. I bought the last three phones the store had and put them away. I used the activation code for the new phones to keep my current phone running. I now have three spare phones, three spare battery chargers, and three spare batteries if I should ever need them. Sweet!
Like I said, that was several months ago on a phone that I had originally purchased well over a year ago. What KMOV-TV was trying to break as something news worthy was hardly such. It was little more than a veiled commercial for Walmart delivered by their two top morning news anchors and wrapped in the credibility of the local news. I was appalled and disgusted.
This evening I came home in time to watch The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on the local Public Broadcasting Service channel. One of their stories was the continued decline of newspapers and news programs. The first thing that popped into my mind was the dribble about the new Walmart phone being pushed on people by the two news anchors I caught earlier. The Channel 4 News team is often touted in commercials as the news team that the public can trust. The commercials never say what the public can trust them with. I guess we can trust that Channel 4 stands ready to sell their image to any corporation ready to pay. The whole affair was just more confirmation that a great deal of today’s news is biased and corrupted by corporate dollars.
KMOV-TV just made a healthy investment to re-brand its morning image as a more modern alternative to the same old behind the desk image of news that has become the staple of broadcast ever since television news was invented. News 4 Awake has the anchors standing in front of flat panel displays with a supposedly more improvised news delivery instead of the constant sticking to their writer’s script. No doubt, this is an effort to appeal to a more youthful television audience and protect market share.
But as news agencies continue to peddle themselves like whores on a corner to any corporate john willing to buy what they have to offer, people will continue to lose interest. People don’t want to watch the news to hear about some sale at Walmart. What people are looking for from the news is news and information free of corporate contamination and corruption.
Had the two anchors admit that they were going to hand up their anchor hats and don pitchmen wares then the whole affair could probably be forgiven. I doubt if I would buy the Walmart phone but at least they wouldn’t be trying to convince me that this was some kind of news story. This is the kind of investigative reporting you could expect from somebody like Maury Povich. It might not be the over the top type of social programming that comes from showing people’s paternity drama. But it is dishonest nevertheless. News 4 Awake is a prime example of the problems associated with modern journalism. Like most news organizations these days it is for sale to the highest bidder.
The Bleak Future Of Black Magazines
As far back as I can remember my parents had Ebony magazine as part of our coffee table library. Mom usually kept a spread of at least eight months in front of the living room sofa. When I asked my mom why she subscribed to the magazine, she said she simply thought it was something that should be in our house. I interpreted that to mean she thought it was something that belonged in black family houses.
When I was little I thought Ebony magazine was to the black community what Life magazine was to the white community. Both magazines had a page size much larger than the other magazines. The only difference was that Life seemed to be focused on the happenings that pertain to the white community while Ebony was focused on the black community. That was back in the late sixties and early seventies when the vestiges of America’s institutionalized segregation was still very much evident everywhere. Black focused magazines like Ebony and Jet had their purpose and fulfilled a need for black people that no other magazines even bothered to try and fill.
Now that we are taking half-assed steps towards a more racially integrated society, black magazines like Ebony and Jet no longer have the market of black people to themselves. Most of the big magazine names have made cuts into the black market. Back in the day, the number of black people who appeared on the cover of the white community’s periodicals could probably be counted on one hand with a couple of missing fingers. If a black somebody was going to appear on the cover it was going to be through a black magazine.
Forty years later black magazines are struggling to survive. As the walls that kept the black community a more cohesive unit began to crumble under efforts for more racial integration, the magazines that once avoided black people like the plague now bend over backwards to embraces top notch black talent and popularity as well as any black magazine. Now, Ebony and Jet have to compete with Cosmopolitan and Harpers Bazaar to get an interview with a Jada Pinkett Smith or a Denzel Washington. And while many high profile black entertainers, celebrities, politicians, and business people are regularly found in high demand from both sides of the magazine world’s former racial divide, black magazines don’t do too much business with high profile white entertainers, celebrities, politicians, and business people.
Now that many mainstream publications have broadened their racial scope, they enjoy a loyal following from a well racially mixed audience. Walk into many homes of black people who like to read magazines and you’ll see any number of mainstream periodicals that may feature an occasional black person on the cover or through the pages. Unfortunately, it’s a better than fair bet that many white households have no interest in subscribing to a magazine that primarily focuses on issues of major concern to the black community, no matter how closely they may mirror mainstream concerns. So while the black community may endorse more mainstream publications, generally speaking such support is not reciprocated to the black publications.
Now it is well known that a lot of people outside the black community subscribe to Oprah Winfrey’s “O” Magazine. But in all honesty that monthly could hardly be described as primarily focused on the black community. I thumbed through an issue of “O” Magazine and didn’t see a single article about a single person relevant to the black community. The only black person in the book was in a single advertisement. As far as mainstream goes, “O” Magazine ranks right up there with the best of them.
Consequently, the market share for black periodicals is shrinking. They no longer offer that unique perspective on the upper crust of the black community. And as more black people distance themselves from the black community the less relevance black magazines have for these people. The only thing some black people need to know from a magazine is what Beyonce thinks about black hair. What most people in the black community might think is important for the black community isn’t even close to being important for a lot of black people. Who’s got time or a need for such things as informative social commentary?
The black community will cheer and celebrate Vogue when it creates an issue that features nothing but black models in front of the camera, but continues to be put together by the same people who have been excluding black people behind the camera. Many will think that we have arrived and will do what we can to buy the latest manifestation of a post racism era. At the same time, many in the black community will let black magazines with a long of history of promoting most things important to the black community, magazines that employ black people in front as well as behind the camera or the story, fall by the wayside. Black magazines might have been important back in the day when black people didn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell of being the subject of a mainstream periodical.
These days, a handful of black people enjoy superstar recognition from the major publications. Now, we have to ask, if we can see Beyonce everywhere who needs to see her on any of those old black magazines? It’s pretty unfortunate that the black community starts to fall apart as soon as some of us get some kind of acceptance from the majority. My mom told me that she simply thought a black magazine belonged in our black house. I interpret what’s happening to those magazines now as just more proof that people in the black community needs to reset our focus on the black community.
Some Conservatives Have No Tolerance For Compromise
Lindsey Graham is in a bit of some political trouble. The senior Senator from South Carolina is in a little hot water with a good portion of his conservative constituents. Many think that Mr. Graham has caved in to political pressure and has officially betrayed his country. What was this damning act of betrayal? Mr. Graham, a staunch supporter of all things conservative, has the audacity to work on bipartisan legislation with Democrats, the sworn enemies of the Republican Party. Mr. Graham has pledged support for the more than fourteen hundred page Waxman-Markey bill, designed to give the federal government control of free markets through the implementation of cap and trade to curb pollution and save the world from global warming. That sounds like a bastard alright.
In an article published in the New York Times and coauthored with his Democratic rival Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts, Mr. Graham says that he agrees that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security. The depths of his depravity knows no bounds. Even the most casual of conservatives knows that the scientific research on global warming is inconclusive with many of the best scientist that money can buy disputing the fact that global warming exists at all or, if so, is a man made phenomenon or, if so, man’s contribution to global warming is minimal. The fact that many if these partial scientist receive very generous payments from industries with a lot to lose if America takes global warming seriously is just a coincidence.
Conservatives simply refuse to believe any of the calamitous predictions by scientist all over the world and embraced by the liberal left in a vicious plot to ruin the country and hand the keys to our government to foreign nationals. The additional costs that will be imposed on every American family if cap and trade is enacted will be substantial. Electricity costs will double. Nearly two million jobs will be lost. The economy will lose trillions of dollars in gross domestic product by 2035. Is the potential of global warming worth the impact to our struggling economy? Conservatives say no. And if Mr. Graham doesn’t utter an unequivocal no he is betraying everything conservatives stand for.
Mr. Graham was easily reelected to the United States Senate through the support of conservatives for his conservative principles. Lower taxes and less government is the conservative way. Anything less is unacceptable. And to add fuel to the fire that heats up the ire of many conservatives, Mr. Graham publicly supported President Barack Obama’s choice for the United States Supreme Court, the wise Latina Sonia Sotomayor. The man is a total liberal douche bag.
But if many conservatives see Mr. Graham as a product for feminine hygiene, it’s his own fault. As a high profile conservative, Mr. Graham did his best to whip the core of his conservative constituency into a foam spewing rabid frenzy. During the campaign for the presidency between Mr. Obama and his conservative opponent Arizona Senator John McCain, Mr. Graham was uncompromising and relentless in his promotion of the conservative party. There was no room for negotiation. There was no room for conciliation. It was an all or nothing proposition. Mr. Graham said he would be deathly afraid of Mr. Obama winning the White House and would work relentlessly to block Mr. Obama’s liberal agenda.
But the public had different ideas. Six years of our federal government controlled by a strong conservative trifecta controlling the White House, the House of Representative, and the Congress gave many people pause to continue supporting a conservative political agenda. The majority of people saw that change was needed. Now, the Democrats are enjoying their own triple threat and the conservatives are now simply along for the ride. Democrats are in firm control of both congressional houses and are pushing through a liberal agenda. In order to remain a player in the new un-conservative political conservation taking place at the moment, conservatives must now learn a little humility, eat a little crow, and learn to compromise with their opponents in the majority at least for the moment.
To go from a promise to be an unrelenting thorn in the majority’s side to a compromiser probably looks like betrayal. It makes the Senator look weak kneed and unreliable. Many conservatives are now saying that Lindsey Graham has bought into the liberal agenda hook, line, and sinker. He has made his deal with the political devil. And now, that infamous town hall mentality that expressed so much furor at liberals is now being aimed squarely at Mr. Graham. Case in point, there is a video circulating where one of Mr. Graham’s constituents calls him a traitor as he walked out of the auditorium where a town hall meeting was taking place. In response, Mr. Graham says people should just chill out. But it’s hard to simply say chill when just a minute ago he was telling people not to.
Conservatives have long memories and they do not have the most forgiving of hearts. These are the type of people who cheer incessantly for the uncompromising determination of pit bulls in lipstick that have all the vision of a crayon. The word “compromise” simply isn’t a good thing in the conservative dictionary. It is a word synonymous with traitor. Better to be reduced to an ineffective caricature tilting at political windmills than do anything that could even remotely be interpreted as working with the enemy.
