Rage…I agree with mostly everything you said. Well, everything. But I fear this is deeper and that the effects of which may be more troubling.  This isn’t just about Jackson and Obama. Wright Part II was a push from behind the scenes and I know there is more to come.  If Obama fails, I want it to be his failure, and not sabotage from inside the jealous upper class of black elites.

Many will use this election as a barometer of the nation’s attitude about race and toward Afro-Americans.  What that’ll mean to most blacks is unclear.  But it will mean to the “grievious elite” may become more readily apparent.  There has already been a move away from the civil rights paradigm, which some has classified as generational, though Bill Cosby seems a bit older than those 45 and under born post movement. Like you stated, the mantle must be passed on but I sense resistance and that Jackson is merely one of many.

Entrust is the operative word and I don’t see that occurring.

For all of the good he has done in a fading past for Americans (both of color and otherwise), Jackson in his personal life and again here as on many occasion has shot himself in the foot with his mouth. He should know better than to become an Al Sharpton, but cannot seem to hold himself back. If Imus had said it, he’d be crucified, Jesse.
Still, the other side of my perspective on such statements is that every multimillion-selling gangsta rap music CD has 50 to 100 statements that are (or should be) considered more denigrating to African Americans than anything Jackson or Imus has ever said, and they are gleefully sold as fast as they can be pressed by record companies, mostly to young African Americans, at a huge profit. Little is said about the fact that this glorifies a culture of gang criminal activity, disdain for family responsibility, misogynism, and drug use. If Obama is trying to teach some social responsibility as a counterbalance to this, maybe Jackson should view it as a positive and just shut up. Obama can make a real difference if we don’t have all these ‘friends’ of his making such statements of support.

William T. DeMente:

As the kids say, “OMG!” You ACCIDENTALLY revealed that I am just a braying jackass, a gapping rectal sphincter, a buffoon: striking at the essence of my argument and causing it to rumble and shake itself apart like a uranium atom under electron bombardment, like a water balloon at the point of over-filling, like a George Bush policy confronted by incontestable facts.

What might you be able to do if you intended to deflate me.  I am in even greater awe.

Sista, Cyrena…..Yes…..U No I hang wit ya, anytime. 

I think the most troubling thing about Present-day Jackson is the self-worth aspect. I get the sense that Mr. Jackson wants recognition from those under 50.  I get the feeling that my generation was supposed to stay out of the way and wait our turn.  And that those who walked with King feels an indignancy toward us.  Over the last few years, more and more, Afro-Americans my age have been questioning and challenging. 

Lately, the generational differences have been pondered on by the BLACK INTELLIGENTCIA (hee, hee). Young v. Old; Free-born V. the Freed and on and on.  What strikes me as funny is the fact that people are surprised that these competing views exist among blacks at all. Black unity is a slogan and, frankly, cultural suicide.  But we rap about that later.

What has been over looked and ignored, though, is that Gen X blacks now, and pre-Movement blacks then, exercise to some degree self-critical or inter-community analysis. And let’s not forget today’s “silent” majority, who dare not challenge the black elite for fear of the dreaded “Uncle Tom” tag. Ask Bill Cosby what happens when you cross these people.

Now it’s time to challenge those who “lead” as well as those who we honor for their past, because they haven’t prepared a great many of us for the future.
Charles Ogletree and Derrick Bell, noted law professor fron Harvard and Yale, respectively, both have written books reflecting on the failed pursuit of intergration and the lost opportunity to three/four generations of Afro-American children. Policies push by the black elite inspite of the feelings of most blacks during the bussing years. This is wonderful, but why couldn’t this be realized earlier?

All of those filled jails; those failed schools; dirty and sick neighborhoods; millions of lost children unable to be save and save others.  This is the work of the failed leadership J. Jackson and friends. Shifting from “civil rights” to radicalism with no plan but that of making whites feel guilty.

1 of 2
“…As for Cyrena’s comments regarding the genetic base of African American identity—it may be the base but “African-American” is far more a cultural designation…”

Jaded Prole,

I’m pretty sure you didn’t get my point at all, which was a response to Conservative Yankee, when he mixed genealogy with not necessarily black culture, but the legacy of slavery. His complaint was this…

“…“Obama never had family who had to sit at the back of the bus, he didn’t have the indignity of wetting his pants because there were no “colored” bathrooms. he was not educated in substandard sergegated schools. He doesn’t have the African American genology to kidnapping, slavery, and family seperation.”

Maybe I am too ‘literal’ for my own good. But the bottom line is what I’ve said, and what others have said on this thread. While it might be true that Obama didn’t have to go through this, neither have other American born black people of the past SEVERAL decades. Now if Jesse Jackson went through this; peeing on himself because there wasn’t a colored bathroom,  or having grandparents, etc, that were kidnapped from Africa and brought to this country as chattel, (which of course we all know occurred, and for a very, very long time, even after it was outlawed) then I will take my hat off to Jesse Jackson, and we can certainly chat about the history that CY thinks he LIVED, that in fact most black folks born here in the past 70 or 80 years have avoided.

I did not suggest, by any stretch of the imagination, that black folks, (including my own family) had not suffered the permanent affects of the INSTUTION of racism, that continues today. I very much resent any suggestion (by you or CY) that any black person born in the USA must somehow have needed to experience, first hand, all of these above named atrocities, in order to be able to respond to the black community. I think that’s total bullshit, which is the same thing I suggested about the so called ‘reverse racism’ that white people complain about. I’m not saying that there aren’t isolated occasions of that happening, but you know as well as I do, that black folks in America have NOT gotten any flippin’ free pass. Racism is SYSTEMIC and pandemic. It doesn’t just ‘go away’. But it would SEEM that any efforts that anybody makes, (like Obama) to open up some real dialog that might be helpful, are immediately shunned from both sides of the race divide. Now when it’s white folks doin’ the dissin’ we call it racism, because it is. When it’s black folks dissin’ their own, (like so many black folks currently bad mouthing Obama and calling him ‘elitist’ and ‘out of touch’ with the black community and the black electorate) I really don’t know WHAT to call it. Academics call it ‘internalized’ racism. I use Clarence Thomas as an example of this, because he is one bitter man, and he has made his distain for blacks, and specifically black women, very well known…beginning with his own mother and sisters. He is a racist, and he happens to be a black one.

Part 2 of 2

Now for any black folks who somehow feel quite comfortable in bashing Obama, but accusing everyone else of bashing Jesse Jackson, I don’t really know WHAT you would call yourselves. I’ll leave that up to you to figure out. But without a doubt, there is a very serious hypocrisy going on there sistah girl. Oh yeah. There is definitely THAT!

If you honestly believe that Barack Obama could do the amount of work in the communities of the South Side of Chicago that he’s done, and NOT have any clue about what the experiences of the people are, then something is seriously wrong with you. I have lived in Chicago, and I’ve spent time on the South Side. A lot of it. So I KNOW better. Now if somebody has a problem with the ‘system’ actually working the way it has been heralded and claimed by the white folks for so long..everybody has a chance if they just work hard enough…blah, blah, blah, then there’s some pathology going on there as well, because obviously, it’s not only white folks don’t really mean for that to apply to ‘us’, but apparently there are a whole bunch of black ones that think the same way. In that case, I guess it really is an ‘audacious’ thought to have any hope.

Let’s be clear about this as well. I personally haven’t ‘bashed’ Jesse Jackson. I *personally* am old enough to appreciate the work that he did in the Civil Rights Movement, and I will always be grateful and respectful of that.  His COMMENT a few days ago, was obviously totally inappropriate. Off the charts inappropriate. And while it’s clearly obvious that he would never have said such a thing had he known his mic was hot, that doesn’t change the fact that he DID. And THAT speaks to the very mentality that makes me sick, and has been a self-perpetuated plague on black Americans since day one. In other words, it apparently hasn’t been enough that blacks were treated less than human by white folks for centuries, so black folk have to treat each other the same way or worse.

Sorry. I can’t call that attitude anything other than the standard ‘crabs in the barrel’ mentality. If that is NOT how you feel, than accept my apologies in advance. If it is, then own it and give it some consideration. You don’t have a whole lot to lose, or very much further to fall.

Meantime, if you really have a bone to pick with Uppity Negros who don’t have a flippin’ CLUE of what goes on in the poor communities of America, BLACK or white, then go rag on Condi The Rice for a while. I mean, if it’s such a sin to be black, educated, and articulate, dog her out.

IW,

You’re right about the big piture view. FireMan’s experience gives him a particular perspective, as do we all. What’s most difficult for some to see is the capacity one group to have the perspective of the other.  That’s what Obama’s speech in Pennsylvania was stressing, that everyone’s point of view should be recognized.  This is what doctor King tried to do.  I can’t recalled the author or is book at the moment, but during an interview on NPR, he spoke of a community leader in rural(redundant?)West Virginia who stressed that white people in his area weren’t against King’s movement, but they couldn’t help resent it because it didn’t seem to included poor whites.

Both of those captain’s were jackasses and should’ve been fired, but it’s obvious that the brass failed to protect everyone. Union/Frat support isn’t the issue, management is.

FireManJohn

Your experience is one that millions of women supporting Hillary are making now. I can’t argue with it: it wasn’t right and you are right—in my mind, to resent the disparate treatment. 

I don’t think we should start tolerating racism because other abuses aren’t dealt with properly. I don’t think we should abandon our commitment to stamping out racism because some blacks aren’t atuned to sexism and Gay bashing. They need to be educated, just as whites need to be when they were the victims. They need to be called on their “isms” just as their persecutors were and are.

However, under no circumstance do I subscribe to the universal that whites get “absolutely obliterated for any comments…and Blacks get a FREE PASS.”

That seems way out of kilter from where I sit.

Jared….Just what is Jackson better at than most?  Getting paid by exploiting black issues?  Fixing them?  What, pray tell, has he done to improve the state of black America? Is it the twenty black folk he pays at Rainbow PUSH?

The vitriol exhibited by Jackson has nothing to do with talking down to “blacks”. It was hate, simple and plain and Jackson is pissed because he’s lost his platform; hence your’s and CW’s attempt to race-wash/redefine, whatever, the Senator which is unnecessary and silly. Even though he’s made no attempt to become the next Civil Rights prophet. Also, I am puzzled as to why you would compare his record of race with that of Obama’s, but not profer the record itself or its’ efficacy. The only proof we have of Jackson’s is that of the press conferences (His real source of prominence). 

You’ve presented no tangle policy success of his, but you claim “blackness” as an unexplained absolute. Could’nt second or third generation Jamaican’s or Kenyans be considered black? And exactly what are Kenyan features? Is blackness biology or social or cultural or historical.  When is someone black?  In front of the cops or a judge; on the football field as a linebacker or quarterback?  I’m not sure the point you are trying to make.

This isn’t that sexy: Jackson was thinking of himself, which is fine, but in the name of a large segment of the population! His real problem is that he’s a Regent without a Court; a landless Lord, who wants it back.

I hope you “Obama isn’t a black because his great great grandfather wasn’t a slave” types recognize that you’re being elitist about the whole thing.  You sound to me like the Daughters of the American Revolution. Why don’t you rent Union Hall and not let Obama speak there because he isn’t black enough.

Black, White, Brown, Yellow we all have more in common with each other today than any of us have with our dead ancestors. We are all alive today and they are all dead.

I guess all the white folks should start condemning those who can dance because they didn’t have the benefit of a white Northern European Protestant anti-dancing cultural background—good dancing whites ain’t really white, right?

Culture my butt. You can’t make any more out of “blackness” within your skin color group than segregationist made outside of it without falling into the same “us versus them” mindset that gave rise to horrors of the past.

African Americans alive today have a diversity of cultural experiences that is a broad as anybody else in America.  No one group of you get to claim your own experience as the “true black” tradition.

It isn’t racism, but it is elitism: which respect no racial or cultural limits.

issywise wrote;

If you think whites get “absolutely obliterated for any comments…and Blacks get a FREE PASS,” then you think the color of an American’s skin is way more important than the rest of us do.

Speaking from personal experience on the local civil
service level, that is emphatically true.
A fellow White Lieutenant was suspended without pay for 1 month for being overheard saying the n word.

shortly thereafter a Black Captain called a female
firefighter the c word.
both are considered violations, subject to punishment.
after much wrangling by the Firebirds(assoc of black ff)who were convinced that race trumps sex, NOTHING was done to the Captain.

I feel we can base Jackson’s comments on class more than race. Obama wants to preach morality to poor working people regarding parental responsibility but he is clueless as to the realities. Jackson gets it.

As for Cyrena’s comments regarding the genetic base of African American identity—it may be the base but “African-American” is far more a cultural designation. An immigrant from Nigeria is not culturally an “African-American.”  That is a rich culture that developed in the crucible of segregated racism. I’ve met White identified Blacks and Black identified Whites. The influence of African American culture on our larger culture is immeasurable from language to style to music but Obama does not share in that culture anymore than McCain or Clinton and is just as out of touch with the reality of poor working class people Black, White or whatever else.

justme:

If you think whites get “absolutely obliterated for any comments…and Blacks get a FREE PASS,” then you think the color of an American’s skin is way more important than the rest of us do.

You don’t distinguish between what persons say: you only distinguish based on the color of their skin.

Imus’ comments were racist (black women are all “hos”) Jackson’s had nothing to do about race: they were comments made by a person of one race about a person of the same race suggesting he’s talking down to others of the same race in a political campaign.

The content of the two comments is what singles one out for more attention than the other.

If you can’t see the difference between the two circumstances, then PLUUUEEEZZZZ learn to quit seeing things through the universal prism of race.

Should we judge Jesse Jackson’s comments ONLY based on his skin color and condemn him to balance out things because the racist Imus was chastised for racist comments? Should we keep score on what person of what race was condemned and when and then look to condemn someone else of a different race to balance the scales of racial justice?

Or should we actually consider what was said by both persons (regardless of skin color) and distinguish between the two’s statements based on the content of the utterance?

You aren’t even looking at the content of what was said: all you are seeing is the speaker’s race. You have created categories in your own mind that are not healthy.

It’s funny what comes out our mouth when we ain’t watching.

PLUUUEEEZZZZ give me a break with the crap of pretending you don’t understand that Whites get absolutely obliterated for any comments (free speech, by the way) - and Blacks get a FREE PASS. And yet you cry about “Equality.”  Martin Luther King Jr. would be appalled.

Oh, my Cyrena.  Usually you are on the ball, but with this you are pulling a cover over a body that’s not yet dead.

I too am a 50 something black woman, raised in in a suburb of Chi but also a regular visitor to the south where my grandmother lived.  I remember very well having to sit in the back of the bus, having to sit upstairs at the movie, having to stand in colored lines whenever I’d visit grandparents.  We drove…and my father made it a point to never stop in Mississippi. 

There weren’t signs in Chicago, but there were rules.  My friends couldn’t invite me inside their apartment bldgs; I couldn’t go into certain sections of the city. 

Yes, a long time ago.  But my life, my destiny, could not be fulfilled like that of my white counterpart.  In fact, I can say with absolute certainty that had I been white and had the privileges that many of dumb colleagues had automatically, I’d be both wealthy and recognized.  Although I was smarter, more educated, more skilled and better than my professional colleagues, I was black and that determined and denied me a lot.  And, yes, I’m angry about it. 

Now Hillary and friends can talk about the plight of women and hard working white Americans all day to cheering crowds, with Obama taking up the chorus—nobody says to them “shut up, we’ve moved on.” 

There are a lot of people who haven’t moved on—didn’t you see the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?  These people are detritus of what was a holocaust in this country, the mechanism of which still grinds on.  Like other black families in the south, mine just had 80 acres stolen from them via an eminent domain mechanism.  Did you know that black people have lost over a million acres over the last 20 years, primarily in the south?  I provided a link to a pulitzer prize winning series published in Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1202-03.htm

John Conyers has chaired investigative panels into this outrage.

Despite this gross injustice, black people survived and many of us have thrived—not all, but many.  But racism is hardly dead and the impact of that horror has understandably warped good people.  We can sympathize with Israel and protect that country because its citizens were targets of terror.  But black people need to just move on?

That’s insulting and it’s not fair to a minority group that deserves protection in this country given its history instead of exposure to forces that could destroy it. 

Let’s give black people and the black experience the respect deserved.  If we had not fought for our freedom, I doubt we would have it today.  No foreign country was going to invade the states and rescue us from all the despots that limited our lives.  We organized ourselves and forced this country to live up to its ideals.  We deserve more credit than what we get, and I think Jackson was only trying to emphasize that about us.  Why not extol some of our virtues?

justme:

Imus is a racist pig whose use of the public airways was and is an offense to ten if not hundreds of millions of Americans.  He deserved and deserves to be ridden off the air for his hate-filled “slips.” He panders to the haters among us for commercial success and invites the companies who use his airtime to promulgate their products on the public on the back of racism. Those products deserved to be shunned as does ABC and Disney which owns it.

Nonetheless, William T. DeMente was just showing off by destroying my assertions with a single word.  Out of courtesy’s sake, he might have at least made it a whole sentence to obstruficate the mortal stroke he was delivering to my expressed viewpoint.

justme—What viewpoint are you expressing? Do you think black public figures are treated better than say raving racists and that such treatment is an indication of some “agenda” held by unnamed evil doers?  Exposit what you are really saying: If you believe something, expose to the light of day and see how well it stands the weather.  Don’t be one of those guys who sits back in the shadows and implies things that can’t be properly explored in the light of day because they never are really offered fully to the light of day: Kind of like the racism that slips out of Imus’s foul soul from time-to-time—just a slip….don’t get too worked up about it…oh you guys, you’ve got an agenda to impose political correctness on us guys who drop a racist jewel once in a while and really don’t mean it to hurt anybody.

justme—Imus deserves all the punishment he did and will get. There was no hidden agenda there. Racism is no longer going to be just tolerated: it is going to be confronted and the hate mongers who espouse it are going to be called what they are.

Conservative Yankee’s got it right. Everyone wants to dump on Jesse Jackson who, after all, IS unmistakably African American and knows that economics and a continuing history of disadvantage are real problem and who feels insulted when resulting problems in the African American community are considered moral deficits. Yes, Jackson has an ego but he is far better than most of our elected leaders including Obama.

As is human nature, many Blacks who have made it to the upper and middle class tend to distance themselves from and forget the realities of life for the many who remain mired in relative poverty. They support Bill Cosby’s moralistic attacks on African Americans and gladly mistake Obama for one of their own due to his inherited Kenyan features.

True, Obama is better than McCain and so Jackson will do his best to backpedal and support him but he is right and Obama should pay attention. Remember, Hillary could preach and play to African Americans as well and not that less convincingly, but people will vote their own interest if they bother to vote at all so where’s the beef? What’s in it for poor working folk? Obama needs to learn from Jesse Jackson, John Edwards and others, to put away the bable and talk jobs, living wages, and safety net issues.

CY…you’re out of touch again. Taxi back in…

•  “Obama never had family who had to sit at the back of the bus, he didn’t have the indignity of wetting his pants because there were no “colored” bathrooms. he was not educated in substandard sergegated schools. He doesn’t have the African American genology to kidnapping, slavery, and family seperation.”

As ApprxAM has suggested…most black folks alive today haven’t experienced any of this either. That’s not to say that they don’t experience a newer and less blatantly overt version of it. Like say, they respond to a job offer via the phone or mail, and all sounds hunkey dorey until they show up in person, and the job has mysteriously been filled within the last 20 minutes.

That’s not to say that when they go in search of housing, the price of the place doesn’t jump by $15 or $20K as soon as they show up to check the place out.

I could go on.

As you know, I’m a 55 year old woman of color and dual ethnicity. I never experienced any of this sitting in the back of the bus, or peeing on myself because of there not being any colored rest rooms, and I never had the opportunity to taste ‘white’ water to note the difference between it and the ‘colored’ water either. I was born and raised in Southern Calif, long after the miscegenation laws had been repealed here.

My sister peed in her pants in kindergarten, but it wasn’t because there were no bathrooms available to her. She just didn’t get to it. But when my mother showed up after a call from the school nurse, to bring her some clean dry underwear,  the nurse thought my mother was a ‘nanny’. (my mother is ‘obviously’ –colored- and my sister is not so ‘obviously’.

To suggest that Obama doesn’t have a connection to African-American genealogy is like….NO CONNECTION. “Genealogy” doesn’t consist of kidnapping and slavery and family separation. Genealogy consists of GENETICS. Like..GENES for Christ’s sake! Do you think only black people have been kidnapped, enslaved, or subjected to family separation?

That’s not to say that Obama wasn’t subjected to family separation, because he WAS! He was raised by his single parent with help from his grandparents. That they were white and not black doesn’t change anything. He didn’t sit in the back of a bus in Hawaii because for the most part, Hawaii has never experienced the racism that we’ve had in the South and the defacto segregation everywhere else. And considering his age, that wasn’t even a situation on the mainland. We finally GOT RID OF THAT CY!! By 1961, when Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, they’d outlawed the kidnapping and slavery, and they were getting real close to doing away with black folk being forced to the back of the bus and other such atrocities. You want that we should all go back to that, so we can all have a taste of the “authenticity’ of the inhumanity of racism?

And quit with this reverse racism shit. It’s old, and was invalid even when white folks where yelping about it 20 years ago. It has NEVER existed, expect in the minds of the ideologically afflicted.

Please. It’s people like you that just won’t give up this race thing. There are some things in history that we can and should allow to die. The legacy of racism is one of them. Can you possibly allow yourself to MOVE ON?

John McCain hasn’t been through any of these ‘trauma’s’ either, but you’re still gonna vote for him. So, what the hell is up with all of this nonsense?

As for Jesse..my most admirable recollection of him is that every time I saw him in the Chicago airport, he was usually alone, and willing to collect his own bags.

Very impressive.

Conserve, Jesse sees only himself and no one else. His enelegant display of buffoonary only highlights this.  Jackson couldn’t care less for black people, because without the tragedy, he’d have no job.

Secondly, Obama’s lack of “Jim Crow” pain means nothing.  Must black people live the tragic life in order to gain bona fides? Guess what, no black living today were slaves and a great many of us was never made to go to the back of the bus. I’m not sure where you’re getting your “black experience” markers from, but I very much doubt that slavery and segragation is required.

All Obama has to do is fix the country’s path and that’ll be good enough for must black people.  Contrary to popular belief, we don’t need much. water, food, shelter, liberty from shot happy cops and the same financial protections everone else gets; civic care, Con. Not much more that.

luckily for obama, jackson is a non-entity. here is a man who attempted to run for president, after proving his inability to run PUSH, a minor organization with a
5.5 million budget.
it is annoying that jj will face no sanctions, job loss
or repercussions of any kind, from the liberal media.

I just don’t think Jesus would be very happy with one of his shepherds saying such nasty things about one of the sheep.

Why would anyone say “Imus”?  as if not getting the connection

Imus says something on the radio and it’s international news for weeks and he loses a job

Jesse Jackson says crap and it’s buried and censored

hmmmm, wonder what the agenda is?

William T. DeMente,

You ask “Imus?”

Ouch! That hurt. So I’m wrong. You don’t have to slap me upside the head with just a single word.

OK, Jackson has done a world of good and his excesses are probably just minor fringe type things….

but to kick my butt with only one word…........... mercy please.

* “Still, I have to wonder what Jackson was doing on FOX to begin with.”

  I’m still wondering what he was doing outside poor Terri Schiavo’s nursing home, if not slapping his face in front of any set of cameras that might assemble for any reason.

  The man is a compulsive “look at me” self-promoter, whose dignity has been falling away in sheets in recent years.

    If I’m not mistaken, he was making the same arguments some years ago that Obama is making now—only now the attention comes only if he plays the contrarian.

Jesse, AL, Julian, Andrew, TAVIS(God I hate that guy) at el, are simply Interest Groups. Whether they hate black people or not, one things for sure, they usually ain’t too good for us.

Jesse has done good things, but how long does one hang onto the position of influence without tranfering it to younger Afro-Americans (see Kwame and his mother, the Kilpatricks)

Sharpton and his mostly idiotic displays of selfish grandstanding, has been on the forefront of the numerous shootings of black men at the hands of police and riotous lynch squads in NYC.

Julian Bonds and Andrew Young….well from what I’ve seen, some good here and there, but a lot of petty, selfish, inflexible positions; almost reflectively pro-black no matter the issue.

Tavis Smiley: What the hell can you say about him. ABC fired his ass because he isn’t good at interveiwing (also see BET & anything he’s done on NPR/PBS) and cries when he isn’t given whatever respect the thinks he deserves and is missing.  If I see she another of his embarassing “State of Black America” programs on CSPAN which alway over-runs its’ time slot, because if the program is two hours, they spend an hour and twenty0two minute applauding the guess or the great host himself. I was horrified to see Orlando Patterson on that stage, a serious scholar from Harvard, placed in the middle of that crazy, nonsensical forum where nothing gets done and solutions are far from even scouted.

I’m tired.

I don’t believe the speech to be elitist, just unreal and out of touch, as well as pandering, but the last part isn’t really an issue.  Hell, black people feel the same way.  The problem is how!!!  Would it be ideal for all of these fathers to be involved and is it even possible.  What I resent is the implication that “Black Men” are in control and by default, at fault. 

Morality of the first action aside, all blame is placed on one party, the male.

1) Having sex with a fertile partner

2) Getting her pregnant (or as the court will say; giving a gift.

3) Having the child (see the ovearching principle of Roe v. Wade)

4) not marrying, not being marriagable, not staying, not insisting on staying, divorcing or just leaving

5) Global warming

Now, I don’t offer any excuse to men, but control rest not with in every instance.  What if she doesn’t want him there, can he stay then?  Is there ever a point at which complete fault lies with the male?  What if he’s trying to maintain contact and, not won’t but can’t?  What about inmates and the dead?

How about the jackasses that are there but fails to teach their children or watch them properly? What Obama and many others do is simplify the subject and washes over a complex and multifaceted problem with simple, episodic television solutions.

What bothers me about Obama’s speech wasn’t the fact of the matter, but the lack of what is really the problem and a general sense conveyed that tomorrow all of this can change if we just believe that black men will come home.  Pandering is the least worrying aspect of his speech.  But who was he pandering to? Whites? Black women? In what way does it help anyone but Obama?

I don’t claim to have the answer, but I doubt this can be addressed until real analysis occurs.  not until and honest assessment and honest fault is found in the culture, those involved, the way the law and social policy addresses the issue without making them worst and a new model is fostered.

One thing is for sure.  We can’t waste our time wishing and praying men (you know, the black ones) will get there sh(i)t together, becasue that may not happen.  Why?  Because there isn’t only the one reason these bad thing happen.  Sadly, I think we already know this.

Yeah troubled, as a matter of fact, I DID note that Hillary voted *THIS TIME*! (now that she’s lost the nomination). I also noted that she has been conspicuously ABSENT in previous votes on this very same issue. Just as John McSame was on this latest one. You really should pay more attention.

FISA Vote Tallies: Part II
February 12th, 2008

“The Dodd/Feingold Amendment 3907 to strip retroactive immunity from the underlying SSCI bill just failed, 31-67. 51 votes were needed to pass.
Voting with the Republicans were the following eighteen Democrats (again, rough count):

Bayh, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Feinstein, Kohl, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Mikulski, Conrad, Webb, and Lincoln. Joe Lieberman also voted against stripping retroactive immunity.

Not present and voting was Senator Hillary Clinton, the only presidential candidate serving in the Senate to miss the vote.”

~~~~
Some people are so naïve.

http://holdfastblog.com/2008/02/12/fisa-vote-tallie s-part-ii/

Here’s another one. Not all of us have these 5 minute attention spans, and can actually figuring things out.

~“No FISA Vote? Well. Hillary Lost This White Lady Today.~

•  “Tonight the pundits talk about Hillary’s support among white women, and other demographic fluff, as we wait for the results of the “Chesapeake Primaries” on the day the Senate handed telecom immunity to a pleased White House.”

http://www.sixhoursaweek.com/2008/02/no-fisa-vote-w ell-hillary-lost.html

Just as an FYI, she didn’t do any better the first time around either.

As for me assuming that you’re a woman just because you admired Hillary for slugging it out? Nope. I know you’re a woman (and a miserable one at that) from your writing in your multiple posts. The truth is, what people write and say to and about OTHERS says far more about THEM, then it does the people they’re speaking of or to. But then, you wouldn’t get that.
And no, bert never got under MY skin. But MY skin has nothing to do with it. It’s that she apparently has never been under or near ANYBODY’S skin that seems to be one of her many issues. And, I can certainly understand why.

So, did you notice that Obama did exactly what he said he was gonna do back when you first dug your bulldog teeth into this? Yep, he voted (although it was a very tiny minority of them that did) to strip the immunity for the telecoms provision from the bill. It didn’t work of course, but then we knew that. Just like Hillary knew that there wouldn’t be enough ‘no’ votes (even if Obama had voted no) to prevent the entire thing from passing. So, no skin off her fat ass.

Now of course you’ll note above, that it was a far different story back in Feb, when she was still in the running. That’s why she sat that one out.

And you say she slugged hard for over a year? I’d say she was a cowardly hypocrite, which is at least in part why she lost. No guts, no glory. No problem at all with taking a contrary or risky vote at this point. And, it’s real difficult for me to entertain any image of her ‘slugging it out’ when she still can’t even pay her bills, and Obama is still begging his own supporters for money to pay them off on her behalf.

Meantime, no headaches for me. (I’m grateful) I *do* have some serious back aches though…old age, hard work, all of that. But every time I think of whining about it, I realize it could be so much worse. I could have a narrow little mind like yours, carrying the proverbial boulder on my shoulder.

So, I get over it. I don’t have much patience for bitchers and moaners who piss and moan when they don’t get their way.

Jaded Prole…

I must be out of the loop. I thought about this when I read Jesse’s comment…and now yours..

“Jesse’s right. His line toward African Americans reflects an upper class, out of touch, and slightly racist view—Oh that’s right, since he looks Black he can’t be racist. . .”

What exactly was Obama’s ‘line toward African Americans’? I mean, I would really like to know what it was he said when he ‘talked down’ to us. I mean, I want to be just as indignant as the next African-American if I’ve been talked down to.

So, WHAT DID HE SAY?

Jesse doesn’t mention it, and neither does anybody else. I sure wish I knew.

Come on now crab apple, not liking Obama is no reason for you to assume that anyone is miserable, or that anyone who thought Hillary deserved credit for slugging it out for over a year must be a woman.
Just don’t know who Bert is but knowing she got under your skin gives me a good impression of her. Speaking of Hillary, did you notice she voted against fisa?  But then she probably didn’t take Carvil’s advice and give Obama one of he nads, leaving him to wimp it out on fisa.  How’s your migrain?  Can’t imagine what it will be when he comes out for a full scale attack on Iran and keeping Bush’s tax cuts in place.

Jesse’s right. His line toward African Americans reflects an upper class, out of touch, and slightly racist view—Oh that’s right, since he looks Black he can’t be racist. . .

Still, I have to wonder what Jackson was doing on FOX to begin with.

Jackson isn’t even elected, so we don’t even have to impeach him; just ignored him and the NY Times and other media that gives him and others like their assumed power.

~~~~

Glad you mentioned this ApprxAM. It coincides with a comment that was provided by a mostly flakely black assistant professor of political science here in my own community. It was about the only thing he ever said worth remembering or repeating…

Jesse Jackson has never even had a REAL JOB!! At least none that we know of. Now that’s not to say that he hasn’t done a good thing or two, here and there. But hey…nobody has ever elected him or hired him to do anything.

Only the white media has held him up for the past 3 decades.

His son…he’s much better. That’s a good thing.

But Jesse Jack Sr. is now insignificant. Out of season. Just the way it is.

ApprxAM…

It’s debatable,(but not really important) what race or gender Troublesum happens to be. I think the gender is pretty certain. Female in so far as the genes determine. I’ve never presumed otherwise.

Whether she is black or white is more up in the air, because her alternative identity (bert) one time identified herself as an old white woman. (and don’t ask me why an old white woman would choose ‘bert’ as a user name..I haven’t a clue. OWW would have sufficed).

But THEN, writing in the ‘troublesum’ identity, she once complained (probably more than once) that Obama was not responsive to the needs of blacks. Why would an old white woman care?

So, best to just accept that she’s a bitter old woman, (and a man hating one) and leave it at that. I have a former in-law that could be a clone of troublesum/bert and Miss Marie. Now unlike them, this former in-law has been married muliple times, (but never for very long) because of course nobody stays around long at all. She runs them off, and then accuses them all of ‘desertion’. It’s ALWAYS somebody else’s fault. NEVER hers. In other words, some people, (male or female, black, white, or in-between) are simply miserable, and choose to be miserable, and want everybody else to be just as miserable.

And there you have troublesum-bert-or Miss Marie. They’re just a bunch of bitter old women, and NOTHING will make them happy, or stop their eternal bitching and whining. That’s not to say that there aren’t an equal number of men afflicted with this same dysfunctional psyche. It’s just that in this case, the offender happens to be female. Doesn’t matter what race she is, since this dysfunction isn’t specific to any race. Just think of her as the female version of Clarence Thomas, and very, very, ‘troubled’. Hopelessly troubled. Incurably troubled.

Such as it is.

ApprxAm,
Miss Crabtree thinks I’m a white woman; you think I’m a black man.  I understand now where you are coming from in regard to Jackson and other black leaders but I don’t think you can blame them.

Enough about Obama.  This is about a man who has failed in his job as a Civil Rights Activist.

Since the balcony, at the Lorraine Motel, the day Dr. King was killed, Mr Jackson has inserted himself in front of the cameras, grabbed the attention of the press and the mantle of leader.  Well it’s been forty years and what do we have to show for it?

The highest incarceration rate, drop-out rate, teen pregnacy rate and homicide rate. These are results of leadership?  (Effective Leadership)

Using the term “Hymie-Town” before going there for a fundraiser while running for President.  They very same people who were the intellectual heft behind the Civil Right Movement and all he can think to call them is that.  (Smart Leadership)

Sued TexaCo for using the N-word during a meeting, getting a monetary settlement and never giving account as to how it’s spent. Yet, no programs of substance to train Afro-Americans in Chicago, at least, to purchase home loans and other fiscal instruments.  (Financial Leadership)

During a riot in a Chicago nightclub owned by a friend of his, serveral patrons were killed due to the negligence of the hire security casuing a stampede.  And guess who’s side he was on.  (Community Leadership)

Got a co-conspirator in Rainbow PUSH pregnant. Embarassing his wife and family, the “movement” and the organization.  (Moral Leadership)

Just what is his beef with Obama?  Talking down to black people he says? Just like Bill Cosby’s statement, crude and anti-intellectual as it was, pointed to the feeling many African-Americans concerning the state of black America. Along with Eric Michael Dyson, ponced on Mr Cosby and damn near called him a traitor to his race; holding Mr. Cosby hostage during his public apology.  But why was he apologizing? The style was wrong, by the substance warranted attention. (Leadership-By-Arms)

Senator Obama isn’t the problem, just his tactic.  No black man is allowed to exercise autonomy in this country without the permission of the “Black Guard”.  Obama ignore Tavis Smiley’s “Back Patting, blame whitey” New Orleans Funeral Tour and was called everything short of Uncle Tom.  Thanks to the Black Blogs, Smiley was out in his place and now he’s Obama’s biggest fan. 

During the early to mid nineties, Russian hockey players in the NHL, were threatened with abduction and worst by the Russain Mob who felt owed tribute and insisted dues be paid or damage would befall them. This is no different. OBAMA TRIBUTE IS DUE. How dare he take power without being given it by those who suffered at the hands and nightsticks of Bull Conner and the Birmingham Police.  Black folk weren’t supposed to think for themselves and now the black elite are pissed off.

Whether he wins or loses, it’s time for new politic.  The consent to be governed by those who are accountable. No more Kwame Kilpatricks with the porn parties and spending taxpayer money to quiet three cops fired for doing their jobs, or a Congressional Black Caucaus that falls behind a thief with money in his freezer and the jac*sses who voted him back into office. A mayor in Philadelphia who is more concerned with stealing contract for crooked friends and not the countless men dying on the streets he controls.

Jackson sin’t even elected, so we don’t even have to impeach him; just ignored him and the NY Times and other media that gives him and others like their assumed power.

Troublesum.

I’m going to assume that you’re black and ask you this, Sir.  “What is it that black people are to expect from a BLACK PRESIDENT?”

Nothing!!! Nothing.

It can’t be that difficult to understand why he doesn’t!

ApprxAm
I’m afraid you’ve got it backwards.  Obama got where he is by keepng his mouth shut about real problems blacks face and preaching morality to them instead so that whites would understand he’s on their side.
He’s just another Clarence Thomas.

Jackson, Sharpton, Bonds, Bob “BET”:“Kan’t speek well” Johnson, Tavis “wait for the applauds” Smiley and the rest of the “Black Guard” have lost it.  They hate that he’s done this well without them and resent losing of control of their black agenda.

They’re not just angry about how far he’s come and how much white support he’s gained, but in how far they’ve been left behind.  And no matter what happens to Senator Obama’s candidacy, people will begin to question the forty years of failed leadership. Win or lose, blacks will be that much closer to being free from the culture victimhood, and the professional complaint industry that has become known as “black” leadership.

Cutting off his dick with black people and cutting off his balls with white progressives.  Spot on Jesse.