Generation Squeeb

hat tip to LEO's General Sense of Outrage:

Go here and read Matt Taibbi's latest Rolling Stone post on the American electorate. His theory: The American voter has been so beaten down by trite, meaningless "scandals" like Obama's Rev. Wright and Clinton's Gerry Ferraro that we haven't realized how fast we're cruising toward a milquetoast middle where there is not a shred of controversy or, importantly, room for actual discourse or contrary thought.

"So instead of talking about the fact that Barack Obama once introduced a bill to give a tax break to a Japanese company whose lawyers donated fifty grand to his Senate campaign, we're freaking out for five minutes about the fact that Obama's pastor thinks America spread AIDS on purpose in Zambia. And instead of talking about the fact that Hillary Clinton took $110,000 from a New York food company she later helped by introducing a bill to remove import duties on tomatoes, we're ranting and raving about Gerry Ferraro's paranoid ramblings about Obama's blackness.

We can't keep our eyes on the ball and really think about the serious endemic problems of our system of government because we're too busy freaking out like a bunch of cartoon characters over silly, meaningless bullshit. And then forgetting about that same bullshit ten minutes later, so that we can freak out all over again about something else later on."

Banned Boondocks episode on BET

For whatever reason Cartoon Network refused to air two episodes of The Boondocks that lambasted BET. Rumors swirled that BET executives were threatening to sue. BET denied it.

So the episodes aired in Canada instead. And thanks to the Internet the episodes can be viewed almost anywhere online. So without further ado.

'The Hunger Strike' part 1



To see part 2, go here.

Criticisms of BET have reached a fever pith among black Americans before. Mainly based on the cancellations of substantive programming for unalloyed buffoonery. These controversial episodes, however, are the most public satire of BET and its founder, hopin' Bob Johnson have received.

Here's the odd connection.

Reggie Hudlin, who directed House Party and Boomerang, worked with The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder to develop a television pilot for Fox Network in 1999. After the two couldn't sugarcoat The Boondocks enough for network TV to digest, Hudlin left the project. Today, Hudlin is President of Entertainment for BET. Has been since 2005. Pay attention to 'The Hunger Strike', he is heavily satirized.

Cruising the Divide

With Derby 2008 right around the corner the monotony of news coverage is bound to highlight what's become a decade-long debate over cruising on Broadway.

I covered the madness of Derby cruising in LEO a few years ago. Since then the topic has become a radioactive waste dump, a toxic mix of thoughtlessness cruisers and unimaginative policymakers. In 2006 the mayor ended it, which basically closed all of West Broadway for cruisers...and vendors, and families, and foot traffic, and local businesses.

As usual, when politicians can't fix something artists fill the vacuum with illuminating satire. So next Tuesday, at 7:30 pm at the Braden Center (3208 W. Broadway), Actor's Theater is inviting the public to hear a community reading of Cruising the Divide: From West Broadway to Churchill Downs, an interview-based play created by Actors Theater of Louisville's Apprentice Company.

Written by Will MacAdams, director of the apprentice/intern company, the script was developed from interviews conducted by the apprentices last winter and fall with over 60 Louisvillians from across the city discussing their views on Derby cruising.

"Our goal is to build dialogue and bring together people are not talking to each other," said MacAdams, who believes theatre is a communal way of putting people together in a room who would otherwise never meet to discuss divisive issues. He encourages the public to attend the reading and share their thoughts.

Although the final draft is not finished, the play is scheduled to be performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville on May 15th and 17th at 8pm. On May 16th, portions of the play will be performed in the backyard of the Braden Center.

All performances are free of charge.

To RSVP for the April 1st reading, call (502) 584-1265, ext. 3083 or e-mail MacAdams here.

The face of Operation Iraqi Freedom

U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq: 4,000

Iraqis killed: between 82,000 - 650,000 or more depending on your source

Cost of Iraq War: $500,000,000,000, which is 210,000,000 plus for Lou., KY or $341 million a day or $1,721 per person.

Gas prices: Fucking ridiculous!

And yet, media coverage has slowed in the U.S.

Message to the People on Obamania

We haven't blogged on Barack in awhile. Sorry.

So to catch up let's offer a perspective from one of Louisville's few public intellectuals. In this week's LEO, U of L professor and Pan-African Studies chair, Dr. Ricky L. Jones dropped his monthly column, 'Message to the People' addressing Barack's speech and the inevitable relationship to race in this historic campaign:

"Barack Obama’s March 18 speech in Philadelphia on race was inevitable. Try as he might, there was no way he could complete his presidential bid without facing the beast at some point. After video of controversial comments by his longtime Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright, were repeated ad nauseam by almost every major media outlet, Obama was forced into an almost impossible damage control balancing act.

He had to distance himself from Wright’s words without “rejecting and denouncing” his minister, as he did Louis Farrakhan in Ohio weeks earlier. He couldn’t completely and unapologetically pull Wright to his bosom, because many in white America wouldn’t accept it. Neither could he simply throw his pastor and mentor under the bus, because highly religious black America would then label him a political opportunist and turncoat."

For the rest, go here.

I say more whores, less wars

"I ain't going nowhere, bitches!"

Kwame Kilpatrick indicted on 12 counts today, ouch!

Given the overall seriousness of the American political landscape (Iraq, gas prices, etc.), this sort of tabloid news should be relegated to the satirists of SNL and The Daily Show. I don't want to read The Nation or watch CNN or listen to NPR for this tawdry comedy.

Impeaching and indicting politicians for lying about sex or extra-marital affairs but no consequence for misleading the public about policy or war is the crumbling of modern democracy.

Even in black politics, Kilpatrick's text message scandal is more comical than the embarrassment of yesterdays. For example, former Washington, D.C.'s crack-cocaine mayor Marion Berry. Remember the hotel footage of Berry yelling, "That bitch set me up!"?

Still, watching the fall of America's hip-hop mayor does make me cringe a bit. Then I smirk and go back to laughing again.

From CNN's Political Ticker:

"A Wayne County prosecutor said Monday she will seek felony charges against Detroit's embattled Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick, who is married, has been snarled in a well-publicized sex scandal since January after The Detroit Free Press reported he exchanged romantic text messages with his then-chief of staff, Christine Beatty.

The newspaper report contradicted testimony Kilpatrick gave in a court case brought by police officers against the mayor and the city of Detroit for misconduct in the mayor's office. The case alleged the mayor retaliated against the officers for their role in investigating his office. Critics alleged that Kilpatrick committed perjury and called for his resignation."

Or listen now on NPR.

4,000 killed

After four soldiers were killed this weekend due to a roadside bomb, the war in Iraq has reached a new horrific milestone just days after the 5th anniversary -- the 4,000th solider was killed in Iraq.

That means 97% of U.S. casualties have come since our national schoolyard bully stood under the "Mission Accomplished" banner on May 1st, 2003. For a detailed account of casualties among all coalition forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including the fallen soldiers' names go here.

Jan. 20th, 2009 can't come quick enough.

A pause for KY's rising prison population

Well it's March Madness time in Kentuckiana, so you know what that means. The weight of news coverage shifts to college basketball and our great democratic debates consist of bracket bets.

Meanwhile...

After covering the racial disparities in KY prisons last month, the C-J gave some noted coverage to the overall rise in KY's prison population.

"Kentucky's prison population is rising at the fastest rate in the nation, according to a report last month by the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan Washington research and policy group. Kentucky currently has about 22,600 felony offenders in jail or prison, and this year's state corrections budget is about $431 million -- compared with about 3,700 inmates in 1980 and a budget of $30 million."

The ignoble designation of leading the nation in prison population growth compounded with the costs of maintaining our prison industrial complex has at least given lawmakers a reason to hold a meeting. According to the C-J Justice Secretary J. Michael Brown called the state Criminal Justice Council to meet today in Frankfort.

For the rest go here.

Blackface Already? But It's Not Even Halloween Yet!

Spike Lee must be pissed!

From Soulbounce:

I give anyone reading this post 3 guesses as to which Black actor this is before proceeding onto the next line. A young Ben Vereen? No. An angry Will Smith? No. Lighter-skinned Don Cheadle? Umm...definitely not. Brace yourselves, y'all. This is none other than Academy Award winning actor and former multiple drug-abusing Robert Downey, Jr.

Apparently, Tropic Thunder, a new movie featuring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr., is slated as an "epic action comedy" whose trailer will debut in theaters March 17th...and so close to St. Patrick's Day at that! Downey's character in the movie is not surprisingly an Oscar-winning actor who is cast in a Vietnam War-era movie within this movie in a role originally written specifically for a Black actor. But thanks to the wonders of makeup and current wig technology, Downey transforms into...Poof! A Black Man! And according to Ben Stiller, test audiences seemed to "really embrace it."

I don't even know where to begin with this one, folks. I mean, I thought the ridiculousness of C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man was well behind us and just a bad 80's flashback, but apparently some people still find mockery of Black culture an expense they are willing to bear.

I keep telling folks we're this close to having a Bamboozled television show.

The movie is called Tropic Thunder, an action-comedy about three actors filming a movie about the Vietnam War. Co-star Ben Stiller said Robert Downey, Jr's blackface character is satirizing over-the-top actors, not African-Americans.

Okay, Ben. We shall see.