Black on black slime.

Wal Mart's pimp, Tavis Smiley, was on national television today ripping the president for ----of all things--his comments on race. There are a lot of things we could get on this president about, and some black folks actually do a credible job of calling him out on things, but his WH presser about the Trayvon Martin verdict was not one of them.

Anyway, I love this post over at "The People's View" by Spandan:

"While Prof. Ogletree correctly called out the smug Smiley for pretending that all responsibility to have a conversation and take action on race falls on the president simply because he's black, for the lack of time, he didn't get to respond to the smug Smiley's demand to list what the president had done. I will. 
Let's start at the beginning - let's start with candidate Obama. Barack Obama's 2008 speech on race and race relations in America is one of the best inspiring speeches that captured America's emotions - in history. His 2008 speech falls in a group of select speeches by presidents in this country: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, JFK's historic civil rights speech, and President Johnson's address to Congress on voting rights. The contemporary import and significance of Barack Obama's 2008 speech is exceeded perhaps only by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr's I-have-a-dream speech.

But as much as Tavis Smiley would like for the president to speechify until he's blue in the mouth - much like Smiley himself does without making any real difference - President Obama, despite his impressive oratory, is more of a doer than a talker. So let's have a look at the policies that the president has codified or pushed, and what difference they make in the American promise to equal opportunity and equal justice for all.

Health Care Reform: Obamacare isn't just good health care policy, it is a key policy to bridge the health insurance disparity between whites and people of color. 21% of African Americans and 32% of Hispanics have no health insurance, compared to just 13% of whites. Health reform levels the playing field, institutes community rating and guaranteed issue, and ensures affordable coverage, along with the largest subsidies for health insurance in history. Because people of color bear the disproportionate brunt of lack of health insurance, we also stand to gain the most from health care reform.

Wall Street Reform: The president's Wall Street reform not only set up the country's first independent federal agency dedicated to consumer protection, but also imposed restrictions on banks and financial institutions from fooling and issuing liar loans to unsuspecting minorities and pushing subprime loans. Bankers even admit that they did so. Poor people and minorities are targets of rip-off style financial products, and both overall financial reform as well as the CFPB are a godsend. The CFPB is looking into regulating payday lenders I write. Once again, because people of color are disproportionately the target of financial vultures, the president's reform also disproportionately benefits them.

Pell Grants and Student Loan Reform: We continue to hearken back to economic factors limiting the scope of opportunity for minorities - who are disproportionately dependent on student loans and Pell Grants - but that's normal given that it is the economic hurdle that is the most pernicious in trapping minorities. One of the first bills President Obama signed into law protected students from loan sharks. The president's student loan reform was done in two parts: the first part in the student loan reform bill itself - a bill that made it far easier for students to pay off their debt. In the second part, through the reconciliation bill that completed health reform, he cut the banks out of the process of federal loans, investing the banks' cut in students instead.

The president also doubled the funding for Pell Grants. Why is that important? Because of the greater economic need, Pell Grant recipients of color dramatically increase their college graduation rates. It also eases the debt burden.

Credit Card Reform: Credit card reform outlawed a whole host of loan-sharking practices, including the minimum payment scam (now you have the right to know how much interest you will pay and how long you will pay if you just made the minimum payment), universal default for existing loans, deceptive due date practices, and giving credit cards to students without requiring proof of ability to pay (or a co-signer). Once again, because the abuses fall on those who have the toughest time paying - read disproportionately racial minorities - the benefits of the reform also befall the same people.

These broad policy achievements, of course, come in addition to specific, targeted policy achievements of the president, including the Fair Sentencing Act that reduces the drug sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine, and yes, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - both because women of color are the most victimized by pay discrimination and because the Act itself deals with pay discrimination on the basis of any of the categories under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including race. The president nearly single-handedly restored the American auto industry, and thus American manufacturing - also an economic underpinning of many minority communities.

This is to say nothing of the stimulus package that turned the whole economy around from the worst disaster since the Great Depression - a disaster that also disproportionately affected minorities.

The president has advocated for and tried to advance more policies that would address economic conditions - including his Jobs Act (as Professor Ogletree correctly pointed out) - without success as Republicans in Congress have made it their mission to block this president in any way they can.

But hey, why would you expect someone like Tavis Smiley - who economically is closer to the 1% and entirely focused on increasing his personal wealth through "poverty tours" to sell his book - to even recognize ways to address economic racial disparities as achievements or advancing the frontier on race relations? My mistake.

For those who want to focus on what the president says vs. what he does, there is no shortage of the president's public engagement, either. Not only has he stirred the nation's emotions from the death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of an armed killer who racially profiled him, the president has lead with depth with the Gates controversy in 2009, after a Harvard professor was arrested for entering his house. Michelle Obama identified with Hadiya Pendleton as a southside girl from Chicago. Nearly every speech the president has given either on the campaign trail or on a college campus, addressing our future, his calls for people of all races and backgrounds to come together have given us hope. The president is, however, the president - and his role is not to lead a race, but to lead a nation.

What the likes of Smiley don't understand when they accuse this president of taking a backseat on conversations of race is that this president has had to suffer through something no other president in history has because of his race: the palpable institutional and media racial bias. He has had to contend with claims from the likes of Glenn Beck that he hates white people, and he has had to put up with claims from the likes of Tavis Smiley that he's not militant enough"...[More]

Finally, as I posted earlier on twitter, to see why I will never be caught dead under the right wing tent (wait, I take that back; you could find me dead under there), please read here.

Have a wonderful Sunday evening, folks. And if you went to church today I hope that you prayed for peace.

 



  

Anita is "brutalized", and Negroes keep jigging.

I never had any respect for Governor Big Hair, but I really don't have any respect for him now. My man sent his wife out there to cry woe is me to anyone who would listen. And boy did she ever deliver.

"It's been a rough month. We have been brutalized and beaten up and chewed up in the press to where I need this today...We are being brutalized by our opponents, and our own party. So much of that is, I think they look at him, because of his faith. He is the only true conservative – well, there are some true conservatives. And they're there for good reasons. And they may feel like God called them too. But I truly feel like we are here for that purpose." [Source]

Wow! "Brutalized and beaten"? Now that's some hyperbole for your ass. Welcome to national politics, Rick.

So he was called to run by a higher force. I wonder if that higher force told him to paint over that Niggerhead rock on his leased hunting property? God sure works in mysterious ways.

Some of you are claiming that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West did a good thing by going on FOX NEWS and sparring with Bill O'Reilly over poverty. Well I got news for you; they did not.

It's never good to go on FOX NEWS and give those clowns any sort of legitimacy. I know that those two will never hesitate to jump in front of a camera, but sometimes you just have to say no.

They thought that they were doing a good thing by getting into a shouting match with O'Reilly, but I can guarantee you that all they were doing was giving him material for his reprehensible show.

"He said that what Smiley and West seemed to want was for the government to "forcibly seize" money from the rich and give it to the poor. "That's socialism and that's not going to work here," he concluded.

"It wasn't socialism when we bailed out the banks in the first place?" Smiley said. He started to say that O'Reilly had been "right" in a recent attack on Stanley O'Neal, the former head of Merril Lynch. O'Reilly misheard him.
"Lied about it?!" he thundered. "What do you mean i lied about it?!"

"I said you were right!" Smiley said. "R-i-g-h-t!" O'Reilly apologized, and assured his guests he was "calm." Things got a lot less calm right afterwards, though. Smiley asked why O'Reilly was focusing on O'Neal, one of the few black CEOs of a major firm, causing O'Reilly to shout, "we treat everybody the same here!" Smiley disagreed, and wondered why, when Occupy Wall Street protesters were being arrested, no "bankster" had gone to jail "to pay for his crimes."

"They didn't violate any laws!" O'Reilly said, prompting Smiley and West to essentially lose it. "OOOOOHHHHHHHH!" they both said together. "How do you know?!" West yelled. "There's been no investigations! Why would you say something like that?!"

"All right, knock it off!" O'Reilly fired back." [Source]

I might have to agree with O'Reilly on that one: Fellows, please knock it off.

"Break Up To Make Up"

Black folks can we talk? If we are going to really change our communities from the ground up, do we really need a bunch of self appointed clowns jockeying for the position of HNIC? Because honestly, that is exactly what has been happening lately in the civil rights industry.

You have Tavis fighting with Rev. Al, the NAACP, and the Urban League. And you have Rev. Al fighting with Tavis. And, once again, it's about them, and not the larger struggle that they are supposed to be a part of.

But I blame his O ness for all of this. If he hadn't went and became president of these divided states, some of these clowns would have actually still been running around d thinking that they have some juice, and that they are still relevant in black America. They are not. The only people that they are relevant to are young white cable news producers who give them shine so that they can tell the rest of A-merry-ca how black folks think. They can't. Black folks are not monolithic thinkers, (just read the comments on this blog) and we sure as hell don't need a bunch of self appointed leaders of the Negroes in A-merry-ca telling us how to solve our problems.

If you live in Camden or Detroit, your problems are local: Poor schools, crime, jobs, reentry programs, affordable health care, and so on. So you really don't need a bunch of national talking heads who are paid handsomely to be professional poverty pimps, pontificating about us and our problems. And we sure as hell don't need to be a part of their clash of egos because someone was dissed or offended by the others words. The tragedy is that they are on national radio programs doing this bullshit, and we have to be dragged into the middle of it.

" James Taylor, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco, calls the current debate an example of black political elite fighting for better positions for themselves.

'“This really isn’t about representing the concerns of everyday black people,' Taylor told BlackAmericaweb.com. ''You have black millionaires coordinating a program that is economically driven and not protest driven.

'While blacks, like others in America, want to see more people back to work, most don’t look to activists for the real solutions, Taylor said.'They look past Smiley and Sharpton. They look to President Obama for policy that will eradicate the poverty of blacks,' Taylor said."

Amen Mr. Taylor! And BTW, I loved "Fire & Rain".

But seriously, if others can see it, why can't they? Are they they so caught up with their own egos and self delusiuon that the can't see the forrest for the wingtips? I mean really, was this really necessary? (Tavis, I guess Rev. Al kept it real at your expense. That will teach you to get all jealous [no pun intended Mr. NAACP leader] just because his O ness didn't invite you to the White House. And Rev. Al. if we are going to keep it really real "fo" real; how about a little less of the Super Bowl festivities and more of the people's work? Folks, I got my peeps all over A-merry-ca. )

"Syracuse University professor Boyce Watkins said the debate between Sharpton and Smiley is one that can probably be heard at dinner tables across America."

I love you Dr. Watkins, but you are wrong. The only thing that is being said at black dinner tables "across America" is how did the job interview go? And, pass the salt.

Do the field Negroes get to pick the race experts?

I know that the day before I appear on Dr. Eric Dyson's radio program I shouldn't be ripping a supposed "black race expert" on my blog. Others have been ripping our race experts, but I won't go there. Still, I don't know about my man Tavis. I got an e-mail from a very popular "Buppie" promoter here in town who has a very strong mailing list. The e-mail was all about this new documentary that Tavis is promoting and they want folks to attend the screening and have an open dialogue about it.

Now, I don't want to rip Tavis, that would be too easy. I really want to believe that his head and his heart is in the right place. I mean, let's face it, if many of us had Tavis's influence, wouldn't we be doing the same thing? Isn't it too easy to say on the sidelines and call Tavis a self promoting race hustler rather than get involved ourselves? That's what a part of me is saying. But then the other part is saying that Tavis is a self promoting race hustler. And I know that many of us are getting involved and trying to make a difference, we just don't shine the light as bright on ourselves while we do it. ---Is there a brighter light than the one Tavis has?-- I am just saying.

Hey, tell you what, you people who love TS, please tell the field why I should love him right along with you. Because I truly believe, that like Dr. Tyson and others, he is a designated race expert in A-murder-ca, and I always want to know what the experts are saying about race. I don't want anymore groups like the "Anti Cooning Tribunal" popping up all over the place, we need to all get on the same page, people.

But I digress, this is what the e-mail promotion said:

"Sulaiman Rahman. “STAND” Film Screening at the African American Museum
A DOCUMENTARY CHRONICLING THE EXTRAORDINARY ROAD TRIP OF TAVIS SMILEY AND 10 FRIENDS EXPLORING THE BLACK MALE EXPERIENCE.
STAND, a compelling documentary chronicling an extraordinary road trip taken by broadcaster Tavis Smiley and remarkable black male friends at a key moment in our nation's history. America was commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., against the backdrop of then-Senator Barack Obama emerging as the first African American to become the Democratic presidential nominee. As America approached the historic 2008 presidential election, the national dialogue and debate intensified about race relations, politics and legacy of the civil rights movement.

"There are times in the film when we debate, cry, laugh, hug and even hold hands and pray together. It's a genuine reflection of Black men and brotherhood which we rarely, if ever see in the media. When people see the film, they really respond to that," said Smiley.

Dr. Cornell West and Dr. Eddie Glaude will host a post-movie discussion.When: Thursday, May 21st, 2009 Time: 6pm - 9pm (Film starts at 6:45pm)Location: African American Museum, 7th and Arch Streets, Philadelphia PA"

Tavis and his friends in an "extraordinary documentary". Gee, there is a surprise.

The Black Community Experts.

I recently read a fascinating article in "The Atlantic Magazine" about the recent elections and how the Obama team used (or didn't use) race to win the elections. It was quite an interesting insight into what the Obama team was thinking at various times during the campaign about the delicate issue of race.

I found the following parts of the article to be the most interesting:

"Obama refused to accept this late-20th-century model of racial politics, and he had no intention of fighting the general election with the same bolo punches and taunts that had stopped working decades ago. He had written a memoir about the labyrinthine complexities of racial difference. He wasn’t afraid to acknowledge the psychological effects of, say, race-based affirmative action on poorer whites. He had an exotic name. He was new. He was young. Most of his advisers weren’t black.

'There was a period when it was not at all clear that Obama would be able to win the vast majority of the African American vote,, David Binder, Obama’s focus-group guru, told me after the election. 'The biggest problem we had with African Americans would be that they didn’t think he could ever win.' In the focus groups, black voters told Binder that they didn’t believe whites would ever vote for Obama. 'That all changed with Iowa,' he said. 'The Iowa results proved to many African Americans that Obama had broader-based appeal and was not just someone who was going to be a token African American candidate.'

Last February, the black journalist Tavis Smiley held his annual State of the Black Union forum in New Orleans. For the second year in a row, Obama declined to attend. (The 2007 forum took place on the day he launched his campaign.) Smiley was angry about the slight and criticized Obama openly. The backlash against Smiley was intense. This was just after Obama had won the South Carolina primary, after African Americans had united around Obama in part because the Clinton campaign seemed to be writing him—and them—off. Smiley quit The Tom Joyner Morning Show, one of the country’s most popular radio programs among African Americans, because, as Joyner explained to his audience, 'He can’t take the hate he’s taken over Barack Obama. He’s always busting Barack Obama’s chops.'

The Smiley backlash was evidence to Obama’s inner circle that, in the words of one adviser, “Barack became untouchable in the community,” in much the same way that civil-rights heroes such as John Lewis had earned a lifetime’s worth of goodwill and benefit of the doubt. “Tavis Smiley was the object lesson for everyone,” says Anita Dunn, a senior campaign strategist.

'We came to realize that the black community, politically, had moved into a different era,' another senior Obama adviser told me shortly after the election. 'You could get intensity in the African American community by giving them a candidate they could see as being able to win. You didn’t have to speak to them in a way that would make white people nervous.' Obama shared the antipathy of liberal whites and younger blacks toward the hand-to-hand, transactional politics that had characterized the relationship between the Democratic Party and many African American leaders.

It took the campaign a while to figure out the right course. 'We did not have an organized strategy around this,' says Michael Strautmanis, a counselor to Obama. “It was like a series of constant recalibrations.”

In the winter of 2007, the campaign entered a bidding war with the Clinton campaign over the endorsement of State Senator Darrell Jackson, the pastor of one of the largest congregations in South Carolina. The Obama campaign offered him a $5,000-per-month retainer, and Jackson said he would soon endorse him. But then he sent word that the Clinton campaign was offering a more lucrative contract, implying, at least to the Obama team, that he would endorse Obama only if they would tender a more generous offer. Through his deputy campaign manager, Obama refused. It would be the last time that Obama negotiated with black pastors this way. (Jackson endorsed Clinton.)

A few weeks before the general election, aides to a pastor contacted the Obama campaign and laid out a political battle plan. The pastor would mobilize 300,000 volunteers and dispatch 72 church vans to battleground states on Election Day. He would touch more than 2 million voters. All he needed was $5 million to pay for it. The Obama campaign thanked him and said no. The pastor threatened to go public with the refusal. The Obama campaign pointed to examples of other black leaders who had confronted Obama in public, and invited the pastor, in essence, to bring it on. (The pastor apologized the day after the election.)"

Noooooo, you mean to tell me that preachers wanted $$$$$ from his O ness for their endorsement? I am shocked, shocked I tell ya.

Anyway, I knew how Tavis felt about his O ness all along, but now I know how the Obama folks felt about him. Must be nice to be able to just read the black community like you would a play book. Looks like his O ness had some Black Community Experts in his inner circle. (Do they study that shit in college?) I guess if you are a politician in A-merry-ca you are going to need a few things: A good fundraiser, a good grass roots organizer, great pollsters, and last but not least; a Black Community Expert.

Interesting. Poor old Tavis I guess he wont be doing any sit downs with our new president elect anytime soon. And no wonder the O man had Rick Warren pray at his inauguration, if he had asked some of these black preachers they would have wanted to get paid. (It doesn't take a Black Community Expert to figure out that preachers like $$$.) And we couldn't have that now could we, not when the country is so broke.

GO EAGLES!!!

What a ride!

By all accounts this will be a historic night here in A-merry-ca. You Obamaholics should be proud of your boy. The first black man (albeit a half and half one) to win a major party nomination for president of these divided states. I for one will have to eat a little crow and admit that I didn't even think that the "O" man could win the dumbocratic nomination. All along you Obamaholics told me to watch and see, and all I could think of was therapy; these folks need some serious ass therapy. But you did it, as I write this your boy is six delegates short of his 2,118 needed to clinch the dumbocratic nomination and Hillary is begging to be on the ticket with him. Who knew?

I was also inspired by a post by my man Baratunde over at Jack & Jill Politics , and it made me want to talk about this past political season. It has been one hell of a ride, and we aren't even in the finals yet. We have had haters like Tavis Smiley, and Juan Williams throw in their two cents at every turn. We have had doubters like yours truly chirping about the Obamaholics and all his "O" love at every turn. And we have had the flat out racist (see the FAKE NEWS NETWORK and certain voters from the Appalachian states) who would just as soon vote for Charles Manson before they put a Negro family in their "white" House. And there has been the good too. Folks in states like Iowa and Oregon, Lilly white folks, ignoring the "O" man's race and buying into a movement. People like Christopher, a regular to this site, who has had nothing but love and devotion for the "O" man from day one. People like Christopher and all of you Obamaholics deserve all the credit in the world. You gave your money your time and your votes. And without it, the "O" man would be slinking back to the South Side of Chicago to work on his bowling and his jump shot. It has been beautiful to watch the Clintons and all of their minions (see the clowns over at Bartcop and other various pro Hillary sites) become unraveled and exposed for the patronizing racist frauds that they really are.

Now I will be in the gym every day for the next few weeks. Because I bet someone that if the "O" man won the general I would run down Broad street in my Jamaican birthday suit. Now I am pretty sure that I am safe. There will be no headlines screaming that a Philly lawyer/blogger was arrested for indecent exposure on North Broad street after the final election results were tallied. But the way things are going, you never know.

You Obamaholics might just have one more trick up your sleeve.

Some special coons.

I know I retired the "Coonie Awards", but just for the sake of this latest Obama controversy, and the "O"man's campaign, I have decided to revive the "Coonies" just one more time. Some of these noteworthy coons are folks who have relished in the Reverend Wright fiasco, and have benefited in one way or another from it. But all of these Coons have distinguished themselves by contributing to the downfall of A-mery-can politics and discourse.

1. Bill Clinton: You may have been the "first black President", but Bubba, black folks don't love you anymore. And after all the dumb shit you have been saying lately, can you blame them?

2. Geraldine Ferraro: (Yes Geri, white women can be Coons too) A Black man is lucky to be born black in A-merry-ca? You must have lost your fucking mind. And you are upset because you were lumped with Jeremiah Wright? My question to you would be why? You are more dangerous than the good Reverend. You ran for the second highest office in the land, he did not.

3. Robert Johnson: Mr. Johnson, having money doesn't shield you from being a Coon, it only makes you a rich Coon. Owning that coon acting, rump shaking, coonfest network was bad, but your comments about Barack Obama during this election cycle was over the top. Try taking some of that money of yours and buying a fucking clue.

4. Juan Williams (And all other people of color who accept invitations to appear on FAKE NEWS) Juan, I am really torn about you; but I think I am going to send you a Coonie. If only because you are on that racist propaganda network, and because I am sure that you are cashing that Rupert Murdoch check. You also represent a very troubling trend: Whenever FAKE NEWS offends black folks by doing what they do, they trot out folks like you to make A-merry-cans think that we (Black folks) co-sign with their bull shit.

5. Andrew Young: See John Lewis for how an icon from the civil rights era should behave. First Wal-Mart, and then your behavior during this election primary. My god man, get off the stage.

6. Ken Blackwell: Some folks have made the argument that this coon actually cost the dumbocrats the White House in 2004. As the Secretary of State of Ohio, he was partially responsible for some of the voting irregularities that took place there. Irregularities which benefited the rethuglicans and George Bush. That alone gets him on this list. And when I see him on television night in and night out bashing the "O" man, I have to wonder about his true motivation behind that shit.

7. Glen Beck/Sean Hannity/Bill Orielly: I support the First Amendment as much as the next person... but these clowns really make me wonder sometimes.

8. Tavis Smiley: Tavis, I tried watching your TV show the other night, but I couldn't get that green tint from my television screen. I just can't figure out if it was caused by your envy of the "O" man, or if it was due to all that corporate money you have been raking in lately.

9. DMX: Sorry, I have to give this dumb ass Negro an award. You never heard of Barack Obama, and you are proud of that shit?

10. Pat Buchanan: Every now and then you make sense, but thanks to the Obama run for President, your true colors have been showing.

Okay, now the "Coonies" are officially retired for real.

Happy Easter!

Tavis is not smiling.

"In the final stretch, I will be on the campaign trail every day in states like Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin talking directly with voters about the causes that are at the heart of my campaign and the State of the Black Union forum... That is why, with regret, I am not able to attend the forum"

This is what the "O" man wrote and told Tavis Smiley as an explanation why he couldn't attend his "State of The Black Union Conference" on Saturday. Now I have to tell you, I started to write this post with every intention of ripping Tavis Smiley, because there is something very unsettling to me about the guy. Sorry, there just is. Tavis seems to be all about Tavis. And I can't help but think that he wanted the "O" man at his event more to lend it star power than for substantive reasons. Still, I don't want to rip what he is trying to do. (Lord knows we do enough of that as black folks) I do like the fact that he wants to deploy 1,000 volunteers all over New Orleans to help that city rebuild post Katrina. And the networking and all the symposiums at his conference can't hurt either. Plus, the damn thing is free. Supposedly he will have 4,5000 registering for the weekend, and getting the ear of that many black folks all at once can lead to some positive things.

But still......Maybe it's the fact that Tavis always features the usual suspects like Sharpton,West, Jackson, Dyson, and the rest of civil rights inc. that bothers me. Nothing wrong with those guys, but is it just me, or does anyone else think that we need to feature some new blood now?

"I think it's a missed opportunity on Mr. Obama's part...Now I am not interested in demonizing him for his choice, but I do disagree with him."

Of course you do Tavis. He dissed your party, and I am sure that doesn't sit right with your ego.

I would love to be in Mr. Smiley's head right about now to see what he really thinks of the "O"man. "Will you get off the stage Negro, I am supposed to be the young black savior here."

I do see that Hillary was there, and honestly, she needed to be there more than the "O" man did. Already her backers are ripping the "O" man for missing the event, and accusing the "O" man of taking his peeps for granted. But I suspect the Ice Queen was there because black folks have been bailing on her quicker than you can say hope. She said all the things you expected her to say. But mostly she reminded the black folks in attendance just how much her husband did for them, and how much she loves black people.

Poor Hillary, I know she wishes she could have done like the "O" man did and stayed on the campaign trial. I mean honestly, what percentage of the black folks in attendance do you think are going to vote for her? Twenty maybe? Alright if you count all the participants and the CBC members in attendance, twenty one. But you get the picture. In spite of what Tavis and his people would like to believe, that ( even with mostly black people) was not a pro Hillary crowd.

So Tavis, good luck with your continued career and quest to save black folks. I just can't wait to see what next year's state of the black union looks like.

A Saturday Sweep.

Mrs. Field is downright giddy tonight. The "O" man just pulled a clean sweep over the Ice Queen in today's primaries (including her home state of Louisiana). Talk about reach. Her boy won in the deep South and far Northwest. And to top it off, come April 22nd her vote here in the Pennsylvania Primary might actually have some significance this election year.

I'll be damned if the "O" man isn't acting like he wants to pull this thing off. Forget the cynical bloggers like the field Negro. Forget the old school traditional black politicians like Shiela Jackson Lee and the folks at the CBC who owe so much to the Clintons. Forget the folks like Tavis Smiley and Shelby Steele, who for whatever reason seem to be consumed with jealousy and hateration. He is impervious to us all.

You Obamaholics will have a serious hangover tomorrow morning because of this high that you are on right now. But be careful, don't go overdosing on the Obama Aid just yet. There are still things like super delegates (which, by the way, is bullshit)and Clintonian political trickery down the road to consider. For now though, I won't deny you your right to party and soak up these latest wins. You deserve it. You have been sticking with your boy when cynics like yours truly have been saying the Emperor might not have any underwear on under all those fine clothes.

Now I am off to bed. Let's just hope Mrs. Field is still in that mood.

Thank you "O" man ;)

The Shunning

So what are you doing on September 27, 2007, at around 9:00 PM? Well, if you are a republican candidate, running for president of these (not so) United States, I know what you won't be doing; you won't be hanging out at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Mmmmmm, I wonder why? Could it be because this is the black folks debate hosted by that uppity Negro, Tavis Smiley, at a predominantly black University ? Gee, let me see now.....yeah, I am going to take a wild guess and speculate on this one. I am going to say that not one of the leading republican candidates would want to jeopardize his red state vote by showing up at the "live at the Apollo" debates. You see it's like this, unfortunately for Tavis, they have their own little covenant too. But unlike his, their covenant is with their white conservative base, and there is no way in hell that they are going to participate in a debate that his black behind moderates.

But if you hear my man, the potential moderator, Tavis Smiley tell it, the debate will go on. This, in spite of the fact that the republican candidates are treating him like the Dixie Chicks at a FOX NEWS picnic. So all four of the leading candidates bailed out on you huh Tavis. Hey, don't feel bad, they did it to my Hispanic brothers and sisters too. But unlike you, my Hispanic bothers and sisters told them to go and fuck themselves, and canceled their debates. But what did you expect Tavis, that the leading republican candidates for president would actually debate each other with you as host? And, at a HBC (That's historically black college for my readers who aren't in the know) no less. Come on Tavis, don't tell me you are one of these people in America that really believes that republicans care about your vote? Don't tell me you actually believe that shit? You must have lots of black republican friends; that could be the only explanation for your naivity.

"There is a pattern here. When you tell every black and brown request that you get throughout the primary process that 'no, there's a scheduling problem. That's a pattern... Are we really supposed to believe that all four of these guys couldn't make it because of scheduling?" No Tavis, you are not. And quite frankly, they don't give a damn what you think. They are republican candidates for president trying to get out of a republican primary. They won't find their Kumbaya moment until the general election rolls around. That is when they will have to convince the rest of the country that they are kind, compassionate republicans; the kind of republicans who takes pictures with little black children, and who loves to quote MLK.

"I told them I thought they were making a grave mistake and I thought they should reconsider" Yeah right Tavis, just don't hold your breath.