by Aoife
The main stream media is its own running gag. The result of huge cutbacks in news staffing not only around the world but in the United States has resulted in "reporters" who troll the net like anyone else can for "news" and don't know anything about sourcing a rumor or lead that's not handed or whispered to them by someone they regularly party with. The gravitas brought to a news broadcast by the likes of Murrow, Cronkite, Huntly, Brinkley and Dan Rather have been replaced by people who read the news not those who report on the news. Bresking news is considered sn interview with a member of that family based in California that boasts a former Olympic swimmer as it's patriarch. If you want serious news you have to rely on the internet amd be your own researcher as well as find your own sources. The current crop of pretty faces appear to have shown up in newsrooms without a stitch of knowledge about the history of this country. When it comes to race relations it's even worse. Many of the pretty faces are too young to remember Jim Crow or what it took for African Americans to be able to live as full citizens of this country.
Which brings me to the strange case of Herman Cain. Main stream media (MSM) has been breathlessly reporting how Mr. Cain has been able up until now to lead the Republican field among voters whose mindset seems to be stuck firmly in the 1940's. This same group villifies the current President of the United States as an elitist (read educated) and the incarnation of evil. Mr. Obama overcame what for some would've been difficult circumstances to become the most powerful man in the world. He is articulate, well spoken, and can think on his feet. Mr. Cain is none of the above. He tends to speak in old school African American slang using not only the words but the style of speech from back when I was younger. Deep thought doesn't appear to be his strong suit and to be honest he really doesn't care. His supporters find comfort in the fact that he has no idea of the strategic importance of Uzbekistan or that the Taliban is not a Libyan based movement. He can shuck and jive with the best of them and that is comforting to many. They won't say it in public but Herman Cain is their kind of Negro. He's not an elitist. He's taken advantage of opportunities others fought and died for him to have, but he's not trying to be above his station like Mr. Barack Obama. He's the guy you pass on the street and nod your head at in greeting who replies with a big grin and a loud "Good Morning".
He is also the type of Black man many whites think of when they have to confront the reality of a successful black man. Yes he has a black wife, an upstanding church going woman who dresses modestly and is content being a housewife. But every chance this black man gets he's running after the "fair haired woman" with blue eyes and white skin. Cain is a black man they can understand. It surprises them that many politically aware, educated blacks want nothing to do with Herman Cain or people like him. He is, as my mother used to say, a disgrace to the race and the cause of much shame and embarrassment. The Republican base, entrenched in the '40's, can't comprehend or understand how much of an anachronism Cain, and many of their bought and paid for black people are. Barack Obama is alien to them. He is not a "real" black man.
If the MSM was still run and populated by people with a sense of history and not just those who follow whatever the current flavor of the month is as dictated by people who purposely use their collective ignorance for their own objectives this subtext would be made clear. Instead the media chooses to act as if the Republican base isn't what it's been for the last few years, anti black, anti multicultural and stuck in the past. When it comes to family values the POTUS and his family exemplify them but he is, as I've said, an alien to these people. Herman Cain is who they see when they look at Barack Obama. And that is not going to change.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Matthew Chapter 7
by Aoife
I grew up in a world that seems to have totally disappeared.
I was in the place of my birth, Harlem USA yesterday afternoon. I had some business to attend to on the main drag, 125th street. What a place of wonder it was for me as a child. My mother would take all four of us and we would walk the twelve blocks down 7th Avenue. The Alhambra Theatre was the first awe inspiring thing that would catch my eye. Directly across the street was a bookstore that touted it was the place to find out any and everything about the Negro. Most people called it Michaux's. I never made it in there because my mother was always ranting about that "rabble rouser" Malcolm X who was often lecturing in front of the store.
When I was older I made it to another store that was located on Lenox Avenue and 125th street called The Tree of Life. It was a place where there was not only political discourse taking place but lectures on numerology, astrology and African based religions given by amateurs certified by the book of life not some university somewhere. I wonder why some thought it was absolutely necessary to close the place down. Was it the fact that spirituality and non Christian religion was allowed a place or the politics? I have no idea. It was closed down and life moved on. There was some protest about the space being devoured by the new State Offfice Building but I don't think anyone seriously thought The Tree of Life had a chance.
There had also been a jewelry store on the corner of 125th and Seventh Avenue where my father had bought my mother's engagement ring and wedding band. Not to mention the "superstore" Blumsteins where my mother would take us shopping for winter clothes and put them on layaway.
A trip to 125th Street holds many memories for me.
Yesterday I got off the express bus at 125th Street and Fifth Avenue close to Mount Morris Park. It's been renamed Marcus Garvey Park but to me it will always be Mount Morris Park where I saw Miriam Makeba perform light years ago.
This wasn't my first trip to the new 125th street, a multicultural phantasmagoria of street vendors, Africans, Asians, Europeans and African Americans. The mind holds onto it's memories but the eyes record the realities. My old landmarks are long gone. In their place stand odes to the commercialism of this time and place.
But those changes are not what left me depressed and concerned.
As you know I started this blog as a place to talk about my recovery from serious illness. As a result of following a strict diet in order to control my diabetes I have lost over 50 pounds. As anyone knows who has lost a significant amount of weight you become pretty fanatical about it. I try not to be that person but what I saw yesterday makes me wonder what the hell is going on when it comes to the food choices people make.
The first thing that strikes me about traveling in any black or brown community is the obesity of the younger generation. African American and Latino children are increasingly becoming baby blimps. I saw a woman yesterday feeding her infant small pieces of McDonald's fries. The baby was still on the bottle by the way but that didn't stop this young mother. She was maybe twenty and had two children. The oldest was about four. I'll skip over her changing her infant's diaper on the bus stop and giving the soiled one to the four year old to throw away without telling the child where to go to throw it out.
She was not the only young mother I saw. I was taking the Seventh Avenue bus, the #2 to meet my daughter at 14th street and I was lucky to find a seat since there were a lot of young women and children waiting at the stop.
What struck me is that all of these young women have children. Not a child. Children. None of the children I saw yesterday were more than seven. None of them were in a summer camp. More than likely a young woman had three to four little stair steps as my late mother would say. And none of these women was over thirty. Hell most weren't over twenty five.
This post is not about the politics of the situation. I know it's not a new situation. It's just that I was working for 37 years and between the job and raising my daughter I really didn't pay too much attention to what was going on in the community. When did it become cool to be in your teens and have thighs as big around as a person and wear a dress so short that when you sit down the person across from you can see France? When did it become cool to be so fat? Why is it cool? What is wrong with us?
I ended up saying to myself that the Creator has a plan and that there has to be a reason all of these children are being born into this world. I did manage to learn over the years that the universe will do a show and tell for you if you keep your eyes open and look out for it. I got my show and tell big time yesterday. My lesson? Judge not lest you be judged.
End Note
When writing the post about Norway I randomly clicked on comments and found a post by a long time online friend HelenW. She posted two years ago and for some reason I never got the normal message that someone had posted a reply. I can't post it now.
Helen if you see this your thoughts are most welcome.
I grew up in a world that seems to have totally disappeared.
I was in the place of my birth, Harlem USA yesterday afternoon. I had some business to attend to on the main drag, 125th street. What a place of wonder it was for me as a child. My mother would take all four of us and we would walk the twelve blocks down 7th Avenue. The Alhambra Theatre was the first awe inspiring thing that would catch my eye. Directly across the street was a bookstore that touted it was the place to find out any and everything about the Negro. Most people called it Michaux's. I never made it in there because my mother was always ranting about that "rabble rouser" Malcolm X who was often lecturing in front of the store.
When I was older I made it to another store that was located on Lenox Avenue and 125th street called The Tree of Life. It was a place where there was not only political discourse taking place but lectures on numerology, astrology and African based religions given by amateurs certified by the book of life not some university somewhere. I wonder why some thought it was absolutely necessary to close the place down. Was it the fact that spirituality and non Christian religion was allowed a place or the politics? I have no idea. It was closed down and life moved on. There was some protest about the space being devoured by the new State Offfice Building but I don't think anyone seriously thought The Tree of Life had a chance.
There had also been a jewelry store on the corner of 125th and Seventh Avenue where my father had bought my mother's engagement ring and wedding band. Not to mention the "superstore" Blumsteins where my mother would take us shopping for winter clothes and put them on layaway.
A trip to 125th Street holds many memories for me.
Yesterday I got off the express bus at 125th Street and Fifth Avenue close to Mount Morris Park. It's been renamed Marcus Garvey Park but to me it will always be Mount Morris Park where I saw Miriam Makeba perform light years ago.
This wasn't my first trip to the new 125th street, a multicultural phantasmagoria of street vendors, Africans, Asians, Europeans and African Americans. The mind holds onto it's memories but the eyes record the realities. My old landmarks are long gone. In their place stand odes to the commercialism of this time and place.
But those changes are not what left me depressed and concerned.
As you know I started this blog as a place to talk about my recovery from serious illness. As a result of following a strict diet in order to control my diabetes I have lost over 50 pounds. As anyone knows who has lost a significant amount of weight you become pretty fanatical about it. I try not to be that person but what I saw yesterday makes me wonder what the hell is going on when it comes to the food choices people make.
The first thing that strikes me about traveling in any black or brown community is the obesity of the younger generation. African American and Latino children are increasingly becoming baby blimps. I saw a woman yesterday feeding her infant small pieces of McDonald's fries. The baby was still on the bottle by the way but that didn't stop this young mother. She was maybe twenty and had two children. The oldest was about four. I'll skip over her changing her infant's diaper on the bus stop and giving the soiled one to the four year old to throw away without telling the child where to go to throw it out.
She was not the only young mother I saw. I was taking the Seventh Avenue bus, the #2 to meet my daughter at 14th street and I was lucky to find a seat since there were a lot of young women and children waiting at the stop.
What struck me is that all of these young women have children. Not a child. Children. None of the children I saw yesterday were more than seven. None of them were in a summer camp. More than likely a young woman had three to four little stair steps as my late mother would say. And none of these women was over thirty. Hell most weren't over twenty five.
This post is not about the politics of the situation. I know it's not a new situation. It's just that I was working for 37 years and between the job and raising my daughter I really didn't pay too much attention to what was going on in the community. When did it become cool to be in your teens and have thighs as big around as a person and wear a dress so short that when you sit down the person across from you can see France? When did it become cool to be so fat? Why is it cool? What is wrong with us?
I ended up saying to myself that the Creator has a plan and that there has to be a reason all of these children are being born into this world. I did manage to learn over the years that the universe will do a show and tell for you if you keep your eyes open and look out for it. I got my show and tell big time yesterday. My lesson? Judge not lest you be judged.
End Note
When writing the post about Norway I randomly clicked on comments and found a post by a long time online friend HelenW. She posted two years ago and for some reason I never got the normal message that someone had posted a reply. I can't post it now.
Helen if you see this your thoughts are most welcome.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
About Norway
BOB MARLEY
"War"
Until the philosophy which hold one race superior
And another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned -
Everywhere is war -
Me say war.
That until there no longer
First class and second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man's skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes -
Me say war.
That until the basic human rights
Are equally guaranteed to all,
Without regard to race -
Dis a war.
That until that day
The dream of lasting peace,
World citizenship
Rule of international morality
Will remain in but a fleeting illusion to be pursued,
But never attained -
Now everywhere is war - war.
And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes
that hold our brothers in Angola,
In Mozambique,
South Africa
Sub-human bondage
Have been toppled,
Utterly destroyed -
Well, everywhere is war -
Me say war.
War in the east,
War in the west,
War up north,
War down south -
War - war -
Rumours of war.
And until that day,
The African continent
Will not know peace,
We Africans will fight - we find it necessary -
And we know we shall win
As we are confident
In the victory
Of good over evil -
Good over evil, yeah!
Good over evil -
Good over evil, yeah!
Good over evil -
Good over evil, yeah!
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Evidence, Juries and Verdicts
by Aoife
The country is in an uproar about the Casey Anthony verdict. A jury of her peers - that had to be imported because the local jury pool had been so tainted - found her not guilty of the crime she'd been accused of - the death of her toddler daughter. People were in the street screaming "OJ2" with tears streaming down their faces at the thought of this child's death going unavenged.
I'm going to be honest. I didn't follow the case once it went to trial. I'm one of those contrarians who, the minute she hears that everyone is obsessed with something or someone I go in the opposite direction. I was surprised that the case went to jury so soon but as I said I wasn't paying that much attention. A mother who went out to party after her child disappeared. A mother who got a tattoo? A mother who waited 31 days to report her child was missing? A mother who laughed when she was fingerprinted? Slam dunk for the prosecution right?
As it turns out the prosecution's case was more like LeBron James and the Miami Heat's march to the NBA Championships. The child's skeletal remains were found in a swamp. There was no DNA evidence to be found. Yes there was the smell of human decomposition in the trunk of Ms Anthony's car but the jury didn't think much of that. There were pictures of the young mother having big fun.
Before you start about the jurors being idiots let's talk about what the jurors responsibility is and the burden of proof that rests on the prosecution.
I've served as a juror on a murder trial. I've served as a juror on a drug possession trial. I've served as a juror on a gun possession trial. And each time the jury I was on found the defendant innocent, much to the consternation of the prosecutors.
I should say that I'm not a textbook, knee jerk bleeding heart kind of person. I put my opinions on hold when I step into a jury box. That is what the judge tells you during jury selection. As a juror you listen to what the prosecution presents as evidence and what argument the defense makes to give nuance to or counter that evidence. It also has to be remembered that the defense doesn't have to prove anything. The burden of proof is on the shoulders of the prosecution.
In all of the trials I sat on the prosecutors showed up with evidence that at best can be called shaky. In the murder case we were shown video of the accused confessing, saw the coat the murdered man was wearing showing the stab wounds in the back of the coat, the murdered man laying on the sidewalk showing not one ounce of blood on his abdomen. Yet the arresting officer proudly showed the tape of the alleged murderer saying he stabbed the man in the chest. The other two cases presented equally shaky evidence.
But it was hard evidence. In this case the prosecution had to present circumstantial evidence, evidence that seems to have pointed to Ms Anthony being guilty. But the jury saw it differently. I could go on about how the dumbing down of America has probably affected the ability of many Americans to get to Point B from Point A. I grew up with the expression "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck". That type of reasoning seems to have gone bye bye as people look to be led more than being able to reason for themselves. They want to be told what to think and feel not reach an independent conclusion. But that is a discussion for another time.
I was stunned that the jury came back so soon but when I did I knew that Ms Anthony would be acquitted and that the decision was unanimous. It's the nature of juries.
On the juries I sat on once you're in the room a vote is taken, straight up, guilty or not guilty. If there is a split the discussion starts. Fortunately all of the juries I've been on were made up of people who had respect for each other. The discussions got heated, but there were no smackdowns, verbal or physical.
If the vote is unanimous it comes down to accommodations, job pressures and personal preferences. Do we go right back in? Do we milk them for another day of free lunch and a paid day off from work. I've never been sequestered so I don't know how that dynamic works.
I think they voted, decided on not guilty across the board, and decided they needed a night to sleep on it, to make sure they could live with the consequences of their decision.
It doesn't look good that the jury cut and ran. It smells of book deals and television interviews. They have to go home to what will be hostile reactions from friends and neighbors. When the Sheriff of the Florida County where Ms Anthony lives has to go on the air and beg for calm I don't think that these folks will have an easy time of it. If you feel you reached the right decision stand up and explain why. The OJ jury did. It's the least you can do for little Caylee Anthony, may she rest in peace.
The country is in an uproar about the Casey Anthony verdict. A jury of her peers - that had to be imported because the local jury pool had been so tainted - found her not guilty of the crime she'd been accused of - the death of her toddler daughter. People were in the street screaming "OJ2" with tears streaming down their faces at the thought of this child's death going unavenged.
I'm going to be honest. I didn't follow the case once it went to trial. I'm one of those contrarians who, the minute she hears that everyone is obsessed with something or someone I go in the opposite direction. I was surprised that the case went to jury so soon but as I said I wasn't paying that much attention. A mother who went out to party after her child disappeared. A mother who got a tattoo? A mother who waited 31 days to report her child was missing? A mother who laughed when she was fingerprinted? Slam dunk for the prosecution right?
As it turns out the prosecution's case was more like LeBron James and the Miami Heat's march to the NBA Championships. The child's skeletal remains were found in a swamp. There was no DNA evidence to be found. Yes there was the smell of human decomposition in the trunk of Ms Anthony's car but the jury didn't think much of that. There were pictures of the young mother having big fun.
Before you start about the jurors being idiots let's talk about what the jurors responsibility is and the burden of proof that rests on the prosecution.
I've served as a juror on a murder trial. I've served as a juror on a drug possession trial. I've served as a juror on a gun possession trial. And each time the jury I was on found the defendant innocent, much to the consternation of the prosecutors.
I should say that I'm not a textbook, knee jerk bleeding heart kind of person. I put my opinions on hold when I step into a jury box. That is what the judge tells you during jury selection. As a juror you listen to what the prosecution presents as evidence and what argument the defense makes to give nuance to or counter that evidence. It also has to be remembered that the defense doesn't have to prove anything. The burden of proof is on the shoulders of the prosecution.
In all of the trials I sat on the prosecutors showed up with evidence that at best can be called shaky. In the murder case we were shown video of the accused confessing, saw the coat the murdered man was wearing showing the stab wounds in the back of the coat, the murdered man laying on the sidewalk showing not one ounce of blood on his abdomen. Yet the arresting officer proudly showed the tape of the alleged murderer saying he stabbed the man in the chest. The other two cases presented equally shaky evidence.
But it was hard evidence. In this case the prosecution had to present circumstantial evidence, evidence that seems to have pointed to Ms Anthony being guilty. But the jury saw it differently. I could go on about how the dumbing down of America has probably affected the ability of many Americans to get to Point B from Point A. I grew up with the expression "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck". That type of reasoning seems to have gone bye bye as people look to be led more than being able to reason for themselves. They want to be told what to think and feel not reach an independent conclusion. But that is a discussion for another time.
I was stunned that the jury came back so soon but when I did I knew that Ms Anthony would be acquitted and that the decision was unanimous. It's the nature of juries.
On the juries I sat on once you're in the room a vote is taken, straight up, guilty or not guilty. If there is a split the discussion starts. Fortunately all of the juries I've been on were made up of people who had respect for each other. The discussions got heated, but there were no smackdowns, verbal or physical.
If the vote is unanimous it comes down to accommodations, job pressures and personal preferences. Do we go right back in? Do we milk them for another day of free lunch and a paid day off from work. I've never been sequestered so I don't know how that dynamic works.
I think they voted, decided on not guilty across the board, and decided they needed a night to sleep on it, to make sure they could live with the consequences of their decision.
It doesn't look good that the jury cut and ran. It smells of book deals and television interviews. They have to go home to what will be hostile reactions from friends and neighbors. When the Sheriff of the Florida County where Ms Anthony lives has to go on the air and beg for calm I don't think that these folks will have an easy time of it. If you feel you reached the right decision stand up and explain why. The OJ jury did. It's the least you can do for little Caylee Anthony, may she rest in peace.
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