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The A-List: 05.16.03
Compiled by Africana Staff

This week on the A-List:

1. Jayson Vs ...?
Since the Jayson Blair affair broke like a rotten egg against the back of the A-List's various screens last week, at least six of our acquaintances have commented that what young Master Blair needs most at this point is not therapy but a good, old fashioned ass-whipping. Three have wondered whether the "troubled" young man will commit suicide, two expressing worry, while the third (a pal, but one with a fondness for shocking utterances) offered to help him. Seen from the standpoint of community self-policing, all these suggestions have a certain cathartic seductiveness to them, especially when made by reasonable professional folk without a violent bone in their body. Everyone feels a little dirty now and is looking for ways to get clean ASAP, and there's nothing like a little imagined violence to soothe a troubled collective soul, especially when the object of that violence is a universally vilified hustler with few defenders beyond his folks, lawyers, shrink and (eventually) book agent.

The awful feeling that needs out breathing, this anxiety about guilt-by-association (even as the vast majority of us are practically -- heck, wholly -- unassociated), might be a psychic disorder created by endured racism, but that doesn't mean it isn't common. Moreover, the feeling of implication in Blair's misdeeds isn't just a feature of this story, it's also its whole reason for being. If this one man's fraud didn't offer an opportunity to shame an entire race it wouldn't be half the story it is now. It would wax and wane in the familiar rhythm of a normal news cycle, as opposed to the current hyperventilating frenzy. The firestorm that has erupted around newsroom diversity, the attacks on The New York Times' "liberal" editorial page, the immediate appearance of reverse racism ambulance chasers like the odious Jim Sleeper -- all these things are signs of a story that jumped several quantum states to become of greater value to one or another constituency than the sum of its parts might indicate. The Times is a fit news organization even at its worst, so it will root around in its own muck and identify the organizational whys-and-hows that allowed this to happen, but for the rest of us Jayson Blair has transitioned from news subject to national symbol, a magic mirror who will reflect whatever the observer's needs and biases are at any given moment.

The reflections so far have run the gamut, ranging from predictable white whining to its black opposite number. (As The Black Commentator website richly intoned: "Blair's alleged transgressions are proof only that The New York Times is a bad judge of Black people -- as is normal among racists.") The A-List's reaction has been that while this story does not necessarily prove anything about hiring, it is proof that peculiar, shady things go on between white and black people in purportedly "liberal" work environments. Racist work environments have an awful clarity to them where white disdain structures everything, but shops where white people have explicitly taken up the challenge of doing the Lord's racial work (or been told to by their managers) can have freakish racial cross-currents, pockets of self-consciousness, blindness, over-analysis and back again where racism's traditional playing field has been re-drawn by the emergence of new playing pieces and new strategies. The new peculiarities of the board allow for a pathological personality like Blair to subvert the system to be sure, but it also allows closet racists to carry on business as usual, their actions camouflaged by the new backdrop. These new kinds of familiarity also breed new kinds of contempt. The great secret of environments like a New York Times' newsroom isn't that black people working there are coddled by weak white liberals, but that the vast majority of black and white co-workers don't socialize and don't really like each other much for reasons having very much to do with race. Everyone still manages to get their respective jobs done most of the time anyway. The old, idealized mythology of integration required that we all hold hands and get along, but today all you really need do is produce. Ironically, Jayson Blair produced alright, but just not what anyone wanted or expected.

As for Jayson himself, if he isn't beyond caring about such details, he will be soon. A book agent recently speculated that a Jayson Blair tell-all would be worth seven figures, as if this young man who reportedly just moved out of a ruined, dirty shamble of an apartment and into a hospital, as if hecould get it together to finish a book proposal, let alone the actual book. (To suggest that he would have the agility to profit form his current notoriety is both cynical and cruel, while the other possibility -- that an agent will put the whole deal together for him and hold his hand while he signs the contract -- is equally unpleasant.) In any case, Jayson is about to enter that rarified zone of infamy where he doesn't really need a book deal. Like OJ, all he'll needs to do is just walk the earth while everyone around him stops and stares and marvels that he'd have the nerve to show his face, keep breathing, whatever. The A-List once literally ran into OJ in a revolving door in Vegas and what struck us about him was his awful invulnerability to our shock at bumping into a double murderer. Men like OJ are invulnerable to libel, slander and public opinion; call him guilty and he'll head to the craps table with the same equanimity as if you'd high-fived him. Jayson Blair is going to have to develop that kind of disconnected toughness if he's going to survive, which might be the ultimate shame. After all, it's not like he killed anyone.

2. To Be Young, Black, Gay, and A Morehouse Man
Homosexuality on black college campuses has always existed but usually in invisible networks deep, deep underground. Only the most scandalous gay rumors made the gossip on the HBCU yard -- like the occasional frat boy whose roommate caught him messing around with the quarterback or the evergreen rumors that some of the guys in the choir sleep with, well, some of the other guys in the choir. So, last week when we heard that Morehouse College had sent out a e-mail survey designed to take the temperature of student's attitudes about homosexuality, we gasped, "Lord, how things are changing!" Our excitement was short lived, dying down after we heard that Morehouse's gay students were uhappy with the survey, calling the questions on it insensitive and homophobic. The A-List agrees that activists have an imperative to play watchdog, especially since the school's policies in the future would rest on results from a survey like this. Although we're probably being naive, we think everyone should wait to see what conclusions Morehouse administrators reach in June before tearing their effort apart. Morehouse and Howard are the only HBCUs with any kind of pro-active effort in place to address the needs of homosexual students and we should applaud, encourage and counsel those initiatives -- not protest them.

3. Aww Shucks, Hush That Fuss
When we were kids we remember laughing at the way our grandparents dismissed hip hop as that "bumpity-bump music" that was bringing black folks down, mostly it seems, by popularizing "hoodlum hairdos" like locks and cornrows. Those criticisms seemed pretty flimsy even to our third-grade sensibilities, since their elders probably said the same thing about jazz, conks and zoot suits. Sure, maybe they had a right to be appalled by NWA fringe of the culture, but most of the rappers we listened to were about uplifting the race one way or another, a message we're quite sure our grandparents would have connected with had they bothered to look past the ruffian surface. That's exactly why Rosa Park's continuing legal fight with Outkast is so maddening. What should have been an opportunity for some cross-generational alliance-building between a Civil Rights icon and a progressive, popular rap group is now a costly, messy lawsuit. Someone should have been able to explain to Ms. Parks and her attorneys that Outkast was trying pay creative tribute, not smear her name. Or if she really, really just wanted a royalty check, she should have been up front about that. It's hard to imagine Outkast saying no to a reasonable, private negotiation. But now, with the case being kicked around Midwest appeals courts, it's too late for anyone to back down.

4. The Thieves of Baghdad Hit Nigeria
Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, the oil services company Halliburton, is in the news again this week -- well, sort of, since the story didn't make the American news media. A Nigerian newspaper, The Vanguard, reports that officials from Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton (already criticized for winning a closed bid postwar contract in Iraq), bribed a Nigerian tax official with multi-million dollar payola. But the deception doesn't end there. Last week Senate Democrats in Washington also questioned the military about Halliburton's Iraq contract, which was originally supposed to be for fighting fires but now includes the operation of oil wells and the distribution of oil. Hmmm. Take the most corrupt cohort of businesspeople/politicians America has seen in its recent history and mix them with Africa's most corrupt politicians/business people (Nigerians) -- what else could you possibly get?

5. Russell Simmons, Susan Sarandon, Coalition of Hip Hop Artists Fight Rockefeller Drug Laws
It's easy to be cynical about Russell Simmons' evolving persona as hip hop's political guru/(pied piper?), but he's fighting some good fights lately. Maybe there is a hidden bottom line agenda in play, but so far it seems like he's just accepting his responsibility as a rich, powerful black man and putting his executive skills to good use. First he organized a well-attended emergency rally in protest of proposed budget cuts in the New York City school system (last spring?). Not only did thousands of students, parents and teacher mobilize at Simmons' behest, but some of his friends in the rap community did as well, giving the protest enough media-savvy celebrity polish to freeze the planned cuts. Now he's joining the motley coalition organizing around the fight to repeal New York's Rockefeller drug laws. (The laws impose long, mandatory sentences on non-violent drug offenders, most of whom are black or Latino.) The fact that Dr. Ben Chavis, Andrew Cuomo and Al Sharpton are among the strange bedfellows leading this charge gives us a moment's pause, but the issue is important enough that we'll take comfort in their collective naked ambition. Those guys wouldn't sit at the same dinner table unless they smelled victory cooking.

6. Dennis Rodman Marries Girlfriend But Won't Live With Her
Remember how your mom always said, "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?" (Remember how seriously you took her, as you frantically hid all signs of cohabitation -- including that boyfriend or girlfriend you somehow let move in -- before each of her visits, pretending you were pretty much a virgin?) If it's a well-known fact that living together before marriage is, if more or less accepted among certain age groups, still considered scandalous by Mom and her crowd, what on earth do you think she'd make of its opposite: marriage without cohabitation? Ever breaking new lifestyle ground, former NBA star/embarrassment Dennis Rodman recently announced that he and longtime girlfriend Michelle Moyer (with whom he shares two children) will not be living together once they are married next month. She can come over on weekends, he says -- unless it's poker night, we guess -- but as far as Rodman's concerned, we're guessing he feels like, why drink all that milk just because you own the cow? And hey, what if you don't want to have to drink the same milk from the same damn cow for the rest of your life?! We're not sure, but somehow we think Mom wouldn't approve of this arrangement either.

7. What's Your PSA?
The A-List wants, just for a moment, to get serious. We are inspired by reading that the Howard University Medical Center has launched a new center focusing on prostate health, and that Louis Farrakhan has lent it his name and blessing at an event last Sunday night. Prostate cancer is a leading cause of death in African American men, who are disproportionately at risk for dying of the disease. Among the rolls of black men who have faced prostate cancer are Cornel West, Andrew Young, Boston-area newscaster Charles Austin and Africana's own health columnist, Dr. Ben Carson. It's a killer that takes far too many men far too long before we are ready to lose them. Guys, we know you don't like strangers messing around down there but hey: talk to your doctor about prostate health. If you are 40 or over, get yourself tested. Do it for us -- your sisters, brothers, parents, children, lovers and friends. Live long enough, and who knows? Maybe they'll name something after you.

About the Author: Defending the free city of Zion against the machines to our last gasp.