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ebogjonson's September 2006 archive

September 30, 2006

the day the nerd hath made

Special Heavy Gaming, motherfucker. Call me crazy, but I dream of taking home the bronze joystick.

Posted by ebogjonson in videogames and other cracks at 6:51 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2006

torture planet

Glenn Greenwald on the recent vote authorizing the use of torture during interrogations:

Democrats in favor (12) - Carper (Del.), Johnson (S.D.), Landrieu (La.), Lautenberg (N.J.), Lieberman (Conn.), Menendez (N.J), Nelson (Fla.), Nelson (Neb.), Pryor (Ark.), Rockefeller (W. Va.), Salazar (Co.), Stabenow (Mich.).

[...]

During the debate on his amendment, Arlen Specter said that the bill sends us back 900 years because it denies habeas corpus rights and allows the President to detain people indefinitely. He also said the bill violates core Constitutional protections. Then he voted for it. [full story]

More Greenwald, also worth quoting at length:

Opponents of this bill have focused most of their attention -- understandably and appropriately -- on the way in which it authorizes the use of interrogation techniques which, as this excellent NYT Editorial put it, "normal people consider torture," along with the power it vests in the President to detain indefinitely, and with no need to bring charges, all foreign nationals and even legal resident aliens within the U.S. But as Law Professors Marty Lederman and Bruce Ackerman each point out, many of the extraordinary powers vested in the President by this bill also apply to U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil.

As Ackerman put it: "The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights." Similarly, Lederman explains: "this [subsection (ii) of the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant'] means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to 'hostilities' at all."

This last point means that even if there were a habeas corpus right inserted back into the legislation (which is unlikely at this point anyway), it wouldn't matter much, if at all, because the law would authorize your detention simply based on the DoD's decree that you are an enemy combatant, regardless of whether it was accurate. This is basically the legalization of the Jose Padilla treatment -- empowering the President to throw people into black holes with little or no recourse, based solely on his say-so.

There really is no other way to put it. Issues of torture to the side (a grotesque qualification, I know), we are legalizing tyranny in the United States. Period. Primary responsibility for this fact lies with the authoritarian Bush administration and its sickeningly submissive loyalists in Congress. That is true enough. But there is no point in trying to obscure the fact that it's happening with the cowardly collusion of the Senate Democratic leadership, which quite likely could have stopped this travesty via filibuster if it chose to (it certainly could have tried). [full story]

After yesterday's vote an American citizen can now be legally wisked away to indefinite detention without any form or judicial oversight or recourse. Do you feel safer?

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciences at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

thanks!

Just wanted to thank all the folks who linked to the Should I use Blackface on my Blog? process flow, especially (in no particular order):

Prometheus 6, Professor Kim, Sunrunner, Alas, a Blog, the ladies at Racialicious, Rachel's Tavern, Monica Jackson, Slant Truth, Feminist Blogs", Salto Mortale, Zuky, and anyone else sent me some eyeballs!

I created the chart in response to the Jane Hamsher thing, but reading the blogs of folks who linked back to it reconfirmed to me how unsettled the problem of race remains in our politics. If engaged, otherwise thoughtful white progressives like Hamsher can't wrap their heads around basic racial etiquette, it seems hard to imagine that less thoughtful, less engaged, or generally hostile white folks will ever grok to it.

Posted by ebogjonson in blogishebog housekeepingrace and other identities at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

September 26, 2006

poll tax 2006

Plus ca change. From the NAACP Legal Defense Fund:

Today, the House of Representatives voted to undermine the political participation of Americans by approving the deceptively named "Federal Election Integrity Act." The bill imposes new, substantial, and unnecessary barriers to vote in federal elections by establishing a single form of identification-- one that proves citizenship -- as an ironclad requirement to vote.

Just three months ago, the House voted to continue to break down barriers to the polls by renewing the Voting Rights Act after considering several amendments that would narrow the coverage of the Act. But just hours ago, the House retreated from its commitment by voting in favor of the Photo ID Bill without permitting any amendments to be offered.

Theodore M. Shaw, Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP LDF stated that "the bill effectively transforms the vote from a right to a privilege by elevating the privileged over those citizens who will disproportionately become ensnared in this voting trap including: African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, the elderly, disabled, and poor. It's a modern poll tax. Any bill that would require all eligible citizen voters to engage in a bureaucratic process to obtain a citizen ID that includes swearing poverty in order to vote is corrosive and undemocratic. Against the backdrop of limited anecdotal evidence that fraud is a problem, it elevates an administrative requirement above a constitutionally protected right. That is un-American."

While supporters have cited polls of dubious relevance to justify this law that turns the clock back to the days of tests and devices designed to "protect" the polls, LDF Assistant Counsel, Jenigh Garrett explained that "the plain truth is that if Americans were polled before Katrina's flood waters hit most would have truly believed that the residents of New Orleans would have had the ability and financial means to ensure their safety * of course, the truth was very different. [full story]

Steve Gilliard sez re. the claims this measure is needed to prevent voter fraud:

Voter fraud=brown people voting.

Keep worrying about Diebold. They're passing the new poll tax as we speak.

I will say, though, that I dunno if the rise of modern day poll taxes makes the easily-hacked Diebold voting machines a "head-fake," as Steve so pungently put it. Republican racism like the CIA's sub-basement: The terrorist torture room can very easily be right next door to the paymaster's office where they pay off active terrorists in hopes of making them into "assets." When your skunkworks are broad and deep and nefarious enough, literally anything can happen in parallel without contradiction or confusion.

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciences at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 25, 2006

lashawn & russell heart george allen

from Salon.com:

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said. [full, disgusting story]

It's amazing to think that not very long ago George Allen was considered a contender for '08 Republican presidential nomination. We live in 2006, and yet these kinds of racists continue to hold positions of some honor in the Republican party. Not a year goes by that some or another prominent Republican isn't revealed to be the most base and disgusting kind of racist, and yet talking androids from here to Russell Simmons try to justify their pursuit of narrow economic self-interest by claiming black folks need to start thinking "outside the box" and switch to the party of George Allen. Simply amazing.

Besides being amazing, Simmon's line also the oldest form of okey-doke. Russell's idea of thinking outside the box is to make a buck, as in his plan to "address" the problem of underbanking in the black community by hooking teens on fee-laden Rush Cards that line his pocket while doing nothing to help black folks accrue interest, save or build a credit history. I don't pay any attention to George Clooney's politics, I don't know why I should give a damn about Russell Simmons', but you can't throw a rock at a hip hop blog without reading some predictable asstalk about Russell's "thoughtful" reply to critics of his support for talking android Michael Steele. Fuck joining the Republican party: it really is enough to make you a social anarchist.

Posted by ebogjonson in hhop-ishpolitricknal sciencestalking androids at 6:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 24, 2006

just a comma

founs on the carpetbagger, via atrios:

BUSH: Yes, you see -- you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people.... Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy. (emphasis added)

Even by Bush's already-low standards, it was a stunning comment. We're talking about a war that has claimed 2,700 American lives and seriously injured 20,000 more. It's a crisis that has, by any reasonable measure, made the threat of terrorism against Americans considerably worse. It's a misadventure that has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, to fight a war sold under false pretenses, and mismanaged with almost child-like incompetence.

Asked to explain himself, the president is unconcerned. Everything we're seeing is "just a comma." I'm sure that will bring comfort to the families of those who have sacrificed so much for Bush's mistakes.

Do you know any Iraqis who have died? Just a comma. Lost anyone in the US military? Just a comma. How about you if you're unlucky enough to be around the next time Bin Laden or a member of al Qaeda attacks a major US city? Just a comma.

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and so on

Posted by ebogjonson in Iraqpolitricknal sciences at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 22, 2006

hugo sez

Think I can get Hugo Chavez to plug my site?

Posted by ebogjonson in media at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

alphonso jackson, still android talking

HUD Secretary and Talking Android Alphonso Jackson

From Think Progress:

The Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development has conducted a detailed investigation [of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson] and produced a 340-page report detailing his findings. The agency has given a copy to Jackson, but refused to release the report to the public.

ThinkProgress has obtained the executive summary. Here are some key excerpts:

- "During the investigation, Secretary JACKSON's Chief of Staff, as well as the HUD Deputy Secretary testified that, in a senior staff meeting, JACKSON had advised senior staff, to the effect, that when considering discretionary contracts, they should be considering supporters of the President, language consistent with the remarks made by JACKSON in Dallas, Texas, on April 28, 2006."

- "Investigation did disclose some problematic instances involving HUD contacts and cooperative agreement grants, in particular, the cooperative agreement award issued to Abt Associates...was blocked for a significant period of time due to Secretary JACKSON's involvement and opposition to Abt. Secretary JACKSON's Chief of Staff testified that one factor in JACKSON's opposition to Abt was Abt's political affiliation."

- "Secretary JACKSON's Chief of Staff also identified other instances of Secretary JACKSON intervening with contractors whom he did not like. Reviews of political contributions indicated these contractors had Democratic political affiliations."

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) have already called on Jackson to resign immediately. The White House yesterday gave him "a tepid vote of confidence."

[full story]

I wrote about Jackson previously here and here. Why hasn't he been fired?

Talking androids have been having a hard run with this Preznit. Remember Claude Allen and his evil twin?

Posted by ebogjonson in talking androids at 4:25 PM | Permalink

nope

If the Independent had bothered to consult my "Should I Use Blackface?" process flow, they would have been able to deduce in just a few easy steps that putting Moss in blackface was a bad idea.

Posted by ebogjonson in mediarace and other identities at 3:48 PM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

Al Wynn brags of stealing election

MYDD.com got this email from the Donna Edwards campaign: [via atrios]

Hello,

By now you are aware of the multiple layers of problems that occurred in the Tuesday, September 12, election in Maryland's 4th Congressional District. Whether these flaws are attributable to incompetence, inefficiency, or fraud -- we may never know. Votes are still being tabulated in Maryland's 4th District -- provisional ballots arriving as late as Tuesday, September 19, a truckload of machines and memory cards arriving 21 hours after the polls closed on September 12, changing estimates of absentee ballots to be counted, etc.

Needless to say, the system is deeply flawed -- leaving voters with little reason to be confident. In the midst of all of this system failure and uncertainty, I wanted to share with you the transcript of an exchange that took place on Tuesday, September 19, between my opponent, Albert Wynn, and his colleague on the powerful House Energy & Commerce Committee:

BARTON: Down in Texas, we had a Democratic primary about 50 years ago that Lyndon Johnson won by 54 votes. And he got the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." We have Mr. Wynn next. He had a little bit of a tussle last week, but he did win. And so, I want to recognize "Landslide Wynn" for any opening statement that he wishes...
WYNN: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. In fact, they're still counting, but we're quite optimistic. And I did take a couple pages out of Lyndon's book, so if I win, it can be attributed to Texas know-how.
(LAUGHTER)
(UNKNOWN): Did you (inaudible)?
BARTON: I hope not. I hope you win fair and square.
(LAUGHTER)
WYNN: A win is a win.

P.S. Just within the last couple of hours, the Board of Elections in Prince George's County opened up a machine with no tamper tape (so much for security), and at least one other machine that recorded votes for other offices but none for U.S. Congress.

That's just awful. Albert Wynn who is regularly rated among the worst of the CBC, is nonetheless likely to survive this challenge. It seems sometimes like black voters are particularly unable to punish crap or corrupt black politicians, that no matter how disgusting or ineffectual, pols safely ensconced in black districts are hard to extract. Is it that we feel like we are going to be underserved no matter what, so we might as well be underserved by one of our own?

I'm glad to see the so-called liberal blogosphere tracking this story, though. Between their fear of being called racists and their cultural affinity for talking androids like Harold Ford or Cory Booker, the more vocal sectors of the online volume industry have been pretty invisible on the issue of effective governance for black folks. Calling Edwards "the black Ned Lamont" is to use unfortunate, predictable shorthand, but it beats white folks having no emotional hooks at all for understanding her fight with Wynn.

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciencestalking androids at 6:36 PM | Permalink

September 18, 2006

wired to the max

What's that old line about a dollar and a dream? We live in a media age where if you have a laptop, a camera and a crew of trusted, agile friends you can make some pretty funny shit pretty easily, as in this parody of The Wire below. Is there a black lonelygirl15 out there?

Posted by ebogjonson in internet tubesscreened at 3:50 PM | Permalink

should I use blackface on my blog?

Because I am, as one of my cousins once disdainfully put it, "some kind of paid, so-called racial expert" I'm often asked to provide direction on this or that question of racial etiquette. Recently a number of people have asked me to help them decide whether or not it's appropriate for them to photoshop blackface onto various offending politicians.

This is a highly complicated question, requiring that one juggle a number of aesthetic, political and racial conundrums. During my time as an internet executive, I learned that basically anything could be explained to anyone using an Excel spreadsheet, so as an aid to bloggers and civilians everywhere I've put together a handy process-flow/spreadsheet that I believe should answer folks' various questions lickity-split.

So: should you use blackface on your blog? Click here to find out! (It's a big file; give it a minute to load if yer using a slow connection.)

- your friend in racial spreadsheeting,
ebogjonson

Posted by ebogjonson in race and other identities at 3:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

September 17, 2006

your democracy is hackable

A study by Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy show that Diebold's voting machines are vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. Until this is fixed, you will never know for sure whether any election involving these machines is legit. A video produced by the Center is below.

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciences at 4:54 PM | Permalink

ACLU CRACK HAVEN

I think I kind of live here. The picture above was found on Art Blogging LA.

View from a Loft has this picture and these thoughts:

I agree in that it's well done, but also question the context. The signs are critical of social groups stating they are empowering drug dealing and it's rare that side of the fence is subject of artistic criticism. "LA CAN" is a grassroots organization from Skid Row and it's certain that LA CAN's supporters are the ones who took down that sign.

I agree, too. LA's downtown is a unique case, the zone's failures having (in the way of such things) a complicated array of fathers, but blaming advocacy organizations for the blight of drugs is not only backwards, but also encodes the right's false assumption that if those hard-working, overmatched folks weren't out there, there would by definition be less dealing, homelessness or addiction. That wishful thinking is unsupported by the history of drugs in major cities before the rise of modern advocacy, as well as by the drug problems in today's rural municipalities who have had nowhere near the same level of "rights"-centered advocacy that places like LA or NYC have had and yet are experiencing explosive growth in addiction and the like.

This is an arbitrary, generalizing swipe, but what I don't understand is why View from a Loft is surprised to see this kind of message from "artists." For every Gronk that has lived downtown for years, there are a dozen, skateboard-riding, post-graffiti, collectible-making, like, guys, whose politics strike me as being roughly aligned to those of the cast of Jackass. To those folks, black addicts are just the inevitable back-drop to the big, bad city, (required back-drop, even) and anyone working to make those folks' lives better is a bleeding rube, a maroon or a gay girl. So me, I'm not surprised by the signs at all.

Posted by ebogjonson in city of angels at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

george allen's ethnic friends (UPDATED)

Republican diversity, from The Colbert Report, via the huffpost:

UPDATE: Apparently being a known, demonstrable racist is not an obstacle to being voted to national office by Republicans in Virginia. As of September 15th, polling has Allen leading his opponent by 7 percentage points.

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciencesrace and other identities at 10:58 AM | Permalink

September 14, 2006

another black site bites the dust?

Saw this on Richard Prince's Journalisms:

"BlackCommentator.com Senior Editors Bruce Dixon, Margaret Kimberley ('Freedom Rider') and I have left BC to launch a new, bigger and better e-magazine, BlackAgendaReport.com (BAR), which is scheduled to make a big splash online in the last week of September," Glen Ford notified supporters of the Black Commentator Web site. "Our reasons for leaving BC involve irreconcilable differences with the site's other co-founder over the publication's operations and business model, especially the introduction of subscriptions and the blocking of non-subscribers' access to past issues. We believe this business model has diminished BC's usefulness and its ability to effectively reach the audience we all seek to influence and serve. We also think the model is financially unsustainable." Ford and co-founder Peter Gamble "have been friends and collaborators on various media projects for nearly 30 years," the site says.

The notice was saddening, first because it suggested that BlackCommentator might soon be no more, and second because I had always admired (from the outside, obviously) Gamble and Ford's long record of accomplishment, collaboration and (it seemed) friendship. I have no idea what went down on at BC but it would be sad to think that something as ephemeral as an "internet business model" came between two men who have worked so well together for 30 years. There will be a new model tomorrow and the day after. Nothing to lose a bud over, seriously.

BlackCommentator endorses a strain of black politics that isn't completely aligned with my own, but I still find them invaluable. It's amazing to think that while the black community numbers some 34-some odd million, while we constitute a discrete media market worth billions, no one besides BlackCommentator has ever thought to produce things like the BC Congressional Black Caucus Report Card. More amazing still to think that they couldn't find a way to monetize that kind of unique product offering, but then I know from experience that black sales people and agencies are actually even less interested in non-entertainment programming than their white counterparts are.

I wish both BC and the forthcoming BlackAgendaReport.com the best of luck. That said, I also want to offer some genuine, very basic and (I know) completely unsolicited advice to both sites:

1 - Get some kind of RSS feed - I was always baffled by the lack of feeds on BC. People want feeds. I know: tomorrow people will want something else. But it isn't a huge deal to identify and then provide for your audience's desires. BC and BAR don't exist to be technical innovators in the management and distribution of information, but that doesn't mean they should lag behind in providing near universally available widgets and doodads either.

2 - Build a reason for people to come to BAR and BC every day - I don't know what either site's ideal publishing schedule should be, but either you provide people with passive hooks into your site (see item #1) or you provide them with reasons to come back to it on a regular, preferably daily basis. There are plenty of low-cost ways to get people to come to BC or BAR on a daily basis. Blogs, headline aggregators, a daily updating comic, comment-enabled articles, community, all-of-the-above, none, whatever. Ignoring all those options and allowing your site to lie fallow for the time between weekly updates is a prescription for failure.

I understand that these solutions are either driven by the audience or by linking, both of which mean a shift in thinking for politically-motivated folks invested in the notion of providing unique, original content to an underserved audience. But unless you can afford to build the kind of shop that pushes out a number of wholly original, must-have items a day, these other strategies are what keeps you meaningfully connected to the audience you want to serve.

3 - Develop a real advertising strategy - I was always disheartened to go to BC and see the same, parallel universe ads on the site, like the button for Bob Avakian's autobiography. I can imagine that BC likely saw the lack of even google ads as some kind of proof of their integrity, but really, now: integrity isn't even going to cover your hosting costs. I don't know what Steve Gilliard's financial picture looks like, but his Alexa metrics seem to be comparable to BCs and he seems more fully engaged with the ad market and the current opportunities available for keeping himself in business.

I'd never suggest that joining some random advertising network will change anyone's life, but until a site is in the proverbial game its managers have no insight or data with which to even begin to imagine what might work for them. Maybe it's ads, maybe it's some kind of premium subscription + ads, maybe there is BAR t-shirt idea out there that is waiting to blow Cafe Press the fuck up. You'll never know until you engage and BC's ad strategy seems to be predicated on a politically motivated lack of engagement. Like I said, I understand the political sentiment, but it's a terrible ad strategy.

3.2 - also - For another comparison, look at BC and BlackSportsNetwork.com's Alexa rankings. BlackSportsNetwork barely registers, and yet which site feels more current, lived in, relevant?

How about BC vs BlackAmericaWeb?

3.5 - also also - not that you asked, but ebogjonson.com has made, like, a dime a day off of its Google ads, which means that if you are reading this, you should feel very select and avant - that and very lonely. Having put them up mostly to play with Google's ad program and tools, I've been thinking about taking them down, but man! That dime sure is addictive!

4 - Get better designers, please - The internets are full of young, black, conscious pixel-pushers who will give BC or BAR a reasonably usable and good looking site at a politically motivated discount. Please find one at all costs.

Besides cooking up a hottish site, the other thing this designer will do is hopefully convince both sites that the current BC color palate should be abolished, not just from BC, but from every black website forever:

This palate is a basically red, black and green for black nationalists who are afraid of the internet. It says "black site" without saying "website." I really hate it.

5 - Put some pictures on black folks up on your site - I know this likely strikes some folks as a costly, superficial hassle, but even Bob Avakian would click on an interesting picture of Mao.

6 - Give people something to do besides read - This is an alternate take on item #2, but it bears repeating. "Things to do" can mean traditionally defined community activity, as in posting messages or feeding you news items. It can also mean watching video or listening to a podcast. It can be a less-direct programming experience like a weekly "direct action" item where you ask the audience to write letters. Whatever it is, it should feel relevant to the audience as understood/aspired to by BC and BAR's staff. You know these folks better than I do. What would they like to do besides read?

7 - "Hottish" is a meaningful web value just like "usability" - People have a hard time remembering that when BlackPlanet.com was launched, other folks involved in the black or urban web space were convinced it would fail. "Not hip hop enough," they said. "No celebrities." And (most damning for its subconscious racism), "black folks aren't interested in that white homepage building crap." None of the folks who made those arguments are in the business anymore, and not a one of their brands survived. In fact, six years later, instead of failing Blackplanet.com has become the most-blackenest black space in all creation, so gosh darn you-know-what that it has become shorthand for a host of social relations and habits that grown folks claim to be embarrassed by. This wasn't achieved by producing an experience that was 5-10 years out of date in comparison to mainstream sites looking to forge the same type of relationship to audiences. The thing was "hot" in ways that Hookt.com or UBO were not "hot."

And, not that you asked, but there is nothing out there in the 2006 space that is as hot as BP was in 1999. It would be super-disingenuous to hold out to BAR the possibility of being that site, largely because there is a sense in which doing so will (maybe) put them in opposition to their own politics. But I think it'd be invaluable for them to think about the question of how to be that site while remaining themselves, this even just playfully and theoretically. In management mumbo-jumbo this is known the Big, Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) thought experiment, also known as the Blow Nucca's Minds (BNM) experiment and the Next Level Shit (NLS) game: If the BlackAgendaReport set for itself the Big, Hairy Audacious Goal of Blowing Nuccas Minds using some kind of Next Level Shit, what would it do? What would that mean? What would it require from a staff, technology and culture standpoint?

......

Anyway, everybody's a critic, right? Like I said, I wish both sites well. The folks involved have provided an invaluable service over the years and it would be great to see them continue.

Posted by ebogjonson in internet tubesmedia at 4:34 PM | Permalink

September 11, 2006

another plug for my feed

If you subscribe to my new feed, you will also automatically get any updates to my del.icio.us bookmarks, which are (in my opinion) quite interesting.

I'm just saying.

subscribe to my feed!

Posted by ebogjonson in ebog housekeeping at 3:39 PM | Permalink

September 11, 2001 (NYC)

I don't really have anything to say about 9/11 except that it was the one of the weirdest, most terrifying days of my life. I was living with a girlfriend I had recently broken up with (long, ugly story) and even as we were able to come together to get through the day, I spent 9/11 completely out of my head, cycling manically between fear, feelings of warm, encompassing forgiveness for my ex, and desperate prayers to god to please, please not let me die with that awful, despicable woman, don't let her be the last thing I ever see.

We were living in Brooklyn so we watched the whole thing on television or from a hill in Fort Green Park. My ex-girlfriend had a daughter and after the towers had fallen we decided to take her to the park. My ex was British and I attributed her desire to get out of the house to some gene acquired during the Blitz, some specific impulse to live one's life as one pleased when under horrific aerial assault. For a few minutes we were the only people outside. I felt a twinge of worry, a pang of social inappropriateness. Were we doing something wrong by laying a blanket out and reading to Joy while the world was coming down around us? A few minutes later the park was full of people talking, walking, crying and sitting. We hadn't been wrong at all, just a little early.

Even though we were both New Yorkers (me by birth and she by choice) and had been to the World Trade Center a dozen times, we didn't fully grasp the scale of what had happened until we went to the park and saw the plume of smoke with our own eyes. It was immense, it arced into the sky like a solid thing with structure and design as opposed to something insubstantial and windblown. Just before a friend called to urge us to put wet towels under our doors and to tape our windows against toxic fallout we had started to wonder if we could smell - what? A fire? Dust? Death? We went home, got lost in the details of making life as normal as possible for my ex's daughter. We joked about escaping to my family's in Haiti if civilization collapsed, and in darker moments I imagined, terrible, insane, selfish things, like taking Joy with me to safety and leaving her mother to just deserts - eaten by mutants, perhaps. I also imagined the two of us being bound together forever despite our mutual antipathy by the exigencies of post 9/11 parenting survival, and once or twice I imagined falling back in love, 9/11 transforming everything right down to the unstable molecules of our relationship. What happened instead is that we watched the news and a week later we took tentative steps back into the world. We did not have 9/11 sex. We retired to our separate bedrooms after Joy was asleep every night, our great ugly war temporarily in a state of externally imposed truce. We lay awake all night, vigilant, listening, alone.

I kept telling myself that I had escaped the worst of it, all of it really, until I had to take a subway for the first time. I was surprised to find I was terrified, that I could barely breathe. As I stood there pressed up against some or another stranger I stared at my feet trying to hold it together and stealing glances at the faces around me. I was looking at other people's eyes in hopes of being reassured by something there and what I mostly found were reflections. People were discretely looking at me, at everyone, all of us looking to be held down, looking for help in the suddenly pressing, endless work of maintaining our sanity, the work of not running screaming out onto the street at the next station. Even though it stood to reason it was strange and unexpected to discover that we all felt the same way. It was even stranger and more unexpected to realize we were all participating in the creation of a new class of American experience, something to do with inexplicably large horror and small, personal fear, with resolve and the willingness to share our literal vulnerability with our neighbors. In those first few days there was no one for us to kill in hopes of feeling any better, there was nothing for those most directly affected to do except survive and clean up, rebuild. To do the little things we did as a matter of course: go to work, go to school, sit in the park in the shade of a great cloud that may or may not be laced with death, reading to our children.

And that's it, really. It goes without saying that I believe that if the rest of the United States was like New York City we would not find ourselves in the predicament that we now face in Iraq, in Afghanistan, anywhere really. New York City is admittedly a liberal town, but I don't think it's a simple accident of place and political temperament that has the bulk of New Yorkers failing to see the relationship between what happened to them that day and the things our government and our countrymen have since done and said in the name of our unique losses. It's New York City; even as every passing year erases the array of textures and differences that make this far-flung nation unique, New Yorkers persist in living and understanding things a bit differently than our neighbors do, up to and including remembering what happened on September 11, 2001.

Posted by ebogjonson in memoryplacespolitricknal sciences at 2:07 PM | Permalink

September 8, 2006

spicy hot

California Governator Arnold Scharwzenegger is down with the explosive power of race mixing:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today apologized for saying the lone Latina Republican lawmaker in California had a "very hot," fiery personality because of her ethnicity, a comment captured on audio tape last spring in his private office.

The governor made his apology in Santa Monica standing next to Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City), the Latina lawmaker whom Schwarzenegger characterized as hot-blooded.

"The fact is that if I would hear this kind of comments in my house, by my kids, I would be upset, and today, when I read it in the papers, it's something when you say things, but it is another thing when you read it in the paper. It made me cringe. It made me feel uncomfortable. And so this is why I thought I should come out and address the issue right away."

On the recording, Schwarzenegger describes Republican legislators as the "wild bunch" and refers to Garcia, casually saying that "black blood" mixed with "Latino blood" equals "hot."

"I mean, they are all very hot," the governor says on the audio recording. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

Garcia said there was no need for Schwarzenegger to apologize.

[...]

"I love the governor because he is a straight talker just like I am," Garcia said. "Very often I tell him, 'Look, I am a hot-blooded Latina.' I label myself a hot-blooded Latina that is very passionate about the issues, and this is kind of an inside joke that I have with the governor. [full story]

Inside is right, Assemblywoman Garcia, inside is right. Thank you very much, Mz. Cuchi Cuchi Coo 2006.

Some CA Latino leaders reportedly told Der Arnold that they "are not preoccupied with this kind of thing" but Der Arnold sure seems preoccupied by the various attractions of Afro-Latino woman. I, of course, do not need to remind you of this:

I detect a long-standing pattern. I'm not particularly mad at Der Arnold myself but I think his wife Maria Shriver might be. While there is something vaguely telenovela about Shriver, I don't think she satisfies Arnolds obvious yen for certain racially-coded attributes.

Here is a question for the ladies: what's a woman to do when her man is a serial groper with a thing for an entire class of ladies that look nothing like she does?

Posted by ebogjonson in what is B.O.G.? at 6:07 PM | Permalink

The Tucker and Al Show

I think white folks spend a little too much time obsessing about Al Sharpton, but this recent bit of shtick from him really struck me as super stupid:

Dancer Tucker gets good spin from Rev. Al

The Rev. Al Sharpton has crossed the dance floor's ideological lines to back Tucker Carlson on 'Dancing With the Stars.'

[...]

"We are living in trying and uncertain times," the good reverend writes, tongue in cheek. "That's why now, more than ever, we need a strong leader who will stand up for what we believe. Better yet, we need a leader who will dance for what we believe. Tucker Carlson is just such a dancer."

Sharpton continues: "Watch Tucker do the cha-cha and then call in your vote to make sure he advances to the next week's show. You can call as often as you like. Remember: Voting in celebrity dance contests is not just your right in this country, it's a privilege. ... If you sit back idly and fail to perform your civic duty, lesser dancers could win this competition. America simply cannot afford that. "

Yesterday, Carlson admitted to me that he actively sought Sharpton's endorsement. "Nobody turns out the vote like the Reverend Al," Carlson said.

Sharpton, meanwhile, explained: "I want to balance the influence of DeLay and at the same time get a right-winger off talk television and help Tucker find another career. I think it would be a great contribution to society to have him as a cheeseball disco dancer than a talk-show host propagating right-wing politics." [full story]

I guess when you are admitted to the inner sanctums of the talking head club, you really are in the club. At the same time though (and seriously): fuck Tucker Carlson. That guy is crap on a stick. Here is a typical, choice quote from Tucker:

Tucker Carlson: "Lighten up" about racist Limbaugh statements

During a segment on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson told fellow co-host Paul Begala to "lighten up" about syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh's racist comments to an African American caller. When Begala pointed out the offensive comment and questioned President George W. Bush's decision to appear on Limbaugh's show -- particularly in light of the Republican National Convention's Day 2 theme of "compassionate conservatism" --Carlson dismissed his concerns and Limbaugh's racist statement, calling Limbaugh "pretty amusing."

From the August 31 edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360:

BEGALA: The problem is, for the second day in a row, George W. Bush is undermining the central message of this very well-scripted and well-executed convention. ... Tonight they want to show compassionate conservatism, what does Bush do? He goes on The Rush Limbaugh Show, not exactly the home of compassion. Rush Limbaugh famously once told an African American caller, and I'm quoting him here, "Take that bone out of your nose." Not exactly a people-of-compassion kind of statement. You can't have it both ways ...

[crosstalk]

CARLSON: Hold on. Settle down. Lighten up. It's not a kook radio show. Look, you know the guy's telling jokes. I mean, I must say if there's one issue that divides the parties -- it's not a race issue, that's a pretty tired throwback, I think that stopped working in about 1984 -- Hold on, lemme just say one thing. If there's one issue that divides the parties, it's humor. You have on the one side this kind of relentless, harsh, grim, dour humorlessness, and on the other side, you know, I don't know Rush Limbaugh, whatever you think of him, he's pretty amusing. [link]

Here is Carlson on the recent comment by Sen. Conrad Burns's (R-MT) that terrorists are a "faceless enemy" who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night:"

CARLSON: I think it's funny. He didn't offend me. [full]

(You can find an entire list of Tucker's greatest hits here.)

One of the things I've always appreciated about Sharpton is that dude holds a monster of a grudge. Me, I wouldn't piss on Tucker Carlson if that guy was on fire, and I can't imagine a scenario that might change that rule. Certainly not the chance to get some kind of tailwind assist from some highly popular (but crap) celebrity dance contest. But like I said: It must be good inside the club.

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciences at 4:16 PM | Permalink

The Wire is God

Not that you asked, but this Sunday I am having a viewing party for the season premiere of The Wire. I recommend that those of you progressive folks who are all up in arms about this fraud being broadcast by ABC get together with someone who has HBO and watch The Wire. Besides getting in on what is among the best dramas ever produced for television, you can also register your discontent with the cultural politics implicit in ABC's 9/11 fakeudrama. You can't get father from that shit than the Wire.

On 9/11 itself I don't think I'll be watching anything, so that takes care of dissenting from fakeudrama Part 2. My man Jim is going to be in LA that night. Jim and I used to work together at Community Connect and although I believe he had already left for grad school that particular September, when he came back to NYC for the holidays we had numerous, completely freaked out drinks where we thought at length about the attacks, our lives, what we thought might be coming next. It will be good to see him.

Posted by ebogjonson in screened at 10:20 AM | Permalink

September 7, 2006

ABC is the new FOX News (updated)

Bill Clinton's not to happy about the upcoming fake 9/11 movie on ABC:

Clinton pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.

The former president also disputed the portrayal of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as having tipped off Pakistani officials that a strike was coming, giving bin Laden a chance to flee.

"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely," the four-page letter said.

The movie is set to air on Sunday and Monday nights. Monday is the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

Based on the 9/11 commission's report, the miniseries is also being provided to high schools as a teaching aid - although ABC admits key scenes are dramatizations. [full story]

In addition to the sin of general fakery, the truly eff'd up thing is that they're going to distribute this crap to high schools as a "teaching aid," thereby insuring another generation of citizens is properly misinformed.

I don't watch FOX News and I can easily chuck ABC. The only show I ever watched on there with any regularity was Lost, and I decided those guys were completely making shit up as they go along after the finale to last season.

(Maybe the headline for this post should be: FAKE ABC 9/11 MINISERIES IS THE NEW LOST?)

UPDATE: Here is a link to a discussion of the fake teaching aids associated with this fake movie.

----------

On a related note, I wasted a few precious minutes of my life watching one of Bush's terror speeches this morning. I think he said the words "safe" and "safer" about 50 times. As Glenn Greenwald writes, this neocon obsession with safety is a supreme irony:

So much of the neoconservative warrior cries are built on an ethos of deep fear, of exactly the desperate desire to be protected and saved which Steyn and company claim is the hallmark of the girlish, soul-less West. As they strike the warrior pose, they are desperately willing, even eager, to fundamentally change the character and principles of our republic and to sacrifice the core liberties which define it because they are scared and want, more than anything else, to be protected.

Do you want to hear what a person sounds like when they really are -- to use Steyn's words -- "weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade"? Here is Bush loyalist Sen. John Cornyn, explaining why we should allow the President to break the law and eavesdrop on our conversations without any oversight: "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead." And here is Pat Roberts, showing how willing he is to trade all American values in the hope of being protected from the things he fears: "I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead." That "rationale" means we do anything -- give up all freedoms, relinquish all values -- because desperately trying to stay alive is the only thing that matters. [full post]

It isn't safe and nothing these people are doing is making us safer.

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciencesscreened at 8:45 AM | Permalink

September 6, 2006

condi condi condi

Condi, in the New York Daily News:

Secretary of State Rice compared the Iraq war with the American Civil War, telling a magazine that slavery might have lasted longer in this country if the North had decided to end the fight early.

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.

"I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'" Rice said. [full story][via atrios and the Carpetbagger]

Leaving aside the patently absurd historical comparison (justifying the Iraq war by comparing its critics to apologists for slavery is the height of moral hypocrisy... and political panic), it is interesting to note that Condi's comments came in Essence. She specifically crafted this patently ridiculous argument for a black audience, suggesting the Secretary of State buys into the racist, right-wing mythology that black folks are sheep prone to unthinking, knee-jerk reaction to certain code-words, "slavery" apparently being a Susquehanna Hat Company-type trigger that leaves us uncontrollably frothing at the mouth.

Rice's comments also just go to show that no talking android, no matter how craven or sold-out, can resist switching codes and evoking metaphors rooted in the traditional black political consensus when forced to address black audiences. These are folks who, in every way possible, at every possible turn, have chosen their own careers and the rewards of white patronage over the health of their community, and yet stick them in front of a black crowd and suddenly they're eager to connect, evoking conceptual frames (like the fight for equal rights) that they've otherwise worked so hard to disassemble.

One minor nit to pick with our friends at the Carpetbagger, tho. They write:

Maybe Rice thought that Essence's circulation is small enough that these comments wouldn't cause a stir.

Hey friend: Essence is not only the leading publication for black women, it's owned by the same people who own CNN, making it part of the major media octopus. Relative size of circulation has no bearing on how and why she said what she said..

The Bushites fully expected this line of argument to get out into the general mediastream. Equating anti-war politics with apologia for slavery is just another part of the ongoing campaign to make opponents of an illegal, ill-advised war out to be the enemies of freedom, truth and apple pie and so on. It's just another trial balloon in the endless quest for new justifications for the same failed policy. These people are monumental fuckers.

Posted by ebogjonson in Iraqpolitricknal sciencestalking androids at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 5, 2006

Ayiti: Cost of Life

I've been meaning to do a post on serious gaming forever, but, you know how it goes. The idea of using games and game experiences to effect social change strikes the expected chord in me, and it also dovetails with practical experience I've had that suggests the bulk of social networking and community activity in the black web space operates according to rules that are relatively game-like.

Anyway, this caught my eye:

Playing 4 Keeps is an innovative youth media project, in which a team of Global Kids Leaders at South Shore High School are gaining leadership and game design skills that they will use to develop and produce a socially conscious online game each year. Once produced, the game will have the potential to educate thousands of young people about a critical global issue. The program is a collaboration with the award-winning online game design company gameLab (gmlb.com), and the GK Leaders at South Shore will work closely with gameLab's experts to produce their game.

[...]

This year, participants chose to focus their game on the general topic of poverty as an obstacle to education, based on their learning about the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and about obstacles to receiving an adequate education that youth face around the world. They then decided to use Haiti as a case study and setting for the game. Ayiti: The Cost of Life is a role-playing video game in which the player assumes the roles of family members living in rural Haiti. Over the course of the game, the player must choose among and balance various goals, such as achieving education, making money, staying healthy, and maintaining happiness while encountering unexpected events. The player must make many decisions that contribute to or detract from achieving his or her chosen goals. [link]

The game isn't finished yet, but you can sign up for updates about it here.

Posted by ebogjonson in haitivideogames and other cracks at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

a feedburner feed

I've added a feedburner feed to the site and am testing it out with an eye towards moving all my feeds over to that stream in the next few weeks.

Please update your feed and let me know if you have any issues.

I'll give proper warning if I decide to deep-six the other feed formats.

Posted by ebogjonson in ebog housekeeping at 9:41 AM | Permalink

September 4, 2006

my father's house; mine once upon a time

Pictures taken at my father's house before we sold it in 2003. Happy Birthday, Dad. A flickr slideshow

Posted by ebogjonson in blood relationsmemoryplaces at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i am lying

This is random, but if a black person reads the following line in Gawker's coverage of the boring-ass, irrelevant MTV VMA's, is that like matter and anti-matter colliding?

lots of random name-dropping, then

There you have it, folks: black people--still not reading Gawker. [link]

Are you or have you ever read Gawker?
Are you or have you ever been a black people?
Are you reading this post now?

As opposed to matter/anti-matter chain reaction, a more likely scenario is that if one other black person besides me reads Gawker, then the black dude they just had guest editing for them while the staff was on vacation explodes.

Posted by ebogjonson in media at 10:12 PM | Permalink

nifty

I am absolutely going to make a million of these using this tool. It takes anything you write and creates a cassette label. via boing boing.

Posted by ebogjonson in link dumpvideogames and other cracks at 10:06 PM | Permalink