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ebogjonson's August 2007 archive
August 31, 2007
for when i cut my locks off
I am going to need a new 'do if I ever decide to cut my hair. Perhaps I can find a stylist at the Bronner Brother's Barber Battle and Hair Battle Royale in Atlanta?
(You do realize she's cutting hair while suspended from the ceiling, don't you? Yes, of course you do.)
And with this post, dear friends, I bid you adieu for the Labor Day weekend. I've pretty much been able to successfully avoid doing a lick of honest, money-earning work this entire day thanks to the bloggery, and, I have to say, it feels damn good.
No need to clap; I couldn't have done it without you!
Posted by ebogjonson in BRA means black, random, amazing at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
friday youtubery: sad dance music
All my favorite sad songs are house-ish and minimal these days, as in the "Radio Slave's Remix for K" version of Trentemoller's "Moan":
(You can hear my preferred version of that song here.)
Or LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends:"
Speaking of versions and remixes, here is the Franz Ferdinand version of the same song:
I have to admit that there is a raced division of labor in my sad music preferences, in that I find most R&B moping boring, but maintain a soft spot for moping white alt. types. (What's that line about one of the features of white supremacy being an irrational love of white people?) I think there is a relevant Armond White article somewhere about how popular black music is no longer a venue that supports much in the way of vulnerability, although I imagine that (if I can find it! There is no online archive of The City Sun articles) was written before the age of Kanye West:
The big difference between the personas of Kanye and 50 Cent, and yes we're going to keep talking about this, is that Kanye makes personal pop music, whereas 50 mostly just makes popular pop music. 50 doesn't vent his soul, and he's not particularly concerned with coming across as an actual human being; instead, he blows himself out into this indestructible ghetto superhero character. Kanye, by contrast, is just as arrogant, but his arrogance brings with it hesitation and vulnerability and uncertainty. At least for me, there's always been a certain fantasy-baseball-camp appeal to Kanye: this is what happens when a typical dorked-out rap fan with no pretensions toward street-cred or hard-scrabble origins suddenly gains access to the mysterious world of rap stardom. [full Breihan]
Posted by ebogjonson in screenedthe love at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
friday youtubery: Kala edition
I really like that new M.I.A. record.
Posted by ebogjonson in hhop-ish at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
the racism fairy visits larry craig's bathroom
Old racism fairy:
New racism fairy:
Sgt. Dave Karsnia: I just, I just, I guess, I guess I'm gonna say I'm just disappointed in you sir. I'm just really am. I expect this from the guy that we get out of the hood. I mean, people vote for you.Sen. Larry Craig: Yes, they do. (inaudible)
DK: unbelievable, unbelievable.
LC: I'm a respectable person and I don't do these kinds of...
DK: And (inaudible) respect right now though
The thing about the racism fairy is that the same wave of the magic burning cross that converts a poor white person into a racist (pobrecito Kramer!) also forces all the coloreds within a 20 meter radius into an abrupt, unwelcome confrontation with something ugly, exhausting and depressing. The closer white folks are to power's normative tentpoles (maleness, straightness, richness) the less likely they are to know what it's like to be sitting there minding your own business - say, perusing the transcript of chatter between Sen. Larry "I'm not gay in the bathroom" Craig (R-Idaho) and the cop who nabbed him - only to be suddenly sucker-punched by an -ism, in this case white supremacy. Sgt. Dave Karsnia's comment that he'd expect lying and dissembling from a guy "gotten out of the hood" neatly embeds a range of classic white supremacist tropes about hoodish suspects. These tropes are completely from left field in this particular scenario. It's as if Sgt. Karsnia, apropos of nothing and engaged in some inaudible internal dialogue, just figured he'd offer Craig a randomly shaming contrast for good measure. Getting busted cruising for sex in a public bathroom just isn't enough of a faux pas for a sitting, anti-gay Republican senator, but acting like a guy from the hood? Now, that's shameful! Because we all know white Republicans don't lie when caught red handed, don't try manipulate the system to get off, and they definitely don't disrespect the established processes and procedures of law enforcement.
Given how the stakes are constructed in the Larry Craig story, pointing out the bias in Karsnia's admittedly, uh, tossed-off comment isn't likely to send anyone into a tizzy. This story doesn't require any particular presumption of progressive or racial virtue on Karsnia's in order scan legibly, and so white people won't experience much in the way of cognitive dissonance around this particular winkle. If Karsnia was a blogger supporting the good guy in a key senate race, as Jane Hamsher was, or a progressive organization engaged in its yearly convention, well, it would be a different story, wouldn't it? This post would be viewed as divisive, distracting, mean spirited. I would be accused of refusing to give a political ally the benefit of the doubt, for fuzzy logic unsupported by statistics, for political correctness, for being an all-around buzz kill. Shut up and leave your betters to the important work of saving the republic in peace, basically.
Thank god Dave Karsnia is just some schmuck on the job in the Twin Cities, huh? Otherwise, there might be a problem!
Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciencesrace and other identities at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 30, 2007
don't let the sun set on you in a t-shirt in Jena with your ass hanging out
JENA, La. - Officials at a central Louisiana high school have banned T-shirts supporting six black students accused in the beating of a white schoolmate, saying the shirts are disruptive.About nine students at Jena High School wore the "Free the Jena 6" T-shirts on Tuesday, and the slogan caused too much of a stir on campus, said LaSalle Parish Schools Supt. Roy Breithaupt.
John Jenkins said his three daughters wore the shirts to make a statement, not to cause trouble.
"They weren't doing anything other than wearing the shirts," Jenkins said. "The school doesn't have a dress code. They were covered. They're trying to tell them what they can and can't wear."
His son, Carwin Jones, is one of the six students charged with attempted murder in the December 2006 beating of 18-year-old Justin Barker.
Barker was treated for a swollen and cut face and released the same day. [full item, h/t Prometheus 6]
I wonder what happens if you wear a "Free the Jena 6" tee and baggy jeans?
Posted by ebogjonson in race and other identities at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 29, 2007
happy birthday, katrina!
We got you this timeline:
7AM CDT -- KATRINA MAKES LANDFALL AS A CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE [CNN]
7:30 AM CDT -- BUSH ADMINISTRATION NOTIFIED OF THE LEVEE BREACH: The administration finds out that a levee in New Orleans was breached. On this day, 28 "government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, [reported that] that New Orleans levees" were breached. [AP]
8AM CDT -- MAYOR NAGIN REPORTS THAT WATER IS FLOWING OVER LEVEE: "I've gotten reports this morning that there is already water coming over some of the levee systems. In the lower ninth ward, we've had one of our pumping stations to stop operating, so we will have significant flooding, it is just a matter of how much." [NBC's "Today Show"]
11:13 AM CDT - WHITE HOUSE CIRCULATES INTERNAL MEMO ABOUT LEVEE BREACH: "Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city." [AP]
MORNING -- BROWN WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DEVASTATION OF KATRINA: In a briefing, Brown warned Bush, "This is, to put it mildly, the big one, I think." He also voiced concerns that the government may not have the capacity to "respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe" and that the Superdome was ill-equipped to be a refuge of last resort. [AP]
MORNING -- MAYFIELD WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE TOPPING OF THE LEVEES: In the same briefing, Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center Director, warns, "This is a category 5 hurricane, very similar to Hurricane Andrew in the maximum intensity, but there's a big big difference. This hurricane is much larger than Andrew ever was. I also want to make absolutely clear to everyone that the greatest potential for large loss of lives is still in the coastal areas from the storm surge. ... I don't think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but there's obviously a very very grave concern." [AP]
MORNING -- BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: "I spoke to Mike Chertoff today -- he's the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on -- a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are." [White House]
mccainbirthday.jpg MORNING -- BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]
11AM CDT -- MICHAEL BROWN FINALLY REQUESTS THAT DHS DISPATCH 1,000 EMPLOYEES TO REGION, GIVES THEM TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE: "Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as 'this near catastrophic event' but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, 'Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.'" [AP]
LATE MORNING -- LEVEE BREACHED: "A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new 'hurricane proof' Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina's fiercest winds were well north." [Times-Picayune]
11AM CDT -- BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: "This new bill I signed says, if you're a senior and you like the way things are today, you're in good shape, don't change. But, by the way, there's a lot of different options for you. And we're here to talk about what that means to our seniors." [White House]
4:30PM CDT -- BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: "We've got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. ... I could tell -- she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check." [White House]
8PM CDT -- RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld "joined Padres President John Moores in the owner's box...at Petco Park." [Editor & Publisher]
8PM CDT -- GOV. BLANCO AGAIN REQUESTS ASSISTANCE FROM BUSH: "Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you've got." [Newsweek]
LATE PM -- BUSH GOES TO BED WITHOUT ACTING ON BLANCO'S REQUESTS [Newsweek]
Posted by ebogjonson in new orleans at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 28, 2007
more roadwarriorz
I have to say, Sophia, the fact that you intend to drive around in that thing really indicates there's a higher level to yer game than even I, your humbly supportive droog, though there was. I mean, that's some kind of crazy Mad Max
What the hell are you guys going to keep in the back?
(For context on the above, go here.)
Posted by ebogjonson in screened at 8:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
the abandoned
from the LA Times:
Houses abandoned to foreclosure are beginning to breed trouble, adding neighbors to the growing ranks of victims.Stagnant swimming pools spawn mosquitoes, which can carry the potentially deadly West Nile virus. Empty rooms lure squatters and vandals. And brown lawns and dead vegetation are creating eyesores in well-tended neighborhoods.
In Northridge, the house next door to Michael McKenna's was put on the market, sold and then foreclosed on, all in the space of a few months last spring.
With the five-bedroom home now forsaken and deserted, McKenna has been reluctantly cutting the lawn and dumping chemicals in the pool to kill the bugs.
"I resent having to do this," the former studio production manager said. "It's breaking my back."
More than 100 houses a day are being foreclosed on in Southern California, up from 13 a day last year. That's still a relative handful for such a populous area, but even the optimists predict that the problem will soon get much worse. [full story, h/t atrios]
When I was growing up in Queens there was a house on our black that stood abandoned for almost two decades. We dropped the "house" and just called it "the Abandoned," as in "Let's go over to the Abandoned," or: "Where's Mark? He's at the Abandoned with Tommy."
The older boys would break into the Abandoned fairly regularly to drink and smoke cigarettes in the basement, and my generation kept all our pornography in the garage. (t was all hard copy in those days.) I remember that house as a usefully scuzzy freezone on our otherwise solidly and neatly trimmed, middle-middle class block. We told the littler kids that it was haunted, and I made out once with a lanky girl named Melissa who was summer-visiting from the Bronx, this in the tall, wheaty stalks that took over its back yard during the summer. When we stretched out in the weeds we could have been in a prairie for all we knew. The plants dampened the already suburban quiet, and all we could see besides each other was a 360 degree curtain of golden stalks, a ragged swath of blue overhead. My block sat beneath a major approach flightpath into Kennedy Airport, and every few minutes the sky would fill with a low-flying plane tracking the rough north-south orientation of 227th Street. It made Queens feel like a kind of fly-over country.
We were too young to have any real connection to the economic or family dynamics that had kept the Abandoned unoccupied for so long, although I do have a vague recollection that it was owned by someone who was elderly and down South. Our parents, of course, viewed the house as a kind of tumor that could spread in any direction at any moment. The house directly to the south of the Abandoned was a meticulously tended property owned by an elderly, white hold-out couple, and when the husband died there were whispers that his dotty widow wouldn't be able to keep up appearances to the satisfaction of the block's homeowners association. (The worries of first-generation property owners are numerous and complex, and the white folks who had sold our parents their homes let everyone know they figured the block was going to go to the dogs in their absence.) She was completely mad, that old white lady. She once chased me down the block yelling that I had left a pile of rocks in front of her stoop, and she was convinced that the boys on the street were constantly playing elaborate pranks on her. (We were, kind of.) When a stray ball - stick, foot, base or basket - landed in her yard there was a thrill of excitement and terror at the prospect of having to go get it, this because you never knew when she would come barreling out from behind her screen door, shouting your house number out at the top of her lungs. (The elderly white folks on our block didn't know our names, so they referred to us by the house number in our addresses. I was "68", which I always found numerologically significant given that 1968 was the year of my birth.)
The house directly to the north of the Abandoned was the " Monkey Bar House," this because of the elaborate set of monkey bars (!) installed in the back yard. The Monkey Bar House was a small single-story affair that came with its own, built-in aura of parental disrepute, this over how the owners rented it out instead of living there like good, honest people. The block association, being full of folks who had moved to South Queens in order to build equity, was of a mind that that renters and rentals were a step backward on the evolutionary chain, but at kid-level the occupants of the Monkey Bar House could do no wrong as long as they let us use the bars. Jazz drummer Chick Corea had lived there for a spell in the late sixties / early seventies, and although I was too young to overlap with him, the older boys had fond memories of his generosity with monkey-bar access, liked to wax nostalgic about what they interpreted as his druggie, hippie ways. (No one knew he was famous; he was just some guy who played the drums all day instead of going to work.) After Corea a single mother lived in The Monkey Bar House with her two blond daughters. Their names escape me now, but I remember they caused quite a stir on the block, what with their youngish, unattached mom, the way they had traveled up-stream against the current of white flight. The white people on the block were all either old, paranoid refusniks, or they were the Stira boys: Tommy, who was otaku-like in his precise study of 70s and 80s black culture (we used to joke he was the blackest person we'd ever met; he's some kind of Muslim now, I hear) and Paul, who was a legendary hacker before he was even grown. In that mix, the two reedy white girls across the street (their mom smoking on the stoop in hip-huggers!) were first exotic, then (once they'd moved on) legendary as "The Last New White People Ever." It would be 30 years before any new white folks moved onto the block, and those people turned out to not even be real neighbors, being instead some bizarre church group that took over a house for a year in order to store visiting Xtians.
The Abandoned stayed abandoned until the 90s or so, but the whole thing came apart when the house became infested by rats in the early 80s. It was like the house knew Reagan was president, that you could buy crack up on Linden Blvd 6-10 blocks away, that something thick and miasmic had been loosed in the city. Trips into the Abandoned got more infrequent, more violent and illicit. Every now and then strange kids from around the block would infiltrate it through a hole in a back fence, raising the troubling specter of being caught out alone on your own block. Instead of functioning as a boyish resource, the Abandoned started fueling strange, previously unheard of talk about needing to protect ourselves, about needing to teach those bitch motherfuckers from 228 various lessons. Empty movie and record dialogue, really, which had, all the same, jumped right off the screens and turntables and into our mouths. Despite our ritual rehearsal of the lines for fit and appropriateness, nothing bad ever happened to anyone on my tier, but Keith, one of the boys in my younger sister's cohort, was stabbed to death in 1997 on his front stoop, right across the street from the Abandoned. By then it was no longer "the Abandoned," it was Mr. Pete's house. Mr. Pete had bought the place and renovated it, added another floor and made it one of the nicer homes on the block. He was also the one who rushed out into the street that day in 1997 unarmed and waving his hands, chasing the boys who had just murdered Keith away. He must have been asking himself what the hell kind of neighborhood he had moved into.
Nobody lamented the loss of the Abandoned when Mr. Pete bought it, not even the generation of boys directly below mine. Keith's generation was glad to see it go, I think, to see the place filled in by a smiling new neighbor. Their entire lives that house had been nothing but a nest of rats, not one of them had ever lain on their back in its yard and stared up at a sky with a girl, the weeds leaning in protectively around them. I know it's not our fault, but there are times that I feel like me and my friends let those younger kids down. My generation ran around talking a lot of shit on that block, but we had boys 5-10 years older protecting us, letting us round out their teams of touch football. Teaching us to smoke menthols and insisting we settle our differences with each other fair and square, little boxing matches in the middle of the street, with cornermen and shouts of advice, assurances the swelling would go down. But soon after becoming the oldest kids on the block me and mine all either moved or retreated from its life, leaving the care and feeding of its younger denizens to the street itself. I feel like we took all the good and interesting things about growing up in bad old NYC with us. All those stories and eccentrics were gone by the time Keith and his boys hit high school. It's like we'd left them nothing to inherit but the danger.
Posted by ebogjonson in memoryplaces at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
August 27, 2007
miss south carolina for AG
I guess that beauty contestant is prolly out of the running to replace Alberto Gonzales.
Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciences at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
August 26, 2007
single in LA 003
Watching A Clockwork Orange
This place used to be famous for bums and tranny prostitutes, but
gentifrication has brought a decent house dj (DJ Marko) and flatscreens
playing Kubrick flicks.
Posted by ebogjonson in city of angels at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 25, 2007
two jack and jill hat-tip "ha!"s
1: Ha!
Fox-Backed Democrat Debate Called Off(AP) Fox News and a black political group say they will not hold a Sept. 23 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, which the leading candidates already were planning to skip.
A new date had not yet been set, Fox News spokesman Michael Murphy said Thursday.
The campaigns of U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards had said they would not participate in the debate. Opponents have criticized Fox as biased against Democrats.
The debate, co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute, was to have been held at the Fox Theatre.
Institute chairman U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement on the group's Web site that the "overwhelming number of party presidential debates has created a scheduling challenge."
"Revisiting the CBC Institute's debate schedule will allow the time necessary to complete all debate logistics in an effective manner," he said. The group had said it planned to sponsor two Democratic and two Republican presidential debates. [full item, h/t Jack and Jill Politics]
To echo Jack and Jill Politics blogger Jack Turner:
Big Up/Hat Tip to all in the netroots that helped kill this thing including Robert Greenwald at Fox Attacks, Color of Change, and many, many, many more.
2: Ha!
Black Agenda Report's Bruce Dixon writes:
When George Curry's Emerge Magazine published its famous 1993 cover depicting US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as "Lawn Jockey for the Far Right", he used ridicule to ignite a potent WMD --- a weapon of mass discussion among African Americans that clarified black opinion on the uses to which an earlier Bush administration put its prominent black faces. In that spirit, Black Agenda Report and CBC Monitor will be at the annual Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference in DC this September 26 to establish a new tradition --- the awarding of the "Lawn Jockey" to the three or four African American members of Congress who score lowest on the semi-annual CBC Monitor report cards. The Honorable George Curry will present the awards. It's time to reclaim, to restart and to redeem the African American political conversation, the dialog among and about us that neither black nor white corporate media is willing to air. [full item, h/t Jack and Jill Politics]
While I shed a tear that my own preferred coinage hasn't taken off in this arena -
- I can't wait to see who wins the coveted Lawny in September.
(Those of you confused by the use of the lawn jockey in this case should consult this chart.)
Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciencesrace and other identitiestalking androids at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 24, 2007
giuliani, keeping it real
Water sure does find its level:
Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani has a new team of media consultants with a strong record of electing GOP candidates, sometimes using controversial ads. The team is led by Heath Thompson and his Dallas-based firm, Scott Howell & Company. Thompson, as director of President Bush's 2000 campaign in South Carolina, helped Bush to an 11-point victory in that state.Last year, a commercial made by Thompson's firm for Tennessee's U.S. Senate race was criticized for what the NAACP and others said were racial overtones.
Run by the Republican National Committee against Democrat Harold Ford, who is black, the ad showed a white woman saying she had met Ford at a Playboy-sponsored party. As the ad ended, the woman, her shoulders bared, whispered into the camera, "Harold, call me." [full story]
I can't stand talking android Harold Ford and found the bulk of the chatter about him and de white wimmins a bit off, but the ad created by Scott Howell & Company was a real piece of work:
(This is an aside, but it took a while to find a youtube stream whose description wasn't of the "look at this funny ad!" variety.)
Ex-Giuliani Michael Meyers advisor recently described Rudy G as someone who "could play on the edge of old racial antipathies," and that sums him up neatly as a racial type, I think. Picking a PR firm with a racial cloud over it (or halo, depending on your POV) is a kind of of racial edge-play, a statement that Rudy won't let anyone mau-mau him into any given decision or action. Rudy's racial antipathies are of that very specific, big city, cop-ish strain where contempt is experienced as a kind of insight or familiarity. Like the ad above or any given article in City Journal, the internal experience of this kind of antipathy is the conviction that one knows something hard-won, unpopular and powerfully telling and true about the Negro - his cranial capacity, for example, or how Harold Ford rolls sexually, or the lyrics to Cop Killer.
Not to go all the way back to Imus, but one of things about the whole nappy-headed ho's thing is that Imus thought he was speaking in, er, jive, which is to say to a large extent he was just saying something he "knew"" black people say all the time. For someone like Imus, a Nappy Headed Ho problem (or a Blackface Joe controversy) is a hypocritical tempest in a media teacup, something driven not by legitimate grievance but by opportunism and realpolitik. Similarly, I'd imagine the complaints about Scott Howell & Company's Ford ad are not about the ad's racism for Giuliani, but its effectiveness.
I was talking to my man Pascal on the phone, and he was telling me that he's already convinced Giuliani is going to get the Republican nod and that he is going to beat Hillary. ("You didn't think Bush was electable first time around either," he reminded me.) Leaving aside the epic scope of the disaster such a turn of events would represent, we can already rest assured from his PR firm that Giuliani is going to run an ugly, ugly campaign.
Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciencesrace and other identities at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 22, 2007
fox attacks: iran
plus ca change.
Posted by ebogjonson in screened at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 21, 2007
i'm a african - dead prez machinima
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas + Dead Prez + machinima = ? [via wayneandwax del.icio.us]
Posted by ebogjonson in hhop-ishinternet tubesscreenedvideogames and other cracks at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
i've been meaning to write you
I really have! It's just that there's been a lot going on.
Correct emailing practice does not exist. The true mood of the form is spontaneity, alacrity--the right time to reply to a message is right away. But do that and your life is gone. So you reject the spontaneous spirit of email; you hold off replying for hours, days, even weeks. By then the initiatory email has gone stale, and your reply is bound to be labored. You compensate for the offense with a needlessly elaborate message. You ask polite questions to which you pray there will never come an answer. Oh, but there will. [full item]
Posted by ebogjonson in brain maintenanceinternet tubes at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 18, 2007
single in LA 002
Wherein me and my man W find ourselves consuming firewater in downtown LA.
W and I are engaged in a completely bullshit convo with one young gent
(white, middle American) who hasn't realized that he's queer yet, which is
fine because the girls he's with have also slept on dude's confusion.
W sez: Yo! Talk to those girls!
But what's the point? All of us are here under false pretenses.
Posted by ebogjonson in the love at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 17, 2007
single life in LA
wherein we find ourselves suddenly ourselves in Los Angeles
Posted by ebogjonson in the love at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
friday youtubery
h/t Matt Shadetek and rupture on the two youtubes directly above
Posted by ebogjonson in screened at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 16, 2007
treo buffer clarionite 004
Clarion West 2007 classmated Dave Williams and Jon Allison hiding on my
cell phone
Posted by ebogjonson in clarion and sci-fi writing at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
treo buffer clarionite 003
the view from my seat at the workshop table, stacks of critiqued story in
front me
Posted by ebogjonson in clarion and sci-fi writing at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
treo buffer clarionite 002
clarion classmates Mike Underwood and Roz Clarke have been hiding on my
phone.
Posted by ebogjonson in clarion and sci-fi writing at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Treo buffer clarionite 001
Dominica Phetteplace, found on the phone!
Posted by ebogjonson in clarion and sci-fi writing at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 13, 2007
a marine, a muslim girl and youtube walk into a bar
On this coming September 11, one of my buds is setting out from NYC with one of her buds on a cross country road trip "in search of post-apocalyptic America." She's Qatari and her pal is an ex-Marine who fought in both Iraq wars, and their plan is to drive deep into some crazier parts of the country Borat-style in hopes of creating as many different punchlines as possible for the underlying, Odd Couple (who happen to be childhood friends) set-up. (You should subscribe to her feed.)
(Actually, considering that she really is Qatari and he really is a Marine, I guess it's not Borat style at all.)
The clip above is a semi-related trip to one of their long-lost childhood homes, which ended up some kind of meth-lab. I'll post more of them as she sends them in.
Posted by ebogjonson in screened at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 7, 2007
diversity
I looked over at Pach, a person of color who writes about those issues frequently on FDL, and we both just shrugged our shoulders. [link]
I also mingled and drank with a passel of gay men and women of all ages. I was on a panel with James Rucker of Color of Change and sat with several African American bloggers during one of the workshops. I had a long conversation about immigration with a latino blogger.[et tu, Digby?]
I have to say in Digby's defense, though, that she subsequently updated her ode to the diversity of YearlyKos, copping to the boneheadness of bragging about talking to, like, three, people of color. (This in frickin' Chicago!) Digby's post read as a little wan and forced from jump, indicating she knew there was an issue somewhere, unlike, say, Her Shrugness, who was too busy tabulating her hotel bill to notice anything amiss.
Posted by ebogjonson in race and other identities at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
August 6, 2007
stuff i've been tired of for years
The comment reproduced below came in response to my post earlier today on Barry Bonds, Crooks & Liars, white liberals and their blindspots. I used a picture of Firedoglake founder Jane Hamsher to illustrate the post, and made reference in both the entry and the image to the infamous "Blackface Joe" incident. A few hours go by and I get this, from someone identifying themselves as Scarecrow, a name I associate with a Firedoglake frontpager:
I'm afraid you don't know Jane Hamsher -- a friend of mine. I don't argue with the offensiveness of the blackface image, nor does Jane, who on several occasions has (1) apologized and (2) said it was a mistake, which is why she pulled it very soon after it went up. But the image -- the metaphor -- was about Joe Lieberman pretending to be someone he wasn't -- a loyal friend of Afro-Amer- voters at a time he was demonizing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and sending race-baiting signals to Republicans in Connecticut because these two men had endorsed Lamont. That was the point of the post, however badly it misused the image.Jane's comment about the faux controversy was not a defense of the image -- again she admits that was wrong -- but a comment on how it was used by Lieberman's campaign as a distraction in his fight against Lamont, who had nothing to do with the image.
And Jane happens to be a white woman, but so what? CNN asked her to go on CNN to talk about Yearly Kos, the convention she had just attended; she didn't go on presuming to represent people of color but rather to talk about other issues.
I hope you get to meet Jane someday, but in the meantime, an open mind on who she is and what she thinks would be helpful.
First of all, Scarecrow, let me just say that (assuming this is you!) I've always enjoyed your FDL posts. Your comment above aside, I've found your additions to most conversations to be sterling, so it is with a heavy heart that I find myself forced to call bullshit on you in this particular instance.
I also have to say that while I'm genuinely touched that you felt the need to come all the way over to defend Jane Hamsher (a.k.a., the founder of the site through which you share your words and insight with so many thousands of people), it did kind of freak me out when you wrote: "I hope you get to meet Jane someday, but in the meantime, an open mind on who she is and what she thinks would be helpful." I mean, helpful to what? I live in LA, and whenever someone tells me it'd be "helpful" for me to "keep an open mind," I start looking for the Scientology/Landmark Forum materials. It's basically like you're telling me Jane's not going to be able to eat my brain unless I let go of retained negative emotions about Blackface Joe. (Engram, anyone? Racket?). My brain is important to me, Scarecrow, but that's just me...
Regarding your specific comment, I find it telling that you have not a word to say concerning the bulk of the post to which you're purportedly responding, i.e., the annoying thing that went up and down on Crooks & Liars today. It's all about you and your bud, I guess. The funny thing about this is that I reached for Jane pretty much on a lark. The offending Mark Groubert item was still in my Feedburner this a.m. (despite having been taken off of C&L), and there, floating just a few posts above it on my screen, was Jane of Blackface Joe fame, smiling down from the heavens on all the good progressive boys and girls. It was just too rich a coincidence, so I wove her into the post about how Mark Groubert had similarly spoiled himself for me with his endumbening Barry Bonds commentary.
The context of the image I snagged was Jane's CNN discussion of a Mitt Romney interview, so your comment about Yearly Kos somewhat mystified me. That is, until I found this:
Things I'm Already Tired Of"Why wasn't more attention paid to issue X at Yearly Kos..."
"Why was Yearly Kos all white males..."
The diversity issue is a real one, but I think a lot of critics have really overstated the case. First of all women were very well represented, both in the audience and on panels. I'm not going to guess at the precise proportions, but the gender balance seemed to be actually pretty good. Second, often the discussion of the issue neglects that fact that the great orange Satan himself is probably not best described as a "white male." His existence doesn't negate or minimize the importance of the general issue, but it should at least be acknowledged. Third, there's a tendency to talk about it as if the relative lack of diversity is a reason to fault a specific individual or group, rather than seeing it within the broader context of diversity issues.
...ah, I see Jane was here first. [atrios]
Which led me to this post by your friend Jane Hamsher:
YearlyKos and the Myth of the White MaleI just want to comment on the Washington Post article which said that based on observations made about Yearly Kos, the progressive blogosphere is a bunch of white males. I spoke with the author, Jose Vargas, at length prior to its publication but what I had to say doesn't seem to be the story he wanted to write and there were many other non-bloggers willing to validate his point and that's what made it into print. From my perspective, while there may have been a socioeconomic bias that may have made it easier for white male non-bloggers to attend Yearly Kos, there is diversity in the blogosphere and more than that a tremendous willingness to embrace more. And I question the authority and the knowledge regarding the progressive blogosphere of people who don't acknowledge that.
[...]
People can insist that the blogosphere is a bunch of white males but it just isn't. I sat there and listened to someone who actually does blog and who I like a lot say that nobody of color was blogging on "A" list blogs about prison reform or immigration and I looked over at Pach, a person of color who writes about those issues frequently on FDL, and we both just shrugged our shoulders. What were we going to do? It wasn't what anybody wanted to hear. [full Jane]
That's when I realized that - of course! - this "response" I had gotten from the white liberal blogging world had actually nothing to do with the underlying comments and issues I had raised. It actually had to do with a side conversation being held between Jane, FDL and whoever about a WaPo article that I hadn't then read, hadn't commented on, and hadn't posted about. That makes your bit about friendship, and hoping, and knowing, and an open mind, and apologizing all pretty much, well, bullshit, in the Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit sense of "utterances and speech acts which do not add to the meaning of the set of sentences uttered, but which are added purely to persuade interlocutors of the validity or importance of other utterances."
Your comment certainly has nothing to do with the Crooks and Liars post or, at the root of it, even Blackface Joe. You regurgitate Jane's original non-apology for the image, thereby recapitulating in rather pristine terms her underlying racial error. Although you're at obvious pains to assert how sorry Jane is, how offensive you personally find the image, you also just can't resist bellying up to the crap, self-serving (Jane-serving?) argument that the larger frame around the controversy was the Ned Lamont campaign, where "faux indignation" was "ginned up" by the execrable Michelle Malkin. The simple fact that that proposition, in the context of Hamsher's forced, insincere apology, might have actually been more offensive than the stupid picture eludes you a year later, as does the fact that Hamsher specifically slurred literally hundreds of people of color as "distracted" rubes being bamboozled by the right's use of a race card.
You write that "on several occasions [Jane Hamsher] has apologized," but those mea culpas must have been offered up in that brain-eating "meet Jane someday" friend-zone of which you write so ominously, as I can only find a single, on-the-record apology from Hamsher on this topic ever. Setting that particular wrinkle aside (and Scarecrow: please do send me additional evidence all these apologies) this is hardly an apology. What that is, is the an artfully parsed ass-covering through clenched teeth - "I sincerely apologize to anyone who was genuinely (emphasis mine) offended by the choice of images accompanying my blog post today on the Huffington Post" - followed by five paragraphs about how poor Jane is being used to keep easily manipulated black voters from voting for her candidate. Such a thin gruel might be able satisfy Jane's pals, but,given my lack of insider personal context, forgive me if it didn't work for me.
But I will say this: you're right that I don't know Jane Hamsher. All I know about her is what's on the screen, a lot of which is great, and some of which tiresome, defensive white dunderheadism of the most predictable sort, like "the day I have to make the blog a slave to the PC language police who want to mau-mau it into sterility by throwing around loaded and innacurate race- and gender-baiting accusations is the day I shut it down." I wasn't at YearlyKos, I have no idea how diverse it was, and this particular question is distinct from the specific points I made in my post. What I do know, though, is that on the same day I referenced Blackface Joe, Jane Hamsher happened to write a self-congratulatory post about who is gay, and who is Hispanic, and who is a woman, and who she shrugs shoulders with, and despite all that warm fuzzy diversity in her life she couldn't be bothered to find a photo with more than half a person of color in it to go as an illo. Now, I know that's not a Federal offense or anything, and, moreover, half of James Rucker is thrice your average activist, but I still just have to laugh. You guys are so passionate and intelligent about so many critically important things, and yet, for some reason, on this particular set of issues, you insist on remaining the rankest of practical, formal and intellectual amateurs. It really does baffle me.
Posted by ebogjonson in at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
more and better liberal bloggers
Dear Crooks and Liars,
Thank you for deleting this post from your site: Bonds Ties Aaron; Say It Ain't So.
Bonds is an asshole and (by all indications) a cheat, but this section from the deleted post - a rather rote lament about Barry Bonds' 755 HR by Mark Groubert - was, as they say, completely beyond the pale:
Aaron had seen the ugliness of segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings and separate but equal schools. He had ridden the buses through spring training in the Deep South. He had felt the pain of Jackie Robinson. He was one of the Apostles.Bonds is new school. Bonds is Kobe Bryant. Bonds is Michael Vick. Bonds is O.J. Simpson.
Uncritically proffering how, once upon a time, there were good, suffering, holy Negroes, and now all we have are selfish ballers, dog-fighters and double murderers, is, well, you frickin' knew what it is, Crooks and Liars, which is why you disappeared the post in question from your site. (Too bad for Feedburner, eh?)
Chris Rock can run this particular gag forever if he feels like it (and for the record, it was dumb when he did it, too), but, as Dave Chappelle's professional seppuku indicates, white and black folks don't process self-critical or self-examining black discourses in exactly the same way. Even if you take away the race of the sources, though, Groubert doesn't even get the cloak of misfired comedy that Rock does, as his post was written in compete seriousness and earnestness, right down to the "RIP, oh, sweet beloved game!" kicker.
(Is this Groubert 16 or something? I was sixteen once, so I'm not shitting on it. But now I'm, like, 38 - double 16 plus! - so I have a hard time connecting to that kind of maudlin, overcooked sentiment.)
Aggressively stupid and inelegant white commentary like Groubert's is precisely why black folks poll so differently from the W's on the Bond/juice controversy:
However, race plays a unique role. Black fans in the survey are more than twice as likely to want Bonds to break Aaron's record (74 percent to 28 percent), and 37 percent of black fans think Bonds used steroids, compared to 76 percent of white fans.Blacks are nearly twice as likely to think Bonds has been treated unfairly (46 percent to 25 percent). Why? The survey found that 41 percent of black fans think this is due to the steroids issue, 25 percent think it's because of his race, and 21 percent blame Bonds' personality.
For whites who think Bonds has been treated unfairly, 66 percent blame steroids. Virtually none blame race. [full item]
More than 37% of black people "think" Bonds used steroids. The question is how many black people a day stop caring after reading items like Groubert's. I mean, I wasn't there getting huge with Bonds; maybe all the people who are claiming he took steroids are race-morons like Groubert? I am personally pretty convinced Bonds injected steroids into his body and all, but I stopped experiences any measurable outrage about it five or six dumb-ass, Groubert-style commentaries ago. It's just kind of low on my list of outrages, truth be told. As I see it, Barry Bonds is a guy who gets paid to wear pajamas and hit a ball, whereas Mark Groubert is writer who spends his day wrestling with language, truth, morality, et cetera, so which sin do you think is going to rank higher for your droog and humble narrator? As my Clarion classmate Derek Zumsteg has pointed out in his book The Cheater's Guide to Baseball, cheating is actually a part of the national pastime, whereas racism is purportedly an unforgivable lapse here in Liberal Blogstania.
To me, Groubert's post is like swearing the Iraqis are going to welcome the US Army with open arms, or being a Democrat and voting for the crap FISA amendment last week. It undermines a certain kind of credibility for me, which is why, to this day, I can't look at Jane Hamsher without seeing Blackface Joe. Hamsher created a nice site and all, but she has no credibility with me on questions of race, racism, ethnicity and never will. Yet these she is on TV, blond white superliberal incarnate. But that's just me being silly. Who needs in-born expertise on "questions of race, racism, ethnicity," when you can just split the difference and invite a few coloreds over to guest-blog?
The regularity of these incidents underscores the sad fact that shared affiliation (party or otherwise) or common disgust with the current political climate is no guarantor that a given white liberal blogger will be able to talk about race and people of color without coming off like a regressive moron. The folks at Crooks and Liars at least had the decency to disappear the offending post, which beats the enraged belligerence you often encounter when you raise this genre of concerns, as in Hamsher's assertion that complaints about Blackface Joe were just "ginned up controversy," "faux indignation in attempt to further distract from the issues important to the voters." (darkblack, the artist who actually created the image, understood the problems with the image to his/her eternal credit.) Hamsher's take is, of course, bullshit. But in much the same way that being wrong about Iraq won't keep you off the Sunday op-eds, being an unconscious, unrepentant race-moron won't keep you from representing the progressive family on TV.
But thanks again, C&L! Having the strength to hit delete beats being dumb forever.
yours,
ebog
Posted by ebogjonson in race and other identities at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 2, 2007
new issue of chimurenga
Chimurenga is a very nifty South African magazine edited by scholar, gentleman, man-about-town and rake Ntone Edjabe. Ntone was in Kenya for the Heron Collective meetings last year.
Here's what's in the new issue:
The new Chimurenga featuring Gael Reagon; Yambo Ouologuem; Quiet Encroachers; Fidel Castro; Hereros; Okpu Ndi Chie; Ethel Sharrif; Mokotux Charlie; Melodius Thunk; Ralph Lemon; Ramallah Underground; Ruben Um Nyobè; Julius Eastman; Johnny Dyani; Stompie Mavi; Seitlhamo Motsapi; Letta Mbulu; Dudu Pukwana; Everybody in Duduza, Cradock and Queenstown; Everyone inside Camp X-Ray, GITMO; Margaret Mcingana; Pat Matshikiza; Tsakane Maubane; Mongezi Feza; Stonethrowers; Necklacers; War photographers; Black Arkologists; Mr. Parks; Maria; Mehdi and Jack Henry Abbott. Cover: sarko, fanon and the jazz baroness.
Posted by ebogjonson in the collective at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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