Are You This Woman?

I want a woman who will give me time and space when I get home to shake off my day so I can be there, with her, together

I want a woman who can watch the game with me, go hiking with me, and go out for drinks with me

I want a woman who takes care of her body, her job, and her home but isn't afraid or too proud to ask for my help if she should need it

I want a woman who has pushed herself to become educated in her chosen endeavors, but has interests outside of that

I want a woman who can speak her mind, tell me straight, and discuss what goes on within and between us

I want a woman who can handle me grabbing her ass in public

I need a woman who has a healthy sexual appetite and a good sense of adventure (with reason and decorum)
I need a woman who can handle a man being a man without taking offense
I need a woman who can accept me as I am and support me (not financially) as I continue to grow
I need a woman who will grow with me and not expect me to stay the same all the time
I need a woman who recognizes that we are equals but we're not the same

I need a woman who has and will maintain a life of her own as I have and will maintain my own

I need a woman who can let me into her world as I open mine

If you are this woman, get in touch with me.

Fanaticism and Arrogance

If there's anything that an election year brings out in Americans, it's fanaticism. REPUBLICAN! DEMOCRAT! CONSERVATIVE! LIBERAL! BLACK! WHITE! HISPANIC! MALE! FEMALE! HETEROSEXUAL! HOMOSEXUAL! UPPER CLASS! MIDDLE CLASS! LOWER CLASS! PUBLIC EDUCATION! SCHOOL VOUCHERS! ROE! WADE! FREE TRADE! IMMIGRATION! DRILL FOR OIL! NUKE THE ARABS! SAVE THE PLANET! SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY! SAVE OUR JOBS! EQUAL WAGES FOR WOMEN! SAVE OUR BOTTOM LINE!

It's pretty comical to listen to how vehemently people talk about whatever their number one issue is. "If you don't believe how I believe then you are bigoted, stupid, a sinner, a bible-thumper and a drain on this country."

It truly seems like everyone is of the opinion that the world believes, or at least should believe, as they do and having a different opinion/belief is the mark of mental retardation. When did we all become so self-focused that we forgot the core attribute of free speech...differing opinions? Now please don't think I believe we've EVER had free speech, but it seems that we're now using arguments for free speech to denounce the free speech of others...it's like "Who's On First" on crack. People are free to agree with me or disagree, love me or hate me, want me in their life, neighborhood, school, company, church or want me out of it. Those are freedoms we all have and when we accept that everyone has those freedoms, the shit hits the fan.

"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil who is standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours...Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the 'land of the free.'"
- Michael Douglas playing President Andrew Shepherd in The American President (1995)

Now here is the really hard part of free speech. The same people that make your blood boil and you believe to be ignorant, blind, or retarded ARE YOUR EQUALS. They are humans, Americans, and citizens entitled to all the same rights that you have and cherish. If you can listen to Insane Clown Posse, they can listen to Kenny Chesney. If you can worship at your local church, they can belong to an online Satanic cult. If you can televise Skateboarding, And-1 basketball, and Frisbee Golf, then they can televise log-rolling, tractor pulls, and rodeo bull-riding. If you can believe in a monogamous, missionary-only sex life, they can be promiscuous swingers who engage in everything from urination to furries. And yet again, these people ARE YOUR EQUALS. They are entitled to every right that you have. Doesn't that just sound like a simple, liberal, moral, and high character way to live and govern?

Where we run into problems is elections...we have two dominant political parties that are trying to take sides that represent a paradigm on every public policy issue. What makes matters worse is because there are only two parties, they feel the need to take opposing sides on most everything. In truth, while there are multiple ways to address most issues, the method that best serves as progressive and diverse a country as ours requires more positions than the two dominant ones that rule our politics. Folks, we need to do better about making sure our positions are represented. If anything, I suggest we become more fanatical...but we also have to become less arrogant...our strengths are not our self-interests, they're in all of our interests.

Wouldn't It Be Nice...

I hate to preface blog posts but I feel I have to for this one. This was sent to me by my uncle and is intended for all Black Americans, no matter who you choose to vote for. I have yet to decide who I will vote for, but I agree with the statements contained herein.


Wouldn't it be nice to have a Black first lady and two young, intelligent, well-behaved Black girls in the White House?

Wouldn't it be nice to see those young girls grow up to be decent young ladies?

Think about it, how many other candidates (in either party) have school aged children?

Wouldn't it be nice to see some inner city kids playing on the White House lawn during the Easter Egg Roll?

Wouldn't it be nice to see a high ranking Black person finally at the table, but not just at the table -at the HEAD of the table?

Wouldn't it be nice to see a Black family bring multicultural traditions to the White House?

Wouldn't it be nice to see a Black woman on HGTV or any other show giving a tour of the White House during the holidays - showing the decorations on the Christmas trees and explaining the meaning behind her holiday theme?

Wouldn't it be nice to see a photo of young Black children in the Oval Office for Take Your Child to Work Day?

Wouldn't it be nice and ironic to have a Black person create and own a Presidential library, especially when most people like to say that Black people don't read?

Wouldn't you be curious to go to DC for a change and actually consider taking a White House tour?

Wouldn't it be nice to see more Black people all across the country do the same?

Wouldn't you be proud to hear them play Here Comes 'The Chief' for a Black person for a change?

Wouldn't it be nice to see the Armed Forces salute a Black Commander-in-Chief?

Wouldn't it be nice to see someone who looks like us taking the oath of office on the White House steps, giving a State of the Union Address, giving weekly radio addresses, & signing things into law with the Presidential pen?

Maybe it's just me that I've never dreamt for anything this big but isn't it nice to know that someone else has?

Wouldn't it feel good to make that Dream come true?

What if it were you or your family, wouldn't it be nice to know that someone would vote for you if they had the Opportunity ?

Some people ask the question 'why?' - I'm saying why not?

The world is looking at Black people, wondering if what we will do when we're presented an opportunity of a lifetime. They'll wondering whether we are really ready for our situation to change, even a little bit?

Together we are making history. This is the America I want to live in.

This is what our families should be like, and can be like.

Josh Howard: Privacy Pinched

I'm going to do something that I normally wouldn't do...defend a professional athlete. In most cases I consider professional athletes to be overpaid children. They are superstars in the world of their game, made more important than they are, and idolized by far too many for being good at a game you can find 8-year-olds playing all around the world. No life has ever been saved by a slam dunk, a home run, a hail mary pass, or a slapshot. Wars and disease don't end over all-star games. I'd still rather see Nobel Prize winners celebrated than sports Hall of Famers. Still, despite being pampered, idolized, overpaid children...they are humans. If they grew up here, or naturalized themselves, they are US citizens as well. In our country's Ten Commandments, there is one that grants us all FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

In case you haven't heard about this yet, I'll give you the scenario. Josh Howard, a power forward for the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, was participating in a charity football game put together by Allen Iverson, shooting guard for the NBA's Denver Nuggets. Someone was on the field with a cell phone making a video of talking with participants during the singing of the national anthem and ran into Josh Howard. Josh then goes into the following:

"'The Star-Spangled Banner' is going on. I don't celebrate this shit. I'm black."

He later mentions Obama '08 but his voice fades out before we can hear any more. From there the cell phone goes back to other players and then ends. All in all this is a harmless moment, until this cell phone video makes it on to YouTube.com. Apparently this video gained popularity or recognition quickly because it became a story on ESPN and a number of other news outlets. It became something that the NBA, the Dallas Mavericks, and Josh Howard have to answer for. Apparently all the playoff chases, NASCAR chase, NFL injuries, Ryder Cup, College Football, and NHL pre-season was not enough for the media because they decided to make this 4-second clip of a cell-phone video that only became public because someone put it on YouTube a story.

Now please don't misunderstand me. I do not want to make Josh Howard out to be a victim or circumstance. If his agent, coaches, college coaches, and family didn't already tell him, he should know that in today's society, you can't do or say anything without it finding it's way into the media. Beyond this incident, there have been several incidents in the past couple months that demonstrate that he is not the most Public Relations friendly guy and he either doesn't believe in or doesn't grasp the concept of lying/omission as self-preservation. So beyond his having said what he said, it became a juicier story because he was already known as someone who would pop off at the mouth.

Still, here's where I have a problem with the whole thing. What was videotaped was a private conversation at a public event. What was quoted lasted all of 11 seconds. What was implied and extrapolated was a big ol' shitstorm.

Personally, I think this should fall into the category of publishing a picture without the object's consent, plagiarizing material, or taping a phone conversation without a person's knowledge. It would be one thing to tape the encounter and tell someone about it, but it's altogether different to provide a video of it without the person's consent. I realize that we've come to accept the pushy, garish manners of paparazzi and media but it doesn't mean that every one, every where, and any time should be fair game. You can say that his being an NBA player, and an all-star too changes the situation but I disagree. The incident happened during the off-season at a non-NBA function on the site of a charity event. If it was not substantial enough for the media (local to that event) to catch, it should not be a national media event and a point of scrutiny against him. You're welcome to argue the point but if you can ok it for him it is only fair to ok it about yourself.

How would you feel if a video of you talking badly/jokingly about (a family member, friend, coworker, acquaintance, nationality, race, religion, gender, etc.) was made public and available to everyone so they could judge you? Chances are your comments would have been made privately and were meant to be kept private. In this case, as in Josh Howard's case, that has been violated and now you will answer for it. So will he. If we truly intend to make this a country of 'any statement is admissible', then we should take down those stringent rules we have in our laws about consent, because it's obvious that we don't care about that. Whoever took and published that video, who I'm sure is famous if not rich, should be sued for their worth for putting him out there like that. But that won't happen. The unethical perpetrator will go on with no repercussion while the person who did nothing more than speak his mind in private will be publicly crucified.

As much as I like seeing the real sides of public figures, I'm tired of seeing this information plucked from sneak-a-peak photos and cell-phone videos. Say what you like about the behaviors that we caught on camera but I think Josh Howard, Michael Richards, and Mel Gibson would agree. When we've reached the point of trolling You Tube for media stories, it's evident that our media is not reporting on real issues.

Hispanic: The Other White Meat

It was a decade ago. What a difference ten years makes. A census study stated that by 2050, white people would no longer be the majority race in this country. If this information had been released when we weren't trying to commit impeachment-by-felatio, it would have been a bigger story. Still, if you look at the changes that have been made in the past ten years...maybe it was.

Think back to 1998:

• tech stocks were making people rich,
• El Nino was being blamed for everything from ruining crops to raising your cholesterol,
• California became the first state to ban smoking outdoors
• Ramzi Yousef was sentenced to life in prison for bombing the World Trade Center
• the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl
• the Winter Olympics were in Nagano, Japan
• the Oscar for Best Film went to the movie Titanic
• Proposition 227 in California banned bi-lingual education (which included Ebonics)
• Michael Jordan won his sixth NBA title with the Chicago Bulls and then retired...for the second time.
• Mark McGwire broke Hank Aaron's single-season home run record*
• We found out what Catholic priests were doing with the Altar boys for all these years
• Jesse "The Body" Ventura was elected Governor of Minnesota

Yeah, that was 1998. But there is one more thing that we had in 1998 that we no longer have...Hispanics, Whites, and Blacks. It's worth noting that '98 was the year that McGwire broke the home run record* because his record number of homers was followed by Sammy Sosa (playing with the Chicago Cubs). Sammy Sosa, while being as dark as most Blacks, has always considered himself Hispanic/Latino. He, like a lot of Hispanic people chose to identify himself by ethnic standards and not racial standards. The U.S. did not, at that time, accept Central/South Americans under the same standards that we held ourselves. While we divided ourselves up by Race, we allowed immigrants from the South to collect themselves by Ethnicity. If you don't know the history of this country and ethnic divisiveness, that may not seem significant to you. Knowing the history, it meant only one thing...they would have to be co-opted and assimilated.

There's just one problem with racially co-opting Hispanic immigration to this country, they are the most racially diverse people on the planet!

It would do those in power no good to place the emerging Hispanic population with the Native Americans, though that is the most accurate generalization, by far. They couldn't be universally adopted as 'White' because someone like Sammy Sosa would have screwed that up altogether. So what they were left with was trying to split Hispanics and Latinos between White and Black. Now here was the ingenuity of that decision...many, though not all, Central and Latin American countries are Colorist in their nature. While we have Racism, they have Colorism because there are too many racial mixes and they're so diverse that you can't clearly tell who belongs to which race(s). This Colorist system praises the lighter shade and condemns the darker shade (though rising to prominence in sports or music will go a long way toward removing any dark color stigma). Hispanic countries get their Colorist underpinnings from the Spanish and the Portuguese, naturally. The Spanish and the Portuguese had just removed the Moors (African Muslims) from power in the Iberian Peninsula before their conquests in South, Central, and North America which later led to their involvement in trading African slaves.

What is the result of Colorism brought into a country with Racism? We now have the option of being Non-Hispanic White (George W. Bush), Non-Hispanic Black (Michael Clarke Duncan), White-Hispanic, or Black-Hispanic. Then there's always Native American, Asian, and Other. So here's my question to you, can you place these twenty prominent Hispanics (though not all Americans) comfortably into a White or Black racial slot?


George Lopez - comedian
Antonio Banderas - actor, producer
Sammy Sosa - MLB baseball player
Andy Garcia - actor
Manny Ramirez - MLB baseball player
Carlos Mencia - comedian
Tony Gonzalez - NFL football player
Rich Rodriguez - college football coach
Henry Cisneros - former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Bill Richardson - governor of New Mexico

Celia Cruz - Grammy winning singer
Christina Aguilera - Grammy winning singer
Gisele Bundchen - World's highest paid supermodel
Jennifer Lopez - actress, singer
Rebecca Lobo - WNBA basketball player, Olympic Gold medalist
Lorena Ochoa - WPGA golfer
Gloria Estefan - Grammy winning singer

Salma Hayek - actress, model

Rita Moreno - Grammy-winning singer, Tony-winning performer, Emmy & Oscar-winning actress
Selena - singer

I didn't think so, they can't either. Colorism would suggest you claim to be white as that is praised. Black has historically had negative connotations in this and other countries. So over time it is likely that the incoming Hispanics will become White (not in pigment, just in classification), which will alleviate the Racial power shift that was predicted for 2050 (more recently updated to 2042). If the U.S. reclassifies the majority of immigrant Hispanics as white, then White will remain the "racial" majority in this country. Hispanic: The Other White Meat

There's No Room for Hyphenated Americans

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.”
President Teddy Roosevelt, 1915

The statement is more to the point today than it has ever been in the history of this country. We are more diverse today than ever and the attentions of the American citizen are pulled to so many other things before we think of our country. We become Americans on the 4th of July and Labor Day and Thanksgiving and during the Olympics or World Cup. The rest of the time we’re middle-class, middle-aged, minority, sub-urban, Republicrats who follow the Tarheels, Cowboys, Lakers, or Red Sox AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT, PAL! We’re Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, Mexican on Cinco de Mayo, Christian on Christmas and patriotic on Memorial and Veteran’s Day. With all the things that we hang our identity on, it’s no wonder that we think we need hyphens.

Still, there is the intent of President Roosevelt’s statement. Let me give you a little background to what was going on at the time he said it and why. In 1915, World War I had been going on for a year. Roosevelt was six years out of the White House but still a prominent political figure. The U.S. had yet to enter into the war…that would happen in 1917. There was a good deal of pressure being placed on politicians by Irish-Americans and German-Americans who had an interest in getting the U.S. military involved in the war in support of their homeland nations. In case you don’t remember your history, Ireland and Germany were on different sides of the war.

Teddy wanted to make it clear that nationalism of American citizens to homeland nations threatened the greater good of this nation. The U.S. took a stance of neutrality at the beginning of WWI and it was Roosevelt’s contention that if we entered into the conflict, it should be for reasons befitting this nation’s welfare, not loyalties of its citizens to their ‘homeland’. While the speech and its intent spoke to divisions among Americans of European Descent (see how much a pain that is to say), it is just as true now that we have significant populations from every continent and many more nations.

At the time of this writing, our country is going back and forth over issues of political party, class, race, gender, nationalism and region. Whichever of these issues plays the loudest for you will likely be what drives your decision on whom to vote for. That is politics as usual. That is why candidates pander to you regarding far more issues than they have interest or ability to address. That is not going to help us get out of the collective mess that we find ourselves in. We’ve got to address our nation’s infrastructure, economy, industry, security, education system, and healthcare. None of those issues are hyphen specific. These issues affect us all.

For those who are able to vote, please pay attention to current events and the policies that our government candidates propose. Oh, and do one more thing for me…GO VOTE! For those who are unable to vote stay involved and get others to vote.

(Paraphrased from the original speech)
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling special-interest groups, an intricate knot of nationalities, political parties, races, ethnicities, genders and other interest, each preserving its separate loyalty, each at heart feeling more sympathy with members of that interest group, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”

You can find the entire speech at the following location:
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trquotes.html

I Invented Pants!

Now don't get me wrong...I'm no Al Gore, but I invented pants. I also invented the internet, Health Maintenance Organizations, sudden death overtime, chili cheese fries, and hybrid-electric automobile engines.

What??? You don't believe me? You don't believe that I, in my infinite power, wisdom, purpose, and inventiveness could create these things that have changed our computing, healthcare, football, snacking, and driving (respectively)?

Ok, I admit it...maybe I didn't invent them. But I could have, I mean, I'm not the President or anything, but I have the ability to come up with these concepts. As such, the good and the bad of these things should rightly be attributed to me, right? I should be praised for the wonders of eBay, semi-annual checkups, the Tuck rule, higher cholesterol, and those uppity tree-hugging Prius drivers...right?

OK, I admit it...coming up with these ideas, or even knowing they are possible doesn't exactly lay the praise or blame at my feet. After all, I'm not the President, right? There are other people who were responsible for inventing those things, cultivating those things, manufacturing those things, and making them come to life, right?

I mean really, the Internet was invented through military and NASA technology in the late 70's (I mean, I was a smart baby, but dayum). Health Maintenance Organizations were developed by healthcare conglomerates and insurance companies to package healthcare in a manner that yielded higher insurance returns. Sudden death overtime was brought in by the NFL to eliminate tie games that screwed up their playoff system. Chili-cheese fries were probably invented by the owner of a dive restaurant or bar and taste so damned good that now everyone serves them. And hybrid-electric engines...well, they started in jet design but were adapted to automobile engines by Toyota.

Now this sounds an awful lot like some things that are being tossed around as the fault of the currrent White House, though they were invented by someone else, carried out by someone else, or neglected by someone else and never were their responsibility. For all their fuck-ups, and there are many, the President and Vice-President aren't even in the top 10 when the blame comes up for American jobs being outsourced, 9-11, failures in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the decline in manufacturing/agricultural

jobs, or the mortgage crisis. With the exception of Katrina, most of these things were started (by action or inaction) of federal government agencies, or foreign policy dating back 10-30 years. If anything, this should teach us one thing. We're better served with a smaller government who lets us tend to our own needs than a bigger one that can fuck us over lose an election and escape judgment.

There is plenty that this Presidential administration is responsible for royally fucking up...leading an ineffective war in Iraq for six years, allowing the cost of gas, higher education, and healthcare to skyrocket beyond what Americans can afford, and a "No Child Left Behind" policy that undermined the ability of schools to educate. They should answer for that, but they won't. They should have been impeached, but they weren't. A swift boot in the ass for every soldier who's passed and a shot in the arm for every cent that gas has gone up in the last eight years sounds about fair, but we're not going to get that either. We're just going to get a new figurehead who has no more power to solve the world's problems in a four-year term than the last four had. If your fear is that one, or a few people, abuse power...give them less power.

Also, remember that 3 of the 4 people trying to get to the White House were in Congress while the forces that have made these eight years horrible grew! Obama or McCain will make very little difference. Limit the scope and responsibility of the federal government. Put the responsibility in the hands of people who are involved longer than two or four-year terms.

Barack Obama: Role-Model? Maybe. African-American Role-Model? NO!

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawai'i in 1961. Hawai'i has never even a meager black population and never took part in 'African' slavery or Jim Crow laws. His parents were a Kenyan-exchange student at the University of Hawai'i and a female student from Kansas. His father stayed on the scene for two years and then split. His mother later remarried to an Indonesian-exchange student (are we noticing a pattern yet)? The Indonesian step-father moved the family to Indonesia. At the age of 10 he moved back to Honolulu to live with his maternal (mid-western, white) grandparents. He didn't go to a Historically Black College, he went to Columbia and Harvard. None of that roots him Black American history, heritage, culture, or experience.

These were his formative years, influences, and impressions. Growing up mulatto in Hawai'i with an absentee African (not African-American) father and a strong white family does not make him any part of the African-American experience.

When Gov. Bobby Jindal was running for office in Louisiana there were newspapers that reported him as 'the first African-American candidate to be seriously considered for governor'. Bobby Jindal is Indian-American!!! And I don't mean Cherokee or Sioux, I mean from India (where his parents moved here from). I would say the same thing to Barack Obama as I would say to Bobby Jindal...skin color doesn't make you what I am. The only difference is this, Bobby Jindal never claimed to be me. These days Bobby Jindal isn't confused for me either, it's established that he's of Indian stock.

Now don't misunderstand me, I take nothing away from his accomplishments, his eloquence, his intelligence, or his charisma. He is obviously very intelligent (judging by his education at Columbia and Harvard). He is obviously very eloquent. He obviously has a very strong family (on his mother's side). What white, Kansas family do you know would readily support their daughter having children by an African (who left her) and an Indonesian (who left her) and raise the children themselves, while moving to Hawai'i? He obviously had family with money...Hawai'i isn't cheap, Columbia isn't cheap, Harvard isn't cheap. Aside from his not having an attending father, he was well setup and good for him. Even being well setup, he still admittedly got hooked on drugs and alcohol...ok, he's American...hell, he's damn near a Kennedy! If not for having married a chocolate Black lady and having children, it'd be hard to tell he was "African-American" at all. I know white sun-worshippers who are darker than him.

He is not what I am. To him Roots has as much depth and meaning as Evita has to people in Kenya. He is not the same as me and it's exhausting having people try to force him down my throat. I don't feel compelled to vote for him or even like him because of his ethnicity. Ethnically, we have about as much in common as I do with Joe Biden. If or when you hear me say "I can't wait to see a Black president" it should be interpreted as follows..."I can't wait for the progeny of the historically subjected peoples (black and brown) of THIS land to ascend to the highest office in our government."

No high-yellow mulatto with an absentee African namesake father and white family who grew up in a part of the country that wasn't even part of the country during slavery can claim that.

Would it be nice to see a non-white President? Sure. It would be nice to see a non-male president too, but that won't happen this election. It may be nice to see a non-male vice-president but that remains to be seen. For me though, don't ask me if I'm gonna vote "the brotha" into office or some shit like that...we ain't brothas like that. As for the election, I'm just hoping one of these two will step up and say something that will actually help this country. No matter who wins this election, I'll still keep looking out for the first BLACK president.