November 2006

NOTE: having received the book, i’ve changed my mind about recommending it. see this post for details.

the last comment that i received on my couple of posts about kramer was from h. lewis smith, author of bury that sucka!. i searched for it on the b&n website, as the author suggested, and was unable to find it, so i dropped him a note. in his reply, he said “I find it interesting that before all of this fall out with the n-word, my book was readily available on barnes&noble just by simply typing in the name of the book. For whatever reason they are trying to make it difficult for people to find my book there. Thanks for letting me know.” he also provided the ISBN, and using that, i was able to find the book on amazon.

coincidence? i don’t think so.

here’s their description of the book:

Bury That Sucka! explores and examines what makes the African American community the epitome of an incredible paradox. On the one hand, there is this unbelievable love affair with the word nigger-at the same time, when used by a non-black, the word suddenly becomes an insult. A self-inflicting, mental genocide is the road that the community appears to be traveling down…prompting an appeal to the black community to bury the N-word.

while no doubt mr. h. lewis smith and i may disagree on a number of points, we clearly agree on one — the one i think is central to the questions that the kramer controversy has spotlighted — if using that word is not OK, then everybody needs to stop using it.

i ordered my copy this morning.

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i received a long and thoughtful comment from a young black woman named kara about my blog on the ‘kramer controversy’ (which you can read in its entirety in the comments section of that post).

she made a lot of good points and also introduced me to a heartbreaking website that i had not seen before, without sanctuary.

and while i agree with many of kara’s points, i do believe she misunderstood mine — or perhaps i mistitled that particular blog post — because what i addressed most wasn’t kramer’s meltdown but what i read about it in the next day’s paper, where a young black man’s only comment on the outburst was that white people should “never use the n-word”. he didn’t say anything about the references to lynching, which is what much of kara’s comment addresses.

she asks, “Had this been a Jewish audience and an entertainer said, ‘Shut up! In the 1940’s your a-s would be baking in a gas oven somewhere’ and then screamed kike nearly 10 times in succession would the issue even be up for debate?” i agree completely that the issue, in that case, would not be up for debate — but largely because jewish people don’t casually and lovingly call one another ‘kike’ on a regular basis. nor do italians regularly refer to themselves as guineas or asians call themselves chinks, etc. for that reason, those words (and others like them) retain their power as racist insults and nothing else. it’s impossible, in 2006, to put the n-word in that same category, and not just because of hip-hop.

i wish kara had mentioned where she lives, when she said that “NO ONE and I repeat NO one in my circle uses that word EVER.” i live in new york city and i don’t think there are many black people here who could honestly say the same thing. so if i have some kind of a bias, it’s certainly a geographical one, not, as kara suggests, a bias in favor of using the n-word. the point i made in my post is that it’s all or nothing — can’t be OK for some people to use the word but not others. and while kara’s circle of friends and family may not use it, it is certainly widely in use in the circles of many black people in this country, and not just rappers (who are not even mentioned in my kramer controversy blog). the only black person i called out by name was chris rock, who is not a rapper but a comedian (and a far more effective one than michael david).

she asks, “Since when do juveniles who are just finding themselves speak for the ENTIRE black race?” i answer “never”, while pointing out that the example of what goes on in my neighborhood is not limited to juveniles. on a daily basis i hear middle-aged and even elderly men and women use the n-word with great regularity. i hear mothers call their children by that name (”get over here, you little n”), shopkeepers, bank tellers, police officers, MTA station managers…

i agree that richard’s rant was tasteless and completely off the mark. i didn’t see the video of the whole event until last night, and it’s pretty obvious that he was trying to do a “lenny bruce” and when he realized that he’d failed, he totally lost control. i still don’t know whether or not he is a racist or just an idiot (or some combination of the two), but i’m completely clear on the fact that i wasn’t trying to “defend” him, as kara suggests in her note (which she did not think i would post).

i would like to hear from her again to understand what she meant by saying that my own views about the n-word are biased, as i am neither in favor of nor against the use of the word — i’m simply against it being OK coming out of some mouths but not others.

although i do think one very positive thing has come from the now-common use of n: it has lost most of its power. years ago, that one word would stop time, start a riot, end a friendship, land somebody in jail. and while today those results are not impossible, they are immensely less likely. the word, through repetition — most often from the mouths of black people — no longer conveys what it did back in the days of lynching and government-enforced segregation and violence.

i had to smile at kara’s question of whether i thought that 50-cent (who is a sexist idiot, which he proves every time he opens his mouth) could greet Denzel or Oprah with that word. i suppose he couldn’t. but then i had an image of Oprah meeting Denzel, opening her wide and loving arms, and saying with a smile “i am so glad to meet you, you beautiful, talented n.”

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is michael richards a racist? i don’t know him, so i can’t say. yet somehow i have the feeling that a true racist performing in front of a mixed audience would have been, somehow, more discreet. seems more to me like kramer is a poor excuse for a comedian, and tried to make a daring joke that backfired.

some performers could have pulled this off, even using his exact words. it’s all in the timing, the tone, the look on the face. clearly, he failed on all three counts, as you can see from the video linked to the title above. i doubt he will try his hand at standup again, even in the unlikely event that some venue invites him to.

what bothers me more, though, are some of the comments i’ve heard about the incident. in particular, alongside the article in AM-NY yesterday were some ‘man in the street’ straw polls. three people, two white, one black. the white people mostly seemed to think, as i do, that the once-famous kramer is just an idiot, or an extremely poor comedian.

but the comment from the lone black man was disturbing. he said (i don’t have the exact quote) something along the line of well, he used the n-word, and it is NEVER acceptable to use the n-word.

oh really? has anybody mentioned this to chris rock? i don’t think he’s ever done a show without it, but from him it’s okay?

i live in a primarily black neighborhood, and i can barely walk out the door without my ears being filled with loving shouts that include the n-word. around here, it’s a term of affection — but, as elsewhere, it’s only a term of affection if it’s used by people of color. let me say it, or michael david say it, and right away it’s racism — no matter what the context, no matter what the intent.

the only conclusion i can draw is that it’s okay to say the n-word if you’re black and it’s not okay if you’re white. in other words, one group has a privilege that other groups do not. does this remind you of something? like segregated bathrooms and lunch counters, like rosie parks at the back of the bus?

there is a one-word definition for situations in which one race holds rights denied to another:

racism.

if the n-word is not okay, then i guess all you n’s need to stop saying it. let’s start up in my neighborhood, where every young brother’s name seems to be n.

i have a friend, dolores, who always calls me “her nigger”. she is black, i am not. it’s okay with her if at the end of an evening out i give her a hug and say “good night, my nigger”. it’s a term of endearment. and, offensive as this might be to some, it’s not the white race that has turned it into one.

can’t have it both ways, my n’s.

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you would think that a man who walked away “not guilty” after slitting the throats of his ex-wife and her boyfriend would just keep his mouth shut, no?

no. the headlines now are full of stories about his new book, and the editor, regan, says — “i think of it as his confession”.

who the fuck is zooming who here? we already know that he did it and how he did it, the question is moot. what i want to know is, who in their right mind would buy (much less publish) this book? we already have all the information from the trial, from his bizarre car-chase in los angeles after the slayings. no more information is needed.

what is needed, apparently, are funds for oj the murdering, whitegirl-loving, football-playing asshole, to continue living in the style to which he has become accustomed.

you know what oj? mary wilson, one of the original Supremes (as in diana ross &) died penniless in a flophouse. that’s just about right for you, and the sooner the better. god don’t like ugly, and neither do i. (btw, diana ross is almost as ugly as simpson, voice or no voice.)

yet i’m almost more pissed off at the media than i am at oj. him, forget about it, a psycho, a sick man, a murderer. we all know that. so why then (setting the outrageous book deal aside) is he suddenly front page news? how many of us would even have known that the asshole had a (ghost-written) book coming out if it weren’t on the front page of newspapers in many cities where he doesn’t even live? they’re all saying, of course, what a travesty, the nerve of him, etc., etc. but if they really believed that, then why write a story? if it’s all just about selling more papers, no matter how, then they are just as guilty as this musclebound semi-literate bullhead football player.

oj, we already know you’re going to burn in hell if such a thing exists. but the people who loved nicole — who REALLY loved her — are already there and don’t deserve to be. yet you continue to throw coals on the fire.

what goes around comes around, mr. simpson. and for you, the sooner the better.

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i thought the problem might have been that i was just reading the wrong newspapers, the NY Daily News and AM-NY. so this morning, at 6:30 AM on the upper east side, actually, where there was nowhere to get a cup of coffee other than enemy starbuck (and where said enemy stocks only one flavor of newspaper) i bought a copy of the New York Times, something i never do.

if only i had been right about reading the wrong papers. but no. either the media is insane or no longer cares what they print. there, on page one, is an article entitled “For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’”

need i mention that this article was accompanied, inevitably, by a smiling picture of herr bush with his arm around some israeli official?

but what i want to know — politics aside — is how god can have a foreign policy at all if everyone is a child of god? who are the foreigners? does it all depend on where you’re sitting when the mighty glance of god falls on your face? i somehow seem to remember, from years of reading various scriptures from various faiths, that we are all god’s children. in the context of that, the word ‘foreign’ is not in the vocabulary of god. and the very idea that war and slaughter are not only condoned, but required by some version of god, is so lopsided and ghastly that i believed, in my naivete, that it had gone the way of the crusades.

but no, there is the smiling so-called leader of the free world embracing the man who spouts this…what shall i call it? nonsense? profanity? heresy? a turd by any other name still smells like shit.

the use of “god” in this context is no different than the use of “god” in the context of terrorists blowing up themselves and others in the names of their various faiths. where, then, is the difference between the U.S., where is the difference between Israel, and all the various terrorist elements they and we both profess to detest?

there is no difference, other than that one gets approval and multiple photo ops on the front page of what once was a highly respected but now is just a widely read newspaper. there is nothing different but some details in the methods.

anybody who murders in the name of god, or even threatens to do so, or claims a mandate to do so, is so disconnected from god that they may as well be a fishwife working as a car mechanic.

i used to wonder when everybody would wake up. sadly, i now wonder IF we ever will.

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oh, right. i ain’t supposed to say niggah. or nigger. or nothing like that. i’m not the right color to have permission to use that word.

well, you know, fuck that.

i live in harlem, and half the people up here use the word nigger the way people down south use the word buddy, or northerners use the word friend or guy or hon. one night i was walking home along manhattan avenue, really late at night (or early in the morning, depending on how you count it). nobody on the street but one young guy hollering back and forth to another young guy hanging out a third-floor window. i wasn’t paying too much attention to their talk, but when upstairs man called to his sidewalk buddy “yo, where’s all my niggers?” i pretty much lost it and almost couldn’t walk for all the laughing. they looked at me, middle-aged white lady, nothing special, what the hell is she laughing about? but not important enough to ask. glad they didn’t. but i loved it — 3am in harlem and some homebody shouting down to the streets asking where is all the niggers at? they might not see what’s so funny about that to me, and it woulda taken too long to explain, so they didn’t ask and i walked on, two blocks more, to home, laughing like a lunatic most of the way there.

but that’s not what this post is about. this is about charles rangel. now, though i’m a blue-dyed democrat who tries not to hate anybody but still seems to hate george bush, i don’t always know everybody’s voting record. i’ve got a job, you know? and some other creative things happening. 20-hour days. i just don’t have time to follow it all that closely. so while i know some people have problems with rangel’s votes or positions on some things, i don’t know the specifics.

and i don’t care. i love charles rangel. why? because he speaks his mind, no self-censorship, no pre-talk poll-taking. sort of like ray nagin crying on the radio (another niggah we should all have listened to when katrina came down like a nuclear bomb and the government all stood there with their dicks in their hands, wondering what to do).

couple of weeks ago, in this blog, i sent love to charles rangel because he had the balls to call dick cheney a son of a bitch. now i’m sending him more love because he was brave enough to say “who wants to live in mississippi?” — for which he was immediately censured, of course.

well, you know. dick cheney IS a son of a bitch — or at least, an assistant to one. and no sane person would want to live in mississipi. here’s why:

it is the poorest state in the nation
it has the lowest educational rate in the nation

and you don’t have to take my word on it, check with resident, who lives there.

seems like georgia hates mississippi. so why is charlie rangel being reprimanded for saying “who would want to live in mississipi?” — i wouldn’t want to live there. would you? seems pretty clear (based on NYC letters to the editor at various publications) that nobody would want to live in mississippi other than the unfortunates who are already stuck there.

yet rangel is condemnded for stating the obvious, when that state is compared to NYC. why? he is RIGHT.

here’s what i like about charles rangel — even if i don’t necessarily agree with all his political positions: he has THE BALLS TO SAY WHAT HE THINKS AND TO STATE THE OBVIOUS.

the whole democratic party needs to learn these skills if it’s going to thrive and survive past all the self-congratulary backslaps engendered by this latest election “sweep”. we need to go in there like aggressive and mouthy vultures, and pick the dead skin clean off the corporate operatives of the republican party.

seems to me that charles rangel is already doing this.

does anybody else in office have the balls?

hillary, this is a BIG question for you.

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good morning, newly democratic america!

i was expecting victory over the republican machine, but i was not so optimistic to think things would turn out as well as they have. and though rumsfeld is being replaced with a clone, the haste with which the white house doors hit him in the ass shows some promise. i’d imagine rove is next.

so now the question: to impeach or not to impeach? that there are grounds for the impeachment of bush are incontrovertible; but whether or not it would make sense to do so now that he has been de-balled and effectively disempowered raises some tricky questions. the last thing we need to do is launch a massive impeachment campaign that distracts our newly-elected democratic leadership from making some real and badly needed changes in the way this country is run, and also runs the risk of turning tyrant bush into some kind of a martyr — if you remember, even richard nixon got some love from the people as he slunk out of the oval office.

though i remain entirely convinced that bush is certifiably insane and unfit to serve in any capacity, i’d rather see him resign than be impeached. and, as the wonderfully outspoken charles rangel said in today’s AMNY, “I’m the president’s best friend in preventing impeachment, I know Dick Cheney.” well-said, by the man who publicly referred to cheney as a son of a bitch in the press a couple of weeks ago. i suggest that cheney isn’t so much a son of a bitch as the vice-bitch — and i doubt his stunted, pacemakered heart would survive the succession to office. but it’s like lotto - hey, you never know. even though it’s common knowledge that cheney does, and has, run the government for the past 6 years, it’s also common knowledge that he prefers to do it from behind the scenes (as long as he’s not shooting his best friend’s face off in a drunken hunting accident, that is).

there is a citizen’s movement afoot to begin the proceedings whether the house initiates it or not. you can find information about that at impeach for peace. and there’s always vote to impeach. i’m still not quite sure what the best thing is to do, but impeach for peace has a massive operation set to kick off on january 15th, so i’ve got some time to think about it.

and so do you.

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reading the daily news can be terrifying. the level of entrenched idiocy (or incompetence) embedded in the city’s infrastructure is headspinningly large.

for example, page 3 of today’s (11/7, election day) daily news has two articles on it. the first is about the failed launch of the intrepid, the second is about a subway pulling out and riding a whole stop with its doors open, filled with passengers. at first glance these things are unrelated, right? nope.

first of all, the intrepid hasn’t moved in 24 years. according to bill bleyer, in AM-NY, “officials said that while more than 13,000 cubic yards of silt had been dredged between the stern of the ship … and the middle of the hudson, the mud around the hull had not been removed.” so they did some dredging, NO testing, called out hillary clinton and several marching bands to attend the launch that…did not happen. too much mud. propellors embedded in mud. took 7 tugboats an hour to move the sucker 15 feet before everybody called it a day.

now i ask you: could we not have done a small test, just get the boat out 50 feet or so first, and THEN call out all the hoopla? maybe somebody think about the fact that this ship has been frozen in place and time longer than most of my co-workers have walked this earth and figure out that perhaps a test was in order? perhaps THINGS had happened to the boat stuck in all that mud for all that time? noooo-ooooo. btw, the ineffectual dredging that was done cost a quarter of a million bucks. to go nowhere!

hillary clinton! marching bands! holy shit!

then we have the infamous flying door A train, with the opposite problem — it didn’t not go, but it went when it shouldn’t have. conductor says he was walking back to find out why some of the doors weren’t closing when the engineer took off. engineer says all door lights were green and closed. luckily, nobody fell out in the tunnel — but that’s only because it wasn’t rush hour. in rush hour, this would’ve been a massacre, and bush would undoubtedly have invaded some unrelated country (maybe canada this time), screaming Terrorism! but nobody died, nobody even got hurt, and “TA officials” eagerly await the results of the drug tests administered to both engineer and conductor.

now, to test them for drugs is reasonable — in fact, under these circumstances, it’s mandated. but as someone who has ridden the trains here for nearly half a century, i find it hard to believe that both of them were drunk or stoned. it’s much easier to believe in the reality of fucked up equipment and broken PA’s. you can never hear what anybody is saying on a subway PA. it’s no stretch to think that the safety lights are just as broken as the public address system.

so there we have it, a tale of two transits. as they say in brooklyn, “lights on, doors open, nobody home”.

and nobody minding the store.

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if not, shame on you! (unless you’re planning to vote republican, in which case the country is better off if you just stay home. go to church or something — that is, if your church is still open, which it might not be if your pastor was the infamous conservative republican preacher ted haggard who just got fired for having drugged-out gay sex.)

i’m heading for the polls in about an hour. voting in harlem is always an interesting thing — the books are confusing and the clerks are confused, and god help you if you don’t know the exact ED/AD for your street address. the one very pleasant thing about it, though, is knowing that just about no one up here is voting for the murderous, restricting, corporate-owned republican regime that has stolen the last two presidential elections via fraud.

michael moore warned us again about that yesterday in his call for last-minute actions — it’s not enough for the dems to win, we have to win BIG so that there’s no room for finagling.

and yes, i AM voting for hevesi, scandal be damned. if the worst thing he’s done as a politician is have somebody drive his wife to the doctor, i figure we’re ahead of the game. he’s done a good job as controller, and i believe he will continue to do so.

it’s time for us to get away from the kind of politics that tries to impeach a great president for getting a bj from some bimbo in his office, yet fails to challenge a president who started an unprovoked, illegal war that has cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, mostly civilians, and who has openly condoned the use of torture at the discretion of, well, almost any member of his machine.

yeah, i feel strongly about this stuff. that’s why i joined technorati. the people who don’t want to hear this kind of stuff are the ones who need it most.

see you at the polls.

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