Monroe Anderson

The POTUS sings the blues, Blue marries his bass player

 

 

  Barack Obama sang the blues last night.

I saw it coming. When Chicago’s blues icon Buddy Guy started egging the president to join in on Sweet Home Chicago, I figured I was about to witness an encore singing excursion, a follow-up to the “I’m so in love with you” debut performance last month. This time, instead of the Apollo,  the president was playing  the East Room at the White House, singing a duet with “The King of the Blues,”  B.B. King, and a gaggle of other blues stars as back up.

“This is music with humble beginnings -- roots in slavery and segregation, a society that rarely treated black Americans with the dignity and respect that they deserved.  The blues bore witness to these hard times.  And like so many of the men and women who sang them, the blues refused to be limited by the circumstances of their birth,” President Obama said in his opening remarks for the Black History Month celebration concert as it was live streamed over the Internet.
 
“The music migrated north -- from Mississippi Delta to Memphis to my hometown in Chicago.  It helped lay the foundation for rock and roll, and R&B and hip-hop.  It inspired artists and audiences around the world.”

One of those artists who was inspired by the blues was there and featured: Mick Jagger.

His presence struck a sour note for me. Watching the lead singer of “the world’s greatest rock and roll band” headlining at a blues concert in the White House made me instantly think of Dr. John’s lyrics “I been in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time.”

Here we had an English rocker pretending to be a blues performer in America’s House.

It was a bad juxtaposition for me: my friend, Sugar Blue, would have been a better choice.

Blue was the harmonica player on Miss You, the second song Jagger sang last night at the White House and my favorite Rolling Stones hit. When you listen to the 1978 recording, the song’s driving, defining beat is Blue’s harmonica rift. When Mick sang the song last night, I missed Blue.

Across the threshold photo by Maggie Reid

As fate would have it, five days earlier I had attended Blue’s wedding right here in Sweet Home Chicago at the Chess Studios, home of the Chicago Blues Foundation and Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven.

 

The Wedding Reception. From left to right, Billy Branch, Wayne Baker Brooks, Sugar Blue, Billy Boy Arnold, Iltaria Lanteri, Eddie Clearwater, Deitra Farr, and Paul Benjamin (Photo by Monroe Anderson)

Ilaria Lantieri and Sugar Blue cutting the wedding cake (photo by Maggie Reid)

 Sugar Blue’s was no ordinary wedding.

First of all, his lovely bride was Ilaria Lantieri, his band’s bass guitarist who is also an MD in her native Italy. Their wedding was a three-layered affair. It was a conventional wedding imbued with a Native American Smudge Ceremony followed by the jumping of the broom. The guests were their extended blues family--Blues greats Billy Branch, Detra Farr, Corky Siegel, Jimmy Johnson, Eddie Clearwater and Billy Boy Arnold were present as were the children of Jimmy Reed, Howlin Wolf and the grandchildren of Willie Dixon.

Following the ceremonies on Chicago’s South Side, we all went to Rosa’s Lounge, the blues club on the city’s near northwest side. That’s where the bride, and her Grammy award-winning groom, took to the stage to play some blues. They were soon joined by many of their other talented blues guests.

And while the White House celebration was a sweet way to spend a couple of hours, Rosa’s rocked the night away.

Mr. and Mrs. Blue jamming at Rosa's (Photo by Monroe Anderson)

 

 

 

'Fox And Friends' Defends News Corp. In Phone Hacking Scandal (VIDEO)

Fox and Friends clumsily defended News Corp. on Friday morning, inaccurately defending the company as a victim of hacking instead of the one that did the hacking. Host Steve Doocy said, “It’s too ...

Fox and Friends clumsily defended News Corp. on Friday morning, inaccurately defending the company as a victim of hacking instead of the one that did the hacking. Host Steve Doocy said, “It’s too ...

Dilenschneider also said that News Corp has done "all the right things" in its response to the scandal. He then likened News Corp. to companies that have been the victims of hacking, such as Citigroup, American Express and Bank of America. It was an odd analogy, given that News Corp is not a hacking victim, but has been found guilty of hacking others.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Looks like Rupert Murdock is going down. It's about time. But Fox and Friends are making a clumsy attempt to defend the big bad boss and the evil media empire's unethical practices. Is Doocy right? Is this much to do another nothing? Or should the MSM keep reporting on this and should the Justice Department make sure it gets to the bottom of the barrel of rotten apples.

Novel blog: Sweetspeare's Sirens

 
 

    Shortly after I bought my first PC, I started my novel about the first wave of African American journalists to go into mainstream media in Chicago in the early 1970s. That was back in late 1985. I finished my novel six years ago, then spent a good year trying to find an agent to represent it and me. 

It was the most belittling and discouraging professional exercise I've ever experienced. I systematically sent letters out to dozens of literary agents. Frequently form letters were what I got in return, perfunctorily encouraging me--after they expressed no interest. 

In a dozen instances or so I got letters asking to see the first three chapters. All but three of those interested agents sent personalized letters gently rejecting my labor of love. The rejection letters from the other three came after I'd sent the complete novel.

In every case, those who read it told me that the novel was well-written and that the characters were well-developed and interesting. Then came the but... One was bothered because the novel has a number of flashbacks. Another liked it but basically said it was too long. The third didn't really say why not.

I thought I understood their hesitations back then. I think I understand them even more today. 

My novel, originally entitled The Corliss Column or A Generic Suicide Note, is 119,000 words or about 500 pages long. Too much book for a first novel. It is also not a commercial effort. It's not a mystery novel or a how-to book. No mainstream celebrity, I've not been trashed in the pages of the National Enquirer nor has my private life been teased in a promotion for Access Hollywood. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck haven't the foggiest idea who I am. Neither does Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

There are a couple of other reasons why an agent might not find me and my novel a top prospect. I'm no thirty-something so they are unlikely to get three or four decades of steady income off my production. After many false starts, I didn't really get serious about completing my first work of fiction until I had turned 50 and came to the realization that if I didn't do something soon I could end up on my deathbed speaking in short breaths about the novel I was going to write.

When I finished the novel five years after a concerted, disciplined effort, what I had in hand was a story about my protagonist, Pierce Trotter, and other black journalists' efforts to overcome hidebound, institutional racism in the news media--a pre-existing condition that is the book publishing industry suffers from as well.

Today, of course, it's a new game; sort of. While the law of last-hired, first-fired is still in effect, resulting in an disproportionate number of minorities losing jobs in the cut-backs, both the mainstream media and the book publishing industries are on life-support: Therefore the embedded racism rampant through both industries will go with them.

And while my novel, newly-named Sweetspeare's Sirens, a Tell-All Memoir by Pierce Trotter, is historical faction, I choose to look forward not back. I've decided to use the new media to publish my novel about the old media.

Beginning tomorrow, I'm going publish my book 140 characters at a time on Twitter. My tweets will show up on my other social media outlet, Facebook. Once 500-900 words have passed through Twitter and Facebook, they'll appear on MonroeAnderson3.0, a contemporary expression of the name on my birth certificate Monroe Anderson III, the new blog I've created exclusively for Sweetspeare's Sirens. Nearly finally, the novel post will appear in longer-form on my Facebook page until somewhere, someday it materializes as a hardcopy book.

Meanwhile, I'll be cutting the length of the novel by 40,000 words or so as I shoot it out into cyberspace. 

A warning: Since Sweetspeare's Sirens is set in the '70s and '80s, there's lots of sex, drugs and Rhythm & Blues. There is also some raw language.

My latest venture into social media may also morph into performance art. We'll see as my experiment evolves.

I hope you'll follow me on this electronic journey. It should be some trip.

This was cross-posted on MonroeAnderson3.0.

Mainstreaming Malcolm X

    I heard about Malcolm X's assassination while listening to the radio in my father's car. For the life of me, I can't remember much else. I can't remember whether I was driving or a passenger. I can't remember where I was going. What I do remember is the news report that he had been fatally shot by gunmen while giving a speech in Harlem.

    At the time, I knew little about Malcolm. I'd watched him on late-night talk shows that were forerunners to Common Ground, the one I'd find myself hosting three decades later.

    Before the year of his assassination had ended, I'd come to know much more. By Fall, I was a freshman at Indiana University. Jazz musician Charles Ellison, who was one of three black students on my dorm floor back then and to this day remains one of my closest friends, dropped by my room with a big book in hand.

    "Read this, It's the Bible," he said, showing me the newly published "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."

    It was. The book stirred my soul and fired up my political consciousness unlike anything the fading Civil Rights Movement had ever managed to do. By the time I'd finished reading Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King's nonviolence approach to combating racial discrimination seemed about as relevant as a "We like Ike" campaign button. A little more than a year after Malcolm's death, when Stokely Carmichael shouted "Black Power," I took to quoting the Black Muslim leader and embracing Black Nationalism.

   At that time, black Americans virtually had no power. The Civil Rights Act had become law just two years earlier, the Voting Rights Act a year after that. It would be another year before Carl Stokes and Richard G. Hatcher would be elected the first black mayors of Cleveland and Gary and Thurgood Marshall would become America's first black Supreme Court Justice.

    Today, of course, 45 years after Malcolm's death, blacks have power in America. We have black mayors in the nation's largest cities, black heads of Fortune 500 corporations, black governors and senators and Barack Obama. 

    That's not to say we still don't have a long way to go--just look at the unemployment and incarceration rates. There's still much work to do. But there are no longer any major obstacles that we can't overcome.

    In fact, from Hip-hop to fashion, African American influence at home is American influence throughout the world. We have power. 

    So, why was I so surprised to realize that even the very militant Malcolm has himself become mainstream in America? I don't know. But, after seeing this  MSN popular searches, I suspect he has now.

 

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                                 Search: Malcolm X assassination

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the assassination of a leader in the American civil rights movement: Malcolm X.

Lost too soon: Malcolm X (Birth name?) (Muslim name?) was only 39 when he was cut down while speaking here. Find speech transcripts and hear him talk.

Powerful presence: He was a charismatic speaker, and the media covered him extensively. See videos.

Lasting legacy: He was a member of this group before he founded an organization with this philosophy.

Intimidation: What troubling events occurred shortly before his death? What did his wife, Betty Shabazz, say days before his assassination?

Premonition? Malcolm X made this comment eight months before his killing.

The crime: Who were the shooters? They were convicted but didn't receive the death penalty. Where are they now?

Cover-up? Some don't believe that version of events. Conspiracy theories abound.

His family: Malcolm X left behind his wife and six daughters. Shabazz died tragically. How are the daughters doing?

The impact: He was mourned by many, and after his death he received this honor, among others.

Two giants: Malcolm X and this civil rights leader met only once and for just a brief moment (see photos).

Gary, Indiana's greatest? I write. You decide.

 

Big Mike started it.

I was at home, sitting in my library, MacBook Pro on my lap, HD flat broadcasting my daily dose of MSNBC cable, counting the most recent hypocrisies of our nation's Republican leaders on both my hands and feet when I got a call from my friend, Benny Jay.

"I think you should check out our blog. I had nothing to do with it."

So, I go to The Third City website and what do I see? Something silly. 

Big Mike is claiming that Milo is Gary, Indiana's greatest writer. And I thought the Third City guys were my friends. I'd come to admiringly think of them as the Three Musketeers, taking on day-to-day issues that other bloggers found too low rent and trivial to tackle, sort of the Seinfeld's of the internet.

Obviously, I was wrong. As it turns out, the Three Musketeers are not so much one for all and all for one as they are only one, Benny Jay, with the other two, Big Mike and Milo, jointly amounting to the Three Stooges. 

Benny Jay is a good friend. He read my unpublished, 500-page great epic novel, Sweetspeare's Sirens: The Tell-All Memoir by Pierce Trotter. Ben also read all 12 or whatever of Milo's unpublished novel attempts. Did I mention that Benny Jay is a very good friend to Milo?

Anyway, I went to The Third City website, only to read this:

My apologies to Monroe Anderson, but Milo Samardzija is Gary, Indiana’s greatest writer.

Benny Jay’s been leaning on Monroe for months now, trying to get him to become part of this Third City outfit. Between you and me, if Monroe does cave in and sign on, he’ll be Gary, Indiana’s greatest writer. Like I say, let’s keep this on the QT — there’s no need for us to ruffle Milo’s feathers. He has his moods, if you know what I mean.

Because there isn't an egotistical bone in my body, I was all set to let it go. I mean, I know how I roll and how I've rolled  as a writer while nobody knows whether Milo is still on training wheels or a tricycle when it comes to using words to move readers' hearts and minds. But while I was in my "be read and let be read" frame of mine,  my friend and fellow Garyite, Milo,  went all Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels on me by writing on The Third City blog:

Let me set the record straight. Monroe Anderson is a barely literate, no-talent hack. As a writer, he is in the same league as Benny Jay and Big Mike, which is to say they are all bush leaguers. I doubt Monroe is even from Gary. He probably grew up in Muncie or Fort Wayne, or some backwater in southern Indiana. He just says he’s from Gary to improve his social standing.

After receiving tens of thousands of man-up emails from the Monroe Anderson is Gary's Greatest Writer International Fan Club, I had to reply to Big Mike and Milo. If you want to read my letter to the editor, posted by Benny Jay on The Third City website, click here. 

If not, I understand, The Third City assertion that I'm not Gary's greatest is so third rate that it may not be worth your precious time as an intelligent reader who all too well knows what's what, who's who and why Gary, Indiana is so damn proud of me--and is wondering who is this Milo and why is he making this lame-brained, Sarah Palin-like claim?

A mother of a father's day

    There is no comparison between Mother's Day and Father's Day--it's all in the cards and flowers and candy and jewelry and, ahhhh, neckties.

    The moms get it. The dads get less.

    More than $11 billion was spent this Mother's Day cards and gifts. Come June 21, a less beefy $8 billion will be spent on us fathers across America.

    Although I must admit that I'm a bit jealous, as a man I understand. As a general rule, we aren't on the job like mothers are. We're either out of the house, earning a living or--in too many cases in modern America--just out of the house period.

      But, there's something else that may be in play as well. Men aren't supposed to be as sentimental as women. If a spouse or a child misses a birthday or Father's Day, a man is expected to shake it off and stay in the game. Miss those special occasions with a mother and there will be guilt to pay. Who carried you for nine months? Who went through the excruciating pain of childbirth? Who wiped away your tears and kissed away your fears?

    And if you were to show up on the nightly news after ax murdering the girl next door, who would be on the TV announcing with complete conviction that she knew her child could never have done such a heinous crime?

     Besides all that, tradition also favors mom. Way back in 1914, Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. It wasn't until 1966 that President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father's Day and it was six years later before when President Richard Nixon signed it into law.

    All that to say is that I get it when Joyce Owens my wife and the mother of my two sons, gets the holiday card and call that passed me by. It may even be partially my fault. When I noticed that both of us were being taken for granted by both our sons, I started quietly pulling them aside to remind them to be sure to call their mother, who they know and I know, did a great job and deserves to be appreciated for it. I secretly remind them to buy her cards. I'd quietly quiz them about their intentions on giving her gifts.

    After my prompting them through a few special occasions, they've come to realize that father knows best and the cards and calls now come to their mother almost without fail.

    So I was pleased when Scott Anderson, our older son, called his mother this morning for Mother's Day. After they'd talked for about half an hour, I got on the telephone to find out how his new job as a game developer at Kaos Studios in NYC was going and how he liked his new overpriced Manhattan mini-apartment.

    We chatted for about 15 minutes with Joyce frequently interrupting my conversation with him to offer a few more motherly pearls of wisdom and love. Just when I was about to hang up, Scott said he had one more thing he'd like to tell us. 

    Six weeks ago, Scott and his friend, Steve Swink, presented at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco the early stages of the computer game, Shadow Physics, they've been working on in their spare time for the past year or so. After the presentation, Scott was interviewed about the dynamics of the game.

    That interview, which was posted three weeks ago on YouTube, already has more than 101,000 views. That's not to play a game but to see Scott talk about his unfinished game. There are also more than 300 comments about the game or--to be more specific--the video of the game.

    Here's one comment I particularly like: "this is really an all around amazing idea for a game...i would definitely pick this up if it became available. the whole concept is so abstract yet understandable and explores a whole new dimension of thinking and ability to adapt because nothing like this has ever been done before. amazing idea. 5 stars. this is going in my favs."

    No, the comment is not from Scott's mother but from someone whose nickname is touRR30.

    But Mother's Day or not, it was me with the swollen chest. Afterall it was me who brought the first PC into the house 23 years ago, when Scott was only three. It was me who bought him computer games and gave the preschooler unrestrained access to my $2000 machine. It was me who sent him off to computer camp at Stanford University when he was 13. It was me who enrolled him in a math camp at the Illinois Institute of Technology the summer his 14th birthday. It was me who arranged, when he was in the 9th grade, for a year-long apprenticeship with Ali at CompuServ Plus where he learned to build his own computer from scratch. And it was me who took him to the Chicago Internet Street Fair just as he was beginning his senior year in high school, which led an internship at cyberPIXIE where he first learned how to program for wireless devices.

    I may have been MIA  for the lion's share of the diaper changing, but I made my personal parental contributions and I'm seeing them pay off. So, while I may or may not get a call from Scott on Father's Day, all things being equal, this was a very good Mother's Day for me.

    And should Shadow Physics get picked up by some big game distributor and should he become another one of those twenty-something Internet multi-millionaires, I won't be too disappointed if he fails to call me on Father's Day because he's too busy designing his next big hit--a new shiny red Porche in dear old dad's garage will do just fine.

    (Here's the YouTube video of Shadow Physics.)

Studs Terkel on OJ Simpson, Coming of Age and Common Ground

 

Studs Terkel and I never were running buddies. We drank together once in 1980 in a hotel bar in Manhattan where we both were attending a national writer's conference. It wasn't a long drinking session. After one round, he apologetically left me for a young blond who hung on his every word better than I could ever hope to do. 

We weren't running buddies after that either. We weren't even "let's do lunch" friends. We'd nod and cordially chat on chance meetings.

But I was an admirer big time of the oral historian. I'd read a couple of his books, caught his radio show from time to time. Even checked him out on the big screen in Eight Men Out. And he knew who I was. He'd read the investigative series I'd worked on at the Chicago Tribune. He'd watched me discuss Harold Washington and the Chicago mayor's race on WTTW-TV's Chicago Week in Review. He'd seen me conduct press conferences as Mayor Eugene Sawyer's press secretary.

So, the day he showed up for a taping on my TV talk show, Common Ground, Studs caught me off guard with an in-my-face grumble.

"Why would they book me on a show that airs at 5:30 on Sunday morning?" Terkel asked the book tour driver who had delivered him to my CBS studio set.

The legendary Chicagoan had been booked to discuss his latest book, Coming of Age. Although I'd only been the executive producer and host of the show for four years, it had been around since the late '60s, born out of racial tensions following the murder of Martin Luther King.

It was understandable that a publishing company would book Studs on the show during a promotion tour. It was a natural. In the short time I'd hosted the show, I'd interviewed Rosa Parks. Carol Mosley Braun was my guest the Sunday before she went on to win the primary election that would lead to her being the first black woman and second black in the U.S. Senate post Reconstruction.

The driver didn't answer Studs' question and right after he'd posed it, my illustrious guest wanted to take it back. "You're cool with me, Monroe. It's just that...."

I nodded. I understood. Depending on who my general manager was and what new program director he happened to be listening to, my show was all over the weekend schedule. During the eight years I hosted Common Ground, the show was in 13 different times slots. My best and my loyal fan couldn't even keep up with its schedule.

"When does your show come on?" she'd ask after the latest time change.

"Mom, it's on at 1 a.m. Sunday," I said, after one of those schedule changes.

Her favorite time had been when it was on at 10:30 a.m. Sunday mornings--sort of. That's when she usually went to church. It was a tough choice but I almost always won out.

This all came back to me recently when I discovered that Studs had donated a video copy of the show we'd done together to Media Burn. Sara Chapman at the independent video archive was good enough to break the show into two 10 minute segments and upload it to YouTube.

Although Studs was on my set to promote his book, there was a major news event we couldn't ignore. We taped right after OJ Simpson had gotten away with murder in the Trial of the Century. So we spent the first half of the show talking about The Juice. In the second half Studs got around to promoting his book. Once the taping was over, he was gave me a hardcover copy of Coming of Age, autographing it with this inscription above his signature: "To Monroe--A delight to be with you--as always, Peace."

Of course, he had commandeered the show.  I wasn't the least bit surprised, he was the veteran host. I was the print journalist playing a talk show host on TV. And, I'm so grateful that all those viewers who weren't up at 5:30 a.m. on that October 1995 Sunday morning can check out my interview with the iconic Chicagoan should they wish.

Chris and Rihanna show all's not fair in love that wars

Superstars Chris Brown and Rihanna are the poster children for domestic violence. You know the story. A lover's quarrel in 19-year-old Brown's car led to a beating so brutal that neither were able to make scheduled appearances at the Grammy Awards later that night.

Rihanna ended up with a badly bruised and swollen face, Brown with an arrest record and the two of them back together again. Apparently, Rihanna, 21,  and Brown's teenage fans are willing to forgive him for his behaving badly. 

Their spat gone violent might be worth all the attention it's received if it was not so common. As black nationalist H. Rap Brown observed four decades ago: Violence is as American as apple pie.

That's particularly true when it comes to home and to those who are intimately involved partners. There are nearly two million injuries in this nation each year resulting from domestic violence. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, victims of severe domestic violence--like Rihanna--annually miss 8 million days of paid work; that's the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs, and approximately 5.6 million days of household productivity.

And while I abhor the practice of a man beating his woman senseless--or slapping her around for that matter--I believe it's worst when a parent whips a child.

Although, like Rihanna, many abused women fail to dump their abusing lover, abused children rarely have that choice to make. In the name of love and discipline, a parent can beat a child day in and day out without rebuke as long as that child doesn't end up with welts and bruises--or in the ER. But that old school discipline that so many old school parents are so fast and proud to dish out is nothing but an act of violence.

If I pulled off my belt and decided to whip a complete stranger walking down the street, I'd go jail if not to the morgue. That reality and those rules don't apply to the most defenseless Americans--small children.

Citing "spare the rod, spoil the child," far too many Americans believe that when it comes to punishing children, that which doesn't kill them will make them stronger.

But, in reality, it's poor parenting, not spared rod, spoil the child. Our prisons are overcrowded with men who got their butts whipped as children at home AND on the streets. Rather than beating up your child because you're bigger and stronger, wouldn't it be better to teach them how to behave by reasoning with them and punishing through non-violent means? Time-outs work. So do revoked privileges. Teaching by example is tops. For example, when I was a child, my father told me any curse word I heard him use I could use. Since I never heard him use one, he never heard me use one. 

If you teach a child that violence is a means to get what you want, then violence becomes an early and easy option. The jails are filled with men--and boys--who got their asses whipped on regularly. Rather than learning reasoning and self-control, they learned that physical abuse is the way to control or address problems.

And, isn't it strange that parents feel free to beat up--whip--their children while they're little but stop as soon as they get big enough to make it a fair fight?

The same principle holds true for two lovers. Had Rihanna been bigger, stronger or a black belt, Chris Brown would have thought long and hard before he struck out.

btw, here's a YouTube video reenactment from the police reports of the what allegedly took place between the two pop stars. DoSomething.org, a teen organization, made the video as a public service announcement about teen dating. 

(This column is also posted on Huffingtonpost.com,  Newsvine.com and UK/EU Progressive.)

For News Corp, there's no business for monkey business

 

      When I was a freshman at Indiana University eons ago, I was a resident in Wright Quad, an all men’s dormitory.  

I'd grown up in a segregated neighborhood in Gary, Indiana.  I’d only had two white teachers during my entire k-12 public school education. I knew no whites socially; for me, they were only characters on TV.

      When I arrived on the idyllic Bloomington campus, where only 600 of the school’s 33,000 students were Black, I had some adjusting to do—as did many of the whites who had grown up in rural Indiana communities where the Ku Klux Klan had thrived a couple of generations earlier and continued to maintain a presence in the mid-60s.

      Our men’s room in our men's dorm was wide open. There was no place to hide. The toilet stalls had no doors. The showerheads were side by side with no petitions between them.      

I hadn’t been in my new home away from home for a week before I picked up on something. The farm boys were stealing peeks at me as I stood under the shower facing the wall.  I casually mentioned this curious behavior to one of the white students who’d befriended me. He explained that the stolen glances were the product of rural legends. Their elders had told the farm boys that Negroes had tails.  They were straining to spot mine.

      I am reminded of this early experience in my college education by the current resurgence on a variation of that theme—Blacks as simians—occurring now.   

      Since the New York Post ran the unfunny, tasteless, racist cartoon—you saw it, the one with a white cop holding a smoking gun as he and his partner stand next to the dead body of a bullet-hole ridden, bloody monkey--the Black man as primate once again has been spoon fed to the public's psyche.

      The NAACP has been fighting this sort of ugly, vicious stereotyping for the past 100 years, and the image assault on Blacks in America was being waged 100 years and more before the venerable civil organization was founded to fight it.

      Rupert Murdock offered an unprecedented personal apology for his newspaper’s offensive cartoon in what amounted to a too little, too late gesture. The NAACP began a full-blown counter offensive today on the media baron’s empire, highlighting how token diversity is throughout News Corp. Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, and Julian Bond, the chairman, have made a strong argument that the cartoon, captioned, “They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” which ran in juxtaposition to a photograph of Barack Obama signing the legislation, was encouraging the assassination of the POTUS.     

      I’m not convinced inciting murder was the intent of cartoonist Sam Delonas or the New York Post editor who green-lighted the tasteless cartoon. But it’s been eight years since New York’s rightwing rag has had a Black editor in the chain of command that could have red-flagged the chimp cartoon.     

Unfortunately, it’s not the first time Obama has magically morphed into a monkey. Last May, a Georgia barkeeper sold T-shirts with a picture of Curious George and Obama 08 printed on them. But simple-minded stereotypes of Blacks aren’t confined to U.S. borders. There’s the chimp-like cartoon character Memin Pinguin so beloved by Mexicans.

Even in the Middle East, they can’t resist the temptation to monkey around with the African American image. Today, I saw an email complaining of yet another primate visual. This one featured Condoleezza Rice pregnant, carrying a baby simian inside her stomach.

      What can I say? From the American South to south of the border, from the Middle East to the East Coast, racist ignorance abounds when it comes to symbolism and iconology. 

New Obama era expressed by old English

I am not alone in my belief that our 43rd president was the worst ever--Rolling Stone Magazine made that assertion in April 2006. And while some may argue that James Buchanan did a worse job than George W. Bush, only the visually or mentally challenged will think he wasn't the worst president in modern times; he'll leave office with the lowest approval ratings in history, 22 percent

On Inauguration Day, it will be out with the worst and in, I'm hoping, with the greatest.

Nor am I alone in believing that Barack Obama will perform above and beyond the call of duty. You can tell by the numbers; 65 percent of Americans believe #44 will be an above average president. We may be in a deep recession but Brand Obama--from magazine covers to commemorative coins to wacky and weird merchandise--is booming. And you can tell it by the art. There's the iconic portrait by artist Shepard Fairey and a countless number of Obama-inspired art.

There's also a bunch of inspired poetry and music--which brings me to my long-time friend, Joe English.

Joe, a wealthy old hippie who is in his mid-60s, has had faith and hope in Barack since the beginning. In fact, he claims pride of authorship for one of Obama's early campaign slogans--Obama Right from the Start--which is a reference to the Illinois senator's opposition to the war in Iraq. 

Now that the candidate is about to become the president, the muse hit Joe up again. This time, rather than a mere slogan, it turned out to be a poem which then turned out to be a song--Five Fifths Strong: Redemption Song.

The title alludes to the infamous "three-fifths" compromise" of the Founding Fathers when they were constructing the U.S. Constitution in 1787. For those of you who are a little rusty on your American history, the "three-fifths" clause decrees that, for the purposes of counting each state's population to determine its number of Representatives in Congress and the distribution of taxes, African slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a human being.

We now have a man of African descent about to occupy the Executive House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue which is more than a gesture affirming black Americans' rise to full citizenship.

I think Joe's song does an incredible job of capturing the triumph of the moment. While it's Joe's lyrics, the music is by Atiba Jali. Five-Fifths Strong is sung by Ray Balkcom with the All City Elementary Youth Chorus of the Chicago Public Schools.

Take a listen and let me know what you think. Just click on the blue link below.

        Five-Fifths Strong_ Redemption Song

Here are the words to Joe's poem, Five Fifths Strong: Redemption Song

Out of many, we are one, 

Come into the sun of this shining place 

By Amazing Grace, 

Not without sin, and not without stain, 

In pain of lilacs last in the dooryard blooming, 

To claim another New Birth of Freedom, singing, 

We the People, Freedom's Song as never sung before.

 

Five-Fifths Strong: Redemption Song. 

It is fitting and proper, then, 

That we Lift Every Voice and Sing, 

For centuries' chains could not still 

Freedom's will, nor mute rainforests' root. 

With every voice that's newly heard, 

Kola nuts are broken, shared: 

The dream deferred made spoken word. 

Five-Fifths Strong: Redemption Song. 

Forward in this generation, 

Let all the dreamers wake the Nation, 

And, together, build the shining city on the hill. 

From shore to shore, through fruited plain, 

This is our time to live the dream, 

At every patriot's grave remembering 

Yes, we can. 

Yes, we can. 

Yes, we can let Freedom ring. 

Five-Fifths Strong: Redemption Song. 

Yes, we can let Freedom ring.