When this year's Superbowl champions, the Pittsburgh Steelers, run through the meet and greet ceremony Thursday at the White House, the team's star linebacker will be sitting it out. James Harrison says that he's not going to the Nation's Capitol to hang out with the nation's first African American president because....well, because....WTF?
"This is how I feel -- if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, [Obama] would've invited Arizona if they had won," Harrison told WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh.
Has this player suffered one concussion too many? Had the Cardinals beat the Steelers in Superbowl 43, then President 44 would have been glad-handing with them in the Rose Garden. That's the way it works. The winners gets to the White House. The losers gets to go home. So, yeah, without Harrison's record 100 yard touchdown return, and an Arizona, 23, Pittsburgh, 20, final score, the Cardinals would have gotten the Barack Obama invite.
It was pointed out that Harrison passed on going to Washington three years ago, the last time the Steelers won the Superbowl, to meet with President George W. Bush. Harrison's agent insists that his client's decision to skip the trip to Washington wasn't political. The agent should have insisted that it was downright stupid.
Actually, his agent should have explained it all to his client like he was a six-year-old. If you win the Superbowl, you get a Superbowl ring. If you lose, the other team gets it. If you win, your team gets the Superbowl trophy. If you lose, the other team gets it. If you win, you get to be in the Superbowl parade. If you lose, the other team's town has a parade for them.
If you win the Superbowl, then you get to go to Disney World.
My guess is that since Harrison won, he's been there and doesn't want to ever, ever leave.
(This post was also published on the AgoraVox and Newsvine websites.)
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 toMedia 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.
When it comes to the rabid right, perennial loser Alan Keyes comes off effortlessly as the big dog.
I witnessed him spouting his coo-coonalities while foaming at the mouth on a regular basis back in 2004 when Illinois Republicans, for want of ANYBODY to put up a pretend challenge to State Sen. Barack Obama for the U.S. senate seat, recruited Keyes from Maryland.
I immediately saw it as a cynical move by the state Republicans to pit their Black against the Black Democratic candidate, reasoning that one African-American was as good as the next. I would later come to that same conclusion when the Republican National Committee would con Sen. John McCain into partnering with Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin, figuring since the Democrats failed to put Hillary Clinton on the Obama ticket, their woman candidate was as good as the junior senator from New York would have been.
Both gambits proved to be the undoing of the Repubs.
Obama went on to become the second Black U.S. senator from Illinois within a decade. Oh yeah, and with a big hand from the lipstick-wearing Pitbull, he's now the POTUS.
As Obama's challenger for the U.S. senate seat, carpetbagger Keyes came off as whacked out on peyote-laced Jesus juice. Keyes accused Obama's position on abortion as the "slaveholder's position." Keyes asserted that Obama's Lord and Savior wouldn't even vote for the Democrat. Before it was over, Keyes had throughly embarassed the Illinois Republicans, exposing how dim-witted their decision to draft Keyes had been. And when it was over, Keyes lost to Obama, 27 to 70 percent.
Now, he's back at it. In a video that surfaced yesterday, Keyes calls President Obama "a radical communist" and said he refused to acknowledge the validity of Obama's inauguration because the President is not a U.S. citizen. You've got to hear him to believe him before coming to the conclusion I came to long ago: Alan Keyes is all babble and all psycho too.
The revolution was the real must-see TV.Itsopening salvo was aired on a sub-zero day on February 10, 2007 in Springfield, Illinois in the shadow of the old state capitol where Abraham Lincoln gave his house divided speech. That was when Sen. Barack Obama began the assault on the greatest whites only symbol in America: The White House. The strikes and counter-strikes were on television day in. day out, week in, week out for the next 21 months. We caught it all. We saw the talking heads on cable TV explain why Hillary Clinton was a cinch for the Democratic nomination. Then we saw the victory speech in Iowa, realizing that the junior senator from Illinois was a contender. One primary battles after the next played out on our TV screens, sometimes---like on Super Tuesday--a volley of them at once. And, as the battles waged on, we surveyed the maps on who had staked out which states and how many he needed if the revolution was going to be real. We witnessed, first Rev. Jeremiah Wright, then Father Michael Pfleger, as they were made into men for media destruction. Then we were on the lookout as Obama knocked down that subterfuge and cleared away those smoke screens. Armed with remote controls in the comfort of our homes, we were eye witnesses to the victory march. We beheld the victory celebrations in Denver's INVESCO Field and in Chicago's Grant Park. We saw history made. We saw it all. And yesterday, we saw the beginning of the real struggle on TV--the inauguration. Now that the revolution has been won, the real battle begins--righting so many wrongs. And, as I watched that play out from day-to-day, I'll keep recalling how wrong Gil Scott Heron was four decades ago when he wrote his poem: The Revolution Will Not be Televised.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich has outstripped Sarah Palin as the nation's most laughable governor. Comedians see his absurd reported antics as pure gold. As with Gov. Palin, they don't even have to rework his words to get a rash of chuckles. So far, for comedians, political pundits and politicians alike, the only challenge Blago is presenting is whether to play him as stupid or crazy or both.
Christopher Rabb's Afro-netizen, one of the oldest black blogs around, is now contributing the running joke known as Illinois' governor. In its latest post, it claims to have FBI tapes of Blago wanting to cash in on the Barack Obama in more ways than just the vacant senate seat.
According to the blog, it a transcript of Blagojevich expressing his interests in muscling in on the Obama memorabilia craze by becoming the Victory Plate czar. Here's Rabb's full post, complete with the as-seen-on-TV Victory Plate YouTube video and what his blog claims is the FBI transcript of yet another Blago plot. I'm not sure if this is serious or a joke but, either way, it's definitely amusing.
An anonymous source has leaked to Afro-Netizen information from the FBI sting on embattled Illinois governor, Rod R. Blagojevich (D) that confirms the recently arrested governor sought to become Obama's "Victory Plate Czar", a position Blagojevich believed could be the dark-horse position in the incoming administration to revitalize the national economy currently mired in a historic recession.
Transcripts obtained by Afro-Netizen reveal that Blagojevich believed that in exchange for appointing whomever President-Elect Obama wanted for his vacated senate seat, the governor could secure what he was confident would be the most coveted Executive Branch position outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
According to a transcript of an exchange between Blagojevich and an unnamed advisor, the governor was caught exclaiming:
"This f@#ing black guy s#its gold bullion! And you're telling me he's not getting a f@#$ing taste?! Well, that's b@llsh*t. And if it's not, I'm definitely getting a f@*ing taste for sure. Those shut-ins, old f@#^ers, the blacks and f@#$in' hippies are all buyin' that commemorative sh@t like f@#*ing crazy. We get some of our boys to take over that Victory Plate biz, run it through some new b*llsh#t federal program, and nobody'll even know what's goin' on. Besides, Obama and those f#$*ers on Capitol Hill will be greeting us as liberators, throwing f@&#in' flowers at our feet when we f@#*in' save the Godd@mn economy with this f#$@in' plate stimulus idea! Now, back to rubbin' my feet, f#$*er -- and get out of the way of the TV. I'm tryin' to watch 'The Honeymooners' without your big f@#$in' melon in the way!"
When reached for comment on this unsuccessful scheme, Telebrands founder and infomercial king, AJ Khubani, whose company markets the Obama "victory plates" stated, "That's the most stupid f@*#in' idea I've ever heard. And trust me, if there's anyone who knows about stupid f@#*in' ideas, it's me."
When Barack Obama becomes the first President of the United States, African American history will not only be turning a new page or be in need of a new chapter--we'll have to write and read volumes of new books. Here's my personal observation of one way we'll have to reshape our perspective. It's my latest ebonyjet.com post.
In the eight years it had been around before I arrived immediately after graduating from Indiana University, the weekly Dow Jones publication was a whites only destination. Its managing editor let it be known that he was not about to hire anyone black for his newspaper. He had turned down, I was told, a young Bob Teague, who went on to be an award-winning NBC network reporter, and a young William Raspberry, who went on to become the Washington Post’s best-known black columnist.
Months before I was all set to slip on my cap and gown, the conservative ME got his gold watch. His retirement was followed by this pledge from the Observer’s younger editors: they would hire the first qualified black journalist that applied. About that time my resume—highlighting my Newsweek Magazine internship in the summer of 1968—arrived in the mail.
I was with the D.C.-based Observer just shy of two years and during my brief stint, it was just me. There were no other blacks. No other black reporters. No black secretaries. No black pressmen. No black janitors. No black anybody but me. In 1972, I left for Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, in truth, not because I was black but because I was too green for the job.
After a couple of years of being mentored and challenged at Ebony Magazine, I went to the Chicago Tribune. When Harold Washington became Chicago’s mayor on April 29, 1983, I became the first black reporter to cover City Hall for the Chicago Tribune; make that the first black reporter from any mainstream media newspaper to cover Chicago’s City Hall and city council. The one thing I brought away from both my Observer and Tribune experiences is that it’s not easy being the first black.
At the Observer, I felt as if I had the weight of the race on my shoulders and that any mistake I made would have negative ramifications far beyond me, setting back any opportunity for any other black reporter that might try to follow me. At City Hall, I was the man in the middle of a racial council war as black aldermen were outgunned and outnumbered by white aldermen who were dead set on torpedoing the political agenda of Chicago’s first black mayor. I was second fiddle to an eight-year younger David Axelrod, who had been named the Trib’s political editor and who, more recently, as chief political strategist, brilliantly helped carry Obama to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It’s not going to be easy for America’s first black president. But that is so obvious and the reasons are so many that a brief discussion couldn’t begin to address them, right now.
It wasn’t easy for Jackie Robinson either. The name-calling and taunts from the baseball fans and the hostilities from the players are history. Since Robinson became the first black major league baseball player 61 years ago, there has been a long and steady stream of first blacks. There was the first black country and western recording star 42 years ago, the first black NFL quarterback 40 years ago, the first black astronaut 29 years ago, the first black Radio City Rockette 20 years ago, the first black governor 18 years ago, and the first black CEO of a Fortune 500 company seven years ago. And, of course, there’s Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods.
No doubt, there will be other Jackie Robinsons, in other fields and professions in America. Someday, there will be the first black executive editor of the New York Times or Washington Post. Someday there will be the first Black baseball commissioner. Someday we’ll see the first head of a major movie studio and the first black owner of a major TV network.
But, while any and all of these future black first accomplishments will be important and welcomed when they finally arrive, what Barack Obama has pulled off dwarfs them all—past, present and future.
He may not have run as the black candidate for president but he is, in reality, symbolically and metaphorically, no less than that. So when he is sworn in as POTUS on January 20, he will officially—and forever—be America’s last first black.
Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com
Making fun of Sarah Palin is too easy. It's like shooting moose in a corral. So, naturally, Saturday Night Live had to bring Tina Fey back to take another shot. And, of course, it was another bullseye.
In impersonating Palin, some of Fey's comedic lines were ripped virtually verbatum from the Katie Couric CBS News interview. By comparison, it was at once painful and frightening to watch the network news interview, realizing that this unprepared candidate could conceivably be the leader of the free world anytime within the next four years and hilarious to have the Saturday Night Live parody have life imitate comedy.
Here's the SNL script of Saturday night's skit (Videos of the skit and the CBS News interview follow):
POEHLER AS COURIC: "Did you enjoy your week in New York City?"
FEY AS PALIN: "You know I did, Katie, and I wasn't sure I would at first. New York is, of course, home to the Liberal Media Elite. But Todd and the kids had a great time goin' to the Central Park, F.A.O. Schwarz and that goofy evolution
museum."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "So, sounds like the trip was a success?"
FEY AS PALIN: "Well, there were some funny moments. For instance, I had fifteen to twenty false alarms when I thought I saw Osama Bin Laden driving a taxi. I was embarrassed to be wrong but mostly disappointed I wasn't right! Also, in an effort to bone up on foreign policy I went to the Times Square area to see a film called, 'The Bush Doctrine.' It was not about politics."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "You went to the UN for the first time. How was that experience?"
FEY AS PALIN: "You know, it was just amazing. So many interesting people. Though I have to say, I was disheartened by how many of them were foreigners. I promise that when Senator McCain and I are elected, we're gonna get those jobs back in American hands."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "How did the world leaders you met with, react to you?"
FEY AS PALIN: "They embraced me, Katie. Both figuratively and, a couple of them Pakistani guys, literally. But they were all so welcoming. Be it from Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan. Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq. Or Bono, the King of Ireland."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "On foreign policy, I want to give you one more chance to explain your claim that you have foreign policy experience based on Alaska's proximity to Russia. What did you mean by that?"
FEY AS PALIN: "Well, Alaska and Russia are only separated by a narrow maritime border. (using her hands to illustrate) You got Alaska here, this right here is water, and this is Russia. So, we keep an eye on them."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "And how do you do that exactly?"
FEY AS PALIN: "Every morning, when Alaskans wake up, one of the first things they do, is look outside to see if there are any Russians hanging around. And if there are, you gotta go up to them and ask, 'What are you doing here?' and if they can't give you a good reason, it's our responsibility to say, you know, 'Shoo! Get back over there!'
POEHLER AS COURIC: "Senator McCain attempted to shut down his political campaign this week in order to deal with the economic crisis. What's your opinion of this potential 700 billion dollar bailout?"
FEY AS PALIN: "Like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help...uh...it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddy back on the right track and so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, y'know...has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know...Also..."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "What lessons have you learned from Iraq and how specifically, would you spread democracy abroad?"
FEY AS PALIN: "Specifically, we would make every effort possible to spread democracy abroad to those who want it."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "Yes, but specifically what would you do?"
FEY AS PALIN: "We're gonna promote freedom. Usher in democratic values and ideals. And fight terror-loving terrorists."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "But again, and not to belabor the point. One specific thing."
(several seconds of FEY and POEHLER staring at each other)
FEY AS PALIN: "Katie, I'd like to use one of my lifelines."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "I'm sorry?"
FEY AS PALIN: "I want to phone a friend."
POEHLER AS COURIC: "You don't have any lifelines."
FEY AS PALIN: "Well in that case I'm gonna just have to get back to you!"
POEHLER AS COURIC: "Forgive me, Mrs. Palin, but is seems to me that when cornered, you become increasingly adorable. Is that fair to say?"
FEY AS PALIN: "I don't know, is it?" (She gestures 'cutely')
POEHLER AS COURIC: "Governor Palin, is there anything else you'd like to say other than 'Live from New York, it's Saturday Night?'"
FEY AS PALIN
Yes, Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!!!
Here's the real Katie Couric interview:
And here's the SNL comedic sketch:
After she helps John McCain lose the presidential election, if the governor of Alaska tires of her day job, there's no doubt that she has a future playing Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.
While attempting to sort through all the Republican game playing going down at the White House bailout meeting, its aftermath and its meaning, I dropped by the wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com site. They've explored the deep, pale secrets of coded words for White People used by politicians and pundits alike. In the general genuflecting to not just come out and say White, the media, the right-wingers and the public intellectuals have created more than a gaggle of euphemisms to describe these folks. So far the Respectable Negro count is at 67. More may be coming. Here are the first 30:
1. Values voter 2. Heartland 3. Mainstream voter 4. Hard-working Americans 5. Lunch pail voters 6. Soccer moms 7. Walmart Moms 8. Nascar Dads 9. Blue collar 10. Regular Americans 11. Real Americans 12. The Base 13. Culture War voters 15. Palin's Army 16. Joe Six Pack 17. Joe Lunch Pail 18. Hockey Mom/Hockey moms 19. American Workers 20. Work Force 21. Regular Folks 22. Ma and Pa Kettle 23. My (or your) neighbors 24. Average American Voter 25. Rural Voters 26. Non-elitists 27. My accountant 28. Small Town Voters 29. The Woman Vote 30. Middle America
The worst financial crisis in America since the Great Depression was not caused by government deregulation or corporate greed or Republican governmental incompetence as Fox Cable News' Neil Cavuto understands it.
Apparently, it's the fault of minorities.
"Loaning to minorities and other risky folks was a disaster," in Cavuto's narrow little mind in his limited, little universe.
Of course, I've got to wonder which "minorities" did he have in mind. Oprah? Billionaire Bob Johnson, the BET sell-out? Tiger Woods? Michael Jordan? You get the picture.
In case you don't, Cavuto has footage of Barack Obama on screen while he grills a Democratic congressman.
Here's a mind-expanding report and explanation by theyoungturks.com on YouTube.com:
Watching The Interview with Charlie Gibson, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed for women, Republicans and John McCain. This was the Trophy Veep exposed. It was the Beauty Queen Interview II, but this time instead of Miss Teen South Carolina, it was way up north with the runner-up in the Alaskan beauty pageant, Miss Congeniality.
It was not a pretty sight.
Sarah Palin didn’t know WTF she was talking about—and when she did, or did not, she lied about it. She didn’t know how NATO works. She didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was. She continued to spiel an alternate reality about the Bridge to Nowhere by doing some explaining that was reminiscent of Miss Teen USA contestant Lauren Caitlin.
The big diff, obviously, is that Caitlin, the adolescent, was competing for an insignificant position that would do no harm. Palin, a woman who should know better, is attempting to be vice president of the United States of America; the number two person to a 72-year-old man with a history of skin cancer. This time next year, under a worse case scenario, she could be the leader of the free world. How uninformed is she? Let me begin to count the ways.
Her foreign policy experience can be summed up very quickly: On a clear day, she can see Russia from Alaska.
Her reformer credentials can also be summarized just as easily: She may have kept The Bridge to Nowhere pork and abused earmarks in Alaska but when she goes to Washington, she’ll make sure such deals have transparency.
Her maverick instincts boil down to this: when she and McCain get to Washington, the beltway boys had better watch out.
Imagine what the right-wing fear and smear machine would be spewing out had Barack Obama spit out such inane answers to Gibson’s questions. Like I said, I feel embarrassed for women because this is only the second time in 20 years that they have one of their own on a major presidential ticket—and this one comes up blushingly short.
I am embarrassed for Republicans and McCain as well.
Do they really believe the American public is so stupid that they’ll buy this pig in a poke—lipstick not withstanding?
The number of Americans on Food Stamps. The largest since the program began in the 1960s
4,200
The number of American military killed in Iraq since the occupation began on 5/1/03
101,480
The number of Chinese who died in work place accidents last year. The work-related fatalities were down 10 percent from 2006. That's progress, I guess.
“The national production safety situation continues to steadily improve,” said Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety.
6
President Bush's rogue Department of Justice investigated or prosecuted six times as many Democrats as it did Republicans. A political profiling study by Donald Shields, a University of Missouri-Kansas professor, reports that 631 Democrats were targeted by the president's DOJ while only 142 Republicans were. I thought that sort of judicial disparity was only reserved for black men.
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