Monroe Anderson

For my father and sons, no time for lessons on life

 

  There is no good time to die.  But Tim Russert’s untimely death two days before Father’s Day was one of the worst.  The death of the beloved Meet the Press host also happened a day after he had returned from a family vacation in Italy, celebrating his son Luke’s graduation from Boston College.
    I only knew Russert from what I saw on television and read about him, but I have no doubt that he was a great father and son.  So I feel sorry for Big Russ, his father, who just recently was moved into a nursing facility. But my heart goes out to Luke,         Tim’s son, who will forever connect his graduation and Father’s Day with the loss of his caring and loving dad.
    Russert was only 58 years old when he died. That’s three years younger than I am now. That’s way too young. My father died way too young as well. He was the same age I am now when he, like Russert, died suddenly from a heart attack.
    I’ve never fully recovered from his death, which was 24 years ago. My older son, Scott, was just five months old. My younger son, Kyle, was not yet born.  Over the years, as I fumbled my way through fatherhood, I frequently wished my father was to teach my sons lessons on life.  I regularly wished he was around for my sons to know the joy they surely would have experienced had he lived to share with them a grandfather’s love.
    That was not to be. I am reminded as much this Father’s Day as I cherish my wonderful sons and miss my great father.

    (The photo above is of my father and my nephew, Chuck. It was shot in 1973. The one to the right is of Kyle, Scott and me. It was taken four years ago.)

 

    Here’s an op-ed page column I wrote commemorating my father’s life just days after he passed away.

 

 

A good man and great father
The Chicago Tribune
January 20, 1984

Life is a series of wishes for second chances.

For me, that impulse to backtrack has sometimes been sparked by insignificant little moments. Hasty motions leading to the spilling of milk or the breaking of treasured objects have prompted me to wish my actions had been more measured. Cutting words to close friends during heated arguments have left me wishing I had thought longer before speaking. Missed catches in the outfield have had me wishing I had kept my eyes on the ball.

At other times, rather than an instant replay, I’ve tried to guess what would have happened if I had had a chance to draw up an entirely different game plan during the pivotal periods in my life. When I was going through a divorce several years back, I felt that way. What if I had done this rather than that? Could the marriage have been saved? Should it have occurred in the first place?

Last week, I craved a second chance. I would have traded a year of my life for the ability to turn back the clock a mere 12 hours.

Monroe Anderson, my father and my friend, died, without warning, on the morning of Jan. 9 at his home in Gary. He suffered a heart attack at the age of 61.

As soon as I learned of his death, I began second-guessing what might have happened if I could have stopped the clock and turned it back 12 hours for a second chance. I would have been there at his side. Maybe I could have done something to save his life. If fate had to prevail, then at least I could have had final words with him. In reality, there was only the finality of it all. There were no second chances.

But while he was alive, my father had had a second chance. In a curious and vicarious way, I was it.

To explain how and why I came to be my father’s second chance. I’ll have to go back to the beginning. He was the son of yet another Monroe Anderson, a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta. In 1923, my father’s family’s little tenant shack was uprooted by a tornado. The bodies of his father, mother and 6-year-old sister were found in a field a mile away. My father, one year old, was found there too. As his tiny body was being loaded on the horse drawn cart bearing the heap of corpses, someone noticed him shudder. He was raised by his grandmother and two young aunts.

As a teenager, he came to the North to improve his life. He moved to Gary where life and earning a living were easier for an unskilled young black man with an eighth grade education. In late 1942, he received his draft notice. He persuaded Norma, the 17-year-old love of his life, to elope with him so that if he went overseas, he’d have a family of his own back home.

After he received his honorable discharge, he returned to Gary to establish an instant family by inviting his widowed mother-in-law to share his home; she has been there since. I was born about a year later; my sister and brother followed. Although during his life he would labor as a coal truck deliveryman, a cab driver, a cabinetmaker and a steelworker, his true profession was that of a father and family man.

When he wasn’t working, he was at home. When he went out, he took us with him. What little money he managed to make, he spent on us. He wanted us to have the things he hadn’t had—an education was the most important of those things.

To send his first-born to college, he worked two full-time jobs at two steel mills so my tuition and room and board wouldn’t impose a financial hardship on the rest of the family. It was worth the price to him. My success was his reward.

I remember his telling me how he had taken a clipping of my first newspaper article to show people at the mill. “That’s funny,” his superintendent commented cruelly when shown the article. “Your son’s a writer but you can barely write your name.”

I also recall his reaction to an appearance I made on a Phil Donahue show in 1976 following an investigative series I had worked on for The Tribune. As I spoke, my name appeared on the screen. “Look. Look, that’s my name on television,” he said with unbridled excitement.

I was not only his namesake, I was an alter ego. He took pride in my accomplishments while I found comfort in my belief that had he been given the same support and opportunities, he would have achieved that much and more.

Over the years, my love and gratitude were spoken and unspoken time and time again. Still, there is this hollow feeling inside me that hungers for one more chance to tell him how good a man he had been and what a great father he’ll always be.

For McCain, straight talk ain't what it used to be

    Somebody needs to explain the new Millennium to John McCain. In these modern times, there is YouTube so that what a politician says stands a good chance of being looked up in a flash--by anyone with a computer and an on-line connection.
    Denying and lying just doesn't work as well as it did in, say, oh, the campaign and first term and first half of the second term of George W. Bush. So Mr. Straight Talk ought to try straight talking. If he doesn't, his credibility is going to be right up there with the current Republican occupant in the White House.

    And I am still trying to figure out why Barack Obama isn't jumping at the chance to engage  Sen. McBush in the town hall meetings. I'm also trying to figure out why the Arizona senator keeps pushing to debate the Illinois senator. Must be the money.

    Want to see what I mean? Watch this:

Welcome back to Kansas, Hillary

   

    In this twisted tale of realpolitik, Hillary Clinton has been following a long and winding yellow brick road to nowhere for weeks now. She proved to be an odd mixture of Dorothy, trying to get back home to the White House, and the Wizard of Oz, standing behind a curtain of distortions, misrepresentations and racial coded pronouncements while distracting us with some dazzling smoke and mirror work.
    Her journey ended today.
    Hillary suspended her historic presidential bid to throw her unqualified endorsement behind Barack Obama’s historic presidential bid.
    "Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary campaign he has won. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me," the former First Lady said in her gut-wrenching 28-minute speech.
    Just days ago, Hillary was still hiding behind the curtain, sending out smoking signals that insisted that she was the more qualified candidate. Meanwhile the Tin Man, aka Bill, was complaining about the msm giving her a raw deal.
    Well, now it’s a done deal—Obama’s the one. "The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States."
    The senator from New York may never be able to go home again, but she’s finally left the Land of Oz, landing gracefully back on Terra firm. The Democratic Party will need her spirit, feistyness and   tenacity—a long, tough battle against its wounded and weary adversary is already underway.

June is now Black History Month

   

    History happened last night. Or as Sen. Barack Obama described it, it was an eventful evening as he became the first African American to win the Democratic nomination for president. A year and a half ago, Obama’s journey this far with nothing but a notion. Hillary Clinton had the name recognition, a leg up in the money chase and her hand on the party’s political machinery.
    Back then, I was soberly skeptical while secretly hoping the improbable would become the reality. Obama is now five months away from being the winner who takes all. 
    Still, yesterday was good. Let’s hope that tomorrow will be even better.   
    Here’s a column I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times a year and a half ago, right before Obama officially announced his candidacy for the party nomination.

Can Obama prove me wrong again?

Chicago Sun-Times

January 21, 2007
BY MONROE ANDERSON

Not long after Barack Obama lost his bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, I ran into him at a downtown restaurant. I stopped at his table for a quick hello before joining my lunch date. Before I could nod goodbye, Obama told me that he was going to run for the U.S. Senate. I was taken aback. ''From a state senator to a U.S. senator? That's too big a leap,'' I warned.

''It doesn't matter. It's all the same,'' Obama said, summarizing in the shorthand exchange of a chance restaurant encounter that either you're qualified and capable or you're not. Remembering that he'd expressed an interest in running for mayor during another lunch meeting years before, I think I shook my head in disbelief. Time, obviously, has proved Obama right and me wrong.

The short period it took him to go from a relatively unknown Illinois state senator to a relatively unknown political force with rock-star stature could have happened only in these modern times, where the currents of cable network news and the World Wide Web ebb and flow 24/7. In less than three weeks, we'll see if it's his time again as he launches his bid to become the next president of the United States. When Obama announces, he'll make history as the first black candidate whose presidential campaign goes well beyond symbolic protest or civil rights activism. As he announces, the time and place cannot be ignored: He'll do it in the midst of Black History Month, from Springfield, the center of the Land of Lincoln.

And this season we're in now may never be the same.

Almost as soon as the nation's holiday season ends, the black history season begins, starting with the Jan. 15 national holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy of freedom and equality in modern American life. With the slain civil rights leader's ''I Have a Dream'' speech as its coda, the black history season lasts six weeks -- from King's birthday until the end of February. While that window of opportunity is open, African Americans of some note -- or those who have something to say -- become the perennial flavors of the month. It's a heyday. The chosen are sought out for speechmaking and interviews on network television. For those six weeks, the trials, tribulations and triumphs of great American blacks become our nation's wallpaper: always there but not always noticed. During the season, from morning to night, day in and day out, there are Black History Month exhibitions, concerts, programs, performances, galas and fund-raisers. The cable movie channels spotlight black film directors and black movies. Sponsored public service announcements are featured on network television. Public radio and television broadcast special features. Public school children are taught the heroism of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver.

Then it's all over. We have to wait until next year.

Shoehorning centuries of conflict and contributions into six short weeks once a year always struck me as a peculiar practice. As slaves and as freedmen, from Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the civil rights movement and now, African Americans are tightly woven into all aspects of the American fabric. Our heritage is the back story in all American history and often a main plot.

To be sure, Obama won't be running on the African-American platform but, seek it or not, he'll be the African-American presidential candidate. That's fine with me. Every time this brilliant, compassionate man speaks to American citizens will be at once, a lesson in current events now and a history lesson for generations to come. And should he win, believe it or not, black history will become America's history 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days of the year. So I, like millions of other Americans of all races, creeds and national origins, would like to see him become the Jackie Robinson of major league politics in this nation.

Only time will tell if, exactly two years from yesterday, Obama will be front and center at the swearing-in ceremony on Pennsylvania Avenue. I honestly doubt it, but I sincerely hope the Illinois senator will prove me wrong again.

Talk about a dream team...how about an Obama-Powell dynamic duo?

    Ebonyjet.com has asked its political contributors to pick cabinet members in a fantasy draft for Barack Obama should he become president. Eric Easter, Johnson Publishing's chief of digital strategy, was the first to voice his choice.
    I thought about the challenge and decided to go out the box in choosing the Veep in my dream team:  Colin Powell.
    Putting the retired general in the number two slot on the Democratic ticket would be the ultimate cross-party gesture from the candidate of change. Over the past two or three decades, a gaggle of conservative Democrats have denounced their party affiliation to before becoming instant Republicans. Turn about would be fair play with Powell's public rejection of President Bush's Iraq war policies; his public explanation on how the Bush Administration hoodwinked him into making the WMD argument before the United Nations; and his public criticism of the Republican party's dreadful mishandling of national governance since it's introduction of the "Contract with America."
    Of course, the power players in Democratic Party would never allow a recently-converted Republican to land the much coveted second spot...but while I'm in a fantasy mode, I figured I'd make a quick case for something completely different. Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary posted earlier today.

Obama’s Cabinet: The Ebonyjet.com Fantasy Draft, Part II


June 2, 2008 

By Monroe Anderson

Monroe Anderson’s been busy over the last couple of days breaking news on our stalwart Democratic presidential candidate. Fortunately, we corralled him a bit earlier to share his picks for the Ebonyjet.com Fantasy Draft for an Obama White House cabinet. He has a few opinions...)

Before I name my fantasy cabinet, allow me to be for real. Cabinet members are not just selected for their administrative abilities; there are also political considerations and paybacks to be brokered. Some appointments will come out of the Washington bureaucracy. Others will be marquee name Democrats—and, most likely, a Republican or two. During the process of inclusion and elimination, Obama will get tons of suggestions. So, here’s two pounds worth.

Vice President— Colin Powell
Forget get about Hillary Clinton. She can’t be trusted to watch Obama’s back and besides—he’ll get two for the cost of one with hubby Bill attached to the deal.  John Edwards looks good on camera but demonstrated as Kerry’s Veep that he’s not good at playing bad cop to the party nominee’s good cop; neither is Bill Richardson. Powell will make an unmistakable change statement for presidential nominee Obama.  Selecting a Republican as his running mate would turn tradition on its head. The retired four-star general would cancel out John McCain’s military advantage. As a former presidential cabinet member for both Papa and Junior Bush, Powell was so popular among Republicans, independents and Reagan Democrats that many thought him a more viable candidate in 2000 than George W. I know this is out-of-the box thinking but Powell is basically a Republican by opportunity only and should be a welcomed addition to the other side of the aisle. Finally, for the nut jobs out there that might be planning an assassination attempt of the nation’s first African American Chief Executive, they’d be forced to think twice.

Chief of Staff—Gov. Bill Richardson
During the double-digit number of debates among the candidates for Democratic Party nomination for president, the governor of New Mexico demonstrated time and time again that he is both level-headed and a peace-maker.  Richardson, who was one of the highest-ranking Hispanic appointees in President Clinton’s administration, brings the right blend of experience and respect to keep Obama’s White House in order.

Secretary of State—Sen. Joe Biden
At the risk of upsetting the balance of power in the senate, Obama will have to be frugal when it comes to recruiting for his cabinet among Democrats in the upper chamber.  Fortunately, with the Republican brand in ruins, the Democrats should end up with enough new senate seats to offset Biden’s move into the inner-sanctum of the Oval Office. As the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the senior senator from Delaware has been a major proponent of a no-nonsense approach to bringing the troops home. Biden also commands respect on The Hill and in the Pentagon.

Attorney General—Lani Guinier
For the past seven years, justice has been denied to virtually any American whose net worth was seven digits or greater. Labeled by the right as “anti-Constitution” and “the quota queen” when Bill Clinton nominated her for assistant attorney general in 1993, the president caved, kicking his former Yale Law School classmate under the bus. Imminently qualified, Guiner will make sure that the poor and the wage earner gets their just due.

Secretary of Defense—Sam Nunn
As a member of the Obama administration, the four-term retired Georgia senator will have to tamp down his opposition to gays in the military if any change is gonna come. But, beyond that discriminatory instinct, the former chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services is ideal for Defense Secretary.  Right now, Nunn is the co-chairman—with Ted Turner--and Chief Executive Officer of the NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative), a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

National Security Advisor—Susan Rice
Rice will have her hands full correcting the international miscalculations of President Bush’s Condoleezza Rice. Currently on leave from the Brookings Institute, Dr. Susan Rice served President Clinton as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.  She now serves as the Obama campaign’s senior foreign policy advisor.

Secretary of Veteran Affairs--John Murtha
The House already has a Democratic-margin safety net; therefore Obama can deftly move the Pennsylvania congressman into this important post. Like McCain, Murtha is a Vietnam War hero. Unlike McCain, three years ago Murtha called for a redeployment of American troops in Iraq. A Clinton supporter in the primary race, Murtha—along with Powell and Biden—would help the Obama administration consolidate support in military and veteran quarters.

Department of Energy—Gov. Christine Gregoire
With global warming threatening to end the world as we know it and oil prices at record highs and rising, Obama will need a director willing to steer our energy practices away from old fossil fuels and into alternative energy. As the governor of Washington, Gregoire is known for her green dedication. She made sure her state was the first in the nation to enact a mandate for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for public buildings.

Secretary of Commerce— Jeffrey Sachs
We’re going to need a heavy-hitter to undo all the damage to the economy Bush and his Republican majority perpetrated on us in this new millennium. Sachs is the solution. Currently a professor on the faculty at the School of International and Public Affairs and director of the Earth Institute, both at Columbia University, Sachs is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In his critically acclaimed book, “The End of Poverty,” Sachs asserts, "Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time."

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   

Olympic protests are not for sport

                                                                                                                                                                                   

   

    Hillary Clinton has it right on China. George W. Bush should skip the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. The president’s presence will only serve to aid and abet China’s dispassionate behavior in Tibet—and more importantly in Sudan.
    "The violent clashes in Tibet and the failure of the Chinese government to use its full leverage with Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur are opportunities for presidential leadership," she said, charging the Bush administration "has been wrong to downplay human rights in its policy towards China."
    Three years ago, Bush officially declared that genocide was taking place in Darfur, and then promptly did nothing about it. This summer, the man who feverishly wanted to get rid of the dictator, Saddam Hussein, is apparently unfazed by the murderous tactics of the dictator, Sudanese President Omar al Basir.
    Changing course on his Olympic journey should not be that difficult a choice for Bush. Protesters in England and France today has demonstrated so fervently that organizers have been forced to play hide and seek with the Olympic torch and ended up cancelling the final leg of the run in Paris.
Bush says he will attend the Olympics because it is a sporting event, not a political event. Will somebody please explain to the president that the protests are political, not for sport?
And will somebody explain to Barack Obama that he can’t play this one two ways. China’s backing of al Basir has left women raped, children maimed and hundreds of thousands dead.
    "On the one hand, I think that what has happened in Tibet, China's support for the Sudanese government in Darfur, is a real problem," he said, before adding: "I am hesitant to make the Olympics a site of political protest because I think it's partly about bringing the world together."
    Do we really want the world to come together behind this atrocious behavior?
    If Bush and Obama won’t take a stand, let's hope the black athletes will. (Less than 24 hours after this  post went up, Barack got off the fence, also calling for Bush to boycott the opening ceremony. Obama's statement wasn't as strong as Clinton's but he did manage to put himself on the right side of this issue.)

    Here’s a commentary I wrote for ebonyjet.com last summer.

Passing The Torch

If China wants to hedge bets around its involvement in darfur, let’s change the rules of the game

08/13/2007
By Monroe Anderson

Communist China's rush to become a world-class capitalist power has gone gangsta in more ways than one. Beijing has been pirating goods, dabbling in state-sponsored gunrunning and short-changing the yuan. Earlier this week, nearly a million made-in-China Mattel toys were recalled because they were covered in lead paint. We have recently learned that Beijing has been exporting melamine-laced pet food and tainted toothpaste.

Although thousands of American cats and dogs fell deathly ill or died from eating China's tainted pet food, it could have been worse: Ten Chinese citizens are known to have died from fake medicine after the former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration accepted $990,000 in bribes in exchange for approving the drugs.

But neither bad medicine nor poisonous products have taken the toll that China's adventures in Africa can claim: In a four-year genocidal offensive in Sudan, more than 200,000 blacks have been killed by marauding bands of the Janjaweed militia, the Arab soldiers of misfortune hired by and backed up with the air support of Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir's government. Entire African villages have been pillaged and burned, driving 2 million black Darfurians into refugee camps where women and children are routinely raped and starved. The bulk of the arms used to kill and maim the black Africans, according to Amnesty International, are being imported from Beijing. China says that's not so.

While it is true that China -- reluctantly and belatedly -- has coaxed Khartoum into finally agreeing to admit U. N. peacekeepers into the troubled region, it is also true that in April China agreed "to boost military exchanges and cooperation" with Bashir's government. And it is fact that China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil and has signed a 20-year agreement with that country to help it develop offshore oil–a resource China naturally covets and desperately needs to propel its development into a First World nation.

It is in China's quest to compete with the other major players on the world stage that we might stop the madness–and the mass murdering. Next year the 2008 games will take place in Beijing. China sees the Olympics as an excellent propaganda ploy–a way and means of wowing the world as it hosts its first event viewed by the other four-fifths of the earth's population. When next year's Olympic flame is extinguished, China's rulers are counting on brandishing a bunch of shiny medals and a ton of glowing media–all highlighting their coming out party. But, as the old '60s saying asks, "what if you gave a party and nobody came?" I say we shouldn't go unless China exerts real pressure on Khartoum to stop the killing.

I say we boycott the Olympics. I am not alone in this notion that the games are a good way to get to China's conscience. Mia Farrow, the American actress and U.N. goodwill ambassador, has designated the Beijing games as the "genocide Olympics" while proposing an Olympic-style torch relay through countries with histories of mass murders. Steven Spielberg, the movie producer, is threatening to drop out as the artistic adviser for the spectacular 2008 Olympics opening ceremony.

The party line from the Chinese government is that the 2008 Olympics should be games for games' sake–with no political competition. "We are absolutely opposed to politicization of the Olympics," said Jiang Xiaoyu, one of the committee's executive vice presidents. "This is against the Olympic spirit and against the Olympic charter."

Well, yes and no. The charter and spirit dictate one thing but reality and history has dictated another. Adolph Hitler tried to use the Berlin Olympics as a political and propaganda platform for Aryan supremacy in 1936. An African American, sprinter Jesse Owens, vanquished that big lie on Hitler's own turf by breaking three world records and tying another. Thirty-six years later, again in Germany, 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists after demands that 200 Palestinians held in Israeli jails be released went unheeded.

Three unrelated but successive boycotts followed the Munich Olympics. Twenty-eight African nations boycotted the Montreal Olympics in the summer of 1976 because New Zealand's national rugby team continued to compete against South Africa's rugby team although the South Africans had been banned from the Olympics in 1964 because of its apartheid policies. The 1980 Moscow Olympics were boycotted by the United States after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan a year earlier. Four years later, the Soviet Union retaliated with its own boycott of the Los Angeles Games.

As the world prepares for next year's fun and games in Beijing, there are Darfurian women and children starving in terrible, teeming refugee camps. They are not responsible for their plight but who is? In an era where "taking responsibility" is the catch phrase of the moment, why won't China? Why doesn't the Bush administration do something substantive to stop the killing? Shouldn't the Congressional Black Caucus act more effectively? And, if no foreign or national responsibility takes hold, what about personal responsibility?

Let the African-American Olympians (who will be responsible for making the games worth watching) choose to watch the 2008 competition from the comfort and safety of their homes in the good old U.S. of A.

Monroe Anderson is a frequent contributor to ebonyjet.com

   

George W. McCain will strike again

 

   

    Forever the maverick, John McCain is mixing President George W. Bush’s politics of fear with his own creation: the politics of facetiousness.
    The presumptive Republican party nominee fears that al-Qaida might try to influence the November general election here with increasing attacks on our troops in Iraq. He worries about it, McCain said during a town hall meeting Friday in Springfield, Pennsylvania, because “I know they pay attention, because of the intercepts we have of their communications."
    What, he worry?
    A stepped up war in Iraq or a terrorist attack on America soil could be a godsend to the Arizona Senator, a bonafide war hero. Lest we forget, he’ll be running against either Sen. Barack Obama, whose national security experience boils down to a gutsy, well-thought out anti-war speech, or Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy credentials are visits to 80 countries as First Lady in alternating capacities as Ambassador of Good Will or USO-style appearances.
    For your everyday American voter, right now it’s the economy stupid–something no one is counting on McCain to master. But a serious flare-up abroad will put the Iraqi war back on the front burner and put millions of American voters back on red alert.
    Of course, a major Iraq attack against our troops will increase the volume on calls to end the occupation but it will stampede the red-state bloc into wagon-circling-and-bunkering-down mode.  When the going gets rough, we’ll need a tough guy as the Commander-in-Chief.
    Who ya gonna call? The Iraqi buster! McCain will argue that only he knows what to do to put those evildoers down once and forever–even if it takes 100 years. The same lot of voters who believed Bush’s war to be a necessary evil will believe McCain too.
    In fact, should there be a major attack in Iraq–say the last week in September–I’m going to call an expert Crime Scene Investigator. Karl Rove’s fingerprints are bound to be somewhere.

Swiftboating Barack

    This email has been sent out by the Dallas South blog to members of the NABJforum and others. It addresses the Minister Louis Farrakhan interview in Trumpet, the formerly-owned magazine by the Trinity United Church of Christ, whose former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was Barack Obama’s spiritual leader.
    Trinity is THE church for 7,000 members of Chicago’s black middle class. Obama has been a parishioner there for 20 years. Trinity United Church of Christ has a pro-African American missionary statement that became controversial once Obama became a political candidate. Although Trinity no longer publishes Trumpet–the magazine is now published outside the confines of the church–the publication has also become controversial thanks to NBC’s Tim Russert and linked to both the candidate and his place of worship.

Here’s the email sent out by the Dallas South Blog:

February 29th, 2008

We all know that Tim Russert attempted to “swift boat” Senator
Barack Obama (and Clinton for that matter) in last Tuesday’s debate.
Russert decided to take the debate off the issues and turn it into a
muckraking session. Russert asked Obama about comments made by Minister Louis Farrakhan as well as comments about Min. Farrakhan that he attributed to Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

I received an email this morning with information from the Managing
Editor of Trumpet Newsmagazine. Her message clarifies the bad information that’s been out there as well as the bad information Russert gave during the debate.
----------------

To whom it may concern:

I write to bring some journalistic clarity to what has become a
widespread inaccuracy. My name is Rhoda McKinney Jones, managing editor of the Trumpet Newsmagazine, and the author of the Minister Louis Farrakhan article in our November/December issue. Over the last few weeks, I have watched in disbelief as seasoned journalists and
not-so-well-intentioned bloggers have attributed to Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, the last three words of my first person, introductory piece on Minister Farrakhan. Those words are now familiar to you, especially after Tuesday night’s debate and Tim
Russert’s use of them — “truly epitomized greatness.” Dr. Wright, never said, wrote or uttered those words. Those words are mine and mine alone.

Whether one agrees with my assessment is not the issue or the reason I
was prompted to correct the record. As a well-trained journalist, I
know the most basic fact checking would have revealed the truth. Next
time, when attempting to sully a presidential candidate by discrediting his
church and its renowned, religious leader, let’s get the facts straight.

Rhoda McKinney Jones
Managing Editor
Trumpet Newsmagazine
Graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and
Spelman College

    I made my own comments on Trinity and an earlier mindless attack on it about a year ago.
    Erik Rush, a right-wing religion blogger, who happens to be black, criticized Trinity’s mission statement and made a feeble attempt to turn the church into a cult. The equally light-weight commentators on Fox Cable News took up Rush’s confusion. This is the op-ed page column in the Chicago Sun-Times I wrote about it on March 25, 2007. Excepts from the column are quoted in Snopes.com to combat the urban legend that Obama is a Muslim as well as on the candidate’s website, Barackobama.com.
    Speaking of urban legends, the United States denomination, The United Church of Christ, is being investigated by the IRS--not Trinity, Obama's Chicago church.

Ethnic identity isn’t black and white

March 25, 2007

BY MONROE ANDERSON

   

For the past two decades, Barack Obama has been a faithful member of the congregation at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Trinity is no run-of-the-mill black church. It’s social activism and political awareness on pure, natural holy water. Trinity’s progressive pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preaches the black theology of liberation. And he practices what he preaches. Back when apartheid was the law of the land in South Africa, when Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner and when American corporations, institutions and the U.S. government all gave their blessings to those evil doings, the dashiki-wearing minister planted a “Free South Africa” sign on the church’s lawn. Obama’s spiritual mentor has routinely been on the right side of morality, championing liberal causes from gay rights to opposition of the war in Iraq.

Shortly after Sen. Obama launched his run for the presidency last month, Erik Rush, a right-wing Christian blogger who happens to be African American, discovered what had been hiding in plain sight: The motto for Trinity United is “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”

Trinity’s motto, as well as its mission to eradicate what W.E.B. DuBois called “the problem of the color line” and “the strange meaning of being black here,” so incensed Rush that he wrote a blistering blog about it. It was unnerving for him to learn that the South Side church had adopted a “Black Value System” and that its 8,000 black members are committed to the “Black Community,” the “Black Family” and “the Black Work Ethic.” In his blog, Rush ignores -- or is just ignorant about -- the nearly 200-year-long tradition of the black church’s struggle to free and elevate its people while slyly substituting the words white for black and then disingenuously concluding that “like the Nation of Islam, a white separatist church or the Branch Davidians, Trinity United more resembles a cult than a church.”

No doubt that concept came as news to the thousands of well-heeled, professional and middle-class black Chicagoans who are members of the church. And no doubt media mogul Oprah Winfrey and rap star Common, who have both attended Trinity, were surprised to discover they were cultists. But quicker than you could say “holy fit,” the cable conservatives were clucking and complaining to the high heavens. Tucker Carlson, MSNBC’s very own Fox News-type right-wing host, opined that, “This stuff sounds separatist to me.”

Sean Hannity, the conservative half of Fox News’ lightweight talk show, “Hannity and Colmes,” sounded as if this country was going to hypocritical hell. If a white presidential candidate’s church had a similar statement and “you substitute the word white for black, there would be an outrage in this country,” Hannity preached. “There would be cries of racism in this country.”

True and Catch-22. If a white church plainly and proudly pronounced its whiteness, Hannity, Carlson and company would be right. But if it was the Holy Trinity Polish Church on Chicago’s North Side, proclaiming its Polishness, who’d care? This is how African Americans find ourselves in a trick bag. We’re defined racially even when we’re acting like any other of this nation’s ethnic groups. Issues knee-jerkily become black and white when in reality they may be African American and Irish American. Or Serbian American and African American. Remove black and substitute another American ethnic group so that Trinity’s Concept No. 6 reads: “Adherence to the Mexican Work Ethic.” Does that still sound separatist? Or racist? Of course not. But, if you’re insincerely espousing color blindness, while holding the race card up your sleeve, you know you can easily trump African-American ethnic pride every time.

Obama’s political advisers know this as well. That’s why, at the last minute, Obama disinvited Wright to speak last month when he officially announced his presidential candidacy. Wright says that Obama now realizes that his political handlers gave him bad advice and that all is well between him and the senator.

I say this is just one more sad example of how ethnic identity gets color-coded for African Americans. And I believe it’s just one more sign that there are those who would place Obama in political purgatory -- painting him not good enough to be black and not right enough to be white.

Hillary's Hail Mary, punt and possible foul play

    Hillary Clinton is hoping for an Hail Mary finish that will leave her holding the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in hand and doing a victory dance in Denver this summer.
    The former First Lady needs to win both the Texas and Ohio primaries somewhere in the 60 percentage range to remain in the game.    

    But Hillary, we have a problem: The polls are showing the Illinois senator slightly ahead in the Lone Star state and the New York senator’s lead steadily shrinking in the Buckeye state.

    Time is running out as big Mo’ runs with Barack.
    In closing last week’s debate in Texas, Hillary seemed to be politically punting.  "I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored," she said. "Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about."
    The day after the Austin debate, a friend of mine, who is a Hillite, got this e-mail from James Carville, the Democratic political consultant whose moniker is the Ragin' Cajun:

Dear J---- K----,

You know why I am always calling my friends at the DSCC before I go on the air? Because if you don't have all the facts, you look awfully foolish.

The DSCC seems to know all the outrageous things Republicans do in every Senate race out there. After a ten-minute phone call, I end up madder than ever.

But you know what they say: Don't get mad, get even. And the best way to get even is with the facts and the truth on your side. So now, the DSCC is going to send regular updates with the absolute latest news about every Senate race.

It's called "The Rant" which I think is perfect because there is plenty in here that gets me fired up. I had to send it on to you, because I know you'll just love it.

Sincerely,

James Carville

    After receiving the email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, my friend forwarded it me with this brief note: Interesting and a sign of the times. There is absolutely no mention of Hillary. I think that she is done and her conciliatory manner toward Barack was the tipoff.
I give up. You win!

    But not so fast. Hillary’s latest campaign ploy looks like foul play.

     A photo of Barack in a turban is being e-mailed out.  With  a  lot of luck, the  Clinton camp may have the picture doing  to the Obama  campaign what the  photo of a helmeted Michael  Dukakis sitting atop an M1 Abrams tank did  to  his presidential  campaign 20 years ago.

    The traditional African-Muslim-garb flick was taken when Obama visited his father's homeland, Kenya, in 2006 and tried on some native attire. This little head fake comes from the same bag of tricks as emphasizing Obama's middle name, Hussein, implying he's a Muslim without explaining that he is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. and a devout Christian.

    The Drudge Report posted the photograph today and asserting it was being circulated by "Clinton staffers" and quoted an e-mail from an unidentified campaign aide. Drudge, a gossip and sometimes news website, did not include proof of the e-mail in the report.

    The Clinton camp denies any connection.

    "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely," said Clinton Campaign Manager Maggie Williams.

    "This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry."

    Whoever said "politics ain't bean bag" was right--we're talking NFL here and Team Clinton just got called for roughing the passer.

In Search of Intelligence in the Multiverse--not on Forbes on Fox, not in Forbes in print

    Fox Cable is better entertainment than the cartoon shows on Saturday mornings.
    So on almost any given Saturday you can catch me in front of my flat screen chuckling as I watch the business bloc on the fair-and-balanced news channel. I just sit back with my morning coffee in hand and laptop within reach and enjoy a steady stream of right-wing platitudes and pseudo-business banter masquerading as thoughtful analysis.
    It’s hard to really say which of the four business shows I find funniest but if I had to choose, it’d probably be Forbes on Fox. Steve Forbes is a self-appointed regular panelist on the show.
    Yes, Steve Forbes, the goofy-looking guy with the oddball flat tax platform, who got roundly rejected by GOP voters in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000. He’s the guy who was smart enough and industrious enough to pick billionaire Malcolm Forbes for his father, therefore assuring that he’d be super-rich for life.
    The show also features other Forbes Magazine editors, each one expressing cutting-edge political thought and business analysis straight out of  the mid-20th Century.
    So when I read that Forbes Magazine had published a pointless list of America’s Most Miserable Cities, I was not surprised to find Chicago, New York and Los Angeles in the top 10.
    Forbes is funny that way.
    If the 15 million people living in those three cities were half as smart as the Forbes editors and had any idea how miserable they were, why they’d move to somewhere like Darien, Connecticut or Pierce City, Missouri.
    Since I live in Chicago, between snickers, I gave the Forbes list a little thought. The first thing I noticed was that nine out of the 10 most miserable cities just happen to be in blue states.
Before the second thought occurred to me, I ran across Sheeple Herder’s Weblog which lists the top 10 cities on the Forbes Most Miserable Cities list while providing some U.S. Census Bureau racial statistics along with them. Here’s the rundown:

Detroit, MI = 89% Non-White: Black 83%, Hispanic 6%
Stockton, CA = 48% Non-White: Black 11%, Hispanic 37%
Flint, MI = 59% Non-White: Black, 56% Hispanic 3%
New York, NY = 53% Non-White: Black 25%, Hispanic 28%
Philadelphia, PA = 55% Non-White: Black 44%, Hispanic 11%
Chicago, Il = 63% Non-White:Black 35%, Hispanic 28%
Los Angeles, CA = 59% Non-White: Black 10%, Hispanic 49%
Modesto, CA = 36% Non-White: Black 4%, Hispanic 32%
Charlotte, NC = 45% Non-White: Black 34%, Hispanic 11%
Providence, RI = 52% Non-White: Black 16%, Hispanic 36%

    This belongs in the "liars can figures, figures can lie"  or "garbage-in, garbage out" column. You can get the results you want by creating a cock-eyed criteria. In Forbes' case, it came to its figures by employing the late economist Arthur Okun's "discomfort index"--which is the sum of unemployment and inflation--and adding weather, crime and toxic waste for good measure.
   By throwing in weather, for example, the publication gets to be super subjective, boiling it all down to rather you prefer extreme heat or extreme cold, hurricanes or firestorms. Using Okun's misery index alone and applying it to nations, the U.S. is a more miserable country than Japan, Canada, Germany and Italy.
   Apparently the Forbes concoction prefers not to measure in shades of gray. The magazine's bottom line seems to be simply this: If a city is too black and brown, it’s got to be a miserable place to live.