Monroe Anderson

It's must-be TV for Blacks in Hollywood

For the past Century, Hollywood and African Americans have had a star-crossed relationship with the movie industry waging an image war against Blacks. Here's my Chicago Defender column on this sad situation.

Selma boycotted but Hollywood still got Glory

 

Monroe Anderson

Defender Columnist

 

 

    Hollywood’s snub of the very important Black film, Selma, about the extremely important march to demand voting rights for African Americans 50 years ago, was so absurd, so ironic, that it was joke worthy.

    On cue, Host Neil Patrick Harris literally opened Sunday night’s 87th Academy Awards show with this pale one-liner: “The best and the whitest...sorry brightest.”

    It was a feeble attempt to sugar coat the bitter truth. Although the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, is a Black woman, the actors nominated for best performances this year were all white.

    The Blacks-are not-worthy judgement was determined by the Academy voters who are 94 percent white. Last month’s Golden Globe Awards paid a little homage at least. David Oyelowo’s brilliant performance as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ava DuVernay inspired direction at least garnered two nominations.

    “Why are we still begging white people for approval?” asks Sergio Mims, who writes for a Black film website, Shadow and Act, and is a co-founder of Chicago’s Black Harvest Film Festival, before shrugging off the Oscars brush off as no big deal.

    Mims might be right. There are the obvious bragging rights, but there is no guarantee that an Oscar will get an actor more work or a higher salary.

    And long after all the sound and the fury over this year’s Oscars have come and gone, the real action will remain where it already is: at home on our big flat-screen TV sets.

    Going out to see a movie, with servings of popcorn, soda and candy, can cost a family of four as much as $80 so we’re staying away in droves. According to a CBS News Poll, 84 percent of Americans see movies at home, four percent at the theater and 10 percent pretty much divided between home and the theaters.

    Television is also giving the theatrical movies a run for the fame and fortune as far as actors and producers are concerned.

    More than two and a half viewers watched Laurence Fishburne’s Hannibal every week as the veteran Black actor pulled down $175,000 per episode. Fishburne is also a co-star along with Anthony Anderson on the TV sitcom, Black-ish. He and Anderson are also producers..

    Producer Lee Daniel’s new drama, Empire, starring Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, has been building its viewership from week to next. The Hip-Hop mogul show, which MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry summed up as a combination of Breaking Bad, Glee, House of Cards and The Real Housewives,  is the new “it” show for Black viewers.

    Since she created Grey’s Anatomy, Writer and Producer Shonda Rhimes has her own cottage industry on network TV with Private Practice and Scandal. She is also an executive producer on How to Get Away with Murder, the new TV drama that last month earned the show’s star, Viola Davis, a Screen Actors Guild Award.

    More than nine and a half million viewers watch Kerry Washington’s Scandal religiously. She reportedly earns $150,000 per show which means no one’s going to be throwing a rent party for her anytime soon. But, this is where the money gets really funny.  While the audience for ratings champion, The Big Bang theory, is twice that of Scandal, all three of the white stars, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki are paid  $1 million each per episode.

    That’s entertainment. Hollywood won’t be winning many awards for treating African Americans fairly over the past century. America’s movie industry has been waging an image war on Blacks since D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation first hit movie theaters 100 years ago. Griffith’s movie, originally named The Clansmen, espoused white supremacy while  glorifying the KKK. One scene features white actors in blackface who are supposed to be newly elected Black legislators during Reconstruction, sitting around, barefoot, eating chicken, drinking whiskey and recklessly eyeballing white women.

     Donald Bogle’s, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, pretty much sums up much of Hollywood’s presentation of Blacks well into the 1980s.

    It’s that history and what took place on the Pettus Bridge that brought tears to some in the audience as they watched John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn-- aka John Legend and Common--perform, and later accept Oscar for Best Original song, Glory.  

    “We know that right now the struggle for freedom and justice is real. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world,” Legend said during their acceptance speech. “There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850. When people are marching with our song, we want to tell you that we are with you, we see you, we love you, and march on.”

    Common and Legend are right on. The struggle continues. But every now and then, we do get to witness some glory.

 

Sikh Slayings: White Anxiety Gone Extreme

Here's my Root commentary on the Sikh tragedy. No more commentary here. It speaks for itself.

 

Sikh Slayings: White Anxiety Gone Extreme

America's browning drives a backlash that found its most virulent strain in Wade Michael Page.

By: Monroe Anderson | Posted: August 10, 2012 at 12:26 AM

 

(The Root) -- When Wade Michael Page walked into a Wisconsin temple last wesek, murdering six Sikh worshippers and critically wounding three others, it was an incident waiting to happen.

As the neo-Nazi loser marched through the temple randomly shooting one Sikh after the next, perhaps the "14 words" motto of white supremacists was running through his warped mind: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

To the insecure and frightened haters in our nation, the end of white dominance in America is increasingly inevitable. Besides being red, white and blue, the good old US of A is steadily becoming brown, black and yellow -- a majority-minority nation.

During a 12-month period that ended July 2011, for the first time in America's modern history, more minority babies were born than white babies. Casually referred to by white supremacists as members of "the mud races," Hispanic, black and Asian newborns made up 50.4 percent of the nation's births during that period. Just 22 years ago, minority births accounted for a much lower figure -- 37 percent.

"White supremacist groups have been having a meltdown since the Census Bureau predicted that non-Hispanic whites would lose the majority by 2050," said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitored Wade Michael Page in particular for the past 12 years, and hate groups in general for much longer than that. "The demographic change in this country is the single-most-important driver in the growth of hate groups and extremist groups over the last few years," he told ABC News.

Last year Potok's organization reported that hate groups in America had exploded to more than 1,000 from 602 at the beginning of the millennium.

Domestic terrorist Page, a 40-year-old U.S. Army reject, who died from a self-inflicted wound during the Oak Creek massacre, could take credit for some of that growth. For more than a decade, Page had been playing hate music. He played with white-power heavy-metal bands affiliated with Hammerskins Nation, and he led a couple of bands of his own, Definite Hate and End Apathy. His music appealed to other young white losers, creating new haters every day. It also raised money to help bankroll other hate groups like the National Alliance, the violent hate group that inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up a Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, which also monitors America's white supremacy groups, the names of these racists bands reveal what's on their minds and in their hearts, names like Grinded Nig, Jew Slaughter and Aggravated Assault. "In keeping with its attempts to reach out to young people, one label, named Resistance Records, even markets a white supremacist video game, 'Ethnic Cleansing,' " the ADL reports on its website. "The game is a first-person-shooter in which the player takes on the role of a white warrior in a future 'Race War,' who must kill all nonwhites to ensure 'the survival of your kind.' "

Although these virulent, malicious white supremacists, who wear their hate on their tattoo sleeves and everywhere else, are more or less a limited group of bigots, they may merely be the underbelly of a larger phenomenon.

When the Tea Party and other conservatives cry, "We want our country back," it doesn't take much imagination to translate what that means as the nation's demographics and culture continue their colorful shift.

Mainstream conservatives have been spewing coded, dog-whistle racist messages since Ronald Reagan's "Welfare Queen" speech in 1976 and the Willie Horton ad employed in the George H.W. Bush 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis. More recently, the billionaire Koch brothers and their right-wing organization, Americans for Prosperity, were accused of buying a North Carolina school board in an effort to resegregate the Wake County school system.

So I wasn't exactly shocked when conservatives attacked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano when she issued a report in April 2009 warning that right-wing extremists threaten American security. The nine-page report, titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," documented the smoldering hate among the nation's extreme right-wing groups, warning that some individuals might commit violent acts. "If such violence were to occur," the report said, "it likely would be isolated, small-scale, and directed at specific immigration-related targets."

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin posted a blog with this headline: "Confirmed: The Obama DHS Hit Job on Conservatives Is Real."

Another conservative website, Alex Jones' Prison Planet, is headlined, "Homeland Security Report Lists 'Liberty Lovers' as Terrorists."

And then-top Republican of the House Intelligence committee, former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, charged "unsubstantiated conclusions and political bias," worthy of a House investigation.

I would like to attribute all this hate to good old-fashioned American exceptionalism, but I would be wrong.

A year ago, Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik went on a shooting and bombing spree that left 77 people dead, many of them teenagers, almost all of them Muslims. Like his brethren in the U.S., he hated Muslims, he hated people who didn't look like him and he hated cultural diversity.

I fear this is just the beginning. Not only are some white Americans threatened by the encroaching "mud races," but there is a quickening recognition around the planet that the world is yellow, brown and black.

Less than a quarter of the world's population is white. By 2060, fears conservative Pat Buchanan, that percentage may dip into the single digits.

Cyber columnist Monroe Anderson is a veteran Chicago journalist who has written signed op-ed-page columns for both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and executive-produced and hosted his own local CBS TV show. He was also the editor of Savoy Magazine. Follow him on Twitter.

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)

 

 

 

Remembering Abbey Lincoln

 

 

I knew who Abbey Lincoln was before I invited the legendary Max Roach to my Prairie Shores apartment for dinner in 1973. I’d seen and appreciated her performance as Josie in the movie, Nothing But A Man, which had come out nine years earlier. Although in reality, that was Ivan Dixon’s movie, not hers. I’d seen her with Sidney Poitier five years earlier in For the Love of Ivy, but she hadn’t quite registered because, in today’s parlance, it was too much of a chick flick for the younger me.

Her name had resonance, for reasons I couldn’t empirically explain.

I knew that she was a renowned jazz singer but I would have been hard pressed to name what she had sung. And although Roach was at my home assisting me in putting together what would be the first of the short-lived Ebony Black Music Poll, he hadn’t gotten around to mentioning her at all.

He talked about his life and fabled three-decades long career as a jazz percussionist. He talked about playing with Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins.

He told me about that rainy night in 1956, when band members Clifford Brown and Richie Powell were killed in a car crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The two were being driven from Philadelphia to Chicago by Powell's wife, Nancy, in the quintet’s car caravan. Roach told me that Powell and Brown had violated the code of never letting a woman drive when they were on the road.

He didn’t tell me that in 1960 he and Lincoln had recorded, We Insist!--Freedom Now, the landmark civil rights jazz song. I think he thought I should have known. I don’t think it occurred to him that I was just becoming a teenager when their collaboration went vinyl.

I don’t remember if Roach told me, as we sat in my Southside Chicago apartment, that she was from the Windy City. I do remember that Roach’s date that night was this beautiful, willowy woman who was about my age. She said she was a model who boasted that she maintained her flawless dark skin by drinking her own urine, which she claimed had some sort of cleansing effect.

As you might imagine, her sharing her beauty secret was a conversation stopper. But not for long. Abbey Lincoln took charge. Roach began talking about her and what she meant to his life.  He didn’t go into a great deal of detail about their working together. Instead he talked about their lives together.

I can still hear the love and faint pain in his voice as he talked about Abbey Lincoln. And that’s how I remember him referring to her. Not as Abbey, but as Abbey Lincoln.

At the beginning of their eight-year marriage, Roach told me that he was a heroin addict. Lincoln had supported him and nurtured him through withdrawal and off the drug. He said he then became an alcoholic. Once again, Lincoln stood by her man, helping him through that crisis.

After that, he said she had nothing left so she left him. Roach spoke of his love and appreciation for his ex-wife even as the young, gorgeous model listened in. And even back then, all I could think about was what a strong, amazing woman Abbey Lincoln was.

When I learned of her death on Saturday, I could have thought about her jazz recordings and compositions or her roles in those two 1960s movies or her 1990s role as Denzel Washington’s mother in Mo’ Better Blues, but I didn’t.

I thought about how sorry I had been when I heard of Roach’s death three years ago and about what he’d shared with me about Abbey Lincoln. I’m sorry I never met her in person but thanks to her ex-husband’s stories about her, I know that we lost a very special woman.

 

 

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).

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.

Obama's inaugural poet--Here's a hot one

A few days ago I got an email from my friend Sandra Jackson-Opuku, a Chicago novelist, pointing out that the blogosphere was all ablaze about who should be the inaugural poet. Sandra said she is nominating Chicago poet and attorney Ginger Mance.

            "Ginger had a central role in protesting a media decision to "black-out" Senator Obama's convention speech back in 2004. She was also a campaign volunteer on his presidential campaign," Sandra wrote. "I'm impressed with both her tireless work on behalf of Obama's candidacy in many of his political races, and the considerable poetic talent demonstrated in "Awakened Sun," a praise poem written for Obama on his election to US Senate."

            I gave Sandra suggestion some thought, then thought about other possible poets who would speak to the times should Barack decide to have a bard at his inaugural. I even checked out some of the suggestions out in cyberspace. After thinking long and hard, and loving to be the contrarian commentator I sometimes am, I chose William "Smokey" Robinson.  My commentary was posted on ebonyjet.com this morning. 

Obama's Inaugural Poet
only one man is right for the job 
December 9, 2008 
By Monroe Anderson

We should have known it was a bad sign when there was no poetry at George W. Bush’s swearing in as president in 2000 and again four years later.  Bill Clinton, the smarter and more competent predecessor to Bush, had two. Maya Angelou read her poem, "On the Pulse of Morning," at Clinton's 1992 inaugural. Four years later, Arkansas poet Miller Williams read his verse, "Of History and Hope" at Clinton's second swearing in.  Robert Frost, John F. Kennedy's inaugural poet, was the first.

On January 20, during the ceremony when he is sworn in as POTUS, Obama should have a national wordsmith step forward as the warm-up act. Someone to signal that we're trying something new before the soul-stirring words Obama will serve up during his acceptance speech to inspire a nation. Like Obama, that poet should be exceptional. Exceptional poets are out there. Names like Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, poetry slam champion Patricia Smith and that great American songwriter who is one of Obama's favorite musicians, Bob Dylan.

All those poets are good but, in my opinion, not quite good enough. There's only one American poet great enough and big enough and beloved enough to share the stage with Barack Obama when he swears in next month. That man is the Poet Laureate of Soul—William "Smokey" Robinson.

Dylan has called Smokey "the greatest poet" of our times. Unlike Robert Frost, whose poem, "The Gift Outright," which was read at Kennedy's inaugural and turned out to be a white-privilege paean to the principles of Manifest Destiny, Smokey's poetry is an ode to the common man. His prose provides pragmatic inspiration to every American from Joe the Plumber to George the President.

Smokey has not only written about love won and love lost, but American employment and unemployment. The lyrics to "Got a Job" plaintively sums up the plight of having a minimum wage gig. His "Abraham Martin and John" lyrics were American social observation at its purest. And the lyrics to "Shop Around" are way better advice than Bush's post-911 edict that Americans be about the business of serious consumption to show the terrorists that they could not undermine our economy.

Like the Spoken Word poem, "A Black American," that he performed live on Def Poetry Jam, Smokey could do a new but similar verse that would educate the nation about its African roots and its diverse, multi-cultural future.

Or he could just sing his poetry. We know the man can sing what he writes.  In the 50 years that he's been out there, Smokey boasts a song catalog of 4,000 tunes with 36 Top 10 hits.

Plus, with Smokey, there's a bunch of material Obama can draw from and expand on in his inaugural speech. He could take "Quiet Storm" and discuss the economic climate we're in right now. Or Smokey could sing an updated, make-it-plain version of  "Who's Gonna Take the Blame" to remind us how Washington's old school politics propelled our nation to this moment of change.  Or, Smokey could stick with the upbeat mood at Obama's inaugural with a "Goin’ to a Go-Go"-inspired rhyme reminding us that the good times are about to begin.

And, since George W. Bush didn't have a poet at his inauguration, Smokey's appearance could represent the transformation from chump to change.  And as Bush is overcome with emotion watching Obama take his place, a few lines from "Tears of a Clown" should second that emotion.

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

UPDATE: My friend, Dawoud Bey was right. As Bey predicted in the comments section on this blog, Elizabeth Alexander has been named the inaugural poet. Small wonder.  She's Obama's buddy and yet one more of his Ivy League prof and/or alum selections. I still believe that Smokey would have been a better choice. Sure Alexander was a finalist for 2005 Pulitzer prize for poetry but Smokey is a 2006 Kennedy Center Honoree. That makes Alexander predictable while Smokey would have been the change we need.

Here's a YouTube video of Smokey's Def Poetry Jam performance.

Black to the future: Bringing the Blaxploitation genre back

I was there when the Blaxploitation craze hit the silver screen. Fresh out of college and living in Washington, D.C. I laughed through Cotton Comes to Harlem and cheered at the end of Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song when the movie promised that the pimp-turned-revolutionary be back taking names and collecting dues. Like many a young black man my age, I wanted to be Shaft, strutting through the black community with Isaac's Haye's lyrics, "who is the man who would risk his life for his brother man," playing in my head.

For the second time around, it was a first. Not since the 1920s and '30, when the pioneering black film director Oscar Michaeux shot more than 30 movies in Chicago, could we see black actors starring in black films about black people.

Then came Superfly, the dope dealer who dressed like a pimp and who surely inspired the cable TV show, Pimp My Ride. Superfly's ride was a Caddy with an oversized,  customized chrome grill that soon had life imitating art. In no time flat, Harlem hustlers  and Chi Town players were doing the gangster lean in their own deuce and a quarter. The big screen car that spawned the ones in the ghetto may have singlehandedly wrecked General Motors' rep as America's most prestigious ride and driven rich white Americans in droves to buy a Mercedes Benz.

With the exception of middle-age and older Jews, who harbored no fond feeling about German engineering, after Superfly, the only time white Americans who could afford them wanted to be caught in a Cadillac was when it was the hearst carrying their dead body.

But, in the hood, Superfly was a smash hit, helping to give birth to scores of other movies that exploited its black American audience. Before long, Hollywood was churning out one low-budget, stereotypical and formulaic movie after the next. Set in the ghetto with drug dealers, pimps and whores as the hero or heroine were always out to get "the man."

      There was Trouble Man, where Marvin Gaye's theme song, like Curtis Mayfield's for Superfly, was far superior to the flick. There were the Rudy Ray Moore movies, Dolemite and The Human Tornado and the Pam Grier flicks, Coffy and Foxy Brown. Fred Williamson's Hammer, Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem were just three of more than a dozen blaxploitation films the former AFL star starred in.

Of course, that was back then and we are right now. If Black Dynamite has it's way, a blaxploitation flick will be playing next year in a cineplex near you. From it's trailer, the movie looks to be a satire on the '70s genre. Since the flicks of in that era quickly became a put-on of themselves, it's hard to tell if this parody will play in Richard Pryor's hometown, Peoria.

It's also hard to tell whether Black Dynamite is going to be as good as Undercover Brother or as awful as Soul Plane. The movie is due out next year.
Here's the trailer now.

And this video may be a clue to how serious Black Dynamite actually is.

Tall tales from the black right

    In rare moments of weakness, I try to give black Republicans the benefit of the doubt. I tell myself they are hanging out with those who don’t want us in their country clubs, board rooms or places of worship because some of us need to be in the party for some semblance of balance—a don’t put all your political eggs in one basket strategy. I tell myself that the tainted tenth that belong to the GOP are there because they are naturally conservative and have a right to join up with some of their kind, regardless of race, creed or national origin. I tell myself that anyone who is a black Republican must be a true believer—not exactly the type that’s interested in thinking things through.
    Before I get anywhere close to convincing myself, the benefit of doubt gets beat down by reality: These bee-oh-cons are terribly twisted. Logically challenged, too.
    As conservatives, what do these African Americans want to conserve? The enduring legacy of the white masters?  Jim Crow?  Lynching?  The modern-day justice system that disproportionately warehouses young black men in prisons? An educational system that fails black youth long before it flunks them out?
    It seems to me that the greatest challenge for black Republicans is to rationalize why they're part of a party--the party of Rush Limbaugh and Jesse Helms--that can barely disguise its disdain for most black folks. Why bother with reality when you can do this: Substitute the Nights with Uncle Remus for One Thousand and One Nights.
    With bold-faced brashness and a willy-nilly wistfulness that would put President Bush and Karl Rove to shame, the National Black Republican Association has posted their billboard proclaiming that Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican.
    But wait, there’s more. I don’t want to spoil it for you. I’ll let you see for yourself. So I’m sharing their lame YouTube anti-Obama video with you. But, before you watch it, you’ll need the appropriate mood music.  Try “Bring in the Clowns.”
    In case you don’t know the lyrics, here’s one stanza from the Judy Collins classic:

Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here

In Search of Intelligence in the Multiverse--Not DMX in the DMZ

   
 

   

    In an interview with XXL magazine, DMX succeeded in lowering the bar when it comes to expecting a certain circle of rappers to not be too ignorant. It’s one thing to proudly and loudly denigrate your  people as niggers--ahhhh, sorry, niggaz--and your women as bitches. WTF, one is supposed to be an expression of endearment and the other is apparently a shout out because you’re their baby daddy.
    But it’s something else not to know what time it is, whose time it is or that it’s about time. Apparently, the 37-year-old Earl Simmons, aka DMX, the sixth highest-selling rapper of all time, star of the easily forgettable movie, Never Die Alone, is out of this world.
    That’s the only explanation for his can’t-be-real knowledge on this year’s presidential race which has been talked about in cyberspace, in foreign countries, in the mainstream media, in the barber and beauty shops, in whore houses and in prisons.
    This is how XXL reported a portion of its interview with the rapper.

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.

But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.

We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.

Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.

The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.

But Bush pretty much…
You think Bush is making fuckin’ decisions?

He did, yeah, he fucked up the country.
He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak!
Can’t be serious. He ain’t making no damn decisions.

Well Barack has a good chance of winning so that might be something.
Good for him, good for him.