Chang's Beef with Obama's Census Form

In today's WaPo, Elizabeth Chang argued that President Obama should not have checked 'black' on his Census form.

I've already dropped my $0.02 on the topic.

What do you think?

Update: One insightful comment attached to the column caught my attention:

"kalsop wrote:

Kudos to Mrs. Chang for accomplishing what she intended, to get people to read her column and comment on it. Pulitzer prize here she comes!"

Indeed.

Update ii: WaPo's Kevin Huffman responds to Chang Sphere: Related Content

歓迎

Welcome! Sphere: Related Content

Wise Asks

What if the Tea Party Were Black?

"Imagine that hundreds of black protesters descended on DC armed with AK-47s. Would they be defended as patriotic Americans?"

(Hat Tip Urban Politico) Sphere: Related Content

Nappy Riddem @ Rock and Roll Hotel DC 420

Sphere: Related Content

Those Three Are On My Mind

What went through the minds of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner that June '64 summer night on Rock Cut Road when a car full of Klansmen pulled up behind their station wagon, essentially signaling the end of their young lives? They had to have known this moment was the end. Were they scared? Were they shocked? Did the reality of America, in Mississippi, in 1964, not truly make itself clear to the young idealists until the final moments?

Who were they?

Michael Schwerner; "Mickey" to friends, "Goatee" or "Jew-Boy" to Mississippi Klansmen; was comitted to civil and human rights.

"Schwerner enrolled at Michigan State, then transferred after a year to Cornell, where he majored in rural sociology. While at Cornell, Schwerner campaigned successfully to have a black accepted as a pledge at his fraternity. Following his graduation from Cornell, he enrolled in Columbia's graduate program in sociology, but dropped out to take a job as a social worker in a housing project on New York's Lower East Side. He was by all accounts a gifted social worker with a special rapport with teenagers. He married Rita Levant, then an education student at Queen's College. Schwerner's commitment to civil rights work deepened after he watched the Birmingham riots of 1963. Schwerner appiled to the national CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], asking to be posted in the South."

In his application, Schwerner added that he hoped to spend "the rest of his life" working for an integrated society.

CORE hired Mickey as a field worker. Accordingly armed with ideals and education, he and Rita left New York in their V.W. Beetle bound for the frontline of the sixties civil rights struggle: Mississippi.

Mickey and Rita met James "J.E." Chaney in January '64 when the Schwerners arrived in J.E.'s hometown, Meridian, Mississippi, to assume leadership of the new Meridian CORE office.

J.E. was, "the eldest son in a family of five children. His mother, a domestic servant, was protective; his father, a plasterer, left his mother when James was in his mid-teens. He was slightly built, but athletic. He was described as shy in public, but a cutup in his home.

Chaney first encountered problems at the Catholic school for Negroes he attended in 1959, when he was sixteen. Chaney was suspended for a week when he refused to remove a yellow paper NAACP "button." The next year he was expelled from school for fighting. Chaney tried to join the army, but his asthma resulted in a 4-F disqualification. Unemployed and restless, Chaney joined the Negro plasterer's union, where he apprenticed with his father. His work as a plasterer ended in 1963 after a fight with his father."

Not long after the fight with his father, J.E. began volunteering at the Meridian CORE office where he quickly became a valued asset. J.E.'s commitment to CORE eventually lead Rita and Mickey to lobby for him to be promoted from volunteer to paid staff member.
 
"In April, the Schwerners wrote a letter to the national CORE asking that Chaney become a paid staff member: "We consider him to be part of the Meridian staff....James has never asked us to buy him a cup of coffee, though he has no means of support.""
 
Andrew Goodman ("Andy") had just finished a three-day training session in Ohio for volunteers with the Mississippi Summer Project: Freedom Summer when he set out for the Schwerner's Meridian office. Jonathan Steele, one of Andy's contemporaries, described the Ohio training sessions:
 
"Before we reached Mississippi we had attended a week-long orientation session at a college in Oxford, Ohio. The three men who went missing were on the course, too. Activists from the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee organised role-plays of redneck thugs beating up defenceless blacks to show us how to curl up and - with luck - avoid serious injury. We were advised of our legal rights.


The instructors, dressed in blue denim overalls, included firebrands such as Stokely Carmichael and Marion Barry, who later became "black power" symbols. But there were quieter ones such as James Forman, who warned us that our presence in Mississippi would inevitably provoke violence, and that we should not provoke it further through sassy behaviour: "I may be killed. You may be killed. But Mississippi is not the place to start conducting constitutional law classes for policemen, many of whom don't have a fifth-grade education."

Andy grew up on the Upper West Side in New York, part of a family and community "steeped in intellectual and socially progressive activism." He graduated from the progressive Walden School, where as a sophomore he travelled to D. C. to participate in the "Youth March for Integrated Schools." After Walden, Andy attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a semester before withdrawing due to a bout of pneumonia. He recovered with his family in New York then enrolled at Queens College, NYC where he originally planned to study drama, but switched to anthropology. 
 
I wonder if Andy's Upper West Side pedigree gave Mickey with his formidable, Lower East Side project experience, pause? How did Andrew fit in with J.E., Rita, and Mickey who'd known each other for several months before Andrew's early June 20th, 1964 arrival in Mississippi? 
 
The same day Andrew arrived, Mickey and J.E. returned to Meridian from Ohio with the first wave of volunteers. Local political leaders and the press whipped up a frenzy of hate and violence among the white population. Instead of countering their incitements, FBI Director Hoover told white Mississippians, "We will not wet-nurse troublemakers."

The next day, Andy, Mickey, and J.E. drove to Neshoba County to meet with local blacks about a church fire and continuing the Summer Project.

June 21st, 1964
 
"After getting a haircut from a black barber in Meridian, the three men headed to Longdale, Mississippi, 50 miles away in Neshoba County, in order to inspect the ruins of Mount Zion United Methodist Church. The church, a meeting place for civil rights groups, had been burned just five days earlier.

Aware that their station wagon's license number had been given to members of the notorious White Citizens' Council and Ku Klux Klan, before leaving Meridian they informed other Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) workers of their plans and set check-in times in accordance with standard security procedures. Late that afternoon, Neshoba County deputy Cecil Price — himself a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — stopped the blue Ford carrying the trio. He arrested Chaney for allegedly driving 35 miles per hour over the speed limit. He also booked Goodman and Schwerner, "for investigation."

Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were all denied telephone calls during their time at the jail. COFO workers made attempts to find the three men, but when they called the Neshoba County jail, the secretary followed her instructions to lie and told the workers the three young men were not there. During the hours they were held incommunicado in jail, Price notified his Klan associates who assembled and planned how to kill the three civil rights workers.

While awaiting their release, the men were given a dinner of spoonbread, green peas, potatoes and salad. When the Klan ambush was set up on the road back to Meridian, Chaney was fined $20, and the three men were ordered to leave the county. Price followed them to the edge of town, and then pulled them over with his police siren. He held them until the Klan murder squad arrived. They were taken to an isolated spot where James Chaney was beaten and all three were shot to death. Their car was driven into Bogue Chitto swamp and set on fire, and their bodies were buried in an earthen dam. In June 2000, the autopsy report that had been previously withheld from the 1967 trial was released. The report stated Chaney had a left arm broken in one place, a right arm broken in two places, "a marked disruption" of the left elbow joint and may also have suffered trauma to the groin area. A pathologist who examined the bodies at the families' request following their autopsies noted Chaney also had a broken jaw and a crushed right shoulder which were not mentioned in the autopsy report. As the autopsy photographs and X-Rays had been destroyed, the injuries could not be confirmed."

Reaction
The lynching murders of Andy, Mickey, and J.E. attracted national attention to the situation in Mississippi and the civil rights movement in general. This was in no small part by design. Activists solicited the help of northerners and whites in hopes that involving citizens from outside the region would attract broader support. This strategy proved itself effective when the Goodman and Schwerner families spoke out demanding justice for their sons and the cause they died for. Steele describes the outcry:

"In Vicksburg, we heard the news that Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were missing. We immediately assumed that they had been lynched, as a warning to all outside agitators. Mississippi's law enforcement officials showed an unsurprising lack of concern at the news. White Mississippi politicians claimed the missing men had been whisked off by their masters in Cuba as a communist plot to discredit the good white people of America.

[Communist plot? To descredit the good white people of America? Why does that sound so familiar? Is that anything like a liberal socialist plot? Hmm . . .]


Fortunately, one aspect of the thinking behind the decision to bring in affluent white students quickly kicked in. The families of Goodman and Schwerner demanded action. Northern liberal politicians took up the cry, and Lyndon Johnson, the Texan vice-president who had unexpectedly become chief executive on John F Kennedy's death, was pressed to show he was a national and not just a regional politician."

Hoover's FBI was pressured by LBJ to investigate the murders. Not surprisingly, the FBI found no communist plot. Still, without the bodies of the young men, the case could not move forward. As Mitchell notes, "The trio were missing for 44 days, and some branded their disappearances a hoax. Then an informant told the FBI where the bodies were buried."

This is where the story gets a little odd. According to the widely reported 2007 testimony of Linda Schiro in an unrelated court case, her late boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr., a capo in the Colombo crime family, had been recruited by the FBI to help find Mickey, J.E. and Andy's bodies.

Crazy right?

Schiro claimed that she had been with Scarpa in Mississippi at the time and had witnessed him being given a gun, and later a cash payment, by FBI agents. She testified that he had threatened a Klansman by placing a gun in his mouth and forcing him to reveal the location of the bodies.

Even with the assistance of informants, Mississippi officials refused to prosecute the case, compelling federal authorities to step in, prosecuting the case under conspiracy charges from the late 1800's as no federal murder charge existed at the time.

In the 1967 U.S. District Court trial in Meridian, witnesses testified that Bowers ordered the killings of the trio. A Mississippi Klansman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and testified against fellow Klansmen. Seven were convicted of federal charges of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of the trio by killing them, seven others were acquitted and three others had mistrials. The most any Klansman served in prison was six years.

The case remained pretty much dormant for the next forty years until previously mentioned invesigative reporter Jerry Mitchell developed new evidence, found new witnesses, and pressured the state to take action. Finally, On June 21, 2005, a jury convicted Edward Ray "Preacher" Killen, described as the man who planned and then directed the killing of the civil rights workers, on three counts of manslaughter. Mitchell reported that Killen had escaped conviction in 1967 because:

"during deliberations a lone juror told others on the panel she could never vote guilty against Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen for one reason - she could never convict a preacher.

When the trial ended Oct. 20, 1967, seven Klansmen walked away in handcuffs, convicted of federal conspiracy charges in connection with the 1964 killings of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney in Neshoba County. But Killen - identified in testimony as the Klan leader who coordinated those killings - never went to prison, thanks to the holdout juror."

Rita Bender (formerly Schwerner) talked to NPR after Killen was convicted of manslaughter [press play button in widget below]



Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney; Mickey, Andy, and J.E.; were victims of terrorism. The torture and killing of these three young men was meant to terrorize blacks in the south and any who dared come to their aid. Their story helps illustrate so much of what concerns progressive liberals today. Make no mistake, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were indeed liberals and the people who killed them; the people who claimed state's rights; the people who feared federal government intervention; the people who cried "Communism!" were . . . not.

This is reality and in reality, there are people at home and abroad that wish harm to others; people who wish to deprive others of rights more fundamental to citizenship than fucking guns. There are people that seek to deprive others of human and civil rights: the right to vote; the right to be treated as a full human being with all the privileges that accompany citizenship in this nation. I suspect this explains why Blacks tend not to be swayed by conservative memes: we know the importance of the federal government and the function it plays in preserving our rights.

And really, how much more absurd could conservatives and their followers sound when they cry out on behalf of "real Americans?" As if the struggles of this country were solely born by Republican voters. As if "real America" were only found in the South and Alaska. "Real Americans" were Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney: men who paid the ultimate price so that people that look like me would be treated like human beings. Sphere: Related Content

Peace Guru

Sphere: Related Content

Trees

See also: April 20th

Update: D.C. to vote on legalization Sphere: Related Content

Guns at a Protest Rally?

On the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing?

What could go wrong?

Sphere: Related Content

Back to Lincoln

The GOP has a race problem: if they don't find ways to appeal to black, asian, and especially latino voters, they won't win many more races.

What is it about the Republican party that turns off minority voters?

The party was founded in 1854 by a coalition of anti-slavery Whig party members and Free-soil Democrats who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which would have allowed slavery north of latitude 36°30'. The new Republican party argued that free market labor was superior to slavery and in fact, their first presidential nominee, John C. Frémont, ran on the slogan, "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont." Frémont's bid was unsuccessful, but the party held strong support in New England, New York and the northern Midwest, which lead to the election of the GOP's first successful presidential candidate: Abraham Lincoln.

The tradition of Republican champions of civil and human rights for blacks continued with the efforts of President Ulysses S. Grant who advocated the Fourteenth Amendment and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Republicans' civil rights stance in the late 1800s allowed Democratic dominance of the South for nearly a century from 1877 to 1964.

Religious and cultural issues played a role in the make-up of the parties as well. The early GOP supported the Protestants who demanded Prohibition. This drove many groups, including immigrant Irish Catholics, to the Democratic party.

Factions within the Republican party; time; and, historical events like the Great Depression, changed the demographics of the two parties further and by 1932, northern cities became Democratic instead of Republican strongholds. The election of Democratic President, Franklin D. Roosevelt over Republican Herbert Hoover realigned the Democratic and Republican parties to more closely resemble today's make-up.

The Republican Southern Strategy also played a role in shaping the party. WaPo's Dan Balz describes today's Republican reliance on the Southern constituency:

The South's significance to the Republican Party is difficult to overstate. Today, 19 of the 41 Senate Republicans are from the South -- defined as the 11 states of the Confederacy, plus Oklahoma and Kentucky. In those 13 states, Republicans hold 19 of the possible 26 Senate seats.

Their strength in the House is equally dominant. Today southerners account for 80 of the 177 seats Republicans hold in the House, roughly 45 percent of the total. More significantly, the GOP share of seats outside the South is near historical lows.

Of the 435 members of the House, there are only four latino Republicans and two asian Republicans. There are no black republicans in the House or Senate. There are no racial minority Republican Senators at all.

This is the Republican Party today and it's not good for our country. Having one party as the sole refuge of minority votes dilutes the power of those votes; polarizes the country; and retards the development of our ideas.

Let's say Republicans actually do one day come up with a good idea: will the public be amenable to it when its only proponents are older, Southern, white people? Probably not.

Republicans especially need the black vote because African-Americans have an effect on American culture outsized to our numbers or historical troubles. Black people in America have and continue to dictate what's "cool":

Cool is also an attitude widely adopted by artists and intellectuals, who thereby aided its infiltration into popular culture. Sought by product marketing firms, idealized by teenagers, a shield against racial oppression or political persecution and source of constant cultural innovation, cool has become a global phenomenon that has spread to every corner of the earth. According to Dick Pountain and David Robins, concepts of cool have existed for centuries in several cultures.

Republican strategists make a critical error in believing that the power of the black vote is limited to the number of black voters. The actions of black people, entertainers, musicians, and other cultural figures resonate with young people of all races. This helps explain why blacks make up a relatively small segment of the U.S. population, yet baggy jeans or rap or jazz still become a phenomenon around the world.

It hasn't always been the case that the Republican party was disfavored by minorities. As history shows, immigrants, blacks, religious groups, and other minorities have embraced the G.O.P. and its values. But history also shows that the Republican party of Sarah Palin is not the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln. For Republicans to remain relevant in the 21st Century, they'll need to find their way back to Lincoln.

Sidenote: The NYT ran a great interactive piece showing the intersection between the tea party and the Republican party. The interviews with tea partiers were fascinating; telling. Sphere: Related Content

D.C. Ghost Bike and Nuclear Security

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association has placed a memorial to cyclist Constance Holden, 68, near 12th Street and New York Avenue NW, where she was killed Monday evening by a D.C. National Guard truck assigned to the Nuclear Security Summit. (WaPo) Sphere: Related Content

Whoops

"Teachers union leaders angrily accused D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee of unethical behavior Tuesday by failing to disclose the discovery of a $34 million surplus in the school system budget in February, three months after laying off 266 teachers because of what she described as a budget shortfall." (WaPo/WRC) Sphere: Related Content

UMD Student Beaten by P.G. Police

"Prince George's prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation of three county police officers who beat an unarmed University of Maryland student with their batons after a basketball game last month in an incident that was caught on video and surfaced publicly Monday, authorities said." (WaPo)

Watch the video attached to the article.

Update: Courtland Milloy discusses Md police chief's response and community outreach Sphere: Related Content

Man Without a Country

On Wednesday, WaPo's Krissah Thompson examined the division among black conservatives over reports of tea party activists using racial slurs against members of Congress. While some black conservatives have spoken out against racism in the tea party movement, others like economist, Thomas Sowell and anti-affirmative action activist, Ward Connerly have denied the allegations claiming that the charges are politically motivated and baseless.

At the National Review's Corner blog, Connerly claims that, "race is the engine that drives the political Left." This is poetic, but unprovable, meaningless, and consequently absurd. From this false premise he further argues that claims of tea party members spitting on a congressman and hurling racial epithets are part of a "strategic plan being implemented by the Left in its current campaign to remake America." Strategic Plan? What plan? Nobody told me about this plan! Governing? Is that the plan he's referring to?

Pops, you officially lunchin'.

Connerly's proof of such a plan is that there is (to him) no recorded evidence of this racial hatred despite the presence of cameras at the healthcare reform protest:

"In a video that has been played repeatedly showing CBC members as they walked past the tea partiers, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is seen using his telephone to tape the event. If he had any evidence to corroborate the racial claims, why hasn’t he come forward with his phone by now to settle this matter? I believe we all know the answer."

We do?

Whether there is evidence of this particular spat of tea party racism or not (and there is), what does that have to do with some broad scheme by the Left to remake America? Connerly leaps from a claim of lack of evidence to a claim of political conspiracy. This is, again, abusrd. If you want to make a claim about lack of evidence of a particular incident (like spitting or using racial slurs) that's relatively easy to prove or disprove with a recording. But, if you want to make a case about the Left using race to advance an agenda, make that case; show us real history and evidence supporting your allegation, otherwise, you just sound silly.

Economist and black conservative, Thomas Sowell has also expressed doubt that tea partiers spat on a black congressman and hurled racial epithets. Similar to Connerly, Sowell claims that injecting race into politics and "playing the race card" have "become an increasingly common response to growing public anger at the policies of the Obama administration and the way those policies have been imposed."

Sowell continues:

"When the triumphant Democrats made their widely televised walk up Capitol Hill after passing the health care bill, led by a smirking and strutting Nancy Pelosi, holding her oversized gavel, some of the crowd of citizens expressed their anger. According to some Democrats, these expressions of anger included racial slurs directed at black members of Congress.

This is a serious charge-- and one deserving of some serious evidence. But, despite all the media recording devices on the scene, not to mention recording devices among the crowd gathered there, nobody can come up with a single recorded sound to back up that incendiary charge. Worse yet, some people have claimed that even doubting the charge suggests that you are a racist."

I respect Sowell's scholarship deeply. And I followed his columns for quite some time, but at some point this cat jumped the shark. Why such a hard on for liberals, Sowell? Get over it. Liberals are not the Great Enemy. There are some liberals who do bad things, as there are within every group. But the vast majority of liberals are just people with a slightly different political perspective than conservatives. It's really not that deep.

Before we roll the tape, let's think about injecting race into politics or bringing up race at all in any instance. If a racist act occurs what exactly are we supposed to do or say about it? Is noting a racist act wrong? Is noting a racist act the same thing as injecting race into the discussion or playing the race card? No. Race, as a concept, is a fact. I explore race on my blog and in my life because it's interesting to me and it's a part of my personal history and my understanding of existence. But so is literature; so is philosophy; so is sex; so is food; so is humor; so is art. I talk about these things; we talk about these things; because they are parts of life that we find fascinating or disturbing or meaningful. I don't bring up race to gain some type of advantage over anyone. I bring up race because it is part of life.

Anyway, news documentation and recordings clearly show that Sowell and Connerly are wrong about tea partiers use of racial slurs:

McClathy Newspapers' William Douglas reported on March 20, 2010, Tea party protesters scream 'nigger' at black congressman.

Salon's Joan Walsh on tea party racism:

"Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was taunted by tea partiers who chanted "nigger" at least 15 times, according to the Associated Press (we are not cleaning up language and using "the N-word" here because it's really important to understand what was said.) First reported on The Hill blog (no hotbed of left-wing fervor), the stories of Lewis being called "nigger" were confirmed by Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones and Democratic Rep. Andre Carson, who was walking with Lewis. "It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, a former police officer. "He said it reminded him of another time." Another Congressional Black Caucus leader, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, was spat upon by protesters. The culprit was arrested, but Cleaver declined to press charges."

Media Matters and CBS confirmed racial epithets and threats left in a recording for Rep. Bart Stupak.

And then there's this:



Sowell and Connerly are wrong. There is ample evidence of tea party racism and harrassment. It's not like this information was difficult to find, so what's really going on here?

Black conservatives strike me as tragic figures. Each seems to be a man without a country. They are perpetually critical of members of their own race which tends to alienate black people. But the white, conservative groups they seek comfort in are inhospitable as well, which leaves them no true home. I can sort of relate to that; the drive to define ourselves on our own terms and the consequences we pay for that stubborn individuality are, at times, difficult.  The issue to me in those instances, is integrity. Will you consistently hold the same values even if there's a price to pay? If Sowell and Connerly agree that racism is wrong, then integrity should compel them to point it out and condemn it, even when it comes from their friends in the tea party.

Side black conservative note: Whatever happened to that guy who wrote A Bound Man: Why We are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win? Does he still have a job?

Also See: Sign Dogs Would-Be Tea Party Leader Sphere: Related Content

WTF?!?

Despite previous governors' refusals, McDonnell issues Confederate history month proclamation (WaPo)

Update ii: Gene Robinson on Haley Barbour's dismissal of the controversy
Update: WaPo editorial.

Colby King offers this rebuke of Governor McDonnell's proclamation.

Money Quote: "The Confederacy that McDonnell commemorates defended a way of life that was dedicated to keeping my family in bondage."

I think that about sums it up. Sphere: Related Content

Obama Congressional Black Caucus Beef ii

President Obama is scheduled to meet with black church leaders at the White House today to discuss the particularly devastating effect the economic downturn has had on the black community. This seems to be a wise tactical move by Obama. When we checked in last, the CBC was raising Uncle Ruckus ("Don't Trust Them New Niggas Over There") over Obama and his refusal to focus specific attention on the black community during this crisis. By meeting with black religious leaders, the President has effectively boxed the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) out of the discussion. Brilliant inside game. Who do (black) citizens trust more, our congressmen, or our preachers? If black religious leaders support Obama's approach to black economic troubles, as is apparently the case:

"The preachers, who represent some of the largest African American churches in the country, have written an open letter to the president that praises the job Obama has done and encourages him to "stay the course."

"President Obama has pursued policies that are crucial for our communities and the nation as a whole, and we cannot afford to lose courage and fortitude at this juncture," reads the letter, which more than 30 ministers signed."

where exactly does that leave the CBC and their complaints? Is the CBC going to disagree with black religious leaders AND the first black president. Game. Set. Match. Thanks for playing, CBC.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Bizarro Obama stays alive for another five minutes.

(Hat tip Mr.Riddem for the Ruckus reference) Sphere: Related Content

Capitol Hemp featuring Nappy Riddem and FK5

Come celebrate Capitol Hemp's two year anniversary and grand opening of Capitol Hemp in Chinatown on 420!!!

Sphere: Related Content

American Gothic

Gordon Parks' American Gothic. Portrait of government cleaning woman Ella Watson. Shot in D.C. (1942) Sphere: Related Content

McNabb traded to Skins

Update: WaPo's Mike Wise throws elbows with reckless abandon over McNabb trade. I concur, Mr. Wise.

I need a minute to deal with this.

What does the trade mean for Soup?

Aww Jason, they've been doin' you wrong since you got here.

Who knows, maybe they'll keep Soup, Grossman, AND Donovan. Not likely, but with a Portis, LJ, Fast Willie Parker backfield, who knows?

Yeah, I know, not likely.

I'm with Donovan, but I feel for Jason. He took so many lumps for the squad. He had no support, no protection, and no loyalty outside the locker room. The 'Skins organization did not treat him well.

Guess that's the business. Sphere: Related Content

Vincent C. Gray Running on the AARP Ticket

"On Tuesday afternoon, with Vincent C. Gray moments away from addressing supporters after filing papers for his mayoral run, someone had a question: “Any more young people out here?” A Gray supporter, surveying the backdrop for his candidate’s address outside the Frank D. Reeves Center, had apparently noticed the same thing LL had noticed: a surfeit of wrinkles." (CityPa)

Sphere: Related Content

Real World D.C.

Had to watch it. I hadn't tuned in to Real World in at least ten years, but like I said: had to watch it.

I'll never get those five or six hours back. That is time, on my death bed, that I'll surely regret having wasted on Bunim/Murray Productions' twenty-third season dump on pop culture. The show debuted in 1992, the year I graduated high school, so it makes sense that it's focus on, "the true story... of seven strangers... picked to live in a house...who work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real" captured my attention. And, you know, for the first seven or eight YEARS I was with it. But at some point, I grew older than the newest cast members of any particular season, and I can only watch the black guy whig out and get kicked off the show, (and the rest of the Real World conflict cliches) so many times before it becomes pointless to continue watching.

So, yeah, I watched Real World D.C. because it was in D.C. and I hadn't seen the show in so long I figured it would be entertaining.

I. Was. Wrong.

Man, that thing stank on ice. The entire cast just sucked. They were boring. They were entitled. They were naive to the point of retardation. And apparantly I'm not the only one who thought so.

Is there a lesson to be learned from all this? . . .  nope. . . . oh, wait, maybe . . . don't watch crappy television (and put this damn show to rest already; take Saturday Night Live with it too please). Sphere: Related Content

D.C. Shooting Traced to Beef Over Bracelet

"As authorities tell it, the wheelman wasn't a man but a boy, 14, driving a silver Chrysler minivan with three passengers, at least two of them adults. When they were done shooting, police said, four victims lay dead or dying, and five others were bleeding from wounds." (WaPo) Sphere: Related Content