I Drew This (I Really Did) And Know About Lots Of Stuff

"The Gipper" by The Crack Emcee

Incredible. This Althouse blurb might inspire a new feature on TMR - Jobs White People Get:

"The comics artist Lynda Barry joins the University of Wisconsin faculty as an assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity."

Or should it be called "Jobs White People Are Given"? 

I'm not sure:

 I just know they're never around when I'm looking,...

 

Sweet Music And Rock Bands From Around The World

Sweet - Great band, funky history:

DUELING SWEETS: 

NOT SO FOXY, CAN HARDLY RUN ANYMORE

Punk's Dark Outlook May Not Have Been A Coincidence

From Flavorwire's 

7 Nefarious Punk Rock Conspiracy Theories:

The early NYC punks ripped off Death

Credibility level: Fairly high

Recently reunited Detroit trailblazers Death have often been identified as trailblazers for the music that would come to be called punk. The thing is, though, they never made a record and hardly played out of Detroit, and it seems like a remarkable coincidence that a Xerox of their sound would magically arise in New York City a couple of years after their decline. It seems an even more remarkable coincidence when you discover that they recorded a demo tape that did the rounds of NYC-based record companies, who may well have seen the potential in the music, but may also have preferred that it not be played by three black men who called themselves “Death.” Hmmm.

Mistake: DMX Meets Dr. Phil To Work Out Some Issues

The Great One will appear on Wednesday.

WOOF!

The Boss Is A Very Strange Entertainer Without Sound

I gather there's not much of a black audience for this,...

Every Good Thing You Who Hate Rap Missed For Hating

 I never met 2Pac, but the guy he's talking to at the beginning of the video is an acquaintance from Digital Underground, who's leader I am friends with.

   

 Dead Prez on seduction.

 

 Will Smith on the joys of Fatherhood.

 

 Biz Markie on Betrayal.

 

Eminem on loving those you don't know.

 

Kanye West on Break-Ups.

 

 Drake on Desire and Loneliness.

 

 Mister Cee breaks down, On-Air, confessing his d/l activities to his fans.

 

"Colorblind" White People (Who Talk About Race All The Time) Don't Like It When Blacks Join The Conversation

White supremacists stake claim 

to North Dakota town 

as sheriff’s office prepares for trouble

Court backs firing of Arkansas cop 

for drunken, racial slur

The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

"I had to hold my head down and could not make contact with the white masters. I heard the instructor ask kids behind me to open their mouths so their teeth could be checked. Some were asked to jump up and down."

“Why Are You Looking for My Son?” 

The Day Troy Davis Was Wrongfully Accused of Killing a Police Officer

Obama is the Antichrist

The loyalty blacks have to their church also has proven costly, said officials at Faith Communities Today, a nonprofit based in Hartford, Conn. A 2013 study revealed that black churches have collected more than $420 billion in tithes and donations nationwide since 1980, an average of $252 million a week. “What people fail to see and understand is that, the church pastors aren’t waiting for miracles to fund their lifestyles, they don’t have to pray, day in and day out, to make their ends meet,” said Northwest resident and author, Byron Woulard. “They are getting rich off God, not from God,” he said.

DMX Has Just $50 In His Wallet; 

Nothing In The Bank

The 1st Is Approaching: Soon - My "Welfare Check Day"

Alright, it's 3AM and I just woke up for no reason - an hour ago. Great. 

A cup of coffee, to wash down a 88 cent TV dinner, and here I am, violently disagreeing with Soundgarden's Kim Thayil about bandleaders, but completely understanding when it comes to Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan:

“If you’ve got a band where one guy calls the shots, that’s a band that’s going to suck. Because the guy might have bad thoughts in his head. Well I just came out of sobriety and I’ve got this idea for a rock record, I just married my third wife and I have this new idea for a rock record.”

I've told you, you gotta watch the multi-spouse thing, because - like gays trying to be straight or straights "experimenting" with being gay - that's a give away you don't know what's going on, and people notice these things. That's why Kim mentioned it. 

I also like that he compared it to those "inspired" by quitting drugs. They always become defensive assholes, too. (You ever been around somebody who just started?) 

Fuck, if Soundgarden hasn't always sounded like somebody taking a dump, Kim Thayil would be my hero.

Is Richard Dawkins a dick? 

 Well, I know he has one, anyway. And somebody running a church, or school, apparently played with it and little Dickie Dawkins doesn't care. 

Compared to most people, I think that makes him more "odd" than anything else, don't you?

“Mitt Romney just bought a black grandchild, straight cash dawg.”

Along with all the other hilarious (and "resentful") comments received, surrounding news Mitt Romney's got an adopted grandchild, a black conservative found time to make a fool of himself by writing "with the taxes the Romneys pay, they already have adopted an entire city of ignorant black people." 

Really?

That's news to me - and without the Mormon "church" around us?

Too bad the country couldn't have gotten a guarantee, on that deal, when he ran for president:

Instead of getting kicked out of this place, I might have been moving into Mitt's already,...

 

This Is Me - Blowing My Life - Trying 2 Get $ From Yours

A couple of days ago, when I wrote "'Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide' Ain't Just A Song" I ended the post with "Death stalks us in this land,..." Now I'm sure, to some of you, that's merely hyperbole but, to the rest of us, it ain't no joke:

“There are more African-Americans on probation, parole, or in prison today than were slaves in 1850. It is not a crisis of crime. It is a crisis of people being left behind. 

...We tried to outpace the thing that chased us, that said: You are nothing. We tried to ignore it, but sometimes we caught ourselves repeating what history said, mumbling along, brainwashed: I am nothing. We drank too much, smoked too much, were abusive to ourselves, to each other. We were bewildered. There is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it.”

Today it's not fair to say "no one acknowledges it," but it's difficult to understand how so few Republicans truly comprehend the life-or-death implications of how this plays out. Inside and out. 

Or the opportunities missed. 

Not to get all Glenn Beck on you but, speaking of the 1850s:

There's a growing fan club for Woodrow Wilson?

Although [Woodrow] Wilson promised African Americans "fair dealing...in advancing the interests of their race in the United States", the Wilson administration implemented a policy of racial segregation for federal employees. Although considered a modern liberal visionary giant as President, in terms of implementing domestic race relations, however, Wilson was "deeply racist in his thoughts and politics, and apparently was comfortable being so. 

...the Republicans won a landslide in 1920 by denouncing Wilson's policies."

I bet - and we could again. Why's Leo here? Because he's doing what I can't as a Republican (no worth in it) - he's living a life of being creative - but with the truth. Or, as one writer said, This is nuts.

Leonardo Di Caprio is making a biopic about Woodrow Wilson, based on a new book that celebrates the life of the most racist president of the 20th century. 

Wilson supported the KKK, defended lynching, re-segregated Washington DC, and fired all African-Americans from federal jobs. Wilson was not just a racist; he was a proud racist. He actually had the KKK-endorsing film “Birth Of A Nation” shown at the White House and called its depiction of the Klan as liberators of white southerners “history written with lightning.” 

Wilson was no mere man of his time. His time, on matters of race, was passing and he used the powers of the presidency to hold the clock back.

That's a light brush stroke, worthy of a Leo's making-a-movie exposé. But turn back to Woody Willie's hard-assed Wikipedia page and then, if you have any feeling for black people - as people - the true depth and horror of being bent over hits you. It hits me, anyway. The Right should already be ripping Leo's guts out (as they should've Oprah's, pre-Obama) making damned sure he gets this story correct:

In 1912, "an unprecedented number" of African Americans left the Republican Party to cast their vote for Wilson, a Democrat. They were encouraged by his promises of support for minorities. However, once in office, Wilson's cabinet members expanded racially segregationist policies. Black leaders who had supported Wilson in the 1912 election were angered when Wilson placed segregationist white Southerners in charge of many executive departments, and the administration acted to reduce the already-meager number of African-Americans in political-appointee positions. Wilson's cabinet officials, with the president's blessing, proceeded to establish official segregation in most federal government offices – in some departments for the first time since 1863. New facilities were designed to keep the races working there separated.

Historian Eric Foner says, "[Wilson's] administration imposed full racial segregation in Washington and hounded from office considerable numbers of black federal employees." Segregation was also quickly implemented at the Post Office Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. Many African American employees were downgraded and even fired. The segregation implemented in the Department of the Treasury and the Post Office Department involved not only screened-off working spaces, but also separate lunchrooms and toilets. 

 

Some segregationist federal workplace policies introduced by the Wilson administration would remain until the Truman Administration in the 1940s.

Other steps were taken by the Wilson Administration to make obtaining a civil service job more difficult for blacks. Primary among these was the requirement, implemented in 1914 and continued until 1940, that all candidates for civil service jobs attach a photograph to their application further allowing for discrimination in the hiring process. 

Despite these policies, Wilson was criticized by such hard-line segregationists as Georgia's Thomas E. Watson, for not going far enough in restricting black employment in the federal government.

Wilson did not interfere with the well-established system of Jim Crow and backed the demands of Southern Democrats that their states be left alone to deal with issues of race and black voting without interference from Washington. 

In 1914, Wilson told The New York Times, "If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it."

I guess that was considered the president giving a pep talk. (Blacks get a lot of bullshit pep talks in the face of real obstacles. The line "Don't be a victim" is usually in there somewhere. Let's see, we got the enraged broke-back black guy and a Jewish blogger, against Leonardo Di Caprio and the marketing might of Hollywood - that's a fair fight to the Right.) Shut up, Leo. You're actually making me understand those slow-assed people in the DMV better. There's no point, in working faster, if they're so far behind they'll never catch up. A life of crime's right around the corner for their kids, trying to make up for what Woodrow took away, before their grandparents spent their lives fighting to get that shitty assed job for their children. "Don't be resentful" others say, while out kayaking, flying their planes, horseback riding, or the best - in email, while on this thing most blacks still have never experienced, a mythical escape from your troubles called a "vacation."

Fine, I'll stop resenting, and just stay depressed I'm not even surviving and the story of why is "history written in lightning." 

"They" ought to correct it - like stolen lives and fortunes easily come back. Or easily produce happy productive people, always on the right road, as long as they stay positive - over generations -  that's the fucking joke.

The implication, on top of everything else, that no matter what the issue, black lives are expected to consist of struggling to fix a multitude of injustices - or struggle at all - it's just sick. This isn't France - I'm at home, damn it, in NewAgeLand. Where everyone else pursues their interests, and I'm not supposed to notice what I've been stuck writing about, as opposed to my own possible concerns (or unlikely desire) for ebony ironwood lighting fixtures, the locations of any black Buddhist tourist attractions featuring unicorns bred by Rappers out to "save the planet," or the casually-approached question of whether the best place to post my long-awaited essay, A Negro Dolphin Wishes Of Love, is on Craig's List or not?

You know, good ol' dependably empty-headed, me:

I never have anything better to do,.... 

All Real Americans Have The Surreal In Our Background

This is the kind of entertainment America needs to see:

  "Had Mr. Alexis, a black male, been forced to carry a shovel instead of a gun, the Navy Yard Massacre would never have happened."

Resolved - Historically - or, since it's me, "artistically":

There is absolutely no reason for Hollywood to be making any of the crap we get when they have this level of material to work with.

They should be swimming in slavery (great title) for us, almost as a duty.

Most don't know how we got here and why we're so conflicted.

Following one sick "narrative" when we have lots of others, much more immediate in meaning and force.

Like how any American teen today - considering our past - could find a choice, as simple as the shovel-or-the-gun, to be stunningly debilitating, confusing, cruel, tragic, twisted, beautiful, and profound.

 

We owe it to them to go there,...