Is it Racist?

Barak Obama has been characterized in a recent L.A. Times Editorial as the "Magical Negro" of the 2008 Election.

Maybe you're not familiar with the term "Magical Negro"

Here is some background from our friends at the wiki-wikipedia...

The magical negro is typically "in some way outwardly or inwardly disabled, either by discrimination, disability or social constraint," often a janitor or prisoner. He has no past; he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist. He is the black stereotype, "prone to criminality and laziness." To counterbalance this, he has some sort of magical power, "rather vaguely defined but not the sort of thing one typically encounters." They are patient and wise, often dispensing various words of wisdom, and are "closer to the earth."

The magical negro is simply a plot device to help the protagonist get out of trouble, typically through helping the white character recognize his own faults and overcome them. In this way, the magical negro is similar to the Deus ex machina; a simple way for the protagonist to overcome an obstacle almost entirely through outside help. Although he has magical powers, his "magic is ostensibly directed toward helping and enlightening a white male character." It is this feature of the magical negro that is most troubling. Although the character seems to be showing African-Americans in a positive light, he is still ultimately subordinate to whites. He is also regarded as an exception, allowing white America to "like individual black people but not black culture."

To save the white protagonist, however, he would do anything, including sacrificing himself, as Sidney Poitier did in The Defiant Ones, the prototypical magical negro movie.

So, now you have some background. This isn't my term. I'm not the one that applied it to Barak Obama, but I am going to talk about it.

David Ehrenstein wrote in the LA Times today:

[The Magical Negro]'s there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

He then launched into a detailed recounting of famous movie characters that fit his mold.

Then he goes this direction, in his explanation of Obama's persona:

The senator's famously stem-winding stump speeches have been drawing huge crowds to hear him talk of uniting rather than dividing. A praiseworthy goal. Consequently, even the mild criticisms thrown his way have been waved away, "magically." He used to smoke, but now he doesn't; he racked up a bunch of delinquent parking tickets, but he paid them all back with an apology. And hey, is looking good in a bathing suit a bad thing?

The only mud that momentarily stuck was criticism (white and black alike) concerning Obama's alleged "inauthenticity," as compared to such sterling examples of "genuine" blackness as Al Sharpton and Snoop Dogg. Speaking as an African American whose last name has led to his racial "credentials" being challenged — often several times a day — I know how pesky this sort of thing can be.

Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

Wow.

I mean, he made some valid points.

Its an interesting take.

Its L.A., so the presumption is not racism.

Unless the guy happens to be a member of the LAPD.

At least he is an African-American though, that has to provide some shelter for him...right?

At least it was not published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by a Caucasian-American right?

Then, the exact same words would have been horrifically racist, unacceptable, and condemnable.

So, what do you think?

On that note, what do you think generally about Obama's candidacy?

I think he is a good...no...great VP candidate in 2008.

And an even better Presidential candidate in 2016 after spending 8 years in the Richardson White House.

For your viewing pleasure, I present Richardson for President.com.

Stay Tuned...

Rove and Miers to Testify...Sort of...

Just have a second, but I have to ask - Why allow Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to answer questions before a congressional committee, but not allow them to take an oath to tell the truth? Seems to me that the Bush White House is saying "They will answer questions, but not truthfully."

This is absurd. When will this White House be held to the same laws as the rest of us?

What are they, Big Tobacco?

Link.

Stay Tuned...

The most controversial blogger in Memphis?

No, not me.

Not yet at least.

(but with your help...)

But, Thaddeus Matthews?

You've got to be kidding me!

Thaddeus Matthews Dot Com is the biggest joke I've seen in my blog-reading life.

This guy is supposed to be the "voice of reason" in Memphis? This guy is supposed to be watching out for us? Watch-dogging the local politicians and media? The guy can't spell and doesn't know which form of the verb "be" he should use. Its unreal how embarrassing this is.

That doesn't even begin to describe the content based blasphamy that is Thaddeus Matthews Dot Com.

No doubt that there are problems at MLGW.

No doubt that W.W. Herenton has got to W.W. Go.

No doubt that Memphis is a mess.

Even still, you can't just throw every unsubstantiated rumor you hear out on the internet (full of typos and in broken english none the less) and present "the truth".

What is this, the CBS Evening News?

He claims to be the "most controversial blogger in Memphis. With no holds barred."

It looks like there is also no spell check, and no high school diploma.

If he is truly the "most controversial" its because he is so bad and so irresponsible that he has ruffled some feathers.

He gets a surprising amount of traffic though.

I'll give him credit where credit is due. He is on top of things in Memphis. He is paying attention, pissed off, and making noise. I like that, and I respect it. I also liked the story on Steve Cohen this week.

This morning while driving towards the Downtown school,Congressman Steve Cohen and his assistant Randy Wade were stopped at a red light at Poplar and Tucker. The light turned green and the car ahead of them entered the intersection and was struck by a car rushing to make it through the light. This accident involved three cars and serious injuries.

Instead of telling Wade to drive on so that they would be on time to read Dr.Seuss to the waiting children at the school,Cohen dialed 911 and told Wade "let's get out and help these people" The Congressman and Wade got out and went over to a car where a young lady named "Cookie" was bleeding from a head wound. The Congressman and Wade made sure the young lady was alive and alert and didn't allow her to move until medics arrived. After the Congressman saw that everyone was fine with spots of "Cookie's" blood on his shirt the congressman went on to read to the waiting children. Finally a congressman that doesn't mine getting bloody for the people he serves.

Um...[sic]?

Does that cover it?

For those who aren't citation-savy, that "[sic]" means that the typo(s) are from the original and not my fault.

Just a taste of the product at Thaddeus Matthews Dot Com.

I've decided to get re-aquatinted with Memphis Politics this year. I tried to distance myself from the mess that is Memphis for the last few years, but its starting to look more and more like home. I figure its time I start to pay more attention to it so I can help when I get back.

In my efforts, aside from my habitual visits to The Commercial Appeal website, I have added The Memphis Flyer, and Thaddeus Matthews Dot Com to my list of links.

Hilarity - and humiliation - will no doubt ensue.

The plus side for you, the reader?

I'll be your Number 1 source for everything that is sad, beautiful, disgraceful, disgusting, wonderful, and scary about life in the Dirty-Dirty Mid-South.

Look no further Kurt.

Stay Tuned...

*If you don't recognize the signs in these pictures, you probably won't care about this or future articles.



Bonus Question: Someone name the street on which you can find each place. Ready, go!

WWJD: Bong Hits?

CNN.com did a good job summarizing the facts:

Frederick was a high school senior in Juneau when he decided to display the banner at a school-sanctioned event to watch the Olympic torch pass through the city on its way to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Morse believed his "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner was a pro-drug message that schools should not tolerate. She suspended Frederick for 10 days. Frederick sued Morse, and that case now is before the court.

Is this a type of speech that is properly censored by a school? The state? Justice Breyer made a good point in the oral arguments:

". . .[H]e is struggling with the case because a ruling in Frederick's favor could encourage students to go to absurd lengths to test those limits.

A ruling for Morse, however, "may really limit free speech," Breyer said."

Not surprisingly, the Bush White House has spoken up in favor of allowing the public school systems to clamp down on student speech.

Think about the chilling effect that will have on our society. Throughout high school, prime rebellion years, the school district will be permitted to suspend or expel students for expressing unpopular positions on drugs? What about politics? Sex? The administration of the school? I hate to use the slippery slope here, but its just too important not to address it.

And then, when the youth of our country graduate from high school, suddenly they will be granted the true protection of the first amendment and expected to take advantage of it? If we raise our children in a world of unconstitutionally restricted speech, how can we expect them to exercise their constitutional rights when they turn 18. Long term, it would be detrimental to our country. This is bad for America.

I don't mean to say that a banner reading "Bong Hits for Jesus" is good for America. I mean to say that the unfortunate effect of free speech is that some idiots will be allowed to (and legally protected when) express stupid and unnecessary view points.

Congratulations to this kid, Joseph Frederick, he has become an icon for first amendment advocates, and a poster child for what is wrong with our high schools. And he will have to live up to those monikers for the rest of his life.

Thoughts?

Stay Tuned...

A Second Amendment Decision?

The full opinion can be found at this link.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down a D.C. Handgun law this week, in the first significant 2nd amendment case in almost 70 years.

6 Petitioners sought relief from a D.C. law that essentially forbade them from keeping a handgun in their home unless it was disassembled or had a trigger guard on it.

Excerpts follow:

We start by considering the competing claims about the meaning of the Second Amendment’s operative clause: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Appellants contend that “the right of the people” clearly contemplates an individual right and that “keep and bear Arms” necessarily implies private use and ownership. The District’s primary argument is that “keep and bear Arms” is best read in a military sense, and, as a consequence, the entire operative clause should be understood as granting only a collective right. The District also argues that “the right of the people” is ambiguous as to whether the right protects civic or private ownership and use of weapons.

* * *

In determining whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee is an individual one, or some sort of collective right, the most important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the holders of the right—“the people.” That term is found in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. It has never been doubted that these provisions were designed to protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion, interference, or usurpation. We also note that the Tenth Amendment—“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”—indicates that the authors of the Bill of Rights were perfectly capable of distinguishing between “the people,” on the one hand, and “the states,” on the other. The natural reading of “the right of the people” in the Second Amendment would accord with usage elsewhere in the Bill of Rights.

* * *

In sum, the phrase “the right of the people,” when read intratextually and in light of Supreme Court precedent, leads us to conclude that the right in question is individual. This proposition is true even though “the people” at the time of the founding was not as inclusive a concept as “the people” today. See Robert E. Shallope, To Keep and Bear Arms in the Early Republic, 16 CONST. COMMENT. 269, 280-81 (1999). To the extent that non-whites, women, and the propertyless were excluded from the protections afforded to “the people,” the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is understood to have corrected that initial constitutional shortcoming.

* * *

When we look at the Bill of Rights as a whole, the setting of the Second Amendment reinforces its individual nature. The Bill of Rights was almost entirely a declaration of individual rights, and the Second Amendment’s inclusion therein strongly indicates that it, too, was intended to protect personal liberty. The collective right advocates ask us to imagine that the First Congress situated a sui generis states’ right among a catalogue of cherished individual liberties without comment. We believe the canon of construction known as noscitur a sociis applies here. Just as we would read an ambiguous statutory term in light of its context, we should read any supposed ambiguities in the Second Amendment in light of its context. Every other provision of the Bill of Rights, excepting the Tenth, which speaks explicitly about the allocation of governmental power, protects rights enjoyed by citizens in their individual capacity. The Second Amendment would be an inexplicable aberration if
it were not read to protect individual rights as well.

* * *

We also note that at least three current members (and one former member) of the Supreme Court have read “bear Arms” in the Second Amendment to have meaning beyond mere soldiering: “Surely a most familiar meaning [of ‘carries a firearm’] is, as the Constitution’s Second Amendment (‘keep and bear Arms’) and Black’s Law Dictionary . . . indicate: ‘wear, bear, or carry . . . upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.” Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125, 143 (1998) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting, joined by Rehnquist, C.J., Scalia, J., and Souter, J.) (emphasis in original). Based on the foregoing, we think the operative clause includes a private meaning for “bear Arms.”

* * *

As the foregoing makes clear, the “well regulated Militia” was not an elite or select body. See Silveira, 328 F.3d at 577-78 (Kleinfeld, J.). While some of the founding fathers, including George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, favored such organizations over a popular militia, see THE ORIGIN OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT at xlvii (David E. Young ed., 2d ed. 1995), the Second Congress unambiguously required popular participation. The important point, of course, is that the popular nature of the militia is consistent with an individual right to keep and bear arms: Preserving an individual right was the best way to ensure that the militia could serve when called.

* * *

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being
understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects
are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

Let the debate begin: Gun rights - Love 'em or Leave 'em?

Stay Tuned...

Fuck Auburn

Link

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Super Deluxe - Super Funny

So Super Deluxe finally got me.

I've been seeing the ads on [Adult Swim] for a few weeks, but ignored them. I finally checked it out and sure enough, its a gold mine of user submitted comedy.

The best of the best?

You're fortunate to have a dedicated blogger willing to do hours of research to bring you the finest materials available:

The Professor Brothers - One of the best on the site. Its one of the two cartoons created by Brad Neely. I'm not sure how they come up with this stuff, but its essentially a series of shorts about two professors, Frank and Steve, who are brothers and share an office on campus. The best place to start is with Bible History #1. This is the story Sodom and Gemorah. Sodom, named after sodomy of course, and Gemorah, named after an even stranger move. Also worth a look? Office Hours, History Lesson (the story of JFK), and The Professors go on a Blind Date.

Baby Cakes - The other Brad Neely creation. Some amazing stuff here, such as "The Brain Fuckler", a retards impressions of King Lear, and the walking drink (10 parts sugar, and 90 parts Bourbon). Good place to start: A visit with Grandpop, a day in the park, King Lear , and The First Entry.

The Post Show - This group has literally dozens of videos on their website. On Super Deluxe they have 4 that are really outstanding. You've heard of Tag body spray? Axe Body Spray? Check out Douche Body Spray. "You look like a douche, shouldn't you smell like one?" Also check out the "behind the music" parody on Bob Dylan, its called No Direction, Period. Also check out the The Dangerous Mind of Mencia which shows Carlos Mencia for the worthless comedian he is. Lastly, is Fun Times with Lenny and Bink about two cartoon characters, best friends, who are tragically sucked through a portal into the real world, and they have to learn what does and doesn't work for the cartoons in the real world. Drawing a tunnel on the wall and running into it - doesn't work in the real world.

This is just a small taste of what this website has to offer, I'd recommend you check it out. Its like youtube for comedy.

Stay Tuned...