Somewhere Charles Blow Is Gritting His Teeth...

...because Mo'nique won an oscar for her supporting role NOT playing a crack mother in a movie NOT made by Tyler Perry.


;)

Charles Blow's EPIC FAIL

I have been very annoyed over the past few months because of a phenomenon I have noticed in black intellectual circles. It seems that all of the "high brow" black folks hate Tyler Perry because his movies show a side of the way black people live that doesn't comport with what they contend is their reality. What's most annoying about this is that these "high brow" black folks tend to conflate Tyler Perry with the characters he plays in his movies. They talk about him as if he walks around in his day to day as his wildly popular character "Madea". Wildly popular that is to just run of the mill black folks who aren't teaching at Harvard or don't have their own column in the New York Times. Its funny to me because I recognize people from many of his movies that I know in real life. Its also pathetic in the sense that characters like Madea are obviously supposed to be over the top caricatures but they insist on treating them as if Tyler Perry is proclaiming that everybody has a grandma EXACTLY like "Madea".

Well Charles Blow decided that he would take his shots today in his op ed column . What followed is in my opinion PURE COMEDY.

First lets start with the title of the column,

Tyler Perry’s Crack Mothers

Now I have seen all of Perry's plays and most of his movies and I could only remember distinctly one character who was a mother and a crack head so I decided to read the column to see where this was going. Here is his dramatic opening to his piece.

Mo’Nique is a favorite to win an Oscar next Sunday for her powerful and disturbing portrayal of an abusive mother in the movie “Precious.”

If she wins, I may grit my teeth at the depraved depiction, but at least her character is merely juxtaposed with the crack scourge and isn't in fact an addict. That's heartening since the crack-addicted black mother has recently made a curious comeback.

There was a time when this character was more relevant: in the 1980s and 1990s when the crack epidemic plunged whole communities into violence, fear and chaos. (To be fair, “Precious” is set in the 1980s.) But this character now feels like a refugee of time — and discordant with the facts on the ground.

Oh my, Charles Blow might grit his teeth if Mo'nique wins an Oscar for her role in the movie "Precious". Hmmmm I guess. I mean I know some people loved the movie and some folks hated it and to that I say to each their own. But why open a piece about Perry's "Crack Mothers" with three grafs that have nothing to do with a "crack mother" in one of Perry's movies. Ahhh there is a correction at the bottom to explain this.

Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly described Mo'Nique's character in the movie "Precious." She was not a crack addict.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So in a column meant to hit Tyler Perry for supposedly stocking his movies with crack mother characters, Blow doesn't even know or realize that Mo'Nique didn't play a crack head in "Precious". I guess he ALSO didn't know or realize that while Tyler Perry did "present" the movie "Precious" it wasn't literally one of his movies. He didn't write it nor direct it and the book it is based on had literary acclaim in its own right before the movie ever came along.

But Blow and other "high brow" black folks can't be concerned with such facts can they? As a matter of fact in a column which Blow tries to intimate that Tyler Perry has single handedly brought back the notion of "crack mothers" which in his mind is now a sort of fantasy, he can only come up with two instances (which he doesn't explain) when such a character has been in any of Tyler Perry's movies. And I can tell you that in at least the movie that I saw where there was a "crack mother" the story line revolved around her being an addict for years, not some kind of recent development.

Im sorry but this is the classic definition of the crab in a barrel mentality that most "high brow" black folks tend to decry. For whatever faults Tyler Perry has, he also has many many good attributes. He has used his position to help other black folks get roles in his movies. He gives quite a bit of money and time to various charities including building homes for Katrina victims and giving $1 million dollars through his foundation to the Haiti relief fund. But you won't hear those "high brow" black folks ever even out their criticisms about him. No they just want to blame all of the ills of the black community on Tyler Perry.

Give me a fucking break.

We have seven year olds stealing cars because they want to do "hood rat stuff" and these folks are more concerned with tearing down a self made black man than addressing real problems. Im sick and tired of it, and honestly its making me lose a lot of respect for folks who I thought were better than that.

Truly.

Those Who Cast Stones Had Better Be Prepared To Duck

One of the many unintended consequences of the right wing's sexist and racist attacks on Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor is the increased scrutiny of Supreme Court justices who have previously been confirmed. White men who were confirmed by a great majority and whom have been held up by the right wingers as having performed admirably after assuming their positions. Its funny what skeletons you find lurking in peoples' closets once you actually go looking for them.

Today Charles Blow compares the "she is a racist" attack on Judge Sotomayor over words she said in a speech in 2001, to some of the words and acts of former and current Supreme Court justices.

Now let’s look at a couple of the men who have ascended to the bench.

First, there’s former Chief Justice William Rehnquist. When the Supreme Court was considering Brown v. Board of Education, Rehnquist was a law clerk for Justice Robert Jackson. Rehnquist wrote Jackson a memo in which he defended separate-but-equal policies, saying, “I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by my ‘liberal’ colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.”

Furthermore, Rehnquist had been a Republican ballot protectionist in Phoenix when he was younger. As the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen correctly noted in 1986: Rehnquist “helped challenge the voting qualifications of Arizona blacks and Hispanics. He was entitled to do so. But even if he did not personally harass potential voters, as witnesses allege, he clearly was a brass-knuckle partisan, someone who would deny the ballot to fellow citizens for trivial political reasons — and who made his selection on the basis of race or ethnicity.”

Then there’s John Roberts, who replaced Rehnquist as the chief justice in 2005. That year, Newsday reported that Roberts had made racist and sexist jokes in memos that he wrote while working in the Reagan White House. And, The New York Review of Books published a scolding article in 2005 making the case that during the same period that he was making those jokes, Roberts marshaled a crusader’s zeal in his efforts to roll back the civil rights gains of the 1960s and ’70s — everything from voting rights to women’s rights. The article began, “The most intriguing question about John Roberts is what led him as a young person whose success in life was virtually assured by family wealth and academic achievement to enlist in a political campaign designed to deny opportunities for success to those who lack his advantages.”

Gingrich tweeted that “a white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw.” Make up your own minds about where Rehnquist’s and Roberts’s words and actions should fall on the racism spectrum, but both were overwhelmingly confirmed.

Until someone can produce proof of words and actions on the part of Sotomayor that even approach the scale of Rehnquist’s and Roberts’s, all I see is men throwing skeleton bones from class closets.

Some how I bet neither Judge Rehnquist nor Judge Roberts appreciate having their bigotted pasts revisted. I am not in the habit of giving wingnuts advice however you might want to quit while you're behind. Right now all you face is losing some Hispanic votes, but if you continue down this path you may well remove all legitimacy of the Republican party itself. Your call.

"You Can't Just Make Up Your Own Facts"

If only David Shuster could host Hardball everyday. Oh wait he DID have a show then the geniuses at MSNBC decided that he was expendable. What a frikking joke.

Well at least he was there today to connect the dots from the cop shooting in Pittsburgh to the hate talk from the wingnuts on Tee Vee and radio. And he pretty much sent the 2nd Amendment guy running home with his tail between his legs. Good on him for that and good on Charles Blow for calling the guy's argument "laughable".

Enjoy

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I Wonder Where He Got That Idea From...

Today brings news of another tragic shooting, this time in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where a gunman has shot and killed 3 police officers who were responding to a domestic disturbance. But check out what at least was his percieved motivation.

From the AP

PITTSBURGH – A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

Three officers were killed, said a police official at the scene who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Police spokeswoman Diane Richard would only say that at least five officers were wounded, but wouldn't give any other details.

Police planned to release more details at a mid-afternoon news conference Saturday.

The man who fired at the officers was arrested after a several-hour standoff. One witness reported hearing hundreds of shots.

The shootings occurred just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot March 21 in Oakland, Calif., in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001.

Police did not immediately release the gunman's identity, but his friends at the scene described him as a young man who thought the Obama administration would ban guns.

One friend, Edward Perkovic, said the gunman feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said he feared that President Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama."

Now maybe this guy was just crazy or paranoid or depressed, but what is it that would make him believe that President Obama was coming to take his guns to the point where it would motivate him to this kind of violence? Well most of us who have spent anytime on progressive and liberal blogs have a clue as to who is responsible for provoking this kind of dangerous behavior through their fear mongering and smears. But coincidentally there is an op ed by Charles Blow in the New York Times this morning that damn near foreshadowed this incident.

But, it’s not all just harmless talk. For some, their disaffection has hardened into something more dark and dangerous. They’re talking about a revolution.

Some simply lace their unscrupulous screeds with loaded language about the fall of the Republic. We have to “rise up” and “take back our country.” Others have been much more explicit.
For example, Chuck Norris, the preeminent black belt and prospective Red Shirt, wrote earlier this month on the conservative blog WorldNetDaily: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, imagining herself as some sort of Delacroixian Liberty from the Land of the Lakes, urged her fellow Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous,” ready to bust caps over cap-and-trade, I presume.

And between his tears, Glenn Beck, the self-professed “rodeo clown,” keeps warning of an impending insurrection by saying that he believes that we are heading for “depression” and “revolution” and then gaming out that revolution on his show last month. “Think the unthinkable” he said. Indeed.

All this talk of revolution is revolting, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

As the comedian Bill Maher pointed out, strong language can poison weak minds, as it did in the case of Timothy McVeigh. (We sometimes forget that not all dangerous men are trained by Al Qaeda.)

At the same time, the unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms. According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.

Coincidence? Maybe. Just posturing? Hopefully. But it all gives me a really bad feeling.

I swear you would almost think Blow wrote his article AFTER the shootout this morning. Yet he didn't and that should tell you something. Yes we have first amendment rights to free speech in this country but what these irresponsible assholes are doing on the right wing fringe of this country is especially harmful and dangerous and if they are not called on the carpet for their bullshit you can expect more of these kinds of deadly interactions to occur between their weakminded followers and innocent bystanders. The shit has gone too far and its high times someone said so. I appreciate the fact that Mr. Blow took up the call today but there should be a lot more where that came from by the Villagers and our elected officials. Including the colleagues of Michele Bachmann.