Morgan Freeman Out'Chere Pitching The Mark Of The Beast - How Appropriate...,

thehill |  Morgan Freeman says if you trust him, you'll take his advice and get vaccinated against COVID-19.

"I'm not a doctor, but I trust science. And I’m told that, for some reason, people trust me," the "Vanquish" star says in a public service announcement released Monday by the arts advocacy group The Creative Coalition.

Freeman, 83, has played God in multiple films and is a popular choice for narrating documentaries and science specials.

“So here I am to say I trust science and I got the vaccine," he tells viewers in the PSA.

"If you trust me, you’ll get the vaccine," Freeman adds.

Morgan, I don't trust you as far as I could spit on you. First, there's your recent Russiagate foolishness and phukkery:

And then, there's that deeply disturbing personal failing from several years ago when your nasty old ass was simultaneously on those blue pills and your own step grand daughter!!! Now, low-information, short-memory, IQ-75 may have forgotten what you were up to, but these liminal views of consensus reality CANNOT UNSEE what they have seen:

American Public School Districts Are Simply Economic Pinatas. Period.

jonathanturley |  We previously discussed the controversial position of Alison Collins, Vice President of the San Francisco school board, in her campaign against meritocracy and effort to shut down the gifted programs at Lowell High School.  The Asian community was particularly opposed to Collins’ efforts since Asian students composed 29 percent of the students but 51 percent of the Lowell student body. Now Collins is under fire for prior tweets attacking Asians as promoting “the ‘model minority’ BS” and of using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”

These do not appear recent tweets but their content is obviously insulting for any Asian American. The Yahoo News story included such tweets as accusing “many Asian American Ts, Ss, and Ps” — teachers, students, and parents — of promoting “the ‘model minority’ BS” and of using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” It also include a demand to know “[w]here are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump?” and statements on how Asians are deluding themselves by not speaking out against former president Donald Trump: “Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well?” Collins continued. “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered “the help.”

While the use of the censored version of the “n word” has led to calls to terminate academics, I do not believe that such objections are fair in this or the prior cases. Indeed, this controversy should not take away from the campaign against meritocracy and the effort to eliminate programs for advanced or gifted students in the public school system. As I have previously discussed, I long been a supporter of public schools.  These advanced programs are needed to maintain broad, diverse, and vibrant school systems for cities like San Francisco.

Race politics seems a focus on every level in the school system, even in the regulation of student elections. Likewise, the controversy in San Francisco follows another controversy in Los Angeles where United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) Cecily Myart-Cruz has also criticized “Middle Eastern” parents in joining “white parents” in seeking school re-openings.  The UTLA was criticized after Maryam Qudrat, a mother of Middle Eastern descent, was asked by the UTLA to identify her race after criticizing the union’s opposition to reopening schools despite overwhelming science that it is safe. This effort to racially classify critics of the teachers followed Myart-Cruz attacking critics by referring to their race

Sassy Blue Checks Are 21st Century Gatekeepers And Responsible Negroes

ghionjournal |  Precisely at the time we need leadership the most, we have been left out in the cold and shepherded into the wilderness by black opinion leaders who are more interested in cashing checks and enhancing their Q ratings than they are in standing up for justice. Gone are the days of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and erstwhile moral giants who confronted racism with the courage of lions, we are now firmly entrenched in the era of hustling hyenas like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris who cozy up to the very system of repression they pretend to be fighting against.

Instead of leading with imagination, sambos in expensive suits prefer to distract us with agitprops and tropes. We went from “we shall overcome”, a mission statement of resilience, to “black lives matter” as we meekly advertise our inadequacies and beg for social acceptance. I am actually embarrassed every time I see a similarly complexioned brother or sister wearing a #BLM logo on their facemask or their chest;

As if doing damage to our psyche was not enough, some decide to add insults to self-injury by dismissing the plight of anyone who does not have melanin like ours. It is the height of absurdity to assume that someone who is “white” has privilege by virtue of their skin color. Not only is it patently untrue, it is counterproductive as it prevents likeminded and like-mired “white” people–who would otherwise be receptive to our plight–from hearing the message we are trying to convey and joining the fight for redemption.

No one likes to be marginalized and their struggles to be minimized; this is true for the truly privileged and the most disadvantaged alike. Think about it; if someone in a wheelchair downplayed your pains and pooh-poohed your anguish wrought by a broken leg, would you not take umbrage with that person no matter how crippled she was? People who have it bad don’t have a license to insult and disparage others who have it marginally better. Instead of reaching an audience that is sympathetic to our cause, all we do is close doors and preclude much needed conversations.

The only people who profit from these campaigns of grievance and woe-is-me victimhood are the very charlatans who are sitting in the lap of comfort and leading lives of true privilege. The establishment reward demagogues who incite passions and lead us in the wrong direction. There is a reason, after all, the Obamas were compensated to the tune of $60 million and why Ta-Nehisi Coates keeps landing on the New York Times bestsellers list. The fastest way to make a buck and get leg up is to sell your own people down the river in order to be invited into the whites’ house.

The leaders of Black Lives Matter have perfected the art of the shakedown in ways that puts Jessie Jackson to shame; they have made more money in our names and using our pains than any black organization since the NAACP. What do we have to show for the hundreds of millions they have collected since Ferguson? Email or DM me if you know the answer because I have been searching for that answer since Michael Brown was assassinated. Far from being freedom fighters, Black Lives Matter is a co-op of fee collectors who hear cash registers ringing each time a “black” man or woman gets killed by a cop.

Amanda Gorman - And Her Work - Are Barely Average...,

thehindu  |  Gorman’s text was also presented and read, and acclaimed, as a poem. That is where the trouble starts. Is there a major difference between people who acclaim a political leader despite his bad policies because they agree with his (good or bad) views, and people who acclaim a weak poem because they agree with the poet’s (good) views? This controversy erupted on Twitter, and it ended with the unasked question: If we lower the standards of policy or poetry for a person, adducing age, sex, colour or correct opinion as an excuse, then are we doing any favour to the person or the cause?

The question assumes significance due to various attempts to ‘defend’ Gorman’s poem by bringing up the different traditions of Black poetry. If Gorman’s poem is an expression of this tradition at its best, then it’s a good defence. If not, then, to my mind, it does gross injustice to both Gorman as a person, and to Black poetry. The white women who posted on Twitter about Gorman’s elegance and poise seem to me to be indulging in a kind of well-meaning racism: it is a version of the racism that makes coloured people take care to appear well-dressed, refined, suave. That is not what is required of a poem.

Does Gorman’s poem match up to the high standards of the best Anglophone poetry by Black poets? You need not compare her efforts to works like Derek Walcott’s Omeros, for that might be considered too literary an example. Let us compare it to shorter poems that, to my mind, are among the great poems of the English language today. Note, I say the English language, not Black poetry.

This is how Gorman’s poem starts: “When day comes we ask ourselves,/ where can we find light in this never-ending shade?/ The loss we carry,/ a sea we must wade/ We’ve braved the belly of the beast/ We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace.” It is a decent start — for a student’s poem. It is full of standard clichés, none of them redeemed by any twist of phrase or idea. One does not want to be a grammarian and point out that ‘shade’ is not just a cliché, but an inappropriate one, for it can convey repose and rest in sunny climates, such as the American South, and not necessarily ‘night.’ Such problems crop up throughout the poem — as they do in any poem by a talented student. An accomplished poet learns to go beyond them. It is not that clichés cannot be used; it’s how you use them.

Stop Pretending That The Inaugural Poem Was Anything But Awful

TAC |  What I found upon this search was, and is, nothing less than an embarrassment to our country. A caricature of a parody, unworthy of the name of poetry, rising not even to the level of propaganda.

But what made it so bad?

First of all, its emptiness. Its platitudes. The fact that, if presented in prose form and unburdened of its opportunistic rhymes, it might be mistaken for a New York Times op-ed. There appears to be a belief among slam poets that this quasi-rap, pseudo-freestyle, lilting rhythm in which the poems are performed (which spans the entire genre without alteration) is an acceptable substitute for substance. That vacuous wordplay fills the shoes of wit. “What just is,” the poet explains in the opening stanza, “isn’t always justice.” The phrase, of course, means nothing. But because the punniness is clever (is it even that?), it passes muster, and ascends to the level of great, praiseworthy artistic achievement in the eyes of our elites.

Gorman’s poem also seems to lift a line, practically verbatim except to include a rhyme, from the recent Broadway hit “Hamilton.” What’s more, that line (“Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid”) is itself a reference to George Washington’s Farewell Address, which is itself a reference to Scripture (Micah 4:4, Kings 4:25, Zechariah 3:10). The irony of the fact that, at an inaugural recitation for the oldest ever American president, more advanced in years than all his living predecessors, reference is made to our first president’s Farewell Address, in which he wistfully anticipates his restful retirement, is too much to bear. In fact, it demonstrates the poet’s unfamiliarity with her material, and thus smacks more of plagiarism than of reverential reference (although I’m sure she reveres Lin-Manuel Miranda very much).

Relatedly, the poem displays a perverse kind of Burkeanism. A contract between the dead, the living, and the unborn is similarly imagined as the basis of our social project: “Because being American is more than a pride we inherit; it’s the past we step into and how we repair it”; “We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation, because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.” But instead of the benevolent passage of the torch from the old to the young, this poem imagines the promise of that contract to be the severance of ourselves from our collective past, either by the forward march of progress or, if that fails, by the revision of the historical narrative itself.

This actually bodes very well for conservatives in the long run. As a member of the same generation as Ms. Gorman, I can say that this poem truly embodies the Millennial and Gen-Z left. That cunning rhetoric, no matter how sophistic, is all it takes to convince. That their sense of an artistic—or any—tradition stretches back only as far as their memory of the latest trends in the pop anti-culture. And that their political mission amounts, simply, to a total dissociation from and dissolution of the bonds of our national past. That mission, like Gorman’s poem, is as self-defeating as it is empty.

Warren Buffett's Kneegrows For Biden BLM Just Now Getting "Woke" To How They Got PLAYED!!!

Thank you @joebiden from the 87% of Black men that voted for you whom you overlooked when hiring these positions. Instead opting largely for a white female base that in majority did not vote you to President-elect. “Biden hires all-female senior communications team.” pic.twitter.com/ORrUMr57la

— Antonio Moore (@tonetalks) November 29, 2020

blmchapterstatement |  It was recently declared that Patrisse Cullors was appointed the Executive Director to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) Foundation. Since then, two new Black Lives Matter formations have been announced to the public: a Black Lives Matter Political Action Committee, and BLM Grassroots. BLM Grassroots was allegedly created to support the organizational needs of chapters, separate from the financial functions of BLMGN. We, the undersigned chapters, believe that all of these events occurred without democracy, and assert that it was without the knowledge of the majority of Black Lives Matters chapters across the country and world.

We became chapters of Black Lives Matter as radical Black organizers embracing a collective vision for Black people engaging in the protracted struggle for our lives against police terrorism. With a willingness to do hard work that would put us at risk, we expected that the central organizational entity, most recently referred to as the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) Foundation, would support us chapters in our efforts to build communally. Since the establishment of BLMGN, our chapters have consistently raised concerns about financial transparency, decision making, and accountability. Despite years of effort, no acceptable internal process of accountability has ever been produced by BLMGN and these recent events have undermined the efforts of chapters seeking to democratize its processes and resources.

In the spirit of transparency, accountability, and responsibility to our community, we believe public accountability has become necessary. As a contribution to our collective liberation, we must make clear:

1. Patrisse Cullors, as the sole board member of BLMGN, became Executive Director against the will of most chapters and without their knowledge.
2. The newly announced formation, BLM Grassroots, does not have the support of and was created without consultation with the vast majority of chapters. 
3. The formation of BLM Grassroots effectively separated the majority of chapters from BLMGN without their consent and interrupted the active process of accountability that was being established by those chapters.
4. In our experience, chapter organizers have been consistently prevented from establishing financial transparency, collective decision making, or collaboration on political analysis and vision within BLMGN
5. For years there has been inquiry regarding the financial operations of BLMGN and no acceptable process of either public or internal transparency about the unknown millions of dollars donated to BLMGN, which has certainly increased during this time of pandemic and rebellion.
6. To the best of our knowledge, most chapters have received little to no financial support from BLMGN since the launch in 2013. It was only in the last few months that selected chapters appear to have been invited to apply for a $500,000 grant created with resources generated because of the organizing labor of chapters. This is not the equity and financial accountability we deserve.

We remain committed to collectively building an organization of BLM chapters that is democratic, accountable, and functions in a way that is aligned with our ideological values and commitment to liberation. We will move forward with transparency and expound on our collective efforts to seek transparency and organizational unity in a fuller statement in the near future. As we collectively determine next steps, we encourage our supporters to donate directly to chapters, who represent the frontline of Black Lives Matter.

Trump Getting Coronavirus Like Freddie Mercury Getting AIDS - But Nobody Was Like "How'd He Get It?"

dailybeast |   As his now infamous 2016 line about giving Trump a chance—inadvertently echoed in Biden’s victory speech earlier Saturday night—revealed, Chappelle’s politics have never been simple to characterize. His public criticism of Hillary Clinton in the final days of that election were bad enough that he had to later clarify that he was “not a Trump supporter.” His willingness to give Trump a “chance” followed him for months, at least until he told Stephen Colbert in 2017, “It’s not like I wanted to give him a chance that night.”

More recently, during an episode of David Letterman’s Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Chappelle answered a question about Trump’s Muslim ban by offering up what easily could be considered a both-sides take on the two presidential candidates.

“You don’t expect necessarily that empathy, compassion or cultural astuteness from a guy like that,” Chappelle, who converted to Islam in the early ‘90s, told Letterman. “What you’re sad about is that the chair doesn’t have more humanity in it. But has that chair ever been that humane? When Biden called Trump the first racist president ever, well clearly that’s not true. So how do I feel when I hear a white person say some stupid shit?”

As Letterman laughed, Chappelle answered his own question with a comical shrug.

“I would implore everybody who’s celebrating to remember, it’s good to be a humble winner,” Chappelle said on Saturday. “Remember when I was here four years ago? Remember how bad that felt. Remember that half the country right now still feels that way. Please remember that.”

“Remember that for the first time in the history of America, the life expectancy of white people is dropping because of heroin, because of suicide,” he continued. “All these white people out there that feel that anguish, that pain, that man, they think nobody cares. Maybe they don’t.”

“Let me tell you something: I know how that feels,” he added. “I promise you, I know how that feels. If you’re a police officer and every time you put your uniform on, you feel like you’ve got a target on your back, you’re appalled by the ingratitude that people have when you would risk your life to save them, believe me, I know how that feels.”

“But here’s the difference between me and you,” Chappelle said. “You guys hate each other for it. And I don’t hate anybody. I just hate that feeling. That’s what I fight through. That’s what I suggest you fight through. You’ve got to find a way to live your life. You’ve got to find a way to forgive each other. You’ve got to find a way to find joy in your existence in spite of that feeling. And if you can't do that…come get these n---a lessons.”

Clinton Takeover Of The DNC: (Or Why Donna Brazile Is Now A Lowly Fox News Contributor...,)

politico  |  I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.

When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer. 

When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.

I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.

The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.

I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.

“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.” 

I discussed the fundraising agreement that each of the candidates had signed. Bernie was familiar with it, but he and his staff ignored it. They had their own way of raising money through small donations. I described how Hillary’s campaign had taken it another step. 

 

Why Liberals Hate Leftists And Negroes

caitlinjohnstone |  Liberals hate leftists. Hate them, hate them, hate them.

They don’t often admit it of course. Admitting you hate those to your left at least as much as you hate those to your right would cause a lot of cognitive dissonance for those who think of themselves as being on the left, and it would weaken their arguments considerably.

But they do. Liberals hate leftists, for a number of reasons.

Liberals hate leftists because there is a night-and-day difference between a capitalist, imperialist establishment and an ideology which wants to tear down that establishment and replace it with peace and socialism. There’s more of a difference between true leftists and establishment liberals than there is between the far right and establishment liberals.

Liberals hate leftists because the psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance actually hurts, so those who provoke it can often be perceived as the cause of that pain.

Liberals hate leftists because they’ve spent their whole lives building and reinforcing a worldview which validates war, oligarchy and exploitation while thinking of themselves as defenders of equality and sanity, so when someone comes in promoting an ideology which highlights the discrepancy between those two points the cognitive dissonance which sets in makes them feel like the leftist just slapped them in the face.

Liberals hate leftists because while both purport to support the working class and disempowered groups, only one of them actually does so.

Liberals hate leftists for the same reason someone telling a bogus self-aggrandizing story at a party would hate somebody who caught them in one of their lies in front of everyone.

Liberals hate leftists because leftists are a constant reminder that liberals are not the thing they pretend to be.

Liberals hate leftists for the same reason you’d hate someone who keeps yelling out “This is all fake! Those are actors!” at a theater: they disrupt a pleasant illusion the liberals are trying to enjoy about villains being fought by heroic protagonists.

Anti-Fauci NIH Covert "Troll" Gets Popped Like Q-Map Author Got Popped Last Week...,

thedailybeast |  The managing editor of the prominent conservative website RedState has spent months trashing U.S. officials tasked with combating COVID-19, dubbing White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci a “mask nazi,” and intimating that government officials responsible for the pandemic response should be executed.

But that writer, who goes by the pseudonym “streiff,” isn’t just another political blogger. The Daily Beast has discovered that he actually works in the public affairs shop of the very agency that Fauci leads.

William B. Crews is, by day, a public affairs specialist for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But for years he has been writing for RedState under the streiff pseudonym. And in that capacity he has been contributing to the very same disinformation campaign that his superiors at the NIAID say is a major challenge to widespread efforts to control a pandemic that has claimed roughly 200,000 U.S. lives.

Under his pseudonym, Crews has derided his own colleagues as part of a left-wing anti-Trump conspiracy and vehemently criticized the man who leads his agency, whom he described as the “attention-grubbing and media-whoring Anthony Fauci.” He has gone after other public health officials at the state and federal levels, as well—“the public health Karenwaffen,'' as he’s called them—over measures such as the closures of businesses and other public establishments and the promotion of social distancing and mask-wearing. Those policies, Crews insists, have no basis in science and are simply surreptitious efforts to usurp Americans’ rights, destroy the U.S. economy, and damage President Donald Trump’s reelection effort.

“I think we’re at the point where it is safe to say that the entire Wuhan virus scare was nothing more or less than a massive fraud perpetrated upon the American people by ‘experts’ who were determined to fundamentally change the way the country lives and is organized and governed,” Crews wrote in a June post on RedState.

“If there were justice,” he added, “we’d send and [sic] few dozen of these fascists to the gallows and gibbet their tarred bodies in chains until they fall apart.”

After The Daily Beast brought those and other quotes from Crews to NIAID’s attention, the agency said in an emailed statement that Crews would “retire” from his position. “NIAID first learned of this matter this morning, and Mr. Crews has informed us of his intention to retire,” the spokesperson, Kathy Stover, wrote. “We have no further comments on this as it is a personnel matter.”

Savage Foreign Scum Working To ReOpen The Bronx Slave Market...,

NYTimes |   This underclass status can be traced as far back as the 1800s, historians say, and is squarely rooted in racism. Domestic work was then one of the few ways that Black women could earn money, and well into the 20th century, most of those women lived in the South. During the Jim Crow era, they were powerless and exploited. Far from the happy “mammy” found in popular culture like “Gone With the Wind,” these women were mistreated and overworked. In 1912, a publication called The Independent ran an essay by a woman identified only as a “Negro Nurse,” who described 14-hour workdays, seven days a week, for $10 a month.

“I live a treadmill life,” she wrote. “I see my own children only when they happen to see me on the streets.”

In 1935, the federal government all but codified the grim conditions of domestic work with the passage of the Social Security Act. The law was the crowning achievement of the New Deal, providing retirement benefits as well as the country’s first national unemployment compensation program — a safety net that was invaluable during the Depression. But the act excluded two categories of employment: domestic workers and agricultural laborers, jobs that were most essential to Black women and Black men, respectively.

The few Black people invited to weigh in on the bill pointed out the obvious. In February 1935, Charles Hamilton Houston, then special counsel to the N.A.A.C.P., testified before the Senate Finance Committee and said that from the viewpoint of Black people, the bill “looks like a sieve with the holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”

The historian Mary Poole, author of “The Segregated Origins of Social Security,” sifted through notes, diaries and transcripts created during the passage of the act and found that Black people were excluded not because white Southerners in control of Congress at the time insisted on it. The truth was more troubling, and more nuanced. Members of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration — most notably, the Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr. — persuaded congressional leaders that the law would be far simpler to administer, and therefore far more likely to succeed, if the two occupations were left out of the bill.

In the years that followed, Black domestic workers were consistently at the mercy of white employers. In cities like New York, African-American women lined up at spots along certain streets, carrying a paper bag filled with work clothes, waiting for white housewives to offer them work, often for an hour or two, sometimes for the day. A reporter, Marvel Cooke, and an activist, Ella Baker, wrote a series of articles in 1935 for The Crisis, the journal of the N.A.A.C.P., describing life in what they called New York City’s “slave markets.”

The markets’ popularity diminished in the ’40s after Mayor Fiorello La Guardia opened hiring halls, where contracts were signed laying out terms for day labor arrangements. But in early 1950, Ms. Cooke found the markets in New York City were bustling again. In a series of first-person dispatches, she joined the “paper bag brigades” and went undercover to describe life for the Black women who stood in front of the Woolworths on 170th Street.

“That is the Bronx Slave Market,” she wrote in The Daily Compass in January 1950, “where Negro women wait, in rain or shine, in bitter cold or under broiling sun, to be hired by local housewives looking for bargains in human labor.”

That same year, domestic work was finally added to the Social Security Act, and by the 1970s it had been added to federal legislation intended to protect laborers, including the Fair Labor Standards Act. African-American women had won many of those protections by organizing, though by the 1980s, they had moved into other occupations and were largely replaced by women from South and Central America as well as the Caribbean.

Dignity Is Something You TAKE!!! NOT Something You Whine And Beg For...,

NPR  |  In the mid-'80s, just as his career as a writer was reaching its first ascent, Stanley Crouch presided over an attempted, unexpected, coup d'etat. Crouch wanted to return to a time when the serious Black practitioners participated in the gatekeeping. (The title of a 2000 Crouch piece in the New York Times says it all: "Don't Ask the Critics. Ask Wallace Roney's Peers.") That was all to the good, but another, more reactionary and perhaps even more commercial aspect of his proposed revolution proved impossible to implement: defining jazz as a fixed object made up of conventional swing, blues, romantic ballads, a Latin tinge... and not too much else. While executing this maneuver, Crouch rejected — by some lights, betrayed — his original peer group of Murray, Blythe and Newton, and instead embraced the latest musicians intrigued by a comparatively straight-ahead approach. (Newton complained, "A stylistically dominant agenda in jazz is like bringing Coca-Cola to a five-star dinner!")

It was an artificial conceit to begin with, and Crouch was too contrarian and combative to lead a movement. However, he did have one important acolyte: Wynton Marsalis, the man anointed as the biggest new jazz star of the era. Marsalis studied the texts of Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray the way he did the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. In what may have been an unprecedented event, a major jazz artist actually read critics, and let those critics inform his music. (Crouch also contributed liner notes to the first run of excellent Marsalis LPs.)

Between them, Marsalis and Crouch kicked off the jazz wars of the '80s and '90s, an argument about tradition versus innovation, a tempest in a teacup that played out in all the major jazz magazines, in many mainstream publications, in bars and clubs everywhere – and in the end did very little good to anybody. (The day Keith Jarrett angrily invited Wynton Marsalis to a "blues duel" in the New York Times was a notable low point.) The 2001 Ken Burns documentary Jazz, which featured Marsalis and Crouch as both off-screen advisors and on-screen commentators, was the climactic battleground. People who love post-1959 styles connected to funk, fusion and the avant-garde are still very upset about Ken Burns' Jazz. 

Still. When he started assembling the repertory institution Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987, Wynton Marsalis was advocating for the primacy of the Black aesthetic at a time when the white, Stan Kenton-to-Gary Burton lineage dominated major organizations like the Berklee College of Music and the International Association of Jazz Educators. The music of Kenton and Burton has tremendous value, but their vast institutional sway and undue influence in jazz education is part of this discussion. We needed less North Texas State (Kenton's first pedagogical initiative) and more Duke Ellington in the mix, and Marsalis almost single-handedly corrected our course – although Marsalis himself would give Crouch a lot of the credit. Indeed, Crouch's long-running internal mandate to get Ellington seen as "Artist of the Century" had finally paid off on a macro level, and the free high school program "Essentially Ellington" is one of JALC's most noble achievements.

Crouch and Marsalis also strove to bury the once-prevalent idea that Louis Armstrong was an Uncle Tom, and encouraged the Black working class to reclaim the jazz greats as crucial to their heritage. (Those ready to hate on Ken Burns's Jazz should keep that perspective in mind.)

There was some bad, a lot of good, and plenty to argue about. What can be said for sure: JALC never quite pulled off Crouch's proposed coup. All these years later, JALC remains merely a part of what makes jazz interesting today. Younger practitioners and listeners comfortably see the music as a continuum that can contain anything from the avant-garde harp musings of Alice Coltrane to the electric fusion of John McLaughlin to hip-hop stylings of Robert Glasper. Crouch's definition of jazz does not dominate the conversation the way he intended, perhaps paradoxically proving the original point that jazz musicians and critics don't really have much to do with each other.

Chris Rock: The Effects Of The Pandemic Were Totally Up To Pelosi And The Democrats

NYTimes | You performed at one of Chappelle’s live shows in July. What was that like for you?

When you’re in the clubs, you learn the rain crowd is the best crowd. Any time it’s raining, they really want to be there. The pandemic crowd is really good. “Dude, not only do we want to be here, there is nothing else to do. There’s nothing else to watch. Thank you.”

 What did you talk about?

I talked about our political whatever. America. Part of the reason we’re in the predicament we’re in is, the president’s a landlord. No one has less compassion for humans than a landlord. [Laughs.] And we’re shocked he’s not engaged.

Did you ever see that movie “The Last Emperor,” where like a 5-year-old is the emperor of China? There’s a kid and he’s the king. So I’m like, it’s all the Democrats’ fault. Because you knew that the emperor was 5 years old. And when the emperor’s 5 years old, they only lead in theory. There’s usually an adult who’s like, “OK, this is what we’re really going to do.” And it was totally up to Pelosi and the Democrats. Their thing was, “We’re going to get him impeached,” which was never going to happen. You let the pandemic come in. Yes, we can blame Trump, but he’s really the 5-year-old.

Put it this way: Republicans tell outright lies. Democrats leave out key pieces of the truth that would lead to a more nuanced argument. In a sense, it’s all fake news.

Nick Cannon, You Know You Done F'd Up, Right? Dwayne Put On A Dress Just For Saying Your Name!!!

variety |  “ViacomCBS condemns bigotry of any kind and we categorically denounce all forms of anti-Semitism. We have spoken with Nick Cannon about an episode of his podcast ‘Cannon’s Class’ on YouTube, which promoted hateful speech and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. While we support ongoing education and dialogue in the fight against bigotry, we are deeply troubled that Nick has failed to acknowledge or apologize for perpetuating anti-Semitism, and we are terminating our relationship with him. We are committed to doing better in our response to incidents of anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry. ViacomCBS will have further announcements on our efforts to combat hate of all kinds,” the company said.

On Monday, Cannon said on Twitter and Facebook that he has “no hate in my heart nor malice intentions” and doesn’t condone hate speech. He also said that he holds himself “accountable for this moment” and takes full responsibility for his actions.

Late on Tuesday and well into the early hours of Wednesday, the host began retweeting scores of messages of support from fans, some of whom condemned ViacomCBS for severing ties with Cannon and expressed concern for the future of long-running MTV sketch comedy series “Wild ‘N Out,” which Cannon has hosted since its 2005 debut and recent expansion to sister network VH1. Cannon also retweeted a number of his critics who called him the N-word. 

I want to clarify my now deleted tweet. I was not supporting or condoning what Nick Cannon specifically said, but I had expressed my support of him owning the content and brand he helped create 🙏🏾

— DWade (@DwyaneWade) July 15, 2020

He later issued a lengthy statement on Facebook, demanding an apology from ViacomCBS as well as full ownership of “Wild ‘N Out.”

The host has had a relationship with Viacom since he was an actor on Nickelodeon in the ’90s, and into the 2000s with “Wild ‘N Out.” More recently, he’s been known as the host of “The Masked Singer” on Fox and hosted “America’s Got Talent” on NBC from 2009-2016. He’s also launching a syndicated daytime talk show in September with Debmar-Mercury.

The Hon. Bro. Minister Can't Truss It

The Honorable Minister Farrakhan is spitting truth to power
✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/Fu96ESSfAO

— Tariq Nasheed 🇺🇸 (@tariqnasheed) July 4, 2020

 

jonathanturley |  It is bad enough when you become a political rally cry for the right as a man trying to destroy our economy or instill fear into the nation.  Now, Dr. Anthony Fauci is being called a mass murderer who, with the cabal of Bill and Melinda Gates, are seeking to “depopulate the Earth.” That is hardly the most deranged thing that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, 87, has uttered, but it may be the most dangerous. Farrakhan is encouraging people to refuse vaccinations, a problem that is already causing world health leaders concerns in Africa.  This is viewed as the new “epicenter” for the pandemic with Africans facing a threat with the need to protect hundreds of millions of Africans. 

Health officials will need their cooperation but they have now heard from Farrakhan who has declared that, if they want to live, “Do not take their medication.”

In this Fourth of July remarks, Farrakhan declared that

“They’re making money now, plotting to give seven billion, five-hundred million people a vaccination. Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates and Melinda — you want to depopulate the Earth. What the hell gave you that right? Who are you to sit down with your billion to talk about who can live, and who should die?

… I say to my brothers and sisters in Africa, if they come up with a vaccine, be careful. Don’t let them vaccinate you with their history of treachery through vaccines, through medication.” 

He added “That’s why your world is coming to an end quickly, because you have sentenced billions to death, but God is now sentencing you to the death that you are sentencing to others.”

What Blaxploitation Could Have Been....,

And I Was Complaining About Helplessly Watching 8:46...,

Where Do Local PoPo Get The Nerve To Unconstitutionally Surveil Black Folks?!?!?

niemanlab |  On Aug. 20, 2018, the first day of a federal police surveillance trial, I discovered that the Memphis Police Department was spying on me.

The ACLU of Tennessee had sued the MPD, alleging that the department was in violation of a 1978 consent decree barring surveillance of residents for political purposes.

I’m pretty sure I wore my pink gingham jacket — it’s my summer go-to when I want to look professional. I know I sat on the right side of the courtroom, not far from a former colleague at The Commercial Appeal. I’d long suspected that I was on law enforcement’s radar, simply because my work tends to center on the most marginalized communities, not institutions with the most power.

One of the first witnesses called to the stand: Sgt. Timothy Reynolds, who is white. To get intel on activists and organizers, including those in the Black Lives Matter movement, he’d posed on Facebook as a “man of color,” befriending people and trying to infiltrate closed circles.

Projected onto a giant screen in the courtroom was a screenshot of people Reynolds followed on Facebook.

My head was bent as I wrote in my reporter’s notebook. “What does this entry indicate?” ACLU attorney Amanda Strickland Floyd asked.

“I was following Wendi Thomas,” Reynolds replied. “Wendi C. Thomas.”

I sat up.

“And who is Wendi Thomas?” Floyd asked.

She, he replied, used to write for The Commercial Appeal. In 2014, I left the paper after being a columnist for 11 years.

It’s been more than a year since a judge ruled against the city, and I’ve never gotten a clear answer on why the MPD was monitoring me. Law enforcement also was keeping tabs on three other journalists whose names came out during the trial. Reynolds testified he used the fake account to monitor protest activity and follow current events connected to Black Lives Matter.

My sin, as best I can figure, was having good sources who were local organizers and activists, including some of the original plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit against the city.

In the days since cellphone video captured white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin squeezing the life out of George Floyd, a black man, residents in dozens of cities across the country have exercised their First Amendment rights to protest police brutality.

Here in Memphis, where two-thirds of the population is black and 1 in 4 lives below the poverty line, demonstrators have chanted, “No justice, no peace, no racist police!”

The most recent protests were sparked by the killings of Floyd and of Breonna Taylor, a black woman gunned down in her home by Louisville, Kentucky, police in March. But in Memphis, like elsewhere, the seeds of distrust between activists and police were planted decades ago. And law enforcement has nurtured these seeds ever since.

Derek Chauvin's Murderous Lil'Dick Energy Bad For Bidnis, Bad For Uhmurukuh!!!

I told you a little of this over a week ago. But further confirmation is coming to light.

TMU |   When asked if Chauvin had a “problem with Black people,” Santamaria commented that she believes “he was afraid and intimidated.”

In the past, Santamaria has commented that Chauvin had a tendency to become unnecessarily aggressive during nights when the club had a primarily Black clientele, especially in terms of by dousing crowds with pepper spray and resorting to calling police as backup in a move she described as “overkill.”

In video footage from May 25 that has been seen tens of millions of times over the past two weeks, Chauvin can be seen choking Floyd with his knee during an arrest attempt that ultimately led to his death.

The white now-former officer held his knee down on the 46-year-old unarmed Black man’s neck for a total of 8 minutes and 46 seconds in total, and two minutes and 53 seconds after Floyd lost consciousness, according to a criminal complaint. Three officers also took part in the deadly events.

The three other former officers who have been charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin during the second-degree killing of Floyd are J Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao.

Mayor Quinton Just Needs A Good Man To Tell Him Which Way The Wind Blows Every Day...,

aier |  Coronavirus hasn’t been a thing since Friday,” said a friend. “The new story is racism.”

Following American media culture can make one’s head spin. 

For three months, all we heard was the danger to life and civilization presented by a novel virus. Millions will die! Few will be spared! There will be unprecedented suffering unless we completely shatter the normal functioning of life. Lock down, shelter in place, and stand six feet apart – very strange exhortations never before heard in the modern history of annual viruses or any public policy in many lifetimes. 

All of it enforced by the police power. The same police power that eventually landed on the neck of George Floyd.

They screamed that we had to close schools, shopping centers, sports, and only allow “essential” business to function even if tens of millions lose their jobs, because lives – lives that the police power has utterly disregarded during the protests – are just that important. Lockdown required that the law change on a dime, in violation of every legal precedent, every slogan in American civic mythology, and contradicting the whole of what made America great. 

In three days in mid-March 2020, everything we previously believed had to end because we had to implement a new experiment in social control as cobbled together by “public health officials” some 14 years ago. They sat around for a decade and a half, bored and waiting to use the new way to combat viruses. Any old virus would do so long as it was a slow news day. COVID-19 was as good an excuse as any. Out was every foundational belief in liberty, property, and free association, in the blink of an eye. 

That was 75 days ago. People were surprisingly compliant, but what could they do? They were scared, thanks to media frenzy, and they weren’t allowed out of their houses to protest in any case. When they did defy the orders to protest in front of capitol buildings, instead of staying home and watching CNN, they were derided by CNN as disease spreaders and enemies of public health. 

I’m looking at the headlines today and all the news on the coronavirus is below the fold or in its own section. It’s all about the protests, riots, and looters. Racism. Trump is screaming for a crackdown while the media demands justice for police brutality. As for social distancing, this was absolutely yesterday’s news. Now a new ethos has taken hold: gather in the largest possible groups to demand social justice. And loot.