Ungawa, Bwana Shung Shi Wang! Bad Ju-Ju there!

Not that our hands are clean (and when I mean "our" I also include with U.S. government and corporate interests we African Amerians, our "revolutionary" intellectuals and artists...and that ol' Congressional Black Caucus...which will hopefully see some replacements like Kevin Powell soon), but hey, look't the Chinese backing up Robert Mugabe! I'm sure they're paying for his inuagural shin-dig where he turns all of Zimbabwe into a parade float. Let's see the scoreboard on the Chinese, shall we? Destroying the ecology of their own nation and polluting the world, floating Bush's phoney-baloney economic "policy" with cheap money, Darfur, human rights, Darfur, human rights, Wal Mart, happy plosts with greedy pseudo-patriotic outsourcing American CEOs, Darfur, buying off NBC and just about everyone else for the Olympics, draining natural resources There Will Be Blood style, and well...did I say human rights, Darfur yet? Now this. Magazines from Foreign Policy to The Economist have been chronicling this neo-colonial push in Africa, and if you think U.S. bankers, CEOs, hedge fund scumbags are willing puppets, imagine the garden variety African president-for-life or newly inaugurated guerilla movement leader now head of state? It's time we stop giving China a free ride. While we degrade ourselves in Iraq and in bellicose nonsense with mullahs eslewhere, they take over the world. You think the Mugabes out there don't see that?

Friday Funnies--Equal Puking for Whiteboys

Re: my NBA Draft post...just so you don't think I'm always down on my own people Juan Williams-style (wait till my review of Hard Times at Douglass High, and the article in The Atlantic on the correlation of violent crime's spikes in suburbs and smaller cities...with yes, clustering of Section 8 and Section 8-hybrid housing) here's a little railing against chez pilgrim for your Friday. No, not more FOX NEWS or rightwing blogger buffonery. No, not your boys Tony "Scales" Scalia, Alito, Roberts and Justice Handkerchief Head handing down this loosey-goosey DC handgun ban opinion basically saying any fool can own artillery. Unh-unh. It's G4. Yes, G4.
A new "reality" show, called "Hurl."
Contestants engage in competitive eating (clam chowder to sausages & such) and then are put through stomach-bubbling obstacles and mini-amusement park rides--hanging, spinning, twisting and kneading--to see who can hold onto to their vomit the longest. You heard me. All to that get that almighty white male 16-35 demographic.
Yes, the shakers and movers, the hedge fund managers and mortgage backed securities defrauders, the future Bushes and Cheneys. Oh, not just gamers and skateboard turds. Sadly, among them are the biggest chunk of young people who volunteer for the Army and still, after all the facts, think Osama bin Laden was sharing pork hot dogs and booze with Saddam Hussein. I see them every day in Silver Spring, months later...minus limbs or half a skull. But hey, as they convalesce it's a laugh-riot on G4 as summer brings "Hurl!"
The axiom for the late 2oth Century and early 21st should be: JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DO SOMETHING, DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD. Indeed, in "Office Space" creator Mike Judge's "Idiocracy," 500 years into a retarded future (smart people reduced to IVF, stupid people having babies galore) the number one box office smash is a movie called "Ass." A naked ass, occassionally farting every now and then. Two hours of it. Now, is that "Hurl?" Oh no--I'm making a mountain of a mole hill. Hurl is harmless fun. Hurl gets the target demo and makes the corporate sponsors happy. And I know you fanboys & girls don't want me biting the hand that feeds ole Nat, as I have to make the trek to San Diego for Comic Con 7/24 for a panel and some signings, and to enjoy the freak show and Hollywood invasion with the other ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine of you. Don't loudtalk G4.
But come on, whitepeople (to paraphrase Cosby)--this is what you come with...yet you refuse to engage existing technology or sock it to the fatcats who've been running your lives and getting uber rich so we can travel, breathe, work, live and love better, more efficiently, more respectfully? Naaaaaaaaaah! That's commie tree hugger talk. Ain't even nigger talk (right Ralph Nader?). So hurray for more whiteboy bread and circus. Well...these days, just circus. Bread costs too much. "Bread and circus"--that's how Rome kept its pleb mob happy...and then Rome fell. I know most of you dumbasses have no clue what that means. Just keep watching the former Maxim models on G4 --they'll elaborate on the new Hurl Xbox game soon. It'll be previewed after a new show called "Diarrhea on DD Tits." Get your Conceal and Carry license (oops...do you even need THAT anymore, Justice Scalia?) and join me at the screening!

Forty Million Dollar Slave Auction

Sorry for the absence. Mourning Jerry R.

Bill Rhoden coined the term in his book. Hurray for Derrick Rose and OJ Mayo. Hurray for the kids who jumped to the pros after centuries of black folks literally dying to get any education, college or otherwise. Hurray for the 19 year olds who think they are stellar and man enough to play in the NBA. Hurray for the massas, Jew and Gentile alike, who with greta moral strength said no, we can't have these nigger boys jump straight from high school. And huzzah for them for no taking the NFL or Major League Baseball as guides. Don't listen to sports writers like Vito Forlenza. Hurray for cars, bling and bitches, and new houses for mama & Uncle Pete. Photos shoots with white girl models & sex tapes with white sluts.

Huzzahs for the folk who say, but these young bucks are realizing their dreams, providing for families (and posses, boyz, baby mamas, vampiric white agents...oops sorry for the elitist bourgie cynism)...what choice do they have? Won't they be rich? As compared to whom...the white men who own teams, arenas, cableTV concessions? Who get their JDs, MBAs, CPA ratings, broker/dealer licenses, etc. who preserve the wealth? Oh no. Hoop dreams. A slave coffle in Everett Hall suits and Stacey Adams gators... with dangled shoe contracts from when they 16 years old. Ah yes, like Kunta Kinte in Annapolis...

RIP Jerry (and George Carlin)

Jerry Rodriguez...award-winning indie filmmaker, Brookyn in his blood, Puerto Rico in his soul. Fellow author. Pal. click here to see how tall this dude stood. His novels are instant classics; we'll dedicate the Darker Mask to him if the publisher can slip something in...

George Carlin. Lord what else can be said about him? I don't like the word "icon." Neither did he. But hell. Look, unlike most Americans he was insightful enough (a premium these days), to hold George Bush, Fox News , etc. in equal contempt with most liberals. Here was a man who could make something as banal as local TV news-sports-weather funnier than anything new comics can muster. He spanned eras. Oh yeah, here's one for you, George--FUCK the FCC!!! RIP, da bof' a youze. We'll keep fighting the good fight.

RAFBN-Week 6

OK, I'm breaking a rule here. I vowed NOT to showcase an "annointed" book by an "annointed" author (he's one of Oprah's)...items where the PR machine's already chugging away. But Andre Dubus is cool. House of Sand and Fog was great. The film was great (prurient crush on Jennifer Connelly notwithstanding, though I met her at a party at the UN last year and let's just say I'll stick with my fantasies and visions of her in earlier movies like The Hot Spot or Mulholland Falls). The Garden of the Last Days (W.W. Norton 2008 ) dropped on Monday. Buy it here. Already they (the literatti pr types) are saying this is the first great 9-11 novel. And of course the dumbasses out there are giving us the hook line: "Is America ready for a 9-11 that shows a "postive" side of terrorists? Well, this isn't truly about 9-11. Nor are we seeing any "positive" side of friggin' terrorists. Andre seeded this by trying to write a short story imagining a life--and appointment with destiny (I always loved that phrase) based on the stripper who danced for a cadre of 9-11 hijackers in Daytona Beach this place called the Pink Pony. If you recall, Florida was the spot where these dickheads paid cash to rednecks to learn how to fly, and from where one cell migrated north to seize American Airlines flight 11. Everything crazy happens either in Florida or Germany. Anyway, the manuscript grew and grew to something his editor whittled down to 535 bookprint pages.

I'm about halfway through it. I love it. Now, here's the rub. This book is just a new flavor in a now amorphous genre which, like an amoeba, seems to send it's gelatinous pseudopods out to capture all kinds of strange themes, pairings of real and imagined people, etc. I'm doing it too in upcoming works. You take a situation in history and some real people and inject it into a fiction plot. You expand on secondary or even tertiary characters in great films, classic literature, etc. You re-interpret villians from those same works, or the protagonists themselves. Does this mean the book biz is out of ideas, and so are authors? Now we just mine...scavenge...old stuff? Well, fresh ideas are there, but, like the music biz, no one wants to be bothered with them. Not enough $$$ in it, and it would involve raising the bridge for the American public, rather than the usual lowering of the river. But folk like Dubus have the balls and the talent to make this type of story work...and yeah, to make murders "human," (and human here don't mean positive, fanboys and girls), to weave in it a conflicted, flawed fictional character and that sense of phony and seedy that is south Florida (I guess the non-comic analog to Hiassen). Here is crappy corner of the world, populated by crappy people, on September 10th...

Like Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) said about John Lennon in The Departed: " He said 'I'm an artist. Give me a fuckin' tuba and I'll get something out of it for ya.'"

Dubus is an artist. This novel is art for our young, insipid century. The Garden of Last Days. Read it and learn.

Friday Funnies

Sorry for the late tip. I'm still chuckling over these. No Youtube clip this time. Listen here:
The usual wingnut Republicans in Congress and in bloggerrhea came out big time against a bill guaranteeing 4 weeks paid pregnancy leave for women and spouses. They said it was BIG GOVERNMENT and "government knows best." OK.
But then they laud the legislation immunizing the telecom companies from privacy suits when that same government wants to spy on your calls and emails. OK.
Barack wants to put this country back on track with massive fiscal policy moves--Keynesian stuff even Richard Nixon would have agreed with. Screw this monkeying around at the Fed. Repairing our f'd up infrastructures--taxing the very m-fs would have taken so much and tried to dupe the NASCAR dads into saying it's all for welfare mothers...Katrina cheats...TAX AND SPEND. OK.
Yet what they do: BORROW AND SPEND? Take cheap money from the Chinese, cheap goods from them, to run our economy? Mortgage our children's heritage to foreigners?
Oh, and they want to drill offshore when the oil companies have been sitting on thousands of permits already, and of course just cut sweetheart deals with the mob that runs what they call Iraq these says (and of course this war has not even come remotely close to Dubya's promise that it would pay for itself). This "market" is an artifice. Plainly. Yet oh no, don't let BIG GOVERNMENT get involved, don't let it police the domestic speculators! But hey, let us drill, and that will lower prices and solve our problems--always and forever. OK.
And the beat goes on. Kinda old school. Old. Like when Southerners before the civil war talked about how Northern States had to yield to BIG GOVERNMENT and not protect runaway slaves. Yet after the war...oh, it's states rights. Leave us be.
Wanna here more? I'll crack you up. Got a few about the pharmaceutical industry, privatizing Social Security (and maybe having Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch run it, right?) etc...

If you're a regular, normal American, you'll get the punchlines.

Local DC stuff--Juneteenth Part I

Youth Leadership Support Network prevents youth violence in DC through the arts, education, and intergenerational mentorships. To support their, please support their play tomorrow (Friday night June 20) at the JCC (Jewish Community Center) at 16th and Q near Dupont Circle... Stogie Kenyatta's one man show "The Life and Times of Paul Robeson." Also included: a performance by the Young Women's Drumming Empowerment Project. Tickets are $20 at the door. A good way to put one's money where one's mouth often is...

Hump Day Humping...

CELTICS. Okay, I knew their owner Wyc Grousbeck well in college (and briefly in law school). He was one of the biggest scrotumheads in the world, but I'm happy for him today...and Allen, Garnett & Co. Yes, still think Stern is as big a gangster as Bud Selig and as much a manipulative corporate robot as the tools who control the NFL...and the NBA is subject to the ratings fix more often than not...but in these bloated playoffs comes a message which I hope is not lost on kids out there hoping to emulate the Kobes, LeBrons, Iversons etc. And not just in basketball, but in all endeavors. The one-man show, megastar, plump with corporate endorsements, unfettered by matters of image and discrimination which we regular folk face, all about the dollar bills, all about the trappings and such...was yoked, embarrassed by defense, by a team. Metaphor & allegory thusly submitted...
ERIC HOLDER. This election is forcing whitefolks to stand and deliver. Come up with all kinds of excuses, from Michelle Obama's term papers 20 years ago and cookie recipes to Barack's name to what--Eric Holder? Eric Holder's a tool--this I know, folks! But if being a tool is the threshold for evil than everyone in or associated with the Bush Administration other than Christy Whitman (who was forced out at EPA for having too much sense) should be exiled to Antarctica.
I think Barack's people need to accept, if they haven't already, that their "movement" view of American politics is a bullshit as the GOP's more mythologic-based creed. ALL politics is tribal. Ironic to use that word which white morons have used on us. Rent/re-watch Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" (with Daniel Day-Lewis's best performance in my mind, and Leo DiCaprio). That vision of New York, 1846-1863 is America. Come on, whitefolks...you had it in ya all along. Rent/re-watch another favorite flick of mine-- "Gladiator" with Russell Crowe. Check out the first five minutes, including this charming scene taken directly from the final script draft:
MAXIMUS: They say no. [tracking: a white and bloodied horse rides within the ranks of the Roman soldiers. A barbarian comes to the forefront of the German lines, waving the horseman's head, tossing it into the mud....]
BARBARIAN: Ihr seid verfluchte hunde! (You are damned dogs!)[As the barbarian calls out his cry, his mangy band of barbarians emerge from the forest, shaking and waving their spears and shields, ready to fight.]
NASCAR dads, perhaps? Hahahaha. Could be--clamouring for off shore drilling which they know in a portion of their skulls is silly and will only enrich the rich, and won't do shit about gas prices, but hey, programmed nonetheless to clamour for clamouring's sake, because some sinister tribe must be threatening the order and counter-clamouring. So stop whining about things being unfair to Holder and get your own Maximus...
THE INCREDIBLE HULK FLICK. I'm not Al Sharpton. Clearly. But damn--has anyone asked why they saw the need to usher The Hulk and Abomination uptown to destroy all of Harlem from Malcolm X Blvd to Old Broadway? Baltimore scion Ed Norton is a Harlem afficianado like all pseudo-hip white boys, but lawd have mercy!
Look, gentrification is one thing, but this is Donald Trump-ery. How many condos can Big Green One make way for? And did they really need to pound the Apollo Theatre to bricks and pebbles? Hey, even "Cloverfield" didn't cross 110th. If he had, and turned right--you'd have found pieces of him in a couple of tons of beans and rice, or wrapped in a few million empanadas. hehehehe

RAFBN-Week Five

This, of course, is my follow up to a 6/13/08 post on the inspid new kiddie flick Journey to the Center of the Earth. My RAFBN choice for this week: the novel by Jules Verne. Most dumbasses in our text messaging/Sportscenter/Dancing with the Stars culture MAY have heard of him. Then there are some who say "Oh yeah--science fiction...20,000 Leagues Under the Sea...Captain Nemo...From the Earth to the Moon....Around the World in 80 Days...whatever." To say they don't make them like they used to is the friggin' understatement of the millennia. I know there're a bunch of you still worshipping Tim Russert as an exemplar of our era. He is--but not for the right reasons. Especially when you compare him to this cat with the interior designer-sounding name. Jules Verne. He wrote over 200 novels, essays, newspaper articles, travelogues; indeed only half related to "science fiction or futurism." He was a journalist, public intellectual. Unappreciated as a fiction author while he was alive, he's still often place behind dudes like Dickens and Twain as titans of the 19th century literatti. But of course here's the rub: Jules Verne lived over 120 years ago and just about everything he wrote about in fanciful stories came true--often in detail: from race relations/civil rights to atomic submarines to concrete superhighways to globalization to radical environmentalism to space travel. It's about time to rediscover this man and his body of work. Read and learn: Journey to the Center of the Earth and everything else this man wrote...

Why R. Kelly is better for white America than Obama

I'd posited the comment 'round the net and among friends, colleagues (borrowing from Chris Rock) that whilst black people are scratching their heads--even outraged--by the R Kelly verdict, niggahs are jumping for joy. White folks are, too. Quietly.

Poor, poor black people in Chicago. Your boy's running for president and subject to a coordinated denigration campaign, and Fr. Tim Phleger's removed from the largest, oldest and most loyal black Catholic church in the city, St. Sabina (after Poles, Irish Italians et al abandoned many parishes). Yes, Tim's white, and he spoke truth on whites and power. Not good to do even though this is the 21st Century. Niggahs certainly don't care about that, and white folks are feelng that goodness and righteousness was vindicated. (n.b. I met Fr. Tim through my ex-mother in law and he's a wonderful priest who, unlike the cardinal, cares about his flock). YET Mr. Kelly gets major counts against him dismissed based on uncooperative witnesses and shoddy investigatory protocols and clowning in Cook Co DA's office...now's acquitted of the lesser charges.

But think on this. People like Barack...and white people like Phleger...upset the applecart. I don't need to go into any more detail than that; those you who don't have your heads up your coo-looes know what I mean. The natural order. R Kelly, well, he makes $$$ for Mr. Charlie. He keeps niggahs entertained and dancing. And best of all he's a convenient prop-bogeyman who doesn't need to be paraded around. You just know he's there, hidin' in da closet. Being nasty, carnal, crazy looking. And aren't they all like that Missy Anne says to Mr. Charlie? Especially the ones with money. Fame. Jay-Z? oh let our kids listen to him. And yo, son...we younger whitefolks talk like niggahs, dress so, act "black." Yeah thats my swag...and I'll have our black friends who make me seem cool--and I know they can't compete with me at work, school, so no harm. Now if Obama was more like Jay-Z, he'd be cool. As long as he wasn't trying to be my boss, or my president. Ironic, isn't it? Rappers, hip hop moguls, ballers, singers, comedians--hell even criminals--as harmless?! Hey even Jay Z is a small planetoid in the entertainment-telecom ownership universe. Just feeding stereotypes, keeping the world in balance. Keeping the applecart just the way it is. A gift that keeps on giving. Please--give him a guest pundit spot on Fox...

Friday Funnies...English teachers shed a tear

Nothing like dumbing-down and butchering a classic novel...indeed a classic Jules Verne film...to make a buck off suburban dumbasses this summer. Your "stimulus" checks at work. Of course, this will prompt the choice for my RAFBN week 5...

I'm jus' sayin'...

OK. Let me get this straight. The US Supreme Court gives George Bush the White House. That is not opinion, that is a fact. Eight years later, the Guantanamo case doesn't go his way, and he tells them--a more conservative bunch even than in 2000--to go to hell. Isn't that bad form...a tad unsporting...churlish? Or in other words--shows he and his rightwing cadre to be the assholes we've always known them to be?
It gets better. This clown who's head of the quasi fascist Washington Legal Foundation issued a statement condemning the decision and proclaiming that the "blood of innocent Americans" will somehow stain it. Hmm. Due process, which set us apart from our enemies=bad. OK, apart from that don't you just hate it when these shrieking fools start to sound just like the opposite side of the coin from the Jihadists and "demon Arabs" they claim our out to destroy our way of life and take our women? Whenever I hear "The blood of..." it's a dead giveway. I'm jus'sayin'.
Oh, by the way, the NBA Championship is fixed. They need the ratings...

RAFBN-Week 4

I know a rabid Obama fan who nonetheless comments that Barack's story is more a "downtrodden immigrant makes good" saga rather than the pyramid-crown of the African American experience (from slavery, through Jim Crow and oppression, etc.) Smarter folk and writers than I have opined that this makes something so outworldly as his candidacy palatable for Joe and Josephine Whiteperson. Perhaps Andrea Levy offers some commonality, if not co-sanguintity, in my RAFBN summer series choice for you, Small Island (published in the US by Picador). The solution involves pain, as does any growth, and we all know white folks are pain adverse when it comes to our Original Sin. But let's try it. First person narrative is eminates from the lips of three main characters; the story paces you through Jamaican immigration to England during and after World War Two. Meaningful for me, given my own heritage, and will resonated for any other person having some blood orginating in de islands, dem. Levy even gives us a sneak peak at well, herself, in the person of an unborn mixed race baby in the womb of one her principal narrators, a white boarding house landlady named Queenie. The human heart really isn't much different or weaker or stronger, whether beating in the lush yet improverished hills of Jamaica or the grim brick tenements of London, barely repaired years after the German Blitz of 1940-41 or the V-2 rocket attacks of 1944. Indeed, Levy's thesis is packed into the the title. Small island. Which one? Both, actually. This is a 2004 Whitbread Award winner and a bestseller in England, Canada and the Caribbean. Would love to see more books by American women of color...sorry "colour" ...like this one showcased, but alas...um...er...you know the story, you snobs, you elitists!!!

Read and learn. Small Island, by Andrea Levy.

Consolation for Hillary fans

If it will help whip things up, put some beat-McCain fire in your feminist uteri, and spur you to reconciliation and of course, bloodlust against that Geezer (for you Brits that means "old fart," not "dude" or guy) I offer this pep talk from Crazy Mel's "Braveheart," end of the flick. Just use your imagination here. Robert the Bruce= Barack; the scowling, forlorn Scots=thousands of scowling, fornlorn bulldykes, Congressional Black Caucus turncoats & Juan Williams; the arrogant nasty English army= not really McCain as much as the thousands of Fox News scumbags and bloggers Dubya disciples, about to get hacked up.for Hopefully, Barack will motivate the Hillaryites accordingly. Enjoy, and no, Bubba ain't in this clip...

Friday Funnies-Bill Clinton: it's summer but he's in winter...

My Princeton classmate Todd Purdum, whom we're lining up to help grace our happy crew at the nascent Hoya Journalism Department with some wisdom in return for grossly underfunded honoraria, stirs the pot again vis. his wifey's ex-boss. Yep Todd's married to former Bubba White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers. Digression/explanation/boasting here, fanboys & girls: Todd is part of my class's Legion of Super Heroes/Mt Olympus/'36 Yankees/'70 Orioles line up of journalistic cool m-fs: Barton Gellman, Joel Achenbach, Liza Mundy, Lisa Belkin Gelb, Michael (Money Ball) Lewis, and let us not forget Martha McCully, HGTV celeb and former Editor-in Chief of every woman's favorite waiting room at the OB-GYN's office magazine, InStyle.

Getting back to it, in his new gig as Vanity Fair gadfly and general pundit (note I did not say public intellectual), Todd has been de-constructing the deconstruction (demolition?) of the Clinton dual monarchy. Here's one piece: click. You decide. What's the 411 on Bill's albatross-like drag on his equally bizarre-acting wife? Goes back, as always, to that Twilight Zone above his neck, not what's in his pants. Explains everything: the mental toll of the bypass surgery, to his Lucifer the Morning Star-like tumble from Soul Brother Numero Uno to the level of Hell just above Karl Rove's. The E! and Fox newsie element is Todd's whispering over Bill's supposed penchant for Gina Gershon. Gina is of course the vampire-mouthed actress who made stylized lezbo scenes a mainstream, hetero male fantasy in Bound and Show Girls (as opposed to reality: think the LPGA Tour and WNBA). Of course Gina's lawyers are sending letters and Bill has blown yet another gasket, though keeping on the pointless message that somehow Hillary was subject to a vast anti-woman conspiracy. Um...it's called "malice," and "damages" Gina, Bill. If you are a public figure, you have to show reckless disregard for the truth, and damages. Which is why seldom do libel suits go forward. The damages part always tickle me when a jury says yeah, you've been libeled, defamed, but based on your rep we award you $1 plus a few grand in attorneys fees. Ha! I have no doubt what Todd plumbed and Vanity Fair printed is true...somewhat true. Sorry.

Here's something else instructive from the piece...and well, almost banal: "Yes, Obama is a daring opponent who thinks he is hot shit and has benefited from the same enthusiasm, energy, and fresh-faced appeal that a fella named Bill Clinton once elicited (but he has suffered from some of the same skepticism, too). It is Clinton’s invariable insistence that his problems are someone else’s fault, and that questions or criticisms of him, his methods, motives, or means are invariably unfair, that is his unforgivable flaw."

My take: the underlying reasons mined by Todd for Bubba's meltdowns, continued geriatric HBO's Entourage-like behavior and paranoia might be groundbreaking to some NYC/DC/LA literatti and journalism snobs. To me? Meh... I see it all the time. It's the "old playa at the club." Not something so regal as the Lion in Winter. Nope, merely old playa who cannot play on. A tragedy only R Kelly or Eurpides and Aeshylus could love. Todd's just putting the usual uber-serious whiteboy over-gloss on it. I'd like to chronicle the Winter of about 75% of the Congressional Black Caucus myself...Vote Kevin Powell!

Something's in the air...

I posted this on a number of different blogs...

"Amid all the rancor and pseudo-issues...are we forgetting that history is being made now? I know that sounds trite...and I also know that white folks in various newsrooms or in Peoria don't want to publicly acknowledge it (nor do folk who depend on Podunk or the burbs ofr ratings, etc.) but this is one for the history books. Clyburn doesn't need to talk about the Civil Rights movement. That's all bullshit and ephemeral when compared to the centuries coming before it, and dream planted with the tears of a couple of folk off-loaded by the Portuguese on a frosty morning, at Jamestown Va. Yeah, there were hundreds, thousands dumped by then in the Caribbean, in Brazil. But these few were the first. if you want to know why I support Obama despite my differences on policy, apporach, tenor, you need not go any deeper than those tears in the dirt..."

RAFBN-Week 3

An original. Nuff said. The beginnings of American fiction, from literature to genre fiction. Crime stories...war...history...interracial sex. Yep. You heard me. Interracial sex. Look, don't let the movies, from 1939 to Daniel Day-Lewis take your mind away from the seminal nature of this novel by James Fennimore Cooper. It was the first American adventure story. Magua, the Huron war captain, was the model for all American serial killers, murderous criminals, etc. And yes, a cheezy love story set against the backdrop of the cruel French & Indian War. Gone With The Wind was bullsh*t compared to this.
It was also the beginnings of American sensationalism and market to sell books. The first entertainment stereotypical inklings of the bad Indian as savage...and "good" Indian as stoic and kind, bursts forth in the plot and in Cooper's publisher's advertisements. Cooper was literally the first American author to go on book tour.
By the way, the last of the Mohicans was Uncas. "Hawkeye" was Natty Bumpo, the white dude. Too often in the movies his character's the star, he gets the girl. Nope, it was Uncas. Please, read this classic. In it you will see the beginnings of everything from Hemingway to Zane. No lie...