Auto Bailout & Christmas Cheer: Billions for crooks, not one cent for workers

That's a big bad corporate lawyer named Drierer, arrested in Toronto yesterday. He's could be any one of my Princeton or law school acquaintenances. He's accomplished much. Made billions, eh? Erected a mini white shoe law firm. Such a posterboy for Big Law,Big Capitalism...oh and did I say he was arrested? But union autoworkers, now they are the true villians. Read on...

...as I'm off to a string of Christmas parties...er...sorry HOLIDAY parties (as corporate America/marketing clowns have ordained) from K Street to NJ for the weekend, so I'll be scarce on the blog. Check me out as a regular contributor in http://www.blackpower.com/. I was wondering what "Joe the Plumber" would say about his beloved GOPs torpedoing of the auto bailout in order to screw the working man? The LA Times (in a last gasp of pre-Zell journalism) reported so. He's now already on record saying to fellow douche Glenn Beck that he felt disgusted after “being on the campaign trail and seeing some of the things that take place.”
So the Republicans love folk like my boy Drierer and Bernie Madoff . Scions of laissez-faire . Ummm...the GOP became socialists and have dispensed over $300 B from the TARP, no questions asked, to folk just a cut or two above Drierer and Bernie. Yet they go back to wingnut-sim and try to dismantle the UAW? Newsflash...even the workers hate the UAW. Umm...they hate it b/c they thought they were in bed with company executives. What's Joe the Plumber's take? Likely still anti-Obama? If so, I guess gaybashing, guns and the flag really ARE are more important than self-preservation and common sense. Imagine that. Perhaps the GOP is onto something. Or, Barack's about to pick up this one last stubborn demo?
New track. In a bizarre twist, it seems Fox personnel are acting more responsible on this Blagojevich thing regarding the President-elect, even Val, Rahm et al than the supposedly pro-Obama MSNBC and CNN. Thoughts?

Enjoy your weekends and Merry CHRISTMAS.

Whence, Journalism? In...New York Magazine?

No, not The New Yorker. The prize for keeping non-brain candy journalism--and the writer's craft--alive goes to New York magazine. Of course it's the rag that gave Tom Wolfe his start, so I guess I shouldn't be shocked. Of course no ghettofab clowns or texting teenagers or NASCAR Dads or Wal Mart Moms have a clue about either, and that's part of the problem.

So bravo on the article among many in this issues fingering the one thing whitefolks--dumb or smart, liberal or conservative, hillbilly or Yalie don't want to acknowledge...that Barack isn't even farther ahead in the polls because he's spook. Ink spot. Spade. Jiggaboo. Colored guy. Period. Forget the "uppity" thing, forget the not ghetto enough stuff or mixed race stuff, forget the cute nonsense of texting VEEP choice to appeal to Gen X yuppies stuff. He's black. This is America. He's not a clay homunculus of some right wing white mad scientist. He's just black. Can you holla COGNITIVE DISSONANCE?! Oh and there's the piece on why the Beijing Olympics are the pinnacle of dumbed-down, insidious "reality TV,"--including the cloyingly terrible lack of piggybacked political or between the lines economic insights. Then there's my favorite quote from Al Roker: "I'm not a journalist, I'm a weatherman." And then he goes on to sorta/kinda paint Matt Lauer, tongue in cheek, as something less than Edward R. Murrow. Finally, there's a missive about the layoffs at Time, Inc. News bureaus, decimated. Yet subsidiary People spends $14 millions on the Brangelina Twins photos? The RIF'd real journalists, photographers, editors from flagship publication on down to specialty magazines like Fortune Small Business--you know, the folks who try so hard to keep us from all descending into Idiocracy--were not amused. If you want to be even more cynical, perhaps that cash could have helped with the severance. Recall what I said about ghettofab clowns, texting teens, NASCAR Dads and Wal Mart Moms? is their diet for crap the

Finally--and this is a severe digression having nothing to do with New York but tangential to journalism (hence it involves FOX News and Glenn Beck hahaha), I was amused by the painful ambivalence shown by these wingnuts regarding coverage of this insane Russian smack down of pro-western Georgia, and American Airlines charging returning troops hundreds of dollars in these bogus baggage fees (the latter story as metaphor for 1. the sick airline industry, 2. the failure of pro-biz almost criminal laissez-faire regulatory posture of Bush-Cheneyism and 3. big business in general). Schizophrenia isn't fun, is it Roger Ailes, Glenn? I mean not badmouthing our so-called ally Vlad Putin, and eight years of nausea-inducing Administration foreign policy versus aggression and a spit in the eye at the West even worse than anything Iran has done. Or soft-pedaling anything American big business does versus our sacred, iconic troops. Oh the sores. Oh the hypocrisy. Stuff even the ghettofab clowns, texting teens, Wal Mart Moms and NASCAR dads could discern. But you shucked and jived enough to keep us confused. Thank God you aren't New York magazine. Brain candy journalism & idiot America, saved...

Friday Funnies: The Dark Knight

Just to show there's more to this film than friggin' suicidal Heath Ledger. (why didn't Brad Renfro--who was actually a better actor than Heath--get any death props at the Oscars. Drugs are drugs). Sorry for the hating. Besides Batman, Christian Bale as "American Psycho" is still my favorite of his roles. I remember him as child in "Empire of the Sun...."
Poor Aaron Eckhart. Just a throwaway role in the film. You think this is what Fox News, Limbaugh and Glenn Beck wish for Obama? hehehehe

The First Black Superhero

I want to thank all the fanboys and girls for their many comments, calls, both supportive and rabid, on my three word quote in today Washington Post re: Obama and Rev. Wright. Huh? That's news? What Obama and Rev. Wright issue? hahahaha. Precisely. The Daily Show put the satirical icing on that cake--thank god for John Stewart. We've seen the distruction, the utter craven whoredom, of a once venerated US television news universe. As you watch Glen Beck or The Today Show, or George Forman as pundit yearning to "eat" Jeremiah Wright on Fox News, you can hear Edward R Murrow weeping if you put your ear to ground.
So I wonder if Barack, as our putative hero--as contemplative as Batman when he was running against The Penguin for mayor of Gotham City, could channel heroes of the past for strength? No not Douglass or King. Superheroes. Who was the most powerful, the most pervasive? Fanboys and geeks will argue, duel, slap each other, cajole. But I know who was and is mine. He came about in at a time when riot-scarred neighborhoods still smouldered. When any notion of diversity was still scoffed at--especially on TV. Yeah, he wasn't a comic book hero. Indeed, he was likely een by more Caucasian eyes than the powers-that-had-been would have liked. He didn't have a name like "Luke Cage," or "Black Lightening," or "Falcon," or "Storm" or "T'Chala."
No, his very name meant action. Literally. And he changed the world when I was a kid. We beheld someone who looked like us, who taught us, who made us proud! And thousands of white children who'd never had never imagined such a hero or a world saw him too...much to their parents' dismay or puzzlement...

Regard: