Sunday Repose: Colin Channer on Jamaicans & the Olympics

Aw bun an' cheese, bwhoy...de Americans dem did fock about wid de track an' fee-ld. Me one nah care 'bout nah Michael Phelps...
Preach it in de Wall Street Journal...

Redeem Team musings...

Now that the reality TV-ratings portion of the Olympics (e.g., swimming and gymnastics selling out to NBC to create the Phelps mythos and the usual teen pixie soap opera) is over, I suppose the next marketing focus will have to fall upon the Redeem Team (how much money did a PR firm get to come up with that? I'll tell once my source uncovers the billables...no this wasn't something homey or a media convocation...PR firms regularly now feed reporters this stuff as a part of image-making)
Dodd White hipped me to this column from by LZ Granderson on ESPN.com's "Page 2." Now, I know the cosmetic annointance of D-Wade as team leader and metaphor for self-less courage in in full effect, but please, read between the lines of this piece, which I reprint in it's entirety:

A few years ago I was working on a profile of a high-salaried NBA player who happened to be black, and who hailed from a poor, inner-city neighborhood. The guy had been in the league during the time when $100 million contracts were common.
I remember thinking that with that much money, the entire planet literally was his playground.
So when he told me that Atlanta was his all-time favorite vacation spot, I was more than a little disappointed.
That's like calling Olive Garden fine Italian dining.
But at the same time, I understood where he was coming from. When I was in college, studying abroad wasn't even something I thought was available to me. It just sounded expensive, unnecessary and, to be quite honest, something only white people had the luxury of doing. I didn't know any better. Growing up poor and unexposed in Detroit, my ideal vacation spot was Sandusky, Ohio -- home of the Cedar Point amusement park.
Talking with that player reminded me that having money as an adult doesn't automatically free your mind of the limited world view you develop as a child.
I was reminded of that conversation this week when I watched a profile of the USA men's basketball team taking a tour of the Great Wall of China.
Tayshaun Prince called it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. My first thought: Why? People visit the Great Wall all the time. Prince is rich. He could probably go every summer for the rest of his life if he wanted. But Tay is from Compton, Calif., and went to Dominguez High School, historically one of the worst academic schools in the nation. There's a good chance he didn't see any globetrotters growing up. If you don't see it, you don't know about it. If you don't know about it, how can you pursue it?
I'm not out to embarrass Prince -- and he might not have meant the statement the way I took it. Still, I couldn't help but wonder if he was a Sandusky, Ohio, brotha the way I used to be.
This is why I have two hopes for Team USA Basketball -- both men and women.
First, Gold.
Second, they take their considerable resources and expose the underprivileged to the wonderful world of, well, the wonderful world.
Stop building basketball courts in the 'hood -- little kids already know about basketball -- and do something that could open the eyes of a young person who is not even aware their eyes are closed.
Tennis great Andre Agassi used to make his shoe sponsor, Nike, donate to his foundation, and in 2001 he opened a college preparatory charter school in West Las Vegas, one of the poorest areas of his native city. Agassi wasn't a rich kid with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was the son of an Iranian immigrant and is a high-school dropout. But he took all that he was exposed to and brought it back to kids who needed someone to care.
I'm not saying the current efforts of a Chris Bosh or Carmelo Anthony are ineffective. Quite the contrary. I'm sure seeing successful athletes returning to lend a hand helps a great deal in cities such as Baltimore and Dallas. But while new basketball courts can give a kid something to do, education can give a kid something to build on. And let's face it, no matter how many points they might score their senior season, most of our children will end up as fans, not players. The real question is, what kind of fan will they be?
Could you imagine the impact of Kobe Bryant and Candace Parker spearheading a charter school or study abroad program in Los Angeles? Or something similar in Cleveland with LeBron James? Then Nike's brightest stars take the graduates abroad at the end of the year. That's not a ridiculous pipe dream. Affluent middle and high schools take their students overseas in the summer all the time. Why? Because travel can light a child's curiosity and implant a hunger for knowledge. Given that high school graduates make less than half of what college graduates make -- according to the U.S. Census Bureau -- it's no wonder the poor get poorer. Education is how you begin to break the cycle of poverty.
And as Agassi has shown, athletes can play a role -- if they really want to.
With all of the excitement over the Redeem Team, there's a chance for one or more of our bright, young stars to make a lasting change here at home. And refurbish a basketball court or two if they still want.
My take: Of course you know what I'm gonna say! When pigs fly is when these dudes will do the stuff we hope. There will always be exceptions, but come on, they have absolutely no incentive--spiritual, economic, cultural, moral--to do it. Indeed, forget the bamma and ghettofab fans--we have too many so-called public intellectuals, leaders, etc. who are also more than willing to cut them a break. But like I said, there are always surprises. Someone as scumbaggish as Ron Artest might be starting a charter school, funding free dialysis and foreclosure relief for folk and saving up $ to put one of his extra ho's kids into Princeton for all I know. But, ah...

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...

The Mummy & China: Two Great Pieces of Bad Taste that go great together

Rachel Weisz quit The Mummy 3: Return of the Dragon Emperor not just to have her kid. Star of the first two dreadful Mummy flicks, she was pissed off at words like "franchise," "tie-in to Beijing Olympics," "vast Chinese market," and "Rob Cohen." Okay the last one's a doozy. Cohen has directed such hi art as Vin Diesel's XXX and The Fast and the Furious. He is on record as believing that films should be as loud and explosive as possible to appeal to the greater mass of dumbasses. And they should have commercial tie ins and franchise appeal. He's publicly excoriated Weisz and got Universal to seduce talented actress Maria Bello. Maria's got that indie cred but come on, having her play Weisz's character is like having Hill Harper and Ray Allen switch characters in He's Got Game. But Maria's gotta pay her rent, too, I guess. The Chinese government, film board and what they call private industry is actually helping promote this flick rather than banning it outright; it opens in Beijing first. Kinda smacks of the Berlin 36 Olympics pr job? The weirder part is that the film Hollywoodizes (sodomizes, whores?) themes, people and events in their history, from the Qin king's founding of the first dynasty and unification of China as an empire, to the construction of the first Great Wall, to the "terracotta army" every fool's seen in Discovery Channel and National Geographic specials, to...yeah...the Abominable Snowman. Lots of Snowmen. Of course, the latter, the yeti, is a Tibetan legend, but hey, as our President tells us, let's not allow stuff like Tibet, or the re-colonization of Africa and Darfur and gluttonous oil consumption and pollution and a continued Stalinist view of civil and political rights ruin the party. After all, without China's cheap goods and cheap borrowed money, our government and our economy would collapse. Then who'd uselessly patrol streets in Ramallah then and spend billions on contractors instead of fixing housing, health care and our own infrastructure?

The film sucks. Nuff said. I've seen press trailers. As an Xbox game or a theme park ride (hey, that's what this "product" is for) is okay. But ya know, sometimes what Kurt Russell (who was better in Big Trouble in Little China than a dozen Brendan Frasers) said about CGI in Death Proof (Grindhouse) is right. Too damn much of it. And the approach? Imagine if Tyler Perry had written the teleplay to Roots, or Jerry Bruckheimer decided to direct John Adams. Get the idea? Good, now mix in a lot of Indiana Jones rip-off and multiply the schlock and explosions by 100. Too often we allow ourselves to say things like "Hey don;t be a snob. These are summer fun movie romps. Fine--except there's the counterpoint of Spider Man I, or 2008's Iron Man, even The Hulk...and of course, The Dark Knight. Accordingly, exciting summer flicks don't have to be least common denominator floating turds enticing rednecks, suburban tools and bammas to the Multiplex. On top of that, China shows it's true colors to the world by promoting this fantasy (imagine if the UK & Ireland decided to adopt The Lord of the Rings as official history...then again the Scots did it with Braveheart and looked stupid doing it).

I won't bore you with a gloss of Jet Li's performance. If you want to see him in something awesome and historical about China, rent Hero. Brendan Fraser's been on my shit list since Dudley Doo Right.

But hey, Rob Cohen will be heralded in China the way the French still love Jerry Lewis and the Brits rightly lionize The Ramones. And isn't keeping those commie sons of bitches happy what's important? After all, we've mortgaged this country to them. What happens when they foreclose? EEEEEEW. Too much for many little brains to take. Like global warming. Easier to shut it down a la the way black folks consume street fiction, plunk down that $9.50. Moi, I'll be seeing Batman for the 7th time, and boycotting NBC's Olympics coverage (okay, I'll watch the boxing). Me, and Rachel Weisz. Alone in our good taste...

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?