Janet Langhart Cohen: Her take on Emmett Till & Anne Frank

Janet Langhart Cohen's new one act play, "Anne & Emmett," debuts at the Holocaust Museum here on June 10 (private opening night), and then at George Washington University (public)'s Morton Auditorium (click Ticketmaster) on June 12.

First of all, if you haven't a clue who Janet, Anne or Emmett are, you're probably either (1) Dick Cheney or Joe the Plumber, or (2) a fool. Sorry, you can collapse both into one. And apologies to Dick, because he knows exactly who Janet is, as Janet's hubby is Former US Secretary of Defense under Slick Willie, William Cohen. Dick's rabid right has long fatwa'd Bill Cohen, former senator from Maine, as one of the moderate Republicans the GOP can do without--despite the rapport Cheney tried to curry with Cohen over Middle East policy during the Clinton-W. transition 200-2001. Now think of the conversations around wingnut land back when Bill married sistagurl Janet? Oh, and the buzzing about the redneck elisted personnel and holy roller white officers was, according to my pals within the Pentagon on out in the field, quite piquant when Cohen would take Janet on DoD trips to see the troops. Come back to me in the comments for feedback and facts on that stuff...

So back to the play. It's author Janet is retired award winning journalist (I mean in the old school Jane Pauley, Linda Ellerbee, Gwen ifill sense, not Fox News/CNN bubble-head and cleavage sense circa 2009; she still writes for HuffPo etc. occasionally). She's a former national and local on- air news reporter for...Indianapolis beauty queen (okay a friend of mine once said the finest yella/redbone women are from the Midwest, not the East Coast or even New Orleans LOL). Note my "black don't crack" post of a few days ago; Janet looks better than 75% of the thirty-something Fairfax Co. soccermoms I've met, and Janet has not lived some charmed, coddled life. BTW she's penned plays and other long form visual pieces before (short docs, etc.) before.

Her "Anne & Emmett" envisions a conversation between two teenagers who's deaths are allegory for so much that' wrong with our human tribalism. Oh, don't get it twisted: the forces which ripped the flesh of both of these tender kids live and thrive today. It's not "evil" or "hate." It's much more complex, insidious. That's the terrifying notion. And apparently this ain't no bleeding heart colloquium or contrived bitch session using these kids as mouthpieces. It's their characters, idiosyncracies and all, awkaward teens, reflecting frankly on the thing that made them smile and the despair at not being allowed to reach things to which they aspired. Yep, two regular kids. Anne, hiding then found, gassed and burned in the death camp. Emmett, tortured, tied to a truck transmission, sunk in a creek. Perpetrators feeling utterly justified, indeed lauded (and it's still a funky state of affairs in Emmett's America) for their acts at the time. The word which comes to mind for both is always: innocence.

FYI, a great starter book on Emmett's life & death, and in the Civil Rights context, is my boy Prof. Christopher Benson's effort with Emmett's late mother, Mamie Till Mobley titled Death of Innocence (Random House) click here for amazon.com. There's a legion of stuff on Anne, of course.

I'm looking forward to this play. Be nice if the douchebags who fight over the air or the Net would set aside their poison, and join with folk calmly to watch and enjoy, too. In the words of Davey Crockett, musing on the coming oblivion at the Alamo: "Amazing what a little harmony'll do."

Why some Asian & South Asians dump on Blackfolks

The war stories, the grumblings, the stereotypes are legion and legend, from Korean store owners aiming judgmental, haughty eyes at patrons, to Japanese collectors of old Jim Crow memorabilia, Chinese grad students questioning your intelligence, to that rude immigrant Indian or Pakistani doctor who won't return your sick gran-mama's calls. Like I said, legion and legend. Largely myth and reverse Archie Bunkerism or perhaps hypersensitivity on our part. But...sorry...they're often grounded in some unpleasant facts. Ask Beyonce how much L'Oreal paid her to keep her mouth shut about them lightening her skin, bone-straightening her hair for their ads to Middle America.

And sooooo...consider this upcoming BBC report ( here ) THE INCREDIBLE WHITENESS OF BEING IN ASIA, on the booming skin lightening cosmetics/plastic surgery industry in Asia and South Asia. Yep, from India to Indonesia, to Sapporo and Seoul and Shanghai and to Bobby Jindal (hahaha): folks wanna look like Hugh Jackman (who ironically has two biracial kids) and Nicole Kidman. Yep, you heard me. Producer and blogger Philip Martin reports: "The desire for whiter skin is nothing new. But as Asia's middle class has expanded, and with greatly raised incomes, so too has the demand for whitening skin care products." Check out Philip's blog here. You can also catch him on Huffington Post.

Comments? Observations? There's nothing so creepy as a Malaysian millionaire or Chinese factory boss's wife with surgically altered blue eyes. No wonder African Americans aren't often on their radar unless someone's bootlegging a Jay-Z CD, or has a c-note on a Cavaliers-Lakers game (or needs Kobi for a Kobe beef commercial. Mony talks).

Nat's part "coolie" by the way. If you're from T n T or Jamaica, holla...

Racism! Racism! Racism!

Stop whining about Burris. Here is the real face of a racial victim. Dr. Jan Adams, former host of TLC's Plastic Surgery Before and After and celebrity skin cutter, was sentenced to a year in the big house. Not for killing Kanye's momma. Nope. DUI. This in a world were the average celeb gets a slap on the wrist or rehab for being a menace. Nor are they required to wear convict's stripes. Check out Jan. So stop whining about old too proud to see he's being used Burris playing musical chairs here in DC. This is racism. If his name was Dr. Jan Adamstein, would he be on lockdown? Well, if he'd betrayed the Tribe like Madoff, yeah. But Jan's a brother, so guess what?

Just in time for Election 08...

White people, white people...what to do? It's hypocrit or hipster time. Yeah, so we culudfolk 're still hashing out some silliness ourselves: Jesse and the activist gray-dicks versus Barack and young button-downs, Cosby-ism versus Dyson-sim, Condi versus Lil' Kim, Teri Woods versus real literature (calm down--I'm just teasing!), but these so- called "culture battles" are nowhere near the kind of conflict ya'll will endure when it comes man-in-the-mirror time in November. Internecine. And internal. Oh sure, Fox News, the wingnut bloggers, the howling douchebags on the radio, izarre story plants and salted headlines, blah blah are attempting to provide you cover, but hey, unless you're a foreigner reared on pop-culture visions of African Americans, an irredeemable redneck, seething guido or a zombie to your rightwing pastor, you know the peek into the abyss is coming. You pine for more movies like Hancock, or Eddie Murphy as "Donkey" to diffuse the tension, make for reassuring ebony-ivory moments. Instead comes Bama Girl, and it ain't about country-ass black people.

The film just dropped, so it missed SilverDocs here in DC/Silver Spring at the American Film Institute. Nevertheless, it's is opening in major film festivals this summer and will hit like a Rivera fastball on a batter covering home plate to closely. What happens when one African American girl aspires to take the Homecoming Queen crown of the University of Alabama. That slot has been controlled for over a century by a cadre of frats and sororities on campus known as "The Machine," which ensures the title only goes to the sweetest magnolia blossom, with her pink cheeks and supposedly Christian values (until Spring Break in Mobile or Panama City, then, Lord, here cometh the stinky pinky?) This wasn't 1968. This is now. New wounds, old wounds. Surprising attitudes, even from our folk. Hell, perhaps even the black football players. Yep--all them brothas recruited for the Crimson Tide. Read Forty Million Dollar Slaves for how those negroes roll. Pretty white girls as recruitment meat. Yum...

So check out the documentary film's site and the trailers. Nothing yet on Youtube. Will keep you posted. ROOOOOLLLLLL TIDE!!!

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...

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.

RAFBN-Week 2

Week Two: Summer's "read a f-ing book, n- "series...

James McBride is my hero. An African American LITERARY author of somewhat popular note. A brother who is not plagiarizing Candace Bushnell and replacing the white girls with obese church ladies lookin' to score wid the pastor. Who isn't writing thug fables and calling it "the reality of the street" (Ha!). Whose lead character isn't a conflicted handsome, mysterious dude romancing female lawyers who look and act suspiciously like video hoes. Whose lead character isn't a conflicted handsome mysterious clown romancing MALE lawyers. His Song Yet Sung (buy it at the right) is a paeon to the Chesapeake, to the slaves who toiled, yearned and struck out for freedom at water's edge; of course I'll try to best him with Yella Patsy's Boys. His first foray into the historical fiction genre came a few years ago with Miracle at St. Anna. I offer this selection in honor of ALL vets and dead soldiers (except Confederates--why the hell should those redneck traitors count?) this Memorial Day.

The setting is Italy, WWII, 1944. The true event is the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre: retreating German (call them German...stop with this "Nazi" shit) Waffen-SS Panzergrenadiers rounded up about 500 women, children and old folks--in retaliation for guerilla activity--and shot them, then burned them (many were just wounded so they were burned alive). The other element is the 92nd Infantry--a segregated combat unit which encompassed most of the old "Buffalo Soldier" infantry regiments. Led by incompetent and racist white officers, plagued by so-called "Greatest Generation" white boy GIs on the one hand, they must also deal with a desperate enemy hell bent on taking as many Americans with them to the bitter end (the Waffen-SS were the most fanatical German troops).

Here's where it gets interesting. McBride gives us a sweet yet dim witted black soldier (think Lenny from Of Mice and Men with a rifle and a tan) who befriends an orphan against the backdrop of this atrocity. Allegory's all there on many levels, including a symbolic device with a statue's head; pain, bravery, treachery, love, redemption...an miracles...ensue. And don't look for the usual "cross-section of society" stereotypes re: the dudes in the group of four black soldiers caught behind German lines. Read/re-read this book before Spike Lee's film comes out. McBride penned the screenplay but Spike's already up to his old bullshit braying and self-promo--given his pretty much needless attacks on Clint Eastwood for "Flags of Our Father/Letters of Iwo Jima" and Speilberg for "Saving Private Ryan". Interesting as Clint's ALWAYS been a thoughtful, artful director and even did the Charlie Parker biopic. Did you, Spike? Nah. So shut up. Speilberg did The Color Purple and yeah--Amistad. Did you, Spike? Nah. So shut up. Why not A Soldier's Story? Or any number of films and TV-movies of the week on blacks and WWII, blacks and any war (hey you can option Yella Patsy's Boys once it drops and show the freed slaves burning down the White House with the British in 1814 if you want--one of those patented moving shots of your on Dolley Madison realizing she gotta run before she's caught would be cool...). Going into the merits of his attacks on the WWII movies is silly as the attacks are silly; again I'm sure 99.99% of it is just his ego/personality, and I'm praying my hero Brother McBride tempers that stuff. Would he allow Hollywood succubus to steal his soul, a la Mariane Pearl and Brangelina in A Mighty Heart? Likely not. He's my hero, after all. Read and learn.

A Forgotten Campaign Issue

That's Ed Burns, Dave Simon and bestselling mystery author (and neighbor of Me & Mrs Nat's) George P. Pelecanos . They write-produce-direct HBO's The Wire. Probably the best show on TV, ever. And not many people watched because it was too "real." Uh huh. When you poll members in focus groups--especially in places like Concord NC or Davenport, Iowa--that's the response you get, interestingly. Not that it's "alien" or "too black/ethnic" or "too East Coast" or "bleak" or "obscene." Nah. Too real. America in the Dubya Years--thanks.

Not too long ago in Time, Ed (a former tough street cop turned public school teacher turned Hollywood producer), David (a former Baltimore Sun reporter and editor who quit when the stories lost depth and were replaced with fluff by vapid, cost-cutting owners, now a MAJOR Hollywood producer) and George (one of the best "hard boiled" detective writers of all time and chronicler of the "other" D.C. beyond the monuments and K Street and embassy parties) presented their view of this so-called War on Drugs. They were joined by bestselling authors Richard Price (Lush Life, Clockers) and Dennis Lehane (Mystic River). My one regret--and trust me this IS a BIG issue--was that the new-school marquis African American authors were too busy writing about oral sex with the pastor, or strippers marrying a reformed pimp, thugs who must come to terms with their thuggery, to be a part of this in a meaningful way. Indeed, we produce "House of Payne" and "Norbit;" they do "The Wire." Something ain't right, and that's our cross to tote in this matter.

But I digress.This silly, draining war actually rivals the War on Terror in its destructiveness, collateral damage, horror, toll on governments, the cops, communities. Americans. No candidate is talking about it. Everyone wants to be "tough on crime." Hell, even recently a Bush Admin. official shilled on herself on NPR, declaraing "Yes, demand for drugs is one important element in this problem." Huh? Hey White Lady: it is THE element. The only element, really. Why do people get high? Ask Rush Limbaugh. Because they're weak? Stupid? Oh, no...

Here I link one modest proposal from the Time piece. Your thoughts? Rail if you will. OK, but how's the current course working for ya? And if if you're white and insulated from gas prices etc. I'd still ask the question. Poison is eveywhere, and I mean the effects of the drugs, the policies--not the drugs themselves.

Friday Funnies

From today's Washington Post, A section (following -up from another quote last week):

Christopher Chambers, a Georgetown University professor and Obama supporter, said a woman
tracked down his cellphone number, dialed it and called him a race traitor after
he said Wright's performance would doom the senator's presidential run if he did
not act decisively. Obama denounced Wright's appearance later that day.

Probably an ex. They all shriek alike, so it's hard to tell which one it was...

And yet another mirror...Bill Maher?

Bill Maher is a douchebag(or is it scumbag?), but at least he admits it. And sometimes, not often, he hits things right on the nose. This is from his HBO show this week. Now, if you want to annotate this hilarious solo with a socio-economic-political history of the US from the Revolution to the election of 1800 (Jefferson becomes Prez over Adams...also on HBO!), to Jackson, to the rise of the Know-Nothings to 1860 to the death of Recontruction to the pre-emption of the Populists to the death of the Frontier and the election of 1898 to on and on...whew...go back to college. But, for the quick and dirty as of 2008, regard (and advance to about 2 minutes in if you want the bare, nitty gritty):