Tag Archives: Uncle Tom

Gates v. Crowley Case is black and white

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Selma Alabama 1965
While pundits pit Professor Gates against Police Sergeant Crowley, I recommend a white man’s refresher course in Black v. Cop. The above photograph depicts the officers of the law who came from all over Alabama in 1965 to prevent the SNCC civil rights marchers from leaving Selma. Most of the images we recognize from this day were taken seconds after this one, as the southern gentlemen eagerly bludgeoned the kneeling marchers. It took the interference of the President of the United States to send Federal troops to defend the peaceful protesters from the police. Have things changed?

Now they use tasers?

If you are not African-American, ask an African-American.

President Obama’s interference, tiptoeing with niceties for the boys in blue, couching his criticism as if his words carried no more authority than Uncle Tom, falls well short of representing the complaints about still overwhelming racism which black Americans face from law enforcement. Still Obama’s opinion has not been welcomed by the police department which arrested Professor Gates for being uncooperative in his own home.

Policeman Crowley and his superior and his buddies on the force and police unions across the country are telling the president he should not butt in? And they’re assuring us that they’re not racist? Let’s poll the LAPD on the matter, or any of the squads who’ve been caught on video tape beating their charges, (double-entendre intended) usually black.

We need to give equal time to the majority of our prison population. Or the people of New Orleans.

Sergeant Crowly et al are positive they are not racist. They’ve taken the courses, they’ve given the cross-racial CPR. They do not believe they are racist, and I believe them. I don’t believe I am racist either, although clearly I am. I am uncomfortable about being racist, and I’m not sure what to think about the degree of comfort I take as well.

And now the insolent bastards are second guessing the president for second guessing them.

This is that what comes of the post-9/11 theme of deifying First Responders. They’re big galoots –brave, no question– who rush up high-rise stairwells with no premonition the steel structure would be coming down, and next thing patriots are hawking chatchkes of firemen and policemen raising the Stars and Stripes over the rubble, as if they’re under fire in Iwo Jima. So now they’re qualified to tell the president he’s unqualified to make a judgment?

I can criticize the president because he’s not delivering what he promised. What basis do his employees have for grievance?

Crowley and ilk are none too bright, obviously, and they’re racist. They offer their own proof. What would a dutiful policeman’s reaction have been when a white president deigned to weigh in on a matter. I’m guessing deference. To the Commander in Chief.

I did my duty as I knew best, I am open to criticism, and welcome certainly anything the highest executive office holder might offer by way of suggestion, I am most humbled that he might have granted his attention to my personal case, which to guess from the offense people have taken was evidently a lapse in judgment on my part.

Deference. And that’s not what’s being shown their Boy in the White House.

Suddenly colored television

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Today Show-network now African AmericanImmediately after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the term “Nine Eleven” was already tripping off the tongues of TV talking heads as if it was more natural than saying “last Monday,” or “last week Monday,” before even we knew the attack was not going to last several days. The day after the election of Barack Obama, a suddenly large proportion of the TV talking heads were black, overnight, like it had become some sort of costume party theme.

Television has become colorized, and much more vigorously than Ted Turner might have ever intended.

Have you noticed? On post-Bush television, Black is the new focus of equal-time. When pundits are summoned, now there’s a black person among them. Nothing wrong with this development. Whatever years of seasoning these new African-American faces may lack, they make up for by being visibly brighter than the vacuous white-breads they replaced. There must be an entire class of Anglo-Saxon communication majors who are lamenting the great lost entitlement of 2009.

It’s a fine development, though certainly limited in its generosity. The proportion of African Americans to the total population, is vastly smaller than the new TV ratio. Conversely, over half the US public is progressive. But still almost zero percent of the corporate media personalities reflect that.

Where did all these colored faces come from? Had they been training in the wings, for just this contingency? It’s a wise move on the part of the networks. President Obama and his family would be looking pretty dark against the sea of white Washington DC. Someone could confuse him for security or kitchen staff, but for the media framing of black commentators to remind White America that there is no cause to panic, the new American lens is colorblind.

It should be, but is it? White man still looks upon dark-skinned people as requiring domination. American urban blacks are to incarcerate, African blacks are to rescue, and insurgent/Muslim/pirate blacks are to lynch. I’m not sure we don’t really long to lynch the bunch of them, if AIDS isn’t thinning their number fast enough for our taste.

Hitch your horse to this manservantObama meanwhile is the black man we invite to dinner. And these colored teevee folk too. They’re not poor blacks after all. They’re the Thomas Sowells, Uncle Toms, educated reformed black people. Rich black people are the new lawn jockeys.

Okay, so the corporate media wants to project an urbane sophistication about integrating racial harmony into its facade. We hope, I suppose, that by portraying it so, they can make it so. I think we have to wonder if that’s the real manipulation.

The day after September 11, the term “Nine Eleven” was coined before most of us knew what even happened. Flights were grounded anticipating more attacks. How curious that the experts were calling it “9/11” when it might still have turned out to be 9/11 – 17 or other. They’d gotten the memo about how to frame the “world-changing” development, complete with its catchy catchphrase.

Obama is just such another media campaign, to assuage the darker-skinned world that the Great White West comes in peace, see look, we love our Darkies. We respect them, we ask their advice, we put them up in the White House.

This year’s Clio Award, the advertising world’s Oscar, for best campaign, went to Barack Obama. What does that tell you about the collective effort involved, and the focused objective of the marketing?

Clansmen hold a rally in Washington DC

Tea Party Tax Revolt ignorance-mongers rally their usual Republican supporters

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COLORADO SPRINGS- The corporate media led by Fox News, local talk radio led by KVOR, and the Gazette editorial page itself, herded their red sheep into Acacia Park today for lunch-time speeches full of hate, ignorance, and good old-fashioned unapologetic self-interest. They didn’t understand my sign, but knew enough to scowl.
Bunch of Republican dim wits who blame their troubles on the poor

Gazette representative Maria St. Louis-Sanchez was live-blogging the event, sitting on the ground beside the stage, which gave her an appropriate lack of perspective for the coverage she intended. For example, this online exchange:

12:33 [Comment From Guest] Is it basically an all white gathering?

12:34 Tough to tell. There seems to be a good mix of people here.

Oh my goodness. The crowd was ALL WHITE! With the lonely exception of deposed-councilman Ed Jones, who delighted the crowd when he proclaimed he was not an African American, he was an American, and derided those critics who would call him an “Uncle Tom.” The crowd cheered Jones, there were even chants exhorting him to run for governor. But if this had been nightfall, and one depression earlier, this is the mob that would have lynched him.

And I’m inclined to imagine that had Jones been Hispanic American, judging from the anti-immigrant rhetoric, they would have jumped him in broad daylight today.

tax day tea party white male

Richard Randall

These were ugly Americans, led by their representative uglies, hate-radio DJ Richard Randall, representative Doug “Porky” Lamborn, the illiterate Quixote Douglas Bruce and business-homophobe Ed Bircham. All pure archetypes of disgruntled white males.

The demographics in my estimation were all white, mostly male, with ugly carved into everyone’s faces from years of being disagreeable and bitter. And a plentiful predominance of pasty obesity.

Disaproval

Opposition to Public Education

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Why Republicans HATE Public Education.

In the Words of THEIR prophet Hitler “Universal Public Education is the most virulent toxin that Liberalism can inflict upon itself. It only makes the Lower Classes think more highly of themselves than they ought, and leads to discontent with their position in life. Truly, they only need enough education to be Efficient Coolies for our industries”
(Liberties taken with the exact English phrases, the Original was in German)

We often are accused of “ignorance” when the Anti-Semitic Supporters of Killing Palestinians, for example, or the one who calls him/herself “Friend” posts… publish their reactionary Angry Hate Speech on Not My Tribe.

In a slightly backward twist we are often accused of being “intellectual Elitists”, but Still ignorant.

Or “idiots”.

Without Public Education we would be left with home-schooling, or Parochial Education.

Those of us who weren’t born with silver spoons in our mouths would be left out in either case.

“Keep ’em Ignorant”

And for not just nearly but EXACTLY the same reason American Slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write.

I’m sure the Republican’t respondents will argue that it’s not like that, I’m just spouting Marxist Propaganda again, the Repukelickin’ Party doesn’t actually engage in class warfare or racism blah blah blah blah…

My grandfather was a cowboy.

Not like George Bush with his “ranch” and 5 cows bought and maintained by his Trust Fund, a trust fund which I’m once again going to point out came from an enterprise his family engaged in called Slave Trading.

They’ll say that, Yankee Puritans they claim to be, their family didn’t actually own slaves. Nor did their favorite “charity” the Yale Foundation.

No, they wouldn’t soil their own hands with the whips and chains necessary to “earn” their money for them…

They just owned a fleet of Slave Ships.

That and Grand-poppy Prescott Bush laundered money for the Nazis, which they don’t

a) apologize for

and

b) they’re still spending the money they got from BOTH enterprises.

No, Grandpa Brown was a REAL cowboy. So was his brother Loy and their brother-in-law Tom.

In Texas in those days that meant Impoverished.

Cowboys were just then being romanticized in the public IMAGINATION through those new-fangled movin’ picture thingies.

Uncle Tom wound up being the foreman of the Rolling Hills Ranch in Keene, Texas, until the ranch was sold to Halliburton in the late 70s to make a Game Ranch.

Like the one where Former Vice President and Current Active War Criminal Richard Cheney shot his friend in the face while they were “hunting” captive, hand raised “Wild” ducks.

They also have or had a website wherein you could with a click of your mouse or joystick “hunt” and actually kill actual formerly live animals (until you put the mouse pointer over them and clicked)

Uncle Tom described it as a place where they bought old, diseased “wild” zoo and circus animals dependent upon your actual skill level they would drug the animals or even chain them up for you so you wouldn’t miss.

That way you could go on an African Safari without ever leaving Texas.

Really swell, wonderful Republican People, they are.

But with a family background like that, working class all the way, impoverished…

Without Public Education how would I have ever risen to the position where I could contend with so many Noble Rich American (and Israeli, if you believe their story) Aristocracy like “Friend” and the Megaphone Users?

The short answer is that I wouldn’t.

Nor would most of us who oppose their monstrous schemes, we would simply have to take their word on any subject or issue, they would pat us on the head and bid us go back out into the cotton fields like good little childishly ignorant Peasants.

While they can’t do it literally, they do, in fact, precisely that by sneeringly dismissing anything we write, anything we Learn and then Share as being “ignorance”.

And sneeringly claim that we must be “idiots”.

But it’s not Racism or Class Warfare or Big Brotherism. No, it’s “all for your own good”

But in their underestimation we’re just too stupid and “ignorant” to recognize it.

Slave Corporations in Murderous Action

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Florida bean patch
I gotta tell you, before inputting all this, it is NOT pretty and is potentially very embarrassing for any investors in any industry for which Texas Correctional Industries, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and Corrections Corporation of America provide Labor.

You might not want the kiddies to know where your family money is coming from. It’s called “Slavery,” the buying and selling of human beings and human lives.

Too bad. I hope to hell if you put the ol’ Parental Censorship on them, their little friends at school will show them this, so they can know what kind of satanic Bastards their Mommies and Daddies are.

I for a while couldn’t find a picture of the Texas chain gang, I know they exist but the guards will forbid cameras anywhere near their operation, if you pass by on a road and try to take a picture they’ll swarm you.

But it looks straight out of a woodcut for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, they make sure the fellows know what their Slave Status is.

Seeing it during cotton picking time is especially disturbing.

But that’s the publicity photo they publish.

But field labor is punishment detail, they make HUGE amounts from things like the Sign Shop, printing everything from license plates to Highway signs to every street-name sign in Texas, they HAVE to buy them from TCI, state law, the inmates get paid exactly $0.00 per hour/day/week/month/year/lifetime.

Data Entry, they used to provide the training for E.D.S. AND had the Data Entry contracts for everybody from every Texas state agency, some federal agencies and private insurance agencies. That one is HUGE.

They also have a print-shop on the same unit, Beto 1 (there’s three Beto units) that prints up car titles, state bonds, get this: Birth and Death Certificates.

The State agencies pay Texas Correctional Industries, the State provides the housing, the facilities for production, and the labor force.

Which they don’t pay.

You might have heard about the Coffield Unit seven years ago, the outside temperature was 120 F.

Only, Coffield Unit is built with panes of glass for the exterior walls.

Not something that, you know, blocks the rays from Mr Sun.

In East Texas in the spring, summer and fall, Mr Sun is NOT your Friend.

The temperatures inside are typically 20 to 30 degrees hotter than outside.

Like a greenhouse.

And, there’s no Air Conditioning. No cold water either. Ice is contraband.

Where that comes in, when the outside temperature was 120, there were a LOT of guys inside their un-ventilated cells 24-7, on Punitive Segregation, for such “crimes” as refusing to be Slaves.

7 years ago the TDCJ *Reported * that 9 inmates died of heat exhaustion while in these cells.

That means, knowing the way the System LIES, the number was a lot more. The guys who never got any visitors and never sent or received mail, they didn’t have any reason whatsoever to tell their families so they simply Didn’t Tell Them.

The Life of a Slave is cheap.

To make it worse, in the Texas system, you can PURCHASE a small electric fan from Commissary, provided you have family or friends on the outside who will put money on your account.

Like I said, they get paid NOTHING for their labor. Texas Correctional Industries and their Greed-head No-Conscience Slave-holder investors, however, DO.

Those inmates who have no money, have no fan.

The ones who are being punished for the “crime” of refusing to work as slaves, had their fans taken away from them… in temperatures estimated to be as high as 150 F.

That means, for any readers who are interested in defending their own profits as shareholders of TCI, the Shareholders are guilty of MURDERING those men for refusing to be slaves.

Any readers who want to make a stink about THAT charge, ok, YOU tell your children and grandchildren where the family funds came from, YOU defend your position, but, hey, have a little bit of Honor and Dignity about yourselves, eh? Show them the Evidence I just presented. Every word of it, including this,

I bet, kids, that Mommy and Daddy and Grandpa and Grandma try to tell you that I’m a liar and must have some kind of Evil Agenda for writing this.

They’re probably telling you I must be a CRIMINAL because I don’t join in to their Celebration of Murderous Greed.

Because I pointed out that Human Bondage is evil.

Uncle Tom’s Hotel Rwanda

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Is the Don Cheedle?Let’s clear something up for the sake of poetic justice. Uncle Tom was a maltreated slave who bore his burden with dignity. He was no collaborator, no stool pigeon, no upper class of black slave that kept the lower savages in order. That “Uncle Tom” is what the term has come to mean: a white man’s black man, owing perhaps to the original character’s civilized humanity which a white reader might not have expected to be a capacity of an African slave. The neo-Uncle Tom is a Tutsi.

I heard the film Hotel Rwanda was just incredible, I’m sure it was. I watched the Frontline documentary to commemorate the anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and so thought I knew the sad story already. Well I was right and I was wrong, but not about the film.

The mounting trouble in the Democratic Republic of Congo is causing leaders to forewarn of genocide such as Rwanda experienced in 1994. We’re told the same Hutus are marauding today. In addressing the issues of the Congo, do we have an understanding of what happened in 1994, beside the film dramatization?

The question to ask is whether what happened in Rwanda was genocide. That’s not to minimize the killings, but to scrutinize the motives. Was the fighting between Hutus and Tutsis racially motivated tribal warfare, or was it class warfare? Were the events of 1994 components of a peasant rebellion, distinguished by the opposing forces being from different ethnicities?

The distinction is critical. Behind the Hotel Rwanda imagery is the theme that African tribes need to be protected from each other. This happens in the form of UN intervention usually. The storytellers also know that if the narrative is bloody enough, a Western audience is just as ready to throw up its hands. Thus our impulse to join the Peace Corps or Medecins Sans Frontieres is quietly scrubbed in favor of calling in the cavalry. And then, only in the event of genocide.

Someone keeps wanting Westerners to believe that African tribes will continue to kill each other regardless what we do. Is it true? No, the Africans fight because of what we do.

The Tutsi victims of Hotel Rwanda were not just hotel keepers and clerks. The Tutsis were the administrative enforcers of post-colonial central Africa. The Hutus were the oppressed, and rose up against the Tutsis after generations of oppression and killings.

If Africa were let to develop autonomous states from its indigenous populations, its people could put their natural resources to use improving their lives. Instead, our post-colonial tentacles continue to stir up instability. Our business interests make sure that the native Africans never get their footing. We fund strong men to enforce violent rule over the inhabitants. It’s a controlled instability that facilitates the minimal societal infrastructure our traders require. But instability is difficult a balancing act. When the mayhem gets out of hand, peace-keepers are brought in at the people’s expense, to restore the disordered order.

Is it Rodeo time again? Damn…

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Seems like only last year that somebody angrily was denouncing the contention that putting a pull-up cinch around the testicles of a bull in order to make him fight the rider more aggressively somehow causes PAIN to the animal.

Ummm… yeah.

And the presumably young lady who was so angry about our reporting of it, stating that somehow she knows for certain that a large mammal could not possibly be in pain, even though the bulls seem to be put into a killing rage by the practice, you know, having his ballocks squeezed.

I guess a bull told her that, calmly and assuredly, “Why no, little lady, doesn’t hurt us at all. We just naturally attack humans and try our level best to stomp their brains out.”

Before any of you yay-hoo goat-ropers start thinking that I’m some kind of Yankee elitist, allow me to point something out. You have shit for brains.

I hear so often (because I grew up in Texas, spent 40 damn years there, also Kansas, New Mexico and Here) that Rodeo is a reflection of ranch-hand work.

Must be reflected in one of those Fun-House mirrors at the associated carnivals, I guess.

My grandpa, his brother and their brother-in-law, Tom Blaylock, did trick riding for rodeos from time to time. One of their legendary accomplishments was when somebody who was very intoxicated challenged them to ride their horses on the Ferris Wheel. They were also very intoxicated and accepted said challenge. Fortunately their horses were smart enough not to get drunk. They also didn’t panic when they got on the ferris wheel.

That’s a Good Thing. Elseways I would have lost my grandpa and two uncles in the same incident long before I was born.

Uncle Tom grew up to become foreman at the Rolling Hills Ranch in Keene, Texas. Ok, in the middle of a trapezoid between Athens, Cleburne, Fort Worth and Keene. Had a Star Route address when they switched over from RFD. He died in 2002. In the summer of ’69 I was on the ranch, 8 years old, Woodstock was goin’ on but you wouldn’t have known it if you were just a kid on a ranch in Johnson County Texas. At the time I had never seen a man with long hair, Bearded men would have shocked livin’ hell out of me.

So I have plenty of first-hand experience with the Bucolic Lifestyle, plenty of truly rednecked close relatives, most of whom had plenty of experience with both Rodeo Cowboying and the Real Job. The two paths split and get further apart, one really really Far Away From Real Ranch Work issue is that of actually attempting to Ride Cattle.

A really important giveaway on that fact is that cattle in general and Bulls in particular just don’t have a docile attitude about people jumping on their backs. Especially if they have a Nutsack Cinch applying pressure to their testicles.

Now, here’s a challenge to all you wannabee cowboys out there… why not, when you’re on that bulls back, do it without the assurance that the clowns and other members of The Show aren’t going to try their level best to save your stupid ass once the inevitable happens and the bull throws you off, then turns around and tries to kill you.

Then, while you’ve got three-quarters of a ton of hate and mean and ugly dancing on your ribcage, maybe the last thing that goes through your pointy little head (besides a hoof) will be “You dumbass, whoever told you that Cattle were meant for ridin’?”

While we’re on the subject of gross and stupid habits, y’all can quit dippin’ snuff too.

Dudes, you project an image of ignorance on all Texans when you do stupid shit like that. Knock it the Hell off.

Those subversive librarians…

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Banned Books Week Sept 29 - Oct 6The Jungle, Brave New World, To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, A Farewell to Arms, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Howl, As I Lay Dying, The Age of Reason, The Origin of Species, Native Son, The Grapes of Wrath, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Satanic Verses, The Gulag Archipelago, Das Capital, Critique of Pure Reason, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ulysses, etc.