Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

As anyone whose read MEDIA ASSASSIN, or any significant portion of my two decades-plus writing about race, might venture, I probably agree with almost everything Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, above, has said, in his oft-quoted and misquoted public statements.

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An estimated 5,000 Black human beings were lynched in the United States between the years 1890 and 1960. By averages, that’s one African-American dying horribly, in racist mob violence, every five days for seventy years. In almost all of these cases, no one was ever charged for the crimes. So affirms the guest on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, April 25, 2 pm ET.

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“Schtupp” just didn’t test well: The new Teutonic scent

The Germans: They went there. They totally went there. (Respect due to BoingBoingTV for the tip.)

Because it’s the question overloading your neurons right this moment, yes, this package, above, is totally real. The scent is called VULVA—a rather pretty word, it occurs to me—Original.

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Hey, Pennsylvanians: I would never dream of telling you how to vote.

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Tee-hee. This week, The Huffington Post quoted a New York Times‘s article on the new Wall Street Journal parody, My Wall Street Journal. Apparently, it so angered Rupert Murdoch that someone from the company went throughout Los Angeles, buying up the entire stock of local newsstands.

Last Thursday, Alexander Laurence was working at one such stand in Los Angeles, chatting with a customer, David Metz, when, both of them say, a man in a shirt with a Journal logo asked if anyone had seen a paper that looked sort of like The Journal.

“This guy comes by all the time to bring promotional stuff for The Wall Street Journal — bags, coin trays, stickers,” Mr. Laurence said.

Sure enough, they found what he was looking for. “He grabbed them all, said, ‘I need to buy all of these,’ ” Mr. Laurence said. “He had been going around to different stands, buying them.”

The man paid with a corporate American Express card. “At first he’s saying they have to make a correction or it’s not supposed to be out yet,” Mr. Metz said. “But then he said these are not published by The Wall Street Journal.”

Perhaps what most outraged Murdoch, and what the Huffington Post reproduced but the Times didn’t, was this, above: A full-page, topless spread of conservative “#1 FOX News Fox” Ann Coulter, done painstakingly in stipple, per Journal stylee.

On one hand, though satire, it could be argued that the image refines the use of women’s bodies as a territory over which men do battle, often symbolically, and that this post is part of that.

On the other hand, if accurate, the picture of a sow-like Coulter raises serious questions about the veracity of her Young Americans for Freedom forum quote, in the hed, further proving that conservatives not only mangle the truth, but exaggerate the greatness of Americans, particularly when speaking to naive, impressionable audiences.

I’m gonna get you, sucka: John McCain flashes those pearly whites

It’s such an obvious question that it seems bizarre few in the media have asked it:

Does John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

And, outrageously, did he refer to his wife with the evil “C-word,” during an outburst?

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Thanks to Afro-American Pie for tipping me to the spring’s hottest tee (detail, above): A stylish little number, set off with mugshots of indicted Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff / paramour Christine Beatty, and tastefully finished with patter from the duo’s estimated 14,000 X-rated e-mail text messages. Sassy!

The news this week that Barack Obama is distantly related to, among others, Brad Pitt, and that Hillary Clinton is, albeit at a distance, connected by family to Angelina Jolie, led to Pretty On the Outside blog fashioning these grotesque morphs of the Democratic candidates with their respective kinfolk.

“He would not have been my pastor,” Hillary Clinton haughtily told members of the press Tuesday, speaking of Trinity United Church of Christ’s Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s beleaguered former pastor.

But, reports The Huffington Post, the senior pastor of the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C., where the Clintons went during their White House years, calls Wright “an outstanding church leader.”

“He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize.”

Hillary, ducking sniper fire on the campaign trail, could not be reached for comment.

Not so cute, funny, and sexy now, is it?: Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff/alleged mistress Christine Beatty, above, after turning themselves in to the Wayne County Sherriff’s office for mug shots and fingerprinting on perjury, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office, and other charges, Monday. Both are scheduled to be arraigned today at 1 pm CT.