Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

Pimp My Rolling Presidential Fortress.

Barack Obama presidential limo

Barack Obama and the First Lady will be transported the 2-mile distance down Pennsylvania Ave. tomorrow, as part of the inaugural procession, in the dashing black vehicle, above.

The new presidential whip fulfills a processional tradition of escorting the new leader of the free world in a new, secure ride. The car was fashioned by a grateful Cadillac, which, as part of GM, was sure able to use the work.

“Cadillac is honored to serve and renew this great tradition,” said GM spokeswoman Joanne K. Krell. “And it is entirely appropriate that an American president has at his service a great American vehicle.”

But though it’s a Cadillac, the car is “not a direct extension of any single model,” Krell added.

“The presidential vehicle is built to precise and special specifications, undergoes extreme testing and development, and also incorporates many of the top aspects of Cadillac’s ‘regular’ cars — such as signature design, hand-cut-and-sewn interiors, etc.”

Presidential inaugural limo, side view

Asked about what special protective elements have been built into the vehicle, shown here from the side, in order to safeguard what has been, without doubt, the most threatened President-elect in American history, Krell replied,

“I am really  prohibited from actually talking about the safety features of the car.”

In a press release, Nicholas Trotta, assistant Secret Service director for the Office of Protective Operations, was no more illuminating.

“Although many of the vehicle’s security enhancements cannot be discussed, it is safe to say that this car’s security and coded communications systems make it the most technologically advanced protection vehicle in the world.”

Of course, as everybody knows, retirees like to talk, and Joe Funk, a retired Secret Service agent who, during part of his time with the Service, drove President Clinton, is no exception. According to CNN, he thinks

Obama should expect two seemingly contradictory feelings when riding in the presidential limousine. …

“I think he will be surprised about how when he’s in the limo, it’s a cocoon,” Funk said. “The everyday noises will be gone, and he will be totally isolated in this protective envelope.”

“At the same time, I think he will be surprised at the communication capabilities, how the phones, the satellites, the Internet — everything is at his fingertips,” he said. “So at one end, you are totally removed from society. The other side of the coin is that he can have any communications worldwide at a moment’s touch.”

Maximum clarity on the Service’s safety concerns, though, arrived in the person of Ken Lucci, CEO of Ambassador Limousine Inc., which owns two presidential transports from Reagan’s administration.

“The limousines of yesteryear were designed just well enough to provide protection to get the president out of the situation. In today’s case, they [the Secret Service] expect a prolonged attack, and they expect an attack that is a lot more violent than [with] a weapon you can hold in you hand.”

“It literally is a rolling bunker,” he says. “It just happens to have wheels on it.”

Dag.

The Year of Living Sexually.

2008 calendar

Charlotte, NC public relations consultant Charla Muller had a problem.

Her husband, Brad, was about to turn 40, and she needed to appropriately commemorate the date. She wanted to give him something unique and original, something that nobody else would think of giving him, “something so dramatic and different that Brad would never ever pause to remember what I gave him for his fortieth birthday.”

She thought, and thought, and strategized, and when she finally told her husband what she wanted to give him, “he literally fell over”:

Sex. Every Day. For a Year.

Her story of their experience, 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy, tells how gettin’ it on every 24 hours “transformed a marriage.” But as opposed to being a diary of Charla and Brad’s technique, “it’s a book about the ups and downs of married life, trying to have it all (and failing) and figuring out how to get back to the basics of a grounded, faith-based marriage,” Charla says on her web site.

Charla Muller is the guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, January 16, at 2 pm ET.

Slingshot Hip-Hop artFollowing my conversation with Charla, I’ll also be talking with Jackie Salloum, director of the documentary Slingshot Hip-Hop, right, and Ora Wise, education director / associate producer of the project.

The film covers the resistance against Israeli occupation in Palestine as it is waged intellectually by hip-hop artists in the region. Some may recall that I wrote about Jackie’s film and the Palestinian hip-hop scene, back in the March 2008 edition of VIBE magazine, and here, on MEDIA ASSASSIN. As well, I subsequently spoke about these subjects on WNYC Radio’s Soundcheck program, with host John Schaefer.

Given the logarithmic escalation over the past three weeks of the ongoing atrocities in the region, I’m thrilled to have these brave activists on my program.

You can hear their ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

Merry Christmas, President Bush.

Red Wing Shoes celebrates centenary with the world’s largest boot, 2005

Duck.

No Higher Calling Than To Serve.

Obama the Waiter?
Illustration by Mike Flugennock

Shortly after the election, Katherine Rosman, writing for The Wall Street Journal, talked about a party she’d attended as a freelance writer, before she’d joined the esteemed newspaper, and about her chance meeting that night with a politician from the Midwest.

On a warm weekday evening in 2003, a group that can fairly be described as representative of the media elite gathered at one if its favored venues: the garden behind the Manhattan apartment of journalists Tina Brown and Harold Evans.

The occasion was the publication of “The Clinton Wars,” by Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton. Editors from the New Yorker and the New York Times were in attendance along with media figures like Steven Brill and Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner. The guests mingled and sipped wine. Even Clinton showed up, instantly becoming the epicenter of attention. …

Standing by myself I noticed, on the periphery of the party, a man looking as awkward and out-of-place as I felt. I approached him and introduced myself. He was an Illinois state senator who was running for the U.S. Senate. He was African American, one of a few black people in attendance.

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What Happens If a Bunch of Iraqi Journalists Get Their Hands on These Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Vivienne Westwood shoes
Dame Vivienne Westwood’s killer 10-inch, Anglomania heels,
from the collection of the Bata Shoe Museum. Photo by Nicola Betts

Dear readers of MEDIA ASSASSIN:

There is an oversight to which I must own up.

Iraqi journalist Muntader al-ZaidiYesterday, when I put together my prospective rogue’s list of deadly, would-be Presidential shoe-throwers—Wayne Gretzky, Shaq, Pinball Wizard, Bozo the Clown, Frankenstein—in the wake of the controversy around Iraqi newscaster Muntader al-Zaidi, right, who, the day before, threw his shoes at President Bush during a press conference, I tried to be thorough. I wanted to compile a complete roster of people for whom President Bush, in his waning days as our nation’s leader, might keep out an alert eye. To me, it was a matter of national…well, no…clearly, it was a matter of international security.

But I failed.

I forgot to include Vivienne Westwood.

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Handling Our Business.

Under New Management T-shirt

Available in XS-XL for $16 ($22 in heather gray), this t-shirt, above, boasts an outline of the U.S. map that, celebrating our recent general election’s outcome, forms the words, “UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.”

Sing it, baby!But given the passionate American outburst over Barack Obama and his ascension, not to mention the upcoming inaugural, perhaps, evoking singer Miki Howard’s exultant 1989 hit, right, that shirt should read “IN LOVE UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.” You know what I mean?

And, in a related-unrelated, here’s a surprise that surprised me: Squint and check the director’s credit on Howard’s video.

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Lookin’ Fly in the Buttermilk.

Barack obama and the rest of the U.S. presidents

Michelle Obama, You Are Puttin’ a Hurtin’ on That ESSENCE Cover.

Michelle Obama’s January 2009 ESSENCE cover

Clearly, this “collector’s edition” January 2009 cover—one of two—wasn’t much of a stretch for ESSENCE.

Now, a little somethin’ for the ladies….

Barack Obama January 2009 ESSENCE magazine cover

[via Hip-Hop Crunch]

Shifting Out of “Race-Neutral.”

Tell it like it is.

Thanks to the wayward nation of Australia for doing what no U.S. media, in their white, self-congratulatory, post-election euphoria, have yet done, save C-SPAN and Bill Moyers Journal: In this clip from the Aussie news show, Lateline, Dr. Ron Walters, director of the University of Maryland’s African American Leadership Center, and a key strategist with both of Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns, talks at length about the role of race in the Obama campaign, and specifically on the president-elect’s “race-neutral” modus operandi.

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Al-Qaeda Second-in-Command Calls Barack Obama a “House Negro.”

Ayman al-Zawahri makes his point

As reported by the Associated Press, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin-Laden’s No. 2 man, has released a video—”al-Qaeda’s first response to Obama’s victory”—in which he

called the president-elect — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — “house Negroes.”

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