Soul Series Presents Taalam Acey

Tomorrow night Soul Series presents renowned spoken word poet Taalam Acey. Acey is no stranger to performing in New Orleans. ... Read more at the New Orleans Literature Examiner.

First WOC Online?

I hate labeling boxes when I organize my house or move. I hate filing. I hate the term "women of color blogs." The latter makes me uncomfortable because it creates a sea of women so vast it sends my writing mind into a seizure. What does that mean, "woman of color blog"?

Does that mean any woman blogging who is not exclusively of European descent? Does it include Jewish women and if it doesn't include Jewish women then should it not include Arab women? After all both groups sprang from the Middle East not Europe. They are both Semites, and both can be classified under the larger umbrella of groups that have been oppressed, not automatically benefiting from "white" privilege.

Does the tag "woman of color" include all Asians? Some Westernized Asians don't identify with oppressed people of color at all, sometimes not even other Asians. Sometimes some Asians, as do certain kinds of upper-crusty black folks, mentally imagine themselves to be white. ... Please continue reading this post at Blogher.com, A Decade of Women of Color in Blogging: Who Was the First WOC Online?

Artwork discovered at Cine's World post. Just giving credit for where I found the art, not sure I know what the hell the person is talking about in the post.

Laina Dawes Considers Future of WOC Bloggers

Update: The post, "A Decade of Women of Color in Blogging: Who was the First WOC Online?," is now live at Blogher.com.

I am almost done with my post for Blogher.com, "A Decade of Women of Color in Blogging," and yet I'm not really finished. The writing process on this one has been a love hate relationship. I may touch on what I mean in the actual post, but here I'm sharing two things.

The first is this quote from Laina Dawes of Writing is Fighting. She is also a BlogHer.com contributing editor and a black Canadian who writes about Metal music. Here she's answering my question about what she see or hopes for in the future for women of color BlogHers. The Carmen to which she refers is Carmen Van Kerckhove.

In the future...well, I know Carmen from Racialicious personally and I love what she and Latoya Peterson, Wendy Muse and the other contributors are doing - the mix of popular culture and really good critical race theory. Rachel Sullivan, who is a (white) sociologist blogged a bit about her partnership with a black man and her biracial twins, and I loved how she did it. Oh, and the angry black woman(theangryblackwoman.com) has been around for awhile, but her rage has dropped off in the past couple of years. These blogs are smart and funny but very educational. I would love to see more women put that much time into their posts - and I know it is hard and for all the work that you do, you know how hard it is.

I want to see more alternative culture blogs - women and other women of colour who are living lives outside of the box. On the other hand, as I can tell you - they are not going to be popular, but at least they make you think. As someone who is an alternative blogger, I think that emphasizing lives outside of what is stereotypically thought of what POC's do is important, especially to the shorties coming up. I want to see more blogs by Latina, South Asian and Native American women. I'm tired of reading the "I can't get a man, men ain't shit, what about my hair? blogs and since I don't have kids, I'm not into mommybloggers.at.all. I want people to stop being PC and let it all hang out. Be real, don't be so nervous about what other people are thinking. (Laina)

The other item to share is my podcast with Gina McCauley of What About Our Daughters and Michelle Obama Watch. In the interview, Gina says that she believes blogging benefits the kinds of women of which Laina speaks, those women of color who live outside the box on their own terms:



Keep your eyes open for the full post at BlogHer.com or at least as full a post as I could do in a reasonable number of words. This topic begs the question, "Exactly what is a woman of color blog?"

Van Jones Accepts NAACP Award with Message to Glenn Beck

While Precious, the movie, based on Sapphire's novel Push, was front and center tonight at the NAACP Image Awards, the organization reminded America that it still stands for justice when it presented Van Jones with the President's Award. Jones is the social activist and environmentalist Fox talk show host Glenn Beck branded a "communist" last year, pressuring Jones to resign in September 2009 from his position as the White House "Green Czar."

Oh, but Jones was gracious and regal tonight accepting his gift from the NAACP. He gave a beautiful speech, one of the best of the evening, ending it with a message to Beck that he loves him anyway.

At times Jones sounded like the green evangelist prophesying to the nation, at others like a skilled politician, and this is what he said:

First of all giving honor to God and also to my mother Loretta Jean Kirkendall Jones--let me get it right. Get that right, straight! I want to thank my beautiful wife and our two boys Matai and Cabral. I want to thank the staff and supporters of Green for All, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Color of Change, incredible freedom fighting organizations. I also want to give a shout out and a salute to President Barack Obama. President Barack Obama who is a world class leader, a man who volunteered to be the captain of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, and we're still floating, and we're still floating. Let's stay with this president!

And I also want to thank the NAACP for encouraging me to continue in my quest. It took a lot of courage for Ben Jealous to nominate me for this award and to give to me this award. I appreciate that courage, and I appreciate the courage of the NAACP.

I have had 1,000 defeats in this past year, but I had one victory, and it's the most important victory to me: I don't hate anybody. I'm not mad at anybody, and I still believe in the politics of hope. I still believe! You can't take that from me. You can't take it from me.

And I know one thing, we have people in every community in America right now watching this program who don't have jobs, who are suffering, who are afraid, living in economic uncertainty, and I know there's a future out there for them where they get a chance to make the products of tomorrow. If we want the jobs of tomorrow, we have to make the products of tomorrow. There's somebody right now who's in Detroit, and they know how to make cars. They're a skilled machinist, but they're idle. Let them make the wind turbines and the smart batteries and the solar panels to repower this country. Let them work! Give them hope! Give them the opportunity!

There's somebody right now who's living in Appalachia, who's living in rural America, who's afraid she's going to lose her land because she doesn't have enough sources of income. Let her put those wind turbines up. Let her grow an energy crop. Give her the opportunity to hold on to her land and be a part of this energy revolution. Let's get everybody involved in repowering America in a clean way.

And for a country that beautiful, that prosperous, that innovative, that united, I am willing to walk through fire and brimstone and fire and brimstone until we get the job done.

The last thing I want to say is this. To my fellow countryman, Mr. Glenn Beck, I see you and I love you, brother. I love you and you cannot do anything about it. I love you and you cannot do anything about it. Let's be one country! Let's be one country. Let's get the job done. (Transcript of Van Jones's speech accepting 2010 NAACP President's Award at the Image Awards)

If you search for Jones under news, you'll see he's making a come back.

Van Jones, who resigned from the White House Council on Environmental Quality last fall in the face of a coordinated smear campaign by conservative activists, has reemerged from his self-imposed exile. He'll be teaching at Princeton University and taking up a senior fellowship at the Center for American Progress, where he will head a "green opportunity initiative." ("After right-wing smears, Van Jones gets a second chance")

In a blog post at the NAACP website, its president and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous explains why Jones deserved the President's Award. You may also read The Grio's recent interview with Jones.

Others receiving special awards this evening included Tyler Perry (Chairman's Award). He too sent a message in his speech. He's also one of the producers of Precious, and his multiple Perry movies and shows were honored during the event. Two others getting special recognition were Wyclef Jean (Vanguard Award), and Clarance Avant (Hall of Fame). The New York Times has posted a full list of other winners.

BlogHer Syndicated My Danziger 7 Bridge Incident Cover-Up

BlogHer.com just accepted for syndication and posted my piece from yesterday about the Danziger Seven investigator pleading guilty to covering up the truth about the shootings on the bridge following Hurricane Katrina. You may read the full post here.

I also saw that today the Times Picayune/NOLA.com ran an editorial calling the Danziger Seven "a lawless gang."

Danziger 7 Investigator Pleads Guilty to Cover-Up

Check this link for my latest update on the Danziger Bridge case.

While we in New Orleans bask in the glow of Super Bowl victory, Hurricane Katrina ghosts still haunt us. On February 24, yesterday, the story finally broke that Michael Lohman, a former New Orleans Police Department officer, had confessed to conspiring with other officers to cover-up the truth of what happened on the Danziger Bridge September 4, 2005 after the city flooded. On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty in federal court to obstructing justice and promoting lies about the shootings.

While Lohman was not one of the officers on the scene, he was, instead, responsible for supervising the NOPD’s investigation. Lohman did arrive on the scene shortly after the shooting, and according to the bill, he concluded that the shooting was justified. The 21-year veteran of the force abruptly retired earlier this month. (WWL-TV)

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation press release, " Lohman personally drafted a 17-page report, which he knew to be false, and provided that report to an investigator to submit as the official incident report."

Around the nation and here in New Orleans, many concerned citizens never bought the results of the 2007 report that said seven New Orleans police officers had acted righteously in the Danziger incident. The accepted final report relied almost solely on police officer accounts and ignored eye-witness testimony from civilians who were on the bridge that day who said officers shot without provocation at those attempting to cross it, killing two people and wounding four.

Lohman's admission validates stories that officers lied and also planted a gun near the fallen civilians. In the 2005 incident, one of whom was a mentally-handicapped man, Ronald Madison.

“Defendant Lohman, after realizing that officers had shot unarmed civilians, encouraged the involved sergeants to come up with a story justifying the shooting,” said the court document. (WWL)

Read more on this story at NOLA.com/the Times Picayune, including a pdf of the original bill document. This is a continuing investigation as the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice pursue the Danziger 7, the police officers originally charged with the shootings.

In August 2008, Louisiana Criminal District Court Judge Raymond Bigelow threw out local charges against the officers. He "concluded a prosecutor violated grand jury secrecy."

In addition to that information, readers may appreciate this 2007 article, "The Danziger Bridge Killings: How New Orleans Police Gunned Down Civilians Fleeing the Flood" at Democracy Now. Lohman's confession represents a big break in this case.

Maureen Miller reported for Anderson Cooper on this story in 2008, "What Happened on the NOLA Bridge?"

Here’s what we know happened around 9 a.m. on Sunday, September 4th, 2005.

Two men, Ronald Madison, 40 and James Brissette, 19, were killed and four others were wounded as they crossed the Danziger Bridge over the Industrial Canal in eastern New Orleans.

Autopsy results show Madison, a mentally ill man who had no criminal record, was shot in the back several times. No gun was found on him or near him.

Just before shots rang out, police received a Signal 108 – the code for an officer or officers in danger and in need of assistance. Seven officers heard the call at their makeshift office in a banquet hall they’d taken over after Katrina flooded their usual work space.

According to their statements in a police report, they thought two of their fellow officers were “down” – either wounded or killed – near the bridge.

The seven officers rushed to the scene. When they arrived they say at least four people were shooting at them. They say they only started shooting after they were fired upon.

But survivors of the shooting who were on the bridge say they were unarmed and ambushed by the seven officers. The survivors say they were simply walking across the bridge to a grocery store to get food. (CNN)

And here is a link to the NPR story of 2006, "What Happened?"

The story was also reported as it broke on local Fox 8.

The bill of information goes on to allege that police planned to provide false and misleading information on the shootings and would cover up other information in order to ensure the shootings would appear legally justified. Lohman allegedly went along with the plan and the "clean" gun was later used in the investigation, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors say an investigator knowingly failed to take steps that would have allowed a proper investigation, including telling Lohman he planned to plant a gun and other evidence under the bridge to justify the shooting.

The current NOLA.com headline says Lohman's plea deal blows this case "wide open."

This story and other Hurricane Katrina stories of African-Americans being gunned down following the storm, fester as an open wound in the city's race relations. The families of the victims in this particular case pursued further investigation relentlessly, always maintaining that their dead or wounded loved ones were not the criminals the officers reported them to be. The case has been a symbol of how some in law enforcement and some in the media misrepresented certain events following Katrina, making it appear that New Orleans was a city of roving black looters, rapists, and snipers, and that perception made it easier for the police to tell whatever stories they chose about shootings.

I am one of the people who never believed the police officers' version. The victims were African-American, and the NOPD is not known for being trustworthy, a fact long-time New Orleans residents know. If black they may be doubly aware and instinctively question the police version of events when a case sags with media attention. For those who want to understand why that is, the problems of NOPD brutality in New Orleans have been documented in a book, Black Rage in New Orleans: Police Brutality and African American Activism from World War II to Hurricane Katrina, which will be released by LSU Press in April.

Having lived long enough to know that our racial problems would not disappear with our recent good news and anticipating that eventually our Super Bowl euphoria expanding good will to all will fade, I wrote a poem in early February called "Gaining Yardage." It hopes that New Orleanians won't let life's racial tensions and this kind of information keep our different ethnic groups from working toward what's best for the city in the future.

News of injustice fires anger and ferments bitterness, but bitterness rarely results in justice. I keep hoping we will learn from the past not to repeat its uglier stories, and so I look at this breaking news as a sign that gone are the days of sweeping this kind of ugliness under a rug. If we want a clean house, if we want to keep marching toward progress, we must be willing to sanitize every corner, and yet, being the practical woman that I am, I know dirt always comes back and stubborn stains suck the most.

This piece is also syndicated at BlogHer.com

That School-Spying-Webcam Case Again

I heard about this case of the school spying on a student via a webcam on a school-issued computer earlier and Leslie Madsen Brooks writes about it at BlogHer, but I also saw this CNN video. Read Leslie's post and watch the legal eagles discuss the case below. Bizarre!

CNN says the FBI is investigating.



When I took my computer into Best Buy a while back, the Geek Squad guy laughed because my webcam is taped over, something I did before this case came to light. I know it seems paranoid, but as someone who had someone spy on her before, I take no chances.

White Man in the House

My father, 89, lives with me. Right now it's 11:15 p.m. or so, and I'm half-watching that "scary" movie, The Ruins, with white people imploding because they're someplace they don't belong. So, I hear my father coming with his walker down the hall, and he comes into the living room and the conversation goes like this.

"Nordette, you know I've been sleeping most of the day?"

"Yes, Dad. I saw you sleeping in the easy chair when I went through earlier today," I said.

"And yeah. Then I went and got in the bed."

"Uh-hm," I said.

"Well, when I went to sleep, I had the television on. Must have been the news. Police were arresting somebody. And you know where my television is in my room," he said.

"Yes." He has a 32-inch HDTV at the foot of his bed.

"Well, I just woke up, and I saw this man and I thought, Now you know this is something. This white man done broke into the house. Because I saw him coming toward me. And then I realized it was on the TV. Now you know that's something! I think it must be this medicine."

It could be his medicine. I'll be going to the doctor with him this week, but medicine or not, I laughed at the vision of him, an 89-year-old black man in Louisiana, waking up and being that calm about the possibility a strange white man was at the foot of his bed.

Rachel Maddow at CPAC 2010

Below is amusing video of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's adventure at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. She talks about the giant pictures of Sarah Palin and Anne Coulter that she saw, and also how some guy got nasty and in her face, but sounds like that was her only open confrontation. According to CNN, the conference ends tomorrow.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dick Cheney also appeared, but without his gun, gloating and saying he thinks Obama is a one-term president.

Per HuffPo, Bill O'Reilly advises CPAC zealots not to bash Obama. You'll have to read and watch to see what he means. It must be getting pretty bad if O'Reilly thinks some of the attacks are "cheap." Maybe that's why they didn't have Rush Limbaugh speak again. He looked downright insane in some of the videos last year. However, I read that he appeared on video, "announcing that Ed Morrissey was chosen as CPAC's blogger of the year."

Carleen Brice: Blogger's Novel Becomes Movie

With little risk of being wrong, I'll say, "Most women have an issue with their mothers." They may not have a big Oprah-show-worthy issue with Mom, maybe not even a priest or therapist-worthy issue, possibly not even a sleepless night irritation, but somewhere deep in her soul, a woman has some kind of matter about mother that pricks her with questions: What does my mother's womanhood teach me or not teach me, and what does my mother's womanhood say about my womanhood?

Paraphrasing what I said to novelist and blogger Carleen Brice in a Blog Talk Radio interview yesterday, I think that even if our mother is ideal in our eyes, we may still have a problem, the fear we'll never be as perfect as we believe her to be or she seems to believe herself to be.

Brice's first novel, Orange Mint and Honey (One World/Ballantine, 2008, paperback, 324 pp.) is about a mother-daughter relationship, one with a painful history and uncertain future. It's a story of a woman in her twenties growing up after she thought she was grown as she learns to forgive so she can move forward. It's a compelling tale that's gone from book to film. It is now the movie Sins of the Mother, starring singer and actress Jill Scott, and it premieres Sunday night, Feb. 21, at 8:00 p.m. ET and 5:00 p.m. PT on the Lifetime Movie Network. ... Please read more at BlogHer.com

Real Men! I'm a Womanist, But Dayumn this is Funny

Based on conversations some of us have been having about what we laugh at in spite of ourselves, BlogHer.com's Suzanne Reisman posted Guilty Pleasures and Feminism. It covers commercials that could or should be deemed sexist that still make us laugh, well, at least some of us.

Her post made me remember that I intended to post a commercial that I watched at least three times in a row Tuesday night and laughed (okay, I salivated a bit too). It's the Old Spice Body Wash "I'm a Man" commercial, which I've embedded below, and I've discovered it's part of a series the company's calling "manmercials." Can't vouch for the rest of them, but the one below got me.



H/T to Maria Niles for letting me know that the man in the manmericial's name is Isaiah Mustafa, and he's on Twitter, and the Ministry of Gossip noticed him too. He's "the man your man could smell like." (and "I'm on a horse.") The MOG article also has video at the end telling how the producers made this video with Mustafa, a former NFL player. (Updated, 6:40 CST)

I caught it on DVR as I was fast-forwarding. Of course, this brother's body is what caught my eye as it whizzed by, but I also saw his facial expressions and thought, "Hey, wait! He's got to be saying something funny." So, I rewound and yes, he was saying some pretty funny stuff, "Look at your man, now back to me," and so forth. This commercial plays on one of the oldest gender stereotpyes, macho man masculinity. Go, Village People!

I laughed at it the same way I laugh at the "Gaston" song in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.



Great satire and the undercurrent is the stereotype of women's expectations of a "real man."

OSF: I Would Sing Like ...

I went around and around on this week's Old School Friday theme, if I could sing I would sing like ... and I had multiple names, and almost posted more than one singer's video, but I finally decided there could be only one and for me that one is the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald.

Here she is as a young woman singing A Tisket, A Tasket.



And an older woman singing "Cry Me a River."



The creators of the Old School Friday meme are Mrs. Grapevine and Marvalus at Conversations with Marva and has these rules, if you want to join this theme party.

Women as Friends and Me as Woman

I'm working on a blog post for BlogHer.com about female friendships. It's kind of a hard write for me because my mind is very noisy on the topic and because I don't tend to keep lots of friends. My personal experience on the subject matter is rather limited because I don't think that I've ever had a BFF (Best Friend Forever), not even as a younger woman.

Oh, I have friends that I knew when I was in high school that I can still connect with when we choose, but one of those friendships with the kind of bond that causes a buddy shows up to nurse you back from cancer or a group of friends that keeps in touch with each other regularly and all their children know each other? Uh, no, don't have that, and at this late date am likely to ever have that, which is probably why the book The Hot Flash Club fascinates me. What's the likelihood of finding that kind of friendship between random women springing up after age 50? However, it would be nice.

When I started working on this post, I had a working title, "Are We Liberators or are We Crabs? Females as Friends, Mentors, Champions" because this question of women as the lifters of women, as balm and guide for other women, women as friends has been on my mind juxtaposed to critical statements about women as friends that I see too frequently in the news or fiction. I'll probably give examples of what I mean in the BlogHer.com piece. But I've concluded that to think about how as a woman you relate to other women is to look in the mirror for the kind of woman you reflect.

When my marriage ended, I was left alone with a woman I did not know as well as I thought I knew. Me. As I look back at some of my writing from those days, blog posts and poetry, I see that I struggled not only with who I am but what is woman and her role on the planet, hence my mulling over the concept of goddess.

Consequently, I wrote poems such as "Light and Only Light" aka "I am Goddess"--sort of me telling me to think more of me or nobody else would, certainly not a man--, or "I Can Only Speak of Me, that reflects a search for self and the dark places it takes you, and "Evoulution" that reflects what it might meant for me to be a straight woman without a man. I wondered how much more dependent I might be on female networks than I'd ever before considered as I quickly discovered males didn't want to be real friends unless that included sharing a bed sometimes. I couldn't accommodate them because casual sex is not really my style.

I emphasize "straight" with the word "woman" because I recall the men who dropped by my poetry sometimes to suggest I was a lesbian because I had no clear interest in knowing them instead of myself at the moment and because I wrote about womanly matters.

Unlike my former spouse, I had no desire to leap immediately into a new marriage. And as I pushed away a few men who clearly had marriage in mind, I contemplated what it means to nurture the bonds of platonic affection. The kindest word a man dubbed me, as far as my work went, was "womanist."

Lately, perhaps because I look at the world with five decades beneath my belt, I ponder how this world has changed its view of female friendships. It seems women's relationships with women, especially well-known women, get pinned beneath microscopes. While men have been encouraged to have male bonding sessions, the female bond is being scrutinized and open acts of affection labeled "gay."

You know what I'm talking about, the Oprah and Gayle rumors that Rosie O'Donnell, for instance, would rather fan than discuss intelligently under the possibility that there is such a thing as platonic attachment. I'm not sure what that's about, Rosie fantasizing or the world's growing dysfunction revealing a belief that the only real affection is sexual or romantic affection.

I call it dysfunction because I know that if a shrink ask you, "So, do you think that the only way to show affection is sexual?" You'd better answer "No" and list some other ways or you'll be paying for a lot more sessions. And yet women today have less liberty to be openly affectionate as though the whole world is made up of confused middle-schoolers.

I remember when teen girls and young women could walk down the street holding hands, whispering in each others ears about what else but boys or older women could drape an arm around a female friend's shoulder just because she loved her like a sister and nobody questioned that. No one. It was understood that women had friendships with women to whom they felt deep connection and that was the extent of it, a deep sense of kinship, unquestioned loyalty.

I wanted one of those; however, as I suggested earlier, I'm not sure that I was ever another woman's best friend. I mean I was not the woman called up to be the maid of honor at the wedding or the one people called when they wanted go shopping. Maybe that was one of the drawbacks of being the "fat" friend. I don't know.

But I've been the friend people call when things fall apart with the boyfriend because they want advice, when they want help with their resume or to give an opinion on an office situation. I was even asked once to go to a party, talk to a specific man, and then report my impressions of him back to a friend, sort of like a psychic being asked to give a reading. But I've never been the friend that everybody else knows is the BFF, the one you know that if you look for one, there is the other. I think I've been the BFP, best friend in a pinch.

And yet, I've never developed all these odd ideas of female relationships. The ones I see that judge and label female pairs and cliques as "frenemies" or "repressed lesbians" or "bitches in ditches," "queen bee and hive" or "bucket o' crabs." Maybe I'm not that observant.

The most I've done is observe women in groups and like Heidi Klum on Project Runway determine who was either in or out, meaning I tended to notice the females who were like me and those who weren't. The ones like me were there in the group but not really. They were good at faking being in the group and sometimes fell over themselves worried about fitting in while at other times didn't think fitting in mattered at all. The ones unlike me were consistently popular, usually excelled in social graces--the art of flattery, lying, knowing when to keep mum.

I can only write this because to my knowledge, none of my brick and mortar friends read this blog, and so I won't have people writing me to say, "But what about me? I'm your friend." To which I would say, "Yes. Yes you are." That's what you say when you care enough not to hurt anyone feelings, knowing that person won't be there when you need them at all because you wouldn't feel comfortable telling them you needed anything. A friend is someone you feel won't judge you if they see you at your worst.

However, I do have friends who I know will come if called. I'm just not the calling type. I'm the do as much as you can alone type, and that's either a character flaw or common sense. I still don't know which it is.

Happy Birthday to the Hot John Travolta

I've been seeing the previews for From Paris, With Love, starring John Travolta, and for only one reason have I considered going to see this movie: Travolta, who will be 56 on February 18, is looking mighty tasty. Yes, I know, that's so subjective, but as a woman who recently turned 50, I keep an eye out for how the males in my age-range are holding up.

Folks scrutinize women and judge how they're aging, right? Well, I refuse to be sexist. I think the men need a gander too.

Back in 2008, People Magazine ran a poll that asked whether John Travolta looked better bald or with the black, luxurious locks of his youth. That poll's closed now, of course, but either way, Travolta looks hot to me. However, I favor the bald Travolta these days.

Aside from Travolta's vintage hotness, I'm told by my son that From Paris is a decent movie.

Paging Mother of the Matrix: Prevail by the Pen!

Oh, let's see. I'm not in the best of moods. When I opened my email this morning I had a Google alert on African-American authors and the only story in it was a posting of a faux story at Black Voices about Sophia Stewart winning her case against the Wachowski brothers and whoever else it was she sued regarding The Matrix Trilogy and Terminator.

That news report is false. She did not win!

It's time to stop entertaining this. It's time for her and her supporters to move on and if they really care more about her than a lost cause, they need to tell her what I'm telling her at The African-American Books Examiner ... Please read the post..

Part of me feels that there are so many other, hard-working black writers who are actually producing books worthy of purchase, reading, and herald, so many black writers pushing to get scripts to studios that deserve attention and support that I question those who are putting more energy into Stewart's story than into viable writers with real track records. And if she doesn't have a good reason for why she didn't show up to her day in court, why are we still talking about her?

For the Love of Ivy as Black Romance Novel

Today at the African-American Books Examiner, I look at the African-American romance novel briefly, but move onto say that had the movie For the Love of Ivy, from which I present clips, had been a book first and not a screenplay, it would have been the first black romance novel. I suggest you pop over to that article if for no other reason than to watch the comic scene of the white family falling apart without their black maid. Read more here.

My Zulu Ball Adventure

Friday night, where was I? First, I was getting ready for the Zulu Ball at home. Had a near disaster because my daughter made a bad decision about where tho take the ball gowns to be steamed. Then I was leaving the house with my son and daughter an hour late.

We had to go pick up my son's girlfriend. At her house, my Toyota got stuck in the mud. In tuxes and evening gowns, who was going to push it out? No one. We found another means of transportation.

At the ball we saw these people in the older video below, Casa Samba, perform. I didn't know I would see half-naked dancers, and my daughter commented on the weird juxtaposition of virginal debutantes being introduced to society against drums and gyrating, thong-wearing, booty-exposed females. Hey, that's entertainment, New Orleans style!



However, before we made it into the ball room, we parked the car and walked two blocks in unusually cold weather for New Orleans. My feet hurt and I was freezing.

When we went to the ladies room before we went to our tables, I discovered that the dry cleaner had attempted to remove the rhinestone broach from my purple gown just to steam it (why I don't know), hadn't sewn it back securely, and so the broach had fallen of half way, ruining the drape of the bodice. I'm glad I wasn't there to be cute.

We enjoyed the pageantry of the evening. Pretty funny that Queen Zulu couldn't sit down without help under all that queen-wear. The second lines of people still high on the Saints Super Bowl win were fun.

Eric Benet performed, looking as fine and and sounding as beautiful as ever. He sang some old favorites but also a not-so-old song of which he's very proud because it was produced by David Foster. It was quite good and is called "The Last Time."



En Vogue was snowed in someplace, at least three of them, and so they couldn't perform.

We got home after 4:00 a.m. I got up today around 3:45 p.m. and sat in a stupor on my living room sofa watching television. After 7:00 or so, in the dark, my son and daughter went with me to retrieve car that was stuck in mud the night before. We pushed it out, and then hit the Waffle House. Fun, fun! Sorry, I did not take my video camera.

Gaining Yardage (Saints & New Orleans win poem)

Gaining Yardage
By Nordette N. Adams

New Orleans,
where we have struggled
together,
now dance
together,
and weep in joy and leap
together.

We have huddled,
together,
having seen our future shimmer
in the gleam of football helmets
black and gold.
We have believed
to see our city
not drowning in canal and Pontchartrain waters,
not broken like the levees,
not shamed forever naked to the world
at woe in a storm-beaten Superdome
but lifted
high above the flooded night
together.

We have looked at Saints
on a field in flesh.
We have prayed with saints
in the heavens.
We have persevered
together.

Now we smile like drunkards,
loving everyone,
high not on Bourbon
(well, yes, some)
but high on hope,
everyone the same,
hugging with equal felicity
strangers and kin folk in the streets,
greeting in common tongue, "Who Dat!"

We must drink in each moment,
be in each second,
savor each breath of this sweet
victory air.

And when we again
find ourselves not
in shirts black and gold
but pitted
against each other in skins
black and white,
when we touch the ground
and see in our skins we
are not saints, but human--
blood rooted African, European,
Viet Namese, Mexican,
Creole, and Cajun--
when our halos rust
in common humid air,
may we shake off
smothering spiteful dust,
hold fast to ties that bind
and win again
together.

© 2010 Nordette N. Adams

New Orleans's Colorful Gangster Brouillette

New Orleans is a land of color--colorful traditions like Mardi Gras, colorful stories like the one that will be told about the Saints winning Super Bowl 44, and colorful characters like legendary gangster Frenchy Brouillette. ... Please read more at the New Orleans Literature Examiner.

Define Your Racist: Twelve Examples

Yesterday, I had to say something on John Mayer, and I did so in the post "John Mayer Reveals His Authentically Racist Self." After seeing how people--in one case even one of the black women he named--extended their hands to say "I don't think John Mayer is racist," I began to ponder what that meant.

However, I don't fault people for not wanting to say anything bad about people they like. That's the way we're raised and we're raised to know that to be racist is a bad thing.

Nevertheless, it occurs to me again that America is moving toward making the word "racist" another forbidden word. Unhappy with the "N" word, and now the Special Olympics "R" word, plus the other "N" word, we're moving on to add yet another "R" word, "racist."

Yes, America, I am concerned, and so, I woke up this morning and wrote the following on Twitter via TwitLonger.

RE John Mayer > Oddly, people debate whether he is racist but agree with little debate that he is sexist as though to identify Mayer as "racist" is as bad as him using the "N" word or labeling his penis David Duke. On sexism we say if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck. But if it walks like a racist duck, then we debate hearts and intent. Do Americans understand what the word "racist" actually means? (Posted at TwitLonger)

I've gotten a definite impression, as I implied in comments on another post, that many Americans in today's popular culture think the word "racist" means a person who comes to your house and burns a cross on your lawn or lynches your husband, and rapes your daughter for fun. We associate the word racist with these extreme acts of terror, but the word "racist" in its purist sense means simply a person who thinks his/her race is superior to other races in the same way the word "sexist" means to think that one's gender is superior.

The word "racist," because of hate groups, has come to mean more the equivalent of the word bigot as in it's associated with extreme hate and intolerance. People think racist is to race as wife-beating misogynist is to woman or Nazi is to Jew. That, however, is incorrect. Racist is to race as sexist is to woman, which is why "hatred or intolerance of another race or other races" is number three on the definition of "racist" not number one.

We've done an exceptional job of making people feel guilty and afraid to be called racist, to get all wound up in a knot if the word is uttered against them, and by extension to fear examining whether what they do or think is racist the same way the devoutly religious are afraid sometimes to acknowledge they've felt lust or anger. Instilling that fear was probably necessary to make some of the strides in Civil Rights that we've made, but now it's time to grow up and understand what the word "racist" means. Only then will we have any chance of stepping into the mythic land of Post-Racial America. (Nordette in comments at BlogHer)

In addition to fear of calling a white person "racist," I'm hearing from some of us that black people need to stop having knee jerk responses to the word "nigger." I agree. We should be intelligent enough to examine context. Who knows, if Mayer had stopped at "nigger" pass, given the point he was trying to make, I would have chalked what he said up to imprudent use of irony. But he didn't. He added to the fire that his penis was white supremacist.

But many times we must look at context before we throw a hissy fit. For instance, if we encourage a banning the word "nigger" mentality no matter what the context, then what will we do with this poem by Harlem Renaissance writer Countee Cullen, "Incident"? How will we learn to evaluate the works of Zora Neale Hurston? Should we toss out Mark Twain? Can we grasp the point in Taalam Acey's "Market for Ni$$as"?

That said, what is going on in the American psyche that it now takes affront at use of the word "racist"? I see people redefining common sense methods of identifying a person as "racist" as "resorting to name calling." So, I say, "While it's true we need to stop having a knee-jerk response to the word "nigger" and consider political or literary context, it's critical that we do not start having knee jerk responses to use of the word 'racist.'"

I am disappointed at the fallacy that the word racist must be reserved for only the ugliest of white supremacists. That notion is absolute nonsense. We are speakers of English. Let us use more than one part of speech.

Intelligent people understand that there are different levels of racism, even different types--paternal racism, blatant racism, conscious racism, subconscious or repressed racism. So, add adjectives when you use the word "racist" if you want to establish to what degree a person is racist.

Define your racist! Here are a dozen types of racist just off the top of my head.

1. "Oh, yes. He's nice. He doesn't know he's offensive, and his lover is black. He's a subconscious racist."
2. "Yeah, Limbaugh pretends he's never said anything racist. He's a venom-spewing, Wiley Coyote racist."
3. "She's acknowledging white privilege and its influence on her life. Many white people are recovering racist."
4. "Girl, please. David is a card-carrying, skin-head-KKK racist. Look at his tattoos!"
5. "We must give Bill credit. He's very polite. It's hard to see how he feels about black workers because he's a poker-faced racist who doesn't want a lawsuit."
6. "Mary walks on eggshells around black people. She's afraid she'll say the wrong thing. She's a self-fearing racist. She's scared if she says the "n" word, she won't be able to stop."
7. "Who, Glenn Beck? That crazy-ass racist!"
8. "Do you want to get yourself killed? Stay away from Bubba. He's a lynching racist."
9. "She thinks she's funny, but she's just another insensitive, joker racist, who should not be confused with "ironic/tragically hip racists." They "really think they're down and empathetic, but they wallow in their entitlement and privilege" (H/T to Brownstocking.)."
10. "No, Sarah Palin doesn't know anything about black people or their history and contributions to America. She can't see 'em from her house. She's a pretty ignorant racist."
11. "Sen. So-and-So will gladly support redlining for campaign contributions, Voter-ID too. He's a political whore of a racist."
12. "Ah, Joe. He romanticizes his Confederate heritage and wishes he were married to Scarlett O'Hara. He's a rose-colored-glasses racist."

I know. I know. The word "racist" makes some white people go insane with guilt. So, believe me, I get the whole communications tactic and wisdom presented in the following video from Jay Smooth, "How to Tell People They Sound Racist," which advises us that we should concentrate on behavior and not labeling people even when we know the person should be labeled "racist."



I love that video and applaud the advice. I do not, however, think the video's approach is always the best way to deal with blatantly, racist comments from a public figure. Sometimes it takes Malcom X bluntness to get the behavior changes encouraged by Martin Luther King, Jr. Sometimes, you really do need to call the person "racist." And come on, let's face it, eventually the truly crafty will start telling us we don't know what is and isn't racist if we limit ourselves to only labeling behavior. Some white people love to tell people of color the definitions of words in ways that favor a white mindset and gives them absolution. Therefore, it's best, sometimes, to let the word "racist" rain down, so its insult rolls off your back. Get it out of your system and move on.

But why do so many people resist calling a racist they know and like a racist? The answer lies in the same reason people like to debate the nature of sin and what specifically may be classified as sin. Nobody wants to be called a sinner. If I point out the mote in your eye, I may be asked to examine the mote in my own. Mostly, people don't want to see the ugliness in what or who they love because they fear guilt by association and dread self-examination.

Tip for my white brothers and sisters: Stop defending yourselves on this topic. Even when you feel in your heart that you are not a racist, try this on for size, "It's possible I have some racial demons I need to wrestle. I'm working on it." What can anyone say to that but, "So, please work faster and more quietly."

Read the comments section on Maria Niles's John Mayer post at BlogHer.com

Mayer Reveals His Authentically Racist Self

Should we slaughter John Mayer now? I mean that figuratively. I know to clarify that I meant that figuratively because I know there are white people, like the ones who were outraged at Serena Williams's tantrum, who believe if a black person speaks of violence she means she will literally kill someone.

However, if you looked up John Mayer in the Twitter stream right now, you might conclude his life is in danger. People of all races slam him at the moment.

"F*ck John Mayer!" is today's catch phrase chocked full of venom, and all this because he speaks of having or not having a "nigger pass" in Playboy Magazine and says his penis is white supremacist followed by naming black women into whom he might consider thrusting himself.

What did I say about this on Twitter?

(The) John Mayer thing only bugs black ppl who confuse trying 2sing blck w/liking blck ppl. Cultural theft has nothing to do w/love. (Nordette)

The rest of what I could say would be book length and discuss the dangers of looking in any poet's, songwriter's, or novelist's closet. What they really think about life and your people might not sit well with you, especially on race.

But I've never been into Mayer. I'm the woman whose son, when he was 7, embarrassed his father at the fancy Bridgewater, NJ, mall by saying loudly in a shoe store full of white people, "Daddy, you know what Mom says," as my former husband raced to cover his child's mouth, knowing something bad was about to happen. "She says she gets so tired of white people stealing black people's music."

People pretended not to notice, but the clerk snorted at the cash register. An N'Sync song was on the Muzak speakers.

So, how was it that Justin Timberlake maintained the love of black male rappers and black music consumers after throwing Janet Jackson under the Super Bowl bus? How is it that we continue to think that liking black music, imitating us, trying to be hip and cool in black has anything at all to do with not being racist?

Don't get me wrong, I like a little blue-eyed soul, Joss Stone for instance, but I don't assume because she mimics black singers she likes black people. She might. She might even think she identifies with black struggle, the way Mayer seems to think he may, but I don't assume that she does anymore than I assume because a man says he loves his wife he's not a misogynist or that slave owners who impregnated their black slaves got up the next morning and freed them.

As I've said to friends, even the who dat New Orleans controversy reminds me of how much some white people love black music and black athletes, how they like saying black phrases, but, as I said in "Crescent City Blues in K," don't love the people from whom the culture springs. Poll some of the white people down here who were yelling "Who dat" is their culture and ask them if it would be o.k. to move black people into the house next door. How about pressuring government to help more of the poorer blacks who couldn't come back to New Orleans to come back home? Crickets chirp.

However, I am also the woman who's tried to explain repeatedly to white liberals who think they are not racist to stop having a knee jerk response to the word. Most folks have some racist in 'em, some kind of bias based on color or culture, especially white people, who have been conditioned to think they're a cut above everyone else.

Finally, Mayer's just a songwriter/singer and young at that. Don't like what he said? Stop buying his music, and stop buying the music of black rappers and entertainers who record or perform with him in the future. Other than that, who gives a damn about who John Mayer wants to fuck and whether he thinks he's got a pass into blackness? And "John, please don't try to apologize. Don't explain a thing. Be who you are."

Related: Define Your Racist: Twelve Examples.

I'm 50, and the Angels Still Sing

Today, my son, 19, returned home from classes at the University of New Orleans, bounded into my bedroom where I was working and said, "So, tomorrow, you'll be over the hill."

I said, "What do you mean? I'm already over the hill." And I laughed.

He said, "Mom, haven't you heard that 50 is the new 40? Everybody knows that the half-way point makes you over the hill."

I grinned, contemplating that ... Read more at BlogHer.com.

From WWL: Drew Brees Dances to Good Times

Thank you, WWL TV, for making your videos embeddable. Here's Saints Quarterback Drew Brees having a great time, dancing to Good Times at tonight's city parade for the New Orleans Saints. So much fun to watch. And he was not the only Saint player having fun with fans.



I think Brees may have been drinking just a little bit there. Float riders are tethered to the floats to avoid falling accidents, but I think a few times his teammates grabbed his jersey to make sure they didn't lose him along the route.

And from the Times Picayune, more parade video.

New Orleans Saints Video: Victory Parade

Black Books Tuesday, February 9

Black History Month kicks off this week's round-up of blog posts on black books and ends with an extra tidbit on the 1949 movie Pinky. In the middle, readers may consider how to donate books to Haiti. ... Read more at the African-American Books Examiner.

Saints Super Bowl Front Pages from Around Nation

My cousin sent me this PDF of newspaper front pages from around the nation for the New Orleans Saints winning Super Bowl 44, their first ever. Thought I'd share them with you because the win means so much to the city's rebuilding.

Click the image to download or view the PDF
.

E*Trade Baby: Girlfriend, Milkawhat?

If not visible here, then you can view at E*Trade's YouTube site.


This hilarious E*Trade commercial is from the 2010 Super Bowl, SB44, in which the Saints won. Yes, they did! I'm still smiling silly over that win.

New York Times Reviews 'Pinky,' a 1949 Movie about Racism

Whether by coincidence or providence, I do not know, but tonight, after seeing a post at BlogHer.com on the complexities of interracial dating, I came across the 1949 20th Century Fox movie Pinky on cable via demand. The movie is based on a book by Cid Ricketts Sumner, a white female writer from Mississippi.

Predating movies such as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, and Kriss Turner's Something New, and excluding the 1922 version of Shakespeare's Othello, Pinky is perhaps the first movie to broach interracial romantic relationships. The way the story is told is very telling of the time when intermarriage between blacks and whites was illegal.

In the trailer the text refers to the white doctor who fell in love with Pinky as the man who "found out too late." The viewer is left to grasp the unfinished sentence to be "that the woman he loved was of Negro blood."

He could not possibly have known unless Pinky told him she was a Negro because it's the story of a black woman who was light enough to pass for white. She returns home to her black grandmother in the south after being a nurse in the north. While it has themes similar to Imitation of Life, I think Pinky is less well known, and God's Stepchildren, made in 1938 by black director Oscar Micheaux with a "colored cast," is forgotten even more.

The video below is the 1948 trailer for Pinky, and below it is an excerpt of the 1949 New York Times review.



While Ethel Waters, an African-American, plays Pinky's grandmother, the main character, Pinky, is played by Jeanne Crain, a white actress. Here is that excerpt from the New York Times. Notice that the writer presents racism as though it's something that must be proven and is not evident even though discrimination against African-Americans was more blatant and common back then.

Now that our screen has contemplated some bitter evidence of anti-Negro bias as it has crashed with dramatic explosion upon individuals in the Army and in "the North" ("Home of the Brave" and "Lost Boundaries"), it has remained for Darryl F. Zanuck and Twentieth Century-Fox to shift the scope of observation into that more noted arena of racism, the Deep South. And in "Pinky," their film upon this subject, which opened at the Rivoli yesterday, they have come forth with a picture that is vivid, revealing and emotionally intense.

Telling a story of a young nurse —a girl with white skin but Negro blood—who returns to her home in Mississippi after being raised and schooled in the North, this picture assembles illustrations of the cruel humiliations and abuse to which this girl is subjected after her identity is found out. It also presents a tender aspect of the mutual loyalties between Negro servants and white masters that still exist in the South, and it skirts the edge of a fragile romance between the girl and a young white doctor from the North. (New York Times, 1949, read full review)

Turner Classic Movies is currently showing the film for Black History Month, it seems. According to Wikipedia, this movie was banned in Marshall, Texas, when it was released. One writer said the producers "missed a golden opportunity" by failing to cast Lena Horne as the main character.

Related:

• More on the Color Struck and Obsessions with Blue-Eyed Black People
• Lisa Durden on Black Men Dating "Outside their Race"
• Maybe Post-Racial Does Exist? at Siddity
• "A Different Take on Interracial Relationships: Questioning Our Motives, Our Mates, and Ourselves" by Laina Dawes at BlogHer.com
• On Michelle Obama's Roots & Placage in New Orleans
• A post by Professor Kim Pearson, "Why Black History Month Still Matters."

Saints Win: NOLA Sports Caster Waxes Poetic

The video is from WWL TV, New Orleans:

Watch Jim Henderson's final commentary is an homage to the Saints fans and the City of New Orleans and the team that has helped us believe.

Related: New Orleans Sees Bright Economic Future with Super Bowl.

Saints Win Super Bowl 44! We Win, We Win!

I have warned everybody in my house, "Do not toss out tomorrow's newspaper." Yes, the Saints won Super Bowl 44! Final score, Saints beat Colts, 31 to 17. Both teams gave their all.

Tracy Porter's interception of Manning's pass for a 74-yard touchdown had me screaming at the top of my lungs, and did anyone notice when the clock stopped at 4th Quarter 44 seconds? I hear shouting in the streets, screaming, fireworks going off. I've done my screaming and now I'm just smiling at everyone.

Read about the game at NOLA.com. And watch follow-up at WWL TV. Both have live cams on Bourbon Street.

On Saturday, BlogHer.com published my piece on how the Saints going to the Super Bowl is impacting the city of New Orleans. Consider now what it means to to win!

And I have to post "Get Crunk" by the YinYang Twins, which I first posted while talking about the Saints and superstitions. I suspect this coming week a lot of folks will be playing the number "44" for the lottery.

Mitch Landrieu's Win Is Not About Black vs. White

When news came that Mitch Landrieu had won the New Orleans mayor's race, I was reclining on my sofa with a headache, watching a horrible made-for-TV SyFy Channel movie. (Maybe that was making my headache worse.) And I was thinking about how I'd be watching the Super Bowl Sunday even though I'm not into football. Come on, it's great news for the city.

Anyway, I read the news that Landrieu won in a landslide on my Blackberry and then put the Blackberry on the table next to me. Really, there was nothing shocking about that victory, and for all the fake controversy about the mayoral race and whether New Orleans would elect its first white mayor since the 70s, the black-white divide story was manufactured nonsense from myopic sensationalists and ignorant pundits.

Once Landrieu entered the race, it was over. I said that to my dad, 89, who agreed, and I got silent on Twitter more or less about the race because I didn't want to be a wet blanket on the James Perry tweeting party.

Princeton professor and New Orleans activist Melissa Harris-Lacewell was supporting the young, fairly unknown Perry, and lots of tweeting NOLA hipsters plugged him, but as kindly as I feel toward James, I knew he wouldn't win. Regarding the rest, I told jokes about John Georges, who seems to run for everything, and seeing that Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizaro supported Georges only served to downgrade the rich guy more in my eyes. I think Cannizaro only cares about Cannizaro, not the city.

As for everyone else running, I kind of ignored 'em, including the very Raginesque Troy Henry, Raginesque roots-wise. I only observed him from the standpoint of studying black Creole power structures in New Orleans today.

Landrieu is not only the city's first white mayor since 1978, he is also the son of the last white mayor, Moon Landrieu.

When he takes office May 6, Landrieu will become the city's first white chief executive since his father, Moon Landrieu, left the job in 1978. Early analysis shows that Mitch Landrieu's victory owed to widespread crossover voting by African-Americans, who make up two-thirds of the city's residents. (NOLA.com)

New Orleanians with deep city roots, regardless of race and prior to Landrieu coming in, looked at the field of mayoral candidates and were scared witless. None of the candidates had the political clout or experience needed to lead this city into a new era of recovery. The ones who seemed capable were too unknown and the ones who were known seemed too incapable.

Landrieu won for the same reasons I tired to explain at BlogHer.com when telling readers the whispers about Brad Pitt were a joke, for real. New Orleans needed a mayor with solid, old-school political connections and Mitch Landrieu, former Lt. Governor and brother of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, comes from a political dynasty.

Sometimes it's good to vote for the new fresh face who is the smartest dog, but the smart voter knows that sometimes the best person for the job is an old dog who knows old tricks. I'm not saying Landrieu will do a wonderful job. I'm saying I hope he does and he should because he grew up in the game so has tricks up his sleeve, and I think he actually appreciates the city's culture and gumbo-flavored history. I suspect he understands what must be preserved to nourish the future.

Also, I suspect Landrieu will not be saying anything stupid like Nagin did after Katrina or like Stacy Head has at City Council meetings. Boy, I can't believe some folks thought she should run for mayor, but she was wise enough to reject the notion. However, I have trouble believing she was re-elected to her old seat. What are people in her district smoking?

Neither do I think Landrieu will hide behind technicalities to avoid transparency the way Ray Nagin has. At least I hope Landrieu is savvy enough not to do that.

Landrieu's win is about more than the city's demographics changing or any racial unrest. It's about a city recovering, growing up, and understanding after five years of post-Katrina wild-eyed desperation dotted with dog and pony shows downtown, New Orleans needs to get busy with getting better.

New Orleans Saints Book to Become Movie

New Orleanians won't deny it. The city's gone insane with joy over the Saints playing in the Super Bowl Sunday, and this bounty seems bound to boost its post-Katrina economy. So, for sports fans and with who dat say who dat controversies aside, it seems only proper that the New Orleans Literature Examiner should list a few books about the New Orleans Saints for readers. .. Read more at the New Orleans Literature Examiner.

Sarah Palin vs. Beck, Limbaugh? Not Likely

When I wrote around midday Thursday, February 4, that Sarah Palin's Rahm Emanuel drama reveals her insincerity and ignorance, I only included a history of colorful and bad form in Republican officials. As cynical as I can be at times, it never occurred to me that conservative pundits and some Republican politicians or political staff have used the word "retarded" in far uglier ways than Emanuel did.

Then I saw these videos posted online from Countdown with Keith Olbermann after my original post.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

OLBERMANN: Sarah Palin will stand up to anyone to defend her baby, except anyone who might help her politically. After calling for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to be fired for using a phrase, behind closed doors, which she calls heartbreaking to special needs kids and their families, she is refusing to call for the same measures against Republicans who use that word or variations on it, even on national radio or TV.

This weekend, she will be campaigning for a man whose top campaign aide has used that word repeatedly directly to journalists. But first, tonight‘s new developments; after the Plum Line Blog called Palin‘s attention to the fact that Orly Taitz Limbaugh too used the word, glorified in it, while referring to the Emanuel story, Palin‘s spokeswoman issued a statement that did not call for Limbaugh to be fired or even apologize. And if you read it carefully, does not in fact criticize Limbaugh at all. Quote, “Governor Palin believes crude and demeaning name calling at the expense of others is disrespectful.”

And yet never has the integrity to stand up for her son and say that Limbaugh, just like Emanuel, actually did this. Republican number two who can say the word, Texas campaign consultant Dave Carney, whose repeated use of this word, even directly to reporters, called into question yesterday, has not led Palin to call for his resignation from the campaign of Texas Governor Rick Perry, for whom Palin, herself, will be campaigning this weekend.

And Republican number three who can use the word, not once like Emanuel, not privately like Emanuel, but repeatedly on national television, on national radio, laughing about it and it‘s perfectly fine with Sarah Palin—that would be Fox News host Glenn Beck, whose uses of the word were literally too numerous for us to present in their entirety in our time allotted tonight, but to whom Ms. Palin gave a lengthy interview just last month, after a year of Beckian commentary that included the following. (Olbermann's transcript)

Even I didn't think Palin was that stupid and that big of a hypocrite to demand Emanuel be fired for using the "R" word while her cohorts did the same. A definitely lapse of healthy cynicism about politicians on my part there because had I looked I would have found this recording at Media Matters, posted January 9, 2009, more than a year ago, of Glenn Beck "laughing, to Mary Lynn Rajskub: "What do the paintings of the retarded children go for?"

Naturally, Rush Limbaugh is slapping her down for succumbing political correctness. He defends his use of the word "retarded" by saying he was only quoting Rahm Emanuel. But as I said earlier, I think this latest grumbling from Republicans/conservatives over speech such as demands that Sen. Harry Reid step down for using the term "Negro dialect" is not a genuine push for political correctness but a mocking of political correctness in the tit for tat way they approach this world.

In the middle of this craziness though, I think Feministe's asking the right questions, what has Palin done for disability advocacy? Meanwhile, Rahm Emmanuel is taking his apology to Special Olympics further by hosting a panel on disability issues. Somebody at Wonkette thinks this is a misuse of his time.

• Palin denounces Limbaugh. Will Glenn Beck Be Next? (Headline's a little misleading. She didn't uses Limbaugh's name and only her spokesperson made comment.)


• Why is Sarah Palin afraid of Rush Limbaugh?