So, one day you look down and see your feet in shoes you don't recognize. Maybe you like them, maybe you don't. This is where life begins. Welcome to WSATA, where the Goddess returns.
NBC talk-show host Lawrence O'Donnell is on point with his challenge to his own network to force Donald Trump to tell the American public now if he plans to run for president and stop postponing the announcement. O'Donnell makes an excellent case that Trump, by not officially filing for candidacy, is either lying about running for president and using this political flirtation as a publicity stunt, or he is dodging invocation of media laws that require television networks to give presidential candidates equal time.
By now we know that Donald believes that he is some kind of god, that he is "huge!" O'Donnell tells us how he got that way, laying our Trump afflictions at his bosses' feet. "NBC has created a monster," he says.
I thought the same thing, that NBC has created a monster and that the Donald is dodging media laws, when I saw a clip of Trump in a very awkward moment on an episode of his NBC show Celebrity Apprentice . He asked Celebrity Apprentice contestants if they would vote for him if he ran for president, and after they mumbled replies, he told them that they'd be stupid to disagree with his being an awesome candidate. Perhaps he will think the American public is equally stupid if it disagrees. Or is he laughing at American stupidity and all the way to the bank when he sees the polls rise in favor of his running?
O'Donnell makes another excellent point when he says that if Trump has already signed to renew Celebrity Apprentice, then he is not actually running for president and that the NBC executives know that. He also calls out Trump's racism regarding the suspicions Trump has expressed about Obama's qualifications to enter Ivy League schools and Trump's questioning whether Obama writes his own books. O'Donnell's right. That's racist rhetoric. With those kinds of appeals, Trump aligns himself with a very traditional form of racism, one that assumes black people are intellectually inferior to white people. (Hat tip to Field Negro for alerting me to this video.)
President Barack Obama said that he and First Lady Michelle wanted to express their deepest condolences to families in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and the other states hit by tornadoes earlier this week. "I've never seen devastation like this," the President told reporters as captured in CNN video, and he also assured citizens that he will get the maximum federal help to the ravaged states as soon as possible so the people can rebuild.
A few nights ago, I sat mesmerized by the video of the monstrous twister ripping up homes, trees, and public buildings. I have relatives in Alabama, but they are not on the side of the state that was hit. I don't want to imagine the terror one would feel taking shelter from a tornado and can only relate the grief to loss felt in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina here in New Orleans. I didn't liven here at the time, but my parents' home was under six feet of water. It's restored, but to this day many of my friends and family are scattered, no longer residents of the city.
The tornadoes death toll surpasses 300 deaths to date across seven states, reports ABC. I think I'll check on what the UMC is doing to help and what it needs to fulfill its goals.
President Barack Obama finally lost patience with birther nonsense, and so, Wednesday morning the White House released the long form of Obama's birth certificate from Hawaii, his birth state.
"We do not have time for this kind of silliness," Obama told reporters at the White House.
"Normally I would not comment on something like this," the president said. But the country has "enormous challenges" that it will not be able to effectively meet "if we're distracted."
The president ripped what he characterized as a recent focus on "side shows" and "carnival barkers." (CNN)
I've covered the stupidity of "birthers" before, and so I won't go into it now. Perhaps the White House is reacting to Donald Trump's collapse into "birther" conspiracy theory insanity (Trump now says he's proud to have played a role in possibly getting rid of this issue. Nice spin, but no cigar, Mr. Trump.). I could write more, but my time is too valuable to waste more of it on this topic. But we should be asking ourselves if some people in the GOP and the Tea Party trust even the laws enacted before Obama took office because the first birth certificate the president released while running for office is actually the legally recognized certificate of live birth in Hawaii, not the old, long form that birthers have doggedly demanded and you can see above.
The L.A. Times and other news sources report that singer Phoebe Snow has died from complications due to a stroke suffered in January 2010. I love her music, which was a large part of my youth in the 1970s. I am saddened at this news. She was 60 years old.
The video up top is Snow singing "Poetry Man," and the one below is "Love Makes A Woman" with dancers on Soul Train. A DJ played the latter at the Zulu Ball that I attended during Mardi Gras. It was one of the songs that made the evening.
A male student at Riverview High School in Tampa Bay Florida was called out of class to the principal's office because he wore high heel shoes to school, reports Tampa Bay's Fox station. School principal Bob Heilmann decided it was best if the student not where the shoes and told him to take them off. See video below.
A teacher notified the school principal and said that the boy’s high heels were distracting to the classroom. ... Heilmann reports there was name calling, so he instructed the young man to remove the shoes.
“As a principal of a high school, I have to take the paternal side as well, I have to make sure he’s going to be okay,” Heilmann told Fox, adding he was worried the student would be subjected to bullying. “Anytime anyone goes out from, quote, ‘the norm,’ or anytime anyone wants to make a statement, you have to be willing to take what comes with it.”
Does Heilmann even realize what he's saying? If he has children of his own, then I feel sorry for them since his "paternal side" apparently encourages him to tell young people who are exploring sexual orientation or gender roles to "Stop that! People won't like you or be nice if you do that. Conform or die!"
In essence, Heilmann is in the namecallers' corner, empowering bullies rather than students who are bullied. He's punishing the student who wore the high heels instead of calling in the students who ostracize their peers and having a talk with them, or better yet, opting to send the bullies to some kind of counseling to explore why they believe they have the right to call another student names. It's probably too much to ask of a school in Florida also to discuss with those students societal constructs of gender and grand narratives about sexuality framed by heterosexual privilege. He missed the higher ground of this teachable moment.
A friend of the student, per the local station says the young man is "proud of who he is, but embarrassed now." Sad.
Apparently Heilmann doesn't keep up with social issues such as bullying or campaigns such as "It Gets Better." Consequently, he'll be remembered as a symptom of the disease students must "get better" from.
Props to the Tampa Bay Fox station for putting this story in context of the little boy whose mother was criticized for letting him dress up as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. That mother shared her perspective on BlogHer.com this past November.
Last week, a small plane crashed at the intersection of West End Boulevard and Harrison Avenue in New Orleans, La. As it went down, it clipped a minivan, but no one was treated for injuries. The plane crashed along a route I travel often, and I would have taken a photo of the wreckage when I drove by hours later and the police were still there, but my adult son and daughter, who were in the car, whined like toddlers that they were hungry. So, I kept driving home.
And then yesterday morning I heard the news that an Amtrak train had derailed in Slidell, La., near a house that I own. The train crashed into a tractor-trailer carrying military vehicles to the Textron plant. An Amtrak official said the truck was blocking the railroad crossing; however, Slidell officials say the intersection lacks a crossing warning. Only minor injuries in that one, thank God. The truck driver was injured, but it was also a passenger train headed to New York, The Crescent. It could have been much worse. Read more of the story at WVUE, which is the source of the video below, and NOLA.com has video with more passenger interviews.
In addition, today I've read that an Amtrak train struck a woman's minivan in Jefferson Parish, killing her. WVUE says it's the third Amtrak crash in Louisiana in 24 hours; another woman was struck as she walked along the train tracks in Vinton. She did not survive.
My rational side tells me that these are random incidents and to remember that random events sometimes appear to have patterns that aren't actually present. My emotions, however, are screaming, "What is going on?"
The video above shows Michael A. Stefanone discussing the results of a study he and other researchers conducted through the University of Buffalo, "Contingencies of Self-Worth and Social-Networking-Site Behavior" that has been published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. Shari Roan of the L.A. Times reports that "a study :
on how people use social networking websites such as Facebook confirms what many of us suspected. Women who post loads of photos of themselves on their sites are conveying some strong personal characteristics, according to new research. These women are more likely to base their self-worth on appearance and use social networking to compete for attention.
A friend of mine shared Roan's article on Facebook. She had recently posted pictures of herself at a book-signing and shared the article for irony's sake. Nevertheless, her reasons for posting her pictures should tell us all not to judge anyone's nature or character strictly by this study. While her photos include her, they're really about her work as a writer.
Also, my friend is over 35 and this study focused on "311 men and women with an average of 23." I think that it may ignore, if I go by the L.A. Times article, that women around age 23 are more focused on catching a date or a permanent mate and as anthropologists tell us, most men do not first look at your family history, career choices, and I.Q. test results when they're thinking about dating or marrying you. They routinely study face and body. So, hormones driving the female desire to mate with an understanding of the male gaze is encouraging this kind of behavior as much as anything else, maybe more than anything else.
Cage appeared before a magistrate this morning where his bond was set at $11,000. He was ordered to return to court for a hearing on May 31. A "stay away'' order was waived. (Per Nola.com)
And I may have to take back some of what I said suggesting the police may have been overzealous with Cage. He's getting a reputation around here, according to what the Times Picayune reports, and "was escorted out of a French Quarter restaurant by police on March 4 after an incident that ended in a broken window at the upscale Stella!" He was not charged back then.
Previously Reported: I don't want to believe it, but a news source via the New Orleans Sheriff's website reports that actor Nicolas Cage "was booked into Orleans Parish Prison at 6:30 a.m." on domestic battery and disturbing the peace charges. According to WWL TV, Cage is shooting a movie in town.
TMZ says that Cage "taunted police into arresting him." He was sloppy drunk when a cab driver saw him arguing with his wife, Alice. However, his wife says that he did not physically assault her, reports TMZ. The cab driver, however, says he called the police because he saw Cage push his wife. (I give props to the cab driver for calling the police if he thought a woman was in danger.)
It sounds like Cage made the officers mad, and well, you know how it is. The New Orleans police like asserting their authority. Two officers were recently convicted here in beating a man to death six years ago and trying to cover it up. But I hope Cage was just drunk after partying in our fair city, lost his mind for a few minutes, and that's all there is to it. We don't need another Charlie Sheen.
After being shown on Fox News, uploaded as cellphone video to YouTube, and then reported on WWL TV, New Orleans, this story's gone viral:
Outrage after TSA pats down 6-year-old at N.O. Airport NEW ORLEANS -- Some civil rights advocates are outraged after a 6-year-old girl received an intense pat-down at Armstrong International Airport security on April 5. ... Someone caught the pat-down on video, and it's making its way around the Internet. ... It has many asking, are the intense security screenings really necessary, especially for a little girl? ... “A child who is visibly, audibly complaining, ‘I don't want to do this,’ should at the very least be given some privacy,” said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU Louisiana.
This happened in my hometown, but I've been so busy I heard about it on Facebook from Lisa Durden, a New Jersey talk-show host. She said the following:
Hmmm, I conflicted, while I am disturbed that a little girl got a body pat down at the airport, but unfortunately, people have & do stash Contraband & bombs on children. So I was glad to see that it was a female TSA agent who explained to the girl where she was gonna touch her. These are the times we live in so the parents should have prepped her before hand.
Some people interviewed in the news footage had similar opinions. Since the TSA can choose to scan some passengers and physically pat down others, the complaint from parents is that perhaps TSA should be more selective and only scan children, not physically touch them.
In the video at YouTube, you can hear a child complaining, but it's not the little girl who is being searched.
I love good music whatever the genre--blues, pop, rock, R&B, jazz, bluegrass, opera--but let's face it, some song lyrics about people in love are really about people locked in obsession and would be labeled more accurately "confessions of a control freak." For instance, you do know that "Every Breath You Take" by Sting and the Police is really about a stalker, don't you?
I'm not criticizing the songwriters as much as I'm wondering why these kinds of songs are so popular. Is it because we confuse the early stages of the lover experience, which is infatuation, with love? Infatuation is the stuff of fleeting passion and sometimes insane behavior, not the stuff of a good foundation long-term.
So, I like B.B. King, but while I was working today "Don't Answer the Door" was playing in the background, and I thought Damn! A domestic violence counselor could use this song as an example of what a controlling man sounds like. The lyrics are a classic example of someone isolating a woman from her friends and family. The song's narrator doesn't even want the doctor to come to see about her if she's sick and he's not home: "You just suffer until I get home," says the speaker.
(I'm not picking on B.B. King because "Don't Answer the Door" is just a song, and he is after all singing the blues. The blues has a special kind of pathos. Its ethos is grounded in tales of human misery.)
Don't Answer The Door B.B. King (Lyrics as posted at BluesForPeace.com)
Baby, I don't wanna a soul, Hangin around my house when I'm not home. Oh, I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not home. I don't want you to open the door for nobody, woman, Oh, when you're home and you know you're all alone.
Your sister might wanna visit us, But the little girl she talk too much. If she just come by to visit us, Tell her to meet us Sunday, Sunday, down at the church. 'Cause I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not at home. Yes, I don't want you to open the door for nobody, baby, Oh, when you're home and you know you're all alone.
Your mother might wanna visit us, But you tell you mamma I get home bout the break a day. And that's too late to visit anybody, baby, So, tell you mamma to please, please, please stay away. 'Cause I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not at home. Yes, I don't want you to open the door for anybody, woman, Oh, when you're home and you know you're all alone.
You might feel a little sick, baby, And you know you're home all alone, I don't want the doctor at my house, baby, You just suffer, suffer, suffer till I get home. 'Cause I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not at home. Yes, I don't want you to open the door for nobody, woman, Baby, when you're home and all alone. Yeah!
Note the difference between what Aretha Franklin's lyrics say in "Dr. Feelgood": she doesn't want anybody always sitting around her and her man. She doesn't mind company. Company is alright with her every once in a while. What she doesn't want is people hanging around so much they interfere with her sex life. It's not about having total control.
However, for the record, I know that some women can also be abusive and controlling. And female singers also have their share of songs about obsession. In fact, Aretha, one friend reminded me that Aretha also recorded "Until You Come Back To Me," which has these lyrics:
Though you don't call anymore I sit and wait in vain I guess I'll rap on your door Tap on your window pane I want to tell you Baby The changes I've been going through Missing you. Listen you
'till you come back to me That's what I'm gonna do
I do not have the time to surf YouTube all day, and so I thank NPR for bringing composer and choral director Eric Whitacre's virtual choir to my attention.
I've been singing in real choirs since I was a kid, so I was intrigued to participate in a virtual one. I recently asked Whitacre how he came up with the concept.
"Well, it all started with this video — a young girl named Britlin Losee, who was 17 at the time, posted to YouTube a video of herself singing the soprano part to a piece of mine called 'Sleep,' " Whitacre says.
Listen to the interview. Whitacre ended up putting together a choir online of people singing his composition. According to the article, "Thursday night, he unveil[ed] his Virtual Choir 2.0 on YouTube. It features more than 2,000 singers from around the world, including this reporter."
The video above is the one referenced at NPR. The video below is Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - 'Lux Aurumque' from 2010. You can watch the video that gave instructions to participants here with Whitacre directing.
I lived in Augusta, Georgia, for nearly a decade and did not know that Frank Yerby, a famous African-American author, was from there. And I was also a fan of swashbuckler movies as a child, but I had no idea a black man, Yerby, wrote the book upon which the movie The Saracen Blade was based.
Frank Yerby rose to fame as a writer of popular fiction tinged with a distinctive southern flavor. He was the first African American to write a best-selling novel and to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for a film adaptation. During his prolific career, Yerby wrote thirty-three novels and sold more than fifty-five million hardback and paperback books worldwide.
According to the video above, Yerby's books at one point outsold all the works of other African-American authors combined, and three of his thirty-three novels were made into movies.
The reason I entitled this post "The Controversial Frank Yerby" is my African-American Literature professor said that during Yerby's era the author tried to conform to the expectations that black authors should write about race and racism, but he eventually abandoned his attempts to tackle "the problem" and wrote mainstream fiction. The pressure talented black writers felt from liberal whites and other black authors to write fiction that dealt solely with race is discussed somewhat in Zora Neale Hurston's letter to Countee Cullen here.
The Georgia Encyclopedia says the following:
Yerby's first literary success came in 1944, when he received the O. Henry Memorial Award for his short story "Health Card," which focuses on the racial inequities faced by an African American soldier and his wife. Prior to this story, Yerby had written a protest novel about racial inequities in the South, but publishers had rejected it. Perhaps in part as a result, he began to write historical novels centering most often on white protagonists. It is from these novels that his literary reputation was built.
Black writers still face that inner struggle, the question of whether to stick to "race writing," which means they may face an uphill battle in getting published and becoming best-selling authors, or to write mainstream white characters instead. Black writers who want to write complex black characters in stories that do not address race also face publishing obstacles.
The issue becomes particularly complicated for middle-class black writers who want to follow the advice to "write what you know" because if they write what they know and produce black characters with higher education levels, money, and "wholesome" family values, then they are criticized and told "you aren't writing black enough." What does that mean? Is the stereoptype of the urban black family--fatherless and swallowed by crime and drugs--the only kind of black families allowed in books?
I'm one of multiple black writers who have considered that issue. Bernice McFadden, the author of Sugar and Glorious, touched on the topic a while back in a guest editorial at The Washington Post. The writing team Deberry and Grant have also faced challenges at times because they do not craft characters that fit black urban stereotypes, and as said earlier, it's an old concern that lingers. See Zora Neale Hurston's commentary, "What White Publishers Won't Print," which was first published in the Negro Digest in 1950.
Interestingly in the 1966 interview below from Ebony Magazine, Yerby, an African-American of mixed race, is presented as a writer who after 20 successful novels hopes to write a "novel of significance," which is one more example of how writing while black becomes complicated. After great success making a living by writing white characters, it seems he still felt that he missed a calling perhaps to write about the plight of his people. The reporter says Yerby cited American racism as the reason for his "voluntary exile to Europe." He moved there in 1952. Or maybe Yerby was responding subtlely to those critics who in polite terms called him a "sell-out."
In an earlier profile in Jet Magazine, 1953, however, Yerby is touted for writing seven novels in seven years. According to The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance by my friend Aberjhani and co-author Sandra West, for years many readers did not know Yerby was black because of the kinds of books he wrote.
The video above features Dallas Willard lecturing at Stanford University in 2002 on objective versus subjective constructs. He is comparing and contrasting the teachings of Jesus Christ to those of Nietzsche. From a description from the video's sponsor, the Veritas Forum:
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Jesus said. "God is dead," claimed Nietzsche, thousands of years later. How can we make sense of these two prominent figures in intellectual history? Which really represents the path to the truth? Join Dr. Dallas Willard and explore two of history's most influential people in the world of ideas.
Willard is a Christian scholar and philosphy professor, per Wikipedia.
In one of my classes we're reviewing postmodernism, a set of ideas that's prompted scholars to reevaluate society's grand narratives and to question whether there is any one ojbective, eternal truth. When I came across this Nietsche v. Jesus Christ video, I thought it related to my studies, decided to listen and then decided to share with you.
NBC talk-show host Lawrence O'Donnell is on point with his challenge to his own network to force Donald Trump to tell the American public now if he plans to run for president and stop postponing the announcement. O'Donnell makes an excellent case that Trump, by not officially filing for candidacy, is either lying about running for president and using this political flirtation as a publicity stunt, or he is dodging invocation of media laws that require television networks to give presidential candidates equal time. 
