This is an open letter sent today by Arlen Parsa:
Dear Rush Limbaugh,
O, master of moderation,
O, beacon of reason,
O, exemplar of well-thought-out-discourse,
Please stop calling Barack Obama a “magic negro.”
I know you only have only the best intentions in mind. I know you would never, everrrrrrr intentionally say annnnnything racist, but when you call the only African American person in the entire Senate a “negro,” over and over again, on the your nationally syndicated talk radio show, it comes across as just a tad bit racially insensitive.
I know, I know, you meant it as a joke. And I that you probably thought it was hilarious, and in the best possible taste, when you sing it to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon, lives by the seaaaaa” (”Barack the magic Negro, lives in DC”). But here’s the thing. It. Is. Not. Funny. In fact, O wise radio mogul, it is the opposite of funny.
As I am sure I don’t need to remind you, another radio host was not long ago fired for doing something similar (no doubt the words “Don Imus nappy headed hos incident” ring bells in your mind). And keep in mind, Imus said he was just “joking around” too. In your case, you actually planned your joke ahead of time, and your producers found some music to play in the background so you could sing your rendition of “Barack the magic negro.”
Which brings me to my next point. Although I’m sure you probably thought it would help race relations in America by mimicking what you think is a “black voice,” while singing your little ditty, I regret to inform you that to the average person, who doesn’t know that you’re actually regarded as a second coming of Rev Dr Martin Luther King in the African American community, it only makes it worse.
Now, I know what you are about to say. “But I didn’t call him that; the LA Times called him that! Those liberals are so racist!” Let me stop you. When an African American person criticizes the perception of another African American person by comparing them with the archetypal sociological concept of a “magical negro,” it is not, in fact, racist.
If anything, the LA Times column to which you slam for its supposed racism, is in fact an attack on what the author feels is racism in white American politics, and as an extension, an attack on what the author sees as Senator Obama’s willingness to act as a figure whom “white America [can] project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on.”
I will be waiting for you to apologize to Senator Obama and have your “Imus moment” on Al Sharpton’s radio show. I am confident that it won’t take very long for you to realize that your “joke” wasn’t in fact the funniest thing on the planet, and that you will apologize soon enough. That’s just the type of thoughtful, productive, selfless type of thing we’ve come to expect from you.
Sincerely yours,
-Arlen
I swear to god, it’s like there’s a contest inside the Bush Administration to see who can be the most spectacular hypocrite. At this point, I wouldn’t even be surprised if everyone in the ONDCP office sits around taking bong hits all day.
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Ombudsben, in a comment Down the Rabbit Hole:
John Lennon ate platypus, once. On a bet with Billy Joel, at a restaurant once that served rare species. (Not cooked rare–you could have well done, if you wanted.) Loki, god of mischief, cooked, and the bet involved monks and naked tango night at a Catholic church fundraiser for soft red-flannel shirts, which are now more endangered than spotted owls.
Rhonda Cook reports on the case of Kathryn Johnston in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which you can also read at the Media Awareness Project. This is an excerpt:
Five or six bullets hit the terrified woman. Authorities never figured out who fired the fatal bullet, the one that hit Johnston in the chest. Some pieces of the other bullets — friendly fire — hit Junnier and two other cops.
The officers handcuffed the mortally wounded woman and searched the house.
There was no Sam.
There were no drugs.
There were no cameras that the officers had claimed was the reason for the no-knock warrant.
Just Johnston, handcuffed and bleeding on her living room floor.
That is when the officers took it to another level. Three baggies of marijuana were retrieved from the trunk of the car and planted in Johnston’s basement. The rest of the pot from the trunk was dropped down a sewage drain and disappeared.
The three began getting their stories straight.
Hat-tip Pete Guither.
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Yeah, I’m endorsing three people now. Who says I can’t?
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Former U.S. AID director Randall Tobias, who resigned yesterday upon admitting that he frequented a Washington escort service, oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath.”
Recommended listening:
Hat-tip Melissa.
Okay, call me a shameless whore, I still like Bill Richardson and have not withdrawn my endorsement but I love Mike Gravel too. Can I endorse more than one candidate? Why the heck not? We should be building a cabinet out of all of these fine people, regardless of who winds up atop the ticket.
A small town loser tells his tale of redemption through education and asks for his readers to support a change to the federal law that denies federal financial aid for school to people with drug convictions. Read it!
This is a letter to the editor of the Washington Post. Hat-tip Think Progress.
We, the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, contest the attack on Sen. Harry Reid’s leadership by David S. Broder in his April 26 column, “The Democrats’ Gonzales.”
In contrast to Mr. Broder’s insinuations, we believe Mr. Reid is an extraordinary leader who has effectively guided the new Democratic majority through these first few months with skill and aplomb.
The Democratic caucus is diverse, and Mr. Reid has worked tirelessly to make sure that the views of each member are heard and represented. No one ideology dominates the caucus, so that a consensus can be reached and unity achieved. It is hard to imagine a better model for leadership.
Because Mr. Reid has the support of members of the caucus, is a good listener and has an amazing ability to synthesize views and bring people together, the Senate has accomplished a great deal during his time as majority leader. Armed with his years of service in the Senate and with a mastery of procedure, Mr. Reid has led the chamber with a slim majority and a minority that is, at times, determined to stop legislation with which it disagrees.
In the first 100 days alone, we made great strides under his leadership on long-neglected legislation concerning stem cell research, the Sept. 11 commission’s recommendations and the minimum wage, to name three. In addition, under Mr. Reid’s leadership, we have fulfilled our obligation, left uncompleted by last year’s Republican-led Senate, to fund the federal government. He has accomplished all of this in the face of stiff opposition and with a commitment to giving ideas full opportunity for debate.
Finally, in this age of scripted politicians speaking only to their base or claiming that they “don’t recall” anything, the fact that Mr. Reid speaks his mind should be applauded, not derided. His brand of straight talk is honest, comes from the heart and speaks directly to the people.
THE MEMBERS
OF THE SENATE
DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS
Washington
This letter was signed by Sen. Reid’s 50 colleagues in the caucus.
What is this?
As you look at those who have died in the war on drugs, remember one thing: There has never been a single recorded case of anyone dying from an overdose of marijuana.
No consideration was offered or received for the showing of this or any advertisement on Cannablog.
Abortion can be necessary.
Hat-tip Ellroon.
Dana Rohrabacher (hat-tip Ted):
For example, I know in one or two cases you have a man whose name was exactly the same name as a Muslim that was involved in al Qaeda. To the degree there are a few of those cases, we should do our best to make sure those cases don’t exist, try to find a system to root them out.
But, here’s the other shoe dropping, we are at war, and we’ve got to make sure that we do not let go 50 terrorists who will go out and plant a bomb in London and kill 20,000 people in order to protect that one person who we arrested accidentally because his name was the same. That’s the type of unfortunate consequence.
I guess Dana feels comfortable that there aren’t too many men with his name.
Larry Johnson (h/t Creature):
We are well on track for the second consecutive month in which U.S. military casualties will exceed that of their Iraqi counterparts. Do you understand this point? The burden of “defending” the new Iraq government is being borne primarily by U.S. troops not Iraqi troops.
“One, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam. And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates. Oh, there ain’t no time to wonder why we’re all gonna die.”
Please bring the troops home safely, and quickly.
Recommended music:
I don’t have a vote in France. But if I did, I would vote for Ségolène Royal.
Chester Scoville exposes the secret plan:
Decades ago, little George Soros decided to take over the world so he got rich through the capitalist system which he wished to destroy by paying John Kerry to fake his wounds and forge his service records in Vietnam so Kerry could run for president one day while leaving lots of people POW-MIA in Vietnam so that we’d all stop being afraid of Marxism so that literary critics from France could infect the minds of the young with Cultural Marxism and pornography via tenured radicals in English Departments and organizations like MoveOn.org and Media Matters and the Em Ess Em so that the Great International
CommunistIslamofascist Conspiracy to Dominate the World could move ahead by means of feminists evolutionary biologists atheists and liberal Christians who want to ban Christmas so that everyone will be gay and that way they’ll all be feminized and passive and won’t be able to do anything but stand around when the Islamic Bomb is built which it will be any moment because Saddam really did have WMDs in fact the only supply of WMDs in the entire world that the terrorists could possibly get their hands on and the Islamic Bomb is being built right now by Syria Russia North Korea and China most of which are not Islamic countries but it’s all the same thing anyway and everyone in the government from the Bush Administration to the Congress and all the way down the bureaucracy and the Em Ess Em knows this but isn’t saying anything because they’re too embarrassed and when the Islamic Bomb is developed it will be dropped on American cities and soon all those atheist liberal Christians will see oh yeah they’ll see all right when they all have to wear hijabs and then George Soros will have won.
Sharon Astyk, via Monkeyfister:
Saying there is only one movement now does not mean that things like the struggle for economic justice or civil rights is over – it just means that every single person who believes that there is hope for a decent future, and who has some investment in that future now shares the same basic goals. We must remediate and adapt to what is coming. We must deal with peak oil and climate change. We must get over our stupid prejudices and divisions and form a whole cloth movement of universal JUSTICE. Peak oil is about Justice. Climate Change is about Justice. They are about the most basic questions of human justice – who eats? Who lives? Who has water? Who decides? Who gets health care, and to have their kids live to grow up, who gets enslaved and impressed into military service? Who decides to let someone die, and who actually does the dying?
If any of this seems revelatory to you, if it has never before occurred to you that poor black women in Kenya or New Orleans are like you, and are the face of your future and your potential allies, time to wake up! If you’ve never thought of peasant farmers and people who are shot for trying to unionize in Ecuador as your brethren, people whose rights and needs should be a part of your focus, it is time to wake up. If you don’t see the problem of immigration and the loss of manufacturing jobs for poor white people in the south as linked to each other and to you, wake up. If you don’t recognize that Justice for everyone means justice for you, it is time to WAKE UP!
There are a lot more regular people than there are rich folks, politicians and corporate powers. So of course they want us to be balkanized, divided, debating. They want feminists to see poor southern white men as their enemy, instead of allies and victims of corporate greed. They want peak oil tarred as something only for “liberals” and climate change advocates to be “hippie environmentalists.” They want churches to fight over whether or not to deal with climate change and Jews and Moslems to wonder if they have any common ground at all. Guess what – we do – and it is the simplest common ground in history.
We want to live, to go on, to prosper, to have enough, to live in a just society, to have peace, and hope for the future. That depends on unity. Getting over our differences and finding common ground will be hard work. The only reason to do it is because it is so necessary. Those in power are terrified of ordinary people and their anger, their fear and their passion for justice. Of course they want as many ordinary people as possible fighting over things like gay marriage and Don Imus. Of course they don’t care if poor people die, or go hungry – hungry people are too weak to fight, and dead people can’t call out for justice.
Sooner or later we’re all going to wake up and notice, because the future will be slapping us in the face. I vote sooner. I vote now. I vote today. I vote we scare the fuck out of them, and save the world.
From the Drug Policy Alliance, today:
Your work is paying off–Connecticut’s Compassionate Use medical marijuana legislation, House Bill 6715 (HB 6715), passed the Joint Judiciary Committee in March and will be considered by the General Law Committee tomorrow
Let’s make sure the committee passes the legislation tomorrow morning – please take action now!
HB 6715 would allow seriously ill patients access to medical marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation. A 2004 University of Connecticut poll found that 83% of Connecticut residents support allowing patients to access medical marijuana for relief of symptoms associated with debilitating conditions such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and multiple sclerosis. Of particular note, three legislators who voted “no” in 2005 actually voted “yes” this year. This is a strong indication that your faxes, letters, and testimonies are having a positive effect. Great work!
Support for Compassionate Use legislation continues to be strong, largely due to the continued pressure we have been applying to the CT legislature. We hosted a a successful press conference with Montel Williams in March 2007 and Connecticut Governor, M. Jodi Rell, has indicated possible support for Compassionate Use legislation. In addition, the Hartford Advocate recently featured Compassionate Use activist Mark Braunstein, in an article decrying opposition to HB 6715.
Help move HB 6715 forward! Please send a message to the Connecticut General Law Committee members, urging them to support this important legislation.
The General Law Committee will vote on HB 6715 tomorrow, Tuesday, April 24, at 10:30 AM, in Room 1D of the Legislative Office Building, 300 Capitol Ave., Hartford, CT. Please take action now, and forward this email to five people you know today-the more of us who take action, the more likely we’ll win Compassionate Use in Connecticut this year.
Thanks for all you do.
Gabriel Sayegh
Drug Policy Alliance
It’s worth being reminded.
Hat-tip Len Hart.
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Arpaio believes that inmates should not be treated better than the average citizen. Thus, upon his initial election Arpaio began instituting the controversial changes for which he would later become noted.Arpaio began to serve inmates surplus food (mainly outdated and oxidized green bologna) and limited meals to twice daily. Meal costs would be reduced to 90 cents per day; as of 2007 Arpaio claims that he has managed to reduce costs to a mere 15 cents per day. Certain food items were banned from the county jail, mainly coffee (which also reduced ‘coffee attacks’ on guards), but later salt and pepper were removed from the jail (at a purported taxpayer savings of $20,000/year).
Full stop. It gets worse.
P.S. Burton has more.
Update: Here he is. The first three minutes are a little bit slow, but it gets interesting from there.
I remember the bomb that was Windows ME. Well, Microsoft has done it again,
Vista is been such a success that CNet reports that Dell is bringing XP back. In response to customer demand, Dell is going to make Windows XP available on its home machines, as it still is on its business machines.
Hat-tip Bryan at Why Now?
By the way, I really do like the MacBook. It’s a comfortable machine to use, as opposed to merely being powerful.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: The Sword of Desirable Mindfulness.
Cannabis News Indybay drugwar newswire
