I went to a movie this weekend

I saw a man take three little girls into the men’s restroom.  He did it twice.  There are urinals in there.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Michael Berry, but I could be wrong.

Michael Berry went to the movies with two of his nieces.  He noticed that mostly non-white teenagers were there and that most of them dropped f-bombs around him.  What he doesn’t know is that all of those teenagers did that on purpose, just to make him look silly.

That is just about as credible as Berry’s supposed story that led him to spread rumors about a certain person who happens to be famous.  Berry cannot put down the celebrity pipe.  He wants to be one so badly it hurts.  He thought he might have reached it when he “lost” his SUV, but that didn’t stick.  (I thought it was a good story.)

So it’s the same old story.  Blackity black black black with a good dollup of whiney white man mixed in.  It’s probably why he didn’t yap about the party crashers.

Dylan Gwinn from Local Traffic Reports to Big Time Talk Radio

I finally found this guy on the intertubes.  He’s done traffic for KTRH and has a you tube channel for his traffic videos.  His blog is nonexistent (you could buy if you want). He hasn’t done anything on his website for 2 1/2 years.  He does have the St. Ronny worship covered, as well as his liberal hate on.

(I’m listening to him right now — he’s full-tilt Obama is the problem, everything is his fault.  He’s also got a pretty good white man whine going about how he can’t speak his mind or that people knew about the shooter at Fort Hood yesterday couldn’t say anything to stop this before it happened.  Also, there’s the predictable anti-Muslim nonsense.)

Here are the podcasts from his show from yesterday (November 5th 3:00 and 4:00 p.m.).  For whatever reason, they couldn’t get his name right.  He should look into that.

Two things to listen for:  from the first hour — towards the end– Gwinn reads from an article about a mayor who suggests paying people not to have children as a solution for problem parents.  “AN outspoken Kiwi politician has proposed a new solution to the country’s child abuse problem – pay the “appalling underclass” not to breed.”  After a rambling and convoluted rant connecting this mayor’s suggestion to “death panels” and health reform, he states that he doesn’t know where Kiwi is. (rim shot)

The second thing:  from the second hour — right at the beginning — a woman calls in bellyaching about how President Obama started giving his closing remarks to a Native American Conference at the White House instead of immediately talking about what had happened at Fort Hood.  The woman is so pissed that she gets everything wrong (she thought he was talking about the health care bill, and that he was praising people working on health care).  Gwinn doesn’t check his facts, but jumps in with both feet and ad libs outrage.

Later on in the second hour he responds to a caller pointing a finger at the private companies making the flu vaccines as having some responsibility for the delays in getting them out.  Gwinn turns around and tells her, no.  It’s Obama’s fault because he ordered single dose vaccines instead of double dose and that’s what slowed everything down.  This is nonsense.

(Gees, here at the end of his show, he’s accusing liberals of hating America.)

So, my critique of what I heard, Gwinn is scattered — and stale.  He’s just regurgitating the same old things and even the way he deals with callers is typical.

Oh, great.  Now Michael Berry is on to continue with the white man whine about political correctness.  And he repeats his statement from yesterday that people should be cautious and wait for the facts to come in about Fort Hood, which he did do, but only after trying to get the journalist he interviewed first to SPECULATE more than once.

And I’m going to turn him off because he’s already said that he’s going to concern troll the President about how he handled his “press conference” yesterday (which WASN’T A PRESS CONFERENCE dumbass).

Not Ambivalent

This morning, the NYT had an article out about Michelle Obama’s roots.

This evening, the New Hour interviewed the journalist and ancestry expert who had done the digging.

They couldn’t get an interview with the First Lady or her mom, and I see why.

While the genealogist claimed that the First Lady’s case was universal, I think that it’s wrong, very wrong to do this investigation without her input.

It’s a way to set off the Obamas from other Presidential families.  Look at the genealogy of the Bush family.  Unfortunately we are stuck with a father son combo again.  Look at President Obama’s family history — I can’t tell you how many times I have read people plead with him to admit to his white background.   “Talk about your white mother” I read.  Will comment sections be filled with pleas for Michelle to do the same?  Or is it different because now we know that she is a descendant of a slave who had babies with a white man?

Are you uncomfortable reading about this yet?

The old saw is “we’ve got two wars going on and health care, etc.” but the reality is connecting Michelle Obama to a slave is important in two ways.

It outs the racists, again.

It confirms what many of us know.  Our history is bloody and represents the worst of humankind.

Yes, we fought a war to settle it, but what Michelle Obama’s family history shows is that the war had repercussions, like all wars.  Michelle Obama’s family history tells the lie of America being the “last best hope.”  It’s not.  Never has been.  We are a country on a planet and GOD had nothing to do with it.  Not in the formation by a bunch of old white men, nor the effort and struggle of a bunch of black slaves trying to be free.

We are all of us.  We are not enemies.

Today a colleague of mine tried to play the “you are white and I am white” racist game with me.   He blustered into my office mid story about a criminal case he had witnessed the day before. He explained that someone was chillin’ and others were packin’ and all of them were stereotypical, and did I get it?

I told him, yes.  I get it.  I get it very well.  He laughed.  I get it.  I get YOU very well.

Chipping at racist America, one person at a time.

Oh yeah, Michael Berry went there . . .

While he tried to focus his one hour show on President Obama over-exposing himself and his interview with Glenn Beck, his callers were more focused on a local story.

Last year, a Houston police officer was killed by an illegal immigrant in a stop where the officer had pulled the man over and placed him in custody, but the man had a gun and shot the officer.  The wife of the officer, who is also an officer, has sued the city.

The two callers that I heard while running errands and driving home were very possessive about police department equipment and their taxes.  They were both probably old white guys, as Michael Berry could deduct as well.  Why should they pay more for a black police officer not doing his job right?  So, he died.  So, they “feel” for his family.  But damn it all if their taxpayer cop cars and their taxpayer cops do something their taxpayer (but non-cop) asses have to pay when there is a lacking.

Berry tried to bridge the gap by suggesting that the killer had the gun “up his rectum.”  This made the one caller uncomfortable because he had to argue about asshole and gun sizes with Berry on the air.  Berry said, “He’s a big guy.”  Or something like that.

Oh, did I mention that the slain police officer was black?

So let’s break this down.  The chief is black, the slain officer is black, Michael Berry’s callers are old white guys.  Of course they think that they will pay individually for this crime, and claim that they own the police department (while wanting to de-fund every branch and tree of government — every man for himself!!!!!).

Completely predictable.

Did Berry diffuse anything?  No.  He just stepped on his own interview of a personality that he already has on board and agreed with him, while the person Berry idolizes (wants to replace?) sends a shot out.

Gees, and I thought it was bad being a Democrat.

HAHA moment — Berry said Clinton left office in 2002.  And then whored himself and his book until he was shamed to go underground and claimed there was some magazine showing Clinton circling the drain.  HAHAHAHA.  Lucky tags tonight Michael.

ACORN

I’ve never had any interaction with them.  At all.  I feel that any organization that tries to increase voter registration and turn out will draw the wingnut ire and also do something good.  It’s a simple equation.   Conservatives want to reduce the turn out of middle and lower class people, specifically minortities (and no, I’m not talking about tokens) in order to win elections.  One year it was free flu shots at the polls, next it is dumbed down to registration.  The voter ID law that jammed up the Texas legislature this last time is an example of that.  With no proof of voter fraud, they still decided we needed it, and they sacrificed the session on that and guns on campus and forcing a woman to look at an x-ray before having an abortion.

This is their journey.  This is their path.  Except that some give up.  Paul Bettencourt gave up.  He ran for office and then gave it up so that the Republican party here in the Harris County area could install a minority.  Because it looks good.  Same thing happened with Michael Williams.  He was appointed (because it looked good) and then ran again and is now running for something else ( a seat that is not vacant officially yet).

For a party that rails against affirmative action, they use it an awful lot.

It’s not going to work, though.  Much like Michael Steele won an election by convincing the conservatives that they needed a black man to counter President Obama, they will fail because they will not be able to convince enough white conservatives to vote for a black man for senator.  Ain’t gonna happen.

Props to the White House for staying above the fray, and props for Jimmy Carter for telling it like it is.

We see you Republicans/Conservatives.  We see you.

It’s a Crusade

Kathleen is on a crusade to prove that “the left” treats the African American community in a worse way than “the right” or conservatives or Republicans or whoever she sees herself as at this point does.  And it is very important to remember that she does not reflect any of those groups with regard to race, except that she has a “nanny” sort of attitude toward them — a “why can’t they just think and do what I want them to” or “I know what’s best for them” attitude that is very irritating.  She’s not racist, though she freely labels African Americans racist when it suits her.  (Come to think of it, she’s been quite the apologist when it comes to Republican/conservatives being racists.)

In the light of the Van Jones resignation, she decides that someone (Carl Pope of the Sierra Club) who has written in support of Jones is, get this, “condescending . . . to the African American community” .

Pope starts with this in his first paragraph:

On Thursday evening, I got worried. Friday I put in a call to ask Van Jones how to help. Saturday I started writing a blog post, which would have appeared this morning. (I’ve attached it below because it goes into more detail on the history of the “Bush as addict” meme.) But on Saturday night, Van resigned, and this morning I was sick at heart. Collectively we — the environmental community, progressives, and the Obama administration — blew this, and we let our cause, our president, and Van Jones down.

I feel the same way.  He goes on in his second paragraph:

This was a lynch mob and, when it started forming a month ago, we didn’t take it seriously enough. When I saw the first Glenn Beck piece on Van Jones and the Apollo Alliance as the new vast left-wing conspiracy, I could not take it seriously. Silence enabled Fox to keep pushing. The statements for which Jones apologized — the reference to the right as “assholes” and saying that Bush was talking “like a crack-head” were such ordinary political discourse — think Rahm Emmanuel, think Dick Cheney saying “fuck yourself” to Senator Leahy, think Tom Friedman dubbing Bush “the addict-in-chief” — that I didn’t understand why an apology was necessary; I assumed it would blow over.

Yeah, I didn’t go that route in my thinking because I was sure it was Color of Change pay back, and I still do.

Kathleen skips all this to get to a bit that offends her The Woodlands sensibilities.

Calling Bush a “crack-head” is seen by a large part of America as worse than calling him “addict-in-chief” because crack is not just a drug — it is a drug used largely by black people. It reminds those Americans who are still uncomfortable with Barack Obama that we have a black president.

And this is what she has to say about that:

Really? Crack is used mostly by blacks? Ok. Maybe I don’t know enough about people who use crack, but I never thought of it as a “black” drug. I thought of it as a drug used by drug addicts. Period.

But get his reasoning here. Since crack is supposedly the drug of choice by black people, then we automatically think of Pres. Obama when we hear the word “crack-head.”

Could that[sic] any more insulting to President Obama? I think I can speak for most of my conservative brethren when I say that when we hear the word “crack-head” we DO NOT think of Pres. Obama.

Good grief.

I guess Kathleen is clueless as always.  The book There are No Children Here documents the attitude of police and the community — crack is the poor black’s drug of choice.  It’s always been that way.  And even though others have gotten hooked on it over the years, the stigma stays.  That’s what happens when you live in the burbs.  You don’t get exposed to others’ lives.

Here’s some more that she leaves out:

What was the reactionary right up to on Friday? They sent operatives out to San Quentin prison to obtain videotapes of workshops that Van Jones conducted there while he was working to help prisoners transition back to society. (The inmates wouldn’t let them get their hands on them — they knew, before I did, how serious this was.) They were cuing up video clips from teenagers that Jones taught in the Oakland ghetto in 2000.

But she keeps the last part of that paragraph because, you know, it works for her:

If you watch the infamous “assholes” video carefully, it’s clear that what Jones was saying was that Republicans play hardball better than Democrats, and that we need to start playing by their rules. He said it, though, in the language of his own community — and that, at the end of the day, was his crime. He spoke to and was of a part of an America that Fox and the reactionary right would like to put back on the plantation or pretend is not part of our nation.

Here I disagree with Jones, but I do understand the nature of language — as does Jones.  Republicans are assholes.  And it is no secret that African Americans are seen as having a vulgar vocabulary and that there is a double standard about it.  But Kathleen gets her fainting couch out for this one:

So let me get this straight. Jones calls Republicans “assholes” because that is how blacks talk! Come on people, he seems to be saying, we all know blacks cuss like sailors!

Isn’t that just a bit racial and insulting? Like white people don’t cuss that much. Please. Why doesn’t he just say black people eat more watermelon? It’s the same denigrating stereotype that is meant to group one type of people as the same.

Does anyone think that Kathleen doesn’t know that the Republican party has already done that?  It’s not the same because what Pope is doing is relating what Republicans/conservatives already do.  They stereotype.  Kathleen gets caught in her own net.

And she ends her post by reaching back to her childhood — the childhood of segregation.

Sorry, Kathleen.  At least you had the chance to interact with black kids.  I didn’t until I went to college — in 1980.  And yet, even given my background, I am more knowledgeable and understanding about African American history in this country than she is.

Kathleen has a blog on the Houston Chronicle and thinks she is a teacher — teaching others about politics.  I doubt anything will dent her vanity.

Michael Berry: Situational Racism

Of course it was going to come up, that’s his gig.

Today Michael Berry set up his first caller on a racially charged issue to call him a racist.  He admitted as much and then went on to criticize and denigrate the guy.

Fair enough.

Then one of his callers (not Berry himself) pointed out that he is married to “an Indian woman.”  This allowed Berry to go with his set piece.  It’s his explanation of why no one can legitimately call him a racist.

You see there are “situational racists” who have friends who are black or Hispanic.  They mind their manners around these ‘friends’ but if they are in a different social group, they laugh at the racist jokes — you know — going along to get along.

Berry will not play the “I am married to and Indian woman” card, nor will he play the “my boy is African” card because of situational racism.

He has problems with Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton and Skip Gates — especially Gates because all he ever thinks about is BLACK BLACK BLACK  according to Berry.  Gates and Jackson and Sharpton are all professional black people.

This makes Michael mad.

But Michael cloaks his anger in a high purpose:  stirring shit up.  He claims to want to make people think about their beliefs about race and question their reactions to his words.  Michael is a good man, just looking to enlighten his listeners.

Michael Berry is actually a SELECTIVE racist.  He and I are around the same age and when I was in school in Pasadena (a racially pure city at the time) we traveled to his part of south Texas for competitions and such.  There was racial tension that my little group of white people couldn’t understand.  I’m sure he holds a grudge.

He admitted as much today and has before.  He didn’t get into UT law (or as an undergrad from what I can tell) because some Filipino guy’s son got in instead.  It is a tired story from white males that I experienced with my own family.  Someone with a foreign name, but who was just as American as Michael Berry got not only the company scholarship, but also others just because of his name.

Poor little white boy couldn’t go to UT.  My one little violin of sympathy plays for him.

Given how Berry runs his business, I’d say that UT is relieved.

To wrap up:  Michael Berry is a selective racist.  He looks for callers that “sound” black and then humiliates them after they hang up on him.  He doesn’t play the “I’m married to or adopted” card because he knows that is a shit way out.  His whole life is about being bitter about term limits and not being able to stomach the fund-raising that is involved in politics.  He’s got a bought and paid for gig on a radio station in the 4th largest city in the U.S.A., and yet he still cries the white boy cry of two decades ago.

I pity the man.

One Down!

I subscribed to Color of Change a while back and am glad to report that they have had a remarkable success getting advertisers to pull out of Glenn Beck’s crazy show on FNC.

YaY!

Step by step.

Now What’s Wrong With This?

Obama’s Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, who founded the group Color of Change, has hired a Hollywood PR group to pressure Glenn Beck’s advertisers to stop advertising with Beck’s cable program.

On July 28th, Beck made a comment on the Fox & Friends morning show about Obama’s reaction to the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. During the discussion of “Professor-Gate,” Beck connected the President’s past association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright to Obama’s comment that Cambridge police officer, Sgt. James Crowley, acted stupidly. Though Beck acknowledged most of the Obama administration is in fact white, {my bold} he concluded that the President’s world experience made him a “racist.”

Now Color of Change has pressured SC Johnson, Progressive Insurance, and Geico to boycott Beck’s program. Red State has the contact numbers for these folks if you’d like to send them your two cents. Oddis also includes Proctor and Gamble in her list as well as Nexis Lexis.

Color of Change has this statement on their front page:

Fox’s Glenn Beck recently said President Obama is “a racist” and has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Beck is on a campaign to convince the American public that President Obama’s agenda is about serving the needs of Black communities at White people’s expense. It’s repulsive, divisive and shouldn’t be on the air.

Join us in calling on Beck’s advertisers to stop sponsoring his show.

Color of Change is a non-profit organization.

Glenn Beck is not a crazy person, but he is full of himself and sells the crazy.  So if a group of people want to stop him from selling the crazy and they can, what’s wrong with that?

I belong to Color of Change and believe in their goals.  They are correct in this situation and if they are successful, we are all the better for it.  If Beck finds himself relegated to AM radio, too bad.  He could try doing something productive instead of just talking all day, spreading the crazy.

Source here.

Michael Berry: Black Black Black Black

As I was driving from work to Target, listening to Michael Berry, I was trying to think of a title for the post I would write later.  The one above was one of the possibilities.  Why did I choose that one?  Because after I thought of it, here comes Berry bitching about people he calls “Professional Black People”:  not professional people who are black, but Professional Black People.  Then he said, “Black black black black.”

Talk about being obsessed.

As I was driving home from Target, Berry took a couple of calls.  He still didn’t have his facts straight about the Gates case and when one caller pointed out a discrepancy between the police officer’s report and the 911 call, Berry just said, “well, you’re welcome to your opinion.”

Berry had been berating President Obama for trying to work things out like an adult (i.e. inviting both parties to the White House) when another caller, who had also pointed out discrepancies,  stated that he didn’t agree with Berry very often, but he did with regard to being cautious when encountering police officers.  Berry, unable to control himself, said, “I want you to come to the station tomorrow for a beer.”

Click.  The caller had hung up.

I seriously believe that Berry didn’t understand why that happened and that his feelings were hurt.

You know, Berry doesn’t have a problem with black people in general.  He’s just got a problem with certain black people.  And here’s a hint to defining that group:  they do not belong to those who know their place, who know when to keep their mouths shut.  His listeners know this.  So, why doesn’t he understand that they do?