Perusing The Root during my lunch break today, I came across this headline, "TV's Golden Age of Rage: O'Reilly, Hannity, Olbermann and the rise of white rage on cable television."  I immediately clicked on the link, ready to read what I thought would be a brilliant dissection of white paranoia and white frustration with non-white male progress (and its perceived byproduct, white male stagnation) as propagated by the "news media."

But then I got to this part:

But now, try to think of a single African-American newsman who's exhibited—and gotten away with—the type of antics their white counterparts do each and every day on America’s top news channels. Don’t feel ignorant if you can’t. There aren’t any. But why?

Ugh.

This article, which isn't entirely wrong about the racial double standard, does succeed in diluting the force of an argument against such a standard by arguing that what Black folk want is the ability to do stupid ass shit too. 

Look, I'm all for reminding people of racial double standards.  But in this case, I don't know that we should be arguing for Black people to act a damn fool on the news. 

Or, to put it another way, the article misses the point.  The issue with cable news right now isn't that its unfair that Black folks can't behave the way Hannity, Beck, and O'Reilly behave. 

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Posted on July 8th, 2009 - Filed under Culture,Politics

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Money quote: "BET is the reason why the caged bird is in fact in the cage."

HILARIOUS!

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Posted on July 1st, 2009 - Filed under Culture,Television

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The fellas over at The League of Ordinary Gentleman have been all up and through my blog lately.  I am aware of this and am very okay wit it.  At this point, LOG is my favorite blog to read along with my boy Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Here is Freddie goin hard at how useless the national conversation of race has become: 

But those who immediately and harshly react to any suggestion of racial impropriety don’t want any discussion at all. And that’s what a really huge amount of our racial dialogue, at present, amounts to, a sustained campaign to whittle down the parameters of appropriate debate, and to cast anyone who alleges racism or something like it out of the bounds of respectability. We don’t live in a post-race society, and we aren’t moving towards one, but we are moving towards a post-race-discussion society. That’s an incredibly dangerous thing.

Precisely.  Hats off to you, Freddie.

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Posted on June 23rd, 2009 - Filed under Culture,Quote of the Day

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Pat Buchanan goes at Sotomayor's credentials in a column in the latest issue of Time magazine, mostly by conflating affirmative action with stupidity (white male conservative's favorite pasttime):

That were it not for Ivy League dishonesty, Sotomayor would not have gotten into Princeton, would never have been ranked first in her class, would not have gotten into Yale Law, nor been named editor of Yale Law Review, and thus would not be a U.S. appellate court judge today or a nominee to the Supreme Court.

Ah yes, affirmative action got her through all of that. Sure – it helped her get into Princeton, but affirmative action doesn't take the tests and do the work for you.

But that isn't the kind of thing you'll likely hear from rich privileged white man who think they are under constant assault from minorities and women. 

Wouldn't it be nice if they'd say "wow, I guess test scores aren't always great predictors of how well someone does in college?"  You know, something accurate and thoughtful.  And helpful.

It never ceases to amaze me how much they really think this is their country.

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Posted on June 15th, 2009 - Filed under Culture,Current Affairs

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A states' rights argument for the Defense of Marriage Act?

"This policy of neutrality maximizes state autonomy and democratic self-governance in an area of traditional state concern, and preserves scarce government resources. It is thus entirely rational."

Say what?!

I think what bothers me most about this is the "it is entirely rational" part.  To save money, the government should discriminate? Really?  You really wanna go down that rabbit hole, Barry? 

Get it together, patna!

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Posted on June 13th, 2009 - Filed under Culture,Current Affairs,Obama,Politics

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