Reverse Racism Rears Its Ugly Head

Make no mistake, please.  I don't like this woman one bit.

Like the rest of that herd of broadcasting right-wing "pundits," Laura Schlessinger is unbearably self-righteous and rude as hell.

I'd lose absolutely no sleep if I never saw or heard another obnoxious word from her ever again.  But as we've all seen this week, one word in particular got her in a whole lot of trouble on Tuesday.

Schlessinger had scintillating "Mama Grizzly" Palin later swim to her aide, too.  The Huffington Post reported last Thursday:

Sarah Palin has used Twitter to share some advice with Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the talk radio host who apologized and decided to retire from her highly-rated program after using the N-word on the air 11 times in 5 minutes.
Palin's advice: "don't retreat...reload!"

It's a breathtakingly tone-deaf bit of provocation -- even by Palin's standards.

Dr. Laura, as she's known on her radio program, quickly came under fire for her remarks of a week ago. She immediately acknowledged the mistake and soon announced that she would end the show once her contract expires later this year. She currently commands the largest audience of any woman in syndicated talk radio and overall her ratings are among the top five hosts in the nation.

Palin, once the governor of Alaska and Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, has been using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to push her messages in recent months. She fired out two messages about Dr. Laura on Wednesday night, the first reading:

"Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")

That was quickly followed by:

"Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice, America!" 
 
I'd likely join a multitude and "b thankful" if Constitutional Law Guru Palin would kindly suffer some regular bouts of both laryngitis and arthritis so there might be some blessed relief from her insufferable blathering and tweeting.  Just maybe Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and the other neocon troglodytes might do the same.
 
But there's a bigger elephant here in this room and I think a whole lot of people can hear it roar even louder than "Dr. Laura's" apparent capital crime.
 
That's the very much whispered-about issue of REVERSE RACISM.  Yeah, let's put it in upper case so we can at long last cut all the damn whispering and start talking about it.
 
For instance, is it any mystery, indeed, how this clever little double standard works?  Simple, really; you just need to have the correct skin pigment (tan or brown or black, etc.) and ya got an automatic license to sound out "Nigga" to other black people, be it in private or public settings.
 
No, I realize you've never, ever seen this REVERSE RACIST occurrence, right?  
 
Notice the modification of this offensive word.  My PC is clearly alive and kickin'.  After all, do I want to take a chance gettin' pilloried like that upstart honky girl, Dr. Laura?
 
One of the things she did say in her "rant" was:  "If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing...."
 
 

Hmmmm, confusing it is.  Take Chris Rock, as our favorite case-in-point.  This wildly hilarious man will scream that "Nigga" word 100 times plus in his stand ups, then the laughs (from aggrieved black audiences) will continue all the way to one of his many favorite banks.
 
Oh, of course, it's cause he's a comedian, with the required skin color.  Just like those "gangsta" rappers, who stick the word into their charming little raps with a vengeance.
 
Again, while Schlessinger IS an insensitive, meglomaniac talking head, you can bet the farm that had she looked like Oprah, or Chris Rock, it wouldn't have been The Problem it turned out to be.
 
And The Problem is the one called reverse racism.  I experienced  first hand racial hate politics as a white kid growing up in the 60's & 70's era San Francisco Bay Area, as a student in one of the most racist school systems in creation, my hometown of Berkeley, where those ever-thoughtful left-wing politicians imposed forced busing to try an instant experiment to change the racial atmosphere. 
 
The black woman caller, "Jade," who was mistreated by her oafish host made the outrageous claim later to CNN that ONLY minority people could ever know what racism and discrimination felt like.
 
Not quite.  My experience was five years of a "Burn, Whitey, Burn" living hell in the Berkeley Schools Unified District, perpetrated by militant administrators, teachers, and a whole lot of hostile black students.  I got heaping servings of racism, each and every nightmarish day.
 
Reverse racism.....that nasty ol' elephant is still rampaging around our national living room.  Go on, you can keep on looking away.
 
I'll conclude with this important link to some perspective from a black man who I'd enjoy sitting down to coffee with to compare notes on the pathology of both racisms. 
 
Maybe you'd like to join us.   

Balancing The Kiss Of Life's Highs And Lows

"How did it happen that their lips came together?  How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill?
A kiss, and all was said...."
                                                 -- Victor Hugo

The anguish of witnessing a world's endless tragedies and atrocities--refugees or floods or corruption, genocide, famine or persecution--sometimes throws me to the deepest part of a dark well.

In the throes of that moment, I know I have choices:  Remain there, head hanging in swirling gloom, is one of them.

Another is just look straight up to the distant light, finding something that will renew my spirit so much that I'll fly out from that dank prison like a falcon.

We human beings are such a curious lot.  One of the most simple but dramatic observations made was in a precious film called "Starman."  

"He has traveled from a galaxy far beyond our own.  He is 100,000 years ahead of us.  He has powers we cannot comprehend.  And he is about to face the one force in the universe he has yet to conquer.  Love."

That was what the 1984 movie poster read.  But it was a line that Jeff Bridges' extraterrestrial said just before the end that really captured something.  A blog writer for Explore Science Fiction Movies.com noted:

"And when at one point toward the end of the movie he says, 'You humans are at your best when things are worst,' that is not just another sop to the audiences, a piece of ready-made Hollywood wisdom that should make us feel good about ourselves. That line comes from a creature who was shot at and hunted down, and who experienced persecution and hate at the hands of humans."

Monumental ironies all over the map.  That's our fate, it seems, so much of the time, this co-existance of the most wrenching contrasts in our human condition.

Sometimes, too, it boils down to just the extremes of elation and despair.  The heart-warming "VJ Day Kiss In Times Square" photo  at the top of this post well illustrates the former.   

  Something even more horrifying than despair shimmers in a quite different portrait showing us what happens to sisters of Palestinian boys murdered by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

Again I feel myself plummeting to the bottom of that dark place.  I ruminate, maybe weep like them for a good while. Then I grab some resolve as to what I can do in my own limited path.

But comes the time to look up to that light once more.  It's still there, in the priceless vision of a kiss.  Or a song.  

Or perhaps both.



"In this world of extremes, we can only love too little."
                                           -- Rich Cannarella

Beneath This Twilight....."Life Starts Now"

Only a dream.  That's how it all started seven years ago.

The housewife woke up that summer morning with a vivid image of two young people deeply in love.  There was, however, a chilling difference to the male teen with the odd sparkling skin.

Something else strange about him.  He was sensitive, yes.  Yet cold to the touch and, all the while, overheated with passion.  He was protective of his love, without any question.

The biggest part about the dream, most palpable and most frightening, was that underneath this Romeo's peculiar skin was an utterly inhuman, unbearable thirst for his Juliet's blood.  Stephanie Meyer was so transfixed by what she saw that right after finishing the housework and tending to her three children, she sat down to the computer and began to write.  And write. And write.

“I started out just so I wouldn’t forget the story," Meyer remembers, "but I kept going. I really feel like it was a situation where I had a talent I was not using; I had buried it. And that was my kick-start. I was supposed to be doing something with this talent.  It sounds a little odd to say that you were inspired to write a vampire novel.”


As it turned out, Meyer didn't start it off with a chapter one.  She instead created first what turned out to be Twilight's chapter 13 ("Confessions") in the first-person narrative of the Juliet, teenage character Bella Swan, in a semisteamy interlude in that now-famous meadow with her dangerous Romeo, 104-year-old vampire Edward Cullen.

From the prose one reviewer described as "a gripping blend of romance and horror," an excerpt:

"I sat without moving, more frightened of him than I had ever been.  I'd never seen him so completely freed of that carefully cultivated facade.  He'd never been less human....or more beautiful.  Face ashen, eyes wide, I sat like a bird locked in the eyes of a snake.

His lovely eyes seem to glow with rash excitement.  Then, as the seconds passed, they dimmed.  His expression slowly folded into a mask of ancient sadness.

'Don't be afraid,' he murmured, his velvet voice unintentionally seductive.  'I promise....'  He hesitated.  'I swear not to hurt you.'  He seemed more concerned with convincing himself than me.

'Don't be afraid,' he whispered again as he stepped closer, with exaggerated slowness.  He sat sinuously, with deliberately unhurried movements, till our faces were on the same level, just a foot apart.

'Please forgive me,' he said formally.  'I can control myself.  You caught me off guard.  But I'm on my best behavior now.'

He waited, but I still couldn't speak.

'I'm not thirsty today, honestly.'  He winked."   

Meyer's "kick-start" ignited what would be the genesis of a literary and film phenomena sweeping the globe today.  This year the four-book Twilight saga sold over 100 million copies worldwide with translations into at least 38 languages.  The latest film from the series, Eclipse, has broken box office records, combining with the earlier Twilight and New Moon to rack in a staggering $1.5 billion in worldwide revenue.  It's anyone's guess what the riches from the final two films will be--derived from the fourth novel, Breaking Dawn--but no doubt they'll be nine-digit wonders.  

Meyer, who has a degree in English literature, says her fantasy romance stories are "about life, not death" and "love, not lust," and that each book was inspired by some classics she had to have poured over during her studies at Brigham Young University:  Twilight came from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice;  New Moon, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (big surprise!);  Eclipse, based on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights; and Breaking Dawn came from a second Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Meyer also states that Orson Scott Card and L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series  influenced her writing.

According to one source:

"Other major themes of the series include choice and free will. Meyer says that the books are centered around Bella's choice to choose her life on her own, and the Cullens' choices to abstain from killing rather than follow their temptations:  'I really think that's the underlying metaphor of my vampires. It doesn't matter where you're stuck in life or what you think you have to do; you can always choose something else. There's always a different path.'

                                    
Meyer, a Mormon, acknowledges that her faith has influenced her work. In particular, she says that her characters 'tend to think more about where they came from, and where they are going, than might be typical.'  Meyer also steers her work from subjects such as sex, despite the romantic nature of the novels.

Meyer says that she does not consciously intend her novels to be Mormon-influenced, or to promote the virtues of sexual abstinence and spiritual purity, but admits that her writing is shaped by her values, saying, 'I don't think my books are going to be really graphic or dark, because of who I am. There's always going to be a lot of light in my stories.'"

True enough.

Even if her detractors go on about Meyer's stories being contrived and schmaltzy, what cannot be ignored is the wild sensation created and spread like a wildfire onto the big screen. "I've been in the movie business for twenty-five years, and I've never seen anything like it!" remarked series costume designer Tish Monaghan.  "Maybe it's the Internet, which has created this ocean of adoring fans -- there were fans we saw in Italy on New Moon that were recognized in Vancouver!  It's hard to fathom, but there are many different factors."

Right again.

Fused into three beautifully crafted films is surely the most salient of factors:  Life choices -- and their consequences.  Bella's everlasting love for Edward; worth sacrificing her humanity?  Or the good-hearted Cullen family's option for the high road, not feeding on humans, verses the bestial, murderous Volturi that "don't give second chances."  

         

Intriguing was the Eclipse review by Christianity Today ("A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction").  We all know how much our fundamentalist Dudley Do-Rights adored the "demonic" Harry Potter stories & films.  What, then, is their final word on this sordid tale of undead love and devotion?

The Evangelically Convicted reviewer surprisingly spared the film  a hellfire & brimstone baptism.  She even went as far to admit that "though the movie's view of marriage is not particularly Christian, it does hold the institution with high regard...." 

Lo and behold, baby.  There were even some "discussion starters" at the review's end, featuring some seriously thoughtful questions: 


"1.  Bella faced some tough choices that required her to hurt people she loved; did she make the right choices? Could she have handled the situation better?


2.  We see multiple examples of people being manipulated by those they thought loved them. What does true love look like? How can we tell whether we really love someone, or if we're just using them because they can do something for us? 


3.  In her graduation speech, Jessica tells her fellow graduates, "This is the time to make mistakes." Was this good advice? Why or why not? Are there types of mistakes that are okay? How do we know?


4.  Bella and Edward spend a lot of time discussing marriage. What are their reasons for and against it? Are these good reasons? What are good reasons for marriage?"

Now there's those talking points about choices & consequences.  Doggone well-stated, too.  Only wish the same could be said for one of the review's first comments. Note that raging indignant Believer Cherry Howell not once asked whether or not the spirit warrior Quileute wolves were God-fearing:

"People long for consuming love that will change them. This was put in us by God. This movie takes that longing and twists it. Edward is a romantic hero, who honors Bella by respecting her innocence and asks her to marry him. God intended this also. It's a shame that these virtues have to be intwined in a converted vampire saga. Did the Cullen clan read the bible? The movies are relatively clean except for some mild swear words and insertion of modern safe sex advice.

It's a shame Bella is not shone [sic] to be as virtuous as Edward. There is an interesting trend of making evil characters virtuous, i.e., Harry Potter. They are relatively clean entertainment. But there is something sinister going on here and it is directed at our children. Can blood sucking demonic vampires or worlocks [sic] display virtue? These movies are saying that the Bible and what God has told us is wrong. I think Satan has whispered in a few authors ears. There is just enough virtue in these films to deceive many." 

One thing's for sure, Cherry -- there's a hell of a lot of Satanic Author fans out there now.  And, yep, they're gaining strength.  More Twihard websites are popping up every day including the forces of "Twilighters Anonymous," whose battle cry is "Helping Addicts Since 2008 Because We Don't Want A Cure."

They'll be able to get their next fix at the end of November, 2011 if they can stand the wait.  It won't be easy, for sure, because this story has genuine pathos.  Underpinning all the fantasy and action in these superbly cast & directed films is the very profound question about choices we often must make and their inevitable consequences.

There's a song, "All Yours," that comes on when the credits roll at the close of Eclipse.  Contralto vocalist Emily Haines of the Canadian group "Metric" offers a stunning performance, with poignant lyrics and video (below) that could apply to God just as easily as any earthly--or unearthly--love.

Which makes it perfect.     

"Other lives, always tempted to trade
Will they hate me for all the choices I made?
Will they stop when they see me again?
I can't stop now I know who I am


Now I'm all yours, I'm not afraid
You're all mine, say what they may
And all your love, I'll take to the grave
And all my life starts now


Tear me down, they can't take you out of my thoughts
Under every scar there's a battle I've lost
Will they stop when they see us again?
I can't stop now I know who I am


Now I'm all yours, I'm not afraid
You're all mine, say what they may
And all your love, I'll take to the grave
And all my life starts


I'm all yours, I'm not afraid
You're all mine, say what they may
And all your love, I'll take to the grave
And all my life starts
Starts now....."      [ Click link! :]

Come On, Everybody -- Sing Along With Sarah: "DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!!"

What does 1,000,000 gallons of oil a day ravaging our environment look like, as we speak?

Likely you've already had that horrific little underwater preview:



By now, the Gulf Coast is turning into one disastrous mess, for the Gulf residents, the birds, fish, plants,  everything.

I just wonder at what point did Pert Palin's handlers decide to delete bouncy little "DBD!" Republican Refrain from her boiler plate road show.  Or--nooooooo--she's still at it??

In any event, Demos should pray that Gov. Sarah DOES indeed get the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, so this little beauty can be shared with the voters day & night on every network and the all over the blessed blogosphere:



Thanks for sharing, Sarah, Big Oil, and our bird-brained Republican friends.

“Most people," remarked naturalist John Muir, "are on the world, not in it--having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them--undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."

I take it back, with apologies to the birds.  It's granite-brained Republican friends.

Understanding The Gaza Crisis: A Blunt, Unsparing Expose Of American-supported Israel's Nazi Tactics Eliminating Another People

The facts aren't just searingly painful.  The situation is outrageous, disgusting, unbearable.

The perpetrators continue running their machine on your tax dollars, Americans.  Generously squeezed out of a sheep-like Congress, year after year after year, by the crushingly effective Israeli lobby, AIPAC.

The Israeli Regime just committed another act of piracy today, to maintain its Warsaw Ghetto as the world's largest open air prison.  And what a hell on earth place they've transformed Gaza.

There is no reason on earth to partner up with war criminals.  Have a look at this report's "plain language" and ask yourself the question:

"Who is it that's in the cast in this 'War On Terror'?"

Now, We Are All Palestinians.

The latest Israeli assault on human decency--will this atrocity simply fade from public consciousness, day by day, as other stories emerge to take its place?  Oil spills, Miley's new shoes, or the newest episode of CSI?

What's painfully clear is that the might-makes-right dictum too often plagues our world, whether local, national, or global.  Perhaps some tyrannical boss at the office trashing ethics or a politician you trusted betraying his promises or some foreign power bullying anyone in the way of its "national interest."

We watched our faithful U.S. government-backed Israeli stormtroopers come blasting aboard an unarmed mercy fleet, like Blackbeard's pirates on a plunder.  All because some humanitarians were simply trying to give hungry, homeless refugees in the world's largest open air prison some food and housing materials.

It is sickening beyond words.

The insult to injury is Israel and its apologists' appalling fabrications trying to justify such cruelty, a relentless process that began over 60 years ago when the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes.

Not that such barbarism and suffering has been limited to the Middle East, of course.  It's a universal curse and has been the root of so much grief.  One of the most overpowering expressions I've ever witnessed of this angst is a 1965 ballad, utterly timeless.

You'd only have to graft some contemporary events onto the lyrics and one would never tell the difference.



"The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace...."

The Dylanesque message resonates like few others have and the singer unleashes it with a pathos that nearly mows me down.
 
But like that potent scene of DeNiro getting battered in the ring in "Raging Bull," he taunts his tormentor with the assurance that he "nevah went doooown."
 

 
Even if he did, or you do, just get the hell back up, no matter what.  Stay on your feet, moving in the direction of the headwaters of faith. 
 
Maya Angelou's immortal words sparkle in the water.  Get in.  Rejuvenate.  One beleaguered person, or an entire nation under siege, it works.
 
"Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide,
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise....."

And with the elation, the promise of a different kind of "eve" comes into view.

A more spiritual, comforting realm.

Call it, for want of a better term......the "Eve Of Construction."

Recalling The Birthday Song Lyrics For The World's Greatest Ethnic Cleanser

Israel.....a nation steamrolled into existence over the instant ruins of another--Palestine.  Some other glowing candles for its 62nd Birthday Cake: 

• Israel holds the world record in the number of towns & villages it ethnically cleansed:  Over 500


• Israel holds the world record in the number of refugees it's created:  Over 4,000,000


• Israel holds the world record in the number of homes it demolished:  Over 60,000


• Israel is the country with the highest record of UN condemnations:  Over 500


• Israel is the country with the highest number of protective US Security council vetoes:  Over 100


• Israel has killed more innocent civilians per capita than any other country:  Over 50,000

 • Israel has imprisoned more civilians per capita than any other country:  Over 250,000


• Israel has rendered more innocent civilians handicapped per capita than any other country:  Over 50,000

• Israel has injured more innocent civilians per capita than any other country:  Over 200,000


• Israel has only two countries to defend its policies in the United Nations. These countries are America &  Micronesia. The population for Micronesia, as of June 2008, was 108,000


• Israel is the only country on Earth that denies the right of return of refugees


• Israel is the only country on Earth that still occupies a whole other country & parts of two other countries


• Israel is the only country on Earth that publicly steals the water of its neighbours


• Israel is the only country on Earth that has legalized home demolishing as a method of collective punishment

• Israel is the only country on Earth that uproots trees as a method of collective punishment


• Israel is the only country on Earth that deliberately targets civilian infrastructure and justifies it


• Israel is the only country on Earth that legalized assassination


• Israel stands unique in using human shields in military operations


• Amongst all countries, Israel is the only one that has legalized torture


• Israel is the only country on Earth that builds illegal settlements in occupied lands


• Israel is the only country on Earth that publicly jails activists without trial


• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Israel has created the highest number of checkpoints


• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Israel holds the world record in the number of curfews imposed on the Palestinians


• Israel is the only country on Earth whose checkpoints deny women access to hospitals, many who've been forced to give birth alone, with fatal results.

• Israel is exceptional in being the only country on Earth whose checkpoints denies patients access to hospitals, with fatal results.


• Israel is the only country on Earth whose checkpoints are where wedding parades come to an end


• Israel is the only country on Earth who checkpoints school children, denies them access to school, and puts an end to their classes


• Israel is one of two countries that, against International Law, uses cluster bombs and depleted uranium bombs. America is the other.


• Israel holds the world record in the number of soldiers refusing to serve in the army


• Israel, despite being a rich country, receives the highest financial aid, more than the sum aid to all sub-Saharan Africa.


• While talking about its enemies wanting to wipe it off the map, Israel is in the 62nd year of finishing the wiping of another country--Palestine--off the map.  With American tax dollars.


• Israel is the county that has introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East, but continues to be the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty


• After East Germany, Israel has been the only country that is building a segregation wall

• Second to South Africa, Israel is the only country to establish an apartheid regime


• Israeli engineers developed the world's first iron gates on roads


• Israeli engineers developed the world's first cities-turned-to-jails, with gates and opening hours


• Israeli engineers developed the world's first apartheid walls


• Israeli engineers developed the world's first electrified segregation fences


• Israeli engineers developed the world's first "eyes specific" rubber bullets


• Israeli engineers developed the world's first abortion-efficient, infant killing tear gas

• Israeli engineers developed the world's first humiliation-guaranteed human cages


• Israel is the only country on Earth that has a political party that publicly advocates ethnic cleansing of native citizens (Palestinians)


• Israel is the only country on Earth that still has racist laws that discriminate against native citizens (Palestinians)


• Israel is the only country on Earth known to have a memorial dedicated to a terrorist where his followers gather and dance


• Israel is the only country on Earth that imprisons children for political reasons


• Israel is the only country on Earth where you get a one month community service for deliberately smashing the head of a child 


• Israel is the only country on Earth that does not hold its soldiers accountable for shooting--and bulldozing to death--peace activists in cold blood


• No other country on Earth has towns and cities allocated exclusively for one ethnic group


• The only country on Earth, where people live in homes stolen from living refugees is, Israel


• The only place on Earth where people cultivate fields stolen from living refugees is Israel


• Israel has the highest number of towns built upon ethnically cleansed villages, whose former residents are living refugees

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border...."
                       -- Zionism Founder Theodor Herzl
                          Diary Entry, 1895

Happy birthday Israel.

Cake and ice cream, anyone?