The San Antonio Spurs have dispatched of a very tough Utah Jazz team in five games, and will take the next week off waiting to see who their opponent will be in the NBA Finals.

And the Detroit Pistons?

They are struggling their way through another seven game series with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Come on, now! Why do the Pistons feel the need to do it the hard way every single year? As much as the Detroit press and Pistons fans complain that the team is often guilty of taking the night off to its detriment, they have not changed that perception.

Many pundits are blaming Chauncey Billups, the team’s leader, for the sub-standard performance. Not only is “Mr. Big Shot” not living up to his name, some say he is making poor decisions and playing without the heart necessary to win a championship.

So what gives, Chauncey? Are you more concerned about your impending free agency than another championship? What are you doing?
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I was shell-shocked recently when I walked into Detroit’s Cooley High School to speak during their Career Day. The kids are huge, many of the girls and almost all of the boys are taller than my 5 feet 7 inches. They are loud. Bopping down the hallways with mp3 players on their ears, unable to separate themselves from music for even the five minutes between classes. “That’s a whole song!” they exclaim when I inquire. They were fascinating.

Chris “Kazi” Rolle, the founder of The Hip Hop Project, a successful after-school program and now a critically acclaimed film, said that the thing that he did to get through the teenagers of the so-called “lost” generation, was to listen to them.

It was so simple, it was scary. Listen to them. Stop talking at them, stop talking about them. But listen to what is important to them, and listen to how they feel, and how life is treating them. Then, you will learn how to help them.

So, as I went from class to class, talking to different grades. Mrs. Rowley’s first hour was very attentive. They wanted to know who my favorite people to interview were, and how I got into entertainment journalism. They wanted to know the keys to my success. I told them, READ. Read a book, everyday for at least 15 minutes. Not just hood books, but real books, and expand your mind. They promised that they would as they listened to me with rapt attention. Then, I asked them what they wanted to be. There was one rapper, a few doctors, a couple lawyers, no teachers, one artist, and a bunch of others who had no idea, and I assured them, that’s okay.

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Cindy Sheehan has had it. The mother who began her crusade to end the Iraq War by camping outside George Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch after her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, issued her resignation as “the face” of the anti-war movement in a post on the DailyKos website this Memorial Day.

The activist has endured a storm of criticism throughout her two-year campaign, and that storm grew stronger last week when she renounced ties with the Democratic Party over their refusal to cut off funding for the imperial occupation in Iraq.

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

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In an article for the online magazine, Slate, former NBA player, Paul Shirley, currently in the Spanish pro league, recounts the lonliness of the white American basketball player.

Though he makes a great living playing ball in “the second-best basketball league in the world”, Shirley complains about the racism that he has encountered in the NBA. He believed other players didn’t respect his game specifically because he was white.

Of course, Shirley is not best known for his basketball skills. According to his listing in Wikipedia, Shirley’s biggest claim to fame was the online diary he kept as the Phoenix Suns’ twelfth man on their 2004-2005 playoff run, and the blog he writes for ESPN.com. He was cut at the end of that season, and failed to make the Minnesota Timberwolves roster at the beginning of this season. Ironically, Shirley mentioned the $10 million, 5-year contract of white Timberwolf Mark Madsen as the reason he was released.

Paul Shirley offers an interesting perspective on what life is like as a racial minority. White Americans currently make up only 6 percent of NBA players (75 percent are African-Americans and 19 percent are foreigners). Though the winners of the last three MVP titles are of European descent, they aren’t white Americans (two-time winner Steve Nash is Canadian and this year’s MVP, Dirk Nowitski, is German). According to Shirley, this is a problem for white American men who aren’t believed to be as talented as Black and foreign players.
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This is a cause we can ALL get behind!

From Alternet.org

“We now seem more determined than ever to work harder and produce more stuff, which creates a bizarre paradox: We are proudly breaking our backs to decrease the carrying capacity of the planet,” says Conrad Schmidt, an internationally known social activist and founder of the Work Less Party, a Vancouver-based initiative aimed at moving to a 32-hour work week — a radical departure from the in early, out late cycle we’ve grown accustomed to. “Choosing to work less is the biggest environmental issue no one’s talking about.”

Americans work more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world. According to the United Nations’ International Labor Organization, we work 250 hours, or five weeks, more than the Brits, and a whopping 500 hours, or 12 and a half weeks, more than the Germans. So how does ecological damage figure in to the 40-plus workweek?

Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving technology equals ever-increasing productivity. Without high annual growth to match productivity, there’s unemployment. Maintaining growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution.

So chill out. Stop working so hard. Live a little. Life is too short. Your grandchildren will thank you, and you’ll thank yourself.

Alternet.org: Why Working Less is Better for the Globe

House Judiciary Chair Rep. John Conyers of Detroit has lost friends in the activist community since reversing his position and backing off his calls for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

It seems like a political lifetime ago since Conyers introduced House Resoultion 635 asking for an investigation of possible impeachable offenses by Bush and Cheney. During his congressional campaign in 2006, Conyers won the votes of Detroit impeachment activists by implying that he would continue his pursuit of impeachment proceedings.

But after his election, when the chair of the House Judiciary Committee was in his grasp, the Congressman bowed to pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and parroted her decree that “impeachment is off the table.” He has failed to place H.R. 333, Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s introduction of articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, on the House Judiciary Committee calendar.

Last week another Conyers from Detroit gained national attention by making a stand in favor of Bush/Cheney impeachment. Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers, John’s wife, introduced a resolution that would recommend that Detroit’s congressmembers introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney.
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This just in. A news website in California is recruiting reporters in India for its local news coverage. Because Pasadena’s city council meetings are available on the web, PasadenaNews.com believes journalists in India can report on the local government as well as a local reporter who attends the meeting.

This is just the latest facet of the outsourcing trend. English is the global language of business, and many of the world’s most privileged students study in the US and Britain. Just as automotive engineering jobs and computer programming jobs are moving overseas, now the reporter on the scene may be halfway around the world.
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A look at online media reports about the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell show that most are unsympathetic… Headlines read: “PRAISE GOD, JERRY FALWELL IS DEAD“, “God Angrily Awaiting Jerry Falwell’s Arrival” and “Jerry Falwell Finally Dead By God’s Hand.”

According to Wonkette.com, “Falwell has supported South African apartheid, called AIDS an invention of Jesus to punish gays, attacked Martin Luther King and U.S. civil rights, and blamed 9/11 on feminists and homosexuals.“

Jerry Falwell? Peace out.

Wonkette, Gawker

As Detroit’s entrepreneurs search for new business opportunities, we should not overlook an important growth industry that could improve both the economic and physical well-being of the city.

Urban farming and community gardening have been touted for several years as a possible source of fresh produce and jobs for The D. Pioneers like Grace and Jimmy Boggs have shown us the way, and a few of us have followed.

The information in this recent article on Entreprenuer.com demonstrates that Michigan entrepreneurs should pick up the pace, not only when it comes to organic farming, but also in distribution and retail.
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The US Senate just scored a major victory for America’s drug dealers.

I’m not talking about the “dope boys” pushing nickels and dimes on the corner. I’m talking about the nation’s REAL drug dealers. The big ballers - the major pharmaceutical companies who raked in over $600 billion in global prescription drug spending in 2006.

On May 9, the Senate passed a bill that, according to The New York Times,

…gives the Food and Drug Administration sweeping new power to police drug safety, order changes in drug labels, regulate advertising and restrict the use and distribution of medicines found to pose serious risks to consumers.

While the measure takes small steps in an effort to ease consumer fears about the FDA’s questionable drug approval methods, the bill renewed the government’s deal with the devil that allows drug companies to pay fees that speed up new drug testing, review and approval. The Times quotes Public Citizen’s Health Research Group director Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe as saying, “The bill’s improvements in F.D.A. authority are important but inadequate. The bill would increase collaboration between the agency and the drug industry, by increasing the agency’s reliance on user fees to finance drug reviews.”

The bill also fails to legalize the importation of lower cost drugs from Canada or to cap the rising cost of medicine. In a society that dopes up on legal and illegal substances of many stripes, drug dealers will have a stronger grip on American bodies and wallets thanks to our politicians.
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The Barack Obama bandwagon is picking up steam. In many circles, the junior senator from Illinois is being compared to John Kennedy. He is young, good looking, charismatic and yes, articulate, providing a resounding echo of the JFK experience.

However, when NeoConservatives start issuing accolades for a Democratic candidate, it’s time to take a closer look.

From London, England’s TimesOnline:

But last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama – that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was “pure John Kennedy”, a neocon hero of the cold war.

So warmongering neocons dig Obama? The presidential candidate has expressed his opposition to the Iraq War, and says he was against it from the beginning, but his own words show that he is not an advocate of peace.

Blues Talkin

The objectification of women has been a hot topic here and elsewhere lately. Let’s face it. From the adult dancer/college student/single mother who accused Duke lacrosse players of rape to the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team to nearly every song on urban radio and every video on BET, women are viewed by society as sexual objects.

But in an era of Girls Gone Wild, video vixens, strip clubs in every city, Internet porn, King, Maxim, Playboy, Hustler, etc., how much responsibility do women have for objectifying themselves? By choosing to bare their assets for money, attention or both are they seizing the power or are they allowing themselves to be sexual puppets to male desire?

In an article on Alternet, adult entertainer turned author Sarah Katherine Lewis confronts the question from a feminist standpoint, “If a woman chooses to objectify herself — shedding her clothes to obtain power through money — is she helping to eliminate gender inequality or simply degrading herself?”
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A Pew Reseach Center survey recently found that viewers of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert were just as knowledgable as readers of major newspapers and much more knowledgable than viewers of Fox News. We know what this says about Fox, but what does it say about mainstream newspapers if “fake news” shows on Comedy Central match their quality? Presumably readers of The Michigan Citizen weren’t surveyed.

Stewart and Colbert haven’t gone without criticism though, and until recently their most glaring offense has been a lack of racial diversity among the casts. Colbert’s contest to find “a new black friend” was really stupid, but the Daily Show has followed through with the solid casting of Aasif Madvi as its Senior Iraqi Corespondent, and Larry Wilmore as the show’s Senior Black Corespondent.

On the May 3 “fake newscast”, Wilmore offered a frank, but hilarious analysis of the “Stop Snitchin’” trend that is growing among hip hop artists and the greater Black community. According to Wilmore there is hope for the inner city through gentrification.

Don Imus just won’t go away… ABC News reports that the recently jetisoned shock jock is expected to sue former employer CBS next week for $120 million after he was fired for his racist and sexist insults of the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team.

A draft copy of Imus’s lawsuit says that the network expected him to be controversial and irreverent under the terms of his contract. And he claims Imus’s show was on a five second delay that allowed the network to censor him if they wanted.

The draft points out that Imus wasn’t fired for two weeks after the remarks were made.

Meanwhile, four former FCC commissioners contacted by ABC News say they do not believe that the speech was actionable under current federal guidelines that prohibit profanity or indecency on public airwaves.

Of course, CBS will fight this, and believes they can win any legal action. Whether we want to or not, we’ll soon find out.

ABC News

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, MR. PRESIDENT!

It’s May 1, the fourth anniversary of President George W. Bush’s triumphant “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he announced that major combat operations in Iraq were over. The US military had successfully overthrown a sovereign government and taken the Iraqi nation hostage. Champange for everyone!

Because of the deteriorating security situation there, the widespread corruption, billions of dollars in cash missing and the fact that many of the projects Bush bragged about are now falling apart, the public believes things are going poorly in Iraq. Despite the grumbling and moaning that we hear, keen observers will clearly perceive, through the 20/20 vision that four years of hindsight allow, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been highly profitable ventures for Bush, Cheney, their families and the neoconservatives who led us to war.

The mission has been accomplished indeed.
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