The nation’s most influential newspaper, The New York Times, has made news once again by calling for the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

This is a dramatic turn of events for two reasons. The first is because the Times wields a great deal of influence among mainstream US news organizations and thus among the public. As journalist Michael Massing observed in Bill Moyers’ documentary “Buying The War“,

The New York Times is just– remains immensely influential. People in the TV world read it every morning, and it’s amazing how often you’ll see a story go from the front page of the day’s paper in the morning to the evening news cast at night. People in government– of course read it, think tanks, and so on.

The second reason this is a critical development is because The New York Times was one of the mainstream media outlets that helped sell the invasion of Iraq to the American people. In fact, The New York Times was a significant supporting player if not a leading character in the tragic melodrama that led this nation to war.
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Talk about poor timing.

Russell Simmons released his book, Do You: Laws To Access The Power In You To Achieve Happiness And Success, right as the argument about hip hop’s often misogynist lyrics reached a fever pitch.

The result? He is answering (or dodging) more questions about hip hop lyrics during his book tour than he is being asked about his book.

So when the hip hop mogul sat down recently with NPR’s Farai Chideya, he got so flustered she thought he was going to walk out.
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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

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

The Don Imus Incident brought out a lot of anger toward Hip Hop. In reality hip hop culture plays a very small role in the Imus controversy - Don Imus probably isn’t a fan of Snoop Dogg, and most Black folks didn’t know who he was until the controversy erupted - but his remarks inflamed the long standing debate that similar language has gotten out of hand in popular music.

Oprah even got into the act by devoting two shows to a town hall meeting where Russell Simmons and Ben Chavis (representing The Hip Hop Summit Action Network), joined by Common and Warner Music exec Kevin Lyle, were confronted by a host of detractors including longtime hip hop-hater columnist Stanley Crouch and a group of Spellman college students who appeared via satellite. The hip hop panel promised to convene a summit with the corporate music industry to discuss the problem and develop concrete solutions. That summit, held at the home of Warner Music’s Lyor Cohen, ended with no press conference and no statement about what was or was not accomplished. And no one is surprised.

The corporate media and the major labels who market the small percentage of music that is heard on most radio and video outlets should be held responsible for the content that they push on the public. Bay-area emcee Paris put it best in a post on GuerrillaFunk.com when he said:

The argument is often made by Russell Simmons and others that rappers are poets who simply report on what they feel and their surroundings, and that they shouldn’t be censored. As an emcee, on that point we partially agree — we shouldn’t be censored. But balance between the negative and positive needs to be provided, and it currently isn’t.

Most artistic integrity is questionable at best. My understanding is that artists are supposed to express what they believe in at all costs (if not, there’s work at the post office). But most don’t, and they mold their approaches to making music based on what they perceive major labels wanting. If Def Jam or Interscope or any of these other large culture-defining companies issued a blanket decree that they would only support material and artists with positive messages then 99% of those making music now would switch up to accommodate. That’s real talk.

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I don’t use my mobile phone to access the Internet, so that may be why I haven’t become inundated with mobile ads yet.

But according to Business Week, if you are surfing on your cellular, you may begin seeing more commercials on your phone. Advertisers are gearing up to use targeted mobile ads in a big way. (more…)

The Imus/Rutgers insult and the furor that followed illustrate both the power of words, and the volatility of race as an issue in America and the world.

The remarks that he made have struck nerves on so many levels. The term “nappy headed” invokes Black hair politics; the reference to women as “hoes” is degradation; darker skinned Blacks are pitted against fairer skinned Blacks with the “jiggaboos vs. wannabes” comment; and all of it raises questions like Who has the right to call people names? Why is it okay that Blacks can use certain language while others can’t? How responsibile are Black people for the words that are used against us when we perpetuate the issue by continuing the use of those words?

On April 10 after the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team’s press conference, I submited a post titled, “Not a Nappy Head in the Bunch” on Last Chocolate City. The post pointed out that those beautiful women had responded to Don Imus’s comments with poise and grace. The title implied, though the article did not clarify, that none of the women had what most Black folks would consider, “nappy” hair. Unfortunately, some people were offended by my reference to the women’s hair.

I didn’t mean to offend anyone with that statement. I apologize personally, and on behalf of LastChocolateCity.com and The Michigan Citizen, Inc., I apologize as well.

Imus and his team had attacked the women for their physical appearance, and the women of Rutgers obviously did not fit the description of “nappy headed hoes” by any stretch of the imagination. My intention with my post was to emphasize the fact that Imus’s comments were not only hateful, but inaccurate. However, by stating that there wasn’t a nappy head in the bunch, I stirred up some deep seated animosities within the Black community.

For the record, I am a brother with waist length locs. My hair is nothing if not nappy. The comment I made was intended to be a humorous remark directed with love for my sisters on that team and for my people. But by making comments that were offensive to someone else, my intentions (and my hair) were not scrutinized. What mattered was the perception and that another human being was hurt by my words.
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The Rutgers Women’s Basketball team responded with class and poise to racist comments from Don Imus’s “Imus in the Morning” show at a press conference on Tuesday.

The radio/television host and his producer, Bernard McGuirk, referred to the Big East champions as “nappy-headed hoes” and “jiggaboos” last week after their loss to Tennessee in the NCAA Women’s National Championship game. Imus will serve a two-week suspension beginning on Monday, April 16.

Rutgers team members refused to comment on the severity of the punishment or on whether they thought it was just. The university used the opportunity to highlight the accomplishments of the group this season and to focus on their intellectual prowess. Rutgers has tough academic standards, and according to Coach C. Vivian Stringer

“These young ladies before you are valedictorians, future doctors, musical prodigies… these young ladies are the best this nation has to offer and we are so very fortunate to have them at Rutgers. They are young ladies of class, distinction. They are articulate. They are gifted.”

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They say “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

However, after losing her hearing in 2005 and then regaining it through surgery in Feb. 2006. Foxy Brown has been arrested more than numerous times. The arrests have been petty and childish incidents.

One took place in August of 2004 during which time she allegedly attacked two manicurists and left a nail salon refusing to pay a $20 tab. The case dragged on for over a year and in October of 2006, Foxy was finally sentenced to three years probation for the incident.

During one of her court appearances, in Dec. 2005, Brown allegedly stuck out her tongue at the Judge in her case. She was then handcuffed to a bench and then engaged in an argument with an officer of the court. She later apologized to the Judge stating that she had stuck out her tongue to show that she was not chewing gum.

Most recently, Foxy was arrested in Florida, where a “take-down” measure had to be taken against her by police.

What is wrong with Foxy Brown? (more…)

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is basically saying he doesn’t have Black friends because he is afraid that he will offend. As if he (and white America) is constantly wrestling with some internal demon force–keeping all of those racist, mean-spirited beliefs suppressed.

So that is why white people and Black people live in separate communities?

This all started because of Sen. Joe Biden’s comments about Sen. Barak Obama being “clean and articulate”.

Now you got to feel sorry for us white folks here, because I’m telling you now I’m afraid to say anything. You know, you’re an articulate guy, doctor, but I’m never going to say that. You’re a smart guy. Is that bad if I say you’re a smart guy? … Yes, absolutely, instead of Black and white Americans coming together, white Americans are terrified. They’re terrified. Now we can’t even say you’re articulate? We can’t even give you guys compliments because they may be taken as condescension? - O’Reilly

This past weekend, I admired Forrest Whitaker’s brilliant portrayl of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. The Oscar talk is well-deserved (though Ghost Dog is still my favorite Whitaker vehicle), but Amin’s brutality was disturbing. And he isn’t the only African tyrant who is guilty of such abuses.

“Africa has had far too many dictators like that,” my wife remarked as we walked out of the theater.

James McAvoy also did a fine job as Nicholas Garrigan, Amin’s personal physician and “closest advisor”. In the film, Amin turned to Garrigan for advice on dealings with his ministers, his family and with the media.

Ultimately, Ugandans relied on him to tell the story of the despot’s attrocities. A Ugandan doctor tells Garrigan in the movie, “They’ll believe you. You’re a white man.”

And that line reveals the truth, doesn’t it? The character of Garrigan is fictional, created for the book by Giles Foden and adapted for the movie. Was the white man added to the story to make it more “believable”, or is he there to make an African tale more “marketable” to a white audience? (more…)

Last Chocolate City contributor and resident football fanatic Tommy Gibbs is convinced that ESPN is up to no good. The titles of his two recent posts (ESPN is Racist I and ESPN is Racist II) are blunt and to the point.

I don’t know if ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski is aware of Tommy’s accusations, but his column about Fritz Pollard, the NFL’s first Black player and head coach, is significant in the way it discusses (or doesn’t discuss) Pollard’s legacy.

Lovie Smith, one of the first two Black coaches to lead NFL teams to the Super Bowl and the lowest paid head coach in the league, works for the Chicago Bears, a team founded by the legendary George Halas.

Remember the cement block-sized piece of hardware Smith hoisted after winning the NFC championship a few days ago at Solider Field? It was the Halas Trophy, and it was held tightly by, technically speaking, the first black head coach to lead a team to the Super Bowl.

“That is ironical,” says 85-year-old Eleanor Pollard Towns, one of two Pollard daughters who live in the Chicago area.

Ironical, she says, because Halas was no friend of Fritz Pollard or his causes. Ironical because Halas has always been linked to the 1934 unwritten edict by NFL owners that banned black players from the league until 1946, as newspaper reports at the time detailed. (more…)