Must be a Commie Plot!

I've always been fascinated by history. The written record of mankind's triumphs and transgressions enthralls me. We can learn from how someone succeeded or failed. In the midst of the great health care debate I've heard lots of angry men and women shouting down anyone siding with the president or the Democratic party in this instance and they all seem to be unified in their cries of "socialized medicine." The bulk of the men and women tend to be largely conservative and white.
Being conservative and white aren't bad things. Consider that conservatives as a group by definition simply aren't big fans of radical change and as change can be daunting concepts I can respect this on some level, but I have to analyze what's going on now and compare it to a few other instances in American history.

When in the 20's organized labor lobbied for a shorter work week, a minimum wage and benefits they were called "Communist." They were opposed by big business and such noteworthy conservative organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. Ironically the bulk of the Klan's membership were blue collar types who benefitted MOST from labor laws. Big companies who shall remain nameless hired thugs to beat up Union reps and The Klan was KNOWN for beating, lynching and running union reps out of town.
When Franklin Roosevelt suggested the New Deal, conservatives and big business called it socialism to the highest degree.
When the civil rights movement hit it's stride in the mid 50's Conservatives were calling it a "Commie Plot" and went so far as to call Martin Luther King a Communist as a means of discrediting him. Along with the conservatives (Who were the Democrats at the time) were the conservative "Citizen's Councils" (who saw integration as evil) and the rank and file of the Ku Klux Klan.
Flash foward to present day. America has a biracial president who is trying to push healthcare reform. Who opposes him? The Insurance companies who deny men and women coverage, give them ridiculous deductables, and just flat out won't pay some claims and the Pharmaceutical Industry who rakes in huge profits for drugs which they sell for a 1/3 their American price in Canada.
Is President Obama's overhaul of the healthcare system a good idea? I haven't read all 1100 pages of the document which lays out his provisions so I won't agree or disagree. Will his plan cost us a fortune? Again, haven't read the proposal so I won't say. Uninformed opinions make one appear short sighted. What I find odd however, is that there are many people who are running with half truths on this potential legislation and calling it both "Socialism" and "communism." What can I say when threatened, play the commie card. Worked for Joe McCarthy. Didn't it?

Tears for Lola

My 3rd grade teacher Mrs Stokes was a master of child psychology. In the year which I spent in her class she convinced me that I was possibly the dumbest child to have ever drawn breath. She attempted to place in me "special needs" classes and HISD subjecteded me to not one but two IQ tests at her bequest.  I was tested twice, because Mrs Stokes successfully convinced the principal that the person who administered the first test OBVIOUSLY made a mistake. The second test showed precisely what the first had shown. I was far from intellectually challenged.

            While I wasn't the "special needs" case that Mrs Stokes had painted me to be I needed a teacher who could have undone the damage that she had obviously done to my psyche. 

Every school has that one teacher whom the kids (and some of the teachers) both respect and fear. At Alcott Elementary in Houston, Texas that teacher was Mrs. Lola Blackmon. Mrs Blackmon taught 4th grade and was known for not taking any attitude from any student or parent and swinging a mean paddle.  As I and Mrs Stokes' outgoing students stood in the hallway outside her door we watched as the fourth grade teachers walked up to class after class and read the names of their new students off the clip boards they carried.

          I can't speak for my classmates, but I stood there praying the way that only an 8  year old boy could for my name NOT to have been on Mrs Blackmon's list.  She was a short, stout woman with skin the color of a freshly poured cup of black coffee. She walked up to my group without expression and peered though her big bi-focals and read four names:

"Davis, Johnny. Garner Frank, HANDY, JESSE. Spiller Willie. Come with me boys." We were in shock. We were too scared to move, but her reputation with a paddle made us more frightened of staying put. From day one Mrs Blackmon let it be known that she would expect nothing less than our best at all times. We would respect, ourselves, one another and her at all times and if we didn't there were consequences. The first time she was out we gave a substitute teacher hell on earth. On her return, EVERY student (except those who were absent) got a paddling for disrespecting a sub. Needless to say every sub we had after that told her how "Well behaved" we were.

          For reasons I didn't understand she was particularly hard on me personally. She always gave me extra assignments. I didn't complain, I was too afraid of her to have said anything. There were times when my classmates would be at recess and she would give me lengthy vocabulary lists or reading assignments.  At the end of the school year Mrs Blackmon pulled me aside when my classmates were playing dodgeball and said "Jesse you're probably wondering why I gave you so much extra work this year aren't you." I was too afraid of her to answer. "Tell the truth."

"Yes ma'am." I replied sheepishly. She then told me about how Mrs Stokes had initially tried to retain me in the 3rd grade and when that failed how she had attempted to have me placed in special needs classes. After hearing about how Mrs Stokes had convinced the principal to test me a 2nd time Mrs Blackmon told the principal that she would gladly take me into her class and prove that Mrs. Jane Stokes had simply given up on me far too soon. 

        I was fortunate to have had my own personal Henry Higgins in the form of Mrs Lola Blackmon. The following year I and several of Mrs. Blackmon's former students were placed in the gifted and talented program. I didn't realize it at the time, but I actually enjoyed the things she made me read. I enjoyed being able to do vocabulary exercises without a dictionary and I enjoyed writing. 

         In high school and later in college I would occasionally venture by Alcott Elementary to see how my teacher was doing.   Whenever I did, I got Mrs. Blackmon's trademark smile and a huge hug. One day while talking to a concierge in Houston Center I mentioned Mrs Blackmon and the impact she had had on me early on. As luck would have it, the concierge was in her very first class when she taught at Sunnyside Elementary. 

        We laughed and joked about her for a moment then he hit me with a devastating blow. He'd informed me that the greatest teacher I had ever known, had passed away a few months earlier. There were hundreds at the funeral, most in attendance had been former students. I'm not ashamed to admit that I stood there and openly wept for Mrs Lola Blackmon. 

        Today I work for HISD and whenever I can I try to rise to the incredible standard which she set.  There are times when I will ask myself 'How WOULD Mrs Blackmon handle this?' when faced with a perplexing issue. 

       

         We encounter many people in the course of our lives. Some we forget instantaneously, some we find memorable, others make a profound impact.  I'm happy and proud to say that Lola Blackmon made an impact. Who knows, maybe one day years from now, someone may say the same of a kid who sat in the front of Mrs Lola Blackmon's 4th grade class in 1979.

Who do you have to kill to get published?

 

For the better part of my life I've wanted to write fiction. Last summer I wrote an outline and from it wrote a 273 page manuscript about a girl from the midwest who runs away from home and is forced to make an inner journey on the mean streets of a sweltering urban hell as she supports herself in the world's oldest profession and takes stock of her life. 

           I allowed a couple of objective and just plain mean people read it. They loved it and asked when I was getting published. My question is this. WHEN AM I getting published. I learned after completing the project that publishers don't take manuscripts from authors who DON'T have agents. Hence the days of sending your manuscript to Bantam or Simon and Schuster are long gone. 

            If you're famous or infamous literary agents salivate at the thought of you putting your incessant ramblings on paper as they can sell millions of copies of a book that is filled with pics of your dog or you doing laundry.  I mean come on, Paris Hilton's DOG Tinkerbell is a published author for god's sake. Celebs, pseudo celebs and the idiot by products of condomless celebrity sex can get books published while men and women with premises that would make great books fall by the way side and continue to work in factories simply because no one want to listen to an unknown. 

           Literary agents are like ugly girls on an aircraft carrier to unpublished writers. They KNOW they're sought after so they're considerably more selective than they would be under normal circumstances. Let me give you a scenario.  You're a lit agent and a security guard from the University of Mississippi has written a manuscript. Do you give it the once over, or let him get lost in the shuffle of other authors who clamor to be published? Chances are you'll do the later. Congratulations! You passed on "Soldier's Pay" and Mr William Faulkner will simply have to find SOMEONE ELSE to publish his works and his Nobel and Pulitzer prizes will not equal a few million more in sales for YOUR agency. The downside to being TOO selective is that they may very well be missing out on the next William Faulkner, Stephen King or Amy Tan.

         I'm not trying to imply that I and every other unpublished author out there should be mentioned in the same breath with Faulkner, Tan, King, Stienbeck, Sinclair and Capote, but at the same time if literary agents never let us past their receptionist the world will never be able to judge for themselves. I and every other unpublished author out there write for the joy we get from telling our stories. I'm actually 125 pages into my second book about a first year teacher in an inner city school (I work as a substitute teacher in an inner city school by the way) and I write simply because I love doing so.  But who knows, the literati may be too busy waiting for Tinkerbell's latest saga to care about what unknown writers in Houston, Sioux City, Madison Biloxi are doing.

Music Piracy...hardly.

On Thursday June 18th a jury awarded a group composed of music giants Warner Music Group Corp, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Sony Music Entertainment 1.92 million dollars in a copy right suit.  Who were these giants of the music industry suing? A huge musical conglomerate who could crush them individually if they DARED not to sue en mass? A music mogul who attempted to steal the recordings of their artists to become even wealthier? Who frightened the companies that give us the bulk of our distributed music? Would you believe a housewife and mother of two? 

       Yes, Jamie Thomas-Rassett  was found to have willfully violated the copyrights of 24 songs by making them available for free downloads and was charged the sum of $ 80,000 PER SONG! This is Thomas-Rassett's second trail. Music industry fat cats are saying that people like Thomas-Rassett are the reason they keep jacking up the price of downloading music for a fee. 

      Fact the average C.D cost 18 dollars and usually has 11 songs on it, most of which are filler material. The average blank CD cost  a few cents. The music industry seems too stupid to grasp that the REASON for wholesale "Piracy" are their ridiculous prices. I wanted to purchase the soundtrack of "Jesus Christ Superstar" on CD. The price was $40.00. I went out and bought the MOVIE "Jesus Christ Superstar" and it only cost me $10.00.  Does it cost more to record an album than it does to make a film? Of course not.  Record companies are run by men and women so incompetent that they have ceased to ask what people are listening to and now TELL us what we listen to. Most song that make it to radio are chosen by a handful of record company executives and the heads of a few major corporations that control the bulk of Americas radio stations, Cashbox Media, Cox & Clear Channel Communications control most of the major market stations in every format. Recording industry low life tell the media conglomerates what they have, buy lots of air time and we get sucky artist like the Plain White Tee's, L'il Wayne and The Jonas Brothers going platinum. Prior to Disney shoving these warmed over Osmonds down our collective throats...who the hell ever heard of the Jonas Brothers.

          Music industry types have always wanted to squeeze every dime from consumers. In the 60s when cassette players were about to hit the market, record companies sued saying they would lose hundreds of millions from people recording things on cassette. They lost thankfully and an entire generation recorded songs directly from radio and made our own poor quality cassettes. We still bought the albums but some times we merely wanted a single rather than an album. Ironically the recording industry didn't collapse and the earth didn't fall from it's axis.

           When it became possible to buy music online not only did recording industry types complain, but overpaid, spoiled artist did as well. At one point when Napster provided free downloads, Heavy Metal band  Metallica's drummer Lars Ullrich  whined like a little girl who had soiled her favorite Sunday dress at the thought of someone downloading "Master of Puppets" for free. Globally Lars' music has sold hundreds of millions of copies making him and the other members of the band very wealthy men several times over. Not satisfied with his millions Lars whined on behalf of all spoiled musical vaginal cavities. Apparently he could have bought platinum fixtures for the bathroom in his yacht rather than gold ones had one person in Michigan not downloaded one of his songs without paying for it.  

         One can't help but wonder how small someone's genitalia would have to be in order to measure his worth not in the QUALITY of the music he's created, how many concerts, he's sold out or his place in music history, but rather how many poor people he could prevent from listening to his music, becoming fans and possibly BUYING his music.  The music industry needs to take a long hard look at itself. For decades the quality of music has declined to the point where when someone with talent proves how well they can sing we are collectively Amazed because the music industry in addition to over charging us, has brainwashed us to think that only attractive people can sing or should. If that IS true and we can judge someone's beauty based on their personalities then the bulk of record company executives shouldn't be allowed to record out going messages on their own answering machines.

Taking Pics with a DICTATOR?! (GASP) And SMILING?!?

There's an old joke in political circles that starts out "What's the difference between a 'terrorist' and a 'freedom fighter'? a 'terrorist' is someone who kills, loots, rapes, plunders and pillages for a cause we don't like. A 'FREEDOM FIGHTER' on the other hand is someone who loots, rapes, plunders and pillages for a cause we DO like."
Over simplified? Perhaps. Black humor? Of course, but it does illustrate an interesting point. How we define geopolitics in the 70's and 80's was relatively simple. We had one litmus test. Is he/she communist? If the answer to that question was yes then it was accepted that they were evil and all of their citizens were either:

a. mindless drones
b. brain washed idiots
c. godless atheist

or my personal favorite

d. oppressed people who long to breath the sweet air of freedom but are suffering under the brutal regime of an evil totalitarian.

If one WASN'T a communist the wholesale butchery of your populace, rigging of elections and having political dissidents "eliminated" by your secret police were completely ignored by your friend of friends the United States of America. It's the reason why Pol Pot and Daniel Ortega will burn in hell, but we ignored Agusto Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Manuel Norriega and Saddam Hussein for the bulk of his reign.

President Barack Obama was recently photographed shaking hands with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and the bulk of American conservatives had a collective heart attack and immediately went on the offensive. He was called everything from "naive" to "socialist" to flat out "communist." Why because he met the leader of another country, shook the man's hand and smiled while exchanging pleasantries.
Initially I couldn't see what the big deal was, but a conservative whom I work with as well as a friend of mine informed me that shaking hands with a dictator like Chavez undermined both Obama AND the authority of the United States. Something about that didn't seem quite right. Being a student of history I knew this couldn't have been the first time an American president shook hands with a dictator. To jump start my memory I found some old photographs which backed up something which my gut had been telling me and sure enough I found pictures of former American presidents shaking hands with dictators.

I found a treasure trove of former presidents shaking hands with men who were the poster boys for dictatorship. There were multiple shots of Reagan shaking hands with former Russian premier Gorbachev. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Reagan call Russia an "Evil Empire?" I could have sworn that during the cold war the Russians had intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at every major city in the United States poised to wipe us off the map. Gorbachev's Russian oversaw a Gulag system that still sent political dissidents to Siberia and funded wars in Central America and Southeast Asia. Where was the conservative anger when "Ronnie" shook hands with this 'evil' commie? I guess George Will was busy that day.


I saw pictures of Bill Clinton George Herbert Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan AND Jimmy Carter with Yassar Arafat leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The United States has LONG considered the PLO a terrorist organization. Where was the uproar?

When Nixon recognized China and made his historic trip with Secretary of State Kissinger and took a now famous photo with Chairman Mao Tse Tung. pardon me, but wasn't Mao the guy who sent Chinese troops at American troops in human waves on the 38th parallel at the Yalu River during the Korean war? Didn't he also start the "cultural revolution" and send millions to death and work camps? I could have sworn he did yet there was no uproar when Nixon shook hands with him.
And Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only shook hands with Josef Stalin, but brought the Soviets into World War Two as our allies. Josef Stalin was possibly one of the worst totalitarian butchers in the history of the world. Stalin killed tens of millions MORE of his own people than Hitler and the 3rd Reich. His secret police rounded his enemies up in the middle of the night to be executed or shipped to Siberia. He ruled his country with an iron hand, reduced human life to numbers on a chart and had history books rewritten to cover the full extent of his crimes against the world.

Do I mean to minimize any wrong that Hugo Chavez may have done or may STILL be doing? Of course not. Do I think Mr. Chavez to be relatively sane? Not really. But in the grand scheme of things, Chavez isn't funding terrorist to attack us and isn't pointing thermonuclear weapons at us, hence I don't see him as a threat? What I find puzzling is that despite George W. Bush declaring that Chavez was an evil dictator we didn't cease buying oil from Venezuela or impose an embargo on products from them. Chavez nationalized his country's oil supply and effectively angered foreign oil companies who were making a fortune in his country and the 2% of Venezuela's population who control all of it's wealth. Translation? This crazy guy wants to control his country's natural resources, build schools, roads and hospitals and stop the poor in his country from taking to the streets with guns to over throw whomever's in charge. HOW DARE HE!?!
Chavez routinely sends brutal police to attack demonstrators and is far from being the "man of the people" he would like to be seen as. He censors newspapers and imprisons those who disagree with him. He IS a dictator and should be seen and treated as such, but on that same token, an American president should NOT be unfairly demonized for simply extending a social pleasantry. I wager that had President Obama openly criticized Chavez or punched him in the face the same conservatives who are still in an uproar about this handshake would be chastising him for being "uncouth" and "un presidential." If one is determined to see something with enough zeal, eventually he or she will see it.

Susan can sing...AND?!

Last week several people bothered me (as they are want to do as I'm an admitted misanthrope) that I simply HAD to watch a video on You-Tube of a British show called "Brittan's Got Talent". Being that iconoclastic fool who takes pride in taking a left when everyone else takes a right I initially refused but having grown weary of hearing the masses bleating I eventually gave in.
I went to YouTube and saw a large, ordinary looking woman who looked as if she'd just walked out of a supermarket who announced to two grinning panelist and a stone faced Simon Cowell that she was going to sing a song from Les Miserables. I sat there thinking how much I didn't like musicals but decided that her voice was what she was being judged on and my personal musical taste had no real bearing.
The music started and Ms. Susan Boyle of Scotland sang like an angel. A smile crossed my face as I was quite impressed with her vocal talent. Having gone to High school and college with some people with extraordinary vocal talent, it was not the first time I'd heard someone with a classically trained sounding voice rising to challenging material. I was fortunate enough to have gone on a couple of dates with an Opera student at one point and was privileged enough to have been briefly serenaded, but that's neither here nor there. Susan Boyle received a standing ovation and impressed me with her talent but I couldn't see what the big deal was...until she stopped singing and the comments started.
One of the judges said "We expected you to fail." I was puzzled. I then saw clips of various entertainment news programs where they announced that Susan was now an " internet sensation" and many of the talking heads and hair farms (who should avoid the gene pool at all cost) on these various programs said how people didn't expect such an incredible voice to come from such an "unattractive" person.
I would say I was insulted, but as Richard Nixon once said "One can only be insulted by those he respects." I sat there and listened as many weighed in on this talented woman and used adjectives like "unattractive," "Ugly", "Frumpy" and a myriad of others to describe this woman who only wanted to sing to them. Am I the ONLY person who (If I might paraphrase George Michael) listened without prejudice? If so then I have to say you people make me sick.
I have to ask what the HELL does ones appearance have to do with one's talents and abilities? Are we as a society so superficial and UNBELIEVABLY STUPID that we correlate beauty with talent? Is Charleze Theiron a better actress than Cathy Bates because she's younger, thinner and some migh argue prettier? Is Brad Pitt a better actor than Ed Norton simply because he's better looking? Having grown up in the days when MTV was in it's infancy I remember listening to the radio in the late 70's. When radio stations played all types of music we judged all of it simply on rather or not we actually liked either, the beat, the lyrics or simply the singers voice. MTV changed the game. Musical taste shifted. People who were fun to look at became stars seemingly overnight and established acts faded into oblivion as many proved to either not know how to make good music videos or simply proved physically unappealing to those watching. When I spent three years as a DJ I was AMAZED at how much INCREDIBLE music never made it to commercial radio stations because of how political the music industry is, and just how visually oriented much of it has become. Did we learn NOTHING from the Milli Vanilli debacle of the late 80's/early 90s?
Susan Boyle deserves the recognition she's receiving as a talented singer, but we as a society need to hang our heads for exalting talentless bimbos and effeminte, tone-deaf, pretty boys while talented people like Susan are lucky to sing in their own showers.

Hey Madonna...still looking to adopt?

American entertainer Josephine Baker had to undergo a radical emergency hysterectomy and was told she couldn't have any children. Baker's response was to adopt children of seemingly every race, color and creed and label them her "rainbow tribe".
In keeping with the late great Ms. Baker's love for children, many Hollywood types as of late seem to want to spread the love around and are adopting children who might otherwise have grown up in orphanages. Angelina Jolie re popularized it when she sojourned to Cambodia and adopted her oldest son Maddox and years later the one and only Madonna-Louise Veronica Ciccone-Penn-Ritchie followed suit and adopted a cute little African kid...shortly after Ms. Jolie did the same.
Recently Madonna went back to Africa and attempted to adopt a second child and a court has temporarily blocked the adoption. Well, if the courts don't allow Madonna to this child I have a simple solution that would be beneficial to the child, his/her family, the African nation in question, Madonna and myself. I respectfully submit to Ms. Ciccone-Penn-Ritchie she should adopt...ME!
Yes ME! Madonna is 10 years my senior and as older women tend to attempt to "mother" younger men...it's a win/win situation. There would be no legal fees or tedious adoption paperwork to fill out as I'm sure my family would HAPPILY let Ms. Ciccone simply have me.
Just think of it Madonna (or should I call you "Mom"?):

1. You won't have to get me an entry visa.

2. You wouldn't have to hire a nanny or an aupere to take care of me..but if you want to hire a hot college student to tend to me I'd be in a good place with it.

3. You wouldn't have to toilet train me.

4. I don't eat much

5. You wouldn't have to pay my way through school...unless you really wanted to... a brotha could use a masters or a PhD.

But wait there's more, you could take me on the road with you on tours. I'd love to tour Europe with you! It'd be a great chance to meet Robyn (You know the little blonde Swede who does R&B who was your opening act for the "sticky and sweet" tour in Europe?) I'd be better than a press agent and would make sure that good press about your work with various charities made it to press.
In all seriousness however, I applaud Madonna, Angelina Jolie and other actors and actresses who adopt. You are giving a child a family and that is just beautiful. My only criticism would be this: there are starving children here in the United States (Ms. Jolie) and in England (Madonna) who need families as well and could also benefit from your obvious good will and philantrhophy. It's great to give to those who most need your help, but true charity should always begin at home.