Thursday, April 12, 2007
It's Not So Hard Out Here for a Pimp
Well, I don't know about RAG, but this is my absolute last word on the phony Imus affair (fingers crossed!). By way of blogosphere regurgitation, I recommend Jason Whitlock's column on the whole mess, which I came across on BookerRising (I still like Shay's site, even if she goes bonkers and Sharpton-like on the issue of Harold Ford, Jr., black men and interracial dating).
It's nice to know that I'm not the only black male in America that thinks this mess was much Hairdo about nothing, and see it for what it really was: a way for poverty pimp Al Sharpton to demonstrate his meager talent of racial huckstering, enabled by white journalists and media folk whose only concept of black leadership is limited to Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; as well as for talentless black journalists that have nothing better to write or research in terms of important (or UNCOVERED) black news and issues, go for the easy, meaningless water cooler talk of cable news networks. I haven't felt the need to renew my membership in the National Association of Black Journalists, and this whole stinking, anti-First Amendment episode (guess journalists of all backgrounds have forgotten what THAT is) isn't going to make me reach for my check book.
I guess now Sharpton will have to go back to attacking black filmmakers, and black journalists can continue to whine about diversity and jobs in a dying newspaper and advertising business that is shedding jobs regardless as to race, color, religion or sexual preference.
Update:
Okay, SECOND to last word (told you that I had to cross my fingers). Justine Nicholas at LewRockwell.com makes a pointed libertarian-economic case on why attempts to silence people like Imus will ultimately fail at improving race relations. An English professor at City University of New York, Ms. Nicholas also makes an interesting distinction between two common words in the lexicon of modern black thugs, which have been (unfortunately) much discussed in the past week.
Consider the articles of Nicolas and Whitlock to be the perfect bookends on a very stupid episode in the national dialogue.
Updated Update:
Imus Fights Back. I knew this was coming. Sharpton claims we need to "have a discussion on what is appropriate on the airwaves." I can't wait to see what an unchained Imus, coupled with Opie and Anthony, and a host of others who are starting to feel their Wheaties, will do to confront Herr Sharpton and his Hair-Raising Hordes.
Mother of All Updates:
"Well, Don, when I got fired it took me a whole roll of LifeSavers to get over it ... "
If it helps to cheer folks up, here's a classic slice of Al Sharpton at work. Looking back, all I could think was that the Good Reverend looks like Prince's bass player from the early 1980s after an airhose was shoved up his butt.
Labels: Al Sharpton, Black Hypocrisy, Censorship, First Amendment
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Crito Alito
Just on the basis of Justice Alito's statements this past week on the issue of the First Amendment and free speech rights (the so-called "Bong Hits for Jesus" case), I'm hesitantly willing to concede that George W. Bush may have actually gotten one thing, the nomination of Samuel Alito, correct in his wretchedly pathetic presidency. I was particularly heartened by Justice Alito's critique of public schools using ambiguous arguments for the expansion of state power and curtailment of individual expression.
(Sidenote: With more than one scholarly Italian-American on today's court, maybe the idiots in Hollywood and the so-called "non-racist liberal" mainstream media will stop portraying them all as breakers of the law rather than defenders? Spike Lee, that means you too.)
I don't expect Justice Alito to be the Gatekeeper of Free Speech that Hugo Black was (a justice that took every word of "Congress shall make NO LAW" quite literally). It is a wonderful thing, however, to see that there is at least one Republican-nominee on the SCOTUS that can still faintly remember what constituted conservative jurisprudence, before the arrival of Le Texan Terrible and his Son of Great Society endless welfare-warfare state.
For those of us who'd rather read and use their own brains, as opposed to accepting the facile regurgitations of Al Franken, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Rush Limbaugh or other puerile pundits, you can access the oral arguments here.
As a side rant, those pebble-brained partisans (LEFT or RIGHT) that complain about the nature of our land's Highest Court should remember that one reason the Founding Fathers chose to make Supreme Court justices lifetime appointees was to give them an opportunity to decide matters of constitutional law with little fear of political repercussion, the popularity contest psychology and cognitive stupidity of elections, or having to appeal to the lowly IQs and jurisprudential ignorance of the moronic masses. On historical balance, this decision by the Constitution's Framers has done more good than harm.
Case in point: Earl Warren who, as governor of California in the 1940s was responsible for the unjust incarceration of the Japanese-American population in his state (somebody PLEASE bitchslap Michelle Malkin for me). As an elected official, Warren bowed to the pressures of elections, polls, and a racist idiot electorate. As a Supreme Court justice, however, he was able to humanely and sanely rule on integration in the 1950s, even at the point of death threats and physical intimidation, without the fear of electoral repercussion or financial support.
Labels: First Amendment, Samuel Alito, Supreme Court
