Watch the video and read Pam House Blend’s take. I have nothing to say about Pat Buchanan’s take on judge Sotomayor…..O.K. one thing. The reason Pat Buchanan gets paid by MSNBC is because he is a white conservative male. That’s affirmative action by his definition. But by the real definition, it’s not because he’s not qualified. That’s enough of him.
Let me start by saying this: I like fried chicken, I like Kool Aid, I like Watermelon.
Now, when I first heard about Martellus Bennett’s (aka Marty B) Black Olympics video on YouTube, I kind of brushed it aside. As a fellow Texas A&M alum, I have followed Bennett since he shocked everyone by signing a letter of intent to play Tight End for the Aggies, so I knew he had an interesting sense of humor.
It wasn’t the first time Bennett has been in trouble for his YouTube exploits, and unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last. So after listening to talk about the video on the radio, I pulled up Marty BTV to take a look at what all the fuss was about.
Chicken eating contest, not too bad. Kool Aid drinking contest, still watching. But it was something about watching two grown African-American men have a watermelon eating contest that was just a little too much to handle.
I checked out Jean Jacques Taylor’s column today in regards to Bennett, and I thought it was a little heavy. Martellus was born March 10, 1985, which was already 30 years removed from the Montgomery Bus Boycott. To expect him to think of the Civil Rights struggle while making a video on his Mac Notebook is a bit much
What I thought was funny when I was 22 is a lot different than what I think is funny today. And thank God we didn’t have video cameras to catch all of the ridiculous things we used to do back in the day. At 22, I was still in College Station kicking it with my frat brothers, being young and dumb.
It looks a little funny though seeing a guy with a million dollars having a chicken eating contest in the kitchen with his brother. But poor decisions is a hallmark of youth regardless of how much money you have.
Martellus Bennett likes to have fun, he likes to laugh. It gets him in trouble with the Cowboys on the field and it’s getting him in trouble off the field. When you are 22 years old, one of the hardest lessons to learn is the impact that your actions (positive and negative) can have on others. It’s even harder learning how to pull back when you feel like you are right.
Bennett is having a good time, but he is also hurting his career. Catching 15 touchdowns next year will help his career more than this YouTube could ever hurt him, but sometimes in sports players need the benefit of the doubt. That’s what I hope Marty B’s people are telling him. That if and when he truly makes a mistake, there may not be enough goodwill left with coaches, teammates and fans to get him through it.
For the critics, the line here is very, very thin. If you come out strong against this video then I hope you don’t own Season 1 & 2 of the Chappell Show. The standards for what’s racist and what’s funny are often levied arbitrarily.
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Who can say what when? Lisa Lampenelli say she can’t believe 82 black guys have a job but Don Imus can’t say….well naw, Don Imus can’t say what he said. But you get where I’m going.
It’s a slippery slope, and what it comes down to in the end is what’s funny and what’s not. Borat was funny, Bruno is not. Because Bruno was not funny then the racist/bigoted humor comes off as…well…racist and bigoted.
I would suspect that Bennett is going to keep doing his thing. If you take the time to watch a few more of the videos on Marty BTV you see it’s just a few guys literally riffing, tripping, and being corny. I’m not going to give him a history lesson, but from one Aggie to another I’d say think about whether it’s worth all the trouble before you shoot your next production.
If you want to fly under the radar, change your jersey number in support of Darfur like Tracy McGrady did. The media could care less about that.
Looks like a Pennsylvania Summer Camp group may have fallen victim to civil rights era discrimination when they wanted to go for a swim recently. According to Philadelphia’s NBC Television affiliate, a group of African-American summer campers were prohibited from going to a private pool they had already paid to use.
View more news videos at: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/video.
Here’s some of the story as it appears online.
And what was the reason given for being turned around? ”There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.
Hat tip to Carmen D. of All About Race who sent this story out on Twitter.
I met Ryan Grim online back in 2007 when he was with Politico and have kept in touch with him over the years. I was excited to learn about his new book that I’m hoping to get my hands sometime soon. It’s titled This is Your Country on Drugs. I hope to get an interview with Ryan after I read through his book, but until then, I’ll post a few of excepts that appeared at The Root.
Read the rest of Ryan’s Black, Paranoid and Absolutely Right at TheRoot.com
BY KRISTIN OF BECAUSE I SAID SO
The Supreme Court has decided to reverse a decision made by the U.S. Court of Appeals which included Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I have yet to read the entire ruling but I find myself wondering about the ramifications the ruling will have on the New Haven community. It is my understanding that New Haven is predominately a minority community and will now be served by few minorities in positions of authority. I know of many people who came from areas where authority figures did not look like them. I know first hand how feelings of mistrust will pervade the neighborhood and do very little to bridge a widening gulf.
After reading the original ruling I agreed with the ruling in which Judge Areterton arrived. I can say with all honesty I am happy the New Haven 20 will receive the promotions they deserve. I will also say I am very apprehensive about the future of affirmative action.
It is my personal belief that though we have come along way affirmative action is very much needed to ensure a diverse environment,especially on college campuses. For many minorities affirmative action is our Legacy admission. It will be interseting to see how this affects Sotomayor’s confirmation I am of the opinion that it will matter little. Judge Souter whom she would replace agreed with her ruling.
It is undeniable to me that Sotomayor is right in respects that the bench is were policy is made. The supreme court basically laid forth a new policy that will have far reaching effects for the future. Exactly what those outcomes are remains to be seen.
I wanted to share the contents of an email sent out by Color of Change Director of Grassroots Mobilization, James Rucker, to their massive member list regarding the plea of “No Contest” by the defendants in the “Jena 6″ case late last week. Color of Change was at the forefront of the internet movement to secure justice for the young men back in 2007.
I’ve had a chance to correspond with James and meet some of the Color of Change staff. They are utilizing 21st century tools to combat injustices that have persisted for generations. It’s cool to see that they haven’t just rested on their involvement in Hurricane Katrina justice and with the Jena 6, but continue to stay engaged, even taking the fight to Fox News. They remain relevant and functional as many such organizations have the tendency to fall off into the abyss of irrelevancy. Kudos to C of C.
Dear Shawn,
Friday, nearly two years after more than 320,000 of you stood up to protect them from Jim Crow justice, the Jena 6–Jesse Ray Beard, Carwin Jones, Robert Bailey, Theo Shaw, Bryant Purvis and Mychal Bell–are all now free to move ahead with their lives. We should all be proud.
The five remaining Jena 6 cases were brought to conclusion on Friday1 when Jesse Ray, Carwin, Robert, Theo, and Bryant pleaded “no contest” to misdemeanor simple battery charges.2 They will spend no time in jail, serve seven days of probation, and pay relatively minor fines and court fees.
It’s an incredible outcome given that the young men were originally charged with attempted murder in small-town Louisiana and had neither the funds nor the connections to get high-quality representation or attention for their cases.
Luckily for the Jena 6, hundreds of thousands of you got involved, and the power of your participation changed the game. An amazing team of lawyers worked tirelessly to achieve Friday’s outcome. Our staff helped recruit them, and your financial contributions–over $275,000–provided the bulk of the funds for their work. Jim Boren, the coordinating attorney, said this about ColorOfChange members’ contribution: “None of this would have happened without you.”
But it wasn’t just lawyers and money. Over 300,000 of you wrote to Governor Blanco and District Attorney Reed Walters. On September 20th, 2007, more than 10,000 of you went to Jena. Members who couldn’t make it to Jena held more than 150 rallies and vigils across the country, and made more than 6,000 phone calls to elected officials in Louisiana. And a few weeks later, ColorOfChange members sent almost 4,000 complaints demanding an inquiry into the DA’s actions.
Your actions offline and online helped put Jena on the map and resulted in critical coverage in every mainstream news outlet. You started a movement that made it impossible for Louisiana officials to support the status quo.
Today we offer congratulations to these young men and their families, and we say thank you to the entire ColorOfChange.org community. We’re also so thankful to the attorneys who took these cases but chose to stay out of the limelight. They and several others3 are the unsung heroes of this story.
As the young men of the Jena 6 close this chapter of their lives, we wanted to give you an opportunity to wish them well. Click the link below to leave a personal statement for the young men of the Jena 6, or to listen to the voicemail from Jim Boren thanking the ColorOfChange community for our work:
– James, Gabriel, William, Dani and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
June 28, 2009
1. “Plea Bargain Wraps Up ‘Jena 6′ Case,” 9-26-09
2. The sixth teenager charged, Mychal Bell, pleaded guilty to battery in juvenile court on December 3rd, 2007.
BY EDDIE GRIFFIN of Eddie Griffin BASG Blog
In my adult years as I began to rub elbows with the black bourgeoisies, many of them scoffed at the June 19th holiday. “Why would you celebrate slaves in Texas spending an extra 2 ½ years in bondage?” they would ask. I have to admit, it’s a pretty good question… As we’ve gotten more and more educated, we get further and further away from the wisdom born out of the struggle of our people.
Ignoring the French historiography and Marxist class categorizations that give meaning to the name of this group of people, I want to go straight to the psycho-sociological aspect of the issue… that self-contradictory, mismatch phenomenon of being sociologically black and psychologically alienated from an appreciation of black heritage.
“Why would you celebrate slaves in Texas spending an extra 2 ½ years in bondage?” they asked blogger Shawn Williams. Notwithstanding the writer’s thoughts, note how the question was formulated in their minds. True to its characteristic, the so-called black bourgeoisie sees the cup half empty, instead of half full.
It may not have ever dawned on them that Juneteenth is a celebration of Freedom, like the Fourth of July. What say, in celebrating the Passover, are Jewish people celebrating 400 years of Egyptian bondage, or the blessing of Emancipation?
The so-called black bourgeoisie sees only what it wishes to see, thinks only what it wishes to think, and choses to see no more and know no more than they already see and know. Therefore, black is an inappropriate descriptive for this bourgeoisie- thinking people. Being bourgeois is what it is… a colorless attitude of people who thinks of themselves as more highly favored than their peers and contemporaries, and thereby different, even better than they, and a little more holier than thou.
Juneteenth, with them, will probably never find merit, because they will remember only what they have been taught about it in integrated schools by teachers who were uneducated and unappreciative of black history. Hence, they will never seek to know otherwise. They even avoid contact with any knowledge that would burst the bubble of their brainwashing.
They are alienated from their common identity and estranged from their heritage… like a cow with the head of a goat. (eddiegriffin)
The Holocaust Memorial Museum announced that 39 year old Stephen Tyrone Johns died as a result of gunshot wounds suffered at the hands of Neo-Nazi James von Brunn. The Museum released the following statement.
There are no words to express our grief and shock over today’s events at the Museum, which took the life of Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. Officer Johns, who died heroically in the line of duty, served on the Museum’s security staff for six years. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Officer Johns’s family. We have made the decision to close the Museum Thursday, June 11, in honor of Officer Johns and our flags will be flown at half mast in his memory.
DCist points us to a memorial Facebook group that has been created in his honor.
It’s reported that James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist, walked into The Holocaust Museum and opened fire, apparently killing security guard. von Brunn was also shot and is hospitalized.
von Brunn
I’ve already heard comparisons to abortion opponent Scott Roeder’s shooting of Dr. George Tillman, and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad who shot and killed Private William Long in recent weeks. While all three used guns, did not personally know their victims, and were fueled by some sort of deranged hate, von Burnn doesn’t fit the “Lone Wolf” profile so neatly.
Von Brunn is well known in hate group circles, and though you wouldn’t expect something like this out of an 88 year-old, it’s not his first time acting out.
According to von Brunn’s website Holy Western Empire, he “attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest.” The site says he was “convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge.” This is how Talking Points Memo describe the event:
On December 7, 1981, a man named James W. Von Brunn pulled out a sawed-off shotgun at the Federal Reserve Board headquarters, claiming to have planted a bomb and threatening to take members of the Board hostage. That was 40 years to the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, though it’s unclear whether that’s a coincidence or not.
Von Brunn may have been a “lone wolf” but he has been on the radar screen. I generally steer clear of the internet cesspool that is White Supremacists sites. Those very words and this post mean that they will find us here at Dallas South and start trying to spew their hate here.
But after learning of the shooting, and the “Negro jury” that convicted von Brunn, I couldn’t help but see what I could find out about the guy. Apparently his “life’s work” is a book called Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog (Kill the Best Gentiles). It’s hailed in hate circles, where I saw one person respond ” This is a book that needs wide distribution. The author has been through Hell, and back, and came out fighting. Buy, and read it, please.”
Dr. Tiller’s was the 9th person murdered due to abortion and to date, domestic violence against U.S. Service personal is still at a minimum. But von Brunn’s actions today is the latest in this country’s sad history of violence by supremacists. And they don’t have to hide or meet in secret, their message is overt and they tell everyone who they know how they feel.
While I heard some folks say on T.V. that Dr. Tiller got what he deserved, the majority of anti-abortion advocates came out against using violence. A few months back I met Bob Stains who’s Public Conversations Project lead a high profile mediation (he would say dialouge) between groups on opposite sides of the abortion debate. back in the 90′s This occurred after two receptionists were killed in Massachusetts and an anti-abortion group wanted to ease tension.
I don’t think White Supremacists groups want to ease anything. They will hail von Brunn as some sort of martyr and celebrate the fact that we are even talking about them.
see von Brunn’s Hitler’s Worst Mistake
But I always feel that you cannot ignore this segment of the population because the numbers are large and they are growing. It’s why every now and then I’ll let one of their bigoted comments get through just so that folks can see how these particular American’s think.
Though their ideas are on the “fringe” their numbers give reason for vigilance. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 926 hate groups operating in the U.S. last year. That represents a more than 50% increase since 2000.
By all accounts security personnel responded admirably to von Brunn’s treat. Unfortunately one of them had to pay with their life. May God Bless their family.
When I received an email two days after Brandon McClelland was killed in Paris, and saw the details of this case and how it was handled from the beginning, I knew something was wrong. I knew “beyond a shadow of a doubt” would be difficult.
The longer the case drew out, the more I thought that Shanon Finley would again be let off easy. Well he and buddy Ryan Crostley are now out of jail after charges of murder against them were dropped after word of their release first circulated yesterday.
I can only shake my head, because from the beginning I knew this would be a very hard case to prosecute. When the only witness is dead, things get a little dicey.
I still say this; a speeding gravel truck could have hit a person walking on a dark highway, but I don’t know of anyone, drunk or sober, who walks those roads these days.
May God bless the family of Brandon McClelland.
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