Dr. Robert

(via Thighs Wide Shut)

If you're like me, you've been eating up all this Carson nostalgia all week long. I always liked Johnny, and especially today, find something intrinsically appealing about his subtle, hip, understated comedy and interview style, with its hints of hidden off camera gimlets and smoldering Lucky Strikes.

Carson though, like a lot of white men of his generation, was a racist. I guess if I'd ever thought about it I would have figured that. This clip leaves no doubt. In it he's an unfunny asshole in addition to being a bigot. (credit O-Dub on the video link)

Update:
So, for the record: I always liked Carson and felt like an idiot for not realizing sooner that he was probably an asshole. I was not pissed at Johnny, just disillusioned. If you're a young-blood you might not know, but Carson, in this video, is mocking (poorly, mind you) Rickles' patented, acerbic, "fuck every ethnicity" schtick. He's not just being an asshole.

Byron has picked up this story and run with it in his typical, subtle, introspective style. He's blown it completely out of proportion and is using it to mock all those self-rightous bloggers who got so indignant over the Hot 97 "Tsunami Song."

There are some similarities between this and the "Tsunami Song." Neither is funny, or particularly important. If you're pissed off about Tsunamis and other instances of human suffering, give your time or money to a charity that helps that. If you're the type to get pissed off over bad jokes, write your own funny ones.

I've got a bad feeling that someone I know is going to walk into this (unbelievably hi res) picture any minute now.

Patches is the reason I think its fucked up that that the Swiss eat Horses.

Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter...

Geronimo Jackson

Yeah I said it.

Fuck Bush.

Here's why.

Now jump through the hoops necessary to make something happen.

A few Hip Hop blogs have been straight fire of late:
Government Names, especially the man d_l_k. He hipped me to Lil Weavah!

Kris Ex aka Gun Yoga, blogs with the frenzy.

Houston So Real. Those Geto Boys interviews are off the chain.

Over at Bol's celebration of hateration, our man has a post calling out the Diabolical Biz Markie for being a scruple-less opportunist and playing Bush's innauguration. I love the Biz, but fuck that noise.

On a similar note, Austin, TX countrified Gangsta Leaners, The Gourds, are also holding their noses while they roll around in ungodly piles of blood money. They're playing the innauguration too, at something called the Black Tie and Boots Ball. Jimmy ought never have trouble paying off a DUI again, and Kevin will never be without cheeseburgers! Assholes.

I'm too lazy to organize anything, but shouldn't we boycott these sell-outs?

OH yeah, and while we're at it, fuck ZZ Top too. They've been getting steadily worse since Tres Hombres, and don't have very far left to fall.

Real revolutionary E-Wright, late of The NIA Project and now running tings over at Project South, has worked up this little manifesto on social change to coincide with the upcoming Innauguration.

Here it is. E encourages you to spread it far and wide, post it, email it, give it to hotties on the subway, make it happen...

It Ain’t Just About a Vote
Building a Vision for a Movement

The ‘election’ of George W. Bush in 2004 will affect the remainder of our adult lives. As empire builders, for the long haul, the Bush Movement is stacking its’ political deck-of-cards to bend reality towards its own quest for global financial and social domination. We, who live among the grassroots of community, have been struggling against injustices from racism to poverty for generations. Our communities, communities of color, working and poor communities have to act now, if we are going to pass on a life worth living to the generations that follow.

We don’t believe that this most recent defeat was due to lack of voter mobilization (of which there was a good amount), voter fraud (of which there was most likely a better amount), or lack of celebrity spokespeople encouraging us to care for once (of which there was far too much). History gets defined and re-defined as one moment rather than a series of moments that build on one another. If we continue to react and respond to the results of one day (specifically the first Tuesday in November) we have failed, and we will never build a long-term movement. This historical moment has been confused. So many of us who believe in progressive or liberatory values believe that we were defeated by our own people. That the red on the maps is cause for long-term depression and surrender. That we tried as hard as we could for 12 months and didn’t get what we want, so we should stop trying. If you’re not eager to give up so soon, let’s examine this moment, since we were all there, and look for the lessons to move forward better, prepared, and united.

The recent success of the Bush Movement has left us two options moving forward. We can either react to the draconian order created by this Regime, protesting each injustice, or we can counter their devious movement with another movement based on our own principles. The point of this article is not to answer how to build our movement but to suggest, from our experiences, that successful movement requires the development of a clear vision to guide our movement.

Why vision?

Often times we focus on strategies to win our goals. Sometimes we focus on political education and development in our communities. However, these strategies and consciousness raising activities are not always connected to a bold vision of ultimate change. Without this bold vision, our daily work and struggle becomes tiresome and confused. With this bold vision, our daily work and struggle reflects the world we are working to create. Common-agreement on vision can produce strong and intentional solidarity and alliances between communities and organizations. Our progress will be measured against this vision and our process will be accountable to it.

Vision moves people

The mantra of the last widespread effort of the Left was “anyone but Bush.” Not only do we not like this particular man and his weasel ways, we don’t like the vision his administration has put into fast forward action. People were moved from all sectors to do something to get Bush out. Abbie Illenberger, an organizer with a national labor union talked about workers who stepped off the job to rally voters. Whether it was to protect the right to vote, a notion threatened anew in 2000, or to oust the man cutting medical pensions and sending our young people to a crazy war, they “mobilized from a defensive position.” She continued, “Even the most passionate of the passionate were coming together to stop something.” We don’t like this vision, and we will try to stop it. This call was an effective but limited tactic to get people to the polls. The only thing more shallow than rallying behind a single politician to protect us is to rally against a single politician out to get us.

Progressive folks voted against a vision but not for one. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) did not offer a clear, unified vision to counter the Bush Movement for presidency. Progressive Democrats agree: Adam Werbach, former Sierra Club president, writes, “The obsession with denouncing the radical conservative project as a ‘lie’ has become a useful substitute for vision.” One of the primary reasons they don’t put a comprehensive vision forward is because theirs would look uncannily like the Republicans’ but with a few more perks. Democratic elected officials speak about how the Party needs to ‘move towards the center’. The defeatist strategy of, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” also reflects the shared interests across both National Parties.

The highest voter turnout in the last 80 years was in 1960 at around 63% of eligible voters voting in Kennedy. Folks who attended our most recent Building A Movement session in Atlanta mentioned this election as one that spoke to a vision they could stand behind. The folks with a clear and powerful vision get people to the polls, to vote for or against it. However strong they articulate a vision, the ruling class political parties cannot build a grassroots movement to counter the Bush Movement.

Building Our Movement

Those most affected by injustice are the ones in position to build a movement for justice. The ruling elite occupies the leadership in both parties and is interested in maintaining their elite power through their political parties. This top-down approach by elites to maintain and expand their own power is a rule of the Bush Movement. A bottom-up approach of movement building to maintain and expand justice would surely counter the Bush Movement. The diverse forms of oppression require diverse forms of fighting oppression, but our diverse struggles can be connected by common-vision, which moves us in the same direction.

For this vision to be rooted in our realities, we must come up with it ourselves. For it to be collective, we rely on organizing skills that identify leaders, build strong bases, and stage strategic short-term fights that link to a long-term strategy for sustained change. Prioritizing the space to discuss and build a vision is an important step within the process. No one leader or organization can offer up a collective vision that reflects a multilayered reality. Project South does not offer a vision, but a process to create one.

Project South gathered 60 grassroots organizers and community members to discuss and practice visioning for our movement. We asked them to describe what the world looks like when we win. The most difficult part was encouraging people to define a world without using the word ‘no.’ Instead of no war, no prisons, no pollution, people took a new leap to describe collective work, systems of community accountability, and alternative energy sources. Groups split up according to issues, not as a way to compartmentalize vision but to go deeper based on knowledge and experience. Recognizing the intersections of all issues, we returned to stitch together an inspirational glimpse of the true dreams we share. Though we were unable to draft a complete vision, an unrealistic goal, we developed an effective process to begin the difficult and necessary work to do just that.

History of social movements shows us that vision is both an essential component to winning and progressive movement building. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which was organized in 1964 to challenge the racist and all-white Mississippi Democratic Party, is a very relevant example of this. After organizing and educating folks in Mississippi to vote, the umbrella civil rights coalition, Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) realized that their efforts would be in vain if there was not representation of poor and black people within the state party, and created the MFDP as a clear vision of change. The MFDP successfully organized thousands of people to create a party platform and sent Delegates to the National Democratic Convention of 1964 to replace the Mississippi Democratic Party. However, once at the National Convention, relationships of power between the Federal and State governments were laid bare in their unified opposition to the MFDP. The MFDP was not allowed to sit, and after being offered 2 ‘at-large’ seats by vice-presidential hopeful Herbert Humphrey, the delegation was forced to stage a symbolic sit-in on the convention floor.

The MFDP vision was successful in organizing Mississippi’s poor to develop of party platform, which reflected the lives and principles of poor and black people in the state. Even though their ultimate goal was not realized, the organizers and members of MFDP could reflect on this loss and create a new vision. MFDP members left the Convention distraught but the Movement built from this moment to expand its’ political vision of change. Instead of viewing the federal government as a potential ally in the fight for basic civil and human rights, the MFDP effort revealed that the federal government was apart of the problem. New visions emerged out of the freedom struggle in the South, such as the first Black Panther Party, which was organized in Lowndes County, Alabama only 2 years later. The MFDP vision created space for people in Mississippi to organize and, in the process, led to an expanded vision that informed and advanced their organizing.

The election, its fast-paced momentum before November 2nd and the downward spiral after the 2nd, offers an opportunity to see exactly what is missing from the Left. Creating spaces for people to gather in strategic combinations, identify themselves and their priorities, and develop a vision of the world we are fighting for is our current responsibility. If we start to take ourselves more seriously and plan beyond one fateful day, we will turn this thing around. Our movement must create and consistently refer back to its own vision for change. Our lives depend on how effective we are in building movement that counters empire.

That's whassup. Yaoming?

I don't know if y'all remember back when Stromile was at LSU and did this same thing to Chris Mihm, but I think maybe, finally, Chris can start to forget about it.

My man Matt over at Instant Replays is right, Stro would be a star if he was on a team with a shorter bench than that of the Grizz.

Update:
Here's some video of the posterization.

The #1 reason kids in France are so up on Current Events.

Ooh La La.