Walter Rhett: "The Greatest Demonstration for Freedom in Our Nation’s History"

Discussions about race are easier to understand if we realize the conversations are less about race and more about how we think and perceive.

Three dominant perceptions about race sweep through the American centuries: race doesn’t matter and discussions only create problems and ill-will; race matters a lot and everybody should be aware of its dangers and conflicts; race matters sometimes personally and professionally. Within each view, race is potentially negative or neutral—in the American view, the mention of race is seldom good or glorious.

Today is the 50th anniversary of one of its most glorious moments. That glory is being buried in discussions that lean more toward tradition, that sometimes, many times, dangers and problems are tied to race. A review of its denials, its entitlements, its victims, its character flaws and political use is precisely the wrong way to celebrate the remarkable events that took place in Washington, DC, 50 years ago today.

That entire day was a triumph. Its closest rival and heir in our history was the cold January day that Barack Obama took the oath of office, to be sworn in by the Chief Justice as the Muslim, socialist, anti-colonial, “half-white,” inexperienced hater tyrant who wanted Cadillacs for the homies but instead created a run on bullets that resulted in a six-month manufacturers’ backlog as twisted, close readings of the Constitution fueled an internet cottage industry led by a Russian-born lawyer that declared the American President was really born in Kenya, and according to a Cuban émigré, needed to “learn how to be an American,” a comment punctuated by the appearance of empty chairs swinging from lynch ropes slung across neighbors’ trees...

Stormy Monday, 8/26/13

With Syria roiling and the situation increasingly unpredictable, the White House has announced that it “will be consulting appropriately with the Congress” about next steps. Once he’s received their advice, the President will at least be in a better position to know what not to do. It was reported this afternoon that the White House has had “preliminary communication” with John Boehner regarding Syria.

John Kerry delivered scathing remarks at the State Department today, confirming the Administration’s belief that the Syrian regime is guilty of carrying out chemical weapons attacks on civilians, actions Kerry described as “a moral obscenity.”

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey is in Jordan for a two-day summit with defense officials from Jordan and other nations, where the topic of Syria is no doubt on the agenda. Last week, Dempsey implied that US military involvement in the Syrian conflict is unlikely.

A new poll, meanwhile, indicates that roughly 60% of Americans oppose US military involvement in Syria, but if roughly half of respondents were Republicans, their answers were of course wrong, no matter which position they took...

Take Five (Summertime Blues and Reds edition)

ONE: The Original Kings of Comedy

With Stewart and Colbert in reruns, Congress in recess until September, and the phony hysterics over this summer’s White House pseudo-scandals losing their already dubious entertainment value through tiresome repetition, it’s been pretty damned tough to find a laugh recently.

Tough but not impossible: perhaps sensing a ready audience, the two obnoxious House Republicans who share the surname “King” have been competing in what amounts to an impromptu comedy slam. Iowa’s Steve King got out to an early lead about a month ago in a Newsmax TV interview with his now-viral comments about undocumented immigrants:

“Some of them are valedictorians — and their parents brought them in. It wasn’t their fault. It’s true in some cases, but they aren’t all valedictorians. They weren’t all brought in by their parents.

“For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert…”

Ignoring (or maybe reveling in) the widespread derision these remarks earned, King sat down with Laura Ingraham a week later for an eerily Palinesque interview, and laid it on even thicker...

Walter Rhett: Answering The Call (The Butler)

A friend called from California to ask had I seen the news of Skip Gates’ screening of Lee Daniels’ new movie, The Butler (starting Forest Whitaker), which led at the box office over the weekend in ticket sales, grossing more than $25 million. Already, conclusions are being drawn about what it means, the lessons of the creative celebration on the screen and on the lives beyond.

I spend the weekend looking backward. Thinking about Stepin Fetchit and the Bundy boys, William and McGeorge. Stepin Fetchit, a stage name, was born Lincoln Theodore Andrew Perry of West Indian parents who migrated to Florida in the 1890s, his father a Jamaican cigar maker, his mother a Nassau seamstress. Perry received the first screen credit for a person of color and was Hollywood’s first black millionaire, earning its twin coins of recognition and money for his character portrayals of offensive stereotypes.

But Stepin Fetchit (“step’n'fetch it,” laughing remainder of ordering a lackey about; it misses the hidden admonition: go and get it) took us beyond belief—and beyond disbelief. So exaggerated and absurd was his character, so obvious a stretched, ridiculous caricature of the stereotype itself, it became both an indictment and parody of those who accepted his image in their looking glass as it portrayed and revealed the inner fears and social uncertainty that were barriers to progress.

His work was a revolutionary cautionary tale. Deliberately calculated, it made fun of the fears of lynching and brutality by mocking the physical forces that regulated black life, then monitored and adjudicated by a privileged, random citizenry...

Stormy Monday, 8/19/13

After a Martha’s Vineyard vacation that included dinner with Deval Patrick, a cocktail party at the home of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, and a round of golf with Larry David, President Obama returned to Washington yesterday and starts the week with a Monday afternoon meeting with financial regulators to review implementation of Dodd-Frank. Things get a little livelier on Tuesday, when he hosts the 1972 Miami Dolphins in a ceremony belatedly honoring their perfect season.

On Thursday, the President heads to upstate New York for a two-day bus tour. His itinerary includes stops in Syracuse, Buffalo and Binghamton, as well as Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he’ll be joined by Vice President Biden. The trip continues his barnstorming on economic issues, with the focus this time on education.

Work continues this week on the installation of new solar panels at the White House, a move announced three years ago. The mansion will be partially solar-powered for the first time since Ronald Reagan had President Carter’s solar panels removed in 1986.

Saturday has been designated to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. The National Action Network has a range of events planned, the largest of which is a morning rally at the Lincoln Memorial followed by a march to the King Memorial. Both monuments have been receiving some hurried TLC recently, the former because some jerk splashed Lincoln’s statue with green paint in July, and the latter for the painstaking removal of a shoddy paraphrase of an MLK quote, a paraphrase derided by Maya Angelou as making Dr. King “look like an arrogant twit.” President Obama will speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at a “Let Freedom Ring” rally on August 28, the actual anniversary of the March...

Walter Rhett: Presidential Petitions

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) wants to impeach the president for unhappiness. “A question I get a lot, ‘If everybody is so unhappy with the president, why don’t you impeach him?’” Farenthold said at a town hall meeting Saturday, as seen in a YouTube video. He went on: “I’ll give you a real frank answer about that. If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, we would probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it.”

According to Politico, Farenthold’s odds-making on a hypothetical impeachment of a President whose high crime seems to be the misery of his opponents came after a woman presented Farenthaold with a folder that she says contains proof that Obama’s birth certificate was faked.

Farenthold does not stand alone on impeachment. A White House petition calling for impeachment gathered 49,890 signatures (from all 50 states!), enough for an official response; it demands the President submit himself to impeachment and lists a bill of particulars!

I’m not sure a constitutional mechanism exists for Presidents to submit themselves to impeachment. That indeed would break a longstanding precedent and take the nation into uncharted waters, maybe even precipitate a constitutional crisis—actually demonstrating the indifference and ineptness that the President’s foes are fond of citing. They listed several examples in the petition...

Nance Greggs: ODS – Obama Derangement Syndrome

Stormy Monday, 8/12/13

Well, it’s taken a full year, but finally something worthwhile is happening again in Washington. It’s DC Beer Week! This year’s list of events is long and varied; many will feature Solidarity Summer Ale, a limited-edition collaboration between over a dozen Washington area brewers.

The 60-odd goats turned loose last Wednesday to tame the weeds at the perimeter of Congressional Cemetery will complete their work Tuesday and return to their home base, Eco-Goats, in Davidsonville, Maryland, with full bellies and the thanks of Christ Church and the nation. Despite its name, and the many dozens of members of Congress interred there, the cemetery has no government connection, as its website FAQ confirms:

Q. Do you have to be a Member of Congress (or any other requirement) to be buried there?

A. No. You just have to be dead.

President Obama and family hopped into Marine One and headed to Martha’s Vineyard over the weekend. Apparently it was the first presidential flight to be accompanied by the fancy, newfangled tiltroter MV-22 Osprey, several of which ferried press, White House staff and Secret Service personnel to the Vineyard. The Obamas’ fourth vacation on the island ends August 18.

This was supposed to be the second week of a two-week “sexual harassment therapy” program for San Diego mayor and übercreep Bob Filner. Instead, Filner has pulled himself out of the program and will be taking “some personal time.” Don’t worry, though, Payne & Frears, the law firm trying to keep Filner’s miserable ass out of jail, assures us that he will “continue treatment on an outpatient basis.”

Paula Deen: A Cautionary Tale

I recently read an article telling of Paula Deen’s continued advertising and marketing troubles. Sponsors are bailing left and right and Paula’s brand is falling like a rock. Is she being raked over the coals to excess? A lot of people see the fallout from Paula Deen’s deposition as overkill and piling on; some say she earned the pain she’s receiving. No matter one’s opinion, Paula Deen’s troubles show how far this society has to go in the category of racial equity.

Longing for a Fantasy Racist Past or Waxing Ridiculous?

The really bad thing about the Paula Deen incident is not that she admitted to using racial slurs, something she likely shares with the vast majority of white people in general, but that it was done in a deposition for a discrimination case brought against her. A lawyer or other marketing/business professional would acknowledge that she is in a very high-visibility business and recommend that she not risk her good name and image in a court case and quickly settle out of court. I do not know if she got bad advice or no advice, or ignored said advice, or whatever the case, but, her deposition is now public record.

The next thing: what else has she said? Dig into the archives and find out. There are lot of people who will.

I had no opinion of Paula Deen either way. The few articles I read about her were not complimentary, including her cooking style and recipes that require insane quantities of butter, and her deal with a drug company to promote a diabetes prescription drug. However, the article that caught my attention was an interview about one of her past relatives who had a plantation and slaves and lost everything after the Civil War. In the interview, the slaves were called “workers” and were “treated like family” and she took great care to make the former slave owner look like a victim. The careful avoidance of any references to slaves and slavery is part of the neo-Confederate rewrite of history. I can see sympathy for a family member, but the rewrite of the history of the antebellum South made me want to vomit. I will not go into the historical treatment of slaves, but I do want to make this note: They were slaves. They were not considered people. They had no rights. I suggest reading the Articles of Secession issued by the seceding states back in the 1860?s; they made it very clear why they wanted to secede: to maintain and expand slavery. The Gone With The Wind South existed only in the movies...

Take Five (Hot Mess in the Summertime edition)

ONE: Happiness Is a Warm Diorama

Last Friday, the NRA opened its “National Sporting Arms Museum” in Bass Pro Shops’ mammoth flagship store in Springfield, Missouri. Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris was so taken with the NRA’s National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia that he generously underwrote the new museum, where visitors will have an opportunity to drool over almost 1,000 guns, some of them historic, plus “detailed dioramas and displays.” Guns & Ammo sent author and gun enthusiast SP Fjestad in for a preview. He was not disappointed:

The firearms displays are grouped within time periods, with some of the best dioramas I’ve ever seen placed in between them. These included a buffalo hunter, a 1950s hunting cabin, Lewis & Clark, Native American hunter, and modern-day father and daughter decked out in camo.

Yes, that does sound special, and worth every penny of the free admission. The new collection complements the Virginia museum‘s 1,700 guns and “state-of-the-art” firing range boasting “touch-screen target retrieval.” Impressive as all that is, I can’t help but think the NRA needs to let its corporate imagination run just a little wilder.

The full text of every piece of gun control legislation the organization has helped to defeat over the years might make a nifty exhibit, although it would take a hellaciously long time to read them all. What about a Gallery of Preschool Firearms Victims, or a Worst Gun Massacres Hall of Fame? Hey, Charlton Heston’s cold, dead hands could certainly pack in the crowds, especially if they were holding something sleek and high-caliber. Personally, I’d love to see an interactive, animatronic Wayne LaPierre that turns bright red and spews spittle at the utterance of certain, uh, trigger words, like “regulation” or “background check” or “civilized society.” Then again, the real Wayne LaPierre could do that even better, and he’s already on the payroll.