The Clinton 12 documentary is on right now on East Tennessee Public Television. It started a few minutes ago, and will re-air Sunday at 6:30 p.m.

Responding to Bob Herbert's column calling out the GOP on racism, Sen. Macaca's former mouthpiece defends St. Ronnie's infamous 'States' Rights' speech in Philadelphia, MS by noting that the Neshoba County Fairgrounds isn't actually in Philadelphia.

In search of the facts surrounding what has now become a media circus involving what no one disputes is an ugly situation in Jena Louisiana, I found there are many differing and obviously biased reports coming from both camps.

Googling through the usual variety of articles, I came upon a Snopes' report of the issue. Link... I usually like Snopes because so much of what we get through the media turns out to crap, but I was sort of surprised that they decided to include the Jena 6 issue as an urban myth based on what appeared to be (from reading the Snopes' commentary) only two challenged facts. Does that put the Jena 6 incident into the urban myth catagory?

Sick evil people come in all colors, shapes and sizes. Every race has them. Also does anyone else see an echo of Abu ghraib in this behavior?

Link...

"Deputies found Williams on Saturday when they went to the house in Big Creek, about 35 miles southwest of Charleston, to investigate an anonymous tip from someone who had witnessed the abuse, Porter said Tuesday.

One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the woman limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying "Help me," the sheriff's department said in a news release.

Link...
This article by Dr. Edward Rhymes originated on the Black Agenda Report.
Link...
It is one of the most intelligent discourses I've read about the recent controversy over rap music and violence. In fact, though radical, the Black Agenda Report expresses views us white folks seldom get to hear from "the people" themselves. The authors on this site tend to be a bit academic, but that's great, because they actually present good arguments for their points of view. Because of ingrained, historical seperatism in our country, most of us only get to understand the black community's thinking through white-owned, mostly conservative (and mostly racist-driven) news. Not really knowing many black people tends to limit our undertsanding of the Black community. We tend to lump that group together in a way that is often completely distorted. A broad mind should want to peer into its own dark cave corners if it seeks to be illuminated. The Black Agenda Report does just that for me. This article really probes our concern that Black rap music is violent and causing our all our kids to glorify sex and crime.

Dr. Rhymes points out the existing duplicity quite nicely.

"My assertion was, and remains to be, that the mainstream media and society-at-large, appear to have not so much of a problem with the glorification of sex and violence, but rather with who is doing the glorifying. In it I stated that "if the brutality and violence in gangsta rap was truly the real issue, then shouldn't a series like The Sopranos be held to the same standard? If we are so concerned about bloodshed, then how did movies like 'The Godfather,' 'The Untouchables' and 'Goodfellas' become classics?"

Rhymes is not a defender of violence.

"Young people, for better or worse, are looking for and craving authenticity. Now, because this quality is in such rare-supply in today's society, they gravitate towards those who appear to be "real" and "true to the game." Tragically, they appreciate the explicitness without detesting or critically deconstructing what the person is being explicit about."

He says White men have been crooning about violence for years, but few people took them to task.

"The exaltation of drugs, misogyny and violence in music lyrics has a history that predates NWA, Ice Cube, Ice T and Snoop Dogg. Elton John's 1977 song "Tickin," was about a young man who goes into a bar and kills 14 people; Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska," featured a couple on a shooting spree, and his "Johnny 99," was about a gun-waving laid-off worker; and Stephen Sondheim's score for "Assassins," which presented songs mostly in the first person about would-be and successful presidential assassins.

Eric Clapton's "Cocaine" and the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (LSD) as well as almost anything by Jefferson Airplane or Spaceship. Several songs from "Tommy" and Pink Floyd's "The Wall" are well known drug songs. "Catholic girls," "Centerfold," "Sugar Walls" by Van Halen were raunchy, misogynistic, lust-driven rock refrains.

Even the country music legend Kenny Rogers in his legendary ballad, "Coward Of The County," spoke of a violent gang-rape and then a triple-homicide by the song's hero to avenge his assaulted lover. Marilyn Manson declared that one of the aims of his provocative persona was to see how much it would take to get the moralists as mad at white artists as they got about 2LiveCrew. He said it took fake boobs, Satanism, simulated sex on stage, death and angst along with semi-explicit lyrics, to get the same screaming the 2LiveCrew got for one song. Manson thought this reaction was hypocritical and hilarious.

Hmm...somehow I never really thought about that...

I heard there will be an even bigger rally today at the courthouse. I was going to go down there to show my support for the African American community, but I just couldn't let the Klan drag me down to their level. I knew all I would feel was anger, venomous disgust, bile-raising rage, and aggressive feelings. I would be on the same vibrational level and that's not someplace healthy or productive to me.

I hope there is little publicity for the media hungry Klan about this..

Barack Obama has picked up Secret Service protection -- the earliest assignment of a detail in a long time. Wild speculation has been that Obama has been threatened because of his race, but no one is saying. So, who didn't see that one coming? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, CBSNews (does any one read it???), comments have been disabled on any article concerning Barack Obama because of racist comments. The example cited is a slur I haven't heard since I was a boy. Even rather respected posters here can't seem to help themselves over the "Hussein" middle name or snide remarks about "my baby's daddy."

Oh, my god! That was sooo scary! It wasn't so much the idea of it. It was the unfolding of the more than bizzarro event that took it on a downhill slide. First of all why in God's green earth would anyone who is considered to be a person of intelligence say they spend their time," tearing the heads off little animals"? Was it a metaphor for the way that idiot has treated people? Oh, Sigmund, where are you now?

It was of course to some extent racist. Kind of like a black face minstrel show with fat little Rove trying hard to get loose enough to do some moves. By the time he really let loose, I was snorting and muffling my laughter in the couch pillow. That guy is so obviously nuts.

The previous "act" was at least funny, but then I realized the reason it was funny is because those poor people are so uptight anything would tintilate them. I could just imagine some giggling woman leaning over to her husband saying," Oh, my, imagine that, George! Isn't Karl such a fun guy! I can't believe he is actually dancing!"

The President's act, him joking about himself, seemed a bit pathetic, but then the man is pathetic. Every now and then I feel sorry for these guys, but then I remember how lethal they are and the way they have plans to destroy democracy as we know it, and I have to stop myself.

White man rapping very badly--now there's a sight that must have made the homeboys wince. I found it a bit painful myself. Surely there were other national icons they could have chosen. A Donald Trump skit or a Miss America pageant maybe?

Who ARE these people anyway? How could they have grown up so ignorant and yet full of themselves?

I'm hoping it was visiting spacemen that spawned them.

This came across my email today. I would never go to see Mel Gibson's latest because 1. his movies are dreadful* and 2. I don't donate money to Republicans.

*Braveheart is, easily, one of the most historically inaccurate hit pieces ever made. Errol Flynn movies capture history more accurate and don't even try to do so. The Patriot contains scenes of war crimes that have been demonstrated by AMERICAN scholars to have not happened or that there is no evidence showing that they happened.

To: FFF@REMOVED.EDU
Subject: Mel Gibson's Apocalypto
Reply-To: Ford Foundation Fellows List

Published on Sunday, December 17, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
The Sober Racism of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto
by Liza Grandia
Liza Grandia is a cultural anthropologist who has worked with Maya peoples
in Guatemala and Belize since 1993 and who speaks Q'eqchi' Maya fluently. She is
currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, writing a book called
"Unsettling" about the repeated land dispossessions and enclosures of the
Q'eqchi'.

Rolling Rock has a new ad wherein a spokesperson at a desk gives a wooden apology for a previous ad in which a guy in an ape suit parachutes into a pool party. He holds up a chart showing apes winning out by a distinct margin over dogs, rats and otters as "animal most associated with a pool party." The previous ad is real; the reaction for which they are apologizing is invented.