August 2010 Archives
These truths I hold to be evident: That all men and women are (sort of) created equal, depending on how they behave, and that there is a larger gathering of nuts around here now more than ever.
Let's look at that top nut in Iran, Ahmadinejad who always has an eye on a.) either taking over the world, or b.) blowing someone or something up. All in all, he isn't someone I'd bring to a dinner party. But if we are to progress as a nation and I as a person, we must look at some of the root causes of his behavior.
Bunions: Many people have them along with unseemly toenails and fallen arches. I qualify in the fallen arches category, and they have made me grouchy. When I was a waitress in a family-styled Greek restaurant before they burned theirs down to collect on the insurance money, I once got mad at a cook for not handing me a special iced tea spoon in a timely manner and left the premises. I now believe that my later diagnosed fallen arches and the need for arch supports had something to do with it.
The Napleon Complex: Let's face it the only way this man could get into a tall person's club would be to climb in through a transom. This may partially be why he is pushy and aggressive like Naploeon Bonaparte, who the complex was named for.
His Relationship with his Mother: There are mothers and then there are mothers, and anyone who behaves like this probably had one that was a cross between Frankenstein and his bride. How can I tell, you might ask? How do I know? Because the only things he can bond with are his ego and a bomb. And that is never a good sign.
The question, of course, is what to do with him. We can't go and kill him because it wouldn't be very friendly, and he seems to have the constitution of a water buffalo and would recover faster than a stubbed toe. We can't oust him because he'd either bounce right back or a more lethal version would surface. And don't count on him keeling over any time soon because he is the kind to live a long life just to spite people if nothing else.
The best way to handle him is to get him to commit the old harry carry. I propose filtering Israeli music into the Dictatorial pad twenty-four/ seven. Show Israeli TV and serve Israeli and other Jewish foods like gefilte fish. And for the final piece de la resistance, flash pictures of Jews who have made it in spite of men and women like him.
That ought to do it right then and there.
A car carrying four Israelis was just ambushed by a group of Palestinian thugs. They shot the two couples from far away, and then went up to the car and shot them at point blank range to make sure they were dead. One of the women was pregnant.
It happened on the eve of the renewed peace talks. Some may view it as a random act of violence by a couple of thugs, but it really is part of the bigger picture and what goes on in the Palestinian society. Because the Arab world accepts these attacks by silent acquiescence, then this is part of the Arabic culture on the whole. Though when one brave woman, Egypt's Nonie Darwish, spoke out against her brethren, she had to have security systems installed in her home and have protection because of the death threats.
The larger world may point to Israelis supposed treatment of the Palestinians, but their standard of living actually improved before the infitada. I only know that if I had a neighbor who lobbed rockets and bullets at me, my friends or my family, I would be hard pressed to act any other way. And expecting anything less than violence in return is unreasonable especially after nothing else has worked.
Hopefully, Mrs. Darwish's prediction will one day come true, that Israel better build a high wall around herself to block out all the Palestinian in fighting because not only can they not peacefully coexist with their neighbor. They can't even peacefully coexist among themselves.
Twenty-one American soldiers died in the past 48 hours in Afghanistan. For what? For Karzai and his band of crooks, warlords and narcos?
The central tenet of Gen. Petraeus' COIN (Counter Insurgency strategy) is based on the premise of defending and protecting a decent governmental entity. Clearly this is not the case. So, what are we doing?
The answer is two-fold. One, we hate losing and losing face. We believe it diminishes our credibility in the world. While this is true, it does not diminish our credibility more than dragging out the killing of civilians and our own prolonged and agonal losing. Looking weak does not become looking strong if you just keep sticking to it for years and decades, rather than recognizing reality and leaving.
The second part of why we're still there is that we are trying to contain Pakistan and keep the Taliban from taking over a nation with from 85-110 nuclear weapons. This is certainly an understandable and important ambition. But are we giving ourselves a real chance here or only empowering the Taliban and enrolling more soldiers in their cause?
As we announce, once again, that all major combat operations have ceased in Iraq--so now our soldiers are killed in minor combat operations as advisors and battle coaches--we should examine our record at containment. For containment has really been the centerpiece of American military policy for over 50 years.
We contained the old Soviet Union fairly successfully after they grabbed half of Europe following WWII. We fought them all over the world both with our own forces and with proxies. We fought in Korea to contain China--not for Korean democracy (which has only recently emerged). We fought in Vietnam to contain China. We lost, and China does not own Vietnam. Though arguably China owns us. Meanwhile, Vietnam is a trading partner and tourist destination.
We fight in Iraq, not for democracy but against Iranian hegemonic desires. We removed the number one adversary of Iran, Saddam, and thus empowered the Iranians. We are fighting now in Afghanistan for results in Pakistan.
I have no issues with our ambitions. We were not wrong to worry about the USSR, Red China, Iran or Pakistan. But we do have to question our, well, no other word for it--with ironies understood--"execution" of lofty ideals.
We are not winning or even breaking even. "Oh, they say, "the surge in Iraq worked?" No it didn't. Buying the frightened Sunnis who had been thrown out by Bremer and Garner and paying them to form the Sons of Iraq worked. It worked until we turned over the money to the Iraqi government, mostly Shiite, and they stopped paying, while we stopped protecting them. This is why we have a resurgent insurgency and increasing violence during our drawdown.
We are not winning in Afghanistan either, and left and right agree that our current policy of promising both to leave and to protect our local allies forever is logically and morally incoherent.
So, where is the outrage at these blunders and all the wasted blood and treasure? Why aren't our streets filled with protestors and our universities seething with fierce unrest? Why do the talking heads on cable only talk about the politics and effect of our policies on our elections and never about right, wrong or truth?
Perhaps the greatest irony in these series of ironic tragedies is that if we had a draft, these wars would be over. If middleclass and upper middleclass kids were at risk, if the populations of our universities had war to look forward to at graduation, we would be done with this. Their parents would not put up with the waste and the universities would be up in arms for us to put down our arms. Ironies indeed.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
We are now over 60 days past having our constitutionally mandated budget in California. Every day without a budget means tens of millions of dollars in lost income, unfunded grants, smaller revenues from sales taxes, increased costs in borrowing and general pain to the system and, more importantly, to the people.
Either our government or I don't understand the meaning of being in violation of our state constitution. Our representatives, who have sworn to protect and defend the constitution, are not only in violation of their mandate but express a willful disregard for the law--not to mention the people.
With each day growing more critical, with California out of money, with education and social services shutting down, with state workers being furloughed, what do our elected leaders do? Ah, not buckle down and get it done. Not work through the night dedicated to fulfilling their oaths. Not take our pain seriously. On the contrary. What they are doing is going on vacation! Yes, the legislature is adjourning and Der Gubernator is going to Asia.
I wouldn't mind this gross violation of the needs of the people and their own oaths of office if only they promised to stay away. Frankly, they should either be locked in an un-air-conditioned room in Sacramento till they settle this, or they should be locked out when they finally return. What they should not be able to do is to abandon us at will and expect to come home like some wastrel spouse. Enough!
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Iranian nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to Israel. Given the trash talking by the leadership in Iran that is constantly calling for destruction of Israel and threatening to erase it from the map, the question of pre-empting Iran has to be considered.
Strangely, no group wants Israel to attack more than the Sunni Arab nations. They'd be happy for Israel to be their surrogates in the great Persian v. Arab struggle. While Iran raises a serious question, no serious person could doubt that if Al Qaeda had nukes they would use them.
This distinction between Al Qaeda and Iran is important. Al Qaeda is stateless and can act without fear of losing much. Iran, however, is a state with history, culture, great cities, universities, museums and an educated--and often anti-government--middle class.
In the last thirty years, Iranian policy has been brutal, even evil. They've enabled various bad actors to kill Americans, Israelis and Sunni Arabs throughout the Middle East. They've sent arms to their co-religionist Shiites in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. They've armed Sunni radicals in Gaza and on the West Bank. They've shipped rockets to Israel's enemies. There's no reason to believe that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
But there's also no reason to believe them suicidal or mad. They know that a nuclear attack on Israel would mean their destruction.
Iran, under Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs, talks like Al Qaeda but acts with more caution--knowing they've much to lose. There's nothing in their history to indicate self-destructive fanaticism. Iran's government will likely fall of its own weight if Israel and the US don't push them together with a unifying attack.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
I haven't seen a televised beauty pageant in a while, not because I've turned politically correct, perish the thought. It's because my television broke and I haven't gotten around to buying another one.
I also never considered entering one, so I haven't had the opportunity to play the "Star Spangled Banner" on the harpsichord or enter the swimsuit competition, though that is one place where I'd draw the line. No one has the right to see me in one of those things and pass judgment especially after all the time I spent dieting and exercising. Even if I passed that round, I'd probably get thrown off after answering a question in a politically incorrect way.
Still, it would be un-American to call all those pageants off, even though they should be tweaked a bit here and there.
Maybe I'm clinging to some childhood image like a shipwreck survivor clinging to a buoy, but there is something so American and comforting about them. It's like hot apple pie a la mode or waving the American flag on the Fourth of July. For me, it's those times Martha Jacobson's father hitched the wooden wagon in their barn to his station wagon and pulled the neighborhood kids down the street on the Fourth of July. It's having my father walk barefoot onto the driveway to get the morning paper in the days when the papers used to run off the presses. It's Americana, for crying out loud.
The past years though, some pageants have been riddled with scandal. Who would have known in the fifties when it was first created that the queens would one day pole dance or pose in compromising photos? Those things were relegated to strippers and women dancing in bars, not ingénues who wanted to save the world and Biafra through charitable deeds?
Still, they need to set some rules before going on. So any contestant who has engaged in one of the following actions after being old enough to sign a contract should be disqualified: any activity related to being a stripper: pole dancing, photos fit for Playboy, who belches, snorts drinks out of her nose or has tattoos, even an artful one. That ought to narrow it down considerably.
Keep the swimsuit and the talent competitions. Even if a contestant wants to tap dance to "America Beautiful," let her and keep the question and answer session because it is entertaining. So if someone thinks that birth control is a controlled substance, chalk that up to probably not having majored in any of the sciences. And if someone wants to answer in the politically incorrect way that she is against gay marriage or supports Arizona's immigration law, then don't give her the boot and kill off all that hard work, those health club memberships and exercise regimens at the same time.
After all, this it is only a beauty pageant we're talking about here and not the selection committee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In Washington DC, in a day filled with ironies, two flawed and self-promoting leaders leading two flawed groups may have advanced the cause of healing our polarized nation. At least, for a couple of brief and shining moments, they created a picture, a snapshot, of America as we should be.
Glenn Beck, a political pundit sounding like an Evangelical preacher, exhorted his followers to religious values. Across town, the Rev. Al Sharpton, a preacher, exhorted his followers to political action.
On this anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, two groups, both feeling locked out of the benefits of the powerful, called for greater involvement in making America better--according to their own lights. Both groups had members of Dr. King's family speak to them. Both heard how important it is to be involved and stay involved in the ongoing struggle to make America work.
Most importantly, despite some at the fringes who might yearn for confrontation, when members of both demonstrations met there was peace. Yes, there was some taunting based on their stereotyped impressions of each other. But when the Beck folks started chanting, "USA! USA!" at the Sharpton people, their response was to join in and chant, "USA! USA!" Yes!
As a columnist for three different papers who writes on political topics, I get a fair (or to me unfair) amount of hate mail. The truly hateful and obscene I ignore--believing it says more about them than about my IQ and the marital status of my parents at my conception. But to most I respond sincerely: "My adversary is not the person who disagrees with me, however passionately. No, my adversary is the person who doesn't care, who just lets others do the work of thinking, committing and acting to influence the future."
Today, through speeches that spoke to me and speeches that didn't, today, when the public speaking ended and the people mixed together, America worked. USA! USA!!
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Mea culpa. I am someone with a long memory who carries a grudge. Take the list of countries I won't visit based on their politics for the past five hundred years.
I won't go to Spain because they expelled the Jews during the Inquisition. And I won't go to Greece because of their behavior during the Holocaust and because I don't want to be picked up by a man who forgets that he has a wife and kids at home with or without the ouzo. Germany and Poland are also out, and I wouldn't dream of setting foot in the West Bank or Gaza because I'd like to use my round-trip ticket home and have an airline meal than includes more than a bag of nuts and a soft drink.
That only leaves a few places, which may explain why I hardly ever go anywhere.
And that is why AB 619 authored by Bob Blumenfield, (D, San Fernando Valley) has its merits, whether a person is a grudge-bearer or not and won't go to certain places over what happened 500 years ago.
But we are not talking about five hundred years ago or even the Renaissance. We are talking about sixty-five lousy years ago and the companies that did business with the Germans then. Only a fraction of the survivors are still alive, but most of their children are, or if not, then their children's children.
Even Judaism is against blaming the children for the sins of their fathers, because a cuckoo parent does not always end up raising a cuckoo child, that doesn't mean that we should all get collective amnesia, either.
If companies that were in with the Third Reich have reformed, then let them prove it. Send in a legit accounting firm to look at their books and to see whether they've made reparations to anyone, or if they are still on the wrong side.
In the meantime, thank you, Bob Blumenfield for being such a sane and rational Democrat.
Joan Rivers, not otherwise known as a political philosopher, asked the most important question facing our nation. "Can we talk?" Maybe she meant it rhetorically or maybe it was just a trademark, but the question is profound and our answer vital to our survival.
The storm surrounding the building of the Mosque in Manhattan is only the most recent example of the fact that our present answer is: No! We can't talk. We can't listen. We can shout and we can demean those who differ.
As a product of 1960s and the Civil Rights movement, and therefore a participant in many inter-racial dialogues, as someone who studied counseling and psychotherapy, I am a strong believer that we cannot therapise what we cannot talk about. In the 60s our Afro-American partners in dialogue did not demand that we deny prejudice or racism. On the contrary, they demanded that we search our souls for the taint of hate. Healing began, as with AA, in letting go of denial and beginning the journey with truth--however painful or embarrassing that personal truth might be.
We have completely reversed this process and assumption. Today no one dares admit to prejudice. Our new standard is "I don't have a racist bone in my body." This is followed naturally by "I'm not anti-Semitic, nor am I Islamophobic." It is still semi-acceptable in some, thank God diminishing, circles to admit to being homophobic; but less and less.
We paint disagreement with a broad brush so that the people who want to build the Muslim Cultural Center are insensitive at best and stealth terrorists at worst. The brush then on the backstroke, paints the people who are unsettled by the Mosque and Islam as haters. Well, there are terrorists and there are haters in every group and on every side, but they are a truly tiny minority.
Yes, there are people uncomfortable with Evangelicals and others who still fear a Papist conspiracy. We have racists who just don't like blacks or whites or Asians or Hispanics. No, of course our phobias are not okay, but they do exist--even in good people. We cannot address our fears and phobias by, well, not addressing them. We cannot address them honestly of effectively, till we search ourselves for that one little bone of racism, ethnocentrism or sexism.
Change starts with truth, and we have effectively outlawed truth. Denial will not serve us well. On all of the hot button issues, we have to speak kindly and listen generously. This is a difficult and there will be painful times. However, as in any kind of therapy, we have to build trust in order to share, at our deepest levels, the strange and frightening complexity that makes us human beings and gives us the tools and the potential to change. Can we talk? We must talk.
Banning companies that profited from the Holocaust may seem at first blush a good and fair idea. As someone whose mother-in-law still receives a check every month from Germany for her suffering and slave labor in Nazi work camps, I indirectly benefit. As someone whose mother received compensation only a few years ago for our apartment house that was stolen by the Nazis and later held by the East German Communists, I have also indirectly benefited.
Yet when AB 619, proposed by San Fernando Valley's own Bob Blumenfield, passed in Sacramento this week, I was forced to have second thoughts. The "Holocaust Survivor Responsibility Act," sounds fair enough. I certainly don't want the monsters that perpetrated the Shoah and the companies that profited to be rewarded. But, how long is long enough to carry out this doctrine of inherited guilt and responsibility? Though it was fitting that my mother and mother-in-law got something (that could never be enough to achieve justice for them,) what am I due today? I don't think anything.
The larger question is about what the children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren of the perpetrators owe anyone? Do the sins of the fathers and grandfathers pass "unto the seventh generation," as per Isaiah? Sixty-five years after liberation can we wipe away the debt without erasing the memories and the lessons?
If we can't, do we condemn ourselves to follow the well-worn disastrous path of eternal enmity? How do we deal with the injustices America committed against Americans of Japanese origins during WWII--and for how many generations? How do we recompense Blacks for being kidnapped and being enslaved? What is fair compensation to our Native Americans whose land we took and whose liberty and culture we did our best to destroy?
The ultimate question is this: When I say that "we committed" these injustices and atrocities, what does "we" really mean? It wasn't me. Nor was it my parents or grandparents who were busy not enjoying their own hells in Eastern Europe. What I owe is a real question. What the children of the perpetrators of the Holocaust owe is the very same question.
Is there a statute of limitation on outrage? If not we can continue our intractable situations with Israel and the Palestinians, the endless enmity between Serbs and Croats, the internecine conflict between Sunni and Shiah and all the other historic conflicts and eternal cries for justice. As Gandhi observed, "An eye for an eye and soon the whole world is blind."
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
There are 52 Saturdays in 2010 and talk show exhibitionist Glenn Beck could have picked any one of them to hold his "Restoring Honor" rally on Washington DC's Lincoln Mall. But Beck, of course, picked August 28, the same date as the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington. Becks been repeatedly called out for picking the date to mock the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He first lied and said that he had no idea the date is a sacred day for civil rights leaders, and that it was pure coincidence he chose the date. But since that lie wouldn't fly, Beck reversed gear and wrapped himself in the mantle of King. He's bragged to audiences that he and conservatives are the inheritors and protectors of King's dream. In a moment of preposterous flight of rhetoric he fantasized that he and other conservatives could see themselves beaten by police, set upon by dogs, dosed with fire hoses, and jailed on trumped-up charges. What an imagination! But Beck wasn't finished with King and the civil rights movement. He boasted to another radio audience that he was out to "reclaim" the civil rights movement and that his choice of August 28 as the rally date was "divine providence" and supreme proof that he's doing King's bidding.
Let's cut the garbage. Beck is the modern day PT Barnum. He'll do anything to shuck and jive a crowd to make sure he has a crowd. The aim is always the same to snatch ratings, ratings, and more ratings. Beck has done it better than most. But perverting King isn't something that Beck invented solely to grab more ratings, and mock the civil rights movement. Legions of conservatives, including GOP presidents, long ago beat him to King.
In the mid 1980s, the GOP and conservatives eagerly grabbed at King's famed line in his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in August 1963, in which he called on Americans to judge individuals by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Those sentiments proved, Republicans claimed, that King would be on their side against affirmative action.
During the fierce wars over affirmative action in the 1990s, King's words were even more shamelessly used to justify opposition to affirmative action. That was just the starting point for falsifying and then repackaging King to suit the GOP.
Starting with Reagan, Republican presidents realized that they could wring some political mileage out of King's legacy. They recast him in their image on civil rights, and bent and twisted his oft times public religious Puritanism on morals issues to justify GOP positions in the values wars that they wage with blacks, Democrats and liberals. Even conservative black evangelist jumped into the act, and staged a march to King's gravesite to protest gay marriage, the implication being that King being a good Baptist minister would know about have opposed gay marriage. Coretta Scott King dispelled that by repeatedly issuing statements saying that she was a staunch backer of gay rights, and so would King have been.
Beck added another perverse twist to his I'm the second coming of King fantasy. He bashed his favorite whipping boy, liberals with it. Telling his radio crowd that it's liberals that perverted the civil rights movement and that it's the sworn duty of conservatives to take it back from them. None of this pap would work let alone grab the media attention it has if there weren't millions who profess to genuinely loathe liberals, see government as the sworn enemy, and are in an absolute rage at President Obama's policies and even him. They just as firmly believe that he has turned government into a Frankenstein monster to tax them out of their gourd to create endless social programs that benefit minorities at the expense of hard-working whites. This is exactly how hate groups, the pack of anti-Obama Web sites and bloggers, and radio talk jocks, and of course Beck, craft the reason for the anger and alienation that many whites feel toward health care and, by extension, Obama. This translates to even more fear, rage and distrust of big government.
Beck could have easily stopped with simply saying the rally is what he claims it to be and that's an event held in conjunction with the Special Operations Warrior Foundation to provide college scholarships and counseling to children of special operations personnel killed during operational or training missions and to honor America's heroes. But truth and honesty is not a Beck strong suit. Saying that wouldn't give him the national platform to do what conservatives have done for two decades and that's propound the absurd notion that King and the civil rights movement would be in lockstep with them. Beck's rally is simply their latest perverse homage to King.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
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One part of the globe that Obama and Hillary should focus on is the Congo and Rwanda. In an attempt to gain control of the minerals used to make cell phones, the rebel forces have been raping women and children, most recently within 20 miles of a UN peacekeeping base. They've been dragging women into the forest where they've been gang raped by several men who then send them out humiliated and naked.
Adding insult to injury, these women and children are then shunned by their community, so they have nowhere within their milieu to turn. It's been an unfortunate and effective practice.
My solution would be to build a small guillotine and give the misused appendage the old chopperoo. That would end that real quickly and maybe give the world a few more coloratura sopranos.
For now, we need to get the Congo to bow to world opinion the way we pressured the Iranian government to halt the stoning of an accused adulteress. Contact your congressman/woman and let them know what you think, that we will not put up with this and that this is an outrage. I called the State Department, and they said they were sending troops out there, but the more calls the better. For those in Reseda, the phone number to Henry Wax's office is: (323) 651-1040. Otherwise, just google congressman and your city.
So, a Buddhist, a Muslim and some New Yorkers walk into a discussion on the Manhattan Mosque. This is no joke, but may illuminate a way to some understanding and reconciliation.
One caveat: As a thought problem we are limiting the participants to the vast majority of Muslims and New Yorkers who are people of good will, with legitimate concerns and complex feelings. We are excluding the cynical politicians who are trying to use this as a wedge issue and the small group of uneducable haters on both sides.
Let's assume for the moment that the Imam is sincere in wanting this Center (recreational, culinary, learning and worship space) to be a gesture of good will and a bridge to understanding. Let us not attack his character, try to read his mind or look at all with whom he has lunched or where he is soliciting the funds. Take him at his word--as I do.
So the question, the legitimate question, becomes pretty simple: Does the recipient of someone's gesture of good will have any responsibility in communicating if he or she is able to accept the proffered offer?
Here is where cultures and religions may differ. And this is where the Buddha comes into the picture. As an old man, the Buddha was invited to dinner by some devotees. He observed--being himself an observant Buddhist--that the food was tainted. However, not wanting to offend his hosts, he ate dinner and died. While I personally think it is tougher on a host to kill a guest, the Buddha chose otherwise.
So, now imagine a sick Muslim neighbor--and truthfully I have five Muslim neighbors and one Muslim cousin. Imagine that my neighbor is ill, and as a gesture of good will--but with an abundance of ignorance--I bring over a plate of pork ribs. My neighbor may accept them with a smile, and not wishing to embarrass me, say nothing about it. Or, and I think legitimately, my neighbor might instruct me that as well-intended as the offer was, it is not something that he can accept. I would not be inclined to argue that he should accept the ribs or that his sensitivities are silly or out of keeping with American culture.
The Jewish analogue happens all the time. People from one branch of Judaism may not know--or worse respect--the nuances of the kosher laws. Good hearted Christians coming to a house of mourning might bring something inappropriate. I have personally turned away many plates of shrimp salad and ham sandwiches from various Jewish functions. At one memorable event, we had contracted with the hotel for a milk-based dinner. The hotel being newly refurbished wanted to add a lagniappe--threw in, out of a true spirit of generosity, some Chinese pork buns. They meant well, but we chose to inform them of their error and our needs. We assumed their good will, so responded kindly and with respect.
I believe this is what we owe each other now. I accept that the Imam's intentions are honorable, but the feelings of the recipients are relevant in so far as this is a gesture of peace. Their right to build should not be in dispute. It is not Islamophobic, in my view, to communicate discomfort to those who proffer the gift. We can only understand each other when we talk and listen to each other with generous hearts and true respect. While I don't want to appear to be Buddhaphobic, I think the Buddha is not a good model here. I prefer truth and kindness.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
I'm a liberal. This means that my normal instinct is to throw money at problems and hope they go away. I will give money--even my own and not just yours--to try to make the world better. I don't need perfection. I know that not every dollar will be well used. There is some fuzzy line of waste, fraud and abuse that I'll put up with for a good cause.
Then there is LAUSD. I'm still a liberal but no longer in regards to LAUSD. They have gone over the line and have abused my trust. They have wasted my money with "learning systems," that are new magic bullets that change every couple of years. They have bought whole computer systems that only run on the software of the seller and are obsolete when new software choices are made. They have changed the names of their various bureaucratic schemes and gone from Regions to Areas, to Mini-Districts, and with each name change there are new offices and positions to be filled.
This past election, for the first time in my life, I voted against what the schools were asking for. It hurt at the time. But it feels better with everything I learn about the stupefying incompetence of LAUSD. It will be a much easier vote to cast next time.
I believe in public education. I believe that free secular education is what made America great. It was the engine of our unity, taking kids from various nations, tribes and ethnicities, placing kids with many languages and customs with each other to work together and learn together. It has been a great success story till now.
Our schools in LA are broken. Over 50% of our kids do not graduate. This is more than a systemic failure; it is a social catastrophe. We blame the parents--immigrants--legal and illegal. But my generation's parent's arrived without either money or English. Okay, so we blame the teachers, the same teachers we disrespect with bad pay, crazy hours and broken promises. Our LAUSD bureaucrats preemptively pink slip nearly a quarter of our teachers--and then at the last minute retain most of them. Our teachers live in fear of being fired, transferred or just jerked around by a bureaucracy with a terrible "Edifice Complex."
After two decades of not opening a new high school, LAUSD has come roaring back with hi-tech, state of the art palaces that would have made Russian Tzars blush. Our Lady of the Holy Waterslide, otherwise known as the Visual and Performing Arts Center, across from the Taj Mahoney, just off the 101, comes in at only $238 million. The new Robert Kennedy Community Schools is running around $578 million. They have to pluralize School to Schools to make it seem that we're really getting a lot for our money. We are. We're getting a lot of waste. More schools on the same lot simply means duplicative bureaucracies. Principals without principles.
When critics point out how extraordinarily and massively wasteful these buildings are at a time when we are cutting programs, firing staff and laying off teachers, the official excuse is this: The money for building comes out of a different pocket, a different place in the budget than actual teaching programs.
I'll try this with my banker and see how far it gets me. "Uh sorry, we don't have money to pay the mortgage but we are going off on that round the world cruise because that's in the travel budget pocket." Right. The money comes out of different budgetary pockets but it originates in one pocket: OURS!
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Don't expect any apology, retraction, or the standard I was misquoted backpedal from renowned evangelist Franklin Graham for saying that President Obama has the Muslim seed in him. Graham's quip was a response to a question from CNN's John King about the Pew Research Center poll. It found a big increase in the number of Americans that think that Obama's a Muslim. But Franklin had another motive, and the motive had nothing to do with religion, belief, or Obama's genetics, but politics, naked, brutal, and raw politics.
The Obama is a Muslim label carries a special taint, and Franklin knows it. No religious group in America has been more distorted, reviled, and demonized than Muslims. Simply utter the word, and this instantly conjures up for many dark images of bombings, terrorist attacks, war, chaos, destruction, and fanaticism. Muslims have stirred the nativist, xenophobia, and religious intolerance pulse in many Americans that has always lurked just beneath the surface in American life. Politicians have at times played to that impulse and it in turn translated it into a massive religious social revolt, and reaped big gains at the ballot box. The rumor and fear mongering images of Islam and Muslims escalated with the emotion throbbing September 11 terror attacks. The attack stirred tremors among Muslims that they would routinely be targeted, subject to search and surveillance, and profiled at airports.
This was a mere dress rehearsal for Franklin's dump of the Muslim scare on Obama. This has dogged Obama from the first day of his White House tenure. His speeches in Cairo last year to a Muslim and international audience, his repeated preaching of tolerance and outreach to the Muslim world, his occasional tough line on Israeli settlement expansion, and the topper, his White House Ramadan dinner, and a his favorable statement supporting the right to build a mosque at ground zero. This for many was smoking gun proof that Obama is not a closet but an avowed Muslim. Though some GOP political strategists have urged caution about making the Ground Zero Mosque and Obama a campaign issue, the GOP will do it anyway. Fox News, the pack of right wing talk show hosts, and bloggers have had a field day doing everything possible to fan the fire of anti-Muslim sentiment. They have even plopped on the table an outrageously distorted, misstated, and misunderstood discussion of Sharia Law, and declared that any Muslim who believes in it and practices it does not believe in the Constitution and by extension can't be a loyal American. The implication being that since Obama is a Muslim than he must also believe in the strict tenets of Sharia Law and therefore..... The dots have never been more wrongly and badly connected.
Graham didn't wrongly and badly cross the dots out of ignorance, or misguided belief about Obama's birth. Like so many other bible thumping mega preachers, he's a politician hiding behind the good book. Tarring Obama as a born Muslim is a good throw-away line to fire the like minded crowd that he appeals too. The big plus is that it gives them even more zeal to mount another Holy Crusade to the polls in November's mid-term elections and cast out as many of the evil, sacrilegious, terrorist, and anti-American Democrats that they can get their vote on in Congress and elsewhere.
The Muslim seed strategy has already paid two other dividends, both relished by Graham. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, and nearly every other run scared Democrat thats facing a rough and tumble reelection fight has fled from Obama's support of the right to build the Mosque.
It's also forced Obama to scramble and profess loudly that he's a devout Christian. It's not an implicit rejection of Islam, but it sends a pleading message that Christianity is the White House's faith of record. The appalling ignorance of so many Americans about Obama's religious beliefs refutes the old adage that religion and politics don't mix. Graham's "Muslim seed" crack about Obama is proof positive of that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
It's no surprise that so many Americans think that Obama is a Muslim. The Pew Research Center poll found a big increase in the number of Republicans that think that. Certainly that was no surprise. And only slight less surprising the poll found that lots of Democrats and Independents also think that he's a Muslim. No president has ever had more pejorative labels slapped on him. He's been branded a Bolshevik, socialist, Nazi (go figure that one), an anarchist, leftist, an alien, and of course, un-American.
But the Obama is a Muslim tag carries a special taint. No religious group in America has been more distorted, reviled, and demonized than Muslims. Simply utter the word, and this instantly conjures up for many dark images of bombings, terrorist attacks, war, chaos, destruction, and fanaticism. Muslims have stirred the nativist, xenophobia, and religious intolerance pulse in many Americans that has always lurked just beneath the surface in American life. Politicians have at times played to that impulse and it in turn translated it into a massive religious social revolt, and reaped big gains at the ballot box. The rumor and fear mongering images of Islam and Muslims escalated with the emotion throbbing September 11 terror attacks. The attack stirred tremors among Muslims that they would routinely be targeted, subject to search and surveillance, and profiled at airports.
The profiling alarm bells went off again after a soldier with a Muslim name shot up the military base at Ft. Hood back in November. The Council on American-Islamic Relations wasted no time and issued a loud and vigorous denunciation of the mass killing. The Council didn't know at that moment whether Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter, was a Muslim by birth, a converted Muslim, or even a Muslim at all. The name and the horrific murder spree was enough to drive the group to quickly distance itself from the rampage. Other Muslim organizations instantly followed suit and issued their own equally strong disavowal of Hasan.
This didn't stop the pack of Fox Network commentators, conservative radio talk show hosts, writers, and some officials from again openly shouting for even tighter scrutiny of Muslim groups. Airline bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab raised the decibel level on their call for transportation officials to openly profile Muslims at airports, train stations, and even on the open highways.
But this was a mere dress rehearsal for the Muslim scare that's dogged President Obama. His speeches in Cairo last year to a Muslim and international audience, his repeated preaching of tolerance and outreach to the Muslim world, his occasional tough line on Israeli settlement expansion, and the topper, his White House Ramadan dinner, and a his favorable statement supporting the right to build a mosque at ground zero. This for many was smoking gun proof that Obama is not a closet but an avowed Muslim. Though some GOP political strategists have urged caution about making the ground zero mosque and Obama a campaign issue, the GOP will do it anyway. Fox News, the pack of right wing talk show hosts, and bloggers have had a field day doing everything possible to fan the fire of anti-Muslim sentiment. They have even dumped on the table an outrageously distorted, misstated, and misunderstood discussion of Sharia Law, and declared that any Muslim who believes in it and practices it does not believe in the Constitution and by extension can't be a loyal American. The implication being that since Obama is a Muslim than he must also believe in the strict tenets of Sharia Law and therefore..... The dots have never been more wrongly and badly connected.
Since his initial statements on the ground zero mosque, Obama has kept silence on the controversy. There's absolutely no need for him to say anything more about it. The issue will be fiercely debated by politicians and much of the public in the coming weeks. The danger though is that the issue will incite more rage in the days immediately before the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attack. Expect the Obama foes, and that's nearly any GOP candidate or incumbent who can figure out a way to sneak a line or two about the attack, the ground zero mosque controversy and a sly hint that Obama backed the right to build the mosque into their speeches, to take a dig at Obama. Even some top Democrats facing tough reelection battles have backpedalled fast from Obama's position on the Mosque. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was one. Expect more Democrats to follow him in the weeks to come.
The ignorance of so many Americans about Obama's religious beliefs if nothing else refutes the old adage that religion and politics don't mix. They do, and Obama's foes have done everything they can to make sure that that's the case with him.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
On May 3, 2003 George W Bush announced that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." It was not true. Tonight on August 18, 2010 our government offered a press release proclaiming essentially the same thing. This too is untrue.
As I watched, what the military named "The Last Patrol," cross over into Kuwait, I was sad--even despondent. Of course I'm glad that major combat is over (at least for now) and only 50,000 men and women, plus uncountable military contractors, remain in harms way. However, we are very far from seeing the last American killed in action. We are still advising and consulting. We are still available to partner with Iraqi forces on patrol. We are still part of a war that has no end in sight. We have already announced plans to more than double the number of private security people!
Yes, we are leaving--kind of. And yes, our military did everything we asked of them. But they couldn't do what they couldn't do. They couldn't make Iraqis make peace with each other. We leave months past their great national election with their parliament having met once for 18 minutes. We leave with no government and no governing coalition. We leave Iraq broken.
I am so sad that so many of our men and women were killed, maimed and carry injuries on the inside. I am so sad that we have accomplished virtually nothing since President Bush's first false declaration of an end to major combat. If we went into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein and make sure there were no weapons of mass destruction, these goals were indeed achieved virtually in the beginning. If we went in to make Iraq a model democracy, we failed. If we went in to block Iranian ambitions, we did worse than fail; we gave Iran an immense boost in power and prestige.
At a cost of over 4,400 American lives and countless physical and psychic injuries, we deposed a very bad Sunni enemy of Iran and replaced him with an Iran-friendly Shiite power with revenge against the Sunnis as its unifying core principle.
We leave: We leave the Sunnis insurgent once more because they cannot simply wait for the Shiites to extact their revenge. We leave the Kurds both militant and threatened by a taste for independence that threatens both Baghdad and Ankara. We leave Iran, Russia and China with the oil contracts and our spilled blood in the sand. If there is anything that we don't leave and might take away from this debacle it is the limits of military power to build things. Their proper job is to break things, and they did that superbly.
Our failure is of politics and policy. Our failure has been great but ultimately the major unanswered question upon which history will judge us and our fate depends is: Have we learned anything?
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Gee, Jonathan, why would anyone pair off brown-skinned people with "illegal immigrant?" This, once again, sent me to google, where I typed in the pithy and ever-loving percentages of illegals. And lo and behold, 80% of all illegal immigrants come from Mexico or some other Hispanic country, with 56% percent being of Mexican origin. Shocking, really. 13% were former inhabitants of Asia, and 6% were from Canada or Europe.
With those kinds of numbers, why would anyone think anything else?
Granted, there may have been some illegal people hiding that the researchers missed, so it may be a rough figure, but not by much. After all, who do you think the news cameras filmed at the Arizona rallies carrying on and whooping it up? The Eskimos? Defectors from the Bolshoi ballet? Without sounding like a Nativist or a racist, those people at those rallies looked pretty Hispanic to me. And if it weren't for the physical and anthropological clues, the signs in Spanish were the final clue.
And I have a message for them based on a furniture metaphor: When you are a guest in someone's house, you don't rearrange the furniture. But by sneaking across the border and bringing crime and gangs with them in all too many cases, they pretty much pointed the finger at themselves.
The 14th Amendment should of course be changed because of this and for those who plan on becoming fruitful and multiplying here sometimes within hours after crossing the border because this is not what Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers envisioned when they wrote the Constitution. No one asked me, but in case they do, I would say that having a baby here and asking the taxpayers to pick up the tab should not a citizen make. Anyone who is serious about staying here should at least have to stand in line without cutting ahead, and their kids should not act as INS agents who grandfather them in.
President Obama's biggest worry should not be that his approval ratings hit a new low in July (says Gallup). Or that nearly forty percent rate him as worse than average as a president. That's just a paper figure and it can change at any time. The big worry should be that more people disapprove of his performance on the following issues than approve: the federal budget deficit, unemployment, health care, taxes and immigration. The blame for this is not Obama's, it's the Democrats. They have blown the mandate that they had to make the changes that voters hungered for in November 2008.
It wasn't just the Democrats abysmal cave in on Afghanistan, or their even more abysmal failure to plow taxpayer dollars Congress ladled out to Wall Street and the big banks into a direct jobs and home foreclosure relief program. These two failures stoked public frustration, impatience, and fury at the Democrats. The day after Obama won his electoral college landslide victory, the GOP was reeling. President Bush was both discredited and loathed. The public blamed him and the GOP for two failed, flawed, costly wars, for making a shambles of an economy, the endless chain of sex and corruption scandals, and an unprecedented giveaway to Wall Street.
The day after their victory and near sweep of Congress Democrats could have announced that they would forcefully push for an FDR style jobs and relief program, clamp a tight ceiling on executive compensation for all banks and financial houses that got taxpayer bailout dollars, prohibit all stock speculation, swaps and manipulation by the same banks and financial houses that got bailout money, require that they fully open the lending spigot to distressed home owners, businesses and industry.
They would have been widely hailed for acting like Democrats in more than just name. The public would have applauded Obama as the true second coming of FDR, and the party as a genuine reform party. The Democrats did none of these things. They dithered, retreated, and plopped down half measures to jumpstart the economy, health care reform, and continued to shell out billions more to escalate the no-win Afghan war.
The Democrats bash of Bush and GOP for the failed wars and the continued economic slide wore thin fast and more and more voters finger-pointed the Democrats for not doing enough to reverse the damage. Their dither with caution and half measures was no accident. In countless speeches and private talks during the 2000 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton sternly warned the Democrats that if they want to grab the White House they must seize the issues of national security and defense, tax reform, law and order, and banking and corporate deregulation from the Republicans. He once admitted in a candid moment that critics called this and other GOP friendly positions he took, Republican lite. He was successful with it and figured other Democrats could be too.
Al Gore and John Kerry followed his script to the letter. They said virtually nothing about jobs, education, and health care reform during their campaigns, and they scrupulously avoided making any promises to make big, sweeping changes on them if elected.
If Democrats had looked at the polls much closer they would have seen that a majority of voters wanted Democrats to act like Democrats and manage the economy better, boost education, create more jobs, and provide affordable health care. These are the exact same things people are telling pollsters now that they want. And express anger at the Democrats for not doing them.
Obama doesn't need polls to tell him the obvious that people want and expect the Democrats to reverse not just the damage of the GOP and Bush, but also their own timidity in fighting for jobs and revving up the economy. They are sick of hearing the Democrats talk about tax credits and unemployment extensions, and are repelled at congressional wrangling over appropriations bills. They want to the Democrats propose and then enact a real jobs program and massive funding plan to stop home foreclosures. That's what they thought real Democrats did and stood for.
Some Democrats finally get it. They no longer delude themselves that the public is still so mad at the GOP and that the party is still so fractured, petty, and incompetent that they will suffer minimal loses in the November mid-term elections. They take the threat of the tea party and the Palin crowd seriously enough to warn President Obama to off the wraps, knock off the make nice appeasement with the GOP, and go to the wall for a full jobs and economy remake. In other words fight for the things the Democrats hinted they'd fight for during the election. There's still time.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
I hear America shouting. I feel our fear, our loathing and the deep distrust of one another that grows like cancer in the body politic.
When we look around it is sometimes difficult not to feel a certain sense of panic. Yes, the sky, badly over weighted with smoke, smog and pollutants, is falling. Yes the effluence from the affluent flows into our one sea. Yes, there are lots of people around the world who hate us and want to kill us. (Not most, but more than enough). Yes, the economy stinks, and there is too much unemployment and under-employment. Our political parties are more interested in winning than in governing for our benefit. Our newspaper industry is dying. Our media companies are consolidating and our democracy, that depends on an informed electorate, is in danger. But none of this is the truly bad news.
Our greatest peril is a mean nativism that is growing malignantly through our society--and it is not a creature of either the right or the left. It grows from fear--fear that both parties cynically play to.
Nativism, the dividing of a nation into different classes of legitimacy, has existed forever, and usually it is based on some fear that is real but then taken to an extreme. Yes, we were attacked by Muslim extremists on 9-11. And yes, we are fighting wars in two Muslim countries and by killing Muslims raising a certain animosity. But this should not make all Muslims enemies or Muslim Americans come under an umbrella of fear and suspicion.
Yes, we have an immigration problem. We have not protected our borders. But we have let immigration become a code word for Hispanic and have thus cast every brown skinned person in the role of illegal interloper, suspected criminal, gangster and parasite. The truth is that even the undocumented and we are in a dual parasitic and symbiotic relationship. But that is too nuanced for our sound byte politics of screaming and distortion.
Now to all the xenophobia directed against Hispanics and Muslims, we add a new discussion: The repeal of the 14th Amendment which confers citizenship on all who were born here--regardless of the legal status of their parents. Now, if we were having a reasonable and dispassionate discussion and writing a brand new constitution, this might be a legitimate topic. After all very few other nations grant automatic citizenship based simply on birth. My mother, born in Belgium to American parents who were travelling, was not Belgian. However, there is a context to this issue and it is, in my view, ugly.
Terms like "anchor babies" and images of people pouring across our border to drop babies in order to bring the rest of the family later, are ugly and demeaning. They are also clear code for Hispanic.
We have trod these fearful grounds before. There was the Yellow Peril. There was the Papist Peril with all those Poles and Italians. And, of course, there were always the Jews. These folks could not be, could never become "real Americans," like the white Protestants. Ironic, isn't it, that our current Supreme Court consists of three Jews and six Catholics.
The genius of America has been our ability to assimilate the strangers in our midst. We have always done this with some difficulty and awkwardness. There has always been both pain and resistance. But we did it.
Now I wonder. Our venom is so poisonous and our fear so deep that I am beginning to question if we can turn away from this demonizing of all whom we consider the other. I see so many good people who look at the real issues but react with over-broad fear and anger.
There are reasoned conversations to be had concerning Mosques in Manhattan, but we are not having them. There are legitimate questions about our borders and immigration policies and profiling. The nature and responsibilities of citizenship is an important discussion. We are neither asking these questions dispassionately nor listening to each other with open hearts or minds. We are shouting. We are angry. We are frightened.
Yet, I am not ready to give up on us. If we have a special providence it is not in our perfection but our vision. We dream a great dream: E Pluribus Unum. Not easy to achieve, but we do better than most. Make that better than any.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
I am very uncomfortable with Gail's take on Obama and the Mosque. Legally there is nothing to say except that Muslims have the same rights as any other religion. Obama has to affirm this commitment to our Constitution. If the proponents of the Mosque can survive the zoning hell that every church and synagogue also has to go through for a great variety of excuses, they should be able to build their Mosque/Cultural Center.
We are not at war with Islam. We are fighting and dying in Muslim countries, in theory, for the sake of Muslims. This is why we wanted to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. We cannot be fighting and dying only for their religious freedom there and ignore it here--or worse make all Islam into our all-purpose enemy.
On the other hand, open and honest dialogue means that I can recognize their right--and defend it--and still be uncomfortable. I can express my discomfort without being an Islamophobe. I have lived happily and well in an Arab Muslim country--not simply as an American but as a Jew. I have received amazing loving hospitality and truly believe we can live in peace with each other. However, honest dialogue runs in two directions and to the extent that they believe that their building is a gesture of healing, those who do not feel that way are obligated to share their feelings kindly and respectfully.
We can have honest conversations without name calling or believing the worst of each other. We can wrestle with delicate sensibilities and constitutional rights without looking cynically for political advantage. We can, as an old Rabbi once suggested to me as I prepared to deliver a eulogy in a delicate situation, "Tell the truth nicely." This is what we owe each other.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
During a recent bout of brain freeze, I opined that Obama may not lean that far to the left and it is all a label and all that other blather. I am admitting here and now that I was wrong. The man leans so far to the left that he is going to fall over and break a left rib after leaning so far over in his Cole Haan shoes.
How did I come to this conclusion? How did I at last see the light that others long before me have seen like a wayward comet flashing across the sky then trailing off into parts unknown? It all comes down to the mosque caper and the fact that our chief executive, our head honcho, the one that our whole country elected to office, gave the presidential nod to building a mosque near Ground Zero.
It's one thing if a group of overly open-minded people okay it. It's one thing if Mayor Bloomberg okays it, though it's enough to ride up on the Richter scale of insensitivity, but it is another when it comes from our left-wing commander in chief on the eve of Ramadan, the Moslem holy month. What was he thinking? Apparently not too much.
Defending his decision, our commander-in-chief said that he wanted to show religious tolerance. While they can legally build a mosque, there is the letter of the law and then there is the spirit, and this violates its spirit because funding a mosque from the same group who were basically responsible for destroying the people who worked there. I know that there are law-abiding Moslems, but there wasn't a word of condolence from them after 9/11. And their silence could be taken as an agreement over what happened.
How about a compromise? How about as a show of tolerance Obama asks Feisal Abdul Rauf, the mastermind behind the project, and his radical Muslim Brotherhood buddies to throw a church, a synagogue and a Hindu temple into the project? That would be a show of tolerance that they just don't have.
Sometimes newspapers get something right. Yes, it's an increasingly rare phenomenon. But our own beloved Los Angeles Daily News got it so right by bringing in Al Martinez as a regular columnist. Yes, he has a Pulitzer. Yes, he has a long record as a reporter, a screenwriter, a novelist and a columnist. But it is not the length of his resume but the content of writing that makes him standout.
Few people write well. Fewer still write with heart. Even fewer combine intelligence, insight, poetry and humor. Al is the poster child for this rarest of specimens.
Yes, of course, I wanted to get a column of my own. And naturally I am very jealous of Al. However, I am not jealous that he got the column. I am jealous that he got the talent! We are all very lucky to have him. He is a treasure.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Talk show host Dr. Laura (Schlesinger) quickly and predictably bowed to public pressure and apologized for her on air N word laced diatribe. The apology is not good enough for the National Urban League. It demands that Talk Radio Network pull the plug on her show. Dr. Laura is a soft target because she's a white woman that seemingly sprinted way over the line of racial etiquette. It was a no brainer that the League would rage against her. She got the same treatment that the pack of white celebrities, politicians and public figures that have used the N word.
But Dr. Laura is not of that ilk. In fact, she got it right about the word, or more particularly who uses it, condones it, and even glories in it. And that's the legion of black comedians and rappers that have virtually canonized the word. They sprinkle the word throughout their rap lyrics and comedy lines, and black writers, and filmmakers go through lengthy gyrations to justify using the word. During a panel discussion at the Summer Television Critics Association tour in 2005, Aaron McGruder, creator of the popular comic strip, Boondocks, defiantly told the audience that he'd use the N' word as much as he pleased in his comic strip and in his series on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. If folks didn't like it, well tough, said McGruder.
N word users and apologists serve up the lame rationale that the more a black person uses the word, the less offensive it becomes, which is precisely the point Dr. Laura picked apart. They claim that they are cleansing the word of its negative connotations so that racists can no longer use it to hurt blacks. Comedian, turned activist, Dick Gregory had the same idea some years ago when he titled his autobiography, Nigger. Black writer, Robert DeCoy also tried to apply the same racial shock therapy to whites when he titled his novel, The Nigger Bible.
The black N word apologists tick off an endless storehouse of defenses to justify use of the word. They claim that that it is a term of endearingly or affectionately. They say to each other, "You're my nigger if you don't get no bigger." Or, "that nigger sure is something." Others use it in anger or disdain, "Nigger you sure got an attitude." Or, "A nigger ain't s...." Still, others are defiant. They say they don't care what a white person calls them since words can't harm them.
They forget, ignore or distort one thing. Words are not value neutral. They express concepts and ideas. Often, words reflect society's standards. If color-phobia is a deep-rooted standard in American life, then a word, as emotionally charged as nigger, will always reinforce and perpetuate stereotypes. It can't be sanitized, cleansed, inverted, or redeemed as a culturally liberating word. Nigger can't and shouldn't be made acceptable, no matter whose mouth it comes out of or what excuse is tossed out for using it.
There are still dozens of daily examples where whites (and other non-blacks) taunt, and harass blacks by calling them nigger, spray paint the word on their homes, businesses, churches, physically assault and even murder blacks. In the FBI's annual count of hate crimes in America, blacks still make up the overwhelming majority of victims.
The N word reigns supreme at the top of the stack as the favorite racial epithet hurled at blacks during these crimes. Even when the word isn't used, the sentiment is that blacks are still fair game to be abused and dehumanized, and the N word reinforces that belief. The word nigger is and will always have grotesque and deadly meaning to them. And, even if some blacks do occasionally go off the deep end and wrongly harangue whites for using the word, maybe that's because nigger, pricks agonizing historical and social sores.
A handful of black activists have waged war against the N word. Their target is those rappers and writers that have turned the N word into a lucrative growth industry. They have been the exception. Blacks have been more than willing to give other blacks that use the word a pass. The indulgence sends the subtle signal that the word is hardly the earth-shattering, illegitimate word that black and white N word opponents brand it.
Dr. Laura gave no public hint before her spew of the word that she is a closet bigot who routinely uses the word in reference to blacks. But she didn't have too. The obsessive use of and the tortured defense of the word by so many blacks gave her the license to use the word without any thought that there'd be any blow back for doing it. She was wrong and got publicly called out for it. But that doesn't make her rationale or her explanation for using it any less valid. Dr. Laura got it right about the N word.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
For the past year, I have lived with the terrible case of Mitrice Richardson. The surface circumstances about the case are now well known. Mitrice, the 24 year old African-American woman, with emotional challenges, was held and then released alone by Los Angeles County Sheriff's from the station in the early morning hours of September 17, 2009. She then disappeared. Her disappearance touched a national nerve. It ignited loud and anguished pleas from her parents, friends and thousands of concerned citizens, a cover photo in People Magazine, several searches of the area where she was last seen by sheriff's deputies and teams of volunteers, and countless reports of Richardson sightings in Los Angeles and various other cities.
Richardson's mother, Latice Suttton, appeared twice on my radio shows asking for the public's help in finding her daughter. But that wasn't enough. She then asked for my help in formally appealing to Attorney General Eric Holder to direct the FBI to enter the investigation. This was a more than reasonable request since Mitrice's disappearance had by then generated national publicity and outrage. There was great concern that she may have been the victim of foul play that may have involved the crossing of state lines. This made her disappearance and possible death a federal matter.
We knew that Richardson was by no means an aberration. More than 800,000 missing persons cases are on file with the FBI. Most of those are children. However, nearly 29,000 of them are adults and juveniles who are "missing under circumstances indicating that the disappearance was not voluntary; i.e., abduction or kidnapping. This made the case even more compelling. Latice and I jointly made the request in November, 2009 for Justice Department involvement. The response was the typical bureaucrat's duck and dodge. The FBI said it was sympathetic to the plight of Richardson and her family,and would keep a close watch on developments. There was no commitment to investigate, and no promise of a follow up.
This was a double blow. The L.A. County Sheriff's Department had vehemently disclaimed any responsibility for Richardson's disappearance. It exonerated itself in a lengthy report which insisted it followed proper rules and procedures. This Pontius Pilate hand wash came on the heels of the Justice Department's refusal to take action.
But now with Richardson's death, the questions are even more troubling. Why was she released alone? How did she die? When and how did she die? Were others involved in her disappearance and death? What and how the sheriff's department and with the renewed call for the FBI to get involved in the case, handle the investigation into her disappearance and death?
The FBI and sheriff's department's response to the Richardson case again raised ugly questions regarding how diligently officials investigate the deaths or disappearance of African-Americans, and does the press report their murders or disappearance with the same intensity as white victims, especially when the victims are young black females.
The charge by Richardson's family and local civil rights leaders that the police are insensitive to the disappearance and possible murder of African Americans such as Richardson is not new. Countless groups have marched, picketed and screamed loudly that law enforcement and judges impose a hard racial double standard when the victim is a young African American, whether a missing person as Richardson, or a murder victim, as Richardson may well turn out to be. Whatever the case, the implicit message is that black lives are expendable.
Police officials and judges vehemently deny that they are any less diligent in prosecuting the kidnapping or murder of blacks, or that they expend less time tracking down leads and mounting a full court investigation in the case of a missing person who is African-American. The tipping point is the willingness of the victim's family and friends to go public and keep pressure on authorities to take the murder or disappearance seriously. Richardson's family put constant public pressure on the sheriff's department to pursue every lead and possibility in trying to find Richardson. This made the media take note, especially mindful of the popularly dubbed "missing white woman syndrome." That is to deluge the public with story after story on missing white women such as Jennifer Wilbanks, Chelsea King, Susan Powell, and Natalee Holloway. No tidbit of news, rumor, or gossip about these cases was deemed to report while ignoring or barely mentioning the disappearance of black women. Richardson's family demanded the same headline treatment news for Mitrice.
But what if the Richardson family and friends hadn't turned Mitrice into a cause célèbre in the media and law enforcement? If not, we'll never know whether she would have been less than a bare footnote in the news. Fortunately, this was not the not the case.
Richardson's death now marks another chapter in the terrible saga of her disappearance. The questions about her death are just as endless as those of her disappearance. Richardson's family now more than ever needs those questions answered.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
It all goes to show that you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time. That and that most things are a matter of perspective.
Who cares what people call Obama? As long as it's clean and doesn't contain any threats or vulgarities, then it's all good. He's a politician and is in the public eye, so he probably has the hide of a rhino. Even so, I wouldn't want to be too happy if someone called me leftwing. And I would probably sue for defamation of character.
The bottom line is that our dearly beloved president made promises and campaign pledges that he couldn't possibly have kept. Not only because he is a politician and his pie-in-the sky exuberance but because he was about as inexperienced as they come. While it is true that he has signed more bills than most any president, the jury is still out on the impact that he will have on this country.
He promised to create jobs and that has failed, but the economy was so depleted from the collapsed housing market that even the love child of Donald Trump and Warren Buffet couldn't have possibly pulled off a revival.
Jonathan has goofed about the wars, though. While I don't want to see more people die, Iraq and Afghanistan are one of those pick your poison deals where we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. The gaffe we made is that we leapt across cultural bounds assuming that we could whitewash theirs clean with ours. That was our mistake. We should have taken the time to get to know who we were dealing with. In his biography, "the Eternal Male," Omar Shariff makes the case when he writes about their distrust of foreigners and interlopers, which is what we are.
Probably no one could have pulled it off, least of all a freshman senator from Illinois and his wife, Marie, let's vacation in Spain, Antoinette.
Newsweek Editor Fareed Zakaria as the poster child for Moslem tolerance? Fuggetabout it. He's just a scribe who can't practice what he preaches.
In 2005, the Anti-Defamation League awarded him the Hubert Humphrey First Amendment Award championing free speech, which he kindly accepted probably along with a nice chicken dinner and some nice kosher vino.
And it remained in his office at Newsweek until the ADL had the utter temerity to opine that a mosque near Ground Zero should be a nix. They didn't say that there should never be a mosque anywhere near the Western Hemisphere, just that one near Ground Zero should be a no-go.
Blathering on about free speech and about how Feisal Abdul Rauf, the guy behind the mosque is really one heck of a guy, despite all his ties to radical Muslim organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, Zarakia returned the award to the ADL. I guess that while exercising his right to free speech, he forgot that Abraham Foxman at the ADL has his right to free speech, too. Guess that small details like that don't matter to Zakaria.
If he were so concerned about free speech and freedom of religion, he might want to aim his pen and articles towards the Moslem countries where there is not one synagogue or church and where people cower in fear for being what they are because he'd be busy for quite some time.
I do not consider myself part of what Press Sec. Gibbs called the "professional left." I agree with Earl that Obama has made some really splendid accomplishments--achieving in his first year and a half what no other Democrat ever achieved. He has a record worth bragging about--if you are a member of the amateur left. His many large ideas are not perfect. They are not the dream of the left, and he did have to compromise--but politics is both the art of compromise and the art of the possible. He has achieved major victories in healthcare reform, the stimulus to break the free fall of the economy, TARP, financial reform and environmental programs.
While it may seem perverse, the proof of the magnitude of his accomplishments is the frantic and desperate nature of the push back from Republicans, the professional right and the Tea Party people. All in all on the domestic front I am contented by pragmatic progress instead of idealistic failure.
However, on the two war fronts, I am despondent. Yes, he is keeping his campaign promises. He said he would leave Iraq--and we are leaving. He said the Afghanistan was the right war and he intended to win it. He did not lie. But he is wrong, and I fear he will go down as the LBJ of the 21st Century. Remember LBJ was wonderful domestically. He passed landmark civil rights legislation, and created Great Society programs of social welfare (later all but dismantled by Clinton). But it was the war in Vietnam that brought LBJ down. It may well be the war in Afghanistan that makes liberals sit on our hands in 2012 and more importantly 2014.
By any measure--or as Rumsfeld liked to say "metrics"--our wars are going badly. We have done what Sen. George Aiken suggested regarding Vietnam, "Declare victory and get out." We have no victory in Iraq. We replaced Arab Sunni with Iran-friendly Shiites. The Sunnis are compelled to wage civil war because after what they did to the Shiites for decades, they expect no mercy from them now that the roles have been, with our help, reversed. We are leaving. But we are leaving a mess. There is no democracy, no coalition, no deal for distribution of oil income or political power. But we are done because having broken it we at last recognize we can't fix it.
Afghanistan is worse. We might have had a chance eight years ago. But we took our eyes off the prize and did not finish--or really even begin--meaningful political and infrastructure changes. Now when we surge all we are doing is becoming targets, killing civilians and producing the next generation of Taliban sympathizers. Since our surge, civilian casualties have gone up 31% (and this is our number). We are seen as occupiers and short timers. There is no reason for any Afghan to throw his lot in with us since we are clearly leaving, and they will have to live or die with the Taliban.
While I believe that our intentions are honorable, we have to face the fact that we are not winning--not the military battle nor the battle for their hearts and minds. As the young and pre-political John Kerry said, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
This is now Obama's war and he will be held accountable. The right will excoriate him for not being bold enough. The left will complain bitterly that we are in an empire-killing quagmire that has defeated Greece, the British and the Soviets.
Mr. President, you are simply wrong on this. Even by the standards of Gen. Petraeus, we are doomed. His own counter insurgency doctrine pre-supposes a decent governmental entity to protect and nurture. This does not exist anywhere in Afghanistan.
Obama's version of Bush's "we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here," is non-sense. Al Qaeda is in Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, Indonesia, Eritrea, Great Britain and the United States. We do have to wage a war against Al Qaeda, but not on their turf. We are the strongest agent in the world for recruiting membership in Al Qaeda. Stop and get out now.
You will be punished politically. Yes, I will vote for you and support you but without the same enthusiasm. I will not sit on my hands, but I will not applaud a wasteful and wrong-headed war.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs need not have apologized for blasting the "professional left." If anything he was much too nice when he branded the carpers at President Obama professional Obama baiters. They have relentlessly ripped Obama for being a spineless, deal making, soft on the right, beltway, corporate centrist, Democrat. Obama has had to hear this almost from the moment he opened his mouth in February 2007 and announced he was a presidential candidate.
Obama's sin if it can be called that was raising the expectation bar on what he could do in the White House to Olympian heights. He did run initially to the left, or what seemed to be the left, only because Democratic Party leaders have veered so far to right. At times on the campaign stump, he revved up the crowds with defiant knocks at the Pentagon war machine, the corporate and lobbyist money changers, hinted at a new war on poverty, that he'd dump the Patriot Act, cut Wall Street down to size, and back universal health care. The wreck and ruin of the Bush years was the powerful tragedian backdrop to Obama's impassioned shouts to remake America. Legions did believe that Obama had come down from the mountaintop in lock step with Moses.
But even a cursory read of his actual record, as well as a fine comb of his speeches, statements, and interviews, during his years in the Illinois state legislature and his brief stint in the Senate showed that he was hardly the "most liberal Democratic senator" the right branded him, let alone a starry eyed idealist. He was a pragmatic, centrist, Democrat who when circumstances dictated would court and conciliate moderates and conservatives on crucial policy issues. Obama's pragmatic bent was plainly evident during the campaign when he and Republican rival John McCain for the most part agreed on the issues of expansion of stem-cell research, immigration, faith-based social services, expanded government wiretapping, building more nuclear power plants, global warming, fair trade, and the death penalty. Obama at times edged close to McCain on his plans on health care and taxes and the Iraq War.
Obama got the stamp of approval from top Democrats, broke the cash registers on fund raising, beat down the Clinton Machine, got the parade of endorsements from former Reagan and Bush Sr., and even W. Bush officials, and drew the raves of virtually every major news outlet. This would never have happened if there was even the slightest hint that he would be a toss caution to the wind, left crusader.
The dictate of American presidential politics is that liberal and moderate Democrats in the early stages of the presidential political game run to the left and move quickly to the center as they sniff the possibility of victory. This hardly tags him as a play to the gate political backslider. It merely shows that pragmatism in presidential politics is the only real principle that counts when it comes to winning and governing.
That's precisely what irks Gibbs, and almost certainly Obama too, since the criticism is drenched with political denial. Obama scrapped talk of universal health care, and later dropped the public option from his plan. If he didn't he could have kissed any deal on health care good-bye. The millions of Americans that ultimately will benefit from many of the provisions of the reform would have been the loser. He backpedalled from his hard line demand that the US immediately pull out of Iraq, and instead talked about timetables, and assessing ground conditions. If he hadn't done that, the Pentagon and conservative Democratic war hawks would have ratcheted up their assault on him as a Neville Chamberlain reincarnate appeaser. As it now stands there will be an Iraq pull out before the end of his first term. Obama gets pounded for allegedly reneging on his promise to close Guantanamo, for wiping out the ban on gays in the military, and for not spending billions more on the economic stimulus, but a close look shows that Obama has not reversed gear on any of these pledges. It just hasn't happened as fast and in the way the left demands.
Obama takes great offense at any talk that he's back flipped on the issues. He pleads for progressives to appreciate the changes that have been made in the relative short time he's been in office, to consider the mess that he inherited, and the powerful forces arrayed against him that want nothing less than his political head on a platter. That's a reasonable plea to make. But it's a plea that will fall on deaf ears. There are just too many on the left whose heads are stuffed with too many delusions about what he can do and when and how he should do it.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
I don't know if Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters is a lamb or a barracuda. Clearly however she is no pussycat. Equally clearly she is being poached in some very hot water. She's tough and a fighter, and has fought for people in her district and, of course, for herself. She has delivered services and, as a congressperson, has had to constantly gather money. This is, for one and all, a corrupting enterprise and no one is pristine.
I think that Earl is wrong to believe that the Democrats are happily offering her up in order to look good and be credible in keeping their promise to be the most transparent government in history and to drain the swamp of corruption. There is no political universe I know of where one looks good trying one of your own. There is no political advantage in an election that will depend on turn out--particularly of minorities--for Democrats to staunch the inevitable bleeding in an off-year in a bad economy. There is no universe where Democrats benefit from picking on representatives on any ethnicity from California and New York. Sacrificial offerings should come from red states already lost.
I think too that Gail overstates the case against Rep. Waters. Although CREW is considered to be a liberal watchdog group, they do tend to go after people--including Democrats--who do not hue to the George Soros party-line. And this is generally true of members of the Black Caucus.
Given how ethically challenged our elected officials are, it is curious that out of such a universe the ethics panel has found two black members of congress to charge: Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters. The question is not so much if their choices are defensible (or more accurately, if their targets are indictable) but if there is some form of selective prosecution. This is a very troubling question--and the answer is far from clear.
2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Maxine Waters may be a lot of things, but a sacrificial lamb she ain't.
Her modus operandi hasn't been lost on the public, either. In 2009, CREW, the Citizens for Responsibility an Ethics in Washington, named Waters as one of the 15 most corrupt members in Congress, though she also made the 2005 and 2006 lists as well. In 2004 after the LA Times ran a story about how her relatives had profited from doing business with companies that she helped, she rallied to have the license of the Times' owned public television station KTLA revoked. Though we should have been forewarned early on in 1992 when she called the mayhem of the Watts Riots a mere "rebellion."
And now she's in trouble for her role in the bailout of a United BankOne, a minority owned bank, meaning black owned in Water World. A senior member of the committee that oversees banking, she's been accused of arranging a meeting between Treasury Department representatives and officials of the bank where her husband owns $250,000 in stock and is on the board. After that meeting, she managed to garner a $12-million bailout for them. While it is true that the Wall Street tycoons weaseled more, Waters et al aren't exactly in that category. They're just LA hustlers trotting out with their hands out and their race cards drawn.
Let the timing of the Water World follies be what it may. Even if the axe reined down on her scheme the night before the election, she still finagled her way to a handout. This hardly makes her a sacrificial lamb. A barracuda maybe, but never a sacrificial lamb.
They must be dancing cheek to cheek over this one, and the party will last long after anyone says, "I do." Yes, the California Supreme Court overturned the same sex marriage ban.
So confused was I on exactly what is a marriage is that I went online. And even dictionary.com., which I always so relied on for my word analysis and diction needs, let me down. The first definition was that a marriage was a union between a man and a woman; the second broadened it out by mentioning couples yet leaving out the sex part, but paving the way for more wedding registries at Macy's.
While I hate to discriminate and have met some same-sex couples who seem perfectly capable of raising normal, non-criminal babies who get graduate from high school and get jobs and the like, there is something about it that feels about as comfortable as an ill-fitting bridal slipper because it could lead to other things like people trying to marry their pets or something else, for that matter. And who's to say that two first cousins might one day want to marry? If we deny them, could they say that we are discriminating against them, too?
I know it's eventually going to pass because they've already knocked down some of the bricks in our fifty state wall and it only will be a matter of time before the whole wall comes tumbling down. The irony is that I would gladly attend the marriage, confirmation ceremony of many of the same sex couples I know and bring a little gift, too. But underneath there would always be the thought that we should define marriage then give same-sex couples a commitment ceremony with many of the same trappings as everyone else.
The headlines in several major dailies blared "Maxine Waters under scrutiny for bank ties." "Waters Helped Bank whose stock she once owned." "What is the Maxine Waters scandal all about?" The reports painted the embattled California Congresswoman who is one of the most influential and outspoken elected officials as a corrupt, influence peddling, deal making politician who schemed to get millions in TARP bailout money for a bank that her husband had stock in. Waters, readers were told, faced possible ethics charges in the House.
There's a problem, no several problems, with this. Start with the headlines that trumpeted Water's woes. They are a year and half old. The House Ethics Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Congressional Black Caucus, and in fact all House Democrats reported and hashed over the allegations against her at the time. Apart from the allegation that she arranged a meeting on behalf of the National Bankers Association, a minority banking group, with treasury officials, and her husband had an interest in one of the banks, the allegation is not new. During that time legions of bankers and Wall Street financial house reps met with treasury officials. They all came with hat in hand for bailout funds. Waters did not attend the meeting in question and had no input in the decision by the treasury to eventually shell out $12 million in bailout funds to minority banks. On the strength of an old charge, a single meeting, and no proof that Waters arm twisted treasury officials to fork over money to the bank in question or any other minority bank, Waters muscled aside Charles Rangel as the poster politician for Congressional thievery and malfeasance.
It's no accident that Waters has been dumped on the political hot seat three months before the 2010 mid-term elections. House Democrats are scared stiff that the GOP will erase their majority. What better way to prove that they can police their own, and make good on Pelosi's oft quoted vow to cleanse the swamp in Congress than to make sacrificial lambs out of a handful of wayward Democrats. And chose those who are the most identifiable, outspoken, and vulnerable, and that's African-American Democrats. The choice of Waters and Rangel has little to do with the actual charges and their alleged transgressions, or even whether they have merit or not. It's politics, pure and simple.
The list of white Republicans and Democrats that engage in influence peddling, conflict of interest, bed ties with lobbyists, nepotism, commit campaign financial violations and improprieties, would fill up a small telephone directory. There are occasions when a few of them get hand slap punishments for their sins. Almost always when they are so over the top they can't be ignored. But black politicians that are accused of wrongdoing, or actually do wrong, are called on the carpet far out of proportion to their numbers.
The pattern was set more than two decades ago. Between 1983 and 1988, the Reagan Justice Department initiated 465 political corruption probes of elected officials. A disproportionate percentage of the investigations were against black elected officials even though they comprised only three percent of US elected officials. A decade later the pattern was repeated. Then half of the 26 members of the Congressional Black Caucus were the subjects of federal investigations. To put the racial magnitude of the investigations in perspective, this was equivalent to bringing charges against 204 of the 409 white congressional representatives. Reagan and Bush Sr. officials hotly denied that there was any racial bias or animus in the top heavy number of black elected officials hit with investigations and in some cases charges. Administrations officials said the investigations simply were intended to root out political corruption. There is a yes and no to that. Taking money and political cronyism is a time-honored tradition in American politics. A number of white politicians have been indicted, convicted and imprisoned, both Democrats and Republicans. But timing and partisan politics can't be separated from who gets targeted for prosecution or hit with ethics charges. In the case of Rangel and now Waters, they are not rank and file Democrats, they are two of the highest profile, nationally known Democrats, and apart from the fact they're African-American, this gives even greater veneer of credence to Pelosi and ranking Democrats contention that they'll go after any Democrats no matter their party rank and stature that cross the ethics line.
Pelosi and the Democrats should hold to that high standard. But they should hold to it with all Democrats. Waters and Rangel may face trial, and the betting odds are that every effort will be made to lay out their dirty ethics laundry. If convicted, the Democrats will crow that their penalties will serve as warning that the Democrats are staunch standard keepers of the ethical flame in the House. Waters is the perfect sacrificial lamb for them to make that case.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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