http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/bill-clinton-hi.html
I was once fascinated by Bill Clinton. His ability to move a crowd. His knack for making a compromise look like a win-win. His determination in the face of adversity. His ability to run as a moderate, and stand firm in it. His enigmatic charisma that seemed to either enamor or repel anyone he met.
In fact, until last year he was on my top ten list of individuals I'd like to meet and grab a cup of coffee with -- living or dead.
And then I got a taste of the real Bill Clinton. So far, the aftertaste is still sour. Today Russell Goldman reported the bitter truth:
"President Clinton told The View that had Obama chosen his wife instead of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden it would have been "the best politically," and that his wife would have likely taken the job though she didn't want it."
It's a very personal decision who should be vice president. I like Sen. Biden a lot. I think he was a good choice. [Hillary Clinton] would have been the best politically at least in the short run because of her enormous support in the country," he said.
Then came the CNN headlines on Sarah Palin," "People look at her, and they say, 'All those kids. Something that happens in everybody's family I'm glad she loves her daughter and she's not ashamed of her. Glad that girl's going around with her boyfriend. Glad they're going to get married,'" he (Clinton) said.
Which, I found nothing wrong with, except the article ends with him saying once again that Hillary would've been the best choice.
Is that the kind of "friend" that Obama or the dems need in this hot button political season? Someone who goes on television and basically says I like your VP choice, but no cigar? And then goes on to say, "But even though you were short sighted for not lobbying harder for Hillary to be your VP, she really didn't want it anyway."
For less astute voters this may seem like a benign statement. after all Clinton prased Obama in the same article he's quoted here. However, those of us in the know can see exactly what Clinton is doing. They are distancing themselves from Obama so if he fails, they are well positioned to reclaim the mantle of Washington leadership. Why else would you publicaly discredit the choice of Biden after claiming to support the ticket?
Now mind you, this is nothing against Hillary Clinton. I have my issues with her, but her husband's behavior far outweighs anything Senator Clinton has ever done.
In a close election as this one, I have seen first hand the Clinton hubris that the Republicans warned us of all those years ago. I chided myself for being so blinded in my own support for democratic ideals that I didn't see that Bill Clinton really does have a character issue-- but it isn't loyalty--- it is arrogance.
First he sabotaged his own wife's presidential ambition with his desire to be in the spotlight making amped up racially tinged political observations when quite frankly Bill, nobody asked you. Then he and Mrs. Clinton launch insidious arguments, in the name of sexism that the only reason Obama got the nomination was because he was a man. (And although the elephant is still in the room, ladies and gentleman Obama is a Black man.) Obama was painted a an inexperienced lofty young man who arrogantly decided to run against Hillary, a confident woman --who is also for the record, a junior senator.
That set the stage for Sarah Palin even being on the planet in this election year universe. Why else would John McCain or the republicans even think of picking someone who wasn't even on the short list, and obviously, had not been properly vetted?
Finally, in true Clintonion arrogance, Bill blames it all on somebody else. It is Obama's fault. Notice how carefully he chose his words. Hillary would have been "the best politically". He avoids saying she would have been the best period, because that would be bold, even for him. But the sneaky part of this is he is questioning Obama's political judgement by saying "politically". What does the average reader get from this. Obama made a bad political choice, and even if he tried to make the good choice, Hillary would be doing "him" a favor.
All this belies the real point: Bill Clinton started this war within the party on his own like a willful child robbed of his candy. The truth is nobody lost this election for Hillary but Bill Clinton. If he had been able to keep his personal life in order, the question of Clinton fatigue very may well have been settled in 2004. If at a time when most African-American voters hadn't made their mind up about Obama Clinton had layed off the rhetoric, Hillary would've rolled Obama under a bus back to Chicago.
With all that hot blame being served up, I would be remiss not to point out the true culprits: it was us. Us who claim to support democratic ideas but supported a man who believed he was above reproach. Bill Clinton is the same person he was in 1992, 2002, and 2008. Incredibly competitive to the point of negligence. Incredibly nasty when he doesn't get his way. And downright condescending.
The most scathing piece of today's news was I mean come on-- so the VP was beneath Hillary, however for the good of the country she would prove she was a team player? Even if that were true, why would you say something like that in public weeks before an election that impacts not only the people of this country but the world?
It is the single most selfish thing I have ever seen him do, and there are a lot of moments to replay prime time in that category.
Well, why ask why if you're Bill Clinton. Who but Bill Clinton in his wonderful way could be a democratic party leader and publicly support a republican without "supporting it?"After all these years of fighting the vast right wing conspiracy I am uncomfortable with how easily he's become part of the club.
At the risk of having any more unfortunate pig references made, this all feels very Orwellian. As George Orwell's Animal Farm demonstrates, we often become the thing we fight. "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. "
As an under 30 voter, I must admit, it does make me sad. I miss the era of Clinton magic. But I cannot walk away from what he has done. When I cannot tell the tactics of the Clintons from their rivals, and that gives me pause when voting for their policies.
So Bill, if you're reading, I'm sorry we will never have that cup of coffee, but I'm sure you understand. I walk away a little more jaded, but a lot stronger.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
EDITORIAL: Black America: Promised Land Lost?
I wrote this a few years ago. Interesting, isn't it?
Tough love isn’t a bad thing. Tough without the love isn’t too good.
Bill Cosby’s recent speech at Charles Drew Elementary School in Bayview Hunter’s Point could easily be summed up as, “Promised Land Lost.”
Perhaps less poetic than Milton, Cosby came under fire for his harsh analysis of poor Blacks in a controversial speech marking Brown vs. the Board of Education decision last May.
The San Francisco Chronicle printed Cosby’s recent comments blasting negligent Black parents who mourn troubled youngsters. “Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know he had a pistol?,” Cosby asked, “And where is the father? You can’t keep saying that God will find a way. God is tired of you.”
There is a nugget of truth in Cosby’s argument. The future of Black America doesn’t rest in the hands of public institutions. Racism exists, yet we as a people cannot allow racism to prevent us from being who God created us to be. Unjust standard, but what’s the alternative?
Here’s another truth: Most Black people aren’t on drugs, derelict, destitute, in jail, or swiftly heading there---and those people resent the idea that victimization is second nature to Blacks. Cosby’s remarks struck gold with blue collars and buppies within the community resentful of an “underclass” that hasn’t arrived at the foot of the mountain, let alone the top; it also and endeared him to conservatives happier than hallelujah to cosign.
However well intentioned Cosby’s desire for parental responsibility, his indignant response can be likened to Moses in the Old Testament striking water from a rock and telling the unfaithful Israelites, “Hear now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” This was the ultimate insult to God because Moses didn’t believe in the divine transformation. And he paid a hefty price—Moses, the man who spent the majority of his life devoted to God’s work was denied entrance to the promised land because didn’t acknowledge that it was bigger than himself.
A good friend taught me that responsibility means that what we do makes a difference. If accountability applies only to the poor, we’ve created a difference without distinction.
The sense of a common struggle is eroding among some in the Black middle class. We cannot drive our SUV’s to corporate jobs and go to our and step over the homeless on our way to our mega churches without remembering, “To whom much is given, much is required.” It defies the legacy of our grandparents who shared all they had, even when that was little.
Progressives may disagree with their politics, but haven’t conservatives (and Black nationalists) argued for years that the Black community needs people willing to do more than write a check? Cosby is among a privileged few with the ability to command diverse unilateral and national attention. The question begs to be asked--Wouldn’t it be powerful if we used our resources to transform our families instead of shaming them?
Tough love isn’t a bad thing. Tough without the love isn’t too good.
Bill Cosby’s recent speech at Charles Drew Elementary School in Bayview Hunter’s Point could easily be summed up as, “Promised Land Lost.”
Perhaps less poetic than Milton, Cosby came under fire for his harsh analysis of poor Blacks in a controversial speech marking Brown vs. the Board of Education decision last May.
The San Francisco Chronicle printed Cosby’s recent comments blasting negligent Black parents who mourn troubled youngsters. “Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know he had a pistol?,” Cosby asked, “And where is the father? You can’t keep saying that God will find a way. God is tired of you.”
There is a nugget of truth in Cosby’s argument. The future of Black America doesn’t rest in the hands of public institutions. Racism exists, yet we as a people cannot allow racism to prevent us from being who God created us to be. Unjust standard, but what’s the alternative?
Here’s another truth: Most Black people aren’t on drugs, derelict, destitute, in jail, or swiftly heading there---and those people resent the idea that victimization is second nature to Blacks. Cosby’s remarks struck gold with blue collars and buppies within the community resentful of an “underclass” that hasn’t arrived at the foot of the mountain, let alone the top; it also and endeared him to conservatives happier than hallelujah to cosign.
However well intentioned Cosby’s desire for parental responsibility, his indignant response can be likened to Moses in the Old Testament striking water from a rock and telling the unfaithful Israelites, “Hear now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” This was the ultimate insult to God because Moses didn’t believe in the divine transformation. And he paid a hefty price—Moses, the man who spent the majority of his life devoted to God’s work was denied entrance to the promised land because didn’t acknowledge that it was bigger than himself.
A good friend taught me that responsibility means that what we do makes a difference. If accountability applies only to the poor, we’ve created a difference without distinction.
The sense of a common struggle is eroding among some in the Black middle class. We cannot drive our SUV’s to corporate jobs and go to our and step over the homeless on our way to our mega churches without remembering, “To whom much is given, much is required.” It defies the legacy of our grandparents who shared all they had, even when that was little.
Progressives may disagree with their politics, but haven’t conservatives (and Black nationalists) argued for years that the Black community needs people willing to do more than write a check? Cosby is among a privileged few with the ability to command diverse unilateral and national attention. The question begs to be asked--Wouldn’t it be powerful if we used our resources to transform our families instead of shaming them?
Waiting on the World to Change
Published in the Berkeley Daily Planet
Reader Commentaries:
Waiting on the World to Change
By Michelle Milam
Thursday August 28, 2008
I am thinking in moments. I was born nearly 10 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and nearly 16 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My baby sister is five years my junior, my best friend and “sister” is five years my senior. My young cousin was born in the 1990s, and my goddaughter was born in 2000. Many of the children I work with are two generations removed from the civil upheaval of the 1960s. I find it ironic that Barack Obama was born eight weeks after the world received that fateful news that shots struck the presidential motorcade in Dallas.
We are the face of the next generation of Americans who have been given the keys to an elusive and magical kingdom. What we do with it will determine the future not only for this country, but the world.
I am struck by the irony of a changing season and a constant hope. Via the Internet, I watched Sen. Kennedy graciously and proudly pass the torch at the DNC the other night. Nearly 40 years before me, on a black and white television, my mother watched as many of the great and influential change makers of her generation were gunned down. Young men of my father’s generation lived an unsure existence never knowing if they’d be drafted into war. Today many of our young men and women are not only fighting an enemy on a foreign soil, we are fighting a domestic enemy—one who looks like us, holding a handgun and ready to take aim.
My grandparents, only two generations from slavery, lived under Jim Crow. After coming to work in the shipyards of Richmond, they finally bought a home in El Cerrito after being told by a couple down the street, “Nobody will sell to a black family.” Today, many of our generation have moved home, since despite our education, in the face of foreclosure, a sour economy and high housing markets, the keys to the kingdom are under glass.
Is eight years of conservative rule enough?
Barack Obama seems to teeter precariously on a thin line between familiarity and risk, baiting the national conscious, hoping that Americas will vote it.
I agree with McCain and Clinton supporters; this election is not about political experience, something that would matter more in a typical business as usual election year. McCain and the Clinton-Bush dynasty have more than enough experience to roll Obama under a bus back to Chicago. But what do all those moments of experience mean if this moment demands something decidedly different?
What values does this generation believe in?
There is really only one question that needs to be answered, and that question is not whether Barack Obama is ready to lead.
Is America ready to change?
Be careful, if you breathe, you may miss the moment.
Michelle Milam is a Richmond resident.
Reader Commentaries:
Waiting on the World to Change
By Michelle Milam
Thursday August 28, 2008
I am thinking in moments. I was born nearly 10 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and nearly 16 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My baby sister is five years my junior, my best friend and “sister” is five years my senior. My young cousin was born in the 1990s, and my goddaughter was born in 2000. Many of the children I work with are two generations removed from the civil upheaval of the 1960s. I find it ironic that Barack Obama was born eight weeks after the world received that fateful news that shots struck the presidential motorcade in Dallas.
We are the face of the next generation of Americans who have been given the keys to an elusive and magical kingdom. What we do with it will determine the future not only for this country, but the world.
I am struck by the irony of a changing season and a constant hope. Via the Internet, I watched Sen. Kennedy graciously and proudly pass the torch at the DNC the other night. Nearly 40 years before me, on a black and white television, my mother watched as many of the great and influential change makers of her generation were gunned down. Young men of my father’s generation lived an unsure existence never knowing if they’d be drafted into war. Today many of our young men and women are not only fighting an enemy on a foreign soil, we are fighting a domestic enemy—one who looks like us, holding a handgun and ready to take aim.
My grandparents, only two generations from slavery, lived under Jim Crow. After coming to work in the shipyards of Richmond, they finally bought a home in El Cerrito after being told by a couple down the street, “Nobody will sell to a black family.” Today, many of our generation have moved home, since despite our education, in the face of foreclosure, a sour economy and high housing markets, the keys to the kingdom are under glass.
Is eight years of conservative rule enough?
Barack Obama seems to teeter precariously on a thin line between familiarity and risk, baiting the national conscious, hoping that Americas will vote it.
I agree with McCain and Clinton supporters; this election is not about political experience, something that would matter more in a typical business as usual election year. McCain and the Clinton-Bush dynasty have more than enough experience to roll Obama under a bus back to Chicago. But what do all those moments of experience mean if this moment demands something decidedly different?
What values does this generation believe in?
There is really only one question that needs to be answered, and that question is not whether Barack Obama is ready to lead.
Is America ready to change?
Be careful, if you breathe, you may miss the moment.
Michelle Milam is a Richmond resident.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Gratitude
What does it truly mean to be thankful?
Birds. Phone calls. Jobs. Thread. Tact. Driving. Prayer. Mothers. Destiny.
We take many things for granted each day. In many cases, we feel like we have a provisional license to complain as soon as the sun peaks over the clouds each morning. Drat! Another day!
I think, today, about all the things that pissed me off. Annoyed me. Didn't go my way. Didn't happen like they were 'sposed to. Was I waiting for the universe to stop, pause and give awe to me?
And yet many of us are. Unwittingly waiting for the universe to acknowledge us. Mad and waiting.
What would a day be like if we didn't ask God for anything and thanked Him for all he did. What if we were grateful for our mistakes, which keep us human. What if we appreciated the ice cream cone even after it dropped, the flat tire, the girlfriend that gets on our last nerve. What if we listened to the caustic language of crickets in the night, trilling for all the world to notice.
Would the universe pause in awe?
Birds. Phone calls. Jobs. Thread. Tact. Driving. Prayer. Mothers. Destiny.
We take many things for granted each day. In many cases, we feel like we have a provisional license to complain as soon as the sun peaks over the clouds each morning. Drat! Another day!
I think, today, about all the things that pissed me off. Annoyed me. Didn't go my way. Didn't happen like they were 'sposed to. Was I waiting for the universe to stop, pause and give awe to me?
And yet many of us are. Unwittingly waiting for the universe to acknowledge us. Mad and waiting.
What would a day be like if we didn't ask God for anything and thanked Him for all he did. What if we were grateful for our mistakes, which keep us human. What if we appreciated the ice cream cone even after it dropped, the flat tire, the girlfriend that gets on our last nerve. What if we listened to the caustic language of crickets in the night, trilling for all the world to notice.
Would the universe pause in awe?
Sunday, April 22, 2007
To accept the things I cannot change
A friend of mine encouraged me to challenge myself to journal for the next forty days on my spiritual journey with God. It is a challenge I accept, with some hesitation.
Even if it is just one line a day, she said hopefully, It could be something that you could use to see where you started and where you ended in your journey. I loved her optimism, and her carefully framed suggestion that perhaps my inner sanctuary needs a good spring cleaning. It is the kind of nudge that only a sister could give you in love without offense.
This is coming at the heels of a powerful 40 days of prayer and fasting that changed my life, hers and many people around me. Now I feel I have walked right into a period of preparation. Walking into that season is kind of like walking into the middle of a party in which everyine is grooving, you know, having a good old time until you walk in there looking undressed for the celebration.
It is much easier for me to write poetry, fiction, even distantly removed essays than to write about my real life. I suppose in some ways that is why I've only kept one diary in my life. It is painful for me to write honestly about my real life.
So at the start of this challenge, which already finds me well over a week into my 40 day spiritual journey of fasting and praying, I'm going to try this out and see where my gutsiness and personal waterfall of self take me.
Today, I am tired. Not spiritually tired, but physically and mentally tired. I got up this morning to sing at eight and eleven o'clock service. The topic? Love. The greatest spiritual gift of all is not preaching or teaching or discernment or faith or the gift to move others with our gifts...it is love. Anything we do without love means nothing. Love is more important than what we say, what we believe, what we know, or what we do.
Years ago I asked God to teach me to love, and I thought that he did by putting difficult people in my life. I've been around a lot of people who don't know how to love well. I went through the obvioud reactions, Why me? What is wrong with me? What is wrong with them? Well this is the way it is, and finally I accept that this is a lesson even if I don't know what the subject is.
My favorite scripture was Corinthians-- the love chapter. In the past few years I put it away in favor of another favorite scripture "Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of this not seen..." but the bible clearly states that love is greater than faith, greater than hope.
So why have I run away from loving, and letting people love me?
I don't know. But I do know that the call to answer is one I accept.
Even if it is just one line a day, she said hopefully, It could be something that you could use to see where you started and where you ended in your journey. I loved her optimism, and her carefully framed suggestion that perhaps my inner sanctuary needs a good spring cleaning. It is the kind of nudge that only a sister could give you in love without offense.
This is coming at the heels of a powerful 40 days of prayer and fasting that changed my life, hers and many people around me. Now I feel I have walked right into a period of preparation. Walking into that season is kind of like walking into the middle of a party in which everyine is grooving, you know, having a good old time until you walk in there looking undressed for the celebration.
It is much easier for me to write poetry, fiction, even distantly removed essays than to write about my real life. I suppose in some ways that is why I've only kept one diary in my life. It is painful for me to write honestly about my real life.
So at the start of this challenge, which already finds me well over a week into my 40 day spiritual journey of fasting and praying, I'm going to try this out and see where my gutsiness and personal waterfall of self take me.
Today, I am tired. Not spiritually tired, but physically and mentally tired. I got up this morning to sing at eight and eleven o'clock service. The topic? Love. The greatest spiritual gift of all is not preaching or teaching or discernment or faith or the gift to move others with our gifts...it is love. Anything we do without love means nothing. Love is more important than what we say, what we believe, what we know, or what we do.
Years ago I asked God to teach me to love, and I thought that he did by putting difficult people in my life. I've been around a lot of people who don't know how to love well. I went through the obvioud reactions, Why me? What is wrong with me? What is wrong with them? Well this is the way it is, and finally I accept that this is a lesson even if I don't know what the subject is.
My favorite scripture was Corinthians-- the love chapter. In the past few years I put it away in favor of another favorite scripture "Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of this not seen..." but the bible clearly states that love is greater than faith, greater than hope.
So why have I run away from loving, and letting people love me?
I don't know. But I do know that the call to answer is one I accept.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Defending Dreamgirls
Smokey puts film under fire
By Chris Lee, Times Staff Writer
UNLIKE so many cineplex offerings these days, the big-screen adaptation of "Dreamgirls" does not open with the tagline "inspired by a true story" — even if the movie and the smash Broadway musical that preceded it have done little to conceal their real-life inspiration: Motown Records supremo Berry Gordy and his management of Diana Ross and the Supremes in the '60s and '70s.
As the film has made its inexorable march through award season toward the Oscars, doing increasingly big business at the box office along the way, neither Gordy nor Ross have offered their opinions. But "Dreamgirls," which leads the field with eight Academy Award nominations, has roiled another Motown legend: Smokey Robinson.
" 'Dreamgirls' is an affront to Berry, to Motown, to Diana Ross, to our legacy," Robinson says. "It defames something we've been building for 50 years. And for a group of people who weren't there and don't know what went on at the time to come along and distort Motown — for people all over the world who don't know the true story — that's not acceptable to me."
The soul crooner voices anger at the filmmakers but also particular disappointment with "Dreamgirls" stars Eddie Murphy, Beyoncé Knowles and Jamie Foxx — performers he feels have lost sight of their African American cultural heritage.
"For them to depict as this shyster who was underhanded from the very first moment, paying people off, manipulating everybody and he's hooked up with the Mafia and doctoring the books at his house — that's unacceptable," Robinson explains in uncharacteristically heated tones.
Specifically addressing Robinson's displeasure with "Dreamgirls," the film's distributor, DreamWorks/Paramount, issued this statement:
"On behalf of the filmmakers, we would like to remind Mr. Robinson that 'Dreamgirls' is a work of fiction based on a Broadway play. We also take exception to Mr. Robinson's unwarranted attack on the cast of 'Dreamgirls,' who are all at the zenith of their careers."
The studio's piquant rejoinder notwithstanding, Robinson remains resolute that amends are in order. "Let them tell me why they depicted us in such a negative light," he says. "Berry Gordy broke down racial barriers and brought people together through music. He and Diana Ross deserve an apology."
Mimi's Moment
Well,
I would dispute that. The film is far kinder to the "Deena" character than the movie.
Alright-- I know. Who can dispute with Smokey Robinson? In all fairness, I think he missed the point. I took away from the film the pressure that black labels faced when trying to market their coveted "sound" in a world that wanted a different face. I think that made the characters a little more interesting. I understood why Curtis was Curtis. I didn't agree with it, but I understood.
I wish the film had allowed him to be a little gentler with Effie, and see more of the love. I think we would have had a more rounded character. Nobody should like Curtis at the end of the film, but they should respect the fact that he was just trying to play the game because he was forced to. That would make the final moment of the film, and the tragedy (selling your own soul) all the more heartbreaking.
I also know in a world sort of Black heroes we don't like to talk about their humanity, real or imagined, because it becomes an unfair liability.
It wasn't all about knocking the Berry Gordyish character for me. I don't need to see perfect suburban Love Jones blackness Big Chill Style 24-7. You know the type of movie that we all were excited about 10 years ago post Blaxploitation and Boyz in the Hood. Black characters that were only seen as positive if they were super wealthy, super smart, super educated, super moral for a film to super positively represent the Black experience. I think that super human characters are not any more positive than the awful depictions because they lack the ability to represent the depth and humanity of the Black experience. Yet I understand Why we have them. Because anything that is a "weakness" in us is unfairly magnified.
I actually have outgrown the need for positive to equal perfect in black characters. Who wants to see that? I do, however, need to see some growth. I need to see some complexity. I need to see a film that doesn't take the easy way out or make the characters caricatures.
By Chris Lee, Times Staff Writer
UNLIKE so many cineplex offerings these days, the big-screen adaptation of "Dreamgirls" does not open with the tagline "inspired by a true story" — even if the movie and the smash Broadway musical that preceded it have done little to conceal their real-life inspiration: Motown Records supremo Berry Gordy and his management of Diana Ross and the Supremes in the '60s and '70s.
As the film has made its inexorable march through award season toward the Oscars, doing increasingly big business at the box office along the way, neither Gordy nor Ross have offered their opinions. But "Dreamgirls," which leads the field with eight Academy Award nominations, has roiled another Motown legend: Smokey Robinson.
" 'Dreamgirls' is an affront to Berry, to Motown, to Diana Ross, to our legacy," Robinson says. "It defames something we've been building for 50 years. And for a group of people who weren't there and don't know what went on at the time to come along and distort Motown — for people all over the world who don't know the true story — that's not acceptable to me."
The soul crooner voices anger at the filmmakers but also particular disappointment with "Dreamgirls" stars Eddie Murphy, Beyoncé Knowles and Jamie Foxx — performers he feels have lost sight of their African American cultural heritage.
"For them to depict as this shyster who was underhanded from the very first moment, paying people off, manipulating everybody and he's hooked up with the Mafia and doctoring the books at his house — that's unacceptable," Robinson explains in uncharacteristically heated tones.
Specifically addressing Robinson's displeasure with "Dreamgirls," the film's distributor, DreamWorks/Paramount, issued this statement:
"On behalf of the filmmakers, we would like to remind Mr. Robinson that 'Dreamgirls' is a work of fiction based on a Broadway play. We also take exception to Mr. Robinson's unwarranted attack on the cast of 'Dreamgirls,' who are all at the zenith of their careers."
The studio's piquant rejoinder notwithstanding, Robinson remains resolute that amends are in order. "Let them tell me why they depicted us in such a negative light," he says. "Berry Gordy broke down racial barriers and brought people together through music. He and Diana Ross deserve an apology."
Mimi's Moment
Well,
I would dispute that. The film is far kinder to the "Deena" character than the movie.
Alright-- I know. Who can dispute with Smokey Robinson? In all fairness, I think he missed the point. I took away from the film the pressure that black labels faced when trying to market their coveted "sound" in a world that wanted a different face. I think that made the characters a little more interesting. I understood why Curtis was Curtis. I didn't agree with it, but I understood.
I wish the film had allowed him to be a little gentler with Effie, and see more of the love. I think we would have had a more rounded character. Nobody should like Curtis at the end of the film, but they should respect the fact that he was just trying to play the game because he was forced to. That would make the final moment of the film, and the tragedy (selling your own soul) all the more heartbreaking.
I also know in a world sort of Black heroes we don't like to talk about their humanity, real or imagined, because it becomes an unfair liability.
It wasn't all about knocking the Berry Gordyish character for me. I don't need to see perfect suburban Love Jones blackness Big Chill Style 24-7. You know the type of movie that we all were excited about 10 years ago post Blaxploitation and Boyz in the Hood. Black characters that were only seen as positive if they were super wealthy, super smart, super educated, super moral for a film to super positively represent the Black experience. I think that super human characters are not any more positive than the awful depictions because they lack the ability to represent the depth and humanity of the Black experience. Yet I understand Why we have them. Because anything that is a "weakness" in us is unfairly magnified.
I actually have outgrown the need for positive to equal perfect in black characters. Who wants to see that? I do, however, need to see some growth. I need to see some complexity. I need to see a film that doesn't take the easy way out or make the characters caricatures.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
How I write
I'm not really a traditionally visual person, I suppose. I don't "think" in words most of the time either. I think I am more of a "feeling person". I credit this to all my writing teachers who said "Show, don't tell." Of course, this rule is subjective. There are times when it is better to tell, but most poetry is about showing.
If you say the word "sand", for instance:
I will feel
the grains of the sand,
the wetness or the dryness of it,
the way it moves, the way it tastes,
the way it touches other things,
the way it sticks,
the impression it leaves
the way the color of it makes me feel
the way the shape of it makes me feel
the way the word is "colored" --does it have double meanings or connotations? What do others associate with this word?
how does the word sound? If it was a musical note, what note would it be? Flat? Sharp? The harmony? The base? What is the music of the poem?
any analogy between the word and other things...
I'll have a flash of the image in my mind, and I may see something very vividly, but I don't attempt to be describe object in my mind, I attempt to describe the way that I feel about that object. I don't do it deliberately, really. It just is the way I think. The words and the images just start pulling from my mind, like they are coming from some otherworldly place, and they are ready for me to arrange.
If you say the word "sand", for instance:
I will feel
the grains of the sand,
the wetness or the dryness of it,
the way it moves, the way it tastes,
the way it touches other things,
the way it sticks,
the impression it leaves
the way the color of it makes me feel
the way the shape of it makes me feel
the way the word is "colored" --does it have double meanings or connotations? What do others associate with this word?
how does the word sound? If it was a musical note, what note would it be? Flat? Sharp? The harmony? The base? What is the music of the poem?
any analogy between the word and other things...
I'll have a flash of the image in my mind, and I may see something very vividly, but I don't attempt to be describe object in my mind, I attempt to describe the way that I feel about that object. I don't do it deliberately, really. It just is the way I think. The words and the images just start pulling from my mind, like they are coming from some otherworldly place, and they are ready for me to arrange.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Why I hate 80's retro
Okay, I love the 80's--- for sentimental reasons. Although I was born at the tale end of the 70's, it was in the 80's and 90's that I came of age.
So I remember Jellie shoes, Jellie braclets, scruchies, geometric cuts, dookie braids, pastels after labor day, Punky Brewster, twin sets, Lisa Bonet Hair, Flashdance, Micheal Jackson BBSO (before boys slept over), acid wash jeans, gold chains, doorknocker earrings, leg warmers, New Edition, LA Gear high tops, Run DMC, leggings and minis, puff sleeves, ect...
And while I cherish the memories (thanks!) I do not want to see them returning like real life musicals for my veiwing displeasure!
Find new and refreshing ways to relive your childhood, people...like writing some good screenplays about the 80's. I would pay for that. The fashion, I will not.
Didn't God say in the Bible somewhere "Behold, I will do a NEW thing?"
Instead of revisiting each decade, which seems to be the formula of late, why not try something, new? Ahem... It may be a novel concept, but it beats looking like you stepped out of the original Nintendo version of Street Fighter.
So I remember Jellie shoes, Jellie braclets, scruchies, geometric cuts, dookie braids, pastels after labor day, Punky Brewster, twin sets, Lisa Bonet Hair, Flashdance, Micheal Jackson BBSO (before boys slept over), acid wash jeans, gold chains, doorknocker earrings, leg warmers, New Edition, LA Gear high tops, Run DMC, leggings and minis, puff sleeves, ect...
And while I cherish the memories (thanks!) I do not want to see them returning like real life musicals for my veiwing displeasure!
Find new and refreshing ways to relive your childhood, people...like writing some good screenplays about the 80's. I would pay for that. The fashion, I will not.
Didn't God say in the Bible somewhere "Behold, I will do a NEW thing?"
Instead of revisiting each decade, which seems to be the formula of late, why not try something, new? Ahem... It may be a novel concept, but it beats looking like you stepped out of the original Nintendo version of Street Fighter.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Bittersweet Cell phone symphony
Okay,
I have read about a million articles reprimanding us about how rude it is to use a cell phone in public. Notably, I believe we all understand it can be dangerous to use a cell phone while driving.
First of all, I am no defender of cell phones. I personally hate cell phones. They are convenient, but costly in terms of our privacy. I remember my life being a lot simpler when I had an answering machine and a 1.99 beeper from Smartbeep. That meant that if someone wanted to reach me, they had to wait. Now because we have cell phones, people think that they have a right to reach you, and actually have the unmitigated gall to be offended if you don't answer. How many times have you been having an important conversation with family, a private moment with a significant other, or just enjoying yourself and have your cell phone being "blown up" by somebody who wanted something that could've waited another hour? Usually those geniuses are motivated by their lack of motivation "I just wanted to see what you were doing." Well, homie, I am actually trying to have a life. What are YOU doing?
But they are here, so here is my rebuttal to the cell phone etiquette folks.
1. First of all, it is NOT rude to answer the cell phone in a public place. Cell phones mean that our family members, our jobs, and others may need access to us. And due to our increased reliance on cell phones, and the insistence upon people that we answer right away, it is RUDE not to answer. Not answering in some lines of work and in some relationships could cost you big time.
2. It IS rude to talk loudly on a cell phone in earshot of people who are being quieter.
3. It is NOT rude to talk on your cell phone in a restaurant, or while having a meal if you are dining alone. As long as you don't talk on the phone while the waiter is trying to serve you-- it is fine, and as long as you again are not talking loudly and disturbing other people. Some people will vehemently disagree with this, and I will unilaterally shut down their dissent with this comment. First of all, if the lone diner were sitting with a friend at lunch or dinner chopping it up, would you have an issue with the conversation? Probably not. Stop hating because they have someone who wants to talk to them. I have heard louder more inappropriate conversations that are rude from groups of diners, than I have from a lone person having a cell phone conversation over dinner.
3. It IS rude to talk to someone on your cell when you are having dinner with a group of people.
4. It is NOT rude to leave a meeting, movie, to take an important cell phone call if a) it is an emergency, or b.) you are not the presenter at the meeting. c.) it is not a call from a second suiter, while you are on a date. Please leave the room if you must do this.
5. It IS rude to keep your phone on during a meeting and have it go off, and then start talking.
6. You should never answer a cell phone call that is not an emergency at church.
7. It is not rude to talk with someone on your cell phone on public transportation, as long as you keep it short, and keep it low.
8.) It is rude to tell the world all your business on the bus.
9.) Despite all the drawbacks of cell phones, wouldn't you rather use a cell phone than talk on a e coli ridden payphone, drive around looking for directions, miss an important call from your family or your doctor, pull over to a payphone to tell someone you are running late, or miss a call from your boss? Just keep it civil.
You have permission to speak freely.
I have read about a million articles reprimanding us about how rude it is to use a cell phone in public. Notably, I believe we all understand it can be dangerous to use a cell phone while driving.
First of all, I am no defender of cell phones. I personally hate cell phones. They are convenient, but costly in terms of our privacy. I remember my life being a lot simpler when I had an answering machine and a 1.99 beeper from Smartbeep. That meant that if someone wanted to reach me, they had to wait. Now because we have cell phones, people think that they have a right to reach you, and actually have the unmitigated gall to be offended if you don't answer. How many times have you been having an important conversation with family, a private moment with a significant other, or just enjoying yourself and have your cell phone being "blown up" by somebody who wanted something that could've waited another hour? Usually those geniuses are motivated by their lack of motivation "I just wanted to see what you were doing." Well, homie, I am actually trying to have a life. What are YOU doing?
But they are here, so here is my rebuttal to the cell phone etiquette folks.
1. First of all, it is NOT rude to answer the cell phone in a public place. Cell phones mean that our family members, our jobs, and others may need access to us. And due to our increased reliance on cell phones, and the insistence upon people that we answer right away, it is RUDE not to answer. Not answering in some lines of work and in some relationships could cost you big time.
2. It IS rude to talk loudly on a cell phone in earshot of people who are being quieter.
3. It is NOT rude to talk on your cell phone in a restaurant, or while having a meal if you are dining alone. As long as you don't talk on the phone while the waiter is trying to serve you-- it is fine, and as long as you again are not talking loudly and disturbing other people. Some people will vehemently disagree with this, and I will unilaterally shut down their dissent with this comment. First of all, if the lone diner were sitting with a friend at lunch or dinner chopping it up, would you have an issue with the conversation? Probably not. Stop hating because they have someone who wants to talk to them. I have heard louder more inappropriate conversations that are rude from groups of diners, than I have from a lone person having a cell phone conversation over dinner.
3. It IS rude to talk to someone on your cell when you are having dinner with a group of people.
4. It is NOT rude to leave a meeting, movie, to take an important cell phone call if a) it is an emergency, or b.) you are not the presenter at the meeting. c.) it is not a call from a second suiter, while you are on a date. Please leave the room if you must do this.
5. It IS rude to keep your phone on during a meeting and have it go off, and then start talking.
6. You should never answer a cell phone call that is not an emergency at church.
7. It is not rude to talk with someone on your cell phone on public transportation, as long as you keep it short, and keep it low.
8.) It is rude to tell the world all your business on the bus.
9.) Despite all the drawbacks of cell phones, wouldn't you rather use a cell phone than talk on a e coli ridden payphone, drive around looking for directions, miss an important call from your family or your doctor, pull over to a payphone to tell someone you are running late, or miss a call from your boss? Just keep it civil.
You have permission to speak freely.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Who would you be if you weren't afraid?
Who would you be, if you weren't afraid?
The Bible says,"Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Romans 8:15
I asked myself this question five years ago, and it changed who I was. It was, not to sound cliche, a defining moment.
At the time I was afraid of many things. I was afraid to love because I had been hurt. Afraid of rejection, so I only tried things I did well. Afraid of life beacuse it was so unpredictable. Afraid of disappointing God, and even more terrified of trusting Him.
Around that time I stopped courting my spirituality, and made a committment to Christ. I was moved by Matthew.
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened ... If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!" (Matthew 7:7-11)
Like many Christians, I prayed to God, without believing that He would answer (or give me the answer I wanted to hear). Self defeating? No doubt. It is no secret that many of us don't pray and trust in God for our happiness, joy, our future. We don't know (or trust) who God is and we fear being disappointed.
I prayed. I even prayed with expectation, but often times I prayed for things I could get for myself. Faith was not tested. Wanting brought disappointment, so I limited my wants to things I believed I could have.
Ever watch the Never Ending Story? The lead character Sebastian, is introduced to an imaginary world turned real that is dying because children refuse to believe in it. At the end of the story, the world crumbles and all that is left is a grain of sand. In order to restore the world, Sebastian has to exercise his faith and begin to wish for things.
Faith is a lot like that. It costs. And that cost is our hope. In fact, the bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. An oxymoron, really. Faith having substance. The substance of faith is hope, and it is the evidence of things that are present, but unseen. A tough concept for people to grasp, because the flesh (the human) part of us deals with sensory things.
Yet we still believe in the wind.
After I began reading this scripture, I realized that there was something missing from my life. I knew God had a purpose for me, but I wasn't seeking God to lead me into that purpose because I didn't trust him. The close relationship with God wasn't as tight as I projected.
I knew I wanted more for my life. Not just material things, but I wanted to be the person God made me to be. I wanted to step out of fear into faith, but I had no courage. Then I read, and begin to get encouragement from the word to ask for freedom from my fears.
"Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures." (James 4:2)
According to some of the different Bible dictionaries, the word "amiss" means we are asking for something "wrongly" or "mistakenly."
Soon after I began asking, and knocking and seeking my life changed. It changed in a physical way. I moved into a rent free house, I got a car without a note, I found meaningful work after college and step into new roles, I was able to help my grandmother through her last days, I was able to make new friends, and let a man love me.
Spiritually, I was learning to trust God, lean on the word, and share the God news. The biggest thing I learned in that early time was to have hope for my life based on God --not my own will.
However, like Job, faith is tested.
After I reached that peak of self reflection, I experienced some real blows. My grandmother died. I bought a house, and struggle with carrying a note alone. I became jaded and disappointed with my community work because the problems were so much bigger than me. I struggled with what seemed to be an endless series of challenges. I experienced health problems related to anxiety. Sickness visited my family. Things I worked for years to build up crumbled in a matter of moments. I lost love, or realized maybe I had prayed for the wrong thing.
That was the blow. I could deal with everything else, but the thing I wanted most in life was to feel loved and protected. I prayed that God would put his hand on my decisions with men and dating. I opened up and truly trusted and gave of myself, stepping out on faith despite those fears, believing that God would not steer me wrong, and it failed.
It was the most crushing thing I have ever experienced. Even worse than the break up of my parents. Even worse than witnessing domestic violence as a child. I think at some point because of the things I've seen in my life, I stopped wishing, and hoping. Oh, I hoped in theory. But I stopped believing to protect myself from being disappointed yet again. It hurt most because I trusted. And maybe I felt betrayed by people who I loved, by the people who I served, by my own inadequacies, --and by God.
The true test of your faith is when you question if God has failed you, or you have failed God. In fact, that is when many people walk away from God, when their prayer is not answered. Isn't that what Job was all about? The devil said the only reason that Job loves God is because God gives him stuff. Keeps His hand on Job. It can also be crushing to think that you have failed God when you believed with all your heart you did His will.
It is dishonest to tell people seeking God that being saved is an instant solution to their problems. In fact, much like the Matrix, salvation is the red pill. Remember as Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more." Salvation of course, is more than truth, it is the way and the light. It has a reward at the end. Increasingly complicating realities however are in store, and God does not promise that we will not have struggle.
It was a dark time for me. And I'm not alone. You have them too. The times you don't understand but the ache seems unbearable. You are confused and hurt. You pray, and feel that God isn't listening. You panic. You have no peace. It is at those hard times, when pressed by the enemy without and within, that we can only stand on the word:
Hebrews reminds us that it is impossible for God to lie:
"That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to take hold of the hope set before us."
That there is a path to God:I am the way, the truth, and the light: no man cometh unto the Father, but through me. John 14:6
In Hebrews 13:5, we are reminded of a promise that God made, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you."
Question: Do you quit, or do you trust?
The disciples asked themselves this in Luke.(Luke 7:18-21) - "And the disciples of John reported to him about all these things. 19And summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, "Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?" Either you believe that there is another way, or you believe that you need to learn the way.
I now think that I have been blessed most in the valley. I truly know that God is with me. I know now you can ask for something "amiss" or "mistakenly" and God knows. He spares you by removing it, but he doesn't ever forget the slightest ask. Sometimes God answers prayers and the answer is "No." With good reason.
Remember, God told Jesus no. He didn't take the cup from Jesus. Jesus was tempted, and forsaken by his friends. After doing the will of his father, he faced death for the world and unbearable pain. Yet he knew that the souls of all humanity rested on his obedience. Still he prayed to God to spare his life,"saying, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done."
But God's will is greater than our will. Jesus acknowledged this by stressing that if it is God's will, take the cup. Sometimes, no matter how hard you have to drink the cup, and go through the fire. But take comfort in knowing God is with you, working it out for the good, even if the situation is bad. That is where your peace will be.
Now I know that God doesn't owe me anything. I am HIS servant, not the other way around. Immaturity (and the enemy)leads us to think that God would leave us. He promises in his word that he will never leave us, or forsake us. It is in the valley that your soul is shaped into the character of Christ.
I struggle with fear. Faith. Doubt. But I am learning who God is. and I am learning that he wants me to be that woman he intended. And I still believe that God can do infinately more than we can ever ask or hope for. That He gives good things to his children. That He can see the path when we cannot.
And that we can be at peace.
Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I to you. Don't let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful. John 14:27
The Bible says,"Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Romans 8:15
I asked myself this question five years ago, and it changed who I was. It was, not to sound cliche, a defining moment.
At the time I was afraid of many things. I was afraid to love because I had been hurt. Afraid of rejection, so I only tried things I did well. Afraid of life beacuse it was so unpredictable. Afraid of disappointing God, and even more terrified of trusting Him.
Around that time I stopped courting my spirituality, and made a committment to Christ. I was moved by Matthew.
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened ... If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!" (Matthew 7:7-11)
Like many Christians, I prayed to God, without believing that He would answer (or give me the answer I wanted to hear). Self defeating? No doubt. It is no secret that many of us don't pray and trust in God for our happiness, joy, our future. We don't know (or trust) who God is and we fear being disappointed.
I prayed. I even prayed with expectation, but often times I prayed for things I could get for myself. Faith was not tested. Wanting brought disappointment, so I limited my wants to things I believed I could have.
Ever watch the Never Ending Story? The lead character Sebastian, is introduced to an imaginary world turned real that is dying because children refuse to believe in it. At the end of the story, the world crumbles and all that is left is a grain of sand. In order to restore the world, Sebastian has to exercise his faith and begin to wish for things.
Faith is a lot like that. It costs. And that cost is our hope. In fact, the bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. An oxymoron, really. Faith having substance. The substance of faith is hope, and it is the evidence of things that are present, but unseen. A tough concept for people to grasp, because the flesh (the human) part of us deals with sensory things.
Yet we still believe in the wind.
After I began reading this scripture, I realized that there was something missing from my life. I knew God had a purpose for me, but I wasn't seeking God to lead me into that purpose because I didn't trust him. The close relationship with God wasn't as tight as I projected.
I knew I wanted more for my life. Not just material things, but I wanted to be the person God made me to be. I wanted to step out of fear into faith, but I had no courage. Then I read, and begin to get encouragement from the word to ask for freedom from my fears.
"Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures." (James 4:2)
According to some of the different Bible dictionaries, the word "amiss" means we are asking for something "wrongly" or "mistakenly."
Soon after I began asking, and knocking and seeking my life changed. It changed in a physical way. I moved into a rent free house, I got a car without a note, I found meaningful work after college and step into new roles, I was able to help my grandmother through her last days, I was able to make new friends, and let a man love me.
Spiritually, I was learning to trust God, lean on the word, and share the God news. The biggest thing I learned in that early time was to have hope for my life based on God --not my own will.
However, like Job, faith is tested.
After I reached that peak of self reflection, I experienced some real blows. My grandmother died. I bought a house, and struggle with carrying a note alone. I became jaded and disappointed with my community work because the problems were so much bigger than me. I struggled with what seemed to be an endless series of challenges. I experienced health problems related to anxiety. Sickness visited my family. Things I worked for years to build up crumbled in a matter of moments. I lost love, or realized maybe I had prayed for the wrong thing.
That was the blow. I could deal with everything else, but the thing I wanted most in life was to feel loved and protected. I prayed that God would put his hand on my decisions with men and dating. I opened up and truly trusted and gave of myself, stepping out on faith despite those fears, believing that God would not steer me wrong, and it failed.
It was the most crushing thing I have ever experienced. Even worse than the break up of my parents. Even worse than witnessing domestic violence as a child. I think at some point because of the things I've seen in my life, I stopped wishing, and hoping. Oh, I hoped in theory. But I stopped believing to protect myself from being disappointed yet again. It hurt most because I trusted. And maybe I felt betrayed by people who I loved, by the people who I served, by my own inadequacies, --and by God.
The true test of your faith is when you question if God has failed you, or you have failed God. In fact, that is when many people walk away from God, when their prayer is not answered. Isn't that what Job was all about? The devil said the only reason that Job loves God is because God gives him stuff. Keeps His hand on Job. It can also be crushing to think that you have failed God when you believed with all your heart you did His will.
It is dishonest to tell people seeking God that being saved is an instant solution to their problems. In fact, much like the Matrix, salvation is the red pill. Remember as Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more." Salvation of course, is more than truth, it is the way and the light. It has a reward at the end. Increasingly complicating realities however are in store, and God does not promise that we will not have struggle.
It was a dark time for me. And I'm not alone. You have them too. The times you don't understand but the ache seems unbearable. You are confused and hurt. You pray, and feel that God isn't listening. You panic. You have no peace. It is at those hard times, when pressed by the enemy without and within, that we can only stand on the word:
Hebrews reminds us that it is impossible for God to lie:
"That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to take hold of the hope set before us."
That there is a path to God:I am the way, the truth, and the light: no man cometh unto the Father, but through me. John 14:6
In Hebrews 13:5, we are reminded of a promise that God made, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you."
Question: Do you quit, or do you trust?
The disciples asked themselves this in Luke.(Luke 7:18-21) - "And the disciples of John reported to him about all these things. 19And summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, "Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?" Either you believe that there is another way, or you believe that you need to learn the way.
I now think that I have been blessed most in the valley. I truly know that God is with me. I know now you can ask for something "amiss" or "mistakenly" and God knows. He spares you by removing it, but he doesn't ever forget the slightest ask. Sometimes God answers prayers and the answer is "No." With good reason.
Remember, God told Jesus no. He didn't take the cup from Jesus. Jesus was tempted, and forsaken by his friends. After doing the will of his father, he faced death for the world and unbearable pain. Yet he knew that the souls of all humanity rested on his obedience. Still he prayed to God to spare his life,"saying, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done."
But God's will is greater than our will. Jesus acknowledged this by stressing that if it is God's will, take the cup. Sometimes, no matter how hard you have to drink the cup, and go through the fire. But take comfort in knowing God is with you, working it out for the good, even if the situation is bad. That is where your peace will be.
Now I know that God doesn't owe me anything. I am HIS servant, not the other way around. Immaturity (and the enemy)leads us to think that God would leave us. He promises in his word that he will never leave us, or forsake us. It is in the valley that your soul is shaped into the character of Christ.
I struggle with fear. Faith. Doubt. But I am learning who God is. and I am learning that he wants me to be that woman he intended. And I still believe that God can do infinately more than we can ever ask or hope for. That He gives good things to his children. That He can see the path when we cannot.
And that we can be at peace.
Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I to you. Don't let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful. John 14:27
Fighting Temptation
Ever been tempted? Come on, y'all let's be real. Have you ever been tempted to do something you know is outside God's will?
Not one of us is above temptation.
Even Jesus. He went into the wilderness, (although he knew the Lord was with him) and the devil tempted him physically, tempted his desires, and his ego. Think about it. Here is Jesus, the son of God, sent to wander in the wilderness, and go without food, being prepared to die for the sins of people who were not good. Do you think he did not have doubts? We serve a Jesus who knows what it is like to be a man. How else could he have compassion on us?
And yet, he resisted temptation by staying in the word, and on God, and recognizing the devil's plots. Imagine what would have been lost if Jesus had failed, and given into temptation. Salvation would have been lost not only for the world, but for him.
We never know what we could have been had we not yeilded.
We are tempted by the enemy because he wants us to take our focus off our destiny in Christ. Temptation is anything we put before God and his will. We can even be tempted by something God wants us to have by trying to get it in the wrong way or in our own time. (Done that before. Lost someone dear by doing that!)
The sad truth of temptation is the devil has a funny way of making dirt look like diamonds, and diamonds look like dirt. Why? Because if we focus on our temptation, of the eyes, of the flesh, of pride, we become reliant on ourselves, and not God. We desire the things of the devil, and not the things of God.
Important to know here that everybody is tempted, so we cannot hide from it. We can only learn to recognize it and draw on God, because he does not allow us to be tempted beyond our capabilities.
Woke up this morning to a scripture, and a word from the Lord: How do you deal with tempation?
The word was: Jesus was tempted on all points.
Ever had a word delivered to you that was a CONFIRMING word and you just had pick your jaw up off the floor, pull your dress up, and say you got caught hanging out there? Yeah, that hard word, that is hard for you to hear, but you needed to hear? Well I got mine today.
You know, I've been struggling with my purpose for awhile now, and I realize now why I'm struggling, and it is pride.
Last week, we were studying in Sunday school about Paul's thorn. Then in bible study we revisit Paul in the book of Acts, where he is traveling to the early church dealing with the divisions.
As I am being prepared for my destiny, It has become clear that my weaknesses have been tested. The word I got today was clearly convicting: we all are tempted, and none is above temptation. Relying on ourselves we cannot resist temptation. Matter of fact, this is prideful. We can only resist in the Lord.
I think in my quest for perfection, I needed to hear that. Forgot that. I had to repent on that. Because it is not me, by myself that does anything, but me in the Lord. I thought I knew that.
But you never know who you really know until you are tested.
I realize that the thing I hate most in my current occupation, pride and ego, is what I hate most in myself, and I am no better than them or it-- we all suffer as humans from pride.
That isn't a pretty thing. We don't like to admit our flaws, but to effectively minister, to keep our eyes on God's will, and to accept God's grace and mercy, we must admit it.
Experiencing a roadblock? What is tempting you right now? How are you responding?
Are you responding in the word, relying on God, or in your own ability?
I learned long ago, that sometimes God will protect you when you are a fool, but once you get stronger in the word, he will let you go through something so that you can learn the lesson.
I am a poet, so I know the power of words, and try to use kind gentle words to soothe pain and hurt. But sometimes a hard word is needed. It may save your life.
I got that today.
Don't stay in your shame, and think you are doomed, because the good news is that you need a savior, and you have one, ready to forgive and redirect. You will be stronger for your struggle. But you have to repent and come to him. We all struggle. We are human. Everyone, even the most spiritually strong of us is weak in God's eyes, because we deal with sin.
Allow yourself to repent, and let God deal with you as a son.
Sometimes a hard word is a loving word, meant to keep you from stumbling.
Not one of us is above temptation.
Even Jesus. He went into the wilderness, (although he knew the Lord was with him) and the devil tempted him physically, tempted his desires, and his ego. Think about it. Here is Jesus, the son of God, sent to wander in the wilderness, and go without food, being prepared to die for the sins of people who were not good. Do you think he did not have doubts? We serve a Jesus who knows what it is like to be a man. How else could he have compassion on us?
And yet, he resisted temptation by staying in the word, and on God, and recognizing the devil's plots. Imagine what would have been lost if Jesus had failed, and given into temptation. Salvation would have been lost not only for the world, but for him.
We never know what we could have been had we not yeilded.
We are tempted by the enemy because he wants us to take our focus off our destiny in Christ. Temptation is anything we put before God and his will. We can even be tempted by something God wants us to have by trying to get it in the wrong way or in our own time. (Done that before. Lost someone dear by doing that!)
The sad truth of temptation is the devil has a funny way of making dirt look like diamonds, and diamonds look like dirt. Why? Because if we focus on our temptation, of the eyes, of the flesh, of pride, we become reliant on ourselves, and not God. We desire the things of the devil, and not the things of God.
Important to know here that everybody is tempted, so we cannot hide from it. We can only learn to recognize it and draw on God, because he does not allow us to be tempted beyond our capabilities.
Woke up this morning to a scripture, and a word from the Lord: How do you deal with tempation?
The word was: Jesus was tempted on all points.
Ever had a word delivered to you that was a CONFIRMING word and you just had pick your jaw up off the floor, pull your dress up, and say you got caught hanging out there? Yeah, that hard word, that is hard for you to hear, but you needed to hear? Well I got mine today.
You know, I've been struggling with my purpose for awhile now, and I realize now why I'm struggling, and it is pride.
Last week, we were studying in Sunday school about Paul's thorn. Then in bible study we revisit Paul in the book of Acts, where he is traveling to the early church dealing with the divisions.
As I am being prepared for my destiny, It has become clear that my weaknesses have been tested. The word I got today was clearly convicting: we all are tempted, and none is above temptation. Relying on ourselves we cannot resist temptation. Matter of fact, this is prideful. We can only resist in the Lord.
I think in my quest for perfection, I needed to hear that. Forgot that. I had to repent on that. Because it is not me, by myself that does anything, but me in the Lord. I thought I knew that.
But you never know who you really know until you are tested.
I realize that the thing I hate most in my current occupation, pride and ego, is what I hate most in myself, and I am no better than them or it-- we all suffer as humans from pride.
That isn't a pretty thing. We don't like to admit our flaws, but to effectively minister, to keep our eyes on God's will, and to accept God's grace and mercy, we must admit it.
Experiencing a roadblock? What is tempting you right now? How are you responding?
Are you responding in the word, relying on God, or in your own ability?
I learned long ago, that sometimes God will protect you when you are a fool, but once you get stronger in the word, he will let you go through something so that you can learn the lesson.
I am a poet, so I know the power of words, and try to use kind gentle words to soothe pain and hurt. But sometimes a hard word is needed. It may save your life.
I got that today.
Don't stay in your shame, and think you are doomed, because the good news is that you need a savior, and you have one, ready to forgive and redirect. You will be stronger for your struggle. But you have to repent and come to him. We all struggle. We are human. Everyone, even the most spiritually strong of us is weak in God's eyes, because we deal with sin.
Allow yourself to repent, and let God deal with you as a son.
Sometimes a hard word is a loving word, meant to keep you from stumbling.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Movie Monday w/Mimi: Step Up
Let me preface this by saying I want to lay my biases on the table. I am Black woman who and a self described equal opportunity entertainment viewer. I pride myself on not a movie snob: I didn’t turn my nose up at Madea as chitlin’ circuit theater, and I was willing to give Save the Last Dance, and opportunity to save itself, and I still think Booty Call was funny as hell even if Jamie Foxx doesn’t claim it no more. I even watched Christie, despite Hallmark mellow drama.
I believe people go to the movies to be entertained, and I enjoy smart entertainment, like a perfect bahama mama. I draw the line at sloppy drunkenness.
Step Up, however, is irrefutably on the low end of subpar summer flicks. It starts off with a pitchy feel: Its male lead, Tyler (Channing Tatum), is eye candy. An updated Patrick Swayze seething masculinity in Rocawear, Tyler is truly a dancer, and evidentially the lone white boy in chocolate city. A poor foster kid from the wrong side of the Baltimore streets, Tyler spends his days passing time stealing cars with his boy Mac (Damaine Radcliff) and – his impressionable brother Skinny (De’Shawn Washington), his nights dancing and getting into fights.
One night after some youthful mischief Tyler and his buddies break the window to the exclusive Maryland School of The Arts and proceed to destroy – perhaps a way of sticking it to the rich kids in effigy. Nobly, Tyler sacrifices his own freedom for his friends and takes the entire rap for the caper. Tyler’s rebellious streak lands him in front of the court, which sentences him to 200 hours of community service at the school.
There the indifferent Tyler is reminded that his carelessness has caused the school enough to loose some student their scholarship. While doing janitorial work, Tyler soon gets a chance to show his moves to Nora (Jenna Dewan), a struggling ballet student looking for a way to prove to the nation’s top dancing scouts and her disapproving mom that she is conservatory material.
Much like “The Little Mermaid” Tyler longs to be a part of Nora’s world and a permanent replacement for Nora’s boyfriend. Conveniently, Nora’s dance partner has an accident, she dumps her boyfriend, and the rest of the weakling sophomores are unable to provide Nora with what she needs-- a strong virile dance partner that can really, umm, lift her. Now, if only her ruffneck could stop being so unruly!
From here it is a predictable cross between west side story, the traditional dance flick, and after school special, with a few explicatives, guns and a murder sprinkled in for effect. Channing is best when he is in motion, because at least then he isn’t assaulting us with monosyllables and blank stares. The rest of the film is a tug-o-war between Tyler’s aimlessness and Nora’s ambivalence.
The ridiculous subplot between Nora’s chums, Miles (Mario) and Lucy (Drew Sidora) the cheery songstress and the shy deejay, serves to fill the awkward scenes until the dancing begins again.
Although I took aim with Save The Last Dance, for it’s Pollyanna attempt to deal with race, Step Up doesn’t even begin to step up when it comes to risk or complication the surface outside of a subterfuge joke made early in the film. The issue of class and race that are brimming at the surface waiting to be painted are glossed over bevy of diverse MSA students, nobly struggling to keep their scholarships, --although I was never convinced that Tyler truly understood. We know very little about what drives (or doesn’t) Tyler, and the film doesn’t give us a reason to care.
What is left are wasted moments to tell the same old song in a fresh new way.
And of course, my bias is lunged out of my seat when they show the hardworking yet neglectful black mother of Tyler’s friends leaving two juvenile delinquents in charge of watching a younger brother while she works the night shift as a maid. Many mothers I know would have brought the kids with her to work. That would have been a plot twist!
Many of its fans applaud Step Up for the dancing. I’ll admit it gets saucy at some points, but I’ve seen better dancers in my hometown. If dance movies are only about dancing and not about the plot, please spare the attention challenged overscheduled masses of the population, and make a video instead. Until then, stay home, save your nine dollars and catch “Dancing With the Stars”.
I believe people go to the movies to be entertained, and I enjoy smart entertainment, like a perfect bahama mama. I draw the line at sloppy drunkenness.
Step Up, however, is irrefutably on the low end of subpar summer flicks. It starts off with a pitchy feel: Its male lead, Tyler (Channing Tatum), is eye candy. An updated Patrick Swayze seething masculinity in Rocawear, Tyler is truly a dancer, and evidentially the lone white boy in chocolate city. A poor foster kid from the wrong side of the Baltimore streets, Tyler spends his days passing time stealing cars with his boy Mac (Damaine Radcliff) and – his impressionable brother Skinny (De’Shawn Washington), his nights dancing and getting into fights.
One night after some youthful mischief Tyler and his buddies break the window to the exclusive Maryland School of The Arts and proceed to destroy – perhaps a way of sticking it to the rich kids in effigy. Nobly, Tyler sacrifices his own freedom for his friends and takes the entire rap for the caper. Tyler’s rebellious streak lands him in front of the court, which sentences him to 200 hours of community service at the school.
There the indifferent Tyler is reminded that his carelessness has caused the school enough to loose some student their scholarship. While doing janitorial work, Tyler soon gets a chance to show his moves to Nora (Jenna Dewan), a struggling ballet student looking for a way to prove to the nation’s top dancing scouts and her disapproving mom that she is conservatory material.
Much like “The Little Mermaid” Tyler longs to be a part of Nora’s world and a permanent replacement for Nora’s boyfriend. Conveniently, Nora’s dance partner has an accident, she dumps her boyfriend, and the rest of the weakling sophomores are unable to provide Nora with what she needs-- a strong virile dance partner that can really, umm, lift her. Now, if only her ruffneck could stop being so unruly!
From here it is a predictable cross between west side story, the traditional dance flick, and after school special, with a few explicatives, guns and a murder sprinkled in for effect. Channing is best when he is in motion, because at least then he isn’t assaulting us with monosyllables and blank stares. The rest of the film is a tug-o-war between Tyler’s aimlessness and Nora’s ambivalence.
The ridiculous subplot between Nora’s chums, Miles (Mario) and Lucy (Drew Sidora) the cheery songstress and the shy deejay, serves to fill the awkward scenes until the dancing begins again.
Although I took aim with Save The Last Dance, for it’s Pollyanna attempt to deal with race, Step Up doesn’t even begin to step up when it comes to risk or complication the surface outside of a subterfuge joke made early in the film. The issue of class and race that are brimming at the surface waiting to be painted are glossed over bevy of diverse MSA students, nobly struggling to keep their scholarships, --although I was never convinced that Tyler truly understood. We know very little about what drives (or doesn’t) Tyler, and the film doesn’t give us a reason to care.
What is left are wasted moments to tell the same old song in a fresh new way.
And of course, my bias is lunged out of my seat when they show the hardworking yet neglectful black mother of Tyler’s friends leaving two juvenile delinquents in charge of watching a younger brother while she works the night shift as a maid. Many mothers I know would have brought the kids with her to work. That would have been a plot twist!
Many of its fans applaud Step Up for the dancing. I’ll admit it gets saucy at some points, but I’ve seen better dancers in my hometown. If dance movies are only about dancing and not about the plot, please spare the attention challenged overscheduled masses of the population, and make a video instead. Until then, stay home, save your nine dollars and catch “Dancing With the Stars”.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
The Bible or the Ballot
I worte this piece over a year ago, but it is worth reflecting on...
The role of faith in politics should not be ignored
Oakland Tribune, Nov 20, 2004
GEORGE W. Bush is a man who believes that God is on his side. Progressives and conservatives don't agree about whose side God is on, but they do agree he was on the ballot this year.
In the aftermath of a hellish election, conservatives gloat. Progressives look for a culprit. Droves of evangelical Christians armed with Bibles and ballots, fueled by GOP outreach, voted to keep a president they once believed was too moderate to represent them. The Christian left, advocating peace, is dumbfounded. Where did it all go wrong?
The role of faith in politics should not be ignored. Jesus said the two greatest commandments were to love God and one another. Both the left and right seem to have a hard time doing both.
In this messy landscape it is easy to wonder if the church will ever agree on anything. While mainstream denominations lose members without replacements, evangelical movements and prosperity ministry grow. Both are battling for religious shoppers looking for something that fits their checklist.
Protestant Christians who historically supported progressive values stand before a fork in the road called civil rights, not knowing which way to turn. Fundamentalists see abortion and gay marriage as opportunities to legislate "morality."
My argument with the Christian right is that it thinks God and government are one and the same. (Some also think that God doesn't love "losers.") The poor, the afflicted and the opposition are cast as Satan's little helpers, and Bush as King David.
If the state could bring about true peace by just rule it would have done so. There would be no need for Christ to die. Jesus shunned the theocratic establishment because it followed the letter of the law, forgetting the spirit of love behind it. I hope the right realizes that Jesus was a loser before he was a winner.
My argument with the Christian left is that it thinks it can change the world without God. Leadership, even by the best and brightest, is always subject to the fundamental human flaw: We are not perfect and govern accordingly.
People need spiritual food to undertake social change. Christian faith relies on individual change rooted in a relationship with God. The world is a work in progress. We can't become bitter and tell people to love one another. It is fruitless to leave God out of social change, and be upset when he doesn't show up.
It is time for the church to plant the fruit of the spirit described in Galatians as, "love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance." Christians don't need a new political covenant, we need to take the old one seriously.
If churches can't agree on candidates, then agree to feed the hungry, house the homeless and heal the broken. If we don't agree on economics, agree it is a sin to see a hungry man next to a church that has a full refrigerator, a clothing box and a phone.
If we can't agree on health care policy, start by agreeing that everyone deserves medicine when they are sick. Be more than pew warmers, Bible thumpers and theogogues. Walk in love with God and each other. Then the world will change. Then we can truly say that God is on our side.
Michelle Milam
c ANG Newspapers. Cannot be used or repurposed without prior written permission.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
The role of faith in politics should not be ignored
Oakland Tribune, Nov 20, 2004
GEORGE W. Bush is a man who believes that God is on his side. Progressives and conservatives don't agree about whose side God is on, but they do agree he was on the ballot this year.
In the aftermath of a hellish election, conservatives gloat. Progressives look for a culprit. Droves of evangelical Christians armed with Bibles and ballots, fueled by GOP outreach, voted to keep a president they once believed was too moderate to represent them. The Christian left, advocating peace, is dumbfounded. Where did it all go wrong?
The role of faith in politics should not be ignored. Jesus said the two greatest commandments were to love God and one another. Both the left and right seem to have a hard time doing both.
In this messy landscape it is easy to wonder if the church will ever agree on anything. While mainstream denominations lose members without replacements, evangelical movements and prosperity ministry grow. Both are battling for religious shoppers looking for something that fits their checklist.
Protestant Christians who historically supported progressive values stand before a fork in the road called civil rights, not knowing which way to turn. Fundamentalists see abortion and gay marriage as opportunities to legislate "morality."
My argument with the Christian right is that it thinks God and government are one and the same. (Some also think that God doesn't love "losers.") The poor, the afflicted and the opposition are cast as Satan's little helpers, and Bush as King David.
If the state could bring about true peace by just rule it would have done so. There would be no need for Christ to die. Jesus shunned the theocratic establishment because it followed the letter of the law, forgetting the spirit of love behind it. I hope the right realizes that Jesus was a loser before he was a winner.
My argument with the Christian left is that it thinks it can change the world without God. Leadership, even by the best and brightest, is always subject to the fundamental human flaw: We are not perfect and govern accordingly.
People need spiritual food to undertake social change. Christian faith relies on individual change rooted in a relationship with God. The world is a work in progress. We can't become bitter and tell people to love one another. It is fruitless to leave God out of social change, and be upset when he doesn't show up.
It is time for the church to plant the fruit of the spirit described in Galatians as, "love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance." Christians don't need a new political covenant, we need to take the old one seriously.
If churches can't agree on candidates, then agree to feed the hungry, house the homeless and heal the broken. If we don't agree on economics, agree it is a sin to see a hungry man next to a church that has a full refrigerator, a clothing box and a phone.
If we can't agree on health care policy, start by agreeing that everyone deserves medicine when they are sick. Be more than pew warmers, Bible thumpers and theogogues. Walk in love with God and each other. Then the world will change. Then we can truly say that God is on our side.
Michelle Milam
c ANG Newspapers. Cannot be used or repurposed without prior written permission.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
????
After hearing the horrible news that one of the resident poets and okp's has ended her own life, I started reflectng on what the meaning of life really is.
This week began and ended oddly for me. First the pastor's message about God being with us in the valley that puzzled me-- then my own bout with sadness and doubt about my purpose-- then the delivery of the used piano my mother gave me--perhaps a sign?--and a used piano bench magically showing up in my mother's classroom. And the conversation with several people again about my purpose.
It is all still processing for me. Hard to know what to make of it. Sometimes I feel free--other times trapped.
I do know one thing: faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of thing unseen.
This week began and ended oddly for me. First the pastor's message about God being with us in the valley that puzzled me-- then my own bout with sadness and doubt about my purpose-- then the delivery of the used piano my mother gave me--perhaps a sign?--and a used piano bench magically showing up in my mother's classroom. And the conversation with several people again about my purpose.
It is all still processing for me. Hard to know what to make of it. Sometimes I feel free--other times trapped.
I do know one thing: faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of thing unseen.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
The Love Connection
So, readers, I'm not perfect. (Did you catch that, yet?) Not by a long shot. And I wasn't always spiritual or thoughtful with regard to my actions. In the spirit of self analysis echoed in my previous post about the coup d'état, I have elected to do some reflection. Am I phoenix mellowing?
Looking through a letter I wrote some years back, It occurred to me that I forgot I was a firecracker. I espoused the ills of a broken and ubiquitously foul system that seemed unfair and without regard for justice.
I marched, protested, wrote, and agitated. I vowed never to mellow, and never ever to sell out.
And yet, with age, I think that you have to mellow. Maybe what we ascribe to "mellowing" is really growth.
I wrote a letter in the Daily Cal years ago in response to an activist group called the "Third World Liberation Front." I wrote a vehement angry letter in response to a law student who dismissed the cause that the students lauded. His father wrote an equally angry letter back to me chastising me for my naivety and rhetoric. It was part of an even angrier stalemate between conservatives and liberals on campus, amplified by the move in the country to end quotas, and the golden age of affirmative action.
Although I don't retract the basis of my sentiments, I don't feel proud of my desire to tear my opponent to shreds--and literally that is what I did. I ripped him a new one by misusing my gift of writing. (If Mr. Ogar is out there, I deeply apologize. It was childish and wrong.)
As I read the original source of my rage, I was reminded of the pain I felt while at Berkeley during that period. I'd trudged my way through substandard education and tracking to make it through high school into one of the most elite public universities in the country.
I'd been scourged by the lack of warmth and belonging that I hoped to feel from both black and white students in my huge elective sections. I felt alone in an environment where most of the students who looked like me had parents more well to do. I experienced a new kind of discrimination that was insidious and cloaked. I recalled the weight of my grandparents, which grew up in the red Texas dust, who were never able to reach the level of education attainment they desired because of racial discrimination.
This only deepened by insecurities leading me to believe that like an insect infestation, or a reoccurring rash, I was painfully unwanted, irritating, and redundant part of University life. By the time our Black graduation speaker gave her keynote address, I was in tears. I cannot remember her name, but I will always recall her words, "We are here. We weren't supposed to be here, but we are here."
It was never about the letter, it was about the fact that I not only had to prove myself as a student, but as a Black student.
And while I still believe in justice, activism and agitating, especially in the aftermath of election 2000, and Bush the sequel, since leaving Cal, I have changed. I am less appaulled, yet still affected. More likely to try to understand the other perspective. Less likely to believe that our political system has the solutions to the human condition. If I were to read Jeff's letter today, I'd probably point out a few points of argument, chuckle, shake hands, and move on.
And I would have been at peace, in love and charity, trusting in God.
I think of this period in my life and I am reminded of a glib little number I heard in "Something New" "At the end of the day it is just a man and a woman, and the love connection."
Corny but true? Really, at the end of the day, politics aside, it is about human beings. And yes, the (agape)love connection.
I am reposting the letters from the Daily Cal here:
TwLF Not Challenging Criminal Justice System
Letter-writer Darren Noy uses a lot of nice liberal buzzwords in his defense of the twLF ("Creative Innovators, Not Childish Cowards," Sept. 14). He even pretends to start out as an unbiased observer, only to finish with the same tired Berkeleyite mantra that I have heard since my childhood.
Let's just set a few facts straight for the record, though. First, the twLF is not challenging the criminal justice system, they are spoiled students attending one of the finest universities in the world (and at taxpayer expense) who are upset because liberal arts and social sciences as a whole are facing budget cuts.
These "activists" know that the squeaky wheel will get the grease ... especially if it's a squeaky wheel of color in the Bay Area.
Second, the demand for amnesty has nothing to do with any thoughtful political agenda. Liberals have been enjoying "political" arrests for years ... smile for the cameras, suffer no consequences.
Those students who are still being prosecuted assaulted the police. They're learning what a "real" arrest is like because they really deserved to be arrested. They just don't like being held accountable for their actions because, again, they are spoiled children.
Finally, please spare us all the "poor Mumia" speech that seems to infect every liberal cause in America. Mr. Abu-Jamal is not a political prisoner, he's a cop-killer. He can have visitors in his maximum security prison; the police officer he murdered can only be visited at his gravesite. How about a little sympathy for him and his family, and a little less crying over these spoiled brats?
Jeff Ogar
Boalt Hall law student, 1999
No Oil Needed in These Wheels, twLF Reviving ?Fight'
BY MICHELLE MILAM
Thursday, September 23, 1999
In Jeff Ogar's letter to the editor ("twLF Not Challenging Criminal Justice System," Sept. 16) he characterizes the members of the third world Liberation Front as "spoiled children" and "squeaky wheel" minority rebels protesting a cause that is merely symbolic.
If we believed Mr. Ogar's characterization, twLF members appear to be privileged welfare babies earning their degree at the expense of taxpayers. How ironic such well-manicured ideological foliage should come from a law student.
Please save us the verbal sodomy. It is rare to find a student these days that doesn't receive some kind of financial assistance or work to finance their educational needs. This is true even of law students. Ogar's characterizations only serve to divert attention away the real point of his argument; namely, he has none.
Ogar writes, "the demand for amnesty has nothing to do with any thoughtful political agenda," and adds that the twLF is "learning what real arrest is." The students of last spring's protests were students fighting for a cause they believe in passionately and are committed to making change.
They set goals and objectives and worked actively to achieve them. If they are fighting for amnesty for some of the students who risked their education for a cause they believed in, does that make them spoiled? The overlooked activists of our generation are labeled spoiled and frivolous. I wonder how many times our parents were fed the same line.
Yes Jeff, we understand that part of traditional non-violent protest is to accept consequences and allow the oppressor to see the injustice of his/her actions. Now ask yourself why did Robert Kennedy lobby to get Martin Luther King out of jail? Non-violent protest is more complex than a bunch of impermeable, regurgitated theories and ideas. When one steps out of the ivory tower and steps into real life, one sees that strategies evolve over time.
The students have already "suffered" more than most of us would. Regardless of how you feel about their politics, one thing is true: while the majority of us were warm in our beds, they were in jail. They should be commended for their activism rather than play armchair academics, they acted.
Ogar's piece does not lack merit; it lacks a healthy dose of reality. Maybe in the glow of academic analysis this would seem to be a case of a bunch of rowdy college students protesting for a dying department; I concede these arguments probably would make one a very good lawyer. Unfortunately, that's all they make.
Academia has greatly underestimated the power of of the determined few. If the twLF is not committed to change and cooperative effort, time ultimately reveals all truth. I'd like to believe that if your cause is just someday justice will be rendered, but for many justice is a empty word intellectuals sprinkle on ideological pallets like sugar.
Perhaps someday in a loftier time someone will credit twLF with reviving the fight to keep the voices of the unheard alive at UC Berkeley during a crucial period for all students at the university. I hope Ogar and the rest of the "spoiled" masses kick around this question: how many of us would go to jail for what we say we believe?
Michelle Milam is a UC Berkeley senior. Send responses to opinion@dailycal.org
twLF of Today, 1969: Both Meaningless in Real World
BY RICHARD OGAR
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Since Michelle Milam invoked the holy words "our parents" in her attack on my son, Jeff Ogar, I thought I was perhaps entitled to a response ("No Oil Needed in These Wheels, twLF Reviving ?Fight,'" Sept. 23).
During the 10 years that I successfully evaded the draft by remaining in college, I was a "political activist," marching for "civil rights," against "the War," on behalf of "People's Park." I was on the staff of the Berkeley Barb and, I thought, a bona fide member of "the counterculture."
It was, oddly enough, the original twLF student strike in 1969 that made me realize, with its outrageous list of "non-negotiable demands" and endless practice of the art of the political tantrum, that there is perhaps nothing less meaningful in the "real world" than the passionately-held political beliefs of hypergonadal college students.
The sad legacy of the 1960s is the sense of personal "entitlement," regardless of individual merit or effort, that festers on every level of present-day American society, and has reached a terminal stage in academia. The proliferation of special interest "departments," each armed with the blunt instruments of "post-modernism" and "critical theory," has tended to move university curricula beyond the "interdisciplinary" to the merely "undisciplined."
Unfortunately, academia has not "greatly underestimated the power of the determined few," but has yielded to it again and again, with increasingly dire results.
If Milam truly believes that her life as a UC Berkeley student represents the "real world," she had best be prepared for something more than "verbal sodomy" once she hits the streets. As G. Gordon Liddy noted, like it or not, "the world is a bad neighborhood at three o'clock in the morning."
But the real world at least has this to offer: While criminals may plead false innocence, while they may escape punishment by means of the latest legal gadgetry, they don't try to argue that they should be able to go home just because they passionately believed in what they did.
Richard Ogar is a UC Berkeley staff member. Send responses to opinion@dailycal.org.
Looking through a letter I wrote some years back, It occurred to me that I forgot I was a firecracker. I espoused the ills of a broken and ubiquitously foul system that seemed unfair and without regard for justice.
I marched, protested, wrote, and agitated. I vowed never to mellow, and never ever to sell out.
And yet, with age, I think that you have to mellow. Maybe what we ascribe to "mellowing" is really growth.
I wrote a letter in the Daily Cal years ago in response to an activist group called the "Third World Liberation Front." I wrote a vehement angry letter in response to a law student who dismissed the cause that the students lauded. His father wrote an equally angry letter back to me chastising me for my naivety and rhetoric. It was part of an even angrier stalemate between conservatives and liberals on campus, amplified by the move in the country to end quotas, and the golden age of affirmative action.
Although I don't retract the basis of my sentiments, I don't feel proud of my desire to tear my opponent to shreds--and literally that is what I did. I ripped him a new one by misusing my gift of writing. (If Mr. Ogar is out there, I deeply apologize. It was childish and wrong.)
As I read the original source of my rage, I was reminded of the pain I felt while at Berkeley during that period. I'd trudged my way through substandard education and tracking to make it through high school into one of the most elite public universities in the country.
I'd been scourged by the lack of warmth and belonging that I hoped to feel from both black and white students in my huge elective sections. I felt alone in an environment where most of the students who looked like me had parents more well to do. I experienced a new kind of discrimination that was insidious and cloaked. I recalled the weight of my grandparents, which grew up in the red Texas dust, who were never able to reach the level of education attainment they desired because of racial discrimination.
This only deepened by insecurities leading me to believe that like an insect infestation, or a reoccurring rash, I was painfully unwanted, irritating, and redundant part of University life. By the time our Black graduation speaker gave her keynote address, I was in tears. I cannot remember her name, but I will always recall her words, "We are here. We weren't supposed to be here, but we are here."
It was never about the letter, it was about the fact that I not only had to prove myself as a student, but as a Black student.
And while I still believe in justice, activism and agitating, especially in the aftermath of election 2000, and Bush the sequel, since leaving Cal, I have changed. I am less appaulled, yet still affected. More likely to try to understand the other perspective. Less likely to believe that our political system has the solutions to the human condition. If I were to read Jeff's letter today, I'd probably point out a few points of argument, chuckle, shake hands, and move on.
And I would have been at peace, in love and charity, trusting in God.
I think of this period in my life and I am reminded of a glib little number I heard in "Something New" "At the end of the day it is just a man and a woman, and the love connection."
Corny but true? Really, at the end of the day, politics aside, it is about human beings. And yes, the (agape)love connection.
I am reposting the letters from the Daily Cal here:
TwLF Not Challenging Criminal Justice System
Letter-writer Darren Noy uses a lot of nice liberal buzzwords in his defense of the twLF ("Creative Innovators, Not Childish Cowards," Sept. 14). He even pretends to start out as an unbiased observer, only to finish with the same tired Berkeleyite mantra that I have heard since my childhood.
Let's just set a few facts straight for the record, though. First, the twLF is not challenging the criminal justice system, they are spoiled students attending one of the finest universities in the world (and at taxpayer expense) who are upset because liberal arts and social sciences as a whole are facing budget cuts.
These "activists" know that the squeaky wheel will get the grease ... especially if it's a squeaky wheel of color in the Bay Area.
Second, the demand for amnesty has nothing to do with any thoughtful political agenda. Liberals have been enjoying "political" arrests for years ... smile for the cameras, suffer no consequences.
Those students who are still being prosecuted assaulted the police. They're learning what a "real" arrest is like because they really deserved to be arrested. They just don't like being held accountable for their actions because, again, they are spoiled children.
Finally, please spare us all the "poor Mumia" speech that seems to infect every liberal cause in America. Mr. Abu-Jamal is not a political prisoner, he's a cop-killer. He can have visitors in his maximum security prison; the police officer he murdered can only be visited at his gravesite. How about a little sympathy for him and his family, and a little less crying over these spoiled brats?
Jeff Ogar
Boalt Hall law student, 1999
No Oil Needed in These Wheels, twLF Reviving ?Fight'
BY MICHELLE MILAM
Thursday, September 23, 1999
In Jeff Ogar's letter to the editor ("twLF Not Challenging Criminal Justice System," Sept. 16) he characterizes the members of the third world Liberation Front as "spoiled children" and "squeaky wheel" minority rebels protesting a cause that is merely symbolic.
If we believed Mr. Ogar's characterization, twLF members appear to be privileged welfare babies earning their degree at the expense of taxpayers. How ironic such well-manicured ideological foliage should come from a law student.
Please save us the verbal sodomy. It is rare to find a student these days that doesn't receive some kind of financial assistance or work to finance their educational needs. This is true even of law students. Ogar's characterizations only serve to divert attention away the real point of his argument; namely, he has none.
Ogar writes, "the demand for amnesty has nothing to do with any thoughtful political agenda," and adds that the twLF is "learning what real arrest is." The students of last spring's protests were students fighting for a cause they believe in passionately and are committed to making change.
They set goals and objectives and worked actively to achieve them. If they are fighting for amnesty for some of the students who risked their education for a cause they believed in, does that make them spoiled? The overlooked activists of our generation are labeled spoiled and frivolous. I wonder how many times our parents were fed the same line.
Yes Jeff, we understand that part of traditional non-violent protest is to accept consequences and allow the oppressor to see the injustice of his/her actions. Now ask yourself why did Robert Kennedy lobby to get Martin Luther King out of jail? Non-violent protest is more complex than a bunch of impermeable, regurgitated theories and ideas. When one steps out of the ivory tower and steps into real life, one sees that strategies evolve over time.
The students have already "suffered" more than most of us would. Regardless of how you feel about their politics, one thing is true: while the majority of us were warm in our beds, they were in jail. They should be commended for their activism rather than play armchair academics, they acted.
Ogar's piece does not lack merit; it lacks a healthy dose of reality. Maybe in the glow of academic analysis this would seem to be a case of a bunch of rowdy college students protesting for a dying department; I concede these arguments probably would make one a very good lawyer. Unfortunately, that's all they make.
Academia has greatly underestimated the power of of the determined few. If the twLF is not committed to change and cooperative effort, time ultimately reveals all truth. I'd like to believe that if your cause is just someday justice will be rendered, but for many justice is a empty word intellectuals sprinkle on ideological pallets like sugar.
Perhaps someday in a loftier time someone will credit twLF with reviving the fight to keep the voices of the unheard alive at UC Berkeley during a crucial period for all students at the university. I hope Ogar and the rest of the "spoiled" masses kick around this question: how many of us would go to jail for what we say we believe?
Michelle Milam is a UC Berkeley senior. Send responses to opinion@dailycal.org
twLF of Today, 1969: Both Meaningless in Real World
BY RICHARD OGAR
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Since Michelle Milam invoked the holy words "our parents" in her attack on my son, Jeff Ogar, I thought I was perhaps entitled to a response ("No Oil Needed in These Wheels, twLF Reviving ?Fight,'" Sept. 23).
During the 10 years that I successfully evaded the draft by remaining in college, I was a "political activist," marching for "civil rights," against "the War," on behalf of "People's Park." I was on the staff of the Berkeley Barb and, I thought, a bona fide member of "the counterculture."
It was, oddly enough, the original twLF student strike in 1969 that made me realize, with its outrageous list of "non-negotiable demands" and endless practice of the art of the political tantrum, that there is perhaps nothing less meaningful in the "real world" than the passionately-held political beliefs of hypergonadal college students.
The sad legacy of the 1960s is the sense of personal "entitlement," regardless of individual merit or effort, that festers on every level of present-day American society, and has reached a terminal stage in academia. The proliferation of special interest "departments," each armed with the blunt instruments of "post-modernism" and "critical theory," has tended to move university curricula beyond the "interdisciplinary" to the merely "undisciplined."
Unfortunately, academia has not "greatly underestimated the power of the determined few," but has yielded to it again and again, with increasingly dire results.
If Milam truly believes that her life as a UC Berkeley student represents the "real world," she had best be prepared for something more than "verbal sodomy" once she hits the streets. As G. Gordon Liddy noted, like it or not, "the world is a bad neighborhood at three o'clock in the morning."
But the real world at least has this to offer: While criminals may plead false innocence, while they may escape punishment by means of the latest legal gadgetry, they don't try to argue that they should be able to go home just because they passionately believed in what they did.
Richard Ogar is a UC Berkeley staff member. Send responses to opinion@dailycal.org.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Gentle Giant?
I often find myself vacillating between believing that kindness as strength and kindness as weakness.
I don't believe gentleness is weak; in fact, it is active. It takes more strength to be kind than it does to be brutal, because it involves restraint and self reflection. It requires grace to see beyond the fault and find the need.
The world, however, is a different story. The world believes that gentleness is a sign of inferiority. It inhibits you from career promotion, from being taken seriously, from being seen as a good "leader." I know for a fact that if I were the kind of cut throat like many of the individuals I know, I would be in a leadership position.
But the problem is, I would not be fit to lead.
True leadership is not about control, because true leaders exercise passive control. They don't have to beat somebody into submission. People want to follow them. They allow others to develop their leadership skills.
I'd rather live my life struggling to be firm, but gentle, than to be rewarded for being brutal. Ultimately, nobody respects someone they fear, and neither do they truly love them. The bible reminds us that perfect love casts out all fear.
I suppose this is an age old question, is it better to be loved or feared? Maybe the answer is both: it is better to be revered. The Bible is always saying we should fear God, but when you try to reconcile that with perfect love casting out all fear, the implication becomes to love perfectly, fear is obliterated. You could infer then, that the biblical text describes to fear means to hold reverence for something.
I serve a God that the gentle enough to be concerned with my every need, to love me in my state of imperfection, yet is the roaring wind of inevitibility that no living thing can overcome.
Yet if God, who is as Muhammad Ali said "the greatest" can be gentle enough to love us despite our flaws, who are we to be any different?
It reminds me of the Fred Hammond song "Sometimes I gotta remind myself, that what I'm called to do, is first to be with you."
(From "The Prince" written by Niccolo Machiavelli rests mainly on his political treatise Il Principe (The Prince), written around 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after his death)
Chapter XV: Of the Qualities In Respect of Which Men, and Most of all Princes, Are Praised or Blamed
And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that feareth is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18
I don't believe gentleness is weak; in fact, it is active. It takes more strength to be kind than it does to be brutal, because it involves restraint and self reflection. It requires grace to see beyond the fault and find the need.
The world, however, is a different story. The world believes that gentleness is a sign of inferiority. It inhibits you from career promotion, from being taken seriously, from being seen as a good "leader." I know for a fact that if I were the kind of cut throat like many of the individuals I know, I would be in a leadership position.
But the problem is, I would not be fit to lead.
True leadership is not about control, because true leaders exercise passive control. They don't have to beat somebody into submission. People want to follow them. They allow others to develop their leadership skills.
I'd rather live my life struggling to be firm, but gentle, than to be rewarded for being brutal. Ultimately, nobody respects someone they fear, and neither do they truly love them. The bible reminds us that perfect love casts out all fear.
I suppose this is an age old question, is it better to be loved or feared? Maybe the answer is both: it is better to be revered. The Bible is always saying we should fear God, but when you try to reconcile that with perfect love casting out all fear, the implication becomes to love perfectly, fear is obliterated. You could infer then, that the biblical text describes to fear means to hold reverence for something.
I serve a God that the gentle enough to be concerned with my every need, to love me in my state of imperfection, yet is the roaring wind of inevitibility that no living thing can overcome.
Yet if God, who is as Muhammad Ali said "the greatest" can be gentle enough to love us despite our flaws, who are we to be any different?
It reminds me of the Fred Hammond song "Sometimes I gotta remind myself, that what I'm called to do, is first to be with you."
(From "The Prince" written by Niccolo Machiavelli rests mainly on his political treatise Il Principe (The Prince), written around 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after his death)
Chapter XV: Of the Qualities In Respect of Which Men, and Most of all Princes, Are Praised or Blamed
And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that feareth is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18
Sunday, July 30, 2006
History
Tonight I attended my 10 year reunion. Let me preface it by saying--I was on the planning committee. That means I couldn't jus enjoy the experience, I had to work, too!
After nearly a year of worrying about what the reunion would be like, and calculating the various tasks and chores, and perhaps dreading the thought of reliving high school again, I realized how wrong I was.
Although I never thought I quite fit in in high school, there was a strange familiarity I experienced during the reunion. Think about it. High school is the first time you really learn what it is like to exist in the adult world. It can be hard, cruel, scary, and confusing, but it also can be exhilarating as a first kiss, exciting as a new life, and breathtaking as a first drive.
It was so different, after being in a world where my every move is under a microscope to be with people who just know me as the girl they went to school with. It is deep to be with people you have history with. I'd forgotten that.
I suppose life made me a little jaded.
You can't go back, but you can look back, and then look forward knowing you are not the only one. There is a whole world out there of children born into the same generation you were.
I am going to make a promise that I will try harder to keep in touch with the people God sends to my life, because history is lived.
After nearly a year of worrying about what the reunion would be like, and calculating the various tasks and chores, and perhaps dreading the thought of reliving high school again, I realized how wrong I was.
Although I never thought I quite fit in in high school, there was a strange familiarity I experienced during the reunion. Think about it. High school is the first time you really learn what it is like to exist in the adult world. It can be hard, cruel, scary, and confusing, but it also can be exhilarating as a first kiss, exciting as a new life, and breathtaking as a first drive.
It was so different, after being in a world where my every move is under a microscope to be with people who just know me as the girl they went to school with. It is deep to be with people you have history with. I'd forgotten that.
I suppose life made me a little jaded.
You can't go back, but you can look back, and then look forward knowing you are not the only one. There is a whole world out there of children born into the same generation you were.
I am going to make a promise that I will try harder to keep in touch with the people God sends to my life, because history is lived.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
The Coup d'État
Have you ever seen the film "Two Can Play That Game"? To the above average movie goers it is an fundamentally regrettable film with little redemptive value, but to the inner anthropologists it tells us quite a bit about what society values.
In the film Vivica A. Fox plays Chante, the scheming girlfriend of Morris Chestnut, whose sole goal in life is to punish and "train" her man into good behavior by using "the rules"-- aka playing hard to get. She and her beau engage in a game of cat and mouse snit for snit, until ultimately both their efforts at manipulation fail.
As juvenile as it is, and may sound, many are common rules that our mothers taught us: The man should pay. Don't return his phone call. Break up and move on quickly. The man should apologize first.
Chante pulls out an arsenal of sneaky manipulative plots to woo her man back all the while making him think she doesn't want him. She saves the best for last (flaunting a new love interest in his face) calling it the coup d'État, or referencing colloquial definition, as Chante frames it, "It's time for the Coup d'État. That's the French term for #$@! him up."
(Well, it really means a coup,--the sudden overthrow of a government through unconstitutional means by a part of the state establishment, that mostly replaces just the top power figures. It is also an example of political engineering. It may or may not be violent in nature. It is different from a revolution, which is staged by a larger group and radically changes the political system. The term is French for "a (sudden) blow (or strike) to a state" - but suspending reality here momentarily--)
Well, well, now, you think. That's unnecessary. And yet, as I look around me the world seems to live off of coup d'État. We throw stones at each other in politics, in our bedrooms, in our families, in our relationships. Sometimes we throw stones just for the sheer joy of making someone else miserable. Sometimes we are justifiably angry, but instead of allowing that anger to be channeled constructively, we allow it to become a walking beast with a sucker punch.
I wonder, how many years of misery could we have saved ourselves if we had waited instead of striking Baghdad in 2001? Or if we hadn't been so focused on impeachment? Or if we had listened to the pleas of Republican congressman seeking funds for the levees on the Gulf Coast? When we hold on to our identity so tightly that we refuse to be objective, reasonable, or even introspective, we loose the ability to make good decisions. There is nothing wrong with identity. But the fear of losing it causes problems.
And yet, I am beginning to think that getting one up, or getting your lick in, is more important these days than getting issues resolved.
Alas, even I can't argue that in the world those are the rules of survival. After all the coup d'État is what makes America so rich in the flesh, and so poor in spirit.
In "Two Can Play That Game" these rules of engagement lead Chante into some sticky situations she didn't plan for. Although Chante is an utterly unsympathetic character, the subtext makes her accessible: everybody knows what it is like to love someone that dogs you out. And if you heal, you try to avoid that.
What our heroine in Two Can Play That Game really wanted was to let her boyfriend know that the drink he had with another woman hurt her, and made her insecure. What she really wanted to tell him is that she loved him and was scared of losing him. What she really wanted to tell him that after years of playing games, she needed some confidence and security in the man she was with.
What she chose to do was get even. I suppose the truth does appear weak, but think about what kind of film it would have been if they had talked about it.
Probably one nobody would've paid to see.
In the film Vivica A. Fox plays Chante, the scheming girlfriend of Morris Chestnut, whose sole goal in life is to punish and "train" her man into good behavior by using "the rules"-- aka playing hard to get. She and her beau engage in a game of cat and mouse snit for snit, until ultimately both their efforts at manipulation fail.
As juvenile as it is, and may sound, many are common rules that our mothers taught us: The man should pay. Don't return his phone call. Break up and move on quickly. The man should apologize first.
Chante pulls out an arsenal of sneaky manipulative plots to woo her man back all the while making him think she doesn't want him. She saves the best for last (flaunting a new love interest in his face) calling it the coup d'État, or referencing colloquial definition, as Chante frames it, "It's time for the Coup d'État. That's the French term for #$@! him up."
(Well, it really means a coup,--the sudden overthrow of a government through unconstitutional means by a part of the state establishment, that mostly replaces just the top power figures. It is also an example of political engineering. It may or may not be violent in nature. It is different from a revolution, which is staged by a larger group and radically changes the political system. The term is French for "a (sudden) blow (or strike) to a state" - but suspending reality here momentarily--)
Well, well, now, you think. That's unnecessary. And yet, as I look around me the world seems to live off of coup d'État. We throw stones at each other in politics, in our bedrooms, in our families, in our relationships. Sometimes we throw stones just for the sheer joy of making someone else miserable. Sometimes we are justifiably angry, but instead of allowing that anger to be channeled constructively, we allow it to become a walking beast with a sucker punch.
I wonder, how many years of misery could we have saved ourselves if we had waited instead of striking Baghdad in 2001? Or if we hadn't been so focused on impeachment? Or if we had listened to the pleas of Republican congressman seeking funds for the levees on the Gulf Coast? When we hold on to our identity so tightly that we refuse to be objective, reasonable, or even introspective, we loose the ability to make good decisions. There is nothing wrong with identity. But the fear of losing it causes problems.
And yet, I am beginning to think that getting one up, or getting your lick in, is more important these days than getting issues resolved.
Alas, even I can't argue that in the world those are the rules of survival. After all the coup d'État is what makes America so rich in the flesh, and so poor in spirit.
In "Two Can Play That Game" these rules of engagement lead Chante into some sticky situations she didn't plan for. Although Chante is an utterly unsympathetic character, the subtext makes her accessible: everybody knows what it is like to love someone that dogs you out. And if you heal, you try to avoid that.
What our heroine in Two Can Play That Game really wanted was to let her boyfriend know that the drink he had with another woman hurt her, and made her insecure. What she really wanted to tell him is that she loved him and was scared of losing him. What she really wanted to tell him that after years of playing games, she needed some confidence and security in the man she was with.
What she chose to do was get even. I suppose the truth does appear weak, but think about what kind of film it would have been if they had talked about it.
Probably one nobody would've paid to see.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Everybody has questions, so here are mine
Questions
Why did former President Clinton get impeached for lying about sex, but our current president lied about WMD, and our reason for going to war, and there is little outrage?
Why is Too Short still saying every record is his last? He may as well just say what your standard crackead says.. this is the last until I get one more hit.
Why do people in politics marry each other? What's the incentive to marry someone you're already in bed with?
Why is the question of global warming still a debate?
Why are today's cartoons so wack?
Why does high fashion look like something normal people would never be caught dead in?
Why do people signal, and not get over?
Why on earth did 360 Mafia get an Oscar for "It's hard out here for a Pimp"
Or for that matter, Why is it so hard out here for a pimp?
Why is the news always bad?
Why doesn't daylight savings last all year long?
Why are Hurrican Katrina survivors paying house notes on homes that are in the Gulf of Mexico?
Why is Paris Hilton still interesting?
Why isn't Xhibit in movies?
How can we look at the ocean and not believe in God?
Why did former President Clinton get impeached for lying about sex, but our current president lied about WMD, and our reason for going to war, and there is little outrage?
Why is Too Short still saying every record is his last? He may as well just say what your standard crackead says.. this is the last until I get one more hit.
Why do people in politics marry each other? What's the incentive to marry someone you're already in bed with?
Why is the question of global warming still a debate?
Why are today's cartoons so wack?
Why does high fashion look like something normal people would never be caught dead in?
Why do people signal, and not get over?
Why on earth did 360 Mafia get an Oscar for "It's hard out here for a Pimp"
Or for that matter, Why is it so hard out here for a pimp?
Why is the news always bad?
Why doesn't daylight savings last all year long?
Why are Hurrican Katrina survivors paying house notes on homes that are in the Gulf of Mexico?
Why is Paris Hilton still interesting?
Why isn't Xhibit in movies?
How can we look at the ocean and not believe in God?
Chocolate Junkie...
The Prologue: Secure, wonderful, strong black men, this does not apply to you.
God bless you, and I hope that one day I will get out of this rut I am in, and smile at you, pray with you, marry one of you and make some chocolate babies… All others:
Well, I am..how can I say this, rooting for the brothas because they will always have my heart, but having trouble watching the star players switch teams.
Let me go on record saying all the PC stuff we should say. Race doesn’t matter, if you really love somebody that is what counts, that people have a right to their choices, and it is hard out here for a pimp, after all…
Those platitudes may sound nice, but real life is a little more complex. I have dated a man of another race twice. Once was my first love, who was dark chocolate. I almost don’t count him because he grew up in the hood and eats grits. Went out with a white guy once as a friend, and it was…different. I did feel the spotlight on me.
The thing is I have always loved Black men. I have always loved how most of them, if they didn’t get anything else understood that look I get on my face when I am/have experienced the race issue, and the world is yet again reminding me that I should know my place. I have loved them regardless of the amount of money they had, or what the world called their brand of asthetic, or what their educational papers said. I have loved them with an everlasting, at last my love, free at last, last one standing, deeply rooted, deeply spiritual, deep longing love.
And yet, I have yet to find one who truly loved me back in the way every human deserves to be loved.
The brothas aren’t the only guilty ones. I’ve met plenty of “others” who have not loved us well, either. It just hurts more with the brothas.
That said, I have had a very real hurt from being chosen over a white woman and I will self admit here: it hurts. Maybe not a waiting to exhale wanna burn your car up kind of irritation, but a hurt nonetheless.
Now I know that I should just say, well he was a man who made choices, and her being white had nothing to do with his immaturity, but my mind sees it as a difference without distinction.
Imagine a man who tells you that any man would want to marry you, daily praises you for being what he sees as attractive, accomplished, faithful and loving. A dream woman, but still not ..a white girl. Did I mention this is a man who you've have known since I was 14?…not some other brotha off the street…but a homie?
Well, you say. That's indicative of men, not Black men. Race is incidental. And you'd be right. But humor me.
So, I saw the movie “Something New” because Sanaa Lathan is one of my favorite actresses, and although I was completely turned off by the idea of a white man teaching a black woman how to love her blackness (for obvious reasons) for the first time since I read Malcolm X, for the first time since I kissed NM’s smooth cocoa lips, for the first time since I screamed at a Morris Chestnut picture and dang near fainted off of Ice Cube’s jherri curl juice drippin’ self, I thought..well maybe they have a point.
Race my be incidental, but it is not accidental. There is a reason why the more successful Black men get, the less "comprable" partners there are to choose from, and the more desirable they become.
Maybe Black men, for all that they say, really don’t want us anymore. Maybe they have outgrown us (if they are successful) or we have “outgrown” them (if they are not). Maybe it is nothing personal, and we are being over sensitive. Maybe they really don’t like their mothers.
I don’t know. But I do know that what I used to dismiss as Black woman paranoia is starting to make sense to me as I soujourn east toward the big 30.
Used to say that if Black men only dated white women, and would not date a black woman-- we didn’t want him anyway. Still true. But the question is, given the state of our men, then who will?
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel inspired and enlightened by the brown beauty of some brotha in the coffee line next to me.
But today,like Ms. “A” I am looking out at the morning rain….
God bless you, and I hope that one day I will get out of this rut I am in, and smile at you, pray with you, marry one of you and make some chocolate babies… All others:
Well, I am..how can I say this, rooting for the brothas because they will always have my heart, but having trouble watching the star players switch teams.
Let me go on record saying all the PC stuff we should say. Race doesn’t matter, if you really love somebody that is what counts, that people have a right to their choices, and it is hard out here for a pimp, after all…
Those platitudes may sound nice, but real life is a little more complex. I have dated a man of another race twice. Once was my first love, who was dark chocolate. I almost don’t count him because he grew up in the hood and eats grits. Went out with a white guy once as a friend, and it was…different. I did feel the spotlight on me.
The thing is I have always loved Black men. I have always loved how most of them, if they didn’t get anything else understood that look I get on my face when I am/have experienced the race issue, and the world is yet again reminding me that I should know my place. I have loved them regardless of the amount of money they had, or what the world called their brand of asthetic, or what their educational papers said. I have loved them with an everlasting, at last my love, free at last, last one standing, deeply rooted, deeply spiritual, deep longing love.
And yet, I have yet to find one who truly loved me back in the way every human deserves to be loved.
The brothas aren’t the only guilty ones. I’ve met plenty of “others” who have not loved us well, either. It just hurts more with the brothas.
That said, I have had a very real hurt from being chosen over a white woman and I will self admit here: it hurts. Maybe not a waiting to exhale wanna burn your car up kind of irritation, but a hurt nonetheless.
Now I know that I should just say, well he was a man who made choices, and her being white had nothing to do with his immaturity, but my mind sees it as a difference without distinction.
Imagine a man who tells you that any man would want to marry you, daily praises you for being what he sees as attractive, accomplished, faithful and loving. A dream woman, but still not ..a white girl. Did I mention this is a man who you've have known since I was 14?…not some other brotha off the street…but a homie?
Well, you say. That's indicative of men, not Black men. Race is incidental. And you'd be right. But humor me.
So, I saw the movie “Something New” because Sanaa Lathan is one of my favorite actresses, and although I was completely turned off by the idea of a white man teaching a black woman how to love her blackness (for obvious reasons) for the first time since I read Malcolm X, for the first time since I kissed NM’s smooth cocoa lips, for the first time since I screamed at a Morris Chestnut picture and dang near fainted off of Ice Cube’s jherri curl juice drippin’ self, I thought..well maybe they have a point.
Race my be incidental, but it is not accidental. There is a reason why the more successful Black men get, the less "comprable" partners there are to choose from, and the more desirable they become.
Maybe Black men, for all that they say, really don’t want us anymore. Maybe they have outgrown us (if they are successful) or we have “outgrown” them (if they are not). Maybe it is nothing personal, and we are being over sensitive. Maybe they really don’t like their mothers.
I don’t know. But I do know that what I used to dismiss as Black woman paranoia is starting to make sense to me as I soujourn east toward the big 30.
Used to say that if Black men only dated white women, and would not date a black woman-- we didn’t want him anyway. Still true. But the question is, given the state of our men, then who will?
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel inspired and enlightened by the brown beauty of some brotha in the coffee line next to me.
But today,like Ms. “A” I am looking out at the morning rain….
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