Unforgivable Blackness

"Because of where we sat, we had a close up view of your conduct in the fourth quarter. The chest puffs. The pelvic thrusts. The arrogant struts and the ‘in your face’ taunting of both the Titans’ players and fans. We saw it all."

The above passage is excerpted from the infamous "letter from a Tennessee mom" in which she took issue with Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton's exuberant celebrations. The mom, Rosemary Plorin of Nashville, framed her criticism of Newton through the eyes of her 9-year-old daughter who was at the game with her. That silly episode was only the most high-profile example of something that Newton has been dealing with all season, and today he finally got it off his chest.  Only the most obtuse observer would deny that Cam Newton's race has everything to do with all of the criticism that is leveled at him. Black athletes have always had to walk a very fine line as far as how much emotion they could express without incurring the wrath of white society.


That goes back at least as far as the first black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, a man who gleefully broke every social convention having to do with the color line as it was drawn in early 20th century America. Johnson not only beat white fighters, and grinned broadly as he stood over their prone bodies, he also dated white women and that was the ultimate taboo. A frantic search was undertaken to find a "Great White Hope" who could defeat Johnson and restore the heavyweight championship to the white race. In tandem with that, Johnson was brought up on baseless criminal charges of having violated the White Slave Traffic Act, better known as the Mann Act.

Johnson would ultimately flee the country to avoid prison and eventually lose his title to a far inferior white fighter in a match that was surely fixed. There wouldn't be another opportunity for a black heavyweight until the incomparable Joe Louis came on the scene 20 years later. And the two black men who managed Louis drew up a strict set of behavioral rules for him to follow both in and out of the boxing ring. They had witnessed the destruction of Jack Johnson and were determined not to allow that to happen to their fighter. Which is why we see so few photographs of Joe Louis smiling. He was forced to wear a mask so as to not offend white sensibilities.

 Those two examples might seem hopelessly dated and irrelevant in an age when black athletes dominate college and professional sports, but I'm not so sure we can dismiss them so quickly. The fact that Cam Newton plays quarterback, a position that has historically been the property of white athletes, adds a disturbing element to the mix. For a long time it was widely believed that black athletes didn't have the intelligence to play quarterback, at least not at the professional level, and black quarterbacks coming out of college would be turned into either wide receivers or defensive backs. Very few coaches, players, or analysts would openly acknowledge what was taking place. It was like the proverbial elephant in the room. And, speaking of elephants, let us not forget what got the conservative gasbag Rush Limbaugh fired from his gig as a commentator at ESPN after about two weeks on the job. This is what he had to say about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb back in 2003:

"Sorry to say this, I don't think he's been that good from the get-go," Limbaugh said. "I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

Donald J. Trump Superstar

I fear for my country...

A Rogues Gallery

 Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the fierce defenders of our Constitutional liberties. What a motley collection of sad sacks. And what the hell is Dennis Miller doing here? That moron on the bottom right does bear more than a passing resemblance to the washed-up comedian/right wing shill. Those strangely whimsical seven-point stars superimposed over their mugshots tend to detract from what they obviously hope would be menacing images. Instead, they look more like middle-aged Teletubbies to me. How pathetic that they all allowed themselves to be taken alive while 53-year old LaVoy Finicum went down fighting. At least the crazy old Mormon rancher had the courage of his convictions, although I imagine that will be cold comfort to the 11 children and 19 grandchildren he left behind. However, these guys are nothing but pussies who wilted immediately once they were confronted by the authorities. Still no word on what the remaining occupiers at the bird sanctuary are planning to do. They are now leaderless, and my guess is that they will end the standoff sooner rather than later.

Bird Brains

It appears that the "brains", and I use that word very loosely, behind the Oregon bird sanctuary siege are now in federal custody. The Bundy brothers, along with several others other members of their merry band of misfits, were apprehended following a traffic stop that turned into a brief gunfight. Ryan Bundy was wounded, and militia spokesman Robert LaVoy Finicum was killed, during the exchange of gunfire. According to reports, the gang was driving to a community meeting when their cars were pulled over. It isn't clear whether they were deliberately courting a confrontation with law enforcement, by leaving the sanctuary, or if they were actually stupid enough to believe that they could come and go as they pleased. I'm going with the latter.

Will the arrest of their leaders convince the rest of this motley militia to lay down their arms and surrender? I guess we'll know the answer to that soon enough. The fear all along has been that any armed clash between the Bundy's, and law enforcement, might serve as the catalyst that generates support for the occupiers. Up until now, they have mostly been the objects of scorn and ridicule. But now their movement has a martyr in the person of the Robert LaVoy Finicum, the militia movement's answer to Baghdad Bob. And, if I'm not mistaken, Finicum is the one who recently had his foster children removed by the state because of his presence at the siege. Another one of these hypocrites who rails against the government, but is more than happy to cash those government checks every month.

Countdown

Every time I attempt to either like, comment, or share something on Facebook, this is the friendly message I get. What really burns me is that the idiots continue reminding me of important dates, like my friends birthdays, but when I try to wish one of them a happy birthday I get one of these. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous one in the world. And, depending on the source, the social media site's current market value is pegged at anywhere from $250 to $300 billion. And yet this massive corporate entity does not provide anything in the way of customer service that involves talking to a human being. It simply does not exist. Which begs the question of why don't they offer live customer service? It isn't as though they can't afford it. Hell, Zuckerberg could buy the Philippines and put the entire population to work providing customer assistance to Facebook users. And if Manila isn't interested, I'm reasonably certain he could find another developing country that would be more than happy to be acquired.

My mama always told me that if life gives you lemons, then you make lemonade. So, I am going to use their stupid messages as motivation to update my blog every day. A countdown, if you will. As I know from past experience, it is a whole lot easier updating my status on Facebook than it is trying to update my blog. Most everything requires a lot more effort with the blog. Instead of just clicking "share" on a story I want to share my thoughts on, I now have to use a hyperlink. And if I want to share a video on this page, I have to actually embed it using HTML. Earlier today, I came across a video on Facebook of an 18-year-old Rafael "Ted" Cruz sitting astride a bicycle and answering the question of what he wanted to do with his life. What he had to say is revealing, to put it mildly. Maybe we are comparing the wrong GOP presidential candidate to Hitler. The thought of a Cruz presidency is positively terrifying, whereas a Trump presidency would likely be more embarrassing than apocalyptic. Here is the video:

30 Days in the Hole

I guess that desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures. The last time I posted to my blog was in November of 2014, and that post was prompted by something that was happening on Facebook. At that time, I was an admin on a military history page on FB and had posted about the controversy that conservatives had cooked up over a song that was played during a Veteran's Day concert on the Washington Mall. Bruce Springsteen, Zac Brown, and Dave Grohl covered a 1969 Credence Clearwater Revival anti-war anthem called Fortunate Son and the right-wing echo chamber accused them of "hating the troops" or some such imbecilic nonsense. I thought it might make for an interesting and timely post for the military history page, Livingbattlefield. Only to find myself accused of being insufficiently pro-American by the British twit that owned the page! He told me that our there was no place for "politics" on the page and proceeded to take down my post. To say I was angered by his reaction would be putting it very mildly, and that incident surely contributed to the break in our relationship that would come a couple of months later.

The really interesting thing is that the post was hardly political at all. Rather, it was a balanced look at the various ways in which the music of the 1960's has been used as the soundtrack for the entire era, including the Vietnam War. The first few comments on the post, from our page followers, were of the Neanderthal variety and I guess that was all he needed to hear. Obviously, they had already gotten the memo telling them to be outraged over the song selection and immediately registered their displeasure over my post. And probably without even bothering to read it past the first paragraph. I could count on one hand the number of people following that page who were capable of higher reasoning. Most of them were barely literate, and their political views were to the right of Attila the Hun. It still amazes me to think I stuck it out over there for nearly a year.

And here I am a year later still struggling with the same old bullshit. Facebook blocked me for 7 days for posting lyrics to a song in a comment thread, and then followed that up with a 30-day block after I was back barely a week. I knew it was going to happen again, but wrongly assumed that there would be some intermediate sentence of perhaps 15 days. Instead, it went from 7 days to 30 days. I went through the stages of Facebook death, and have finally arrived at acceptance. It is just incredible how much time there is in the day without Facebook greedily devouring the hours. I have rearranged my library and started reading books again. And my need to fill the extra hours has led me to start planning some home improvement projects. In the middle of my 7-day ban, I was struck by the crazy urge to replace the bathtub in our upstairs bathroom, and started watching youtube videos to teach myself how to go about doing it. Only to have my son plead with me not to start such an ambitious project because it would surely not get finished once I got back on Facebook. I deferred to the lad's wisdom and put down the sledgehammer. But now, all things are possible. I am firmly convinced this will turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Fortunate Son

Tuesday night a number of famous musicians performed on the Washington Mall at the "Concert for Valor", an event which was billed as a salute to America's veterans. But the following day, the fact that the concert went off without a hitch, was overshadowed by a controversy about one of the songs. Bruce Springsteen, Zac Brown, and Dave Grohl covered a 1969 Credence Clearwater Revival anti-war anthem called Fortunate Son. The conservative website The Weekly Standard seems to have gotten the ball rolling with this brief criticism, and it soon became a heated topic of debate on social media networks.

A number of pundits have weighted in with many calling the song choice anti-military, unpatriotic, or just plain inappropriate. But, judging from some of the complaints that I have read, the people voicing the criticism clearly haven't even bothered to read the lyrics. Because if they had, they would understand that John Fogerty was not directing his anger and cynicism towards the soldiers. He was aiming it at a system that favored the sons of the rich, and well-connected, when it came to deciding who would have to go and fight in Vietnam. However, no such preferential treatment was available to protect the sons of the working classes. The slogan that describes such a system was originally coined during the Civil War: "Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight".

The interesting thing is that the same music that was originally written, and performed, to protest the Vietnam War, is now the same music that has become the soundtrack of that war. It is pretty much impossible to make a decent movie, or even a video, about Vietnam that doesn't include the music of that era. And I am not talking about only anti-war movies. Even the epic Tom Hanks film "Forrest Gump" used Fogerty's anthem during the scene that introduced Forrest and Bubba into Vietnam. And the National Review has ranked "Forrest Gump" as one of the 25 best conservative movies of the past quarter-century.

Predictably, this controversy is dividing along partisan political lines. Conservatives are the ones attacking Springsteen and liberals are defending him. But some of the things being said about the Boss by conservatives leave me somewhat puzzled. I know conservatives like him, and listen to his music. New Jersey governor Chris Christie is proof enough of that. In fact, no less a conservative than Ronald Reagan sang Springsteen's praises when he was running for reelection as president in 1984. And I'm pretty sure that his campaign used his iconic anthem "Born in the USA" for their song. Although, I suspect that Reagan's team probably never bothered to read the lyrics to that song before adopting it. It is just as much an anti-war song as "Fortunate Son".

Lastly, it has been well-established that numerous service members were active in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. A fact that tends to complicate the familiar narrative that has returning combat veterans getting spat-upon, and otherwise abused by hippies. The two groups did make common cause, and while there are always exceptions, most anti-war protesters directed their anger at the government and the military establishment. Not at individual soldiers. I guess the question becomes this: Is it possible to oppose a war, but still support the troops? Are the two things incompatible?