The New Black

By Sam Rosenberg

“The only way to look at a politician is down” -H.L Menken

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” -Joe Biden (Senator and former presidential candidate, in regard to Barack Obama’s electability)

    Two nights ago, on the same eve that Barack Obama was crowned the “presumptive” nominee of the Democratic Party, former NBA star Kevin Johnson took a giant leap toward becoming the next mayor of Sacramento, CA. Unofficial returns from the election show Johnson with a sizable lead (47% to 40%, though some 14,000 absentee ballots are still unaccounted for) over his closest challenger, two time incumbent, Heather Fargo. To win her seat outright, Johnson will have had to garner a majority of the votes (50.1%), which is unlikely considering the ballot featured five other candidates, in addition to Johnson and Fargo. If he fails to do so, he and Fargo will have a run-off in the November election, which he’ll likely win, as long as those girls he “allegedly” molested don’t go running their mouths on network television about how Johnson liked to pinch their nipples and smell their underwear. That wouldn’t be good for anyone, especially Johnson, who has already admitted to showering with a 16 year old, at which time he was 29. It’s a very weird story with implications too bizarre for me to contemplate right now. Here are the police filings: http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2008/04/15/21/Child_Abuse_Report.source.prod_affiliate.4.pdf

    In any normal year throughout American history it would be difficult for a Black, 42 year-old former NBA player and alleged sex offender to win a mayoral race. But this isn’t any normal year; this is the year of “CHANGE.” As long as a candidate is black enough for blacks, gentile enough for whites, and has enough bribe money for the party elders, they’re pretty much a lock to win, no matter their shortcomings (See: Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick). Obama’s given white Americans a reason to check the box next to the black candidate. He and David Axelrod, his campaign manager/media guru, have created the illusion that by “voting black” white people can rid themselves of their slavery-guilt. Essentially, “vote for me and I will lift your burden.” It’s a campaign platform that’s tough to beat, especially when you have at your disposal about a million new white voters trying desperately to find a way to rationalize their infatuation with 50 Cent.

    Before you write me off as a racist, let me clarify something. It’s politicians that I hate. I have as little respect for the black ones as I do for the white ones, and the gay ones. Given enough time, they all prove to legislate based on self-interest and greed. The fact that to even be considered viable in a modern day election you need to raise upwards of a million dollars implies, in itself, that electoral politics is, at it’s core, a money game. As soon as he announced his bid for Mayor, Kevin Johnson wrote a $500,000 check to his campaign, an amount that proved to be more than his incumbent opponent raised throughout her whole campaign, and undoubtedly the reason that he was even able to compete with her. And believe me, that $500,000 was an investment, and Johnson expects a return.

    It may be hard to wrap your mind around the idea that little KJ from the Phoenix Suns is now Kevin Johnson: businessman, philanthropist, and future mayor of Sacramento, but he is. By the same token though, he’s only “gettin’ his,” the same way white politicians have been “gettin’ theirs” since the inception of this great nation. What he and Obama are doing really isn’t new, or revolutionary. It’s business as usual, only behind a black mask, which for black people, and many whites, seems to be “change [they] can believe in.” I look forward to witnessing their disappointment when they realize that the “new black” is really just the “same old white.”

"EVERYBODY'S NUMBER ONE!"

On Monday, in honor of Memorial Day, ESPN ran a special version of their “Top Ten,” in which they paid tribute to American athletes who have served in the armed forces. The segment was preceded by footage of Georgy standing on the White House lawn with five brainwashed NCAA football coaches, all of them smiling like liars and shilling for the war.

With the president lurking over his right shoulder, Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weis, in regard to troop morale on his recent trip to Iraq, gushed, “There wasn’t one person, of the thousands and thousands we met, that had one negative thing to say, and that’s almost overwhelming to think about.”  Charlie’s right. It is overwhelming to think about. Especially when you consider how many of those troops have seen their friends killed, or how many of them have children at home that are growing up without fathers or mothers because of this senseless war. It’s actually very overwhelming to think about. But thinking isn’t Weis’ job. And it’s certainly not ESPN anchor Dari Nowkhah’s job, as he was selected (Probably because he’s a Sportscenter rookie, and Stu Scott, ESPN’s resident Uncle Tom, was unavailable) to read the patriotic swill that preempted the special “Memorial Day Top Ten list.”  

“We here at ESPN thank every single one of you who has served, or is currently serving our nation. In terms of athletes/veterans, that is our Top Ten on this particular Memorial Day. And you know what, nobody’s 10, or 9, or 7….. EVERYBODY’S NUMBER ONE!!!!!!!!”

Like a Bozo show for athletes/veterans, they ran down a list of not ten, but 17 number one’s who left their sport to serve in various wars, all without a single mention of Muhammed Ali. It wasn’t in ESPN’s interest to mention him, seeing as how they’re now in the war-selling business (their day job of course being, “making sports gayer”). But war isn’t my business, so I’ll say it: All of the men on that list, combined, aren’t worth a drop of Ali’s spit. They were all essentially glorified army recruiters who never saw a day in battle, yet gave their souls to the U.S. propaganda machine to use as they saw fit. Because of them, many impressionable sport-loving kids throughout the last century enlisted and died in our armed forces, in wars that we started. Ali, on the other hand, spent his life being persecuted by our government for refusing to enlist when he was drafted to go to Vietnam, boldly claiming,  “Ain’t no Viet Cong ever called me Nigger.” He, like the others on the list, had to sacrifice the prime of his career. But instead of being tooled around from army base to army base on USO tours, trying to convince soldiers that their cause is just, Ali spent his time in jail, giving inspiration to peace movements around the globe.

Even more disturbing than their unwillingness to mention Muhammed Ali was ESPN’s treatment of Pat Tillman, whose grave they’ve repeatedly shit on since his unfortunate death in 2004. While shamelessly praising Tillman’s willingness to serve, they failed to elaborate on the shady circumstances that surrounded his death, which came at the hands of one of his fellow troops, in what the military categorizes as “friendly fire.” ESPN played a major role in the cover-up that ensued after Tillman’s death, painting him as a hero who died in battle; a hero who gave up everything for the privilege to die for his country; a hero whose life was taken by the terrorists. This was hardly the case though. Pat Tillman, the real man, was a person who questioned not only his role in the the army, but also our country’s current foreign policy.

Sportswriter Dave Zirin summed up Tillman’s exploitation best in his book, “What’s My Name, Fool?”

“Tillman wouldn’t play their game. He turned down ‘hundreds if not thousands’ of interviews and photo ops. He refused to be in any recruitment videos or on a single poster…… When Tillman was killed in Afghanistan by ‘friendly fire,’ the [administration’s] gears began to turn again. As Tillman’s family and football fans grieved, the United States’ war machine sprang into action. Death rendered Tillman helplessly compliant—-and far more useful to the masters of war than he had been in life.”

On what should have been his brother’s 29th birthday, Kevin Tillman wrote this op-ed in his brother’s memory, attempting to reframe the context in which his brother’s story was being told.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/

Tillman’s mother, Mary, has also been engaged in constant battle with the U.S. Government to learn the true details of his death. Below is a clip of her directly addressing a congressional committee in regard to her son’s death, follwed by an interview she did with Dave Zirin on his weekly radio show, “The Edge of Sports.” 

I’ve come to expect this garbage from ESPN, but it always amazes me how far they’ll go to back our current administration’s murderous foreign policy. They’re on board though, and like a good soldier, they always say yes when the red phone rings, no matter the consequence.