a word about the barack obama candidacy

of all that's been spoken of the barack obama candidacy by assorted members of the punditry in recent months, and god knows that the whole obama phenomenon has been given a full rectal exam by each and every one of them, there's one piece of "analysis" that perpetually comes up that bothers the hell out of me, and that is this; that barack obama is the first black candidate for president in american history that white people, specifically white people from the south, are not threatened by.

this is a half-truth at best, and it's very close to being patently false.

what obama is to white people, specifically white people from the south, is the first legitimate black candidate for president in american history. past ballot offerings, al sharpton, jesse jackson, alan keyes, etc., were fringe-mongering and buffoonish. whites, southern whites in particular, would not have voted them into office no matter what the color of their skin was. hell, they wouldn't have voted for them even if they had been white! and if the white electorate has felt threatened by black candidates from the past like those aforementioned in any way, it's precisely because they were fringe-mongering and buffoonish and not based solely on the color of their skin.

with all of that said, allow me to go a bit deeper and take this a step further. i should preface this by stating once again that, as of this morning anyway, i was still registered to vote as a republican, as i have been since first registering to vote at 18, though a fairly liberal one, a borderline libertarian. as a child of america, a child of the south, a white child of the south at that, i think that i speak for a great number of us when i say that we want to support a black candidate for the presidency. it's a desire that springs forth from way down, down in that place where the body meets the soul, and it's rooted in part by feelings of guilt, though largely unwarranted and somewhat irrational, over the injustices perpetrated upon blacks by our ancestors. it pains us when people from other places stereotype us as being a bunch of backward hicks because of things that happened long before we were even born. it pains us when we hear reports of pockets of racism that still occasionally take place, such as the whole jena, la saga, because these unfortunate incidents only serve to reinforce that stereotype, even though these sorts of things are fading quickly with the passage of time. older southern americans that were raised in pre-integration america, thus more likely to be steeped in the ignorance that breeds racism, are dying off. the younger generations are, and there are of course exceptions to this as there are for every rule, much more tolerant and accepting. we went to school with black people. we have close friends that are black people. we have entered into romantic relationships with black people.

the times, they are indeed a-changin'.

with all of that said, i changed my registered party affiliation today, the last day for new yorkers to do so before the primary election, from republican to democrat. i did such so that i could hopefully vote for barack obama in the democratic primary. i figure that he and hillary clinton, for whom i hold a previously stated disdain for, even before her crying game antics, will likely be battling it out to win the state's delegates and i want to do my part to help him get elected by casting a vote for him. though i don't agree with him on every issue, i like the guy a lot. and yes, there is this deep-rooted desire to support a person of color for the presidency. i think that it would be a great thing for us as a nation, a massive step forward, a great leap in our collective evolutionary process.

after the primary election, i'll probably switch my party affiliation to independent. i don't even know if i'll vote for obama in the general election if he were to win the democratic nomination. it depends greatly on who the republican nominee is and if michael bloomberg runs as an independent. plus i'm still not all too comfortable calling myself a democrat, even though it's only been a few hours now. it's actually a dirty word in my family. i'm still a bit under the influence of their indoctrination i guess.

and for anyone wanting to lob backwards racist grenades at us louisianians in the future, keep in mind that our current governor is an indian-american and his predecessor was a woman, as is one of our current US senators. how many states can make that claim?


august: osage county

a reader/friend emailed me recently with a word about august: osage county, a play currently running on broadway. she wrote...

Have you seen August: Osage County yet? If you haven't, literally go to telecharge.com right now and buy tickets. It was the greatest thing I've ever seen (including film and television). It made me think of you. It seemed like something you'd really enjoy...or even write.

needless to say i was both intrigued and flattered.

prior to receiving her email, i had been dying to see this show. there's been a tremendous buzz about it since it was running at the steppenwolf in chicago, where it originated. charles isherwood of the ny times even went out to chicago to review it before it came to broadway and was blown away. in his review he compared the matriarch of the family that the play centers on to other classic matriarchs in american theater history...

For all her grace and gentility, Eugene O’Neill’s Mary Tyrone was certainly a handful. Ditto Tennessee Williams’s Amanda Wingfield and Lillian Hellman’s Regina Giddens. Edward Albee’s Martha is a mother you wouldn’t even wish on an imaginary child.

Now an impressive new contender has emerged in the tormenting-female sweepstakes of the American theater. Welcome, please, Mrs. Violet Weston, the cancer-ridden, drug-addled, venom-spewing matriarch of “August: Osage County,” a hugely entertaining (also just plain huge) new play by Tracy Letts at the Steppenwolf Theater Company here.

Like poor Mary in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” Violet spends a lot of her time in a chemically induced haze. Like the fluttery Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie,” her mother love contains equal parts guilt and manipulation. Like Regina in “The Little Foxes,” she is a master tactician. And like the soused Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” she has a tongue that could flay a horse at 10 paces.

well, i finally saw the show recently and holy fuck was i blown away. the actress portraying violet weston, deanna dunagan, gives a mesmerizing performance. the ensemble cast on a whole is perhaps the best i've ever scene on a stage anywhere. and the story told by playwright tracy letts is alternatively hilarious and shocking. when you combine good writing that crackles like this script does with the superb acting present on the stage at the imperial theater, the result is pure magic. you're transported into another world, utterly mesmerized by the lives that are unraveling on stage in front of you. the 3 1/2 hour running time of the play seems to just fly by and you're actually disappointed that the whole thing has to come to an end. it was all it was hyped up to be and more.

if you're in new york, go to see it. they offer seats for $26.50 in the rear mezzanine that are actually quite good. the set is so huge that there really isn't a bad seat in the house. you won't be disappointed. below is the link to the play's official website...

http://www.augustonbroadway.com/


foreshadowing or just coincidence?

my buddy mark, aka the copyranter, found this ad for pakistan international airlines from 1979 that promotes their service to new york.



do you think it's possible that this ad could have planted a seed in the head of the original plotters of the attacks in some way? mark's full write-up on the ad is linked below...

hey, don't you think that plane is flying a little low?


ohio state fans are a classy bunch

my blog buddy orson swindle over at every day should be saturday posted a recap of his time in new orleans covering the BCS championship game for the sporting news. and guess what? ohio state fans are a prickish lot! he writes...

Watching the game with Ohio State fans was anti-fun from the start. I’ve never seen more joyless bunch of college football fans–this was an extension of work and a moment of extreme seriousness from start to finish, at least for the fans at Cafe Ernst. Tension seeped from their pores: whenever anyone the fans did not like appeared on screen, fifteen to twenty fans saluted the television with their middle finger and chants of “FUCK YOU (NAME GOES HERE).” I don’t want to say it looked precisely like the congressional scenes in Idiocracy, but it looked precisely like the congressional scenes in Idiocracy.

(We’re not making any of this up. Older OSU fans were quite nice, and we met nice younger ones, too, and even wrote earlier in the week about how pleasant OSU fans were as a whole…which still remains true. But when the game came on, the vibe turned poisonous, and only got worse as the game went on. They’re still the best road presence of any fans I’ve ever seen, but saying that watching the game with them was “fun” would be “a total fucking lie.”)

The worst moment came when Craig Steltz injured his shoulder and left the game with an injury. Hands shot up with the index finger and middle finger bent into an oval shape not unlike the mouth of a vagina. Just to clarify, I asked what it meant, but didn’t even get to finish the question before the fan next to me stuck his finger through it phallically and confirmed that they were calling Steltz a pussy.

and if all that weren't enough, commenter "kittie" emailed the other day with this story of ohio state fan asshattery...

An ex of mine was an art teacher at CCAD - Columbus College of Art & Design and he said one day when walking around Ohio State during a game where they were playing Texas. Crazy scene outside and around (for those who can't get into the game). There was some car with Texas plates (maybe a family members of a student there or family of a Texas player perhaps?? who knows), well the crazy Ohioans set this poor Texas car on fire - flipped it over and set it on fire!!! Yes, on fucking fire!!! He, a New Yorker like myself, thought Ohio was the most boring state around - could not believe how crazy those people are. Is it just people from Ohio in general, people from Ohio during college football season, or is it ALL COLLEGE football fans - are you ALL this crazy? lol

well, i've never seen LSU fans set a car on fire, but we are pretty fucking nuts about our team. still, i don't think that college football fans are any where near the level of lunacy exhibited by global soccer fans who have been known to riot and kill each other DURING THE GAMES!


with these two just go away and stop making "romantic comedies" please!

i possess an uncanny ability to watch a movie trailer and accurately predict whether or not the film is going to be good or not. this one, fool's gold, starring the always shirtless and always dreamy douche matthew mcconaughey, along with kate hudson, will be a cinematic abortion.



seriously, how does a steaming pile of shit like this get made? oh yeah, i forgot, americans are idiots and will flock to see this shitslice in droves.


reggie bush to possibly lose heisman trophy, USC faces possible NCAA probation?!?!

there's a new tell-all book by don yaeger titled tarnished heisman about to be released. the book investigates reggie bush and the juggernaut that is USC football. it's pretty, ugh, scandalous. no wonder pete carroll is scouting for NFL jobs. writes the la times...

If this were a work of fiction, it'd still be some good pulp.

The book's case against Bush is built heavily on the testimony of one man, Lloyd Lake, who is at the center of the controversy. Lake, a convicted felon whose past in examined in the book, allegedly provided or arranged for hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits for Bush and his family, much of which went directly to into the hands the USC football star. Lake goes so far as to claim that Bush was the one lobbying to further the partnership, in clear violation of NCAA regulations. He says Bush had to persuade him to follow through, urging, "Let's do it," in a face-to-face meeting.

But wait -- there's more. There are numerous examples of other improper benefits Bush allegedly received, backed by receipts and bank records. Some were from another party -- agent Mike Ornstein (himself a convicted felon). While in college, Bush was an intern at Ornstein's office and, according to the book, both he and his family were well taken care of by the man who would eventually handle the player's marketing as a pro.

read the entire review piece here...

la times review of reggie bush tell-all

have a great weekend y'all!