15
Oct
09

Book of the Month Discussion: Quicksand by Nella Larsen. [Sticky Post]

By belleisa 9 Comments
Categories: Books, Literature and PostBourgie Reading and Discussion Group

from barnesandnoble.com

During dinner a friend of a friend foolishly told me he didn’t read. My confusion at the notion turned to heartbreak, then I tried to reserve my judgment. He couldn’t have possibly known he was having dinner with a girl who goes to bookstores for fun. Seeing the disappointment on my face, he quickly added that he has read one book he loved, Fortunate Son by Walter Mosley.

“That’s a real black man’s story,” he said.

“And a great read,” I replied.

I then inundated him with books and authors similar to Mosley and assured him that he didn’t have to relive his high school English syllabus to enjoy reading. My sister gently saved him from my soap box. “Don’t worry,” she said. “She’s a writer.”

In the essay “Dear Ms. Larsen, There’s a Mirror Looking Back,” Heidi W. Durrow writes that Nella Larsen’s writing gave her “the permission…to write the only stories [she] knew how to tell: of being black and Danish, and of being a white women’s child.” The need to establish your own personhood is imperative, but we all need permission to do so. If others are unwilling to grant it, I think literature can.

While rereading Quicksand, I was struck by the way space and experience change the perception of a book and why it’s so important to revisit the novels, poems, essays and articles which have, at one time, moved us.

19
Oct
09

Mad Men, Season 3, Ep. 10: The Color Blue.

By slb 3 Comments
Categories: Mad Men
Web of LIES!

Web of LIES!

Whew! Talk about your gamechangers!

Continue reading ‘Mad Men, Season 3, Ep. 10: The Color Blue.’

19
Oct
09

Untangling ‘Good Hair.’

By G.D. 5 Comments
Categories: Film
Tags:

I saw Good Hair the night it came out, but I’ve been holding off writing about it because my feelings about it keep changing. I’m still not sure just what to make of it. It’s a really, really funny film, but it throws out all sorts of eye-popping numbers and images without really commenting on any of them or even bothering to ask any decent follow-up questions. There’s a scene in which Chris Rock and a chemist demonstrate that the active ingredient in hair relaxer is so toxic that it can melt a soda can in a few hours. Okay…so how much of this stuff is in the typical dose of a relaxer that goes on someone’s head? And what does this mean for the health of the hairdressers who handle it for a living? Neither gets asked. Indeed, the history is hair-straightening is never even touched upon (C.J. Walker’s near-total absence from this movie* is unjustifiable).

And then there’s the powerful segment in India — after software, human hair is the country’s biggest export — which also really unsettled Anna at over at Jezebel.

I will give Chris major points for the segment in which he goes to India to see how the human hair used in weaves is obtained. The resulting footage was damning: Human beings in a third world country reduced to their body parts, which are then sold off so that comparatively rich women in the first world can use them as adornments. Ugh. Seeing those swaths of hair being sorted, laid out, combed through and spun into perfect bundles of shiny ebony silk made me sick to my stomach.

Again, Rock’s take on this segment is essentially “That’s crazy, right?” Why, yes! It is crazy! One might even venture to say that it’s unnerving enough to necessitate a change in consumer behavior! But the closest thing we get to any sort of critique from Rock on this or anything else is his cheesy dodge of a closing line, which goes something like this: “I guess when my daughter is old enough to decide whether to get a weave or a perm, I’ll tell her what’s on top of her head is less important than what’s in it.” And with that, me and the natural-haired woman with whom I went to see the movie rolled our eyes.

*The homie NiaTrue on Twitter reminded me that Walker’s great -granddaughter A’Leila Bundles makes an appearance in the movie, but they certainly don’t explain who she is or why she’s being spotlighted.

16
Oct
09

Hate on Glee.

By shani-o 10 Comments
Categories: Television
Tags: ,

I cut off my cable more than a year ago. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, for a few reasons. One, the times that most people watch television — in the morning before work and in the evening after work — I spent listening to music, reading, and writing. Two, because I had very, very basic cable, there was rarely anything on worth watching. Three, when I did watch, it was often mostly Sunday afternoon Hannah Montana and This Old House marathons. But about six months ago, I got Verizon Fios internet, and my world changed. I discovered Tudou and Hulu and it’s all been downhill from there. Recently, I realized that I have a roster of shows to watch regularly: Fringe, Dollhouse, The Daily Show, Gossip Girl, and Glee all made the list. The last of these, however, has caused me a little bit of consternation.

There are a lot of reasons why I should like Glee. It has musical numbers, and I am a girl who loves musicals; from Gigi to Jesus Christ Superstar, I can get behind a movie with plenty of singing and dancing. It’s in the classic high school setting, and since I grew up just as teen movies and TV shows had a resurgence in the late nineties, I have a lot of loyalty to the genre. Plus, it really is a funny show.

More…

16
Oct
09

Friday Random Ten

By blackink12 7 Comments
Categories: Random-Ass Roundup

A dear member of our extended blog family, Leigh, is getting married in a week and needs a list of essential reception dance songs. Now that we’ve been called to duty, we’ll give it our best shot.

A very special edition of the Friday Random Ten:

1. Step in the Name of Love by R. Kelly (Blackink)

2. Back at One by Brian McKnight (Jamelle)

3. I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know by Donny Hathaway (Belleisa)

4. You Put A Move On My Heart by Tamia (Shani-o)

5. Lady in My Life by Michael Jackson (Belleisa)

6. Isn’t It Romantic? by Ella Fitzgerald (Shani-o)

7. Can’t Let Go by Anthony Hamilton (Blackink)

8. You Were Meant for Me by Donny Hathaway (Belleisa)

9. At Last by Eva Cassidy (Shani-o)

10. Apache by Sugar Hill Gang (Blackink).

Leigh, if you need any ideas for an acceptable routine to accompany “Apache,” Will and Carlton will be your guides. Or you could just do this. Whichever.

If anyone else has suggestions or links or a kind word for the bride-to-be, you all know where to leave them.

That said, we’d like to offer Leigh a very sincere congratulations. Best wishes.

15
Oct
09

Random Midday Hotness: Tall Enough.

By G.D. 5 Comments
Categories: Film and Media

Latoya posted this short which is part of some promotion by Bloomingdale’s. (But don’t hold that against it.) It’s by Barry Jenkins, who wrote and directed Medicine for Melancholy, which I really, really dug.


15
Oct
09

This Is an Actual Thing That Has Happened.

By G.D. 7 Comments
Categories: WTF?

Umm….

14
Oct
09

Quote of the Day.

By G.D. 3 Comments
Categories: Discrimination and Policy

One of Sully’s readers explains how he came around on DADT.

I used to be of the same mind as your military reader who says we cannot repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, as it would bring homosexual men and women into danger. I had served in the Marine Corps, and still bear my marine tattoo. I believed that we had to keep homosexuals safe from the barbarous military men (the women weren’t violently homophobic, in my experience) until I spoke with another former marine who told me that my good intentions were small minded.

Homosexual men and women needed to suffer publicly. They needed to be beaten and keep standing. They needed to be promoted into powerful non-commissioned officer ranks. There needed to be gay drill instructors who put recruits in awe of their abilities. There had to be openly gay marine and soldier heroes to show the homophobes that they are wrong, just as Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, and all the rest have done.

And, as I write this, I realize that’s why so much of the country fears letting homosexuals serve openly in the military, because it will show America that they are not inferior. The hardscrabble Americans in the military will learn that there are gay men who are better than themselves, that there are lesbians tougher, and smarter, and more heroic than they will ever be. That’s why they must keep Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, in order to maintain the hideous illusion of superiority for the homophobes of all stripes.

14
Oct
09

Which is which?

By shani-o 2 Comments
Categories: Democrats and Republicans

There’s been plenty of fun made on the intertubes of the GOP relaunch of their site. Marc Ambinder gave us 10 reasons why the site was ‘fizzlin’;’ Greg Saunders at The Talent Show rounded up all the banner images, which gives us some insight into the demographics the party is going after; Sam Stein at the HuffPo picked apart the GOP’s insistence that Jackie Robinson is a Republican hero; Christopher Orr at The New Republic notes the silliness of the updated “future leaders” page; and a few laughs were had over Michael Steele’s inaugural post on his (renamed) blog in which he informed us that the internet ‘has been around for a while, now.”

Today I showed a (quite conservative) web geek coworker the new GOP site. After he recovered from seeing the insanely bright red, he took screen caps of both GOP.com and Democrats.org, desaturated them, deleted all identifying info, and put them next to one another.

screengrab-196

screengrab-197

The aesthetic similarities are unsurprising. I don’t think it’s just a case of the RNC ripping off the DNC (which itself ripped off BarackObama.com). Pale stars and suggestions of stripes are just the trendy Web 2.0 way of saying “USA.” What is surprising, sorta, is the fact that when the identifying information is removed from each site, I really couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

In the words of my coworker: “Two parties, no color, no self-identification, just rhetoric.”

14
Oct
09

I am Shocked – Shocked – To Learn That Black People Aren’t All That Jazzed on America.

By Jamelle 8 Comments
Categories: Politics and Race

Even if Rasmussen’s poll is accurate and only 14 percent of African-Americans say that American society “is generally fair and decent” (down from 55 percent from February), this – from Powerline’s John Hinderaker – is still pretty stupid:

It’s interesting that Latinos and Asians evidently have a higher opinion of the decency of American society than whites. But the main point here, obviously, is the dramatic shift among African-Americans. What could have caused it?

The only possible answer is that many Americans have opposed President Obama’s policies. But why would that cause African-Americans to think that our society is “discriminatory” rather than “decent”? No mystery there: in a well-coordinated campaign, the Democratic Party has relentlessly portrayed all disagreement with the Obama administration’s policies as “racist.” That contemptible and divisive tactic had seemed to produce no results, but we now see that it had one consequence: alienating African-Americans from their country.

I wonder what would cause African-Americans to think that our society is discriminatory rather than decent?  The institutional racism and massive economic inequalities notwithstanding, I’m inclined to think that it has something to do with the indiscriminate killing of black people by police, or the thinly-veiled racist outrage surrounding Sonia Sotomayor, or the GOP’s race-baiting spokesmen, or the fact that Republican congressmen refer to the president as “boy” and ask him to “show some humility.”  And then there’s the whole “tea party” thing.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that has something to do with it.

13
Oct
09

Of Concussions and Cruelty.

By blackink12 3 Comments
Categories: Health and Sports

x-posted at False Hustle

In the end, I guess I was one of the lucky ones. I left the game of football with a touch of arthritis, a few battle scars, a bruised ego and memories that get all the more grand and outlandish with each passing year. Did I ever tell you all about that time I scored four touchdowns in a single game?

Now, maybe it seems odd to say that I was lucky. I played football in high school and not-so-much in college, leaving behind mostly a legacy of mediocrity. I never got even the faintest whiff of the dream of every kid who puts on the pads – the NFL. It took me about two practices at TCU in my sophomore year to figure out that LaDainian Tomlinson had a future in the game, and that I had a future writing about it.

So, what makes me lucky? Here, try some Malcolm Gladwell:

The HITS data suggest that, in an average football season, a lineman could get struck in the head a thousand times, which means that a ten-year N.F.L. veteran, when you bring in his college and high-school playing days, could well have been hit in the head eighteen thousand times: that’s thousands of jarring blows that shake the brain from front to back and side to side, stretching and weakening and tearing the connections among nerve cells, and making the brain increasingly vulnerable to long-term damage. People with C.T.E., Cantu says, “aren’t necessarily people with a high, recognized concussion history. But they are individuals who collided heads on every play—repetitively doing this, year after year, under levels that were tolerable for them to continue to play.”

That’s pretty bad. And then I begin to think, maybe I wasn’t so lucky. I had one diagnosed concussion in my abbreviated football career, in my first week of college football practice. Looking back over the course of my playing days, I’m almost certain that I had another during a game in my senior year of high school – I was blindsided by a defender, went to the sideline to throw up and I don’t remember much more about that night. I kept playing, though. It was a bad night.

But what I’m not tallying are all the other little collisions that might have bruised my brain in some way. I started playing the game when I was a mere child, in the streets and backyards of my neighborhood, and started playing organized tackle football when I was 10.

What do all those thuds and thumps over the years mean? Gladwell, again:

Yet the HITS data suggest that practice—the routine part of the sport—can be as dangerous as the games themselves. … In one column, the HITS software listed the top hits of the practice up to that point, and every few moments the screen would refresh, reflecting the plays that had just been run on the field. Forty-five minutes into practice, the top eight head blows on the field measured 82 gs, 79 gs, 75 gs, 79 gs, 67 gs, 60 gs, 57 gs, and 53 gs. One player, a running back, had received both the 79 gs and the 60 gs, as well as another hit, measuring 27.9 gs. This wasn’t a full-contact practice. It was “shells.” The players wore only helmets and shoulder pads, and still there were mini car crashes happening all over the field.

I had my fair share of car crashes. And, believe it or not, this was the part of the game that I enjoyed the most. I could hardly get my heart rate up for a game that didn’t involve some collisions. To this day, I still long for the chance to randomly stiff-arm someone, or to bury my head into someone’s sternum. Yes, I understand this makes me a Neanderthal.

But it’s this yearning that makes me object to the premise of Gladwell’s piece: that football and dogfighting are more or less the same. Gladwell points out that one of his interview subjects, former NFL lineman Kyle Turley, said “he loved playing football so much that he would do it all again.” You’ll find that most ex-players feel the same way. Nothing feels quite like playing under those lights, on that gridiron.

I don’t pretend to know much about dogs or dogfighting but, to me, the major difference is the element of choice. I – and thousands of others – willingly submitted ourselves to the brutal theater that is football. But dogs, on the other hand, are maniacally conditioned by their owners to “please (their) master,” said Carl Semencic in “The World of Fighting Dogs”. This is coercion, this is abuse, this is sick.

Honestly, I can’t have a serious debate about whether football and dogfighting share any traits other than violence. But Gladwell’s piece is compelling in that we see how players can drive themselves to ruin in much the same way as a “game” canine. The toll seems to be tremendous, man or beast.

Beyond that, I’m much more interested in how dogfighting is juxtaposed against a culture of sport hunting or some of the uglier practices of our industrial food complex. Michael Vick is condemned; Sarah Palin is celebrated. But why?

Because in the end, football can be brutal. But at least everyone knows they’re getting played.

13
Oct
09

Way, Way Too Much of a Good Thing.

By G.D. 1 Comment
Categories: Health and Sexuality

A woman talks about dealing with Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder, a condition which causes her to have 100-200 spontaneous orgasms a day. Her  condition has caused her to shy away from human contact, and left her depressed and lonely.

[via Gerry Canavan]

13
Oct
09

I’m Not a Sensitive Black Female.

By Guest Contributor 19 Comments
Categories: Media and Sexism
Tags: , ,

by Kiana, x-posted from Propertalks.

I absolutely love Serena William’s photo for ESPN’s “Body Issue.” Not nearly as much as I love Dwight’s, but it’s definitely worth a spot on my refrigerator door. I’m hoping it will deter me from all things fried.  Okay, maybe not all things fried since Serena looks like she knows how to befriend a Twinkies or two.

Aside from the obvious touch ups (where’s the cellulite? Hello Beyonceweave) the good folk at ESPN did a good enough job to stop me from bemoaning yet another magazine cover with a half nekked (yes, we say nekked ’round these parts) woman.

ESPN did well, though I won’t go as far as  former Vibe and KING Magazine editor, Jozen Cummings, and hope that  larger magazines with a predominately male, and white, demographic publish more covers like this one, or KINGs, for men such as him to appreciate, whatever that means.

I agree with Cummings, Black women should be celebrated in the mainstream more often, but there’s something about this article that has irritated me since last week. It isn’t his quick dismissal that the cover is no Saartjie Bartman or how he does not acknowledge the fact that Black women have been subjected to years of sexual exploitation. Rather, the thing that bothers me the most about Cumming’s piece is that he used KING magazine to defend the celebration of Black women and our bodies, when KING magazine did none of that.

When KING flopped, I was happy to see it go.  KING was able to provide an alternative to the mostly white, mostly skinny women who grace the covers of most men’s magazines, but that doesn’t mean it was any less misogynistic, sexist, chauvinistic and all those things that made it controversial.

I know that KING wasn’t made for me, but as the type of woman the magazine claimed to celebrate (I am both Black and curvy;  in college Angela and our friends referred to my butt as if it was its own entity: The Kiana Booty) I never felt a connection or a sense of pride when I saw the magazine on newsstands.  In short, I never felt celebrated.

Instead I felt the women on display were cheapened, used, and angry (peep the photos of KING magazine in Google Images and you’ll be hard pressed to find a cover with a woman smiling). More…

13
Oct
09

Do Big Marches Still Matter?

By G.D. 18 Comments
Categories: Media and Politics

Before the big National Equality Rights March last Sunday, Barney Frank flashed his trademark exasperation at the idea that the demonstration would push lawmakers on gay rights. “The only thing they’ll be putting pressure on is the grass,” he said.

Pam Spaulding reciprocated with some annoyance of her own. “I’m scratching my head on this. OK, so the march isn’t his bag, why not simply say nothing rather than to continue tossing out the barbs?”

While it certainly sucks to have the country’s most prominent openly gay politician call the National Equality March  a big waste of time,  isn’t Frank essentially correct in saying that big rallies like the NEM have little influence on policymakers? To the extent that the  mass demonstrations of the 1960s were effective in spurring policy changes  — and  there’s an argument we could probably have  about how true that may be — those rallies took place when big events monopolized the coverage of a handful of news outlets. That’s a markedly different media landscape than our current one.  There’s also the issue of march fatigue: according to Wikipedia, there have been nine big rallies in D.C. just this year. How much attention are lawmakers paying to any of these events?

There are undoubtedly tons of ancillary organizational benefits that come with big demonstrations. They allow advocacy groups with similar objectives to coordinate and network, to say nothing of the catharsis and goodwill that comes with rubbing shoulders with like-minded people. But to say they have a direct affect on policy seems like a stretch.

12
Oct
09

Your Monday Random-Ass Roundup: No More About Nobel.

By blackink12 7 Comments
Categories: Random-Ass Roundup

Heard this joke? I’m sure you haven’t. It’s really funny. Like, President Obama was recently nominated for a Country Music Award. Or the Heisman. Or a Pulitzer. Or a Source Award. Hell, so was I.

Trust me. This is all hilarious. Without even giving it much thought, anyone can be Leno these days. Comedy isn’t hard at all.

Here’s another one: what did the five fingers say to the face … ?

But enough with the funny. How about some random-assed, PostBourgie-approved reading material from the weekend?:

1. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! (Shani-o)

2. Foreign Policy, on the military’s female units deployed in counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan: First, Afghans don’t seem to mind the female teams. Paradoxically, “Female Marines are extended the respect shown to men, but granted the access reserved for women,” the report finds. “In other words, the culture is more flexible than we’ve conditioned ourselves to think.” (Belleisa)

3. For much of the debate over health care reform, the insurance industry was saying all the right things. But now it seems ready to launch an all-out effort to defeat the Baucus bill, saying that it will cost the average policyholder an extra $4,000 a year. (G.D.)

4. Hoyden relates the tale of a breastfed 4-month-old infant in the 99th percentile of height and weight who is being denied health insurance because it’s obese.  There are no words. (Shani-o)

5. You can’t hear the music but, at this very moment, I’m playing the world’s smallest violin in honor of the very “tired and depressed” Roman Polanski. (Blackink)

6. From Broadsheet:  “Feminists for Choice alerts us to a new Oklahoma law (yes, law, not “proposed legislation” or “some kind of sick joke”) set to go into effect Nov. 1 that would collect detailed data about each abortion performed — and post it all on a public Web site.” (Belleisa)

7. Nearly a quarter of the planet’s population is now Muslim. (G.D.)

8. Alicia at Muslimah Media Watch questions those who question the veil. “Asking Muslim women why we choose to wear the hijab shifts the attention away from the asker’s insecurity of their own ideas of freedom and sexuality (if you’re comfortable with how everybody expresses their freedom and sexuality, how Muslim women dress should be the least of your worries).” (Shani-o)

9. Among many others, neither Andrew Sullivan nor Pam Spaulding were impressed with President Obama’s keynote address Saturday to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay civil rights advocacy group. About the only plus? His opening joke about Lady Gaga. (Blackink)

10. But in much more positive development, the Obama administration has stripped the notoriously xenophobic Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio of some of his powers in enforcing federal immigration law. (Blackink)

11. With each passing day, it looks more and more like embattled Texas Gov. Rick Perry has tried to obstruct a state probe into an arson investigation that led the the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. The Houston Chronicle also has a report showing that Perry received a five-page report from a noted expert questioning the evidence in Willingham’s case 88 minutes before the  execution. To quote a commenter, Perry seems to have no problem letting the facts get in the way of a body count. h/t Dog Canyon. (Blackink)

12. In the wake of Harry Connick Jr.’s righteous stand in Australia against a terrible tee-vee skit featuring blackface, Racialicious ponders the global race to be the “Least Racist Country.” (Blackink)

13. Even though Lonnie Jones was released from prison after serving more than five years for a murder he didn’t commit, the Brooklyn chapter of the Sex Money Murder Bloods still has a $20,000 contract on his head. (Blackink)

14. “Why Do More Women than Men Still Believe in God?” from DoubleX: “It’s hard not to compare women sticking with faith to wives confined to bad marriages: They’re so committed to the institution that they’ll willingly shrink under mistreatment just to maintain their own status quo.” (Belleisa)

15. The Daily Beast ranks Raleigh-Durham, N.C., the smartest city in the nation. (G.D.)

16. There are kosher elevators. I did not know this. And it is awesome. (Shani-o)

17. Matt Taibbi ponders some of the criticism directed at Michael Moore’s new movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story”: “…most of us Americans are much better at being movie and TV critics than we are at being political organizers.” (Blackink)

18. Bored with the look of the American dollar — it’s design hasn’t changed much since the 1920s —  a New York designer launched a contest to overhaul it. Here are some of the entries. (G.D.)

19. “Diary of an Escaped Sex Slave” from Marie Claire. (Belleisa)
20. Also via Marie Claire, Stoners for the “Sex and the City” crowd. (Belleisa)
21. Time explains how noted scholar and best-selling author Sarah Palin was able to write her memoirs so quickly. Surprisingly, crayons weren’t involved.
22. Sarah Silverman makes a pitch for curing world hunger, saving the world. Surely, the Pope would not be very happy with her or her potty mouth. (Blackink)

23. Alcohol ads work so well the British Medical Association thinks they should be banned. (Shani-o)

24. A water beetle. The five remaining numbers in a math problem. A junior hockey league team in Michigan. A treadmill on the International Space Station. Honestly, what’s left for Stephen Colbert to slap his name on?

25. A debate over black Barbies. (G.D.)

26. Yet another reason “The Cleveland Show” is damn near unwatchable: the shameful ridicule of the obese and disabled. Oh, who am I kidding? The show is unwatchable. (Blackink)

27. BET has a hip-hop awards show? (G.D.)

28. The head of the N.F.L. players’ union comes out against Rush Limbaugh’s attempt to purchase the St. Louis Rams. (G.D.)
29. Their franchise quarterback is rapidly becoming a bust of historic proportions. They suffered an embarrassing 37-point loss (and it wasn’t that close) to the Giants on Sunday. And their head coach could very soon face criminal charges for punching out one of his assistants. All in all, it must really suck to be a fan of the Oakland Raiders. (Blackink)
30. Known widely as the sportswriter who essentially ethered John Rocker, Jeff Pearlman is still waiting to hear back from his old foil: “Dumb-asses shouldn’t suffer for an eternity, should they?
Even John Rocker.” (Blackink)
As always, do whatever tickles your fancy in the comments. Even leave a link or two, if you’re so inclined.
Happy Monday.
12
Oct
09

Mad Men, Season 3, Episode 9: Wee Small Hours

By quadmoniker 17 Comments
Categories: Mad Men and Television

Awwwww, Sal. We knew Sal was probably a goner as soon as we saw Don peak in on Sal and the bellhop, but it still seems more than cruel for Sal to get an unexpected hit on from a handsome direction and then have it turn on him. Still, that’s probably the way it would have happened. And when Don suggested Sal should have handled it the way “you people” handle it, it betrayed the secret relationship he thought he and Don had. Sal thought he knew Don because of what Don didn’t do, and that betrayal of a secret understanding really gets to the heart of the episode.

Through a weird, Ken Burns-esque letter-reading voice-over, we see the start of Betty’s affair with Henry Francis take real shape, and then fizzle and die when her juvenile chaise fantasies give way to the hard realty of a desk in an office. It’s nice to see Betty’s childishness kind of serve her well. She throws a box at Henry, but when that doesn’t end with him carrying her off into the sunset on a white horse she wants none of it. All for the best. Hard to see how that was going to turn out well.

But Betty’s relationship with Henry provides a new chance for a secret understanding with Carla, which, through awkward references to contemporaneous events sheds a little light on the superior relationship Betty’s cohort thought they had with African Americans vis-a-vis the South. When Betty’s guests discuss the barbarism of segregation as Carla hangs out in the back, the irony is a little too heavy. And poor Carla, I wish we could see more from her than the sideways glance.

The biggest betrayal, of course, is that of Conrad Hilton, who is one minute calling Don in the middle of the night to tell him he’s like a son and the next demanding some ridiculous ad like any other spoiled client. And it serves Roger the opportunity to give Don the smack down he’s been waiting to give him all season.

I’m just not sure what the episode tells us about Don. In his disappointment, Don does exactly what he’s always done. At the end he’s cuddled up with a hipster brunette which, incidentally, is just the way he started.

Wherever this show is taking us, it’s without my two favorite characters — Sal and Joan — at Sterling Cooper. This season has offered us some of the best episodes from the show yet, but this one seemed ready-made for the criticisms people often throw at it, that it’s a very stylized version of not very much that’s new. I could be wrong about the episode in the first impression. I’d love to see what you guys think.

09
Oct
09

Insult to Injury.

By G.D. 1 Comment
Categories: Poverty

Colin Asher looks at the deteriorating financial situation in the D, which has left dozens of families without the means to claim their loved ones’ bodies from the city morgue.

Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer.

Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. “Some people don’t come forward even though they know the people are here,” said the former Detroit cop. “They don’t have the money.”

Lifelong Detroit residents Darrell and Cheryl Vickers understand this firsthand. On a chilly September morning they had to visit the freezer to identify the body of Darrell’s aunt, Nancy Graham — and say their goodbyes.

The couple, already financially strained, don’t have the $695 needed to cremate her. Other family members, mostly in Florida, don’t have the means to contribute, either. In fact, when Darrell’s grandmother passed recently, his father paid for the cremation on a credit card — at 21% interest.

So the Vickers had to leave their aunt behind. Body number 67. …

Detroit is not alone. The Los Angeles coroner’s office said it, too, has seen an increase in the number of bodies abandoned. That’s not surprising at a time when unemployment tops 10% in many cities and the median cost of a funeral in America hovers around $7,000. Cremation can cost $2,000.

09
Oct
09

Friday Random Ten: WTF?

By shani-o Leave a Comment
Categories: Music and friday random ten

Yet again, BlackInk has abandoned you in order to get Real Work done, and he has charged me with posting this week’s Random Ten. I don’t know about you, but I woke up this morning just before 8, and was greeted with tweets (yes, I check Twitter upon waking, no I don’t care what you think) about Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Frankly, I thought I was still dreaming.

After I rubbed my eyes and looked again, I realized it was true. My first coherent thought: “WTF?!” And the urgency of that question only increased over the course of the morning — especially after the president’s short, awkward, and weirdly delivered pseudo-acceptance speech.

All of that to say, this week’s Random Ten theme is: Songs That Make You Go ‘WTF?!’

Did I Step On Your Trumpet? — Danielson (slb)

“A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger” — Of Montreal (Jamelle)

Smash Into You — Beyonce (shani-o)

Honky Tonk Badunkadunk — Trace Atkins (quadmoniker)

Electric Wire Hustle Flower — Common (Alisa)

Absolutely Cuckoo — The Magnetic Fields (Alisa)

Chicken Grease — D’Angelo (BlackInk)

Anyone Else But You — The Moldy Peaches (shani-o)

My Neck, My Back (Lick It) — Khia (BlackInk)

“Irony of it All” — The Streets (Jamelle)

09
Oct
09

Um, Really?

By quadmoniker 10 Comments
Categories: Barack Obama and WTF?
Tags: ,

Now, I cried like everyone else on election night. Just last night, I finished Brick City, which ended with Barack Obama’s election, and felt the need to watch his fantastic victory speech again. But Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, really? The dude just got started. Maybe you want to wait. But then, it is pretty full of audacity and hope, and that’s the president’s thing.

08
Oct
09

Help Us Name the PostBourgie Podcast.

By G.D. 20 Comments
Categories: Metablogging and Podcast

We’ve been in the lab trying to to get a podcast up and running, and we plan to go live in early November. We’re pretty amped about it, but so far we haven’t been able to come up with a name.

Suggestions welcomed. Nay! Suggestions desperately needed.

If you have any clever ideas — and we know you do — we really want to hear them. We’ll put them up for a vote here on the blog before the end of the month.

Grazie.

08
Oct
09

Naming Names.

By Guest Contributor 4 Comments
Categories: Culture

(by Cindy Mosqueda, x-posted from at Loteria Chicana)

The emotional complexity of that cultural changeover means that parents don’t just switch from Latin names to English ones in a single go. Rather, says Jasso, they may pass through a three-stage process, “with bilingual names becoming popular for a while. Those are names like Hector and Daniel for boys and Sandra and Cecilia for girls.” [Time Magazine, Adios Juan and Juanita: Latina names trend down]

When my parents, Carlos and Luz, chose baby names, they picked names that would sound good in English and Spanish. It made sense to them. They were born in Mexico, but emigrated as school-age children. Although they are fluent in their native and adopted tongues, their parents barely spoke English. Thus, they avoided names that would be mangled by their parents and chose Daniel (well, Grandma chose that name), Cynthia, Laura and Adrian.

I like their approach. I’m not sure mom and dad saw themselves in some sort of “cultural changeover,” but their names as well as the names they chose for their children fit into the three-stage process.

As I read Jeffrey Kluger’s article on Latino names trending downward I wondered about the general premise: distinctly Latino names are dying out as the percentage of foreign born Latinos diminishes and those who are here become more assimilated. Kluger cites data from the Social Security Administration on changes in popularity for baby names.

He has a point. I know few people with old-school names like Refugio, Bartolo (my grandpa!), Antonia (that would be my Mamá Toní) and Herminia in my parents’ generation, let alone in my generation. I’m sure those names are becoming less and less popular in Mexico just as names like Edith, Gertrude and Charles become less popular in the US.

I doubt his claim that the rise in names like Sandra and Daniel (which has been popular since the 70s, the earliest I checked) comes from Latino parents seeking bilingual names for their babies. There’s no evidence that all these Sandras, Daniels and Cecilias were born to Latino parents (or parent).

Moreover, Kluger ignores the rising rates of intermarriage between Latinos and non-Latinos (another measure of assimilation). Could this make a difference in naming? Of course. In my family, cousins who married non-Mexicans chose non-Spanish names for their children. Also, we don’t know which Latinos are choosing Anglicized names. Is there a difference between native-born and foreign-born Latinos? And if so, what is it?

I don’t have the data to answer these questions. Instead, I checked the popularity of names for newborns in 2008 in states with larger numbers of Mexicans (there I go being Mexican-centric) on the Social Security Administration website.

In California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico bilingual boys’ names are very popular (e.g., Daniel is consistently in the top 5, as is Angel). There were several Latino names in the top 100 for boys born in 2008. In California, names like Luis, Juan, Ricardo, and Jorge were more popular than their English counterparts. Other Latino names, such as Alejandro (51) and Miguel (44), were much less popular than Alexander (6) and Michael (14), respectively. And then there is José, the top boys’ name in Texas, #8 in Arizona and #10 in Calfornia. In case you’re wondering, it’s more popular than Joseph in each of these states.

Of course, I checked out the popular girls’ names in these states. Kluger’s argument makes a lot more sense if you consider girls. In the top 100 names, it was much more difficult to find the Latino names except in obvious cases like María. Bilingual names were more popular than more traditional Latino names and fit the “three-stage” process. In California Sophia/Sofia (3/17), Olivia (11), Valeria (14), Victoria (20), Andrea (21) and Camila (22) were all more popular than María (42).

I don’t know what this means. Why do boys names like José, Jesús, Juan, and Manuel continue to be popular (all in the top 100)? Why are girls’ names less Latino, more bilingual in nature (e.g. Isabel, Natalia, and Angelina). Could it do with the common practice of naming boys after their fathers? Maybe. Or maybe not.

I can just imagine the family of kids named Jesús, Manuel, Ashley and Emily born to a José y María. I’m sure they’re out there. And they’ll come up with a whole new slew of nicknames.

08
Oct
09

Tracing Michelle Obama’s Roots.

By G.D. 5 Comments
Categories: History and Michelle Obama
07gene-600 (1)

The Robinsons.

The New York Times conducted a study on Michelle Obama’s ancestry.

In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, marked the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.

Viewed by many as a powerful symbol of black advancement, Mrs. Obama grew up with only a vague sense of her ancestry, aides and relatives said. During the presidential campaign, the family learned about one paternal great-great-grandfather, a former slave from South Carolina, but the rest of Mrs. Obama’s roots were a mystery.

Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.

The findings — uncovered by Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and The New York Times — substantiate what Mrs. Obama has called longstanding family rumors about a white forebear.

The White House bit notwithstanding, this could be  like the family history of most of the black people in the States.

08
Oct
09

Black Republicans and the Specter of Tokenism.

By Jamelle 1 Comment
Categories: History, Politics and Republicans

(x-posted from U.S. of J. and the League)

The whiff of tokenism notwithstanding, I’m actually glad to see that there are credible black Republicans angling for high-level political office.  I’ve long argued that it would be good for black people, and great for the country, if Republicans took the African-American community seriously.  For starters, greater black representation within the GOP would probably force our political culture to actually acknowledge the huge amount of ideological diversity within the black community, and increase the likelihood that those views would find substantive representation in the halls of power. I know I’m not speaking alone here when I say that I am regularly annoyed/driven to a blind murderous rage by the fact that our political culture treats black people as this liberal, ideological monolith, which – despite our heavy support for the Democratic Party – is really not the case.

That said, there is a definite aura of tokenism surrounding these guys.  After all, they aren’t just the lone black faces in a lily white party (indeed, a party that takes “lily white” to its Platonic heights) – they are the lone black faces in a party that routinely and casually exploits racial fear and paranoia for political gain, and whose most prominent representatives in the media are race-baiting demagogues.  More importantly, and as Adam recently pointed out, the GOP has yet to really grapple with its ugly racial history, and in fact, hardly acknowledges it (Ken Mehlman’s brief words in 2005 don’t really count).  By contrast, Democrats – from the  Civil Rights Act onwards – have devoted a hell of a lot of political capital to atoning for their ugly racial history.  Indeed, the 1960s are something of an inflection point in that regard: at the moment that Democrats committed themselves to racial liberalism, Republicans embraced the disaffected white southerners left behind in the march towards greater political equality.

Tokenism, as I see it, has less to do with numbers and everything to do with self-respect.  Insofar that any of these guys are tokens, it’s in their willingness (and in the case of Michael Steele or Ken Blackwell, enthusiasm) to be used as props for a party desperate for cheap grace, and eager to absolve itself of its sins without doing the hard work of atoning for them.  That said, and assuming they want to reform the GOP from the inside, I wish them the best of luck.  They’re going to need it.

07
Oct
09

A Case of Morals.

By G.D. 4 Comments
Categories: Crime and Jay Smooth
Tags:

07
Oct
09

Random Midday Hotness: Back Again.

By G.D. 3 Comments
Categories: Hip-Hop and Music
Tags:

Like I was saying to my homie blackink12 not long ago, Talib Kweli has really come along way from the days when he would try to cram way too many syllables into a bar. He’s always been nice, but he’s much easier on the ears now as his flow has gotten more economical. At the same time, he’s also actually “saying” a whole lot less; his lyrics are less politically pointed and less earnest. Hmmm.

A possibly piggish aside: Res resides in My Personal Pantheon of Hot, somewhere alongside Susan Cagle and Mya. Gotdamn.

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PostBourgie’s Book of the Month.

Our book pick this month is Quicksand by Nella Larsen, an unjustly overlooked writer from the Harlem Renaissance. Please join the discussion!

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