Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised.  It makes sense when you think about it. What is a former vice-presidential candidate, spoken of as a possible presidential contender for 2012, possible most powerful person in the world, compared with the world’s greatest golfer who turned out to be a serial cheater?

Before that fateful Thanksgiving night car crash, we were treated, or should I say force fed,  a daily dose of Sarah Palin vignettes.  We received minute by minute accounts of her book tour for “Going Rogue”, her interviews, even the ones from last year’s campaign were continously trodded out. And we can’t forget Levi Johnston who has probably appeared on every tabloid news outlet in the country.  I wonder sometimes if there were any people like me out there who wondered what the fascination was with this middle-aged mother of five who had, what I can only politely describe as, a questionable IQ. 

Now back to Tiger Woods.  As if by some cosmic shift in the universe, all eyes turned to Florida. The smashed Cadillac Escalade became a metaphor for the smashed image of  Tiger Woods.  Tiger was the image of perfection, both on and off the course;  the perfect golfer, calm, cool, collected with nerves of steel; the perfect family man, devoted to his stunning wife and adorable children with never a hint of scandal.  Overnight, all of the tabloids and most of the main stream media went on bimbo watch, as the number of “mistresses” began to climb; now up to 14 as I write this. It seemed that Tiger Woods had extra marital affairs like most of us go for takeout.  Actually, I think it was reported that he did have some affairs while going for take out.  The advertisers, in typical corporate fashion,  put out initial statements of support in an effort to influence public opinion, but had to “reevaluate” their relationship with Tiger when woman after woman came out with more lurid details of Tiger’s escapades.

What! the golden boy is a selfish narcissist who thinks only of himself? My question is, when did you get your first clue? From the very start of his career Tiger Woods has never made a pretense of who and what he was all about, himself.  He made a point of staying away from anything even remotely controversial and refused to take any stands in the interest of justice.  He went to play at Augusta even though they discriminated against blacks and women, and turned a blind eye to Nike’s questionable labor practices.  Nike, incidently, is the one advertiser who continues to voice it’s unwavering support. He cut the African-American community off at the knees, denying them any pride in his accomplishments, by proclaiming early in his career that he was not black.

I feel that the advertisers are now being hypocritical proclaiming that Tiger Woods is not the best representative for them. He is the perfect representative. He is all about the bottom line and he has done everything that they required of him, which is win.  Tiger is not the kind of man that touches your heart but only your wallet. Decades from now, the world will continue to honor men like Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos. These were men who stood up for things they believed in at a great cost both personal and professional. They will continue to live on in our hearts where Tiger Woods will exist only on paper.  But, for being only out for himself and no one else, Tiger Woods is  still the champ.

No, it’s not your politics. Everyone has a right to what he or she believes and has a right to express those beliefs. The fact that you are a Republican and a conservative is not the problem. Truthfully, when you won the chairmanship of the Republican party many african-americans, myself included,  felt some measure of pride.  But that pride turned quickly into embarrassment. Your phony embrace of hip hop culture on the shallowest of levels in a misguided belief that you could compete with Barack Obama if  you were “cool”,  revealed such a cynical,  lack of understanding of hip hop  that you could not possibly be black.  But that was not the worst of it, by half.  The day when you apologized to Rush Limbaugh was the beginning of the end.  Before that we considered you silly and misguided.  But after that, your ”blackness” was seriously brought into question. We asked ourselves, “what real black man would ever let  himself  be called out like that by the likes of a Rush Limbaugh and respond with an apology?  None, was the answer. 

Our feelings were only reinforced when you scoffed at President Obama’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize saying that he won the award for “awesomeness.”  And let’s not forget your all day rounds of the talk shows the day after Republicans won the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races and “assumed the Heisman position.”

It has become quite evident that you have no idea who or what you are representing.  So, as of now, you do not represent us. You do not represent those african-americans who were held in the cruelest form of slavery known to man. You do not represent Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman or Sojuerner Truth. You do not represent Fannie Lou Hamer or John Lewis. You do not represent W.E.B. Dubois, Langston Hughes,  James Baldwin or Maya Angelou. You do not represent Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin,  Beyonce,  Biggie or Tupac. You do not represent Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali. You are hereby cut off from all of our past and our future,  from all of our pains and our joys. You apparenlty have no understanding of them.  Therfore, you have been ex-communicated.  You are expelled. You can turn in your membership card at the White House.

angeladetroit

Opponents of health care reform contend that the bill contains funding coverage for illegal aliens and abortions, defunding medicare, and don’t let me forget pulling the plug on grandma. So adament are they in these assertions that no amount of denials from their congressperson, health care officials or even the president can dissuade them. In fact, the president’s word carries so little weight with them that a congressman who opposes health care reform publicly called the president a liar during a recent speech to congress. It would seem that the anger of last year against the banks and brokerage firms who are largely credited with causing this country’s biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, has been transferred to the proponents of health care reform.  And, as the anger against the banks has seemingly subsided, I’ll wager that the anger against the health care reform has subsided enough for me to make a few practical observations.

First, if we take on face value that all of these angry people turning up at town hall meetings to denounce the health care reform bill are all just private citizens exercising their constitutional rights, how do they know so much more than the rest of us?  The congress men and women who are holding these town halls do so with the specific purpose of answering the questions that their constituents may have about the bill. But, interestingly, these people never have any questions. They apparently know everything they need to about the reform bill and its purpose. They apparently know more than their congress person, the president and the media.  They have all the information they need about health care reform and there is nothing else they need to know.

Frankly, and this is not a put down, most Americans don’t even know who their congessperson is or in what district they reside. Study after study has shown us that only a small minority have knowledge of basic civics and even less participate in it. Yet, the opponents of health care reform would have us believe that the majority of Americans are opposed to it. I for one, believe that you can never have too much knowledge and that there is always something that we can learn.

Second, there seems to be a major misconception on the part of many Americans who oppose health care reform, that they will be able to keep their health care coverage and their doctor forever, as long as there is no health care reform. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Over the last few decades, health care costs have risen four times as high as incomes and this trend is expected to continue. Currently, there is nothing to mandate that employers provide health care coverage for their employees. With these types of rising costs, is there any doubt that many employers would eventually find that providing health care too costly to the bottom line? Indeed, many employers have already come to that conclusion. In addition, many employers have reduced costs by switiching insurance carriers. In many cases, different insurance carriers means different doctors. So, even those with coverage and doctors that they like will not necessarily get to keep them.  

To those average citizens that are attending townhalls, I strongly urge you to listen , ask questions, and draw your own conclusions. Yes, I understand that the professional resentment hustlers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have told you everything they think you need to know. But, I ask you. Who should you trust more, your neighborhood congressman or the hustler on the corner?

angeladetroit

Without a doubt, Kanye’s behavoir was a serious breach of civility, etiquette, and even fair play.  He was out of line, out of bounds, over the top and all of the other cliches that I can’t think of at the moment. But with all that being said, I was shocked to see the level of the hate and vitriol directed at this man over the past week. From celebrities to the average man (woman) the invectives were flying freely and often. Even presidents got on the hate Kanye bandwagon. Thug, turd, tool, vermin, slime, scum of the earth, the crap on the bottom of my shoe are only samples of what I can print. It’s sufficed to say, Kanye West is the most hated man in America at the moment.

Now is the time, I think, for everyone to take a deep breath. We’re about a week out from this so some of us may have calmed down at least enough to examine all of  this and try to put it into some context.

First, is Kanye West really the worst thing walking the earth? I think not. I believe that we need to seperate the man from the behavoir. We’ve seen this type of thing from Kanye before. Kanye West has a reputation for storming the stages of award shows when he doesn’t win.  So, clearly, he had no particular animosity against Taylor Swift.  And, to be fair, Kanye West has passed along awards that he himself  has won to other artists who he felt were more deserving.  Most importantly, this is still the man who stood up for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and denounced then President George W. Bush for his handling of the crisis on national television,  which was a very courageous act at the time.

Second, our reaction to Kanye West says more about ourselves than about him.  Many of those who have watched Kanye over the past several years agree that he appears to be spinning out of control. The sudden and tragic death of his mother probably accelerated this downward spiral and the fact that he was tipping a bottle on the red carpet should have been the last straw to make his friends and colleagues take him in hand and ask “what’s up?” One of the most vitriolic and bizarre reactions came from Kelly Clarkson of American Idol fame. As reported, she tweeted  that she never hated anybody so much and she doesn’t even know him, she hated him more than her ex-boyfriend and she has a “Moon Man” , (the term for the award) and that he can have hers. . . . and so on.  Huh? So much hate for someone you don’t even know is illogical and over the top. Kelly seems to have made this more about herself than either Kanye or even Taylor. Based on that reaction, Kanye clearly is not the only one with issues. On the other side of the spectrum was the calm, thoughtful persepective of Jay Leno who nearly brought Kanye to tears on his show’s debut by gently asking him what his mother would have thought of his behavoir. Leno had made his point. Kanye West had done a bad thing, but clearly, he was not a monster.

Angeladetroit

Over the past year, we have seen the election of the first African-American president in the United States of America, the escalation of the war in Afghanastan and the de-escalation of the war in Iraq, health care reform, town halls, the death of Michael Jackson and the return of Michael Vick. So, where do we start?  You tell me.

I will be posting daily and discussing the issues of the day. I invite you all to leave a comment about what I have discussed.  I also want to encourage you to ask questions, or make suggestions about  how this blog can be improved or just about the issues that concern you.  I will be reading them frequently.

Thank you all for visiting my site.

Angeladetroit.

Angeladetroit