Nommo South: The Norm

Post Father's Day Blues

"I got the Blues so bad it put my face in a permanent frown..."

Having been in school or teaching someone in school for almost forty years, and having been engaged in consuming and/or producing media/meaning for at least that long I wonder if the ability of mainstream media (networks, cable, and various new media) to make meaning has succumbed--died. 
But death is infectious, and has found a home in the way African World media, through its choices of HOW and what to report as reality.  This is about perspective and worldview--critical questions of being and knowing go unexamined and similar conclusions are reached.
And  school?  Formal education has been reduced to testing opportunities that often require students to evacuate patterns of learning they have assembled by developing and participating in their own learning communities. 
Critical thinking, the ability to make and enforce definitions--hallmarks of self-determining people--have been systematically jettisoned by many African world institutions.  How else could it be?  Institutions--families, churches, schools, businesses, media/meaning making consortia etc.--remain the tires we puncture, the plants we refuse to water, and the children we ignore....
So we return to a changing same we call progress....

"I got the Blues so bad it put my face in a permanent frown...But I'm feeling so much better, / I can cakewalk into town..."

Still Stuck on Stupid: Or, let the Zombie Sleep

As President Barack Obama continues his inspired work to change the world, the media--always over caffeinated and seriously breathless--is without a vocabulary, and more profoundly without a worldview capable of conceptualizing the sparkling new reality that is unfolding in front of them.  Determined to validate the cliché that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, they roll out a corpse rotting from moribund ideas to comment on what it means to be alive.

And there stands Dick Cheney, resplendent in his smug ignorance, an avuncular Dr. Strangelove is what he is made out to be.  He is speaking about how the dismantling of the web of torture and other law breaking activities, have left this country open to new attacks.  No one reminds the former VP that it was on their watch that 9/11 occurred and that they were determined to ignore information about an impending attack—information that if acted on may have spared the world the convulsive pain in now endures.

Why does anyone listen to this man when he has been wrong about everything, even about being wrong he is wrong:  when asked if in light of all that has been wrong about regarding Iraq would do anything differently he proclaims that he would not.  This is the strange world in which Cheney has apparently always lived.

The real question is why does the media treat his statements seriously.  In most neighborhoods in which I have lived, the response to Cheney would be something like “Negro, please.”  Or, indeed, as then President elect Obama said famously during his speech in Denver, “Enough.”  And this was the clarion call of an adult to a bunch of grown-ass children pretending to be adults—and we are of course reaping the world wind of madness they so systematically rained down on the planet.

It’s time to let the Zombie sleep, and if he occasionally stumbles out of the grave of irrelevance he should helped back to that spot and not given a podium from which to assert that death is life.  Let the Zombie sleep.

Where You Been?

Yea, it’s been a while since I wrote here, so I just want to check in to say that more is on the way.  Our baby girl is graduating high school and will start at Spelman College in the fall—wow. And other daughter is steaming ahead in her undergraduate career.
I’m looking forward to discovering how our brand new president will assist in helping making college more affordable than it is now… Stay tuned.  All is good.

The Republican Party AD

"Atomic Dog"
Yeah, this is a story of a famous dog
For the dog that chases its tail will be dizzy
These are clapping dogs, rhythmic dogs
Harmonic dogs, house dogs, street dogs
Dog of the world unite
Dancin' dogs
Yeah
Countin' dogs, funky dogs…
Nasty dogs (Dog)
Why must I feel like that
Why must I chase the cat
Nothin' but the dog in me

Who would have thought that George Clinton and the Funkadelics’ “Atomic Dog” (AD) would have so masterfully foreshadowed the Pavlovian response of republicans to all things President Obama, and to all things from the Democratic Party?  But such is the case.  It doesn’t matter if they are the “countin’ dogs” who now decry the bailout as fiscally irresponsible.  It doesn’t matter if they are “clapping dogs” who now genuflect to Reagan era references.  And it doesn’t matter if they are “nasty dogs” who appear daily on news shows to serve-up leftovers as if they have been freshly baked.  They are all “atomic dogs” who are unable to handle their instinctual responses to change:  “Why must I feel like that/ Why must I chase the cat / Nothin but the dog in me.”

Watching the always tanned John Boehner (Ohio’s 8th District Congressman and the minority leader in the House) on camera, perspiration sprouting from his upper lip as he pontificates opposition to the stimulus plan, changing the health care system, stem sell research—all things President Obama, all things democrat—I saw a man who can’t help himself.  Watch his eyes as he talks: they are simultaneously vacant and searching.  He is speaking from a place of instinct.  He has to fight—his conditioning tells him that unhinged negativity is the hallmark of responsibility.

Like the boys / When they're out there walkin' the streets/ May compete / Nothin' but the dog in ya / Ruff / Ruff / Ruff:  Yet a strain of rationality randomly bubbles up from some reservoir of possibility to disturb Boehner’s instinct.  This is tough, but Boehner does not stand alone: symbolically assembled on a dais from which any republican speaks are a host of zombies, less gory than their role models in “Night of the Living Dead,” but no less limited.  The “Night of the Living Dead” zombies seek to devour the flesh of the living so that they, the dead, may continue their zombie lives.  The republican zombies consume possibility, devour the future in order to try again to build foundations on shifting sand.

House-trained dogs / Wild dogs:  Michael Steele and Big Rush Limbaugh both know that regardless of the PR spin attached to it, death is not an alternative to life.  Still they try to associate death (as in zombie ideas and actions) with life through gestures, verbiage, and theatrics derived from hip-hop culture.  Big Rush fist-bumping at the CPAC; he also threw some weird salute coupled with a peace sign (Crips or Bloods?), and, of course, there was Big Rush doing his best imitation of Kriss-Kross who “make you jump, jump.”  You’ll remember “Kriss-Kross” as the teenage duo who famously wore their pants backwards (more “moonwalking”) as they implored their audience to “Jump! Jump!”   And I’ve blogged previously about Steele’s “off the hook” plans for the Republican Party.

Do the dogcatcher, dogcatcher / Do the dogcatcher / Do you wanna do the dogcatcher / Well, baby, why don't you do it again for me:  The Republican Party is giving canines and canine lovers a bad name.  It is time for them to be rounded up and sent to an obedience school so that they may learn to engage in civil and constructive conversation intended to move America forward. 

Michael "Moonwalking" Steele

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele offended the Republican overlord Rush Lambaugh—himself fresh off an all you can eat crazy buffet at CPAC—by saying in response to D.L. Hughley’s assertion that Limbaugh is the de-facto leader of the Republican that, well, no, Limbaugh is an entertainer.  And that he, the latest Republican Golden Child now that Sister Sarah keeps crashing and burning, is really the leader of the Republican Party.

On that same show, Steele sought to up his “street cred” by asserting that he, like the show’s other guest, Chuck D, was from the projects.  Chuck D had to correct a brother: “I grew up in Roosevelt, Long Island. It's not the projects. It's where black people live."  And so began Michael Steele’s channeling of Michael Jackson—Steele started “Moonwalking” like crazy.

You will remember the Moonwalk as a signature Jackson move where he glided backward across the stage while ostensibly appearing to go forward.  Steele’s Moonwalking could have been labeled as the usual RNC worldview wherein reality is best conceptualized via the rear-view mirror of a Mercedes rushing over a cliff.  But we have to hook his antics to his expressed desire to make the RNC urban and hip, and, well, you know, “cool.”

But wait, Limbaugh, the Republican Overlord—recently photographed in a manner to suggest an homage to Jabba the Hut—is speaking: “Mr. Steele, if you want to lead the Republican party -- as you say you do -- you need to run for and win the presidency…Republicans and conservatives are sick and tired of being talked down to. Until you show them the respect they deserve, you are going to have a hard time rebuilding your party.” 

In the background you can hear Jacko, “Billie Jean is not my lover; she’s just a girl who thinks that I am the one.” And there goes Steele, high-water pants, signature white socks, one hand resplendent in a sequined glove, just moonwalking across the stage. 

Steele stops.  He’s speaking now:  “My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership."

And so this performance (not to worry—there will be reruns parading as  news) ends with a cross-temporal chant from Michelle Bachman, the Wiley Coyote look-alike Congresswoman from Minnesota:  “You be da Man!  You be da Man.”

Steele smiles and no doubt contemplates his sinking success.

Cyclops at CPAC

     Like Cyclops, diminished, diminutive and struggling under the weight of a self-regenerating plague of bad ideas, CPAC completed its 2009 conference in D.C.  Once giants, these always-myopic visionaries rallied to cheer for fall and winter as the only meaningful seasons: “Let’s keep it dying and cold boys.  Life is too messy, too unpredictable.  Gotta keep reality on ice—or at least headed that way.”

    As ebullient as a crazed, albeit articulate “Jack in the Box,” Michael Steele, the African American chairman of the Republican Party popped in to do his best imitation of Mama Barracuda—the self-loathing co-conspirator in The Last Days of Louisiana Red who wishes to resurrect the good old days of the ante-bellum south.  But no conjuring can stop Steele, who now knows that the repudiation of the Republican Party was at root a PR failure.  So Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party’s principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

    Could Brother Steele be looking to tap into the “happy darky” myth where all one needs do to influence black folk is to create the appearance of change. “Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man!"  These discordant accolades leaked from the lips of Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota Congresswoman who famously asserted on Chris Mathews’ “Hardball” show that Barack Obama was un-American.  So the “off the hook” Steele “be da man.”  Her “you be de man” came as Steele finished up his speech in which he sought jovially to give reality a bad name.

    One wonders if the CPAC attendees routinely dress themselves in front of one of those carnival mirrors that distort shapes and sizes, and that maybe the weird images giving back to them is the only world they know.  The corridors down which they predictably tread are slowly transforming into funnels emptying into an antediluvian abyss. To paraphrase a line from “Hustle and Flow,” “It’s hard out there for a Cyclops, especially when said Cyclops is trying to be a pimp.”  CPAC please….

    Of course the always angry Rush Limbaugh brought the CPAC house down by calling President Obama a socialist, and asserting that John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch who was fired in part for profligate spending on redecorating his office ($1.3 million, including a $1400 trash can) and in doling millions in bonuses before being shown the door, was actually stimulating the economy.  The Cyclopian Limbaugh loves logical fallacies almost as much as the republican leadership loves hypocrisy: hard to have real conversation when the folk you’re talking to would rather create fictive narratives that they can then dispute than actually discuss objectively verifiable events.

    This is all bad faith, the juvenile intellect that can’t fathom a world in which their fancily fashioned falsehoods properly promoted don’t take priority over the lives being lived by actual people.  Yea, I know: it worked for eight years.  But it’s past time for bad ideas to stop fighting sleep. 

    Tell Cyclops to close that big ass eye and go the hell to sleep.

Voting to Pose and Give Crazy One More Shot at the Big Time

Somewhere in the juvenile consciousness of House Republicans rests the assumption that progress is best conceptualized and viewed from the “changing same” that recedes from a fixed gaze on a rearview mirror.  Never mind driving the car; it’s pedal to mettle; damn the torpedoes; and any other cliché you can imagine to signify the foolish worth of ill-founded and ultimately quite stupid action carried out as an homage to a myth: the clear thinking cowboy, Marlboro Man, or sheriff, having subdued possibility now sits resolute on his trusty steed, riding off into the sunset. 

The myth is without reflection and therefore unavailable for change.  The myth knows its right, even as it is swallowed up by the fierce consequences of its actions.  The myth is PR, the clever sound bite perfected for the moment.  “You tell ‘em Big boy.”  And so on. Myth exalts itself as the “I” in team and is always singularly victorious.  But is always willing to share and rationalize failure.

And it is this “I” that has been killing  “we” for the last eight years.  And now the “I’s”—who never really had it—even when they were in the majority—have begun a new pledge class for crazies.  Obviously, these women and men have talents that could be put to use for the “we,” but they are becoming grizzled junkyard dogs chained to ideology and unable to freely go where sincere questions might take them.  Stake to the past, they travel the same circumference daily.  Barking is mandatory.

It’s still cool—early in the game really.  The decision of every Republican House member to vote against the stimulus package demonstrates how hard evolution can be:  “Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tales behind them.”

The Day After...

The Day After…
After noting that America is a “young nation,” and thereby suggesting that adolescents—having stolen the car keys to culture, civilization, and compassion along with fake ids to “legally” by beers at the “Seven-Eleven” before taking the world on a “joy ride”—have been running this country for the last eight years, President Barack Obama offers this scripture: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (—1 Corinthians 13:11)

And so it begins: the Bushes in timeout, Cheney in a wheelchair, and a nation no longer waiting to exhale. Playtime is over.  But what a mess these aging “Chuckies” have left.  You’ve seen or lived the story: foreclosures bubbling over the edge of boiling caldrons fired by an economic crisis; legions of workers queuing up for jobs, or quietly attaching resumes to emails aimed at potential employers; affordable healthcare a distant memory of the good old days; and a government that has heretofore looked on suffering as a morality play wherein the least of these have, after all, brought it on themselves.

But what a remarkable response the parents (the unsung and hardworking women and men who are this country) have made by first “choosing hope over fear” by electing President Obama, and then, yesterday, that remarkable expression of possibility as upward of 2 million people—most Americans, but many from foreign countries—sought to affirm a future and exorcise an almost demonic past.

Break away shots to Kenyans looking through tears at their namesake, Barack Hussein Obama; Tuskegee Airmen looking on in dignified disbelief; lions of the Civil Rights, perhaps feeling as if they had been literally transported to the “Promised Land” that Dr. King spoke about; celebrities meaningfully humbled by the moment; and “regular” folk who had to be there. And billions more watched…

These are times to live the value systems of all the world’s wisdom traditions—from the 42 Laws of Maat to the Hopi Medicine Wheel and more.  To be sure, nothing is promised and nothing is assured. But the door is open, and the suffocating air has lifted.

Did you hear that?

The alarm just went off.

Time for work!

   

This is the Day: 20 January 2009

Today is the day and yet it remains surreal: I watch an MSNBC shot of thousands (soon to be millions) streaming onto the National Mall.  Damn, it’s 6:00 am.  I’m humbled by possibility.  We all are.  America is. 

A relatively young man: a father hailing from a place in the world where humankind is arguably asserted to have been “born.”  A mother from the heartland of wheat and corn covered Kansas: one black, the other white.  And this, the child, one Barack Hussein Obama, now stands an obvious and improbable incarnation of possibility.

“Only in America!”  Yea, “Only in America,” a phrase once reserved for conservative assertions for a trip in the “way back” machine to a time when black folk knew their place, and white privilege proceeded unabated, is now a phrase that resonates with full meaning: only in America can an African American fully embrace the historical assertion of the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal…”

This assertion was once another slice of Swiss cheese, riddled with contradictions: the enslavement of Africans, the emerging and systematic slaughter of Native Americans, the casual and unquestioned disenfranchisement of women, and of course the ongoing obliteration of the least of these—defenseless children held on the periphery of everything from healthcare to education.
But this is the day that Americans can begin a process of healing, a process of taking back a country that has been run quite literally like there was no tomorrow.  As the culprits slink back to their opulent dungeons situated at some unmarked circle of hell, may they be assisted in atoning for their assault on humanity.

Storm clouds are lifting.  Light envelops darkness, and possibility is not a bad word, not a bad feeling.  Possibility is love and pervades this stanza from “Lift Every Voice and Sing:”

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We end where we begin: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let's rejoice and be glad in it.”  (Psalms 118:24)

Looking for a Narrative.....

We saw it coming during the election: a broadcast news media simultaneously energized, confused and confounded by the candidacy of Barack Hussein  Obama.  There was first the “not narrative.”  “He’s not experienced enough.”  “He’s not black enough.”  “He’s not been in public office long enough.” “He’s not American.”  And then the “not narrative” morphed into the “too” narrative.  “He’s too liberal.”  “He’s too exotic.”  “He’s too unknown.”

Meanwhile, back at the election box, Obama kept piling victory on top of victory.  Not to be undone by reality, many in the media begin to draw lines in the sand, and, to mix a metaphor, raise the bar for success.  Lines in the sand: “well if he can’t put this thing away, I don’t know what that says about his ability to win the general election.”  Even after compiling enough votes to win the Democratic Nomination, various narratives were invented—it begin to sound like an Eric Von Danigan treatises in which the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza is attributed to extra-terrestrials.

And, perhaps, drinking from the same kool-aid, the writers at Saturday Night Live reprised the crazy woman in Minnesota who said that she couldn’t vote for Obama because she heard he was an Arab (as if that in-itself was a non-starter—making the Arab American a 21st century addition to the “nigger ranks”).  In the SNL skit, the crazy woman wondered around the news set, remarking that she had heard that Obama was part Egyptian, and that he planned to turn the White House into a pyramid.  Imagine that!
Stay tuned for sports fans.  We’re in for an exciting ride.