Dru Hill told us in 1997 all the reasons they would never make a promise they could not keep. I think it’s time someone tell Mitt Romney to take this R&B advice to heart. Do you know this man promised under his Presidency he would get the unemployment rate down to six percent. Not that six percent is good or anything. But it is significantly better than the current rate of 8.1 percent. But dude, even if you really can drop the unemployment rate to six percent using the vulture capitalist tactics you picked up at Bain Capitol you don’t actually say that aloud for reporters to play over and over again when you don’t do it.
I mean you should know seeing how you and your Republican cronies attack the current President for making similar promises. Remember in the transition period between Bush and Obama when Obama and his team of all knowing economic advisors mostly falsely promised the unemployment rate would not rise above eight percent with the stimulus. Then it hit 10.2 percent in November 2009 and you smug bastards came out with soundbytes at the ready to discuss a Presidential promise made that should have never been promised in the first place.
“I can’t possibly predict precisely what the unemployment rate would be at the end of one year. I can tell you, after a period of four years, by virtue of the policies we’d put in place, we’d get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent — perhaps a little lower, depends in part upon the rate of growth around the globe, as well as what we’re seeing here in the United States.”
This is the first post in a new series I’ve wanted to start for awhile and finally the time has come, especially since in the first installment of the series politics won’t be missing The Boondocks much longer. My good friends, family and interweb interlopers it is true The Boondocks is coming back for season 4. The cartoon news, race, ignorant gods have smiled on me and blessed me with more child induced debauchery that just happens to make you think.
From the comic strip in the paper, to the books, to the show and subsequent DVDs The Boondocks has covered everything in the world in a way so provocatively thought-provoking you laugh with tears in your eyes while thinking that’s a damn shame.
An eight-year-old and 10-year-old transplanted from the inner city to the suburbs wreak havoc on their neighborhood and neighbors as they revel in being menaces to society with a cause. The language is coarse the wit ascerbic and the truth 100 percent. From episodes like “The S-Word” to a comic strip where Huey likens then President Bush to Sadaam Hussein and Hamid Karzai no subject is off limits for Huey, Riley and Granddad.
This post was inspired by my family. The first question from my husband. Do I think Obama will win re-election? The second question more ominous than the title suggests was from my mother. Do I think “they” will try to kill Obama if he wins re-election? To the first question I answered a tepid “I don’t know.” To the second question I answered a sound “Yes.” Pessimistic though the answer may be it is a real fear that can come true.
I really don’t know who will prevail the victor on November 6, 2012. I hope it is President Obama because Mitt Romney is just a horrible candidate.
Mitt Romney is not horrible because he’s Republican. I’m not that partisanly shallow. He’s horrible because he doesn’t have a single opinion he can back up from beginning to end. Mitt Romney will flip and flop and flip and flop and flip and flop and do whatever else is necessary to ensure he wins in November. I don’t want a spineless President. I need someone with a concrete position on something. Pick one side. Stay there. Romney’s not that guy. If you can’t keep your story straight, you’ll lie to my face, and knife me in my back. This country’s been knifed in the back enough. Romney is not what we need.
Now whether Romney is what we’ll get is another matter altogether.
There is something about a Black man that strikes fear in the hearts of many an American citizen. There is something about a free Black man as Cornel West would say that strikes fear into the hearts of many an American citizen. It is the kind of fear you can smell. The kind of fear you can see. The kind of fear that makes me want to drop to my knees at times in prayer when all I can ever publicly do is shake my head.
This fear is evident in the Trayvon Martin case. The document dump from last week now shows key witnesses to the shooting of the 17-year-old Miami teen changed their story; some in favor of the Zimmerman family, some in favor of the Martin family. We don’t know these witnesses but they now have taken sides with their changed statements in a case that has the potential to ignite the country’s racial tension giant into a rage.
The change of statements and the continued sensitive feelings about the case come as
Black men you are a target. For some in this society you are a target from when you first leave the warm comfort of you home for the first day of pre-school. You are the target of a system that out of fear has chosen to castigate an entire group of citizens who for all intents and purposes have never asked to be in this country let alone given reason for a Nation’s ire.
Every week I watch HBO’s Girls and at the end of every episode I’m always left wondering, “Who the f*** does this.” I really would like the answer to that question. I understand the show is based off of Lena Dunham’s, “Hannah,” short life experience. I don’t say that in a condescending way. Dunham and I are the same age. However, similarities between her life and my life — real or imagined — end right about there.
At 25 I didn’t have to be cut off and forced to find a job that paid. At 21 with a degree I had a license to work. While my mother will say she never put a timeline on me to hurry up and become a participating member of the U.S. workforce I new I couldn’t remain a jobless dreamer forever. After two big dream interviews resulted in no dream job I locked myself in my room scouring the interwebs for a job I could land. I only left the house to go to the post office and email a batch of resumes and resume tapes.
This alone leaves me without the comprehension to know what it means to be carried. My mother helped, emphasis on help. Carried no. Not being able to come up with rent money. I can’t comprehend. That could very well be because I don’t live in any of New York’s boroughs. But even if I did I’m 100 percent sure I’d always have at the very least my rent money. When I first started out on my own four years ago I considered myself a rich woman if I had gas, groceries and Friday night movie money and maybe even lunch at Red Robin change left over. Not making rent or the light bill or the cable/internet bill. I don’t understand. How does that happen?
Initially this post was to just be directed at Shaunie O’Neal, head basketball wife in charge. Then I saw the picture above and spent half an hour trying to pick up my jaw off the ground. I neglected to include in the ghetto hot mess category Glenda Hersh, the executive producer for The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and Dan Cutforth the producer on Braxton Family Values. They have no special affinity for the Black community and therefore will not be held accountable for promoting negative stereotypes toward their own community. Unfair? Yes. But true. Hersh and Cutforth are still responsible for the trash content they direct onto the airwaves but Mona Scott Young and Shaunie O’Neal are held to a higher standard.
I haven’t really discussed the shenanigans of the “wives” this season because there’s not much else for me to say. They’re negative, they fight, they’re a bad representation of Black women in the media, they’re a shame to their race and they should all go away quickly. All of this is said week after week as these ladies embarrass themselves more than the time they did before. But what got my attention and forced me to my computer — besides the VIBE cover story — is the sneak peek for next week’s episode. Shaunie, apparently in a business meeting says to the apparent Black businessman before her she always gets wary going into business meetings, “especially with Black people” because she’s wondering if they’re thinking she’s just “a ghetto hot mess.”
To answer your question Shaunie, yes we think you’re a ghetto hot mess. You may not participate in all the drama — especially now Gloria’s gone — but the fact you promote it and it’s spin off makes you no better than your bottle throwing, weave pulling, curse hurling castmates. But Shaunie you are not alone in you’re hot mess-ness. Mona Scott Young is right there with you. And the fact you two had the audacity to give statements to VIBE for their June cover story glossing over the drama your cast members tackled head on proves you are living a deluded version of reality.
I go away for two weeks to mark a major life milestone like marriage, and what do I find when I come back to the world: the world exactly as I left it. As it turns out the world really will turn without you and history is always repeating itself. I’m not surprised. When I left race, the “war on women,” and which way the DOW will run dominated topics of discussion along with all of their impacts on the 2012 Presidential election between President Obama and Mitt Romney. I’m back and those topics still dominate discussion with some new twists here and there. Today they’re under a hyper-sensitive magnifying glass because it’s Results Wednesday from Tuesday’s primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky.
So what will make an impact on voters in these two Red Right states the most?
Brand new on The Urban Politico: “You’re Fat… Do Something About It.” We’re tackling obesity and black women. Here’s an excerpt:
Last year our overweight Black female surgeon General went on a tear against Black women about why we’re overweight. Included in her list of why we’re not taking care of ourselves; excuse number one, our hair. I admit as a Black woman with a relaxer that after an hour and 15 minutes of intense Ashtanga yoga my hair is looking like who did it and why. To help my hair behave I wear my hair wrapped in my scarf to yoga without shame to keep from having to damage it later with heat. Being a black woman with a head of curls, coils, relaxed ends, rough edges, a kitchen, a full weave, a lace front, no matter what you have we have a hair and workout story. I’ll admit it was easier to work out when I was natural, and I worked out more often. Some see this as an excuse, Boris Kodjoe, but it is an issue.
Also an issue more than our hair. What we put in our bodies. What we buy at the grocery store. And access to a grocer that carries fresh foods and vegetables.
