Get Well Soon (If You Know What's Good For You)

I’ve been sick all week.

I say that not to elicit the sympathy I won’t get and don’t deserve, nor as a pre-emptive apology for the fever-induced ramblings of this column.

I only mention my misery as a means of vocalizing the epiphany that came to me in a vision – half-awake, half-asleep in a sweating, shivering, NyQuil-fueled delirium.

When you’re an adult suffering from a cold, no one cares.

Oh, it’s not that no one empathizes – family, friends, and co-workers all want you to get better and will cheerily give you the usual aspirin, water, and rest prescription. But let’s be honest – once they find out you only have a cold and aren’t “really” sick, their level of sympathy drops considerably. They’re more interested in the work you’re missing, or the appointments you’re cancelling, or the household duties you’re ignoring – all of which they have to make up for themselves.

When you were a child and caught a cold, you got the royal treatment. Someone was there with spoonfuls of medicines, hot tea, and that chicken soup with the little stars in it. My grandmother would even cut the crust off the toast, a service she’d never perform when I wasn’t sick. I could watch television and read comic books all day and no one asked about homework. Life was good, even if I felt bad.

Fast forward twenty, thirty, or forty years, and catching a cold takes on a completely different meaning.

If you’re married, you have the advantage. You can guilt trip your spouse into catering to your every need, and you know you will. You make any outrageous request you can think of in that pitiful, sickly whine, followed by a violent coughing spasm; and they’re putty in your hands. And they do it, not so much out of guilt, sympathy, or even true love, but because they know that they’ll get sick someday themselves, and paybacks are… well, you know what paybacks are.

If you’re an adult who lives alone, and find yourself facing the seasonal bug, you’re on your own. Now, a smart person, which I’m obviously not, would buy plenty of cold and flu medications on sale, long before they exhibit symptoms, just to have them in the medicine cabinet.

Not me.

I prefer to drag myself - coughing, achy, head pounding and wracked with pain – to the local drug store once it’s clear that I’m not going to get better without the aid of powerful pharmaceuticals. Once there, I snatch whatever is in the cold and flu aisle with abandon, only giving the labels a cursory glance through my blurred double vision. This is a bad idea, not so much because of the potential harm from mixing certain medications, but because I don’t check the prices thoroughly.

When the cashier rings up the purchase, my heart skips a beat, my head clears for a moment and my vision snaps back into clear focus. $38 for cold medicines? Is she kidding? I check the prices, and look at what I bought. She’s not kidding.

With the pain now spread to my wallet, I return home to over-medicate and spend the next couple of days in bed and feeling sorry for myself.

Far from the childhood pleasure it once was, daytime television is a freak show. There’s Maury, where a woman is “1000 percent sure” – yet dead wrong - that the doofus seated next to her is her baby’s daddy, and old reliable Jerry Springer, where yet another toothless gargoyle accuses her boyfriend of cheating on her. I can’t imagine why.

I also can’t imagine why I pay that big corporation downtown more than a hundred bucks a month for 400 channels of absolutely nothing, but that’s a question for another time.

For exercise, I slowly shuffle to the bathroom six times an hour – or if I’m feeling particularly chipper, I make my way to the kitchen and lean my head on the cool refrigerator while the water boils for tea.

I think being sick for a few days is God’s way of reminding us to slow down and enjoy our wellness. On normal days, I never think about the high cost of cold medications, or how the cast of All My Children hasn’t changed since I last saw the show 20 years ago.

My advice: Don’t catch cold. It’s expensive, and downright depressing. Sure, it only lasts a couple of days, but it’s a couple of days you can do without.

For now, I think I’ll go back to bed. Judge Judy is on.

The Worst of Times

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”

So begins Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, but the sentiment could just as easily fit Philadelphia at the end of 2008 as it did Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution.

Still drunk with success over the stunning election of Barack Obama as Leader of the Free World, Philadelphians hardly had time to nurse our collective hangovers when Mayor Nutter slapped us in the face with a cold, hard reality.

The City of Philadelphia is broke.

According to the mayor, we started the fiscal year with surplus of $119 million, but then the stock market collapsed, taking our investments with it, including huge chunks of the city’s pension plan. In the space of a few months, that $119 million surplus has become a ballooning $108 million deficit.

It is important to remember that much of the city’s budget is locked in funds – like pensions and other fixed payouts – that cannot be touched. That amount which remains is that you have to work with, and Nutter says it isn’t enough to keep the lights on.

So, here comes the pain.

The city’s aggressive schedule of business and wage tax cuts? Nutter has asked City Council to suspend the cuts until 2015. Those cuts, according to my buddy Brent Mandel and the other progressive tax reform folks, are essential to making Philadelphia an economically viable city again. If it’s any consolation, they don’t bear the burden alone.

Nutter plans to cut police overtime and leave vacant some 200 positions in the department. And a 50 percent cut in Town Watch money, just in case the neighbors were hoping to take up the slack. Over at the Fire Department, they’re eliminating five engine companies and two ladder companies.

The city is also closing 11 libraries, 62 of the 73 outdoor public pools, and putting an end to most snow removal, bulk trash collection, and residential street cleaning.

The mayor and his staff are taking pay cuts, and he’s even asked all employees making more than $50,000 annually to take a week off without pay. In all, they’re laying off 220 city employees and eliminating 600 unfilled positions, 1,660 seasonal part-time jobs and about 570 contractual, non-city jobs.

The details are still being hammered out, but you get the idea. There’s going to be a lot more pain for a lot more people.

As Black folks, we may not understand every nuance of high finance, but we sure understand broke. We know broke well. Broke is an old familiar friend. We have eaten Ramen noodles and hot dogs, and we have paid the light bill this month but the gas bill next month.

But we also understand that to get un-broke, you may need a little help. The mayor has already petitioned the Treasury Department to afford some of the proposed multibillion dollar bailout to help bail out America’s big cities, many of which teeter on the edge of absolute ruin.

The mayors of Phoenix and Atlanta have joined the petition, and I suspect that many more will sign on before long. Already there is stiff opposition, and GOP leaders like Mitt Romney are calling on Congress to allow troubled cities to fend for themselves.

In the midst of all this pain, you may have noticed the big shot corporate types at insurance giant AIG treating themselves to yet another spa weekend with your bailout money. Fat bonus checks are still being cut on Wall Street, and there’s a real danger of this so-called bailout money disappearing before anyone actually gets bailed out.

We should make sure to keep a vigilant eye on this whole bailout thing before it gets away from us. Who gets, who doesn’t get, and what gets done with the money, are very much our concern. Make contact with your public officials – city, state, and federal – and let them know that you’re watching what they do, and that if we have to hurt, then everyone has to hurt. We don’t mind a little belt tightening, as long as we’re not the only ones doing it.

Dickens managed to sum up our situation in the second part of that opening phrase to A Tale of Two Cities:

“We had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."

One Giant Step for Man...

America took a big step this week.

It is difficult to look at the significance of this event coolly and dispassionately - try as we might through tears of joy - overcome as we are by the flood of emotions that have been welling up for almost two years.

Since the returns started coming in Tuesday night, I’ve been thinking of my mentors – all proud, strong Black men, and none of whom lived to see this day. Of my grandfather, who stormed the beach at Normandy on D-Day, fighting an ocean away for a country that he knew considered him a second-class citizen here at home. Of my friend Rotan Lee, who dedicated his life to Black children – a pied piper preaching the gospel of literacy, scholarship, and critical thinking. And of my dad, from whom I inherited my height, my deep voice and my untrusting cynicism. This should have been their day, too. This should have been a day for all our departed parents, teachers, mentors and ancestors – who endured so much and received so little – because on this day, their belief in the American Dream is vindicated.

Black folk finally see a light at the end of the tunnel –the beginning of the end of the American Dark Ages. After all, he was our candidate, they reason – somewhat ignoring the fact that while 91 percent of Black Americans voted for Obama, that’s just slightly better than the 88 percent who voted for John Kerry four years ago. Meanwhile, about half of all white Americans voted for a Black man for president, and they’ll say they’ve got just as much right to stake their prideful claim in the new administration.

There was a flood of emotion from the losing side too – the conservative pundits and bloggers who have been spitting all manner of vitriol at Obama for months now have, if anything, stepped up their attacks since Election Day. And it’s not just the usual sour grapes that follow a political loss, but a seething, deep-seated hatred for the president-elect and his supporters, coupled with the gravest apocalyptic predictions for the future of our country. I mean, these people are wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth, hopping mad, and they’re not afraid to show it.

To give credit where it is certainly due, Senator John McCain delivered one of the classiest, most gracious concession speeches I’ve ever heard. While his supporters booed and shouted epithets at the mention of Obama’s name, some of the old McCain magic – the American hero, a man of honor, dignity and sacrifice – showed through. After months of sleazy attacks and guilt by association, McCain acknowledged Obama’s victory as a great day for all America, not just people of color. He spoke with genuine remorse of our nation’s shameful racial past, and of his hopes that Obama’s win will serve as an example of how far we’ve come.

You get the feeling that this is more than just an election, it is a changing of the guard. Young people, the nucleus of Obama’s campaign and an essential part of his winning strategy, have shifted the country’s political paradigm. For them, change is important, race isn’t. They didn’t vote for the Black guy, they voted for the young guy, the guy with new ideas.

That could have far-reaching political implications in places like Philadelphia, where old school ward politics, party bosses, and the plain brown envelope are still the status quo. The leaders of the old guard are not going to be happy about giving up power, especially when it involves losing out on those brown envelopes. Expect blood, but that comes later.

For now, allow the winners a few days of jubilation and unbridled glee. Give the losers a suitable period of mourning to sulk and cry in their beer.

The emotions on both sides will soon fade, and the enormity of the challenges that lie ahead will sink in. The people who predict an Obama-led utopia, and the people who foresee the end of the Republic, are both wrong. The government will go on, and our lives will go on, pretty much as usual.

What changes is this: if we’re lucky, we’ll all find ourselves working toward the same goal, probably for the first time in 221 years.

On the back of every dollar bill is the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, “Out of many, One”. One country, one people, one America.

We may not get there. But it sure is something to shoot for, and this week, America took a big step.

The Steadfast Denial of Reality

I almost feel sorry for the Republican Party these days. The GOP self-immolation seems almost complete, down to the predictable last-minute acts of desperation. Witness their indefensible defenses for Sarah Palin’s frightening lack of intelligence - their equally bizarre accusations of ACORN, minorities and city folks in general as anti-American. While this pitiful descent into madness may somehow be energizing their base - provided their base consists of the most easily manipulated people on earth - their steadfast denial of reality proves to the rest of us what they know, but can’t bring themselves to say. It’s over.

Instead, they play Moby Dick’s doomed Captain Ahab, vainly lashing out at the great whale even as he’s taken under the waves forever. “To the last, I grapple with thee! From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!”

And it is this Ahab attitude that keeps me from actually feeling sorry for Republicans. Because I know that for the GOP, hate’s sake is going to include Election Day shenanigans the likes of which we’ve never seen.

OK, shenanigans the likes of which most people in the country have never seen.

This is Philadelphia, where the political shenanigan was first invented, and eventually perfected. Also, the proud original home of cronyism, dirty pool, and double dipping.

So, while this whole ACORN voter registration ballyhoo may have whipped up the uninitiated, for us, it’s a big, fat yawn. Why? Let’s examine this “scandal”: ACORN, among many other agencies around the country, employs armies of freshly scrubbed young people with perfect teeth to register new voters door-to-door and on street corners. ACORN then pays these young people on a sliding scale, according to the number of registrants they sign up. More signatures equal more money.

We should all then be shocked, stunned, and horrified when some of these happy young folks try to make more money by padding their lists, writing in multiple or fictitious names and addresses. I mean, is this contingency unexpected? Who’s zooming whom here?

To make matters worse, ACORN and the other agencies are required by law to submit all registration lists, even the obviously bogus ones listing Mickey Mouse, Wayne Gretsky and Tobor the Eighth Man. (My personal favorite is the old Philadelphia tradition of listing a cemetery as an address, then writing in the names off the tombstones. Classic.)

Now, everyone knows that Mickey Mouse isn’t going to show up in Philly to vote, and neither are the dearly departed culled from the gravestones. A fraud, sure, but a relatively victimless one, considering that the outcome of an election is not decided by people who don’t show up to vote.

Yet, here comes McCain and the GOP, screaming about this latest threat to the fabric of democracy, and all humanity, at the scheming hands of a few overly enthusiastic ACORN employees. Lawsuits are filed, and thousands of registration lists containing hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters are called into question.

With any luck, they figure, most people won’t see through the smokescreen. Most people won’t know that the GOP’s last best hope of winning lies in somehow suppressing the votes of those most likely to vote for Obama. Most people won’t know the difference between voter registration fraud, which you might make a case for against ACORN, and actual voter fraud, where someone, say, shows up to vote twice under different names.

Meanwhile, the door is open for the GOP to “monitor” voters in pro-Obama areas. You may have noticed recent flyers distributed in North and West Philly, falsely warning potential voters with anything from outstanding warrants to parking tickets that police will be ready to arrest them when they show up at the polls. Expect more of this, and expect it to get worse.

Expect a repeat of 2000, when minority votes were arbitrarily stricken from the rolls, when ballots were deliberately confusing in elderly voting places, or deliberately misleading in minority voting places. Expect a repeat of 2004, when “Swift Boating” and outright lying gave way to dozens, maybe hundreds, of GOP-sponsored electronic voting machines “accidentally” erasing huge numbers of votes for the Democratic candidate.

Expect voter intimidation in all its forms leading up to Election Day. Expect to be lied to, lied about, and treated as something less than a full citizen. Fortunately, here in Philadelphia, we’ve learned over the years to expect just about anything when it comes to Election Day politics.

These people are desperate, folks, and they’re not going down alone.

What To Expect from Brother President

Caught up in the Obama whirlwind, I’ve been almost giddy lately with the possibility of the first Black President of the United States. We all have.

This is a unique moment in history, and its importance bears down on us like a great weight. It is a chance for America to begin finally to fulfill her own promise, to inject some truth into Jefferson’s supposedly self-evident idea that all men are created equal.

I say supposedly because I don’t think it needs to be said here that all men have not been equal in America’s long history. Women either.

In fact, the very idea of equality was opposite to the philosophical foundation that made this country great: that vast land could be stolen from one race of people, and then another race of people could be forced to work that land, all for the benefit of the conquering race of people. That’s colonization at its finest, folks, and the young America was a group of colonies.

Of course, none of us needs a history lesson, nor do we need to be reminded that real freedom for Blacks in America is only about 50 years old, and since then has been coming in drips and drabs. And make no mistake: every right, every freedom, every victory has come with a heavy price, a bill that many African-Americans are still paying.

So, of course we revel in the idea that one of us can become president. Sure, they loved to tell us when we were kids that anyone could become president, but come on, no one really believed it. We revel in it because maybe the day is coming when we can finally look our children in the eye and tell them that they can reach their full potential with study and hard work, and not harbor secret fears that we’re just setting them up for a painful reality check later on. We revel in it because while Obama represents change for much of the country, for us he represents hope. Not just hope for the future of America, but an even more fervent hope for the future of Black America.

And this is where I fear we may be setting ourselves up for a reality check.

I heard a couple of young people discussing politics the other day while in a store. The two girls and a boy, about 17, were obvious Obama fans. Standing behind them, I was just happy at the number of young folks who have gotten involved in politics lately, when one of them said something jarring. I’m paraphrasing here, but she said that when Obama becomes president, he’ll rebuild Black communities and Black schools, get rid of drugs, get jobs for everyone, and well… pretty much make everything all right.

OK, I want him to win, but that might be asking a bit much from the brother. He’s just a man, and more importantly, a politician. His policies and initiatives, however sound, will still judged in the court of public opinion. He’ll be stymied by members of Congress, hamstrung by the courts, and hounded by the press with every misstep. That’s just the job.
Or have we already forgotten how years ago we whooped and danced at the idea of Philadelphia’s first Black mayor? Two Black mayors later, are you still whooping and dancing? All right then.

To his credit, Barack Obama is a very smart politician. Maybe even smarter than ol’ Bubba himself. Smart enough to know that the slightest hint of bias or favoritism in the Obama administration will set off a media firestorm the likes of which we haven’t seen since, well, ever. His urban agenda, by political necessity, must be completely even handed. Any urban renewal policy initiative that benefits North and West Philly would similarly have to benefit Port Richmond and Kensington and other areas. And that would apply all over the country. That’s just, I think, the political reality.

If we’re smart, we won’t expect any special treatment from an Obama administration. He’s not going to be ‘our’ president any more than he will be ‘theirs’. Let’s just get that through our heads now.

What we can expect though, is fair treatment. We can expect that our government will respond with the same speed and compassion to a catastrophe in Black areas that it does elsewhere. We can expect that our government will honor its commitment to treat its citizens as identical stakeholders of a single proud Republic.

We can expect to be treated as if we are all created equal.

When In Doubt, The Black Guy Did It

Being a newspaper columnist is not as easy as you might think.

OK, it is – but let me make my point.

Some weeks are so slow and so same-old, same-old that it can be difficult to come up with fresh, new material. Then there are other weeks, like this week, that will have your head spinning while trying to decide among thirty or forty topics people are talking about.

Another slain Philly cop is laid to rest, and the resultant firestorm conjures up everything from the governor calling for a moratorium on all state paroles, to the Fraternal Order of Police calling out judges at a news conference. Over at City Hall, a city council member and his aide get involved in a war of words with FOX 29 over time sheet discrepancies, and then the aide pulls one of the most boneheaded council session stunts of all time – which is really saying something. If there is a college course somewhere in how to bungle a media crisis, this will live forever as the textbook case.

Elsewhere, we are less than a month away from one of the most important elections of our lifetime, and polls show the candidates in a virtual dead heat. The stakes are enormous, and the issues change priority on a daily basis. The stock market teeters on the verge of collapse while Congress scrambles to pass a bill ensuring a financial ‘rescue’, because that sounds better than the failed bill promising a ‘bailout’. There is still a war in Iraq costing us $8 billion per month – money that we apparently don’t even have anymore.

Senators Obama and McCain have been trading shots over the economy, while the Republican National Committee has been engrossed in the monumental but vain effort to prevent Americans from finding out that Sarah Palin is as dumb as a bag of hammers.

But through all this week’s quagmire, one shining light emerged.

One story so amazed, amused, and astounded me that I felt it was my duty to share it with you.

On the floor of the House of Representatives, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann laid the blame for the current financial crisis squarely at the feet of …. wait for it… Black people.

Not greedy Wall Street executives, who walked away with millions in salaries and bonuses by playing Texas Hold ‘Em with senior citizens’ pensions. Not unregulated bankers, flipping mortgages like pancakes while scheming to buy up any bank smaller than their own. Not even her own Republican Party, who spent the past eight years squandering the Clinton surplus and, like Nero, fiddling while Rome burns.

Black people.

Follow her convoluted logic, if you dare.

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), passed in 1977, requires banks to lend in the low-income communities where they take deposits. The banking industry had traditionally “redlined” minority neighborhoods by refusing to generate mortgages, while intentionally keeping Blacks and Latinos out of white neighborhoods. There was therefore little chance that Black people could gain good credit. CRA was passed to fix that.

Because of the CRA, according to Bachmann, “[President Bill Clinton] turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democrat voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else. This potential mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.”

That’s right. Because they outlawed redlining a generation ago, banks were forced – forced, mind you – to loan mortgage money to shiftless, no account you-know-whos, and then thirty years later, poof! Financial collapse.

This theory makes perfect sense – that is, if you’re a both a racist and exceedingly stupid – like Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

Of course, everyone from the Congressional Black Caucus, to Business Week and the Wall Street Journal, to some of her own GOP allies have pointed out the folly of this far-right wing argument. Yes, it’s ludicrous on its face. Yes, no competent economist would agree with this foolishness. But all that misses the point.

Despite the success of Barack Obama, and for that matter, successful Blacks all over the country, America is still a place where Blacks are a quick and convenient scapegoat - the ultimate cause of anything and everything that worries white folks. Even in the hallowed halls of Congress, you can still yell, “The Black guy did it!”, and rest comfortably assured that will be the end of the conversation.

Reclaiming Black Manhood

I have recently come to the heart-rending conclusion that we, as Black men, are coming dangerously close to losing the one ideal that has sustained us for nearly 400 years in America: raw courage.

Set upon, hounded and besieged from the moment our chained African ancestors squinted against the sunlight, after months in the dark misery of the Middle Passage, Black men have epitomized courage, honor, and dignity. Robbed of language, religion, culture and humanity, our forefathers still managed to achieve great feats of engineering, invent machines that would revolutionize the world, and build this country from scratch. And they would do it all without credit, profit or acknowledgement from their white overseers or the books of history.

What I cannot understand how this rich heritage of courage, heroism, and sacrifice could have given birth to a generation of craven cowards and low-rent poltroons.

Poltroon is another word we ought to bring back to life. More than just a coward, a poltroon preys on the weak or unsuspecting, usually in numbers or with unnecessary violence. Say, for instance, like opening fire on a crowded playground.

I met Miles Mack a couple of times. It seemed like whenever I went to cover a story in Mantua, Miles was around. He was loved and respected, a brother with no greater purpose in life than helping others. He founded the X-Tra Miles Developmental Basketball League, and played surrogate father, uncle and big brother to hundreds of troubled kids over the years. He was murdered while handing out championship trophies, in front of maybe 200 witnesses.

When Miles lost his life last Thursday night, the poltroonish gunmen were shooting at someone else. They had their victim, Darren Hankins, right where they wanted him - unarmed and unsuspecting. They hit him, and five other people, including Miles Mack.

I cannot imagine the sad existence that surely must accompany an absolute lack of decency, morality, or any sense of right and wrong. How can you not think of yourself as the lowest form of coward? Who cares about the so-called “reason” for the killings? What reason could you possibly have to behave in so shameful a manner?

You can ask the same question of the pair who last week gunned down Veno Leigertwood, a brilliant, hardworking young family man in Yeadon. An Ivy League graduate and entrepreneur, Leigertwood returned to his alma mater (and mine) John Bartram School to mentor and guide students through the rigors of college application.

A couple of young brothers snuck up behind Veno and shot him to death in his driveway.

I don’t have to tell you that these are not isolated incidents.

From the guys who get their kicks beating up old men in mall restrooms, to the recently jailed poltroon who beat seven women’s faces in after snatching their purses, we’ve been flooded with case after case of young brothers whose heinous actions, a generation ago, would have made their families hide in shame.

When did we decide that craven cowardice is an acceptable quality of manhood?

There are any number of socio-economic factors we could tick off that contribute to crime: poverty, lack of educational and employment opportunities, institutional racism, continuing inequities in the legal system, and a host of others. All fair, and all valid.

That does not explain, however, a change in attitude that excuses, and even encourages, the lowest forms of cowardice. Being a purse-snatcher is one thing, beating the women up after taking their valuables is quite another. Having it out with someone with whom you disagree is understandable, sneaking up on them and shooting them in the back is not.

It’s easy to blame to lack of real father figures in the community, and certainly, to some extent this is true. Fathers (and grandfathers) are the traditional teachers of manhood, but women can just as easily teach boys not to be cowards. Single mothers can, and do, teach their sons to respect themselves and others, and that their actions reflect not only on themselves, but their families and their community.

But somebody, somewhere is telling our boys that it’s perfectly alright to prey on the weak, to gang up on the unsuspecting, to shoot wildly into a crowd. Someone is telling them that these actions don’t make you less of a man, and that you still deserve respect.

The first step to reclaiming our legacy of courage is to find out who is feeding our sons these vicious lies – and pray we’re not too late.

The South Park Defense

I hope you’ve been following this week’s trial of Charles Meyers, the 19-year old from South Philly who last summer shot and killed 14-year old Tykeem Law, ostensibly because Law and his friends didn’t get their bicycles out of the street fast enough. Because Meyers is Caucasian and Law was African-American, this trial has become a referendum on violent crime and the public perception of murderers and their victims. You can bet this case is going to be thoroughly scrutinized and picked apart in the weeks and months to come.

I say, why wait? Scrutinize now and avoid the rush.

Pretty much the first thing out of defense attorney Daniel Conner’s mouth was so predictable, it could have been written by some overworked Hollywood screenwriter. Connor’s argument, if you really want to call it an argument, is that Meyers thought he saw Law reach under his shirt, and believing that Law had a gun, felt threatened and shot the kid in self-defense.

Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that every reliable witness, including the off-duty police officer who witnessed the entire incident and apprehended Meyers, say that Law made no aggressive actions. It’s the sheer, naked audacity of the defense claim that bothers me. We’ve seen it countless times.

I call it “The South Park Defense”. South Park, for those of you who still don’t have cable, is a cartoon show on Comedy Central that takes rude, gross vulgarity to new heights unimagined by The Simpsons or Beavis and Butthead. In one particular episode, the four foul-mouthed ten-year-olds who are the show’s protagonists are taken on a hunting trip by two dim-witted adults, Jimbo and Ned.

Horrified by the sight of Jimbo shooting a defenseless animal, one of the children asks how he can justify killing a creature that meant him no harm. Jimbo’s reply was, “They say we can't shoot certain animals anymore unless they're posing an immediate threat. Therefore, before we shoot something, we have to say; ‘It's coming right for us!’”

As if to punctuate the statement, Jimbo screams, “Look out! It’s coming right for us!” and shoots a small deer drinking from a lake.

The basis of the South Park Defense is as simple as Jimbo explained it. If there’s any question about the justification for a shooting, you simply state that the victim made a threatening move and you made a split second decision to protect yourself. A justifiable, understandable, natural response to a perceived threat. Case closed, court is adjourned and the defendant is free to go.

Keep in mind, though, you can only use the South Park Defense when the shooting victim is Black, but you’d be surprised at how often it works.

Police shootings are a natural for the South Park Defense. Remember Amadou Diallo? Forty-one shots reaching for his wallet. You can just imagine those cops in that tight hallway, guns drawn, when one of them shouts, “Look out! He’s got a gun!” just before they blaze away. How about Sean Bell, the groom blown away after his bachelor party? Same defense, same result.

It’s not just police officers who get to use the South Park Defense, either. There was a case several years ago where a brother was pepper sprayed by an old white woman as he walked past her on a dark street. He was not threatening her; he was actually on his way home from work. However, the mere fact that a black man approached her from behind was enough to justify pepper spraying him, because the old woman felt a perceived threat.

The fact is that the South Park Defense is an effective way to secure an acquittal. If it weren’t, attorneys like Conner wouldn’t make it the first gadget they pull out of their bag of tricks. It doesn’t take much to convince a jury that the menacing Black man made an aggressive motion, and what else is a poor, frightened white person to do?

It’s not much different from the “Unknown Black Guy” defense, made famous by Susan Smith, Tanya Dacri and a host of others. When confronted by the authorities with evidence of your guilt, you say the first thing you think will hold water. And “The Black Guy Did It” holds water in all 50 states.

The South Park Defense will work just fine until juries begin to decide these cases on the law instead of fear and stereotypes. The problem is, too many juries are made up of guys named Jimbo and Ned.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Stupidity

Because of my respect for the United States Constitution, and in particular the First Amendment to that document, which provides for freedom of speech and a free press, I find myself called upon to make a philosophical sacrifice. Like many patriotic acts, this is an unpleasant task, but as an American, I have to do it.

I rise now in defense of the stupid.

Consider the case of West Philadelphia’s Andre Moore, a 44-year old former security guard at Einstein Medical Center. Moore made a home video in which he waved around a semi-automatic handgun, showed viewers how to load and shoot it, and gleefully yet profanely called for the wanton murder of Philly police officers, particularly officers in West Philly’s 18^th District.

Moore got his 12-year old son to shoot the video, and posted it on You Tube, the Internet’s top file sharing program. In almost no time, Philadelphia Police and the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office had the video, and took swift action.

Last week, Moore got an early morning visit from the Gun Violence Task Force – courtesy of a battering ram through his front door. He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, corruption of minors, terroristic threats and harassment.

Will the charges stick? That remains to be seen. There are First Amendment issues at play here, and attorneys will argue whether Moore has a Constitutional right to say whatever stupid thing he likes.

Leave aside the legal conundrum for a moment and think about simple decency, common sense, and yes, outright stupidity. If you post such videos in the public domain, what reaction do you expect from the authorities? Did Moore think police and the Attorney General don’t have Internet access? Or perhaps they’re willing to look the other way when someone waves a gun and calls for unbridled cop killing?

Simple decency dictates that even if you harbor an absolute hatred for the police, you don’t teach those values, and the use of firearms to carry out the deed, to your 12-year old child. Common sense tells you that a guy with a job he wants to keep, and a family he cares for, doesn’t post a “kill the cops” video for the world to see. And if you post such a video, especially in a city where recent cop killings have everyone on edge, only the genuinely stupid would expect anything other than a battering ram through the door and lots of guns in your face.

A 44-year old man with a job and a family to feed is not supposed to be that stupid. It’s not as if he’s some teenage tough guy, fueled by gangsta rap videos and mistaken ideas of manhood. At his age, it’s not just stupid, it’s embarrassing. His wife, Tamara, said as much in a newspaper interview after his arrest.

“I knew nothing about any of this,” she said. “Me, my son and our family are very much humiliated by the act Andre did. Whatever happens to him, happens. My job is being jeopardized because of this.”

Einstein Medical Center also joined the line to throw Moore under the bus. Citing the fact that Moore apparently lied about a previous arrest on his job application, the hospital jettisoned him like dead weight after his arrest.

Well, Andre, I won’t abandon you. Even though your actions disgust me as a father, a Philadelphian, and an American, I’ve got your back. I happen to believe that you have a God-given and constitutionally protected right to be as stupid as you want to be.

After all, the Aryan Nation, Stormfront, and a thousand other hate mongers are allowed to spread their vile message via the Internet, and their calls for the wholesale slaughter of minorities, Jews, gays and others are simply ignored by authorities as the rantings of the lunatic fringe.

Televangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a Fox News analyst suggested that Barack Obama should be shot, and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee quipped that a loud noise offstage during his speech to the National Rifle Association might be Obama ducking out of the line of fire.

All the above violators were allowed to apologize and move on to the next stupid comment. Were they guilty of making terroristic threats? We’ll never know, because they weren’t arrested for it.

The idea of the First Amendment freedoms isn’t to protect speech with which we agree, but speech that causes most of us to recoil in horror. Even the stupid need protection, if only from themselves.

Exit Polls From Alabama, PA

Our rural and suburban neighbors had a conniption fit a few years back when political consultant James Carville, in a now famous quote, called our state “Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other end, and Alabama in between”.

Those same non-city dwellers cried foul a couple of months ago, when just before the Pennsylvania primary, Governor Ed Rendell candidly admitted that there were many residents who would not vote for Senator Barack Obama because of his race.

Being from Philadelphia, but having visited every corner of the Commonwealth, it seems to me that while both men were over-generalizing a bit, their assertions were accurate.

At about the same time Rendell inadvertently laid bare the outlying counties’ deep anti-Black sentiments, Scranton was hosting its annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, one of the largest parades in the country. Scranton, seat of Lackawanna County, is the home base of Senator Bob Casey, ardent Obama supporter and current patriarch of one of Pennsylvania’s most respected political families.

Despite Casey’s endorsement, Obama volunteers at the parade say they were heckled mercilessly with racial epithets, and the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. Accounts from the volunteers who knocked on doors and distributed flyers on street corners were worse. Doors were slammed in their faces, and the n-word flowed freely from residents who made it clear why they weren’t about to cast their ballots for an African-American.

Two Lackawanna County Commissioners who publicly endorsed Obama found themselves the recipients of racist hate mail. I wonder if the reaction would have been any worse had not Obama been endorsed by the most popular politician in the area.

In the “It Would Be Funny If It Weren’t So Scary” Department: Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball wrote in a letter to the editor of his local paper, "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him. No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

I love how they repeatedly throw his middle name out there just to scare the bejesus out of slow-witted white folks. As if the very name “Hussein” is enough to send citizens scampering for cover. Look, the people who are dumb enough to let something as trivial as the candidate’s names sway their vote were already lost at “Barack Obama”. Adding Hussein at this juncture is just overkill.

Since the Pennsylvania primary election last month, which Senator Hillary Clinton won by more than 200,000 votes, the Obama campaign has suffered crushing defeats in the other so-called “Appalachian states” to our southwest: West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The demographic makeup of these states is quite similar to ours in that most minorities live in the cities, where Obama won: Louisville, Memphis, and Nashville. Travel a few miles outside the city, however, and the Carville Axiom holds true.

Witness too the alarming numbers coming out of the exit polls: more than one-third of Clinton supporters say they won’t vote for Obama in the general election against Republican Senator John McCain. That they are happy to abandon the core issues of the Democratic Party: universal health care, the Iraq war, rising gasoline prices and a failing economy; in order to avoid the possibility of an Obama presidency shows the depth of their racial animosity.

This is especially true of white women in this category, who willingly face a rollback of the gender rights for which they’ve fought so valiantly. The next president will pick at least one, but more likely two or even three Supreme Court justices. McCain has already indicated that he will pick judges who are pro-life in an effort to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the bulwark of women’s rights legislation. No matter, they’d still rather have McCain than Obama, who has repeatedly championed women’s rights issues.

I have not spoken to a single Black person who expresses the opposite sentiment. If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination fair and square, without any sleight-of-hand political shenanigans involving Florida and Michigan, I’m positive that the millions of Obama’s African-American supporters would come out in droves to vote for her.

However, I would also submit that African-Americans might well begin to take a serious look at a political party that demands our loyalty, but doesn’t return the favor.

Bitter Is As Bitter Does

Well, this is it, Philadelphia. The seemingly endless weeks of television and radio ads, glad handing, baby kissing and mud slinging have finally come to a merciful end. Come Tuesday, we and our fellow residents of the Commonwealth will decide which primary candidates are worthy of our support – and which have earned our disgust.

It’s hard not to be disgusted by the fact that instead of using this opportunity as a final push for critical swing state votes, we get the same negative politics as usual. In the last week of this long and bitter campaign, we Pennsylvanians have been treated to some of the most pitiful displays of political opportunism and bogus grandstanding ever.

Some of the Democrats running seem perfectly happy to run as Republicans in the primary – trashing their opponents beyond redemption in the fall, and essentially writing the GOP game plan. Chief among the villains is at the top of the ticket, where Hillary Clinton is bleating that somehow Barack Obama is an “elitist”, who is out of touch with the average American.

This because last weekend Obama said that folks in small towns in Pennsylvania are “bitter” about losing their jobs, health care, and pensions. The comment would barely rate a small blip on the media’s radar screen if not for the Clinton and McCain camps constant screeching about how Obama is an “elitist”, or “arrogant”, which we all knew would be the first label they’d stick on a Black man who’s smarter than they are.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that Obama was right. Most people in small town Pennsylvania, places that were once thriving mill towns, or steel towns, or textile towns, are hurting badly. The factories are gone, and the only available jobs involve a paper hat and a spatula, but no health insurance. They can’t afford to get sick, can’t afford the medicine if they do get sick, and can’t afford to keep their houses out of foreclosure. They’re angry, they’re frustrated, and yes, they’re a little bitter. Same goes for Pennsylvania’s big cities, by the way.

Actually, it makes you wonder how Clinton and McCain could have spent as much time as they have in our state over the past six weeks and not seen the same thing. But we’re leaving that aside a moment for this:

The most incredible, piteously laughable part of the whole stupid mess is watching Clinton and McCain sing in unison that someone, anyone, could be an elitist –let alone someone like Barack Obama.

Clinton, who has racked up some $100 million by rubbing elbows with society’s upper crust, lifts her pursed lips from her crystal champagne flute long enough to call some brother from the South Side an elitist? Are you kidding me?

McCain, who won his first election a couple of years after marrying into his wife Cindy’s vast fortune, said not one peep when his hero and fellow warmonger Dick Cheney grunted a dismissive, “So?” in reaction to the overwhelming number of Americans against the Iraq war. But Barack Obama, who turned down a whopping salary out of Harvard Law School to go back and work in Chicago’s poorest communities for peanuts, is arrogant? Who comes up with this stuff?

I shudder to think that there really might be people out there clueless enough to fall for this idiocy, but for the rest of us, it’s an insult to our intelligence. This whole campaign was supposed to be about getting away from the politics of personality. We were all supposed to focus on the issues, remember? No trash talking, no dirty pool, no cheap shots – that’s the line they fed us a couple of months ago.

Yet here we are, at the eve of one of the most important elections of our lifetime, mired in the same old irrelevancies. They had the chance to raise the level of this debate, in fact they all promised it, and they blew it anyway. They went for the lowest common denominator, choosing fear and suspicion over a command of the issues and a vision for the future.

As hosts of this six-week charade, and on behalf of my fellow Pennsylvanians, may I be the first to say that we’re just plain tired of hearing it. Take your traveling caravans, your freshly scrubbed volunteers, and your scorched earth politics with you, and good riddance.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, and try a little harder not to make fools of us all in the general election, will you?

"They Killed Us All"

Thursday, April 4, 1968 started out as a routine day. It was a couple of days before my ninth birthday, and I was already looking forward to getting presents. I went to my fourth grade class at W.C. Bryant Elementary School, then after school walked my younger sister over to our grandparents’ house, a few blocks away at 61^st & Larchwood.

Mom Mom, as we called my grandmother, had the usual after-school snacks and homework demands, and my afternoon progressed along the usual schedule: homework, cartoons on TV, the call from Mom Mom to come down for dinner, then settling on the couch with my grandfather to watch the evening news.

That’s when a routine day turned into one of the darkest nights in U.S. history.

While I was having dinner, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was stepping onto the balcony outside room 306 of Memphis’ Lorraine Motel. He, along the several aides, was on his way to dinner as well, at the home of a local minister. King was in town to lend support to striking sanitation workers, and was just finishing work on his sermon for Sunday, titled, “Why America May Go To Hell.” (A little factoid you may want to remind the Rev. Wright bashers this week.)

King was calling out to his driver that they were ready to go, when a .30-06 rifle slug ripped through his neck, slamming him against the wall and severing his spinal cord. By the time the civil rights leader slumped to the floor, aides were pointing in the direction of the shot – an image captured, and burned into our consciousness for all time. A sobbing Rev. Ralph Abernathy cradled King in his arms, while Andrew Young felt for a pulse.

“Ralph, it’s all over,” Young said quietly.

Toward the end of the news broadcast, Walter Cronkite announced that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot by an assassin in Memphis. My grandfather hesitated on the couch a second, and then went ballistic. Never one to mince words, Pop Pop leapt to his feet and launched into a profanity-laced tirade that was a classic, even for him.

It was the government, he screamed, specifically blaming J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. Hoover has had it in for blacks for years, and would kill King himself if he had the chance, he said. Even years after James Earl Ray had been tried and convicted as the lone gunman, Pop Pop stuck to his Hoover / government conspiracy theory until the day he died. I am still not convinced he was wrong.

For the rest of the evening, news reports and special bulletins filled the airwaves. Solemn-faced anchormen read the copy as images flashed across the screen: riots in more than 100 cities and towns, Black folks wailing in anguish, and a visibly shaken Bobby Kennedy delivering the sad news to a mostly Black crowd in Indianapolis.

There was no rioting, looting or fires here in Philadelphia – the appeal for calm attributed to several courageous citizens including Father Paul Washington and radio personality Georgie Woods. As Washington took to the streets of North Philadelphia to spread King’s message of non-violence in the face of injustice, The Guy With The Goods took to the airwaves in a marathon radio session on WDAS that featured gospel hymns from Louise Williams and many phone-in guests talking about what King’s legacy would mean to American history.

I listened to the radio that night for as long as I could stay awake. The next day at school, my teacher, Mr. Maginn, addressed the nearly all-Black class. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. One of those young, white, liberal dreamers of the 60’s, Mr. Maginn’s tie-dyed world of peace, love, and flower power had been shattered.

He said that while he could never understand the pain we may feel as Black people, he shared our pain that morning. He was hurt, he said, by the accusatory stares he had gotten from Blacks while on his way to work. Dr. King was one of his heroes, and he wanted to feel free to share his grief with his Black friends, neighbors, and students.

“They didn’t just kill one man,” Mr. Maginn told us, “they killed us all.”

School let out early that day, but there was none of the usual jubilation that accompanied early dismissal announcements. Even as elementary school students, we knew that this was not an occasion for celebration. They had killed a dreamer, a visionary, a spiritual leader, a saint, a prophet, and the moral compass of a generation.

They had killed us all.

Just What We Need: More History

For more than 200 years, our little green country town of Philadelphia has been the setting of some of history’s most powerful political oratory. Stirring speeches have been delivered here by some of the greatest thinkers of their respective generations - John Adams, Abe Lincoln, JFK, Nelson Mandela – it’s a list too long to recite.

By noon this past Tuesday, we had another jersey to hang in the rafters.

Barack Obama’s discourse on race, redemption, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, delivered to an invitation-only crowd at the National Constitution Center, was one of the most awe-inspiring political speeches I’ve ever heard. If you somehow missed it, I urge you to watch the speech online, and read the transcript. It’s definitely worth the time.

Dogged in recent days by sharp criticism of Wright, his mentor, father figure and pastor of 20 years, Obama was pretty much forced into making a public statement denouncing some of Wright’s more incendiary statements. The same snippets of a couple of Wright’s fiery sermons played over and over, and endless hand-wringing by conservative commentators and bloggers made it necessary, despite Obama’s previous condemnations, to address the issue fully and head on – which is exactly what he did.

Never mind that right-wing evangelicals and conservative pulpit-pounders have said far worse, and been openly embraced by Republicans for it, since time in memoriam. Never mind about Billy Graham’s anti-Semitic rants, or Rod Parsley’s call for the extermination of all Muslims, or Jerry Falwell’s claim that 9/11 was the fault of gays and feminists, or John Hagee’s declaration that Hurricane Katrina was punishment from God. Never mind about Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, or Ted Haggard. For a solid week, we were told in no uncertain terms that Rev. Jeremiah Wright is the sworn enemy of everything American and Christian, and that even sitting in the pews listening to him is an automatic disqualifier for public office.

And make no mistake: Obama’s speech on Tuesday will not silence the voices of those determined to see him fail. No speech - no matter how eloquent, sincere or thoughtful – will be enough to quell the fear mongering and racially tinged animosity of the Pat Buchanans and Rush Limbaughs of the world. No mere repudiation of a few words, culled from thousands of otherwise uplifting sermons, will satiate the bloodlust created over the past few days. For them, Black people, led by their Black preachers, are to be viewed with suspicion, scorn and derision, in varying doses.

They will scream until they’re blue in the face that Obama didn’t wholly reject Wright as a pastor, teacher and human being, as though even that would have satisfied them. They will tear their garments and wail piteously on cable news shows about the “hate” being preached in Black churches – churches in which they wouldn’t have set foot anyway. They will studiously pore over the sermons of Black ministers, searching for even the slightest criticism of the government or white folks in general, and then howl in pain with each You Tube “revelation”.

They will question the validity of Black anger. They will completely ignore the part of Obama’s speech where he said: “For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.”

They are destined to find themselves on the wrong side of history, along with their brethren who branded Mandela a terrorist; and their fathers, who huffily declared Muhammad Ali a traitor and Martin Luther King, Jr. nothing more than a communist.

I don’t care if you’re a Hillary Clinton supporter, or a John McCain supporter, or even a Ron Paul supporter, if there are any left. If you didn’t see Obama’s speech Tuesday morning as one of the brightest moments in political discourse of our generation, then you are a shortsighted, narrow-minded fool. If you can’t see past Rev. Wright’s inflammatory comments to the larger truth of Obama’s words, then you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Whether he wins the Democratic nomination or not, the nation saw something of Barack Obama Tuesday. They saw the measure of the man - his principles, his history, his worldview – and learned how a Black man came to be standing at a podium in the Cradle of Liberty, poised and ready to take on what may be the greatest challenge of any Black man in our time.

Let the fools find themselves on the wrong side of history. The rest of us who saw the speech for what it was must seize this moment and use it to its full advantage. It’s time to change, America.