London in New York

President Obama’s True Colors Come Shining Through

This past week President Obama, in a White House interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News, made big news with a historic pronouncement of his support of marital equality for same sex couples, i.e., gay marriage. While the coverage in this part of the world of the President’s evolution on marriage equality for same sex couples, has been largely well received, skeptics and cynics remain, even among some progressive voices like Mike Lupica of the Daily News who penned a column ‘Obama does right thing on gay marriage, but won’t score much’ and Lady Bunny who asked readers of the Huffington Post in a blog “Am I the Only Gay Who Eyes Obama’s ‘Evolution’ on Gay Marriage With Suspicion?”

While Lupica may ultimately be right, it is likely for the posture assumed by Lady Bunny that cast aspersions on the President for not going far enough. And that is truly disheartening. Maureen Dowd in the NY Times (after this piece was initially written) also condemned the President emphasizing as follows:

“Why doesn’t he just do the exhilarating thing immediately? Why does he always have to be dragged kicking and screaming to principle? Not everything is a calculation. His embrace of gay marriage was not a profile in courage. It was good, better than continued “evolving,” but not particularly brave. He has been in office three and a half years and he is running for re-election, trying to bring back the thrill with a lot of constituencies and donors who felt let down by his temporizing. Who knows how long he might have kept evolving, while his advisers gamed it out, if Joe Biden, Arne Duncan and Shaun Donovan hadn’t forced his hand by speaking out in such an unabashed way in support of same-sex marriage.”

My answer to Mike Lupica, Lady Bunny and Maureen Dowd is the same.  President Obama is the President of the entire country. He is not in the same position as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg or Governor Andrew Cuomo.  The simple reality is that he cannot brow beat the entire nation on this issue because the nation is still evolving.  The simple reality is also that he cannot govern if he cannot get re-elected. He inherited a host of complex problems along with a cynical, distrustful and volatile electorate that has had several years of being steadily massaged by the activist right demonizing Obama for his inability to solve instantly every problem created by his predecessors who have  demonized him for his different’ness and branding him a traitor, a terrorist Islamic sympathizer and and a socialist, among other things.   Rick Santorum essentially referred to him as a “Nigger”,  a “Government Nigger” and now Senator Rand Paul, essentially called him a homo by saying that “he did not think Obama’s views on marriage could be any gayer.” Under these circumstances,  I could see why he might be slow to evolve to a position which might give the forces of intolerance in battleground states and an engaged and well funded opponent one more issue to brand him with, ‘gay’.  As stated by Andrew Sullivan, “Of Course Obama’s Gay Marriage Stance is Political – So What?” And yes, maybe he is cooler than this guy.

The people, a friend of mine, has referred to as the “Whiners” ought to recognize because of how entrenched are forces against marriage equality that the President’s symbolic statement of support for gay marriage is in fact historic. It does not mean, however, the battle is over.  The President’s role as leader is to persuade folks and get them to come along with him and not to brow beat those who disagree with him. The leader of the free world has endorsed marriage equality. Like it or not, the votes to make marital equality the law of the land are not there yet.  As aptly stated by Scott Raphael, a commenter on Gawker in a pieced entitled ‘Barack Obama’s Bullshit Gay Marriage Announcement’:

“The moral issue is totally black and white. The social issue of getting folks to accept it is not, and will take time. You can’t expect a politician to commit career suicide when he is in a position to actually continue to make slow progress on the issue in his second term. It’s foolish to think it’s even a good idea to!”

Or by another commenter:

“As few as five years ago, a sitting president vocalizing support for gay marriage was a pipe dream. I too want *more* and *now*. However, that desire does not negate the fact that Obama has probably done more for LGBTQ rights than any other president in history. I’m not suggesting that we should now sit by complacently; rather, I’m suggesting that we be appropriately thankful for powerful allies while we work to continue the momentum.”

Andrew Sullivan in a piece entitled: “How Obama’s Long Game will Outsmart His Critics” perhaps fills in the gaps of understanding for the so called whiners who complain about Obama’s timing:

“The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he’s a wimp. Andrew Sullivan on how the president may just end up outsmarting them all.”

Obama is the first black President facing a significant reelection challenge in uncertain, if not turbulent times, and yet he dares to pronounce his evolution on one of the biggest wedge issues of our time in terms of support for gay marriage in a bold fashion and and that only merits a passing nod by Lupica for playing follow the leader to Cuomo and recrimination from Gawker,  Lady Bunny for not going far enough and Maureen Dowd of the NY Times for being too calculated. Really? WTF! Gay Conservative writer, Andrew Sullivan gets it. Why can’t you? What freaking planet are you on?  In the blunt words of Sarah Silverman, quoting Newark Mayor Cory Booker, stated:

Gay marriage, she said, “is something that Newark Mayor Cory Booker said it best: Some things are not meant to be a vote. Some things are a right. And if things like that were left for a vote, he said, I wouldn’t be where I am today – meaning anything that is civil rights. Because people don’t always know what’s best. Their fears keep them from being open and being fair. And so that would just be not up for a vote.”  “Gay marriage, legal, with a big fucking apology for the past few years,” she added.

True Colors: Obama A True Leader According to Cyndi Lauper

I offer the statement of recording artist Cyndi Lauper, also a co-founder of  The True Colors Fund, in response to President Obama’s public support of marriage equality:

“President Obama continues to be a true leader for equality and I have never been prouder to call him my president than I am today. The president’s support of marriage equality gives hope and encouragement to the millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people who feel ostracized and alone.  The words of the president have reinforced that they are worthy of dignity, respect, and love – just like everyone else. As a supporter of the president and a longtime advocate for young gay and lesbian Americans, I am thrilled about today’s news and I’m looking forward to my visit to Capitol Hill, where I will tomorrow appeal to members of Congress to fund programs supporting our homeless LGBT youth.”

The President expressing his evolution on this matter in what is expected to be an extremely close election in uncertain times, frankly illustrates some cajones that Mr. Lupica and Lady Bunny could have been a tad more gracious in acknowledging, especially given the volatile polls. Obama needs the votes of voters across the United States, Cuomo and Bloomberg needed the votes in New York State and New York City respectively.

President Obama clearly deserves more credit than he will get from some corners in America. New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo deserves credit for leading the way on passage of marital equality in New York as does Mike Bloomberg for being an outspoken supporter of gay rights. New York  is, however, one of the most progressive states in America.  In the end,  Cuomo’s stance in support of marital equality elevated Cuomo’s stature.  Obama’s evolution will make Andrew Cuomo seem even more mainstream nationally, if he runs for the Presidency in 2016 as many suspect he will. This is no knock on Andrew Cuomo nor does not make what he did any less righteous or significant. The foregoing being said, do not let anyone tell you that President Obama came forth to pronounce his evolution on gay marriage for political gain. It is not clear in the short term rush for votes, whether the President’s evolution and historic pronouncement helps him in his re-election effort. Despite marital equality having majority support in the wider population of the country, the President’s position poses a far greater risk to his re-election effort than it did to Cuomo’s or Bloomberg’s standing in New York. In North Carolina, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman, recently passed by a 61%-39% margin. As stated by Christian Science Monitor, ‘North Carolina gay-marriage vote could hurt Obama reelection bid’.

North Carolina is a key battleground state Obama hopes to win and ironically, the 2012 Democratic Convention will be held in Charlotte this summer. The President’s position risks alienating a wide swath of the national electorate that has been misled on this wedge issue for political gain by his opponents in the GOP for years.  The President has done what few before him have, risked his Presidency on doing the righteous thing. Those who take risks for equality of all citizens deserve to have the rest of us stand along side them.

OBAMA’S Principled Stand vs. The Latter Day Joseph Smith: A Mormon Con-Man

In my estimation, President Obama thus deserves the unequivocal support of anyone who claims to stand for equal rights in America. If you truly believe in equal rights for all citizens then you must support the President and not someone like Mitt Romney who is a truly hollow man, a political charlatan and Mormon Madoff who has shape-shifted all over the political spectrum on this issue, including manipulating LGBT activists while seeking higher office in Massachusetts, only to stab the LGBT Community and pivot to the right to raise his national profile with conservatives and position himself for a run for the Presidency. As I have stated previously in a post on Cape Cod Today:

“Romney’s carefully nuanced position on gay rights is politically expedient and depends on whether he is running for the Senate, governor of Massachusetts or seeking the Republican nomination for President.”

And in essence that is perhaps the reason for Matt Drudge’s bromance with Mitt Romney, which allows him to forgive Romney’s insincerity and complete and total lack of integrity, including the lack of candor by the Mormon Bishop regarding  his LDS Cult’s high profile support of Proposition 8 in California and his regular and ongoing consultations on social issues, with high brass at the Utah based Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints.   This is  something that should dishearten not just ex-Mormon’s manipulated by the mind control tactics and spiritual indoctrination and repression by the LDS Mormon Cult but those who have gotten a troubling glimpse behind the Mormon Curtain and who do not share its values, which is an over whelming majority of Americans. That a hollow man with no core principles or values is running for President on shifting platitudes and who has been less than candid about the depth of his spiritual guidance and control by  an institution which has been exposed as a fraud by people related to him (i.e., see:  Park Romney, a cousin of Mitt Romney and a Mormon apostate) is a major concern.

Traditional Values & Christian Upbringing Are Not in Conflict with Gay Rights

Truth told, I was raised Catholic in New York City by a family with more traditional values with very little connection to or exposure to the gay community, aside from picking up the Village Voice, listening to the Village People or reading generically about people I never crossed paths with; the gay world and even the gay pride movement was largely a caricature for me.  In 1969, I was more consumed with the Amazing Mets than I was knowledgeable or old enough to even understand that the Stonewall Riots represented a turning point in Gay & Lesbian Liberation and the commencement in earnest of the LGBT Movement.   Furthermore, I  spent my summers in the 1970’s at Camp Good News, a Christian summer camp in New England, the very same one that Senator Scott Brown attended at a time that he claimed in his book to have been molested as a child. I then also attended an affiliated camp known as Chop Point in the town of Woolwich, Maine. My experience at both camps was not at all like that of Scott Brown.  Even so, despite all I learned at those places and at St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church,  I developed an inclination towards Jewish women and an appreciation to an almost fetish degree for those who came from different backgrounds and life experience than my own.  My father grew up in a rather prominent family based in Armenia, Quindio in Colombia, South America and grew up  in somewhat of a life of privilege compared to my mother who grew up in a working class Italian/German family in Chelsea back before it was hip, trendy and gay and more of a working class neighborhood that was an extension of Hell’s Kitchen.

HUMANITY: We Are All God’s Children

My parents always reminded me that the beggar on the street, the homeless man or blind woman was no different than me. And likewise, they also reminded me that just because a man lives in a big house and has attained all the trappings of professional and material success and wealth, it did not mean that said individual did not also suffer the same pains of the every man. Everyone takes hits in life.  Some get knocked down and out.  Some come back and some who seem to lead more privileged lives suffer experience untold pain and suffering.

My parents although they came from different socioeconomic backgrounds and ultimately divorced, reinforced in me that the best they could do was prepare me so when the hit came to me whether it was disease, financial misfortune or bankruptcy, career impasse, challenge or failure or even heart break that I would be filled with the love and belief in myself to come back.

God’s Little Green Apples Always There to Remind Me

And then it happened. I took a fall, a precipitous one. I went through that journey of the dark night of the soul. I gave up on myself.  In the midst of all this personal life drama, a strange thing happened, my eyes opened. When you walk in another man’s shoes you begin to understand, understand how the other man feels and how he sees the world. It is surely an interesting vantage point and it made me stronger but it is not a place I am in any rush to head back to. My parents theories were validated. In my climb back from the abyss I will never forget the random acts of kindness, in particular those of the most “Christian” like in spirit, some of whom were members of the LGBT Community and who had no reason to help me.  I remember those frankly more than the judgments of the less than gracious I incurred during my descent. So maybe when you see a drunk, a beaten woman, a stupid whore, a retard or a ‘fucking homo’ ….what I see is one of God’s children there to remind me I am just like every single one of them. That my friends is why people different than you cross your path, to remind you. The LGBT Community is there to remind us that we still do not have equal rights for all citizens. And that is something that no American should take pride in.

Given my upbringing, I too once held steadfast in my belief that marriage was a life commitment/contract exclusively between a man and woman.  It was easy for me because that is how I saw the world and assumed it always worked,  even if I came to see far too many often weasel out of their commitments in unscrupulous ways. Nevertheless, in all the time I attended Catholic Church, religious instruction, Christian Camp and some Protestant masses and even Jewish temples or in my studies of the bible and Christian theology  in college, for some reason I never came across that section that outlined my right to stand in judgment to deny my fellow man or woman equal rights under the law because they happened to love a member of the same sex. This is so, even though I had not evolved like Obama has and was myself uncomfortable with aspects of gay life and rationalized that civil unions were sufficient. The label to me is less relevant if you simply confer the same legal rights to couples who contract and commit to one another.  I was an economics major who also studied religion and philosophy in college. At one point, I even contemplated converting to Judaism but again I saw nothing there. Then again,  I do not profess to be any rabbinical scholar. I even long believed that certain faith and family organizations, posing as impartial  “family advocates” who sought to protect the family unit were actually doing so, even though they passed judgment that some types of families were some how less.  I do not see how anybody who truly loves and supports the security of children would want children who are under someone like Rosie O’Donnell’s care, not to have that care because she is a Lesbian.

To the learned scholars out there, including those who claim to be closer to god than me perhaps  maybe because you think being over 6 feet tall to my 5′11″ is the reason you are closer to heaven,  but please give me the section and page number in any religious scripture where God has given individual citizens power of attorney and license to anoint oneself God’s spokesperson in order to discriminate against another one of God’s children. If gays are truly living unholy lives not in accordance with god’s law, then let god deal with it in due course and focus on your own life.

Huckleberry Huckabee Wanders off the Farm

You may even be a Huckabee who got his own show on Fox. But to me, when you send out fundraising blasts shortly after the President stands for equal rights for all citizens and you decide that is some sort of a call to arms and ‘defining issue’ for the coming election,  in my mind that makes you simply  simply a divisive Huckleberry who wandered too far off the farm in Arkansas.  May I remind you Sir, of your own former oral fixation? O.k. relax I am not inferring anything regarding  a penchant for sauseech. I understand that fixation was for Apple Pie, Pork Chops and Fried Chicken. I can relate. God knows I wished I could keep my own mouth wired shut at times, as much as others have tried to do it for me. But nevertheless the over weight have also been subjected to discrimination. Why as a former unpopular fat man can’t you see the LGBT Community as the unpopular fat kids?

If I have more authority and am somehow more equal than someone else please let me know because my ego wants me to  believe that I might be better than some of you, whether I am more fabulous or not. You see, I look at my fellow man, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, fit, fat or skinny, male or female, gay, straight, bisexual or transgender and what I see is a human being with skin and bones who breathes, bleeds, laughs and cries and feels pleasure and pain, just like me. Life will kick us all in the ass sometimes. We don’t have to give it any assistance in that regard.

When a man beats a woman or when someone calls someone a retard, a drunk, a homo, a whore et al etc., know this, if you are so religious, how do you know that homo, that whore, retard or drunk is not Jesus or God himself? God did not create Human Pinata’s for some of us to take swipes at. America is not some scene out of Clockwork Orange. It’s easy to love people just like you, but can you love people not like you? If you don’t already, you need to learn to. It is 2012,  ignorance and contempt for your fellow man is what holds us back as a people.

My friends, I can’t wait for the day that the political prostitutes can no longer conquer and divide us on wedge issues but instead only appeal to our better angels. Until that time and perhaps to assure that time comes about sooner rather than later, I say support Obama’s re-election because he is the only candidate in the race who won’t compromise on equality to obtain the votes of the unenlightened and to keep them that way.  The enlightened must stand with him and along side him, as well as march to the polls in record numbers  this coming fall.

Time to get to work. The LGBT Community is still there to remind me there is work to do. Now they should be reminded to get all in and behind the President.

**************

The True Colors Fund was co-founded by Cyndi Lauper to inspire and engage everyone, especially straight people, to become active participants in the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality and to raise awareness about and bring an end to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth homelessness. For more information please visit: http://www.truecolorsfund.org

ROMNEY LOSES DEEP SOUTH TO SANTORUM & STUMBLES INTO NYC FOR LUNCH AT THE WALDORF WITH BILLIONAIRE PALS

YOU MIGHT BE A MITT-NECK……..

ECHOS OF GEORGE WALLACE: The Southern Strategy,  Racial Pragmatism, Pseudo Nationalism & More Tea Party Propaganda by the folks at Breitbart

At the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, Andrew Breitbart promised a crowd of activists damning videos of President Barack Obama as a student at Harvard Law School. The videos, Breitbart said, would show people “why racial division and class warfare are central to what ‘hope and change’ was sold in 2008.” “In this election we’re going to vet him,” Breitbart famously vowed. As noted in the Washingto Post, in retrospect, given what his progeny at Breitbart have since brought forth, this was a case where ‘Showmanship Prevailed’ over meaningful discourse.

‘Big Ideas’ Don’t Come out of Mad Boys with Little Minds and small…packages

The bluster surrounding the release of the video of Barack Obama hugging the deceased Harvard Professor Derrick Bell at a rally in support of greater faculty diversity and in particular in support of Ms. Regina Austin, a then visting faculty member at Harvard Law School in 1991 (who happened to be my former Torts professor at the Universty of Pennsylvania Law School and who is now The William A. Schnader Professor of Law back at Penn Law) and the voluminous right wing blogs written in support of this so called scandal come across with all the depth, reflection, anxiety of a “man” (figuratively speaking) who is perhaps a tad consumed if not entirely cuckolded by a girlfriend  who might prefer a thick slab of KOBE BEEF to Hebrew Frank or a Vienna Sausage. The foregoing statement is actually quite kosher and not anti-Semitic. I have been advised that Hebrew National Franks are of high quality and may in fact be quite tasty, but they do not come in the size of Polish Kielbasa or Mustamakkara (black sausage).  While I empathize with their plight, that is perhaps something he, depending on which Breitbart writer you are referring to Ben Shapiro or Joel Pollak,  can better work out in therapy with a psychiatric professional. And I am only half kidding.  You see the dialogue that Breitbart and his progeny bring forth may expose some old but deep rooted insecurity about their own masculine prowess in terms of  not measuring up, behind closed doors, to the successful, powerful and endowed black man.

Nevertheless, In the video of the rally at Harvard,  Obama asks a crowd to “open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell.”

As reported by CNN:

On Thursday morning Joel Pollak, Breitbart.com’s editor-in-chief, appeared on CNN’s Starting Point to defend the importance of the video.

“The bombshell is the revelation of the relationship between Obama and Derrick Bell,” Pollack said. “Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia. He passed away last year but during his lifetime he developed a theory called critical race theory, which holds that the Civil Rights movement was a sham and that White Supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.”

This characterization of critical race theory sparked a feisty debate between Pollack and CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, who contended that it was a “complete misreading of critical race theory.”

In the article that accompanies the video, Breitbart.com’s editor-at-large Ben Shapiro calls it a “smoking gun” and promises that more information on Bell’s activism will be released soon.

“This is just the beginning,” Shapiro writes. “And this video is a smoking gun showing that Barack Obama not only associated with radicals, he was their advocate.”

BREITBART’S ‘Dirty White Boys’ Get Their Panties in a Twist Over Nothing

So let me make sure I got this right.  Barack  Obama, then the Editor in Chief of the Harvard Law Review, hugged the first black  tenured professor at Harvard Law School, who was veteran of the civil rights movement in America and who engaged in controversial and thoughtul scholarship involving  CRT – Critical Race Theory on issues of race, law and power in America at a rally promoting greater diversity in Harvard’s faculty and thereby Obama is a “radical”?   Some ‘dirty white boys’ who wanna be Breitbart and lead the Tea Party got  their panties in a twist over this? Really?  Only in America is having a conversation or expressing support for critical thinking or critical thinkers, ‘radical’.  And if you are asking me do I know whether any of these intellectual thugs have small Weiner-Schnitzel, I do not, but when you behave like a man with one…you know what they say.

The rage of Joel Pollak and Ben Shapiro of Breitbart over Obama’s association with black intellectuals while a student at one of our nation’s most elite instituions of learning, at the top of the food chain, in the Ivy League,  is frankly surreal and beyond ludicrous.  This is, however, ultimately one of many shots to be fired over the bow by the lunatic fringe in the effort to paint the nation’s first non-white President as radical, extreme and not at all like you and me. As suggested above, it may also belie some deep rooted anxiety about their own masculinity.

OPPRESSED GROUPS HAVE A RIGHT TO INTROSPECTION, SCHOLARSHIP & SPEECH

Know that I do not feel threatened by ‘Black Power’, Gay Pride, Native American pride, La Raza or Zionism. Those who have risen from an oppressed history have a right and dare I say a duty to question the evolution of society, the treatment of their people henceforth and to engage in rational and critical thinking, scholarship and public speech even, in an effort at preserving their station if not rising up beyond it and all perceived or real challenges to their continued progress. That is America.  Now for the record, while I come from a multicultural background, I have never been a slave so I cannot not identify personally with the history of the  black man in America. Nor can I personally identify with the the Jewish people and a Jew who may have had relatives who died or survived  the Holocaust in the century just passed. But I can say that were I either a Black or Jewish man, I would be cautious of getting too comfortable and might not ever take my freedom or standing in society for granted.

SEEDING WHITE ANGER & JEWISH MISTRUST OF THE PRESIDENT IS THE END GAME

America is a melting pot of people who understandably have pride and an interest in understanding the truth about their history and national origin. As an American of Spanish, Colombian, Italian and German/Austrian heritage I might be able to sign up for a few pride related groups myself.  I am not Irish but ‘Kiss the Blarney Stone’ if I won’t be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Movies like Gangs of New York fascinated me, if only because it exposed, how politicians took advantage of racial and ethnic differences for political gain. Now we have “journalists” or social media entrepreneurs who do so to gain traffic, notoriety and mainstream media TV appearances and to have a role in GOP politics.  There are far too many racial pragmatists still to this date, who when pushed come to shove, probably truly do not hate individual people based upon the color of one’s skin or nationality, but who given the opportunity to gain power might seek to play off steroetypes and racial fears for political gain and/or personal profit. These folks I would argue can be every bit as dangerous to the fabric of our nation as the men in white sheets and pointed hats, the KKK or the Nazi’s in Germany, if they are allowed to rise unchecked in a vaccum of intellectual critique

Critical thinking and scholarship is perhaps a radical idea for some folks. For them,  critical thinkers who operate outside their acceptable paradigm, are in essence radical.  Can Pollak and Shapiro be this stupid?  I highly doubt it. Like Obama, they both got their law degrees from Harvard Law School, that elitist institution that Breitbart and others famously referred to as “Beirut on the Charles” River. They are Tea Party operatives, not journalists, who are politically and ideologically motivated to achieve an intended result, the removal of a black Democratic President from the White House.  In that regard and towards that end, anything and everything is justifiable.  They will echo George Wallace if they have to in coordination with the Republican candidates who at present seem to running a template of the Southern Strategy playing on white fear.  What they are doing is feeding into the irrational threat that some insecure white men have of the radical black man rising up to challenge the white man to his very station in life, his job, his pension and even his woman.

Obama’s record as President over the last three years has its strengths and weaknesses.  Some which can be defended. Other aspects  which can be fairly critiqued.  Say whatever you will but the man’s record is not that of a  ‘radical.’  And given his propensity for wearing ’Mom Jeans’ Obama is clearly more of middle America than Breitbart’s Tea Party hipsters.  You see because regardless of what the truth is about Derrick Bell’s critical race theory or CRT, the black man is hardly in a position to take over America at the present time and turn the white man into his slave but much like the Jew who fears a repeat of the Holocaust, its fair for the Black man to consider or contemplate a downgrade in his societal stature and a repeat of his enslavement on a whole other level.   Hell if he should dare speak up or hug some one that certain white men deem radical, passionate men will rouse the militia to come get him and bring his ass down a level.  One is hard pressed to find such a fundamental shift in the existing paradigm, especially at a time when America’s white elite have consolidated power and wealth at the very top.

So forgive me if you will, but for all of the hoopla surrounding the release of this ‘bombshell video’ of Obama at a rally for Derrick Bell at Harvard Law School in 1991, it is truly underwhelming.  As crtics have noted, it is a ‘ total dud’ and ‘falls flat’.  Furthermore, it exposes the barren hypocrisy in the agenda of some quarters on the right and how far they will go to achieve certain aims in their effort to “silence African-Americans attempting to seriously discuss race in America.” Stand up, speak out and get shut down and called a racist radical.

Obama’s statement as a Harvard Law School student in 1991 to “open your hearts and mind” to Professor Derrick Bell, even if his scholarship is controversial or even radical in the minds of some is not of concern to me nor should it be to people of rational minds and hearts.  Even if one cede’s to the right a  misinterpretation of Bell’s critical race theory, that still is not evidence that Obama is a radical, as much as he was a man enveloped and engaged in the learning process.   Furthermore, the real world changes the idealism of many a student, myself included.   Breitbart’s echos of George Wallace will not succeed in painting Obama as a radical, nor will it ultimately succeed in putting a fissure between the Black and Jewish community as intended.  ‘Pray for Andrew Breitbart.’ The charlatan’s blogging for Breitbart are not on a mission for truth in America. They are instead simultaneously pursuing a Southern Strategy seeding white anger and attempting to undermine the Jewish vote which traditionally has gone to Democrats in an effort to regain the White House for the Republican Party.  They are also I suspect hoping to provoke a cautious but determined Democratic President with bonafide military credentials into a premature war with Iran, not on his terms or at a time that is in the best interest of the United States of America but on those preferred by AIPAC and Israeli President Bibi “Nyet and Yahoo!”

In conclusion, my response in short is to stand down and piss off. President Barack Obama is the Commander in Chief. So yes little boys, a black man (partially to be exact since he is also half white) is in the White House and as far as anyone can tell, he has not done anything radical yet except engage in critical thinking. For some, that is truly radical indeed.

TRANSACTIONAL ROMANCE IN ERA OF CRONY CAPITALISM

Upper East Side Madam Anna Gristina is no longer at large. Aren’t you relieved? Oh wait, you did not know who she was? No the ‘Millionaire Madam’ is not Patti Stanger, the ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’. If you want to know the difference, I am not sure I can tell you. Well Patti Stanger does not run a brothel, allegedly. She really had no impact on your life, safety or security you say.?  But if you see the headlines in the papers this week you will be lead to believe that we are somehow all  so much safer now that a 44 year old woman and mother of four that was running a high end escort service  catering to the urban affluent on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is now in custody. There are frankly plenty of men on Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue who married for sex who are no longer having sex. Consider then Anna Gristina a form of marital outsourcing if you will, relieving many women of what might otherwise be a rather unpleasant marital obligation. Is it not a win win for everybody?

Manhattan law enforcement authorities see things a tad differently.   Regardless, WTF is the point of these STUPID prosecutions? Are we PURITANS? And what about the cost to taxpayers of a five year investigation surrounding this woman’s alleged enabling of powerful men to pay for a service that they sought out?  It’s not as if Gristina was showing up at the offices and homes of these men forcing them to patronize her female friends and models.  Does law enforcement really believe that they will make society more safe and secure from affluent men paying for consensual transacational romance or sex with models?  Of course not. There is something far deeper at work here. Prosecutors have a hard time cracking down on human trafficking rings so they go after high end Madams and call girls who would not exist but for the pre-existing demand for ‘transactional romance’, in an otherwise cold and lonely world.  If you are paying attention, every few years they bring someone  else down.  Rest assured,  another woman will rise up in the vaccum to serve pre-existing demand for transactional romance. Think I am wrong? Take a walk into Lavo Restaurant Lounge or the Nightclub on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on  Wednesday or Thursday night and the place is crawling with girls next door who are independent free agents, working girls without a broker,  a matchmaker of the VIP Life. Men of means pay for the convenience. While women pushed to the brink are sometimes found hanging inconveniently and rather suspiciously.

WARNING: SERVICING URBAN ELITE PRESENTS RISKS WHEN CRONY CAPITALISTS ARE IN CHARGE OF SOCIETY

Upper East Side Madam Anna Gristina was at large for all these years and nobody who did not have the coin to pay upwards of $1,000 per hour for companionship had any idea who she was, including me. And I like to think that I know about all these things. Well maybe except perhaps those who targeted for arrest probably because they could not afford her rates.  Or maybe what truly happens, is that somebody far more powerful who has a great deal to lose from his indiscretion, does not like that he is in her little black book.  So, he makes a call or has lunch with a powerful friend, makes a donation to law enforcement or someone’s campaign and voila it becomes time to put the squeeze on some woman who is basically unknown to the wider world at large. Think I am wrong? According to the New York Post:

Gristina’s “black book” included powerful politicians, top-law enforcement, influential lawyers, bankers, entertainment execs and Fortune 500 businessmen, as well as several ultra-wealthy European clients, sources said.

The Madoff Economy which came about as a result of  the sub-prime mortage crisis and Wall Street’s arrogance about being Too Big to Fail created a perception of our country as the United States of Ponzi; hence it was truly when ‘Crony Capitalism [Came] Home’.   It was a ‘Confidence Game’ that led to almost a complete meltdown during the financial crisis of 2008, otherwise known as the Great Recession or Global Financial Crisis. The Inside Job had  its own cast of curious and dubious characters who all deserve credit. Even Client 9 could not get these guys to right the ship before the collapse.  In the midst of this mess a King of Bain with a curious background entered into a Bad Romance with Wall Street to become the next U.S. President. You know there are so many scoundrels mostly male frankly who helped bring about the financial collapse with their rigged games and ponzi schemes and many are still at large, but we are arresting the woman who was probably serving all those ass clowns. How ironic is that? No, seriously think about that.  In ‘the half hooker economy’, with high unemployment  even among the educated and professional classes, fewer men buying ladies drinks but at least some willing to pay for their companionship, law  enforcement is putting yet “another mom & pop shop” out of business; one run by an animal loving entrepreneur no less? People have to eat no?  Who is going to feed the pigs? Maybe that  is why the old boys network imported Cy Vance, Jr. from outside NYC to be New York’s District Attorney so that the unrighteous remain secure.

As citizens, let us not be fooled by the import of these police crackdowns on victimless crimes. They truly serve no particular purpose. You want to audit them for tax evasion, go ahead. But let us move forward as a society, as a people and stop these witch hunts that focus on women only. Frankly, its bullshit. The time has come and gone to decriminalize prostitution. Hell, lets accept the reality that in a capitalist system we are alll pimping and ho’ing to one degree or another. Don’t hate the player when the game is the oldest one in existence and will continue to go on under yet a different umbrella after prosecutors are done with Ms. Gristina.