Keep in mind this poll happened before Zimmerman walked and over half the people surveyed said they are not satisfied with the way blacks are treated! Via L.A. Times reports : A new poll shows that black Americans have grown more upbeat about their treatment in society after the reelection of President Obama. Earlier this summer, a record 47% said they were satisfied with how blacks were treated in the country — more than at any other time since Gallup started asking the question in 2001. However, Gallup cautioned that the question was asked before George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin — an event that could dim that rising optimism. Civil rights leaders have called the controversial verdict a wake-up call to those who thought the election of a black president heralded a post-racial era. The Zimmerman case “could prove to be a watershed event in how not just blacks, but all Americans, perceive society’s treatment of blacks today,” Gallup senior editor Lydia Saad wrote in a summary of the results. The research group surveyed more than 4,300 adults, including more than 1,000 black Americans, in June and early July. Researchers and activists say the election of Obama buoyed hopes among African Americans, who saw his political rise as a sign of new possibilities for black advancement and acceptance. Some fear it also distracted attention from disadvantages blacks still face. Even before the Zimmerman verdict, more than half of black Americans remained dissatisfied with the treatment of black people, the Gallup poll showed. They were much more downbeat than whites and Latinos, a majority of whom said they were satisfied with how blacks were treated. Gallup found that black women were less satisfied than black men, with the sharpest differences surfacing among young people. Sixty-three percent of black women ages 18 to 34 were dissatisfied with the treatment of blacks in the United States, compared with 46% of black men in the same age range — a finding that surprised some scholars. “The conventional wisdom would be that young black males are targeted and harassed and therefore should be the least satisfied,” said Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Others pointed to the added burdens of sexism for black women. “Stereotypes they face are oftentimes accepted by members of even their own communities,” said Kimberle W. Crenshaw, a professor at the UCLA School of Law. Sad that this is the highest satisfaction rating ever for a Gallup poll and less than half of blacks surveyed were dissatisfied. Is it gonna be another thirty years before we get it right? Continue reading →
Yeah right Keri . Timbaland Says Keri Apologizes To Beyonce On Track We all know Keri was coming for Key Bey in that song and got dragged on Twitter for it. What’s the point of trying to backtrack now? Guess dissing King Bey has got her thirsty for another hit because we haven’t heard any good music from Ms. Keri baby since. According to Revolt TV “I got this one song I did with Keri on my album called Sorry and Keri actually tells the story about the whole Beyonce thing and how she was sorry about it because she really wasn’t talking about her but other people [created the hype].” The comment is around the 1:25 mark. Check out the video below: Do you think Keri is full of isht?
The fan who interrupted the All-Star Game because Twitter told him to? That story I can believe. But this story about Nike t-shirts ? Well it’s a little bit harder to imagine someone letting this by. Notice something a bit “off” about this Carolina Panthers t-shirt? There’s the NC and Panthers logos, it’s blue and black… but wait, isn’t that the outline of South Carolina? As a matter of fact it is! Someone was obviously sleeping on the job when it came to this shirt. A couple of people actually. First the person who made it, then the person that approved it, you’d have to imagine more than one person checks these things, whoever saw them packaged, the store owners/stockers who opened the boxes, and then finally the people who bought the incorrect t-shirt. I really hope the Panthers fans who bought the shirts did so in jest because surely they would recognize that it was their neighboring state right? Well done Nike! You may have failed sixth grade geography, but you succeeded in making us laugh.
Is LL just keeping real or did he drink a bottle of haterade? LL Cool J Talks Jay-Z’s New Album LL Cool J is one of those old school ninjas that feels they have a right to speak on the current state of Hip Hop…and he does. We bet LL’s azz would be glad to sell a million records in a day…his dusty azz hasn’t had a hit in a minute. According to Revolt TV “Numbers are Numbers. In the numbers is truth, but in terms of touching the people it’s a little different.” “For me as an artist I still want to be able to touch the people individually.” It still matters to me that people individually went out and bought my record. Although I still think a million sold is a million sold, but for me I like to know that a million PEOPLE bought my record, not a company bought a million copies of my record.” View video here LL, Jay definitely touched some people…a million’s worth These days it’s about technology so a million virtually bought versus physically bought are the same. Quit hating ninja.
Bar Refaeli is older, bigger, a little more irrelevant than she used to be, partially because she lives in Tel Aviv and turned her back on the modelling world when Leonardo DiCaprio turned his back on her, and not in a “I’m a male actor, it’s a pretty gay existence, all I do is look in the mirror and talk to myself making faces like a 5 year old with no friends, obsessing over my looks and whether people like me, or if I sound silly saying this line, or whether my hair looked better in Titanic or now”…kind of stick that huge black dildo in me and tell me I’m handsome way, but in a “bitch, you’re high maintenance, I got line-ups of women” kind of way…and partially because getting older, fatter and more irrelevant is kinda what happens to girls…but she does a pretty good job on her instagram..and here is a round-up of some of her pics.
When I wrote about the Sharknado trailer this week, I said there was no was no way on earth I’d be watching this cinematic masterpiece. Well, as I’m sure it will with plenty of others, curiosity got the best of me. Even though I’ve watched it and am writing about it, I’m still not quite sure if it was a good idea. Let’s go ahead and tackle the incredibly deep, complex plot of Sharknado . See, there are sharks, and these sharks find themselves sucked up into a hurricane and the subsequent tornados the hurricane spawns. And then… nope, that’s it. That is the entire plot. Wait, there was an early scene in which we are party to an illegal shark fin poaching operation. Complete with man of presumable Asian descent there to purchase said shark fins. At first I thought, oh, this might be a statement on the awfulness of shark fin harvesting. No. Apparently that was just the best way the writers could think of launching into this story. How on earth can this be anything but spectacular? Well for one, the acting. Ian Ziering tries so hard. So, so hard. It’s like he has taken all the acting energy that he hasn’t been using in the years since 90210 and put it into this film. Amazingly enough, that doesn’t equate to much. Granted he was playing Fin, a surfing bar owner whose ex-wife and children seem to hate who ends up being the rappelling hero of our shark tale. His ex-wife? Oh that’s Tara Reid. The greatest thing she added was her first scene in which she stood on a staircase next to a framed picture of herself. Who has framed pictures of just themselves? It wasn’t her at some type of natural wonder, nope. It appears as if Tara Reid ‘s character went to the Glamour Shots knock-off and got her a pretty picture. So weird. Then there’s Fin’s children. His daughter hates him. Like legit, hates him. While there is a shark swimming around the her living room eating her mother’s boyfriend (who she apparently adores), she just scowls. Call me crazy, I’d be freaking out, but then again I’ve never been in a situation in which there was a shark swimming around my living room eating people, so I guess I can’t be too sure of my reaction. Fin’s son is apparently in the Coast Guard. In flight school I guess. No one has told his father this because the new boyfriend thinks it isn’t any of his business anymore. Who does this new boyfriend think he is? Frankly, he deserved to be eaten by a living room shark. Good riddance. Of course there is also a best friend. Best friend was one of the first victims of the shark invasion but instead of being literally gulped by the shark like one of the poor shark poachers in the first scene (no, seriously – do sharks inhale their prey like that? It looked like Joey Chestnut taking down 69 hot dogs on July 4th) he was merely nibbled upon. When in the midst of a sharkpocalypse what self-respecting shark nibbles? Come on, get it together shark. Sharknado Trailer (Official) Rounding out this rag tag crew is the doe-eyed barmaid who for some reason feels it necessary to literally throw herself at her boss while standing behind the bar during business hours while the bar patrons look on. To say this love interest angle (I’m assuming that’s what they were going for) fell flat is on understatement of epic proportions. One of those bar patrons is none other than the dad from Home Alone , John Heard. He is mainly a non-player until his shining moment as he is being actively consumed by a shark and he says, in a very even tone of voice, “Ow, no. Get off of me.” Again, I haven’t been eaten by a shark so I can’t assume to know my reaction but I’d hope there’d be at least a little bit of screaming. Some honorable mentions have to go out to the small roles in this delightful film. To just get an idea of their incredible contributions let’s look at some of their inspired dialogue: “That’s Johnni with an ‘i’.” — Weather reporter in the middle of the sharknado right before she meets her bloody end. “$15K a year, no benefits, and screaming kids!” — Bus driver as he is being hoisted from bus to higher ground. “My mom always told me Hollywood would kill me.” — Same bus driver who just escaped a shark attack only to be drilled into the ground by flying pieces of the Hollywood sign. “The government knows when I pee and my favorite kind of cheese. Pepperjack.” – Gas station attendant with a very topical concern of the government’s knowledge of our private lives. Not dialogue, but special shout out to the man being eaten by one shark only to have another fall from the sky and land on his head. For all the incredible performances given by actors, it would have meant nothing without the real stars, the sharks. Oh, this group of sharks gave a performance of the ages. They are met at every turn by cars trying to drive over them as they swim by on seemingly dry land. They are just out for a leisurely flight through Southern California when all of a sudden there’s Ian Ziering with a chainsaw. All they want is to take a nice cool dip in a pool, is it their fault that people have managed to ignore ‘Johnni with an ‘i'” and the people screaming, and the MASSIVE TORNADO FILLED WITH SHARKS and kept on swimming? In the end, that is the truly amazing aspect of Sharknado . When there is a regular tornado, most people head indoors. Apparently the people of Los Angeles just laugh in the face of Mother Nature. Well, joke’s on them because Mother Nature sent her sharks to put them in their place. See if they ignore her again! Ha! Of course it would be some sort of crime if I didn’t mention the visual effects. They were about as awful as one could imagine. There, I’ve mentioned them. No, that’s not fair. This is a movie about flying sharks and frankly it could be Michael Bay (please god don’t let Michael Bay make a flying shark movie) and it would still look like crap. However, I would like to think someone like Michael Bay , or anyone else really, would give a second thought to the physics involved in a storm like this. It’s like the makers of Sharknado have never, ever seen a body of water. Water does not just randomly, in the middle of a place with zero water one second create a monsoon type wave the next. It just doesn’t happen! Nor does a car just spontaneously combust just because it’s leaking a bit of gas. Out of everything wrong with this movie, this puzzled me the most. For all it’s faults, and there are many, I actually enjoyed Sharknado . I don’t really know how as it quite possibly was the dumbest thing I have ever watched, but I did. The filmmakers obviously cared very little about actual story but when your story is about a tornado filled with sharks, does it really matter how much it builds on that idea? Congrats to SyFy though. Because of their big ol’ balls in putting it on air in the first place, they surely have a hit with Sharknado that people will talk and laugh about for at least a couple days. Bravo, SyFy and Sharknado!
Hit the road Jack George. Stacy Keibler Breaks Up With George Clooney Via ABCNews George Clooney and Stacy Keibler have split, a source tells ABC News. The former couple were together for nearly two years. “She ended things recently,” the source said. Though some reports state otherwise, the source added that the split “had nothing to do with kids or wanting to get married.” According to People magazine, which broke the news, Keiber and her movie star ex, 52, are still friendly. “They talk every day,” the source said. “They were friends before they started dating, and they’ll be friends after.” For now, they’re both keeping busy. Clooney was seen celebrating the Fourth of July with friends in Lake Como, Italy, while Keibler is gearing up for the premiere of her new Lifetime TV show, “Supermarket Superstar.” Representatives for the couple declined to comment. George will be aight, he’s got 10 more waiting that look just like her. Image via WENN Continue reading →
A straight father’s open letter to his young son regarding last week’s landmark Supreme Court rulings has gone viral, and it’s easy to see why. His four-year-old boy clearly has no concept of the Supreme Court or the significance of its decisions, as Brian Gresko of The Babble points out. The bigger question is whether the SCOTUS striking down DOMA and dismissing Prop 8 will be seen as a watershed moment when he does get it. It’s a touching letter about what a father hopes will be a teachable moment someday, and emblematic of his desire for our children to inherit a better world. Read what Gresko has to say below: Dear Felix, Your mom and I put off taking you for a blood test because, honestly, we figured you didn’t really need it, that the doctor’s concerns about the level of lead in your body were the routine kind of doctor’s orders we could ignore . Doc has since corrected us of that misconception, stressing the importance of the blood test. (And we wonder where your stubbornness comes from.) Ok, point taken. So, at least a year late, this morning we walked in to get your blood work done just as the waiting room television cut to the steps of the Supreme Court Building, where the announcement came that the Court had ruled 5-4 to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), declaring the law baring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages unconstitutional . You’re four-years-old as I write this. You seem to react to adults who make good eye contact, speak with animation, get down to your level to talk to you, and ask you questions that you understand and then listen to your answers. You click with men, you click with women, and as far as I can remember you only asked once about why one of your best friends has two mommies. When I told you that couples come in all combinations – woman and woman, man and woman, man and man – you nodded and that was that. No big deal. So sitting with you in the waiting room, I had one of those moments of double-ness that parents sometimes have, as I thought about the news and what it meant, watched the happy reactions from the crowd of marriage equality supporters, and wondered what celebration might be going on in other parts of New York City, all while talking with you about the upcoming blood test and reading you a story. I didn’t explain what was happening on the television, and you didn’t ask. I figured the time will come soon enough – probably too soon for my liking – when you’ll be aware of the politics around sex and gender and sexual orientation. Or maybe you won’t. Hopefully, these issues will be moot in seven years time, or ten years, whenever you become aware of your sexual self (let’s go with ten years, eh?) and begin to find other people compelling in ways that will, at first, probably seem strange or mysterious. (For example, I didn’t notice girls had legs till eighth grade. Before then, I’m not sure how they got around, their mobility was no concern of mine. Suddenly, when springtime came and the skirts came out, their long, skinny, graceful limbs became vitally important. And yet I had no idea why. I just found them… fascinating. I knew they were key characters, I just hadn’t figured out what the story was about yet.) Maybe you’ll read about today’s decision in a history book and it’ll sound like a long time ago, the Dark Ages, when certain couples could marry and certain couples could not. You’ll feel comfortable pursuing whatever kind of partnership interests you, no matter the person’s gender, or color, or race, or class, or belief system, or whatever, and live in a country in which you can join in the legal state of matrimony with that lucky person. I hope that by then American society will have a better understanding of what I saw all so plainly today. That if you prick our skin, the same red blood flows through all of our veins. These differences in appearance and behavior and belief in many ways are trivial, surface. How you treat other people, your stewardship of our planet and society and yourself as a functioning, contributing human on Earth, matters so much more than who you’d like to date, have sex with, or marry. As Kurt Vonnegut so succinctly put it, “You’ve got to be kind.” Other than that? Have fun, kid. And while this marriage thing sure ain’t easy – in fact, I don’t wish it on anyone who doesn’t feel ready, 100% sure they want to make their commitment into a socially recognized, legal bond – I’m happy knowing that if, one day, you think you’re ready to take the plunge, you can do it with whomever the hell you want. And I’ll be right there (unless you decide to elope like your mom and me decided, which is totally cool too), cheering you on and wishing you well, no matter whose hand you’re holding when you say “I do.” Love ya kid, Dad .
On the eve of beginning her three-month prison sentence for tax evasion, Lauryn Hill took to Tumblr to rant about racism, slavery, the IRS and more. Hill, who was sentenced in May for failing to pay taxes on around $1.8 million in earnings, appears to be pinning her fiscal woes on historical racism. “The concept of reverse racism is flawed, if not absolutely ridiculous,” Lauryn laments in what can only be described as one of the all-time celebrity rants. Martyring herself in dramatic terms, Hill summates that “the institution seeks to hide its own criminal history at the expense and wholeness of the abused.” You really need to read this for yourself after the jump … The concept of reverse racism is flawed, if not absolutely ridiculous. Most, if not all of the negative responses from people of color toward white people, are reactions to the hatred, violence, cruelty and brutality that they were shown by white people for centuries. Much of the foundation of the modern world was built on the forced free labor of black peoples. The African Slave Trade, the institution of slavery, colonialism, its derivative systems, and the multiple holocausts throughout history, where whites used race as the defining reason to justify their oppression, conquest, and brutal treatment of non-white peoples, are how race became such a factor to begin with. The initial claim by the oppressors, followed a moral imperative (so they said) that people outside of Occidental and European birth were in savage and cursed conditions, and that God justified the captivity of these people, and the rape and pillage of their lands. Ironically, these oppressors would try to discard this same God, who supposedly justified this brutality, in the name of Darwin, whose famous line ‘survival of the fittest’ was used to justify criminal behavior once the Bible could no longer be used as a hiding place for economic domination and evil intention. Spirituality and morality were replaced by capitalism, and with it a conscious shift of focus toward the exploitation of the vulnerable. In order to justify reverse racism one would have to first create an even playing field, undo the generations of torture, terror, and brutality, and then judge whether or not a non-white person is in fact a racist. This approach would require people to examine the need/addiction to feel superior to someone else for no justifiable reason, and the myriad policies: Spiritual, political and social, that it bore. True dominion is self evident and not the result of sabotaging another in order to achieve it. That would be an illegitimate as well as a fleeting position. The Universe, will eventually seek to right/balance itself. Of course there are white people who live transcendent lives, not exploiting ill-gotten privilege or perpetuating the sins of their ancestors who used violence and deceit as a means to gain advantage over others. Humanity in proper order is obligated to acknowledge the Truth, whoever it comes from, be they Black, White or other. Righteous indignation is simply a response to long-standing evil. Much of the world is still reeling from the abuses of Imperialist selfishness, misunderstanding, ignorance and greed. Black people remain in many ways a shattered community, disenfranchised, forcefully removed from context and still caged in, denied from making truly independent choices and experiencing existential freedom. Their natural homes, just like their natural selves, raped and pillaged of the resources and gifts God has given to them. Interpreted through someone else’s slanted lens and filter, they remain in many ways, misrepresented. Taxation without proper representation, might I remind you, was the very platform of protest that began the Revolutionary War, which gained this country its independence from England. Anger is not only the natural response to the abuse of power, but is also appropriate when there is no real acknowledgment of these abuses, or deep, meaningful and profound change. If we took all of what we deem horrible regarding the criminal abuses that black people have committed over this country’s history, and add it all up, it still does not compare to the hundreds of years of terrorism, violent domination, theft, rape, abuse, captivity, and beyond that black people have suffered under the ideologies and systems of white supremacy, racism, and slave based paradigms. I say this only to say that abuse unresolved begets or creates abuse. How then does the chief offender become the judge? Might does not necessarily mean right. Right is right. People forcibly reduced to sub-human existences, so that they behave in sub-human ways, helps a system to justify itself or feel less guilty about its blood saturated foundation and gross crimes against humanity. People, like plants, grow where the light is. When you enclose a plant and limit its light source, it will bend itself toward the light, for the light is necessary for its survival. This same thing happens to people locked in communities where little light and little opportunity is allowed them, survival then forces them to twist and/or bend toward the only way of escape. There is good. And I both acknowledge and encourage the good. Instead of throwing out the Baby with the bath water, we do well to expose the intentionally poisoned water the Baby has been forced to soak in since its origin in these lands. America’s particular brand of hypocrisy is gross (double entendre). I shuddered during sentencing when I kept hearing the term ‘make the IRS whole’… make the IRS whole, knowing that I got into these very circumstances having to deal with the very energies of inequity and resistance that created and perpetuated these savage inequalities. The entire time, I thought, who has made black people whole?! Who has made recompense for stealing, imposing, lying, murdering, criminalizing the traumatized, taking them against their wills, destroying their homes, dividing their communities, ‘trying’ to steal their destinies, their time, stagnating their development, I could go on and on. Has America, or any of the nations of the world guilty of these atrocities, ever made black people or Africa whole or do they continue to sit on them, control them, manipulate them, cage them, rob them, brutalize them, subject them to rules that don’t apply to all? Use language, veiled coercion, and psychological torment like invisible fences to keep them locked into a pattern of limitation and therefore control by others. You have to remain focused to cease from rage. The prosecutor, who was a woman, made a statement during sentencing about me not doing any charity work for a number of years during my ‘exile.’ A) Charity work is not a requirement, but something done because someone wants to. I was clearly doing charitable works way before other people were even thinking about it. And B) Even the judge had to comment that she, meaning I, was both having and raising children during this period. As if that was not challenging enough to do. She sounded like the echo of the grotesque slave master, who expected women to give birth while in the field, scoop the Baby up, and then continue to work. Disgusting. When you are beaten and penalized for being independent, or truly self reliant, then you develop a dysfunctional relationship with self-reliance, and a fear of true independence. When you are beaten or threatened with death for trying to read a book, then you develop a dysfunctional relationship with education. When families are broken up by force and threat of violence, then the family structure becomes dysfunctional. When men who would naturally defend their women and families are threatened with castration and death, then this natural response also becomes dysfunctional. When looking at the oppressor is punishable by violence, then examination of him and his system becomes a difficult and taboo thing to do, despite every bone in your body demanding it. When questioning or opposing oppression is punishable by death, imprisonment, or economic assassination, then opposing systemic wrong in any or all of its meta manifestations is a terrifying concept. Anyone forced to live so incredibly diametrically opposed to that which is natural to themselves, will end up in crisis if they don’t successfully find a way to improve or transcend these circumstances! All of which require healing. It is only by the Grace of God and the resilience of the people that things haven’t been worse. Much of my music, if not all of it, is about Love, a therapeutic resolve created in response to the lack of messages encouraging people like me toward free moral agency. Helping to ameliorate this condition has never been addressed through the political arena alone. It is a sacrificial work that doesn’t simply happen between the hours of 9 to 5 or Monday through Friday, but when inspiration leads us to avail ourselves for the Truth that needs to be said. Unlike the system too often contrarily demonstrates, we believe that people can be and should be helped, and that trauma should not be criminalized but acknowledged, healed and dealt with. This takes awareness, sensitivity and a level of freedom in my opinion the system lacks. And if we don’t know or understand how to do it, then we humbly refer to a higher authority. We have no desire to create humanoids, turn people into machines, or dumb them down so that they remain dependent longer than necessary to an antiquated system in denial of its many inadequacies and need to evolve. Instead we seek to educate and shed light on the snares, traps, and enticements that people set up in the name of business that are intended only to catch the sleeping and/or uninformed. Why would a system, ‘well intentioned’, wait until breakdown or incarceration to consider rehabilitation, after generations of institutionally inflicted trauma and abuse on a people? To me it is obvious that the accumulation of generational trauma and abuse have created the very behaviors the system tries to punish, by providing no sufficient outlets for the victims of institutional terror. Clearly, the institution seeks to hide its own criminal history at the expense and wholeness of the abused, who ‘acting out’ from years of abuse and mistreatment, reflect the very aggression that they were exposed to .
The person that wrote that post needs to be fired. Teen Commits Suicide After Facebook Post According to Mail Online A 19-year-old man committed suicide following a sarcastic Facebook post about his arrest warrant by his local sheriff’s office, his family said. The sister of Andrew Cain is demanding an apology from an Idaho sheriff’s deputy she says harassed her brother on the social networking site in the days before his death. Alise Smith said her brother’s decision to end his life was his own, but she believes the comments that he received about arrest warrants in Latah County became too much for him. The sheriff’s office in Idaho posted a picture of Andrew Cain with the message: ‘We have decided that Andrew Cain is no longer the Wanted Person of the Week… he is the Wanted Person of the Month of June. Congratulations!’ Smith, of Pullman, Washington, said a deputy also sent private messages to her brother on Facebook. Cain fatally shot himself Sunday, Whitman County Coroner Pete Martin said. Sheriff Wayne Rausch told the Associated Press that a deputy did exchange messages with Cain, but the printout he saw showed it was Cain who initiated the exchange by telling the deputy he liked his new wanted poster. The deputy replied that if Cain turned himself in, he’d give him a copy. ‘How this could be construed as taunting or rude or harassment or anything like that, I’m at a loss,’ Rausch said. Smith said she understood the ‘wanted poster’ but felt the ‘congratulations’ comment and the private messages were an abuse of power. Rausch said he told the employee who added the ‘congratulations’ to the post that it was not appropriate and not to do it again. Smith told KLEW-TV that she received a text from her brother early last week that said he felt like putting a bullet in his brain. The message included a screen shot of Facebook messages from a deputy, Smith said. ‘Eventually, it all just got too much to handle because other people were texting him and messaging him on Facebook and he just couldn’t handle all of the people telling him how awful a person he was,’ Smith told KLEW. Both Martin and Rausch called the death a tragedy. ‘That he felt necessary to end his life over facing consequences is tragic,’ Rausch said in his statement. We’re not being mean, but if that Facebook post was all it took for him to take his life then maybe his elevator didn’t go all the way to the top.
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