Mel Gibson needs to hire some kittens.

so batshit Mel Gibson went a little bit batshittier in the days that i havent been updating.  im sure yall know that so we won’t go over the details.

but the homie young h of go in radio tweeted me a gem over the twitter earlier today and a lightbulb brighter than a thousand suns exploded over my head.  this is it!  here’s the answer!  from here on out, Mel Gibson, whenever you open your mouth to say any gotdamned thing, or when you have to respond to something else dumb and criminal that you’ve said:  say it with kittens.  straight up.  i mean you’ll still look like a dick with a chemical imbalance, but at least you’ll be able to make some people say ‘awwwww!’ in the process.

…But Tell It Slant.

*note:  this blog isn’t about me, of course, but below is a personal story of my time in college.  this is an entry that took me over a month to write for PostBourgie.  click here to check out the entry and comments there.

I have had the most difficult time writing this article.  It took me the whole of Confederate History Month (known also as April) to do.

I figured it was just  because I’m over-thinking, as I always do, bending far too often to the little internal editor who keeps reminding me that my language isn’t vivid enough, that I’m being repetitive, that my metaphors are corny and I should erase my last five lines and start over again.  I was five pages of rambling notes and decapitated paragraphs in when I realized that I’m struggling so much because this is a story that I’m tired of telling.  I’ve been trying to write it down since I graduated from college in 2004 and I am weary of the words.  I screamed them vainly from my freshman year to my senior, and once I left the campus for good, diploma in hand, I decided I would just shut up about it for awhile.  I was drained.  Even now, six years later, it’s hard.

I went to a very small, very white private liberal arts school in Lexington, KY—when I began in the fall of 2000, 20 of the total 1,100 students were black (including me).  That was a record, the most in 220 years of the school’s existence.  I didn’t visit the campus before I committed to attend.  They offered me a scholarship and it had a good academic reputation within the state, and that was good enough for me.  The first thing I remember seeing after pulling into the main parking lot in the middle of the dorms is a building with a solid row of Confederate flags hanging in each and every window of its second floor.

That building was the boy’s dormitory.  The school, being so small, didn’t have the space or demand for Greek housing, so they had Greek halls instead, one hall for each frat and sorority in the two largest dorms.  The second floor of the dorm, the one with the Confederate flags in the windows, was the Kappa Alpha hall.  I instinctively stayed away from KAs, as they were called, after finding out that they were the owners of all the flags, and doubly so after I heard about the frat being founded by Robert E. Lee, and triply so when it was mentioned that they were dedicated to “traditional Southern values and traditions.”  (It turns out that it was not, as rumored, founded by Robert E. Lee—he was, however, named as the fraternity’s  “spiritual founder” 1923.)

The KAs weren’t the worst part; the campus was thoroughly littered with crumbs of this “traditional South.”  The dorm that housed the KAs was called Jefferson Davis Hall, so named after the president of the Confederacy.  There was an absolutely gigantic portrait of him in the lobby of the dorm and a too-large bust of him in the library.  It didn’t help that the campus itself was terrifyingly beautiful.  The school’s administration building (which was used as a hospital for Union soldiers during the Civil War) is a large, stately, blindingly white building with Romanesque columns that jutted endlessly towards the sky, which seemed perpetually blue, even in rain.  It sat atop the roundest, greenest hill you’ve ever seen in your life, and at its bottom was a wide arch of grassy land lined with exploding dogwoods and the world’s saddest willows, sweeping their narratives into the ground below.  It made me nervous.  It looked a little too much like the set of Gone with the Wind for me to enjoy it, especially with the rest of the Confederate residue clinging about, both on campus and off—there was a nameless, faceless Lexingtonian who made a hobby of riding around downtown in a bulbous red pickup truck flying a full sized Confederate flag in its bed and laying on his horn, which (of course) played “Dixie.” There was no escape from it for me.  I used to joke that I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw an actual Confederate soldier walking through campus, feeling right at home.  I was wrong.

He was dressed from ankle to Adam’s Apple in pale blue beneath a long wool coat with dull gold buttons on the breast and a cap to match.  I shrugged it off, not wanting to believe what I already knew—that I really did just see one of my fellow students dressed as a Confederate soldier.  I later learned later that it was a KA in costume to celebrate the end of something called Old South Week.  This at least explained why I was awakened to a bunch of shirtless boys waving rebel flags screaming the words to “Dixie” underneath one of the weeping willows a few nights before (Editor’s note:  This actually happened).  From what I understood, Old South Week was a KA function, a weeklong celebration of old Southern customs and traditions, which included boys dressed as soldiers, girls dressed as delicate, magnolia-scented Southern belles in lace chokers and hoop skirts, and beer.  Lots and lots of beer.  I later heard stories of some outrageously offensive pranks pulled during Old South week at other schools; the one that sticks out most sharply in my memory is one where celebrating students dumped cotton balls all over a grassy campus lawn so that the janitorial staff, which was all-black, would have to bend over and pick them up while they walked through in their costumes, taking pictures.

I couldn’t imagine what I would have done if I would have seen something like that.  I didn’t fully know what to do with what I had seen.  I was angry.  I was incredulous.  I felt unsafe.  And when no one cared, I felt invisible and insignificant.

We tried to talk about it.  Teachers held in-class discussions about the matter and the general state of race relations on campus (a few professors actually had me come and sit in on these discussions because there were no other black students in their classes to present “our side”).  We tried to hold campus-wide forums on it, but no one showed up but us black students, the ones who so desperately wanted to tell the ones draped in the Confederate flag what it did to us and why it was important to consider everything that flag stood for, not just chivalry and wrap-around porches and hayrides and sweet tea.  I wrote about it and had quite a few pieces on race on campus published in the school paper.  On more than one occasion, I found my articles ripped out of newspapers and taped on walls with things like “A GREAT EXAMPLE OF IGNORANCE” scrawled across them in permanent marker.

The majority of the campus maintained that they weren’t celebrating anything hateful.  They were simply paying homage to their Southern heritage (as if we, too, were not Southern), honoring their roots, showing their appreciation for where they came from.  But what kind of place was that?  If I were to participate in Old South Week, what kind of costume would I wear?  Would I be on a wrap-around porch with ruffles around my neck enjoying a mint julep, or sweating the day away in the campus kitchen?  Why didn’t that matter to anyone?

This is the problem with the slant telling of history:  excluding something or someone sends the message that that something or someone is not important.  I can understand the kids on campus not wanting to include slavery in the celebration because it’s kind of a wet blanket.  Still, the answer isn’t in simply ignoring it.  When you acknowledge history, you don’t get to pick and choose.  In erasing from the past, you symbolically erase from the present.  All of the discussions we had lead to nowhere; whenever the issue was brought up, those on the opposing side clung to their “heritage, not hate” posters, and they eventually stopped talking about it altogether.  That’s what hurt the most; no one even tried to see our side.  Nobody cared how those Confederate flags made us feel or entertained the idea that they could have meant something different to us.  The message we carried from that:  we didn’t matter.  We were insignificant.

The event was ultimately moved off campus, but I didn’t consider that a victory.  It was a decision made by the administration and challenged by many of the students, and when it was all over, they felt like the victims, the ones punished, penalized, and inconvenienced by slavery, a beast that breathed, in their opinion, because we kept it alive.  Slavery was so many years ago, they said.  I’ve never personally owned a slave.  Let it go.  Just let it go already.

To them, letting it go meant ignoring it.  To us, letting it go meant finally having our concerns and issues being seen as valid, finally feeling understood.

As of now, I’m still holding on, waiting for the chance to let it go.

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white people don’t look like terrorists.

at least not according to House GOP candidate Dan Fanelli.  check out this ad he’s got running in Florida, as reported by Greg Sargent at The Plum Report (i found this via @USSClueless):

…there are a few people who beg to differ with that logic:

these lily white men are responsible for the deaths and woundings of nearly 1,000 American citizens (click their pictures or click here to read about their crimes).  and this isn’t even considering the murders and attacks carried out by the most well-known American terrorist group, the kkk.

but all terrorists are brown tho.

lol okay.

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lol. cant wait to hear microsoft’s explanation

after they “look into the details of this situation” (swiped this from GD @ PostBourgie):

Microsoft apologizes for altering photo to edit black man out of picture

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wednesday, August 26th 2009, 11:35 AM

MicrosoftMicrosoft has apologized over doctoring the photo.

LOS ANGELES — Software giant Microsoft Corp. is apologizing for altering a photo on its Web site to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture.

A photo on the Seattle-based company’s U.S. Web site shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the Web site of Microsoft’s Polish business unit, the black man’s head has been replaced with that of a white man. The color of his hand remains unchanged.

The photo editing sparked criticism online. Some bloggers said Poland‘s ethnic homogeneity may have played a role in changing the photo.

“We are looking into the details of this situation,” Microsoft spokesperson Lou Gellos said in a statement Tuesday.

“We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/08/26/2009-08-26_microsoft_apologizes_for_altering_photo_to_edit_black_man_out_of_picture.html#ixzz0PJygsvDz

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are they so wrong tho?  are they simply knowing their audience?  when’s the last time you met a black man from Poland?

yo somebody gimmie an address to Fox News

remember when Dave Chappelle said in one of his specials or on his show or somethin that sometimes somebody says somethin so decidedly and explicitly racist that you cant say anything but:  damn… that was racist! 

i just had that reaction to this, which i found sitting in my email inbox this morning.  like.  i literally looked at my screen and said:  ‘that is some racist shit.’  very matter-of-factly.

yo i cant imagine what my response would be to that, either as Barack or Michelle.  it would probably be somewhere around ‘MOTHERFUCKER, THIS IS MY/I AM HIS WIFE, AINT NOT GOTDAMN BABY MAMAS AROUND HERE.’  and that would prolly be the best i could do.  lol

this is tantamount to somebody doin a news story on rush limbaugh’s doctor and instead referring to him as his drug pusher.  but let somebody do THAT shit, they’d be all up in arms about it, right? 

i wonder how all those devoted feminist Hillary supporters would respond/are responding to this story.  surely with outrage and offense, right?  cause feminists care about ALL women, right?  a woman who is honestly and truly concerned about the welfare of women everywhere would neeeeeever let something like, oh, i dont know.. political preference and/or bitterness keep her complicit in the face of such an offense against another woman, right?  and ain’t michelle obama a woman?  i hadnt really thought about this until recently, being more focused on her husband and his slugfest with the Clintons, but Michelle is gonna have a REALLY hard road to travel in the political world.  if any woman needs the support of other women right now, it’s her.  actually, id like to write a quick letter to Michelle:

Dear Michelle –

Hey girl!  What’s up! Not much here, just tryin to make it as a double minority in this messed up world.  Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I know I’ve been hatin on you for awhile and have felt some kinda way about you marrying and sleeping with and feelin all on my man, but we can fight in the streets over him later.  Right now, you need some help fightin big ol scary discriminatory institutions.  I’m focused!

Love,

me.

ps – we will most DEFINITELY fight over him later, though.

anyway.  i guess you could chalk this whole thing up to the whitefolks at fox news just not knowing what the phrase means and ‘misusing’ it.  but fuck that!  this was a racist AND sexist attack from a racist AND sexist news station.  they knew what they were doin.

bastards.

so yeah, find me an address to send some angry letters.  they keep makin it very hard for me to stick to talkin about fake hair and fake boobs in this blog i and i aint takin it no more!!!

an open letter to party-jumping hillary supporters.

i am moved to write on this after helping to edit this petition that nobody signed (lol), and after talkin abt it with a friend on the phone this afternoon.  we were discussing the AP report, now said to be untrue, that said Hillary was going to concede tonight.  so, we were talkin abt that, then got to talkin abt all the rabid Hillary supporters who seem dead set and certain on voting for McCain rather than Obama, should Obama get the nod, and as it becomes clearer and clearer that he will be the democratic nominee, this becomes more of an alarming problem to me.  i mean, its absurd. its completely ridiculous, selfish, and in my opinion, unpatriotic. 

here’s a bit from the petition i mentioned that pretty much sums up my thoughts:

This is alarming because it poses a such a huge threat to democratic success. We must not permit people to succumb to their prejudices; the votes that Hillary supporters will cast for McCain or for no one at all put in jeopardy the lives of additional soldiers who will no doubt be sent to Iraq under further Republican rule. This is unpatriotic. Putting the vitality of this country in danger simply to avoid voting for a black man is unpatriotic. Casting a spiteful vote for a man who will continue so many damaging, devastating policies instead of voting for a fully capable democratic leader is unpatriotic. And we need Senator Clinton to know that sitting idly by while her followers allow their prejudices get the best of them, setting the stage for four more years of global unrest, governmental unlawfulness, and national dissatisfaction is unpatriotic as well.

sigh.  i mean.. okay.  i, too, have a vagina.  black women have been in a unique position during the race between Obama and Clinton because we can see both sides of the fence.  i remember talking with my neice, who was then 14 yrs old, about the election and who she wanted to win, and she was a bit torn.  she said ‘well, i dont know; if either of them wins, i’ll be happy, because if a woman wins then i can be represented as a woman, but if a black person wins, i can be represented as a black person.’  i wonder if this touches on a potential reason as to why we dont see as big a number of Obama supporters who refuse to vote for Hillary if she gets the nod.  no matter who wins, at least there’s some form of minority in the office instead of another representative of the monolithic mythic norm that has forever had a boot on the collective neck of those in the margins.

anyway.  i can imagine how hillary’s white female supporters feel.  the feminist fight is a bitter, brutal one; i know this from my days of activism in college & after, both personally and politically.  when its man vs woman, there’s a big push and need for womanly toughness, a take-no-prisoners kind of spirit.  knuckle up, go toe to toe, dont take no for an answer.  since being so totally turned off by the Clinton camp and becoming a full fledged Obama supporter (note:  i was not always an Obama girl; i was undecided til Hillary & nem started wildin out), i sometimes forget that on the other side, this is man vs. woman.  not strictly, of course; im not trying to boil this down til there’s nothing but the issue of gender left, cause its clearly more than that.  but im just wondering if, for those feminists on Hillary’s side, this is where the bitterness that is leading so many people to say they’ll vote for McCain is coming from.  a strong, capable woman will have again been unfairly defeated by a big ol man, priviledged by his gender (nevermind the huge disadvantage that his race has posed).  i dont know though.  im sure there are plenty of men who dont give a good hoo-damn about what’s between who’s legs, they’re just not voting for Obama.  i am only theorizing out loud.

im still wandering though.  let’s take both race and gender out of the equation, though.  they don’t exist.  they are non-issues.  this is still fucked up!  at the very core of this circus, what you have is a group of people who are so dead set on their candidate being the nominee that rather than do the logical thing and vote for the person who is most similar in beliefs and ideals to their candidate of choice–that person of course being Obama, because he and Clinton’s agendas are not that different, and damn sure aren’t as distant as Clinton & McCain’s are–they’d rather vote for someone who’s policies and beliefs are closer to president Bush?  president gotdamn Bush?  the bastard with the lowest approval rating ever in the history of american presidents?!  the one that all democrats supposedly despise?  this is who you’d rather have in office? 

motherfucker, why??! (c) steve harvey

i’ll tell you why.  it’s not because you believe in what McCain stands for more than Obama.  it’s because you’re selfish, stubborn, sore, and sullen and so prideful that you can’t see straight.  you’re that little kid who brings the ball to the basketball court but won’t let anyone play with it if u get picked last, ruining the whole damn game for every damn body.    you’re selfish.  over all, you’re selfish.  and you’re weak, because you are letting your own selfish pride override your sense of duty as an American.  the security of our country doesn’t give a shit whether or not your first choice becomes president.  it doesn’t care.  it doesn’t want somebody at the helm because they have a flag pin on their jacket.  it wants someone who will do what is best for it, and if u really, honestly and truly believe that McCain is the better person for that, that he has the better ideas and all that jazz, then you should have been on his side in the first place, not Hillary’s.  when u cant get what you want, then you usually want the next best thing.  if u want Pepsi but can’t find it in a store, you go for Coke.  so now that yall can’t have Hillary, u go for McCain?  that’s like goin for castor oil when you can’t find Pepsi.  where’s the logic in that?

im gonna wrap this up soon cause im sure attention spans are quickly running out, but i do want to say that what really, really scares me, like truly and genuinely scares me about all the people who would rather vote McCain in office is this war.  right now, we, as american voters, literally have the lives of american soldiers, present and future, in our hands.  McCain is gonna keep us in Iraq.  i dont believe that Clinton or Obama would.  this is my genuine belief.  the way you vote can essentially save a bunch of young uniformed lives or send them out to slaughter continually for who knows how long.  think about that when you vote.  think about your own children.  would you be able to look them in the eye after you return home from voting for McCain and tell them that you may have just sent them to Iraq, a foreign country where the soldiers there aren’t afraid to die in the course of trying to kill you and your friends?  that will essentially be what you have done.  could you live with yourself and your decision if they go over there and never come back home? 

and how long ago was it that everybody was jumpin on Obama for not wearing a flag pin or putting his hand over his heart a few times?  that was unpatriotic, right?  but these same people who were on his ass about it can put their own country and the men and women who risk their lives to defend it in danger by voting for a man who will no doubt keep us locked in war for who knows how long, all because they dont like Obama? 

yall are gambling with something priceless, seriously.  to vote for that man just because you don’t want Obama to win is wreckless, irresponsible, unpatriotic, and dangerous, all around, if for no other reason than because we are at war right now. 

maybe people are making more of this than they should at this particular time, because there’s a bigger picture that we need to be paying attention to.  we need to cool out and see that right now, this cannot be a battle between man and woman.  it cannot be about black vs white.  it cannot be about ‘i just like her better than him.’  it HAS to be about whats best for this country vs a continuation of the bullshit we’ve been suffering through for 8 years.  it needs to be about democrat vs republican, nothing more, nothing less. 

i dont like Hillary Clinton.  as a person.  i don’t like her.  but guess what, if she gets this nomination?  i will be a Hillary Clinton campaign donating motherfucker.  i will vote for her because even though i don’t care much for her as a person, i can still see that she’s the better choice over McCain.  if either one of these folks wins the nomination, be it Hillary or Barack, we will be in far better shape than we have been for over a decade. 

no matter what happens, i will not vote for John McCain because i love this country and i want the best for it.  i hope that one day, one day very, very soon, Hillary’s supporters will be able to say the same.

stop this foolishness. sign this damn petition because those 8 signatures are really pathetic (lmao wtf, Jordanne!) .

Democrat 08.

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alright, that takes care of the seriousness for the rest of this year.  we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog about celebrity weaves, fat asses, and poot stories.

bush & mccain: ‘let us eat cake!’

im such a dirty thief today.  apologies, but i really wanted to share this with ppl.

ever wonder what mccain and bush were doing on August 29th, 2005, the day that Hurricane Katrina hit?

they were totally gettin crunk with a birthday cake celebrating mccain’s 278th 69th birthday.  barack and al gore were busy trying to save NOLA, though.  party poopers!

“mmm.. baby tears and destruction! your favorite!”