via Mother Jones
With the top 10% of income earners controlling 2/3rds of the nation's wealth, with payroll taxes covering an increasing share of government revenue, with CEO pay off the charts as a multiple of the average worker pay and with half the members of congress being millionaires, it's abundantly clear that if we're experiencing "class warfare," the rich have vanquished everyone else.
"Warfare" requires both sides to be fighting. This is a slaughter.
One year ago, I wrote this story for my email list. I sent it on my birthday which is the 11th of September 1977. This year, cable news organizations remember this day as the 10th anniversary of my 24th birthday, or so I like to tell myself. Someone on Twitter (Julia Smith) asked if I would re-publish the email, and that's what I'm doing below. I had completely forgotten I'd written it, but there's nothing I would change.
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Here's an audio version of the story that ABC News Radio published in commemoration of the other September 11.
Voices of September 11th - @Baratunde by abcnewsradio
This is a story.
September of 2001 was an intense month. I was living in Boston and working at a strategy consulting firm. I’d just been put on a project for a cable company that wanted to enter the local phone business, and I was pulling serious hours.
Rather suddenly and somewhat out of nowhere, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. She went through an accelerated diagnosis and treatment near her then-home in Attleboro, Mass. just south of Boston.
I actually remember telling the company librarian the name of the hospital where my mother would be treated, and she warned me, “That’s a terrible hospital,” but I didn’t know what other choice we had and chalked her attitude up to her being a bit crazy and from Rhode Island.
My sister, Belinda, had flown in to be with my mother through the surgery, and we were playing tag team with mom care. I would work during the day then take the commuter rail down to Attleboro to hang out in the hospital with the family in the evenings.
Near my birthday, my sister had to return to her work and life, having burned various levels of vacation and sick days. On the morning of September 11, I was excited to spend my birthday with my mother, not in the hospital (which it turns out, was indeed quite terrible), but in her apartment.
As I’d done scores of times before, I boarded the commuter train at Boston’s South Station. Just as we pulled in to Attleboro Station, around 8:45am, I got a phone call on my cell from my friend Stacy. This was a memorable moment for several reasons.
One, I had a cell phone. It was my first cell phone, and I got it after being stranded in the Philadelphia airport and watching cell phone owners use their magic powers to book all the best flights and hotel rooms, forcing me to take an overnight bus. “Never again,” I told myself.
Two, Stacy was calling me from San Francisco, which meant it was 5:45am there. Upon seeing the Caller ID, I thought, “Yay! Stacy is such a great friend. She’s calling me extra early to wish me a happy birthday!!”
“A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center,” she said, confusing me greatly because that sounded not at all like “Happy Birthday, Baratunde!” She didn’t know what was happening. No one did at that point, but she told me it was on TV.
Normally the walk from the Attleboro train station to my mother’s place is about 20 minutes, but that morning, I made it in just under 15. Even though I covered the distance in record time, I couldn’t move fast enough for how cut off I felt from the world. This was pre-iPhone and pre-Android people! There was no streaming media on wireless devices. Dear God, there was no Twitter!
As I arrived, my mother had the TV turned on just in time for me to see the second tower get hit. We watched the news for perhaps 30 minutes as various announcers fought to fill the time with information when there was no such thing available.
Unable to make sense of what was happening, unable to reach New York friends by phone and unwilling to watch traumatic images on loop without the benefit of new information, we made the best decision of that day: we turned off the television, left the apartment and went to a park. I figured I could engage with the news from my Internet command center back in my Somerville apartment, but I’d spend this day in the sunlight helping my mother heal and enjoying her company.
That’s just what we did.
The way we acted on that day became my model for how to interpret my birthday on every 9/11 since. Other people have always felt some sympathy for me, wondering how I could celebrate life on such a day of death and destruction. I see it the other way around. How could I not celebrate life on such a day?
If ever there were a time to soak in the sun, enjoy the air and commune with humanity, it is on this day which was exploited by a small group initially that morning and then further exploited by many more over the years who have sought to keep us in a place of fear, a place of terror and a place of horror because they had their own ends or because they lacked the imagination to do anything else.
Today, let us be creative. Today, turn off the instant replay of destruction. Go outside. Take deep breaths. Spend time with those you love, and celebrate life.
Besides, from a strictly chronological perspective, my 9/11 came first.
This was a story.
This morning I joined John Fugelsang as he substitute hosted the Stephanie Miller Show. With both of us being liberal political comics, it was natural to discuss the GOP presidential field, Obama's upcoming jobs speech and other headlines ripped from Drudge and MSNBC. What the audience probably did not expect is that we would get into a serious and detailed conversation about Jersey Shore, the MTV show.
As John put it, MTV has finally become as destructive as our parents feared, but it has nothing to do with the music.
I started watching Jersey Shore as an experiment. I'd just gotten the iPad, and I wanted to test buying and watching TV content on it. When I fired up the store, Jersey Shore was looking me in the face with its over-gelled, fake tanned head. I clicked buy, and found myself watching out of more than a sense of irony. The show was kind of entertaining, and I just loved watching dumb people get paid to do even dumber things.
I was genuinely amused by "t-shirt time!" and "GTL" (gym, tan, laundry) and part of me enjoyed the minstrelsy of it all at the expense of another ethnic group. Black folks had to deal with black-face. Maybe for Italians, this is pizza-face.
The main thing that's kept me watching into season four (other than inertia), is the great analysis by Bill Cammack. I've known Bill for a few years. He's blogged about dating and video and sound editing for years, and it's with those eyes that he watches the show. Bill writes things such as "according to the edit,.... [thing x happened.]" His Facebook page explodes with hilarious commentary after each post, so I watch to read and play, much like the child who goes to church not for the sermons but the youth group.
So that's my excuse. Do you consider yourself too good for Jersey Shore but watch anyway? Why?
The things black folk don't do is the alleged part. There is no allegedness to my appearance. That is happening. Check out the site hosting Angela Tucker's cool video project which certainly shares the spirit of my forthcoming book, How To Be Black. (pre-order on amazon!)
The live chat is on Facebook. 1630 hrs ET.
allegedly.
no seriously, it's not alleged. it's happening.
unless black folk don't do live web chats.
now i've confused myself.
This was so much fun. Last night, I got to join friend, awesome person and America's Substitute Teacher Melissa Harris Perry as she covered in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's The Last Word. They invited me on to talk a bit about The Onion's political coverage. It felt like an on-air tweetup. I wish we could do this on every Whiskey Friday.
I also have to add that doing cable news segments in which I'm in the same room and at the same table as the host is so much more fun and human than the disembodied, Futurama, talking head-in-a-box method. I don't mind being a talking head. I'd just prefer not to be a talking head in a box.
BTW, you're going to want to mark your calendars. Tuesday October 4 at 10pm is the return of Onion News Network on IFC. This year, the news is even less merciful.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
(by ATCQ)
It's all over the papers glowing rectangles. Google is acquiring Motorola. Here are some of the reasons many pundits are citing:
- Get into the hardware business at last
- Get closer to the living room and enterainment devices, the better to compete with Apple.
- Block a mobile partnership path for Microsoft
- Help defend Android against patent lawsuits by inheriting Motorola's patents.
- Show it can spend over $12 billion and not break a sweat.
I shared some of this initial reasoning, but the true secret motivation only now occurred to me. Google gets the StarTAC phone and, more importantly, pagers!!!
Come on yall. Sir Mix-A-Lot ain't no fool.
This may come as a shock to many of you, but I've been really torn during these past few months about who I should support in the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. Obviously, I supported Barack Obama in 2008, but in 2012 I simply cannot put my weight behind a Kenyan. I'm sure it's a lovely place, but this is America, and I want to support an American this time, so I had to look to the Republican party.
On the weekend of May 20th, I decided to put my full weight behind Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. I figured, "Indiana never bothered anybody and seems like it's got a bunch of nice people," but then Daniels hit himself in the face with a door and got 16 stitches. If a man can't lead his face safely through a doorway, how can he lead America? One day later, he dropped out. This left me in a bit of a lurch.
These past few months have been tough without a candidate of my own. I've looked at the GOP field carefully, but no one was the obvious choice. Ron Paul is interesting, but sometimes he uses the name Rand, and I don't like when a man lies about his name. Herman Cain? No way. We already have a black president! Let's get some diversity in the White House, thank you.
But late last night I awoke with a sudden clarity of mind. I thought, "America needs results, not rhetoric!!" Genius, right? I immediately typed this prophetic phrase into Google to see if I could trademark it. That's when it became obvious that Tim Pawlenty would get my vote and my support.
So a few moments ago, I visited T-Paw's real-time, up-to-date, super American website. It's beautiful!
I read every news update, watched every video and even joined his Pawlenty Action center! I filled out my profile, and told my Facebook friends about this great, results-driven man. I pledged to volunteer 3,000 hours for his campaign and unlocked the Workhorse badge! So far I've accumulated 204 points, 4 badges and sit in the top 7th percentile of all members, all in a few minutes. My only regret is in having missed the popular American Christian worship band SONICFLOOd at T-Paw's BBQ in Ames, Iowa yesterday.
But overall, I'm relieved, and the timing couldn't be better. It's great to know that I've just today discovered how I'm going to spend my next 3,000 hours. I urge all of you to join me and T-Paw. It's time for truth. Absolutely nothing can stop us now, T-Paw!! Nothing.
We rarely see historical context on a cable news network, especially one that exposes a seemingly-pro-labor perspective. This CNN Working In America documentary with Soleda O'Brien looks interesting. It's about the debate over mountaintop removal for coal in West Virginia. I can't fully endorse the work cause I haven't seen it yet, but I applaud the effort.
The first opportunity I ever had to ask then-candidate Barack Obama a question, I challenged him over his pro-coal stance. (see this Google Video, and start at 10m09s)
Seems worth checking out.
Ninety years ago this month, 10,000 West Virginia miners waged a violent battle in support of labor rights. The fight now: Will the historic Blair Mountain battleground be preserved, or mined? "Battle for Blair Mountain: Working in America" airs at 8 p.m. ET Sunday, August 14 and 8 p.m. ET Saturday, August 20
- preview video
- text article laying out arguments
- recent NPR story on the same topic in the same region (h/t Melanie Renzulli)