Words From a Wicked Woman

Recording artist will.i.am and director Jesse Dylan, son of singer/icon Bob Dylan, got together with a group of musicians, actors and personalities over the course of two days to mold music written by the Black Eyed Peas founder to words from Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s New Hampshire “Yes We Can” speech into a song of hope, unity and inspiration. It is a video that sends chills down the spine of the jaded and brings tears to the eyes of cynics. Best of all, will.i.am, Dylan and friends did all of this unbidden. This video, and its making, is indicative of the inspiration Obama engenders.

Today is known throughout the country as “Super Tuesday.” Democrats, Republicans and Independents across 24 states will go to the polls to vote for the candidate they want to see as their party’s presidential nominee. The reasons any one person will cast their vote for a particular candidate are myriad, however, I would like to discuss a few of the reasons Barack Obama has inspired so many people and deserves your support.

Barack Obama can change the status quo

Washington is a mess. There’s no getting around it. Legislators are often unresponsive to their constituents’ desires, instead, preferring to grant the wishes of lobbyists and other big campaign donors; very little gets accomplished in Congress because of inter- and intra-party spats and rivalries; there is no unifying vision of where this country needs to go, and; even when there is unity of purpose and vision, there is someone in the White House determined to stand in the way. Today, when many people think of Washington, D.C., they think of a quagmire of lost hope.

Those who support Obama are tired of politics as usual and believe he brings a singular freshness. He is an African-American elected by a largely white, moderate to conservative majority in Illinois because he has a vision of what this country can be. He hasn’t been in and around Washington for decades adding to the morass on Capitol Hill, making it what it is. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison captured the essence of Obama’s value to this country when she wrote in a letter to the senator, “[I]n addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.”

That wisdom was born, in part, because he is America–multiracial, multicultural and multiethnic–the beautiful quilt of this country’s lost amibition. As such, he brings a view that is more expansive and inclusive than we’ve seen before. It is a view that says we can be gracious and talk to those we don’t like (and who don’t like us) instead of pointing a gun at them first and that we must engage countries and people to bring about progress. According to Obama, “On challenges ranging from terrorism to disease, nuclear weapons to climate change, we cannot make progress unless we can draw on strong international support.” Yes we can.

Barack Obama can bring people together

Obama truly believes all people really are created equal and that blacks, browns, yellows and reds can work together to enable this country to reach its potential. In an election cycle that has been marred by racial code intended to inflame, it is time to see beyond the divisiveness of racial politics. That does not mean we should forget our heritage. Indeed, we must acknowledge and celebrate our different cultures, but not allow them to trap us into a mental, spiritual, intellectual OR gender ghetto that separates us from our common goals.

Much has been made of the notion that Latinos will not support Obama in California and the rest of the Southwest because there is a rivalry between blacks and browns. However, the people who have posited this theory forget the reality that Obama has been endorsed by the nation’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, La Opinion, saying:

Senator Barack Obama represents fundamental change in a campaign in which ‘change’ has become a central theme. Obama’s approach to immigration and his inspiring vision are what the country need to break through the current feeling of political malaise.

. . .

It is this commitment to the immigration issue which drove Obama to condemn the malicious lies made during the immigration debate, to understand the need for driver’s licenses, and to defend the rights of undocumented students by co-authoring the DREAM Act. The senator has demonstrated character by maintaining his position despite the hostile political climate.

. . .

We need a leader today that can inspire and unite America again around its greatest possibilities. Barack Obama is the right leader for the time.

The senator’s hometown Spanish-language newspaper, La Hoy, also endorsed him. This is the first time the Chicago newspaper has endorsed any presidential candidate. “The son of an immigrant father and an American mother, Obama knows the challenges facing those deprived of privileges, when facing the uphill climb to success. . . . The Senator is capable of compromising with those who think differently, and has the strength to renew the hopes of those who have come to this country in search of a better life. . . . We, the Latinos, are a mostly young population, with great dreams and hunger for success. For that reason we consider that Barack Obama is the Democratic Party’s best option, to give back to the country a national unity that includes Hispanic talent.”

As La Hoy mentioned, Obama not only brings people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds together, but also those of different ideologies. It is, perhaps, one of his most defining qualities. As he noted in his South Carolina victory speech, “[Obama supporters] are Democrats from Des Moines and independents from Concord and, yes, some Republicans from rural Nevada.” In the very speech from which the above video was made, he emphasizes the diversity of his coalition but says the thing they all have in common is they are people who, “are tired of the division and distraction that has clouded Washington, who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable, who understand that, if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that stood in our way and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there is no problem we cannot solve, there is no destiny that we cannot fulfill.” We can be–we must be–a UNITED States of America. Yes we can.

Barack Obama can end the Iraq War

According to Antiwar.com, there have been 3945 U.S. casualties since the Iraq War began March 19, 2003; 3806 of those have come since President George W. Bush arrogantly and foolishly stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared “Mission accomplished!” on May 1, 2003. In stark contrast to anyone else running for either party’s presidential nomination, Barack Obama has never supported the war.

At an anti-war rally held in Chicago on October 2, 2002, then-State Senator Barack Obama made the following remarks:

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the middle east (sic), and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

I encourage reading entire speech here.

In the wee hours of October 11, 2002, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the other candidate for the Democratic party presidential nomination, in bold relief to Obama’s position, voted to send American troops into Iraq, thus beginning the Iraq War. Literally minutes prior to her vote authorizing the war, she voted against the Levin amendment to the authorization. The Levin amendment would have reigned the administration in and encouraged it to work with other nations before then coming back to Congress to ask for authorization. For a full discussion of the Levin amendment see my previous post “Obama Cordially Hangs Clinton on Iraq in Pre-Super Tuesday Debate.”

Obama has offered a plan to bring one or two brigades a month home from Iraq with full withdrawal completed within 16 months. Clinton will not commit to a timetable even though she says that she now favors ending the war.

Although Obama wants to end the Iraq War, he stated in the February 2, 2008 Los Angeles debate with Clinton, “I think it is important for us to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. . . . but I do think it is important for us to set a date. And the reason I think it is important is because if we are going to send a signal to the Iraqis that we are serious, and prompt the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurds to actually come together and negotiate, they have to have clarity about how serious we are.” We must get out of Iraq as carefully as possible and as soon as possible. Yes We Can.

In Conclusion

For some candidates, this presidential campaign season began years ago. And, for some, it has ended too soon. I think we can all agree that parts of it have been extremely ugly, but there have also been times that have inspired hope where once there was none. Those latter times have, most often, been inspired by Barack Obama–a uniquely transformative agent of aspiration and change. He looks at this country and its people and sees what is possible with faith, belief in ourselves and a generous spirit. He rejects the politics of fear which turns into the politics of “mean.” As a result, people are valuable not because they are of a particular race, ethnicity, gender, income status or sexual orientation. They are valuable because they are human beings who deserve to be heard and counted.

Today is almost at an end. If you live in a Super Tuesday state and you have not voted yet, please do so. But, before you pull that lever or press a touchscreen or fill in a bubble, realize that today is a new day. It is a day when we have a chance to propose a man with the courage to dream, the belief that we can be better than we are and the audacity of hope. He did not sit in the Senate in Washington wringing his hands, wondering what he should do while we languished in malaise. Instead, on February 10, 2007, on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln once called on a divided nation to stand together, Sen. Barack Obama entered the race for president of the United States and asked us to stand together with him to change this country and the world. Some say that he should wait his turn, that he hasn’t paid his dues and that he doesn’t have the experience. They expect him to defer to others who, frankly, don’t have the vision or skills to be a unifying force to correct the mistakes made by the current administration. Instead, he saw that waiting would only allow the country to sink deeper into the abyss, making recovery that much harder. He understood what Martin Luther King, Jr. called in his “I Have A Dream” speech the “urgency of now.”

The reality is that the differences between Clinton and Obama are few. Nevertheless, they are significant. In my mind, perhaps the most astounding difference overall is that the latter can unite while the former has a disturbing tendency to divide and to do so in a profoundly ugly way. In this new day that is today, we need to put aside our racial, cultural, ethnic and gender politics in favor of moving this country forward in a healthy way that will restore our prestige throughout the world. It will take boldness, courage, imagination and brilliance. Barack Obama has those characteristics in abundance. He believes: Yes we can! ¡Sí se puede! I believe, with your vote today: Yes, we can win!

Technorati Tags: activism, african-american, barack obama, blacks, campaign ‘08, candidates, celebrities, democratic, entertainment, hillary clinton, iraq war, politics, presidential campaign

I learned of radio personality Don Imus’ filthy remarks (link requires NY Times TimeSelect subscription) about the conference-winning Rutgers University women’s basketball team while laying in a hospital bed three days after they were made on his WFAN-FM morning show simulcast on cable’s MSNBC and the CBS radio network. In calling the Rutgers women “nappy-headed ho’s” he unleashed a firestorm of denunciations that ended in his firing from both broadcast outlets. For once, big media did the right thing. Frankly, I was shocked, though extremely pleased. In one fell swoop, Imus had turned what should have been a celebratory moment into one of hurt, confusion and anger. Not being an athlete on any level, nor particularly being a sports fan, I cannot say whether it was worse for those young women to get to the NCAA women’s basketball championships and lose or to then be denigrated by a sexist bigot with a national audience. I only know that these beautiful, talented young women–someone’s daughters, sisters, girlfriends–did not in any way deserve to be diminished by a man with a malfunctioning brain. In the end, they were not diminished. They were held up as examples of grace and maturity in the face of ugliness, meeting with Imus and his wife at the New Jersey governor’s mansion, respectfully expressing their pain and, ultimately, accepting his apology. Brava, Rutgers women! Brava!

Don Imus is symptomatic of an illness in America. We live in a society that does not value women or people who are not white, no matter their accomplishments. In effect, it is a society that causes people of color to devalue themselves. This is especially true for women of color in general and black women in particular. Young black women are bombarded by images of singers like Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Rihanna–ligher-skinned, long-haired and slender (though, in Beyoncé’s case, with curves), or; actresses like Halle Berry, Gina Torres and Thandi Newton, if there are any black actresses at all. If I am nothing else, I am a black woman. However, I don’t look like any of the above-named celebrities and neither do most black women. Yet, the message we receive from various media is that we are all supposed to have long, luxurious, straight hair and lighter skin. The idea is that the closer one is to being white, the more acceptable one becomes. Anything less and that person is easily discarded. In black society, this takes the form of “colorism,” the idea that lighter-skinned blacks with “good” hair are more valued than their darker, kinkier-haired kin. Colorism was born during the slave era when mulattos were allowed to live and work in the master’s house and not out in hot, often dangerous, fields. It was a way for slave owners to keep their property in line, turning them against each other. The effects were devastating and can be felt even to this day.

The celebrated 2005 documentary short A Girl Like Me from then-16-year-old New York City filmmaker Kiri Davis is a powerful modern introduction into the minds of the black female teens who were interviewed for the film. They speak of being devalued in their communities because they have darker skin and/or kinkier hair when the ideal is lighter skin and chemically-processed or naturally straight hair. In other words, these are the “nappy-headed” young women of Imus’ comments. They don’t stop there, however, the young women touch on what it means to be black in general. One particularly heart-breaking portion comes near the end when Davis reproduces the “doll experiment” originally performed by Dr. Kenneth Clark and used in the historic United State Supreme Court case Brown v. Bd. of Education, argued by future Supreme Court associate justice Thurgood Marshall. Clark’s experiment placed two dolls on a table and asked young children various questions relating to likeability and beauty. The same questions asked more recently resulted in an eye-opening and disheartening look at the deleterious effects of racism on the self-esteem of black children.

I am extremely fortunate to have been raised in an environment that eschewed images of white skin and long hair as the only examples of beauty and intelligence. My mother was an educator and educated. (Believe me, there is a difference.) She taught me to love black American history as well as the history of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. It is a love I carry and feed to this day as it carries and feeds me. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s when black really was beautiful and old practices of bleaching skin and straightening hair were on the wane. It was the days of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcom X and Huey P. Newton. Women young and old were encouraged to wear their hair naturally and the darker skinned the more “authentic” was one’s blackness. Music actually said something to listeners not only about love, but about politics and the wrongs being done in our name. To be a black child in a black neighborhood with supportive and accomplished black adults around to guide young people was to be in an enriching soup. Times do change.

By any sane person’s measure of decency, Imus’s remarks were despicable and he deserved to have his cowboy hat handed to him on the way out. However, no one can doubt that his actions began a conversation in America about the intersection of race and sex that is a long time coming; and so it will be here at Words From A Wicked Woman. For the next six weeks, this blog will focus almost exclusively on race and sex in its varied forms, but I need your help in doing so. I would like to include personal stories of women, especially, who have been adversely effected by discrimination based on sex, gender expression, race, skin color or grade of hair. While I include workplace discrimination, I am particularly interested in discrimination from peers and social groups. Members of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are specifically encouraged to write. I’d also like to know of the joys of being who and what you are. Do you adore being a woman? Do you like having “nappy” hair and darker skin? Do you feel comfortable in your lighter skin and straight hair? Tell us what you think. Feel free to write to me at thewickedwoman at adelphia dot net. Yours may be the story I tell next.

Technorati Tags: african-american, celebrities, discrimination, documentary, gay, hair, health, homosexuality, lesbian, lgbt

By the time you read this Barack Obama, senator and candidate for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination, will have spoken at a public rally in Cleveland, Ohio and I will not have attended. Frankly, I’m a little bit disappointed. I don’t really support Obama, but I don’t really oppose him either. Let’s say I’m keeping an open mind. Various news outlets have reported that blacks generally don’t support Obama’s candidacy because he didn’t go through the civil rights strainer of the 1950s to 1970s, but who in this generation did? We weren’t born in the ’50s and we were kids in the ’60s and ’70s, people! This analysis would suggest that the only qualified black candidates are those 60-years-old and above. I think said analysis is supremely faulty. Assuming this supposed lack of support is, indeed, real, I think another reason is more germane: Obama has a unique background that frightens some, less sophisticated, black people.

The good senator from Illinois grew up in Hawaii where discrimination has a long and dishonorable history, but primarily against Native Hawaiians and not as profoundly against blacks. His father was Kenyan and his mother was from Kansas, both educated at the University of Hawaii where they met. Obama’s father returned to Kenya after a time while and he and his mother remained in Hawaii with his grandfather, a World War II veteran, until she married an Indonesian. Obama has mixed-race Indonesian-Caucasian siblings. He received an Ivy League undergraduate (Columbia University) and graduate (Harvard Law School) education, serving as Harvard’s first black law review president.

Obama is an exemplary individual no matter what his race. I believe the primary obstacle to his acceptance by black voters is that he is in an elite class. By virtue of his accomplishments, he has surpassed the achievements of the average black American and that bothers some people. It also does not help that, traditionally, what is good for white people is not good for anyone else. Therefore, his support among large numbers of whites may be problematic for some, though not all, black folks. And here we run into a serious problem with the news media in general: the habit of monolithically classifying all black Americans. It’s a hell of a lot easier than doing the necessary background research, not to mention keeping an open eye, to learn we are as diverse as our skin colors. Broadcast media, especially, has a tendency to suffer from this myopia. Add the two together and you get a general pronouncement that blacks don’t support Obama.

There are plenty of reasons not to support the man. I’m not crazy about his positions on marriage equality, but I’m not crazy about any candidate’s position except that of Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). I believe he’s too moderate for my tastes as well. I want a left-leaning Democrat because I’ve had enough of the center. I’m not sure Obama isn’t saying one thing to his audiences in Iowa and New Hampshire and another to his audiences in Brooklyn and South Central. I have no evidence of this either way. I just have my suspicions because he can’t be all things to all people as he appears to attempt to be. I will wait and see.

. . .

I was so proud of Best Lead Actor nominee Forest Whitaker and Best Supporting Actress nominee Jennifer Hudson for their wins last night at the Oscars™! I was also very proud of Dreamgirls’ Eddie Murphy for his nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category, but he lost in an upset to Little Miss Sunshine’s Alan Arkin. I won’t say that Murphy was robbed because I think reasonable people could disagree. I will say, however, that his performance as James “Thunder” Early was far and away his best and proved that he is very capable of handling dramatic, non-action roles. The biggest upset for me was Melissa Etheridge’s win for Best Original Song with “I Need To Wake Up” from the Al Gore-inspired documentary An Inconvenient Truth. She was nominated with three songs from Dreamgirls, all written by Henry Krieger with different lyricists, and Randy Newman’s song “Our Town” from the animated movie Cars. I love Etheridge and Newman always writes fabulous music, but the odds were with Dreamgirls. Personally, I can kind of see it. With three songs from the movie nominated, Krieger canceled himself out and these were not the strongest songs in the movie. At least one of those, “And I’m Telling You,” was ineligible because it was from the Broadway play.

Ten-year-old Best Supporting Actress nominee for Little Miss Sunshine, Abigail Breslin, was little-girl-elegant in a little pink dress with a flowered bodice, Swarovski crystal handbag, Jimmy Choo shoes and, get this, Harry Winston jewels. Even with the Jimmy Choos and the jewels, she was appropriately dressed for the occasion. On the other hand, I really do have to wonder what in the HELL the beautiful Penelope Cruz was thinking when she chose her dress. UGH! How many birds had to die to make that skirt? It was hideous to boot! Not too far away on the scale of Hideous Oscar Ensembles of 2007 was Cameron Diaz’s white Valentino gown. It was lovely until your eyes got to the hem. I get that it is supposed to be asymmetrical, but it looked as though someone should be arrested for drunk sewing. Yuck! Finally, behind Penelope and Cameron was the delightful Kirsten Dunst who wore a form-fitting, light blue tuille, embroidered gown from Chanel Haute Couture. If that’s what Karl Lagerfeld is designing these days, maybe it’s time he retired and Chanel hired some new talent. The neckline was all wrong and, again, there were feathers, although not nearly as many as Cruz’s dress. In addition, she needs to do something about her bangs. With that dress, as hideous as it was, and with the rest of her hair, bangs were simply a very bad choice.

It was nice to have two lesbians take center stage at this year’s ceremony. Host Ellen Degeneres did an admirable job given that she had to keep things rolling for approximately four hours. It’s true that some of her bits were serious misses–like the one where she could be seen vacuuming the first row of the auditorium in preparation for the long-awaited end of the broadcast–but she was mostly quite up to snuff. Aside from her monologue in the beginning, I loved the bit she did with Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg where she gave the latter a digital camera and asked him to take a quick snapshot of her with his fellow Oscar™-winning director. Degeneres’s partner, actress Portia de Rossi, was definitely one of the beautiful people of the evening. I don’t like skinny or thin women, but if she just had to be that way, her navy Zac Posen halter stood her in great stead.

The second upfront lesbian of the evening was the aforementioned Etheridge who, with her wife, actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, formed the epitome of the Hollywood power couple in the Best Dykes To Watch Out For category. Etheridge wore a navy woman’s tuxedo while Michaels wore an ethereal black Pamela Roland gown with upswept hair. If I had to say one thing about each of their outfits I’d say that I would have liked Etheridge’s tux jacket to be more tailored and Michaels to have worn a different color with her pale complexion. Actually, I think I would have chosen another dress for Michaels altogether, although that one was not bad at all. I just think that it could have been better.

. . .

Apple, Inc. began its advertising campaign for the new iPhone with two 30-second spots during last night’s Oscar™ broadcast on ABC. The ads featured clips from famous films of characters answering their telephones with “Hello” and ended with two black screens with white type that read, “Hello” and “Coming in June.” Now that Apple and Cisco have ironed out their trademark dispute over the “iPhone” name, let the marketing campaign begin!

The much-anticipated combination Internet device, telephone, iPod and, as the iPhone page says, “High Technology” product was introduced at Macworld San Francisco in January where it was demonstrated by keynote speaker, iconic Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. The iPhone brings with it a beautiful, crisp, 3.5-inch-wide touch-screen display that that can be used both horizontally and vertically depending on whether it’s being used to watch video, play music or games, dial the phone, type on the QWERTY keyboard or operate one of the ten applications included in addition to the Safari web browser and Mail. People practically salivated over the two prototypes on display after the keynote–only three in the entire world. Journalists had to practically sign over their first born child, their spouse and their income for the next 20 years just to get their hands on one so that they could at least tell readers they’d seen it up close. Time magazine writer Lev Grossman describes his pre-release visit to Apple’s Cupertino, CA headquarters to scope out the theretofore über-secret device.

“If you’ve ever wondered how it works, this is how it works: I don’t call Steve, Steve calls me. Or more accurately, someone in Steve Jobs’s office calls someone in my office—someone at a much higher pay grade —to say that he has something cool. I then fly to the metastasized strip mall called Cupertino, Calif., where Apple lives, sign some legal confidentiality stuff and am escorted to a conference room that contains Jobs, some associates, and some lumps concealed under some black towels. I stare at what was under the towels. Everybody else stares at me. . . . This is how Apple, and nobody else, introduces new products to the press. It can be awkward, because Jobs is high-strung and he expects you to be impressed. I was, fortunately, and with good reason.” Journalists after the introduction didn’t fare much better.

I don’t know if the “Hello” ads that appeared during the Academy Awards™ will be shown at any other time, however, I believe it was wise to start the campaign even though Apple can’t even take iPhone orders now because the device hasn’t been approved by the Federal Communications Commission as yet. The Oscar™ telecast generally garners one of the largest viewing audiences in the world and serves as a premier opportunity for Apple to keep the brand in consumer minds. Such an early launch campaign may also give potential buyers the opportunity to save their pennies because they’ll need a whole lot of them to acquire even the less expensive model–49900 of them, to be exact–that comes with 4GB of storage. The more expensive model will sell for $599 and will have 8GB of storage.

Technorati Tags: african-american, business, candidates, celebrities, clothing, democratic, lgbt, entertainment

Jasmyne Cannick wrote today that the white gay intelligentsia/power structure is hypocritical for demanding actor Isaiah Washington’s head due to his use of the word “faggot” in reference to Grey’s Anatomy cast mate T.R. Knight, who has subsequently come out as gay, while failing to demand that supposed comic Charles Knipp’s performances of a blackface character he calls Shirley Q. Liquor be canceled whenever and where ever they may be. Yep, I agree. The two are both vile, disgusting and have no place in modern society. I also agree that the white gay power structure in this country is often hypocritical, racist and dismissive of the concerns of black people in general and black gays in particular. Why, then, can’t I get all that upset about various white gay folks calling for Washington’s termination from a television show? Maybe it’s because I can’t see two wrongs making anything right here.

I think the petition demanding that ABC/Disney fire Washington for his escapades is overkill. That’s not to say that the option shouldn’t be open to the network; just that the petition, which isn’t really worded as a petition, requires far more energy than the incident warrants. Washington deserves censure, for sure. He probably needs to get himself into counseling as well, especially if Washington has a history of violence as the petition alleges. I’d even go so far as to say that ABC/Disney should make counseling a condition of future employment–ever–at the network and at Disney Studios and its subsidiaries. Washington is a man with a problem. In fact, I think it’s the same problem that plagues actor/comic Michael Richards: rampant bigotry. Both men display a rage toward their objects of derision that is pathological, destroying themselves and everything (or everyone) around them. Bigots have a bad habit of thinking that it is only the people toward whom their hatred is directed who are hurt. That’s not at all true. They also hurt all of the people who look like or identify with their targets, people who are higher on the intellectual evolutionary ladder, friends and family on both sides as well as any witnesses to their hateful diatribes. In this case, as in the Richards case, that includes millions of people–and that’s only in the U.S. If one includes those around the world, that’s tens of millions of people. That’s an awful lot of hurt folks.

Cannick has written about “comic” Charles Knipp for some years now, as has author/lecturer/activist Keith Boykin, as have a host of others. I have yet to see Knipp’s act, but can draw some conclusions about it by reading news accounts of his shows being canceled in Boston and New York City and the negative press he has garnered thus far. Oh, and there is that MySpace page.

The first thing I gather is that the character Shirley Q. Liquor is egregiously offensive to a great many people. Knipp says the character is based on a woman he’s only barely smart enough not to call his “Mammy”–his childhood housekeeper in Texas. His reflections on pleasant childhood memories are stomach-churning in their familiarity based on movies like Gone With the Wind. “While there were many factors leading up to the creation of the character, Knipp said that Shirley Q. Liquor’s voice is partly inspired by Fannie Mae, his family’s housekeeper when he was growing up,” reads a 2002 Daily Free Press article written shortly after the Boston show was canceled. “Fannie had 16 children and taught me to say ‘how you durrin’ just like she did when I was five years old. She thinks my character is hilarious,” says Knipp. The character Liquor frequently misuses and mispronounces words and is mother to 19 children. She’s also big, fat and juicy in a mumu that serves as a dress. I have nothing against fat women, since I am one. However, I do have something against fat women who are made to look sloppy and slovenly as Knipp does with his character.

The comic says that he has many supporters, including RuPaul, Patti LaBelle, the Dixie Chicks and others. I write RuPaul off right away given her penchant for straight, blond wigs. I do, however, have to wonder why LaBelle would be supportive. Is she really, or is she just too polite to tell this guy that he’s an ass? Only LaBelle knows for sure.

The second thing that I can conclude is that Charles Knipp is a purposeful racist. At this point, I have to believe that he continues to perform his offensive act out of sheer spite. There have been too many protests and articles written in the press for him to be unaware of how hurtful and hated he is. There is no higher message here. There is no redeeming value. The mere fact that his act is performed in blackface is a major clue that this guy is an arrogant, willful racist who has every intention of demeaning black people. His act is not a loving homage to Southern black women. It is an insult. There is no doubt that the South is filled with black women who didn’t have the advantages that black women in the North had then or now. They didn’t have the access whites and many Northern blacks had to education and birth control. Therefore, it wasn’t uncommon for them to have very little book knowledge but a great deal of common sense. The one thing most of them had in common was the desire to keep their own children from having the lives they had. They wanted better for their children and worked very hard to make that happen. These are the qualities worthy of emulation, but they aren’t funny. No, those are deeply serious hurdles black women had to overcome to hold their heads up high. So although she may have raised some white chick’s kids because their mother couldn’t be bothered, Knipp’s black housekeeper did so in order to give her own a better life. Frankly, it pisses me off that Knipp would dare make fun of that.

Today, there is a black straight man who is a homophobe and a white gay man who is a racist. Both forms of bigotry are evil and insidious in our society. Knipp will be performing at the Factory in West Hollywood on February 11; The Bourbon Pub/Parade during Mardi Gras in New Orleans on February 15 and 20 and; Chez Est in Hartford, CT on February 23. It is my dearest hope that civil rights groups, gay rights groups and outraged citizens will protest each and every one of this man’s performances, raising a nasty stink that will make promoters think twice about hiring this racial assassin again. It’s not like the guy doesn’t have other characters, he does, but Shirley Q. Liquor is the one that gets him hired.

In contrast, Isaiah Washington only has his own intrinsic talent with which to earn a living as an actor. I think it is good and healthy that his despicable actions and words are being challenged. I also think that termination of employment should be an option that is put on the table for serious discussion. However, in the end, I think Washington may be redeemable given time, education and counseling. It is in Disney’s best interests to do so given their family image. By “family image,” I do not mean “family” as in Focus On the Family. I do mean “family” as in accepting of people who are decent, contributing members of society in all their varied forms. I also mean “family” as in LGBT people who go down to Disney World every year, pouring millions of dollars into corporate coffers and the local economy. In this case, money should talk while the bullshit that Washington has spewed should walk, even if he doesn’t.

The homophobe and the racist are both bad actors (pun intended). Neither one of them should get away with their misdeeds. In reading about Knipp, I learned that the overall gay community hasn’t been completely silent about the offensiveness of Knipp’s act, but they haven’t been very vocal either, with few exceptions. The way to solve that problem is not to give Washington a pass because that just perpetuates the wrong he’s already done. The thing to do is to hold groups like GLAAD, HRC and others accountable to black LGBT for their lack of presence in the Shirley Q. Liquor debate. The very last thing these groups want is to be held up to be racists themselves. That, frankly, would do a heck of a lot more damage to them as organizations than Charles Knipp can ever do to us as black people.

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