Archive
Your Black News: Newt Gingrich Calls GOP Blagojevich Antics A ‘Destructive Distraction’
Who could have guessed that the great moralist, Newt Gingrich, who, last year, called Spanish the “language of… the ghetto,” is having second thoughts, and realizing ethical flaws, in the smear-tactics he helped commission.
Well, in a letter to RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had the following to say about the GOP’s recent attempts to tie President-Elect Barack Obama to the Pay-to-Play endeavors of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:
From Politico:
I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.
The recent web advertisement, “Questions Remain,” is a destructive distraction. [...]
In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.
From now until the inaugural, Republicans should be offering to help the President-elect prepare to take office. [...]
The RNC should pull the ad down immediately.
Your Black World Headlines: 11/18/2008
Your Black News: Obama Victory Spurs Hundreds Of Hate Crimes
Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting “Assassinate Obama.” Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.
Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.
From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.
There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: “I hope Obama gets assassinated.” That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law’s front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.
She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear [...]
More At Your Black News
Your Black News: Is The Reparations Movement Dead?
Just a few years ago, at roughly the turn of the millennium, slavery reparations seemed the coming thing. A New York Times article in June 2001 reported that the movement to obtain compensation for slaves’ descendants had “taken on substantial force” and was “gaining steam” both in the nation’s universities and in the black community.
All the major black organizations had signed on, including the NAACP, the Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Randall Robinson’s book, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” had hit the bestseller lists in 2000. Many state and local Democratic politicians started to talk up the idea.
Then: nothing. Today, reparations seem to have completely disappeared from the national agenda. Few mention them anymore. What happened?
Your Black World Headlines: 10/30/2008
Your Black News: Femi Kuti Releases First Album In 7 Years
Femi Kuti (the son of Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti) is set to release Day By Day, his first studio album since Fight To Win seven years ago and first overall since the live Africa Shrine four years ago, on which he recorded early versions of three of the songs on this new album. Day By Day will be released Nov. 18 by the independent label Downtown Records’ newly launched imprint, Mercer Street.
Femi Kuti’s sabbatical from recording gave him time to learn to play piano properly and to return to the trumpet, his first instrument, which he gave up in favor of the saxophone. Kuti recorded the album with Positive Force, his 17-piece band.
Since Fela’s death in 1997, Femi, a songwriter, performer and bandleader in his own right, has brought his music to audiences that might never have heard of Fela. Femi toured America with the alt-rock band Jane’s Addiction, sang on Rachid Taha’s Made In Medina album and reached out to the American hip-hop community connecting with people such as Mos Def, D’Angelo, Nile Rodgers, Erykah Badu and the Roots [...]
More At Your Black News
Your Black News: Mass Media Struggles To Link Obama With Blagojevich Scandal
To anyone who lived through the media feeding frenzy of the 1990s, during which the nation’s leading news organizations spent the better part of a decade destroying their own credibility by relentlessly hyping a series of non-scandals, the past few days, in which the media have tried to shoehorn Barack Obama into the Rod Blagojevich scandal, have been sickeningly familiar.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer announced yesterday that “some are calling this Obama’s first presidential scandal.” It isn’t. There is no evidence he has done anything wrong. This is not Obama’s first presidential scandal — but it shows signs of becoming the first media scandal of the Obama presidency. [...]
If that happens — if the media continue to behave as they did in covering Whitewater — they will damage the country. It’s really that simple [...]
Please Click To Read More