Musings

I love the color palettes and attention to detail found in J Crew clothes but what is up with their catalog stylists? Why do they insist on grotesquely mismatching tops and bottoms? Why are they trying so hard to bring back material patterns that belong where they died. In the sixties.

J Crew designers are supreme masters at cutting perfect A-line dresses. But in their latest catalog, whose idea was it to pair up men's oxford shoes with evening apparel?

Only once in the past year was I tempted to purchase anything. It was a skirt. Not just a skirt. A whimsy of cream cloth worn over tights. As soon as I saw it I had to own it. But it had no item number to reference. No descriptive copy or price attended it. I called customer service anyway. After all, the thing of beauty I coveted appeared on a page all its own. There had to be an explanation behind the mystery.

When the customer service representative could not retrieve any information on the skirt and seemed just as fluxed as I was, she put me on hold to check with her supervisor. When she got back on the line she casually informed me the skirt actually belonged to the model in the photo. But it can't be! I cried into the phone. Why would J Crew send out a catalog presumably filled exclusively with their merchandise and showcase a chic piece a model happened to bring along with her to the shoot? For all we know she could have simply thrown it on before walking out the door, never thinking it would end up as property of J Crew. Surely I'm not the only customer in the entire world asking for the uncommon item.

What was J Crew thinking? "Oh, by the way, when you come in tomorrow bring a few pieces of your own because although we're known for selling well crafted fashion apparel, and we are indeed one of the mail order fashion houses strongest contenders, our own line falls short of having enough garments to fill up the required pages."
"Well, it is an odd request but if my own fashion sense is included in your catalog, how does that translate to the vision of J Crew and do I receive any residual payment?"
"No. You do not get a penny extra for lugging in your own wardrobe and why shouldn't we use your own clothes. After all, at J Crew we think of ourselves as every woman.

Politics is for Entertainment Purposes Only

By law psychics must post somewhere in their ads or on their premises that the service they provide is for entertainment purposes only. If you listen to talk radio and take in a steady diet of dinner with a side of cable airheads, you should take under advisement the same laws that apply to spiritual healers apply to watching news pundits.

I strive to be an equal opportunity listener, however it hit me like a brick after several days of listening to talk show conservatives rant on and on about the evil stimulus package Obama is trying to push through congress, that these men and women who say they speak for their fellow man clearly do not care about the welfare of their fellow men.

I am not supporting the stimulus package either way here. The way it is written I do not see it as a healing agent for our economic woes, though I do want to give a shout out to Paul Krugman and his piece in last week's Rolling Stone Mag www.rollingstone.com. I thought it provided great insight in how best to handle our economic crisis. In fact Mr. Krugman had the mindful authority to personally pitch his piece directly to the president.

But to hear right wing conservatives blast the stimulus package in the same forked tongue they used to advance Bush's war monger ideology is nothing short of blasphemy! Joe Scarborough this morning was carrying on about how wrong he and all his republican cohorts were when they listened to Bush and supported invading Iraq even after the weapon inspectors found no WMD's. He then said in the same breath, so why should the republican party now follow Obama into economic purgatory. Where is the logical thread here? Where is the rationale for comparing apples to oranges? These people get paid for talking. They get paid a very lavish salary, especially in today's depressed times. Yet there is not one insightful, smart, illuminating thought among them. Stand on any line today and strike up a conversation with the person behind or in front of you, and regardless of their party allegiance, you will have a more engaging, intelligent dialogue than you will hear on any of our highly technological advanced airwaves today.

There were plenty of loud voices raised before there was ever a raised fist singing praises to 'shock & awe' but did Mr. Scarborough or any of his party members listen? NO! They did not! But to listen to Mr. Scarborough this morning you would have to assume that Bush sucked out his brain for the last eight years and only now, in the light of a new day, did he get back his cerebral skill set.

Again, I am not defending Obama's stimulus proposal. But I am in desperate search of an intelligent approach to dissecting the proposal's pros and cons. I am in agreement that the dems apparently did sneak in a whole bunch of dusty agendas they kept hidden away from Pappa Bush. But to hear Joe Scarborough scream about the monies going to food stamps and unemployment insurance as wasteful and deplorable is too much to stomach.

Moreover, where were all these Republicans screaming for President Bush to stop throwing millions of our tax dollars onto the streets of Baghdad? Why didn't they demand accounting for millions of our dollars when our soldiers over in Iraq can tell you how many times they were ordered to hand out bags of cash to people with no intentions other than to use the money to work against and harm our soldiers. Our soldiers can tell congress just how wasteful all that 'throw about cash' was, and how no good came of it. No reliable intelligence or helpful information was revealed or uncovered. Just our tax dollars hard at work at 'WHAT?'

If nothing less but for all the American families that have recently lost their incomes and have no idea how they are going to get through these very difficult times, to collect unemployment checks and buy food via food stamps, it is absolutely imperative for congress to pass some kind of emergency fund budget.

If congress wants to cut out all of the stimulus bill's so called pork and remove every Democratic Christmas wish list item, so be it. But to yell about food stamps and increased social service programs in these horrific days is the same as kicking a man when he's down!! How egregiously hard-hearted can one Republican get!

How can any Republican look himself or herself in the mirror when they know every single day that goes by now hundreds of thousands of American families and individuals have just been cut from their life lines. How they can deny food and medical services to these families and their children? Thank God the SCHIP bill finally got signed, no thanks to the republicans. At least that will help somewhat in the absence of the stimulus package getting approved.

As long as their own families are being fed and taken care of I guess Republicans on the airwaves will always be nearsighted when it comes to passing social programs for the poor.

Black is the new White

Here is my 2009 February Black History Month composition:

It has become abundantly clear in the past twelve months leading up to Obama's inauguration address that we had the privilege to witness an event no one alive today ever thought they would see in their own lifetime.

Obama himself has made humorous remarks in this regard. Just last night in reference to Robert E. Lee he joked if he was with us tonight he would be 202 and very confused. But there are much larger issues at hand today that need our collective vision to venture far beyond the obvious, "Never did I think I'd see in my lifetime." refrains.

Our sights should be set on the way black children have begun to identify with the big, bold changes they see happening. Will Obama's presence in the presidency help to make big, bold changes in their lives as well?

His presence in the White House has already made radical changes happen in certain industries. You can't pick up a magazine or watch TV today and not notice that Denzel Washington and Beyonce are no longer the gold standard by which all black men and women are judged. A large majority of recent print ads and TV commercials have instantly switched from using solely beautiful white models to purposely hiring beautiful black models.

So yes, it's very apparent that Obama's contribution in the media has provided a win fall for all black models and actresses. Their profile and ability to get the part has risen overall one thousand percent. But will this cultural 'What looks good on the cover of People Magazine' transformation also mean a sweeping change in how we supply funding and teach education for our poor and underprivileged children as well?

This is where we need the positive currency of having a black president make the most difference in these children's lives. Before the drug dealer on the corner attaches an appendage to them, before the gang mentality on the corner internalizes in their psyche, before they see their neighborhood as just a kaleidoscope of mean streets and hostile vibes. Before they get a bullet in their back or one way ticket to jail.

Although it is critically important for all our children, no matter what genetic code or ethnicity they bestow, to be able to identify with the images they see in magazines and on TV, if the resources are not available, after they toss the tabloid on the floor or turn off the television set, for them to have the opportunity to attend good schools with well-equipped classrooms that receive natural light and offer clean bathrooms, with heat in the winter and a cool breeze in the summer, and most essential, caring and concerned teachers willing to tutor and not just teach, then all the glossy, perfect pictures in the world will not change the reality they wake up to and have to contend with every single day of their lives.

This momentous change in our nation's history should not and cannot be squandered and lost on ad nauseous realms regarding Obama's celebrity hype and our country's catastrophic economic downturns.

A Clear Case of Black & White

Let's be fair - height does matter and it never matters more than when a man sets himself up to run for the highest office in the land. If democrats truly wanted to hold up an anti-Bush candidate they had the most eloquent active warrior in Dennis Kucinich.

No democrat candidate or congress person was more enthusiastically engaged in bringing down the horror house of Bush-Cheney than Congressman Kucinich. But Kucinich was too short to be president and standing only a foot or two away from him was a tall, black senator who could speak intelligently and had the political swag in his tongue to answer any question put forth to him in a sane, rational and reasonable manner.

Now that tall, dignified, articulate senator from Illinois is set to become our first president of color and as the country, no, the entire planet waits breathlessly for his first presidential spoken words, he has already seen his first piece of policy legislation effortlessly passed by congress. Media pundits have heralded Obama's first act as president, before even being sworn in as president, as a feat of brilliant strategy!

It's come as quite a shock to our stale and greedy-gut political system that one man can serve the interest of both political parties, but his closest advisers weren't surprised at the president-elects non-partisan political mastery. They confidently knew from the start Obama had the skill set to get both parties willing to break rank and rancor.

After all, Obama's nerve center grew up having to appease both the white and black separatists in his own genetic background, in his own family tree, in his own body!

When you break down Obama's psychological profile and take into account the unfortunate and sad events that happened to him as a child together with the real as well as perceived abandonment issues of his early childhood, concerning both his mother as well as his father, it only makes good logic to put forth Obama could either have grown up angry and hostile or overly-sensitive and too eager to please.

Fortunately for our sake and the sake of his and our children, Obama chose to ferment slowly and diplomatically. Getting only a small, brief taste of his father's African ancestry and culture, Obama grew up predominately in a white world and had to grasp early on in his social development how his own loving, affectionate grandmother could fear people who wore the same skin color as he did. Talk about mixed messages. That's hardly a paradox any young child could be expected to internalize and process without great psyche damage being done.

Yet Obama appears to have accomplished just that. Without knowing what his interior life goes through on a daily basis, except from what he has told us through his writings and countless speeches, Obama epitomizes every human virtue we would want in our president. Intelligence, warmth, empathy, compromise, as well as a penchant for truth, justice and non-violence. Buddha himself could not have asked for more.

The hardships Obama has had to endure in his life seem to custom tailor him for this moment in history. A man who walks every step in two mindsets, two colors, may be just the man destined to transcend two very polarized and paralyzed, political parties.

Dennis Kucinich A Voice of Reason

Dennis Kucinich announced today that the

Federal Reserve No More "Federal" Than Federal Express!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pVV4n2lKHk



Alexander Hamilton is revered in this country for having started the concept of banking in 1791, but if you read history, esp Burr by Gore Vidal, you discover an unflattering, living, breathing account of Hamilton as a man who was very skilled at looking out first and foremost for his own best interests.

The recent bail out package assigned to banks which resulted in absolutely no correction as far as our frozen credit markets are concerned should make obvious that two hundred and some odd years later, very little has changed.

Our sad current banking system clearly illustrates that Hamiliton's sense of entitlement and self-interest still reigns in the hallowed vaults of every bank and small print tucked inside every corporate bank lending policy.

Hot off the AP Wire

WASHINGTON – Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin."

Their comments are a part of an oral history of the Bush White House that Vanity Fair magazine compiled for its February issue, which hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and nationally on Jan. 6. Vanity Fair published comments by current and former government officials, foreign ministers, campaign strategists and numerous others on topics that included Iraq, the anthrax attacks, the economy and immigration.

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.

"It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president — because, let's face it, that's what he was — was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire," Wilkerson said, adding that he considered Cheney probably the "most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur" he'd ever met.

"He became vice president well before George Bush picked him," Wilkerson said of Cheney. "And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush — personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum."

The ignorance of the American public to be hoodwinked and lied to is never more than a sound bite away.

Say NO to Rick Warren

If you've done your investigative homework on Pastor Rick Wareen better than Barack Obama did, then you understand better than Barack Obama does that the term inclusive does not mean that you make a decision to embrace a man who is a self-made demagogue and was lifted to the level of spiritual celebrity with the help of a free press that did not do their homework either.

Pastor Rick Warren is a man who tells his female church members to submit to their husbands in every way possible, in or outside the bedroom.

Pastor Rick Warren is a man with a purpose driven life alright. Part of his purpose apparently is to exclude gay and lesbian people from becoming members of his church, oh but you won't find that out because that line was just (conveniently) removed from his web site's mission statement yesterday

Pastor Rick Warren is a man, who in defense of his opinions regarding gay and lesbians told Ann Curry of the 'Today' Show that he holds himself back from having sex with every beautiful woman he sees. First, what does that have to do with his opinions on gays and lesbians? Second thought is, gee, he doesn't even want to get to know her a little bit first? All he wants is to have sex? If it looks like a misogynist and talks like a misogynist and thinks like misogynist, it is a flaming, bible thumping, misogynist. Clergyman or not.

Pastor Rick Warren has also said in another interview that it is this country's duty to kill the head of Iran.

Pastor Rick Warren talks a great deal about environmental issues but what exactly has he done about it? Not much unless you count setting up missionaries all over Africa to proselytize and convert as many as possible to his way of thinking attacking environmental issues?

Obama says words do matter. It's time he thought about the words Pastor Rick Warren is spewing.

It's time Obama thought about the fact that he has put Rick Warren, a misogyny pig, in a position to bless my country. My country and Obama's I thought stood for equality among all, not just who Pastor Rick Warren's Christian retail style of religion appeals to.

Who's Jimmy Stewart?

I received a comment today from a reader (and thank you for reading and the kind words!) regarding my last article, It's The Press Stupid, asking who Jimmy Stewart was.

I keep forgetting that in my head I'm barely out of my twenties, but in dog years I'm really ancient. So I hereby apologize for taking for granted that everyone would get the reference because they were as old as I am.

Jimmy Stewart was an American film and stage actor. During his heyday, the thirties and forties, he was considered one of the Brad Pitts of his time. He starred in too many classic films to list here but you may have seen him in, It's A Wonderful Life, since it's shown every year around this time.

The film I was thinking of though was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington which was made in 1939. For it's in that movie he plays a man naive enough to think that politics should be an honest profession and pay an honest man an honest wage.

The point I was making in my piece was a sad lament that none of the journalists of our pop culture today has the courage or guts or maybe it's just a lack of intelligence? to stand up to a person of political authority and point a finger and say, "Now just hold on a minute sir! the way Jimmy Stewart did in that movie. Youtube has clips of the movie's critical scenes.

My piece in fact, though it was written nearly two months ago, was just crystallized last week when Charlie Gibson (there he is again missing the whole point!) interviewed President Bush and neglected to bring up Scott Ritter's name when he asked Bush if he would have done anything different if he knew there were no WMD's in Iraq before invading. Bush got away Scott free again!!! Pun intended!

Then again, this past weekend when George Stephanopoulos was speaking with Condolezza Rice on his Sunday ABC show, This Week, he also brought up invading Iraq, and would she have thought twice if she knew there were no WMD's and she practically chewed his head off! From there he went to a clip of Rice playing the piano for the Queen of England. Nice segue George.

Neither man presented the question correctly to begin with, but even so, both men either forgot or did not do their homework sufficiently before coming on the air. But on both programs, when the same question was brought up by two supposedly well respected news men, both men failed big time to follow up with the obvious lobe question. Both men failed to do their jobs as respected news journalists. Both men were paid the big bucks for doing a very poor job.

And the consequences of that ineptitude, their incompetence or downright lack of courage, only helps add to the number of families in this country as well as in Iraq who still bury their dead loved ones because our press corp lack the most basic, essential skills to do their job.

It's The Press Stupid

When President Bush and his administration wanted to sneak past Congress and shock and awe Iraq, not one journalist stood up and said "Now just hold on one gosh darn Jimmy Stewart minute there sir."

When President Bush and his administration stood in front of this country, our congress, heck the entire world, and blatantly lied about the reasons they had to "liberate' Iraq' not one journalist or congress person lifted one finger to investigate further than regurgitate back to their readers and television viewership Bush's talking points. Not one journalist had the courage to question, and if need be, question again, and then question again, no matter how many times it was necessary to get under Bush's skin in order to uncover the true meaning behind Bush's doctrine definition of what 'to liberate' meant.

When President Bush and his administration wanted to get the Patriot Act passed by Congress not one journalist stood up and said "Can you explain to the American public sir exactly why you're determined to take away some of the very same rights Americans fought and died for too many times over?"

When President Bush and his administration knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction aimed at us or Israel or hidden behind any Iraqi school, hospital or industrial plant, not one journalist stood up and "Now just hold on one gosh darn minute here sir. When your own top weapon inspector, Scott Ritter, came back and swore he found nothing, absolutely nothing to support your claim that Saddam is hoarding anything, never mind weapons of mass destruction, you and Cheney turned a deaf ear to him and slammed Iraq with the stale old defense that Saddam was defying UN resolutions and no one other than your pal by default, Tony Blair, England's prime minster, backed you up, you still went ahead with your plans against everything and everyone that cried out loudly to stop! Then when our footprint was firmly planted in soil we had no business stepping onto, you hired Blackwater, a private military contractor to shadow our own Army and help you destroy any shred of decency our code of ethical conduct as a country had left to feel proud about."

Nine years ago when Bush and Gore were out on the campaign trail no journalist ever sat Bush down and sternly eyeballed him as Charlie Gibson just recently did to Sarah Palin. Not one American journalist ever tried to ridicule Bush about his glib answers to critical issues that were facing our country at that time. They never brought him to task over his corny imitation of a cowboy when he was nothing of the kind. Not one reporter, other than the comedy news outlets (see Can You Tell a Good Joke from 10/24/08) made mincemeat out of his inability to form grammatical correct sentences or speak articulately on any subject matter pertinent to someone who was running for the highest office in the land.

Not once did our press corp ever hold Bush's feet to the fire even when he ran four years later as an incumbent and his greasy, dirty, scrawny, incoherent handwriting was already plastered on every single wall.

Now fast forward to our present electorally process - you have to hold your ear very closely to the ground to hear the rumblings from the Republicans. They are seriously upset and rightly so about the press giving Obama a free pass. The same free pass the press gave to Bush over and over and over again. McCain's campaign staff are complaining that the press is giving a free pass to Joe Biden's verbal blunders. Sarah Palin herself brought it up to the press asking them to imagine what kind of media circus would have been going on right now if she had made the same sort of statement Biden made about this country being dangerously tested if Obama is elected president. Yet in the press it was immediately swept under the rug as if the words were never spoken.

Our so called free press has made it very clear they want Obama as the next president. Where is the difference between what MSNBC and CNN is doing now in comparison to what FOX News has been doing for the last decade? The world of politics is no different than the world of children at play. When the ball is in your court you're happy, but when the ball is taken away and the other side is winning you no longer feel like playing. You may complain bitterly that your opponent has the advantage but who really cares? Only the other players on your team and if no one steps up to the plate and cries unfair!! your words become just dust in the air.

The idea that we have a free press has become at this point just an urban legend. The press is no longer free nor does it want to be. It's very grateful to it's corporate sponsorship. Apart from Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on CNN, cable news is nothing more than sheer entertainment for political junkies who crave junk news without substance or investigative backbone.

PBS stations across the country are probably the last hold out for independent, intelligent news discussion, but the ridiculously easy questions lobed to the candidates at the Sept. 28th debate by PBS's Jim Lehrer's certainly do not make a strong case for that argument.

There were so many missed opportunities to ask the kind of questions that might have kept us out of Iraq and saved how many lives - the concept is just too deflating to think about. It's too late to turn back the last eight years but if the press doesn't stand up and ask the hard questions now, then no matter who is in the oval office, there will be no one looking over their shoulder, there will be no one looking out for you.

Can You Tell a Good Joke?

If a great sense of humor is your strongest strength and you know how to set a joke up, have impeccable timing to tell it with perfect punch, then rather than just being known as the life of the party you can become television's newest media darling.

Yes, sorry to all the ladies that lunch, but our culture has moved on past generalized talk shows hosted by big name female entertainers such as Oprah and Ellen, Bonnie and the entire cast of The View.

For it appears that the hottest trend growing on prime time tonight is pseudo news format shows headed up by a man. But we're talking just any man. No siree. You're only marketable if you're a clever, funny and hip, in the know male comedian. It's another issue of course that your Emmy will be shared among a writing staff of at least twenty-five ivy league grads. But I digress.

Television program development honchos have placed their paychecks as well as their future employment reputations on plucking out familiar male stand-up comediennes from the comedy circuit gene pool, and giving him own prime time slot, his own set design, his own logo persona and full comedic carte blanche to interview, and even earnestly, albeit mockingly debate real issues with real political figures.

The extent to which these "comedic news anchors" are influencing today's political platforms I'll leave to political science students to thread their thesis upon.

My point is strictly on perception alone.
Ever since the most highly popular, top ad rated, comic driven politicized talk shows such as :
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert have taken over the airwaves and are just so good at taking swipes at real news events and political figures, legitimate cable news operatives like CNN have finally taken the hint and put their together their own band of comedic merry men to deliver the news. Tune into CNN Breaking News with D.L. Hughley or CNN Chocolate News with David Alan Grier.

A phenomena that demonstrates self-evident proof that today's news really is a joke!