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| Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! End communication. |
“Fifty years after the March on Washington and the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, obviously we’ve made enormous strides,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question from a professor of African-American studies. “I’m a testament to it. You’re a testament to it.” He added that “we know that some discrimination still exists, although nothing like what existed 50 years ago.”
“But,” he added, “let’s assume that we eliminated all discrimination magically with a wand, and everybody had goodness in their heart, you’d still have a situation in which there are a lot of folks who are poor, and whose families have become dysfunctional, because of a long legacy of poverty, and live in neighborhoods that are run-down and schools that are underfunded and don’t have a strong property tax base.”
His solution, he continued, was to promote programs like an expansion of early childhood education and his latest effort to make college more affordable — including, he said, making law school two years instead of three.
Okay!
I've long offered two suggestions, one that Obama would never take up (although deep down, during his most depressed episodes, he might have to admit it makes sense), the other of which he might adopt. After all, my second proposal is at least more relevant to the current occasion than shortening law school is.
The first is:
Why not use that propitious occasion to declare victory in the long war on Jim Crow and white racism and announce you are bringing the federal troops home?
The second is to use the celebration over MLK's famous speech on August 28, 1963 to call for permanently commemorating the event by moving the currently not very popular MLK holiday from the frigid middle of January to late August:
Fortunately, one simple change in the holiday could end this racial divisiveness and unite workers of all colors in demanding a paid holiday honoring King.
The federal holiday currently falls on the third Monday in January. In 2004, that's Jan. 19. It's a great time for a holiday -- if you live in Honolulu or Key West. ...
If we moved the King holiday to the Monday a week before Labor Day, it would suddenly become hugely popular. Everybody would want to take the last Monday in August off.
This would also rebalance our holiday calendar. It's dysfunctional that we currently have three holidays in the months of January and February, but none in the two months between the Fourth of July and Labor Day.
Having two consecutive three-day weekends at the end of summer wouldn't disrupt business much, because the week before Labor Day already ranks with the post-Christmas week as one of the slowest periods of the year.
Many people already consider the end of August a good time for a vacation. Europeans have found that making August the semi-official vacation month works well. With our shorter vacations, we could make the week before Labor Day a semi-expected vacation time, just as the week between Christmas and New Year's already is.
This schedule would allow workers to take a 10-day vacation running from the Saturday before the new MLK day through Labor Day, yet use only four vacation days.
Or is the current (unspoken) thinking that holding the MLK holiday in dead cold winter keeps blacks from making trouble? Maybe. But my vague impression is that late spring or early summer is the rowdiest time of the year, while late summer is mellower, more lazy and hazy than crazy. Somebody should study the subject using data.
How about (Harvey) MILK day?
ReplyDeleteI Crave a Ream.
You want to know how much of an evil whitey I am?
ReplyDeleteI've fantasized about that Maoist looking MLK statue in D.C. being pulled down by a tank a la saddam style, surrounded by cheering White crowds.
If that ever happens, I'd die happy, that's for sure.
“Fifty years after the March on Washington and the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, obviously we’ve made enormous strides,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question from a professor of African-American studies. “I’m a testament to it."
ReplyDeleteIt really took him only two sentences to come back to the topic of his own self?
"How about (Harvey) MILK day?
ReplyDeleteI Crave a Ream."
That was funny!
Excellent idea to move MLK day to late August. Let's take it a step further and re-name the holiday to the more inclusive Civil Rights Day.
ReplyDeleteIn this way, the movement does not stand on a single person but is an acknowledgement that others have paid the price and were involved with the struggle for equality before the law.
Obama's ideal speech this coming week:
"I am your dream, fully realized. I am the dream that someone of a different color can in fact be elected to the highest office in the land, thus fulfilling Dr. MLK's theme that the dream has come true. But while my personal dreams have come true more than ever imagined as a youngster in faraway exotic Honolulu, it is important that we achieve the ongoing work that was begun by the civil rights movement that we are working toward a more perfect people where race will no longer be considered a detriment nor a hindrance to achieving whatever dreams each of us, regardless of color, can ever hope to achieve.
In this way, we will one day become more of a perfect union as our people retain the spirit of true civil rights that were begun some decades ago by many including that of Dr. MLK."
There's the speech outline of what to expect.
this MLK story is at the top of the google news page.
ReplyDeleteWhy is that?
Do you really think this story is more popular with the american people right now than anything else?
NO!
The elite have shoved multiculturalism, racial integration, mass immigration and civil rights laws and decisions down our throats for decades now.
Why?
Because these things put money in rich wallets.
Divide and conquer, that is the elite strategy. And with racial segregation, little immigration, etc, the rich cannot get their hands on cheap labor and they cannot turn the voters against one another.
"You're a testament to it".
ReplyDeleteThe dimensions of the black professoriate in 1963 were circumscribed, but there certainly was a black professoriate (notably at black colleges). It is just that they taught conventional academic subjects and did not collect in foetid institutional puddles like "African-American Studies".
I'm a testament to it.
The vice-president of the United States during the Hoover Administration was a Cherokee mestizo who started his career ca. 1892, at about the ugliest time imaginable for a racial minority during the post-bellum political society. IIRC, the man had some palpable familiarity with Cherokee society. Obama was reduced to listening to Frank Marshall Davis and watching Soul Train.
===
Counterfeit blacks in political offices an counterfeit scholars taking up space on faculties. Progress.
I can't see that black people are better off than they were in the Sixties. Their "culture" is a mess.
ReplyDeleteShow ya what the government can do when they claim to "help people."
Is it just me? That is such an ugly statue! The face looks like that of a mean-spirited bitter person lacking any warmth, humanity or nobility. It kind of looks like a statue you would find in an old communist country.
ReplyDeleteIt kind of looks like a statue you would find in an old communist country.
ReplyDeleteI think it was made in an old communist country - China.
The MLK statue is a good example of the dangers of outsourcing. In spirit it is closer to a Mao statue.
ReplyDeleteMy hunch is that the Chinese sculptor, who was slopping hogs during the Cultural Revolution, seldom saw African-Americans on TV until Mike Tyson's rise in the 1980s. So, his MLK looks a lot like Iron Mike. Somebody should try photoshopping Tyson's face tattoo onto this sculpture to see if my impression makes sense.
ReplyDeleteAs Anon suggests, we just have to have a gay holiday. Obviously, we also must have a Muslim holiday to balance out Christmas. But let's not leave out our brown friends, and their ever-expanding numbers. We need a holiday for them too. Well, one day to start. After, amnesty kicks in we are going to need more than one day. We can always ditch Presidents Day, since that's about dead white men.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure this is a good idea.
ReplyDeleteImagine MLK Day evening some hot August night on some generic big, vibrant city's MLK Boulevard.
That might turn too hot and too vibrant for most cities' police forces.
I've thought that making the "black" holiday commemorate abolition in the form of "Juneteenth," which stems from the anniversary of emancipation in Texas. This accomplishes several things:
ReplyDelete1) As with your suggestion, it rids us of the pointless holiday in mid-January when everyone is just getting back into the swing of work after Christmas and New Years.
2) It gets us to an unofficial standard that no holiday commemorates an individual American. If George Washington doesn't get one, no one else does either. Sure, we still have Columbus Day, but I can live with that because early October is a damn fine time for a long weekend.
3) We could celebrate it on whatever Monday in June falls in the teens, which has a fun quasi-accuracy about it, unlike MLK's birthday (observed).
4) In terms of the establishment narrative of the country's history, which is about the gradual extension of rights to broader classes of people, emancipation is probably the single most important event in that history. As important as the civil rights movement was, the country wasn't nearly split in two over it.
5) Most schools are out by then, which lowers the potential for interruption.
6) It would fall roughly mid-way between Memorial Day and July 4. The two-to-three week intervals between each holiday would probably be too long for most people to take as one vacation. But, lots of people do go on vacation at some point in that first half of summer (which begins for practical purposes with Memorial Day). This would give them three options for taking a full week while using only four days of time off.
I kid you not. Rolex uses Martin Luther King in their advertising. Saw a full page ad in the FT a few months ago.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing about Civil Rights is discriminating against Whites to make up for past discrimination against Blacks.
And yes, Martin Luther King was a fraud. Why? Because he wore a Rolex. You can't be God's Drum Major for Justice as he styled himself and wear a watch that costs today at a min $4,000, and back then about the same. I don't begrudge Prince or Shaq wearing one, as entertainers they earned it, all they do is entertain me, and they don't give me moral lectures.
But if someone is going to give moral lectures, the least I expect is for them to eat their own cooking. Its like a chef who won't eat at his own restaurant. If King was legit, he'd never have worn a Rolex. He did so he's not.
As for Black culture, a great success. No, really. As Blacks have become more and more aggressive and dysfunctional, Whites worship them more and more. Quiet success or middling about like Hispanics is "boring" and no one wants that. Instead, Blacks are so different, so alien to White experience that they get worshiped as a substitute for old, dead God. Courtesy Nietzsche. What, Blacks would make money in Silicon Valley? On Wall Street? As MDs? Social dominance through threat ever present of violence is a way to punch far above numbers and get the rest of society to do what your group wants them to do. Very successful.
That's why ads are filled with Black actors, often the point is the product/service if used will get the approbation of Blacks by the White user; or lack of it disapproval. The other twist is that Blacks approve of the product/service. It sells. Because most Whites most of the time worship Blacks. See the NFL, NBA, etc. Or the King Holiday. King is America's Saint, obviously more important even that Lincoln or Washington now.
The Chinese-looking Martin Luther King... frozen in carbonite, and in perfect hibernation.
ReplyDeleteI think the MLK statue is a monument to black cluelessness. Not only does MLK have Chinese facial features, he's white. The only thing black about him is the gang sign he appears to be making.
ReplyDeleteBouncer of the Mall.
ReplyDeleteOr is it Sonny Liston?
whitewashington of MLK.
ReplyDeleteAdded benefit: King day would no longer conflict with Robert E. Lee day.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous Whitehall said...
ReplyDelete"I'm not sure this is a good idea."
Yeah, I can see the coverage now:
"Vibrancy in Action. It's because you're a racist. News at 11."
The dimensions of the black professoriate in 1963 were circumscribed, but there certainly was a black professoriate (notably at black colleges). It is just that they taught conventional academic subjects and did not collect in foetid institutional puddles like "African-American Studies".
ReplyDeleteThere was an article in the LA Times the other day about a black, straight-A high school student from a crappy LA public school who is now struggling as a freshman at Cal:
"By the end of his senior year, Kashawn's 4.06 grade point average was second best in the senior class. Because of a statewide program to attract top students from every public California high school, a spot at a UC system campus waited for him.
[...]
In College Writing 1A, his essays — pockmarked with misplaced words and odd phrases — were so weak that he would have to take the class again.
He had never felt this kind of failure, nor felt this insecure. The second term was just days away and he had a 1.7 GPA. If he didn't improve his grades by school year's end, he would flunk out.
[...]
The biggest of his burdens was schoolwork. At Jefferson, a long essay took a page and perfect grades came after an hour of study a night.
At Cal, he was among the hardest workers in the dorm, but he could barely keep afloat.
Seeking help, he went at least once a week to the office of his writing instructor, Verda Delp.
The more she saw him, the more she worried. His writing often didn't make sense. He struggled to comprehend the readings for her class and think critically about the text.
[...]
There was little to show for the effort. On yet another failing essay, the instructor wrote how surprised she was at his lack of progress, especially, she noted, given the hours they'd spent going over his "extremely long, awkward and unclear sentences."
Black Studies to the rescue!
"One morning this summer he walked slowly to the kitchen table, sat in a black chair and cracked open his laptop. Cal's website had just posted grades.
He scrolled down the page and saw the results for College Writing. His teacher said he'd improved slightly, but not enough. She gave him an incomplete. To get a grade he'd have to turn in two more essays, if he came back to school.
His heart raced. He saw that he'd passed a three-unit seminar. He scanned further, his eyes resting finally on a line that said African American Studies 5A. There was his grade.
A-.
"Yes!" he exclaimed. An A- lifted his GPA above a 2.0.
He wasn't a freshman anymore. He would return to Cal for his sophomore year."
So a kid who couldn't write a coherent freshman-level essay, even after repeating the class and working with a tutor all year long, still manages to get an A in an Afro-American studies class? What a comment on the quality of AA studies classes. Apparently they were introduced precisely for this reason, to allow blacks who can't deal with real college curricula to attend and graduate from elite universities like Cal Berkley.
There are also a couple of interesting footnotes in the article about Cal's racial hypocrisy ("A semester later, Kashawn Campbell sat inside a cramped room on a dorm floor that Cal reserves for black students.") and the apparent prevalence of Leftspeak on campus ("It's usually subtle things, glances or not being invited to study groups. Little, constant aggressions.").
As a representative of 'the blacks', I would like to confirm that, yes, we would run around and make trouble if MLK day was changed as you prefer, Steve. Thanks for listening!
ReplyDeleteThere was an article in the LA Times the other day about a black, straight-A high school student from a crappy LA public school who is now struggling as a freshman at Cal:
ReplyDeleteYou have two explanations for this tale. One is truncated intellectual development due to a deficit of challenge during his primary and secondary school years. The other is a deficit of transparency in the performance indicators the admissions examiner was making use of at that UC campus conjoined to ignoring the indicators which were there. The result is deadweight loss. He is in a program to which he is comparatively ill-adapted, he is a time sink for his teachers, and he is not learning any salable skills (in part because he is in over his head and in part because he is not following vocational courses).
Years ago, an instructor at a college in Minnesota offered a precis to Richard John Neuhaus of the subtypes of experience black students at his institution had and in conclusion offered this judgment of AA there: "we are doing it for us". It was not benefiting any segment of the student body.
That's higher education and that's what it does: it provides agreeable salaried employment for members of the word-merchant tribe and for various and sundry apparatchiki that a commercial employer might chew up and spit out. (Including yours truly). Services to the clients are a side benefit, and distributed haphazardly.
ReplyDeleteMLK Day should be shifted to June 31st.
Either that, or MLK Day should be on February 29th, to exemplify how Affirmative Action and all the other baseless race preferences allow unqualififed blacks to leap over Whites whose output makes them deserving of college admmission, employment, &c.
"So a kid who couldn't write a coherent freshman-level essay, even after repeating the class and working with a tutor all year long, still manages to get an A in an Afro-American studies class?"
ReplyDeletethere was an NCAA football player a few years ago who admitted that the only book he had ever read was about africans being discriminated against in sports, recommended to him by a professor in the african american studies department.
this guy had just graduated and was entering the NFL draft and this was a comment from one of his draft interviews.
read that again. he had just graduated. from a university. openly admitting he had only ever completely read ONE SINGLE BOOK in his ENTIRE life.
how do you graduate from college without reading any books?
sorry, but the entire enterprise is a fraud. our society has gone to astounding lengths to accommodate these people.
Martin Luther King III said today that "the color of one's skin is still a license to kill that person."
ReplyDeleteHe's so right.
Ask Shorty Belton and Christopher Lane.
August the 5th should be given consideration as it's the date of one of his greatest personal triumphs way back in 1966 in Chicago's Marquette Park neighborhood. His very presence there galvanized crowds of enraptured locals who threw rose petals and other love offerings his way. Being momentarily overcome by emotion, he actually went down on one knee, as if in prayer, in order to regain his composure. There was magic in the air that day.
ReplyDeleteAugust would certainly provide plenty of time for flash-mob celebratory activities for all such inclined youths before they head off for institutions of higher learning such as Stateville.
Jody:
ReplyDeleteYou're thinking of Kemba "Read a Book" Walker.
http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/29758/kemba-walker-recently-read-his-first-book
Now, back to the subject matter at hand. Obama said:
His solution, he continued, was to promote programs like an expansion of early childhood education and his latest effort to make college more affordable
You don't have to dig far into both proposals to find out that they do nothing but shovel money into the coffers of two big constituents of the YAY BLUE TEAM. Obama is reduced to spouting short soundbyte teleprompter talking points everywhere he speaks in public.
When the MLK statue was first unveiled, Steve referred to it as "Ming the Merciless". That still fits well.
ReplyDeleteThere was a big scandal at the University of North Carolina a year or two ago involving the African American Studies department. Lots of athletes (and non-athletes too, apparently) getting credit for little or no academic work. Not even showing up for class in many cases.
ReplyDeleteWould be surprised if that sort of thing wasn't the norm in AA Studies departments in Division 1 schools. They're there to keep the football and basketball players eligible.
No need for the president to reference Trayvon--Martin Luther King III already has. When I saw the headline on Drudge today that read, "MLK III: COLOR OF SKIN REMAINS LICENSE TO MURDER," for a second I thought he was addressing the recent spate of vicious murders committed by young blacks against whites. No, no, of course he was talking about Trayvon and pretending his death was murder and not justifiable homicide.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who would expect an iota of integrity from anyone in the civil rights movement hasn't been keeping up.
sorry, but the entire enterprise is a fraud.
ReplyDeleteI should mention that the liberal arts institution I know best hands out about 30 diplomas to black students each year. IIRC, they usually average about two a year in "Africana and blah blah studies" etc. The top four majors for black students there enrolled are the same as those for the student body in general (political science, English literature, economics, and history). That particular institution has almost no vocational programs.
One minor reason many might want MLK day in January is that it's an automatic day off of school during a time of year when many schools may need to use a snowday, meaning less to make up in June. There are at least a couple of times that I remember an MLK day which would have been a snowday if it weren't a holiday.
ReplyDeleteAs a newcomer to the USA, I allow myself to suggest to move Thanksgiving holiday to the middle of Fall semester - e. g. to Halloween.
ReplyDeleteThree holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year days are too close to each other.
Thanksgiving is just before the final exams of Fall semester.
Make new Thanksgiving-Halloween to become Fall analog of Spring break.
The statue itself is a monument to Black bigotry. Clearly the committee couldn't find a Black American sculptor with the skill to carve it. A White sculptor (and there are plenty) was out of the question. Ditto European artists. The Chinese were a face-saving solution.
ReplyDeleteThe story behind the monument is a dead giveaway to how Black Americans really think. It's absurd. It's perfect.
>But let's not leave out our brown friends, and their ever-expanding numbers. We need a holiday for them too. Well, one day to start. After amnesty kicks in we are going to need more than one day.<
ReplyDeleteBut we have one day for this already.
Cinco de Mayo, baby!
Any real learning that takes place at any level of the school system is, to borrow a phrase from the late great Bob Ross, "a happy little accident."
ReplyDelete"The face looks like that of a mean-spirited bitter person lacking any warmth, humanity or nobility. It kind of looks like a statue you would find in an old communist country."
ReplyDeleteWell, 1) it's a statue of a communist built by communists, after all, so it should. But 2) keep in mind the main purpose of the statue (as well as the holiday): to remind whites to feel guilty about racism. So the stern, superior, unforgiving look is completely appropriate.
The goal at Cal isn't to graduate them. Just to get them accepted so the stats on entering are politically correct. And for some students, the school's goal is to get them on the basketball team.
ReplyDeleteSo a kid who can't write an essay coherent enough to get a passing grade in Writing 101 can use a laptop to check his grades. Good job, schools!
ReplyDeleteIn a sane world, the teachers at his high school all would be fired, the building torn down for the raw materials, and all the parents would be told they'd be better off homeschooling, even if that means letting the kid watch cartoons all day. So I'm going to guess this school will get increased funding.
A Working Class American said:
ReplyDelete"This MLK story is at the top of the google news page. Why is that? Do you really think this story is more popular with the american people right now than anything else? NO! The elite have shoved multiculturalism, racial integration, mass immigration and civil rights laws and decisions down our throats for decades now. Why? Because these things put money in rich wallets. Divide and conquer, that is the elite strategy. And with racial segregation, little immigration, etc, the rich cannot get their hands on cheap labor and they cannot turn the voters against one another."
On Google, I may agree with him. I get my news from Google News and every so often, including yesterday regarding Spokane, an insane story about a savage remorseless Blacks on White murder hits the number one spot with hundreds of sources on it before it vanishes entirely from the page. - Check that, the Largest Print article from the subject generally sticks around for another few hours at the top of the "most popular articles" list due to the fanatic public interest in the subject.
Anyhow, I also agree with him, more than most people here, that the rich are the enemy. I hate the rich just as surely as the starving have every natural reason and instinct to hate me.
I realize of course that in this weirdly religious world people believe that there must be some sort of moral "right" that we must stand on such that you hear every sort of convoluted ramble about how our forefathers had every right to arrive on these shores but modern immigrants do not.
Nuts.
My own view is that the mother whose baby just starved to death because I bought an extra pair of glasses instead of using that money to feed her dying tyke does not suffer any moral lapse by hating me. Similarly, I suffer no moral lapse by despising those who do everything in their power to make it difficult for me to live an easier life in America just so that they can sit their bloated asses on golden toilets.
Still, I think that 'A Working Class American' probably assigns too much forethought to their crimes. they commit their traitorous crimes against us without malice and without any more calculated greed than any of us engage in when we buy contact lenses or splurge at McDonalds on a Double Quarter Pounder instead of sending 4/5s of that money to prevent 3 children from getting malaria.
Not every self-beneficial action is intentional (as evidenced by the many actions that aren't, including liberals strongly OPPOSING Stop and Frisk, regardless of what non New Yorkers fantasize about liberal attitudes in the city). The race nonsense for example genuinely ISN'T a Big Business plan to do X, Y, or Z to get more money for fat cats at the expense of you and I. It's a wholly liberal thing which was pretty bad for Big Business but which they came to turns with and - using that big money they've got - eventually figured out how to use to their advantage (mainly as a sideshow to distract us from what's REALLY important to our and our posterity's welfare).
In closing, I appreciate A Working Class American's ability to speak up and withstand the abuse from the local Hannity watchers ("Hannity appreciators perhaps, he's like a subtle, sophisticated wine), a crowd that scared off other's who doubted the American mythology's First Commandment to "Make it rich or don't complain because it's your fault".
I can't see that black people are better off than they were in the Sixties. Their "culture" is a mess.
ReplyDeleteIf movies from the 70s like Let's Do It Again with Cosby and Poitier are at all indicative of what life was like, it appears to be much worse now. Yes, some have risen into positions that weren't open to them then. But the rest apparently have lost the mostly self-sufficient, working-class culture that was portrayed then.
A new date for MLK day?
ReplyDeleteHow about April 29th - anniversary of the Rodney King Riots.
This schedule would allow workers to take a 10-day vacation running from the Saturday before the new MLK day through Labor Day, yet use only four vacation days.
ReplyDeleteSubtle style tip - if you really want to slyly mimic progressive rhetoric with statements like these, always add "and their families" after words like "workers."
Other examples: "homeowners and their families," "taxpayers and their families," "bloggers and their families," etc.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteMy own view is that the mother whose baby just starved to death because I bought an extra pair of glasses instead of using that money to feed her dying tyke does not suffer any moral lapse by hating me."
So just who is this woman, and why did you kill her baby? Why didn't SHE feed her little tyke, and why don't YOU make your own personal amends if you're so bent out of shape about it, and leave the rest of us the Hell out of it.
"In closing, I appreciate A Working Class American's ability to speak up and withstand the abuse from the local Hannity watchers"
WCA is a nitwit who imagines that this is some kind of FOX news sponsored website and that we are all members of the local Republican club. If he bothered to actually read and understand Steve's posts and what others here write in reply - which he evidently does not - he would realize that neither Sean Hannity, nor Fox News, nor the Republica Party are really very popular 'round these parts.
[Obama's] solution, he continued, was to promote programs like an expansion of early childhood education and his latest effort to make college more affordable
ReplyDeleteThis guy really never has had a single original idea in his life, has he?
Cail Corishev said...This guy really never has had a single original idea in his life, has he?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't care if they were original if only they were useful.
>[Obama] really never has had a single original idea in his life, has he?<
ReplyDeleteFeature not bug in a figurehead.
When Goldman-Sachs looked around the lobby...
Well, 1) it's a statue of a communist built by communists, after all, so it should. But 2) keep in mind the main purpose of the statue (as well as the holiday): to remind whites to feel guilty about racism. So the stern, superior, unforgiving look is completely appropriate.
ReplyDeleteHe was not a Communist. He employed on his staff Stanley Levenson and Jack O'Dell, who were Communist Party members fairly proximate to his employment of them. The Kennedy brothers informed him ca. 1962 about Levenson and O'Dell, but I believe both remained on staff.
Richard John Neuhaus described the kultursmog around protest politics of that era (including the leadership of SCLC, whom he knew) as 'radicalised liberal' among whom it was fashionable to deride 'morality from the waist down'. King was not manifestly knowledgeable about the most salient issues facing the black population after 1971. He was also a far more gantryish figure than almost anyone outside his inner circle knew. I have a suspicion he was killed right before the time his reputation would have gone into free fall.
I would not assume the sculptor has a party card, or, if he does, it has any use other than avoiding hassles. You recall in 1990 the ruling party in Hungary dissolved and reconstituted itself in one maneuver, directing anyone who wished to exchange their old party card for a new one. The handwriting was on the wall as far as scheduled elections were concerned. Of the former body of party members, only 4% thereof applied for a new party card.
I will wager this guy learned his craft copying ancient statues of Shih Huang Ti and that is why it looks the way it does.
Cail Corishev said...I can't see that black people are better off than they were in the Sixties. Their "culture" is a mess.
ReplyDeleteYes, after all the sturm and drang, all the speechifying and indoctrination, all the turning of everything upside down, what have we got? Is the current state of the black community what we did that for? Let's face it, as Paul Kersey says, "Freedom failed."
In closing, I appreciate A Working Class American's ability to speak up and withstand the abuse from the local Hannity watchers ("Hannity appreciators perhaps, he's like a subtle, sophisticated wine), a crowd that scared off other's who doubted the American mythology's First Commandment to "Make it rich or don't complain because it's your fault".
ReplyDeleteDo we have some posters here whose ancestors were Wobblies, a.k.a., the I. W. W.?
... Historical local color of the American Pacific Northwest ...
"How about (Harvey) MILK day?
ReplyDeleteI Crave a Ream."
I just got home tonight. That is hilarious. A genuine laugh out loud for about one minute.
That is the whitest statue I've ever seen. He should have been rendered in gold - Martin Luther Bling. Black people could claim to have the most valuable statue ever, maybe not artistically, but certainly as scrap - in a pinch it could be melted down to bail out Detroit.
ReplyDeleteIf you're on Martin Luther King boulevard, there's some violence going down.
ReplyDelete"But my vague impression is that late spring or early summer is the rowdiest time of the year, while late summer is mellower, more lazy and hazy than crazy. Somebody should study the subject using data."
ReplyDeleteSee here, p. 28: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/var/ezp_site/storage/fckeditor/file/pdfs/centers-programs/centers/mrcbg/publications/awp/ranson_2012-8.FINAL.pdf
He was not a Communist. He employed on his staff Stanley Levenson and Jack O'Dell, who were Communist Party members fairly proximate to his employment of them. The Kennedy brothers informed him ca. 1962 about Levenson and O'Dell, but I believe both remained on staff.
ReplyDeleteStanley Levison.
In other words - the link between the SCLC and the CPUSA is almost exactly as close as the link between Stormfront and the KKK. Or... I don't know... Hezbollah and the "military wing of Hezbollah".
Why we're supposed to take this laughable pretense at plausible deniability seriously is not exactly clear. Oh, wait, I know. We're being hacked. We're supposed to bend over and take it like all good serfs. Well, count me out.
In general, communism runs a "No True Scotsman" hack on you and has for about the last century. We're supposed to believe that there are two separate movements, liberalism and communism. If not three - liberalism, socialism and communism. Despite the utter lack of any meaningful criterion for telling the difference between a liberal, a socialist and a communist.
"Holds a CPUSA Party card" is not a meaningful distinction. You can be a fascist without an NSDAP membership, can't you?
Partitioning/ostracism in the social graph is a meaningful distinction. But while moderate rightists ostracize extreme rightists, extreme leftists (if anything) ostracize moderate leftists.
And so on. Thus National Review is happy to feel that it can join with One People's Project to smash fascism, then team up with Miss Lindsey Graham to smash communism. Or at least, admonish it firmly. Ha. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
The only reasonable view of the progressive movement is monist. It's not two things. It's certainly not three. It's one. When it goes, if it goes, it all goes. Which means we're not done until that tank pulls over the Milky Colossus - not to mention renaming all those damned streets. (Berkeley is the worst offender - MLK is a block down from good old King Street.)
I've made my own post in response to recent events, including the MLK anniversary:
ReplyDeleteAn Ironic Segue | JayMan's Blog
He was not a Communist.
ReplyDeleteI didn't say he was a Communist (though he may have been); I said he was a communist.
It is not a 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. King, Abernathy, Williams, et al were never Communist Party members nor advocated anything remotely like a bureaucratic authoritarian party state cum command economy. Bayard Rustin had been a Party member decades earlier, but he was not advocating anything along those lines either during the period running from 1956 to 1964. (For decades Rustin was a critic of racial preference schemes and after 1980 was associated with Schachmanite organizations critical of the Sandalista tendency which dominated leftoid political discussion).
ReplyDeleteThese men had issues and shortcomings. Leninist cadres they were not.
50 years MLK Day celebration: KKK Threat saddens my heart. They're marching I'm still dealing with racism, unfair education system and violations of injustices. 50 years later, there is less of an" innocent until proven guilty system." There is less interest in remedy injustices and equal rights. There is almost no interest in discovering the truth. People that can provide legal help, don't have time unless you have the money. By the time a poor person can save the money, the statue time of limitations is up. This plan works out perfect for the persons and corporations in the wrong. However, it keeps the oppressed depressed for they have waited so long for nothing.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youcaring.com/help-a-neighbor/kkk-school-threat/81338
Their justice fighting went from days to years without seeing JUSTICE come to light. The court will not hear the long kept evidence. So, while we cry for help, they flip the calendar of no justice.
Cail Corishev said...
ReplyDeleteIf movies from the 70s like Let's Do It Again with Cosby and Poitier are at all indicative of what life was like, it appears to be much worse now. Yes, some have risen into positions that weren't open to them then. But the rest apparently have lost the mostly self-sufficient, working-class culture that was portrayed then.
And Sanford and Son was a show about black entrepreneurs.
"A new date for MLK day?
ReplyDeleteHow about April 29th - anniversary of the Rodney King Riots."
How about Feb 29 so we need to celebrate it only once every four years.
I'm for eliminating all Federal holidays. How about giving everyone ten days off which they can celebrate in any way they like, any time they like.
ReplyDeletejody:
ReplyDeleteThat guy's remedial classes at the university should have been funded from the pensions of his high school teachers. Though the story echoes one Thomas Sowell tells about himself in one of his books, about getting to Harvard and suddenly realizing he is completely unprepared and is going to flunk out if he doesn't work his ass off.
The legacy of poverty is being perpetuated by lefty policies. Without those policies, lefties would lose power.
ReplyDeleteSo a kid who can't write an essay coherent enough to get a passing grade in Writing 101 can use a laptop to check his grades. Good job, schools!
ReplyDeleteIn a sane world, the teachers at his high school all would be fired, the building torn down for the raw materials, and all the parents would be told they'd be better off homeschooling, even if that means letting the kid watch cartoons all day. So I'm going to guess this school will get increased funding.
The kid in the article couldn’t make it through Writing IA, even with a college instructor providing hours of one to one tutoring.
On yet another failing essay, the instructor wrote how surprised she was at his lack of progress, especially, she noted, given the hours they'd spent going over his "extremely long, awkward and unclear sentences."
High school teachers, particularly in schools like the one from which the student in the article graduated, have 150+ students in a year, at least a quarter or more of whom can’t form coherent sentences and don’t understand the basics of essay writing. They have been passed and passed, despite their lack of proficiency, because you can’t have 14 year olds in a fifth grade classroom. One university teacher took him on as her project, spent hours of high quality tutorial time with him, and got almost no result, because the real problem was:
He struggled to comprehend the readings for her class and think critically about the text.
He just didn't get it, because he doesn’t have the ability to get it. That’s not the teacher’s fault. A high school teacher with dozens of students performing at that low level, administrative pressure to pass them regardless of their abilities, and the added joy of public perceptions such as Cail’s, is at a complete loss. In addition to everything else they do, many high school teachers make themselves available for before school, after school, and lunchtime tutorial sessions, of which struggling students rarely avail themselves. That is also not the fault of teachers.
The kid’s mother apparently worked all the time trying to support them, and left him with a friend, who provided a typically academically impoverished environment in his formative years.
"Me and Kashawn always had a strong connection," Lillie said. "But Sylvia raised my boy, yes she did."
Sylvia didn't read many magazines, newspapers or books. Only rarely did she take Kashawn outside their neighborhood. That is also nothing over which teachers have any control.
Michelle Rhee did try firing and replacing all those lazy, do-nothing teachers in DC…5 years later, the proficiency rates fell in the four wards with the lowest incomes: http://www.dcfpi.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/3-13-13-Final-Test-Score-Paper.pdf
Because they got rid of the teachers, but the students stayed the same. Teachers are being handed chipboard and told to create a Chippendale. Here’s an idea – fire all the do-nothing, under-performing students. Voila! Improved results, across the board. Stop blaming teachers because NCLB has decreed that every child in the land is capable of graduating from college - they aren't.
Anonymous, you're right that it's not his teachers' fault if a kid just can't learn to write. (You'll note I didn't say replace them; I said tear the school down.) But it is their fault that they not only kept passing him, but gave him great grades that convinced him, his parents, and college admissions people that he was college material. It is their fault that they didn't keep him in secondary school until he learned to write or quit. NCLB and the whole "everyone can/should go to college" theory couldn't exist without the willing participation of millions of teachers.
ReplyDeleteIn my day, a (white) kid like this would have been held back a couple times by the time he got to high school, and then he probably would have gotten the heck out as soon as he was old enough and gotten a job moving pallets at the feed store. Of course, that's not as likely an option now, because we don't want Americans (especially black ones) doing manual labor. That part, at least, isn't teachers' fault (well, except for whatever their unions spend pushing mass immigration).
Anonymous, the funny thing about your comment is that I am a teacher -- a private tutor, but still, I know what it's like to be faced with a kid who just can't get something. But if I told a kid's parents that he was a 4.0 student, and they paid to send him off to college and found out he couldn't write a decent essay even with help, they'd be understandably upset. They might even have a case against me for fraud.
ReplyDeleteBut public school teachers (not all, but many) all across the country do that every year. You'll say they don't have a choice, because they'd lose their jobs if they told the truth. Maybe so, although that wouldn't be the case if enough of them spoke up and there were thousands of Gattos instead of just one (that might even be something for their union to do, if it can spare the time from getting Democrats elected). But how long do you want to keep a job that requires you to lie to people and screw up their futures?
I'm thinking of trying to start some memes
ReplyDelete1) They shoulda used black stone man. It's like they're pissing on his memory man.
2) Do you think they made him look a tiny bit Chinese? You can't see it? I dunno i can. Not a lot, just a little. I think the Chinese dude may have made him look Chinese by accident.
Anonymous, the funny thing about your comment is that I am a teacher -- a private tutor, but still, I know what it's like to be faced with a kid who just can't get something. But if I told a kid's parents that he was a 4.0 student, and they paid to send him off to college and found out he couldn't write a decent essay even with help, they'd be understandably upset. They might even have a case against me for fraud.
ReplyDeleteCome on, that's silly. Cal knew this kid wasn't Cal material when when they admitted him just by looking at his SAT scores, they're the ones at fault here. Admitting kids to elite universities based on high school GPA alone is utterly absurd and inevitably leads to exactly this type of problem.
The head on the statue is pure Olmec. Just google Olmec head and you will see what I mean. It is really eerie. This is an Olmec in a suit.
ReplyDeleteYo mama's an Olmec.
ReplyDeleteTeachers have very little control over their grades, and honest grading will get them fired. If they want to keep their jobs, they are totally at the behest of their administrators, who are in turn at the behest of the districts and the school board. The school board of the county I taught in last year decreed that no student will receive a grade lower than 50%, and that includes the students who throw every piece of paper handed to them on the floor, and sleep through every class. They should receive zeros, but they will not get them. The various scores that make up a student’s final grade are weighted, and the reasoning is that, with a 50% base, if a kid somehow decides to pull his fat from the fire at the last minute and makes a decent grade on the final, or turn in work that is two months overdue, he will pass, but with a zero, he won’t. Of course, students quickly become aware that they are not actually required to make anything beyond a modicum of effort, in order to pass.
ReplyDeleteTrue story: in a meeting I attended, an assistant principal listened to a new teacher say that, at the moment, she had a few As and Bs, but half of her students were failing. Why? They weren’t doing the work. They weren’t doing class assignments, and they weren’t turning in the homework. Asst principal cocked head to one side, looked quizzical, and asked, “Well, do they have to do it?” It's so much easier to tell teachers that their students aren't proficient because they, the teachers, are not singing and dancing sufficiently throughout the day in order to keep the students "engaged," than it is to admit that nothing can be done for low functioning, low motivation students who refuse to help themselves.
Added to the grade inflation is the lowering of standards for the vibrant. As a teacher, you get so few students from the diverse brigade who can write anything sensible, or even make any effort to, that when you get a kid who actually tries, you tend to grade him higher than he deserves. I’m sure that’s the origin of the student's 4.0 GPA in the article. Steve likes to quote from Bonfire of the Vanities, and most who post here have read it. Remember the conversation that Peter Fallow has with the teacher of Henry Lamb? The teacher tells Fallow that, as a Brit, Fallow is probably used to levels of excellence to select honor students, but at the school Henry Lamb attends, a kid who shows up most of the time, sits quietly, doesn’t cause any trouble and makes some effort is considered an honor student. 25 years later, it’s no different. Just as Abe Weiss was in the eternal search for the “great white defendant,” so American public schools are in the eternal search for the “great black scholar,” and tremendous, unending pressure is brought to bear on teachers to pretend as if such students are a significant presence. The reality of their paltry number is certainly not due to lack of teacher effort to find and promote them.
AD,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you're assuming that King himself is the most important person in the King organization. Why? Because he stands in front of the camera and makes speeches? Obviously, the most important person is the person who created and runs the organization. Where's your evidence that King is anything more than an actor?
Second, as Cail observes - I said communist, not Communist. Look how easy it is to stop being a Communist (your definition). You simply cut up your Party card and say, "I believe in free enterprise," and look - no Communists here!
Imagine if it was that easy to stop being a racist - the SPLC would be out of work in five minutes. Indeed, no one is ever purged for being a Racist. There are no Racists. Plenty of racists, though...