Chris Rock on ‘nicer white people’ in America

The social and political insight Chris Rock has brought to his comedy the last 10 years has been off the charts, but just to here him speak on any serious issue is enlightening stuff. Take this part of an interview he conducted recently with Frank Rich:

What would you do in Ferguson that a standard reporter wouldn’t?

I’d do a special on race, but I’d have no black people.

Well, that would be much more revealing.

Yes, that would be an event. Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

Right. It’s ridiculous.

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

Red-blue state divide

This piece by Richard Florida explains a lot about the current blue- and red-state divide in America. In general, blue state economies in the Northeast and on the West Coast offer more technology, engineering, cutting-edge jobs at the forefront of innovation and finance at the expense of a more expensive standard of living and more costly housing, while the South and parts of the Midwest and Southwest, predominantly churn out more jobs in energy, production and agriculture with more affordable housing and standards of living. That said, economic inequality, surprisingly enough, has grown the most during the last three decades in predominantly blue states like Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and California.

As Florida points out, while metro areas like San Francisco and New York:

are booming … they are hampered by potholes and crumbling infrastructure, troubled public school systems, growing inequality and housing unaffordability, and entrenched poor populations, all of which mean higher public costs and higher tax burdens.

And yet for all that, they are pioneering the new economic order that will determine our future — one that turns on innovation and knowledge rather than the raw production of goods.

Despite their longstanding divisions, red state and blue state economies depend crucially on one another. Just as Alexander Hamilton’s merchant cities ate and exported the harvests of Thomas Jefferson’s yeomen farmers, and New England textile mills wove slave-harvested cotton, blue state knowledge economies run on red state energy. Red state energy economies in their turn depend on dense coastal cities and metro areas, not just as markets and sources of migrants, but for the technology and talent they supply.

Of course, while Massachusetts and Mississippi represent the extremes of America’s politico-economic divide, there are many red states like Utah, Arizona and Texas that are growing their tech and knowledge economies, and a number of historically blue states like Pennsylvania that have benefited from the fracking boom. But in our increasingly competitive global economy, long-term prosperity turns on knowledge, education and innovation. The idea that the red states can enjoy the benefits provided by the blue states without helping to pay for them (and while poaching their industries with the promise of low taxes and regulations) is as irresponsible and destructive of our national future as it is hypocritical.

But that is exactly the mantra of the growing ranks of red state politicos. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a likely 2016 G.O.P. presidential candidate, has taken to bragging that his state’s low-frills development strategy provides a model for the nation as a whole. But fracking and sprawling your way to growth aren’t a sustainable national economic strategy.

The Republican strategy is one that has, so far, worked to persuade conservative voters who are unable or unwilling to see the big picture, and the big picture is that while an economy that is focused on agriculture, production and labor-intensive industries may be able to foster a cheaper standard of living in the short term, it is not sustainable as a long-term model to lead American into 2016 and beyond. And this is Florida’s central point. The basic conservative model has subsisted in conservative American politics for centuries going back to Jefferson’s yeoman farmer. The conservative vision for this nation has, historically, been far too shortsighted and dare I say, naive to do America’s economy any favors, although it’s this willful naivety that has handed the conservative party many a victory through the years, and more times than not at the expense, ironically, of the very people who support it.

The allure of cheap growth has handed the red states a distinct political advantage. Their economic system may be outmoded and obsolete, but it is strong enough to blight the future. The Democrats may be able to draw on the country’s growing demographic diversity and the liberal leanings of younger voters to win the presidency from time to time, but the real power dynamic is red.

As long as the highly gerrymandered red states can keep on delivering the economic goods to their voters, concerted federal action on transportation, infrastructure, sustainability, education, a rational immigration policy and a strengthened social safety net will remain out of reach. These are investments that the future prosperity of the nation, in red states and blue states alike, requires.

Heightened partisan rancor is the least of our problems. The red state-blue state divide threatens to kill the real American dream.

On a personal note: Health update

Quite unintentionally, I have been away from this blog for a couple weeks in order to devote some much-needed attention to my health. During a trip to New York City this month — I am still here and will likely be here another week or two —  I had intended to write while on the road, at the hotel, etc., but for one reason or another, it just hasn’t happened.

In any case, it’s Saturday, and as much of East 73rd Street in Manhattan is packed with the Ronald McDonald House’s annual block party street festival to raise money for the foundation, I have some time this afternoon to give an update on my status. I rarely mention my personal life on here as a matter of policy or unless I feel it’s absolutely necessary to the importance of the maintaining the site itself. This isn’t one of those times, as I have already undergone a secondary T-cell transplant to correct an imbalance in my immune system, and by all accounts — I’m now three days post-transplant — I have not had any reactions to the procedure. Still, I felt it important to at least tell you guys where I have been. I’ve already recounted most of the details here, but suffice it to say that I was in need of a T-cell transplant to put me on better footing for a lung transplant at some point down the road. Patients need to have relatively strong immune systems in order to endure the battery of immune suppressants typically administered after a lung transplant. My doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center said I would need to stay in the New York area at least 9-12 days to make sure the T-cells properly “grafted” into my system from the donor, my mother, who was also the donor during my original transplant in the early 1980s. Same doctor. Same hospital.

So, that is where I stand at this point. As I said, I fully intended to continue posting during this trip — and even considered making a daily post on my observations during this most recent trip to NYC — but I have been here so many times at this point, it’s more or less a secondary home and far from novel. I have also been using this time to catch up on my reading. Since coming to NYC I have finished Thomas Pynchon’s “V.” (maybe I’ll post a brief review soon) and am now reading “Three Negro Classics” by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois and James Weldon Johnson, whose house, consequently, is just up the road from here on Lexington Avenue.

I am meeting with my doctor on Monday for some blood tests and an update on how well the cells are grafting into the bone marrow. My doctor and his team are now working on concocting a mixture of cells that will be engineered to essentially make me resistant to the type of infections that might ensue from a lung transplant, should I need one at some point down the road. Consequently, my lungs seem to be holding out reasonably well, and even showing some minute signs of improvement. While at the hospital this past Wednesday, my oxygen saturation level was 97 percent just sitting there, which is essentially normal, and it hasn’t been that high in at least 2-3 years. Typically, the level is between 92-95 while immobile, which isn’t good. And two months ago while seeing the pulmonologist, I achieved something like 600 steps without oxygen while maintaining an SO2 level above 90 percent, which was also a first in recent memory. The only change in my regimen has been the addition of a small dose of azithromycin every three weeks as a prophylactic.

In any case, I’ll post an update on the health stuff soon, and will continue my usual disputations on religion and philosophy post haste.

OWS and the 99 percent

Wow. When you finally decide to get back to your own site after a 1 1/2 week layoff and can barely remember making the most recent post, you know something is rotten in Denmark.

I’ve been on vacation to New England and specifically, the North Shore above Boston. I actually got back in town late Saturday, rested Sunday, and work has been a whirlwind early this week. I’ll try to pick up the pace as I get back in the swing of things.

Coincidentally, I was actually passing by New York City along one of the perimeter routes when I first heard the announcement on the radio of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration that would take place later that day. I was tempted to take a detour, but I had a long day of driving ahead. Anyway, the following is a response from a Facebook user to a letter written by a recent college graduate who claims that she had worked her way through college, did it all without assuming any debt and that she would not blame Wall Street for any of her bad decisions (This implies that the OWS demonstrators were blaming Wall Street for their personal failings).

Facebook user Kim Fraczek composed a retort to this, which appears at right. For more information on what the 99 percent business is about, visit: http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/.

Courtesy Kim Fraczek

 

Amidst the rubble …

A local church sign is featuring these enlightening words this weekend: “Amidst the rubble, stood a metal cross,” which is obviously a statement in honor of the now famous World Trade Center cross, a group of beams that was found in the rubble following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York.

Credit: Samuel Li via Wikipedia

Of course, folks who say the discovery of a steel cross gives people hope apparently have forgotten the fact that they aren’t called “crossbeams” for anything, since skyscrapers have many such “crosses” all along their structures. In fact, if volunteers at Ground Zero hadn’t found a grouping of beams in the shape of a cross, that would have been a real miracle, since that’s essentially of what building frames consists. As it happens, the discovery of this particular WTC cross of crossbeams is, without a doubt, unremarkable.

But let’s assume for a moment that there was actually some kind of spiritual element behind the cross appearing at Ground Zero. Couldn’t a cross amid the rubble just as well mean that Jesus was actually behind the attacks? Couldn’t the cross be kind of like a personal stamp on the whole scene, kind of like graffiti or the branding of animals? And if that were the case, wouldn’t it be a little bizarre for Christians to look at the cross as a sign of hope and inspiration? In actuality, if God exists and if he’s omnipotent, he is at the very least, an accomplice to the attacks because he is said to be a) all-loving and b) omnipotent. He knew it was going to happen and watched it take place with folded arms, possessing all the power in the universe to prevent it. Isn’t this more plausible than an all-loving, all-powerful God watching 3,000 people die in New York and then mockingly placing his supposed symbol among the bodies and debris? In that context, how could this cross, even if legit, provide inspiration to anyone?

Our daily universe: 9/11 attacks from space

I seem to be in a posting kind of mood today after a fairly long slump. As usual, I have been preoccupied with Counter Strike: Source, reading this and well, work has been a gom.

Just when you thought you had seen all the photographs from Sept. 11, 2001, here are some views of New York following the Sept. 11 attacks taken by Frank Culbertson from the International Space Station:

Credit: NASA

 

 

Credit: NASA

 

See here for more information.

NYC: two towers down but still in the game

Article first published as New York City: Two Towers Down But Still in the Game on Blogcritics. Originally written about midnight Sept. 12, 2010.

***

I admit it. I have not spent the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, tuning in to the 24/7 news cycle, which – and I know this just by mere channel surfing – seemed to feature loop after loop of the planes crashing into the buildings and the subsequent terror that surely shattered the hearts of many in Manhattan and Washington and Pennsylvania, and nay, the entire nation.

Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Today, I have mainly watched college football and read a book on the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth (highly recommended, by the way).

But between my various enterprises this Saturday, I have thought about that day and about what it means to me. I have thought about the many volunteers who gave of their time, and some of their very livelihood, the latter of which (some) suffer from incurable diseases, such as lung damage from those who inhaled various toxins on that day and in clean-up efforts.

I have thought of the regular folks on the street who witnessed the planes crashing into the buildings, and then found themselves encased in chaos and dust. I thought of the 9/11 Truth crowd who claim, with pomposity, that the whole thing was rigged from the start, by our own government, or at the very least, that our government under George W. Bush was privy to such tidings.

And I have thought about my own excursions to New York, “the concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” as the popular Alicia Keys/Jay-Z tune goes. I live in the Southeast now but once lived in Manhattan as an infant. But since that time, I have been to the city many times. And once, I was able to go to the very top of one of the Twin Towers and looked out over the city from that phantasmal height, and I was in awe. This is an experience for which I am thankful to have been given. The view is still fertile in my mind. There, across the rail. Through the tall, shiny glass windows. Soaring and a little nearer to sky and clouds than to Earth.

And now, probably some 15 years or more since I was there, that heralded skyline is no more. I don’t need the news stations to tell me how grave and important Sept. 11, 2001, really is to all of us who love the city. I felt the thud, an intense thud, like everyone else. My “thud,” perhaps, wasn’t quite as booming as that of, say, a Mets or Yankees or Giants or Rangers fan, but it was a real thud, but not awe, as Bush later proclaimed about Iraq. For, with war, there is no “awe,” just shock and death, and “awe” is a quite macabre way to describe war.

So, tonight, now 15 minutes into Sept. 12, I am reminded of two songs, one my Ryan Adams titled, “New York, New York” (which was shot, interestingly, only four days prior to the tragedy on Sept. 7, 2001) and one more poignantly directed at the 9/11 tragedy, The Beastie Boys’ “An Open Letter to NYC.”

Here is the second video:

[Photo caption: Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times; Family members of 9/11 victims at the reflecting pool during the ceremony in New York.]

Bias in sports media, trends in newspapers

With major newspapers struggling to stay afloat these days, I thought it might be interesting to briefly take a look at a specific segment of the media: that of sports journalism, and attempt to figure how that branch of journalism is faring and the implications on the craft in general.

I was listening recently to the radio interview of an ACC Sports Journal writer, who mentioned that one reporter, previously working as the beat writer for an ACC school at an independent newspaper, had recently taken a position to be the official “vessel,” as it were, for that school’s football coverage. I wish I could remember the reporter’s name who took the position. I think it was for Virginia Tech. The fellow interviewed on the radio was making the case, I would say quite ably, that the face of sports journalism was changing toward more, not less, bias. That’s to say that, while you still have independent media organizations covering college and pro sports, you also have many schools (and, obviously, professional ball clubs now hiring reporters, i.e. Zach Eisendrath with the Denver Broncos) to come on staff and be the “official” voice of the Hokies, Cavaliers, Broncos or whatever. The person interviewed said this practice, in ways, presented challenges to independent news organizations because, while the independents fish for information, colleges or professional clubs have their “inside men” (my quote) who, at times, have unrestricted access to practices, the locker rooms and have no trouble getting news because they are employed by the school or ball club. Thus, the news we have coming out of those ball clubs, at least from the “filtered” reporters, is largely positive, at least upbeat, and never scandalous, is a far cry from the scrutiny to which these clubs should be subjected.

Ball clubs and colleges are well within their rights to hire journalists to attempt to “control the message,” as it were, and journalists are well within their rights to seek greener pastures. As the person interviewed from the ACC Sports Journal said, some consumers care about the distinction between beat reporters employed by the teams and writers from independent sources and some consumers don’t. But there is an important distinction, and it creates the issue of bias regarding the out-feeding of sports news that comes out each day. That’s why seeking information from multiple sources is important to getting the truth of what is really happening. While there is much truth coming out of denverbroncos.com on rote football topics like who’s impressing coaches in practice or which quarterback is likely to get the starting position, other topics get more complicated. For instance, how the official Broncos Web site handled coach Mike Shanahan’s ouster after the lackluster 8-8 season in 2008. I attempted to find old articles from the official site about the story, but came up empty.

The four major U.S. sports now have their own cable channels and Web sites and contracts with television networks. All major colleges have communications departments, which issue press releases with their “messages” via their Web sites or hard copy releases.

Some major newspapers also cast a suspicious shadow over their sports writing with their various interests in sports teams:

Several prominent teams are still owned by media companies; Cablevision owns the Knicks and Rangers, The New York Times owns nearly 18 percent of the Red Sox, and the Tribune Company, pending a sale, still owns the Cubs. The relationship between teams and the sources covering them has unsurprisingly led to suspicions of bias. — “Examining the Future of Sports Media,” July 2, 2009

It’s a fair question to ask, as this story does, “What happens when the people we cover start to control the news?”

This makes the idea of independent journalism all that more important, and quite unfortunately, as big newspapers continue to struggle, less and less space is available for that coverage. This is compounded by the fact that newspapers are still the best source for detailed news about topics of the day. Or, as The Times’ magazine article (linked above) puts it,

Newspapers remain the primary source of news-gathering in America. And unlike so many Internet “sites,” they are firmly grounded in a geographical place. To read a newspaper is to know what town you’re in.

We can know this to be the case when we find Sean Hannity (CNN is guilty of doing the same, wham-bam-style interviews and news pieces) and Christopher Hitchens debating God in a five-minute segment. Two hours of discussion could not do that particular topic justice, but such is the world of television and radio news. “Just give us the talking points and no details so we can all get on with our lives,” seems to be the rallying cry. Newspapers, and to some degree, magazines, depending on the publication, compel us to sit down and spend time with the news and with the issues facing us today. Newspapers in hard copy form will one day go the way of the dodo, but I think it’s important for us to recognize the service they provide in holding those in high places accountable for their actions with our tax dollars. It’s important, at least to me, as it should be for anyone who appreciates and loves information, that they continue as long as possible. Or, if not, at least their online counterparts. Sports journalism, perhaps, doesn’t hold the same immediate consequence as, say, government beat writing, but the trend toward closer relationships between sports teams and the organizations covering them is troubling, and it makes the work of The Associated Press and others more laudable. Here is a detailed study of four newspapers regarding bias compared to the AP.