Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Bob McCannon posted to the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) discussion list Robert Lipsyte's commentary in USA Today, A different type of porn: The Four F's — Food, Fashion, Fitness and Finances — masquerade as news, blotting out information we really need. (One post appeared to attribute the article to Kevin Taglang, and I made that mistake in my original post; this is corrected below.)

I got to thinking (frightening, I know) because of this broadside reposted to the Food Not Bombs discussion list by Erich:

[According to the Terra Bite Cafe (http://www.terrabite.org/) in Kirkland, WA]

The question is whether Tom Ashbrook, of NPR's "On Point," is consigned to go to hell when he dies, or is already broadcasting from hell.

So he's reporting that McCain is in trouble. Ashbrook decides this not because of any issue or political stance, but because McCain's campaign is reportedly low on money.

So who's going to benefit from this, Tom asks his guest. Guliani?

So I was thinking about how immigrants today bring some much-needed radical understanding and practices, and then thinking about how this has always been true, and then I asked myself, and the Internet, what happened to the anarchist jews?

And wow, I didn't answer that question but I came across some of the most important words I ever read, written one hundred years ago, in 1907:

On 7/5/07, Jim-NYS wrote to the Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center (of the US Social Forum) list:

> Anyone with info, ideas, thoughts on the key needs of Healthcare in the
> U.S.. as it relates to servicing communities of color, is invited to share
> such information with me.

It's a book. On paper. Find a copy, and read it.

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Joe Bageant
Copyright © 2007 by Joseph L. Bageant
ISBN 978-0-307-33936-2

(TODO: I have got to get this in a CCK type that formats for some microformat or semantic markup that formats for "book review"— and I guess I should make this into an actual Book review, also.)

While ordering the book (which you can do through his site) you can read the author's blog:
http://www.joebageant.com

A 2005 article on hot young economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. by Stephen J. Dubner got me thinking about my thesis again.

About all I need to know to want to keep track of his work is that his model is W.E.B. DuBois.

But this statement is disturbing, and the author is an economist himself. Following up on examples of Fryer's willingness and capacity to look at all things that might affect black achievement, including genetics, Dubner wrote:

So here is Fryer's final anomaly: he is a man who revels in his blackness and yet also says he believes, as DuBois believed, that black underachievement cannot entirely be laid at the feet of discrimination.

What sort of fool, let alone a self-described rogue economist, would frame the question as a matter of discrimination? Kidnapping and slavery and no compensation hardly fit neatly under discrimination. Follow history a tad longer and you get to sharecropping, which puts the problem squarely in an economic context.

Make wealth and resources equal, and I bet black people will overcome racism – with great difficulty, but ultimately overcome it – and achieve just about anything professors and bureaucrats care to measure.

• I will be on time, I will not be late, for any meeting or appointment.
• I will not waste anything – water, electricity, fuel, food. This particularly honors my grandmother also.
• I will work hard.
• I will treat all people with respect, including family.
• I will take a little more care in my personal appearance.
• I will walk, eat, and talk with a little more dignity.
• I will pay attention when I drive, and do anything else important for that matter.

It's impossible to describe the sadness and rage at the world in general with which I write this. I want my Dad back. This cannot be.

The hospital stay killed my father. But he checked himself into the hospital because he didn't have the breath to do things he could do just months ago, even get to the bathroom sometimes, using a container instead.

Emphysema from cigarette smoke is the reason my dad is dead now.

Dad tells me that the Olympic athletes who did the black power salute suffered reprisals from it the rest of their lives, to this day (I got him the "What's my name, fool" book by Dave Zirin).

hmm, do you suppose just maybe anyone with the commitment and drive to perform at the level of an olympic athlete, and the political thoughtfulness and bravery to make a powerful public statement, could probably have done well at a great many jobs?

As a movement for a better world, we need to organizationally support those who take a stand.