God vs. Evil

It seems God never gets a moment's rest and this past week has been no exception. Aside from lavish Thanksgiving meals and Black Friday sales, she's been hard at work.

'Ugly Betty' extra Michael Brea claimed to be doing the work of God when he killed his mother with a three foot sword. Okay, not exactly. Brea told police he was excising the demons from his mother because the voices told him to.  "I just kept cutting her. No one could stop me. I was doing the work of God." he confessed before being taken to Bellevue Hospital in New York for a much-needed psychiatric evaluation.


Then up in Portland, Oregon, a Somali-born teen was arrested for attempting to detonate a car bomb during a Christmas tree ceremony. Lucky for the people attending the ceremony, Mohamed Osman Mohamud's jihadi aspirations were thwarted. When he was arrested by police, Mohamud is said to have yelled "Allah akbar" before being taken to jail.  Yes, God is great. 


On Sunday, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson dashed all hopes of beating the Pittsburgh Steelers when he dropped the ball in the end zone. The Bills lost to the Steelers, 19 - 16. An angry, dejected Johnson took to Twitter to blame God for what was clearly his own fault:

Really!? I find it intriguing that God becomes a convenient excuse and/or reason for just about everything, even for the most ungodly behavior. Whatever happened to 'the devil made me do it'?

The Persecuted Black Man

We all do stupid things. As everyday folk we can toil in anonymity sharing our missteps with close friends and family but celebrities aren't so lucky. As much as I want to talk about Flava Flav's latest business ventures: a fried chicken franchise and a line of vodka, I'm going to give him a pass and get right to Wesley Snipes. Earlier this week, Snipes was convicted of three counts of willful failure to file a tax return and was sentenced to three years in the slammer. While free on bail, he is hoping to delay his sentence while his lawyers file an appeal. Good luck with that Wesley.

I used to be a Wesley Snipes fan. Though not handsome or even nice looking by my standards, he had some undeniable sex appeal going on until about 1997. In the now infamous interview he gave to Ebony magazine, he made some unflattering comments about women which many black women thought were directed at them.They were probably right.

I don't think Snipes hates black women, he just doesn't want to come home to someone who is "mean and aggravating and unkind". He prefers the docile, more subservient type. At the time of the Ebony interview, Snipes' partner was an Asian woman and his current wife is also Asian. His personal views no doubt influenced the casting decisions for his later straight-to-DVD movies; the actresses that played his love interests/wives/partners were usually white, Latina or Asian. Black women got your message,Wesley.

Black women were Snipes' fan base. I don't think many of them are even checking for Wesley. Three years in prison is a long, long time. He will have plenty of time to reflect on his life and his bad decisions. I hope he got his money back from those "financial" advisors who told him not to pay his income taxes. Black women might forgive you Wesley, but the IRS won't. 

Holiday with H&M

I am loving the new holiday ads from Swedish company H&M. The beautiful images of sisters, brothers, twins, friends and the gorgeous Somalian models Waris Dirie and Liya Kibede are amazing. Nothing political here, just some affordable, stylish fashion ranging from $9.95 to $34.95 that everyone can afford.

Spare Us Please, Oprah

Photo taken from CNBC photostream via flickr


Every year for as long as I can remember, TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey has unleashed her list of favorite things around the holidays. Her devoted audience of well-heeled housewives clamor to buy these coveted items because Oprah has blessed them. If Oprah says its good, it must really be good! With her spirituality and desire for higher ratings, she often vacillates between living her best life and being vacuous and materialistic. Her list of favorite things gets more ridiculous each year. Here's a description of one of the lower priced items, the $55 Lafco House and Home Collection Candle Set:

It's a candle-palooza! The Lafco House and Home Collection of 18 different candles has been designed to complement the ambiance of every room in your home, from the foyer to the family room. With scents like Rosemary Eucalyptus (great for a home office) and Chamomile Lavender (perfect for the master bedroom), these beautiful and versatile candles can also be moved from one space to another to create you own personal fragrance aesthetic. "This is the perfect amount of scent and the perfect amount of wick," Oprah says. 

Granted, Oprah's a billionaire and can afford to move these beautiful and versatile candles from one house to another, I'd just settle for a full-time job with health benefits. In my neck of the woods, there are plenty of unemployed folks who will only get two more checks before their unemployment benefits expire on November 30th. While some may be fans of Oprah, I doubt if any of them care what her favorite things are, their desires are much more basic like providing for their families; it's not going to be a Merry Christmas for them.

With the real unemployment rate hovering around 20% and the economy in the worst shape since the Great Depression, the situation is dire for working folk and those who used to be middle class. Do you think any of them gives a damn about a $525 Judith Ripka earrings or a $700 Nikon camera!? Oprah's ultimate list of favorite things is a shameless indulgence being thrust upon regular folks at a time when the income gap between folks like Oprah who earned 49.4% of all income generated and people like me living in poverty who only earned 3.4% of all income generated. Of course, it's not Oprah's fault but just another dire consequence of our failing economy and the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

The Road to Socialism is Paved With Roadkill

Two years into President Baraka Obama's socialist agenda, GM, the American automaker that was bailed out with $50 billion of our tax dollars last year emerged from bankruptcy today.  With the largest initial public offering (IPO) of stock ever, GM raised over $20 billion dollars which puts them well on the way to paying off their debt.

Bailing out GM has had more cumulative benefits than bailing out those criminals on Wall Street but you shouldn't expect to hear any Republican, from RNC Chairman Michael Steele to House Minority Leader John Boehner praising momentous occassion. They were highly critical about this particular bailout since it involved union workers and decried it as the beginning of socialism: "a government-owned, government-run company". Not so believable since the Republicans had no plan of their own to offer GM last year except "Whatever the Obama administration is offering, we're against that".  

It's a Small, Small World at FOX News

Ailes Sign, originally uploaded by News Corpse.

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is ca-razy! In a recent interview, Ailes calls President Obama’s “socialism” too far left for our European allies. First of all, it helps to know and understand what Ailes’ definition of socialism is. Much like his viewing audience, Ailes doesn't know the meaning of the word "socialism". Both Germany and France have socialized medicine, we only have 'Obamacare'.

While deriding the President, Ailes praises entertainer Glenn Beck, host of his own show on Fox News. No surprise here. The extremist views that Beck perpetuates are deplorable and despicable but Ailes praises them. Vilifying ACORN, inciting dimwits to attempt murder and attacking a wealthy contributor to the Democratic party are all quite commendable acts...NOT!

Roger Ailes criticism of the President is amusing but I wouldn’t expect anything different from the chairman of a network that profits from unfair and decidedly unbalanced news. Ailes lives in a very small world and surrounds himself with others who have similar narrow minded views. According to him, President Obama “has a different belief system than most Americans.” And which one is that? I’m going to need more details but this is another example of how FOX News has taken the hints and innuendo to another level.

Ailes knows his audience and knows what they want to hear. These are same people who still haven’t gotten over the fact that a black man is in the White House. Here we are two years later and these people are still believe President Obama is not a U.S. citizen and is a Muslim. Ailes and the network he oversees has done more than its share to perpetuate lies, stir up fear and keep the hypocrisy alive. What else can he say that we haven't already heard and expect to hear from the chairman of Fox News?

The Randomness of It All -Updated Version

Ntozke Shange's 'For Colored Girls ...'

There are some things that happened these past few weeks that I wish had not:

• W Resurfaces as a Book Author
  I so wish he would have waited another four years so I could I work the bad taste out of my mouth. Another attempt to rewrite history. Regretting that you didn't get to privatize Social Security doesn't make me change my mind about you. The man could hardly form a grammatically correct sentence as president and now he expects for some of us to believe that he actually wrote a book. At least some of us know better. Oh the hubris! We never found those weapons of mass destruction but Dick Cheney and his cronies have made billions from Halliburton/KBR contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  
  
• Tyler Perry Effs Up 'For Colored Girls'
  First 'Precious', now this. I don't need to see the movie in order to confirm what I already know. The play was dark, sad and had an intellectual edge that Tyler Perry could never translate to the film version. Black women's lives are not that miserable and all black men are not abusers. Besides, any movie starring Janet Jackson as a main character concerns me. Miss Jackson never made it to acting classes.  She is the most unconvincing actress I've seen since seeing 5 minutes of Beyonce in that faux thriller 'Obssessed'. Both are very painful to watch. Sometimes I actually miss Spike Lee. Hands off Tyler Perry! 'For Colored Girls' should have just stayed a choreopoem.
  
  
• Clinton Cosigns Bush
  Former President Clinton, in my opinion, has always been a poser. Giving W's book a rave review is about as believable as the Easter Bunny laying eggs. I never bought into Clinton's alleged affinity for the African American culture preferring to believe he was a true Republican at heart. He got my vote once. He gave us the Welfare-to-Work program, now he's endorsing the dimwit's book. I don't think so.
  
• Hollywood Still Relies Heavily on Stereotypes
  The more things change, the more they stay the same. You mean to tell me the only films that get made about black women involve abuse and abusers. Do you really think you'd see a white version of 'For Colored Girls' starring the likes of Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston? Of course not! Why is it so easy to make a film that portrays black women as abused and black men as abusers?
  
  
• Two Years for Oscar Grant's KillerWe all saw the horrifying videotape of Oscar Grant's senseless murder. None of us can possibly walk in Johannes Mehserle's shoes and know his intentions but he has to spend the rest of life knowing that he has taken a human life. Two years in prison is nothing.
  
• Damn It, Kate Gosselin!
  Why you are a celebrity is a mystery to me. You and Octomom prove that any woman can crank out sextuplets and octoplets but it takes real cahones to be a mother. I hope posing on the cover of that glossy weekly gets you the attention you so desperately crave. You deserved that tummy tuck, bigger breasts and a vacation in Mexico with your bodyguard. Now go away.