The Common Ills: 2024-12-01

Saturday, December 07, 2024

Music

First up, today's posting:

Two of the posts above are non-music. The rest? All Beatles songs except the top one, Diana Ross' cover of "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" which is a John Lennon song.

Great music is great music.

Michael Jackson was a pedophile but "Rock With You" was a great song. I'm not going to deny it because of what he did outside the studio.

There's some real desire on the point of some to trash the Beatles. This is largely radical freaks. They seem to think they score points by trashing the Beatles.

They don't.

They only demonstrate their ignorance.

After the band broke up, there was a push to downgrade them and uplift the Rolling Stones. I like the Stones but they were never the Beatles. And probably no one ever will be.

Ringo Starr wrote "Octopus Garden" and "Don't Passy Me By" which are interesting notes in the Beatles' discography. Good songs, songs that probably wouldn't have been written by the other members. George Harrison came into his own as the band progressed and ended up writing the great songs "Here Comes Tomorrow" and "Something." He was clearly influenced to grow and stretch by working with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Those two were the Rogers & Hart of the second half of the 20th century.

Now Rogers & Hart wrote great songs -- "Ten Cents A Dance," "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "Where or When," "Blue Moon," "My Funny Valentine," "Sing For Your Supper," "Glad To Be Unhappy," "My Romance," "Little Girl Blue," "My Romance," "The Blue Room," etc.

They wrote for Broadway. They weren't not the only great songwriters of their era but they were probably the greatest when you look at their output compared to others.

And that's why, even when they were no longer writing songs together (Lorenz Hart died in 1943), people were still recording their songs -- in the sixties, that included Diana Ross & the Supremes, Janis Joplin, the Mamas and the Papas and Cass Elliot as a solo, Miles Davis, Barbra Streisand and many, many more.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon might even be better than Rogers and Hart. If so, that's due to a number of reasons. First, the fifth Beatles -- George Martin. He produced their albums. And his skills and interests forced them to be better. A second reason was the fact that they became very popular and that popularity gave them a license to do what they wanted in terms of exploration.

Stevie Wonder is an amazing songwriter but, while the Beatles were stretching and being encouraged to, he was instead at MOTOWN and being discouraged. No one really respected Stevie or his talents in his early days at MOTOWN. The thought was that he shouldn't be in charge in the studio. Those who only know of Stevie after his release of one of the all time great albums of the 20th century, 1972's TALKING BOOK, might not grasp just how hard Stevie had to work for final say and control to deliver his greatness as he heard it and not dictated on MOTOWN's terms.

The Beatles got popular quick and did so via bubble gum pop. In the US, and with lesser management (Brian Epstein was their representative for the bulk of the group's time together) and a so-so producer (George Martin was their producer) and a more successful label (they first achieved success on EMI's PARLOPHONE) they would have been forced to remain the same over and over, record after record.

Third, the times they recorded. You had a whole cultural revolution taking place -- hippies, calls for peace as war on Vietnam mounted. New fashions -- the hippie look, the mod look, etc. A call for films and books that spoke to people's lives. The photography of Diane Arbus, the pop art sensibility of Andy Warhol, comics who did acts -- actual thematic comedy shows -- and not just a string of unrelated jokes. In every aspect, the arts were growing. Lorraine Hansberry and Joe Orton demonstrating what plays could be in terms of focus and in terms of structure -- add Juidth Malina and Julian Beck of THE LIVING THEATRE -- these were seeds planted early int he decade that grew and advanced the arts. . You had a huge demographic bulge that had started out on bubble gum pop but wanted something more as they continued to buy records.

Fourth, the music revolution taking place. As Michelle Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas, has noted, everyone was striving for contributions via their music, they were borrowing freely from one another in their recordings and creating a sound. As she noted, the Beatles borrowed from Bob Dylan. And you had Brian Wilson who was a nice hitmaker reaching deeper -- PET SOUNDS being the result. Music was exploding in the UK and in the US and there was so many influences and influencers.

It was also a dark time that had hope. And that fueled great songs.

Music itself was stretching. The Temptations are a great group but look at them from the early sixties to the end of the sixties and start of the seventies and you can hear how music had changed. They depended a lot on outsiders and MOTOWN wasn't really wanting them to grow, but grow they did in their psychedelic soul period.

Smokey Robinson writes great love songs and he wrote some great ones for the group but Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong provided deeper material. And the group grew as a result.

Last week, a White man who always tries to speak for Black people did an attack on the Beatles. We don't like that man here, we don't note him here. We've found him useless over the years repeatedly. He is the Woody Allen joke of the White man majoring in Black Studies who thinks he can become Black (BANANAS).

The attack was done by a dumb YOUTUBER a few years back and we responded at THIRD with a long list of Black artists who had recorded Beatles songs.

I don't understand the hatred for the Beatles.

You don't have to like their music to appreciate it. I can't stand Laurie Anderson's music. Nothing in it speaks to me and nothing ever has. However, I can appreciate that's she's followed her own muse, done her own thing and advanced art.

The members of the Beatles, after the group folds, doesn't write a lot of great songs. Even John, who had the most to say, struggled to fill a full album most of the time with even just good songs.

The four didn't have each other to challenge nor was their a thriving music scene to challenge them.

Carole King wrote some amazing music in the sixties and achieved classic status with TAPESTRY. But not a lot after that. She never had another TAPESTRY and by the mid-seventies she wasn't even recording good music. By that I mean the music she wrote was now arranged -- by her -- poorly. Gone were the figures -- which she sometimes wrongly calls vamps -- that set the music apart -- the piano figure at the start of "One Fine Day" and throughout. Now everyone just seemed to play the same chord on albums like WELCOME HOME and TOUCH THE SKY -- among others.

Valerie Simpson is someone who is magnificent when it comes to writing music. I love Valerie as a person and I loved Nick. But Valerie's music often achieved art while Nick's lyrics were sometimes hit making lyrics but not art. Nick was very talented and I'm not saying that he wasn't. Early on, when the two great songwriters ("Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing," "You're All I Need," etc) became a recording duo, Nick got some of the worst reviews because his voice was only passable and passable is not good when you're singing opposite Valerie who possess one of the most amazing voices. But Nick worked and worked and by the time of "High Rise," he's his own singer with his own style and he and Valerie are an awesome duo.

But, again, in terms of great artistry, that's Valerie's music and not Nick's lyrics. They could be hit making from time to time, his lyrics, but it's not until STREET OPERA that his lyrics come close to reaching what Valerie's capturing in the music she's writing.

I wouldn't put the Beatles in the top ten of the best singers of the sixties. I think John's the best singer of the bunch.

But as songwriters, they have few people who are actually on the same level.

In some cases, that's by choice. Joni Mitchell didn't want hits. She was scared of fame early on before she was even recording albums. She infamously ran out of a college party because the students recognized her as the woman they'd seen perform live. David Geffen -- whose was her manager -- grasped this and knew he had to make it a game. So, for example, he tells her that she can't write a hit song. Despite the fact that she'd already written the hits "Both Sides Now" and "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock." To prove him wrong, she writes "You Turn Me On I'm A Radio" which made it to number 25 on the top forty.

Noting the greatness of the Beatles does not mean that there were no other great songwriters nor that all the great songwriters were White.

Great songwriters from the 60s to the close of the 20th century would include: Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Pam Sawyer, Tracy Chapman, Prince, Carly Simon, Kurt Cobain, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Nicks, Laura Nyro, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, Sade, Ben Harper . . .

Why are we talking about this now?

Honestly, because of race.

The attacks on the Beatles in the last few years have tried to insist that the Beatles are not relatable to Black people. This despite the fact that Black people have always been a significant part of the group's audience in any decade. And this despite the fact that the Beatles have been recorded by many, many Black artists -- Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, The Temptations, Natalie Cole, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr (two founding members of The 5th Dimension who, in fact, did an incredible tribute album to the Beatles not that long ago), PP Arnold, Tina Turner, Ella Fitzgerald, Richie Havens, Sarah Vaughan, Chaka Khan, Dionne Warwick, etc, etc.

The 2024 election has resulted in many of us looking at the issue of race -- and how racism and sexism worked to put Satan back in the White House.

And there are times, in the snapshots, where you're seeing "if this doesn't apply to you, just let it roll off your back." Because, if you're a community member, I know you're not acting on racism.

But the reality is that a lot of White people voted against their own interests and betrayed Black women.

Black women have voted for every Democratic Party nominee for president over and over.

And despite some on the left using this -- Laura Flanders, I'm looking at you -- for one election cycle after another with the 'Vote Like A Black Woman' slogans and using Black women's votes to attack White women, there was no love or support for Kamala.

We saw it and we won't deny it.

This is another good moment to point out that, Tuesday, the African American Policy Forum had a roundtable entitled "Views from the 92%: Black Women Reflect on 2024 Election and Road Ahead." Professor of law Kimberle Crenshaw observed at the start, "Conversations are going forward with us being relegated to a time out space." Black women were largely silenced before the election and this has continued. Now when it came to trashing the first Black woman to seriously run for president, DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, COMMON DREAMS, etc. Along with Kimberle, the participants included THE WASHINGTON POST's Karen Attiah, iONE DIGITAL's Kirsten West Savali, Black Voters Matter Fund's LaTosha Brown, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and Convener of Black Women's Roundtable's Melanie Campbell, the National Council of Negro Women's Shavon Arline-Bradley, the Transformative Justice Coalition, Atlanta Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta's Fran Phillips-Calhoun and Higher Heights' Glynda Carr.

I am not trying to divide us and I'm not trying to make being White a crime. I do expect accountability for those who put Trump back into the White House -- that includes the White racist like Amy Goodman and Kartina vanden Heuvel, it includes the fakes asses in Dearborn and in Hamtramck who pretended to speak for Palestinians even while some of them took GOP money for their remarks -- we're compiling that list in the community newsletters.

You are welcome here regardless of your race, gender, ethnicity, etc, etc.

You can even be here and welcomed if you realize you made a mistake and supported Trump or the hideous Jill Stein.

But we're going to talk about what happened. And if that makes you uncomfortable? You should grasp that's due to the media you've been consuming.

There is so little Black viewpoints expressed at THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, on DEMOCRACY NOW! or on YOUTUBE programs hosted by White people that when you hear honest criticism of White people for their actions, you feel attacked personally.

Jon Stewart does not speak for Black people. Point of fact, he really doesn't even acknowledge that we have a viewpoint.

You're worshipping a lot of false gods who really don't have any excuses in 2024 to be presenting nothing but the White viewpoint. If we want to grow as a people, we're going to need to learn the viewpoints of other people -- which, by the way, Black people have always had to do.

If I'm calling out a White person and it doesn't apply to you, then I'm not calling you out.

If it doesn't apply, let it fly.

Let's wind down with this:

The Black Commentator Issue #1019 is now Online

December 6, 2024

Read issue 1019

Our email address is BlackCommentator@gmail.com

Our voicemail number is 856.823.1739

The Black Commenentator | P.O. Box 2635, A weekly publication dedicated to economic justice, social justice and peace.,

The following sites updated:

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

Diana Ross and The Supremes - the Beatles' Eight Days A Week

Beatles' Got To Get You Into My Life - Diana Ross & The Supremes and The Temptations

Natalie Cole - Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - The Natalie Cole Special ...

Cher - Beatles Medley (with Tina Turner, Kate Smith) (The Cher Show, 04/...

PP Arnold - Beatles' Yesterday

Patti Smith - Beatles' Within You Without You

Roberta Flack - Beatles' Here, There and Everywhere

Aimee Mann & Michael Penn - Beatles' "Two of Us" [Leno 1/21/02]

Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. - Beatles' "The Fool On The Hill" (feat. Natalie ...

Rickie Lee Jones - Beatles' For no one

Diana Ross - Beatles' I Will

Alicia Keys - Beatles' Blackbird (Piano & I: AOL Sessions +1)

Ella Fitzgerald. in Beatles' "Hey Jude", Montreux Jazz Festival, 1969.

Trump LOOKS SO STUPID doing Foreign Affairs VIA TWEETS

Chaka Khan The Beatles' We Can Work It Out

Blondie - Please Please Me (Beatles cover)

Annie Lennox Beatles' Don't Let Me Down Live 1992

Jennifer Hudson & the Philly POPs - Beatles' "Golden Slumbers" 7-4-19 CLIP

Aretha Franklin - Beatles' Eleanor Rigby - 3/7/1971 - Fillmore West (Official)

Norah Jones - Beatles' Something Live at George Fest [Official Live Video]

TINA TURNER [Beatles' LET IT BE ]

The Mamas & The Papas - Beatles' Nowhere Man (Live on Hullabaloo 1966)

Fiona Apple - Beatle's Across the Universe (Official HD Video)

Roberta Flack - Beatles' If I Fell (Official Audio)

Tina Turner - Beatles' Help! (Official Music Video)

Bettye LaVette - Beatles' “The Word" - 30th Annual John Lennon Tribute

Diana Ross - Beatles' The Long And Winding Road

The 5th Dimension - Beatles' I've Got A Feeling

Nina Simone: Beatles' Here Comes The Sun

Sarah Vaughan - Beatles' Come Together

Judy Collins - the Beatles In My Life (I Love You More)

Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. - Beatles' "And I Love Her"

Dionne Warwick the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" on The Ed Sull...

Joe and Mika Keep Fighting A Losing Battle

Cyndi Lauper - Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever 4K REMASTERED

Peggy Lee - A Hard Day's Night (1965 The Beatles Cover)

Diana Ross & The Supremes / Beatles' Michelle (TV - 1968)

Diana Ross & The Supremes - The Lady Is A Tramp

Cher & Kelly Clarkson - DJ Play A Christmas Song (Official Audio)

Cher Opens Up About Love and Iconic Moments With Josie Gibson | This Mor...

Trump THREATENS Meidas and it DID NOT GO WELL…for Trump!

TOP Democrat Thinks BIDEN Should PARDON DONALD TRUMP!?

Ticked-Off Jon Stewart Blasts Dems in Ridiculous ‘Morning Joe’ Style Rant

Friday, December 06, 2024

BREAKING! Joe & Mika Curiously Absent from Morning Joe Following Tirade ...

‘Enormous heist’: Hayes on the ‘audacious scheme’ to reward big donors

Blue States STRIKE BACK at Trump before TERM STARTS

Trump's cabinet of sexual predators

Rep. Crockett Talks Elon Musk & DOGE Drama with Wolf Blitzer

Jenifer Lewis SAVAGES Black Maga

Transgender lawmaker Leigh Finke on the political backlash surrounding t...

"Morning Joe" Is Showing How Scared They Are

Fed-up Morning Joe Host SELF-DESTRUCTS in Must-See MELTDOWN

Sarah McLachlan - Find Your Voice (Official Video)

Far Right HACKS on Supreme Court Rejected Trans Rights Argument

Is Cable News to Blame? People Are Tuning Out at the Worst Time...

WTH?!? Nut Case MAGA Talking Heads DENIGRATE Def. Sec Lloyd Austin With ...

Who Would Be in Your Dream Cabinet? | Pivot

MAGA CONGRESSWOMAN vows to go after HUNTER BIDEN anyway!

Colleges Take EMERGENCY ACTION over Trump THREATS

The United States is Sick! | democracyish

Live Chat!

Iraq snapshot

Friday, December 6, 2024. Implosions for MORNING JOE and THE YOUNG TURKS -- and why we need to not just expect better from the media but to actually demand better from the media.

Each day, it seems, our country loses a few more brain cells and we, as a people, increase our ignorance as a result of garbage like FOX "NEWS" and Bernie Sanders.

The 'independent' US senator sees everything as a joke. Ha-ha-ha, we're not laughing. We're not laughing with your racism which repeatedly conflates "working class" with White, we're not laughing at your decades of disrespect for Black women, we're not laughing at your decades in Congress and never having accomplished anything, we're not laughing at the fact that the Democratic Party leadership punked you in both 2016 and 2020 and you just took it. We're especially not laughing as you run around in circles playing Donald Trump's bitch.

FOX "NEWS" reports:

The progressive Independent senator took to X on Tuesday where he addressed the idea after it was first reported by Fox News.

'Trump has suggested that Canada become the 51st state in our union,' Sanders wrote.

'Does that mean that we can adopt the Canadian health care system and guarantee health care to all, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and spend 50% less per capita on health care?' he went on.

'I'm all for it,' he concluded.

The talk of Canada joining the U.S. was sparked Monday evening when it was reported Trump floated it to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during their meeting at Mar-a-Lago on Friday.

The talks?

Reality for the nut jobs:

A Commonwealth realm is one of a group of sovereign states within the Commonwealth of Nations that have the same person, currently Charles III, as their monarch and head of state. All the realms are independent of each other, although one person, resident in the United Kingdom, acts as monarch of each.^[1]^[2]^[3] Except for the UK, in each of the realms the monarch is represented by a governor-general. The phrase Commonwealth realm is an informal description not used in any law.

As of 2024, there are 15 Commonwealth realms: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom. While the Commonwealth of Nations has 56 independent member states, only these 15 have Charles III as head of state. He is also Head of the Commonwealth, a non-constitutional role.

The notion of these states sharing the same person as their monarch traces back to 1867 when Canada became the first dominion, a self-governing nation of the British Empire; others, such as Australia (1901) and New Zealand (1907), followed. With the growing independence of the dominions in the 1920s, the Balfour Declaration of 1926 established the Commonwealth of Nations and that the nations were considered "equal in status ... though united by a common allegiance to the Crown".^[1] The Statute of Westminster 1931 further set the relationship between the realms and the Crown, including a convention that any alteration to the line of succession in any one country must be voluntarily approved by all the others. The modern Commonwealth of Nations was then formally constituted by the London Declaration in 1949 when India wanted to become a republic without leaving the Commonwealth; this left seven independent nations sharing the Crown: Australia, Canada, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Since then, new realms have been created through the independence of former colonies and dependencies; Saint Kitts and Nevis is the youngest extant realm, becoming one in 1983. Some realms became republics; Barbados changed from being a realm to a republic in 2021.^[4]

King Charles III is the head of state for Canada. No, Canada isn't becoming a part of the US -- not today, not tomorrow.

Instead of forever playing the court jester (fool), might Bernie try educating the public?

I expect FOX "NEWS" to spew stupidity, even I didn't think Bernie was this bad. I hope he feels a part of the Trump club by shucking and jiving and wasting everyone's time. Old man Sanders, you're life is done and you accomplished nothing.

And now you're taking Trump's stupidity and amplifying it. You're the worst second banana in the world, sitting on the couch next to the 'comedian' host and yucking it up over his one liners.

It's not a good look. Not for a man over 80 and certainly not for someone serving in Congress.

These are serious times and we don't need yucks and jokes from our members of Congress. Especially the ones way too old to be funny.

It's disgusting but, hey, SECULAR TALK's Kyle has enthused "my two presidents!" over another bad Bernie moment where he spoke with Jon Stewart this week.

Really?

Neither Bernie nor Jon is President of the United States, has been President or will be President.

Their interview was an embarrassment.

Hero worship is not going to save the left.

Let's all try to be a little damn smarter.

Right now is where I would normally go off on THE VANGUARD. Instead, we're noting two videos that they did yesterday.

Good for Zac and Gavin. They've actually risen to the occasion.

This is an awful time.

A very close election.

Kamala Harris: 74,938,474 votes (48.4%)

Donald Trump: 77,236,275 votes (49.9%)

That's the official AP count as of this morning. There was no landslide, Satan has no mandate.

But close didn't deliver the presidency and the Dems lost the Senate -- but increased their numbers in the House. Republicans control it but as it stands right now there are 220 Republicans in the House and 215 Democrats.

Satan is both an idiot and a terrorist.

These are not joyful times.

And we need to be concerned.

But too many idiots who think they need to lead us or that we need to watch them or listen to them or read them are the worst of the worst. They're doing nothing.

They're yammering away as though they're Cokie Roberts going on ABC's THIS WEEK to offer a bunch of nonsense -- that's what everyone else is saying already. Conventional wisdom? It may be conventional but it's never been wisdom.

And it's appalling to watch just how little we've learned on the left.

THE VANGUARD gets plenty of criticism from me but applause to them for a real topic that's tremendously needed. We need to be holding people accountable. THE YOUNG TURKS were never our friend. Cenk and Ana need to be called out. That's a real topic.

Our media especially betrayed us this year. Especially this year. And if we seriously do want to think about how to make things better, we need to be demanding much more of the media supposedly serving us. If you're supposedly left and you're writing a column that could easily run in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, you're wasting our time and money's being wasted paying you.

The Supreme Court is probably going to deliver a severe attack on trans rights. They heard the case this week. We've noted many videos here about it -- and no one laid it out better than Danielle Moodie -- that's why we included her video in yesterday's snapshot.

I haven't written about this case here (but did two pieces for community newsletters) and the reason is, I just can't. I don't know if it's a scene from a film I'm recalling or something from news footage that's blurred in my mind long ago. But it's black and white when I dream and it's a child and they identify as female so some hateful thugs -- adults, not peers -- shaves her hair and beats her up. And it was popping up in dreams and I've not been able to sleep and now carry it over to waking moments. This isn't a topic I can address right now myself.

And there are topics that you might not be able to address immediately on your YOUTUBE program or at your website or on your radio program or in your magazine. But that doesn't mean you address nothing. And yet that's what far too many 'left' 'journalists' are doing.

That's not: You can't have fun!!!

Obviously you can. Everyone needs to blow off steam. And Ava and I cover TV for THIRD and while everything since June has been about politics, we will return to just covering entertainment TV at some point.

But we can't afford junk news anymore than we can afford junk science.

That's reality.

And if you're appalled by Ana and Cenk -- and you should be -- or by Mika and Joe -- and you should be -- you should grasp that they got away with it.

It didn't start yesterday or last week. Ana's been trashing transpeople forever.

But more to the point, they've both been doing junk news. It's probably more obvious with Ana because her lies are always very clear. Someone she knows said this, some doctor called her a name, some friend got this . . .

This is nothing but junk. She invents situations and characters to attack people because she can't do the actual work required. So it's a coffee talk with Ana and Cenk that they try to pass off as news.

It's not news.

It is news that Joe and Mika can't stop yelling at whomever is still watching their sorry ass program.

When your audience has tanked in less than a month, you don't scream at whomever's left watching.

And MSNBC bosses don't think that was a good look.

Mika and Joe bowed to Satan and kissed his ring -- finger and anal -- only to be shocked that this kowtowing resulted in a backlash.

Now they're screaming at viewers for calling them out?

Even worse, they compare themselves to THE WASHINGTON POST and THE NEW YORK TIMES.

No.

They are talk show hosts. Joe was a crappy politician before he became a right-wing, crappy TV personality and Mika was never more than a nepo baby. MORNING JOE does not break news. MORNING JOE is not a news program. It's a talk show. On it's best day, it might qualify as a public affairs program but it is not and has never been a news program.

The two are talk show hosts and nothing more.

And what they sell -- as hosts -- is that you can believe them and you can trust them. Then, days after they've called out Satan, they're sneaking off to his lair to bow and scrape before him.

Again, we need to demand better media. (And, again, MSNBC bosses are not pleased with the stunt of Mika and Joe screaming at viewers on air.)

On any given day, there is more than can be covered. On any given day, there are too many people spouting talking points -- and I'm talking on YOUTUBE -- and not doing any actual work.

I know Rahm Emanuel. I've known him for many years.

I have not endorsed him to run the DNC. I don't plan to endorse anyone.

But I don't get the group think there.

Kyle and his club meet up with Krystal and others and determine who we're going to be supporting.

Oh, they did such a great job with Tim Walz, right?

All I wanted was anyone but Josh Shapiro.

Didn't expect we'd get someone who would deliver the worst performance in a vice presidential debate ever.

Rahm is to the right of me. Far to the right.

But the conversation has been nonsense on the left regarding this.

The next head of the DNC, whomever it is, is not going to be shaping policy. They're going to be allocating resources for candidates, they're going to be working on messaging, etc.

Rahm can be an asshole -- I think he'd admit that himself.

But is that a quality we might need in that position? Does he know about races and campaigns?

These are the issues that matter for that position.

If whomever gets it agrees with me on every issue, that's excellent, yea!

But that's not really what the post is.

And we can't have an intelligent discussion about that. Again, I'm not endorsing Rahm, I'm not endorsing anyone. And don't come up at me with Iraq because I will bury you with the actual facts. Rahm was pro-war, yes, but he was also the most effective communicator when Dem leadership became more vocal against the war. That includes a disaster press conference on the topic where Nancy Pelosi couldn't string together a coherent thought and Steny Hoyer seemed asleep. Rahm's the one who jumped in and made the anti-war argument and saved Pelosi and Hoyer a lot of embarrassment. I can provide more examples but, again, I'm not endorsing him or anyone else.

Yesterday, we noted Melanie Campbell from a roundtable that we'll be noting below in a moment. But let's quote her again on the issue of who should head the DNC:

One of the things that's disturbing for me is that you don't see -- right now, we're talking about four people who they're talking about who are up for the position to be the head of the Democratic Party. Why don't we see a woman? Why is there not a Black woman? If we voted 92% for the [presidential] candidate, why are we not even seeing one Black woman in the running or in the discussion? So that's one of the things that I see that we have to address. And that's how we deal with our money and make demands because we do write checks, right? And the other has to do with how we find ways to fund our politics. Until we do that, I think we'll always be in that position.

That's a good observation and a good criticism.

But some of the other puff that's being offered -- especially by those backing one man -- is awful and embarrassing and it dumbs us all down.

It has nothing to do with qualifications. They just happen to like the person -- or to like the image the person has.

How is that any different than what Satan's doing with his Cabinet dreams?

Tulsi's not qualified, Junior's not qualified, Pete's not qualified, go down the list.

But then take a moment to look at how the discussion of who should chair the DNC is going.

I don't really care what they think about this or that. They're not going to be making policy. They are going to be steering the party with regards to races.

Can they do that?

Many thought Howard Dean was going to do a great job.

And he was lousy. It should have been obvious that he would be. What was his experience? A failed run for the presidential nomination and a governor Vermont. How did that spell big vision? How did that spell out experience in leadership?

I don't care who they choose. But I do care about the quality of the conversation. And this shouldn't be -- as Krystal Ball tried to make the 2024 DNC presidential nomination -- about who attended your wedding. This should be about actual experience and qualifications.

Can you deliver in the job?

Do you have experience in government or politics or philanthropy of working well with others?

I don't need to hear "She built a brand on her own!"

Okay, so that person can work well by themselves. Doesn't mean that they have leadership skills.

We need better conversations and we need smarter media.

Zac and Gavin made a few mistakes -- and they know it, they corrected themselves. I'm not bothered by mistakes when people are trying. I am bothered by it when it's coming from people phoning it in.

There is so much at stake over the next four years. We can't be phoning it in. We need to have serious conversations and address actual issues. There's no time for fan boying. Stop worshiping politicians, especially those who have failed to deliver.

Bernie may be the King of Talk but he's the accomplisher of nothing. Letting him jaw bone on camera may save some nursing home patients from having to endure it over breakfast and across the table but he's got nothing to offer as he has demonstrated in all of his years in Congress.

The roundtable.

Tuesday, the African American Policy Forum had a roundtable entitled "Views from the 92%: Black Women Reflect on 2024 Election and Road Ahead." Professor of law Kimberle Crenshaw observed at the start, "Conversations are going forward with us being relegated to a time out space." Black women were largely silenced before the election and this has continued. Now when it came to trashing the first Black woman to seriously run for president, DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, COMMON DREAMS, etc. Along with Kimberle, the participants included THE WASHINGTON POST's Karen Attiah, iONE DIGITAL's Kirsten West Savali, Black Voters Matter Fund's LaTosha Brown, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and Convener of Black Women's Roundtable's Melanie Campbell, the National Council of Negro Women's Shavon Arline-Bradley, the Transformative Justice Coalition, Atlanta Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta's Fran Phillips-Calhoun and Higher Heights' Glynda Carr.

Excerpt:

Kimberle Crenshaw: And one of the things too that has to be elevated is the denigration of DEI as though that is an inherent --

Barbara Arnwine: It's -- it's just a new word -- it's the new N word.

Kimberle Crenshaw: That's what people have been saying.

Barbara Arnwine: It's the new N word. I mean, come on, the ship hits a bridge in the Baltimore Harbor and they start talking about the 'DEI Mayor' Brandon Scott which had nothing to do with the darn ship, nothing to do with the situation.

Kimberle Crenshaw: Or a door flies off a Boeing jet and that has to be because of DEI mechanic. And once again it comes down to the things that we haven't effectively been able to integrate into the mainstream -- the understanding that DEI is not a signifier of someone less qualified. The operation of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are not preferential treatment. They are efforts to ensure that people who are qualified and would otherwise be excluded have the opportunity. Our failure to be able to force a reckoning at the media level and even with some of our allies is what now leaves us as a loaded weapon on the table that is now used against us. So we're going to see DEI being weaponized. We're going to see universities and philanthropy being attacked for having any recognition that the ways that people have access to their institutions need to be broadened and deepened and made more equitable. This is basically the end of Reconstruction 2.0 -- pushing us out and attacking the policies that have made it possible for us to integrate the institutions to which we've been traditionally excluded. So a lot of work. I mean one of the things that we're trying to do here is to list the things that need to be done differently next time. So we need to speak directly to those efforts to deny what our racial identities are in our communities. We need to speak to the efforts in our communities to denigrate DEI and we also need to speak to the way that racism and sexism individually and together create a completely different arena for us when we are candidates. On that note, let me come to you, Kirsten, because one of the principal ways that Kamala Harris was attacked was that she was battered with spurious lies about her past -- used again to suggest that she wasn't qualified, that she 'slept her way' to the top. Now this is something that is gendered -- women often have to deal with it. But it takes on a particularly violent dimension when it comes to Black women -- a dimension that we might be able to use Moya Bailey's term misogynoir to express. So tell us about how what we saw happening we could have predicted was going to happen with respect to these stereotypes against her -- against Black women in general. How this is an expression of misogynoir and why we should have been better prepared to deal with it.

Kirsten West Savali: Thank you, Kim, and thank you again for having me. You know, first, before I go on to the response to your points, I saw a couple of comments about why do we have to see these things now? And I wanted to just frame this a little bit because why is it important to discuss these things and look at these things? It's because we cannot look away because we're dealing with the party that also tries to negotiate often times and bargain with White supremacy, because these are the people that they are trying to tell us that we should link arms with and get votes from. We cannot negotiate, we cannot bargain with that level of misogynoir, with that level of White supremacy and we do need to be able to call it out when we see it -- not only from them but when people in the Democratic Party tell us we need to link arms and capitulate to that level of terrorism. So that to me is the reason why we have to see every single time and not turn away and why we cannot be surprised. It's because the story of this nation has been written. There are no surprises here. They see Black women either as -- again, we talk mammies or jezebel. Right? The oppression, the systemic oppression in this country is mapped across the bodies of Black women. We are a nation rooted in land theft. We are a nation rooted in genocide, rape and slavery. We talk about police violence and the murders that they commit against our communities but also sexual violence is the second highest form of police brutality so that when you have someone -- like a Kamala Harris -- who they cannot contain, who is not their property, who they cannot tell to shut up, who is becoming the face of a system that they think belongs to them, that should help Black women stay at a position of subservience to them, they cannot take it. This is why we have White men -- White men, they think, 'Oh, there on our side.' Sometimes no because White men marry and are friends with and their girlfriends with does not mean that they also don't hate Black women. And so we have someone like a Donald Trump and I can't tell you about how many times he talked in the news about how 'beautiful' she was. They say all the time 'she's beautiful.' He called her like the most beautiful actress he's ever seen. They cannot contain her.

Kimberle Crenshaw: Mmm-hmm.

Kirsten West Savali: And that is the problem. They do not want to see Black women in power. One of the things I noticed -- again we were not surprised about how the popular vote turned out -- but a little bit looking into how White men in this moment were so angry, they refused to play the game. That's a little bit more than just your run of the mill like a Hillary Clinton or like another White man running for office or even a Joe Biden. They could not stand the fact that this Black woman that they cannot sleep with, that they cannot fire, who is more educated, more talented, probably more economically secure than a lot of them, they can't take it. And that's really what it came down to and we saw it all through the very end. There are a lot of reasons why we can say the election turned out the way that she did but I think one of the things we have to do is make sure we call a thing a thing and talk about the entire story that we saw.

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