May 20 2006
Ok so since i seem to be ahead of the curve on the “tar baby” thing,
(see my post from about a month ago) I’d like to talk for a moment about voting.
I tell this to people all the time when they say they don’t think their vote matters: It’s not about now it’s about tomorrow. It’s about being on the record.
Actually I feel it’s a direct dis to our ancestors and those of all color who fought and died for the right. You could vote it for no other reason than to pay homage. Even if they don’t count it, it doesn’t take long.
My question to you hard core, bitter non voters who want change, is what are you doing that’s more or as effective as voting. What are you doing that voting would hinder or destroy your efforts?
Believe it or not, there is such a thing as the lesser of 2 evils… it’s not what I want but it is what is. I’m sure enslaved black people and white abolitionists could have just waited for the perfect person to come into office before they started agitating, resisting, escaping, protesting – but they didn’t. They did what they could, every minute they could.
Now. About the “Tar Baby” situation.
From cnn.com:
Snow’s briefing also produced a couple of backpedals, several pointed rejoinders — and at least one turn of phrase that raised eyebrows.Asked repeatedly about reports that the government has collected records on millions of Americans’ phone calls, Snow said, “I don’t want to hug the tarbaby of trying to comment on the program, the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.”
The expression, which refers to a character in the most famous of the fictional Uncle Remus stories, is sometimes used to portray an inextricable situation. But, as the word also has been used as a derogatory term for blacks, it raised eyebrows when spoken from the White House podium.
Snow’s statement was inappropriate, insensitive, and offensive.
Later in the briefing, Snow was asked what he meant. “Well, I believe ‘hug the tarbaby,’ we could trace that back to American lore,” he said
Racist ass Uncle Remus… WORD? ‘American lore’ has a lot of potential references to describe the position he was in. He chose the most incendiary one possible. Why?
The hubbub around the term has obscured the question he was dodging… probably one of the most important things to be talked about in the entire press conference.
This guy is no dummy
He works on television
He worked for FOX
He knows words and how they work
This was his first press conference, and he says something so wildly inappropriate that everyone focuses on the “bad word” and not on the issue he was “not going to hug” –
The NSA
Spying on you
And while we bicker over this phrase, the constitution is being shredded before our eyes
If you want to be offended, be offended by the dministration’s appalling response to Katrina and the fact that it might happen again this year
Be offended that the dollar is worth less
Be offended that the cultural reference that Snow made will be wasted on a country full of barely literate people of all races that are currently going through the public school system.
Exercise your rights before you get flabby
And stay focused
On Monday, on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show, Rosie Perez discussed the G word — gentrification — in Manhattan and in her childhood Brooklyn, specifically in Fort Greene and in Clinton Hill, where she now lives. You could say that Perez is on the anti-gentrification side of the ongoing citywide debate about how to preserve the old NYC while embracing the new. She complained that her neighbors don’t say hello to her. “When I walk out of my house, I used to know everyone on my block in Clinton Hill. I walk out there now, people move away from me because I’m a person of color and then once they recognize me, they go, oh. That’s a horrible feeling. That’s a feeling I didn’t grow up with,” she told Lehrer. This morning, at WNYC’s flashy new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the conversation continued, with Perez’s signature feistiness in full force. She hosted a broadcast debate in which community activists and city-landmark officials argued over the nature of this changing city. “Let me tell you, since I said that [on the radio], now everybody is saying hello to me,” she told her mostly amused audience (many of whom seemed to be from Fort Greene). “Be careful what you wish for.” [Read more]
