Free Republic

If Barack Obama makes it all the way to becoming the Democratic nominee for President in 2008, a feat he says he may attempt, a much more complex understanding of the difference between color and ethnic identity will be upon us for the very first time. Back in 2004, Alan Keyes made this point quite often. Keyes was the black Republican carpetbagger chosen by the elephants to run against Obama for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. The choice of Keyes was either a Republican version of affirmative action or an example of just how dumb the party believes black...

One of the most repulsively fascinating facts about contemporary black popular culture is how it continues to reach fresh lows. It finds new ways of leaping all fences that would bar it from falling into a bottomless pit of tastelessness. All of the insults and burdens of minstrelsy have been bested by black comedians and rappers who have made stupidity, hedonism, pimping, misogyny, pornography and violence their stock in trade. One defense of this amoral sense of life and culture is that black people didn't invent any of it, so why shouldn't they, like the white people, be able to...

When President Bush talked about environmentally responsible energy in his State of the Union speech, it was a surprise to a lot of folks. He was supposed to be a patsy or a puppet for Big Oil, according to his enemies, who grumbled that he was playing against type. But, as one political consultant said to me, "If Bush was actually a pawn of the oil industry, he would never have said that. He would not want people to even begin to think about alternate forms of energy." The harsh and sometimes daunting truth is that, like everything else in...

Richard Pryor's world was filled with prostitutes, pimps, winos and those others of undesirable ilk. This past Saturday Richard Pryor left this life and bequeathed to our culture as much darkness as he did the light his extraordinary talent made possible. When we look at the remarkable descent this culture has made into smut, contempt, vulgarity and the pornagraphic, those of us who are not willing to drink the Kool-Aid marked "all's well," will have to address the fact that it was the combination of confusion and comic genius that made Pryor a much more negative influence than a positive...

There's a reason thousands of people turned out for Rosa Parks' funeral yesterday. On Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to lift her bottom from a bus seat in Montgomery so that a white man could put his down, American history was cut into two parts - before the civil rights movement and after it. Parks had no idea that her refusal would become a standard by which the nonviolent movement would judge itself as it grew to take on all of the grand dragons of Southern segregation. Yet it is important to understand that Rosa Parks, the young Martin...

When we look at the ongoing crisis in the depths of black America, it is sometimes hard to understand why there was such an explosion of outrage at Bill Cosby. One would have thought that he did the very worst thing possible when he called on the carpet the self-destructive behavior that separates prosperity from poverty. What Cosby showed was how dangerous defensiveness in face of the facts can be to any serious discussion of poverty. Poverty and ignorance have always been well-acquainted. Part of the problem at the bottom is ignorance. Part of the problem of those who suffer...

I find the Catholic Church one of the most uplifting organizations to have risen from the human family because of the extraordinary art it has inspired and the majesty it has stylized in its ritual. I will never forget how my brother used to love to go into the neighborhood cathedral because he said that it was so calm and so beautiful and was a refuge from the heat or the cold of the outside world. But in a time as vulgar as ours, when we have trouble finding things to believe in that are beyond our bodies or beyond...

The White House has the power to save the civil rights establishment from irrelevance. But only if Republicans find the right way to approach black Americans — a possibility made plausible by President Bush's strong ties to the Christian right — forcing the black establishment to move away from the Democratic Party. The civil rights establishment, it must be noted, is not the civil rights movement. The movement was a loose confederation of organizations and volunteers that faced fierce opposition, some of it murderous. Its moral and legal victories set the stage for the civil rights establishment, mainly a few...

Forty years ago today, Malcolm X was shot down in front of his family and an audience of followers at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. When he died, Malcolm X had been estranged from the Nation of Islam for about a year and had begun to call Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the cult, a liar, a fraud and a womanizer. Those were mighty hot words to direct at the Nation of Islam, which was feared throughout the black community as a known gathering place for violent criminals of all sorts who had been converted in prison, the way Malcolm...

Confusion over Africa and its relationship to black people in this country may be coming to a head very soon. We now find that more Africans than ever are immigrating to the U.S. and that their presence may dramatically change the discussion on affirmative action. Over the years, affirmative action has become a free-for-all grab bag that anyone who is not white - or not male! - can use as a precedent for special treatment by the government or the job market, especially where public funds are distributed. That is not, however, how affirmative action was conceived, rightly or wrongly....

As we think back on the festivities down in Washington last week, it should be clearer than ever how complicated or contradictory the image of the Republican Party is. On that cold Washington morning, there were a number of people seated near the podium. At the center of the ceremony was Trent Lott, whose presence was taken as an insult even by black Republicans. Sitting there in the chill with everyone else was Democrat Barak Obama, the new senator from Illinois, whose opponent was the carpetbagger Alan Keyes. A contemptuous quick fix by the GOP, the elephants flew him to...

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com Forget fluff, focus on jihad Thursday, July 15th, 2004 The constant discussion of John Kerry and John Edwards in superficial, gossip-column terms may result in their soon being called John & John or J & J, but it will not change something that we have to keep our eyes on, here and abroad. The Islamic extremists bent on waging holy war will not disappear. They are intent on destroying secular governments and turning the clock back to a time when the worshipers of Allah ran what was then considered the world. One can...

As Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" continues its success, I wonder how clearly we see what is going on in Iraq right now. There are no images of Saddam Hussein marched into an Iraqi court in handcuffs on the covers of magazines. Instead, we see Moore and hear discussion of his "documentary." That is shameful. Beyond its numerous distortions, Moore's movie is essentially childish and full of a kind of frat-boy humor - rock-'n'-roll simplicity that the nerds of the world celebrate for its spunk and daring. When we look at Iraq, where Saddam and his henchmen have been arraigned and...

Some people are particularly disturbed by my use of the word Negro as opposed to the latest fashionable label. I am not bothered by such people, but I am disturbed by the reliance on cosmetic identity that has become so important to black people over the last 35 or 40 years. More than a few people were actually taken in by the obsession with naming that came out of the Nation of Islam, when Malcolm X, chief heckler for Elijah Muhammad, inspired many to begin responding to the word "Negro" as if it were the dirtiest of insults. The argument...

We can contemplate a good number of things as we think back over the year since our nation invaded Iraq. Some will say that we are in a quagmire and believe it. I don't, but it does seem that we were not all prepared for the resistance that has continued after the invasion. That means we are now fighting the real war and are losing troops the way that one does in a real war. Should we be in there or should we pull out? The deaths of our troops are tragic and are magnified by the news media, which...

I have been thinking, yet again, about the Middle East since that Palestinian mother of two kids decided the time had come to blow herself up and take some Israelis with her. This kind of violence has been gathering steam over the last year. Terrorism is no longer the business of only male Muslims. Now female terrorists also believe they can fly into the arms of Allah in bits and pieces. I wonder what the female equivalent of the 70 virgins supposedly awarded the male terrorist in heaven amounts to. It seems to me that if the most extreme Palestinians...

When President Bush signed a bill into law last week calling for the construction of a museum of black history in Washington, we saw, once again, that the Republicans have no idea how to make the most of issues that will draw black voters. Here you have something coming to fruition that Negroes have been trying to get done since 1915. For all those decades, nothing happened. Now, with a Republican-run Congress, the museum is passed into law - yet you would almost have to be in the CIA to know that such a thing happened. Bush signed the bill...

Since 9/11, I have been supportive of every homeland security measure used to single out for close scrutiny those with Islamic backgrounds and those from Islamic countries. I supported measures like annual registrations, periodic checks and a policy of refusing to allow such immigrants onto these shores. None of that support had anything to do with hating Muslims or disrespecting Muslims or profiling Muslims. It had to do with war and how differently one expects a society to go about protecting itself during a war. For those who did not notice it, the destruction of the World Trade Center and...

When I look at the coverage of casualties in Iraq, I am happy that the same kind of media and the same style of journalism were not in place 150 years ago. I say that because I'm not sure the media of today would have allowed President Abraham Lincoln the time he needed to find Gen. Ulysses Grant, who revamped the Union war effort and commenced putting his foot in the backside of the Confederate Army. The Rebel army won many early battles in the cause of making sure that Southern gallantry, plantation life and refined manners rolled over the...

The seemingly comical story of James McKinley, who mailed himself home to Texas from the Bronx in an airborne crate, ceases to be amusing when we really think about it. Imagine if he were a terrorist: McKinley would have successfully gotten to the belly of the plane. Strapped down with explosives, he could have flown into the arms of Allah in a gory, murderous blaze. Those terrorists comfortably hiding in America because law enforcement has gotten virtually no help at all from that small sea of Arabs in which they swim, must have bitten their knuckles and slapped their foreheads...

GOP breaks its vows to black voters At this crucial time in American life, President Bush has before him a number of options that call for supreme boldness but are well within the realm of possibility. Bush needs to contemplate something I once saw when Jack Kemp, then the U.S. housing secretary, Bertha Gilke, a black community leader and the first President George Bush spoke together in St. Louis. At one point, Gilke said that as a life-long Democrat, she had never expected to be on a stage with two Republicans, but she had to admit that Bush and Kemp...

The tragic murder of City Councilman James Davis brought great attention to his career. He is rightfully mourned, if only because of how far ahead of the civil rights establishment this highly principled man was. He was willing to face the epidemic of urban violence, push for better alliances between the police and communities and bring together hip-hop writers and entertainers opposed to the oppression of those communities by murderous thugs. Given Davis' example, you might ask what the civil rights leaders and black elected officials who represent terrorized urban neighborhoods are doing about this problem. Largely nothing, from what...

As President Bush continues to wend his way through a five-day trip to Africa, we can see some things about our country and our special-interest groups and our ideologues as clearly as we have ever seen them. On his first day in Africa, he gave a speech in Senegal from Goree Island, where slaves were gathered and sold to Europeans after being captured by other Africans (something self-righteous Negro Americans ignore at every turn). The speech shocked many because no Republican President since Lincoln has ever seriously addressed slavery or its consequences with such direct eloquence and depth of vision....

At a White House event entitled Harlem's Song, President Bush declared June Black Music Month and gave a speech that was a further indication of what could amount to a grand strategy. I mean a strategy that could make Democrats a bit unsure about owning the black vote, especially during presidential elections. I was there because I had been invited to make some remarks before the performers came on stage. The audience then heard the All-Stars of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem under the leadership of Loren Schoenberg, the executive director of the museum and a highly respected saxophonist...

On Tuesday, at a White House event entitled Harlem's Song, President Bush declared June Black Music Month and gave a speech that was a further indication of what could amount to a grand strategy. I mean a strategy that could make Democrats a bit unsure about owning the black vote, especially during presidential elections. I was there because I had been invited to make some remarks before the performers came on stage. The audience then heard the All-Stars of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem under the leadership of Loren Schoenberg, the executive director of the museum and a highly...

In terms of domestic crime, things are continuing to look up in our town for two reasons. One is that all those people who are "warehoused" in state prisons are not out there committing more crimes, which means crime will go down. On the subways, it's down 15%. The other, of course, is that our city's police force - which should never be less than celebrated when it does things right and never less than castigated when it messes up - has been on the case. It is surely one of the finest police forces in the history of this...

A certain perspective tends to dominate the Marxist-derived visions of those among us who most furiously denounce our nation. They seem to believe that something, from somewhere outside the U.S., is going to save them from the horrors of capitalism or the terrible greed and corruption of those elected to office, be they Democrats or Republicans. Sorry. We are not going to be saved by any system of ideas arriving from outside this country. Whatever happens to us will come as a result of what we in America do about our problems. Neither Marx nor Lenin, Russia nor China, neither...

A couple of days ago, I went to a lunch to celebrate Paul Theroux's new book, "Dark Star Safari: Overland From Cairo to Cape Town." "One of the epiphanies of my trip," he writes, "was the realization that where the mode of life had changed significantly in the Africa I had known, it had changed for the worse." When Theroux and I talked, he observed that he had noticed something very strange in The New York Times in the last couple of days - a short Associated Press story about "966 victims [who] were killed in an April 3 assault...