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Monday Round Up


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With their 3rd straight win of the new NFL season, the Chicago Bears are doing their part to deflect the negative vibrations emanating from Chicago.  With its high homicide rate, "Chi-town", also known as "Chiraq", has had its image bemirched by being named the most dangerous city in America. A recent drive-by shooting that sprayed a crowded gathering of players and spectators at an outdoor basketball game, injuring 13 people including a 3 -year old toddler, did nothing to dispel this misleading designation - which is based on questionable statistics.

 

Anyway, the aftermath of the shooting was a familiar one, complete with the obligatory interviews with bystanders and relatives of victims.  What was particularly gripping was the appearance of one lamenting woman who was identified as the grandmother of the injured child.  This disheveled woman looked to be in her 30s.  Her distress was obvious, as she lectured her neighbors.  Y'all gotta stop all this mess. We cain't sit back and let these killins keep on happenin. C'mon y'all,  dees is yo kids and relatives.  Y'all out their doin this shooting, need to jest stop it!

 

Nobody can quarrel with what this woman had to say, altho they can wonder why a 3 year old youngster was hangin out in a park at 10 oclock at night. 

 

This is not an unfamiliar scenario in the cases where children have been caught in cross fire.  And that's the point. This rampant violence taking place in Chicago's inner city is the outgrowth of a culture. With a few exceptions, the victims and victimizers are cut from the same cloth. They are a cast of characters playing out roles in a drama that stars single mothers and absentee fathers.  The offspring of these couplings then become part of a mob scene where they will either kill or be killed, and the settings for these productions are all too effective, with unemployment and bad schools contributing to the plot. Granted, the plot is crafted by a system that is designed to favor the privileged. Unfortunately, nothing is going to change, unless  black people  take it upon themselves to make better choices in the hope that they will gain better chances.     :(  

 

                                                             

 

Elsewhere, Kerry Washington lost out on the Emmy she was favored to win for best actress in a drama.  Her emoting in SCANDAL must not have impressed enough voters who probably thought the winner Claire Danes did a better job of playing a bi-polar white woman than Kerry did playing a frustrated black woman.  Obviously the latter is not that much of a stretch.  Kerry's co-presenter was Dihanne Carroll, who was the first black wowman to win an Emmy way back in the 60s, something the audience seemed not only clueless about, but disinterested in as Ms Carroll stumbled through her lines seeming to verify rumors of her growing dimentia.  But she sure looked good for a woman in her late 70s.  Black don't crack.

 

Speaking ot television, I am really a fan of "Board Walk Empire", the series set in New Jersey during Prohibition that is beginning its 4th season on HBO.  I just love how the producers have recreated the zeitgeist of this time period in America. The story line is all over the place but that doesn't matter, the characters and costumes and sets are so authentic and effective at capturing the mood of this decadent era.   

 

I'm particuarly pleased that the producers have beefed up the storyline involving the black characters, one of whom is Jeffrey Wright, a favorite actor of mine.

 

For watchers of this show who wonder about the chorus line in the nightclub that is reminiscent of Harlem's famous Cotton Club, in case you didn't already know, during these times, only "high-yellow" dancers were picked to appear in the revues. No dark women needed to apply because the influence of colorism was very strong back then. Also no Blacks were allowed to patronize these clubs; their sole function was to entertain the wealthy white customers.    

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Our Giants have started the season at 0-3...

 

What is happening in Chicago is, I'm beining to see, is a natural consequence of what happens when take a group of uneducated disinfranschised people and corral them together.  You see the same thing in all over the country it is just that Chi-town has the distinction of having the largest concentration of folks like this than anywhere else in the country.  

 

Plus the main stream press loves writing about Chicago so very much.  It seems murders in chicago make national news all the time.  I'm sure there are white communities like this, but the mainstream media loves to highlight Black dysfunction -- it feed into their world view..  Maybe Black media should go into dysfunctional white communties an report on their crime....

 

Yeah, I enjoy Boardwalk Empire too.  Right now it is the only program I watch.  I will be watching Sunday's episode later this eveneing.  They manage to keep the too often gratuiitous sex scences common in HBO series down in Broadwalk Empire.  I'm liking the Jeff Wright character -- epecially fater he took care of "Miss Anne".

 

The Emmy don't interested beyond what you have to say about it.  I don't watch any of the shows, though I did watch an episode of Scandal once to see what the hullabaloo was all about.  I quickly realized it must be a "chick" thing, 'cause I don't get it :-)  '   

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  • 1 month later...

 
Life is like a camera . . .

Focus on what's important,

Capture the good times,

Develop from the negatives,

And if things don't work out,

Take another shot.

 
This is pretty good advice.  But you're lucky that if things haven't worked out, you're not too old to take another shot.  Unless, of course, you're taking a shot of vodka. 
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