FOX News Has Lost Its Damn Mind: Racism, Whitney, and Rep. Maxine Waters

Dear FOX News:

Last week the United States lost an icon. Miss Whitney Houston was not only a singular voice and the voice of a generation, she was also emblematic of the problem of U.S. celebrity, the ways in which, particularly people of color performers, are commodified, superhumanized, idolized and then, when the pressure, stress, strain, racism, stardom, use, and abuse gets to be too much, we delight, in an old school Roman Coliseum way, in watching their slow and devastating decline...extracting the last bits of their humanity before they expire and we then memorialize them when it would have been more fitting to cauterize their words and had them still living amongst us. But I digress.

This week was lost an amazing woman, Whitney Houston, and I, and many folks of my generation, mourn her loss. She was responsible for her own actions, but we are responsible for cannibalizing her and her pain.

And then comes along FOX News.

Now....I make it a point to never ever watch FOX News...mostly because I choose not to go to folks in the midst of a permanent psychotic break to get my news. The reality that the folks at FOX News are seeing and the one that the rest of us are living in seemingly have nothing to do with one another. I seem to recall something about the news being objective, or, at the very least, it is supposed to make an attempt to report the facts as they are...now and again FOX gets a date or a location correct, but everything they say after that point seems to come from a badly translated neo-conservative fortune cookie.

The other day, while at the gym, my friend Brian swooped in for a butt grab to catch my attention...seeing as he is easy on the eyes, I didn't mind. But when I removed my headphones he asked me if I'd seen the clip from FOX News concerning Rep. Maxine Waters, a crack pipe and Whitney Houston comment, and the House Banking Committee, and my eyes burst into flames from a sudden bout of FOX News Induced Rage (FNIR).

Whitney Houston hadn't been dead three days, and FOX News had already found a way to use her death in a supremely fucked up and racist way.

By the time I left the gym, Brian had posted the video clip on my Facebook page. In it, Eric Bolling, after rolling a clip of Maxine Waters making a statement about taking back the House, and, when doing so, becoming the chair of the Banking Committee as Rep. Barney Frank is retiring and she is next in line. Her comments went further to say that she would use the powers of the committee to hold big banks accountable for this here recession they put us in. Sounds like common sense to me. Sounds like justice to me. But apparently, to Eric Bolling, it sounded like a perfect moment to speak ill of the dead and make a racist crack head comment about Rep. Maxine Waters.

Specifically, he lost his mind and said:

“What is going on in California? How’s this? Congresswoman, you saw what happened to Whitney Houston. Step away from the crack pipe, step away from the Xanax, step away from the Lorazepam because it’s going to get you in trouble.” Bolling said about Waters on “Fox and Friends.” “How else do you explain those comments?”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72964.html#ixzz1n7G4JUcR

If a commentator on CSPAN, CNN, MSNBC, or the Home Shopping Network had made a comparable comment, he or she wouldn't have made it to the end of the segment before being fired. But oh no, not FOX News...the last best defender of the 1st amendment freedom of speech and the press. Bolling made a half-assed apology and said he was joking, and he continues on the air...a racist neo-con time bomb just waiting to explode again.

How about this. FUCK YOU ERIC BOLLING YOU RACIST MOTHERFUCKER.

Since Obama took office it has been a free for all on Black elected officials. White folks have felt free to say whatever the Hell pops into their minds about the president and other African-American electeds. At this point, I want to start passing out white hoods to half the pundits and all of the GOP. The only thing that is post-racism about the United States is that it is post-time to get real and recognize that racism is alive, well, and taking center stage in a way that it hasn't since before the Civil Rights era. If Eric Bolling had signed off his segment with, "Good night, niggers!" I couldn't have been any more shocked or surprised.

I would suggest a boycott of FOX News, but no one I know watches FOX News, and ain't none of the gays I know about to give up on Glee. So, instead, I am encouraging folks to call FOX News and let them know how you feel about Eric Bolling's comment: 1-888-369-4762.

And I hope if Rep. Waters ever gets that man alone for five minutes she takes off her belt or cuts a switch and beats his ass like his Mama should have.

And Whitney...if you could ask JC to send Eric boils or shingles or Ebola...I would be much obliged.

A Prediction

Call me Miss Cleo or believe that I am channeling the spirit of the now deceased Zelda Rubenstein (aka Tangina) but I have a feeling that some shit is about to break off up in this piece sometime very soon.

We got angry white men flying airplanes into IRS buildings and the media refuses to call it what it is: Terrorism (fucking racism)

We have angry ass white men in Tennessee calling for a return to Jim Crow (fucking teabaggers).

We have an angry white woman in Washington State calling for the lynching of U.S. Senator Pat Murray (more fucking teabaggers)

Finalists are being eliminated from American Idol for shenanigans and skulduggery (fucking FOX)

And I got the shits.

Oh yeah...something real is about to break off up in this piece.

Obama has reached up inside himself, grabbed his nuts, and pulled them out of his abdomen and is letting the Republicans have it.

The Republicans are firing back a full 41 gun salute in the Senate (damn you Massachusetts). And Nancy Pelosi is off getting Botox when she should be in Harry Reid's office slamming his forehead into his desk.

And Carnie Wilson has gained all that weight back that she lost from gastric bypass surgery.

The world is going straight to hell.

The good news is that the economy has rebounded, some. And I know a lot of gay boys in finance that are making money hand over fist or fist inside anus, however you want to phrase it.

But even with that...my Spidey Sense tells me that something for real for real is going to break off this week. Something unexpected or perhaps some shit we should have expected but thanks to a gaff by the CIA, NSC, FBI and PBS we are going to be caught with our pants down, our cheeks spread, and a baby Jesus butt plug in some hard to explain places.

Call me Nostrahomodamus....but grab your implants boys and girls...we are in for some real shit, really soon.

Tragedy and Stupidity In South Memphis

This morning I logged into my Facebook account to find a news clip posted on my wall by my friend Arthur. The clip was an interview from a Fox affiliate in South Memphis. A mother and and her sister left their home unattended with a two year old and a three year old inside while they went to drop off a friend at home. During their absence the house caught on fire. The two year old died.

You can see in this clip that the mother of the children is understandably distraught. One child is in critical condition and the other one is dead. Then the aunt of the children loses her fucking mind. At the end of the clip, she announces that she has no regret that the children were left home alone, then she laughs and says she needs to get in to see if her "purse burnt up cuz her food stamp card..." was in the purse.

Stupidity knows no fucking color.

Unfortunately, this ignorant black woman's interview is already making its way around the country at the speed of YouTube. I am sure that Fox News could not WAIT to get this clip up on the Internet and into the hands of their faithful across the country. At a time when the black community is enjoying the beginnings of a Renaissance, Fox has helped ensure that this ridiculous excuse for a human being is going to get massive amounts of air time.

And let's be real here. When a crazy white person aka Timothy McVeigh blows up a federal building killing innocent children, he is just one disturbed human being. When a crazy working class black woman exhibits her personal ignorance and callousness on Fox News, she is representing the entire American Black community. She immediately conjures of images of deadbeat welfare queens, uneducated poor, and stereotypes of black women used to galvanize the religious right base during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years.

The woman in that video clip is a poor excuse for a human being that should have her tongue yanked out by her sister. I can't imagine one of my siblings being so heartless and cruel as to make a statement such as the one she made while the house is still smoldering. If any of them did, you can bet the first thing I would do when I came out of the shock of losing my child would be to kick his or her ever loving ass. But I would know that it was just a stupid person saying stupid shit. But when the media, particularly Fox media, gets a hold of something like this it is a culture war gold mine.

If I had the stomach for it, I would Google search this topic. I would not be surprised if Don Imus and Glen Beck mentioned this news story on their shows today. Just as one black person should not represent our entire community nor should that same black person have the power to sabotage the image of an entire community, but this one disturbed individual does. My own internal tapes started running as soon as I heard her speak. False stereotypes of the working class (from which I come), the South (my family is from the South and I went to college in the South), black women (ummm I am black), and a whole host of other negative stereotypes started running through my head. AND I KNOW BETTER. I know that the South is a beautiful and vibrant place. Most of my political mentors come from, live in, and organize in the South. I came out in the South, cut my teeth as an organizer in the South, and I know the power, beauty, and history of that place. Yet this one woman was able to raise all the specters of the South implanted in my mind by history books, television, movies, and other pop culture vehicles. I know so many powerful black women that it should be impossible for me to project the shortcomings of this stupid individual to all black women, yet the tapes in my head started shouting things like "typical." The Aunty in this video IS NOT TYPICAL. Yet pop culture and U.S. acculturation tells me that she is.

I hate Fox News. I despise this woman her personal ignorance, and I hate our cultural system that indoctrinates even people that know better to feel and think AUTOMATICALLY the thoughts and feelings that rushed through my head and heart when I watched this particular interview.

My heart and prayers go out to the Mother of those children. She is not faultless. She knew better than to leave two young children at home alone. She has reaped a punishment that will haunt her for the rest of her life. I wish her only peace as she tries to pick up the pieces of her family. To the Aunt, I hopes that she gets the help she needs from friends and neighbors. I hope she sees her interview and is embarassed to the core of her being. And I fervently hope that Fox News and Ruport Murdoch are sucked into a worm hole, deposited on an oxygen-less planet on the far side of the solar system where they are gang banged by giant poisonous sea slugs.

Lord let the rest of the day be filled with peace, joy, and love.

Health Insurance Companies Can Suck My Dick

After spending half a year working at the Center for Media Justice and basically deepening my distaste for the media to the point where saying FOX out loud is enough to make me projectile vomit down the nearest news anchor's open mouth, I have been reduced to scanning the headlines via Yahoo and watching CNN on the treadmill at the gym. I figure I can learn all of what I need to know in terms of distorted media biased issues reporting from one of those sources, in small spurts, without risking nausea or a brain tumor.

Today, though, I was reading an article on Yahoo that talked about the upcoming speech that Obama is planning to a joint session of Congress. First of all, joint sessions of Congress are extremely rare occurrences. The only time they happen regularly is during the State of the Union. Otherwise, they are generally reserved for things like announcing a formal declaration of war, the end of a war, the death of a someone of near God-like stature, or the annual Congress Christmas Party and Intern Rubdown.

In the aforementioned article, it happened to say, punnily, that one of the opposition points of the conservative lobby and GOPers is that they are worried about the health of private health insurance companies.

Excuse me? The HEALTH of private health insurance companies? Did United Healthcare come down with tuberculosis, AIDS, or malaria and I missed it? No? Until then shut the fuck up talking to me about some goddamn entity that exists on paper as having any health needs whatsoever. I have health needs...I need to be healthy; I need to be able to get sick and not have to worry about dying from a heart attack when I get the doctor bill; and I need to not have to decide whether or not I should spend money on electricity or Zoloft.

Health of health insurance companies. Nigga please.

This is the one time in all my life that I have heard Democrats advocating for a full on market system that will force private companies to play by the rules of capitalism by competing with a new and larger player that will force bloated, vampiric, profit mongering private health insurers to stop price gouging, price setting, and profiting from the illness, death, and misery of people and start looking at ways to keep people healthy, reduce costs and provide the most effective treatment for the lowest price. That is how the fuck you stay in business in any other damn industry...hey health care...suck my dick...I don't give a shit about the CEO of United Heath care raking in a salary of $124.8 million (and yes kiddies that is what former United Health Group CEO Bill McGuire made in 2005).

This is also the first time I have ever heard Republicans talk about protecting the market from competition. Excuse me...is Rush Limbaugh back on those pills? Is Trent Lott back to advocating for the return of the Dixiecrats? Is someone up in the Senate Office building smoking crack rock? I find it highly amusing the inviolate free market economy beliefs of Republicans are about as deeply held and inviolable as 13 year old boy at Neverland Ranch.

There is no health care reform without a public option. Period. Without a public option the health care reform becomes a minor tweak of the health care system where teeny changes will be made, that will save money in the short term, will not address the fundamental underlying problems with the system, will result in bloated health care premiums over the long term, and will inevitably lead to a return to the status quo or worse...the collapse of the U.S. economy under the burden of health care costs. States are already seeing this happen, for example, in Minnesota, the majority of every new tax dollar raised goes to offset state health care costs. When all of our money is going to pay for bloated programs that do not work and to premiums and systems that create poor care and massive numbers of underinsured or uninsured, why the hell wouldn't we do anything and everything possible to address the real issue: CREATING A HEALTH CARE PROGRAM AND SYSTEM ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE, AFFORDABLE TO EVERYONE, and SOLVENT!

Anticipating Obama's speech to Congress, I can feel the spirit of my Big Mama sitting with me. I am about to pull on my house coat, lube up my slippers, chew on some tobacco, and cut a switch. I am going to sit in the gallery in Congress, spitting in to my chaw bucket, and slappin' my switch menacingly on the bench...staring down at Obama and daring his narrow black ass to back off a public option. And the minute some cock-eyed, short dicked, Cadillac insurance carrying Republican member of Congress (or Blue Dog Democrat for that matter) opens his or her mouth to as much as yawn during or after the speech, I am going to lay into their asses like their Mama's should have and scream at the top of my lungs, "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You...You Don't Like A Public Option? Then YOU PUT THE 40,000,000 uninsured on YOUR health care plan."

Don't worry GOPers and Blue Dogs...the ass whoopin' you got comin' is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

No it ain't. Bend over and take it bitches. Cuz you have earned this whoopin', and I hope Obama tears your fat asses up.