Posts by Kyle Matthews
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(Q: Would we have cried, would so many have been so moved, had a woman been the candidate and the winner? I'm thinking not, and I'm not sure why. I'm also a little dismayed at myself for putting this question in parentheses; feel free to tease it out a bit more in the discussion thread).
I was thinking about that as well Jolisa, and I agree, there wouldn't have been as many tears.
I'm trying to avoid playing "your oppression is bigger than my oppression", which is a bit of a crappy game to play.
But I think the path from slavery to today, is a larger journey. The daughter of a freed slave participated in this election. As much as it shouldn't have taken this long, it still blows my mind.
I also think that the oppression of African Americans around civil rights are both more visual, and more recent. Lynchings, dogs, fire hoses, crosses burning on lawns. These have all occurred in living memory. The struggle of women to vote was both more distant, and a more civilised struggle - though still difficult and very significant.
Lastly, my perception is that race is still a dividing line and very significant issue in America. Almost every household, workplace, social group has women and men. You can't say that about black and white.
And, I think that in many ways the struggles of women around various rights, including civil rights, are easier to get less up in arms about because of these things. Women are everywhere, they're not segregated into neighbourhoods. "I'm not sexist" is easier to say, and to be accepted, when you're married to a woman. "You don't have any black friends" is true of many people, everyone has female friends and family members. It's an easier issue to not get uppity about, because it's less obvious.
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I'm pragmatic enough to know Obama is going to need some shit-kicking arm-twisters in his corner to "manage relations" on Capitol Hill (which isn't necessarily going to make his life easy just because it is controlled by his party) and so on. But really -- the White House Chief of Staff has rather a lot of practical and meaningful influence.
Well, there's no point kicking shit if you aren't influential enough to back it up.
Otherwise you're just a guy with crap on your shoes.
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Go for it - I only require a 6 figure concept fee. (10% of that goes to David for providing the forum for the brilliant idea .:)
Just because Russell is in a drunken stupor mumbling about MLK and Obama, don't think that he doesn't provide the forum.
David just provided the spark?
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actually I just found out that Richard Pryor was the first BPOTUS waay back in '77.
Nah, I can beat that as it turns out. James Earl Jones in The Man.
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Does he he count as the first fictional black POTUS?
Closely followed by Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact.
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Didn't we do that already?
My ballot paper must have got lost in the interwebs.
Though seriously, Belich, Bolger, Orange, Te Kanawa, and Whineray? Not the list of options I want to be a constitutional head of state.
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except when they really just want to lock some up.
for instance in cuba.
Well yes. Bill Ayers is probably lucky that US law in the 1970s and 1980s wasn't operating under the military code, and interesting interpretations of it.
But if it was, one suspects he'd still be in hiding.
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"The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder is mere incompetence. I don't know what sort of defense that is.
One that would stand up well in most courts. I think the American legal code definition of murder probably mentions about someone actually being dead.
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The nail bomb his girlfriend prematurely detonated on was intended for the killing of some dancing officers and WAGs
Wait, he should be in prison for something that:
1. His girlfriend did.
2. His girlfriend didn't actually do either?I'm in favour of arresting terrorists for things that they're about to do, though there's some tricky legal parts of it.
But Bill Ayers wouldn't still be rotting in jail for not being at a house where people were preparing to commit a horrible act of terrorism, at which only the potential terrorists got hurt.
The Weather Underground never killed anyone, the worst thing they did was blow up some buildings and break people out of jail. It's pretty vanilla terrorism.
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The only reason Ayers isn't still rotting in jail is that the FBI screwed up part of its case against him.
One of several reasons that Ayers isn't still rotting in jail is that he never killed or injured anyone as part of the Weather Underground. The worst action he could have been convicted of was blowing up buildings, which wouldn't carry at 30 year prison sentence.
Eric Rudolf on the other hand, killed a couple of people, and injured many others.
But keep on making things up. I think Che is entertained.