And here's your host...DON CORNELIUS!

I was ten when "Soul Train" first hit the small screen, and there had never been anything like it on television.  Yes, there was "American Bandstand," but this was so much cooler, with black kids of all shades and sizes, and more Afros per square inch before, or since.  It was like a televised dance party with a bunch of my friends.  That is, if the party had brighter lights, and my friends happened to be the "Soul Train" dancers, with stylish clothes.  And forget the records; the recording artists were right there.  Lip-syncing, sometimes (which was kind of lame), but lots of times they sang live, and you'd groove to Kool And The Gang,  Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Jackson 5,  Al Green, Barry White (with the entire Love Unlimited Orchestra, mostly white people on the string instruments but they could GROOVE),  James Brown (who sweated profusely but never slipped while he danced).  Aretha.  Stevie.  Everybody wanted to crash that party, even Elton John and David Bowie.  My sister Susan and I grew up standing in front of the set, shaking our respective "groove things" and putting our hands together until we learned some of the moves; Mom would take an occasional look and comment about the clothes: "I love the colors!!"  And, of course, the legendary "Soul Train" dance line was a part of every wedding, reunion, and bar mitzvah I've ever gone to.  Frankly, it's not a party until you have a "Soul Train" dance line.  That's just a fact. 

This cultural phenom started small.  In 1970, a local Chicago DJ named Don Cornelius wrote, hosted, and produced a televised pilot version of his radio show with his own money (a whopping $400). Cornelius set the tone each week with his velvety voice and killer instinct for talent and trends.  The show was such a hit that the next year it relocated to Hollywood and was syndicated to stations across the country.  (And can we talk about the power of hearing the phrase "..this has been a Don Cornelius Production" at the end of every show?  This cool black dude with shades, a suit, and a 'fro, owned the show! And that blew my mind!)  

"Soul Train," like that dancing choo-choo that opened the show each week, was the little engine that could.  It ran for a staggering 35 years, bringing African-American music and culture (and sometimes a little history lesson) into living rooms across the country and around the world. "Soul Train" was a democracy of dance.  And forty years later, at a time when the country seems so polarized, "Soul Train" is a sweet reminder of how sharing a culture got us kids in sync, dancing to the same beat.  Thank you, Don Cornelius, for showing the world that black is beautiful, and that our music rocks the world. Now and forever, "we wish you love..peace..and SOUL!"

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

His words. 

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."

(Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962.)


"Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan."

(Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.)

That man could write, right?

Okay.  Remember 2006?  An election in Iraq?  And a proud purple finger? It was a human demonstration of what we’re were “fighting for” in Iraq.  We were spreading  democracy, letting liberty and freedom take root, and for the first time the Iraqi people were getting a chance to vote in a democratic election in their own country.  And vote they did, on simple paper ballots, about 8 million strong, almost 60% of the population, risking their lives to stand in line and cast their ballots.  The final step -- an election worker marked the voters hand with indelible ink, to prevent repeat voting.  The pictures were moving -- proud, defiant, purple ink-stained fingers.  Proof of the Iraqis taking a major step towards self-determination.

So.  Liberty.  Freedom.  Democracy.  One person, one vote, no repeats.  And the votes counted accurately.  And the will of the people is heard.  Sounds good, right?  Well, why are we spreading these innovative concepts to other countries, and simultaneously tweaking laws in our own country to make it more difficult for our own citizens to vote?  And more difficult to count the votes accurately?  

From state to state, even district to district, different rules, deadlines, and voting methods apply.   Some of us will cast a paper ballot; some will feed a ballot card into a computer device, or touch a screen to register our vote, or use the old mechanical lever machine.  Some states require you to bring a voter registration card, some ask only for signature verification; others require a state-issued photo ID.  Random and confusing proof-of-identification laws have sprung up all over the country.  And polling hours vary widely: in New York you can vote from 6AM-9PM; in Hawaii it’s only from 7AM-6PM; in Illinois its 6AM-7PM; North Carolina 6:30-7:30.  What happens if you can’t get there in time?  If our citizens can get a slushy 24 hours a day from any 7-Eleven, can't we extend the hours, or provide 2 days for people to vote?  

Proper identification is necessary -- voter fraud can happen.  The rumors of lost and found ballot boxes in Chicago during the 1960 presidential election are legendary.  And in the 2000 presidential election weird things happened: tens of thousands of eligible Florida voters were falsely said to have felony convictions and purged from the rolls; ballots with “hanging chads” were questioned or eliminated; voting machines malfunctioned and some polling places never opened.  The system failed.  The Supreme Court stopped the count and declared the winner.   And you know the rest.

The various states new voter ID initiatives have the potential of denying millions of citizens their most basic right.   A photo ID seems easy enough to have in this day and age, but if you're elderly, or don't drive, you'll need a state-issued ID.  And to get that you need a birth certificate. And if you don't have one, you have to pay to get a copy.  And if you can't pay, or can't get the copy in time, or if your photo ID isn't from the same state as your college...get the picture?  If over 60 million of us can phone in votes for our "American Idol," it's crazy not to make voting for our public officials simple, accessible, and consistent.

At the very least, when the entire country is voting for the office of President of the United States, the entire country should vote on as identical a ballot, under as identical conditions, proof of ID, etc., as possible.  And get this: more people will vote.  And anyone who doesn't want more people to vote, in my opinion, is anti-American.  

Some states are taking positive steps: in Vermont, people with disabilities can vote more easily by using a special phone at the polling place.  And in Wyoming, qualified voters with the proper identification can actually register to vote as late as Election Day.  But right now, in 2012, there are citizens (mostly African-American, by the way) in Michigan whose right to vote is being threatened. There's something called an Emergency Manager Law that gives the governor the right to suspend local elections and make his own appointments. The Voting Rights Act passed forty-seven years ago, but if anyone's ability to vote is threatened, everyone's freedom and liberty is threatened as well. We cannot go backward.  Why can’t we make voting as simple as a paper ballot and a purple finger?  

"The conservatives who say "Let us not move so fast," and the extremists who say, "Let us go out and whip the world," would tell you that they are as far apart as the poles.  But there is a striking parallel: They accomplish nothing; for they do not reach the people who have a crying need to be free."

(Why We Can't Wait, 1964)

TCM: great; Fox Movie Channel: not so much

Robert Osborne: classy, smart, knowledgeable, a true movie lover and the face of Turner Classic Movies. Three years ago I was in line at a Judy Holliday film festival and saw him leaving the theatre as I was walking in. I leaned toward him. "When will you show 'About Mrs. Leslie?' "Ahh. Shirley Booth.," he said. "That's a good one. It's out of print. " A little wave, without breaking his stride. The man knows his movies, and knows exactly what to tell you in his intros and outrows. He picks interesting themes. There's "Thirty One Days of Oscar," with a month's worth of Academy Award winners in all the categories. Ethnic film festivals, including Native Americans, and the African American one doesn't run during Black History Month, by the way, which is unheard of. What else. "Guest Programmers" who choose four (sometimes five) movies they love and get to talk to Robert Osborne about why they love their movies. And the TCM Film Festival next April, and I'm going.

Tom Rothman: God awful. On Fox Movie Channel. Hosts "Fox Legacy With Tom Rothman," starring himself, which is fifteen or so minutes of his dull anecdotes before the movie starts. Why does he do this? Because he can. It's his studio. He talks about the "alchemy" of movie-making (?), or he yaks his way through through the entire plot, or he states the obvious. I don't need him to tell me how brilliant "All About Eve" is, and sorry, but "Die Hard 2" isn't in the same category. His idea of "programming" is putting the same stupid movies back to back, and calling it a Triple Play, and in the TV promos the poor announcer has to sell this idiocy as if six hours of the same shit is something to look forward to! Classics like "Revenge of the Nerds!" "Zardoz!" "Without A Trace!" (TV Land and Nick At Nite do the same, with four hours straight of "Roseanne," or "Everybody Loves Raymond," or "The Nanny," sometimes "The Cosby Show." They don't even bother to pretend it's some kind of "marathon," this is routine. Eight hours each of 3 sitcoms, and that's a day. And someone gets a paycheck to arrange this. I only hope they'll be affected by the Bush tax cuts, but now that the GOP wants to protect the hardscrabble top three percent of the country that make more than $250,000 a year, those inventive programmers should be fine. )

Before I Forget

I've been seeing the trailers for Tyler Perry's "For Colored Girls" (written for the screen, produced, and directed by Tyler Perry, based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire), and the voiceover is by a white man! Not by a "colored" "woman?" Er, what's that about? Not even Keith David?

There's an awful lot of straight hair in that movie. Movin', shinin', hangin'. Whoopi's wearing a turban. I've got to see if there's an afro anywhere in sight.

And by the way, there's a last-ditch GOP ad (more like infomercial, almost a half-hour long) running in some of the states with tight races, that trashes President Obama and brings up all the old crap: Rev. Wright, Obama as secret Muslim, Obama as white-people-hater, Obama as taking your hard-earned money and giving it to ethnics, and so on. Saw excerpts of the commercial on Rachel Maddow's show tonight. And the voiceover on that spot is by a black man. Now, I don't know if this guy is a "true believer" in Republican smack-talk, or if he saw this as a script and a gig so what's the difference; and I know that "we" all don't think alike, and since I've constantly been accused of "sounding white," what the hell do I know? Maybe it isn't a white man's voice on the "Colored Girls" spots, maybe this isn't a black man shilling for the GOP, and who am I to begrudge anybody getting a job. But both ads bugged the shit out of me. So there.

I had a moment of truth this afternoon at the Popeye's drive-through in North Bergen, NJ, on my way home from the Volvo shop. I needed something delicious to eat after paying mo money mo money mo money to get my car fixed. All I wanted was chicken and a biscuit. No sides, no drink, just the meat and the bread, because I already had collard greens (from Whole Foods, way overpriced, like four bucks for two and a half scoops, and I didn't realize that until I paid for them and didn't have it in me to just leave them with the cashier) and was planning on taking my little meal home and maybe eating it at the table.

So I'm getting my thigh and wing, mild not spicy, and a biscuit.

"Anything else?" said the voice in the middle of the menu board.

"Can I get an extra biscuit?"

"Miss, you can get three biscuits for $1.29, would you like three biscuits?"

Of course I would like three biscuits, but I don't need three biscuits. "How much for two?"

"Excuse me?"

"How much would two biscuits cost? I don't want three."

"$1.26."

"Excuse me?"

"It's a dollar twenty-six for two biscuits." The voice waited.

Do you see the dilemna? Spend three more pennies and your biscuit count goes from 2 to 3. This is the kind of pricing that makes gluttony worth it. Jesus, what to do. I worked out twice in the last three days and finally, after more than a year, actually felt a slight ache in my abdomen, as though Saturday's sit-ups reached past the wall of pudge that is my stomach and actually worked a muscle buried deep, deep inside.

I took a deep breath. "I'll just take the one biscuit."

"Three-sixty-three is your total. Drive to the next window please."

I paid, got my bag and drove away. God knows what the Weight Watchers points value was on my yummy meal, but this was a teensy triumph. I passed on the biscuit sale and resisted the chance to overeat. And that was my dinner. A wing, a thigh, the Whole Foods collards (more expensive than the meal itself) and one biscuit.

Shit. Writing this down is making me hungry.

It's Election Eve, 2010. Make sure you vote, whatever you believe.

By The Time I Get To Phoenix, I'll Be Arrested

Arizona's governor Jan Brewer signed a law last week, called SB 1070. It "prohibits the harboring of illegal aliens and makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration crimes." Fine. "Harboring" people who have entered the country illegally isn’t right, and neither is breaking the law, whether you're an "alien" or not. (But can we please not call them "aliens?" They aren't two-headed silver pod-people from outer space, okay?) Next, the bill "...also requires police officers who, in the course of a traffic stop or other law-enforcement action, come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien verify the person’s immigration status with the federal government." Wait a second. How do you make the leap from jaywalking to illegal immigrant? Is it the iPod with James Brown and Celia Cruz songs? A pair of hardworking hands that are “suspiciously” dirty? Someone working in a front yard with too many weeds? What? Please tell me.

I talked about the Arizona bill with my neighbor Elsie, 82 year old, the daughter of Italian immigrants who built their own home, brick by brick. Elsie’s proud of her heritage, but we realized that if I lived in Arizona, and I was stopped by the cops, I'd be in big trouble . I always look suspicious, I’ve got a lot on my mind. Add to that a sloppy scarf, sweat pants, barking dog, a single key, plastic bags, and no ID. This "reasonably suspicious" American citizen would be hauled off. But wait a minute -- what about the illegal European immigrants who are in this country? Maybe they didn't slip across a border. Maybe they flew here. What's the difference? They're here illegally working as au pairs, cleaning people, busboys and so on. Would they be stopped? (I don't like saying "they," by the way. We're all people.) Let's be real: this bill is targeted at the browner skinned immigrants.

Did you see the photos from the New York Times piece last week? ("Growing Split In Immigration," 4/26/10) There are two: first, a Latino "illegal resident," chillin' outside his apartment building in an undershirt, with pregnant wife and three other children, plus an unidentified man with his back to the camera. And they’re all milling around the gravel-lined yard. The second is of a "supporter of law enforcement," a white woman neatly coiffed and dressed, on her way into the suburban mall to shop. The “paper of record,” doing their bit to reinforce stereotypes. They made the case for Arizona right there. Well done, New York Times.

The opposition to this bill has grown over the past week from celebrities like Shakira, George Lopez, and Linda Rondstadt; to religious groups, and even one of Arizona’s congressman Raoul Grijalva, who’s called for a boycott of his own state. There’s talk of pulling baseball’s All Star Game from Arizona next year. Conventions there have been cancelled. Illegal immigration is a huge problem, our borders desperately need to be secured, no one is denying that. One color matters to Arizona: green. And maybe losing millions will encourage them to think again.

And by the way...

Curling is stupid.