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Thread Count: Hate in a Sheet, Principle in a Suit

3/14/2014

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“Where are you Mister Hate Filled Man? Still thinking up a brand new plan. In the boardrooms where you meet. In Brooks Brothers’ suits instead of sheets.  ” From “Hate-Filled Man” © 2001 Poetry Emotion by Jay

Before we get into the heart of this discussion, allow me to provide some contextual background as it relates to the title. According to Wisegeek, thread count refers to the number of threads, both vertical and horizontal, in a one-inch square of fabric and is affected by a number of factors, including ply and thickness of the threads used. Using finer threads also allows for more thread to fit in a square inch. Finer thread often results in smoother, softer fabrics, part of the reason high thread count fabrics are considered more desirable than fabrics without one. Finer thread also results in a more fragile fabric, however, which may not always be ideal. Two-ply fabrics help solve this problem somewhat by strengthening the threads and creating a more durable, though heavier, fabric.

Does anyone remember that hilarious scene in the movie “Django Unchained” when a bunch of Klan members ride in on horseback determined to murder Django and his comrade? Well if not, the men realize that none of the holes cut into the hoods they are wearing line up correctly. As a result, no one is able to see their quarry well enough and ultimately they (Klan) are defeated while attempting to flee. Not only does this reflect complete and utter ineptitude on the part of the woman responsible for carving out the holes, it also serves a reminder that most Klan members are not refined to the point of caring about thread count. Hell, to them a sheet is a sheet is a sheet, right? However, that was then at least until the late fifties through the mid-sixties when circumstances forced the Klan to consider a more subtle strategy.

First, let us ask ourselves one very important question and that is, where do we suppose the children of the Klan of that era are? You know, the young men and women who were throwing rocks at blacks, spitting at blacks, attacking buses filled with black and white freedom marchers, and calling out nigger as though it were the first word they ever learned. Where are they now? Well guess what, they’re the people at town-hall meetings raising their voices, pumping their fists and saying President Obama should be executed as a traitor. They’re the people going around talking about ‘Real America’ as though the America in which we now live is somehow an impostor. They’re running cities, they’re legislating in statehouses and they’re governing.

They’re running the corporations, can anyone say Koch Brothers, they’re governing states, they’re sitting as Federal and Supreme Court Judges and Justices. And, they’re sitting in the United States Congress. That’s right folks, from sheets to suits. Their parents spewed a rough and course message of what we know as ‘hate’ while wearing sheets. However, these new age Klan spout the same thing while wearing suits, only they call it ‘principle’, a smoother, finer rhetoric.  Oh and they changed their name too, now they call themselves ‘Tea Party Conservatives’.

Think about what went on at the CPAC Conference last week. From Cruz to Christie, from Paul to Palin, not one kind thing was said by or about anyone who did not look, sound, or think as the CPAC speakers and attendees did. Nor for that matter did anyone have anything productive to say regarding policy other than that the president’s policies were a load of crap and that so too was he. Hell, with all of the focus on Obama coupled with very little mention of Hillary Clinton, one might mistakenly assume the president was running for a third term.

It would not be a stretch for most people to read the subliminal message espoused by CPAC speakers, that tongue-in-cheek, wink, wink message that says we hate all people of color and that includes you Dr. Carson and Governor Jindal –we only suffer you because you hate Obama and you provide us cover. Don’t believe us, try hugging him like Christie did.

Finally, we come to this week’s hoof-in-mouth suicide by none other than that Wisconsin fraud of a choirboy, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, another suit espousing ‘principle’. Congressman Ryan has for the past four years as Chairman of the House Budget Committee presented budgets targeting the most vulnerable Americans while benefiting the wealthiest Americans. Ryan even has the nerve to do so under the guise of harboring a so-called compassion for the poor, which by the way everyone with a nose knows is pile of you-know-what. However, as with most things, in the right light every bump and blemish shows, and in an interview on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show this week Ryan’s did just that. 

Responding to a question by Bennett concerning fatherless children and the example of work ethic lacking in fatherless homes, Ryan said, “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.” Ryan went on to say, “If you’re driving from the suburb to the sports arena downtown by these blighted neighborhoods, you can’t just say, ‘I’m paying my taxes, government’s got to fix that.’ You need to get involved,” Ryan said. “You need to get involved yourself, whether through a good mentor program, or some religious charity, whatever it is to make a difference. And that’s how we help resuscitate our culture.” According to Ryan, food stamps and Medicaid “trap” people in poverty because earning higher income through work means less eligibility for benefits and that liberal poverty policies give people “a full stomach and an empty soul.”

Question for you, Congressman, exactly whose culture are you interested in resuscitating, your culture (whites), the culture that gives you carte blanche to run roughshod over people of color –a culture built on the backs of black slaves. Are you interested in resuscitating our (blacks) culture, the original culture you and your ancestors killed or is it the culture of blacks saying “yes sir boss”, stepping aside so that you and yours could pass on the sidewalks. Could it be that culture that existed when we were not allowed to vote or run for office that you wish to resuscitate, me thinks it is the former and not the latter. But then again I could be wrong, after all, you’re wearing a suit so I should understand, it’s ‘principle’.

My mother use to bake pies while she wore her housecoat. However, when she wore a dress she called it quiche. Sure did taste like pie.

~~~ Jay Arrington, Maryland Daily Examiner

*See more at: http://www.marylanddailyexaminer.com/thread-count-hate-sheet-principle-suit/#sthash.dBMi2tky.dpuf



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The Real Ape Story - Part III: Annie Oakley vs. Mother Theresa

3/6/2014

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Who could have ever imagined the day when the argument for women to pack heat would be at the forefront of a national debate in the United States? Yeah, you heard it right. The gun control debate has turned into Mother Theresa vs. Annie Oakley. Last week in Newtown, Conn., one mother after another testified about losing her child in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre or about the guilt that haunts her because her child survived. The military-style AR-15 rifle the shooter used, one mother told a legislative panel, was “a death machine.” Meanwhile on that very same day in Washington, another woman, Gayle Trotter of the Independent Women’s Forum, testified just the opposite. She said an assault rifle in the hands of a mother defending her children and her home against violent intruders offers “peace of mind.” The AR-15, Trotter told a Senate panel, is “a defense weapon.”

Now, setting aside for a moment the validity, sound or not, for either argument, can any of us really imagine a mother welding an AR-15 assault rifle when she answers her front door- or better yet, having one set up in her living room like a piece of exercise equipment? Has America descended so far down the hellhole of violence that irrational thought is now the new normal? Powerful lobbies on both sides of the issue are turning to women as leading spokespeople and symbols. In television advertisements and op-ed articles, speeches at rallies and testimonials before legislators, both types are stoking emotion and fear in an attempt to sway public opinion. What is far worse however is, that lost in all of this fear mongering are the voices of those that really matter, the children. In the midst of this conflagration, the so-called adults on both sides of the issue are using the very bully tactics they de-cry as a major part of the problem that leads to these horrendous tragedies.

Those in favor of stricter firearm restrictions are employing mothers of shooting victims in their public relations push, calculating that when they speak out against gun violence they are hard to dismiss. Hundreds of thousands of moms who began organizing on Facebook after December’s Newtown shootings are staging rallies nationwide and lobbying lawmakers to pass President Obama’s gun-control proposals. The gun lobby, meanwhile, is using women to create a gentler image of the male-dominated industry and to frame its status-quo agenda as more about family safety and self-protection than about hunting and aggression. When CNN aired a town hall forum on gun violence last week, both of the pro-gun panelists were women. Manufacturers sell product lines of feminine firearms and accessories, retrofitting weapons to better accommodate women’s bodies and marketing them in pink and other bright colors. One Web site, Girl’s Guide to Guns, describes itself as “dedicated to women who dig fashion and fire power.”

“America’s women, they are leading the way,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in a speech at the gun group’s convention last year. “Nearly 30 million American women now own guns. And they know what all of us have known for a long time: the more women who buy and own and shoot guns, the safer and the better off we’ll all be.” News flash Mr. LaPierre, arming women is not what this debate is about. It’s about disarming troubled teens, urban and suburban. It’s about our children and somehow I just cannot imagine Mother Theresa or Annie Oakley squaring off in the middle of the street armed to the teeth with an AR-15. Can you?



~~~ Jay Arrington (EMAIL)
        Maryland Daily Examiner

- See more at: http://www.marylanddailyexaminer.com/the-real-ape-story-part-iii-annie-oakley-vs-mother-theresa/#sthash.BT7Cl8L0.dpuf
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The Real Ape Story - Part ll: The Traffic Light Syndrome

3/6/2014

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Have any of you ever turned on the news and heard about some tragic car accident and the reporter is interviewing people in neighborhood? There is always the one thing that stands out about most of those interviews and that’s the statement, “they speed through here all of time and I just don’t understand why they don’t put up a traffic light or erect a stop sign there. It was bound to happen sooner or later.” Next thing you know the neighborhood is outraged and everyone gathers at town hall meetings to shake their collective fists at local politicians. Episodes such as this mirror the legacy of the gun control debate in the United States and just like the traffic-light syndrome of local communities, most of the time these debates of shock and outrage only included those affected by the tragedy. In other words, people outside of the affected community never bothered attending meetings until and unless it concerned them and their own family’s safety.

In the wake of countless mass killings at local schools and universities, a phenomenon that has taken on the characteristics of a runaway train, more and more communities are melding their collective voices and shaking their collective shocked and outraged fists at local, state and federal politicians. Unfortunately, that runaway train has gathered a head of its own steam and sadly, some of the stops it makes are stops that a great many people in this country do not want to see removed from the train’s schedule. Take for instance the more than 500 murders that occurred in Chicago in 2012, where was the shock and outrage for those children? Who raised their collective fists and voices other than those affected by those tragedies? Where were the advocates for the traffic-light that might have saved Hadiya Pendleton, the 15 year-old honor student and band majorette at Kings College Prep School in Chicago who died after a gunman shot her at a park just a week after she performed in President Barack Obama’s inauguration. From the looks of things, shock and outrage does not rear their collective heads until the train makes a stop in neighborhoods that really matter.   

This past Tuesday would have been Trayvon Martin’s eighteenth birthday. However, as we all know Trayvon had his life taken by that overzealous wannabe sheriff, George Zimmerman last year. Zimmerman, whose right to supposedly stand-his-ground and kill a defenseless unarmed teenager is being defended by an outraged NRA shaking their collective fists, is being challenged by those who finally had the train stop in their neighborhoods and are shaking their collective fists right back at the NRA. In Detroit this past Wednesday, a 70-year-old high school basketball coach shot and killed one teenager and wounded a second as they attempted to rob him outside the school. This incident will no doubt be used to fuel the gun advocates’ claims that all law abiding citizens be armed if they choose to be.  

Part one of this series began by me describing the results of a learned behavioral experiment using apes in a cage. I then went on to substitute and relate the behavior of the apes to that of inner-city children, only for purposes of point, not physical characteristics. This metaphorical use of traffic-lights and the silence of the voices who witnessed the behavioral patterns of those in their communities, knowing that sooner or later something bad was bound to happen, yet said nothing, is much the same as those who never warned the children in part one of this series. It is only after the fact that people raise their collective voices and shake their collective fists. First, the shock and outrage only extends to those affected locally, no attention paid to communities affected beyond. Moreover, while the ear is pricked by the sound of the train’s warning whistle and we raise our heads to try and see from which direction the train comes, we ignore it if makes its stop somewhere else. We do not realize that our ignorance and lack of compassion for others only fuels the fire that steams the engine of that runaway train headed right for our hometown depot. However when it makes its stop, this time the collectively raised fists and the collectively raised voices are accompanied by collectively shed tears.   

~~~ Jay Arrington (EMAIL)
       Maryland Daily Examiner



See more at: http://www.marylanddailyexaminer.com/the-real-ape-story-part-ii-the-traffic-light-syndrome/#sthash.bbLPLA1Z.dpuf


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    Jay Arrington

    Jay Arrington is a featured staff writer and reporter for the Maryland Daily Examiner.  

    Jay's political commentary is cutting edge, and stands on truth and justice.  

    An activist and advocate for civil rights and a fair judicial system, Jay reports with the conviction of equality for all. 

    Jay Arrington's EMAIL

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