Today's links (11-2-12 edition)

1. I wanted to write something about the latest act of historiophotic gentrification (been waiting a long time to use that), this one involving Spike Lee's ouster as director of the James Brown biopic (to be replaced by the guy who directed 'The Help'). But Aaron Overfield beat me to the punch in bringing the gentrification meme to this week's head-scratching movie news, and I couldn't bear to take this on after thinking about Nina Simone all week. Even though it may be a bit strong to say that Lee was 'ousted' and 'replaced', just based on the circuitous paths that films take to getting made, one needn't be a standpoint theorist to think that the James Brown story  might benefit from having a black director. There's something to say here about the overlapping but different things that soul music and r&b mean to people of different races - you have this thought to thank for the still from 'Animal House' that appears above - but, like I said, I can't bear to think about it anymore. (The guy from 'The Help'? Really?)
2. The Feminist Wire is 5 days into a great, great series on Black women in academia and their health. In an interesting coincidence, I had just read this interesting piece in Meridians (subscription required to get the entire piece) by Grace Hong that begins by reflecting on the health costs of being an academic WB&F (while black and female).
3. I came some days ago to condemn facebook, now let me praise it: were it not for my friends posting on fb, I would never have discovered this wonderful marker of GOP campaign strategies jumping the shark, again. Then again, maybe black people in 2012 should vote Republican -  because, you know, Lincoln freed the slaves. In semi-related news, I'm really tired of hearing about Obama's war on coal. My fault for living - for watching TV - in central PA, I guess.
4. Sometimes a headline makes you angry even when it sort of gets things right. Like this one. Seriously: what if Mike Bloomberg is right, and Sandy was a function of climate change? Bloomberg? Some smart communication theorist must have a name for this. It happened as the Iraq War, the latest one, descended into an orgy of ill-motivated waste and theft and senseless death and stupidity. It happened as the financial crisis exploded into our lives and, well, continues to rain shrapnel on us all. In all these and still more cases, some people tell us how things are for years and years only to get ignored, until the truth can't be denied anymore and then all of a sudden the people who couldn't countenance the foolishness of the doomsayers before suddenly become converts - but without giving any credit to the proselytizers of doom. Maybe Bloomberg believed in climate change before Sandy - I dunno, I've tried not to pay attention to the man. But the fact that Forbes makes him the prophet of climate realism is just - well, it's not quite like saying that Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan are going to save the world from economic collapse. But it's in the ballpark. Still, not a bad article from Forbes.

To Be Young, Gifted, and... Brown; or, Blackening Zoe

 (From the 'Y'all Should Be 'Shamed' Dept.)

It has been brought back to my attention, rather against my will (damn you, Facebook), that Zoe Saldana has been tapped to play Nina Simone in a forthcoming biopic. It had to be brought back to my attention because I had successfully put it out of my mind. On learning of this some time ago, I had instantly decided that it was a casting disaster of Nick Nolte-as-Thomas-Jefferson proportions. It suggested to me that the film, like most films, was more about getting cash than about inventively exploring the world of meanings that it meant to invade.

What brought the matter back to my attention, and proved my initial response right, was a social media firestorm over pictures like this:

That's not a production still from a Star Wars set, where the intergalactically exotic extras are waiting to play lively at the Cantina. That's Zoe Saldana, late of 'Star Trek' and 'Colombiana' and various other excuses to watch her run around in skimpy outfits. More to the point, that's Zoe Saldana with her skin artificially darkened and her features artificially altered so that she looks more like Nina Simone. I hardly know where to begin, except to say that this is surely the latest nail in the coffin of vulgar postracialism.

Red Storms Rising

  In Sunday's coverage of this week's "storm of the century" it should be noted how compliant, bi-partisan and open to big government many Republican governors are. New Jersey Governor  Chris Christie all but endorsed Pres. Obama for a 2nd term and Virginia Governor Bob "Trans Vaginal Ultra Sound" McConnell, stated in a CBS interview that in moments like these, "There are no Democrats or Republicans". Ahem. That may have to be re-considered. The Franken-storm known as "Sandy" the 2005 storm "Katrina" and the various massive meteorological events that we have been witnessing for almost the past decade have a distinctly partisan cast and can be rightfully called Republican storms. For almost two decades, the Republican Party and its representatives have along with various corporate entities engaged in a systematic campaign to deny the fact of the planet's weather conditions changing due to human activity and consistently blocked Congressional efforts to address Global warming. The outright ignorance, corruption and mind boggling stupidity that comprises, the GOP's anti science, contra factual, flat earther conspiracy bullshit will be the literal death of us all. Seasonal Storm Sandy is just the beginning of what many scientists believe to be our weather systems passing the climate "tipping point" wherein human actions to curb the increase in green house gases or reduce the burning of fossil fuels may be irrelevant. We as a species may be looking at our next great Darwinian moment and the word for the future is adaptability instead of mitigation. This helpful little website Surging Seas will give you a sense of what your future needs may be.
  So in the mean time the next time you hear some red state buffoon during storm season or drought season or "For fuck's sake I can't believe this is happening" season, mouth platitudes about not being Red or Blue, coming together in times of crisis, or any such politician speak drivel, you point fingers, name names and assign blame, because this s*** could have been avoided. With true missionary zeal, the crypto corporate conservatives and their American Taliban employees have blocked, stymied and undermined every attempt moderate and progressive forces have made to take on the challenge of Global Warming. There may not be red states or blue states during times of crisis but there are those that tried to solve the problems that effect the very existence of our species and then there were those that decided to take hand jobs from Big Oil and Coal instead.

To all of you in the storm's path, be careful be safe and our thoughts and prayers from all of us at Jambangle.

3 Points from the Corner All Net or A Red Letter Day in "I Told You So"

  Frank Rich's brilliant, exasperating and infuriating column in New York magazine is a wag of the finger to those overly optimistic about the progress of race relations in 2008. Giving teeth to John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's 2004 work The Right Nation, Rich reminds us that despite liberal/progressive optimism over the years, a defeat of the right at the ballot box, will only encourage a further shift to the right. Contextualizing the modern conservative movement within Goldwater's 1964 defeat, Rich argues the right has only lurched further to the right in search of greater levels of ideological purity and rigidity. I have always believed this to be an inherently conservative nation (restricting the franchise at the founding of the nation and maintaining legal slavery should be a tip off) and have rarely been confused about liberalism in this nation's history. It is the exception not the norm. What provides this nation with a sense of uniqueness is the delusion among many that liberalism is the norm and conservatism the aberration. What this country does is try to be a liberal society but that effort is always in context of the permanent conservative disposition and bloc. So in short what Rich tries to tell us is that if Obama were to win this election, it will not create some Republican implosion, in fact it will only encourage the movement to gird its loins and seek out true conservative warriors. Because as Rich analogizes, conservatives are the cockroaches of American politics, nearly indestructible and most busy in the dark.

Run 'N Gun Romney

Having used this space recently to beat up on the idea of voting for Barack Obama, I'll turn my attention today to Mitt Romney. It occurs to me to do this because I've stumbled on the analogy that captures my sense of Mr. Romney's campaign. Mitt Romney is the political equivalent of Paul Westhead.

For those who don't know, Paul Westhead is a basketball coach, and a high profile one at that, at least for a time. He came to the attention of people like me during his brief stint as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, where he took the helm during Magic Johnson's rookie season (1979-80). Despite winning the NBA title in his first year, he was fired after a disappointing finish in the second year. Westhead went on to become the coach at Loyola-Marymount, a moribund college program that won big during his tenure and set multiple records for offensive firepower. He is now the coach of the women's team at the University of Oregon.

I hate the practice of treating political campaigns as sporting events, reducing the deliberative dimensions of an exercise in democratic living to a daily update on who's winning right now (in the polls). But I find this sports analogy irresistible. Westhead's mark of distinction as a coach is his commitment to 'The System' - an offensive philosophy built around unceasing fast breaks. Westhead's unsympathetic critics describe The System as a blatant attempt to outscore the opponent, without regard for playing defense. There is some merit in this description - the point seems to be to coax the opponent into doing more running than they're accustomed to (not having cultivated the endurance that The System requires), so that there's no need for defense: just keep trading shot for shot and the other team will eventually turn the ball over more, and miss more shots, and lose.

Why this reminds me of Romney: Making assertions is like playing offense, and providing plausible arguments and evidence is like playing defense. And Romney is all offense. It's really quite remarkable to watch - not unlike Westhead's Loyola-Marymount teams.

Holding noses and winking presidents (10-24-12 links)

1. This is the best response I've read yet to this year's round of 'hold your nose and vote for the Democrat' arguments. It even takes down the 'what about the Supreme Court?' gambit. I find it utterly convincing. But then, I would. More on this soon.
2. Did anyone else read this NYT piece about the President's balancing act on race as a plant? To be clear, I mean 'plant' in the complex way that informs so much big journalism now - the journalists hunger so desperately for access that when some crumb drops from the table of the informed, they gobble it up and (hmm... not sure I want to commit to this metaphor... oh, the heck with it) and excrete a slightly mediated missive from the powers that be. And the powers are good at dropping crumbs. Then again, it could be an example of good old-fashioned, Judy Miller-style court stenography. Anyway: The "complex calculus on race and politics" that Jodi Kantor reports on Obama's behalf has in part to do with deciding how and when to signal to American Negroes (I use the term advisedly) that I really am one of you, I really am thinking of you, I'm just bound by my circumstances, just wait, I'll do right by you, I promise. And one way to do that is to have someone remind us all just how conflicted he is, and how hard it is to balance negro-dom and POTUS-hood. There should be a name for this move. We've got the sister-souljah move - what happens when a politician publicly demonizes black folks to signal his or her independence to the revered swing voter/middle American. But what should we call this? Having just finished teaching Cathy Cohen's work on this very topic (see chapter 6 especially), I think I'll call it the 'nudge nudge wink wink.'

Y'all Need to Be Shamed, Vol. 4 or Playing Smart with Stupid Poliitcs

Looking back on the nuanced expression of the US's alliance with Israel in last night's final Presidential debate I am still aghast at what, from all accounts, were smart politics but would be stupid policy. So here in a special volume of "Y'all Need to Be Ashamed" are the Top 5 Topics that Were Criminally Ignored in Last Night's Debate.

5) Lots of talk of Israel, Palenstine not so much.

4) European austerity riots and civil unrest.

3) Socially destabilizing pharmaceutical driven chaos in Mexico.

2) A little place called, Africa ( and not because of drug prices in Europe) and finally

1) Climate fucking change!

But I guess none of this matters to the 5 morons nuanced voters (Thank your lucky stars for Chihambuane) that still can't figure out what is a presidential campaign and what they should do on Election Day. So Mssrs. Obama and Romney due to your smart politics and canny polling sense, "Y'all Need to Be Ashamed" for not having the courage to make it plain.