From 2000
Who cries for Latonya Perkins?
For the last month so-called “leaders” of the black community have gotten major headlines wringing their hands over the President election, the State Senate replacement for Lacy Clay, or internal workings of the local NAACP. In the past under this same black leadership there have been other headline grabbing protests, internal bickering between newspaper publishers, but strangely there is silence in the recent shooting of Latonya Perkins who was found shot to death December 3rd in North St. Louis.
Ms Perkins was the wife of Harold Richardson who is being held in custody for the shooting this past summer of police officer Robert Stanze in August. Many people in North St. Louis felt that there was more to that shooting that meets the eye.
First Mr. Richardson was stopped in connection with the shooting of a Berkley policeman. Although the officers involved in his August 8th arrest were veteran cops, the manner in which the arrest was handled was curious; especially in light of the crime they suspected him of committed.
Secondly even as Mr. Richardson was being arrested for officer Stanze’s shooting, the police continued looking for someone even though they never acknowledged there was another person at the scene. Now his wife gets gunned down barely a block away in what is called an execution style murder that the police say is ‘not related’. Yet the chronology of events leads many to doubt the official story. While the St. Louis police department may not have the negative reputation as say the Las Angeles Police, recent St. Louis Police history is replete with many questionable shootings and incidents. There has been a lot of talk and a lot of smoke, and where there is smoke there is usually fire. Yet there appears to be a conspiracy of silence by the media, the political leadership, and those who fashion themselves as black leaders.
So, who cries, who marches for Latonya Perkins? Was she just as the police and the media suggest, another black homicide victim? Or was it more? Her husband has alleged through his mother that he has been beaten in jail. Who marches for him? What are we missing here? What is being covered up? Perhaps if the black leaders rolled put as much energy in this incident as they do grabbing headlines about elections that in essence had already been decided, the internal bunglings of the NAACP, and the fumbling of the State Senate seat, maybe the real truth can be uncovered. Until then, all we have is more of what the late poet Tupac Shakur, called “Teardrops and closed caskets.”
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Fading Spirit of 1776
In the spring of 1954 Texas Instrument Chief Gordon Teal unveiled the transistors at an industry convention. Yet what happened that spring day would have an impact that would not be understood for another forty years as the introduction of the transistor launched computers into the modern age. Looking back and considering the implications of this new technology, that fact that it was scorned and scoffed at now seems short sighted and silly. But when Texas Instrument introduced the world to the transistor, it completed a journey started by Alexander Graham Bell, which would ultimately lead to the domination of three screens. In 2008, media giants Verizon and AT&T launched their ‘three screen’ strategy designed to lure consumers to their brand by offering a one stop shop for all of your information needs via telephone, television and internet. At the same time another national phenomena was taking place.
The newspaper industry now understood what its industry brethren in the railroads felt over a century before with the advent of air travel. Newspaper readership is down losing a battle with more advanced news information platforms. As a result in the same manner pharmaceutical companies compete for the cure for cancer, or AIDS, communication companies compete for the newer and faster ways to disseminate information. Information is often what separates winners and losers. Before armies go to war they utilize their intelligence resources to gauge enemy strengths and weaknesses. Hence both the capacity to gather and disseminate information is critical - businesses use it so they can effectively market their product, for politicians information gathering helps them to plan their political campaign in the same way that military strategists prepare to prosecute a war.
Lost in this barrage of new technology, and multi platform media outlets, is a dramatic shift of power is underway. A shift so dramatic that in my view it undermines the intent of the original intent of our founding fathers which was to have a government of the people and for the people. What makes this shift dangerous is that most Americans and unaware of the lurking dangers. Therefore for many of us, the power of Washington, Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, is intact and the handiwork of James Madison lives on. Yeah right. Only a well conceived story of fiction would lead one to believe that the President of The United States really runs this country. We all remember the glorious campaign of 2008, the choked up Keith Olberman announcing that Barack Obama would be the 44th President of the United States, and the great speech in Grant Park. Yet, how does the saying go, that was then, and this is now. In the final analysis, Barack Obama’s hold to power is only as strong as the media’s desire to keep him there. But as long as Americans focus on the distilled power conferred by the Constitution to our government leaders and ignore the real power of the media to wage a mind control program that would make Joseph Goebbels blush, our blindness will continue to “energize’ the new world order.
All that to say what? The Obama Administration is a well conceived trick on the American public. Not trickery because of ill intent by President Obama, but the Obama election obscures the the reality of a democracy in decline, and a growing inability of Washington to produce real change. I am not sure if Barack Obama is a dude that understands that at the end of the day, the best he can do is to deliver “change lite’ and hope that what he does sets in motion a critical mass that can open the floodgates for future progressive Presidents.Change agendas that sound so compelling on the campaign trail reach Washington and enter a twilight zone, where the media decides for its non critical thinking viewers and listeners whether this change is socialistic, un-American, good, bad, ugly or indecent. President Obama must feel like a worn out puppet as he continually recalibrate due to the musings of the media. When he first ran for President he was not black enough, then as time moved forward he was too black, and too radical, he was praised by the media for been cool, and nuanced, now blasted for not being angry enough. And before the public can get their arms around which President Obama they should like, they media changes again.
This game is worth billions of dollars to the major networks, their outlets, talking heads, and bloggers. Whether it comes from the right via FOX or from the left via MSNBC, they both need hyperactivity, vitriol, and insecurities to keep fear moving at warp speed. Politicians have always pandered to the media, but now the pandering is so pervasive, that voters can’t keep up with the number of faces a politician may put on from day to day. Furthermore, voter’s perceptions are now crafted not by common sense, or the reality on the ground, but by the pontifications of their favorite talking head. Look no further than the influence of the media on the issue of government spending. During the Bush years, when the Bush Administration fleeced the government coffers blind, with tax cuts to the rich, and wars of choice, the right wing media was silent on the issue of federal debt and therefore the American public many steeped in personal debt, saw our fiscal imbalance as a non story. Now the conservative news media label Barack Obama as a freewheeling spender whose expansive stimulus package was borderline socialism, and therefore now the American public finds our debt as disconcerting and want to rein in spending. President Obama ought to ask them where do they want the ax to fall.
Networks understand their power in crafting perceptions. I recall in the days leading up to President Obama’s Afghanistan review decision, NBC News sent Brian Williams to Kabul ostensibly to garner American sympathy for the plight of the Afghanistan people, and to give the upcoming military buildup decision a soft landing. In addition in the aftermath of the Gulf Crisis, President Obama eschews his “cool hand Luke Persona” to tell The Today Show's Matt Lauer that somebody needs to kick BP’s ass. President Obama went hard only after the media hounded him for not being angry.
On the eve of America’s 234th birthday, the levers of power have shifted far beyond the wildest imaginings of the founding fathers. Now to be sure, the men who met in Philadelphia in 1776 understood in their own time and in their own way the importance of messaging, and image. As evidenced by no other than John Hancock whose imprimatur, was large enough to be viewed across the Atlantic by the British King. Yet the vast influence in today’s media, is unprecedented and in my mind dangerous. Multi platform, media corporations are now under the banner of General Electric – NBC, Viacom – CBS and Disney owns ABC and ESPN. And let’s not forget that Fox News owned by the world’s second largest media conglomerate News Ltd is not American owned. In a world where we zig zag from work to home, to school, to soccer practice, rehab centers, and back again, our dependency on the media has become an unseemly American addiction. News shows like the Today Show have now morphed into a hybrid of a news/gossip show, while other outlets like Fox and MSNBC have become media darlings of the conservative and progressives respectively. But just because Keith Olberman says something, in direct contrast to Glen Beck does that make it so? How much of what is said and done in Washington can truly be trusted or credited as original thought? How much is done merely for “effect”, how much is done for spin?
Over two hundred years ago they wrote, “When in the course of human events it may become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them”. This is now an unrecognizable America, seemingly incapable of big things, where reality is suspended in favor of noise. The bands that now connect us come in the form of a “3G” network where bandwidth is king. Urban rumors, mindless chatter, gossip, fears, hatred, is now dispensed faster than you can say 1776. At a time of two wars, economic instability, a gathering ecological storm, our political leaders prefer grandstanding than grand vision. When a politician speaks, now the first question that is asked is “what audience” is he or she speaking to, lending a certain amount of two facedness by our leaders.
As Rome burned, Nero fiddled, as America continues to crumble under her own overextended weight, our leaders “mean mug” for the camera. In 1960 John F. Kennedy faced Richard Nixon in the first televised debate, according to historian the late Teddy White, those who saw the debate which pitted the younger and charismatic Kennedy against and older Richard Nixon sporting a five a clock shadow, many who saw the debate on television said Kennedy got the better of it. Those who listened to it on the radio gave the nod to Richard Nixon. All which gave birth to political style over political substance.
Our current leadership now comes with talking points, which often become the sanitized version of what is said in the media, or they make a 180 degree reversal after reading the media driven tea leaves. What we need, and what the spirit of 1776 was based on was leaders having original thought, having a vision, and doing the big things need to run a country. Today those leaders have more strings than Pinocchio, as what they say, do, or produce is done at the behest of their media masters. Today the spirit of 1776 has been replaced by a dark, foreboding media mega power whose power to control minds, takes us closer to Nazi Germany than Philadelphia and the spirit of 1776.
Lost in this barrage of new technology, and multi platform media outlets, is a dramatic shift of power is underway. A shift so dramatic that in my view it undermines the intent of the original intent of our founding fathers which was to have a government of the people and for the people. What makes this shift dangerous is that most Americans and unaware of the lurking dangers. Therefore for many of us, the power of Washington, Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, is intact and the handiwork of James Madison lives on. Yeah right. Only a well conceived story of fiction would lead one to believe that the President of The United States really runs this country. We all remember the glorious campaign of 2008, the choked up Keith Olberman announcing that Barack Obama would be the 44th President of the United States, and the great speech in Grant Park. Yet, how does the saying go, that was then, and this is now. In the final analysis, Barack Obama’s hold to power is only as strong as the media’s desire to keep him there. But as long as Americans focus on the distilled power conferred by the Constitution to our government leaders and ignore the real power of the media to wage a mind control program that would make Joseph Goebbels blush, our blindness will continue to “energize’ the new world order.
All that to say what? The Obama Administration is a well conceived trick on the American public. Not trickery because of ill intent by President Obama, but the Obama election obscures the the reality of a democracy in decline, and a growing inability of Washington to produce real change. I am not sure if Barack Obama is a dude that understands that at the end of the day, the best he can do is to deliver “change lite’ and hope that what he does sets in motion a critical mass that can open the floodgates for future progressive Presidents.Change agendas that sound so compelling on the campaign trail reach Washington and enter a twilight zone, where the media decides for its non critical thinking viewers and listeners whether this change is socialistic, un-American, good, bad, ugly or indecent. President Obama must feel like a worn out puppet as he continually recalibrate due to the musings of the media. When he first ran for President he was not black enough, then as time moved forward he was too black, and too radical, he was praised by the media for been cool, and nuanced, now blasted for not being angry enough. And before the public can get their arms around which President Obama they should like, they media changes again.
This game is worth billions of dollars to the major networks, their outlets, talking heads, and bloggers. Whether it comes from the right via FOX or from the left via MSNBC, they both need hyperactivity, vitriol, and insecurities to keep fear moving at warp speed. Politicians have always pandered to the media, but now the pandering is so pervasive, that voters can’t keep up with the number of faces a politician may put on from day to day. Furthermore, voter’s perceptions are now crafted not by common sense, or the reality on the ground, but by the pontifications of their favorite talking head. Look no further than the influence of the media on the issue of government spending. During the Bush years, when the Bush Administration fleeced the government coffers blind, with tax cuts to the rich, and wars of choice, the right wing media was silent on the issue of federal debt and therefore the American public many steeped in personal debt, saw our fiscal imbalance as a non story. Now the conservative news media label Barack Obama as a freewheeling spender whose expansive stimulus package was borderline socialism, and therefore now the American public finds our debt as disconcerting and want to rein in spending. President Obama ought to ask them where do they want the ax to fall.
Networks understand their power in crafting perceptions. I recall in the days leading up to President Obama’s Afghanistan review decision, NBC News sent Brian Williams to Kabul ostensibly to garner American sympathy for the plight of the Afghanistan people, and to give the upcoming military buildup decision a soft landing. In addition in the aftermath of the Gulf Crisis, President Obama eschews his “cool hand Luke Persona” to tell The Today Show's Matt Lauer that somebody needs to kick BP’s ass. President Obama went hard only after the media hounded him for not being angry.
On the eve of America’s 234th birthday, the levers of power have shifted far beyond the wildest imaginings of the founding fathers. Now to be sure, the men who met in Philadelphia in 1776 understood in their own time and in their own way the importance of messaging, and image. As evidenced by no other than John Hancock whose imprimatur, was large enough to be viewed across the Atlantic by the British King. Yet the vast influence in today’s media, is unprecedented and in my mind dangerous. Multi platform, media corporations are now under the banner of General Electric – NBC, Viacom – CBS and Disney owns ABC and ESPN. And let’s not forget that Fox News owned by the world’s second largest media conglomerate News Ltd is not American owned. In a world where we zig zag from work to home, to school, to soccer practice, rehab centers, and back again, our dependency on the media has become an unseemly American addiction. News shows like the Today Show have now morphed into a hybrid of a news/gossip show, while other outlets like Fox and MSNBC have become media darlings of the conservative and progressives respectively. But just because Keith Olberman says something, in direct contrast to Glen Beck does that make it so? How much of what is said and done in Washington can truly be trusted or credited as original thought? How much is done merely for “effect”, how much is done for spin?
Over two hundred years ago they wrote, “When in the course of human events it may become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them”. This is now an unrecognizable America, seemingly incapable of big things, where reality is suspended in favor of noise. The bands that now connect us come in the form of a “3G” network where bandwidth is king. Urban rumors, mindless chatter, gossip, fears, hatred, is now dispensed faster than you can say 1776. At a time of two wars, economic instability, a gathering ecological storm, our political leaders prefer grandstanding than grand vision. When a politician speaks, now the first question that is asked is “what audience” is he or she speaking to, lending a certain amount of two facedness by our leaders.As Rome burned, Nero fiddled, as America continues to crumble under her own overextended weight, our leaders “mean mug” for the camera. In 1960 John F. Kennedy faced Richard Nixon in the first televised debate, according to historian the late Teddy White, those who saw the debate which pitted the younger and charismatic Kennedy against and older Richard Nixon sporting a five a clock shadow, many who saw the debate on television said Kennedy got the better of it. Those who listened to it on the radio gave the nod to Richard Nixon. All which gave birth to political style over political substance.
Our current leadership now comes with talking points, which often become the sanitized version of what is said in the media, or they make a 180 degree reversal after reading the media driven tea leaves. What we need, and what the spirit of 1776 was based on was leaders having original thought, having a vision, and doing the big things need to run a country. Today those leaders have more strings than Pinocchio, as what they say, do, or produce is done at the behest of their media masters. Today the spirit of 1776 has been replaced by a dark, foreboding media mega power whose power to control minds, takes us closer to Nazi Germany than Philadelphia and the spirit of 1776.
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