Can I Keep My Bowl Name Please?

In my sports loving family I grew up watching the Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Sugar Bowl among others. Those games signified the end of the college football season and crowned the best teams in the country. Of course everyone still argued about whether rankings truly indicated the best teams or whether or not there ought to be a playoff system to end these debates once and for all.

Now we not only have a slew of inferior bowl games but even the old time games have been christened with corporate names. The Allstate Sugar Bowl, Discover Orange Bowl, and ATT Cotton Bowl will all be played this week. If that isn't awful enough, we have bowl games which exist only for the purpose of advertising products, some of which the world would be better off without. Don't believe me? Why is there an Outback Bowl, a Capitalone.com Bowl, and a Chick-fil-A Bowl? You can see the list of infamy here.

I suppose this is yet another sign of the last stage of capitalism but it truly sickens me that we lose what little is left of our popular culture because corporations spare nothing in promoting their products and services. College football is not alone. Several years ago the New York City Marathon became the ING New York City Marathon. Yes, that is the official name. I suppose the marathon no longer belongs to the people of this city, it belongs to ING or whomever the future deep pocketed corporation turns out to be.

Of course college sports is all about the money, but in this horrific era there is not even a pretense that anything else matters or that we shouldn't mind giving up the things we always loved to corporate branding. If there were thrilling games in the Rose, Cotton or Sugar bowl, we remember that name, will we now have corporate names in our memories too?

It is like some horrible dystopian post apocalyptic nightmare. But then again I guess that is where we live now. We no longer have the rights to our own memories and to the things we love. If it can be branded it will be branded, and f*ck anyone who won't go along peacefully.

Happy 2012!

African Rape is America’s Porn

Here we go again. The New York Times has a story today about rape in war torn Somalia.

It is difficult to critique this sort of journalism without seeming to be blasé about sexual assault. I am not at all uncaring about rape survivors here or abroad, but I am very wary of the media showing interest in women of color only when they are rape victims and the circumstances permit wholesale finger pointing at all black people. The Times has never given its readers a true history of the Somalia conflict, which is a direct result of American intervention.

The al-Shabab are not some crazed group of so-called Islamists. They are the resistance fighting against the U.S. instigated Ethiopian incursion into their country. Somalia has been destroyed by the United States and that destruction has gone largely unreported. All of that country’s terrors, from rape to starvation, can be laid at Uncle Sam’s door step.

I wrote about this phenomenon of phony concern for black women in my column last year.

“Nothing excites the imaginations of Americans like lurid tales of sexual perversion among black people. The corporate media leap upon any and every report of sexual assault committed among black people with a peculiar delight. The scene of the crime may be Darfur, the Congo or Haiti, but the stories always create a narrative of animalistic Africans and give the impression that entire groups of people should not be considered human beings.”

The comments from Times readers were true to form, calling Somali men animals, blaming Islam, and of course advocating for more U.S. terror under the guise of humanitarian intervention.

If New York Times reporters want to write about sexual assault, they don’t have to go all the way to Somalia. They might talk to police in any American jurisdiction or go to one of the 70 prisons located in the state of New York and talk to victims of rapes carried out by other prisoners or prison personnel.

Of course, writing about rape in America’s prisons would open a can of worms which most people would rather not see. It is far easier to point the finger at a faraway land populated by black people.

Anyone horrified by the stories of these crimes does not have to write a check to an NGO. A better course of action is demanding that the U.S. leave Somalia alone. Talk about a can of worms, we might actually have to make demands of the president and congress. Wringing our hands about a newspaper article is a lot easier.

Yes, America is Officially Fascist

Mr. Peace Prize winner and constitutional law professor just doesn't give a sh*t, neither do the Obamabots.

Black America Hits Rock Bottom

Black people are at the bottom of the heap. The median income of Americans is only $50,000 per year, but a mere $32,000 for African Americans.

The wealth gap is even worse. White median net worth is $113,000 but it is only $6,325 for latinos and $5,677 for blacks.

I had more to say in my column in Black Agenda Report today. Common Dreams linked to it too. Thanks for the shout out!

Yes, Virginia, there is an Occupy Harlem and they are conducting actions on the NYPD's horrendous Stop and Frisk policies.

Waffle Maker Riot

The next time someone says that we simply must have Walmart here in New York City, I will think of this video. Actually we already have enough places where you can buy cheap sh*t. We don't need more inducements to moronic and frankly psychotic behavior.

Shoppers Trampled at a Target in Buffalo, New York

Today is Buy Nothing Day and this video explains why.

George Washington Took His Slaves’ Teeth

I have always been told that George Washington had false teeth which were made of wood. Not true. Some were made of a variety of materials including elephant or walrus ivory which darkened over time and appeared to be wood. However nine of his teeth were taken from some of the 300 human beings he and his wife Martha owned, his slaves.

"The following year, in May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed "Negroes," presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth, slightly less than one-third the going rate advertised in the papers, "on acct. of the French Dentis[sic} Doctr. Lemay [sic]," almost certainly Le Moyer. Over the next four years, the dentist was a frequent and apparently favorite guest on the plantation. Whether the Mount Vernon slaves sold their teeth to the dentist for any patient who needed them or specifically for George Washington is unknown, although Washington's payment suggests that they were for his own use. Washington probably underwent the transplant procedure--"I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion," he told Richard Varick, his friend and wartime clerk, in 1784--and thus it may well be that some of the human teeth implanted to improve his appearance, or used to manufacture his dentures, came from his own slaves."

I'll remember this fact the next time I'm told about honest Abe, I mean George. Whatever.

I hasten to add that even if the slaves were paid, the transaction could not have been made on an equal basis. Who would take a chance on refusing the person who physically owned them? I would not have. Even if they did get the 122 shillings, their teeth were stolen.