Memorial Day News.

 

Today is Memorial Day, and as I always do on this day, I would like to acknowledge Mrs. Field's brother-in-law who gave the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Miss you, bro.

Now on to the news: 

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, it's amazing to me how many Americans were not aware of this atrocity that took place in this country we hold out as the "shining city on a hill" when it comes to human rights. The truth is, the white mayor of Tulsa, who was born and raised there, and whose father was the head of the historical society, never heard of what happened on what was known as Black Wall Street in his own city. 

Tulsa, of course, is not the only city that suffered from the cruel acts of racial violence against its black citizens. It happened in Rosewood, Florida, in Wilmington, North Carolina, Elaine, Arkansas, and Opelousas, Louisiana.  I could go on, but I would encourage you to google Red Summer.

This is why when conservatives try to whitewash (pun intended) the ugly truths about our history, and pretend that these things never happened, it's all so offensive to me. And pay attention, folks, because they are doing it again. Just look at all the gaslighting going on now that we are just months removed from that terrorist attack on out seat of government. Imagine how poor Viola Fletcher felt having to watch those domestic terrorists rekindle the memories she has of those past horrors against her family and her people.

Finally, while republicans continue their efforts to restrict the voting rights of people of color, the democrats, at least in the state of Texas, seem to be fighting back against the "the big lie". Thankfully, they walked out at the last minute last night before republicans could pass their restrictive--and some would call racist-- voting laws. 

 "The sudden revolt torpedoed the sweeping measure known as Senate Bill 7, which would have reduced polling hours, empowered poll watchers and scaled back ways to vote in Texas, which already has some of the nation's strictest voting laws.

For Democrats, the victory may be fleeting: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who had declared new voting laws in Texas a priority, quickly announced that he would order lawmakers back to the state Capitol for a special session. He did not, however, say when that would happen.

"We've said for so many years that we want more people to participate in our democracy. And it just seems that's not the case," Democratic state Rep. Carl Sherman said." 

With the former national security advisor and trump acolyte calling for a Myanmar type coup in this country, they seem to want to do more than just pass laws at this point. They're getting desperate, and that's when bad things happen. Just ask Viola Fletcher.   

The cover of whiteness.

 

I was looking at the fascinating debate between Mark Lamont Hill and another gentleman from the majority population about critical race theory.  The part of the debate that I found particularly interesting was when Hill asked his guest to tell him what he liked most about being white. 

As to be expected, the guest went into a long declamation about being judged by his character and not the color of his skin, and the fact that he did not like stereotypes ascribed to whiteness. He explained that he wants to be judged as a human being and not someone who is "white per se. He just didn't want to be defined by his skin color. 

Hill, to his credit, wisely pointed out, that he, as a man of color, does not have such options. He knows, that as a black man in America (and in the world) he doesn't have the luxury of being able to say that he does not want to be judged by his skin color. 

As most of you know, I am a trial lawyer. It is my job to try cases in a court of law. I can't tell you how many times I have been mistaken for the Defendant I am representing by a Judge who has never seen me before in his or her courtroom. Yes, this usually happens in the more rural counties, but it's  fact of life that I have to deal with. I am sure my white colleagues in my profession do not have to suffer such indignities, because they are shielded from such slights by their privilege.

 It would be great if we didn't see color when we see another human being, but let's be real, that's just not realistic. Color is the first thing we see when we see someone. We don't know their names, what they do, their net worth, or what language they speak, but we sure as hell know what color they are. This is why when someone says that they don't see color, I immediately right them off as frauds in the racism discussion. How could you not see race? Honestly, it's what you do after you see the individual's race and how you choose to interact with them that defines your character in my book. 

Color is also what shields so many people in the majority population from day to day slights and instances of affronts that people of color have to endure. As Hill stated in his debate, it doesn't matter if you are Irish, Polish, or Italian, your skin color acts as a buffer and a ticket for you. The person of color, in the other hand, be they Jamaican, Haitian, Bahamian, or Bermudan, are going to be seen and treated as such, and we all know that in this society we are living in that's not a good thing. 

“That doesn’t answer the question though, name something that you believe is positive about being white.”

Rufo replied,“I don’t buy into the framework that the world can be reduced into these metaphysical categories of whiteness and Blackness, I think that’s wrong.”

Unless, of course, you happen to be white. 

Movie Monday.

 

What's the name of this movie? 

"Democratic trap"?

"Republicans in the House and Senate should not approve the Democrat trap of the January 6 Commission,

"It is just more partisan unfairness and unless the murders, riots, and fire bombings in Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, and New York are also going to be studied, this discussion should be ended immediately." ~ The former guy~

What's that saying old black folks like to say? "I'm sick and tired of being tired?" That's kind of how I am feeling right now. 

Let's face it, folks, America is a hot mess. I really should clarify that statement: Half of America is a hot mess, and I think you all know the half I am talking about.

If you would have told me a few weeks ago that the GOP would block the January 6th investigative commission, I would have told you that you were crazy. Of course I would have been  the crazy one, because I should know not to put anything past the current crew of republicans in Washington. These are the same folks who refuse to strip Mart Gaetz of his committee seats until we see where this whole sex with minors thing leads us. Not to mention the fact that one of their more prominent members and biggest fundraisers is...wait for it..... Marjorie Stalker Greene. Yes, the QAnon diva turned congresswoman is a pretty big deal in the grand old party. 

But back to this commission. These are the same folks who had one investigative commission after another when they were trying to nail Hillary Clinton for Benghazi. Now they want us to believe that this type of commission would be too political. Let's not forget the fact that a republican was a co-sponsor of the bill to get the damn thing off the ground, and that an equal number of republicans and democrats were to be on the commission. What they really mean, of course, is that it will make them look bad, because it was their former guy who whipped those people into a frenzy and encouraged them to head to the capitol that day. The truth is, some of these same politicians could be implicated in one way or another with what happened. 

There is another thing happening here as well. The white washing of the event. (Pun intended) The gaslighting and revisionist history around this event has been astonishing. They have said things such as "those poor trump supporters were just tourists", to "they didn't even have weapons with them." A commission would debunk all of that nonsense, and maybe get us some real answers about what really happened that day, and not to mention who knew what and when.

Sadly, I think Tim Ryan speaks for all of us. 

“We have people scaling the Capitol, hitting the Capitol Police with lead pipes across the head, and we can’t get bipartisanship,.. ...What else has to happen in this country...this is a slap in the face to every rank-and-file cop in the United States.” The assault on the Capitol resulted in the deaths of five people, and 140 police officers were injured."

They don't care congressman Ryan. They will go to the lowest depths imaginable to protect the feelings of a certain guy. The one calling the commission a "Democratic trap".  

 

Movie Monday.

 

 

What's the name of this movie? 

It's the former guy's fault.

 So there seems to be war in the Middle East again. I guess Jared's brilliant negotiating didn't quite work out so well.

Sadly,  as is the case with everything the former guy's administration touched, the Abraham Accords is turning out to be a failure. 

Alex Ward's great article in Vox explains why: 

 " First-term Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), who stocked his office with 13 former Trump administration staffers, thinks the eruption of violence between Israel and Hamas this week is partly President Joe Biden’s fault.

“Last fall we saw a watershed shift toward peace w/the Abraham Accords,” Haggerty tweeted on Wednesday. “The entire region was eager for more. Biden had 4 months to build on this ... Instead, Biden squandered those 4 months.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee member’s case is one that other Republicans and allies of former President Trump have been making in recent days.

They note Trump brokered normalization-of-relations deals between Israel and four Arab nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Those pacts, known as the Abraham Accords, served two main purposes.

The first was straightforward: They allowed Israel to engage openly and officially with countries that refused to recognize its existence for years. That historic development received bipartisan support in the US, and many today want Biden to build upon the foundation Trump left him.

The second was more nuanced. Many of those and other Arab nations, like Saudi Arabia, are key backers of Palestinians in their decades-long dispute with Israel. But by getting them to interact with Israel, the idea was that they might let their support for the Palestinians slip and side a little closer with the Israelis.

If that happened, the theory went, Palestinian leaders would have no choice but to negotiate a peace deal with Israel. Jared Kushner, the main architect of the accords during the Trump years, has remained confident this might happen. “We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal two months ago.

It’s hard to overstate how bold this play was. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, now Biden’s top climate envoy, told a Washington, DC, audience in 2016 that there was no chance of striking normalization pacts before signing a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. “There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world,” he said. “That is a hard reality.”

So are Hagerty and his fellow conservatives right? Are we witnessing violence that’s seen over 80 people in Gaza and seven others in Israel killed because Biden “squandered” the momentum of Trump’s Abraham Accords? Experts I spoke to are unanimous in their answer: absolutely not.

“That’s nonsense on multiple levels, to be honest,” said H.A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in DC. “I just don’t really buy that argument at all,” Guy Ziv, an assistant professor at American University, also in the capital, said of the growing conservative argument.

The reason, they and others say, is that the Abraham Accords weren’t struck to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They were designed, well, to help Israel normalize relations with Arab nations.

The plight of the Palestinians was an afterthought, if even that. Along with the US, “the Abraham Accords gave Israel the impression they could proceed without anything significant with the Palestinians,” Hellyer said.

And that was a problem, because instead of trying to strike some sort of deal with the Palestinians, the Israelis realized they could push for whatever they wanted with America’s full support. In effect, the Abraham Accords emboldened the Israelis while allowing them to disregard Palestinian demands or rights.

That, simply put, doesn’t resolve a conflict. It fuels it.

Hagerty and his ilk have a point. The Biden administration purposely aimed to stay out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to focus on other priorities like the coronavirus pandemic, the rise of China, and bolstering America’s democracy. To this day, the president has yet to name an ambassador to Israel or a special envoy for the crisis, and now his team is scrambling to push regional players to deescalate tensions.

That on its own would lend credence to the squandered-opportunity narrative. Such a case would ring truer, though, if the Abraham Accords had had any positive effect on the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But they didn’t, which means Biden’s hands-off approach and failure so far to strike another normalization deal isn’t why Israel and Gaza are warring.

What does explain the troubling fight is more local to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

 Last week, Israeli police in Jerusalem blocked off the Damascus Gate, a popular gathering place for Arabs during Ramadan, sparking protests. An attempt by Jewish settlers to evict longtime Arab residents of Sheikh Jarrah, an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, inflamed tensions, leading to violent clashes with Israeli police. Arab youth attacked ultra-Orthodox Jews in the city, and Jewish extremists assailed Arab residents.

All of this culminated in a violent Israeli police raid on the al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem’s holiest site for Muslims, located on the Temple Mount (the holiest site in the world for Jews).

Then Hamas, the Islamist militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, fired rockets at Jerusalem. Ostensibly, this was a display of solidarity with the protesters on the ground. But it appears to have been a political calculation — Hamas attempting to capitalize on Palestinian anger over the violence in Jerusalem to expand its own influence, especially in the wake of recently canceled Palestinian elections that likely would have strengthened its political position.

Israel retaliated strongly, and now rockets from Gaza rip through civilians homes in Israel, and Israeli warplanes bomb Hamas and civilian targets in Gaza.

Little of that has anything to do with the Abraham Accords, at least not directly. In fact, the pacts deliberately sidelined the Palestinian issue in favor of other priorities.

“The Emiratis had their own impetus, the Bahrainis their own impetus. And then the Moroccans wanted their sovereignty over Western Sahara recognized in exchanged for very limited recognition of Israel. And the Sudanese were put in a terribly awful position due to the continuation of sanctions,” said Carnegie’s Hellyer. “But across the board, Palestinians were absent from the impetus.”

On the one hand, that’s understandable: Trump’s team certainly didn’t want to wait for progress on the peace process before helping Israel normalize relations with four former adversaries. But on the other hand, that decision was deeply problematic because it left the crisis to fester just as Biden was coming into office.

The eruption after Israeli police and Palestinian protesters clashed at the mosque is case in point. “You can’t just wish this issue away,” said American University’s Ziv. “The situation is getting out of control.”

It’s so out of control now that Kushner’s hope for closer Israeli-Arab ties to revive the peace process likely won’t come true anytime soon. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine any Palestinians would want to negotiate for peace imminently.

There’s still a role for Biden to play. After helping to calm tensions, Ziv said, the president should present his own vision for a peace plan and put pressure on the Israelis and Palestinians to start talking. “There’s no adult in the room, and that’s where the US could step in,” he told me.

What won’t work, though, is believing more side accords that don’t involve the Palestinians will somehow lead to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It hasn’t worked yet, and it likely won’t work in the future, either.' [Source]

Pull up this article and read it to the next person who tells you how great the former guy's Middle East policy was. 

Caption Saturday.

 

 

Please give me a caption for this picture. 

Liz vs. The Former Guy.

“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen....Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”

 I'm quite sure that when I look up in the sky later tonight the moon will be blue, because I find myself rooting like hell for Liz Cheney in her battle with the QOP right now. Republicans might not realize it, because they are still in that slavish devotion to the former guy mode, but she might be the only thing saving the republican party from becoming a thing of the past in the next twenty years. And yet, they are trying to purge her from their ranks.   

The former guy has declared war on her, and unlike the other cowards in her party (I see you Kevin, Marco, Mitch, and Ted) she has been all but willing to stand up to him and tell the truth. No right-wingnuts, the election was NOT stolen. Don't buy into the "big lie" that the election was stolen from the former guy, because you make yourself look really stupid when you do that. Cheney, to her credit, is all too willing to tell anyone who will listen the truth: The former guy lost to Uncle Joe fair and square. He is just too embarrassed to admit it. This is the guy who said there is no way that he could lose to Biden, and if he did, he would leave the country. Well, he is still here. 

Speaking of republicans, is it me or does it seem like elected republican leaders are just are just tired of hiding their racism? Now, rather than just teaching history and telling the truth about our country's past, they are trying to white wash it. (Pun intended) 

"LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday he doesn’t think 1619 is one of the most important points in U.S. history.

That's the year the first enslaved Africans were brought to and sold in the Virginia colony, a point often considered as the beginning of American slavery.

“I think this is about American history and the most important dates in American history. And my view — and I think most Americans think — dates like 1776, the Declaration of Independence; 1787, the Constitution; 1861-1865, the Civil War, are sort of the basic tenets of American history,” 

Sure Mitch, let's just forget that slavery ever happened.

 Part of the problem, of course, is that men like Mitch McConnell were on the wrong side of history, and he refuses to look in the mirror and acknowledge the reality of the cruel treatment that his ancestors and others like them meted out on people who look like I do. It's a tough pill to swallow, but America  will be never a truly great country until we do just that. 

Rather than face our history with all its warts head on, we get republican lawmakers making declarations like this:

"On Tuesday, during a debate on the floor of the Tennessee General Assembly, state Rep. Justin Lafferty, a Republican claimed that the Three-Fifths Compromise was about "ending slavery."

"We ended up biting a bitter, bitter pill that haunts us today. And we did it to lay the foundation for all this that we enjoy in this country," Lafferty said, referencing the compromise.

He added, "The Three-Fifths Compromise was a direct effort to ensure that southern states never got the population necessary to continue the practice of slavery everywhere else in the country."

Additionally, Lafferty argued that not counting enslaved Blacks as a whole person was a praiseworthy achievement.

"By limiting the number of population in the count, they specifically limited the number of representatives that would be available in the slaveholding states, and they did it for the purpose of ending slavery," he said. "Well before Abraham Lincoln. Well before Civil War." [Source] 

Lord help them! Liz Cheney, I wish you all the luck in the world. 

   

  

Corruption all around.

In today's corruption news: 

"A confession letter written by Joel Greenberg in the final months of the Trump presidency claims that he and close associate Rep. Matt Gaetz paid for sex with multiple women—as well as a girl who was 17 at the time.

“On more than one occasion, this individual was involved in sexual activities with several of the other girls, the congressman from Florida’s 1st Congressional District and myself,” Greenberg wrote in reference to the 17-year-old.

“From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. I did see the acts occur firsthand and Venmo transactions, Cash App or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the Congressman.”

The letter, which The Daily Beast recently obtained, was written after Greenberg—who was under federal indictment—asked Roger Stone to help him secure a pardon from then-President Donald Trump.

A series of private messages starting in late 2020—also recently obtained by The Daily Beast—shows a number of exchanges between Greenberg and Stone conducted over the encryptedmessaging app Signal, with communications set to disappear. However, Greenberg appears to have taken screenshots of a number of their conversations.

“If I get you $250k in Bitcoin would that help or is this not a financial matter,” Greenberg wrote to Stone, one message shows.

“I understand all of this and have taken it into consideration,” Stone replied. “I will know more in the next 24 hours I cannot push too hard because of the nonsense surrounding pardons.”

I hope you are prepared to wire me $250,000 because I am feeling confident,” Stone wrote to Greenberg on Jan. 13.

In a text message to The Daily Beast, Stone said that Greenberg had tried to hire him to assist with a pardon, but he denied asking for or receiving payment or interceding on his behalf. He did, however, confirm he had Greenberg prepare “a document explaining his prosecution.”

In the private text messages to Stone, Greenberg described his activities with Gaetz, repeatedly referring to the Republican congressman by his initials, “MG,” or as “Matt.”

“My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg wrote to Stone on Dec. 21. “They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”' 

And in other pals of the former guy corruption news:

"Eighteen months ago, media reports indicated that Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, was under scrutiny by federal prosecutors at the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for actions related to his involvement in the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump's first impeachment. 

Given the time that has passed, one could be forgiven for thinking that the investigation had petered out and that Giuliani was in the clear. All that changed early Wednesday morning, however, when FBI agents showed up at Giuliani's home and office to execute a search warrant approved by a federal judge, and later did the same with respect to fellow lawyer Victoria Toensing, a major sign that the investigation is not just still alive, but that it is ramping up in a big way. (In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Toensing's law firm said she had been informed she wasn't a target of the investigation.)

The crimes under investigation, according to The New York Times, relate to whether Giuliani acted as an unregistered foreign agent -- namely, that if while he was working on Trump's behalf to get Ukrainian officials to announce a criminal investigation into the Bidens, Giuliani was also lobbying US officials about matters of interest to Ukrainians with whom Giuliani was working, like the removal of then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), trying to influence US policy at the direction of a foreign actor without registering as an "agent of a foreign principal" is illegal; for national security reasons, the US government wants to know the identities of the interests behind those lobbying US officials on matters of US and foreign policy.

One may ask: why did it take so long to get around to executing search warrants? We don't know for sure, and likely never will given the confidentiality around internal deliberations involving criminal investigations at DOJ, but The New York Times is reporting that there may have been politically motivated action taken to delay and then refuse to approve the warrant under the Trump administration. Search warrants involving lawyers like Giuliani carry particularly onerous approval requirements, because of concerns around breaching the attorney-client privilege by gaining access to communications between a lawyer and his client.

That means that these particular warrants would have been sent through the chain of command at the US Attorney's Office, up to Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss, and then down to the Justice Department in Washington for another set of approvals. In the past, approval was required from a special unit at DOJ called the Office of Enforcement Operations that handles particularly sensitive search warrants, including warrants for lawyers; now, due to a rule change, billed as a "clarification," by former Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen shortly before he left office at the end of the Trump administration, search warrant requests involving lawyers also must be approved all the way up to the Deputy Attorney General him- or herself.

Thus, in this case, before presenting the warrant to a judge, the Giuliani and Toensing search warrants also would have been approved by DOJ's second-in-command, now Lisa Monaco. Once approval is given, prosecutors take the application to a federal judge, who must be satisfied that there was probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the evidence sought would be relevant to proving that crime.

Now that the search has occurred and evidence has been seized, I expect a few things to happen. As would be expected, Giuliani, who has long denied any wrongdoing, is ramping up his defense in the court of public opinion. We heard comments from Giuliani's lawyer Robert Costello, who complained that execution of the warrant was "legal thuggery" because Giuliani served as associate attorney general and US attorney, as well as Trump's lawyer. Giuliani's son, Andrew Giuliani, also chimed in with comments suggesting political bias in the case.

I also expect significant litigation over the seized information to happen before the prosecution team is able to review it. Prosecutors certainly will be prepared to create a walled-off two-team review system to ensure protection of attorney-client privilege. But I expect -- as we saw when another Trump personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was served with a search warrant as part of his criminal investigation by SDNY -- that Giuliani will challenge them every step of the way. " [Source]

I know one thing, the right- wing republicans who fought against Merrick Garland getting on the supreme court will regret the day that they did that. He is not playing around over at the justice department. 

Just ask the former guy and his cronies. This won't end well for them.   

 

• 
  

• 
  

Please don't shut up after you dribble.

 

A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender why the NBA playoffs isn't on the big screen television. The bartender says that the owner has banned all NBA games in the establishment because of LeBron James and his attitude.

That wasn't a lame attempt at a joke, that is actually happening somewhere in Ohio because some FOX News watching guy objects to an athlete actually speaking his mind (albeit poorly in this case) about an issue of the day. 

Just imagine if some of these folks like the bar owner would actually bring this type of energy and passion into trying to make the world a better place free of bigotry and ignorance. The country would be such a better place. 

LZ Granderson summed up my feelings about this issue perfectly in the following article: 

"The season finale of Marvel’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" was released Friday but I’m still processing a statement made in the previous episode: “They will never let a Black man be Captain America.”

I wonder if LeBron James has seen it yet.

Last week the Kid From Akron found himself in the crosshairs of another stick-to-sports maelstrom for posting, then deleting, a tweet about the police shooting of a 16-year-old Black girl in Ohio. From sports debate show hosts to members of Congress, someone from every walk of life seemingly was asking, "Why?"

Why did he post it? Why did he delete it? Fox News did a story about how the other networks weren’t making a big enough deal about it. Opportunistic politicians — representing the proverbial “they” that won’t let a Black man be Captain America — piled on.

“Lebron James truly has a lot of nerve targeting a police officer for doing his job,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) wrote on Twitter. “I’m not sure what China has on him, but his constant push for division in this country is obscene.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said James’ tweet “could certainly be interpreted by some, even, as a call for violence,” a remark echoed on social media by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who posted, “this is disgraceful and dangerous. Is the NBA okay with this? Is Twitter?”

And so we found ourselves in the familiar space of debating more about how LeBron James said something than why he said it.

James’ back story — a literal rags to riches story — should make him the paragon of American exceptionalism embodied by Captain America. But his politics, specifically his tendency to speak out on issues that are important to the Black community, makes him more of a villain than a source of inspiration for conservatives prone to be more upset about tan suits than such hard questions as the atrophied relationship between law enforcement and communities of color.

The controversial, deleted tweet — in which James posted a picture of the white officer who shot and killed 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant along with the words “YOU’RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY” — was inarguably premature. Body cam video appears to show Bryant attacking another teen with a knife seconds before the shots were fired; many consider the officer’s actions justified. Others are skeptical because of years of simmering tension that resulted in Columbus' current search for a new police chief because, according to the city's mayor, the previous one “could not successfully implement the reform and change I expect and that the community demands.”

Those details are germane to the larger issue of this country’s discomfort with Black leadership. And nowhere is that discomfort more evident than in the world of sports.

Which brings me back to that line from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”

It’s easy to assume “they will never let a Black man be Captain America” was written to reflect a post-George Floyd world, the dangers of “woke culture.” The reality is that subject was approached more than three decades ago: Captain America, Volume I, Issue No. 333. It hit stores in 1987.

Like the current streaming series, the question of "Who will be Captain America’s successor?" is an essential element of the storyline in the comic book. In Issue 333, a committee of military and government officials is debating who should represent American exceptionalism when a Mr. Mathers holds up a headshot.

“I imagine we could also rule out another of Rogers’ friends and ex-partners, Sam Wilson, alias the Falcon,” he starts. “I doubt the country is ready for a Black Captain America.”

The issue hit shelves a few months after longtime Dodgers executive Al Campanis went on ABC’s "Nightline" and infamously said, when asked about the lack of Blacks in leadership positions in baseball, “No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager.”

The interview ignited a firestorm, and Campanis was fired less than 48 hours later. But here’s the rub: When Ken Williams was hired 13 years later as GM — the third Black GM in MLB history — , he said “no n— should run the Chicago WHITE Sox” was painted on the side of his house. More than 20 years later, Derek Jeter is baseball's only Black CEO.

So, did Campanis get canned for the substance of his remarks or for the act of giving voice to them?

It’s not just baseball. In the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport 2020 report, of the 130 athletic director positions at FBS, white men accounted for nearly 77%; nearly 70% of conference commissioners were white men; roughly 84% of football head coaches were white men, who also make up about 59% of assistant coaches as well. Meanwhile the number of football student athletes who were white was less than 35%.

The NFL’s Rooney Rule was enacted in 2003 to compel owners to interview candidates of color for head coaching jobs. How’s that working? The league just hired its first Black team president ever last year and I’m not sure if the Washington Football Team would have selected Jason Wright had Floyd’s murder not sparked a national racial reckoning. (I write this confidently because until Floyd’s death, the team was still comfortable using a racial slur as its nickname.)

It’s my sense many white conservatives prefer Black athletes like James to just play, because they don’t want to be reminded of their Blackness. They want feel-good stories about making it out of the ghetto without talk of why there is a ghetto in the first place. They don’t want discussions about racial inequality blended in with sports because they don’t want discussions about racial inequality anywhere. They pretend “I don’t see color” is a declaration of inclusion, when in fact it’s a denial of the trauma people of color experience regularly.

Instead they lurk in the bushes, waiting to pounce on missteps as a way to stifle larger cultural debates because that’s easier than genuine problem solving.

James' tweet was a mistake. He was linking the circumstances behind one death with that of another without the facts. So, he deleted it, and instead posted about the pain that comes from seeing Black and brown bodies being gunned down by police.

But individuals like Tom Cotton, who is constantly criticizing James about China, aren’t interested in James’ pain, or understanding how the confluence of the Derek Chauvin verdict and a police shooting of a Black girl in a city that has had four similar shootings in the past four months might inspire a rush to judgment. They’re not interested in his Blackness or the brand of leadership it inspires.

He’s not the Captain America they want. The one featured in the first issue punching out Adolf Hitler, as an “America to the rescue” metaphor.

No, LeBron James is allowed to rescue the Lakers.

But anything beyond that is deemed a problem by those not interested in solving the ones he’s talking about." [Article] 

"Just shut up and dribble" is what one right-wingnut told Mr. James to do. 

I'm glad he didn't listen to her.  We need more athletes like LeBron James, not less.  

Deja vu?

Like the rest of you,  I watched the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial on television, as well as all the celebrations and sighs of relief that soon followed. (Thank you Dr. Tobin.) And while it's good that the legal process was allowed to play itself out, and that the jury seemed to have done its job, I didn't really feel like celebrating. 

I kept thinking to myself: Why should I feel a sense of relief about a verdict that should never have been in doubt? One would think that Derek Chauvin's lawyers main focus would have been to get a nice plea deal with the state and call it a day. But they must have thought that they could have gotten at least one juror to see something different than what we all saw with our own eyes.  A hung jury, and then live to fight another day. Given how these types of trials have played themselves out in the past few years, I can't really say that I blame them for thinking this way. 

As if she was reading my mind, my sister sent me the following article yesterday, and I realize now why I didn't feel like celebrating. 

"The Derrick Chauvin trial has evoked a myriad of emotions for me in the last few weeks. Many have asserted  that this is the first time a law enforcement officer has been held to account for murdering an unarmed citizen.

Not true: For me, and for other Detroiters who were alive in 1993, the Chauvin trial was deja vu.

Few Americans outside Michigan recall the successful prosecution of a case eerily similar to the Chauvin trial. But Detroiters remember: That trial was the People of the State of Michigan v. Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn for the unjustified beating death of Malice Green.

Mr. Green was a Black motorist who died after a bogus traffic stop that spun murderously out of control. He was pummeled and beaten to death by police officers armed with heavy Kell flashlights. But like George Floyd's killer, Mr. Green's murderers insisted the deceased was to blame for his own death.

I was the lead prosecutor in the Budzyn/Nevers trial. For weeks, I have had flashbacks to that long-ago August.. I can still hear defense attorneys telling jurors that Budzyn and Nevers were not responsible for Green's death He died because he was high on cocaine..

He died because he had heart issues. 

He died because of this, and because of that —  but certainly not because he was stuck in the head multiple times by on-duty, veteran police officers with flashlights.

At that time, no on duty police officer had ever been convicted of murder. Never in the history of the United States.

But I had faith in the juries that we had selected. I was convinced that Detroiters would accept the verdict no matter which way it fell. I believed this even though nothing had been captured on videotape. Cell phones, body and dashboard cameras were not yet commonplace. But the testimony of those who labored to explain the circumstances of Mr. Green's death —the civilian witnesses, the medical experts, the use of force expert — was compelling.

Over the last few weeks, the Chauvin trial has been broadcast on TV, and even live-streamed, But in 1993, there was only Court TV, and it had yet to reach Detroit.

Don Barden, the owner of Barden Cablevision, understood the significance of the Green case, and made sure his viewers knew what was happening in the courtroom. Every day for twelve weeks, Detroiters saw prosecutors fighting like hell to convict the defendants and hold them accountable. People saw that we were serious and singularly focused.

 I will never, ever forget what it was like waiting on those verdicts.  Each defendant had his own jury, so we waited on 24 people to decide the fate of the defendants. And waited, and waited.

One jury would take eight days, the other nine. Intellectually, I knew that we had done everything that we could possibly do. Even so, I couldn't help second-guessing every decision: What if I had made this argument, or that one?

I sleepwalked through those days, trying to ignore the world and minutia around me, and praying to God every waking moment.

In the end, Budzyn and Nevers were both convicted of murder, and Detroit did not burn. 

I distinctly remember bolting up the stairs of the courthouse followed by the press when I was contacted about the verdict from the first jury; the second jury announced that they had a verdict the next day. I knew that justice had prevailed before the verdicts were even read. I just knew. Both defendants were held accountable for their actions.

 I was just as confident that there would be a verdict of guilty in the Chauvin case. As a result of videotaped footage of the crime, police and civilian and expert witnesses presented to the jury, justice prevailed, as it did in the Malice Green case.

The verdict in the Derrick Chauvin case is a victory for police accountability. I would urge the public to believe in our system of justice.  I would also urge the public to remain peaceful in respect for the memory of George Floyd. " [Source]

Kym Worthy toots her own horn a little, and that's fine. But what she didn't say in the article (although there is a mention of it with the captioned that comes with the article), was that the convictions of these two police officers was later overturned on appeal, and they were retried separately and found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

I am thinking the same thing here. It's deja vu alright, but not for the reasons that Ms. Worthy thinks. 

Photo: Richard Lee/Detroit Free Press