There are no qualms about locking up the thousands of poor and unknown.

Pleas on Larry King for Lohan, But What About Other Drug Offenders?
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson 

Within hours after ill-fated model-actress Lindsay Lohan was busted on suspicion of drunk driving and drug possession in Santa Monica her teary eye father, and a parade of Hollywood celebrities, and some of Lohan’s friends and associates, made sobbing, heart wrenching pleas on the Larry King show for public understanding of Lohan’s ordeal. Lohan’s attorney made his pitch for public understanding, calling addiction a terrible and vicious disease.

The kid glove protective attitude of many in the entertainment industry toward Lohan is hardly surprising. She has been released each time within hours on low bond, wears a SCRAM monitoring bracelet, and alcohol monitor on her ankle, gets tested regularly, and got top notch treatment at a posh Malibu, California rehab center. Her film,” I Know Who Killed Me,” which is scheduled for release almost certainly will pack audiences in, if for no other reason out of curiosity and her rogue name.

There’s nothing wrong with Lohan’s entertainment industry friends, and a star-struck public, pleading for empathy for her and urging the courts to spare her a jail sentence, and to give her the help that she obviously needs. But there are thousands of drug offenders that need the same compassion and help as Lohan. The big difference is that these drug abusers aren’t high-profile, bankable screen commodities. They are mostly poor blacks and Latinos. The estimate is that nearly one-fourth of the more than one million blacks that pack America’s prisons are there for non-violent, drug-related crimes. It costs billions to keep them there.

Putting them behind bars has had staggering consequences. It has torn apart families and communities. It has been the single biggest reason for the bloat in federal and state spending on prison construction, maintenance, and the escalation in the number of prosecutors needed to handle the flood of drug cases. Also, few poor, black and Latino drug offenders will be immediately released by police, as Lohan continues to be, and then be allowed to luxuriate in a posh drug treatment center.

For the rest of the story, click here. 

Our enemy is not the “N-word” itself; it’s whatever propels people to use it. We need healers, not language nannies.

The NAACP’s Mock Burial of Its Relevance
By Mark Reynolds

It was grand sociopolitical theater, kick-ass agitprop for the digital age. They played the funeral motif up to the hilt, they left no stone unturned. The somber procession culminated in a ceremony attended by numerous dignitaries. A bevy of speakers gave moving eulogies. And everyone went away satisfied once the symbolic shovels of dirt were heaped upon the casket.

And thus did the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pat itself on the back on 9 July, having buried the word “nigger” on the first day of its annual convention, held this year in Detroit. It took, apparently, the transgressions of Michael Richards last fall for some black people to discover – “I’m shocked, shocked!” they must have said – that black folks have been using the word, or offshoots like “nigga”, for years as terms of endearment. The infamous sartorial judgments issued in the spring by Don Imus, while not “nigger”-centric, served to fan the flames, especially when he attempted to justify his choice of words by saying that black rappers talk like that all the time, therefore it’s okay for him, too.

The ensuing debate kept pundits, race observers, hip-hop artists and activists, and a linguist or two busy for a week or so. Some argued that when blacks use “nigger” or “nigga”, it’s a deliberate attempt to declaw a word from its toxic history and all that it symbolizes. Others held that any use at all was a symbol of ongoing black self-loathing, the ultimate remnant of internalized degradation. Everyone blamed black standup comics and rappers for the modern dissemination of “nigger” into pop culture; some of them promptly got religion and swore off their wayward habits (though none to the dramatic effect of the Africa-inspired epiphany Richard Pryor related in his 1982 concert film Live on the Sunset Strip).

In the aftermath of the mock funeral, many applauded the NAACP for doing a mighty good thing by burying “nigger” and proclaiming that black people should no longer use the word or any permutation of it, however collegial or subversive the intent. And the world seemed awfully receptive, judging by the massive amount of favorable news coverage the event received. It was also an effective media moment on at least two other tactical levels. It showed that the venerable organization, not often linked with the cutting-edge of black culture, has been paying attention to the year’s hottest black pop brouhaha. And it distracted people from asking the musical question, “What are you going to do now that your most recent president, former Verizon executive Bruce Gordon, bailed after only 19 months on the job, and now that money’s so tight you’ve had to lay off a third of your headquarters staff?”

For the rest of the story, click here.

Facebook Founder Sued

Mark Zuckerberg, creator of the popular social networking site Facebook, is being sued by two former classmates who claim he stole the idea. What do you think?

Antonio Cima,
Systems Anaylst
“Poor guy. Sounds like he could use a smiley-face comment.”

Paige Foster,
Valet
“I hope the site isn’t shut down before I figure out what the poke feature is for.”

Kyle Eastman,
Rigger
“They probably would have guarded their secret more carefully had they only known that people’s basest voyeuristic and exhibitionist predilections could be exploited for money.”

From TheOnion.com

Today’s photo of the day shows two of baseball’s greatest players, Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, as they enter the Hall of Fame. Throughout their careers both men have been exemplars of consistency, dignity, and excellence. They just don’t make them any better than these two…

Today’s video of the day is an interview with Charlie Murphy. As always, Charlie Murphy gives a great interview. You’ll be amazed to find out how much he got paid to do the Chappelle Show!!!