Binge and Purge

(Tell 'Em Why You Mad Son!)

I'm still recovering from all the jazz y'all flooded me with but I gotta some shit off my chest.


- Start Snitching is in the NY Times... sort of. I posted this question to Alex Klein, a Washington Post reporter who has a book coming out about my nerdy ass HS, Stuyvesant.

Peep link and the comments that follow.

• As a 2000 graduate of West Indian descent, I wonder how minority students fit into Stuyvesant’s current landscape. How have minority (Hispanic/Black) students percentages held up as New York’s demographic shifts?

  HR

  The percentages, as you put it, have not held up. Issues of diversity continue to plague Stuyvesant. About 2 percent of the student body is black, a significant drop in recent years. The number of Hispanics also has been in decline — standing now at about 3 percent. Meanwhile, the Asian population has grown to about 55 percent of the school, while the percentage of whites has held steady at about 40 percent. The trends trouble educators at Stuyvesant and elsewhere. After all, how can the school system justify a public school, backed by taxpayers, with one of the most expensive school buildings ever built, at $150 million, that provides an elite education to only a small number of blacks and Hispanics? The question, and the issue, is addressed at length in the book. In the past, the school tried to bring about better representation by admitting some students who narrowly missed the entrance exam cutoff. That program has been suspended. Several years ago, the school also introduced a months-long program to help students prepare for the entrance exam. Still, though, the numbers of blacks and Hispanics continue to dwindle. And when asked about it, educators say they are not sure how to fix the problem. From my reporting, I would venture to say that the problem begins far before the students take the test, that, for instance, the middle schools could do a better job of preparing students—all students—for the kind of math and English questions found on the test.

- My little question above becomes a lot more relevant when you have the father of DNA and Nobel Prize Winner, Jim Watson admitting that he believes black people are genetically inferior.

• Watson said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really."

  Watson also asserted there was no reason to believe different races separated by geography should have evolved identically, and he said that while he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."
  
  

Um, wow.


- And the racism continues. Obama said the head of the Justice Department's voting rights division should be fired for saying voter ID laws hurt the elderly but aren't a problem for minorities because they often die before old age.

• "That's a shame, you know, creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any circumstance," Tanner said, according to video posted on YouTube. "Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect because our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

Let's not forget the Social Security privatization push the Republicans went for in 2005 when Bush claimed blacks die early so they need early Social Security.

So much reprehensible shit gets brushed away because the old stories aren't linked to the new ones to establish patterns and shit gets brushed off as a one time event.

Moving on...


- David Chase pretty much lays out the fact that Tony Soprano was killed in that final scene. The intense backlash that ending received was a testament to the fact that the Sopranos' had tons of fans that didn't really get the show. I still miss that shit.


- The New Yorker has a god-body interview with "The Wire" creator David Simon that has taken my excitement for Season 5 of The Wire to obscene levels. The piece is long and great, kind of like the narrative arc of The Wire.


- Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling outs Albus Dumbledore as a homosex. Start Snitching is a proud Harry Potter nerd who is looking forward to the newest overreaction by the Christian right to this bit of news. Who cares about real issues when a beloved children's character is gay and there is a black chocolate Jesus! Let the book burning commence!


- America kicks the immigrants out and then sneaks them back. America's schizophrenic foreign policy is beyond words. What comes after anger, shame and sadness?


- Blackwater disarms America troops at gunpoint.
How can read that article and not have your blood boil. Republicans talk a lot of shit about "supporting the troops" but they have all types of connections to Blackwater who destroy the image of U.S. soldiers by their indiscriminate murder of civilians as well as their morale by getting by incredible amounts of money while doing whatever they want. "Apocalypse Now" ain't just a movie.


- The Republicans gave Bush blank check after blank for the Iraq War and then have the nerve to uphold Bush's veto on the SCHIP bill for children's health care (as covered before) because of Bush's strict budget guidelines. How do the words Bush and strict budget even appear in the same paragraph.

While we're on the subject, here's some visual perspective on the cost of the Iraq war.

But it's all gravy, none of these problems matter because Bush will laugh us into WWIII and end all our problems.



Ha ha ha.

UPDATE:

The Christians already got out the torches and pitchforks against Harry Potter.

• One major anti-Potter crusader is Laura Mallory, a mother of four from Georgia, who made headlines earlier this month when she told the Gwinnett County Board of Education that the series was trying to indoctrinate children into the Wicca religion. In response to Dumbledore's outing, Mallory told ABC News that the Potter series has "an anti-Christian agenda," and, "this only further supports that."

  "My prayer is that parents would wake up, that the subtle way this is presented as harmless fantasy would be exposed for what it really is -- a subtle indoctrination into anti-Christian values," said Mallory. "The kids are being introduced to a cult and witchcraft practices.

  "A homosexual lifestyle is a harmful one," she added. "That's proven, medically."

  Not surprisingly, conservatives at Saturday's Values Voters' summit in Washington also had some thoughts on the now controversial wizard.

  "I feel like children's books shouldn't be political -- they shouldn't have political ties, they're entertainment," attendee Katie Beach said. "I think it's pretty ridiculous for her to say that or to do that."

Because we all know that gays aren't real people so they should never be represented among other social groups in a fictional story. Granted J.K. Rowling wrote 7 books and never made ONE specific or tangible reference to Dumbledore's gayness but now it's an issue.

Yawn...
Wake me up when Harry Potter 6 hits theaters.