“One Negro and…Two Orientals” – A 2010 Census Officer
Posted: January 6, 2010 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Thought Food | Tags: african-american, black, census, negro, new york daily news and 2010 census Leave a comment »The 2010 Census has “Negro” as a check box.
Question No. 9 on this year’s census form asks about race, with one of the answers listed as “black, African-Am. or Negro.”
Census Bureau spokesman Jack Martin said the use of “Negro” was intended as a term of inclusion.
“Many older African-Americans identified themselves that way, and many still do,” he said. “Those who identify themselves as Negroes need to be included.”
The form was also approved by Congress more than a year ago, and the word has appeared on past forms.
The use of Negro began disappearing elsewhere with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as black or African-American became the preferred terms.
All things considered, I can’t say this one worked me into a lather. If anything, it just made me furrow my eyebrows and think: Why?
I get that the Census Board wants to make everyone feel included, but it stands to reason that if people are taking the time to fill out the Census, they’ll probably check the most appropriate box, even if they have to do so grumbling. I would like to meet the person beating down the Census Bureau’s door wondering why they as Negroes were left off the form.
As I consider it, the Negro usage seems akin to grouping “Retarded” along with “Special Needs” or “Handicapped” on a form. Yes; both are previously acceptable terms, but now that’s not really the case and more importantly, the use seems unnecessary considering neither denote anything specific or particular.
Desiree’s Disarray
Posted: December 7, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Thought Food | Tags: desiree rogers, event planning, michaele salahi, secret service, state dinner, tareq salahi, theatre, white house, white house social secretary, william shakespeare 2 Comments »
All the world’s a stage and we are but players.
And somewhere among the players, there are stage managers making sure everything is in place to make the players look good.
Being a stage manager is a thankless job and those who do it are usually overly-stressed task masters with masochistic tendencies. When everything goes off without a hitch, they rarely get the credit deserved. When some prop is out of place or some light cue is too late, it’s the stage manager who hears about it first and last and until it is fixed. Oh, and stage managers get the pleasure of interacting with players, players who are often something less than a delight to deal with.
Such is the life of the people behind the people. Read the rest of this entry »
The Secret Service Doesn’t Care About President People
Posted: November 27, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Soap Box, Thought Food | Tags: joe biden, michaele salahi, president barack obama, rahm emanuel, tareq salahi, the new york times, white house state dinner, white house state dinner crashed 1 Comment »
I’m sure the Secret Service doesn’t its job right 99 out of 100 times. I’m sure they thwart threats that we never hear about. I’m sure of it.
What I’m not quite sure about is how they let certain confidenc-shaking shenanigans see the light of day.
While I was, like most people, mildly amused by the Iraqi shoe thrower, I was extremely troubled by the incident. Sure, the gesture was meant as more insult than harm, but the fact that a guy got two clean shots at the President of the United States baffles me. The first shoe I’ll grant him because…who the fuck expects a guy to go tossing Docksiders across the room, but as he reached for the second shoe, I would expect the Secret Service to have subdued and/or shot this guy. Period.
This most recent incident at the White House State dinner was probably more troubling. How can two people crash anything at the White House while the president is on the premises? What’s that now, they had a cameraman with them?
The Salahis–the crashers–claim they didn’t crash anything and that there was a misunderstanding that will be cleared up soon. Maybe this is true; maybe they were supposed to be on the list and are owed some apology. But that apology needs to come on the heels of their being barred entrance to the event. This is the White House, not Bungalow 8.
Obviously, I’m sort of pumped that it took place because it is a choice example for white (or white-looking) privilege. If this is a colored (or colored-looking) couple, you can believe somebody get folded up right there at the gate. The story in the Times would have been “There are whispers coming from the State dinner that a woman was scoop slammed and her husband back body-dropped for attempting to get into the event without having their names on the list.”
So0meone will like get assigned to Des Moines over this, but the troubling thing is that, had these people been a well-dressed sleeper cell, they could have brought harm to any number of people, including the President of the United States of America. Not that I’m in the business of quoting Rep. Peter King, but this piece in The New York Times is on point:
Mr. King said he had seen people turned away from similar White House events, including a congressman who brought his daughter instead of his wife, whose name was on the list. He also raised concerns about the Secret Service’s assertion that Mr. Obama was safe because all guests passed through metal detectors.
“The fact they went through the magnometer is incidental,” he said. “They could have had anthrax on them. They could have grabbed a knife from the dining room table.”
He added, “The next time it will be a far worse reality than a reality TV show.”
To the Secret Service: 99 out of 100 is good enough for everybody else.
Civilian Court?! You Like ‘Steel Magnolias’ Too?!
Posted: November 18, 2009 Filed under: History, People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Thought Food | Tags: 9/11 plotters, 9/11 trials, adam serwer, khalid sheik mohammed, military tribunals, new york city, steel magnolias, the american prospect, torture, waterboarding Leave a comment »
"We totally think New York has the right stuff."
So sayeth the haranguers spewing poetic on what should be done with Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his merry band of mass murderers. They’ve come up with excuse that range from questions of safety to that of jurisdiction, but the upshot of it all seems to be this:
We don’t trust the Feds in New York City to punch this one through.
To which I ask, as politely as possible: Can you pass that dutchie to the left hand side? It’s clearly some of that deaf bubonic.
Let’s think this out loud: New York City, the site of the worse mass murder in the history of the United States, has a chance to get its hands on some of the scoundrels who perpetrated said mass murder and their gonna bungle this? The same people who would send back food that is “too hot” are gonna let this slide? It would seem the discussion should turn to whether or not New York is a safe place for KSM and Friends to be.
As my buddy Adam Serwer notes, these fools are never going to breathe free air again.
My gut tells me that the supporters of the tribunals have simple reasons for wanting to go that route. Rubberband to my head, I’d say it’s because they think the military will be harder on these guys. Not only will they convict them, they’ll convict them hard.
If KSM and Co. were convicted by a military tribunal, they’d spend the rest of their days getting tapdanced on by dudes in crew cuts in between waterboarding sessions and electrocution that involves nipple clamps. And all of this would take place in that shadowy Military World where the rules are just different. Or so hope, I think, the people who want to see a tribunal go down.
Shorter Pitts-Wiley: They want these dudes put in the hurt locker, military-style.
They want a vicious pimp hand to come down on the 9/11 plotters and they think the Feds in New York are too weak in the wrist.
The Feds in the city where these knuckleheads helped murdered 3,000 people. A city where people don’t even let too-hot food slide.*
Hm.
*Yes; you can probably reasonably argue that the Feds in a city aren’t necessarily representative of said city, but I get the sense that, from sea to shining sea, the Feds in the area take on the musk and complexion of the locale. When something happens in their neck of the woods, they take it personally. If I did something terroristic in New York City, best believe I’m not trying to see their Fed game.
Queries: Abortion, Government and Choice
Posted: November 8, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Thought Food | Tags: bart stupak, health care reform, jimmy carter, joe pitts, jon pitts-wiley, melissa harris-lacewell, Pitts Indeed, pitts-stupak amendment, pro-choice, pro-life, prop 8, terrorism, us policy terrorist negotiation 2 Comments »
What do you mean I can't have babies?!
As we inch closer to health care reform, the reproductive rights of women are again a matter of debate (mostly among people who are not women.) The Pitts-Stupak Amendment, the brainchild of Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan (D) and Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania was passed along with the bill last night, an amendment that would not cover abortion as part of a public health care option.
Many, including my buddy Melissa Harris-Lacewell, were outraged last night, and considered this a Prop 8-type body blow on a night that should be one of victory. As a Pitts (-Wiley) who is pro-choice, I couldn’t agree more. While Pitts and Stupak can attempt to spin this amendment any way they wish, it is decidedly anti-choice and another example of men who can’t have babies telling women who can what to do.
Me, Bart Stupak and Joe Pitts are not BFF right now in any way. Read the rest of this entry »
Killing In The Name Of…
Posted: November 7, 2009 Filed under: History, People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Thought Food | Tags: adolf hitler, fort hood, german national socialism, jon pitts-wiley, mental health, nazi germany, nidal malik hasan, Pitts Indeed, the bible, the quran 3 Comments »
Getting a lot of interesting feedback regarding my Nidal Malik Hasan post, and wanted to take the time to respond to some recurring themes in the responses. I’m gonna tackle them piecemeal so as to hopefully be more clear.
- In initially writing on Hasan, I opened up the discussion with examples of sociopathic mass murders from all different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and I think my use of sensational figures may have overshadowed some of the point I was making. I used these famous killers to highlight the fact that, in my opinion, their mental health/states was infinitely more important than their cultural background. It wasn’t to say that they were of no relevance; rather, it was to say that they were not of supreme importance. I used names that would grab the attention of readers from jump, but may have erred in the parallel due to the fact that the examples I used were sociopaths in a class by themselves, a group to which Hasan may not belong. Read the rest of this entry »
Nidal Hasan: A Reader Responds
Posted: November 6, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Soap Box, Thought Food | Tags: fort hood shooting, islam, muslim, nidal malik hasan, palestine, reader response, the bible, the constitution, the koran, the quran 5 Comments »Reader Sylvia has a few thoughts on my post regarding Nidal Malik Hasan
Um… the Quran does say that, about a hundred times, e.g.:
Qur’an (9:123) – “O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness.”
And according to witnesses he was yelling the infamous “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire. Yes, he’s crazy, but his crazy had help. It’s also relevant that he was Middle Eastern. According to colleagues and contacts, he didn’t want to enter that theatre as part of an army fighting against those he felt to be his own people. He had been desperate to get out of the service for some time because of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which is hardly crazy. They backed him into a corner, and it looks like he chose the glory of jihad as his way out (and he is already being glorified by like-minded Muslims). Maybe the army needs to look at whether they should compel people to fight (however indirectly) people of their own ethnicity if they don’t want to. It may be asking too much, especially in a fraudulent war.
These things are always complex, and we shouldn’t dismiss any factors just to make ourselves more comfortable. They all need to be looked at. Just saying “he’s crazy” is too simplistic. There may be things we can do to prevent these things if we look at them carefully and honestly.
Lots of good points here. Read the rest of this entry »
