Obama’s Nobel Decision

At the end of “Saving Private Ryan”, mortally-wounded captain John Miller, leader of a squad dispatched to collect a soldier whose three brothers have been in killed World War II combat, utters to his rescued charge with his dying breath, "James... earn this. Earn it."

President Obama, nominated a scant 11 days into his presidency for a Nobel Peace Prize that he clearly did not deserve, faces a far weightier matter than that of Mrs. Ryan’s surviving son, who 50 years later ponders whether or not he has been worthy of the sacrifice of Miller and the others who died while fetching him.

American involvement in what Obama called a “necessary war” in Afghanistan ultimately hinges upon how his administration decides what constitutes a victory in what is clearly an unmitigated mess.

Call me naïve but my idea of a military success involves a desk arrayed with papers and pens, a man dressed in crisp khakis and a big grey boat. That notion apparently has been supplanted by retired general Wesley Clark the former top NATO commander, who over the summer offered a hallucinatory assessment of the Afghan war, saying, “It's theoretically possible to achieve success. The question is how you define it.”

Propping up a corrupt government with a cipher of a leader whose main attribute appears to be the ability to sport an über-snazzy chapeau and flowing robes is not in the interest of American “national security” nor worth one additional drop of American blood; especially given how, by agreeing to a runoff, Afghan President Hamid Karzai tacitly admitted that August’s presidential election was fraudulent. Plus, an adversary willing to suicide bomb the dedication of a mosque – as was done in September when the country’s deputy intelligence chief and 23 others were slaughtered – is an enemy that cannot be defeated with military might.

In the absence of what General William Westmoreland, U.S. forces commander in Vietnam, termed the proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel," President Obama would be wise (and courageous) to bring the 63,000 troops already in Afghanistan home immediately – even at the risk of having to return later. The current course of action is not the ballyhooed “change” he articulated during the campaign and that the American people voted for.

Or, unlike the elderly James Ryan, he’ll be staring at a lot more than one tombstone and wondering the same about his prematurely-bestowed award.

A Haiku for the King of Pop

Now, two months later.

I still can't believe you're gone.

We miss you, Michael.

The BET Awards Show

was the biggest coon, chicken-and-biscuit eating, rub your head when it doesn't it itch, laugh when it's not funny, we sick boss?, stepin' fetchit, uncle tom, handkerchief head, aunt jeminah, lawn jockey, stoop your back when it ain't broken, Bones and Tambo minstrel show I have seen. Sad what hip hop has degenerated into.

The White House, The Black Prez, The Watermelon Patch and The Resignations

For the second time this year, a high-ranking government official has lost his job after forwarding a racist email to his colleagues.

In February, the mayor of a California town quit his position. This week, North Carolina's governor asked for and received the resignation of the state's top liquor regulator, who had forwarded a photo illustration depicting the White House South Lawn converted into a watermelon patch and captioned "There goes the neighborhood…"

"E-mails and images of this nature are offensive and unacceptable," Gov. Beverly Perdue said in a statement.

Los Alamitas Mayor Dean Grose's caption read, "No Easter egg hunt this year."

Now if you're black and laughing at these punch lines join the club. Tacky, in poor taste and racist to boot, like it or not the joke is funny whether you're a 44 fan or not. (And if you are black and laughing can you genuinely be offended and amused at the same time?)

This cartoon has been floating around the internet ever since President Obama won the election and I'll bet plenty of black folks have been on the sending or receiving end of this same email.

The problem with emailing this cartoon illustrates a dilemma that has bedeviled computer users since we started communicating via the internet; the separation of the public from the private message.

When using Outlook I always employ one rule before sending out email: would I be comfortable if someone stood in the middle of the city hall courtyard reading it while shouting at the top of their lungs? If not, then I reconsider before sending it out, usually by softening the tome of the message.

At the same time, I'm very cognizant as to the email's audience; I simply don't routinely forward messages to my list of the usual suspects. Because that's where a lack of judgment can lead to a job loss, which in Alcoholic Beverage Commission chair Douglas A. Fox's case, evaporated a six-figure salary.

And yes, I've been guilty of sending a racy email or two (or three or four) to work colleagues, but you've got to be careful with who you can trust and with what. And who can and who cannot take a joke.

I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that the lobbyist who called the guv's attention to Fox's email was white (another conversation). And Fox, bless him, might have been a civil-rights marcher and NAACP member in the past, or perhaps joined a certain secret society that wears pointy white hats; regardless, his stance on racial issues isn't the point in this instance.

The reality is that as a public official Fox - and Grose - can't send out potentially offensive email like this, just as he wouldn't (or shouldn't) place the same cartoon in an envelope embossed with a work address and toss it in the snail mail.

But the internet makes such transgressions oh-so-conveniently-easy to carry out before common sense takes over. In Grose's case, the cartoon was sent from his personal email to a black businesswoman and volunteer he serves with on a community board; he has since apologized, explaining that he didn't know about the sterotypical connection between black folks and watermelon. (Huh?)

Like the Facebook photo of the college student chugging from a beer bong, smoking a joint or showing a wee bit too much skin that pops up when the human resource department does a google search, I suspect we'll continue seeing examples of internet dos and don'ts as people sort out netiquette.

But do you really need to take a $110,000 hit to figure it out?

 

Wake-Up Call for Black Folks

Last year, Philadelphia’s new mayor initiated an idea he thought up on the campaign trail to spur the hiring of the ranks of ex-cons and drive down the crime rate.

 

For three years, businesses would receive a $10,000 a year tax break, a credit against the city’s business tax for each ex-offender they hired. To make it even more attractive for employers, the ex-cons had to work for just a six-month minimum.

 

Sounds great except for one problem; not one single business has applied for the $5 million program – enough for 500 ex-offenders – during the first year.

 

Service providers and city officials speculate that the re-entry program has failed for a number of reasons including the recession, confusion and a lack of information about the benefits and requirements, including rules that the ex-cons would be paid 150 percent of the minimum wage, and that employers must provide $2,000 worth of tuition support.

 

So far, just two unnamed companies that have hired 15 ex-cons are due to apply for the credit next year. Why so little participation? According to a city official, companies are willing to pitch in, but don’t like the requirement that they would be identified publicly.

 

No kidding.

 

Blacks and whites make up about 44 and 45 percent respectively of Philadelphia’s nearly 1.5 million population. But 74 percent of the city’s nearly 9,700 prison inmates are black. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that lots of black men are in prison, the majority of whom will be released back into society someday.

 

And this is what they can look forward to when they get out of lockup?

 

Some say the failure is the mayor’s, that he’s not effectively using the clout of his office to make the program a success. And of course, there’s the tanking economy. But those outs are too easy.

 

Can you really blame employers who must pay the ex-cons more than their (unionized) workers, and are forced to let everybody know they’ve hired former inmates? Some might think that’s a pretty naïve attitude to take since, every day people who’ve served time serve the general public at all levels of employment.

 

But honestly, would you blame customers if they were hesitant to patronize an establishment knowing that jailbirds are working there? That’s just human nature and sometimes human nature doesn’t cut folks much slack regardless of good intentions.

 

At the same time, this cauinary tale should serve as a wakeup call to all the knuckleheads out there who view a rap sheet as rite of passage. Sometimes they cast shadows lasting a lifetime.