Is the Future-Present of the Politics of Popular Culture Aldous Huxley or George Orwell? Alternatively, Do Help Me Build My Netflix Queue if You are So Inclined

The Tea Party jihadis are about to shut down the United States government in an act of devotion to the political cult of Grover Norquist.

And once more, in the Age of Obama conservatism and racism are again and together one hell of a drug, which together subvert the common good. As we are in dire times, popular culture is a way to medicate us all into a state of compliance, indifference, managed anger, and exhaustion through spectacle.

Consider our viewing options this past Sunday night.

1. The Breaking Bad finale

2. Boardwalk Empire

3. The debut of Masters of Sex

4. The New England Patriots versus the Atlanta Falcons

5. The return of The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, and Bob's Burgers

I feel dirty wallowing in the wealth of film and TV riches; the bounty overwhelms me. As detailed by this great political cartoon, Orwell suggested that human society would be controlled by censorship of literature and arts. In comparison, Huxley, hypothesized that we would be controlled by pleasure on demand, and having our senses overwhelmed by stimuli. Both were correct. A dualism of political and social reality is much more common than many binary thinkers are inclined to believe.

As such, I choose not to stand against the wind. There is a Klingon proverb which argues the wisdom of that approach. I have tried to internalize it as best a Terran is able.

To point. I have finally surrendered to the Netflix gods thanks to a kind sponsor. What shows or movies should I add to my queue? Do you have any suggestions? I have of course added Star Trek and Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I just watched a great documentary on the rise and fall of pinball in the United States, and the Star Wars documentary The People versus George Lucas. I will most certainly be adding some animal themed documentaries too.

Please help me build my Netflix queue. Where should I begin?

Our Shared Humanity: Connecting the Death of an 83 Year Old White Female College Adjunct With the Shooting Death of an Unarmed Black Man Named Jonathan Ferrell

Mary Margaret Vojtko was an 83 year old professor at Duquesne University who, after 25 years of service, succumbed to cancer. Delirious, virtually homeless, the French professor passed away on the front lawn of a house that she was too destitute to keep up and was delivered unto God in a cardboard coffin. 

Mary Margaret Vojtko was making $10,000 a year and, like many in her position, she was glad to get it. At the end of her time on earth, she did not have health insurance. Neither did she have job security. On the eve of her death, she suffered the disgrace of finding out that she was terminated after 25 years of service. 

Her death has become a symbol to a special class of professors -- adjunct professors -- who have not the glamor of a mall shooting nor the spectacle of a gas attack to make their cause known to the general public but who, nonetheless, every day die, inch by inch, in a system that, ironically, elevates their labor with that vaunted title "professor" even as it extinguishes their hopes and fortunes and bodies.

What are adjunct professors? They are not "real" professors -- professors who enjoy job security and benefits and dignity. An adjunct professor is the grunt worker of the university system. Often euphemistically termed "contingent faculty," adjunct professors are second tier citizens -- expendable figures who teach class by class, term by term.

We are all being carved up, those of us not part of the 1 percent, and some of us more than others.

Werner Herzog's Bear, one of the friends of WARN, penned a great piece over on his site Notes from the Ironbound that I would like to share here.

I wanted to comment on the death of an 83 year old adjunct instruct who was betrayed by a system which leveraged her talent and ability to teach students who paid tens of thousands of dollars for a degree while leaving her--quite literally--to die penniless.

Werner did it better. This is some powerful writing. We are all in this together folks. "Political race" can and should be real; Werner gives an object lesson in the type of shared concerns and empathy which is the beating heart of such a political project.
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Remember last week? In our 24-hour news cycle world events of great import are quickly forgotten. Our nation keeps lurching forward, like a stumbling amnesiac easily distracted by bright, shiny baubles and incapable of recalling the recent past. Horrors and tragedies occur, but are quickly assigned to oblivion with all deliberate speed.

In our quest to forget we enable the same horrific crimes to be repeated. Last week brought three truly awful examples of how certain people's lives are cheap: the Navy Yard shooting, the police shooting of Jonathan Ferrell for the crime of being black, and the lonesome death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, adjunct professor.

In the aftermath of the Navy Yard shooting, where a mentally deranged man with an inexplicable access to firearms and security clearance killed twelve people, we did not even bother having a real conversation about gun control. A pile of dead first graders in Newtown didn't do the trick, so nothing will. We will continue stumbling along until the next mass killing, and afterwards the same usual suspects will spout their same usual platitudes, and nothing will get changed and more slaughters will follow.

In the case of Jonathan Ferrell, he was unarmed, yet shot dead by the police for the crime of seeking help after an accident while black. Evidently running to get assistance was some kind of threat to the officer to pull the trigger. Funny, I don't seem to recall this ever happening to white people.

Last but not least, the plight of adjuncts briefly entered the national conversation after the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, a longtime Duquesne University adjunct who died penniless, buried in a cardboard box.

Heaven knows how many other people like her have or will soon suffer similar fates. While plenty of people in the academic world have been using her case to argue against the current adjunct system, I fear that the wider world has already stopped caring.

All of these stories affected me, not least because I know in my heart that more adjuncts will die penniless, more unarmed black men will be killed by the police, and more adjuncts will die poor.  What kind of society do we live in that human lives are so cheap, and that their loss barely even registers?

Brothers in Arms? The U.S. is Abandoning its Afghani Translators. If They Knew About the Hmong People in Vietnam, the Afghanis Would Not Have Been Surprised by Their Fate.

Machiavelli warned against employing mercenaries to fight wars. He considered them unreliable, dangerous, and not worth the trouble of using, as they were a threat to a given king or queen's regime and a country's safety and stability.

We can agree with Machiavelli's wisdom, while also considering how theory and broad claims often mask and hide the experiences of a given human being that we call a "mercenary"--people who are ultimately just pawns in the grand game.

America's war in Afghanistan was an imperial misadventure. As such, there are my folks who have suffered because of war fever and the country's poor strategic choices. While acknowledging such a thing, I am also saddened by how American empire has killed too many innocent folks--and is a drain on treasure, blood, youth, and the United States' future--while still honoring those individuals who have fought, suffered, and died in the service of those policies.

As such, the misfortune befalling the native interpreters in Afghanistan who allied with American forces against the Taliban is unfortunate and a national embarrassment. Consider the case of Janis Shinwari:

Five years ago, my Afghan interpreter Janis Shinwari saved my life in a firefight against the Taliban. Ever since then, I've been trying to save his as the Taliban placed him on a kill list for his service to the US military. 

Afghan and Iraqi interpreters are promised that if they give the United States military one year of "faithful and valuable service", they and their immediate families will receive Special Immigrant Visas to come to the United States. Janis has served our military for the past nine years. He has more than earned his place in America, so you can imagine our joy when after years of pleading with the State Department, the US embassy in Kabul issued him and his family US visas two weeks ago. 

But this past Saturday, everything came crashing down. Janis called me at 2am in a panic. After giving him and his family their salvation, the State Department revoked it only two weeks later without any explanation.

America, like so many other great powers, does not always treat its soldiers--either domestic or foreign born--very well. Ultimately, they are tools to be used, and thus discarded and forgotten, when their existence is made inconvenient.

The Afghani translators like Janis Shinwari who have been thrown into the refuse pile are not alone--during Vietnam the United States also betrayed the Hmong people who fought in a "dirty" covert war sponsored by the CIA in the country of Laos:

They call themselves America’s forgotten soldiers. 

Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of the men who sided with America.

“If I surrender, I will be punished,” said Xang Yang, a wiry 58-year-old still capable of crawling nimbly through thick bamboo underbrush. “They will never forgive me. I cannot live outside the jungle because I am a former American soldier.”

Out of sight is out of mind...except for those souls who cannot easily walk away from the consequences of American policy abroad.

Sadly, those who know, worked with, and remember the Hmong's service in the Vietnam War are able to rationalize abandoning them:

Bill Lair, the legendary CIA agent who co-ordinated the operation to build an anti-Communist resistance army out of poorly educated jungle tribespeople, defended the Agency's actions. Speaking by phone from his home in Waco, Texas, he said that the US originally hired the Hmong and used Thai recruits to train them because the Hmong "were better than anyone else around, every step they took was up or down so they could move a lot faster than the enemy".

But when asked if America should now take steps to save them, he replied: "The CIA owes them nothing. We gave them the choice to leave but they decided to stay, thinking they could go back to how they used to live in the mountains".

I do not believe in American Exceptionalism.

But, I do think that a country should honor its promises to those who take up arms in her name. The Hmong in Vietnam, like the Afghanis today, are the "dogs of war". Unfortunately, they are being let off the leash and abandoned when their loyalty is no longer convenient.

Hurt and abandoned pets often turn on their former owners. Are the American people prepared for when now former friends act on their betrayal in reasonable acts of revenge?

Angry Clowns and a Thought on the Meta Rules of Blogging and Self-Censorship

I have a few more posts on the Tea Party GOP's hate of the poor as demonstrated by their cruel attack on food stamps that I will be offering up later today and tomorrow. But, I wanted to take a brief moment to work through the following issues and questions a bit more.

I would like to thank the folks who chimed in on this earlier post on Godwin's Law and truth-telling as it relates to writing online. Your thoughts were very much appreciated. As I outlined there, I am trying to work through the bigger meta-question of how trying to be an acknowledged member of the commentariat often involves one's compromising their intellectual integrity in order to package an idea to fit within the approved bounds of public discourse.

Styles make fights; we often have to modify our style to get the big payday.

There is a related question here: how do those of us who write online on our own blogs, websites, or in traditional print, learn to censor ourselves (or not) for fear of consequences if we deviate from what the/our public/audience expects from us?

Godwin's Law and a Fear of Telling the Truth About the Republican Party's Cuts to Food Stamps and Racism Driven War on the Poor

I am very interested in online writing as a type of performance which is a means to (hopefully) contribute in a positive way to the public conversation on matters of politics and society--however defined. As readers of my work here on WARN and elsewhere know, I am also very interested in the meta-game of punditry, professional opinion making, and who gets the chance to shape the public discourse under the guise of being an "expert".

There is a pattern and a type of style which allows some types of opinions to be considered respectable and mainstream. Some of these boundaries are stylistic (how and in what tone, manner, and venue does one write and speak). The other limitation is that of sticking to approved talking points and subjects.

"Speaking truth to power" can be very difficult within those rules. The trick is to push the boundaries outward while also creating one's own space within which to operate.

My most recent piece here on We Are Respectable Negroes focused on what I suggest is a clear connection between the Tea Party GOP's ethic of racialized citizenship and their efforts to destroy the social safety as a means of furthering the long game that is transferring resources to the 1 percent. The framework for the Republican's odious War on the Poor can be found in the concept of a Herrenvolk society that practices a type of bio politics which subsequently separates the public into "productive" and "unproductive" citizens.

The most obvious examples of a Herrenvolk order are South Africa, Jim and Jane Crow America, and of course Nazi Germany.

My reference to the latter forces a consideration of how Godwin's Law applies not just to online trolls, but also to a broader limit on the types of truth claims that are considered "acceptable" by many in the mainstream media, the chattering classes, and public, more generally.

During my several years of writing online and experiment with public pedagogy, I have learned that there are no guaranteed formulas for how a given piece of work may resonate (or not) with readers and the broader community.

Some of our best work--or what we think is our "best" and actually is not--may not be noticed until a later date. There is such a thing as being ahead of the curve. Alternatively, we can believe that there is something novel and interesting--and yes, attention-worthy and notable--about our work, when in reality our claims are too obvious. Thus, they are made to be uninteresting.

Yet, I have a lingering sense that my reference to useless eaters, Germany, and racial democracy in the context of the Tea Party's GOP assault on the poor and cutting of food stamps, was too direct, and thus too "problematic" for many readers and other venues.

I do not want to surrender to what I see as petty speech norms and rules that deem some ideas verboten. But, this is also a game which has to be played strategically and smartly. 

Are my instincts misplaced? Or are more basic alternative explanation in play in the fear of clear echoes in current events which can be tied directly to the habits and practices of racial fascism of the near past?

Ultimately, how would you find balance between truth-telling and the practical hustle that is jockeying for one's proper position among the chattering classes?

The Republican Vote to Cut Food Stamps is Really a Decision to Kill the "Useless Eaters"

If you like and support the work we are doing here at We Are Respectable Negroes please try to support us with a donation. My online work is a blessing. It is also work and a labor of love. I appreciate all of the support the fans and readers of the site have given me over the years.
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15 million Americans were “food insecure” in the United States during 2012. The Great Recession has increased the number of Americans who do not have sufficient food by 30 percent. The fastest growing group of people who need some assistance with obtaining sufficient food to maintain a basic standard of living is the elderly. Hunger in America is estimated to cost the U.S. economy 167 billion dollars.

Approximately 20 percent of American children live in poverty. Food insecurity and hunger leads to a long-term decline in life spans and a diminished standard of living for whole communities.

Last week, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to cut 39 billion dollars from federal food assistance programs. Their vote is more than just the next act in the ongoing politics of cruelty by the Republican Party in the Age of Obama.

It is a decision to kill poor people.

In America, discussions of poverty are linked in the public imagination to stereotypes about race, class, and gender. The face of poverty is not white (the group which in fact comprises the largest group of recipients for government aid). Instead, it is the mythical black welfare queen, or an “illegal” immigrant who is trying to pilfer the system at the expense of “hard working” white Americans.

Discussions about poverty are also easily transformed into claims about morality and virtue. Consequently, while the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is very efficient and involves very little if any fraud on the part of its participants, stereotypes about the poor can be used to legitimate the policing and harassment of Americans in need of food support through mandatory drug testing and other unnecessary programs.

Here, the long-term end goal for Republicans is revealed for what it is—a desire to make being a poor person into a crime.

Surprised? The Cop that Shot Jonathan Ferrell Dead Like a Rabid Dog Used to Work as an "Animal Control" Officer

More details are emerging about the murder of Jonathan Ferrell by Randall Kerrick, a police officer in North Carolina during the very early morning hours of Saturday, September 14th.

The Charlotte Observer has an account of the events that evening which includes details of the video recording made by the police dashboard camera.

As I wrote here, Jonathan Ferrell was quite literally killed by the White Gaze. What sociologists and social psychologists call "stereotype threat" helped to ensure that Randall Kerrick saw Jonathan Ferrell, a black man, as not fit for human compassion. Research on implicit bias, and the relationship between racism and cognitive processes, demonstrates that Kerrick may have actually believed that an unarmed black man had a weapon in his hands.

Alternatively, and this is a more frightening hypothesis, perhaps Kerrick's instincts to shoot and kill another human being were primed and aroused by the fact that the target was an African-American male.

There is a long history in the United States of whites linking black people with ape and other animal imagery. The Racial State created such a connection as a means to legitimate the dehumanization and murder of black people during the centuries-long slave regime in the Americas and across the Black Atlantic.

Such stereotypes linger into the present: they are reproduced in the collective subconscious (and mediated through popular culture. Black men were historically described as "black beast rapists" or "giant negroes". The same logic argued that we are naturally libidinous, violent, and lack impulse control.

These stereotypes persist and are circulated in the form of how hyper-sexual, black male aggression and thuggery--what is a caricature of black humanity--is a standard trope in much commercial rap music for example.

Ultimately, black people, and black men in particular, have been depicted as animals and brutes in need of

policing and control by "respectable" white society.

I rarely find myself disturbed by news items about White Supremacy and white racism.

However, the last sentence of the Charlotte Observer's story about the shooting death of Jonathan Ferrell is jarring: "Kerrick, a former animal control officer who lives in Midland, was the least experienced of the three."

I was momentarily taken aback not because of the facts presented, but rather as a result of how those words highlighted the "logic" which drove Randall Kerrick's decision to shoot and murder Jonathan Ferrell.

Animal control officers are often called upon to shoot and kill rabid or otherwise out of control and dangerous pets and wildlife. On the evening that Kerrick shot Ferrell 10 times, the latter was transformed into one of those "beasts" that had to be put down with extreme prejudice for reasons of "public safety".

Black men occupy a complicated and contradictory space in America. Black men--and black bodies--are an object of desire, curiosity, envy, fear, and yearning for the White Gaze. As such, black men embody a type of "blackness" that can be consumed and purchased by the public across the color line.

The athletic black body is the metaphorical "million dollar slave". Through hip hop and other types of popular culture, "white negroes" can get a visceral thrill from being "cool" and by engaging in cultural tourism in order to fill the cultural emptiness often associated with Whiteness as a social identity.

Whiteness views black men as dangerous pets: we are wild animals that are best enjoyed from afar. Occasionally, black men may be experienced intimately and in close proximity. Why? The thrill is much more exciting that way.

But, as Jonathan Ferrell, Trayvon Martin, the day-to-day harassment through policies like stop and frisk, and a racist criminal justice system that disproportionately punishes black and brown people as compared to whites demonstrates, the black male body is something that White Society must always be prepared at all times to police, murder, and discipline.

Randall Kerrick did not just kill the person Jonathan Ferrell. He shot a fusillade of bullets at the White Supremacist projection of black men as inherently dangerous and a threat to white society. Consequently, while on his own personal safari as a police officer who embodies State power and authority, Randall Kerrick bagged himself a "giant negro".

The demons of White Supremacy still haunt the Age of Obama. Trayvon Martin and Jonathan Ferrell are proof that they will not be exorcised any time soon.

Jim Cornette Explains How Politics is Professional Wrestling as Ted Cruz Does Not Break Character While on His Kamikaze Mission to Stop "Obamacare"

There are very few new or novel ideas. I have been talking about how politics is a version of professional wrestling for some time here on We Are Respectable Negroes. Of course, I am in good company with that observation.

The cultural theorist Roland Barthes made a similar observation in his 1972 book Mythologies.

Jim Cornette, one of the greatest managers and talkers in the history of professional wrestling, offers up a great shoot interview in which he deftly echoes my argument--only years earlier--about how politicians are all actors and we the public are the "marks".

Lawrence O'Donnell and his guests described Tea Party GOP darling Ted Cruz's efforts to stop President Obama's healthcare reform bill--which is ready to be implemented and is for the most part very popular with the American public--as a "kamikaze" mission.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From his point of view, Cruz is playing the part of a professional wrestler who is going his best job at being a noble "face" who is fighting a good and noble battle against seemingly unbelievable odds.

Not surprisingly, Ted Cruz's Right-wing face character is just like Hulk Hogan during the height of his popularity in the 1980s--he is entirely self-serving and metaphorically doing steroids and drugs in the back with the boys while preaching the virtues of vitamins and prayer to the kiddies and the general public on TV.

Ultimately, Ted Cruz only really cares about his career at the expense of all others (including the long term health of the Republican Party and the American people).

Ted Cruz is willing to engage in a game of political brinkmanship that may result in a government shutdown, the United States defaulting on its financial obligations in order to sabotage the black guy who happens to be President of the United States of America, all to buttress the former's dreams of power as the Tea Party GOP nominee for the White House in 2016.

The kamikazes were a "divine wind" that was said to protect Japan from harm. There is nothing noble or divine about Ted Cruz's effort to sabotage good governance and democracy by trying to derail standing law in the interest of a narrow set of reactionary political interests.

Yes, politics is professional wrestling; Ted Cruz and his Tea Party GOP ilk-brethren are willing to sacrifice the Common Good because they actually believe that their pro wrestling promos and characters are in fact real.

When politicians are so detached from reality, and unwilling to break "kayfabe", we the American people suffer. Ted Cruz and other politicians can live their fantasies at our expense because they are practically (and materially) separated from the real life consequences of such choices.

Ted Cruz would do the public a great service by cutting his promos as champion of the Tea Party GOP in front of his bathroom mirror, slathered with baby oil, and shirtless, than as someone who is ostensibly a public servant even while he has utter disdain for the Common Good and the people's will.

At Which Point Chauncey DeVega Interviews Ato Essandoh from the BBC TV Series "Copper"

I am a huge fan of the BBC series Copper. Ato Essandoh is an accomplished and gifted actor who has appeared in movies such as Django Unchained.

Fate aligns when we have the opportunity to talk to individuals on the TV shows and movies that we watch and enjoy.

Ato Essandoh is cool people.

Part of the fun of We Are Respectable Negroes is discovering the wide range of folks who like, support, read, and are fans of the site. 

Just like in our podcast series, I do not ask strictly conventional questions in the following interview: I am curious about process, random matters, and trying to get a sense of who the "real" person is that we/us see creative outcome. 

I do hope you enjoy Ato's taking the time to share his insights about acting and creative work with WARN.

The interview follows.

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Chauncey DeVega: I have been a fan of your work for some time. I always wonder about that moment of transition, when an actor or actress realizes that they can earn a living, and if lucky, live comfortably, from their craft. What was that moment like for you?

Ato Essandoh: Thank you so much. In college I was studying to be a Chemical Engineer. I took out some loans to do this. A couple years ago, I paid off the last of them with money I made as an actor. Let me repeat: I paid off my chemical engineering degree with money I made from acting. So yeah, so far so good.

Chauncey DeVega: Your parents are from Africa. In my various careers, one of my jobs was working with first generation and immigrant college students. Their parents were consistent: you go to college to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or scientist. How did you folks respond when you got your degree in Chemical Engineering-not too shabby by the way and quite lucrative-and  then became an actor?

Ato Essandoh: Yeah their heads exploded for a second mostly, I think because it came out of nowhere for them. But when they saw my resolve, they backed down. But my parents are pretty atypical as far stereotypical African parents go. They've backed me all the way without a hint of negativity. My mom came to the Copper set last season. I showed her around and she loved it. She took me aside in a quiet moment and told me how scared she and my pop had been over the years, and yet how proud they were that I took such a chance. It was so great to hear. Yeah, my parents rock.

Chauncey DeVega: I have to ask. Ghana is one of the countries that black Americans often choose as their "African home"-this was really common during the 1960s and 1970s. If I was from Ghana or my people were, I don't know how I would respond to such a flattening of culture and history. Have you heard in stories from folks back in "the motherland" about black Americans "coming home" and what transpired?

Ato Essandoh: There is a sense of pride among most Ghanaians, I think, concerning this. Ghanaians, in general, are quite hospitable, so they welcome it. Nina Simone retired in Accra for example. Yet they, and I'm sure most Africans, bristle at the generalization of African culture. Lot's of foreigners still think of Africa as a country as opposed to a vast continent consisting of diverse, ever-evolving cultures.

Chauncey DeVega: Looking at your body of work, I keep thinking about how black folks are part of a global Diaspora. Your parents are from Ghana, you grew up in the U.S., have been in shows in the U.K., and portrayed character(s) from Africa. Do viewers see you as the embodiment of some type of black cosmopolitanism, a worldly voice, as "all of us?" And do fans mistake your origins and assume you are from one country or locale when you are actually from another?

Ato Essandoh:  I've haven't encountered people saying that of me. No. But all my life, people have tried to place me. It depends on who's doing the placing, but I've been placed everywhere from Senegal to the American south, to Brazil. Everywhere except upstate New York. It's probably good for my career now
that I think about it. I could be from anywhere. Except maybe Sweden. Haha!

Chauncey DeVega:  I didn't realize you were in Django: Unchained until a second viewing.You have been asked this before I am sure, but I am legitimately curious. What is it like to meet Tarantino or any other director who is so well-known" Have you finally come to accept that you too are a "famous" actor and are all in the same club more or less? How do those relationships work in Hollywood in terms of figuring out the lay of the land and where a given actor fits in the puzzle?

Ato Essandoh: Quentin is one of my all time favorites. So meeting him was a thrill. I don't think my own level of fame (there's not much of it) is a factor. If it's someone I've admired, I still get a little goofy. I try to keep it cool, but I still get goofy. I usually save the goofiness until the shoot is over. I don't know if there's a Hollywood code. If there is, no one's hipped me to it. Don't get me wrong, I don't freak out necessarily, let's
call it effusive enthusiasm. I'll always be a fan.

Chauncey DeVega:  Does the sense of surprise and wonder ever go away from knowing and meeting other celebrities or seeing yourself on screen? Do you sneak into your own movies for the thrill of it? Or is it all now very mundane?

Ato Essandoh: It's even more intense because now I have access to them. Alfre Woodard came to work with us on Copper. I introduced myself to her as if she was visiting royalty (she kind of is). It's a thrill. I get to act with Alfre Woodard! Seeing my name in the opening credits of Django Unchained? A Quentin Tarantino movie!?! Yeah, that'll never get old.

Chauncey DeVega:  I am really curious about how creative folks go about their process. How do you get ready for a role? How much homework do you do? And given that you have done a number of "historical" roles-Copper and Django-among them, how do you go about putting yourself in the mental mind state necessary to channel, as you so compelling do, a person from the past?

Ato Essandoh: It really depends on the role. Some require more work and prep then others. Sometime I read something, and it already "feels right in my mouth" so I know I just have to get into costume and I'm ready to rock. Copper and Django were similar in that I had imagine what it was like to not be able stand up for myself the way I would in this day and age. It really depends.

Chauncey DeVega:  Given the dynamics of the business that is Hollywood film, and where black men and other people of color are very limited and typecast, how have you been able to maintain the dignity and respect and range that your roles channel?

Ato Essandoh: I honestly don't know. I've been lucky. That's all I can say.

Chauncey DeVega: I am thinking specifically of Copper. With a weaker script and less smart show, you could have been at best a 1 or at best 2 dimensional character. Instead, Dr. Freeman is a real person. How did this come about? Was it the script and directing, or your presence in combination with what the show
allowed you to do?

Ato Essandoh: This is all Tom Fontana and Will Rokos and the rest of the writing team. Again, I'm quite lucky in this regard. And quite honored that they trust me with their words.

Chauncey DeVega:  Random question: I have been to Cornell and the Finger Lakes area on several occasions. How did you stay sane and right of mind up there?

Ato Essandoh: Hahahah! It's quite beautiful up there although it is a bit boondock-y. I was born in upstate New York so I guess I'm used to it!

Chauncey DeVega: Second random question. You are a student of capoeira and live healthy and eat right. I studied under one of the few if only African-American masters to have studied "Kung-fu" in China for several years. I did not do very well given how lazy and not serious I was. Plus I didn't fully grasp the opportunity I had at the time...but I digress. How has capoeira helped your mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual health? Would you suggest that that other folks learn it?

Ato Essandoh: To me the mind, body and spirit are one thing. Or I should say, that I don't see them as separate. Physical activity is mental activity as well as emotional or spiritual activity. Capoeira or Kung Fu, or yoga or learning the guitar or what have you will alway enhance you. Yes! Take a Capoeira class! It's like dancing Kung Fu! To music! Might I suggest Omulu Capoeira in Brooklyn?

Chauncey DeVega: You eat right, but you have to love a good fried pork chop. Am I wrong? Do you hate on the swine? If so, what is your guilty pleasure then?

Ato Essandoh: I was never a pork chop guy. Hahah. I did like bacon back in the days I ate meat. And pork ribs were good. So no, I don't hate on the swine. Haha. We actually have a few pigs on the Copper set. They're funny as hell! Kinda like dogs except not. I would say whiskey is my guilty pleasure, but there's
no shame in whiskey.

Chauncey DeVega: As a closing question, if you had to give advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Ato Essandoh:  Dude. Don't worry about it. You'll be fine.

Did Video Games Like Call of Duty: Ghost Encourage Aaron Alexis to Kill 13 people at the Washington Navy Yard

Okay, I am going to have to buy a new video card to play Call of Duty: Ghosts. Just when I thought I was out, they lured me back in. I did not finish the last Call of Duty game. I admit that fact. I found the game tedious. Will I purchase Call of Duty: Ghosts on the first day it is available? Yes.

But, will Call of Duty: Ghosts encourage me to go out and commit mass murder with a gun? I most certainly hope not.

Gun violence is a function of a complex mix of factors. Aaron Alexis's murder of 13 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday has subsequently allowed for much hypothesizing and speculation as to the factors which drove him to commit such a heinous act.

Because of Alexis's supposed hobby as an avid gamer and fan of first person shooters, it is not unreasonable for pundits and others to wonder about the role that his choice of entertainment may have (or not) played in the Washington Navy Yard mass shooting.

Do video games encourage gun violence?

The answer is not a simple one. There are insightful and expert voices who would suggest that yes, video games are an important element in how and why young men kill others in mass with guns. Such a conclusion is based on a reasonable intuition. The military industrial entertainment complex has skillfully been able to use popular culture to recruit and train war fighters. Moreover, the government, through agencies such as DARPA, have been instrumental in developing consumer technologies that have immediate and ready application for the military--and vice versa.

For example, the video game America's Army has been a very effective recruiting tool for the military. The targeting and gun systems of drones, as well as armored vehicles such as the Stryker, are modeled after video game controllers, and in many cases their displays are indistinguishable from what a player would use in an electronic game.

Is this a mere coincidence? Or is it a convergence of the military's need to recruit and train citizens through supposedly harmless "games" that later on have lethal applications?

As I discuss with Cory Mead, author of War Games: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict, in the second installment of season two of the We Are Respectable Negroes podcast series, video games can help develop familiarity with weapons systems, develop users' muscle memory, train them in language skills, treat PTSD, and desensitize them to violence.

These results may not necessarily have any causal relationship to gun violence by civilians.

However, we must consider the opinion of thinkers and experts such as psychologist and military consultant David Grossman. Is he correct in his argument that video games are part of a culture of violence, one which is training and encouraging people to kill?

The puzzle that is the relationship between video games and gun violence is not an easy one to solve. Critics of the guns-mass violence-video game hypothesis highlight the empirical research by psychologists which suggests that playing video games has little to no relationship with gun violence and mass murder.

Media Matters has summarized this work as follows:

While media figures are predictably pinning blame on video games for yet another mass shooting, academic studies tell a different story. A 2013 study in in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment &Trauma studied environmental influences on violence and concluded that "Media use was not associated with either increased or decreased risk of adult criminality."
Previous research into this topic has produced similar results. First Amendment watchdog group Media Coalition summarized past studies on violent video games, writing, "Reviews by the governments of Australia, Great Britain and Sweden have all studied the research claiming a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior and concluded that it is flawed, flimsy and inconclusive."

Media Coalition also noted that in the course of striking down a California law seeking to restrict the sale of violent video games, "the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 noted that the scientific evidence the state relied upon had been rejected by nearly every court to consider it, and that 'most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology.'"

The Washington Post's Max Fisher analyzed the data on video game sales and gun-related killings internationally, writing that, "Looking at the world's 10 largest video game markets yields no evident, statistical correlation between video game consumption and gun-related killings." 

In fact, Fisher found that "this data actually suggests a slight downward shift in violence as video game consumption increases" and concluded, "video game consumption, based on international data, does not seem to correlate at all with an increase in gun violence."

Video games are now part of what social scientists and others have described as "moral panics" in how they may (or may not) actually have any explanatory power about the cause of mass shootings, and gun violence, more generally. The claim remains infectious; the logic is compelling; it provides a ready answer to a vexing social problem...even if said answer does not hold up to critical scrutiny.

The ready availability of guns in American society coupled with woefully inadequate mental health services are the best explanations for the tragedy that occurred when Aaron Alexis shot and killed 13 people on Monday at the Washington Navy Yard. The Gun Right and its defenders want to find any other explanation--besides the most obvious one--for the increase in mass shooting events, and the extraordinary rate of gun violence, as compared to other countries, in the United States.

A denial of Occam's Razor as it relates to mass shootings and gun violence was demonstrated by Fox News in this video clip:

Guns are inanimate objects. They are a means towards an end that human beings animate and give life to based on our desires and drives and motivations. Guns can be regulated and controlled. To not choose to properly regulate the access to firearms is a choice--one that we must be prepared to live with.

Small and influential interest groups such as the NRA which sabotage reasonable gun control policies, and its related allies who want to reduce government services and programs that could have helped folks like Aaron Alexis get help for his demons, share a great deal of responsibility for the murder rampage at the Washington Navy Yard.

In all, the American people have surrendered to the gun gods. The children are its sacrifices. Moloch loves their blood.

Video games are a neat and ready explanation for mass shootings. Not so long ago, in the 1980s and early 1990s, there were moral panics about role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, and also heavy metal music.

As argued by their detractors, these types of popular culture were forces that corrupted our children and led them to Satanism, murder, drugs, premarital sex, and violence.

To point. A then quite young actor named Tom Hanks starred in the 1980s movie Mazes and Monsters. Now he is now 57 years old and facing off against Somali pirates. Where does the time go?

And just as we can now laugh at Hanks in Mazes and Monsters, I hope that in the future reasonable and responsible people will look back on the moral panic regarding video games, and see it as a watershed moment when Americans finally became disgusted with mass gun violence and forced their elected officials to pass effective gun control laws.

As John Stoehr observed in the Washington Observer, gun violence is at its heart a public health crisis:

Just before Monday's rampage, in which the shooter, Aaron Alexis, was among the dead, The American Journal of Public Health released a study that's being called the largest and most significant its kind. Researchers looked at gun-related murders and suicides in 50 states from 1981 to 2010 and concluded what's obvious with 300 million firearms in circulation.More guns means more death. 

The study found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had higher rates of homicide. The researchers couldn't point to a causal relationship, of course, and they did account for an array of other socioecoonomic factors affecting violent crime, such as race, age, income, education, etc. But the study takes in so much data that outcomes are predictable: "For each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9 percent. 

This is just one study. The Harvard School of Public Health survey the entirety of scholarly literature on the gun ownership-gun violence connection. The message is clear. The more guns we have, the more death by gunfire we have. It's like an outbreak of cholera. You or someone you know is going to get sick. It's not a matter of if. This is a public health crisis.

The ready accessibility of guns in the United States has nothing at all to do with hollow screeds about defending "liberty" against "tyranny". In reality, such rhetoric is a claim about the threshold number of innocent people that we as a country are willing to see killed and slaughtered at home, in schools, and elsewhere by guns for some illusory type of "freedom".

How many killed, maimed, and wounded innocent people, are necessary to protect such a "right?" Clearly, the price is much too high. Why are so many willing to pay it?

The White Gaze Quite Literally Shot and Killed Jonathan Ferrell

[This post has brought quite a few new readers to We Are Respectable Negroes from Facebook and other social media sites. As I do during such moments, I inaugurate an informal fundraising drive.

I do not advertise or monetize my work here on WARN. I also choose not to run advertisements or sponsorship because I want to remain independent. Instead, I have a twice a year fundraiser, and moments such as this one, where I extend the hand on high traffic posts.

Random monies thrown into the tip jar Paypal bucket are however always appreciated. My work here and elsewhere are labors of love. However, I never refuse encouragement.]
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 On Saturday, a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man. Jonathan Ferrell was in a horrific car accident and ran towards three police officers seeking help, just like any reasonable person in a crisis would do.

Again, a black man in America who is interacting with the police is not given the presumption of being a full citizen, innocent until proven guilty, and perhaps in need of assistance.



For the White Gaze, "black" and "male" equals threat and violence.

This is part of a historic pattern of stereotyping and threat in the United States, one which still looms over the popular imagination in the present. There, Jonathan Ferrell, we, those of us black and male, are "giant negroes" possessed of natural ill will, malevolence, and a proclivity to kill and rape as "black brutes" who must be shot dead whenever possible.

Sometimes black men are "armed" with "dehumanizing stares". In other instances, our waving empty handed at the police is interpreted as a violent act. Cans of iced tea, bags of skittles, house keys, flashlights, and other objects are magically transformed into means for legitimating our own murder and assault by the police and White authority figures. The power of our empty hands against those armed with guns is legendary.

Apparently, unarmed black men are titans who inspire fear in the hearts of the police and White America.

The shooting of Jonathan Ferrell by police officer Randall Kerrick is not a surprise. Given America's long history of institutional violence by the State and its proxies against people of color (i.e. vigilantes such as George Zimmerman), "the system" operated as intended and designed.

Resignation: The Politics of Black Respectability Come to Boardwalk Empire with Dr. Valentin Narcisse While Cornel West Expels Barack Obama From the Black Prophetic Tradition

Season 4 of Boardwalk Empire introduces a new character based on Harlem gangster and entrepreneur Casper Holstein in tonight's episode "Resignation".

Portrayed by the immensely talented Jeffrey Wright:

Dr. Narcisse is a doctor of divinity, vice, and chaos. So, he walks into the room and he stirs things up but he’s an equal opportunity troublemaker, so it’s not solely with Chalky that he has issues. But his relationship to Chalky is one that’s based in the intra-racial relations of the time to a wonderfully detailed extent—at that time, there was something of a great debate within African-American society, among the great thinkers of the past: W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and within the Harlem Renaissance about what was the way forward. Within that debate were some pretty vicious personal attacks over complexion, politics, between urbane and rural—a lot of those dynamics are fleshed out within the relationship between Dr. Narcisse and Chalky. It even further immerses the storyline in real history.

Hopefully, Jeffrey Wright's character Valentin Narcisse will inspire viewers to learn more about Marcus Garvey, arguably the most powerful black leader in United States history.

This is a fascinating time for those of us interested in the politics of black respectability. While public discussions of black respectability are not new in the United States, the election of Barack Obama has pushed them into the forefront of the public discourse. Yes, these conversations have long-occurred in black private spaces, and among activists, organizers, intellectuals, and among "regular" folks. But changing media, the cracking of the colorline, new technologies, and the rise of a multicultural elite class, have created a "Black Superpublic" where what were once private conversations are now made accessible to the mass public.

In keeping with this moment, Barack Obama has embraced the opportunity to play Scold-in-Chief of Black America. To much controversy, Bill Cosby has famously called out the black underclass, the ghetto youthocracy, and how the culture of poverty thesis has been proven to be an internalized life world for all too many, wherein limited material circumstances, a lack of education, weak impulse control, and poor decision-making skills have come to be inexorably identified with what it means to be "authentic" and "black".

Historically, those African-Americans who were invested in the politics of black respectability, we called them "race men" and "race women", had a deep and abiding love of black people. While their words may seem harsh to the post civil rights generation, these advocates and fighters for black uplift and human rights were confronting a system of formal white supremacy. For most of American history, the colorline was a life and death matter. It killed, demeaned, and marginalized both black lumpen and black royalty. In its own ironic way, Jim and Jane Crow white supremacy was radically democratic and inclusive.

The debate about black authenticity was also central to the various types of resistance, as well as forms of political advocacy and behavior, embodied by the Black Freedom Struggle. Likewise, the "Black Prophetic Tradition", what is a philosophy and rhetorical approach where African-Americans are truth-tellers and the conscience of a nation that force it to live up to the promise of freedom and full liberties and rights for all peoples, is also at the heart of the Black Freedom Struggle.

But who gets to police the boundaries of this tradition?

Cornel West has nominated himself to this role. While the routine sniping and upsetness by Brother Cornel towards Barack Obama has become a public spectacle and show since the President's election in 2008, West has outdone himself in the following conversation with Chris Hedges at Truthdig where he suggests the following:

“He is a shell of a man,” West said of Obama. “There is no deep conviction. There is no connection to something bigger than him. It is a sad spectacle, sad if he were not the head of an empire that is in such decline and so dangerous. This is a nadir. William Trotter and Du Bois, along with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were going at Book T tooth and nail. Look at the fights between [Marcus] Garvey and Du Bois, or Garvey and A. Philip Randolph. But now if you criticize Obama the way Randolph criticized Garvey, you become a race traitor and an Uncle Tom. A lot of that comes out of the Obama machine, the Obama plantation.”

“The most pernicious development is the incorporation of the black prophetic tradition into the Obama imperial project,” West said. “Obama used [Martin Luther] King’s Bible during his inauguration, but under the National Defense Authorization Act King would be detained without due process. He would be under surveillance every day because of his association with Nelson Mandela, who was the head of a ‘terrorist’ organization, the African National Congress. 

We see the richest prophetic tradition in America desecrated in the name of a neoliberal worldview, a worldview King would be in direct opposition to. Martin would be against Obama because of his neglect of the poor and the working class and because of the [aerial] drones, because he is a war president, because he draws up kill lists. And Martin King would have nothing to do with that.”

...“It no longer has a legitimacy or significant foothold in the minds of the black masses,” West said. “With corporate media and the narrowing of the imagination of all Americans, including black people, there is an erasure of memory. This is the near death of the black prophetic tradition. It is a grave issue. It is a matter of life and death. It means that the major roadblock to American fascism, which has been the black prophetic tradition, is gone. To imagine America without the black prophetic tradition, from Frederick Douglass to Fannie Lou Hamer, means an American authoritarian regime, American fascism. We already have the infrastructure in place for the police state.”

By making such a claim, Cornel West has metaphorically excommunicated Barack Obama, the country's first black president, from the continuity of the Black Freedom Struggle. Such a move is merciless; it is cruel; the language is rhetorically lethal.

These are complicated matters that lead to a larger question. On a basic and foundational level, the debates about Barack Obama and his obligation to the black community are centered on how we choose to define what constitutes Black Politics and the black political tradition.

Is Black Politics a set of principles and beliefs grounded in group uplift, linked fate, and trying to negotiate life in a racialized and racially hierarchical society? Alternatively, is what we would then term as "black politics" just the many different ways that individuals arbitrarily defined as "black" in the United States negotiate access to resources, opportunities, and generally maximize their own utility?

These are deceptively simple yet important distinctions.

They frame how Cornel West and other black leaders locate and understand Obama's relationship to black history and the African-American community. On Boardwalk Empire, the characters of White and Narcisse represent similar questions at the site of intra-racial and inter-class conflicts within the African-American community during the late 19th and first part of the twentieth centuries.

Writing on the conflict between Chalky White and Valentin Narcisse, Salon's Neil Drumming observes how:

Valentin Narcisse and Chalky White are positioned as polar opposites. White is dark-skinned and comes from humble beginnings. He speaks pigeon English and makes his employees read aloud letters addressed to him. Valentin Narcisse is of much lighter complexion, and, though he does so with a faint Trinidadian accent, quotes the Bible — and himself — with great eloquence. 

“Boardwalk Empire” is unrelentingly a show about power play. Narcisse’s and White’s struggles to keep what they deem their own is no different than Nucky Thompson and Arnold Rothstein’s tense but oh-so-polite negotiations or Al Capone’s open challenges to anyone else vying for a slice of Illinois. However, for a show where even a fan like myself must admit the constant posturing, pushing and pulling — and murdering — can get a little redundant, the White-Narcisse conflict possesses a bit of extra flavor. It is steeped in conflict that has existed among African-Americans since slavery: educated versus uneducated, Southern versus Northern, light versus dark.

Despite the specific historical era it may use as a motif, popular culture (TV and film) is a reflection of the present. Chalky White and Dr. Narcisse are engaging in a struggle over power, resources, and wealth in a quasi-historical version of Atlantic City in the TV show Boardwalk Empire during the 1920s. Cornel West is debating--in a one way conversation--Barack Obama about the United States' first black president's role in the Black Prophetic Tradition and the Black Freedom Struggle in the twenty-first century.

Both examples are connected by a common thread: Who is really Black? And who gets to decide?

Truth, Lies, and "Experts" Spinning Us to Death in Syria

One of the qualifiers for being a professional commentator and "expert" on television is the capacity and willingness to talk about subjects on which you may actually have little expertise.

While watching the 24/7 news cycle panelists discussing Obama's speech on Syria, I offered a simple question on Twitter: What if every panelist or commentator had a list of qualifications, a vitae, resume, list of books, articles, or specialized training on a given subject displayed under their names?

Moreover, what if a given "expert's" affiliation with corporations or think tanks was also listed on screen? Both of the latter are directly and materially invested in policy outcomes--not for the Common Good and public interest--but rather to fatten wallets and advance private interests.

And for all of their supposed expertise, few of the approved voices in the corporate media have suggested that the powers involved in Syria (or on any other matter for the most part) may be lying to further their own strategic aims. This is a huge and critical oversight.

Once more, politics is professional wrestling. The performance and opinion leaders' ability to "sell" a narrative is more important than the substantive outcome, and a meaningful discussion of policy which will help fully educate the public.

A fully educated and engaged public is dangerous for a democracy's ruling class. However, the appearance of legitimacy can help to create stability. If the People can be engaged and motivated to support policy matters that are actually antithetical to their interests then Power's grasp and illusion of invisibility is further reinforced.

The Syria controversy is, like many other public policy matters, a story with three elements. In no particular order of importance, and certainly this list is not exhaustive, they are as follows.

One, this is a dance of experts who compete with one another to "win" over the public, their own community, and other elites, with their predictions.

Two, leaders lie. There are different types of lies. Obama, Putin, and the other leaders and decision-makers involved in the Syria controversy are lying to the global (and their own) Public in various ways, for their own purposes, and in the service of goals that may not be readily apparent to the general public at present.

Finally, war is a product that is sold to the American people.

There are tropes and scripts which have historically been used to that end with great effect.

While the "crimes against humanity" and "American leadership" script may not work for Obama to gin up public support for an intervention in Syria, there are several other ready-made narratives that he and others can use for the same end.

Do make note of the quote from the above documentary: America makes bombing other people seem like an act of kindness and altruism.

Sound familiar? And where does such twisted logic lead the American people and the world?

Do You Like Video Game and Chiptune Music? Do You Live in the Boston Area and Want to Win Free Tickets to the "Boston Plays Indies" Show?

I promised two giveaways this week. We have two winners for the Leonard Maltin film guide announced over on the sidebar. They should contact me.

Do you enjoy electronic music? Do you particularly like music produced for or featured in video games?

Do you live in the Boston/Cambridge area?

If so, you should email me ASAP. I have been given two tickets by the promoters of the Boston Plays Indies show this Saturday, September 14th at the Middle East Downstairs.

The artists scheduled to perform include Video Game Orchestra, DJ Cutman, Darren Korb (Bastion), Control Group, and deadbeatblast.

I will keep this one simple. Tell me why I should give you a ticket. And what is your favorite video game song, theme, soundtrack, etc.?

George Yancy Ethers It in The New York Times: When I Talk About the Problem of the "White Gaze" and Trayvon Martin This is What I Mean

“Man, I almost blew you away!” 

Those were the terrifying words of a white police officer — one of those who policed black bodies in low income areas in North Philadelphia in the late 1970s — who caught sight of me carrying the new telescope my mother had just purchased for me.
“I thought you had a weapon,” he said. 

The words made me tremble and pause; I felt the sort of bodily stress and deep existential anguish that no teenager should have to endure. 

Did Trayvon Martin’s death happen in Dr. King’s ‘dream’ or Malcolm X’s ‘American nightmare’? 

This officer had already inherited those poisonous assumptions and bodily perceptual practices that make up what I call the “white gaze.” He had already come to “see” the black male body as different, deviant, ersatz. He failed to conceive, or perhaps could not conceive, that a black teenage boy living in the Richard Allen Project Homes for very low income families would own a telescope and enjoyed looking at the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. 

A black boy carrying a telescope wasn’t conceivable — unless he had stolen it — given the white racist horizons within which my black body was policed as dangerous. To the officer, I was something (not someone) patently foolish, perhaps monstrous or even fictional. My telescope, for him, was a weapon. 

In retrospect, I can see the headlines: “Black Boy Shot and Killed While Searching the Cosmos.”

I do not know how I missed this great piece by the philosopher George Yancy in The New York Times last week. If you have not read Yancy's essay on the relationship between ontological and existential "blackness", and the Trayvon Martin case, please do so.

I am a fan of the Harry Dresden detective novels written by Jim Butcher about a magician in Chicago who is an adult Harry Potter-Jedi mixed with Mike Hammer. the character is compelling.

Harry starts out as a magician with great potential, but one who is a rebel, and thus, undisciplined. Dresden matures, makes discoveries about his destiny, and becomes an amazing magic user. One of the recurring jokes in the books (known as the Dresden Files) is how our main character is damn powerful; however, he has nothing on the members of the senior council of wizards who have forgotten more than he will likely ever know.

Reading George Yancy's column in The New York Times reminds me that I am a very, very journeyman traveler. I know and embrace that fact. We make peace with our choices, life detours, and outcomes in order to remain at peace with ourselves. However, to see a master taking years and volumes of work and thinking, crystallizing it down into a few paragraphs, and offering up a devastating blow to his enemies in The New York Times, is damn beautiful.

In another life, I am acquainted with, and have competed against, some of the best professional bowlers that to this day still show up in big money tournaments on ESPN. I have gotten lucky--and they were on a bad day--and beaten just a few of them. We ghetto nerds do have dynamic and rich lives. Mock us at your peril.

However, I have had more than a many few moments when I realized that "nope, I ain't got nothing on what is going on here." Then I smiled. There is nothing wrong with admiring greatness when you encounter it. Boxing with God is a learning experience to be embraced.

Dr. Yancy does more in his concluding paragraphs here than most, if not all, of what casual observers (however invested and dedicated) have offered up about Trayvon Martin.

What does it say about America when to be black is the ontological crime, a crime of simply being? 

Perhaps the religious studies scholar Bill Hart is correct: “To be a black man is to be marked for death.” Or as the political philosopher Joy James argues, “Blackness as evil [is] destined for eradication.” Perhaps this is why when writing about the death of his young black son, the social theorist W.E.B. Du Bois said, “All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heart — nay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly through the Veil — and my soul whispers ever to me saying, ‘Not dead, not dead, but escaped; not bond, but free.’ ” 

Trayvon Martin was killed walking while black. As the protector of all things “gated,” of all things standing on the precipice of being endangered by black male bodies, Zimmerman created the conditions upon which he had no grounds to stand on. Indeed, through his racist stereotypes and his pursuit of Trayvon, he created the conditions that belied the applicability of the stand your ground law and created a situation where Trayvon was killed. This is the narrative that ought to have been told by the attorneys for the family of Trayvon Martin. It is part of the narrative that Obama brilliantly told, one of black bodies being racially policed and having suffered a unique history of racist vitriol in this country. 

Yet it is one that is perhaps too late, one already rendered mute and inconsequential by the verdict of “not guilty.”

Yancy's above paragraphs should sound familiar to the readers of We Are Respectable Negroes. Much of my thinking on the relationship between Whiteness, violence, and how blackness is a state of existential dread and suspicion as viewed by White America, is informed by scholars such as George Yancy, as well as the intellectual well-spring he draws upon.

My father, a musician who played with quite a few accomplished and famous folks, told me that sometimes you just got to sit back and watch a master at work. Why? You will be better off for it. George Yancy is cutting heads in The New York Times. I do hope he gets a chance to conduct a master class there again.

Yancy's essay has more than 600 comments. He will be back. I hope this is just the first act in a long and ongoing performance.

Did They Ever Find Their "Enchanted Cottage?": Much More Than Gangsters and Guns. Boardwalk Empire's Richard Harrow and the Real Faces of War

TV critics have argued that we are in the midst of a "golden age" of episodic television with shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Sons of Anarchy. Boardwalk Empire should be included in that list, but the show's playing with both "pulp" and "serious" storytelling conventions have caused it to run afoul of those "expert" viewers who watch television for a living.

Boardwalk Empire is one of the most literate shows on television, and a great example of "the hidden history" that was the post World War One era made real for contemporary audiences. Will most viewers sit back and reflect on how that era's changing norms of race, gender, ethnicity, nationalism, and "Americanness" were formed in the crucible of the 1920s? Unlikely. 

Boardwalk Empire has gangsters, booze, violence, nudity, and sex. The challenge of making "socially relevant" popular culture is that a creator has to appeal to the lowest common denominator among the public while still trying to hold true to the rule--consciously or subconsciously--that all "art" is trying to say "something" about society. 

Boardwalk Empire's Richard Harrow is one of the most interesting and complex characters on television. Facially disfigured during World War One, he is quite literally the horror of war brought home to the public. As alluded to repeatedly by Boardwalk Empire, he is like the Tin Man, or perhaps some other type of misunderstood monster, with a heart of gold, amazingly loyal, loving, fragile...and who also happens to be a very efficient killer. 

Harrow is a device through which the writers of Boardwalk Empire are able to comment on violence, the human soul, and the lost generation of World War One. He carries his scars on the outside; the other characters on Boardwalk Empire wear their's inside. Harrow's soul is damaged. But, it is not corrupted. With few exceptions, he is the most "beautiful" person among the characters on Boardwalk Empire even while many of those "normal" people often shun him, pitying Harrow, and commenting on his facial injury in order to demean him.

World World One made too many men like Richard Harrow. 

I worry that the viewers of Boardwalk Empire may admire Harrow's deftness at killing, but remain willfully ignorant of the real people who suffered similar (and worse) injuries. 

World War One maimed and broke human bodies on a scale not seen before in human history. As a result, artists were needed to make an effort at fixing those broken bodies. 

These doctors and surgeons would be the founding mothers and fathers of plastic surgery. The Smithsonian website and magazine has a wonderfully written and moving piece on the soldiers who suffered facial injuries during World War One, and the great humanitarians who tried to help them return to some type of normalcy.

Share Your Ten Essential Movies: Would You Like to Win a Copy of Leonard Maltin's 2014 Movie Guide?

I hope that all of you had a nice weekend. I should be mad at those folks who let me bemoan how Season 3 of Boardwalk Empire was not up to par as compared to the first two installments. I decided to sit down and watch a few selected episodes today before the premier of Season 4. Guess what? I ended up watching all of Season 3 in an On Demand marathon. I curse you all!

The show has only gotten more interesting--and entertaining--as an exploration of post World War One America. Boardwalk Empire depicts a rich social history, the politics of black respectability, and keen insights on racial formation, just as it did in earlier seasons, with some great character development added in for extra points.

The auto-erotic asphyxiating Gyp is a great swerve; my man Richard Harrow only becomes all the more compelling every time he appears in an episode.

Because I was distracted by Boardwalk Empire today, I neglected to post earlier. I have two contests to share on WARN this week: the prizes are some swag to share with the lucky winners.

We discuss movies quite often here on WARN (and by the way, do go see Riddick--it was great fun). Avid film-goers usually have a "must see" list that they enthusiastically share with friends, family, and any else who will listen. Professionals have their obligatory list of favorite movies too.

For example, see: Spike Lee's much discussed Essential Films List.

As a complement to our shared interest in film Turner Classic Movies is offering up a very special two month long special on the history of movies called The Story of Film. On TCM, each week for 4 months, viewers will have access to rare movies which have been selected and curated as a complement to the documentary The Story of Film. It will hopefully be a commercial and financial success for the network, and consequently, encourage similar projects there and elsewhere. Even if TCM's series loses money, the public benefits.

Penguin has been kind enough to provide me with two copies of the new book Leonard Maltin's 2014 Movie Guide to give away here on WARN.

Much like the great Roger Ebert, Maltin is a film expert who has a great editorial/critic's voice, one which enables him to concisely and compellingly share his insights and recommendations about movies with a general viewing audience in a respectful and not condescending manner.

If you would like to win a copy of Leonard Maltin's 2014 Movie Guide, answer the following question in the comments section below.

What are you ten "essential" movies and why did you choose them? These movies can be of any genre, from any time, linked together by a theme, or totally distinct from one another.

Please do chime in. What do you have to lose? Plus, the more folks who participate, the more goodies I will have to give away later.

Slot Machines Play Us to Extinction as I Worry About Zombies When Instead Maybe I Should Really Be Afraid of Rabies

I hope you are having a nice weekend with some good and restful things planned for you and yours.

As I like to do on occasion, here are some "found" news items which are tied together by a theme--in this case the "biting" and/or "sucking" of brains. Feel free to insert pornographic or similar jokes as you wish or find appropriate.

Readers of We Are Respectable Negroes know that I enjoy playing slot machines. While blackjack makes more sense given the relative odds, it would be too tempting for me. The counting of cards appeals to my obsessive compulsive tendencies. Dangerous stuff.

As such, I prefer trying to spread my risk across several slot machines while mocking the silly-folks who fall in love with one machine, throwing hundreds or thousands of dollars into said machine, and that know nothing of the evil wicked random number generator that hides in every modern one armed bandit. Fools!

Insert maniacal laugh...

Funny thing, despite my grand theories and study of the "logic" of how to play slots in a "smart way", I saw several folks win today who would spit in the face of my theories--one hit the machine for 3,000 dollars; a nice older lady hit on her birthday for 1,500 (and was unmoved by the experience); and apparently there was a 300,000 jackpot winner that all the folks were abuzz about with stories of awe and fear.

And anticipating your question, I did not hit the jackpot for 300 large.

Slot machines bite you with the gambling bug and are designed to lull and seduce players into what psychologists and experts on slot machine design call "the zone". The goal? "Player extinction".

MIT's Natasha Dow Schull has a new book out on the subject in which she works through the appeal of seemingly irrational and repetitious behavior for the human brain.

Guess what? As discussed here, the nefarious tricks deployed by slot machine designers are also used by Social Media to keep users present, engaged, and "addicted by design".

Zombies also want to control our brains--in the sense that they need to have physical access to our tasty brains in order to eat them.

I am a great fan of Max Brook's book World War Z: do not provoke me, there is no movie of the same title, such a monstrosity was just some flick with Brad Pitt in it of the same title, one that had little if anything to do with the book.

I have more than a passing knowledge of the zombie genre. Apparently, I do not know as much as I thought I did.

Ignorance on these matters may not be bliss in an outbreak: On his show StarTalk, scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Max Brooks and talks to real like experts in viruses and communicable diseases that thoroughly (and casually) eviscerate--in a nice way--the supposed science which makes a zombie outbreak so frightening to the public.

When said smart folks with real expertise point out the problem with fast zombies, and a disease which subsequently spreads almost instantaneously from person to person, I am pleased. Why? Slow diseases which lay dormant are far more dangerous and easier to spread throughout the populace.

How would a zombie virus that is so "hot" jump continents? Are you letting those crazy folks on your plane or boat? I would not. I doubt that United or Lufthansa would either.

World War Z refers to the zombie virus as a type of human rabies. In reading Brooks' book the first time, and then listening to the audio book repeatedly, such nomenclature seemed suitable for how the media and the government would create a scary, but relatively believable, label to describe the rising of the living dead.

Ultimately, "African rabies" causes folks to pay attention; "zombie" would cause a mass panic.

Maybe I watched the movie Cujo too many times as a ghetto nerd member of the hip hop generation? I am unsure if I want to read Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Dangerous Virus, Bill Wasik's and Monica Murphy's new book on the history of the disease, our efforts to control it, and how rabies remains one of the most frightening and dangerous viruses on the planet.

Real rabies is more scary than Romero's ghouls. The latter are far more entertaining.