This is a Must Read: White America Has Lost Its Mind

The Politics of Hitting on Straight Men

One thing I find absolutely intriguing is the response I recieve whenever I take the notion to hit on a straight male. The responses range from a flattered "I'm not interested" to flaming red hostility, but overlaid over all of that is a belief that straight men some how must be, should be, and are exempt from being hit on by gay men. I don't buy this coda and have broken it so many times its not even standing anymore really. As I think back though, I have had some interesting experiences in this regard. Once, in Indiana, I was sitting on a bench outside of the hotel on campus waiting for a cab and I hit on this boy, a very cute half Arab, half Black boy who worked on campus. To my advances he quickly responded "isn't that illegal?!!" I was like, no..um...Lawrence vs. Texas was a few years ago..and even still...and then of course there are the instances where the advances are accepted, however interestingly they fit into the context of a certain poem by Nikki Giovanni....

The Changes in Music: From the End of the Jazz Era

After reading Billie Holiday's biography and thinking about the life and career of artists such as Nina Simone, I began to think about the social and political changes in music that took place mid20tth Century. The jazz era, of which Billie Holiday was a part of, was a transitional era, but was definitely an era in which singers, specifically female singers, were to stand on stage, look pretty and sing hetero-normative syrupy songs about love, unrequited love, and how much they needed men for white men in business suits. Change number one with Billie Holiday-"Strangefruit" introduced a new kind of polemic into the mix with the first protest song sung by a female singer and introduced into popular music. Change number two-consider Nina Simone who was soo loved at the beginning of her career because sang prettily and made coquettish gestures (if still, very much aware and still carrying a sting) towards the white male, capitalist patriarchal system. The 1950s and the early 60s were still a time of romance and dainty women...you had Nancy Wilson asking "Guess Who I Saw Today?" and Diahann Carroll humming about the hypnotic qualities of a Sleeping Bee lying in the palm of your hand....but came 1963 and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and you saw Nina Simone sit down at her piano at Carnegie Hall and tell her white patrons exactly where they were going,why they were going there and railing her damnation of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. I think that, perhaps more than any other moment, signaled the end of the Jazz era and the rushing in of radical and angry music makers, both male and female, lashing out at the power structure and leading the way towards revolution and change throughout society. It also signaled the liberation of the songstress/coquette who stood still with little movement to look pretty and sing songs for men in business suits...many lashed out at this-including Abbey Lincoln who spoke of her disdain for the art form and how she, a farm girl from Michigan didn't fit into such a "pretty, feminine" world as was created by the masters of the Jazz era. The late sixties forward signaled movement....and liberation..and a new mode, method, and message, for the female singer especially.

About Lady Gaga and Beyonce's "Telephone"

I love this video because it speaks on so many different levels. There are elements of Myra Breckenridge there-especially with the costumes(the American Flag costumes most glaringly). There's also the hint of Mae West there, which fits oh so well because Mae was in Myra Breckenridge. This video makes such bold statements on popular culture, interpersonal relationships, the private versus the public and a host of other issues. I think everyone should watch it and talk about it.

Martha Stout is Absolutely Brilliant-From the Paranoia Switch

...."In the same interview, Peters succinctly summarized his and our belief that envy is the prime motivating factor in terrorism: "You've heard it before, and its all too true. They hate us for our success."

This is an appealing hypothesis. Somehow, it simultaneously addresses our vanity concerning our relative wealth and progress, and the uneasy guilt we sometimes feel over the same blessings when we reflect on the plight of many of our fellow human beings. In addition, the notion that terrorists "hate us for our success" allows us to view the enemy as completely irrational, and conforms to experiences some of us have had with envious acquaintances who became hostile and unreasonable when we acquired or achieved something positive in our personal lives.

But this viewpoint is oversimplified and misleading. it soothes us somewhat, with an extra boost to our well-known sentiments of being biggest and best, but it also abandons us in a dangerous position of ignorance regarding the actual roots and possible futures of terrorism. Seen through lenses that color terrorists uniformly green, all terrorist events are utterly straightforward, and their goal is acheived immediately and almost by definition. Terrorists hate and envy us, and therefore they desire to hurt us and to destroy our accomplishments. Thus motivated, they carry out terrorist acts, which are, by their nature, extremely destructive and hurtful.

And there you have it:the terrorists' vengeful objective is achieved instantly, every time. Terrorism always works, and, after the fact, there is nothing we can do about it.
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The playing field is not the one we think it is. Terrorism's most important aim is not to damage bodies or our material accomplishments or our governments, although these are certainly its most conspicuous effects. Rather, its most cherished ambition is to affect us psychologically, to instill a sense of helplessness....