arberagl01: Midday open thread

Monday, August 29, 2011

Midday open thread

In the hall outside the Oval Office, President Obama displays Norman Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With" (Pete Souza/White House)

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Applause:
Norman Rockwell?s ?The Problem We All Live With,? installed in the White House last month, shows U.S. marshals escorting Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old African-American girl, into a New Orleans elementary school in 1960 as court-ordered integration met with an angry and defiant response from the white community.
I would have thought the Tea Party would have raised more hell about President Obama's Executive Order promoting diversity in the federal government. If when they do I hope the media remembers George W. Bush did the same thing.
The uppidy negroes at UNN review The Help.
Amy Hunter writing for the St. Louis Beacon, offers another view on The Help. In the piece, she mentions one of my teachers, the wise and learned Professor Derrick Bell. He wrote one of the best books I read as a young man, Faces at the Bottom of the Well. Ms. Hunter offers a brief explanation of Professor Bell's landmark interest convergence theory, but he explains it more thoroughly himself in the original article for Harvard Law Review. The Northwestern Law Review recently published a rethink on interest convergence which I also found interesting. Reading all this stuff may help you put The Help in context.
Cornell West thinks if MLK were around today, he'd be calling for a revolution of sorts:
King?s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.
In concrete terms, this means support for progressive politicians like Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor; extensive community and media organizing; civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers that be. Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.

Alright. You go first. Maybe that will get you away from that clown show of a bus tour.
The fellas at VSB speculate that Mother Nature might be racist.
Last Wednesday night I had a bad case of insomnia. I decided to go ahead and call the Jibber your Jabber Live show on Netroots Radio and very much enjoyed the show. Thanks for the great conversation guys!
This week I recommend a nifty little British film titled Yield to the Night starring Diana Dors and directed by J. Lee Thompson. Most of the film takes place in a rather humane (by modern American standards) 1950's era British prison as Dors plays a woman convicted of murder and awaiting execution. You'll also notice Yvonne Mitchell of The Divided Heart fame. The film moves along at a Kubrick-y pace, but with a bit more pep to the dialogue. A sample of Diana Dors' sense of humor:
They asked me to change my name. I suppose they were afraid that if my real name Diana Fluck was in lights and one of the lights blew...