Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Archive for the ‘News & Politics’ Category

Even if I don’t always approve, I generally understand the things Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa does. This time around, it’s neither. This fool is trippin’.

In a recent statement, he’s excoriated some teachers at a South Los Angeles elementary school for encouraging some of their students to celebrate O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman, and RuPaul at a Black History Month event.

“I am shocked and outraged by the actions of these teachers at Wadsworth Elementary School,” Villaraigosa said in a statement. “These teachers undermined the school’s well-intentioned celebration, and they did so at the expense of elementary school students. Their actions were not only cynical, but did a terrible disservice to the students.

Apparently while “other students were carrying pictures of President Obama and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,” these kids were displaying pictures of their heroes.

The outrage seems pretty universal. The superintendent of schools, “community leaders,” and a bunch of organizations have spoken out against the teachers’ behavior. They’ve been suspended without pay and, from the looks of it, they’re going to get canned. At least that’s how it always seems to go with these kinds of things.

But this is straight-up bullshit.

Among the many problems with the way we educate kids these days is that we reward them for giving us the obvious-ass choice for things. We feed them the conventional answers and expect them to parrot the shit back to us. If anyone should disrupt that process, we come down on them like Australians on a bucket of chicken. Kids go to the retarded class and teachers get fired.

NBA Rebound, Defense, and Hustle King, Dennis "the Worm" Rodman

The way I see it, Barack Obama and MLK don’t need any more recognition. One of them already has a national holiday that kids get off of school. The other guy has a Nobel-fucking-Prize and is on TV every day.

I wouldn’t want my various kids learning the over-simplified, sterilized shit it took me years to purge out of my system: Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, “Indians” and Pilgrims got along just fine, and Abraham Lincoln “freed” the slaves.

These kids are learning a valuable lesson: life is messy and complicated. O.J. Simpson, Dennis “the Worm” Rodman, and RuPaul may not be a conventional heroes, but they’re real.

A couple of weeks ago, Ethnic Avenue reported on the sudden unshriveling of Obama’s kick-assery, after an extended, disappointing slumber. Since it was only a single week of ballsy, it was unclear at the time whether the whole thing was just a fluke, or the beginning of something big.

Well, the answer to that question has arrived in the form of a major oh-snap moment against his soundly defeated adversary, Old-Man McCain, at the Heathcare Reform Summit last week. In fact, Obama came down so swiftly and coldly, that I actually felt kind of sorry for the old bastard—despite his infinite dickiness and stupidity.

S-N-A-P. The first thing that came to mind after witnessing that massive dose of shut-the-fuck-up is this now-infamous Sean Connery moment (note Barbra Walters’s change of heart in the final seconds).

Whether Obama is having the Sean Connery Realization–that he’s “tried everything else” and that his beatdown is now “merited”–is unclear. But whatever it is, it’s certainly no fluke.

Barack, the Ethnic Smackdown is strong in you.

The Backstory

A few years ago, I had this millionaire, born-again Christian, asshole boss that was so consistently racist (like actually so), that he distorted my uncanny ability to detect racism for several years. He looked like a torn-up version of Lou Dobbs—if you can believe that.

He would say things out of the blue like, “You know, I hired you despite your accent.” Now, I’ll tell you that in subsequent polling, about 80 percent of people say I have no discernable accent. Another, 15 percent or so tell me I have a medley of American city accents. The other 5 percent is this guy. So, when he told me he hired me despite my accent, I figured that was code for, “I hired you despite your being brown,” a semi-obvious fact I appreciated.

It’s nice when people can overlook your flaws.

Over time, I developed a type of Stockholm Syndrome for the guy and our unhealthy relationship blossomed. We’d go to fancy, tax-deducted lunches together to plot out ways to make him even more money. He’d pay every time, and I came to know what a cheap-lunch-whore, entertaining a middle-aged Republican in exchange for the most expensive thing on the menu, must feel like.

Somewhere along the way, the guy got deluded into thinking he was a genius. And to prove his brilliance, he would bait me into conversations about politics. He’d repeat everything he’d heard on Fox News the night before, and I–like the idiot I was at the time–would try disprove him with reason, punctuated with arcane political theory and historical evidence. Definitely not recommended.

In a conversation about racial injustice in our criminal justice system, I pointed out to him that the jails were disproportionately filled with ethnic people.

He came back with, “Well, you’re the ones committing all the crimes.”

He should have been offensive, but he seemed pretty harmless at the time. Besides, the lunches were good.

Why I Told You All of That

Now fast forward to yesterday. I’m reading the news and I run into this story, where a twelve-year-old girl from New York got arrested, and taken away in handcuffs, for doodling on her desk.

Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled “Lex was here 2/1/10″ on her desk Monday at Junior High School 190 in Queens. She also wrote “I love my friends Abby and Faith.”

The girl says the doodles could have been erased.

I immediately remembered my old boss and thought, you know what, that asshole was right. Lock the little bitch up. We are the ones committing all the crimes.

Every smack that goes up, must come down. And, even though Obama’s hand seems to have floated in the air for like a year, it came down correspondingly hard and crisp across the collective orange face of the Republican party over the past week.

Like so many others, I made no secret of my disgust for Obama’s repeated punk-outs and disappointing overtures to idiots that never had any intention of working with him. But, for at least one magical week, I’m getting to enjoy some good old-fashioned, sweet ethnic beatdown:

What started with a surprisingly in-your-face State of the Union address, has poured over into a daily–semi-abusive–barrage of calling-out, political flourish, and general ridicule. Seemingly overnight, Obama has gone from a bad case of no-balls accommodationism to a life-threatening case of testicular answer.

Now, that’s my kind of change.

Every year around this time, the TV lights up with lame programs about “where we are” in respect to Martin Luther King’s “Dream.” Even though I recognize the value of the occasional check-in, I’ve always felt that the annual MLK news special was one of those hollow, easy gestures from the CNNs of the world—put mostly in place so the second-string newscasters can log hours while Wolf Blitzer gets “the night off.”  Needless to say, this year’s special got all fucked up because of the whole Obama thing. For the first time in a long-ass time, they actually have some movement on the Dream front.

I don’t actually plan on watching any of these shows that I’ve been seeing commercials for, but I can pretty much guess what they’ll sound (and look) like: a TV-Reporter Asian American Girl walking toward the camera while saying something like, “While Obama’s election marks a big step in the right direction toward fully realizing King’s dream, there’s still a lot of work to blah-blah-blah.” Cue footage of an especially dramatic Obama speech, inter-spliced with some black-and-white MLK footage. I guarantee it.

So, knowing how the news is going to handle that situation, where are we with the Dream, really–especially with a black president and all?

It’s complicated. But I’ll start with the stuff we won’t get into (at least not right now):

• How a whole new breed of dumb-as-shit, redneck racists is coming out of the woodwork since the election
• How Obama may have only gotten the job because the guy before him fucked up so monumentally
• All of the miscellaneous evidence that the world is going to shit (spike in overall stupidity, the economy, obesity epidemic, etc.)

What I will discuss is the condition of MLK Boulevards, Drives, and Streets everywhere. I’ll explain.

For most of my life, I’ve subscribed to the Chris Rock School of Thought on MLK Streets:

The way I see it, MLK Street is a good barometer on how far we’ve come to achieving King’s dream of equality. As long as MLK Street remains a ghetto-ass, dangerous place in most cities, things haven’t changed all that much. Just because a minority or two land a good job, that doesn’t mean the condition of that whole race has improved. It’s just a stroke of good luck or an exceptional hustle by that one person.

So if non-violent MLK Streets is a sign that the Dream has become reality, imagine my dismay when I found this—in Jerusalem, Israel of all places:

It’s a good thing Dr. King kept his Dream domestic.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the only way to get your point across to some people is to throw a hard object at them.

Oh, now I see what you mean.

Recently, a Massimo Tartaglia appears to have put this principle into practice, when he, appropriately and accurately, nailed Silvio Berlusconi—everybody’s favorite billionaire media mogul and corrupt asshole politician—in his right-wing mouth with a plaster replica of the Duomo di Milano.

A lousy, overpriced souvenir finally comes in handy.

Frankly, I don’t like violence. But I recognize its important role throughout the history of human communication. I’ve always called violence “the ancient language of last resort.” In the overwhelming majority of cases you can make your point with other, more modern forms of speech (in ascending order: silence; calm, reasonable statements; firm, direct talking-to; screaming and cussing; etc). But occasionally, you have to resort to the oldest language. There are even times when someone may use it with you.

But like any experienced urban dweller will tell you, there are some people who only understand that language. One of those people, it seems, is Mr. Bloody Mouth.

For the longest time, people have been complaining about what it’s like to be heard in Berlusconi’s Italy. The guy almost exclusively owns and controls the media, an advantage he fully exploits to his political benefit. So, if you have an opposing view, you’re pretty much shit-out-of-luck; you’re not showing up on any of his television stations. Add to that his hard-right politics and (habitual) corruption, and you have a recipe for pissed off Italians. Even Berlusconi himself was quoted as having said, “[he] expected this to happen.”

The last time someone took aim at a monumental dick was a few months ago, when that guy threw his shoe at George W. Bush. For his efforts, people all over the world celebrated him as a hero. Women were offering him their daughters in marriage. People were offering him jobs, houses, and other extravagant gifts.

And, that asshole missed.

If you’ve ever been to a convenience store in any major metropolitan area in America, you might already know that humanity is pretty much screwed. I’ll explain why.

Next month, the nations of the world are meeting in Copenhagen to discuss the ever-growing problem of global warming and CO2 emissions, and negotiate a “solution.” It’s a complicated thing, but the simplified version covers most of it. With the exception of a few dinosaurs-roamed-the-Earth-alongside-Jesus crazies, most everyone agrees the Earth is getting hotter—a problem for any living thing that doesn’t have gills. An overwhelming majority of the shit that’s caused (and continues to cause) the problem was put into the air by developed nations—especially the U.S. But now, it’s those same nations that are trying to talk everyone else into curbing emissions and restricting old, dirty technologies.

Standing in the way: billions of Chinese and Indian people.

The way China and India see it, the U.S. and Europe got to make all kinds of money polluting the Earth, and they want their piece of the action now that they’re up-and-coming themselves. Between the two countries, they have over a third of the world’s population, and all two-and-a-half billion people are lining up for their delicious slice of the pollution pie. The trick for the rest of the world is going to be to talk them down from that ledge. The prevailing guess is that negotiations are going to fail unless the current polluters come up with some serious compensation for the up-and-comers.

On their way to fill their baskets with cash.

Don’t get me wrong. Americans are greedy hogs that reinvented the meaning of living in excess. It’s the reason we’re the most obese, most indebted nation in the world. We invented things like food fights (not to be confused with fights over food), pie eating contests, and massive CEO salaries. But there’s nothing like ethnic greed. It’s not necessarily any worse, just different.

If you’ve ever crossed paths with: a no-substitution policy; a handwritten $10-minimum-to-use-your-credit-card sign; a guy that shovels food back out of your combo bowl because god-forbid-he-give-you-an-extra-piece-of-orange-chicken; no substitutions; no refunds; no exceptions; any of that—you know what we’re up against.

And you know it’s going to take a supreme haggling master to get a good deal out of these guys. Let’s hope Obama is good at saying things like, “come on buddy, we’re old friends, give me a good reduction on CO2.”

According to the 1990s philosopher, Tupac, revenge is the second-sweetest joy. Today, Senator Roland Burris’s mouth is puckering up from the massive dose of delicious payback he’s slapping across the collective face of Senate Democrats that have been disrespecting him for months.

Sure, he got his seat under suspicious circumstances—not the least of which was being hand-picked at the eleventh hour by the now-impeached-for-corruption former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. But I’m still having a hard time seeing how it’s worse to get a seat the way he did than by taking millions of dollars in contributions from multi-national corporations.

How you like me now? I'm in the mix.

Since his appointment, this guy has put up with all kinds of humiliation (most of it earned). He wasn’t allowed into his own swearing-in ceremony. They didn’t let him join any committees. And there was a growing chorus calling for his resignation. Imagine going to work every day knowing an additional two or three people are going to want you the-fuck-out. That was Roland Burris.

So after being rendered all but irrelevant, Roland sort of disappeared from the public spotlight—until now.

The Illinois Democrat, appointed by disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, says he’ll only vote for a bill to provide health care to millions more Americans as long as it allows the government to sell insurance in competition with private insurers.

You have to hand it to the guy; very few of us have this level of endurance. He sat back and waited for the right moment to cash in his token. Then, when he did, he landed a two-for-one: sweet revenge and doing the right thing.

The guy knows how to land a good job, he’s patient, ballsy, and stands up for what the vast majority of people want (but the vast majority of Congress is too pansy to support).

That’s enough to get Roland Burris added to the list of candidates for the Ethnic Avenue All-Stars.*

* Coming soon

That’s why I never understood the controversy over Columbus Day.

For most of my life, I thought of Columbus Day as a celebration of the first large-scale gentrification in North America. Since a lot of us ethnic guys have been reaping the benefits of subsequent gentrifications (a flood of white girls into the neighborhood), I thought it was a holiday-worthy event. After all, Columbus got the ball rolling.

What a cute neighborhood! And what reasonable prices.

But, now I’m realizing that Columbus Day is even more. It’s also the day we mark the mighty Native American’s discovery of his kryptonite disease—smallpox. Sure, it decimated millions—and wiped out entire civilizations—but he should have known his weakness. Superman did.

This got me thinking: it’s not right to celebrate only one group’s Achilles-Heal Disease. To be fair, every major ethnicity’s kryptonite should get its own holiday. (Don’t be offended if I left your group out.)

Achilles-Heal Disease Holidays (Proposed List)

• Happy Bloody-Diarrhea Day – Indigenous Americans*
• Happy Sickle-Cell Anemia Day – Blacks, Latinos
• Happy Type-2-Diabetes Day – Latinos, Blacks
• Happy Lactose Intolerance Day – Asians
• Happy Tay-Sachs Disease Day –Jews**
• Happy Sun-Exposure-Induced Melanoma Day – Northern-European Whites
• Happy Gluten-Allergy Day – Other Whites, Miscellaneous

* Already exists

** Already have lots of holidays

So, when Barack Obama started racking up a series of nearly-as-good accomplishments (e.g., publishing a book, becoming the first black president in our 233-year history) we took notice. Since he seemed to have everything under control, we stood quietly on the sidelines.

But, Barack, now that you’ve been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s impossible to keep quiet. We can’t have you messing up a good thing. You may have gotten this far on your own, but you’re going to need a little Ethnic Advice to get you through the rest of the way (conquering the world).

1. Lose Your Temper from Time to Time.

Ethnic people (especially men) are volatile and unpredictable. It’s what makes us great lovers and leaders. I know you’ve gotten a lot of mileage from the calm-and-collected thing, but the time has come for a little ethnic temper. Your failure to put down the royal smackdown on Joe Wilson on primetime television was one thing, but to continue to put up with the repeated punking from the right-wing is getting a little embarrassing.

What you should have said: "I couldn't hear you. Come up here and say it to my face."

2. Brag and Exaggerate.

Every ethnic guy loves to brag, however small the accomplishment. Rudy is still talking about hitting those two free throws, in clutch time, back in high school. And, here you are with way-more-recent accomplishments. You need to bring that shit up every chance you get. Show up unexpectedly at these townhall meetings and say, “raise your hand if you’re a constitutional scholar.”

3. Stay True to Your Homies.

Don’t forget all of the good advice we gave you along the way (including this). But, especially don’t forget the coalition of grass-roots Progressives, labor unions, and young people that got you into that nice house. We’re still waiting for our national healthcare, end to corporate welfare, and cash for our clunkers (wait, we got that already, thanks).