I think Kanye West was right. I don’t think George W. Bush cares much about black people. And Dubya and “his base” Republican-types certainly care even less for poor people. Bush had no problem executing blacks during the period he was governor of Texas, when he presided over more executions than any governor in US history, of which 52 of the 156 executed were black men. One of which was Gary Graham, a juvenile at the time of his crime, who was convicted by the testimony of only one witness which his attorney didn’t even cross examine. Bush claimed that while governor he and his staff spent 15-30 minutes evaluating death penalty cases before deciding whether or not to intercede. The only pardon, or more accurately, commutation of the death sentence to life in prison by George bush was for serial killer Henry lee Lucas. Why? Of all people to pardon, why Henry? But I digress…
Bush also benefited tremendously from the racist felony list created under Catherine Harris and his brother Jeb before the 2000 election which barred many innocent people—non felons—from voting at all. Most of those listed were minorities, of which most vote democratic; who do you think benefited from that?
Katrina’s brutality exposed the ugly side of Barbara Bush too; when Dubya’s mom described the conditions of evacuees and thought they looked as if they were movin’ on up. The scary thing is that I think most rich white people think like the Bushes. They assume blacks are mostly lazy, have too many kids, are likely to be poor and prone to commit crimes and that it is only some of them that actually rise to the top of the mix.
You saw Do the Right Thing, right? I think it's a little like the character Vito's attitude about Prince and Michael Jordan in DTRT. I get the feeling that to Dubya, Condi Rice is kinda like Prince or Jordan--she's better than black, worth more than the rest of them. She's risen above.
Then there’s good ol’ Michael Brown, not as much a racist as he is a buffoon. He is oblivious, and when you watch him it seems he’s clearly lying and distorting reality. On Frontline he was asked if when local officials are overwhelmed, as they were in NOLA (his word overwhelmed) isn’t that exactly the condition for which FEMA exists? His answer: “Based upon the priorities of the state...we [Feds] don’t come in and take over. We don’t have the resources to take over.”
He’s amazing. He puts it on the state, sheds responsibility, even when the record clearly shows he didn’t fulfill what was requested. The supply lines had been cut. The whole thing had been restructured, privatized. When a city floods the city needs rescue by the Feds!! If not the Feds, then who? Halliburton? No, they’ll just get all the rebuilding contracts while reports suggest they’re mistreating workers.
Dubya doesn’t care about poor blacks, or poor whites for that matter. How many poor white kids did he alienate with his callous response to the national tragedy of Katrina? Kids that might grow up hating the federal government that let their friends and neighbors drown; and that might hate the blacks that looted their friends and neighbors houses—Bush, Brown and Chertoff’s disregard might end up spawning Timothy McVeigh style terrorists with a bayou flavor here in the U.S. just like our brutality spawns terrorists in Iraq.
Compassionate conservatism, brothah.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
I'm Thankful for Giant Apes
In our home Thanksgiving always meant giant apes. At least that was the case for me as a child when Thanksgiving usually heralded an all day festival of flicks like King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, Son of Kong and King Kong versus Godzilla. Nowadays I never see classics like that on the holiday but this year that’s all going to change! This year you can bring the biggest ape of them all into your home on DVD with the kick ass release of the original King Kong. If you haven’t already picked up a copy I highly recommend doing so as it looks amazing—very cleaned up and rich with detail you probably never noticed in all the times it’s been rebroadcast on TV. Mad bonus features on the second disk as well.
Speaking of giant apes…a few weeks ago I attended a cryptozoology symposium at Bates College in Lewiston Maine. It was a blast listening to artists and cryptozoology enthusiasts there and talking with other folks that don’t actually think you’re crazy for believing in Bigfoot. There’s a write up about the weekend here and you can always learn more about the subject of cryptozoology here. I went because of my fascination with Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, as he is often called.
Is Sasquatch a North America descendant of Gigantopithecine lineage, a massive ape that migrated from Mongolia and Northern China over the land bridge and down through Alaska, Canada and into North America? The Gigantopithecus americanus, if we can call him that, is bipedal and may have broken into at least one sub-species preferring warmer wetter climes since there have been numerous sightings in the American south as well as the Pacific Northwest which is more commonly thought of as Bigfoot Country.
Hopefully, conclusive proof of the ape man-creature known as Bigfoot will someday come in the form of video or photo evidence, although there is a substantial portion of Bigfoot “enthusiasts” who wish to shoot one dead, in order to prove they exist. I’ll give you a second to try and follow that logic...
Of course science is interested in taxidermy and seeing a North American primate in a museum diorama would be impressive, but at what cost would we cull such a creature? If they really are out there, it’s a species so rare it is on the way to extinction anyway, and killing off even one of the last few individuals would help Sasquatch stride off into oblivion and who could be in support of that? There is no singular fact or finding that proves Bigfoot exists nor is there any singular fact or finding that disproves his existence either. There is a tremendous amount of supporting evidence and a very significant number of very credible sightings. Bigfoot phenomena shouldn't be included in the now trendy classification of Urban Legend because number one, the sightings of Bigfoot have numerous consistent details-urban legends often grow more outlandish with each retelling-Sasquatch sightings are extraordinarily similar. And second, tales of Bigfoot are rarely set in an urban setting at all-most Sasquatch sightings occur in rural to remote areas. Urban Legends are the man with a hook for a hand that harasses kids on lover’s lane or alligators in the sewers. Bigfoot and other cryptozoological critters are different.
Bigfoot is more than folklore. Of the 500, or thereabouts, Native American Nations that were here before white men, almost fifty percent of those tribes told tales of giant men covered in hair that roamed the deep woods. The amount of tracks, feces, hair samples and eyewitness accounts that have been found and documented cannot be wholly dismissed. I'm not saying I'm certain there are apes in America but I'm not so sure I would dismiss it so easily. Science needs evidence so yes, at this point we cannot say they exist but saying they definitely do not exist would be just as foolish. If Bigfoot is gigantopithecus he is a survivor of the Pleistocene epoch, the period when much of our modern species existed; the genus homo first gained its footing, while the extinction of megafauna like the mammoth, sabre-toothed tiger, the giant sloths and the wooly rhinoceros also occurred as the epoch wound down. Bigfoot would have had to survived in small isolated pockets of wilderness; and for the most part that’s exactly where he is usually spotted.
And before you say no way, not a chance, rremember, it was just this past year that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, a species long thought extinct, was photographed in the US. The mountain gorilla was first identified just after the turn of the twentieth century and the Coelacanth, a fish thought extinct millions of years ago, has been caught first off of South Africa in 1938 and on several occasions in the Indian Ocean. It's not that unrealistic to assume there may be more going on in the North American forests than we suspect. At least I’d like to hope so. When Loren Coleman signed my copy of his book Bigfoot: The true story of Apes in America, he wrote a simple dedication of three words that speak volumes to cryptozoologists, both amateur and professional: Enjoy the Quest.
In the end perhaps that’s all we’ll ever have, and perhaps that’s enough.
Speaking of giant apes…a few weeks ago I attended a cryptozoology symposium at Bates College in Lewiston Maine. It was a blast listening to artists and cryptozoology enthusiasts there and talking with other folks that don’t actually think you’re crazy for believing in Bigfoot. There’s a write up about the weekend here and you can always learn more about the subject of cryptozoology here. I went because of my fascination with Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, as he is often called.
Is Sasquatch a North America descendant of Gigantopithecine lineage, a massive ape that migrated from Mongolia and Northern China over the land bridge and down through Alaska, Canada and into North America? The Gigantopithecus americanus, if we can call him that, is bipedal and may have broken into at least one sub-species preferring warmer wetter climes since there have been numerous sightings in the American south as well as the Pacific Northwest which is more commonly thought of as Bigfoot Country.
Hopefully, conclusive proof of the ape man-creature known as Bigfoot will someday come in the form of video or photo evidence, although there is a substantial portion of Bigfoot “enthusiasts” who wish to shoot one dead, in order to prove they exist. I’ll give you a second to try and follow that logic...
Of course science is interested in taxidermy and seeing a North American primate in a museum diorama would be impressive, but at what cost would we cull such a creature? If they really are out there, it’s a species so rare it is on the way to extinction anyway, and killing off even one of the last few individuals would help Sasquatch stride off into oblivion and who could be in support of that? There is no singular fact or finding that proves Bigfoot exists nor is there any singular fact or finding that disproves his existence either. There is a tremendous amount of supporting evidence and a very significant number of very credible sightings. Bigfoot phenomena shouldn't be included in the now trendy classification of Urban Legend because number one, the sightings of Bigfoot have numerous consistent details-urban legends often grow more outlandish with each retelling-Sasquatch sightings are extraordinarily similar. And second, tales of Bigfoot are rarely set in an urban setting at all-most Sasquatch sightings occur in rural to remote areas. Urban Legends are the man with a hook for a hand that harasses kids on lover’s lane or alligators in the sewers. Bigfoot and other cryptozoological critters are different.
Bigfoot is more than folklore. Of the 500, or thereabouts, Native American Nations that were here before white men, almost fifty percent of those tribes told tales of giant men covered in hair that roamed the deep woods. The amount of tracks, feces, hair samples and eyewitness accounts that have been found and documented cannot be wholly dismissed. I'm not saying I'm certain there are apes in America but I'm not so sure I would dismiss it so easily. Science needs evidence so yes, at this point we cannot say they exist but saying they definitely do not exist would be just as foolish. If Bigfoot is gigantopithecus he is a survivor of the Pleistocene epoch, the period when much of our modern species existed; the genus homo first gained its footing, while the extinction of megafauna like the mammoth, sabre-toothed tiger, the giant sloths and the wooly rhinoceros also occurred as the epoch wound down. Bigfoot would have had to survived in small isolated pockets of wilderness; and for the most part that’s exactly where he is usually spotted.
And before you say no way, not a chance, rremember, it was just this past year that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, a species long thought extinct, was photographed in the US. The mountain gorilla was first identified just after the turn of the twentieth century and the Coelacanth, a fish thought extinct millions of years ago, has been caught first off of South Africa in 1938 and on several occasions in the Indian Ocean. It's not that unrealistic to assume there may be more going on in the North American forests than we suspect. At least I’d like to hope so. When Loren Coleman signed my copy of his book Bigfoot: The true story of Apes in America, he wrote a simple dedication of three words that speak volumes to cryptozoologists, both amateur and professional: Enjoy the Quest.
In the end perhaps that’s all we’ll ever have, and perhaps that’s enough.
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