One Drunk Redneck

The pic that galvanized White America Everyone remembers or has heard of the tragedy at Kent State on May 04, 1970.  Even if they only recall the Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a student kneeling over a dead student, screaming, they are familiar with the tragedy.  What most aren't familiar with is the shooting at Jackson State in Mississippi ten days later.  The women's dorm stood riddled with over 400 bullets fired by the police.  Two students lay dead at their hands.  Like Kent State, Mississippi police claimed they responded to a call of a sniper on campus grounds.  No evidence of the call or sniper existed. The pic no one remembers The Pulitzer Prize winning picture of the dead White student at Kent State galvanized the nation.  Over 400 bullet holes in Jackson State's women's dorm went largely unnoticed.  Fifty years later, most of us still remember the Kent State tragedy with that Pulitzer Prize winning picture clearly imprinted in...

When one is asked what their ancestry is, most don’t hesitate to rattle off a hodgepodge medley of bloodlines that makes them the mutt they are. “Italian, German, and a little bit of Irish.” Perhaps they’re ashamed of the Irish or something. Tragically, Black people can say Africa, but few can say where.  Their answer has the same meaning as a person of French ancestry saying European or a person of Thai ancestry saying Asian.  The answer is rootless. Thanks to genetic advances and companies like Ancestry.com , and 23andme.com , people can trace their ancestry to specific regions.  Who can forget the Black woman who learned she had Nigerian blood in her?  Turns out, she has Scottish blood, too.  As the Daily Press reports , her genetic test taught her a lot about her family history she didn’t know.  Through genetic testing, her family from many generations ago can tell their story instead of being silent, faded, and forgotten ghosts. Elizabe...

Over five years ago, I wrote an open letter to then President Obama calling him out on his comments about the George Zimmerman case.  George Zimmerman, if you recall, was the neighborhood watch guy who killed a Black teen.  A jury later found Zimmerman not guilty of all charges.  President Obama held a press conference urging all Americans to do some "soul searching," a directive obviously meant only for White people. In my letter, I challenged President Obama by exposing his racism.  Oddly, President Obama displayed the same sort of bigotry most people accuse Trump of on almost a daily basis.  President Obama tried and convicted Zimmerman, blamed the court system for systemic racism, and made sweeping generalizations about the racist tendencies of White people.  Not some White people; not some Black people; not some Hispanics.  Just White people.  Like Trump often does, President Obama stuck his nose in a state's business where it didn't belon...

Estimated read time: 9 minutes Often I read a story that was touching and memorable at the time and I always hope for a sequel.  More often than not, the story is written when it's news or is good enough to earn a writer wannabe (or a drunk redneck) fifty bucks, but the author rarely revisits the story later.  I might not think about the story until weeks, months, and sometimes years afterwards when I experience or read something that brings that story to mind.  I'm left hanging with the empty thought, "Whatever happened to...." Talk show hosts, both radio and TV, are notorious for leaving us hanging.  They feign their outrage of the day today and move on to other topics tomorrow as if the outrage yesterday was nothing at all.  They'll revive the outrage or topic when other players are involved, but the listener or viewer is left with that empty thought, "Whatever happened to...." Or maybe it's just me.  I have a long memory.  I don't car...

Ajit Pai, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, carried through with his promise to end net neutrality.  Despite 83% of Americans being opposed to the move and three out of four Republicans being opposed (according to the Washington Post as reported by OregonLive.com ) he and two other Republicans sitting on the five-member board cast the majority vote to end net neutrality.  The two Democrats opposed the move. Mr. Pai didn't stop with the simple vote to make a definition change in the FCC regulations.  He added wording that would prevent any future FCC chairman from reversing his decision.  Unless Congress steps in with Net Neutrality legislation, Mr. Pai's word is final, at least for the foreseeable future. “We are helping consumers and promoting competition,” Mr. Pai said. “Broadband providers will have more incentive to build networks, especially to underserved areas.” History, however, disputes his claim.  Another great technological bre...

Bowe Bergdahl was an American soldier who deserted his unit in 2009.   He WAS a soldier because last week, a military judge demoted him to private and gave him a dishonorable discharge. The sentencing lit up the Internet with resounding condemnation.   Everyone from amateur bloggers to our so-called president angrily roared over their disapproval of the sentencing.   "If the firing squad was out of the question, he should've at least been thrown in jail for the rest of his life," they all yelled and demanded. If I hadn't read this opinion piece in Time magazine penned by a British military man (Andy Owen, captain in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army) a week before the ruling, I'd probably would've joined in the shock, disbelief, and outrage.   Captain Owen, however, forced me to look at what happened from another angle. Captain Owen claims Bergdahl deserves our empathy.   Notice he didn't say Bergdahl deserves our understanding, accep...

Scout Schultz at Georgia Tech committed suicide by police.  Schultz identified as Lord knows what.  Before you jump all over me for that last sentence, I get it.  Gender identity can get messed up and I can sort of understand how that can happen.  At least I think I have a pretty good handle on transgenderism, but what the heck is nonbinary and intersex, as Shultz self-described?  Aside from my spellcheck flagging "nonbinary" as being misspelled, nonbinary and intersex sounds like a phrase conjured up by scientists to identify the gender of an android.  Even so, I can handle whatever gender identity term one wishes to identify with.  But I draw the line when you start telling me which pronoun I should refer to you as. No, R2, I don't know why they told us to get lost when we asked them to refer to us as nonbinary and intersex. If you look like a boy and I call you, "he", you can correct me.  I'll be embarrassed, but I will t...

Arizona, a few decades ago, had legalized "friendly" gambling in public places, including bars.   When the law past, I enjoyed the opportunity to play a few hands of black jack while drinking a beer.   I was also smart enough to leave the table when the "house" - any other bar patron who brought a deck of cards - started winning too much. One Sunday night I brought my own cards so I could be the house.   I figured the card sharks would be home or in Church or something and I knew the odds are always in favor of the house.   I'm no card shark so I figured I and everyone playing would have fun in an honest game. The game went fine for about a half an hour.   I was few bucks ahead and having fun.   My friend was probably breaking about even because he said he would leave once he lost ten bucks, but he was still playing.   Two other patrons I didn't know played and appeared to be having a good time.   Then a stranger saddled up to the table. ...

After taking a nine day hiatus from tweeting, Trump, our so-called president, returned from his European trip of embarrassing America to embarrass himself on Twitter. Simply embarrassing. Ok, maybe flippancy isn't the way to make a point, but how can anyone take the hoopla made over Trump's tweet seriously, the tweet where he invented a new word, covfefe?  After all, Trump, himself, tweeted a joke about it the next morning. “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’???  Enjoy!” he tweeted. That evening, Hillary Clinton followed Trump's joke with one of her own. "People in covfefe houses shouldn't throw covfefe," she tweeted in response to Trump's tweet denigrating her for blaming everyone except herself for her presidential bid loss. In all the media's kerfuffle over "covfefe," they missed his tweets from two days earlier.  On Sunday morning, about eight o'clock, Trump tweeted: His first tweet announces his arrival...

Election 2016 and the resulting aftermath happened because there is no dodgeball in our schools.   A few decades ago our educators decided the little kiddies might get hurt and banned the staple of childhood games. They didn't stop there. They went on to banning recognition of individual achievements because our educators figured some of our kiddies' egos might get bruised if we recognized the achievements of others instead of each and every students' efforts.   Now every participant receives an award because participation is just as important as winning.   We've had an entire generation and a half raised believing no matter what they do - and don't do - they are still winners and will get a trophy. And helicopter Moms are always hovering nearby to make sure everyone treats their kiddies like they are winners. Those kiddies are now young adults and young adults pushing middle age.   But before we start talking about how life is smacking them around ...