You Out There?

Yeah, I did it again.  Another long unexplained absence.  I’m sure my six readers are wandering around blogless trying to figure out what’s going on.  I used to have seven readers but I’m sure at least one reader got tired of waiting for an update and moved on to another more frequently updated blog.  I’ll miss you dear reader number seven though you refused to comment on anything I wrote.

I’d like to promise this will never happen again.  Really, I would.  However, I don’t like to write just for the sake of writing.  I won’t blog just to check that off my to-do list.  I actually like to think that I’m somehow adding something to lives of my six readers.  If I post something just because I can then I’m letting my readers down.

Hmmm, this is becoming more defiant than it’s supposed to be.

There were several things that caught my writer’s eye, mostly around the crumbling, stumbling, bumbling world of the United States government.  What started off as a necessary debate about the need for fiscally sound policies quickly turned politically violent.  Honestly I needed a break from politics.  I just couldn’t take what was happening in Washington serious enough to write about it.  What else could I say about the feeble state of our political system that I haven’t already said?  Besides next year the presidential campaign really gets going, I’d rather save myself for that then write about the road to oblivion we appear to be on.

I did get a kick out of Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley’s Poverty tour of the US.  I respect Cornel West though I’ve always found he’s too enamored with his own intelligence.  It’s like he’s always saying, “look at me I’m smarter than you and here’s why.”  Maybe that’s my own insecurities.  Plus his voice is too soothing.  Anyway, Cornel is acting like my 3 year old.  His beef with President Obama seems more motivated by perceived personal slights (sorry Obama didn’t call your Dr. West he’s busy running the country.  He hasn’t called me back either but if he emails me one more damn time…) than anything Obama did or didn’t do.  If Obama called Cornel tomorrow he’d happily dump Tavis for a White House invite.

That brings us to dear brother Tavis.  I get the feeling he thought he was going to be the first black president or he feels his (self-selected) role as the primary spokesman for black America has be usurped by President Obama.  When Obama didn’t come to his State of the Black Union aka The Tavis Saves Black America program Tavis began criticizing the Obama relentlessly.  I’ve watched a several iterations of The Tavis Saves Black America program and came away with the thought the event was just an opportunity for Tavis to boost his profile.  I can’t think of one solution or insight gained from that ego fest.  Now Tavis is mad because Obama is the first president not to invite him to the White House.  Clearly Obama has no interest in talking to Black America.  That is obvious because Tavis has been left out in the cold and he’s the only one that speaks to Black America.  The nerve of Obama!  We should punish him by forcing him to listen to Tavis Smiley babble.  That’ll show him.

Ultimately I decided The West-Smiley World Tour of the United States should have merit and raised some important issues about the devastating effects of the recession and the political budgetary sideshow on Black America (and Latinos and the poor in general).  However, West and Smiley decided to put their personal issues first by attacking the president on such personal terms.  Everybody recognized that and everybody ignored them.  Sadly poor people lose again.

I guess I could have written about my daughter’s discovery of her “bad self”.  Her “bad self” gets all the blame when she misbehaves which is all the time now.  I tried to explain that there was no such thing as a “bad self” however; she wouldn’t accept that and the conversation devolved into a mess of tears.  Once I stopped crying and got myself together I figured that while blogging about her “split personality” might have given me great material but years down the road it would just add her psychiatric bills.  Anyway she has decided her “bad self” should move out the house.  So if you see a 3 year old self randomly misbehaving it’s probably my daughter’s bad self.  Don’t send it back, it’s not welcome here.

Wow this is long.  Maybe I do need to write more often.  Four weeks of vacation should only be reserved for our hardworking representatives in Congress…

Tagged Dr. Cornel West, Parenting, Poverty Tour, Tavis Smiley