Chevron Richmond issue: new video shows job loss impact

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Apparently someone was paying attention to my call for videos from last week's Richmond City Council meeting where I reported that California Attorney General Jerry Brown visited a packed council hearing room and got passed a resolution to allow him to get involved in the issue of the stopped Chevron plant construction order. A number of comments on my blogs pointed to video links but then out-of-the-blue, Chevron itself stepped forward with their video, and it's a good one:



The video shows the workers impacted telling their stories in much the same way that laid off plant construction electrician Dennis Roos told his story to me. The video was apparently created last Tuesday, at the Richmond City Council hearing. One worker in the video said "I've got a family. I've got four girls. I've got a house payment. A car payment. I was really dependent on this job." In the meeting itself, one woman said "I urge you to put yourselfs in our shoes. I've can't pay my taxes. I can't buy groceries. I can't feed myself and I can't support my family."

For me this is hard to take. Again, I can't understand why Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga designed the decision in the way she did when there were so many creative policy roads she could have taken. If one wonders why California has an initiative process, here's an example. The thousands of people harmed by her action have no employment place to go. We're in the worst economy since the Depression and California's feeling the brunt of the pain.

Much of the Federal bailout money goes to new projects, but if they're stopped at the local level, then the jobs that were to be created are erased. In this case, Richmond residents, Judge Zuniga's own people, are harmed. You may call it a "tough, hard nosed decision" but I call it a terrible policy design, and my focus has been policy analysis for most of my life. Good policy works to form a set of laws that work for the best outcome for people on both sides of the equation, not just one side. It takes a level of creativity Judge Zuniga is more than capable of.

But what's done is done; it just needs to be fixed; these people are suffering. As I wrote before, the real little guy didn't win at all.

Again, I'm not questioning environmental concerns at all, just this "winner take all" attitude that comes with these battles of late in a complex system. And that's the point: our socioeconomic system is more complex than the activists - who always simplify these things without an understanding of how to find the main "drivers" in them - get.

A course in system dynamics (which shows how to "connect the dots" between one decision and its impacts) for all concerned - councilmembers, judge, company, workers - would help a lot. But frankly the workers don't need the lesson: they are the ultimate drivers here and have connected those dots. They make the plant run. They build new plans. They vote. They make purchases for families. And they breath the same air, so I know from conversations they're concerned about that too. And if they decide to ban together and take action, they could turn this bad decision around and make it so it doesn't happen again. They need their jobs back as soon as possible.

The overall lesson is for our legal and policy system to "get smart" and start making creative decisions that save California's economy but not at the expense of workers or the environment.

Alexis Cohen's Death caused by 23-year-old New Jersey man

From MTV.com - Police have arrested a 23-year-old New Jersey man in connection with Saturday morning's hit-and-run death of two-time "American Idol" contestant Alexis Cohen. The Asbury Park Journal reports that Daniel Bark was arrested at 6 p.m. on Sunday and charged with causing Cohen's death by reckless driving and then leaving the scene of a collision.

SF AIDS benefit features Jersey Boys, American Idol stars

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On YouTube.com

This Sunday, August 2nd (yikes, two days before my birthday!) The San Francisco-based Richmond / Ermet AIDS Foundation (REAF.org) features the 15th annual presentation of "Help Is On The Way: No Business Like Show Business." I've attended this gala over the last four years and I've got to tell ya it’s a load of fun; a mix of a little serious, a lot of energy, and a ton of talent. (The video above is from last year's event, where San Francisco luminaries like Harry Denton were holding court in the pre-show auction lounge, joined by "Austin Powers", "Dean Martin", and others.) Before I explain why you should attend, let me give you some background.

REAF was founded by Barbara Richmond and the late Peggy Ermet in memory of their sons, John Richmond and Doug Ermet, who both lost their lives to AIDS. In 1995, the two women launched a musical AIDS benefit to honor their sons by raising funds for AIDS service organizations. Ken Henderson is the organization's executive director, and together with his partner Joe Seiler have produced the event with the founder Barbara Richmond. I started going to the annual event after some prodding from a good friend of mine who's on the foundation's board of directors and now it's an event drug I can't do without.

What "Help Is On The Way" is known for are appearances by name entertainers who, while they give their time for free, put in knock-you-outta-your-seat performances. Cast performers from the musical "The Jersey Boys" have graced the stage in the past and this year, show star John Lloyd Young comes in. The show has also been the focal point for "American Idol" stars and this year is no exception. Melinda Dolittle, who wowed Idol audiences in season six, and now has a new album called “Coming Back to You", will be joining him as well as the amazing Joely Fisher. Fisher's currently in a new Fox TV show called "Til Death" and is on “Desperate Housewives” as well, in addition to a wealth of credits on TV shows like "Normal, Ohio" and movies like "Inspector Gadget". I had the pleasure of meeting Fisher at last year's event; what an incredibly nice person she was to go with her many accomplishments.

With Fisher, Dolittle, and Lloyd Young comes the legendary actress Tyne Daly from the "Cagney and Lacy" TV series, and "Judging Amy". Carole Cook, who created the role of Maggie Jones in "42nd Street" and was the first to star after Carol Channing in "Hello Dolly" will come back for her 13th show. David Gaines, who played "The Phantom" in "The Phantom of The Opera" 2,000 times (not kidding), is on board, too. He will be joined by Bay Area-performer Maureen McVerry, Shawn Ryan of "America's Got Talent" (who comes back for the third time), the incredible dancers Cate Caplin and Gary Franco, who are coming for their seventh and third time respectively, and singer Welsla Westerfield, who's making her 10th show. Singer Jeanie Tracy comes for her first show as well as comic musicians BaulPointPen. Jon Maher's back and he's performed in 14 of the 15 annual performances of "Help is On The Way". But the one singer you've got to hear is Susan Anton.

This is Anton's fifth show and if you can sit through her performance and not come away breathless, something's wrong with you. I'm serious. Her career spans 30 years (she doesn't look at day over 30) from the play "Hurleyburly" to “The Ben Stiller Show” and includes most recently Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues”.

The show starts with a pre-event Gala Reception with choice offerings from some of San Francisco's best restaurants and Northern California's best wineries and distillers. Steak? It's there. Noodles? Yep. Merlot? Certainly. But the impersonators are a kick, as the video shows, with "Marilyn Monroe" and other stars. Plus, there's a silent auction for those who want to win, say, a vintage guitar used by a certain rocker. The reception starts at 5 PM, with the show itself at 7:30 PM this Sunday, August 2nd at the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave.

"Help Is On The Way" benefits four Bay Area AIDS service agencies including Aguilas, AIDS Legal Referral Panel, PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support), and Shanti. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, State Senator Mark Leno, and SF Treasurer Jose Cisneros are the event's honorary co-chairs. Come down, and have a great time, and I've got to be frank, for those single straight bachelors holding out because you think it's not for you, get over it! There are a lot of great looking women there, everyone's nice, and its for a real good cause.

For ticket information visit www.reaf.org or call 415-273-1620

Sarah Palin fairbanks Governor's Picnic

Sarah Palin's last day in office as Governor of Alaska is today. Whatever the reason, I think she made a big mistake in stepping down.

President Obama's beer bust with Gates and Crowley: a beer poll

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What started as a calamity threatening to divide America has seemingly ended in a planned beer bust at the White House, courtesy of President Barack Obama himself. The ill-advised (in my opinion) arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Lewis Gates by Cambridge Police Officer Sgt. James Crowley four days ago caught the attention of the nation, but it was President Obama's comment that the Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" and the rather terrible response by the Cambridge Police Union at its press conference , which created a much-needed national conversation about race, law enforcement, and American culture.

Regardless of where you stand on this issue, there's no doubt that it has been the political talk of the day, even if much of it was disjointed, nasty, and ignorant, especially online. My first video blog, which asserts that Professor Gates was arrested for being an "uppity black man", has drawn over 355 comments on YouTube.com alone within one day, pushing it to over 2,700 views and the 14th most commented on video in the "News and Politics" section of the giant video-sharing site as of this writing. While demographic data is not yet complete, I can say just by combing through all of the comments that the viewers were overwhelmingly male, and about 80 percent white and 20 percent "of color" at first, then on the second day more people identifying themselves as black (who really knows in the comment section, right?) pushing the result to about 60 percent white to 40 percent of color.

Some of the comments were nasty and some were excellent, but the one I liked best of all was not on YouTube, but on Facebook and made by my long-time friend and Oakland, Bret Harte Junior High School classmate Lars Frkyman (who stared with my other long-time Oakland friend from the same school and from Skyine High School, Bill Boyd, in my "Star Trek Review" vlog), who wrote (and I reprint this with his permission):

You keep fighting that good fight against prejudices. As a white guy growing up in Oakland I was beaten several times cause of the color of my skin by a bunch of ignorant angry...fill in the blank.Later in life I've been hassled by white cops because of the length of my hair and my unshaved face. I think it must be human nature to exert power over anything, whether it be pit bulls, gray hounds, the homeless, gays, women, men you name it, humans will abuse it. I guess the sad fact is there's a bully in every crowd. We've come a long way but we sure do got a long way to go eh?
ps Obama's right..stupid cop! No apology necessarry
Lars

Lars is right. The Crowley / Gates incident was one of institutional racism on the part of Crowley, versus classism on the part of Gates. Crowley keeps saying "I went by the book" which opens the door to the kind of racial profiling African Americans and others are just plain tired of. "Going by the book" just means that Crowley didn't use his own judgment in the matter, plus he let his ego get in the way when he realized this "black man" was yelling at him and not following his orders. Gates' was angry that Crowley entered his house (without a search warrant) and from his point of view did not show him his police ID or look at the professor's identification, and so was going to "inform Crowley of who he was".

Two yaks ramming heads. Only one of the yaks, Gates, represented a group of people who'd had it. Racial profiling has been the bane of the African American existence for too long, and Obama's comment that the "Cambridge Police acted stupidly", even if his words may have been poorly selected, was right on and struck a cord from sea to shining sea.  For Crowley to behave with the proper judgment in this case, many agree, would have been to make no arrest at all. But some officers are hard-wired to feel (not think) they have to make an arrest if the person's black, at least that's the perception of most African American (especially in the wake of the Oscar Grant shooting) and many whites too, like this commenter on my first YouTube video on this issue:

ALL of you are blaming everyone but whos responsible. First the media was the first person to play the race card to be exact it was CNN. Why because it will sell they know it why dont you? I am irish and white my family came to america in the 1910's we where hated by EVERYONE but my family overcame and if you want to blame someone blame the press they are the ones who plaster black men on the news every damn day and now you wonder why people are scared of blacks. All of us need to put this down.

Or just have a good, ice-cold beer or two! In fact, that's what President Obama, Sgt. Crowley, and Professor Gates plan to do at The White House. According to Obama, it was Crowley's idea, and Gates accepted the invitation. In a statement provided to "The Root" , a website covering news from a black perspective where Gates is editor-in-chief, he wrote:

"..if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color...After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."

Ok, fine, now what beer should they drink?

The Beer Poll

Having gotten past the arguments, we can watch Obama, Gates, and Crowley have a beer, but what brand? You can pick the beer in my poll below:

create fun quizzes & tests on pollsb.com

As of this writing, Budweiser has the lead over Pabst Blue Ribbon by 12.5 percent. No one picked Miller, while my favorite, Japan's Sapporo beer is even with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and 12.5 percent picked "Other" beers. In the interest of real diversity, pick Sapporo! But that written, the day Obama, Gates, and Crowley meet for a beer should be called "National Raise a Glass for Diversity Day."

Seriously.

I think it should be a day that people of different stripes deliberately get together to just get along, get to know each other, and have fun. Considering how far America's come in being a true melting pot, it's not hard to do at all.  But the rule should be to have a beer with someone who's of another background and race from your own.  That would be huge!

Henry Louis Gates arrested for being "uppity black man"

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It's all over the Internet: Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by Cambridge police officer Sgt. James Crowley after trying to pry open the lock, which was already damaged, to his own Cambridge home with the help of his driver, who picked him up from a trip to China. President Obama, in a press conference on his health care initiative, chimes in by saying "the Cambridge Police acted stupidly."

President Obama's totally right. Here's why.

Professor Gates problem was that he was being "an uppity black man" against an officer who looked for "uncommon" versus "common" elements to connect with Gates - no connection, or "uncommon leads to an arrest. On the plane from Chicago to Atlanta yesterday, I was in first class on United Airlines (the luck I enjoy as the son of a former employee). There was a gentleman, white, in his 60s, who looked at the open seat next to me, and me, and kind of frowned. I didn't care. He sat in front of me.

As the drinks he had flowed he started talking loudly about President Bush and Republicans and how Nixon was right, and all that jazz which I though was funny, frankly. But - and I have this on camera - I could not help but notice how he was TRYING to connect with the man next to him, who was white, and older.

By contrast, he never tried to connect with me.

Had the man next to him been black, that would not have happened, and that's the problem. Racism in part is the assumption that you are not like me from the start just because of your skin color. If Officer Crowley had tried to calm Gates down, walked around the house and noticed photos on the walls, etc, he would have quickly picked up that it was Gates home. But because he wasn't looking for common elements or to try and calm Gates - he wanted to have power over him. He was offended that the Professor did not defer to him, and thought "He's not going to dance, so I'll teach him a lesson." So when Gates wasn't calming down and obeying orders, Crowley arrested him.

And that's the rub.

Police officers in the old days knew their neighbors and were more peace officers than military actors. Moreover, there's a common habit, 1) militaristic behavior and 2) of trying to put down someone black who's smart and assertive or just has the appearance of decency. This doesn't happen all the time, but I've been a victim of it, too. In 2006 a California Highway Patrol officer body-slammed me on his car just because I shed a tear after realizing I was going to be arrested after passing a field sobriety test and after going to the officer because a person was tailgating me so close I thought I was being followed (and I didn't say anything to contest the officer, but someone told me "I sound smart"). I'm serious.

On the other hand I personally know a lot of officers - many in the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff's Department and yes on the California Highway Patrol - who have far more self-control and intellect of action and also said the officer who body-slammed me was "out of control". But the bottom line is police officers nationwide - mostly white, a few "of color" - are almost hard-wired to think of a black man as bad "just because", and regardless of the look or background of the person, and that's got to change.

A good friend of mine in law enforcement said the problem is "a lot of these officers they bring in who are white or not black at times, don't have experience with blacks. They may have grown up in the suburbs and then only when they become an officer do they have contact with blacks." And then it's too late.

The lack of exposure to people of color, especially those who's "made it" and don't fit age old stereotypes, is hard to shake and explains why President Obama's so important to our future. Seeing a black person in the role is what America needs to advance. America must move beyond the shackles of racism if the nation is to come together as one people and solve our economic problems - the real big issue before us.

Officer Crowley, if he's an expert in racial profiling and how not to use it, should have known that he should not have treated a distinguished Harvard professor like that, especially someone who's black and walking with a cane! Indeed, he should have known who Professor Gates was right off the bat.

That he didn't is alarming.

Marina Orlova talks about the Blunderbuss: HotForWords

Marina Orlova's terrific show has a new and interesting segment on a kind of shotgun called "The Blunderbuss."

Erin Andrews peephole tape draws Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Beisner

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The search trend that will not die, "Erin Andrews peephole tape" just drew in its latest mainstream media victim of the drug of titillation, Bill O'Reilly, then for good measure, Jason Witlock of the Kansas City Star unwittingly throws Michelle Beisner into the mix.

Now, Michelle Beisner's the top search on Google Trends because of the Erin Andrews peep show video scandal, Witlock digging up that story, and the male desire to see her, too, (90 percent of my 34,000 video viewers - as of this writing - on this matter are men) and Bill O'Reilly has the nerve to bring two more blondes on his show to talk about a blonde, Erin Andrews, who's privacy was violated, and show the offending video mainly because CBS decided to do it first within the mainstream media camp! Oh brother.

Plus, what we have is a great case of racial profiling.

My video on this matter (which has one very cool photo of Erin Andrews just being the normal person she is and using an Apple MacBook) of the CBS action stands:



And regarding, Bill O'Reilly, I will add more. First, I did not embed the video of Bill's show for obvious reasons, but for those who feel I should at least reference it, here it is - LINK - within a great blog post by Will Brinson at FanHouse, who takes the popular conservative hothead to task for his segment. Second, I'll go a few steps beyond where he went.

What Bill O'Reilly does is add sauce to the "Erin goose" by inviting Fox News.com correspondent Courtney Friel and Fox News assignment editor and blogger Jane Skinner on, both blonde and famous for errors of a titillating nature. In Skinner's case, she's known for mistakenly saying "top cock" rather than "top cop" twice in a Fox News broadcast, leading to a yet another viral video on YouTube. Friel's claim to fame is posing in a bikini for the soft-porn magazine Maxim. Gawker discovered the photos after Friel removed them from her website.  Then, Gawker's Ryan Tate (who's now the editor of Valleywag) wrote a new post about her pictures, calling her a "bonehead" in the process.

Bonehead? Bonehead? That is racial profiling, folks, piling on the classic "dumb blonde" image, but more on that later; O'Reilly uses titillation to talk about, well, titillation.  What was done shows the primal genius of Fox News and explains why their ratings are so high.  Bill's 100 percent correct that what was done to Erin - and I stand corrected that it was in a hotel room and not an athletic club as I reported - is cyberstalking.

But given that the audience for this news is male, Bill should have had Fox News male anchors on his show talking about the matter, and not Jane Skinner and Courtney Friel.  Why?  Because first, it would send a message that men in media have a level of respect for their female collegues, second, the obvious question given the backgrounds of Frier and Skinner is "Have you been cyberstalked?" but Bill didn't even go in that direction and thus had the wrong guests on.  He focused squarely on the view that a crime was committed - and he's right - and that's it.  But in fashioning the segment O'Reilly caused a "snails tail" relationship: we talk about the blonde with blondes who have the same level of Internet popularity as the blonde, just like Michelle Beisner. 

Who?

Michelle Beisner's described by Witlock as "former Denver Broncos cheerleader and aspiring D-list Hollywood actress-type. Blonde. White Woman" (but forgot to note, or perhaps didn't care to discover, or didn't see it as important that Beisner's an NFL Network correspondent) who's innocent reply to a text sent by ESPN's star anchor Stuart Scott (who's black) was picked up by an over-the-shoulder peering Al Daulerio - a sports blogger and editor with Gawker media product Deadspin - at a Super Bowl party, then was repeated by Daulerio in Deadspin.

The result was to imply that Scott and Beisner were having an affair as opposed to what commonly happens in the days leading up to a Super Bowl (I've been to seven of 'em): the late night search for a way to get into the next party and go all night long.  I'd bet even money that's what the text was about; Beisner may have contacted her friend, the well-connected Scott, who's married, regarding help getting into another party.

Deadspin has never appologized for the blog post.

While Witlock is correct in bring up how Deadspin poorly handled that story as well as  how Deadspin started reporting on the Andrews video, Witlock's depiction of Andrews and Beisner (Andrews as "Barbie" and Beisner as "D-list...Blonde. White Woman" rather than NFL Network correspondent) is tasteless and smacks of the same racial profiling we complain about as African Americans. (And I will follow up later, on regarding what happened to Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates at the hands of the Cambridge Police.)

No one wants to be placed in a box where they're expected to be a certain way because of their race and sex.  Just because someone's white and blonde doesn't mean they don't know anything; in my experience, perhaps as a reaction to society, it's the reverse.  I had a long tearful talk a while back with a friend of mine who's in San Francisco real estate (and blonde, and tall, and attractive, and smart) about this because she'd had it with people at the time and went on a drinking binge.  (She's fine now.)

It doens't matter if the person's white and blonde, or black and male, we as a World industrial society must stop placing them in a box assuming that they're dumb or dangerous.  Bill O'Reilly did this, Jason Witlock really did it, the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" (to quote President Obama), and Erin Andrews and Professor Gates have been the victims of it.

Enough, already.

Erin Andrews peephole tape draws Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Beisner

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The search trend that will not die, "Erin Andrews peephole tape" just drew in its latest mainstream media victim of the drug of titillation, Bill O'Reilly, then for good measure, Jason Witlock of the Kansas City Star unwittingly throws Michelle Beisner into the mix.

Now, Michelle Beisner's the top search on Google Trends because of the Erin Andrews peep show video scandal, Witlock digging up that story, and the male desire to see her, too, (90 percent of my 34,000 video viewers - as of this writing - on this matter are men) and Bill O'Reilly has the nerve to bring two more blondes on his show to talk about a blonde, Erin Andrews, who's privacy was violated, and show the offending video mainly because CBS decided to do it first within the mainstream media camp! Oh brother.

Plus, what we have is a great case of racial profiling.

My video on this matter (which has one very cool photo of Erin Andrews just being the normal person she is and using an Apple MacBook) of the CBS action stands:



And regarding, Bill O'Reilly, I will add more. First, I did not embed the video of Bill's show for obvious reasons, but for those who feel I should at least reference it, here it is - LINK - within a great blog post by Will Brinson at FanHouse, who takes the popular conservative hothead to task for his segment; Second, I'll go a few steps beyond where he went.

What Bill O'Reilly does is add sauce to the "Erin goose" by inviting Fox News.com correspondent Courtney Friel and Fox News assignment editor and blogger Jane Skinner on, both blonde and famous for errors of a titillating nature. In Skinner's case, she's known for mistakenly saying "top cock" rather than "top cop" twice in a Fox News broadcast, leading to a yet another viral video on YouTube. Friel's claim to fame is posing in a bikini for the soft-porn magazine Maxim. Gawker discovered the photos after Friel removed them from her website.  Then, Gawker's Ryan Tate (who's now the editor of Valleywag) wrote a new post about her pictures, calling her a "bonehead" in the process.

Bonehead? Bonehead? That is racial profiling, folks, piling on the classic "dumb blonde" image, but more on that later; O'Reilly uses titillation to talk about, well, titillation.  What was done shows the primal genius of Fox News and explains why their ratings are so high.  Bill's 100 percent correct that what was done to Erin - and I stand corrected that it was in a hotel room and not an athletic club as I reported - is cyberstalking.

But given that the audience for this news is male, Bill should have had Fox News male anchors on his show talking about the matter, and not Jane Skinner and Courtney Friel.  Why?  Because first, it would send a message that men in media have a level of respect for their female collegues, second, the obvious question given the backgrounds of Frier and Skinner is "Have you been cyberstalked?" but Bill didn't even go in that direction and thus had the wrong guests on.  He focused squarely on the view that a crime was committed - and he's right - and that's it.  But in fashioning the segment O'Reilly caused a "snails tail" relationship: we talk about the blonde with blondes who have the same level of Internet popularity as the blonde, just like Michelle Beisner. 

Who?

Michelle Beisner's described by Witlock as "former Denver Broncos cheerleader and aspiring D-list Hollywood actress-type. Blonde. White Woman" (but forgot to note, or perhaps didn't care to discover, or didn't see it as important that Beisner's an NFL Network correspondent) who's innocent reply to a text sent by ESPN's star anchor Stuart Scott (who's black) was picked up by an over-the-shoulder peering Al Daulerio - a sports blogger and editor with Gawker media product Deadspin - at a Super Bowl party, then was repeated by Daulerio in Deadspin.

The result was to imply that Scott and Beisner were having an affair as opposed to what commonly happens in the days leading up to a Super Bowl (I've been to seven of 'em): the late night search for a way to get into the next party and go all night long.  I'd bet even money that's what the text was about; Beisner may have contacted her friend, the well-connected Scott, who's married, regarding help getting into another party.

Deadspin has never appologized for the blog post.

While Witlock is correct in bring up how Deadspin poorly handled that story as well as  how Deadspin started reporting on the Andrews video, Witlock's depiction of Andrews and Beisner (Andrews as "Barbie" and Beisner as "D-list...Blonde. White Woman" rather than NFL Network correspondent) is tasteless and smacks of the same racial profiling we complain about as African Americans. (And I will follow up later, on regarding what happened to Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates at the hands of the Cambridge Police.)

No one wants to be placed in a box where they're expected to be a certain way because of their race and sex.  Just because someone's white and blonde doesn't mean they don't know anything; in my experience, perhaps as a reaction to society, it's the reverse.  I had a long tearful talk a while back with a friend of mine who's in San Francisco real estate (and blonde, and tall, and attractive, and smart) about this because she'd had it with people at the time and went on a drinking binge.  (She's fine now.)

It doens't matter if the person's white and blonde, or black and male, we as a World industrial society must stop placing them in a box assuming that they're dumb or dangerous.  Bill O'Reilly did this, Jason Witlock really did it, the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" (to quote President Obama), and Erin Andrews and Professor Gates have been the victims of it.

Enough, already.

Are the "Obama's foreign born" folks being racist?

I'm not sure most of the people who are harping on this "birth certificate" issue even believe it's true; I think they're mostly looking for something to badger the winner with. It's amazing what people will do when they're feeling bitter.

Are there racists among them? I assume so, but I'm not sure what fraction it is, let alone if it's the majority. As for the rest of them, logic isn't at issue with most in this situation. It's an emotional response, just as many reactions are in the political arena. There were nut-cases dogging every President in recent memory, forcing them to spend time and attention on trivia - taking their time and energy away from the larger problems facing the people of this country.

Many of them, in this case, have trouble feeling any sort of sense of commonality - or community - with the duly elected former Senator for any number of reasons: some because he's not white, some because he's a Democrat, some because they think he's trying to impose socialized medicine, some simply because they thought we were doing well under the previous administration.

Right or wrong isn't at issue - logic won't change their position; they aren't open to debate, they aren't even listening. Sadly, it's the same sort of "we vs. they" thinking that is so easy to see as problematic in places like the middle east, but when we're caught up in it ourselves we lose our objectivity. It's great in a game of bridge, or as a fan at a sporting event, but inappropriate and counterproductive in this case.

So they pick something to hammer away at, something that doesn't sound - on the surface - like they can't abide a Democrat, or a man who's not another good ol' white guy, or whatever their particular thing is, in the White House. It's a mantle of plausible deniability, distancing their words from their true objection. As such, they're no more objective, or amenable to logical discussion of facts, than the Emperor in the parable that teaches us (or at least tries to) about keeping our perspective.

It doesn't take mental illness, or racism, to account for what's going on. All one of these conspiracy theorists needs is to be a little bit stubborn: pleased to believe that you can't call them anti-black, or anti-Democrat, while they hide behind the story that there's something suspect about a guy who beat out their guy.

In due time some will realize, like the emperor with the "new" clothes, that they've not got even one scrap of evidence to hide behind.

Some few may even expand their view, and decide our President is a lot more like them despite having parents of different colors, and a lot more interested in their welfare than, for instance, a Saudi prince.

But the man's only been in office about 7 months, and that's not a lot of time to win over the opposition while he's busy trying to dig us out of the hole the economy fell into during 2008. He's adopted an ambitious agenda: health care reform alone would be a major task, but he's working international diplomacy, education, and climate reform as well. He's got supporters who think he's not moving fast enough on their own top priority, be it civil rights for gay couples or reforming and regulating Wall Street.

The extreme cases, of course, will remain unswayed no matter how much success Obama has. Like extremists for other points of view elsewhere, they will make a lot of noise because they crave the attention more than anything.

Weekly Address: President Obama Calls for Real Health Care Reform

This is a brief presentation of Obama's Health Reform effort. This was in June. Once I get the full press conference I will post it.

Erin Andrews video peep show on CBS? Why?

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For some reason, ESPN reporter Erin Andrews has been the target of some pretty mean actions of late. First there was someone at ESPN filming her butt live. Then there were fans heckling her while she was trying to go on air. Now, there's the video peep hole matter, and news that it was on CBS!

Before we look at CBS, some background.

Erin Andrews has been on ESPN as a reporter since 2004. Before landing at what Dan Patrick calls "The Mothership" she was a reporter for Turner South covering the Atlanta Braves and before then was with Fox Sports Florida South. Since YouTube was launched in 2005, Andrews image as a "sports hotty" has grown with no additional promotion from her. In fact, the real Erin is a tech-using consumer of information and constant writer and Apple MacBook-fan:

Erin Andrews and her MacBook

It was, most famously, Playboy that fanned the flames of desire for her image online when it crowned her "sexiest sportscaster in the land" in 2008. After that, it seemed we constantly saw some weird photo of her, and now its come to this: on July 16th according to Wikipedia and TMZ.com, someone made a video of her nude in while showering in, reportedly, an athletic club. The video was removed but not before images from it sprang up around the Internet.

But why on CBS?

I know that there's a hunger for her image, but there's also a certain degree of respect for her - high - that should be maintained. CBS did not have to use the images from the video because it validates the video. See? A photo of her, fine. But, hungry for ratings and Internet traffic and money, they did use it.

I think Erin should make an example of the new CBS. The one without Walter Cronkite, who never would have thought to do such a thing.