Let's stop fooling ourselves on race - Separate & unequal

I can find racism everywhere - which is ironic because my white friends usually can’t find it anywhere. Since they’re not racist, they always have a non-race-based justification for what (to me) is obvious racism. I don’t blame them. They haven’t lived with it all their lives, so they don’t know the many forms it can take. Ask a white person if he or she is racist or knows any racists and the answer will always be “no”. Ask a black person if he or she has ever experienced racism and the answer will always be “yes”. That’s because racism lives in that mysterious place just beyond consciousness where our defense mechanisms dwell, making it difficult to recognize and easy to deny. But sometimes there is just no other explanation.

Last week, former Senator Mitchell released his report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Putting aside the questions of whether or not the report was necessary (and whether players should have their reputations destroyed by the word of guys facing jail time for distributing illegal drugs), the big news was that Roger Clemens, the greatest pitcher of his generation, was a steroid and HGH user. Over the last few years, I’ve heard some awful things said about the greatest hitter of his generation, Barry Bonds. On the field, he was arrogant, cocky, and showed up pitchers. Off the field, people said he was aloof, inaccessible to fans, and contemptuous of writers (who now may or may not vote him into the Hall of Fame because he “cheated”).

After the Mitchell Report, anything that was said about Barry Bonds can be said about Roger Clemens. As a kid growing up in Boston in the 80’s, I can tell you that the Rocket was no sweetheart, on the field or off it. He’s every bit as surly and just as much of a “cheater” as Bonds ever was. Roger is no more deserving of the benefit of the doubt than Barry, but he’s gotten it. If wanting to believe the best about the white guy while pushing the black guy under the bus for the same transgressions isn’t racism, then what is it?

There was a similar situation with last year’s Oscars. Alan Arkin was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing a heroin-addicted grandfather in “Little Miss Sunshine” and Eddie Murphy was nominated for his work as a heroin-addicted R&B star in “Dreamgirls”. For his part, Eddie had to sing, dance, and age almost twenty years before dying in Act II. Alan Arkin also dies in his role, but leaves the singing and dancing to Abigail Breslin. And despite the fact that Eddie won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in the performance of his life, he was passed over for Arkin (who wasn’t even nominated for a Globe) at Oscar time. Since the Academy can’t or won’t recognize Eddie Murphy’s work at least as much as the Foreign Press, I don’t blame him for telling them to keep their “serious films” and walking right out of the Kodak Theater and onto the set of “Norbit”. That Oscar was Eddie’s to win and there would have to have been a damn good reason not to give it to him. Alan Arkin’s earnest delivery of a tired old cliché (“A real loser is someone so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.”) doesn’t qualify.

It’s the same thing that was responsible for the Great Snub of 1985. There were two huge movies that year, both nominated for 11 Academy Awards: “Out of Africa” and “The Color Purple”, based on a story by a black author about black people and featuring an all-black cast. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Song, Original Score, Costume Design, and Make-up – but, somehow, not Best Director. How many Oscars did this epic movie win? Not a single one.

I acknowledge that the Academy did (finally) see fit to give some statues to some black people in the past few years. While it’s good that Denzel, Halle, and Jamie got some love, they earned their awards with their performances. Where “The Big R” comes into play is when we make excuses for the fact that one person’s work is judged by different criteria than another person’s work. Racism lives in that place in your mind where you give Roger a break that Barry doesn’t get, it exists in that place where Eddie has to work harder than Alan for the same recognition, and it thrives when you allow yourself to believe there are eleven good reasons why “The Color Purple” was passed over. In other words, racism is real – whether you want to believe it or not.

Give Bush a crown & call it a term - And stop treating me like I'm stupid

As the New Year approaches and we head for the home stretch of his administration, I’ve been trying to decide if George W. Bush is a bad guy. I’ve always believed that you can find something good about anyone if you look hard enough. If you judge him by how he treats his wife and his children, he scores well (he quit drinking for Laura and didn’t get mad when Jenna called him from the set of the “Ellen” show). Since I don’t know him like that, I have to judge him by how he treats me. That’s where we run into problems. I don’t insist that he respect me, I just hate that he treats me like I’m stupid. So he may not be a bad guy, he’s just a really lousy President. Last week’s statements about Iran are the perfect example of why I say that.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has every right to civilian nuclear energy. For four years, the UN and the IAEA has been trying to get Iran to come clean about how much progress they’ve made; the idea being to find out whether or not Iran was working on developing a weapon. Luckily, the U.S. has its own intelligence professionals working to answer the same questions. The conclusion they came to in the National Intelligence Estimate was that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003.

In October, the President was asked if he believed Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon. Part of his response was, “yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon…I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

There are two big problems with this response. First, I saw a movie about nuclear holocaust called “The Day After” when I was in 6th grade and it scarred me for life. Second, under the NNPT, Iran has every right to the knowledge of nuclear power that President Bush is willing to threaten nuclear war to prevent it from acquiring.

Did the President know that the NIE had concluded Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program when he used the words “World War III”? His answer was, “I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was Mike McConnell came in and said we have some new information. He didn't tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze…it wasn't until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.”

The President’s official story is that the Director of National Intelligence mentioned in passing that he had new information on the nuclear threat posed by Iran (the last country standing in Michael Gerson’s infamous “Axis of Evil”), but that he, the President, didn’t ask any follow-up questions over the course of the next three months. Then, six months after it was finished, the Commander in Chief was finally briefed on the NIE right after Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t believe this excuse if it came from my teenage nephew, yet the President expects me to believe what he says - as though I’m stupid.

It makes me wonder if we need to hear from him at all over the course of the next twelve months. What is there left for him to do? We know he’s not pulling any troops out of Iraq, we know he’s not putting any back into Afghanistan, we know he’s not going to get personally involved in brokering an Israeli/Palestinian peace deal, and we know he’s not signing any bills into law if it might help the Democrats. Essentially, we know he’s not going to do any of the things we need a President and Commander in Chief to do.

So let’s make him a deal. If he’ll agree not to bomb Iran and just retire to Crawford, Texas, we agree to let him be King until the end of his term. It’s what he really wants, anyway. We’ll get him one of those Burger King heads with the crown and the “Three Musketeers” goatee, and he can wear it with his suit and tie or his pilot’s jumpsuit or whatever. The people that love him will believe anything he says, and the ones who don’t wouldn’t believe him if he said water is wet; so it won’t matter that the King doesn’t speak. With Press Secretary Dana Perino as the prettiest mouthpiece to ever spin his lies, King W. can spend the next year doing what he does best: serving up “Whoppers” with a big, fake smile.

Actress' whining is a big, fat front - Real women have curves

I love the gossip websites. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I find the accidental entertainment provided by celebrities struggling to do what ordinary people do every day to be much better than almost anything they do on a set or in a studio. The perfect example is Miss Jennifer Love Hewitt responding to pictures of herself on the beach in Hawaii last week.

If you didn’t see it, TMZ posted a shot of a woman in a black bikini, knee-deep in the surf, and facing away from the camera. I thought it was Jennifer Lopez or Kim Kardashian. I was a little surprised to see that Sarah Reeves from “Party of Five” has developed into a fully-grown woman. At least I thought she was a grownup until the next day when she started complaining about the photos on her blog like a whining little child:

“This is the last time I will address this subject. I've sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women's bodies are constantly scrutinized. To set the record straight, I'm not upset for me, but for all of the girls out there that are struggling with their body image. A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be. And being a size 0 doesn't make you beautiful.

What I should be doing is celebrating some of the best days of my life and my engagement to the man of my dreams, instead of having to deal with photographers taking invasive pictures from bad angles. I know what I look like, and so do my friends and family. And like all women out there should, I love my body.

To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini -- put it on and stay strong.”

Who needs WGA writers when JLH is good for this kind of comedy?

First of all, let me speak for my “real women have curves” mother, sisters, and nieces and say that nobody is asking Jennifer Love Hewitt to “address this subject”, or any other subject not in a script. Secondly, the reason she “sat by in silence” while women’s bodies are “constantly scrutinized” is because she was hot. She’s lucky enough to have a pretty face, spectacular breasts, and, until recently, a hard body. I don’t believe for a second that she’s “upset…for all the girls out there that are struggling with their body image” or she wouldn’t have done spreads in “Maxim” and “FHM” and there wouldn’t be a post on her blog entitled “Babes of Comic-Con ‘07”. I think she’s upset because she messed around and read some of the comments posted under her picture – and saw how cruel people can be (especially when she tries to pass herself off as a size 2).

Somebody should tell Jen that this is part of the deal when you choose a high-profile career. I understand it wasn’t her choice to get into show business at five years old, but it is her choice to stay in show business now. As tough as it may be to hear, she needs to understand that it’s not her acting chops that got her starring roles on network TV shows, it’s her hotness. With lighting, wardrobe, and creative camera angles, “Ghost Whisperer” JLH can be just as hot as “Time of Your Life” JLH. But when you see her butt in a bikini through a telephoto lens in the harsh light of day, it is what it is.

The paparazzi aren’t going away and they’re not going to stop taking photos of her body. If she doesn’t like it, she has the power to change it. She could be up in the gym just working on her fitness (you don’t hear Cindy Crawford or Nicole Sheridan complaining about their bikini shots). Or (and I know this is going to sound crazy) she could just go to beaches where there are no paparazzi. After all, the whole point of giving yourself to the public in front of the camera is so you can afford privacy when you’re not working.

I ain’t mad at Jennifer Love Hewitt, but like all Pretty White Kids With Problems, she can cry me a river, then build a bridge and get over it. I grew up in the 80’s when Oprah Winfrey’s weight was go-to material on late-night talk and sketch comedy shows. But instead of complaining about it, she bought herself a nice spread on Maui where she can swim in peace. If I was Jennifer Love Hewitt, I’d stop whining and invest some of the $4m I made jiggling my hot body around the set of “Hearbreakers” in a beach house somewhere the cameras can’t find me.