DAVID BANNER:SORRY EXCUSE OF A BLACK MAN

Apparently, David Banner is still whining, snotting and crying about the fact that black women are demanding that he act like an adult and stop portraying us in an insulting and degrading manner. Here is the interview he gave to Rolling Stone. And below is my response. A tip of the hat to WAOD.

You know, everyone seems to forget what this is really all about. This is about painting black women as bitches, whores, sluts, golddiggers and anything else so called hip hop "artist" care to paint us as, degrading us like so much used toilet tissue, all the while painting themselves as humanitarians. This is about taking away the view of a black woman as a human being, a living breathing entity, and not so much whole sale slop, to be used by black men to earn a dime from the very same folks on this post; whites. How can calling a black woman bitch, whore, slut be art? Who is David Banner to paint every black woman as such? Or any hip hop "artist" for that matter? Is he the arch angel of God that he knows that this is who she is? If everyone in the ghetto is calling black women by these names, doesn't it mean that he should be correcting them not joining them? All David Banner and the rest of hip hop is saying is this; we have found out that by degrading black women in a way in which they cannot defend themselves, and in a way that shows their degradation by us as black men, and in imagery that is insulting, disgusting and pornographic, which sells to the population with the most money, we want to continue as we have because not only does it make us money, it's our freedom of speech. We don't feel as if we have an obligation to portray black women in any realistic light whatsoever, as that does not add money to our pockets, nor to the pockets of our white masters, the record moguls we slave to. Black women should just sit down and shut the fuck up because we have finally found a way to use their black asses in a way that enriches us; writing lyrics like bitch I know; making sex objects out of women for years at BET; showing them in thongs and nipple covers, cavorting around with black men covered from head to toe in baggy clothing, showing nothing; Tip Drill; chinging a credit card card down a black woman's butt cheeks; yes Nellie, you will be forever remembered for that; showing the world that the only thing a black woman is good for is being ready for sex, any time, any where, any place, and with however many men we please; we want to be able to continue the degradation, and to hell with black women and what they have to say, it's all art. David Banner, in essence, is saying that I don't want to be an adult, I want to be forever 16, for who but a 16 year old could write such lyrics? Who but a 16 year old could ask to be excused for the imagery of black women as sexual jungle bunnies? As no more than a lascivious and lewd animalistic being? Only little boys would whine and cry in this way when they know they've been caught doing things they know are past them, when they know they need to put aside cursing women and begin to become men and respect not just black women but themselves. Only little boys would whine at being told they must now put away their "toys" and become men, and act as a man would act, not as a little boy, snickering behind his hand and cursing adults. That is what must happen if hip hop "artists" want to be respected. They must put aside their degradation and misogynistic views of women, and become part of the human race. If they want respect they're going to have to earn it. You're not a humanitarian if you don't treat one half of the race, and part of the race you belong to as so much garbage to be discarded and thrown away. Until you do this, I cannot consider you as men, for how can I when you degrade and disrespect me before the rest of the world? It doesn't work that way, and the sooner you accept this fact the sooner hip hop will grow and become respected for the incredible black created musical force that it can be, and not the destructive force of children.

A RAPE EPIDEMIC

Why I followed a story to the New York Times I don't know, which is often the case for me. My memory ain't worth diddly. I won't print the whole story here, but you can read it here. Be ready with a box of tissues. It's the story of a rape epidemic in the Congo. Damn.

THREE DOCTORS

Authors and 'Three Doctors' bond with fathers

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

NEWARK — They're three friends from Newark's inner city who demolished the stereotypes, overcame the odds and became doctors and authors.

They called themselves "The Three Doctors." Their third book, The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers (Riverhead, $24.95), arrives Thursday.

That also happens to be the birthday of Rameck Hunt's father, Alim Bilal. An ex-con and former drug addict, Bilal belatedly put his life together, inspired by his son's success.

"The publisher didn't know it was his birthday," Hunt says. "It's spooky in a way, but maybe it's a sign: that it's a book that was meant to be."

Hunt, Sampson Davis and George Jenkins, all 34, grew up in broken homes. As they tell it, their mothers and grandmothers did all the heavy lifting of being parents. Their fathers were mostly absent.

That part of the story is all too familiar. The rest is not: The three friends pledged in their senior year of high school that they would all go to college, then on to medical school.

They did, and they wrote about it in their 2002 best seller, The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream. A children's version, WeBeat the Street: How a Friendship Pact Led to Success, followed in 2005.

Hunt, an internist at the University Medical Center in Princeton, N.J., came up with the idea for the new book. At first, he thought it would be about just him and his father.

But as he talked to Davis and Jenkins, "we realized that each of us had a similar but different story to tell. We had all grown up in a world where it seemed normal for men to abandon their children."

Davis, an emergency-room doctor at Newark's St. Michael's Medical Center and two other hospitals, has a Christmas memory of the year when he was 6 when his father pulled a gun on his mother.

"Mine wasn't the kind of house where you could learn a lot about conflict resolution," he says.

Jenkins, a dentist in Harlem and a professor at Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, grew up with little contact with his father, who lived in South Carolina.

"I'm not sure I even knew his phone number," he says.

Never a Father's Day

In their predominantly poor and black Newark neighborhood, Hunt says, "Father's Day was kind of like Rosh Hashana," the Jewish New Year. "It seemed like a celebration for other people, a day that belonged to another culture."

For their book, they enlisted the assistance of Margaret Bernstein, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who wrote an article about them they liked.

They set out not only to describe their childhoods but also to include their fathers' stories and the sons' attempts to get past their lingering resentments. "Sometimes a son has to take it upon himself to bridge the gap when a father can't," is how Hunt puts it.

At the end of a workday last week, the three doctors all looked tired. They were meeting at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, where they have an office for their educational/medical foundation (threedoctorsfoundation .org). But the more they talked about their book, the more energetic they became.

Not that is was easy to write. Jenkins recalls that his initial enthusiasm for the project dredged up "bitter feelings I had buried about my dad, feelings that eat at you and can eat you up." For a while, he stopped work on the book, waiting to see chapters from Davis and Hunt. And he had to persuade his father to open up to Bernstein about his failures. Jenkins says, "My attitude was, 'At least he can do this for me.' "

Davis' father, Kenneth, 81, became too ill to cooperate, but the other two dads did. "Both were extremely likable men," Bernstein says. "Although they were absentee fathers, they weren't villains."

By then, Hunt's father, 52, had rebuilt his life and talked "easily about his life and his flaws and his many regrets," she says. "He knew how to wield his personal story effectively, like a cautionary tale."

She found George Jenkins Sr., 65, "wanted badly to not repeat the pattern of fatherlessness he'd had in his own life. Yet he didn't know how to create that bond during his brief visits with his son. I found it sad; he had thought he could wait until George became a man to explain his side of the story, but it was too little too late."

Newark: 'Worst of all'

In 1975, two years after the three doctors were born, Harper's analyzed the 50 largest cities and declared that Newark "stands without serious challenge as worst of all." After decades of losing white and middle-class black residents, downtown is in what officials call a "renaissance," but Newark remains one of the most violent cities. Per capita, its murder rate is three times higher than New York's.

In August, even jaded Newark was shocked by the murders of three black college students who, police said, weren't involved with a gang or drugs, just socializing at a playground. Witnesses said they were lined up and shot in the head in an apparent robbery.

"It's so senseless," Jenkins says. "They weren't bad kids. They weren't in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. How can you protect them?"

Hunt knows how quickly a life can change on the streets. At 16, he got into a fight with a crackhead, and to show off to his friends, he "gently" stabbed him in the thigh with a knife. Hunt was charged with attempted murder, but the case was thrown out when the victim failed to appear in court. The close call helped him realize "that being a rough guy wasn't me."

None of the three doctors is married or a father. All are dating, a subject they kid each other about. And all say that growing up with absentee fathers has made relationships with women harder.

"I never got a chance to see how to treat a lady every day, how to compromise, how to make a relationship work while raising a family," Jenkins says.

Hunt says: "We didn't write a how-to book. We're not telling anyone how to be a good father. But we wanted to help inspire and provoke people to think about their fathers or their sons and daughters."

He hopes the book is "more universal than it appears on the cover: three young black guys, like this is only a problem for black families."

Statistics do show fatherlessness is most common among poor black families, but Hunt says: "It can be problem even if the dad is in the home but emotionally unavailable. They don't have statistics for that."

At the funeral of Davis' father in May, a relative showed Davis a copy of a résumé Davis wrote when he was in medical school.

"My dad had made copies of it and sent it around to relatives down South to show what I had done. He was proud of me, but he couldn't tell me directly. So part of me has to say, 'That's OK. That's who he was.' "

For years, Jenkins didn't want anyone to think "that my father had something to do with the success I've experienced. So I admit that I have put up a wall between us."

Changing that remains a work in progress. His father's chapter in the book ends hopefully: "I continue to invite George to family reunions so he can meet the folks down here who are so proud of him. Perhaps one of these days, he'll make it."

Jenkins hasn't but says he hopes to someday: "It's always at the wrong time. I'm busy. I've got a new job, and I've got the foundation, and I've got my own life.

"But it's not malicious. I used to have a lot of resentment that he wasn't there when I needed him, but at some point you've got to let it go and say, 'What's the point?' One of these years, I'll make that reunion."

SONS TRY TO RECONCILE PAST WITH PRESENT

-George Jenkins Sr. and George Jenkins Background: His father's heavy drinking, George Jenkins writes, prompted his mother to leave South Carolina and move north with her two sons. Jenkins, who wasn't quite 2, writes, "I don't think I've seen my father a dozen times since we got on that bus." Current relationship: Still tenuous, although Jenkins says forgiving his father has allowed him to move forward. "I began to see that my dad didn't intentionally make things the way they were, nor did he want them to be that way. … We now talk fairly often and care enough to keep up-to-date with what's going on in each other's life." -Alim Bilal and Rameck Hunt Background: Hunt's parents never married. Except for one summer, Hunt never lived with his father, who spent more than two decades as an addict, in and out of prison. A decade ago, Bilal kicked his drug habit, went back to college and became a drug and alcohol counselor. Current relationship: Close, although Bilal suffered brain damage after a heart attack last year. He can't walk and doesn't speak much. His son has abandoned "visions of him going on tour with us to promote this book. I couldn't wait to show him off." -Kenneth Davis and Sampson Davis Background : After years of fighting with his wife, Kenneth Davis moved out to live with his girlfriend when his son was 12. Even before that, he had been a "distant and hands-off dad." He stayed in his son's life only peripherally, although he lived just 20 minutes away. Current relationship: Kenneth Davis died in May after years of suffering from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. His son writes, "There is a part of me that will always be missing, a part that is uncompensated by everything else I do."

JOHN DEPETRO:WHY COTTON GOES TO HARLEM

Summary: On MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams, discussing Bill O'Reilly's recent controversial comments about his visit to Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem, Rhode Island radio host John DePetro stated: "It was a discussion on race and we're talking about Harlem. And by and large -- I lived in New York for years -- white people don't go to Harlem." He continued: "If Dan Abrams and John DePetro, Bill O'Reilly, some white guys are sitting around a table, and Dan Abrams said, 'Yeah, I was up in Harlem last night.' We would think you were either, a) looking for drugs, or, b) looking for a prostitute."

O.K., there is something going on here. There's just too many white folks coming out of the woodwork with their racist views and attitudes! Video here.

REV. YEARWOOD:YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

Today, Tuesday Oct 2nd, I was in line for the Blackwater hearing on Capitol Hill at 9:15 in the morning. When I got to the front of the line at 11:30, Capitol Police stopped the line. I stood there for two hours while the same officers who leapt on me three weeks ago outside of the Petraeus hearing, pointed and stared at me. I stood there, humming “we shall overcome.”

Congresswoman Maxine Waters showed up at 1:30 and saw me standing there. She demanded that I be let into the hearing. Cops were swarming the door, and the honorable Congresswoman from California escorted me into the hearing. Once I got in, three cops stood near me, so I would not forget that I was in their territory.

It is just incredible that as a peace activist, a former Chaplain candidate in the Air Force Reserve, and a Minister, I would be treated so disrespectfully in the halls of Congress.

In case you've forgotten you can see video here.

MICHAEL MEDVED:WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

Michael Medved became Keith Olberman's worst person in the world last night, for spouting his racist views on slavery. You can watch the video here. Just click on the picture of Medved to be taken to the video. He deserves it.