MY POLITICAL TV NEWS ADDICTION

By: Lisa Powell

A few months ago, I was a happy work-from-home mom. Each day was filled with caring for my kids, tending to the hubby, doing case work with my clients and squeezing in a few minutes for myself. Little did I know that a nightmare was coming from a villain that I would have never expected…the STOCK MARKET! In early October, the Dow Jones industrial plummeted as much as 800 points. Before this fateful day, I had never paid attention to the numbers. All of a sudden my world changed. I had to try to get a handle on what was going on around me.

Now, each morning my television is programmed to come on at 6:45am to MSNBC so that I can view all of the events that occurred during my slumber. You ask “what could possibly have happened by this early time”? I have no idea, but I don’t want to be taken by surprise. Although I am just a simple woman from Louisville KY, the world has changed in such a way that I must know what is happening in China, Japan and every other location on the other side of the globe. Watching MSNBC is like having a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. After seeing what happened overseas, I can start my day. If stocks rallied in other places, I get my daughters up for school, get them dressed and make pancakes. If things are a bit “off”, they get a bowl of cereal. Sorry kiddos. As the day goes on, I watch the ups and downs of the stock market. I am good at multi-tasking, so I just have every television in the house tuned in as I tend to my daily duties. Something in my brain snapped a few weeks ago when I made the awful mistake of taking a nap shortly 4pm. When I went to sleep, the Dow Jones was down a mere 200 points. You know how they say that 40 years old is the new 20. Well, now a 200 point drop in the Dow is the new 100 point rally. I have adjusted to some level of disappointment, due to the resent explosion. On that horrific afternoon, I woke from my peaceful slumber and I tuned into my favorite channel. The Dow had dropped nearly 700 points for the day!!! The panic overtook me and I wondered what had happened. I called my sister in TX who watches the news channels almost as much as I do. We talked for over an hour about what this means for the world. I just had this incredible feeling that I was falling and did not know where I would land. The world as I knew it felt as though it were crumbling beneath me. So much seemed to be at steak. That day began my total obsession with political news. I wake to MSNBC, move to CNN, get a taste of FOX and listen to NPR in the car (the kids can no longer listen to their Radio Disney cd as we go to go to Chuck E. Cheeses). While I am doing things for my job, I can’t help myself… I have selected stocks on a constant stream. I go to bed with the peaceful voice of Keith Oberman lulling me off to a land where there are no numbers.

I had the privilege of having breakfast ( that turned into lunch and almost dinner) with my old college buddy Dr. Boyce Watkins today. Since he is a doctor, I thought that I would tell him about the psychological damage that is being caused by my obsession with political television news. Hey, he is a financial wizard, business professor, and doctor (to name only a few titles), so I thought that I would give him a chance at being a psychiatrist. I began by telling all of my sundry symptoms and how it was affecting my life. I could no longer watch SpongeBob with my kids. It was quickly discovered that they simply do not appreciate being manipulated into watching a fun filled episode of “Hardball” no matter how funny I tell them that Chris Matthews can be in the evening. Due to my addiction, I sit in the kitchen at the island during meals with the TV on instead of being at the kitchen table with everyone else. You just never know when some BREAKING NEWS might come on. Most of the conversation that I have with my husband have been surrounded by the new names that Obama is being called, what Palin did today (or what she is wearing), whether McCain has suffered another “senior” moment (you know that the day that he said “I couldn’t agree with him more…” at a rally was funnier than some of the SNL shows) and if Joe Biden was going to take his jacket off again and exclaim to his opponents “where I come from, you tell it to a guy’s face…”. This stuff can be better than any comedy show, scarier than any horror movie and have more cliff hangers than the best drama.

Back to the worst of them all…the stock market. The roller coaster is truly more terrifying than any Six Flags ride I have ever been on. The one and only question that Dr. Watkins asked was “why do you watch it so much?” All good therapists ask questions to make you figure out the answers to the problems yourself. I was totally stumped. To tell the honest truth, I have no idea what all of those numbers really mean. I did some research on all of the information and I might was well have been reading a foreign language. I am a social worker by profession and can only understand things by feeling. The only way that I can describe what the mean to me, is that it a financial gauge to understand how people are feeling. Do you know what I mean? There will be Breaking News that the Big Three auto companies are having trouble and the number falter. An hour later, someone will report that there might be yet another 100 KABILLION dollar AIG bailout and the number move again. A short time after someone says that the outlook on the futures of a favorable stock is positive and we end the day rallying. Although the day ends wonderfully, we have to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again…well, unless it is a weekend. On those two days I am in a coma. There was a time in my life that seems to far away that I used to take a break and relieve some stress. Now I sit and wait for the other side of the world to flip the lever on the financial roller coast once again.

As we listen to the frequently bleak financial and political news, we are all terrified of so many different things. These fears most times involve money and numbers. We are terrified of losing our homes, our stocks, our jobs, our savings…our minds!! Since Dr. Watkins and I are “talkers”, we spent more time discussing my issues and he nearly missed his plane flight. It was therapeutic simply to get it all out and ponder an escape. With that said, I have come to the realization that someone might need to unplug me, like Neo from The Matrix. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel as though they have entered another world…as if the life you had just over a month ago was a dream? So, until Morpheus comes along to pull me from the shell that I lie in, I will continue to tune in. However, I do promise that my girls will get pancakes or waffles each morning for breakfast and I will eat at the dinner table with my family…I will just turn the television up really loud. Is there a 12 step program for this?

Your Black Attorneys: Loving v. Virginia Doesn't Guarantee Gay Marriage

Proponents of Gay Marriage Have No Legal Argument Under Loving v. Virginia
By Syreeta L. McNeal, CPA, JD

Recently, proponents of gay marriage in California are protesting the passage of California’s Proposition 8. California Proposition 8 amended the California Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman.[1] Proponents of gay marriage have been making the argument that their struggle is equivalent to the struggle of African-Americans in seeking their civil rights in the 1960’s. One case that proponents of gay marriage readily equate their struggle to is Loving v. Virgina.[2] This article is intended to debunk the legal argument purported by proponents of gay marriage and show that this case does not embrace recognition of gay marriage on a state level.

Overview of Loving v. Virginia

On June 12, 1967, the United States Supreme Court held that Virginia’s statutory scheme to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications held to violate the Equal Protection and Due Processes Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.[3] Listed below is the issue, relevant facts, relevant law and analysis by Chief Justice Warren in rendering his opinion:

Issue:

• Whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?[4]

Relevant Facts:

• In June 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. [5]
• Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County.[6]
• At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. [7]
• On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years.[8]

Relevant Law:

• Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code (1959): "Leaving State to evade law. If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State, for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it, and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as provided in 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage."[9]
• Section 20-59 of the Virginia Code (1959): "Punishment for marriage. If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years."[10]
• U.S. Const. 14th Amend. Sec. 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Analysis by Supreme Court

Violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

• There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race.[11]
• The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races.[12]
• Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated "[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry" as being "odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100 (1943).[13]
• At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny," Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216 (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate.[14]
• There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification.[15]
• The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.[16]
• We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race.[17]
• There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.[18]

Violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

• These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.[19]
• The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.[20]
• Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888).[21]
• To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.[22]
• The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations.[23]
• Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.[24]

Differences between Loving v. Virginia and California Proposition 8

First, the California Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage does not violate Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. In 1959, the Lovings were charged with a state crime and incarcerated for marrying interracially in the District of Columbia and moving back to Virginia to reside. A white heterosexual couple could marry in Virginia without violating the law in 1959. A black heterosexual couple could marry in Virginia without violating the law in 1959. Only an interracial heterosexual couple could not marry in Virginia without violating the law in 1959. As a result, the U. S. Supreme Court considered the Virginia miscegenation statutes a direct violation of the due process of law for interracial heterosexual couples to exercise a basic right to marry in 1959.

In contrast to what occurred to the Lovings in 1959 in Virginia, currently the law does not penalize or incarcerate California citizens who choose to engage in same sex marriage in other states. California Proposition 8 amended the California Constitution to not recognize gay marriage from another state. What California has done is replicate what 47 states have done in their state constitutions. They defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman. This is not a penalty to California citizens like what Virginia did in 1959 to the Lovings. If a California citizen chooses to go to Massachusetts and get married and come back to California to live, they would not be incarcerated for the act like the Lovings had happen to them in 1959. The California amendment banning gay marriage is similar to what 47 states have done to their constitution by not recognizing gay marriage.

Second, the California amendment banning gay marriage does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. There are three levels of scrutiny that the court uses to review cases brought under the Fourteenth Amendment. Strict scrutiny is the highest level of constitutional review and it forbids state law from discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity or natural origin. The second level of constitutional review is intermediate review which forbids state law from discriminating on the basis of gender. The last level of constitutional review is rational basis and a court will uphold a state law if it appears to be one that is reasonably related to the end of protecting the health, safety and welfare of its residents. In Loving, the Virginia miscegenation statutes in 1959 were scrutinized under strict scrutiny because the state law discriminated on the basis of race.[25] In California, the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is not discriminating on the basis of race. Also, it is not discriminating on the basis of gender either. All the amendment is doing is following what 47 states did to their constitution and define marriage as the union between a man and a woman. So, it is illogical that the argument purported by the proponents of gay marriage should equate their struggle in California to that of Loving v. Virginia. That is why I am proud that 70% of the African-American citizens in California as well as the other citizens in California who did not fall for the delusional argument advocated by proponents of gay marriage. If proponents of gay marriage want to equate their struggle to the cases of the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, they need to dig a little bit deeper because Loving v. Virginia is not applicable.

Legal Disclaimer: This site provides information about the law designed to keep readers informed of pertinent legal matters affecting the African-American community. But legal information is not the same as legal advice -- the application of law to an individual's specific circumstances. Although we go to great lengths to make sure our information is accurate and useful, we recommend you consult a lawyer in your specific location if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is appropriate to your particular situation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)
[2] See Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
[3] Id.
[4] Id. at 2.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id. at 3.
[8] Id.
[9] Id. at 4.
[10] Id.
[11] Id. at 11
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Id.
[17] Id. at 12.
[18] Id.
[19] Id.
[20] Id.
[21] Id.
[22] Id.
[23] Id.
[24] Id.
[25] Id. at 8.

Your Black World: ABC’s ‘Life on Mars’ Rewrites Black History

ABC’s ‘Life on Mars’ Rewrites Black History

By: Tolu Olorunda

Staff Writer – YourBlackWorld.com

In approximately 42 minutes, Life on Mars, a new ABC TV series, sought to do the impossible: Rewrite Black history. On Nov. 6^th, ABC broadcast an episode called, Things to Do in New York When You Think You're Dead. The premise of this particular episode was centered on emerging racial tensions within Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, following the death of a 9-year old Black girl –believed to have been murdered by a Puerto Rican man. This watered-down version of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing was, I presume, intended to promoted dialogue around issues of inter-racial fellowship. Unfortunately, such megalomaniac decisions by big-media companies have only, historically, intensified the problem. It’s like MSNBC claiming its exploitation of incarcerated inmates in the Lockdown series is only a means to an end of educating younger people of the dangerous and horrific conditions of prison life. Or worse, BET intimating that its obsession with the American Gangster series is a way of informing young Black and Brown kids of the history and peril of gang deathstyle. In short, such inference is devoid of logic.

In the ABC-produced episode, the infamous Black Liberation Army made a cameo. This time, neither Mutulu Shakur nor Geronimo Pratt was featured. Instead, ABC, in true corporate fashion, hired a couple of hefty looking Black men, whose portrayal as thugs with no conscience goes against everything the BLA really stood – and still stands – for. Those who know the history of the Black Panther Party are profoundly aware of the strict level of discipline exhibited by both the BLA and the BPP. But ABC wouldn’t take this into consideration. Why would they? Aren’t lies the new truth? Throughout the drama-filled episode, the fictional Black Liberation Army conducted themselves like rogues. ABC’s version of the inner-city missionaries seemed to be more obsessed with street justice and irrational conclusions, than the liberation of their people. With ABC’s ongoing revision of history, it seemed appropriate when a high-heel-mini-skirt-wearing “sistah” was trotted out as the legal representative of the arrested BLA members. Once again, it doesn’t take a fifth grader to track the inconsistencies involved in this farce of a show. ABC’s depiction of Black Panther Party female members, à la Saffiya Bukhari (God rest her soul) and Assata Shakur, as scantily-clad-Hip-Hop-video -eye-candies is a spit in the face of history. No doubt, this was intentional. Sensationalism (otherwise known as, distortion) in Hollywood has always received the green light (Spike Lee’s Malcolm X is a picture perfect example).

In the infantile mind of ABC’s production staff, Black liberation is acceptably reduced to an over-saturation of Afros, the word “dig,” and street-thuggery. Isn’t it interesting that the same media outlet (ABC) which commissioned the demonization of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright – for his gospel of Black Liberation Theology – saw it fit to rewrite the entire history of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s?

Worse than the blatant alteration of history is ABC’s cavalier attitude toward escalating tensions between Black and Brown communities, which has played itself out dramatically in recent history. ABC’s exploitation of the conflict between Black and Brown communities is, sadly to report, normative in the media beltway – especially at moments with healing on the horizon. The media has a long tradition of inflaming rising heights of racial tension. Right-wing ideologues like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage and Michael Reagan have built successful careers of doing just that. It is no wonder that the same white-media, which revels in indiscipline and self-absorption, is, at this moment, declaring to the world that Black people have overcome every impediment that might seek to limit their progress. One Newspaper would even declare racism a “myth.” Such hubristic calculations by the same people who advertised slave auctions on their papers is to be expected, but a non-reaction from the progressive Black and Brown communities would only lend credence to cooperate networks such as ABC, in prolonging the accepted tradition of rewriting and redefining history. To put it bluntly, big-name media is like cancer in the lungs of a new born: No good shall come out it.