Review Of The Jeffersons Television Series

I have been thinking about the Jeffersons television series lately. I watched a lot of television growing up. The reality is that while my mother was scrubbing floors and raising other people’s children, television was raising me. In this context the images of people from my community was important to how I thought that I could function in this society.  As a child you have to figure out which spaces you can occupy until you are conscious enough to create your own space. The Jeffersons was one of the crucial shows. It was about a dark man who worked his way out of the hood by running his own dry cleaners. George Jefferson was loud and obnoxious, but he was also competent and confident. George had 7 cleaning stores by the time the show ended, which he ran from his private office. Louise Jefferson was responsible for George’s rise. She did house work while he created the first store in his dry cleaning empire.  George never forgot about what Louise did for him no matter how large he grew. She never had to work another day. Louise deserved to her last days in leisure, but she did not do that. Louise volunteered at the Help Center where she helped other people who were still in poverty. I am in contact with a lot of educated dark people and a few of them are willing to make minor contributions, but none as much as Louise Jefferson. The whole point of slaves becoming free is to help free others. Selflessness is such a simple concept that too few understand. As I look at television today I cannot find one dark character that teaches a positive lesson. The Jeffersons television series has become more important as the quality of dark characters on television has declined.     

Review of Tin Man By Tracy Chapman

The song Tin Man by Tracy Chapman is a great love song. Tin Man deals with the loss of the emotion that one can have when they suffer heart break over and over again. The song stays exciting by straying into the mystical realities of our world. Tin Man has witches and magic men. I can definitely relate to chronic heart ache being an artist and scholar born to a people not interested in culture or thought. Tin Man gives us hope throughout the song that I will not tell you about. I would rather have you hear it. At this point in time, when so much emotion is rubbed out of everything we see and do, it is nice to have a song like Tin Man to listen to.   

Review Of An Encyclopedia Of Assholes By Darlington & Law

An Encyclopedia of Assholes by Kristoffer Darlington and Diane Law is one of the most honest books that I have ever read. We have a lot of assholes in high positions in this world, but thinkers are often afraid to call the assholes what they are. Darlington and Law are not afraid to it call like it is. This is not a book of opinion. This encyclopedia uses facts to point out the negative affects of some powerful people have on the masses of us. Some of the people in the encyclopedia are folks that I like, but the encyclopedia points out behaviors of these assholes that I cannot dispute. Reality is not negotiable. This book includes everyone from Prince to Dick Cheney. If you think you know powerful persons read An Encyclopedia of Assholes by Kristoffer Darlington and Diane Law to really find out what that person is. 

Review Of The Strain By Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is a different kind of vampire story. The Strain presents the vampires as non human beings that live on earth secretly. Of course there is always one member of the family that cannot stay in line with most enlightened way. One of these creatures is tired of living in the dark. This one is infecting everyone in New York City with ambitions to infect world. The Strain allows us to see what happens when the city becomes deathly ill and transfers death to others. This book shows us who is in control, who suffers the most, who gets treatment and who does not. The Strain also shows us that those who are the most knowledgeable are pushed out into the margins of our society. I know from personal experience about this subject. The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is the first book in a three book series and I am on the hunt for the other two books in the series. If you read The Strain you will see why.    

Timbro: Black People

Review Of Nigger By Randall Kennedy

The word nigger is like many other words, it is what we make it. Nigger by Randall Kennedy gives a nice history of the word nigger and how it became a violent word by one group over another. Nigger also shows how the victims of the word nigger took the word and made it a term and managed it differently. Kennedy tells us how the word nigger can be a term of affection or harm depending on where it used or who is using it on who. The fact that a word like nigger can still create so much chaos while our empire is literally falling apart shows how insane our society is. We tend to pour too much into some words while we let other words fly. You can read Nigger by Randall Kennedy to see for yourself the power that the word nigger has on consciousness of the United States.

Review Of Negro President By Garry Wills

Negro President by Garry Wills will teach you more about presidential politics than any political science class are willing to teach. This book teaches how slave votes were used during Thomas Jefferson’s day and how the votes of the descendants of those slaves are used today. Not much has changed in this regard. Many people have criticized Jefferson for writing all men are created equal while he was holding slaves and got elected by slave holders. Jefferson was not a hypocrite because he did not think that dark people were full people. I do not think that there is evidence that Jefferson was brutal to his slaves. I do not think that he was overly kind to them either. It seems as though slavery was an institution that had to be managed like any other institution. Negro President also taught me a few things about George Washington that I did not know. You know what happens on the surface of presidential politics, but you may not know what happens beneath the surface. Negro President by Garry Wills looks under the hood and takes apart the engine that drives presidential politics.