Are You My...Mammy?

(Left to Right: Mattie Michael, Sethe, Sofia)

Forbes Magazine estimates that Oprah Winfrey has a net worth upwards of $1 billion. With a television show, magazine and her own network, there’s no question that Ms. Winfrey has an undeniable media influence. Additionally, Winfrey is acutely aware of her influence, as the following PowerPoint, which was taken from her own Harpo Interactive site, shows. Direct your attention to slide 11 of 19 you’ll see that Oprah knows her target demographic.

Facts are facts, and any reader with a functioning IQ can see that most of the people who fit the characteristics of the aforementioned demographic are middle-aged white women. This is a good business practice and Oprah should not be faulted for it. Why not market toward a demographic with an incredible amount of disposable personal income? The bigger question is, if Oprah knows her target demographic so well, why would she continue to choose movie roles that depict her as a slave, mammy or in a subordinate domestic role? Oprah has shown she is concerned about the image of women, and the negative stereotypes portrayed to the African-American community through some rap music. But, isn’t it more destructive and disturbing to continually choose culturally demeaning movie roles when you know that the majority of your loyal viewing audience consists of upwardly mobile, middle aged white women? Do the math and you’ll see that six out of eight of Oprah’s major movie roles fall into this category.

The Mammy Roles...

1. The Color Purple - Sofia (1985)
2. Native Son - Mrs. Thomas (1986)
3. The Women of Brewster Place - Mattie Michael (1989)*also served as executive producer
4. There Are No Children Here - LaJoe Rivers (1993)
5. Before Women Had Wings - Zora Williams (1997)*also served as producer
6. Beloved - Sethe (1998)

The Non-Mammy Roles...

1. Ellen - The Therapist (1997)
2. Ocean's Thirteen (2007)*appeared as herself

Why does the world hate the US? (in less than 50 secs)

Have you ever wondered why the world hates the US?

Understanding a Fragmented Iraq

In spite of the ear numbing word Iraq invading your everyday news source - I challenge you to think about the people of Iraq. The constant struggle over legislative power, wealth (oil control) and U.S. support is crucial, and there are many different cultural populations that are vying for it ---- not to mention the neighboring countries that would like their piece.

To understand this cultural divide in the time of "liberation", I propose an analogy:

What if Mexico liberated Southern California? Here you have a white-controlled area where the majority is Hispanic. Throw in another minority (African Americans) in the mix who have constantly been at war with the Hispanics, and oppressed by the whites. What would happen?

Whites would strive to keep their control, and even though they are the smallest in population they have the most resources. Hispanics would claim So. Cal. is rightfully their land, and that the whites stole it from them. Their populational majority would help push this argument. African Americans also have a large community and would not want it to be controlled by the whites (oppression) or the Hispanics (feudal). They would want nothing to do with either group.

In order to understand the correlation you must take it from a cultural divide view - do not take into account all of the other pluralities that would accompany that particular situation as that is a blog in itself --- there are more than two sides/issues to every story.

Moving forward, population differences are not always founded in melanin. Religion is another divider, and there are many more that subsequently form groups.

It is one's inherent means for a survival to belong to a group. In order for there to be a group there has to be another that is different. Basically for there to be an "us", it seems, there must be a "them". In the Iraq of the moment, that need to define by differences seems to be prevalent.

I raise these set of questions to you:
What groups do you belong to?
Do you dislike a certain group because of their beliefs -- and then question why can't we all get along? I personally am guilty of that oxymoronism.

As a resource to find a human perspective on this divide between Iraq's Shia, Sunni and Kurdish population I personally suggest you watch James Longley's Iraq in Fragments. This film is NOT how the United States is destroying Iraq. It is instead a portrait of the human side of Iraq. The trailer can be found below.

U know.

Stuff to think about.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4315024059102108031

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/JFK_JR/jj.html

A plea for the U.S cable news:

Please stop the useless debating between news 'EXPERTS' about every single subject!! What happened to just telling the news and letting us decide what we want to think about it. I am sick and tired of seeing two 'experts debate both sides of the issues'. Especially when it deals about subjects that have more than two sides or just plainly do not need to be furthered discussed into detail because there are no more details.

For example if a child is kidnapped in small town America, all you need to inform us about is when it happened, where it happened and how we can help. End of story. I don't need NANCY 'the scary southern witch' Grace to interview two lawyers in other sides of the country so they can repeat the already stated facts again and again in different words, while showing a 'live shot' of an empty street. If you are going into further detail about a story don't do it just fill up airtime. Do a real unbiased investigation.
Another example of useless waste-of time debating is when a network finds two 'experts' to discuss a 'controversial' issue, ( which 99% of the time has to do with sex or race). Most real controversial issues do NOT have two sides, they have many many more. And please STOP branding these debates with bullshit marketing slogans that use any of the words: Ultimate,Face off, Head to Head. Stop simplifying every issue to two extreme sides, its not only not fair to your audience but it is also DISINGENUOUS.
Unfortunately nothing is going to change anytime soon. Is it maybe because if they try to just report the news, stuff like THIS will happen?


-Jose Jimenez

An Inconvenient Proof (repost)

Ask your local bartender for a beverage made with Ethanol (180-proof grain alcohol) and you'll probably end the night doing some drunk dialing or praying to the porcelain gods. Ask a good chemist to denature it by adding methanol, isopropanol or a few other chemicals, then mix it with normal gasoline and you'll end up with E-85 Ethanol Fuel. Issue 1032 of the latest Rolling Stone features Jeff Goodell's thought-provoking article about America's endorsement of E-85 made from corn. If you can't manage to get through the editorial staff gushing over Sean Kingston and the horrid shot of Axl Rose in a pair of assless leather chaps (pause), then you can visit the links below:



Goodell's Rolling Stone Article

How Dwayne Andreas and the ADM lobby

In the interest of journalistic transparency, notice that Chevron and ADM are partial sponsors of the PBS program NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Look closely at the banner here

The Energy Act of 2005