Not all blacks are open to religious instruction. But, they persist - and we still ain't buying.
In a new MSNBC article titled, Sharpton schools rappers who have been ‘seduced by Trump’, Rev. Al (who's looking like a Funeral Director these days) offers rappers these bars - which, sadly, do not even attempt to rhyme - in an effort to increase our meager civil rights education:
"Let’s go to the 1990s, when five Black and brown young men were falsely accused of raping a white woman in Central Park. It was Donald Trump that took out ads in the papers in New York saying they should get the death penalty. So if they want to cite how Blacks have been abused by the criminal justice system, cite the case where we marched and eventually it was proven these five young men — that Donald Trump called on to get the death penalty — was in fact innocent."
OK, so Al's asking us to remember all of that - which means also going back in time to his unfortunate "James Brown" period - as we're considering what he's telling us now, in his more recent, more slick MSNBC-friendly guise. Fine. Whatever. None of this is pleasant for anyone involved, but I try to do as I'm asked, for my people: I do miss that medallion, tho.
As a black man, known A) to rap now and then B) to clearly remember these events, and C) to have also been seduced by The Dark Side, I took Al's call personally, and as seriously as I could.
Which wasn't much. The Central Park Five is an old story, I've heard too many times before, and always from dubious "spiritual" types. People who make a big deal of their religious background, but who are always proven not to be tied too-tightly to reality, or morality, as I understand them. The Uber-Catholic Joe Biden is a perfect example of who'd bring it up. And a perfect example of no one correcting him, or maybe knowing how to correct him, even when he's 100% wrong. The media wasn't clamoring to do it, then or now. It's crazy-making.
Exhibit "B": When They See Us, the Netflix movie executive produced by Obama's 2013 Medal of Freedom winner, Oprah Winfrey, the queen of NewAge, AKA being totally "out there," so not above telling a racist fib or two or three on film.
"Moved on" to her Best Life, which included telling this lie, which was a doozy.
Because - unlike in another Netflix movie (Oprah didn't produce) where she's promoting a rapist,...
When They See Us has her promoting five convicted sex criminals, and - because of her - people have totally bought it. I mean, one of these guys has now entered politics. Evidence be damned. How do you like them apples?
Evidence? Go back to the phrase "falsely accused": Before the cops even knew the nature of crime they were dealing with, one of the boys, Raymond Santana (purple scarf, above) said, "I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel the woman's (breasts)." And, as Ann Coulter noted, "All five boys confessed - four on videotape with adult relatives present and one with a parent present, but not on videotape." So no one "accused" anyone of anything: they gave themselves away. That's inescapable reality, not a movie. So why are the CP5 free?
Because of Matias Reyes, the serial rapist who should be known as the Central Park Sixth. He was one of the lead actors in the attack, but not part of the CP5's group of friends. In prison, the CP5 forced him to take the blame for everything that happened that night, a bullshit confession that wasn't hard for authorities to accept since A) Reyes was the only one who left clear DNA evidence, and B) it would make people like Al Sharpton tone it down about America being racist. Hell, New York even threw in some walking around money. Problem solved.
So now it's Trump is a racist - which is toning it down by severely limiting the parameters - but brings us back to another now-long-standing lie blacks still ain't buying, because we deal in an identifiable reality, and morality. Some of us, anyway. The blacks with long memories. Who, nowadays, ain't always most rappers.
But anyone old enough to probably not seek advice from an MSNBC Al.
I woke up this morning,...thinking about “woke” - a lot.
Specifically about how, just like Americans stupidly do yoga without understanding it or the dangers, they're also approaching woke in the same ignorant, superficial way. It's a weakness.
And, though it’s fun to watch otherwise intelligent people babble on authoritatively about something they clearly have no clue about - as though they're the smartest people on Earth, coming to save us from,…what they don’t understand - if you're black, and been through the whole "woke" thing, it still leads to feeling like you’ve been born in the world's most stupid era.
Every American, by now, should know what “woke” means. Long story-short: Smart. Blacks have used the term since the 1940s. That the rest of America is just now waking up - to the term - speaks volumes about how cut-off most are, from we people they've supposedly lived side-by-side with for centuries. Who, they insist, don't deserve reparations, presumably because they know our lives so well. They watched a few Thomas Sowell videos, don't you know.
That, Ladies and Gentlemen, would be a woke observation.
I been "woke" to black life. In the '90s, the joke was, if you wasn’t by then, your dumb ass gonna stay nappin'. Remember "It's a black thang, you wouldn't understand?" It appears that may still be true.
Now it's in the hands of the NewAge, so I've had nothin' to do with it. Seriously, those people are crazy, and anything they're behind is a lie that goes right off the rails.
It's crazy that 30 years after I was creating my own Jan. 6, people like John McWhorter (who it's easy to imagine nappin') are still actually missing NewAge, to see "woke," butas a “religion.” He's like people who aren't aware Trump highjacked the Republican Party: the NewAge movement took over "woke" - that's the sick 2023 M. Night Shayamalan twist.
It's weird, watching this deeply religious country, terrified over the growth of a religion. After a lifetime of Christians insisting we, specifically, need to find “religion” as THE answer to all of our problems, now they fear a belief. In terms of NewAge - which is widely acknowledged as harmful - going "woke," I think it's fair to ask, “What’s changed?” Here's a quote to help explain things:
"If you've ever gone browsing in an occult bookstore (and you really should; it's like browsing in a science fiction bookstore, only the authors really believe the stories they're writing, or pretend to), you may have seen a shelf labeled "conspiracies" right alongside the sections marked "astrology" or "Tarot." People who write about fringe politics often miss the extent to which New Agers serve as a transmission belt, allowing ideas from the left, the right, and the counterculture -- not to mention more outré folks like the UFO buffs -- to slide from one subculture to another."
"Many of the progressive and holistic ideas that lie at the heart of today’s lifestyle Left, the environmental Left, and the New Age movement share numerous unquestioned philosophical, emotional, and practical similarities with the intellectual and cultural currents that fed into and sustained Nazism."
- Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism
Those are white women who listen to Oprah, who, skeptics have noted "promotes the paranormal, psychic powers, new age spiritualism, conspiracy theories, quack celebrity diets, past life regression, angels, ghosts, alternative therapies like acupuncture and homeopathy, anti-vaccination, detoxification, vitamin megadosing, and virtually everything that will distract a human being from making useful progress and informed decisions in life." That's their bastardized, inside-out version of "woke." Just from that old list from 2008, I can pull out psychic powers, new age spiritualism, conspiracy theories, quack celebrity diets, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination as major social problems, today, that were helped along by Oprah. I'd add scarily bad journalism to the list, as well. Hell, I could make a really long list after how long she's been around. These people were destined to be a problem.
But, if they were clever, they would've screamed "Fraud!" because that would've been "woke".
"For [Oprah's] believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-'love.' But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is 'spirituality,' illiteracy is 'authenticity,' and schoolmarm moralism is 'character.' It's a culture where people apologize by saying, 'I'm sorry you took offense at what I said,' and forgive by saying, 'I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you.' And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented."
Anybody can see Oprah's 2016 Netflix show, Greenleaf, is a “megachurch melodrama” but can they see she's fucking with you?
Are they smart enough to know it's a cover for that other Netflix show, When They See Us?
You’d think it wouldn't be possible for deeply spiritual and religious people to make deeply dishonest and racist films - films anyone could debunk - but Oprah would. Because she's the Queen of "Woke."
"That would be the same Marianne Williamson who introduced the world to "A Course in Miracles" in her book, A Return to Love. And those would be the Miracles described by Jesus-channeler Helen Schucman, who, at the end of her life "cursed, in the coarsest barroom language you could imagine, 'that book, that goddamn book'," and whose life-partner sidekick, William Thetford, was oh-btw concurrently doing research on "Personality Theory" funded via the CIA's then-secret MK-ULTRA mind control program. Weird, I know. But hey, I'm just saying."
- Rage Boy, from The Mystic Bourgeosie, who noted Obama "actually said 'new age' twice in his inauguration speech"
It'd be amazing if no one didn't notice something.
"Woke" is knowing what was being let loose, in 2013, when Obama - who the NewAge called "The Lightbringer" - was handing out the U.S. Medal of Freedom like it was candy. And what effect such lousy recipients would have 10 years later.
