It's bizarre, how lawyers and so forth are blogging online, without mentioning Judge Joe Brown.
"The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labour & double its Produce. All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity,..."
“The sleep of reason brings forth monsters, and the past two decades have produced monsters galore. Some are manifestly sinister, others seem merely comical---harmless fun, as Nancy Reagan said of her husband’s reliance on astrology. Cumulatively, however, the proliferation of obscurantist bunkum and the assault on reason are a menace to civilization,..."
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.
The story of cults, and how they've integrated into the fabric of society, is a mystery to most Americans. Joe Rogan seems baffled to hear they still exist when, today, they're receiving the most coverage they've ever had in history.
In a discussion of how the media encourages mob rule, journalist Mark Lamont Hill can't grasp "innocent until proven guilty," no matter how many ways Judge Joe Brown explains it to him.
Even with Honest Trailers available, Hollywood churns out garbage.
