Drums in the Global Village

The evolution of the white race. “Learn our ways, and perhaps we can cure your insanity,” said the Queen Mother.

Under all of the topics I’ve happily listed under “love to hate,” I must admit that Tavis Smiley’s “State of the Black Union” was at the very top. I am more upset than I thought I’d be with Smiley’s announcement a couple of days back that he is not continuing these annual forums. I think Smiley’s reasoning is a bit, um, punkish. Lemee get this straight: because we now have a few more radio talk show hosts and scores of Black blogs, and because Roland Martin has a Sunday chat show on TV One, we don’t need this annual national meeting of Black thinkers? How much of this has to do with trying to prevent any more nationally broadcast Black criticism of Barack Obama, since it did damage to the Tavis brand in the past?

I wonder what will rise up to replace it. Something must. We just can’t have 1,000 blogs and websites. We’ve had a lot of national (public) meetings over the years, but nothing stuck like this (corporate and conservative) one. Of course, if we had a movement, we would be meeting all the time. And doing things. Now Obama’s presidency is a marker to have no movement, and too many people are okay with that. It might just be up to small groups to hold (upside down) the flag.

JANUARY 15th UPDATE:  A much better version of what I was trying to say here is here.

And now, this:

The tearjerker point of “The End of Time” for me was Rose telling him it was time for him to go—before she ever met him! Allons-y, indeed! Yes, the two-parter suffered from the usual Russell T. Davies over-the-topness. Really, the whole story was just filling time for the last 20 minutes. And what a 20 minutes it was! Saying goodbye to characters I have known for five years now was/is/will not be easy. Yes, in years to come there will be dozens of novels, audio stories, etc., but it won’t be the same.

I can’t put into words how much I will miss David Tennant in this role. I’m glad he left, though; he will be a big Hollywood star one day, and he has to get out of the TARDIS to do that.

I will watch Matt Smith one day, but not today and not tomorrow. I will miss my soon-to-be cancelled subscription to Doctor Who Magazine. I will miss Rose, Martha, Donna (easily the best companion of the new series, and possibly one of the best ever) et. al. I will miss buying all of those Doctor Who comics starrting Ten(nant). And I will miss spending those weekends sneaking onto youtube to illegally watch my alltime favorite show of the last decade. No, Doctor and Donna, “I didn’t want to go,” either. *SNIFF*

Thanks, Google, for linking to this article. Popeye was a great part of my childhood. And of course I loved this particular cartoon.

Never.

On the one hand……

On the other hand…….

On the one hand and the other hand…….

First Ebony on the rocks, and now this? It’s like all my dreams are dying a slow death….. Poor Chicago magazines….. *sniff*

One of my students told me about Roosevelt Franklin today. Since I was part of the first generation of “Sesame Street” watchers (I’m 41), the name sounded familiar…….Wow….allathis is so 1969-early 1970s.

I’m looking forward to either reading this or reading about this.

And then there’s this.

NOV. 13th UPDATE: See what I’m talking about? Man, she’s great copy…..