Anderson@Large

New York Street Games

First Lady Michelle Obama is on a mission promoting her Let’s Move! campaign to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity.

The Childhood Obesity Task Force recently released an action plan, “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation.” Among its recommendations:

Getting children more physically active, through quality physical education, recess, and other opportunities in and after school; addressing aspects of the “built environment” that make it difficult for children to walk or bike safely in their communities; and improving access to safe parks, playgrounds, and indoor and outdoor recreational facilities.

Back in the day, New York City kids never stopped moving in the built environment – the sidewalks and streets. Whether it was dodge ball, stickball or hide-and-go-seek, kids were physically active.

My favorite games were hopscotch and skelly. And I loved jumping double-dutch.

To this day, when I pass girls jumping double-dutch, I think about asking for a jump. But I quickly come to my senses. I  would probably get tangled up in the ropes and fall flat on my you-know-what.

But one is never too old to take a walk down memory lane. So check out “New York Street Games,” a documentary that will premiere at the Village East Theater next week.

Black Voter Turnout: Act II

In the 2004 presidential election, black voter empowerment groups were upstaged by the fly-by-night America Coming Together. ACT was spearheaded by Steve Rosenthal who convinced major donors that he knew more about black voters than the organizations that closed the racial gap in voter registration and turnout.

In one election cycle, ACT and its partner, the Media Fund, burned through $200 million. The ROI was a Democratic Secretary of State in Missouri. Still, Rosenthal bragged that his high-tech ground operation was a success, but the patient died.

With no accountability, ACT packed up its PDAs and has not been heard from since.

Dr. Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Center at the University of Maryland, is a longtime critic of outside groups big-pimping black voters:

In my book ‘’Freedom Is Not Enough,’’ I wrote that in the 2004 election, Americans Coming Together (ACT), a White Democratic-leaning 527 organization funded by a collection of rich donors like George Soros, went around Black civic and religious organizations and sponsored its own voter turnout drive in the Black community.

Legions of kids with Blackberries showed up in places where the NAACP, Urban League, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Black churches, Black labor unions and local Black civic organizations had worked for years to turn out the Black vote successfully. The result was that not only were many of the Black organizations de-funded, but our strong Black churches and civic organizations were pushed aside to make way for professional canvassers.

Walters has seen this play before:

The Obama campaign is using the same tactics of ACT, financing thousands of young kids coming into Black communities to register Black voters, when from my brief survey, traditional Black organizations who have done this for years have received no funding from the campaign. Now, there are some legal issues here that complicate non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations receiving direct funding from political campaigns and the fact that the Obama campaign has raised more money than the Democratic Party and leaned on 527s not to come into the game. But it seems to me that they could have been worked out to enable the Obama campaign to be an empowerment vehicle for the Black community.

So it was ironic to me that Michelle Obama would urge a convention of Black Baptist ministers to turn out their people to vote – at the last minute in the campaign, with no accompanying funding mechanism – when Blacks have criticized the Democratic Party for years for doing the same thing.

Ironic indeed. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

GOP Targets Michelle

It is open season on Michelle Obama, the New Yorker’s "Angry Black Woman" in combat boots.

A while back, the Tennessee Republican Party got all shook up when Michelle made a campaign appearance in Nashville. In advance of her campaign trip to Seattle, the Washington State Republican Party rolled out a welcome attack video.

Barack Obama has again asked folks to lay off his wife. In an interview with Glamour magazine, Obama said:

It's infuriating, but it's not surprising, because let's face it: What happened was that the conservative press—Fox News and the National Review and columnists of every ilk—went fairly deliberately at her in a pretty systematic way...and treated her as the candidate in a way that you just rarely see the Democrats try to do against Republicans. And I've said this before: I would never have my campaign engage in a concerted effort to make Cindy McCain an issue, and I would not expect the Democratic National Committee or people who were allied with me to do it. Because essentially, spouses are civilians. They didn't sign up for this.

Like it or not, Michelle is fair game. So she should put on some fashionable boots and keep on stepping.  She should also borrow a phrase from Nancy Sinatra:

These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

With Obama leading John McCain in the polls, on Jan. 20, 2009, Michelle might be able to say, "Are you ready boots? Start walking down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House."

New Yorker Magazine Runs for Cover

The July 21 cover of the New Yorker perpetuates racial stereotypes. In the name of satire, the "Politics of Fear" cartoon plays into the smear that Barack Obama is not patriotic. The depiction of Michelle Obama as a machine gun-toting revolutionary in combat boots evokes the "Angry Black Woman."

In a transparent attempt to cover its rear, the New Yorker has compiled a gallery of past political covers. But without context, the current satirical cover merely fuels "a lot of distortions, lies and misconceptions about the Obamas."

A British cartoonist wrote:

Any regular reader would immediately 'get' that cover as it was intended. A not too subtle lampoon of the exaggerated right wing smears Obama has been subjected to so far. I mean, the Stars and Stripes burning in the fireplace. Come on.

So the message should be clear.

But I'm afraid it isn’t, because taken out of context, it can mean whatever you want it to. And here we come to the internet. Seen on its own, scattered randomly over the internet, with no knowledge of what the New Yorker's mindset is, this cartoon can be interpreted however you wish. As a stand-alone image on the web, it really could be some Right-wing website or magazine's propaganda. But it doesn't really matter - it's a cartoon of Obama worshipping anti-American terrorism.

For his part, Obama is downplaying the kerfuffle. He told CNN's Larry King:

Well, I know it was the New Yorker's attempt at satire. I don't think they were entirely successful with it. But you know what? It's a cartoon, Larry, and that's why we've got the First Amendment.

And I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what's happening with the banking system and the housing market, and what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, than a cartoon.

So I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

King asked, "But didn't it personally sting you?"

Obama said:

I've seen and heard worse. I do think that, you know, in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead. But, you know, that was their editorial judgment.

Ultimately it’s a cartoon. It’s not where the American people are spending a lot of their time thinking about.

OK, end of story.

Uptight about Michelle

Try as I might, there is no escaping the presidential campaign. I attended some film screenings at the Afro-Punk Festival over the Fourth of July weekend. The 1968 film "Up Tight!" is a story of revolution and betrayal set in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Its stars include Raymond St. Jacques, Roscoe Lee Brown, Max Julien, Juanita Moore and Ruby Dee.

During the Q&A following the screening, Ms. Dee noted that they were wrapping up filming when Dr. King was assassinated. The director, Jules Dassin, and film crew went to Atlanta for King’s funeral. The film includes powerful images from that day.

"Up Tight!" had a limited release in the United States because Paramount Pictures, its distributor, got cold feet. In response to a question about the film’s title, Ms. Dee said:

With the assassination of Dr. King, it was an uptight time…Being black in the U.S.A. is an uptight situation. If you’re going to survive, you have to loosen up.

The screenwriters’ liberal use of "whitey" brought to mind the rumor that Michelle Obama was caught on tape using that racial slur. The smear has since been debunked by the Obama campaign. The rumor was spread by someone outside the black community because black folks haven’t used the word "whitey" since we were Negroes.

Still, the attacks on Michelle are unrelenting. As the Washington Times reported:

Even as Mrs. Obama appeared on ABC's "The View" in an effort to "soften" her image, one trio of black women launched a Web site, MichelleObamawatch.com, to monitor the coverage of the woman already disparaged as a "Baby Mama," a racist and an unpatriotic radical.

Gina McCauley, founder of MichelleObamawatch.com, said the blog is "a repository of all of the criticism, praise, and general chicanery thrown at Michelle Obama between now and November." Readers are invited to monitor media coverage and contribute to the site.

For more info, send an email here.

Angry Black Women?

In a recent appearance on FOX News Channel, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas complained that black women on television are "usually angry about something."

It’s beyond belief that a talking-head on a cable network that labeled Michelle Obama a "baby mama" wants to know why black women are "angry?"

Since Thomas brought it up, black women are "angry" about:

• an unemployment rate that is twice that of white women
• a mortgage industry that targeted black women with high-interest subprime loans while two U.S. senators were given cut-rate VIP loans
  
• a consumer credit industry that redlines black neighborhoods
• a prison industrial complex that criminalizes black males

Thomas doesn't understand the impact of racial disparities. Nor is he culturally competent to distinguish passion from anger.

So with all due respect Mister Charlie Thomas, STFU.