Anderson@Large

School's Out

Though it’s been longer than I’ll ever admit since I was a school kid, I still look forward to the last day of school.  For one, I get a break from students’ loud talk and horseplay on the subway.  So, to school kids everywhere:

No more pencils, no more books,
No more teacher’s dirty looks!

See you in September.  Sigh.

Crash and Get Burned

I finally got a chance to see “Crash.”  By now, you probably know that Oprah Winfrey was denied entry to Hermes. This faux pas is being described as Oprah’s “‘Crash’ moment.”

The store has since apologized (and here) and invited her to come back. Oprah’s response: Non merci.  She rightly refuses to spend her money (and here) where shop clerks treat her like a suspect rather than a prospect (and here).

Unlike Oprah, I didn’t even try to enter the shop when I strolled along the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.  Hermes is one of those places where if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it.  Still, I have two Hermes scarves that I bought on sale at a department store (or was it a flea market?) in Paris.  I used to wear my Hermes scarves draped over my shoulders like Teresa Heinz Kerry, another African American billionaire (hey, she was born in Mozambique), but now I will wear them as a do-rag.

When "The Oprah Winfrey Show" resumes production in September, Oprah will show Hermes no mercy (and here).

Rice and Beans

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be in New York City today (and here) to promote Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics.  And make no mistake it is the Mayor’s bid.  While generally supportive, New Yorkers couldn’t give a hill of beans about the Olympics if it’ll cost them money.  And throwing Rice at them won’t amount to a hill of beans since she is as unpopular (and here) in the Big Apple as a low-carb diet.

High-Stakes Test

Today is National HIV Testing Day.  Phill Wilson, founder and executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, recently wrote:

On Monday, June 12, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that African Americans represent about half of all people living with HIV in the country. Half! We’re only 13 percent of the population. We already knew three quarters of new female infections are among African American women, who are getting HIV largely through sex.

It gets worse.  CDC also revealed a study—the first in a series that the agency hopes will give us unprecedented specifics about the number and nature of HIV infections in America—suggesting that half of all Black homosexual and bisexual men are already positive.

Meanwhile, improvements we once saw among youth are reversing. After declining by 30 percent throughout the 1990s, the number of new HIV infections among young men of all races shot up 41 percent between 1999 and 2003.

For more than two decades now, AIDS activists have rightly asserted that this is not just any other disease. It’s a virus that preys upon the most marginalized in our society. As a result, infection continues to carry great deals of stigma. It is, after all, a sexually transmitted disease, and one that is most likely to affect those who are having anal sex or using drugs.

But on June 12 we entered a new era. We can no longer afford to trifle with the politics of America’s culture wars, whether they come from the left or the right. It is time that everyone, particularly African Americans, take responsibility for this monster’s longevity.  Individuals, community organizers and policymakers must all begin to hold themselves accountable.

As individuals, two things are clear. First, every African American who does not know whether he or she is HIV positive or negative has the ability to find out. Free, confidential testing is available in any every part of this country. Go find out your status.  Be accountable.

Second, everyone of us who know we are HIV positive have the ability to stop the virus’ spread, to not allow ourselves to be a link in the insidious chain. Similarly, everyone who is negative has the ability to stay that way, by taking responsibility for your own health. Be accountable.

For the location of a testing site near you, click here.

Hasta La Vista, Baby

I LOL as I listened to this NPR report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval rating is dropping faster than a lowrider (and here).  According to the Field Poll:

There has been a steep drop in the regard that Californians have of the job that Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing as Governor…

Among all California adults, regardless of whether they are registered to vote or not, the Governor’s decline in approval is even more pronounced, with just 31% approving and 58% disapproving of his performance in office.  This is a reversal from four months ago when 54% of the adult public approved and 35% disapproved of Schwarzenegger.

As a former California resident I know that the state, or at least the southern part, has earned its reputation as La-La Land.  But one would have to be completely loco to think that the Govenator could terminate government services and run roughshod over public employees with impunity.  That only happens in bad Hollywood movies.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Supporters of PBS scored a surprising hit yesterday when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting failed to name Patricia de Stacy Harrison its president.  Harrison’s appointment would further undermine the independence of public broadcasting (here, here and here).

I knew Harrison when she was cochairman of the Republican National Committee.  She appointed me a national vice chairman of the New Majority Council, the predecessor to the African American Advisory Committee (and here).  Harrison’s commitment to free speech and diverse voices is an open question.

Consider:  When black women were excluded from the Republican Women Leaders Forum that she organized, she received an inquiry about the snub from a reporter at the Los Angeles Times.  She then called me to say that she was “disappointed” that I had spoken to the press before calling her.  As if.

I thought if she was disappointed by the news report, then she should avoid the Washington Times because we -- the uninvited -- had placed an ad to welcome the invitees.  The open letter was signed by me and five other black women, including Phyllis Berry Myers and Gwen Daye Richardson:

In 1851, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, active abolitionist and suffragette, gave a speech at the National Women’s Suffrage Convention in Akron, Ohio, responding to men who proposed women be denied right on grounds of physical and intellectual weakness.  Truth said, in part:

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.  Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ain’t I a woman?”

On the eve of the 21st century, black Republican women are still agitating for inclusion in mainstream activities in the party of Lincoln.  On behalf of the millions of black women who are voters, taxpayers, wives, soccer moms, caregivers, entrepreneurs, community and civic leaders, we ask the organizers of the Republican Women Leaders Forum and GOP leaders:

Are we not women?

I’m still waiting for a response.

Race to the Bottom

Today, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. Anthony Weiner will introduce the “Health Care Accountability Act (HCAA).”  The legislation takes aim at corporations like Wal-Mart (here and here) that boost their bottom line with rock-bottom wages and no benefits (and here).  According to its cosponsors:

The HCAA will expose a growing and costly national problem of large profitable companies, like Wal-Mart, shifting their health care costs onto taxpayers.  Wal-Mart’s relentless pursuit of corporate greed has come at a high price for their workers health care.  More than 600,000 Wal-Mart workers are not covered by the company’s health care plan.  Poverty level wages combined with high deductibles, costly premiums and strict eligibility requirements force tens of thousands of Wal-Mart’s workers, spouses and dependents onto public health care programs designed for needy families and children.

Bottom-feeders like Wal-Mart are coming under increased scrutiny (and here) for their implicit company policy of having taxpayers pay for their employees’ health care:

So here’s how it works: Wal-Mart offers insurance, but aggressively shifts the cost onto its employees.  The low-wage workers then pass up the unaffordable coverage and turn to the states. If this isn’t exactly company policy, it is at least company philosophy.  CEO Lee Scott, at the company’s recent "summit" for the media, even described it.  He said some state health programs are “so lucrative that, in fact, it’s hard to be competitive with them and certainly extraordinarily expensive to be competitive with them.”

               

Since when did safety-net programs funded by taxpayers become another consumer product? Who decided that this choice has no more significance than deciding between shopping at Wal-Mart or Costco?

To hear Scott and other company spokesmen tell it, the company’s workers are free to choose Wal-Mart coverage and just as free to ‘‘choose’’ Medicaid, if that’s what suits them.  Of course if they ‘‘choose’’ Medicaid, their coverage is financed not only by Wal-Mart but by all other businesses that pay state taxes. And by workers -- waitresses and janitors and clerks and cab drivers -- who pay taxes but may have no insurance of their own.

I’m sure Wal-Mart will choose not to carry Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price when it’s released on DVD later this year.