What the world needs now are jobs sweet jobs. Somewhere I heard there was rioting in Iceland because of high unemployment. Why didn’t the established media report on this or the fact that the financial collapse in Iceland resulted in a new election? Maybe it’s because if the conflict is in the details of the stimulus bill, and if derailing the bill makes good copy — so we feature more politicians who are against the stimulus than for it — then we will have the drama of Iceland and Greece here at home. Bad for the country but great for ratings.
The established media isn’t about prevention. (please read my sarcasm or HOLD MY EARRINGS!). Also check out this interview on “Bill Moyers Journal” (2/6/09) with Jay Rosen (PressThink) and Glenn Greenwald (Salon.com) – “Is the established press preventing political change.” I took away the question mark on purpose.
Somwhere I heard an American was travelling in Korea. They were on a train and noticed all their fellow passengers talking on their cell phones while the train was travelling through a long tunnel. Gee, I can’t even get cell phone service in an elevator. The stimulus talks about building and improving infrastructure. The U.S. is still partying like it’s 1999. Everyone else has left the building.
The free “We Are One” Sunday concert on the Mall during the Inaugural weekend began with an opening prayer by Bishop Gene Robinson. I missed it live and on the HBO replay. My sister emailed the following message with the prayer text.
Millions of people heard Rev. Rick Warren deliver the Invocation at the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama on Tuesday. As many of you know, Warren vocally supported the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which took away the rights of same-sex couples to legally marry. Fewer people saw the “We Are One” inaugural concert that took place at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. And even if you followed on radio or watched it on tv, you would not have seen Bishop Gene Robinson’s opening prayer because HBO and NPR chose not to air it. As many of you know, Robinson is the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church.
According to updates, the Presidential Inaugural Committee miscommunicated the time Bishop Robinson was to appear on the program. His prayer will be included on future broadcasts according to HBO executives. Bishop Robinson took his place on stage at 2:20 pm. The start-time was 2:30. NPR hosted Bishop Robinson on “Talk of the Nation” the next day (1/19/09). As far as the Bishop is concerned, the broadcast omission is all “water under the dam.”
However, what you didn’t see on HBO “citizen media” via Christianity Today and YouTube made this video possible (Sunday, January 18, 2009)
Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009
Delivered by the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson:
Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
On another note (no pun intended), it appeared what you saw during the performance of the classcial quartet January 20th, was not what you heard. The performance was live for those within earshot; the broadcast was a recording.
But let me speak in their defense and from experience. Instruments made of wood and string instruments especially HATE COLD WEATHER. They are impossible to play in tune in cold or damp weather. The wood will crack. The strings might break. You will sound horrible. So, I’m not mad with these musicians. All water under the dam now.
Artist/illustrator John Maviroudis snag the cover for the upcoming print edition of The Nation magazine. Maviroudis will be offering limited prints of the cover. (for info. check his web page: www.zenpop.com)
A picture may speak a thousand words, however, in this case it speaks 66 chapters of American freedom, civil, and equal rights history. Here’s the roll call for the historic witnesses featured in the print:
1. Barack Obama
2. Michelle Obama
3. Martin Luther King Jr.
4. Thurgood Marshall
5. Rosa Parks
6. Barbara Jordan
7. Cynthia Wesley
8. Carole Robertson
9. Denise McNair
10. Addie Mae Collins
11. Emmett Till
12. Susan B. Anthony
13. C.T. Vivian
14. James Meredith
15. Homer Plessy
16. Harvey Milk
17. Ida B. Wells
18. Malcolm X
19. Bayard Rustin
20. John Lewis
21. Mahatma Gandhi
22. Abraham Lincoln
23. Frederick Douglass
24. Cesar Chavez
25. Sojourner Truth
26. Nelson Mandela
27. Stephen Biko
28. Oliver Brown (Brown v. Board of Education)
29. Chief Joseph
30. Lyndon Johnson
31. Medgar Evers
32. Rev. James Reeb
33. Fred Shuttleworth
34. W.E.B. Du Bois
35. Ralph Abernathy
36. Viola Gregg Liuzzo
37. Marcus Garvey
38. Andrew Goodman
39. James Chaney
40. Michael Schwerner
41. John Brown
42. Jackie Robinson
43. Dolores Huerta
44. Mary White Ovington
45. William Lloyd Garrison
46. Wang Dan
47. Stephen Samuel Wise
48. Harriet Tubman
49. Dred Scott
50. Booker T. Washington
51. David Richmond (and)
52. Joseph McNeil (Greensboro Four)
53. Martin Delany
54. The Little Rock Nine
55. William Still
56. Thomas Garrett
57. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
58. Samuel Burris
59. Thomas Paine
60. Abigail Kelley Foster
61. Jesse Jackson
62. Eugene V. Debs
63. Lucretia Mott
64. Paul Robeson
65. Henry David Thoreau
66. Shirley Chisholm
I hooked up my converter box yesterday evening in anticipation of the upcoming signal switch from analog to digital on February 17.
It didn’t work.
Maybe because the entire menu on my TV screen was in French. I couldn’t find the English subtitles. I can read the French but I have to set up one of these boxes for my mother. She’s English speaking only. Neither of us have cable on GP (general principle). I do DSL and Netflix.
I’m giving the box set up one more shot when I’m more energetic and less agitated. If I get the same result, I’m taking the f*cking box back to Best Buy (This is the one you buy with your Dept. of Commerce discount coupon).
I’m glad John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama Transition Team is requesting that they move the date and put the breaks on the switch. The networks and PBS apparently agree. I said from the very beginning this consumer conversion was poorly planned by the FCC (approved by the Congress in 2005). No one made the case to the general public as to why we need to switch. What is the greater good? How will it make our lives better? There were no town hall meetings on how to set up the box, and there was no real effort to create effective partnerships with PTV stations, cable companies, and network affiliates to get the word out.
I’m no techno phobe and am pretty sharp when it comes to hooking things up. But HOLD MY EARRINGS!!! C’est wack!!!
Update: After a night’s sleep and some aerobics, I tackled the box again. It’s working, but there are still no English subtitles on the on-screen menu. I have to admit, the picture is much better. But to have an on-screen menu in French — well, I guess it could be Mandarin. Icon literacy required. And I’m up to 6 remotes. sigh
I didn’t plan to write several posts on the theme of family, but themes sometimes take on a life of their own. This morning, I was glued to a Today Show segment produced by Max Paul, who set out on a rescue mission to bring his Aunt Andree back to the United States. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, has been slammed by four hurricaines in the past several months – Gustav, Fay, Hanna, Ike – leveling villages with mud, contaminated water, and leaving hundreds dead or suffering from disease and illness. Many Haitians had nothing to begin with; now they have even less.
Max’s Aunt Andree is an inspiration. This was a woman who didn’t want to be rescued because she felt she had a mission to fulfill herself. If only we had more Aunt Andrees in the world. There are probably plenty. We don’t notice the hands that hold up the sky.