Baby Lust

Nestled among national news stories about the Obama overseas junket, the booted McCain op-ed, and China's futile attempts to "purify" the air for the Olympics.... The latest "fetus abduction" case got me thinking.

Apparently, Andrea Curry-Demus "befriended" 18 y.o. Kia Johnson while the 2 women were at jail visiting their men. Johnson's body was found in Curry-Demus' apartment after Curry-Demus showed up at a hospital with a newborn baby that she claimed she had given birth to at home. This was not Curry-Demus's first attempt at baby stealing. She had actually served time for trying to do it before. And so, as was probably the case for many folk, over the last couple of days (even as I celebrated my own birthday this past weekend) I have looked towards Pittsburgh, wondering what the next strange bit of information would be with regards to this story.

On the surface it is yet another one of those thankfully rare stories about a woman who wanted a baby so badly that she ends up killing and/or cutting open a woman and then attempts (never ever with success!) to pass off the infant as her own. A little bit of research (and I do mean a little) has led me to believe that these baby lust crimes are more than just a few isolated cases of women who want babies so badly that they kill for them. In contrast to the forensic psychiatrists and criminal experts, it seems to me that while Curry-Demus certainly has major issues, her actions are an extreme acting out of the cultural belief that biological motherhood (or faking it) is the most important, most valued role any woman can have.

Is it a surprise that over the past 10 years, as far as I can see, the women who have committed these types of crimes tend to be very poor or barely making it? These are not the women who secretly (or not) mourn their childless state. These are not the women who have "other" social capital that allows them to "forget" that they have not been able to fully experience life. These are not the women that read the books and go to the seminars and decide that they will adopt children from exotic ports of calls and love them as if "they were their own." Their victims are just like them in most cases. They may be younger (since that "biological clock" is often a factor in the killer's inability to have a baby), but the victims are just as poor/working class as their killers.

The desperation of these women (my quick research suggests that over the past 10 years the majority of these cases have involved white women, but there has been a strong "representation" from black women as well) to kill another woman for her baby, usually after befriending her (!) is not just a psychological meltdown/burst of forensic criminal behavior. For women who have no access to frozen embryos, surrogate mothers, and expensive fertility treatments, the options are much more limited. That is if they want to give off the impression of having a biological child. I am not trying to downplay the criminal aspect to these killings, but I cannot help but see connections to the ways that our society privileges "blood" connections when it comes to motherhood. Countless American women, on either side of the ticking biological clock, and with varying amounts of "wealth," spend countless hours and health care dollars in a quest for a biological child of their own. How they define the biological part is of course always changing as technology changes. But at the heart of their efforts is the assumption/belief/desire to be a mother of their "own" child. at any cost, when things don't seem to be happening "naturally." Even in pro-adoption literature, adoption is a "second best" option, because the adopted child's "blood" ties are broken and adoptive parents will have to come to grips with the loss of never having a child "of their own."

What kind of world is this in which we still raise our children, and our daughters especially, to think this way? What kind of legal system do we still have in which the consanguine relationship is still the most important (oops except when it comes to the marriage contract!)? Who is her "real" mother? We all know that means that the real mother is the woman who gave birth to the child, not the one who has spent the last 8 years doing all that unpaid mothering "labor." Wanting to be a 'blood" mother, so badly that you will stop at almost NOTHING to achieve it, is not limited to people like Curry-Demus. I do not want to be disrepectful to the many women who decide to undergo fertility treatments. I don't want to be insensitive to the many women who hear their "biological clock" (notice it isn't their "motherhood clock" that they hear) and freak out. But I would imagine that if you could cut through the psychotic state that Curry-Demus clearly is living in, you might not find the answers to the questions of why she "did it" so different than many other American women who so desperately want a child of their "own."


Easy for me to say, eh? I am the "old" mother of two hilariously, rambunctiously fantastic young daughters.

But if I can't offer this up, then who can?

Shelly Get Your Gun

I only have two things to say about the latest Obama "fun."


1. I told you so. I told you so. We are SOOOOO not beyond race.

2. How did Michelle "Hair so straight it Moves" Obama get a nappy fro?

"New Yorker to Don Imus. Can you read, Imus?"

As I noted in my "Imus post," you can do a whole lot of stuff to make black folk mad. Maybe just maybe the New Yorker cover's addition of a bucket of fried chicken and a busted open watermelon might have been more incendiary, but when you depict a "sister's stuff" as nappy, especially when she goes through lots of trouble to deny its natural "texture..."


You are in a world of hurt and begging for trouble.


Look out New Yorker, here it comes.

My people

Skeptical & downbeat: 12% of the electorate

The election's most downbeat voters are the least enthusiastic about voting and skeptical about whether the election will make a difference for them and their families. They give Bush his lowest approval rating of any group.

They aren't excited about the contenders to succeed the president, either. Four in 10 haven't decided whom to support, by far the largest of any group, and the rest are open to changing their minds.

Thanks to a USA Today/Gallup Poll (and the clever monikers that arise from any attempt to interpret the results), I now know my people. Of the six ideal types of voters, I am most assuredly a "Skeptical and Downbeat." I needed pollsters to tell me that?

Yet I am a bit of a weirdo among my people since:

Voters in this group are older than average and the least likely to have a college education. It includes the highest percentage of those who live in small towns and rural areas.

And,

They favor McCain over Obama by 11 percentage points, but can he persuade more of them to support him — and then turn out to vote?

But I guess I really am an old union die hard in buppscale clothing anyway.

I will always thank the UAW for my straight teeth.... that orthodontist benefit that my parents had in their health care package probably saved me a great deal of pain and torment --emotional and physical. That alone would make you forever a grizzled crusty type. How could you turn your back on the union and/or "the workers", knowing that "the man" would never have helped to pay for your straight teeth unless pushed by the union?

So here I sit with my Apple laptop , Japanese language Google newsfeed, and glass of San Pellegrino, typing away in one of the poorest urban zip codes in the country. My compatriots would seem to be mainly old white men with names like Hank and Gus, Oscar and Ralph. They would most likely not want to hang with me. I wonder if we could agree on anything more than being skeptical and downbeat?

I will not vote for McCain. But I find it strange and a bit depressing to realize that my ways of thinking about the election are not like those of my "real" compatriots. I am out here with 12% of the American voting population who are nothing like me on the outside, it would seem. Not when it comes to race, education, employment, previous political views, gender, household structure--maybe even (Hold your hat, Harriette!) belief in God.

Why does the doctorate-holding, progressive, theory wonk black woman feel the same way as the older, less educated rural American? I think it comes back to how the U.S. has become decidedly anti-intellectual (and in some sense, rightly so). But at the same time , we have forgotten that there are many "uneducated" folk who also think critically and do not easily swallow the candy-coated mess that is both peddled and gobbled down so easily. I will offer that although many of "my people" lack formal education, they have learned how to think critically and beyond the easy answers/explanations--this mere 12% of the voters in this country. Many of their economic histories over the past 50 - 75 years must certainly stand in stark contrast to the dominant "American Century" tale that has been spun (and lived) as the tale of postwar America. The now "skeptical and downbeats" most likely learned a long time ago that their lives have basically gotten worse, not better, as global K-ism has grown up alongside them.

This is not a romanticization. It is not to say that my people are the salt of the earth or the "pure American soul." Yuck. It is instead to offer up the notion that the hope that Dear Obama offers up rings stale and hollow to many of these folks, because it is same shit different day and they don't really care (or at least in a positive way) that he is "black." Yet it is also because their critical thoughts/views have never been supplemented by anything other than mainstream rhetoric/ideas/films (Welcome to the dumbing down of America, everybody) that many of my people have no real way of making sense of what they see in their everyday lives. They thus will probably vote for McCain more so than Obama because they have learned to feel that if they have to vote, they might as well vote for the "man" and not the "boy."

My people.

And so I thus wonder, must I now also count Jesse Jackson as one of "my people," for the first time in history? Skeptical and Downbeat?

Talking down among strange bedfellows for sure.

In yer face

Their tennis is pretty charmless, if pretty devastating. Each has a game that inspires admiration, rather than affection. Both play with little more than power, they like to blast everything in their way. They seem to have a taste not just for winning but for humiliating an opponent. Perhaps that is just a by-product of their style, perhaps it is their nature. It is impossible to say, only to notice that opponents defeated by the Williams sisters do seem to be unusually well beaten.

"Williams Sisters are Doing it for themselves," TimesOnline, 7/4/08

The above bit of coded writing comes courtesy of the man who will now forever be called in my book of "Undercover racist misogyny": Simple Simon. I know nothing about Simon Barnes, Chief Sports Writer for the London Times, other than what he wrote in his article covering the Wimbledon match up between the two Williams sisters yesterday. I do know from reading his piece that he has created a bit of sympathy for the Williams in me, where none really was there before.

I am not (surprise, surprise) a tennis fan. I know how to play. I had to learn in junior high school and high school. Aspiring upper middle-class parents in the 1970s, still expected/demanded that their girls become even better at tennis. I had never held a racket (or really watched a match on television) until that first day in 1975. I hated it. Mostly because I was already starting out much later than most of the other girls on the court. That first teacher (may she roast in hell) actually led the students in their laughter at my bumbling. She even made a crack about my body being more suited for other sports, like basketball (which I of course was always begged to play by the coaching staff every year) or track. Argh. I will never ever forget that. Who would say such a thing to a young girl?

It was in some sense true (at least the basketball part). My body was certainly very different from my female classmates all through school. I was taller, was stronger, "thicker," had more "bosom," and walked around with those power thighs, hips, and, buttocks characteristic of so many black women (all of which certainly went unappreciated in the aesthetic and athletic circles that I traveled in as a young girl/woman). This is not the stuff of Jimmy the Greek. This is the stuff that simply underscores that many black women (not all) have bodies that are "naturally" strong and muscular. Whether or not they are good athletes is a different story. Thus this is not Simple Simon's "nature" either. Have things changed from back then when that woman... (I remember her face clearly, but cannot remember her name) made her comment about bodies like mine, as the Williams (if Simple Simon's piece is to be taken seriously) in all of their glory get the more sophisticated treatment/assumptions?

Probably back then, my body (and my attitude) were much more suited for rougher sports--or at least that is what I came to believe. I can only imagine how things might have been different (if only in the witty come backs that I could have hurled at those oh -so-white and oh-so "toned" classmates/teachers of mine) if Venus and Serena Williams were not being born, but instead were playing tennis in the early 1980s...

Although I never paid much attention to them, I have read/heard all the stuff about their dad (same mold as Beyonce's Daddy?) and their notorious "bad tempers/home training." Over the years I have also noticed that online, there is a huge amount of racist and sexist commentary from "regular" people about them. Stuff that I have read has mostly made me cringe. Commenters using the easy fun of anonymous commenting to place their true thoughts into the public domain. Stuff that would cause this black woman in her 40s, with some notable muscle tone, to beat their asses, if she heard it come from their mouths, instead of reading it in the comment sections of Internet rags.


The Williams have had their bodies and their faces discussed in ways that bring back way too many of the comments and ha ha jokes that I remember from my own youth in predominately white schools. Being compared to apes. Being called "too mannish." Jokes about squashing men. Nasty, nasty, nasty comments.

If we do pay attention to where black women athletes seem to end up playing, whether for "fun" or for money, we still tend to see us in the places where we the stereotypes seem to ring true, Track and Field, basketball or The Independent Women's Football League (IWFL). Bodies still seemingly not well-suited for the gentile sport of refined power, wealth, and sophistication: Tennis (Can you imagine if Tiger Woods had the body of a hulking linebacker?) All of this even as the Williams sisters literally smash such assumptions. Just give it time. Yeah, right.

Which brings me back to Simple Simon. He also wrote in his piece from yesterday:

True, they have been a little bit abrasive at times, sometimes a bit awkward, sometimes a little rough about the edges. Well, that's often the way with mould-breakers. You cannot always change society with supreme tact and patrician manners. Sometimes the sisters have seemed to treat the conventions of the game with contempt, winning the warm-up, overdoing the glares, not apologising for points won from a net-cord, getting too close at the change of ends. Little things, niggly things that add up.

This made them seem a little too strident, a little too in-yer-face. But how could they have been anything else? They needed to batter down walls, they needed, most importantly, to feel that they were dealing with this strange and somewhat hostile world on their own terms. And so they did and if people didn't like it, then that was their rotten luck.

The sisters lack the sense of vulnerability that attends almost all tennis players, of either sex, even the best. That's because, uniquely, they are not alone. There are two of them, tight, loved and loving, and that is a source of extraordinary strength to them. And they go on and they go on, and here they are at Wimbledon and one of them is going to win it again.

As is oft the case, Simon would be shocked to find out that I find his commentary so offensive. I really do think that he imagines that he is being "pro" Williams sisters (how could he really imagine himself pushing any boundaries, when the title of the piece is taken from an Aretha Franklin song.... Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" was probably next in the queue, if things didn't work out).

Much of what Simon writes is simply code for the larger argument that still swirls around the Williams. All those niggly things that add up. They are too "rough" for this sport. They are not "feminine." They get pleasure from letting loose their power. And they aren't sorry! Their bodies are incredible and especially so when they are "beating down" their opponents, but damn do they have to gloat? They are not to be loved, but just simply admired. Their power is impressive and so American working class, like a Hummer (born in Michigan, raised in Compton). No finesse. No complicatedness. No sophistication. But damn. They stick together, don't they?

They are too black for this sport.

Earlier this year there was some "innocent" comment made by a sportscaster about Venus' booty during the Australian Open. Folks were outraged, but many were outraged not by his comment (and the camera person's blatant zoom in coverage of her booty), but by Venus' ignorance of the term "posterior." Others pointed out that the Williams clearly want attention placed on their bodies because they wear clothing both on and off the court that accentuates their forms. And so what do they expect when their "In yer face" clothing styles help to create a situation in which their bodies are commented on all the time.

I know that they both make loads of money. And I imagine that I would not find either of them a "hoot" to hang out with. Their lack of any real substantial education was a big mistake on Big Daddy's part from my perspective, but then again... who am I? But I have been having flashbacks/projecting of my own issues/sympathy for them, as I have been following the coverage of their wins "over there" over the last 24 hours. No matter how formidable, Serena and Venus are simultaneously "working it" and "being had" by the images of and assumptions about black women in global culture today.

Dear Venus and Serena: I got your back!

Um. Well. Sorta.

If only.

The Happiest Day of your Life

I present a bit of salve for those who wonder about the evil tongue's appreciation of love, home, and hearth-- especially after that "downer" post about the Simmons' breakup yesterday and the post/attack on women's alleged universal desires for hugs and cuddling from earlier in the week.

Ruben Studdard, Mr. American Idol, got married yesterday. Everybody loves a wedding, right? Yummy cake. Pomp. Pomp. More pomp. From the pic, it looks like no expense was spared. Huge wedding = showing the world that your love knows no bounds, right?

Beware, Mr. Studdard. I read somewhere that the more money spent on a wedding, the more likely the couple will split. But I have also seen the statistic about couples who live together before marriage being more likely to split. In this case, it is clear to me (and the researchers!) that it is not the living together first that does it, but that such couples are more "open" to challenging "traditional" understandings of what men and women should expect in their personal lives--I am unhappy... Give me my divorce. ¡Pronto!

To be honest, I was shocked to read about the wedding because I always thought that Studdard would follow in the footsteps of HIS idol, Mr. Luther Vandross--confirmed bachelor. So I was also a bit at a loss for words to describe the photo that I saw of the wedding. I am not quite sure what the explanation might be for Studdard's expression in the photo that appeared in the press. There is a long list of possibilities: bad angle, shoes too tight, corset/waist cincher too constricting, too hot, too much bachelor partying done the night before. No matter what the cause, the groom looks like he is about to throw up and/or beat somebody down. Perhaps there are happier shots. Perhaps he crossed some newsperson who chose this photo as the public representation of the happy couple.

Perhaps he was secretly shown a copy of the Simmons child custody agreement right before the ceremony.

Hi Hater/Mommy Dearest

According to legal papers obtained by, The Insider, Russell Simmons gets the girls one week out of every eight, plus extra time for summer vacations and holidays.

In addition, he pays $20,000 per child per month in child support. That cash flow stops when each reaches the age of 19 1/2, or until the daughter is emancipated, married, becomes self-supporting, joins the armed forces or stops living with Kimora Lee Simmons.

Finally, he's required to buy or lease a car valued at $60,000 or more for the girls once every 24 months. (People Magazine online, 6/27/08)





In an open letter wrote by Simmons to celebrity blogger, Perez Hilton, he praised his former wife for being an "excellent mother" who "is doing a great job with them."

"Regarding the money, my kids live a tremendous life. They do have lots of security, nannies, educators, special programs, travel, chefs, on and on. Their mother manages all of those luxuries and I'm happy to provide for that," he added. ("Kimora Lee Gets The Kids and $480,000 a Year for Each", 6/28/08)

I have to admit that I have never paid too much attention to Kimora and Russell. I mean, I know who they are, know their brands, know that the Mister made his first huge chunk of cash from peddling/helping to establish "hip-hop" in this country. He put the PH in fat... Phat Farm, Baby Phat. Like Bill Gates, that other mogul also in the news this week, he dropped out of college because he wanted to start his business. No comment.

I know that he also is a some kind of philanthropist/yogi master (despite the ironic violence and money making methods of the rest of his "business"). I am not really a Baby Phat kind of urban dweller and thus I also kind of found the Mrs. and all of her "style makin'" a bit too much... but hey... neither I , nor my children, are her demographic. But I know that the Simmons' lives were held up by many to be a perfect example of "making it" and "giving back." No comment.

Alas, I also know that the "blingiest" couple have parted ways. Their divorce settlement was made public today. A lot of news outlets/sites have been making a big deal out of the huge amount of money that the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Simmons will get for maintenance/child support (sole custody to boot!). I have to say that I am not faulting her for wanting to "have her girls attended to." And clearly Russell himself has no issue with the huge, mind-boggling amounts of money that he will give to his children's mother for their support/proper upbringing. Great mom indeed. What a gig! Would I turn down the nannies, educators (!), chefs (plural), etc. if I could get them for my children? I don't know for sure, but I'd like to think that I would not want to raise children like that, especially in the world we live in now. Good god...

But it is just kind of hilarious that the conspicuous consumption (good life/luxuries!) that Simmons will continue to pay for (and only seeing the children now and then and without custody) is such a stark contrast to his caring/yoga kumbaya "self-branding." It just seems more "honest" to just go ahead and live like the filthy rich folk that you are... don't try and make it look like you are "doing good"/ humble at the same time. Your life choices are your life choices. All the "good" that you think you are doing is basically to make YOU feel good (and continue the belief that the rich really care about the poor). But you have to give it to Kimora. I don't think she ever claimed to have that "om thing" going on in the way that Russell did.

But even with all of that, what really pushed me over the evil tongue edge was the "car allowance." Seems so over-the top. Yet Ms. Kimora needed some consultation on that demand. With gas prices being what they are now, $60, 0000 just might get them half a year's worth of gas for their peaceful yoga-influenced vehicles by the time they turn 16.

Ante up, big daddy.

Despite the fact that

I could get my blood pressure up into the stratosphere by deconstructing the following:

Men like casual sex more than women—scientific fact

I won't.

Let's just say that nothing says "great research/hypothesis" better than a study that confirms what everybody just "knows": "men" are hardwired to like hot and steamy getting busy throw downs with no commitment and "women" are hardwired to crave Glade scented candles and back rubs from their lifepartner cum daddy to their offspring. Not that there is really anything wrong with either of those modi operandi in principle,

But damn.

Driven by evolution?
Scientific fact!?

Where are those damned bonobos (not that anthropomorphisizing them is less fraught with major theoretical/conceptual issues than the so-called evolutionary psychology mess and its quest for the "true nature of gendered human sexuality") when you need 'em?

Another Happy Place...

As I write this, it is Sunday afternoon in Falls Church, Virginia. I am hunkered down in the back of the Starbucks in Idylwood Plaza (could I have made that up?). I am here in DC doing fieldwork for The bullet and the veil. This is one of my ongoing research projects that I am working on right now. The bullet and the veil focuses on two culturally charged U.S. historical moments. The title is taken from events that took place in the summer and fall of 2002— the Elizabeth Smart abduction in the summer of 2002 and the case of D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo in the fall of 2002, a year after 9/11. The project is focused on shifting understandings in the U.S. of innocence, evil, human nature, and childhood and the ways that these two young people's lives served as backdrops for larger arguments about the future of "the American Dream" in troubled times.

As I sit here making use of AT& T's wireless Internet service, I am just a few minutes drive away from one of the sites where the D.C. snipers killed Linda Franklin in a Home Depot parking lot. A killing that an FBI profiler described as "brazen" because it was close to one of northern Virginia's busiest intersections (the busiest intersection is code for "lots of retail," as I look at it six years later). Most of the Beltway snipers' victims were killed while being consumers.

And as I sit here, writing up my notes and thinking about what I have been observing, I decide to take a break from my work and read the Sunday Washington Post. And imagine my surprise as I make my way through the paper and spot a huge color pic of Detroit's Greektown on the front page of the paper's Travel section.

"Finding a happy place in Detroit"

It is a strange, strange piece. I am not sure if Ellen McCarthy, who wrote the piece, is for, or against Detroit. At its heart, I think, is a quest to see whether or not Detroit really is, as Forbes Magazine declared earlier this year, the Most Miserable City in America.

Anytime a visitor writes a travel piece about a city, natives (or least this native) have a good laugh. The so-called hip hot spots are usually tired and worn out by the time they are mentioned in a travel article. The great places to find food and drink/good times, may remain the same, but oftentimes the "local flavor" that appears in the Travel section is often canned at best when written by an outsider/visitor. This is in part why ethnographers like to think that we do "the outsider" bit better/differently than journalists and travel writers.

Ellen McCarthy depicts a Detroit that even I don't quite recognize. The things she sees and writes about (trying to gauge the misery index in a travel piece? Who approved this as a travel piece?) stump even me, who is by no means a Detroit booster. The places and people that are written about are not even stereotypes. They are unrecognizable to me, as both resident and anthropologist. Her main observation, in that oh-so-lovely snarky tone that I have written about here before, seems to center on the way that everything that she and her companion want to see or do is not open for business when they pull up.


As I sit here, one of the things that has come up in my fieldnotes constantly since I have been in the D.C. area, is the huge emphasis on shopping and buying. I have lived in many an American shopping paradise and this one takes the cake.

Just as Detroit (the city proper) is mainly a city in majority black, with commuter whiteness sprinkled on for good measure, metro D.C. is in the words of my cousin who lives here, "A United Nations of America." And if the American Dream is to be able to shop and buy what you want, when you want to, this is indeed the American Dream. This is the Happy Place that Forbes holds Detroit up against. This is the place where I have seen more personalized plates than anywhere else that I have ever been. I have been told that it is "cheap" to get personalized plates in Virginia. Happy, happy, happy day.

As I drove into the very shopping center that was site of the Franklin killing, I could have even purchased my own Mexican (probably illegal) men to come and do day work for me. As I make my way about this metro area, I see the "happiness" that has helped to make the Virginia towns of Manassas (another site that Malvo and Muhammed chose, this time a gas station) and Woodbridge have the highest home mortgage foreclosure rates in the country at present (I saw this on the local news this past Friday). Folks hoping to find happiness in the good life. Another thing just might be to buy some of the Obama goods that are everywhere in D.C. proper. Obama goods are certainly a profitable cottage industry these days. I did not exaggerate when I wrote in my fieldnotes yesterday: Obama goods/picture taking with cardboard likeness = multinational feeding frenzy.

I have come to see the majority of folks in this area as some of the rudest drivers and shoppers that I have EVER encountered. They may not register on the misery index, and may be happy, but god save their souls. They are what I would call, if I took off my social scientist hat, F-O-U-L. I am not sympathetic to the terror that the D.C. snipers created in this area, but it is indeed an irony that their serial killings were so "successful" because they shrewdly (evilly?) knew where to find easy victims/penetrate the everyday "security and happiness" of Americans. Would "Detroit sniper killings" have had such power? Would they even have been able to take place in Detroit, City of Infinite Misery?

So my addendum to McCarthy's strange piece is this:

Don't worry, be happy.

Don't let the terrorists (whether foreign or homegrown),
the lenders,
or those who led you to believe that the gas and the groceries would always be cheap (so move further and further out to live your version of the American Dream),
know that they have beaten us.

"Get out and shop."

Unless you live in/are visiting Detroit.

My mother and Steve Jobs

I have never owned a Windows machine, although I can use one... I am the stereotypical Mac user. I could easily be in one of their commercials. I fit the profile big time.

When I was in graduate school at Northwestern, I needed to buy my first computer. I of course wanted a Mac. I decided that I would get a pretty good color monitor (a major splurge back in those days...god, am I that old?) and laser printer as well. I decided to take advantage of a low interest Apple loan to pay for my dream set up. I needed a co-signer. Of course I asked my mother. I wondered if I should get a lesser bundle. Less money, but less power/pizazz. My mother argued that it would only be a few more dollars/month in loan and that I would be sorry that I had not spent a little more for what I really wanted. I think she secretly thought that the more powerful computer would give me some kind of edge in my doctoral program. She signed the papers for the bigger and better bundle. The next time she came to see me, she saw the fish bowl screen saver (in color!), watched me use the Internet (!!!! WOW you can interact with stuff and people in real time! and order things on that site called Amazon.com?), and was duly impressed.

I forgot all about that little seemingly mundane memory of my mother until today. An article in Forbes brought it all back. It was all about the speculation concerning Steve Jobs' "rail-thin appearance" when he announced the latest iPhone/Mac power move last week. People have been wondering whether or not his cancer has "come back." The article was all about (complete with diagrams) Whipple surgery and how such surgery is only offered to the slimmest minority of pancreatic cancer patients. This is because usually the cancer is too far advanced when it is discovered to be stopped with surgery. The article details the specifics of the procedure:

surgeons remove the right-most section, or “head,” of the pancreas - as well as the gallbladder, part of the stomach, the lower half of the bile duct, and part of the small intestine - and then reassemble the whole thing in a new configuration. The severed surfaces of the stomach, bile duct, and remaining pancreas are stitched to the small intestine so that what’s left of the pancreas can continue to supply insulin and digestive enzymes.

It suggests that Jobs may be so thin and worn-out looking now (he had his surgery in 2003) because he is still dealing with the effects of this rigorous "mother of all surgeries." As any "regular" reader of this blog knows, my mother too had Whipple surgery (she was lucky enough too), but died almost a year later.

Seeing the picture of Jobs in the article, and reading about the surgery and its effects on those who have it, brought back memories of my mother that I had pushed aside for the last 2 years. I remembered of course, but I had forgotten about just how much the surgery took out of her. She was never ever the same, physically or emotionally, afterwards. Roxanne and I flew down to Tennessee the day after my mother's surgery. Roxanne was just 3 months old and quickly became the belle of the cancer wing. All the nurses loved her and at that time, there was still hope that my mother might be cured. A newborn baby added a great deal to the situation. But looking back, I do wonder what my mother really thought about all of our lame efforts to be cheery and business as usual, as she sat there with half of her major organs removed/reformatted. I remember taking Roxanne to the family lounge to nurse her and sitting there wondering what kind of sick, twisted world could create a situation where my mother's body was so messed/chopped up, while mine was seemingly miraculously "producing" so that my daughter would be nourished.

Whipple surgery is rough. Whether his cancer has returned or not, I have respect for Jobs. I know what it did to my fiercely independent, healthy, and vigorous mother. I know how sick she was after it. Some, but not all, of my most painful memories of her battle with pancreatic cancer come from that time right after she had her surgery. Ironically, the surgery also probably gave my mother another 7 months that she would not have had without it. Those who have undergone Whipple, alive or not, share a kind of bond that I can only imagine. Having gone through it and talking to someone who has done the same must be a powerful moment in their lives. A club of hard core surivors, no matter how long they live after the sutures are removed.

I might have to ditch my BlackBerry for one of those new iPhones, in honor of my mother and Steve Jobs.

My mother, the ultimate early adopter even when she died at age 62, would most certainly have approved.

Barak's lie-ability/All I ever needed to know, I learned at my pappy's knee

You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

Barack Obama, Father's Day speech to Apostolic Church of God, 6/15/08

Barack Obama’s bid for the White House has stirred up excitement in Detroit, where residents have waited for the chance to elect a black president.

Nick Bunkley, "Navigating Detroit," NYT 6/15/08

Today is Father's Day. Adah and Roxanne wanted to celebrate with Daddy by going to the "big playground" on Belle Isle. Belle Isle is the huge Olmstead-designed island park (largest in the nation-- today the city of Detroit's reversion to the nation's largest urban prairie is an ironic addendum to that fun fact). As we drove there, Adah noticed a sign for Obama's rally here tomorrow. She whined from the backseat (as I blasted Lupe Fiasco's "Little Weapon" for her--she begs for it everyday--bad mommy), "OOO. I wanna go see Obama." Daddy told her that he too would like to go, but that "we would have to stand and wait a long time and might not get in AND it would be past your bed time." The youngest Obamaite ever. I don't know what kind of conversations Daddy and Adah have been having about Candidate Obama, but I guess their discussions have made her into a supporter. Good thing she hasn't yet asked mommy evil tongue (who has kept her mouth shut when her 5 y.o. pundit states her presidential preferences) her opinions about Senator Obama.

Kinda like the "Santa Claus talk." Except in good half-Jewish/half-weirdo tradition, she has never been told to believe in Santa. She is most certainly "the spoiler" that has ruined it for others and thus has never had to have her heart broken... Bad mommy.

Adah and Daddy's desire to see the candidate is not a rare thing in Detroit these days. There has been a great deal of buzz around his appearance. A student asked that we reschedule our meeting tomorrow, because she wants to see Obama. Flyers are everywhere, urging folk to come out and support Obama. Detroit is indeed excited about the first real (read: in the city) Obama appearance. And both the local and national media have focused on how our Dear Mayor's legal troubles might make him a liability for Candidate Obama ( Just yesterday Kwame announced that he has decided to stay away--or had it decided for him). Why the buzz? Detroit in all of its glory/ugliness is indeed a black city. A black city in a region of unbelievable dire need of something/anything/anybody to stop its continuing decay and waste (of people and of physical environment). And thus if people like NYT blogger Nick Bunkley are to be believed, we Detroiters are waiting in excitement to vote for a black president, because he knows what ails us and our city. And thus we here in this black city with more than its share of "issues," like the rest of our "skinfolk" in this country, are allegedly going to vote for Obama in huge numbers because he is black. We are excited because he is black. Because he is different. Because at last "our time" has come. He is "ours."

Allegedly.

Probably at around the same time that Adah and Daddy were lamenting being too old/young to attend tomorrow's rally, their lust object was concluding his Father's Day "Moynihan meets Bill Cosby meets 'our values'"speech/sermon in Chicago. Just like his "path-breaking" race speech from earlier this year, this speech represents what I find disturbing (instead of hopeful) about an Obama presidency. In both of these cases, following in the footsteps of that first black president--Mr. Bill Clinton, Obama's performance on the surface sounds like it might be kind of progressive and revolutionary. But it really is the same old conservative culture of poverty crap that Republicans and other neoliberals (this includes many in the Democratic Party as well) have used to weaken/eradicate the expectations of Americans about governmental and corporate responsibility. Gone is any real debate about what the government should actively and unapologetically do to help its people (all of its people) prosper.

In an era in which we are told that we can no longer afford public programs and that there is still no such thing as a free lunch, and while the wealthiest continue to become exponentially wealthier at the expense of "regular" Americans, Obama's "black men need to step up to the plate because they are to blame for their children's social ills" theory is not progressive or refreshing. It is the same shit, different day answer that is not about "personal responsibility" but is really about shifting the responsibility for dire social ills from the government to "the people."

It is easy to be branded as a "pie-in-the-sky-liberal" for suggesting that Obama's focus on black men's collective lame ass role as fathers is racist, classist, and will do nothing to change things for the better. I will take that slam, if need be. Except I actually don't consider myself a liberal, for the record. Somebody might counter my outrage with a but, but argument. But he started out with that little diatribe to help white voters (who we know secretly think that this is the main reason for why black folks in America are collectively "less" than them... how liberal... those family values--see di Leonardo's still relevant Village Voice article for a nasty old skool evil tongued discussion ) be more sympathetic to his more "revolutionary" proposals. Yet even if that was acceptable as strategy, which it is not, Obama is still causing immense harm to the birth of any real alternative to the economic realities facing the poor in America today. Obama was tapping into the widely-held myth that throughout U.S. history, everybody else (read: white folk and immigrants from other countries-past and present) made the American Dream a reality due in large part to their cultural and moral values—with intact families. With fathers.

There is no mention of the very different economic times (outsourcing/rust belt?), of systematic racism (you want to get a mortgage to live where, boy?), of the realities of white ethnic gangs and violent inter/intraethnic violence (the original boys in the 'hood). There is no mention of the huge amount of governmental help that was used after WWII in this country to foster the American Dream for white folk. There is no mention of what to do to help create a similar environment for those who still have not been able to prosper in this country. To do so would not be about hope, but instead would make white folk (and the talented tenth non-whites) uncomfortable in their belief that they have made it because of their (or their families') superior morality/family values. Obama, like Bill Cosby and all the other black folks who preach that we need to take charge of our own destiny by bringing back morality/weddings for the good of the children, speaks to "us" harshly, yet with love. Daddy knows best.

What makes it all so frustrating is that Obama likes to play the "sensitive-thinking-progressive -man" card. Heck, he even worries about the environment, while wringing his hands over the bastard black youth of America. Even as he spoke about the struggling single parents (mothers) he stressed how much an undefined "we" need to help them—his only suggestion of a governmental role is in a menu of tax credits. Ugh... when I heard that, did I ever get a nasty flashback to the excitement during my political coming of age: Reaganomics and the "supply side." Heck, he even makes it clear that he is no misogynist. Golly, he is a feminist (of the liberal feminist type--check out my earlier posting about "feminist defenders" if you need a refresher), dammit. Girls can do what boys can (and violence and hooch mammaism has no place in his fatherly world). Note to self: I wonder if his girls get to listen to Lupe?

Yet all is not what it seems, again.

So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong.

My problem with Obama is that underneath his skin and his smiles, he is nothing new. Yes, compared to what we have had for the last 8 years, he is indeed a gem. But, is that really a compliment? A reason to get excited? As I sit here in the Woodbridge neighborhood of Detroit, surrounded by slumming white hipsters who will inevitably return to suburbia or move elsewhere in the country when they outgrow their skateboards and "alternative" lifestyles, and in turn, all of us surrounded by some of the most heart-wrenching and maddening poverty that one can imagine seeing in this country, I am angered that Obama takes the "black men's inability to keep their penises in their pants and failure to step up to father their children" is to blame route.

Nothing about schools. Nothing about the criminal infant mortality rate in urban America. Nothing about the obesity and nutritional hell that black children face who live in this city. I can find any kind of snack food or sugary "drink" in the world everywhere in this city--and it is cheap and quick energy. You can find fruits, vegetables, and all those other wholesome food choices that your Bridge card can buy, if you look hard enough. But it is more expensive and more time consuming to prepare than all of that junk. A daddy in the home will solve that? A daddy in the home will help this city deal with the huge Brownfield problem that faces not just Detroit, but all those ring suburbs too? A daddy in the home will close down the incinerator (Go Detroit. Again, we have the largest municipal incinerator in the U.S....hooray) that is assuredly responsible for this city's children's out-of -control asthma rates? A daddy in the home will solve, or at minimum, lessen the effects of all of these problems?

I have nothing against daddies. I have nothing against marriage. But the notion that 1) black men don't marry the mothers of their children and don't pay up and 2) no father in the home (even grandpops and uncles aren't as good as that biological daddy, according to Obama) is THE explanation for societal ills is not progressive (Hey, did I just get another nasty flashback--this time to Murphy Brown and Dan Quayle?). I fear that when elected, Barack"The Dream" Obama will take us back to the future of the Reagan years (or to be gracious, if you want to give sociologist William Julius Wilson --Mr. Culture of Poverty himself--some credit, you could insert the Clinton years ) when it comes to thinking about black America.

"Hush your mouth," you say?

I would like Obama to move beyond those easy "statistics" and assumptions and think really hard for a change about the implications of what he so easily offers up for our consumption. Marriage, or rather the mystical saving power of black manhood, as the fix all for social problems is retrograde. I don't care whose mouth it comes from. What is shaking our community's (and the "our" itself needs to be problematized a great deal, as well) foundations is not the lack of live in the same physical space daddies who will whip you with a belt and/or gather the young ones around and instill respect and pride. And the question of child support? Here in Detroit, I wonder if the magic marriage wand was waved and all of "these children" had daddies that stepped up, where would these daddies be working to bring that paycheck into the household? With gas sure to be 5.00/gallon and the cost of living increased by 25% by the inaugural ball next year, and with no real public transport to speak of in the Motor City, work of the legal kind will be even more difficult to find and get to. Good luck, Daddy.

And that my friends is really at the heart of the matter. You can have 80 daddies living in your house. If none of them can find a job because you/they are living in a criminally economically depressed/dire situation (in which even educated white folk can't find work), the manhood factor is a moot point. Unless, again, you believe that it is sheer biologically deterministic maleness alone that accounts for why some kids thrive and others fail. This is easier to believe/ingest/suggest than really grappling with the reasons why kids (and adults) end up where they are and doing what they are doing--and this goes for non-black folk as well. And Mr. Pro-feminist Obama? Going along with your argument, what is to be made of the woman who dares to think of a divorce when she has kids? What kind of mother would do such a thing to her children? Girl, if you love your kids and are any kind of decent mother (and this cuts across all racial and class lines), you had better work on that marriage. Better to suffer in silence, or not, than to selfishly and irresponsibly subject your children to the statistical hell that awaits them as daddyless kids. Should have thought about your "obligations" before you got yourself pregnant. Use your evolutionary commonsense and find the mate that will be the best provider for you and your offspring. Unfortunately, this line of thinking has plenty of "research" to back it up. Anything that challenges this commonsense knowledge/research is branded as "opinionated." Michelle Malkin to the rescue, anybody? Unfair? I will be revolutionary enough to say in my defense: On target. Strawberry-flavored caca or unflavored caca? It all is caca, in the end.


For many this speech may very well convince them the Obama is their candidate. For me, I will admit that it has made me wonder if I really will be able to plug my nose and vote for Mr. Barack in November. I would never vote for McCain. But I really don't know. I just don't know how I will be able to hold my breath for that long.

To quote Outkast:

"Yeah, roses really smell like boo boo."


In Adah's defense, she also begged and whined in the same tone that she used today to see both Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake in concert earlier this year.