No Fats! No Fems!

Internet Perves and Our Civil Liberties: Thanks Alberto Gonzales!

Like most people I have been captivated by the recent Dateline Series “To Catch a Predator.” Every week, or every time I’ve caught it on the boob tube I’ve sat mesmerized watching dozens of really stupid men parade into a house where they suspect a minor is inside waiting to be sexually abused. I, like much of America, to the delight of NBC and there sponsor companies, watched unmoving for the duration of the series
Being the conspiracy theorist that I am I figured that the Date Line specials and the other media focus on internet predators must be serving some purpose for the extreme right, fascist government of the United States. So like the good conspiracy theorist I am, I embarked on an internet probe in search of something that would confirm my suspicion. What I found is that recently the US department of justice with the support of the Federal Bureau of Investigations has made yet another encroachment against our civil right to privacy. According to USA Today, the above listed federal agencies have requested that internet companies like Google, America Online, Yahoo, and MSN begin retaining or preserving records of your click by click activity on the internet. Outrageous, right? I mean if a body is not safe to surf the internet for porn where is a body safe?

Well guess how your repressive government is justifying this encroachment. Our friend and fellow brown-boy (man of color) Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales is saying that the information will help law enforcement agencies to protect your children from online predators. Earlier in the year George Bush and Attorney Gonzales introduced a "plan" by the executive branch to protect children from the growing number of internet perves.
Today after speaking with a friend of mine, a Social Worker, I went to the Date Line website to again watch the available clips. Again, I was disgusted. Internet predators are a big problem and threat to the safety of children! Right? Well…

I had to do a little research. This is what I found:

68% of children who are molested are molested by someone that is related to them.

40% of children who are molested are molested by someone who is in the social network of the child’s family.

10% of children who are molested are molested by strangers.

* Many child molesters molest from multiple categories of children so the above represents a number greater than 100%. The above data are taken from The Stop Molestation Book.

So what’s the deal with Date Line and the Attorney General?

Wouldn’t a more sensible effort to protect children from sexual abuse be focused on making mixed families safer for the children within them? I mean if the number one purveyors of sexual abuse against children are members of their families and most likely a step/adopted parent would it make more sense to teach parents, teachers, social workers, school counselors, and other people who work with kids to recognize the signs of abuse? I mean does this internet thing really happen enough to spend so many resources toward interrupting it? Well according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about 1 in 5 kids who use the internet for chatting are approached for sex. What proportion of those children who are approached are actually exploited or molested is not given by the Federal Government Website.
While 3 children die everyday from child abuse (Prevent Child Abuse, 2006) in this country it seems that if the Attorney General were really trying to protect children he would be focused on child abuse in the broader sense as opposed to the apparently obsessive focus on middle aged men’s proclivities for teenaged girls. I mean I could have told you that a 35-50 year old straight man would rather have sex with a 16 year old girl than with a woman his own age. I didn’t need Dateline to tell me this either. All one has to do for confirmation of 30s to 50s something straight guys desire to exploit teen girls is to take a stroll down the isles of their neighborhood adult book store or watch late night television until the Girls Gone Wild Ads come on. So Date Line/Attorney General intent is lost on me.
It seems that our government and Date Line would tackle this as a holistic issue rather than attacking what is arguably the least concerning phenomenon when one considers the ways in which children are maltreated in this country. As someone who has had the distinction of dropping-out of some of the best Social Work schools in the country I am more than familiar with Child Abuse data. The fact is that the majority of children who are abused in this country are not molested. The majority of children who are abused in this country are neglected. The second largest group of abused children are beaten or otherwise physically abused. If only 10% of abused children are molested and only 10% of molested children are molested by strangers and only god knows what percent of those children molested by strangers are molested by strangers they meet on the internet this initiative promises to protect a very small fraction of the at risk children in our country. I’d love to support a more broad reaching initiative from our Attorney General.

Child Abuse Statistics Ranked:
1. Neglect (54%)
2. Physical Abuse (19%)
3. Other Forms of Maltreatment (14%)
4. Sexual Abuse (10%)
5. Emotional Abuse (3%)

* The above data are courtesy of Prevent Child Abuse America’s Advocacy Guide.

McKinney Shove Versus The Bush Leak

I've decided that the particular political strategy of this administration is the "smoke screen." I think they discovered it with 9/11. You know, when everything that the country had been lambasting the president for was suddenly forgotten as the media focused on the disaster? Remember that half the country was calling his presidency stolen and calling for recount after recount? Then the disaster. Then, we haven't talked about a re-count since. A new strategy was developed.

Do anyone of us remember what was going on as a popular televangelist called for the assassination of a head of state? Have we forgotten that just as Cindy Sheehan had the presidents balls to the wall, as they say, Pastor Pious decides that he is going to call for the murder of Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela? Then, as quickly as it happened, we just stopped talking about it, shortly after we stopped talking about Cindy Sheehan.

The gay marriage debate is pure gold for the GOP. Whenever they need a smoke screen they just introduce legislation in a different state or get George Bush, to threaten a constitutional amendment that he does not have the power to realize. Here in Georgia we rallied around the gays in a frenzy of door to door canvassing and get-out-the-vote campaigning as some of the most regressive legislation in history slipped right under our noses into the laws of our state along with the anti-gay marriage amendment.

Now Cynthia McKinney is being used by the GOP. How many congressman/women have been through that security check point? How many have tried to by-pass it and been stopped? How many have "tussled" with an officer? We don't even know what "tussled" means. We hear the words Tussled and Struck and we create a scenario in our heads but really she could have attempted to remove his grip from her arm or she could have punched him in the face. What do "tussle" and "Struck" mean.

What's most interesting about the media coverage of Cynthia McKinney's "Tussle" with a capital police officer is that recently evidence has been emerging that the president of these united states and a top aide, Rumsfield, were responsible for leaking the identity of an undercover CIA officer for political revenge. Yesterday on the cover of the New York Times we saw that there is now EVIDENCE. But as this situation is brushed under the rug we will be talking instead about the conspiracy against McKinney and how the Republicans want to capture all of the redistricted seats in congress. Or about how they have to try to keep a strong hold of the house in the wake of anti republican backlash.

But I know that this is not about McKinney or congress at all. It's about re-focusing the media away from what they and the country should be focusing on right now.

You may ask: "What, exactly, should the country be focusing on?"

Answ: Evidence that George W. Bush is worthy of impeachment!

http://www.impeachteam.com

Bloggers Make Me Sick

I've been thinkin a lot lately about this blog thing. I've figured out that I am not a "blogger." What I mean by this is not that I don't think I can be good at writing cute things for everyone to read. I can do that.

What I do mean is a little complicated and as usual with me there is a story to tell. Around about 1999 I was really well known for my writing of poetry which I would read at Speakfire and other open mics round about Atlanta. Then I stopped. In a moment of disgust I realized that I could not, while maintaining respect for myself and the medium (poetry) in general, continue to participate in the over-exposed, comercialized forum of "open mics." My biggest concern was aggravated when people started accusing me of being a "spoken word artist."

I hate spoken word. Why? Because I noticed that every black girl with seemingly no clue about the English language nor an iota of capacity as a writer or a poet had taken up pen and pad and started to call themselves "spoken word artist." I decided that the movie Love Jones was mostly to blame and wrote off the form completely. I have not looked back. I could not bare to hear another black girl talk about the flowing rivers of honey between her thighs! Even more I grew to anticipate with great trepidation the angry fuck-it-all, what-do-you-mean-I-need-therapy-?- "poetry. "Nor could I stomach the brother-man-bravado speak about the prowess of his penis delivered in the trite sing-song pseudo rhyme of Tigra and Bunny. Don't get me wrong, I like the cars that go boom too! But I would never sit idly while Tigra and Bunny defined what they do as poetry. I could abide less the insistence by the queues of college freshman, scorned men and women, and self proclaimed love doctors, that they too are poets.

Thus I have begun referring to "spoken word" as "chittlin circuit poetry." I, subsequently avoid open mics and other spoken word venues like the proverbial plague.

This brings me to Blogging. I discovered it a little late and decided that it would be a great low pressure way for me to deliver some of my ideas into cyberspace. I did not care who read my blog and thus blogged like I did not care. Anything that was on my mind became the topics of my blog post.

I found that I was doing it wrong. You see, what I have discovered is that there is a predetermined model of Blogging for Black gay men. The essential components are as follows:

-A super-model aspiring Black fag

-Glamour shots of myself to post on the face of my blog

-Glamour shots of myself to ad to every new post

-An adequate suply of "artistic nudes" of myself for every other post

-A huge predisposition toward self promotion

-A heavily celebrated but mediocre writing ability

-At least 60 black educated butch-queens who profess to want to mentor me that secretly actually are hoping to bed me once I have become to myself, like them, undesirable because of age and body image issues.

I and my blogging have been found lacking. I have thus ignored my blogg with the same disdain that I have ignored spoken word.

What I believe about both is that they have become the forms of people with underdeveloped social skills who are unable to act out their dating dance in realtime and the real world and thus result to the passive pandering of their own sexuality through spoken word and blogging.

What do you think? I'm interested in hearing from bloggers. Particularly those who have wallpapered their bloggs with glamour shots and "artistic nudes."