Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "lisa-bloom"
Friends Versus Enemies: How To Overcome Racism
I generally enjoy Joy Reid's weekend MSNBC show. She and I agree on most issues, and I like her personality; she's intelligent, articulate, politely combative, and occasionally comical. She's also as adept at nonverbal communication as another (rare) dark-skinned female anchor, Whoopi Goldberg. White folks and black men cannot roll their eyes the way black women can. However, during her last two Saturday shows, Joy has gotten on my last nerve as much as smug Chuck Todd of "Meet the Press" and other white media folks have. Two weeks in a row, she has failed to make connections between segments in her show and has failed to distinguish between friends and enemies, a serious problem for black folks trying to overcome racism.
On her June 10 show, Joy briefly discussed the Bill Maher controversy. She and her guest, pop cultural critic Toure, agreed with the general consensus that Bill is supportive of blacks, but he needs to watch his mouth since he's messed up on other occasions. I didn't mind that discussion too much, although I wish at least one black person with a microphone would point out that white people's using the word nigger is not even among the top 100 problems we face. But what annoyed me happened earlier in the show. Joy was talking to her blonde, pale colleague Lawrence O'Donnell about lawyers and pointed out that he was the only person in his family who was not a lawyer. She then said, "You're the black sheep of your family." I laughed delightedly, thinking Joy and Lawrence were about to deconstruct the subliminally racist phrase "black sheep." They didn't; Lawrence didn't say, "Yeah, I'm the good person in my family because the rest of them are sleazy lawyers." They didn't even seem to recognize the ridiculousness of a very dark black person calling a very pale white person a black sheep. (To be fair to Lawrence, maybe he was amused but didn't want to be attacked by the politically correct police the way Bill was). The day after that show, I twitter stormed Ms. Joy, pointing out that unarmed black people aren't killed because Bill Maher or Paula Deen said "nigger." I pointed out that racist language like "black sheep" and "dark money" and racist icons in our culture (Darth Vader's head is black; witches wear black; angels wear white) have brainwashed all of us to fear blacks. I also pointed out that Trump never called Obama nigger. Finally, I defended Maher by reminding Joy that he was one of the few media people who criticized Trump continuously for his racist birther lies. He was even sued by Trump for offering to pay him a million dollars if he produced his birth certificate proving that his father was not an orangutan. I suggested we need to know who our friends and our enemies are. Maybe if the black people in the media had made more noise about Trump when he was disrespecting our President during 2011-12, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now.
Before I could completely recover from the "black sheep" disaster, Joy set me off again. Early in her show yesterday, there was breaking news that the jury in the political and media-created so-called rape trial of black icon Bill Cosby was deadlocked. Joy talked to "civil rights" attorney Lisa Bloom on the telephone twice, did not let her viewers hear what Bill's lawyer and publicist (she was reading a statement from Camille Cosby) were saying, but let us hear Lisa's bigoted mother Gloria Allred, who was not representing the plaintiff, speak, and rushed the Georgia U.S. Representative candidate whose election is Tuesday off the air so that we could hear from the white prosecutor who campaigned on locking up Bill Cosby. I turned off my television and almost ran to my laptop to unleash another twitter storm on Joy. I told her that we will never overcome racism as long as we can't distinguish between our friends (Maher) and our enemies (Allred and Bloom). I wondered if we would call a male lawyer whose career consisted of targeting high-profile women a feminist lawyer. I asked her to find out how many white rapists whose victims were black women Lisa or her mama had prosecuted and persecuted, I pointed out that Tiger Woods had not been accused of raping any of the women with whom he had sex, yet Gloria had represented some of them and got hush money (apparently 10 million dollars) for one of them.
What made Joy's handling of the Cosby trial so upsetting is that in the next segment of her show she discussed the latest black and blue tragedy. At least this cop went on trial for murdering an unarmed black man in front of his girlfriend and her four-year-old child, but he was found not guilty. I repeat, not guilty; the jury was not hung. The contrast between that murdered black man's mother's calm rage and some silly black woman wearing an ethnic costume and crying because an almost 80-year-old black man wasn't going to jail for whatever she claimed he did to her decades ago was very revealing. Black women are strong; they have to be. Black men are also strong, and a strong black man gave Joy the perfect connection to make between her first and second segments. As they discussed the killing of black people, Mr. Phillip Goff mentioned the nine black people killed in a South Carolina church two years ago. Those black people were, of course, not killed by a cop. They were killed by a domestic terrorist who claimed he did it because "they rape our women." Where did he get that idea? Trump had just mentioned Mexican rapists in his announcement speech, but I don't think the racist terrorist was stupid enough to confuse black and brown people. Besides, his attack took more planning than a day or two. If Bill Cosby, America's Dad, the jello pudding man, can't be trusted with white women (and despite the appearance of the costumed brown-skinned woman and the light-skinned woman in the big seventies Pam Grier afro, most of Bill's "victims" were white), no black man can. As I said in my twitter storm, if we call Bill Clinton (or Bill O'Reilly) a rapist, no one will go into a church and kill nine white people.
Rape, especially when used to describe sexual interaction between a black man and a white woman, is a trigger word, more powerful and dangerous than nigger. Bill Cosby was not on trial for rape; he was on trial for sexual assault because he did not penetrate with his sexual organ the foreign white woman who took money from him in a civil case and then testified against him in a criminal trial. He pawed her, fingered her while she was conscious (she claims) but unable to move or respond. Ironically, almost exactly a year ago (June 19, 2016), I wrote about the Stanford case, calling out Miss Emily Doe, who was fingered by a drunken undergraduate while unconscious. I wondered if she had done the same thing to him would she be on trial for sexual assault. I wonder the same thing about these cases. None of these women were beaten or overpowered by Cosby. All of them apparently took pills willingly, and they were all hanging out with a known-to-be-married celebrity. Why did these women think that Bill Cosby wanted to hang out with them? Why would he want to be their mentor? What was so special about them? A smart woman, who wasn't an entitled narcissist, would have been suspicious of an older, very successful celebrity wanting to be her "friend" and "mentor"; she would have wanted to know where his wife and four daughters were. And smart, strong women would not have allowed a bigoted, fame-hungry "civil rights" lawyer like Gloria Allred to turn them into professional victims who might be responsible not only for the death of nine black people but also for Hillary Clinton's loss in November. If white women are so weak that being pawed while they are unconscious or semi-conscious can ruin their lives, how can they be Commander-in-Chief, leader of the free world? Allred, Bloom, and their cavalry of whining victims damaged the image of both black men and white women. Not only can I refer to strong black women like Pam Grier, Oprah Winfrey, and Maya Angelou, who survived and thrived after being molested as children, I can mention as I did in my letter to Emily Doe and a tweet to Allred the young white heroic victims Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, and Michelle Knight. These women refused to accept the role of victim, although by any definition of the word they were. As I said to both Doe and Allred, men can rape and assault women, but they can't make them victims. Only the women can do that to themselves with help from self-promoting bigots like Allred.
As I said to Joy, the primary victims in America are not weak white women but strong black men and women. I will add that our victimization will not end, and we will not overcome racism if we continue to have trouble distinguishing between friends and enemies. The reason we must always talk about race and never allow our white "friends" to use the colorblind lie is so that we can spot those white people who know all of the right words to say but whose actions say something else. Actions always speak louder than words. Bill Maher's actions say he's black people's friend. Gloria Allred's say she's our enemy.
On her June 10 show, Joy briefly discussed the Bill Maher controversy. She and her guest, pop cultural critic Toure, agreed with the general consensus that Bill is supportive of blacks, but he needs to watch his mouth since he's messed up on other occasions. I didn't mind that discussion too much, although I wish at least one black person with a microphone would point out that white people's using the word nigger is not even among the top 100 problems we face. But what annoyed me happened earlier in the show. Joy was talking to her blonde, pale colleague Lawrence O'Donnell about lawyers and pointed out that he was the only person in his family who was not a lawyer. She then said, "You're the black sheep of your family." I laughed delightedly, thinking Joy and Lawrence were about to deconstruct the subliminally racist phrase "black sheep." They didn't; Lawrence didn't say, "Yeah, I'm the good person in my family because the rest of them are sleazy lawyers." They didn't even seem to recognize the ridiculousness of a very dark black person calling a very pale white person a black sheep. (To be fair to Lawrence, maybe he was amused but didn't want to be attacked by the politically correct police the way Bill was). The day after that show, I twitter stormed Ms. Joy, pointing out that unarmed black people aren't killed because Bill Maher or Paula Deen said "nigger." I pointed out that racist language like "black sheep" and "dark money" and racist icons in our culture (Darth Vader's head is black; witches wear black; angels wear white) have brainwashed all of us to fear blacks. I also pointed out that Trump never called Obama nigger. Finally, I defended Maher by reminding Joy that he was one of the few media people who criticized Trump continuously for his racist birther lies. He was even sued by Trump for offering to pay him a million dollars if he produced his birth certificate proving that his father was not an orangutan. I suggested we need to know who our friends and our enemies are. Maybe if the black people in the media had made more noise about Trump when he was disrespecting our President during 2011-12, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now.
Before I could completely recover from the "black sheep" disaster, Joy set me off again. Early in her show yesterday, there was breaking news that the jury in the political and media-created so-called rape trial of black icon Bill Cosby was deadlocked. Joy talked to "civil rights" attorney Lisa Bloom on the telephone twice, did not let her viewers hear what Bill's lawyer and publicist (she was reading a statement from Camille Cosby) were saying, but let us hear Lisa's bigoted mother Gloria Allred, who was not representing the plaintiff, speak, and rushed the Georgia U.S. Representative candidate whose election is Tuesday off the air so that we could hear from the white prosecutor who campaigned on locking up Bill Cosby. I turned off my television and almost ran to my laptop to unleash another twitter storm on Joy. I told her that we will never overcome racism as long as we can't distinguish between our friends (Maher) and our enemies (Allred and Bloom). I wondered if we would call a male lawyer whose career consisted of targeting high-profile women a feminist lawyer. I asked her to find out how many white rapists whose victims were black women Lisa or her mama had prosecuted and persecuted, I pointed out that Tiger Woods had not been accused of raping any of the women with whom he had sex, yet Gloria had represented some of them and got hush money (apparently 10 million dollars) for one of them.
What made Joy's handling of the Cosby trial so upsetting is that in the next segment of her show she discussed the latest black and blue tragedy. At least this cop went on trial for murdering an unarmed black man in front of his girlfriend and her four-year-old child, but he was found not guilty. I repeat, not guilty; the jury was not hung. The contrast between that murdered black man's mother's calm rage and some silly black woman wearing an ethnic costume and crying because an almost 80-year-old black man wasn't going to jail for whatever she claimed he did to her decades ago was very revealing. Black women are strong; they have to be. Black men are also strong, and a strong black man gave Joy the perfect connection to make between her first and second segments. As they discussed the killing of black people, Mr. Phillip Goff mentioned the nine black people killed in a South Carolina church two years ago. Those black people were, of course, not killed by a cop. They were killed by a domestic terrorist who claimed he did it because "they rape our women." Where did he get that idea? Trump had just mentioned Mexican rapists in his announcement speech, but I don't think the racist terrorist was stupid enough to confuse black and brown people. Besides, his attack took more planning than a day or two. If Bill Cosby, America's Dad, the jello pudding man, can't be trusted with white women (and despite the appearance of the costumed brown-skinned woman and the light-skinned woman in the big seventies Pam Grier afro, most of Bill's "victims" were white), no black man can. As I said in my twitter storm, if we call Bill Clinton (or Bill O'Reilly) a rapist, no one will go into a church and kill nine white people.
Rape, especially when used to describe sexual interaction between a black man and a white woman, is a trigger word, more powerful and dangerous than nigger. Bill Cosby was not on trial for rape; he was on trial for sexual assault because he did not penetrate with his sexual organ the foreign white woman who took money from him in a civil case and then testified against him in a criminal trial. He pawed her, fingered her while she was conscious (she claims) but unable to move or respond. Ironically, almost exactly a year ago (June 19, 2016), I wrote about the Stanford case, calling out Miss Emily Doe, who was fingered by a drunken undergraduate while unconscious. I wondered if she had done the same thing to him would she be on trial for sexual assault. I wonder the same thing about these cases. None of these women were beaten or overpowered by Cosby. All of them apparently took pills willingly, and they were all hanging out with a known-to-be-married celebrity. Why did these women think that Bill Cosby wanted to hang out with them? Why would he want to be their mentor? What was so special about them? A smart woman, who wasn't an entitled narcissist, would have been suspicious of an older, very successful celebrity wanting to be her "friend" and "mentor"; she would have wanted to know where his wife and four daughters were. And smart, strong women would not have allowed a bigoted, fame-hungry "civil rights" lawyer like Gloria Allred to turn them into professional victims who might be responsible not only for the death of nine black people but also for Hillary Clinton's loss in November. If white women are so weak that being pawed while they are unconscious or semi-conscious can ruin their lives, how can they be Commander-in-Chief, leader of the free world? Allred, Bloom, and their cavalry of whining victims damaged the image of both black men and white women. Not only can I refer to strong black women like Pam Grier, Oprah Winfrey, and Maya Angelou, who survived and thrived after being molested as children, I can mention as I did in my letter to Emily Doe and a tweet to Allred the young white heroic victims Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, and Michelle Knight. These women refused to accept the role of victim, although by any definition of the word they were. As I said to both Doe and Allred, men can rape and assault women, but they can't make them victims. Only the women can do that to themselves with help from self-promoting bigots like Allred.
As I said to Joy, the primary victims in America are not weak white women but strong black men and women. I will add that our victimization will not end, and we will not overcome racism if we continue to have trouble distinguishing between friends and enemies. The reason we must always talk about race and never allow our white "friends" to use the colorblind lie is so that we can spot those white people who know all of the right words to say but whose actions say something else. Actions always speak louder than words. Bill Maher's actions say he's black people's friend. Gloria Allred's say she's our enemy.
