On Sunday, the New York Times's Pete Thamel filed a dispatch from Haifa, Israel. Why was a college sports reporter filing from Haifa? Thamel was checking in on Jeremy Tyler, the 18-year-old uber-prospect who, in the wake of Brandon Jennings's now-viewed-as-successful European experiment, decided to forgo his senior year of high school and play overseas for Maccabi Haifa.
Thamel reports that Tyler's decision is at this point -- which, to be fair, is very early in the process -- not only regrettable but disastrous. Tyler is clearly immature and distracted by the potential of NBA riches, which he apparently considers a sure thing. His coaches and teammates do not like him. He is struggling to see minutes on the court. And if things keep getting worse, Tyler's NBA draft status is likely to keep falling. These early returns are not promising. A key graph:
His coach calls him lazy and out of shape. The team captain says he is soft. His teammates say he needs to learn to shut up and show up on time. He has no friends on the team. In extensive interviews with Tyler, his teammates, coaches, his father and advisers, the consensus is that he is so naïve and immature that he has no idea how naïve and immature he is. So enamored with his vast potential, Tyler has not developed the work ethic necessary to tap it.
Of course, as one teammate reminds Thamel, Tyler has been a pro for less than 100 days, and he's done so in a foreign country with few friends at an unusually early age. He deserves some slackThis time last year, people were raising similar questions about Brandon Jennings (though those questions had far more to do with ability and playing time than attitude). Still, while Tyler's situation is unique among hoopsters, he's not the first 18-year-old to enter the workforce. He's not even the first 18-year-old to enter high-level sports; by age 18, top-level soccer prospects are being thrust into intense club matches. 18 isn't old, but it's old enough to know when to shut up.
Anyway, Jennings's situation worked out, and there's no reason Tyler's can't either. So let's avoid extrapolating Tyler's situation into an indictment of the European option for recruits. For now, it's just an indictment of Jeremy Tyler, and things aren't looking good.
A local college teacher who asked students to draw a black man with a noose around his neck awaited word Oct. 28 on how he could be disciplined.
Los Angeles Trade Technical College teacher Bill Robles could be disciplined in various ways if officials found that Robles gave the homework assignment with malicious intent, but the primary option is to ask him to undergo sensitivity training, college President Roland “Chip” Chapdelaine said.
Based on his initial review, Chapdelaine said he did not think Robles gave the assignment with malicious intent.
“He gave an assignment that was probably insensitive,” Chapdelaine said Oct. 26, adding he had to reserve final judgment until he conducted a full review.
Final decisions would not be disclosed, however, since the situation is a personnel matter, said Chapdelaine, who did not respond to an e-mail by presstime on Oct. 28 to confirm if an ultimate recommendation had been made.
Robles wouldn’t have to take training but only be recommended to do so, Chapdelaine said Oct. 26.
Although there are different levels, the training generally involves dialogue, exposure, understanding and discussion with people from different ethnic groups, Chapdelaine said, adding he could not speculate on future discipline.
Camelle Williams and other African American students walked out of class Sept. 16 because Robles passed out an image of a black man standing in his bare feet, pointing to the floor with one hand and holding a noose around his neck with the other.
Students in the Drawing II and Drawing III classes were given a different assignment the same day — a picture of a home, students said — but Williams still filed a complaint after talking to Robles.
“He was defending himself the whole time. He didn’t say he was sorry,” said Williams, who recently went before the L.A. Community College District’s board of trustees about the incident.
“He didn’t even acknowledge the noose,” she added.
Robles said he doesn’t remember exactly what he said that day but did not intentionally give the assignment as a racist gesture or to offend anyone. He added that he never associated the photo with any racist themes.
“In retrospect, I see it was an error in judgment,” Robles said.
Black students had an uproar over the image, he said, “and I can see their side of it, but I’m totally devoid of any of those (racist) feelings.”
“I did it in total innocence,” he added.
[Home page of Bill Robles’ Web site, which highlights his work as a courtroom sketch artist.]
Home page of Bill Robles’ Web site, which highlights his work as a courtroom sketch artist. Robles, a longtime courtroom sketch artist, has worked at Trade Tech for roughly 20 years.
Chapdelaine said he did not know of any other complaints filed against Robles in the past.
Robles said he picked the assignment — originally something he drew based on photos he saw many years ago in a magazine — because he felt students could apply drawing principles they learned in class with it. Students, he said, were complaining about not wanting to do certain assignments, so Robles said he wanted to give them an assignment that would be “stimulus” to the students.
Robles said he never gave the assignment to students before. Chapdelaine and Williams, in separate interviews, said he did.
Raymond Baptist, a visual communications student who saw the illustration before it was passed out, refused to draw it.
“It was kind of shocking to me,” Baptist said. “He’s not even being considerate of people’s feelings.”
Virtually all the black students — about five in a room of roughly 30 — walked into a neighboring lab and told another teacher about the incident, according to some students.
“Everybody just came in mad, basically,” Baptist said.
Robles added that the picture — which he said was an intriguing pose and photo of Trinidadian artist and performer Geoffrey Holder — was considered a piece of art several years ago, wasn’t considered offensive, and appeared in a magazine.
Baptist said that doesn’t change his opinion about the photo “because people saw it for what it was … especially black students.”
“We see a black person with a rope around their neck,” he added.
School officials held meetings, including one with Robles. An administration official also visited the class to evaluate Robles because of the incident, and not for a usual review, Chapdelaine said.
Robles apologized to students several days later. The school also apologized in a letter “on behalf of the Arts Trades and Fashion Department” and the administration “for the lack of sensitivity in the Visual Communication assignment…”
Williams said she didn’t accept Robles’ apology, but wants him fired, noting that she doesn’t have a personal problem with him. She said the situation should not be tolerated because racism shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere.
“He is only a symptom to a much bigger problem,” she said, also alleging that racism exists at the school.
Robles reiterated he is not racist, adding he would not have passed out the assignment if he was.
“I don’t know why somebody would want to tarnish a career spending all (these) 40 years with something like this,” he said, reiterating it was false that he meant to offend anyone.
“You’re worried about your 40 years. I’m worried about my 400 years (of slavery),” Williams said as a response.
Later, Robles added, “In retrospect, I’ve had a sensitivity awakening.”
He said he was in “lala land” because he just didn’t think in racist terms when he saw the drawing, but is now more aware.
Nana Gyamfi, a lawyer and co-founder of L.A-based Human Rights Advocacy contacted by Williams, said she would help Williams get the word out about the situation.
People have the right to speak out, Gyamfi said.
“The damage has occurred,” she added, “whether the intent is there or not.”
An art teacher who gave his Los Angeles Trade-Technical College students a racially offensive classroom assignment received a slap on the wrist, but the president of the college may lose his job over it.
Bill Robles, a veteran courthouse illustrator and teacher in Trade-Tech’s Visual Communications Department, gave each of his students in his drawing class a picture of two caricatured Black men pulling a noose around their necks and, as homework, instructed them to draw the figure of the man on the left in the picture.
The class of 30 students was outraged by the assignment to the point that none of the students drew the picture and the five African-Americans in the class walked out on the spot.
Reyna Mendez, one of the offended students, said the picture was totally inappropriate and she asked Robles why he would present a picture like that for them to draw.
Mendez, who is writing a story about the incident for the college newspaper, said Robles told her he wanted to show the “gesture” depicted in that picture so the class could learn to draw gestures. Finding that to be an unsatisfactory reply, “I told him there are a lot of other pictures he could have used to show us how to draw gestures,” Mendez said.
Camelle Williams, a visual communications major who grew up in Long Beach but resides with her grandmother in South L.A., was so incensed by Robles’ picture that she spearheaded a protest against him which culminated in a confrontation with the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees last week.
Robles, an elderly man believed to be in his 70s, was immediately challenged by Williams about his assignment when he gave it last month. “He began to unapologetically defend himself by saying, ‘In all the years I have been teaching, I never had one complaint about this assignment,” Williams said.
“Even after all the African-American students walked out in protest, it was the remaining students who had to explain to him how offensive this is to all races, not only to African-Americans.”
Williams reported Robles’ actions to the college administration, including the president, Roland Chapdelaine, who promised a thorough investigation of the matter and swift discipline to follow, if warranted. Robles’ offense occurred on Sept. 16 and by the end of the month, the investigation appeared complete and Chapdelaine informed Williams that he would recommend sensitivity training for Robles and he would put in his permanent file a reprimand for not having a syllabus for his class.
Williams found Chapdelaine’s recommended “discipline” to be unacceptable, since a reprimand for Robles’ failure to have a syllabus did, in no way, address his offense, so she marshaled her fellow students and took the issue over Chapdelaine’s head — to the board of trustees, which met at Pierce College Oct. 21.
The meeting hall was packed, as most of the people went to express to the board their concerns about a farm and an equestrian center at Pierce College. Williams and her “Robles’ picture” item was listed last on the agenda. But when she spoke, things changed.
First of all, when Jimmy DeVance and other Robles students, distributed Robles’ picture to the crowd gathered for the meeting, the people reacted with horror and stunned disbelief. Although they went there to support a farm and a horse facility, they immediately found something else to champion — the removal of whomever is responsible for this abomination they saw before them. Williams spoke movingly to the board about what Robles had done and what Chapdelaine had failed to do. After she finished, the board turned to Chapdelaine — who was present because the board was scheduled to vote on the extension of his one-year contract to head Trade-Tech — and asked him to give an account of himself with respect to the Robles incident.
Chapdelaine said his investigation showed that the adverse student reaction to Robles’ use of the picture was “split” and that, in affect, it didn’t seem to be that big of a deal. He said, however, he would have a full report on the matter on Monday.
When the time came later on in the afternoon for the board of trustees to vote on extending Chapdelaine’s contract, it voted “no.”
The old NBA player walked into the high school gymnasium for his first day of work Monday night wearing a Cleveland Cavaliers’ long-sleeved T-shirt and practice shorts. The gym at Trimble Tech High in Fort Worth, Texas, hardly resembled the packed 18,000-seat arenas in which he used to play. On this night he wouldn’t be matched up with Kobe Bryant(notes) or Michael Jordan – only unheralded former small-college stars. No more charter flights or Four Seasons suites. These days, it’s Best Westerns and long bus rides.
This is where 38-year-old Isaiah “J.R.” Rider now finds himself, preparing for his first season with the North Texas Fresh, one of more than 50 teams in the American Basketball Association. Sixteen years ago, Rider was the fifth overall pick of the NBA draft, a promising rookie for the Minnesota Timberwolves who would go on to win the All-Star dunk contest. Nearly two decades of self-inflicted drama and personal pain – including several arrests and a 3½-month stay in jail – have now dropped Rider to the low minor leagues, desperate to revive his career and rewrite a different ending to his troubled story.
“I still have it in me,” Rider told Yahoo! Sports. “I still have something left in the tank. It’s still in my blood. My juices still flow.
“I know I can still ball.”
No one ever doubted Rider could play. He showed flashes of being a dynamic scorer and his acrobatic dunks brought crowds to their feet. During his nine-year stay in the NBA, he averaged 16.8 points while making stops in Minnesota, Portland, Atlanta, Los Angeles (Lakers) and Denver.
“I look on a lot of NBA courts today and I still don’t see guys with the talent he had,” said Washington Wizards vice president Tommy Sheppard, who worked in Denver for Rider’s brief stay. “He wasn’t the best ball-handler. But he scored in bunches and was an unstoppable force.”
Of course, wherever Rider went, chaos usually followed. He was repeatedly late to practices, meetings and games. He was convicted of kicking a female manager of a sports bar and busted for possession of marijuana and an illegal cell phone. He spit on a fan. He quarreled with management, coaches and teammates, once threatening Atlanta Hawks center Dikembe Mutombo(notes).
Rider, who grew up in Alameda, Calif., even once missed a meeting with the Oakland mayor that would have led to the city naming a gym after him and opening up a midnight basketball program in his honor.
“I’m upset that my career didn’t go as long as it should have went,” Rider said. “Looking back at it, I would have changed some things.”
Rider spent his last full NBA season with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2000-01. He was left off the playoff roster, but still received a championship ring.
“J.R. was the type of player who wanted to do things his way, and if his way didn’t match with the system sometimes there was a conflict,” Shaquille O’Neal(notes) said. “Whenever you go to a new team, you have to go with that system. If you don’t go with that system, then they oust you. He was a hell of a player and if he would have been a system-type baller then he’d probably still be here today.”
Rider’s NBA career ended in the fall of 2001 when the Denver Nuggets waived him after just 10 games. “It was because of chronic lateness,” Sheppard said. “The talent was undeniable. But we had structure. …That’s where all the bad habits came together. The Nuggets were in no position to take that, even with his talent at that time.”
After the Nuggets cut him, Rider was certain another NBA or overseas team would eventually give him a chance. Nothing materialized.
“I thought they were trying to politic me out [the NBA],” Rider said.
After returning to the East Bay, Rider’s life went from bad to worse. His mother, Donna, suffered a heart ailment and – after what Rider claims was a misdiagnosis – slipped into a coma and eventually was taken off life support. Rider considered Donna his best friend. Once, after Rider was ejected during a game in Minnesota, she walked onto the court, told him to be quiet and ushered him to the locker room.
“We were talking one day looking out at the ocean from the house I got for her in Alameda,” Rider said. “Then the next day I get a call at 2 in the morning saying she is in the hospital. I never talked to her again, man.
“I was blaming myself because I’m not playing and she’s used to going to games. I was like, ‘Screw the world.’ ”
In early 2006, Rider was arrested in Marin, Calif., on a domestic-violence charge after allegedly driving off with a former girlfriend against her will. Ordered to stay away from the community, he drove into another car after a sheriff’s deputy tried to confront him. His substance-abuse problems worsened after he began to lace marijuana with cocaine. Rider eventually pled guilty to several charges, including felony cocaine possession and evading an officer. He received a seven-month sentence in Marin County jail, and says he served half the time.
“It was the ultimate low point of my life,” Rider said. “…There were no visitors. No one down for me. No letters. I had fake friends. They left me for dead. I’ve been there for so many people. I co-signed to pay for homes. I paid for weddings. But when I was struggling, no one was there for me.”
Jail didn’t cure Rider’s problems. In January 2008, he was arrested in Berkeley, Calif., after a confrontation with a taxi driver while also possessing an unlawful firearm and being hit with a $5,000 warrant for grand theft. A drug arrest followed two months later. In March 2008, he was arrested on Los Angeles’ skid row for investigation of auto theft before being released later in the day. He says the car belonged to his cousin.
“I regret it,” Rider said about his problems. “I wish I could have it back. &hellipI had to face and go through all of that to just get to this point now.” Isaiah Rider won an NBA championship with Shaquille O'Neal and the Lakers, but he was not on the team's playoff roster. (NBAE/Getty)
Thomas Brown, a deputy district attorney for Marin County, and Rider’s lawyer, Garrick Lew, both say Rider made a lot of his problems worse by not following through with court requirements. As in most areas of his life, tardiness was a main problem.
“He couldn’t get out of his own way,” Brown said. “He would be able to resolve a felony or misdemeanor with fairly minimal diversion obligation and couldn’t do that at all. There were always excuses. But personally, people wanted to see him succeed. He just couldn’t do it and the courts got sick of it.”
Lew said Rider has since fulfilled all his legal obligations.
“Most of the trouble he got in was from not going to court,” Lew said. “It upset the judge. His bail would go up when he failed to do what he was expected to do.”
Not surprisingly, Rider also ran into financial problems. The Marin Independent Journal reported that Rider lost his mother’s home in Alameda to foreclosure in 2006 and also lost two properties in San Leandro, Calif., and several cars. Lew said Rider also paid for his sister to complete a master’s degree program and helped support two brothers.
So how is Rider doing financially now?
“That’s not public,” Rider said. “That’s no one’s business whether I drive my Bentley to practice or ride with one of the coaches. I’m able to eat, able to feed myself and feed my family.”
Rider, who now claims to be drug-free, said he began to turn his life around at the start of the year by attending church. He also reunited with a former girlfriend, Vanessa Cassidy. Rider and Cassidy dated while he was playing for the Lakers. Six months ago, she convinced him to leave the troubles of the Oakland area behind and move with her to Phoenix. The couple is now engaged and she is pregnant with a boy to be named Isaiah Rider III. Cassidy also is staying with Rider in Texas as he plays for the Fresh. Isaiah Rider thrilled fans when he won the 1994 dunk contest as a rookie with his
“It’s been only her and that’s it,” Rider said of his main supporters. “Her and God. It seemed like everybody else, and I say this not mad at anybody, left me for dead in that support group. All the friends I used to have are not there. Arn Tellem, the agent I started with, won’t answer the phone. Personal friends in Oakland, those friendships ran dry. I have quite a few associates, but very few close friends.”
Hoping to restart his career, Rider contacted Joe Lee, a Washington-based agent who represents several players in the minor leagues and overseas. Lee, who has a law-enforcement background, was skeptical of Rider’s sincerity.
“I gave him a test to see if he’d be on time calling me back and to see if he’d do the things I wanted him to do,” Lee said. “And we went on for about two good weeks and he was on time all the time.”
Rider’s goal is to eventually land an overseas contract that could potentially pay upwards of $20,000 a month. Lee said teams in China and Dubai have expressed some interest, but all want to see him playing first. The hope is that the Fresh afford him the opportunity to compile some video evidence.
A 90-minute face-to-face meeting with Rider convinced Fresh owner Jay Bowdy to sign him. “I understand that he’s made mistakes, he had his chance and he flunked on it for whatever reason,” Bowdy said. “But the reason why I took him is because unless you mess up with me and I see it … then I’m not going to not accept you because of what you did 10 years ago. That’s a long time and there’s so much you can learn from your experience from that.”
Bowdy, 26, said Rider will be one of the two highest-paid players and the Fresh also are providing him with an apartment. But that doesn’t mean Rider will be banking much money. Sixty percent of the pay for players and coaches, Bowdy said, comes from each night’s merchandise and ticket sales. The team will practice and play its home games in a high school gym and practices are scheduled at night so players with day jobs can attend.
“Just give me a gym with a nice floor and I’m good,” Rider said. “It’s a long way from practicing at [Trail Blazers owner] Paul Allen’s house in Seattle, but it’s still good though.”
Rider also thinks he’s still good enough to prove he can at least play overseas, where he could land a better contract.
“Money is green everywhere,” he said. “I have a gift and I feel like I got to do what I got to do. God gave me a gift, and I feel like I should be able to play basketball for as long as I possibly can.”
Rider still has dreams he can make it back to the NBA. Most NBA general managers see his chances as just that: a dream. One Eastern Conference executive said it would be “almost impossible” for Rider to earn another job in the league at his age.
Rider needs to work on his conditioning, but Bowdy said he is only about 10 pounds over his NBA playing weight of 215. He also liked what he saw from Rider’s first practice. The first game for the Fresh is Nov. 22.
“He still has his tenacity and no-lose attitude,” Bowdy said. “I was impressed. I will be scared to see what he does to my players when’s he’s in shape.”
Just two months ago, Rider claims he pulled off his famed “East Bay Funk Dunk” that won him the 1994 dunk contest. He says he did so in a park. While wearing jeans. The video of the dunk he provided, however, makes it questionable, at best, whether the rim was the regulation 10 feet.
Still, Rider remains undeterred. “I’m the best player in the world not playing,” he said.
For now, Rider has pledged to stay out of trouble and continue working toward his goal. In addition to playing for the Fresh, he’s nearly finished filming a documentary about his life. The film will focus on Rider’s struggles after he left the NBA. Only one part of the documentary is left to be shot.
Somewhere in an old gym in North Texas, Isaiah Rider continues to search for the right ending.
Isiah blasts Magic over criticisms in new book =================================
Magic Johnson in a soon-to-be-released book, Isiah Thomas said he'd had enough. And so he began to fight back.
"I'm really hurt, and I really feel taken advantage of for all these years,'' said Thomas, the Hall of Fame point guard and former NBA coach and executive, most recently with the Knicks. "I'm totally blindsided by this. Every time that I've seen Magic, he has been friendly with me. Whenever he came to a Knick game, he was standing in the tunnel [to the locker room] with me. He and [Knicks assistant coach] Herb [Williams] and I, we would go out to dinner in New York. I didn't know he felt this way.''
The criticisms are made by Johnson in When The Game Was Ours, which he co-wrote with Larry Bird and author Jackie MacMullan. The book, to be released on Nov. 4, tells the inside story of the most important rivalry in basketball history.
Much of their story involves Thomas, who as captain of the Detroit Pistons served as a primary threat to the championship ambitions of Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers. The book offers revelations that have stunned Thomas. Magic addresses years of rumors by finally accusing Thomas of questioning his sexuality after Johnson was diagnosed with HIV in 1991. Magic also admits that he joined with Michael Jordan and other players in blackballing Thomas from the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, saying, "Isiah killed his own chances when it came to the Olympics. Nobody on that team wanted to play with him. ... Michael didn't want to play with him. Scottie [Pippen] wanted no part of him. Bird wasn't pushing for him. Karl Malone didn't want him. Who was saying, 'We need this guy?' Nobody.''
"I'm glad that he's finally had the nerve and the courage to stand up and say it was him, as opposed to letting Michael Jordan take the blame for it all these years,'' Thomas responded during one of several interviews he gave to SI.com on Wednesday. "I wish he would have had the courage to say this stuff to me face to face, as opposed to writing it in some damn book to sell and he can make money off it.''
Thomas, who is the first-year coach at Florida International in Miami, confirmed that MacMullan attempted to reach him for comment six months ago, but he declined through his publicist to speak with her.
Magic's most shocking accusation, however, is that Thomas was responsible for spreading rumors that Johnson was gay or bisexual after Johnson tested positive for HIV, forcing his retirement at age 32. "Isiah kept questioning people about it,'' Magic says. "I couldn't believe that. The one guy I thought I could count on had all these doubts. It was like he kicked me in the stomach.''
Thomas vehemently denied that he had gossiped behind Magic's back, pointing out that he knew better than to engage in such hurtful talk.
"What most people don't know is, before Magic had HIV, my brother had HIV,'' Thomas said. "My brother died of HIV, AIDS, drug abuse. So I knew way more about the disease, because I was living with it in my house.''
His brother, Gregory Thomas, died five years ago, Isiah said.
"Magic acted and responded off some really bad information that he got,'' Thomas went on. "Whatever friendship we had, I thought it was bulls--- that he believed that. Let me put it to you this way: If he and I were such close friends, if I was questioning his sexuality, then I was questioning mine too. That's how idiotic it is.''
The book's main source for this allegation is Magic's longtime agent, Lon Rosen, who says Thomas told him in 1991, "I keep hearing Magic is gay.''
"C'mon, Isiah, you know Earvin better than anyone,'' Rosen replies.
"I know,'' Thomas answers, "but I don't know what he's doing when he's out there in L.A.''
On Wednesday, Thomas denied that conversation. "I don't know Lon like that,'' he said, adding that he reached out to Johnson at the time. "I remember calling Magic and saying [of the allegations that he was rumor-mongering], 'You know that's some bulls---.' ''
Magic declined to be interviewed for this story. Rosen, speaking on behalf of his client, said he and Magic stand by everything attributed to them in the book.
Thomas insisted he felt too much sympathy for Magic to be spreading rumors about him.
"I felt awful for him; I felt awful for everybody,'' Thomas said. "But I knew enough at that time that he didn't have to retire. The 'blood' thing we do in the NBA -- where we stop the game because of blood on somebody's shirt and all that ceremonious stuff -- we're not stopping HIV/AIDS that way. We still do it out of some insane fear that came about when Karl Malone and everybody was saying they weren't playing if Magic was playing.''
Instead, Thomas said he helped make it possible for Magic to return in 1992 to the All-Star Game.
"They weren't going to let Magic play in the All-Star Game; all the players were coming out [against him],'' Thomas said. "You know how that all got turned around? I had a meeting with all of the players -- because I was president of the players' association -- and I told them not only was he going to play, but we were going to shake his hand and give him a hug. And I was the first to shake his hand and hug him and give him a kiss, to let people know that's not how the virus is spread.
"And you can go back and check at the players' association. Call Charlie Grantham [the former union executive director and COO] and ask him how Magic got to play in the All-Star Game. Ask him who called the meeting.''
When The Game Was Ours credits NBA commissioner David Stern with inviting Johnson to play in the All-Star Game, despite objections from some players and owners. The book does acknowledge, however, that Thomas was the first player to embrace Johnson on the court before the game.
"I don't discriminate," Thomas said. "I don't believe any race or ethnic group or social group should be discriminated against, because I have been discrimated against, and I know it would be wrong for me to discriminate.
"I think Magic has been misled on a lot of things, and unfortunately this has been another one of them. I am hurt and disappointed that he has chosen to believe others as opposed to his closest friends. And I think you can go back and look in that era and see who his closest friends were, and who his closest friends are now. At that time, I don't consider Lon Rosen to be one of his closest friends; he was one of his business advisers making money off him.''
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Spike Lee is critical of Perry’s work describing, "Meet the Browns" and "House of Payne" as "coonery and buffoonery."
He has even compared Perry’s work to Amos and Andy. Lee has always been a controversial figure, however this time he is bang on.
Perry is the face of coonery with his Madea character leading the way. She is loud, ignorant, abrasive and downright ridiculous. Her solution to dealing with problem children is to break out the belt and pray. She is the mythical mammy that White folks think exist in every Black family.
How exactly does his vision of Black womanhood advance Black people? The overriding theme in Perry’s movies is that a woman must submit and pray to find a mate in life. His vision of Black womanhood is sexist and promotes Black male hegemony. Just like his White male counterparts, Black males seek power through oppression.
It is one thing to show Black people doing the electric slide at a party and another to show us shucking and jiving at every turn. Perry has responded by saying:
"You know, that pisses me off," Perry tells Byron Pitts. "It really does. Because it's so insulting. It's attitudes like that that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist and that's why there's no material speaking to them. I would love to read that to my fan base."
Of course these people exist, but is this really the image of Blackness that we want promoted. Is it any wonder that Obama, a Harvard educated Black man can have his intelligence questioned, when this is the image of Blackness in pop culture?
Black people are hungry to seem themselves reflected in mainstream media. They are so hungry that they will eat the sand, without every realizing that the images that they are consuming are a mirage. They eat because men like Perry tell them to and because that is all that is available. This is not nourishment for the soul.
Perry wishes to receive accolades from his and his employment of black bodies. Well, when White people employ a Black housemaid, should Black people be thankful for their generosity? When Whiteness fills it supports staff roles with people of color and saves the well paying jobs for White people, should we be thankful for the hand up? Employing Black people to participate in the diminishment of Blackness, is not something we should ever be thankful for.
Perry is very resistant to any criticism of his work. We are expected to ignore the sexism and coonery because it has a Black face behind it. Being Black does not give you any more authority thank a White person to diminish Black people. Whiteness is maintained as a powerful force through the support and collusion of people of color. While Perry is mass producing these harmful images, POC are fighting against them in an effort to get an education and jobs. If Tyler Perry really wants to do something for Black people, he can ride off into the sunset from whence he came.
* Reporter: Christina Gonzalez * Posted by: Tony Spearman
Los Angeles (myFOXla.com) - A sketch in an art class is stirring controversy at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. Some students say the sketch of an African-American dancer is racist.
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines art as “the use of skill and imagination in the production of things of beauty.” In 1965, a thing of beauty was not a phrase that would have been used to describe the community of Watts. And yet at that time, co-existing with the chaos and social upheaval that characterized Watts that year, was an art movement that was in its infancy. That movement began in 1959 with an effort to tear down the eclectic towers that soared over the community created by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia, who constructed the artwork from cement and found items during the time he lived in Watts—1920 to 1954. “When Simon left, he gave the towers to a neighbor; the neighbor wanted to turn (them) into a taco stand,” explained Rosie Lee Hooks, current director of the Watts Tower Art Center, which sits adjacent to the world-famous Watts Towers. The city had other ideas about the structure, and issued a demolition order. During a stress test to pull the towers down in Oct. 10, 1959, Hooks said they were so implanted in the land that they tipped over the truck trying to tear them down. That cosmic act of defiance prompted an effort to preserve the towers by creation of the Committee for the Simon Rodia Towers in Watts. That effort was primarily pushed by non-Watts residents. But there was also a group of people who had grown up in the area, who saw preservation of the towers as a way to bring art education to the community. Setting up shop under a tarp on the foundation of Rodia’s burned-out house, they taught informal classes. Some of these individuals would go on to make towering names for themselves in the art. Those teaching under that tarp included Lucille Krasney, noted assemblage artist Noah Purifoy; and enamalist Curtis E. Tann. They also formed the beginnings of the present-day Watts Towers Art Center. But, as often happens, the best of intentions in communities like Watts, if not sufficiently funded will falter and sometimes die. What saved this center, said photographer Willie Middlebrook, a former director of the center who spent many of his formative years at the art space, was a decision to give the center to the City of Los Angeles, who then sold it to the state, and then leased it back for $1 a year. Middlebrook said, the city also infused the community center with $100,000 in funding, and the first director under the auspices of L.A. City, was renowned artist John Outterbridge. “Our goal (with the center) was to invite young people to learn about their history from an art point of view,” remembers long-time art advocate Cecil Ferguson, who worked with Outterbridge producing exhibitions at the center. Among the shows Ferguson said that left an indelible impression on him was “Women of Watts.” “This was a dynamite show. All these (pioneering) women from Watts . . . Frieda Shaw Johnson, Geraldine Burton, Kathleen King,” reminisced the feisty septuagenarian who grew up in the community and said the show chronicled the lives of women who made an impact on Watts. “Katherine Grimes came to Watts in 1900. She planted an oak tree, and when she died, it was over 50 feet high. She grew collared greens and orchids next to each other,” added Ferguson, who went to church with Grimes as a boy and curated a show at the art center featuring her entire greenhouse. “Another big show we did was on the Laws family—Anna Laws and Henry Laws. Anna was about 90 years old, and the day we did the opening for the show, they brought her on a stretcher. We gave awards to the whole family, and she got off that stretcher and went to get her award,” remembers Ferguson, laughter in his voice. In 1942, the Laws family was told that African Americans were barred from living in the neighborhood at 1235 E. 92nd St. in Los Angeles, and were ordered to move. The family fought and eventually won a lengthy legal battle to remain in the home they owned. As a result of the Laws exhibit, Ferguson said he got the thrill of meeting pioneering activist and newspaper woman Charlotta Bass, who he said helped sponsor the family’s lawsuit. What Purifoy, Tann, Krasney, Outterbridge and Ferguson did in those years by building the art center was to develop cultural awareness in the Watts’ residents, said Middlebrook. “You have to take into consideration, there was nothing there . . . it brought high quality exhibits of all types to the community to expand the self- image of the Black community.” Middlebrook also noted that the center was instrumental in helping numerous young artists, including himself, Richard Wyatt, Michael Massengale, Elliot Pinkney and Cedric Adams, develop their artistic skills. According to Hooks, today the center offers courses that include graphic arts, piano and photography. There are visiting and neighborhood school programs as well as a media arts and animation program. The center has also sponsored a drum festival for 28 years and a jazz festival for 33 years and hundreds of exhibits. But more than the tangible gifts that the Watts Arts Center and Towers give back to the surrounding community, there is an essence that touches people. “Once you come here, once you even walk into the gallery, there is a spiritual connection that automatically gets you, if you tune into it. You cannot leave, You just cannot leave this place, if you are a creative person,” pointed out Hooks. The Watts Art Center begins wrapping up its year-long celebration of 50 years of art in Watts with a program Saturday beginning at noon that features Ferguson on a artist panel discussion, and a historical look at the center. A film festival Nov. 7 at the Mayme Clayton Library and Museum will conclude the celebration.
Ten years ago, a collection of African American artists working in the community came together to meet, mingle, talk and document. The event was called the “West Coast Big Shot,” and it happened at the California Afro-American Museum in Exposition Park. It featured about 130 people. Ten years later, many of those same artists as well as a few new ones gathered at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC) compound to reprise that 1999 shoot during the “2009 A Great Day in Watts” celebration. About 200 people—from venerable Black arts curator Cecil Fergerson to artists Richard Wyatt, Bill Paajud and Michael Massenburg to music educator Reggie Andrews and photographer Willie Middlebrook, who actually was charged with taking the photo, showed up last Sunday for the event. “I have a relationship with August 11. It’s my birthday; Diego Rivera died on the day I was born and it is the 44th anniversary of the Watts Revolt,” explained Middlebrook, who added that the idea was to bring the artists together. “That is something the West Coast lacks—somewhere all the artists can come together in one place.” In fact, Middlebrook said some of these people—because of their schedules and the directions their lives have gone in the last decade—had not seen one another since that last photo shoot. The other reason WLCAC was chosen as the photo shoot location is to expose the artists to the quality art space that exists in Watts in the form of the Cecil Fergerson Art Gallery, and to do a sort of kick-off for the show currently on view—“Watts Art 24/7,” a solo exhibit featuring the work of Haitian born artist Gary Senatus.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a new US policy of engagement with Sudan, but warned Khartoum to expect a tough response if it ignored fresh incentives to improve the situation in Darfur.
Abandoning past attempts to isolate Sudan, Obama and top diplomats laid out a new carrot-and-stick approach aimed also at ensuring that a 2005 peace deal is fully implemented and that it does not become a "safe haven for terrorists." Reaction: Sudan hails 'positive' US policy
"We are looking to achieve results through broad engagement and frank dialogue," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters.
"But words alone are not enough," said Clinton. "Assessment of progress and decisions regarding incentives and disincentives will be based on verifiable changes in conditions on the ground."
The top US diplomat warned that "backsliding by any party will be met with credible pressure in the form of disincentives leveraged by our government and our international partners."
Clinton said, for example, that the Obama administration would watch for "credible elections" scheduled for next year under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
The planned elections have already been twice postponed amid differences between the Khartoum government and the southern former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) over a planned census and a new electoral law.
A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US diplomats would engage with Sudanese government officials but not directly with President Omar al-Beshir, who faces war crimes charges over Darfur.
"We have no intention of talking with President Beshir," the official said. "We think he should get himself a good lawyer... and face the charges."
A top adviser to President Beshir welcomed the change of tack by the Obama administration.
"Compared to previous policies there are positive points... we don't see the extreme ideas and suggestions which we used to see in the past," Ghazi Salaheddin told reporters. "I will say it is a strategy of engagement, not a strategy of isolation."
Beshir faces an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued in March, accusing him of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. In July, the ICC prosecutor said he has enough evidence for a further arrest warrant against Beshir for genocide.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in Darfur first rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum in February 2003.
The government says 10,000 people have been killed.
A 22-year civil war in southern Sudan only ended in 2005, in what had been Africa's longest civil war. Elections are now planned in February and a historic independence referendum is due in 2011.
Clinton, flanked by Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, and General Scott Gration, the special US envoy for Sudan, warned that oil-rich southern Sudan risked becoming a "flashpoint for renewed conflict," if further steps were not taken.
Rice warned of "significant consequences" for any parties in Sudan who failed to live up to their promises and said there would be "no rewards" for the status quo.
In a statement, Obama said the United States and the international community must "act with a sense of urgency and purpose" as they "seek a definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses and genocide in Darfur.
"If the Government of Sudan acts to improve the situation on the ground and to advance peace, there will be incentives, if it does not, then there will be increased pressure imposed by the United States and the international community."
On the measures the US was considering, Clinton said: "We have a menu of incentives and disincentives, political and economic, that we will be looking to, to either further progress or to create a clear message that the progress we expect is not occurring."
"But we want to be somewhat careful in putting those out. They are part in fact of a classified annex to our strategy that we're announcing the outline of today."
There is a long tradition of sitting Presidents courting, relying on and even plotting with their predecessors, and the latest chapter is set to unfold Friday afternoon when former President George Herbert Walker Bush, accompanied by former Secretary of State James Baker, greets Barack Obama as he steps off a Marine Corps helicopter in College Station, Texas.
At Bush's invitation, the 44th Commander in Chief is paying a long-planned visit to the home of Bush's presidential library to mark the 20th anniversary of the voluntarism initiative begun by the former President in 1989. (See TIME's 2008 Person of the Year: Barack Obama.)
After being introduced by Bush, Obama will speak on community service before 2,500 people in Rudder Auditorium on the campus of Texas A&M University. Obama is expected to pay tribute to Bush's Points of Light Initiative, a community-service and charitable works program he launched in the early days of his presidency in 1989. Joining the two men on stage will be Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense and former president of the university, who has worked for both Presidents.
The meeting has been in the works for months, almost since the earliest days of the Obama Administration, and postponed at least once. It is just the most recent display of bipartisan goodwill between current and past holders of the highest office in the land. These alliances often span vast differences in both ideology and age: Richard Nixon paid a secret visit to Bill Clinton, 33 years his junior, to discuss Russia policy in 1993; Herbert Hoover met with John F. Kennedy, 38 years his junior, before he was inaugurated in 1960. Bush, at 85, is 37 years older than Obama, who is 48.
The two men met for the first time in January when Bush's son, George W. Bush, invited all the former Presidents, as well as Obama, to the White House. Earlier this year, the White House issued a proclamation marking the 20th anniversary of another Bush initiative, the Americans with Disabilities Act - a gesture that did not go unnoticed in Bush country. (See TIME's White House photo blog.)
The political benefits of this stop are easy to spot - though it would be easy to overestimate them too. It does not hurt Obama to be seen in the Lone Star state with Bush and Baker, two of the state's favorite sons, not to mention Gates, a Kansan who in College Station is something of an iconic figure. And as Republican criticism of his busy legislative program has increased, Obama may benefit from a joint appearance with a popular former Republican President elsewhere in the country.
But it is more likely that Obama, as he considers his options in Afghanistan, would benefit most from any private conversation he can work in on the subject with Bush, who was considered a foreign policy maestro, not to mention Baker, who along with Brent Scowcroft (and Gates), helped Bush chart a solid and centrist foreign policy from 1989 to 1993.
Longtime Bush observers were not surprised that the former President initiated Friday's visit. Bush is the informal leader of the four living ex-Presidents (Carter, Bush, Clinton and Bush) in part because, as President, he paid uncommon attention and courtesy to the four living Presidents who preceded him in office. Bush already enjoys a good relationship with Clinton. If Bush is not the most active former President, he is certainly the gamest: he jumped out of an airplane to mark his 85th birthday last summer, as he said recently, "to remind people that getting older doesn't mean you have to slow down."
WASHINGTON – A second Republican senator signaled Wednesday she's open to voting for sweeping health care legislation this year, putting President Barack Obama closer to a historic achievement that has eluded generations of Democratic leaders.
But Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told The Associated Press that the bill approved Tuesday by the Finance Committee needs substantial improvements to make coverage more affordable, contain costs, and protect Medicare. Nevertheless, she joined her Maine GOP colleague Sen. Olympia Snowe in endorsing the goal of far-reaching changes.
"My hope is we that can fix the flaws in the bill and come together with a truly bipartisan bill that could garner widespread support," Collins said in an interview. "I think this bill is far superior to the ones passed by the Senate (health) committee and the three House committees, but it needs substantial additional work."
The 10-year, $829 billion Finance bill was approved by the committee Tuesday on a 14-9 vote, after Snowe broke ranks with her Republican colleagues to support Chairman Max Baucus' middle-of-the-road plan.
Wednesday, Snowe tackled the most divisive issue still on the table: creation of a government insurance plan that would compete with private ones.
While emphasizing that she still opposes the so-called public option, Snowe said in a nationally broadcast interview that she could foresee a government-run plan that would "kick in" if private insurers failed to live up to expectations that they keep premiums in check.
"I think the government would have a disproportionate advantage" in the event of a government-run option, Snowe acknowledged. At the same time, she added, "I want to make sure the insurance industry performs, and that's why we eliminate many egregious practices."
If the industry didn't follow through on congressionally-mandated changes aimed at making health care more affordable, she said, "then you could have the public option kick in immediately."
Snowe previously had proposed using the public option as an incentive, or a threat, to private insurers. This "trigger" option, or some version of it, has survived the bitter debate and scrutiny to remain a viable option for compromise.
Such a statement from a Republican can be very influential in an environment in which GOP lawmakers almost universally have opposed any kind of government-run health care option to compete with private insurers. It represents a break in party solidarity, even if finite. Health care proposals advanced in the House include such a government option.
Snowe broached her standby notion again as talks among lawmakers on health care were going back behind closed doors; Senate leaders are trying to merge two very different bills into a new version that can get the 60 votes needed to guarantee passage.
Collins, however, said she could not support Snowe's idea because she thinks it would make it too easy for a Democratic administration to impose a government plan nationwide. "It would simply delay the public plan for a couple of years," she told AP.
The White House dispatched chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and other top advisers to Capitol Hill for afternoon meetings on combining the bills.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters that it was unlikely that the House would vote before the first week of November. He said he expected a vote by Christmas but was making no guarantees.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he wants move quickly to merge the Finance bill with a version passed earlier by the Senate health committee. His goal is to get health care overhaul legislation onto the floor the week after next.
Both bills were written by Democrats, but that's not going to make it easier for Reid. They share a common goal, which is to provide all Americans with access to affordable health insurance, but they differ on how to accomplish it.
The Finance Committee bill that was approved Tuesday has no government-sponsored insurance plan and no requirement on employers that they must offer coverage. It relies instead on a requirement that all Americans obtain insurance.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill, passed earlier by a panel in which liberals predominate, calls for both a government plan to compete with private insurers and a mandate that employers help cover their workers. Those are only two of dozens of differences.
In general, bills moving toward floor votes in both houses would require most Americans to purchase insurance, provide federal subsidies to help those of lower incomes afford coverage and give small businesses help in defraying the cost of coverage for their workers.
The measures would, among other things, bar insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and for the first time limit their ability to charge higher premiums on the basis of age or family size. Expanded coverage would be paid for by cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from future Medicare payments to health care providers. Each house also envisions higher taxes — an income tax surcharge on million-dollar wage-earners in the case of the House, and a new excise levy on insurance companies selling high-cost policies in the Senate Finance Committee bill.
Rev. John "Bootsie" Wilson, the last surviving member of influential soul group the Silhouettes died at age 69. Wilson, a former lead singer who joined the group in 1961, passed away Monday, Sept. 21, at his Spartanburg, S.C. home after a battle with cancer and a kidney ailment, according to his wife Pauline.
A Philadelphia native, Wilson joined the group -- best known for its 1958 chart-topper 'Get a Job' -- after the departure of the group's original lead singer. Although Wilson didn't sing on the original version of the song, which was one of the first R&B tunes to cross over to the pop charts, he did re-record and release the song under the moniker of the New Silhouettes in 1968.
During his tenure with the doo wop group, Wilson recorded notable songs like 1962's 'Move on Over (To Another Land),' 1963's 'Rent Man' and the 1968 tune 'Not Me Baby.' The latter became a 1970s dance hit in the UK and ranked among Wilson's personal favorites with the group.
Although 'Get a Job' remained the band's most enduring hit, Elaine Lewis, the widow of Wilson's bandmate Richard Lewis -- who wrote that song -- told the Associated Press that the Silhouettes hit their creative stride under Wilson's lead. "John's songs, I think, were the best ones," she said. "Somehow 'Get a Job' got all the attention, but clearly John was the best lead singer they had, hands down. He had a marvelous voice."
"He was so proud of that part of his life, his life as a Silhouette," Lewis added. "He was so nostalgic about that period of his life, and he missed his fallen comrades."
After his career with the Silhouettes, Wilson moved to South Carolina, became an African Methodist Episcopal pastor and served at eight churches since the '70s. His funeral was held Saturday.
During the early part of this decade, sistergirl had the distinction of being the only African-American actress with enough steelo to star in two hit TV series — Ally McBeal and ER – simultaneously.
With elegant but bit parts in The Cosby Show and Law & Order, in the 1990s, the Brooklyn, New York-born brick house known as Lisa Nicole Carson became a princess of the small screen.
Her star rose higher as she was cast in feature-length films Love Jones, Jason’s Lyric, and Eve’s Bayou.
But what happened to Carson, the serious character actor with a star as bright and fiery as her male counterpart, Tupac Shakur?
The woman that played a then-rare-for-its-time steamy scene with Denzel Washington in Devil in a Blue Dress (“You hittin’ my spot!”) has reportedly taken time away from entertainment. The official line is that she is being “cared for by family,” due to mental health issues.
Hints of Carson’s illness first surfaced in 2000 after a fateful incident at the L’Ermitage Hotel in Los Angeles. The morning before the Grammys were set to begin, news reports indicated an inebriated Carson yelled obscenities while at the bar. She was charged with “interfering with a legal business establishment” and “not leaving the premises” before being released to the custody of some associates.
Reports differed on her apparel or if she visited the bar twice that morning, but some witnesses said she had on wrinkled jeans while others stated that she had on a bathrobe. In any event, she was arrested for disorderly conduct and whisked away by her family into a mental health facility. That incident followed an eight-day binge in a hotel where it was reported she drank alcohol and smoke weed. Soon she was admitted to a hospital for an “undisclosed medical condition.”
Star Magazine that year reportedly quoted Carson as saying she had “smoked a joint laced with PCP,” and that the actress was working to get it together. Indications were that that was her second stay that year in a mental institution. In July of 2001 it was reported that she had been in a restaurant “sitting alone, talking to herself, and then she locked herself in the bathroom for 45 minutes,” a restaurant employee told Rolling Stone Magazine in 2001.
Police led her away but the producers of ER killed her character off in a car accident without even bringing her in for a final taping. Carson was treated in the mental health unit at Manhattan’s famed Lenox Hill Hospital, where such stars as Barry Manilow, Elizabeth Taylor and Winston Churchill have also received care. Earlier this year, British actress Natasha Richardson, who sustained fatal injuries while skiing, died there.
But what exactly was it that ailed Carson?
Reports have surfaced that Carson suffered from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The two illnesses are similar but there are differences. Bipolar sufferers experience extremes in mood and temperament, capable of exhibiting a startling nonchalance one minute and a raging meltdown the next. A lot of people mistake schizophrenia for split personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder, but it is not the same.
One of the major hallmarks of schizophrenia patients is that they almost always suffer auditory and even visual hallucinations with ranging degrees of paranoia. Strange occurrences on the set of both “McBeal” and “ER” doomed her in the closed world of television. But is that the end for Carson? Thankfully, no.
While traits of both bipolar and schizophrenia can be hereditary or genetic, recreational drugs tend to worsen the symptoms. Contrary to popular belief, sufferers of bipolar and schizophrenia can live normal lives, provided they stick to a regimen of medication for a certain time frame dependent on the individual. In other words, we just may see Lisa Nicole Carson on the small screen – or the big screen –again.
The President gives a speech directly to Americas students welcoming them back to school. He emphasizes their hope and potential but makes clear they will need to take responsibility for themselves and their education to reach that potential. September 8, 2009.
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (Reuters) – Fast food giant McDonald's on Tuesday lost an eight-year trademark battle against a Malaysian curry restaurant after the country's highest court allowed the latter to use the prefix 'Mc'.
Malaysia's Federal Court dismissed an application by McDonald's Corporation to appeal against an earlier Appeals Court judgment which allowed McCurry to use the prefix.
Chief Judge of Malaya Ariffin Zakaria, reading the verdict of the three-person Federal Court in the administrative capital, said McDonald's had failed to properly frame its questions when applying to challenge the Appeals Court's earlier verdict.
"It is unfortunate that we have to dismiss the application with costs," Ariffin said.
McCurry, which is short for "Malaysian Chicken Curry," serves Malaysian staples including fish head curry, according to the company website (www.mccurryrecipe.com).
"We feel great that this eight-year legal battle is finally over, and we can now go ahead with whatever we plan to do such as opening new branches," McCurry owner P. Suppiah told Reuters after the court decision.
McDonald's, which has 185 outlets in Malaysia, first sued the curry restaurant in 2001 and a High Court ruled in favor of the international fast food chain in 2006.
McCurry then took the matter up to the Court of Appeal, which ruled in favor of the Malaysian restaurant. McDonald's subsequently took the matter to the Federal Court.
The McDonald's operation in this country of 27 million people is run as a franchise by prominent businessman Vincent Tan.
(Reporting by Royce Cheah; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Prince and Michael Jackson were friendly rivals? Seriously? According to former band members of the Purple One, it’s true.
A report in the Startribune, Bobby Z., Prince’s drummer for the Revolution, remembers watching the 1984 Grammys with Prince as Michael Jackson swept the Grammys.
“We were watching rough cuts of [the movie] ‘Purple Rain,’ and we knew that’s where Prince wanted to be the next year,” Z said Thursday.
Michael Jackson even showed up to 2 Purple Rain shows backstage. Although Michael Jackson did want to work with Prince a few years later, Prince declined due to lyrical differences.
Michael Bland insisted they got along fine. “They’d shoot hoops at Paisley Park,” Prince’s studio/home in Chanhassen. “We used to get packages from MJJ Productions [with] footage of Sly Stone performing in Europe. Prince would pop it in the VCR, and we’d watch it.”
Prince even defended Michael at a press conference in 2000 where he said something along the lines of “we don’t really know what is going on with him and maybe we need to chill on that.” (I can’t find the original transcript so paraphrasing people.)
Personally speaking, I did see Michael Jackson attend one of Prince’s shows at 3121 Las Vegas in 2006 with Wil I Am of the Black Eyed Peas and Chris Tucker. Michael did not make the after show as planned where he was to be seated with Michael Jordan.
Recently, Prince has been performing Michael Jackson songs in his sets, “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” and recently “Dancing Machine” by the Jackson 5
It’s nice to know my favorite artist Prince had an interesting connection with Michael that many of us did not know, beating him in hoops I am sure. -Dr.FB
After making a career of shoving his own quarterbacks into the woodchipper, I sort of hoped that eventually, someone would do the same to Terrell Owens(notes). What I didn't figure was that it would be model Joanna Krupa.
ABC's got this new show called "The Superstars" where a celebrity pairs up with an athlete in a series of athletic competitions. The winner gets ... I don't know, to be on television more, I guess. Last night was the first episode, and Terrell Owens and Joanna Krupa, probably the favorites, were the first couple eliminated.
From there, Joanna turned into Terrell Owens, and she turned Terrell Owens into Jeff Garcia(notes).
Oh, that's fantastic. My favorite part is right at the end when she throws in a forceful little "Shut up." I think I've watched it about 843 times.
Did Owens deserve to be yelled at like a little boy? No, probably not; the poor guy's foot got caught in the net. Tough break. But Jeff Garcia and Donovan McNabb(notes) probably didn't deserve the treatment they got from Terrell Owens, either.
It happened, though. Miss Krupa is probably used to having everything in the world she wants, and probably has a pretty healthy ego of her own. That doesn't make her right, of course, except in the grander, karmic scheme of things.
Maybe, in the end, it'll be good for Owens to experience what it's like to be on the wrong end of a media tirade. Joanna Krupa may have just done Trent Edwards(notes) a huge favor.
PARKERSBURG, Iowa (AP)—A 24-year-old former high school football player walked into the school’s weight room Wednesday morning and fatally shot his former coach, before sheriff’s deputies arrested him at a nearby home a short time later, authorities said.
Mark Becker shot Aplington-Parkersburg High School football coach Ed Thomas several times with a handgun after walking into the room at about 8 a.m., authorities said. Thomas was rushed to nearby Waterloo hospital, where he died.
Several students were in the room at the time of the shooting, but none were injured, said Kevin Winker, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. School was not in session Wednesday.
“The people that were present were not threatened in any way,” Winker said.
Becker is charged with first-degree murder and was being held in Butler County jail.
Winker said Becker was arrested without incident at a home in rural Parkersburg shortly after authorities received a 911 call about the shooting.
He said he couldn’t discuss what Becker’s motive for the slaying might have been, or what Becker might have been up to in the days leading up to the shooting.
“Motive is one of those things we’re looking into,” Winker said.
Winker said Becker used a handgun in the shooting. He did not elaborate.
He said investigators plan on interviewing students who were in the weight room and to look into Becker’s past.
“Mr. Becker’s entire past is being looked at,” Winker said.
The school is in Parkersburg, about 80 miles northeast of Des Moines.
Thomas compiled a career record of 292-84 in 37 seasons as a head coach, 34 of them at Aplington-Parkersburg, and was one of the most well-known high school football coaches in Iowa. He was honored as the NFL High School Coach of the Year in 2005, and four of his former players are in the NFL: Green Bay’s Aaron Kampman, Jacksonville’s Brad Meester, Detroit’s Jared DeVries and Denver’s Casey Wiegmann
TEHRAN, Iran – Police beat protesters and fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands who rallied Saturday in open defiance of Iran's clerical government, sharply escalating the most serious internal conflict since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Witnesses described fierce clashes after some 3,000 protesters, many wearing black, chanted "Death to the dictator!" and "Death to dictatorship!" near Revolution Square in downtown Tehran. Police fired tear gas, water cannons and guns but it was not clear if they were firing live ammunition.
Some protesters appeared to be fighting back, setting fire to militia members' motorcycles, witnesses said. There were no immediate confirmed reports of fatalities and the head of Iran's police said his men had been ordered to act with restraint.
"We acted with leniency but I think from today on, we should resume law and confront more seriously," General Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghadam said on state television. "The events have become exhausting, bothersome and intolerable. I want them to take the police cautions seriously because we will definitely show a serious confrontation against those who violate rules."
Police and militia were blocking protesters from gathering on the main thoroughfare running east from Revolution Square to Freedom Square, the witnesses said.
A massive rally in Freedom Square Monday set off three consecutive days of protests demanding the government cancel and rerun June 12 elections that ended with a declaration of overwhelming victory for hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi says he won and Ahmadinejad stole the election through widespread fraud.
Mousavi has not been seen since a rally Thursday, but late Saturday he repeated his demand for the election to be annulled.
In a letter to Iran's Guardian Council, which investigates voting fraud allegations, Mousavi listed violations that he says are proof that the June 12 vote should be annulled. He said some ballot boxes had been sealed before voting began, thousands of his representatives had been expelled from polling stations and some mobile polling stations had ballot boxes filled with fake ballots.
"The Iranian nation will not believe this unjust and illegal" act, Mousavi said in the letter published on one of his official Web sites.
But Mousavi did not say whether he endorsed ongoing street protests or the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sternly warned opposition leaders to end rallies or be held responsible for "the bloodshed, the violence and rioting" to come.
Khamenei's statement during Friday prayers effectively closed the door to Mousavi's demand for a new election.
As reports of street clashes became public, Iran's English-language state TV said that a suicide bombing at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of central Tehran had killed one person and wounded eight. The report could not be independently confirmed due to government restrictions on independent reporting.
The channel also confirmed that police had used batons and other non-lethal weapons against what it called unauthorized demonstrations.
Amateur video showed dozens of Iranians running down a street after police fired tear gas at them. Shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" — "God is Great" — could be heard on the video, which could not be independently verified.
Helicopters hovered, ambulances raced through the streets and black smoke rose over the city.
The witnesses told The Associated Press that between 50 and 60 protesters were hospitalized after beatings by police and pro-government militia. People could be seen dragging away comrades bloodied by baton strikes.
Police clashed with protesters around Tehran immediately after the presidential election. Gunfire from a militia compound left at least seven dead, but further force had remained in check until Saturday.
Eyewitnesses said thousands of police and plainclothes militia members filled the streets to prevent rallies. Fire trucks took up positions in Revolution Square and riot police surrounded Tehran University, the site of recent clashes between protesters and security forces, one witness said.
Tehran Province Police Chief Ahmad Reza Radan said that police would "crack down on any gathering or protest rally which are being planned by some people." The head of the State Security Council also reiterated a warning to Mousavi that he would be held responsible if he encouraged protests.
Tehran University, which sits in the heart of downtown Tehran, was cordoned off by police and militia while students inside the university chanted "Death to the dictator!" witnesses said.
Shouts of "Viva Mousavi!" also could be heard. Witnesses said protesters wore black as a symbol of mourning for the dead and the allegedly stolen election, with wristbands in green, the emblem of Mousavi's self-described "Green Wave" movement.
All witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared government reprisals for speaking with the press. Iranian authorities have placed strict limits on the ability of foreign media to cover recent events, banning reporting from the street and allowing only phone interviews and information from officials sources such as state TV.
"I think the regime has taken an enormous risk in confronting this situation in the manner that they have," said Mehrdad Khonsari, a consultant to the London-based Center for Arab and Iranian Studies.
"Now they'll have to hold their ground and hope that people don't keep coming back. But history has taught us that people in these situations lose their initial sense of fear and become emboldened by brutality," he said.
Mousavi and the two other candidates who ran against Ahmadinejad had been invited to meet with Iran's Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 clerics and Islamic law experts close to Khamenei that oversees elections. Its spokesman told state TV that Mousavi and the reformist candidate Mahdi Karroubi did not attend.
The council has said it was prepared to conduct a limited recount of ballots at sites where candidates claim irregularities but Mousavi's supporters did not withdraw his demands for a new election.
Both houses of the U.S. Congress approved a resolution on Friday condemning "the ongoing violence" by the Iranian government and its suppression of the Internet and cell phones.
The government has blocked Web sites such as BBC Farsi, Facebook, Twitter and several pro-Mousavi sites that are conduits for Iranians to tell the world about protests and violence.
Text messaging has not been working normally for many days, and cell phone service in Tehran is frequently down.
In an interview taped Friday with CBS, Obama said he is very concerned by the "tenor and tone" of Khamenei's comments. He also said that how Iran's leaders "approach and deal with people who are, through peaceful means, trying to be heard" will signal "what Iran is and is not."
A spokesman for Mousavi said Friday the opposition leader was not under arrest but was not allowed to speak to journalists or stand at a microphone at rallies. Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf told the AP from Paris it was even becoming difficult to reach people close to Mousavi. He said he had not heard from Mousavi's camp since Khamenei's address
WHITE CEILING WATCH — The recent kidnapping by Somali pirates and the rescue of the Maersk Alabama ship Capt. Richard Phillips is so well known that the heroic episode will surely be recorded in American history. But there’s somebody else who needs to be remembered: The commander of the ship that saved Phillips. That would be Rear Admiral Michelle Howard, an African-American woman. Adm. Howard, who holds a master’s degree in military science arts and sciences from the Army’s Command and General Staff College, had received the assignment of leading the U.S. Navy’s counter-piracy task force just three days before the Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somali pirates.
Howard was the first in her 1992 U.S. Naval Academy class to reach the rank of admiral in 1999 and the first Black woman to command a Navy ship — the USS Rushmore. Adm. Howard’s task force operates with U.S. warships deployed to the Eastern Africa area as well as with those sent from allied nations. Before her present assignment, she was the senior military assistant to the secretary of the Navy. Remember the name: Adm. Michelle Howard.
NEW YORK – Jon Bon Jovi considers writing classic songs as a way of being remembered throughout time.
"It's the closest thing to immortality as we're ever gonna see here," he said.
There may be another way: the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And on Thursday night, the New Jersey rocker and his writing partner, Richie Sambora, joined Crosby, Stills & Nash for one of music's top honors.
Also honored at the induction ceremony, which represented the Songwriters Hall's 40th anniversary, was Jason Mraz, who was given the Hal David Starlight Award honoring a younger artist's promise. Mraz performed his hit single "I'm Yours" to the delight of the crowd of his more established peers.
"I believe in 20 years, or whatever, (he) is going to be in the Songwriters Hall of Fame," Rob Thomas said before the ceremony.
Other performers ranged from James Taylor to the cast of the recently revived "Hair," whose composers were also inducted.
Kara DioGuardi, the "American Idol" judge and songwriter, said the Songwriters Hall is important because composers still don't get enough recognition.
"A lot of the public still considers artists to be the only people that write their songs. They don't even think there could be another songwriter. They just think whoever is singing it, wrote it," she said.
Crosby, Stills & Nash, among the acts who wrote their own material, were inducted by singer-songwriter Taylor, who performed a medley of their hits.
"They speak for a generation. I know that sounds cliche, but it's really true," he said before the ceremony.
Clint Black honored the British songwriting team of Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway with their classic "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress." The pair penned many hits, including "You've Got Your Troubles," "My Baby Loves Lovin'" and "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again." They also wrote the Coca-Cola jingle "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing."
Chris Daughtry of the multiplatinum band Daughtry inducted Bon Jovi and Sambora Afterward, Bon Jovi, with Sambora on a double-neck guitar, performed "Wanted: Dead or Alive," one of Bon Jovi's many signature hits.
Earlier in the evening, Daughtry talked about the impact Bon Jovi had on his band.
"They're a huge influence on our career as songwriters, as performers, as people," he said.
Broadway was represented with two inductions: Stephen Schwartz, composer of the hit "Wicked," was inducted by Five for Fighting's John Ondrasik. Schwartz then performed a solo version of "Defying Gravity," the dynamic duet sung by the show's witches Elphaba and Glinda. It took on a much different demeanor with its creator's solitary voice.
The last induction of the evening went to Galt MacDermot, James Rado and Gerome Ragni, writers of the musical "Hair."
Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., whose group, The Fifth Dimension, took "Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In" to the top of the charts in 1969, were joined on stage by the current Broadway cast for a finale that brought the ceremony's approximately 1,000 guests to their feet
The What's up news site is dedicated to informing the public on what's going on in the world. This site will cover Social and Political Issues as well as Sports and Entertainment.
Robles passed out an image of a black man standing in his bare feet, pointing to the floor with one hand and holding a noose around his neck with the other.
drawing, but is now more aware.
Magic Johnson in a soon-to-be-released book, Isiah Thomas said he'd had enough. And so he began to fight back.
