blacksnextdoor

Meant to take a sabbatical from blogging. Too restless, feeling more and more trapped in the bleak news report that loops over and over without end: the economy this…economy that…the economy, the economy, economy…

Anyway, I’m back because before I began this Blacks Next Door public diary, I promised myself, to do it for one full year — so I will do my best – despite my wide mood swings to honor BND’s September 2010 expiration date.

“The economy’s still not doing well.” I overheard someone sigh in the elevator last week. You would have thought he was mourning a dying family member or dear friend such was the intensity of his melancholia.

Life by numbers is oppressive. It’s also stupid. Ever have a manager shove a spreadsheet into your face that’s supposed to be a snapshot of your value within your organization that doesn’t reflect any of the important intangibles like what the forces were that inspired you to perform well or may have led your daily performance to be not at all inspired?

Well, if the Republicans continue to have it their way, this is how America will be ruled: by spreadsheet.

Human potential will have no more meaning than what numbers justify. In fact, the future will be shut inside a coffin and handed back to you wrapped in a flag.

This is my final conclusion after a week of watching Republican politicos kick and scream and foam at the mouth over the President’s proposed Stimulus Package.

Allocating $50 million to The National Endowment on the Arts is a waste of money they ranted. How could citizens having music and art in their lives be stimulating except in some subversive way that only serves ‘liberal’ culture?

First of all, this is no longer the 80’s when the voice of the Right may have been more in tune with that of the mild mannered ‘man on the street’ than that of an artist like Andres Serrano.

After two terms of Clinton — who at least at the level of the streets I walk, was a conservative influence – and eight years of Bush, porn and gambling are bigger than ever.

And instead of the Piss Christ, we have Ann Coulter.

So the Obama team will have to use imagination as much as money to truly stimulate and inspire people to feel good, dream, innovate – not just consume but create.

Until then, as long as one of the most important cultural events in this country is basically a war game, yeah, sigh, The Super Bowl — with an ominous Bush regime icon like General David Petraus at the center to kick it off, America remains — as far as my watchful eyes can see — well, a Republican nation.

Trying to ease up the stranglehold of media, I search for truth at odd angles or look the wrong way on purpose.

The oddly unimportant news that Jimmy Carter’s bicycle was stolen gave me some relief from all Obama’s breathlessly euphoric pre inaugural coverage. Maybe it’s just me, but I can only handle so much spine tingling and so many goose bumps before I want to press the stop button at least for a moment.    

Bizarre but not unimportant has been the miracle plane landing on the Hudson. I got my eyewitness account from none other than Robin Roberts of Good Morning America who seems to have watched the plane’s descent from her apartment balcony.  Even with my tendency to distance myself from the crowd, I too am part of the Robin Roberts Fan Club.  How could I not be?

As I shuffle around my mirror in the morning, stealing peeks at the TV, like a pot of bubbling coffee somewhere close by, she blends right into my whole domestic daydream.

I hear chatter that she’s a closeted lesbian.  The criteria to be a straight woman seem to grow more narrow every day. Nor  does she pass the equally small minded  ‘black enough’ test.  Sooo tall, sooo  vulnerable.  I’m most fascinated by how her struggle with cancer has reinforced her femininity, transformed her in fact into this subversively glamourous force despite the rest of us.

Most anticlimactic event of the week:  Bush and that…that…you know what, Condoleeza, saying good-bye.  Does anyone really care? Did she ever exist down here on the same planet as the rest of us?

This is a woman who  – and I don’t care how much money as a consultant and speaker she makes in the private sector moving forward – will always be despised and remembered as nothing more than a nasty…well..you know what I’m trying not to say.

The way Bush trotted her about like some modern day Ota Benga, (the Congolese man exhibited at The Bronx Zoo in 1906) inviting the rest of us to join him in marveling at her ability to speak Russian and play piano.

It’s not clear that Condie spoke more than limited Russian and as for the leverage with the Russians her presence in his administration was supposed to have brought us – where is it please?

Just like McCain’s ‘maverick’ myth fell apart during this campaign as we observed his wife, Cindy, henpeck him during interviews and the Republican party pull him in a million different directions, Condie’s  having been friends with one of the girls murdered in the Birmingham church bombing didn’t cushion us from her bitter political agenda.

I have never seen anyone confuse unpopularity with expertise the way Ms. Rice did.  Will we ever forget her scowling defense of her administration’s mishandling of September 11?  Never an apology to the families, nothing.

Her subsequent global war on terror has been an empty spectacle.

Condie, the dominatrix marionette.  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Anyway, refreshing doesn’t even come close to describing Michelle’s arrival on the scene.  Such style, warmth, candor, intelligence.

Yes, I’m emotionally ill-equipped to handle all the delirium of this upcoming inauguration, but I m ever so grateful to be experiencing this momentous change – and ever so relieved.