President Obama, Are You The Problem Or Is It Something Else?

How broken is Washington? Beyond repair? A day in the life of the president reveals that Barack Obama’s job would be almost unrecognizable to most of his predecessors—thanks to the enormous bureaucracy, congressional paralysis, systemic corruption (with lobbyists spending $3.5 billion last year), and disintegrating media.

Inside the West Wing, author Todd Purdum talks to Obama’s top advisers about the challenge of playing the Washington game, ugly as it has become, even while their boss insists they find a way to transcend it.

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The Proper And Improper Use Of The N-Word: Blazing Saddles Versus TV Producer Mark Gordon And Dr. Laura Sclessinger

You Go Cleavon Little!

Now Grey's Anatomy writer and producer Mark Gordon, your use
was a different story.

And radio host Dr. Laura, well... listen for yourself, then decide:

Author Earl Ofari Hutchinson Revisits The LA Watts Riots, 45 Years Later!

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

My friend and I watched looters gleefully make mad dashes into the corner grocery store. Their arms bulged with liquor bottles and cigarette cartons. Suddenly, my friend shouted out as if he was speaking to an audience: “Maybe now they’ll see how rotten they treat us.” The “they” was the white man. My friend’s words were angry and bitter.

Yet, underneath, there was a subtext of hope that the mass orgy of death and destruction that engulfed our neighborhood during the harrowing five days and nights of the Watts riots in August 1965 might improve things for blacks. Over the years, when I returned to the block I lived on during the riots, I often thought of his bitter yet hopeful words.

Forty-five years after the riots, those words remain just that: hopeful. The streets that my friend and I were shooed down by the police and the National Guard 45 years ago look as if time has stood still.

They are dotted with the same fast food restaurants, beauty shops, liquor stores, and mom-and-pop grocery stores. The main street near the block I lived on then is just as unkempt, pothole-ridden and trash littered. All the homes and stores in the area are all hermetically sealed with iron bars, security gates and burglar alarms.

Forty-five years ago, many of us were poor and trapped in a segregated neighborhood. But we knew, trusted and looked out for our neighbors. We could walk the streets at night, and felt secure in our homes. That day is long past.

On the 25th and 40th anniversary of the Watts riots, I hosted and participated in symposiums in Watts on the meaning and significance of the riots to Los Angeles and the nation. The participants were from community groups that worked in Watts, its residents, and elected officials. They were virtually unanimous that conditions were frozen in time, and that the government and businesses had failed miserably to keep their promises to remake Watts.

The riots were largely a reaction to racial injustices suffered by black Americans in Los Angeles, including those related to jobs and discrimination. But Tommy Jacquette, executive director of the Watts Summer Festival, asserted that Watts was still the same Watts that he grew up in. Jacquette, until his death in 2009, each year commemorated the deaths of those killed by police during the riots. He called them martyrs.

Since the riots, the Watts Labor Community Action Committee has operated an array of job, education and housing programs in Watts. But its executive director Tim Watkins has been frustrated by chronic funding shortfalls, city and state budget cutbacks, and the refusal of major industry and retail businesses to commit to development in the area.

In the decades after the riots, the L.A. Watts and the many Wattses of America were written off as vast wastelands of violence and despair. Many banks and corporations, as well as government officials, reneged on their promises to fund and build top-notch stores, make more home and business loans, and provide massive funding for job and social service programs in such poor black, inner city areas.


Business leaders still have horrific visions of their banks and stores going up in smoke or being hopelessly plagued by criminal violence.

The National Urban League in its annual State of Black America reports grimly note that blacks have lost ground in income, education, healthcare, and their treatment in the criminal justice system compared to whites. They are more likely than any other group in America to be victimized by crime and violence.

Five years ago, the L.A. chapter of the National Urban League and the United Way issued an unprecedented report on the State of Black L.A. The report called the conditions in Watts and South L.A. dismal. Blacks have higher school drop-out rates, greater homelessness, die younger and in greater numbers, are more likely to be jailed and serve longer sentences, and are far and away more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes than any other group in L.A. County. The report has not been updated, but even the most cursory drive through the area shows nothing has changed.

The only significant social change in Watts is the ethnic demographic shift. Forty-five years ago, the area was predominantly black; it is now predominantly Latino, with growing numbers of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Filipino residents.

The fast changing demographics have at times imploded in inter-ethnic battles between blacks and Latinos over jobs, housing and schools. There have also been deadly clashes within the L.A. county jails. Black flight has also drastically diminished black political strength in Los Angeles and statewide.

In the past decade, the number of blacks in the California legislature has shrunk, and there is the real possibility that blacks could lose one, possibly two, of their three city council seats in the next few years.

Watts is no longer the national and world symbol of American urban racial destruction, neglect and despair. But the poverty, violence and neglect that made it that symbol is still very much there.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.

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Heard In The Black Church Parking Lot: Attendance Is Down Saints. Way Down!!!

Novelist Anne Rice's surprise post last week on Facebook — she announced she had quit Christianity "in the name of Christ" because she'd seen too much hypocrisy — brought cheers and smug smiles from critics of institutional faith, and criticism and soul-searching among believers.

But there's something more at play here than one of America's most famous Catholics — Rice re-embraced the faith of her youth in 1998 and published a memoir just two years ago, "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" — walking away from the church.

Spiritual? Yes, Absolutely! Religious? Wait, Not So Fast!

Rice is merely one of millions of Americans who have opted out of organized religion in recent years, making the unaffiliated category of faith the fastest-growing "religion" in America, according to a 2008 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The Pew report found that 1 in 6 American adults were not affiliated with any particular faith. That number jumped to 25% for people ages 18 to 29. Moreover, most mainline Protestant denominations have for years experienced a net loss in members, and about 25% of cradle Catholics have left their childhood faith, the study showed.

And in a 2008 study by Trinity College researchers, 27% of Americans said they do not expect a religious funeral.

Black Churches Are Also Facing Declining Relevance And Influence In African American Communities. This Blog Post Explains Why.

American Christianity is not well, and there's evidence to indicate that its condition is more critical than most realize — or at least want to admit. Dr. Eddie Glaude found out the hard way when he declared that "The Black Church is Dead!"

Pollsters — most notably evangelical George Barna — have reported repeatedly that they can find little measurable difference between the moral behavior of churchgoers and the rest of American society. Barna has found that born-again Christians are more likely to divorce (an act strongly condemned by Jesus) than atheists and agnostics, and are more likely to be racist than other Americans.

And while evangelical adolescents overwhelmingly say they believe in abstaining from premarital sex, they are more likely to be sexually active — and at an earlier age — than peers who are mainline Protestants, Mormons or Jews, according to University of Texas researcher Mark Regnerus.

On the bright side, Barna's surveys show evangelicals (defined by Barna as a subset of born-again Christians, which he sees as a broader group with more flexible beliefs) do pledge far more money to charity, though 76% of them fail to give 10% of their income to the church as prescribed by their faith. Various studies show American Christians as a whole give away a miserly 3% or so of their income to the church or charity.

"Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change," Barna has said.

Why Black Churches Remain Invaluable To African Americans

Barna isn't the only worried evangelical. Christian activist Ronald J. Sider writes in his book, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience": "By their daily activity, most 'Christians' regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is their Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate their allegiance to money, sex, and personal self-fulfillment."

How to explain the Grand Canyon-sized gap between principles outlined in the Gospels and the behavior of believers? Christians typically, and rather lamely, respond that shortcomings of the followers of Jesus are simply evidence of man's inherent sinfulness.

But if one adheres to the principle of Occam's razor — that the simplest explanation is the most likely — there is another, more unsettling conclusion: that many people who call themselves Christian don't really believe, deep down, in the tenets of their faith. In other words, their actions reveal their true beliefs.

The Black Church Is Dead
by Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr.

That might explain why Roman Catholic bishops leave predator priests in ministry to prey on more unsuspecting children. Or why churches on Sunday mornings are said to be the most segregated places in America. It also would explain why most Catholic women use birth control even though the practice is considered a mortal sin.

Culturally, America is still a Christian nation. The majority of us still attend church at least occasionally, celebrate Christmas and Easter, and pepper our conversations with "God bless you" and "I'll be praying for you."

But judging by the behavior of most Christians, they've become secularists. And the sea of hypocrisy between Christian beliefs and actions is driving Americans away from the institutional church in record numbers. In the African American community, the denial is both disturbing and eye-opening.

Some, such as Anne Rice, are continuing their spiritual journey on their own, unable to reconcile the Gospel message with religious institutions covered with man's dirty fingerprints. Others have stopped believing in God. Those with awareness who remain Christians are scrambling to find ways, like St. Francis of Assisi, to rebuild God's church.

Churches Are Falling Apart, Literally!

But remember, St. Francis offered a radical example during a time when the institutional church had grown corrupt and flabby. He was a wealthy young man who took a vow of poverty and devoted himself to the poor. His motto: "Preach the Gospel at all times — and when necessary use words."

A well-informed hunch says American Christians aren't ready for the kind of reformation that will realign their actions with biblical mandates. And in the meantime, the exodus from the church will continue.

William Lobdell is the author of "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America - and Found Unexpected Peace."

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