Wonkette
John Hope Franklin — the esteemed historian, author and professor who died Wednesday at the age of 94 — lived through nearly half of U.S. History. And hell yes, he stayed angry. But he also saw an interesting development in the last months of his life.
And he saw something else, in November.
Open Thread, etc.
When I’m 94 I hope I’m either that sentient or dead. What a man. RIP.
OPEN THREAD — Annie, Annie where are you? My face awaits your ass, unless, as I said, you look like K-Lo, then forget about it. But please do come back & chide us for our childish antics and tell us to read books and grow up. We need you, Annie.
When I was in line for early voting at City Hall, there were two very old black people (one man and one woman, unrelated) who I wasn’t sure were going to make it through the day, much less to November 4th or January 20th. The woman sat in a rolling office chair (she had walked in but gotten tired right afterwards) and the man waited in a wheelchair until their turns to vote came and they were squeezed into the office with the voting machines.
And while I bitched and moaned about the last eight years (and many before those) and was thrilled when Obama won the presidency, there’s no comparison between my white, middle-class suburban existence and the lifetimes of slavery, oppression and overt and covert discrimination that black Americans have endured to reach this moment — which makes it all the more fulfilling that President Obama is so focused on being the whole country’s president that I hardly think of him as the first black president. As it should be — I shudder to think what the Atwater/Rover smear machine would’ve done to a Jesse Jackson in the same position.
Anyway, farewell John Hope Franklin — to be born the grandson of a slave who witnessed President Obama’s inauguration — not to mention making the life and career you did for yourself against all odds — is truly one of the better examples of why I love this country.
A fine example of the unique richness of America.
No way Thurgood Marshall & that whole crew didn’t meet him at the gates, with a bunch of booze and a plan to keep stirring shit up from above. Warriors, man, they were warriors.
blueduck: Every Saturday, they summon Jesse Helm out of hell so they can beat the shit out him. Good times in eternity.
I am gladdened for people of color in this nation because even in my early childhood, which was only three decades ago (only…), it seemed as though racism was a tangible force in our society. I grew up in South Louisiana, and a black man had a better chance of getting shot to death or sent to prison than of getting an office job. Some things changed a lot since then. A lot of things didn’t.
In South Louisiana one could still easily make the claim that a black man stands a better chance of getting shot to death or sen to prison than holding public office. It’s a miserable reality. The poverty level in some areas could easily be equated to areas such as Detroit, East St. Louis, and Gary, Indiana. There wasn’t a lot of hope there before our current economic troubles, and it’s halfway to hell and hopeless now.
Having said these things, that I am happy for Barack Obama and all minority people in the United States, I still have to say that President Obama does not get a free pass because he accomplished what many people considered impossible. I understand that he wanted to move our country toward a post-partisanship style of governance. This has placed some (surely not all, but some) of his policies and ideals at great odds with progressives and liberals.
Republicans are never going to like him, or accept his policies. There will be no miraculous parting of the waters so that our country will be united in love and brotherhood. Obama has yet to prove himself in the eyes of history. Courting the people who dislike him at the expense of the people who do like him does not lend itself well to the odds of a positive outcome.
Of course I am referring to his Department of Justice and the decisions they make concerning the war crimes of the Bush Administration. The door to unlimited executive power has been opened, and Obama has not made any indication he will close it. Those people who defied the rule of law took the reigns of our nation and steered us down the path to possible oblivion.
It’s not over. This great experiment has not entirely ended. It would help if President Obama made some steps toward restoring the rule of law. Torture by its very nature is wrong. For lack of a better word, torture is evil. If President Obama lets the perpetrators go, then he is party to the crime as well. Winning the presidency was just the first impossible thing this man must accomplish. Now he just has to snatch us back from the brink of demise.
I’m fresh out of “funny” tonight. Please excuse any errors.
2druk2phluq: no funny, but well said.
FROM TELEPROMMPTERS LIPS TO YER MOUTH>!1!!
2druk2phluq: Amen to that. The treaty Ronald fucking Reagan signed obliges the United States to prosecute those who torture, regardless of any laws passed or legal opinions authorizing torture. And truth & reconciliation dog & pony shows are not acceptable means, by the terms of this treaty, for dealing with torture. It must be prosecuted. And as John Dean has said over & over, if the current administration does not prosecute then they are just as guilty as the torturers.
I can only imagine what kind of bribes, severely disadvantageous to the US, might be proffered to any number of European countries in exchange for just forgetting this stuff ever occurred.
I hope those offered the bribes refuse them, denounce them, and proclaim their intention to do themselves what President Obama’s administration has so far refused to do, as the treaty obliges every signatory to do. Or perhaps, through the program of extraordinary rendition, most of our European friends are complicit and will do nothing.
Meanwhile we wait and wonder if Bush or Cheney or other significant figures in the W administration have the balls to test the treaty’s signatories by visiting one of their countries. My guess is they won’t be traveling abroad (apart from to the W-friendly Canada) anytime soon. My fervent hope is that they do & that the treaty’s signatories carry out their obligations with extreme prejudice.
I…have something in my eye.
Ken, What a nice old man. May god rest his soul. How are we supposed to snark about that?
The poor old dear is so delusional though, he seems to think we have a black president? My Barry is half-white and that’s why I supported him
YellowScientist: Mine eyes hath seen the glory and I’m agnostic.
TGY: Well, I’m not an American and I just saw this guy for the first time (damn!). My Dad and I were watching the wrap-up reports the night before the election, we assumed that in the end he would lose but still got so teary over the dream of a Black President. I’m amazed by Prof Franklin’s (and his mother!) : “Negro President! We just liked to say it!” That’s some optimism! Especially after what he must have gone through. Oh…I have something in my eye again.
Erm, sorry. Please return to your regularly scheduled snark.
Thanks for posting this, Ken. It’s inspired a good thread. I’ll check in again later in the weekend to see thoughts others have left. As for Dr. Franklin, if there are angels, they definitely carried him to his rest.
You know, if Darth Cheney would just STFU, it might be possible for his Jedi mind tricks to work…”there is nothing of interest here”… However, the Sith Lord keeps beating the drums of torture, more torture. I think it is time for the French Foreign Legion to send an extraordinary rendition team to kidnap his ass to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes.
Why French? Poetic justice for freedom fries.
I like how his middle name is Hope.
Hearing Dr. Franklin speak about Obama’s election and the issue of fairness I was reminded of something Harold Washington said in a speech after he became mayor of Chicago. He promised that his administration would be fair and so fair in fact that “no one will be able to hide from our fairness”. I know its galling to see Obama reaching out to a tool like Boehner or any other Republican when you know these guys have no real interest in working with him on anything and have clearly placed their bets on total economic melt-down as the way back to power. But I think he has to keep trying to reach them if only to possibly reach their constituents…eventually. Certainly he won’t be able to win over the delusional Galtists and Tea-baggers. They’re too busy learning secret handshakes to listen to reason. But there are so many republican voters, like my parents, your parents, your co-workers, who are basically rational but easily distracted that it’s got to be worth the effort to get some of them to realize what the Republicans are really about.
And as for the possibility that torturers and perpetrators of fraud from the last administration will be prosecuted, I’ve long imagined that Cheney and Rove comforted themselves regarding this possibility by saying that the pile of crap they were leaving for Obama was so large and tangled that neither he nor Congress would have the time or the energy to sort through it. I agree that it is absolutely essential that the time and energy be found to do just that, that no one be allowed to hide from our fairness. But I tend to see Obama as a tragic figure, like Benjamin’s angel of history, who wants to go back and fix what’s broken but can’t fly against the storm of crap he’s in right now.
2druk2phluq: Amen. Not only would prosecutions be the right thing to do, it would be good political strategy. Throw one or two of those republican cocksuckers (i use the term strictly as a 3 syllable pejorative which goes nicely with republican, and not as a snide comment about anyone’s sexual preferences)in jail, and the rest of them will get bipartisan pretty sharpish. Also.
Anybody have an idea of what this dude’s PPG average was?
What a concept worthy of entry back into vogue after the myriad madnesses of the Reagan-Bush Age:
‘Fairness’
OED says: “Equitable; not taking undue advantage; disposed to concede every reasonable claim.”
Thanks for posting this Ken.
gurukalehuru: “cocksuckers (i use the term strictly as a 3 syllable pejorative which goes nicely with republican, and not as a snide comment about anyone’s sexual preferences)”
Glad you cleared that up! My cock is happy to be sucked by Republicans, Democrats, Green Party members, or any other political variant.
I started blubbering 5 seconds into the video and the tears are still streaming. Please, Annie, can you sit on my face to staunch the flow?
The profoundity of a black woman living 94 years ago giving her little baby the middle name of Hope. The lump in my throat threatens to choke me.
Custerwolf: Amen.
Such Communist “Negros” (I believe that is the term) will never achieve the insight, intellectual sophistication, and sheer moral courage of black “leaders” (I believe that is the term) such as Michael Steele.
[I'm practicing for a job writing for Fox News.]
“Next: Clarence Thomas on ‘Why The Civil War Was WRONG!”
“On FOX!”
Good.
Um… trucknutz? Telmrproteprs? Also?
Sorry, no way. Snark is impossible after those videos.
In case any of you haven’t heard his boy scout story from NPR, listen to it:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102401101&ft=1&f=1003
Back in the early 60s my (white, middle class)family moved from San Jose, CA to a small town in northern Florida. What a culture shock. My mother worked in a diner where Negroes could order and pay for their meals at the register then had to wait outside and pick up their order at the back kitchen door. I attended an integrated school (more due to economics than racial harmony) but there was a black high school, Booker T Washington High. I attended movies that segregated blacks to the balcony. I saw the “Negro Cemetary” (and you can guess what it was actually called), the shanty towns where people lived without indoor plumbing and just the whole segregation thingy. From that start I witnessed the first girl to come to school with an Afro and all the commotion that caused in the teachers. So I can see the humor of a black family joking about a black president - it was about as likely a possibility as the KKK announcing Malcolm X their man of the year. To give a child the middle name Hope in circumstances like that was a statement in the belief that one day, one day Lord, things would change. RIP Mr. Franklin.
What was his position on marijuana laws?
jagorev: This is excellent–it’s only about 3 minutes, and worth every second of it.
I am so sorry I really never paid much attention to John Hope Franklin when he was alive. He seems so engaged in these videos–he’s got such a fire in his eyes. And I live just down the road from Duke. I wish I would have been able to ask him to speak to some of my classes about the Civil Rights Era. Thank good for Youtube and the other places where we can get videos and audio and all the things that will bring him back to life.
It’s strange, but I want to work harder and do better at my own scholarship now that I’ve seen how hard Dr. Franklin had to work, under much worse conditions. (That would require me to cut waaay back on my Wonkette viewing, but I promise to click through more ads to make up for it.)
Anarm Anoleg: About his middle name–so true, and so poetic, actually. Perfect in the year of Obama’s election and inauguration. You just can’t make this stuff up–the truth is often more beautiful than fiction.
OPEN THREAD:
The TSA’s report on the recent plane crash in MT (which killed 7 children and 7 adults) has officially been declared “An act of God.” Apparently, the doctors on board ran a ‘chain of abortion clinics.’ So in retaliation, God - who loves children only for what they could be and not for what they are - caused the plane to plummet into a cemetery of fake dead babies. God’s sense of humor did not go unnoticed by christian onlookers.
Custerwolf: God becomes kind of an attention whore during lent (unless you live n a brown-skinned country, with a no-frills god). It’s just a phase.
Colander: Phew!
Custerwolf: I thought they were speculating they put too many damn people in that little prop plane. ‘An act of God.’ Who knew he had that kind of time on his hands what with him having to determine who wins on awards shows, sporting events & telling Snowbilly Grifter & Oreo Steele if they should run for president or not. I guess this kind of schedule is why he doesn’t have time to help out in Sudan or Darfur.
Also.
Colander: Custerwolf: Seems like God has the same PR guy as Michael Steele. Every time something horrendous happens…plane crashes, volcanos, ebola outbreaks, a Bush being elected to office…it’s an ‘act of God.’ So either the big guy is getting a serious bum rap or he’s one mean spirited son-of-a-bitch.
Duke does everyone a disservice with that cheesy, community-access style music and wipe effects they have there. I guess the film department doesn’t have the same caliber of faculty.
President Beeblebrox: Well you can a little. For example, do you think fellow historians called him J-Ho?
hobospacejungle: Fret not, the Socialists in Europe have started going after the Bushies. No, Cheney’s not part of it and no, it’s not something that will put them in jail, but if it comes to pass, John Yoo will have to strike Paris from his list of vacation destinations.
An amazing man. The 70’s funny-porn music intros were a bit odd, though.
Does anyone recall the name of the man who told Franklin’s mother she could not ride in a white train car, the people who told him he could not become a historian or go to Harvard or teach at white university? Yeah, me neither.
John Hope Franklin was a giant.
loudmouthredhead: What do you want? Aerial tracking shots in Hi Def? Explosions? Beyoncé j-setting in hotpants in the background?
user-of-owls: The mean-spiritedness lies in folks who are actually believeing this shit and posting about it on the internet. What these fuckers won’t justify in the name of thier god. Dog help us.
user-of-owls: To be fair, I’ve heard many attribute Sully’s Hudson landing to lord god as well (courtesy of “Jesus Take the Wheel”). Also he gave us the Jonas Brothers, so this is quite a Century for the g-man.
Colander: God did get me laid once, so there’s that.
Custerwolf: Never attribute to god what can more likely be ascribed to sneakiness and taking advantage of the religious rubes.
I just watched STS-119 return successfully to earth — entirely deity-free. I’ll give religion its due as soon as it does something besides add to human misery. But if the Pope, Pat Robertson, a slew of imams, rabbis, lamas and other assorted prelates and molesters want to build their own space ship out of twigs and powered by prayer, I’d be perfectly happy to attend the launch. Hell, I’d even help push the damn thing over a cliff that I might glory in its mastery of the forces of nature and be rightfully humbled at the ability of faith to overcome all.
SayItWithWookies: Especially if some or all of them were inside it, of course.
Franklin was an authentic scholar and a man of principle, right to the end.
But since this is an open thread I’m going to make fun of the right wing nutters. Like so:
http://tiny.cc/wWRRO
John Hope Franklin, Woody Gutherie and Will Rogers. At least my state has offered the world three good things. But it’s been a long time.
Oh, and the parking meter. Your welcome.
SayItWithWookies: I was appalled at your suggestion - until I realized I’d misread the rabbits and llamas part.
It is 9 p.m. in Central Europe, my wife is making me an egg salad sandwich, I’m pleasantly stoned, I had a wonderful day watching cartoons with my kids and then we took a walk through a little park near our house which is surrounded by ornate 19th century buildings, and I thought, “Oh, my, this really is a beautiful day.”
So, I need Wonkette to bring me back to Earth, to provide me with my snark fix, to remind me that the world is the bitter, twisted alcoholic place with which I have grown comfortable. So, dear editors, please get a new story up. Not one with puppies, either.
I would like to point out that, despite the wonderful interview with the 94-year old black guy who saw hell freeze over in his lifetime,
Duke sucks.
Go ‘nova!
(Georgetown sucks too.)
Open thread? I’m a little intimidated. Granted, I opined the other night that having a open thread would be fun, but now that it’s real, I’m snarkless.
TJBeck: Duke? Isn’t that the university where the guys only get accused of rape? pussies.
SayItWithWookies: Today’s WSJ:
The Texas Board of Education approved a science curriculum that opens the door for teachers and textbooks to raise doubts about evolution.
Critics of evolution said they were thrilled with Friday’s move. “Texas has sent a clear message that evolution should be taught as a scientific theory open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned,” said Dr. John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that argues an intelligent designer created life.
Kathy Miller, president of the pro-evolution Texas Freedom Network, said, “The board crafted a road map that creationists will use to pressure publishers into putting phony arguments attacking established science into textbooks.”
Science standards in Texas resonate across the U.S., since it approves one set of books for the entire state. That makes Texas the nation’s single largest market for high-school textbooks.
A whole state’s about to get a lot dumber. This is way crazy-making, parrticularly calling somebody who opposes it “pro-evolution.” They’re pro-science, you dipshit WSJ writer.
SayItWithWookies: Ok, just read the defense of pi == 3 by some evangelical, and it is amusing.
But obviously the wisdom of God is greater than the wisdom of man:
In this verse the word for “circumference” (QaVa in Hebrew) is written with an extra letter (qavah).
Since in Hebrew all letters are also numbers, we can take the ratio of (the gematriacal(seriously) value of) the unusual word form (qof, vaf, he ) to the regular word form (qof, vaf). Given that Qof = 100, Vaf = 6 and He = 5 we find that
( 111 / 106 ) = ( 3.14150943… / 3 )
The real value: PI = 3.1415926…
The difference between 3 x 111/106 and PI is 0.0000832 which is only an error of 0.00026%.
Apparently god writes letters that are numbers if you change the letters around, but only to get within in percentage of the definition of pi, a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter. Apparently the ratio is betwixt the letters that are actually the numbers that represent the value of pi if you arbitrarily do math to them, and have nothing to do with the definition of pi. So god is wrong, but only in small amounts, so he’s right.
In other words, good on us for not being as retarded as our parents.
wheelie: Beyoncé j-setting in hotpants in the background?
Yes, please.
bago: The real value of pi isn’t fully appreciated until served a la mode.
Yes, I grajiated frum teh unaversity of Teckses (which lyes close to the Canadiun border, I think).
Since we’re on the serious tip, and while we’re all patting ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come as a society to see a black president, but where are all the GLBT heroes and icons who suffered injustice, violence, hatred, denial .. and still do. They exist, but the media ignores them.
Or those who were forced to live in closets and pretend they’re straight in order to survive. Where are those heroes?
*lights a candle for Larry Craig*
V572625694: A whole state’s about to get a lot dumber.
Well, if it’s any consolation, we’re already pretty fuckin’ dumb to begin with, so this isn’t really going to have that great of an impact. And this will ensure that only educated kids get into the state colleges and the intelligent design kids will have to make do in life with their 12th grade ‘education’ or perhaps go get dumber at Regent & associated pseudo-universities.
This is just a continuation of the right-wing project of intentionally dumbing down US America so as to turn as many of us as possible into know-nothing, non-questioning mental wards of the state. Nothing new here. The shrinking Republican belt across the south will get dumber & dumber while the rest of the country will continue to educate itself.
While on the whole this development is tragic, I’m not too terribly bothered if stupid people want to continue to be stupid. I say this only because demographically the stupids, a majority of whom are white, will soon be a minority in US America, so I no longer fear political domination by a generation of stupids. Their time was W, and the sea change in US American politics means their time is over.
DC Hates Me: For that matter, no one mentions the suffering of old people. I probably won’t turn dyke or transgendery (I don’t know what the ‘B’ stands for -but it better be beastiality or I’m gonna be pissed), but I do intend to get old (not 94 old, mind you). So how about someone stand up for these folks - or at least help them up so they can stand up for themselves)? No wonder old people are so godamned cranky.
So not playing with terminal state.
Thank you for posting this. I’ve been trying to sum up what I wanted to say about him since he died, and I’d forgotten that he speaks for himself way better than I ever could for him. Well done.
I’m glad now that I didn’t leave my comment on the top post about ‘Ken Layne - GI Joe Stunt Double’. It would have been frivolous and I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to leave the jokes about genitals or being fully poseable out of it.
“Act of God” = “flying a high aspect ratio, critically thin airfoil into severe icing conditions, while overloaded”?
No kidding?
Shit.
Then why did I spend all that time getting my Commercial ticket, and sucking up to that asshole FAA Flight Examiner, when the whole thing comes down to Divine Will?
“Ladies and Gentlemen: FUCK the seatbelt sign; do what you want with your carry-on electronic devices; and get the goddamn drink cart up to the flight deck, PRONTO! The co-pilot and I are going to need a little more lubrication before we start the first series of aerobatics in this ‘Airbus’ — which, for all you non-French speakers, is Frog for ‘Piece of Shit.’
YEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Neilist: WIN.
bago: That’s a lovely little chestnut that pops up surprisingly often — god is, in fact, a very small rounding error. Why this doesn’t apply to insects (who have four feet in Genesis) is another of those great mysteries.
Custerwolf: Well if the fundies ever get their way, slamming planes into the ground will be about the only avenue of recourse left to pregnant women who no longer wish to be pregnatn.
Custerwolf: For the record, I support California’s attempt to prevent the elderly from marrying. It’s gross! And I support converting seniors into juniors. Being old is a choice, not a right.
This brings to mind, in a pleasant way, the President’s latest press conference where one of the razor sharp reporters asked him if he’d experienced any racism since he was inaugurated and his answer was basically “I’ve been a little busy trying to save the world, thanks for asking though I wouldn’t recommend asking a follow up.”
JHF and the giants he rode with, like Thurgood Marshall and MLK, made beautiful moments like that possible. Thank you sir.
Last week, NPR played a prior interview with Franklin in which he described his admission, as the first black, to an exclusive D.C. club. As he was leaving, a white woman asked him to hang up her coat. To paraphrase Franklin, white America sees blacks as existing in a condition of service.
Speaking of service, what have the Repugs us left with? Clarence Thomas. But I mean that in a non-judgemental way.
And there was the time Carl Rowan, the first black in his rather exclusive Northwest Washington neighborhood, was out taking care of the lawn and raking up a few leaves.
A neighbor woman came up and asked him how much he charged for his services, saying she had been looking for a boy to do that kind of work.
Or MUCH more recently, when a sudden influx of guests at a certain Mansion near Dupont Circle led to a bottleneck at their valet parking and a neighbor pitched in to help drive the cars to the various valet spots. It turns out the helpful neighbor was a young Congressman. Who got a dollar tip and was called boy. That was this decade, and he’s still a young Congressman.
I heard a fantastic interview with him on NPR’s The Story this week. It was from a few years ago and they re-ran it the day after he died. What an incredible story and an impressive man!
ThePerfesser: I hope that he kept the dollar tip and framed it.