"You da man now, Cos."
Bill Cosby has more harsh words for black community
DON BABWIN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 1, 2004
(07-01) 16:25 PDT CHICAGO (AP) --
Bill Cosby went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere."
He also had harsh words for struggling black men, telling them: "Stop beating up your women because you can't find a job."
Cosby made headlines in May when he upbraided some poor blacks for their grammar and accused them of squandering opportunities the civil rights movement gave them. He shot back Thursday, saying his detractors were trying in vain to hide the black community's "dirty laundry."
"Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other n------ as they're walking up and down the street," Cosby said during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund's annual conference.
"They think they're hip," the entertainer said. "They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere."
In his remarks in May at a commemoration of the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, Cosby denounced some blacks' grammar and said those who commit crimes and wind up behind bars "are not political prisoners."
"I can't even talk the way these people talk, 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk," Cosby said then. "And then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."
Cosby elaborated Thursday on his previous comments in a talk interrupted several times by applause. He castigated some blacks, saying that they cannot simply blame whites for problems such as teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates.
"For me there is a time ... when we have to turn the mirror around," he said. "Because for me it is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat, it keeps you frozen in your hole you're sitting in."
Cosby lamented that the racial slurs once used by those who lynched blacks are now a favorite expression of black children. And he blamed parents.
"When you put on a record and that record is yelling `n----- this and n----- that' and you've got your little 6-year-old, 7-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car, those children hear that," he said.
He also condemned black men who missed out on opportunities and are now angry about their lives.
"You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity."
Cosby appeared Thursday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the education fund, who defended the entertainer's statements.
"Bill is saying let's fight the right fight, let's level the playing field," Jackson said. "Drunk people can't do that. Illiterate people can't do that."
Cosby also said many young people are failing to honor the sacrifices made by those who struggled and died during the civil rights movement.
"Dogs, water hoses that tear the bark off trees, Emmett Till," he said, naming the black youth who was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955, allegedly for whistling at a white woman. "And you're going to tell me you're going to drop out of school? You're going to tell me you're going to steal from a store?"
Cosby also said he wasn't concerned that some whites took his comments and turned them "against our people."
"Let them talk," he said.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
From the Nres and Observer:
Mending family ties at UNC
Williams is working to restore the bond among former UNC players
CHAPEL HILL -- There was a buzz in the Smith Center last Wednesday when Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants, Sean May and the 2004-05 Tar Heels challenged a pro team composed of former Carolina players.
The pros won, rallying for a 100-93 victory while several hundred wide-eyed youngsters at UNC's basketball camp ooohed and aaahed.
They saw Antawn Jamison, a multimillion dollar NBA player, dive on the floor for a loose ball that led to a fast-break basket. They watched Donald Williams knock in long jumpers, Brendan Haywood throw down dunks, and Makhtar Ndiaye drain a 3 that enabled the alumni to reach the 100-point mark needed for victory.
Carolina coach Roy Williams didn't like hearing that his current Tar Heels had been beaten, but he enjoyed having the old-timers back in town.
"Thanks for playing,'' he said, giving the alums a smile, handshake, or pat as they strolled to the dressing room.
That old Carolina family atmosphere is back.
Michael Jordan brought his two sons to Williams' camp. Shammond Williams, Ed Cota, Jerry Stackhouse, Eric Montross, Derrick Phelps, Bill Chamberlain, Curtis Hunter and Dante Calabria are among others who have been around.
"Having these guys come back is something that's very important to me," said the folksy, friendly Williams. "Every player who ever played at North Carolina, I want them to still feel it's their basketball program."
That special bond was prevalent throughout the 36-year era of Dean Smith and continued when Bill Guthridge became the head coach.
But after Guthridge retired in 2000, the situation changed.
A cloud of conflict billowed. Several players transferred. And former players didn't show up as often.
Haywood, a Greensboro native who plays for the Washington Wizards, said players became "kind of detached" from the program as UNC struggled under Matt Doherty, who was fired in 2003.
"A lot of things changed when coach Smith and Guthridge stepped down," Ndiaye said. "People kind of went their separate ways. We didn't have that line of communication."
Doherty accepts some blame for the breakdown in relationships.
In an interview last Friday, Doherty said not retaining assistants from the previous Heels staff -- Phil Ford, Dave Hanners and Pat Sullivan -- created "hard feelings" among several former players.
"Some took that personally," Doherty said. "They were very close to Phil, Pat and Dave. As a result, some guys were not as supportive as I would have liked. I understand that.
"I think that set a tone for three years for a lot of people who were very much a part of the Carolina family. It was such a traumatic transition. In hindsight, I would have handled that differently. I would have tried to be loyal to my staff [I brought from Notre Dame], but try to use creativity to include the staff at Carolina."
Doherty said he was more focused on getting players at the time he was unexpectedly hired.
"It happened so fast," he said. "It was July 11. I was thinking of recruiting. I needed to work on making it a smoother transition."
When Williams was named head coach at UNC, he contacted all former players. Then last season he held a reunion weekend, an effort to revive the unity that Smith and Guthridge had established.
But while more players are paying visits with greater frequency now, they usually don't stay as long as in the past.
"There was a time in the summer when James Worthy, Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Al Wood and everybody was running in," Williams said. "Times have changed.
"In the old days, pro players
didn't have anything to do in the summer. Kids have families quicker now. They have team obligations, shoe-contract obligations ... pro teams require they be in that city."
Phil Ford, a former Tar Heels All-America and assistant coach currently working with UNC's Educational Foundation, is "glad to see" the former players around.
He remembers how, in his UNC playing days, it was helpful to compete in pickup games against the pros.
Garner's Donald Williams, who starred on a title team in Sweden last year, didn't make it back for a few summers after he got married and had two children.
But he showed up last week, and noted that coach Williams and his assistants make former players "feel at home."
Montross and Chamberlain, who has been an instructor at the Carolina basketball camp regularly since 1972, both pointed to last season's reunion as a kind of healing moment for the "family."
Montross says it "re-energized" everybody and added that players are exchanging more e-mail messages, communicating more.
Former Tar Heels player Dave Chadwick, a Presbyterian minister in Charlotte, continues sending each of his sermons to Chamberlain -- a practice Chadwick started after Chamberlain's wife died more than a decade ago.
While re-connecting more fervently with the program, what the Carolina old-timers want to see now is a Tar Heels team's return to championship status.
"They've got talent," Donald Williams said after the camp pick-up game. "But they've got to work hard to become a good team."
And beat the Carolina pros.
Mending family ties at UNC
Williams is working to restore the bond among former UNC players
CHAPEL HILL -- There was a buzz in the Smith Center last Wednesday when Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants, Sean May and the 2004-05 Tar Heels challenged a pro team composed of former Carolina players.
The pros won, rallying for a 100-93 victory while several hundred wide-eyed youngsters at UNC's basketball camp ooohed and aaahed.
They saw Antawn Jamison, a multimillion dollar NBA player, dive on the floor for a loose ball that led to a fast-break basket. They watched Donald Williams knock in long jumpers, Brendan Haywood throw down dunks, and Makhtar Ndiaye drain a 3 that enabled the alumni to reach the 100-point mark needed for victory.
Carolina coach Roy Williams didn't like hearing that his current Tar Heels had been beaten, but he enjoyed having the old-timers back in town.
"Thanks for playing,'' he said, giving the alums a smile, handshake, or pat as they strolled to the dressing room.
That old Carolina family atmosphere is back.
Michael Jordan brought his two sons to Williams' camp. Shammond Williams, Ed Cota, Jerry Stackhouse, Eric Montross, Derrick Phelps, Bill Chamberlain, Curtis Hunter and Dante Calabria are among others who have been around.
"Having these guys come back is something that's very important to me," said the folksy, friendly Williams. "Every player who ever played at North Carolina, I want them to still feel it's their basketball program."
That special bond was prevalent throughout the 36-year era of Dean Smith and continued when Bill Guthridge became the head coach.
But after Guthridge retired in 2000, the situation changed.
A cloud of conflict billowed. Several players transferred. And former players didn't show up as often.
Haywood, a Greensboro native who plays for the Washington Wizards, said players became "kind of detached" from the program as UNC struggled under Matt Doherty, who was fired in 2003.
"A lot of things changed when coach Smith and Guthridge stepped down," Ndiaye said. "People kind of went their separate ways. We didn't have that line of communication."
Doherty accepts some blame for the breakdown in relationships.
In an interview last Friday, Doherty said not retaining assistants from the previous Heels staff -- Phil Ford, Dave Hanners and Pat Sullivan -- created "hard feelings" among several former players.
"Some took that personally," Doherty said. "They were very close to Phil, Pat and Dave. As a result, some guys were not as supportive as I would have liked. I understand that.
"I think that set a tone for three years for a lot of people who were very much a part of the Carolina family. It was such a traumatic transition. In hindsight, I would have handled that differently. I would have tried to be loyal to my staff [I brought from Notre Dame], but try to use creativity to include the staff at Carolina."
Doherty said he was more focused on getting players at the time he was unexpectedly hired.
"It happened so fast," he said. "It was July 11. I was thinking of recruiting. I needed to work on making it a smoother transition."
When Williams was named head coach at UNC, he contacted all former players. Then last season he held a reunion weekend, an effort to revive the unity that Smith and Guthridge had established.
But while more players are paying visits with greater frequency now, they usually don't stay as long as in the past.
"There was a time in the summer when James Worthy, Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins, Al Wood and everybody was running in," Williams said. "Times have changed.
"In the old days, pro players
didn't have anything to do in the summer. Kids have families quicker now. They have team obligations, shoe-contract obligations ... pro teams require they be in that city."
Phil Ford, a former Tar Heels All-America and assistant coach currently working with UNC's Educational Foundation, is "glad to see" the former players around.
He remembers how, in his UNC playing days, it was helpful to compete in pickup games against the pros.
Garner's Donald Williams, who starred on a title team in Sweden last year, didn't make it back for a few summers after he got married and had two children.
But he showed up last week, and noted that coach Williams and his assistants make former players "feel at home."
Montross and Chamberlain, who has been an instructor at the Carolina basketball camp regularly since 1972, both pointed to last season's reunion as a kind of healing moment for the "family."
Montross says it "re-energized" everybody and added that players are exchanging more e-mail messages, communicating more.
Former Tar Heels player Dave Chadwick, a Presbyterian minister in Charlotte, continues sending each of his sermons to Chamberlain -- a practice Chadwick started after Chamberlain's wife died more than a decade ago.
While re-connecting more fervently with the program, what the Carolina old-timers want to see now is a Tar Heels team's return to championship status.
"They've got talent," Donald Williams said after the camp pick-up game. "But they've got to work hard to become a good team."
And beat the Carolina pros.
Will `Fahrenheit 9/11' Burn the Democrats?:
Andrew Ferguson
June 29 (Bloomberg) -
A political activist rang me up and told me I had to see the new documentary about the president.
``It's chilling,'' he said. ``It shows what a slimeball this guy is.''
So I saw the movie, and it was -- how to put this? -- a crock. Watching it I thought: Whoever produced this slanderous mess deserves to be run out of polite society.
That was 10 years ago, and the documentary was a slapdash confection of lies and innuendo called ``The Clinton Chronicles.''
It accused Bill Clinton -- slyly and indirectly -- of drug- running and worse. There was no evidence but lots of insinuation, a series of meaningless coincidences presented in breathless tones so the weak-minded might connect dots that weren't there.
Now the U.S. is being treated to the same kind of exercise, on a much grander scale, with Michael Moore's scabrous ``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' And once again weak-minded ideologues are lapping it up like hungry pups.
There's a big difference, though. Polite society, especially the mainstream press, recognized the producers of ``The Clinton Chronicles,'' a California-based group called Citizens for Honest Government, as the fools they were. After hawking the film on his TV show, the televangelist Jerry Falwell never quite recovered what little reputation he had once enjoyed. Years later, he was still apologizing in TV appearances for associating himself with the movie.
Now, however, the paranoid strain has so thoroughly saturated U.S. politics that Moore's cinematic slander can be feted and extolled -- not only by mainstream movie reviewers but, more ominously, by the same Democratic Party establishment that Moore accuses of colluding with President George W. Bush.
At the Washington premiere of ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' last week, Moore was conspicuously greeted for the cameras by Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
``There might be half the Democratic Senate here,'' Senator Bob Graham of Florida told the New York Times.
Unlike the Democratic Party, Moore has always prided himself on his radicalism. So who's changed -- Moore or the Democratic Party?
I saw the movie at an early showing on Saturday afternoon in a packed theater in my heavily liberal Washington suburb. As the film unspooled, the audience laughed, fell silent, and tut-tutted to Moore's heavy-handed cues with Pavlovian discipline.
I, on the other hand, was unmoved. (Maybe you've noticed.) But I was surprised by the movie -- and surprised by my surprise.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Moore posted this on his Web site: ``We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants.''
So I wasn't surprised that Moore is, um, skeptical about U.S. motives for invading Iraq. To the extent he has an explicit thesis at all, it's that the invasion was a scheme to divert attention from the Bush family's involvement with the family of Osama bin Laden.
And having followed Moore's career, I wasn't surprised by his shadings of fact. When he says that ``many studies'' showed Al Gore won the vote in Florida, for example, he neglects to mention that many more, including recounts by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, say Gore did not.
And I wasn't surprised that when he ridicules Bush for sitting passively in front of a classroom of schoolchildren directly after learning of the attacks, he omits the reaction of the school principal.
``I don't think anyone could have handled it better'' than Bush did, the principal, Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
And I wasn't surprised that Moore accuses -- if ``accuse'' is a synonym for ``insinuate'' -- Bush of approving the flight of the bin Laden family from the U.S. after Sept. 11. Why, the family's passports weren't even checked, Moore says, even though ``that's what would happen to you or I.''
I wasn't surprised that they don't teach grammar in film school.
What did surprise me, though, was the crudity of Moore's method. Moore calls his movie an ``op-ed,'' but it is written in Crayola, with a heavy grip.
He mostly avoids straightforward factual assertions -- which makes the movie harder to confront and argue with -- in favor of ellipsis and misdirection. The music is alternately creepy (that's how you know he's being serious) and chipper (that's how you know he's being sarcastic). His cultural allusions show the depth of the Baby Boomer satirist, ranging from TV reruns like ``Dragnet'' to TV reruns like ``Bonanza.''
The movie's only powerful moments -- of soldiers in Iraq, of the immediate aftermath of the Twin Towers' collapse -- come in footage Moore has acquired from other sources.
Will anyone care that the movie, viewed as either art or journalism, is a mess? ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' has a Palme d'Or from the Cannes film festival -- and now the implicit endorsement of the Democratic Party establishment.
This embrace of Moore's crackpottery is great news for Moore, very bad news for Democrats -- just as the GOP's kooky flirtations under Clinton did damage it has yet to recover from.
By the way, I eventually lost track of my political-activist friend, but I heard about him the other day. Apparently he's urging people to boycott ``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' It's the work of an extremist, he says. And who would know better?
Andrew Ferguson
June 29 (Bloomberg) -
A political activist rang me up and told me I had to see the new documentary about the president.
``It's chilling,'' he said. ``It shows what a slimeball this guy is.''
So I saw the movie, and it was -- how to put this? -- a crock. Watching it I thought: Whoever produced this slanderous mess deserves to be run out of polite society.
That was 10 years ago, and the documentary was a slapdash confection of lies and innuendo called ``The Clinton Chronicles.''
It accused Bill Clinton -- slyly and indirectly -- of drug- running and worse. There was no evidence but lots of insinuation, a series of meaningless coincidences presented in breathless tones so the weak-minded might connect dots that weren't there.
Now the U.S. is being treated to the same kind of exercise, on a much grander scale, with Michael Moore's scabrous ``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' And once again weak-minded ideologues are lapping it up like hungry pups.
There's a big difference, though. Polite society, especially the mainstream press, recognized the producers of ``The Clinton Chronicles,'' a California-based group called Citizens for Honest Government, as the fools they were. After hawking the film on his TV show, the televangelist Jerry Falwell never quite recovered what little reputation he had once enjoyed. Years later, he was still apologizing in TV appearances for associating himself with the movie.
Now, however, the paranoid strain has so thoroughly saturated U.S. politics that Moore's cinematic slander can be feted and extolled -- not only by mainstream movie reviewers but, more ominously, by the same Democratic Party establishment that Moore accuses of colluding with President George W. Bush.
At the Washington premiere of ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' last week, Moore was conspicuously greeted for the cameras by Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
``There might be half the Democratic Senate here,'' Senator Bob Graham of Florida told the New York Times.
Unlike the Democratic Party, Moore has always prided himself on his radicalism. So who's changed -- Moore or the Democratic Party?
I saw the movie at an early showing on Saturday afternoon in a packed theater in my heavily liberal Washington suburb. As the film unspooled, the audience laughed, fell silent, and tut-tutted to Moore's heavy-handed cues with Pavlovian discipline.
I, on the other hand, was unmoved. (Maybe you've noticed.) But I was surprised by the movie -- and surprised by my surprise.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Moore posted this on his Web site: ``We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants.''
So I wasn't surprised that Moore is, um, skeptical about U.S. motives for invading Iraq. To the extent he has an explicit thesis at all, it's that the invasion was a scheme to divert attention from the Bush family's involvement with the family of Osama bin Laden.
And having followed Moore's career, I wasn't surprised by his shadings of fact. When he says that ``many studies'' showed Al Gore won the vote in Florida, for example, he neglects to mention that many more, including recounts by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, say Gore did not.
And I wasn't surprised that when he ridicules Bush for sitting passively in front of a classroom of schoolchildren directly after learning of the attacks, he omits the reaction of the school principal.
``I don't think anyone could have handled it better'' than Bush did, the principal, Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
And I wasn't surprised that Moore accuses -- if ``accuse'' is a synonym for ``insinuate'' -- Bush of approving the flight of the bin Laden family from the U.S. after Sept. 11. Why, the family's passports weren't even checked, Moore says, even though ``that's what would happen to you or I.''
I wasn't surprised that they don't teach grammar in film school.
What did surprise me, though, was the crudity of Moore's method. Moore calls his movie an ``op-ed,'' but it is written in Crayola, with a heavy grip.
He mostly avoids straightforward factual assertions -- which makes the movie harder to confront and argue with -- in favor of ellipsis and misdirection. The music is alternately creepy (that's how you know he's being serious) and chipper (that's how you know he's being sarcastic). His cultural allusions show the depth of the Baby Boomer satirist, ranging from TV reruns like ``Dragnet'' to TV reruns like ``Bonanza.''
The movie's only powerful moments -- of soldiers in Iraq, of the immediate aftermath of the Twin Towers' collapse -- come in footage Moore has acquired from other sources.
Will anyone care that the movie, viewed as either art or journalism, is a mess? ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' has a Palme d'Or from the Cannes film festival -- and now the implicit endorsement of the Democratic Party establishment.
This embrace of Moore's crackpottery is great news for Moore, very bad news for Democrats -- just as the GOP's kooky flirtations under Clinton did damage it has yet to recover from.
By the way, I eventually lost track of my political-activist friend, but I heard about him the other day. Apparently he's urging people to boycott ``Fahrenheit 9/11.'' It's the work of an extremist, he says. And who would know better?
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