hardballs, hardheads, and hardtruths

having a hard day

smerconish spent the week auditioning for chris matthews' 'hardball' slot all last week. i am only bothered by this because smerc is a bit less smerckish and a little more rockefeller center.
i refuse to go so far to say smerc is anything at all like matthews. smerc doesn't spit when he goes off on a 3-minute question rant and he doesn't rant for 3 minutes, so it's a win win for his guests.
i hope smerc eventually gets the gig.

smerc allows his guest answer questions; matthews asks his guests questions, but somewhere along the line matthews decides he is going to answer the question too, leaving guests like mother jones', david korn, chewing the insides of his cheeks.
ugh, smerc is nothing like chris matthews, but nothing quite like smerc either.

my pet turtle, arlen specter

i was elated to think he would be back in philly on monday, and tuned
in to hear  a 'best of smerconish' repeater edition of arlen specter pimping that gawd-awful book of his.
nineteen fucking words in the title!
only specter.

and gawd damned chris matthew's stupid assed vacation too!

when i arrived home from my appointment with the worlds greatest chiropractor on the face of the earth, i woke up my laptop and there to my surprise, was the real smerc on wpht!
yay! sybil out, smerconish in.
around 6 pm-ish, the topic centered around the trayvon martin shooting in sanford, florida. once again, smerc's mainliner zip code (also known as- the new elites' blanket of protection from real human beings) leaves him pondering, "are people really taking sides already and deciding guilt or innocence before zimmerman is even charged?"
michael michael michael.
duh.
charles murray is correct.
there are zip codes in cities full of fine people... - i'm making no judgements.
none that i'm admitting to right now anyway.
i'll continue.....fine people with lovely manners and worthy-of-praise socialization skills, and free-range access to crane stationary and mont blanc fountain pens.
and these people, fine as y'all are, participate in the real planet earth as naturally and as often as the gop's favorite gaffer- mitt romney.
as white trailer trash (because i took murray's test, and i know both jimmys) i am left to enlighten you smerc, to real human thoughts on the trayvon martin shooting.
buckle yourself up, in that fine jag-u-are of yours; i'm taking you for a ride through the www philly burbs:

from cnn facebook thread:
Tina MH This Is So HeartBreaking A Young Boy 17yrs old,Just buying Tea &Candy! SMH...We ALL KnoW If The KiLLeR WaS Black & The ChilD Was White! NO WaY WouLD He Be STILL Walking ArounD W/ThaT GUN!-Racism IS SO OUT HERE It'S INJUSTICE!! SO SHAMEFULL!!! CARMA Is SOMETHING!!
9 minutes ago · Like · 1 (props to carma with a 'c'!)
MikeR wearing a hoodie when its not cold or raining is a sure sign you arent up to anything good.
about an hour ago · Like
msnbc:
SandraT Just like when I got profiled for being a skinny white girl ... I must be in this neighborhood for drugs. If I were slovenly ... it wouldnt have happened. If I were black or Mexican it wouldnt have happened. I was targeted because I am skinny and white. But that isn't racism?? OK ... I forgot only black people are victims. All other nationalities are not ever discriminated against. It is bullshit and it pisses me off
3 hours ago · Like · 1
DanP
If a white kid was killed the shooter no matter the race would be in jail and the trial date would be set.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
DanP You can tell the racists by their outrage at people demanding justice in this case.
Just Sayin
8 minutes ago · Like
TavorisS Why hasn't anything been said about the SHOOTINGS N TULSA I guess don't wanna end up TALKING about BLACK WALL STREET & showing what WHITE PPL R CAPABLE 3 hours ago ·

GlenC.M. John C, Republicans want to see one big plantation!

2 hours ago · · 4 (notice this shit get's 4 thumbs up!)

from ms facebook wall:

Billy Mulligan By the way. Truth is not hate speech. Obama is an Affirmative Action President.. Trayvon was trespassing on private property, when trespass you take the risk of being shot. Sandra Fluck is a slut. She allowed herself to be used by the left like a slut.. Truth is not hate speech.. Now me I use hate speech because I absolutely abhor the Left and Democrats as a whole

11 hours ago · · 2 (billy contributes some freakin' doozies, lemmetellya! billy makes facebook ed look like milquetoast!)

 

i know, it's depressing, isn't it?

hey, mr.bubble?
yeah mr. smerconish, you are indeed a resident in the charles murray bubble of the unincluded. it seems the real world, which IS facebook, has bee completely divided into 2 camps:
zimmerman's camp guilty

trayvon's camp of justice

you and i are among a select few who have put on earmuffs to a media hellbent on stirring a racepot that rivals charles manson's intention to start a race war between blacks and whites in 1969.

during the woodstock era, manson used drugs and his notorious cult appeal as a means to his desired end.
in 2012, we have the mainstream media.

stick to your legal gut instincts, and keep the earmuffs on.
stay comfortably in the mainline bubble, and i will keep you informed of what the real people do.
cmk

p.s. the april 8th announcement of smerconish's move into rush limbaughs' noon-three timeslot on 1210 wpht leads me to believe, smerc is gonna get the hardball job!

zimmerman man-fans

the more the better. i think.

i had the unfortunate benefit of listening to wednesday's smerc callers addressing the trayvon martin case, and for the most part i have drawn the sad conclusion, we still need the al sharptons to shine a great, big spotlight on injustice, if not but for weeding out  bigots and idiots.
as if bigot and idiot are separate. 

*many of whom listen to the show.
i still say, we give al his walking papers and send him on his merry way to his msnbc gig, 'politics nation', and we all know even al scratches his james-brown-head and asks himself, "how in god's hell did i pull this one off?" i know al sharpton has some naughty karma comin', i just don't know when.

as a replacement i suggest harold ford, jr. because i like him. i like lenny kravitz, too.
and on the hot scale, while ford isn't awful on the eyes, kravitz is so easy he's practically skanky.

one point i keep hearing over and over again is the image portrayed by the media of trayvon martin, represents someone younger and smaller than the 17 year old shot dead by george zimmerman. it was suggested he looked 14, and the photographs used were judged to be unrepresentative of the hulking, menacing kid on purpose!

as the mother of 4 children i am going to explain something to you people who have never been placed in charge of memorializing your branch of the family tree. let me further say in my defense, i never asked for this job because i completely, absolutely suck at keeping track of anything smaller than a child.

when my children were all young, i could go pick one up, put it on the couch, and take photos of it until i ran out of film with rare objection. i stood on many-a-sideline screaming and hooting and hollering about my sport-child, snapping photos in between hoots.
there comes a point, when the child begins to whine and moan and groan at you on a fairly regular basis, and asking them to pose for a picture only gives them one more thing to bitch about, so screw that.
i still find it a lil hypocritical when i creep on their fb pages
and see photo after ph/scratch that, album after album of them posing for someone else and doing utterly stupid shit; obviously i am meant to take this personally, so i have, and i'm done photographing my children.
add a.d.d. to that and you have my filing system.
i do not have one album.
all my photos are in a box in a closet i can see from where i am currently sitting.

i tell you all of this because of the hypothetical i will now pose:
my child doesn't come home one night. at some point my child will be deemed legally missing and i can notify the police.
i am probably in a panic when the police request a recent photograph of my missing child.
i run to my box of photographs and grab the first photo i come to that most closely resembles my missing child.
i would not stop to make sure the photo was from his junior year, out of a uniform of some sort, or was particularly as tall or as heavy as my child.
i would hand it over to the police and say, "this is the best one i have right now. please use this and when i am finished with this meltdown, i will get you a more current photo."

the 1210 sleuth-set has it all figured out, with little if anything of a factual nature to consider. beyond trayvon martin's death as the result of being shot by george zimmerman  everything that follows  is conjecture or verbal accounts from witnesses i don't know from rocks. i heard more reasons for zimmerman to shoot-on-sight than i wanted to hear and it left me very depressed.
and then i realized al might hang around longer, which was even more depressing a thought.

i just want to let you know why moms don't always have just the right picture, and i have debunked one bigot-idiot-theory.
feel free to bring on another.

p.s.- for those children whose mothers don't have albums or "baby's first steps" journals, it doesn't mean we don't love you, we just have lots of shit to do )

cmk

*smerc- you may wanna rethink your fan base. just sayin'

hot old lady in love park

i left love park's candlelight vigil for trayvon martin a few minutes ahead of the peaceful crowd. those who could stand plummeting temps and winds that literally blew me down the sidewalk two times, went on to occupy something in philly, while i briskly walked to my illegally parked jeep.

i peed for a second time at the krispy kreme on chestnut, plucked a parking ticket off my windshield, (philadelphia parking kiosks only take quarters while my camera bag was filled with nickles and dimes), and headed toward the art museum. i made my way on to a user-friendly schyulkill- this means i am headed west leaving the city after 7 p.m. est.

the schyulkill is always friendly when you're leaving.

too late for smerc, i tuned into wpht http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/station/talk-radio-1210/   

and hung out with gary arnell for a chill drive home.
arnell's guest, jenice armstrong, columnist for the philadelphia daily news, was reporting live from ground-zero, love park. seemingly surprised by the small number gathering for the candlelight vigil, http://www.philly.com/philly/gallery/Trayvon_Martin_vigil_at_Love_Park.html?viewGallery=y ms. armstrong seemed even more perplexed by the national attention the death of trayvon martin was receiving. 

i listened further as ms. armstong recounted philly murders in recent past, that, according to her garnered no attention whatsoever, posing the question, "where was the outrage over these murders?".

in a column, posted 3/26/2012

http://www.philly.com/philly/living/20120326_Jenice_Armstrong_.html?cmpid=138894519
armstrong highlights 4 recent philadelphia homicides near or around the gunning-down of trayvon martin and in conclusion states, " Not to take as much as a Skittle away from Trayvon, but aren't these people's untimely deaths worth our getting worked up about as well?"

answer: of course they are! and what did you do about them, jenice? and your job doesn't count.  

trayvon martin's murder has received attention that eluded our fellow philadelphians for one reason and one reason only-

al sharpton.

al

did anyone in philadelphia call al blueberrypie sharpton?
i am pretty sure sharpton works a lot like batman, and requires at the very least a phone call, if not a shaft-like help-us-hologram in the sky.
i find the naivete in your question, well, weird at it's least.
the civil rights movement gave birth to the much needed organization and representation for a very underrepresented group of americans.
whites had always been above and beyond represented in every possible constitutional way, and had no need for such organization. and imagine in 2012 if there was a national association for the advancement of white people.
it was never needed, nor would it be tolerated.

young black men are murdered at an outrageous, disproportionate rate every, single day in this country. 

as a journalist, but more importantly as a black female journalist who, i am assuming lives in or at least near philadelphia, i ask you this: 

 how do you not know yourself what to do to draw attention to your hometown - which currently places 1st for homicide rates in 2012?

the world's perfect puppy, lucy

i am an aarp card holding woman in the suburbs of philly and i know who to call. when my puppy, lucy, hears al on msnbc recalling his pie-thieving days in brooklyn, she growls. even my dog knows - call al sharpton!
nothing brings the racial tension to the table like al.
no one can spin the murder of a young man by a gun wielding security officer into a racial frenzy, like al.

now, if sharpton were not such a self-promoting opportunist, i would applaud and encourage his participation in every homicide in every city across this great nation.
the problem with al is, he forgets why he is there and only sees the color of one's skin. i just find that odd from a man who quotes dr. martin luther king.
sharpton should have term limits, much like our congress should have term limits. out with the old, in with new.
sharpton, like his fellow sexagenarians, are antiques to the system. sharpton wants to march in a world that needs less and less marching. 

not exactly stealth

if al could fly to florida, stir up some shit and then fly back to his rockefeller center office in new york, new york, hop in his corporate limo, and get back to his day job at msnbc, that would be great. but al can't do that. al needs to be the story; needs to be the show; he just can't walk out of the limelight.
we need a navy seal-type who slips in under the tv camera radar, wreaks all sorts of havoc, then slips out as stealthly as he came.
mission accomplished, bin laden is dead, claps hands together and that's that.
last night i stood among fellow philadelphians where i saw some angry, some sad, some determined, some militant humans meld together; i saw folks i thought probably had some money in their pockets and some i knew did not. i saw old and young, human and canine.  i listened, i participated, and i then i drove home.

that's what i did, jenice. my job is working in a bookstore. my obligation as a human being was to choose to be in love park.
reporting the news is one thing.
being the news is another.

cmk

no more division, please.