Bent Corner

Yes, this says what you think it says. Click here to see a larger image.  I don’t know what is more disturbing, that something like this could be found in Hagerstown’s own Rocky Ridge Collectibles or that the seller wants $45 for it.

And that was not the only piece of racist crap sitting on the shelf.  No, it was only the most agregous.  There were other similarly framed works of racism for sale along with this one.

Sorry for the crummy quality of the photo.  I took it with my camera phone.  I had to temporarily move a stack of cowboy hats to get a clear picture.  Who would have guessed that the same vendor that was selling this framed piece of historical hate would also be selling cowboy hats?

It’s 2008.  It would be nice if we could finally get past this type of stuff.

From the Dallas City Hall Blog on the Dallas Morning News website:

County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections “has become a black hole” because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a “white hole.”

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster’s, is perhaps “the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape.”

Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling, after all.

I’d love to see the video of this.  What I find to be hysterically funny about this is that even though commissioner Mayfield wasn’t being the least bit racially degrading when he used the term black hole, commissioner Price (seen here letting his hair down) was being racially insulting when he responded to the imaginary slur with the term “white hole”.

At least he was trying to be which makes it extremely funny.

If I wasn’t such a cheapskate, I would send commissioner John Wiley Price and Judge Thomas Jones copies of Stephen Hawking’s landmark book, A Brief History in Time.  I was looking around Borders yesterday and happened to find an updated, re-written version of the book entitled A Briefer History of Time.  I was published in 2005 by Hawking and American physicist Leonard Mlodinow.

Finally there is justice in the world. Jesse Helms, that racist old coot from North Carolina is finally not breathing the same air as the rest of us.

His hometown newspaper, The News & Observer, published a joke of an obituary that failed to truly capture the level of absolute racism this man practiced. They described him as “cantankerous” and wrote that “Helms could be the picture of the courtly Southern gentleman“. As if there is anything cantankerous or gentlemanly about hating folks because of the color of their skin.

Not that they failed to mention the Helms’ racism. They wrote:

Although Helms denied he was a racist, his work in the Senate often seemed at odds with the interests of blacks.

Well now, isn’t that putting it rather nicely. Helms was one of two senators for the state of North Carolina, Helms represented many black people. So when his work in the Senate was “at odds with the interests of blacks”, it was at odds with a good many of his own electorate. The very people he should have been representing.

That’s not democracy.

Don Imus is once again in hot water over something he said on his radio show. Last time is was about the hair style of the Rutgers ladies basketball team. This time it was concerning former Tennessee Titans defensive back Pacman Adam Jones.

Maybe the I-Man shouldn’t talk about sports?

He and the rest of the people on his show were discussing Jones and how he has been arrested multiple times for multiple offenses. This is what Imus said:

Imus: “What color is he?”

Warner Wolf: “African-American”

Imus: “There you go. Now we know.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I think any time you begin your statement by asking what color someone is, it cannot be good.

I thought much of the Imus outrage the last go around was overblown.  I thought what he said about the lady basketball players was stupid, but I did not think it was as bad as most people pretended it was.  With that said, I think this statement is worse then what he said about the lady basketball players.  A lot worse.

Don Imus is just a big old racist idiot.  He needs to just go away.

Alan Greenspan’s wife lied again today on Meet The Press. She said this towards the end of the program:

And I do think–let me just say something from being on the ground in Pennsylvania and in Ohio–I think racism is a real factor here. I don’t think it’s being polled correctly because I don’t think it can be polled correctly. I think it is what you see in some of his failure to connect with a particular sector of the electorate. And I’m not sure how you get your arms around it, but I think it is a real issue that there is a resistance to him on some level in the electorate, and you hear these things from voters when you talk to them. “Oh, I heard that he’s not really a Christian.” “Oh, well, he didn’t, you know, put his hand over his heart.” All this willingness to believe totally erroneous things about Barack Obama, which begins to congeal, and I think it’s a problem.

It’s not racist and it’s not erroneous to think that Barack Obama didn’t put his hand over his heart. This photo was in Time magazine. It was taken in Iowa at a steak fry hosted by Tom Harkin during the National Anthem.

Barack Obama — he’s the guy on the left — can be clearly seen with his hand not over his heart.

Maybe its not really important. Maybe he just doesn’t know basic etiquette. I know he’s never been in the military, but maybe he’s never been to a ball game either.

I don’t know why I watch Meet The Press. I actually got duce chills last week when Tim Russert held up an Alexander Ovechkin jersey and said, “GO CAPS”. Why subject myself to that?

Washington County’s newest public school, Rockland Woods Elementary School, will be open to all kids that live in the county. It doesn’t matter where they live. If they live in the county, they can attend the school.

This is not good news to some.

From Hagerstown’s one and only crap newspaper, The Herald-Mail:

Metra Reid, who lives with her husband and two children in the Westfields housing development, said during Tuesday’s public meeting that open enrollment at the school will be a disservice to her children. When her family moved to the development three years ago, she said they were promised that the school would offer a high quality of education.”It’s not fair to penalize those of us who live in the development by just sending in whoever,” Reid said. “We had such high expectations for the school.”

She said children from families in other parts of the county do not value education as much as families in her neighborhood.

“When you buy a home in a neighborhood, you want people like yourselves,” Reid said. “It’s not fair to just let anyone just ship in whoever. Think about it before you let everyone and anybody go to that school.”

Reid said her daughter attends a private preschool in Hagerstown and will attend Rockland Woods in its second year. Her son would enroll in the school’s third year, she said.

Reid said her daughter is able to count into the hundreds and is learning to write. She said students from other areas of Washington County would not be at the same level when they enter kindergarten.

“It’s not fair to put her in the classroom with 20 other children who won’t know their alphabet,” she said.

I’ve got to say that her daughter sounds like a big dork. She’s not even five and she’s counting into the hundreds? Who makes their kid count that high? I’m not saying it’s comparable to water boarding or making them listen to Jimmy Buffet music, but can’t she think of some other way to torture her kids?

Better yet, can’t she come up with some other way of feeling good about herself without living vicariously through her children? Just because she forces her kids to learn how to count or learn their alphabet before they should doesn’t make them any smarter.

Kids should be allowed to be kids. The alphabet and counting to a thousand will wait.

I blogged a little yesterday about my troubles with the Herald-Mail message board. Mostly I told people to go to Steve Likes to Curse and read Steve Shives’ excellent breakdown on what went down.

I emailed the Herald-Mail website administrator explaining what happened. I’ve yet to get a response. My suspension was removed yesterday. I only knew this because I read about it in the comment section of Steve Likes to Curse. If they were going to remove my 2-day suspension, they ought to at least tell me. What good is announcing it on a message board I was led to believe I was suspended from?

When I went back to the message board, I found the following post from the moderator:

After careful consideration of all the factors involved, and rereading the initial post and the subsequent replies. I have reconsidered my original judgement [sic].

Bentcorner used the term “Negro” and not the other “N-word”, for the record.

After researching the term “Negro”, it does not appear to have the same connotation that the other “N-word” has. While his post may or may not have had anything to do with the nature of the thread is not being considered. It did not take the post off-topic (anymore than what anyone else has ever done).

Bentcorner has my sincerest apologies for my hasty decision and is hereby reinstated.

The moderator had to research the word Negro to learn that it didn’t have the same connotation as the N-word? This is the same person that thought removing all the letters except the letter “N” was a good way of making the word not racially offensive. There’s only one word in the English language that has the same connotation as the N-word.

It’s the N-word.

As soon as I found out that my suspension had been lifted, I began deleting all my posts from the Herald-Mail message forum. The reason? I don’t appreciate how the moderator is able to edit posts. He drastically altered my comment. He made it appear I wrote something all together different then what I really wrote. Who’s to say it won’t happen again?

If he truly thought my comment was racially offensive, he should have just deleted it. He didn’t do that.

I’m once again suspended from the Herald-Mail forum. This time it’s for a year. I can’t log back on again until March 25, 2009. The reason? I don’t know. Once again, I wasn’t informed of the reason. It can’t be for anything I’ve posted because I haven’t posted anything since my initial suspension. I’ve only been deleting my posts.

There is no rule against that.

Click here to see a screen capture showing that I was suspended for a year.

I was suspended from my local newspaper’s message forum yesterday for posting a comment they deeded to be “racially offensive“.

I’d like to explain what actually happened, but I’m still too pissed off to put it all into words. Luckily for me, fellow Hagerstown blogger Steve Shives of Steve Likes To Curse already blogged about it. He does a much better job then I ever could describing what actually happened.

I’m not even going to try.  Go read Steve’s blog post and let me know if you have any questions.

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