Gay Tagging police and Roland Martin are going to develop a made for TV mutual admiration sideshow….. violence against gays (especially kids) is a serious issue, but there is a fuzzy area where overreach comes into question…. this may be close to one of them ….. or at the very least there should be a mulligan of sorts for a stupid play, but we are at the cusp of morphing into a zero tolerance society where any reference to violence ends in (u guessed it) punishment, with the attendant innocent victims, and missed opportunities for real dialog.
When Roland Martin tweeted “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him.”[1] during SuperBowl XLVI, GLAAD – Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said the remark advocated violence against gays. CNN subsequently placed him under suspension.
If Giselle Bundchen (wife of Tom Brady), made a Victoria Secrets ad sans wings, and the same comment was made with reference to married men, the tweet would not even have been a footnote ….. anywhere in cyberspace.
The question begs to be asked…. who exactly died and made GLAAD the new keepers of the Kark Rove playbook for connecting the gay dots. Even if one stretched the comment to include gays it seems that there is sufficient reasonable doubt that they were not the only possible target segment. David Beckham has enough of a rabid soccer following, and female audience (think jealous male), to warrant the remark, and if that were not enough it also brings to question whether or not another ‘straight’ guy can admire a male physique without being labeled “gay”…. which would put GLAAD in the unenviable spot of ‘gay tagging’ most guys who buy “Muscle and Fitness”, and “Men’s Health” magazines…. as Wendy Williams would say, “How U doing”.
That was actually the less SERIOUS part (did anyone catch that if I used “funny” instead of “less serious”, then GLAAD could come after me as well)…. It gets a lot tougher from here on in, but there are two decent points.
Martin Luther King Jr. (E1)
First, the Negro Spirituals were a fascinating part of the culture of passive resistance adopted during slavery. The admirable takeaway is that even under the worse of times the African American spirit has endured and found ways to thrive, prosper, and survive. This is no small feat, and though some point to the welfare system as being a bedrock for African American advancement, the fact is that the African American came out of slavery with nothing more positive than the scars on his/her back. Welfare, as much as a progressive tax system, acting at both ends of the economic continuum, stabilizes the economy through good and bad periods. (Society benefits, and of the 40 million Americans in poverty, approximately 10 million are African American and 20 million are White.)[2] These processes are crucial programs in linking, and tempering the needs of a capitalist system with a liberal democratic system. This is the umbrella under which American society provides recourse for the minorities, but a working democracy of this scale is as undefined, unmanaged, and untested as any other ideology in history. It is imperative that minorities continue to be unbiased supporters, and advocates for the clear, and unequivocal development of individual rights.
Through the (say) two hundred years of American slavery (1865), and the 100 more years to the civil rights movement of the 1960s it seems odd that any African American has not learned the lesson that he has not earned the right to offend ANYONE, (although some groups have earned the right to fire everyone, or be recognized as sovereign entities[3]). After arguably being subjected to the worst example of human degradation, evil, and humiliation, devised by a society of any life form known to man, the empathy for marginalized groups, and minorities should be embedded in the DNA of the black diaspora everywhere. If anything, in an ideal world we should all aspire to be drum majors “for justice, peace and righteousness,”.[4]
Collecting African Tribal Art 