Day of Mourning

The students and professors at Virginia Tech and the residents of Blacksburg are in my thoughts and prayers.

Road Trip!!!

Line Up:
BUCKCHERRY!!!
Evanescence
Hinder
Chevelle
Three Days Grace
Breaking Benjamin
Puddle of Mudd
Velvet Revolver
Papa Roach
ZZ Top
Black Stone Cherry
This could quite possibly be the concert event of my life...thus far. It's been six years since I've seen Buckcherry in concert and I am SOOOOOOOOO excited to see them again. This will also be the furtherest I've ever traveled to a concert. Mapquest places the commute at 5.5 hours. Columbus, Ohio here we come!

Fox News

Dear Friends,
Fox News has a horrible record of attacking Black people, politicians, and cultural institutions. Despite this, the Congressional Black Caucus Institute has agreed to partner with Fox News to host presidential debates prior to the 2008 elections.

I have joined ColorOfChange.org in asking that the presidential candidates take a stand where the CBC has failed and refuse to participate in the CBCI/Fox debates. Please join me:

Color of Change

The CBC Institute, an organization led by Black members of Congress, claims to share ColorOfChange.org's goal of politically empowering Black America. But after being presented with the case against Fox and hearing vocal opposition from over 12,000 ColorOfChange.org members, the CBC Institute elected to complete a deal with Fox. We'd expect that they would recognize the obvious: that validating Fox News as legitimate hurts Black America, and undermines the CBC's credibility.

Fox's record is horrible. Their on-air personalities and regular guests consistently marginalize Black politicians, culture, and institutions. In fact, Sen. Obama has stopped giving interviews to Fox reporters because of repeated attacks on his character and intimations that he has connections to terrorism. Even the Democratic Party in Nevada backed out of doing a debate with Fox because of remarks about Obama, but the CBC Institute hasn't moved.

And it's not just Obama. Here's a sampling of the kind of offensive messages put out on Fox News:

Commenting on Hannity & Colmes about the speakers at Coretta Scott King's funeral, featured guest Mary Matalin said, "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists" who are keeping "their African-American brothers enslaved."

Jesse Lee Peterson, a regular guest who is Black said: "Kwanzaa is a racist, pagan, Marxist holiday" and then claimed that the "so-called seven principles of Kwanzaa are socialist, Marxist, separatist ideas... if a white man started a white holiday, seven-day white holiday, black folks would be burning down America."

Erik Rush, another Black guest, labeled Sen. Obama's church as cultish and separatist for espousing values of black unity and black empowerment (Fox regularly selects Black guests it knows will undermine Black causes). Rush said he replaced the word "black" with "white" in the church's mission statement and "Suddenly, I was looking at this really scary doctrine. You know, it was something that you'd see in more like a cult or an Aryan Brethren church… I would go beyond saying they're Afrocentric. They're African centric. They refer to themselves as an African people and that somewhat disturbs me from the viewpoint of well, do they consider themselves Americans? Do they consider themselves Christians?"

On The Big Story, John Gibson, warned viewers that nearly half of all children under the age of five in the United States are minorities. "You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic." He then urged viewers to "do your duty. Make more babies." He later repeated: "To put it bluntly, we need more babies."
Given its record, Fox News shouldn't enjoy the support of Black political or cultural institutions connected to the Congressional Black Caucus. On the same grounds, presidential candidates should refuse to participate in a debate run by Fox, regardless of the CBCI's misguided decisions.

Color of Change

Thanks.
Ahsirt

PS - All apologies for the form letter; however Color of Change worded this much more eloquently than I would have.