No Love for the 'Guru'

Mike Myers stars in The Love Guru.

Paramount Pictures

If everybody loves a lover, how come there's so much hate floating around for Mike Myers' not-even-opened-yet new film The Love Guru? The fear from some in the Hindu community is that the film is nothing but a collection of tired stereotypes about their faith.

If you've seen the trailer, you get the concern. Long hair? Check. Brightly colored clothes? Check. Hippie sensibility that makes the Grateful Dead look like Republican lobbyists? Check.

Despite all that, the film certainly isn't as offensive as it could be. Myers doesn't play a Near Easterner, but rather a white guy who was raised in the Near East. Naturally, he becomes an accent-laden dispenser of Hindu-like philosophy because that's all the Near East has to offer. This, in some ways, is progress from the character -- or caricature -- Hrundi V. Bakshi, played by Peter Sellers in the 1968 film The Party. Maybe even a step beyond Sir Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi. But is that enough to keep The Love Guru from being offensive?

The answer to that depends on whether the film is funny. Insightful funny would be nice. Clever funny. But if we learned anything from Borat -- or, more rightly, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan -- there's nothing like a busted gut to make one kick their PC-ness to the curb.

But the bigger issue with The Love Guru isn't whether it mocks or traffics in stereotypes -- most comedies do -- but rather that there's nothing for it to stand in relief against. Other than Kumar escaping from Gitmo with Harold, The Love Guru is probably going to be the only "mainstream" Near Easterner Hollywood introduces us to this year. And it's when we get only one type of image that the image becomes a stereotype -- not doctors or lawyers or folks just trying to find money enough in their household budget to pay for gas, but rather high-toned philosophers in Nehru jackets. If it's played smartly -- which ultimately The Love Guru might be -- I think we can take that. But while you're at it, Hollywood, give us some variations on the theme, as well.

4:19 PM ET | 06-18-2008 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Celebrating 40 Years of Loving Day

I previously noted the recent passing of Mildred Loving. However, I thought on the day honoring both Mildred and her husband Richard it was worth remembering their bravery once again with this commentary from Morning Edition:

You may not know it, but June 12th is day of great historical significance.

Forty-one years ago, the Green Bay Packers were the first Super Bowl victors, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released its debut album, the Beatles put out a little thing called Sergeant Pepper, and interracial couples could still not legally marry in 16 of 50 of these United States.

Hence, the significance of June 12th. Loving Day is a little observed, but considerable day of remembrance -- particularly for those with some connection to an interracial relationship, as Loving Day marks the end of one of the last "slave laws" that remained on the books in many Southern states.

Loving Day is not named for the emotion of loving, but, fittingly, for Richard Loving and his wife Mildred. Richard was white, and Mildred was black and when they were married in 1958, their home state of Virginia was one of those 16 that considered the two of them being together just plain criminal.

For a lot of you youngsters raised in a multi-cultural society, I'm sure it's hard to believe people could get so bent they'd actually write laws restricting affairs of the heart. But interracial marriage - miscegenation is the pejorative - was once a severely odious concept. In 1912, Congressman Seaborn Roddenbery of Georgia tried to introduce an amendment to the Constitution banning such unions. To his colleagues in Congress he lectured:

"It is contrary and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is contrary and averse to the very principles of a pure Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. ... No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society and moral status than the one which welcomes or recognizes everywhere the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America."

Then, as now, a particular ilk of politician tried to make bank using relationships between consenting adults as a wedge issues. Substitute "Africa and America" in the previous with "same sex couples" and you get my drift.

The Lovings spent time in jail for the high crime of being married to each other, were forced to move from Virginia. Then, on June 12 of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Lovings' criminal convictions and struck down all laws against interracial marriage.

Now, 41 years later, there's something like 4.3 million mixed-marriage couples in the United States.

Though their only desire was to spend a lifetime together, it was not meant to be for the Lovings. Richard was killed in a 1975 car accident. Mildred passed away May 2nd of this year.

Well, they're together again now.

For the millions of mixed race couples and their families, this Loving Day is one to be particularly celebrated. It arrives on the heels of history, and is personified in Barack Obama's candidacy. Forty-one years after the laws were struck down - just 41 years. And now the son of a relationship once considered contrary to "every sentiment of pure American spirit" is one step removed from the American people placing him into the highest office in the land.

1:03 PM ET | 06-11-2008 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Hollywood Deathwatch

This weekend's fire on the Universal Studios back lot only added literally and figuratively to the pall hanging over Hollywood. Out here we're all on a hard countdown to a potential June 30 work stoppage by the Screen Actors Guild, the trade organization that represents about 120,000 actors. Some of them actually working actors! This, of course, has got everybody in a funk.

The town still hasn't recovered from the ill-conceived 100-day writers' strike. There was a shortened regular broadcast television season. No pilot season. And the creeping hegemony of reality TV continues, which means fewer jobs for traditional craftspersons. Network television viewership sank about 15 percent, and there's already a de facto movie strike happening. Studios aren't green-lighting any new films until the actors' contract situation is resolved.

The fact that AFTRA — the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a smaller guild that reps about 40,000 actors — was able to hammer out a new contract with the producers in the last two weeks doesn't offer much sunshine. There's some bad blood and bruised egos between SAG and AFTRA, and the fear is AFTRA's public display of lucidity will make SAG all the more recalcitrant.

However, with both AFTRA and the DGA — the Directors Guild of America — demonstrating through their successful contract negotiations that reasonable people can come to sensible conclusions, there's hope that the leadership of SAG can act the part of adults and actually negotiate a deal.

2:44 PM ET | 06- 3-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

White Parents, Black Kids, Tough Love

This week comes word that some child welfare groups are calling for changes in federal transracial adoption laws, saying the so-called colorblind adoption system mandated in the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 can do more harm than good to black kids adopted from foster care by white parents. A study by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute found that while "transracial adoption in itself does not produce psychological or social maladjustment problems in children," these children and their families face "a range of challenges, and the manner in which parents handle them facilitates or hinders children's development."

Among the things the groups want to change is a provision that bars prospective white parents from undergoing any race-oriented training that's different from what any other prospective parent would receive.

Perhaps the single most important thing for a child is to be with a loving, supportive family. And all things being equal, any child of any race should be placed with any qualified parents without restriction or special conditions.

But all things are not always equal.

I would never advocate prohibiting transracial adoptions. Black kids in foster care already have a significantly harder time finding homes than children of other races. But in the case of white parents/black children, the MEPA provision against race-oriented training's gotta go.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society. From the moment we switch on the morning happy-chat shows until we fade to the stale jokes of the late-nite laughers, our news, our information, our assessments, are delivered through the filter of Anglo perspective. Be it liberal or conservative, it's still monochromatic. People of color grow up steeped in "white" culture. The reverse is not true. And, no, listening to hip-hop on the way to work does not count as immersion. Most whites will never know, experience or fully understand the myriad of preconceptions or gentle indignities that people of color have to deal with near daily. And that's prior to getting hit with full-on bigotry. Being of color in America by no means amounts to a constant barrage of negativity. However, unlike being white, being of color means one's race is a constant issue. How to handle it is an experience that is best learned practically, passed from a parent who's lived it to a child who's living it. It is not an experience gained merely by watching the boxed set of Eyes on the Prize (though you should watch it anyway). Short of that, some actual training would be useful. Anyone who believes otherwise is just displaying arrogance.

I would think, at the very least, trained and qualified parents of black children could be established as mentors. This would also help the adoptive parents build a "go to" support group for when their children do have questions and issues.

No doubt the policy barring the training was born of some kind of political correctness. But like most political correctness, it's Pollyanish.

Parents who engage in transracial adoptions are clearly committed, brave and, above all, loving. They should be fully prepared as well.

2:13 PM ET | 05-30-2008 | permalink | comments (39) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

One Bad Barkley Doesn't Spoil All Gaming

Former NBA player Charles Barkley arrives at the opening of Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Las Vegas in December.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

It happens like clockwork. A racehorse gets put down after having been riding-cropped into running so hard it breaks both its ankles, and all the sob sisters out there want to shut down the whole family-fun sport of horse racing.

And every time a cigar-chomping ex-NBA star gets nearly brought up on felony charges because he fails to pay the $400,000 gambling debt he racked up in Vegas over two days, the moral wet blankets start whining about the ills of the professional gaming industry — and please, people, get it right: It's GAMING, not GAMBLING.

I'll be straight with you: I like gaming. I game a lot. And same as with hot wings and adult Internet entertainment, I can't imagine life without the gaming industry. I might add that I once had the opportunity to game with Charles Barkley — that is to say, I had some action going on the green felt at the same time he did — and I can safely say one bad Barkley doesn't spoil gaming for everybody. If I had a nickel for every time I was a little slow paying off a marker ... well, I'd play penny slots and win the money back. And $400,000 to a guy like Barkley? That's pocket change. He's already admitted to losing close to $10 million at the tables, which, if those stories about Bill Bennett are true, barely puts Barkley in that league of pathological gamblers.

Gamers. I mean pathological gamers.

And the whole concept of pathological — uncontrollable, addicted — gaming is little better than legend anyway. Just check out the American Gaming Association Web site. They give you the unvarnished truth about gaming, the way only a gaming industry trade group can. By their reckoning, only a lousy 1 percent of the population can be classified as Level 3 — pathological — gamers. Are we going to let a few Level 3s ruin it for the rest of us?

And, really, how sure can we be that those Level 3s are truly "pathological"? A study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in 2005 found that "Pathological gambling is highly comorbid with substance use, mood, anxiety, and personality disorders, suggesting that treatment for one condition should involve assessments and possible concomitant treatment for comorbid conditions."

Comorbid. They exist at the same time. Need I say more?

So I say to Sir Charles, keep doing what you're doing. And while you're at it, lay a bet for me.

3:11 AM ET | 05-16-2008 | permalink | comments (7) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

It's All Down at the Upfronts

Actress Holly Hunter of TNT's Saving Grace rehearses her portion of the Turner Entertainment Upfront presentation in New York on Wednesday.

Richard Drew/AP

It's Upfront season! That wonderful, magical time of year when the television broadcasters show their wares for next fall to all the Madison Avenue advertisers, set their ad rates and rake in their billions. A little more than $9 billion by the collective networks last year.

The Upfronts are kinda an entertainment-centric affair, but like Fashion Week and Internet hoaxes over the years, they've taken on a life of their own: big parties, paparazzi, live blogging from bloggheads ...

But all that sybaritism is in the past.

This year, the Upfronts are a very subdued affair. It reflects the rather somber state of post-writers' strike Hollywood, which — much like post-war Europe — is struggling back to some kind of normality. Because of the strike, few pilot episodes of new shows were filmed, so there's little to "dog and pony" for the advertisers. In place of lavish, star-studded presentations held at SRO venues like Radio City Music Hall, there are smallish events one observer compared to a trade show-like expo. One network's presentation consisted of the titles — just the titles — of potential — yes, potential — new shows flashed on a movie screen with slight descriptions of what the show may or may not be if it's ever filmed.

Imagine trying to figure what cut of your ad budget you're going to allocate to a network based on that.

The ABC network's basically not even bothering with new shows this fall. It's only premiering two shows: one an Americanized version of the Brit dramedy Life on Mars; the other a reality/game show.

And if you're thinking things in TV Land can't get much worse, they're about to. While real Hollywood — the "working stiffs" rather than the high-paid celebs — are still trying to dig out from under the writers' strike, the community is staring down a June 30 work stoppage by the guild representing the actors.

Tokyo, say hello to Godzilla.

What does this mean for you? Maybe no new fall TV season at all. At least not with scripted shows starring professional talent. So, all those reality shows, YouTube clips and oldies you were digging on iTunes? Bookmark 'em, 'cause you may be getting re-familiar with them come September.

5:38 PM ET | 05-14-2008 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

In Memory of Mildred Loving

Mildred Loving and her husband, Richard, shown in 1965, challenged Virginia's ban on interracial marriages.

AP

Mildred Loving passed away with little notice last Friday. You may not know her name, but Mrs. Loving was a civil rights activist. Like many who played a role in the civil rights movement — Emmett Till, Rosa Parks — Mrs. Loving wasn't looking to change the world by her actions. All she was looking to do was be married to her husband, Richard. Richard was white, and Mildred was black and when they were married in 1958, interracial marriage — "miscegenation" is the pejorative — was against the law in their home state of Virginia, as well as 16 other states.

Interracial marriage was once a concept so odious that in 1912, Rep. Seaborn Roddenbery of Georgia tried to introduce an amendment to the Constitution banning such unions. To his colleagues in Congress he lectured, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune:

"It is contrary and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is contrary and averse to the very principles of a pure Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. ... No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society and moral status than the one which welcomes or recognizes everywhere the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America."

Aren't you glad we're living in a time when politicians don't use relationships between consenting adults as wedge issues?

I digress.

The Lovings spent time in jail for the high crime of being married to each other, were forced to move from Virginia...

Then, in June of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Lovings' ACLU-supported challenge to the Virginia law banning interracial marriages.

Forty years later, there's something like 4.3 million mixed-marriage couples in the United States. Never mind the number of people legally allowed to love as they please, Mildred Loving never thought she personally had done anything special. "It was God's work," she told the Associated Press in an interview last year.

Though their only desire was to be together, it was not meant to be for the Lovings. Richard was killed in a 1975 car accident.

Well, they're together again now.

It's a pity that unlike Mildred, Richard Loving could not live to see the son of a relationship once considered contrary to "every sentiment of pure American spirit" one step removed from the highest office in the land.

2:37 PM ET | 05- 9-2008 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Rev. Wright in Charge

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright speaks at the National Press Club on Monday in Washington, D.C.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Barack Obama's former spiritual guide (and current irritant) Jeremiah Wright took a lap around the media. I figured Wright would calmly have his say, and with the story mostly old news, he would come and go and hardly register.

Not quite the case.

Wright took the opportunity to preach on the media's treatment — read that as "attack" — of the tradition of the black church. There was that, there was his unequivocal support for Louis Farrakhan, his continued assertion that AIDS was set upon blacks by the U.S. government, his description of American foreign policy before Sept. 11 as "terrorism on other people"...

You really gotta wonder why. When Wright could've just kept cool, stayed clear of the press, why come up for air in such a big way? And why right when Obama is still in the middle of a political dogfight?

Maybe that's a holdover aspect of another black tradition: the HNIC.

For the uninitiated, HNIC is an acronym for Head Negro In Charge. But HNIC is — or was — a much sought-after job in the black community. And it speaks volumes that such a position, at least in a historical sense, ever existed. There is, after all, no single spokesperson for the aggregate of white thought.

But blacks?

We needed a HNIC to give us voice when the Constitution that guarantees freedoms didn't guarantee us jack. We needed folks who were the embodiment of the fearless free African: Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.

Problem was, as people of color advanced, there were more and more who wanted the job of HNIC. And that's when armed philosophical conflict erupted — every potential black potentate pitching his solution for the travails of colored America. Booker T. Washington had little patience for DuBois' ideas for black uplift and vice versa. And neither could stand the self-reliant path cut by Marcus Garvey.

Even today we see lesser figures — your Al Sharptons and your Jesse Jacksons — trying to grab up that HNIC scepter.

So, then there's Obama, who's gotten a lot of support in his political lifetime from the very influential Wright. Except that at the first sign of trouble, Obama tosses Wright from his campaign and very publicly distances himself from his pastor.

So now, when the heat's on, here comes Wright claiming that the More Perfect Union speech was just Obama saying "what he has to say as a politician," and that should Obama be elected, Wright would be "coming after you [Obama], because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people."

Is that the most subtle message you've ever heard to people of color that Obama's just a shill for The Man? Could Wright be trying to hand Obama just a touch of payback for slighting him — showing Obama just who's the boss and who's the upstart?

Maybe I'm reading a whole lot more into Wright's second coming than is there. And I hope I am. Well beyond his loopier comments, there's a good deal Wright has to say that's worth listening to. And it would be a shame if Obama, a candidate who's done everything he can to transcend race, is taken out by some old-school HNIC maneuvering.

2:19 PM ET | 04-29-2008 | permalink | comments (23) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

The Undeniable Virtue of Rev. Wright's Pro-Blackness (And the Problem with Pro-Whiteness)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, left, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in 2005.

Trinity United Church of Christ /AP

Bill Moyers is broadcasting a sitdown with Barack Obama's "controversial" pastor, Jeremiah Wright, this Friday evening. By Saturday, expect every utterance Wright makes to be as picked over as an episode of Lost at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Now, I'm not going to even try to defend everything that Wright has to say. At least not the four or five loopy sound bites — out of how many thousands of sermons he's given — that have made him quite the YouTube sensation. But there is a particular aspect of the Wright mischaracterization I take exception to: the idea that his pro-black teachings make him some kind of radical separatist. Interviewing Wright in March of last year, for example, Fox's Sean Hannity had this to say about statements appearing on the Web site for Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ:

"It says, 'Commitment to God.' By the way, I'm with you, and I hope you'll pray for me, Reverend. Commitment to the black community, commitment to the black family, adherence to the black work ethic. It goes on, pledge, you know, acquired skills available to the black community, strengthening and supporting black institutions, pledging allegiance to all black leadership who have embraced the black value system, personal commitment to the embracement of the black value system. Now, Reverend, if every time we said black, if there was a church and those words were white, wouldn't we call that church racist?"

My answer to the question: yeah, probably. But that's 'cause there's a difference between being pro-black and pro-white, and the difference is a bad one.

Adherence to pro-black values isn't code for "kill whitey." It's merely how blacks have managed to stay alive and viable in America all these many years since we were first graciously given a ride across the middle passage to get dropped off in Virginia.

"A commitment to the black community" is what got us collectively through slavery, through an abandoned Reconstruction and the ensuing era of Jim Crow. As I'm sure some will recall, because of a pesky little thing called segregation, there was nothing for the black community to rely on but the black community.

Ironically, the community values and focus on the family that Wright preaches are exactly the kind of "don't bother us, do it yourself"-isms conservatives are always hectoring people of color to observe. How convenient for the pundits that they can both wish us off the perceived teat, then get riled by those who encourage us to be self-reliant.

To the contrary of pro-blackness, it's pro-whiteness that has unfortunately produced some awful-to-horrible results: white sheets and nooses and burning crosses and Citizens Councils and redlining and guys nicknamed Brownie doing a "heck of a job."

That's not to say there's anything wrong with being comfortable in white skin. If that's what God gave you, sure, be happy with it. However, the whole concept of having to be pro-white is redundant. It's not as if, in the normal course of events, white folks as a race really need that much encouragement. Do teachers really have to explain to white kids that in a more fair America they could perhaps grow up to be president?

So, yeah, based on its suspect history, if one were to preach the doctrine of pro-whiteness, there could be due cause for concern.

Pro-blackness, on the other hand — analogous to the Protestant work ethic — is one of the most positive American values we have.

1:15 PM ET | 04-25-2008 | permalink | comments (23) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Could Ayers Blow Up in Obama's Face?

In this 1982 file photo, Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, walks with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and their 4-year-old son, Zayd Dohrn, outside Federal Court in New York.

David Handschuh/AP

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright nontroversy? Not a problem.

"Bitter," clingy blue-collar types, flag lapel pins? He can navigate those annoyances with ease.

But come November, the Bill Ayers issue rushing up in Barack Obama's rearview mirror could be a real political problem.

A former member of the Weather Underground organization — a radical group responsible for a string of bombings in the early '70s — Ayers was a privileged kid turned domestic terrorist. Reformed and respectable, Ayers is now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an informal adviser to Chicago's mayor and a past contributor to an Obama campaign. In Wednesday's debate, Hillary Clinton gave a preview of what to expect from conservatives come the general election should Obama take the nomination: accusations that Obama is cozy with radical liberals. There's not much the Clinton machine can do with the accusation, seeing as President Bill Clinton commuted the prison sentences of a couple of Weather Underground members.

Conservatives will try to do considerably worse, and they'll have a lot to work with.

Back in the day, Ayers was a radicalized liberal in the worst way. Not merely because he and his comrades turned to indiscriminate violence, but because of the reason they turned. Chiefly, their paternalistic belief that blacks could not secure civil rights without their helping, explosive hand to guide them. "Black people have been fighting almost alone for years," read the first communique of the Weather Underground. "We've known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution."

Armed revolution.

Going metaphorically arm-in-arm with Dr. King — as innumerable liberal-minded folks of all persuasions did — was not enough for the Weather Underground. They had to blow stuff up. And they did it without regard for the fact that they were essentially spitting on the memory of a man who was committed to nonviolence. Yes, they were partially radicalized by the killing of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton at the hands of the Chicago police. But many vented their very righteous anger without lighting fuses. But many, also, didn't fancy themselves modern John Browns leading otherwise helpless blacks to freedom.

The Weather Underground claimed to want to avoid human suffering. But you can't express yourself with explosives without somebody getting hurt. And the people who got hurt were three of its members, blown up in an accident so tragic it's actually empty of irony.

But I'm sure at the time the Weather Underground figured they were doing something noble.

And I'm sure Ted Kaczynski figured he was doing the same.

The issue, though, isn't what Ayers thought then; it's what he thinks now.

Read Ayers' memoir, Fugitive Days, which was published — in actual horrific irony — on Sept. 10, 2001. Though I have to admit it's pretty well written, it's filled with more paternalism ("A squad of cops in Cleveland had dragged Black men from a motel and shot them down in cold blood, and now we would, I thought, even the score.") and romanticism of what were ultimately terrorist acts. Ayers was also quoted in 2001 saying that he has no regrets for his past actions, but rather he feels that "we didn't do enough." Take a gander at his Web site and see if you find contrition or self-aggrandizement.

What someone did 40 years ago — within reason — should not damn that person forever. But that's assuming offending individuals pay their debt to society and repent. Ayers has done neither.

I genuinely hope Obama's got as much distance as humanly possible between himself and Ayers, and that Ayers is just, as Obama said in the debate, "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

4:15 PM ET | 04-18-2008 | permalink | comments (19) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)