King Day Blog

(cartoonist is RJ Matson, St. Louis Post Dispatch)

A time to love can’t be a project
It must be our promise
--Stevie Wonder

Yeah yeah yeah everybody,

Real easy to take shots at the throne, especially when my Panthers lost, and my premonition of a Colts-Panthers Super Bowl turned to smoke on both ends like candle’s wax. Oh well, it was a fun ride, and I hate that a great team like Carolina just couldn’t overcome the injuries that plagued us in that game. Well, now that we got that out the way…

The King Day Blog. So much to talk about here, from ‘anti-PC movements’ to ‘Glory Road’, so on and so forth. Well, let me talk about my King Day…for one thing, I have every Monday off, so I was chillin’ at home soaking in the day that was. Looking at TV, it was funny how it seemed like the media tried to pacify us by ‘doing US a favor’, showing Carmen Jones, basically, showing ‘Black Television’. Two things about this: 1) why not show diverse movies year-round on your stations, AMC? Bravo? Don’t just do it because it’s a ‘special occasion’, it’s just too classless…like having a Black History Month. (did I say that? You mean that black history is too diverse to have for a year…oh wait, I’m saving that blog :-} ) 2) Big ups to TV1, and for those of you that have this station in your market, TV1 is a station that has the black consumer in mind, and even mixes up the rotation with shows like Boston Public. Nice work, folks.

Never mind me talking about 106 and Park on King Day, where questions were asked to young adolescence about what King did, and how they felt about his achievements. All I’ll say about that is to those of us that have the power to reach young minds, whether younger brothers/sisters, or just kids that look up to you, don’t take that responsibility for granted. We have the power to shape young minds, and we should no longer leave that responsibility in the hands of the media. Word…

So let’s get to the heart of the matter, and basically why there was a Precursor to this blog. A lot has been said about ‘anti-PC’ shows like Dave Chappelle and Boondocks…but first, let’s get a definition of ‘anti-PC’ from the King of Links…

My opinion of what pc is, is that its basically having respect for others, using tact and being reasonable istead all ignant and in your face… and yes, sometimes that does result in folks taking it too far and not being real … but the anti-pc movement results in folks goin in the complete opposite extreme. ignorant and hateful things get thrown out there, under the guise of being real, and people like bill o'reilly and rush limbaugh are able to move from the fringe to the mainstream… felt i'd throw my definition in, since i coined the phrase.

By the way, the reason for his nickname is because dude is always sending me some interesting links online abut anything and everything, so that’s how he got his nickname. Good look King, and I apologize about the Bears and everything. Well, back to the situation at hand…

-- anti-PC movement

First of all, I want to say that I’m an avid watcher of the Boondocks, and have both uncensored DVD of Chappelle’s show Season 1 and 2. I say that to say that I appreciate the entertainment aspect of the shows, and the shows tend to drop knowledge concerning racial matters of the day. The question at hand; however, and the statement posed to me a while back from Ron bring us to this question…

Just how effective are shows like the Boondocks and Chappelle’s show?

I’ll make some quick references here to the Precursor, to catch everybody up and so I don’t have to go back and forth from the conversation between Jig and I. First of all, concerning the n-word, I’m against the use of it period point blank. I don’t say it, I don’t like it, there’s too many negative things associated with it, and am not ‘ambivalent’ to it, as a friend of mine so eloquently put it. Such words are said a lot on these shows, and I’m not going to say that it gives these shows a certain ‘spice’, but I think there are certain buzzwords, especially in matters of race, that invoke certain emotions. That being said, it’s funny how you can say the n-word on shows now and you really don’t get that effect. It’s disheartening, but I’m not necessarily blaming that on these shows…that’s just the culture in general…and that sucks.

Another thing, I understand that we give the media too much responsibility, especially with the aforementioned shows, but I think those familiar with Spider-man understand the quote ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’. And I say that to say you have to at least take a marginal responsibility, especially when you have a show that is trend-setting on many levels concerning racial tolerance and how people express themselves in certain situations. What tends to happen is people fail to understand what’s satire and what’s real, and that’s where you have lack of awareness in society overall.

Now, about the Boondocks episode that brought all of this to a head. “Return of the King” was an episode about a dream that one of the main characters, Huey, had about Dr. Martin Luther King. In this dream, Martin Luther King lived through the assassination attempt, as the famed gunshot would only put MLK in a coma. He would come out of the coma in the 21st century, and would continue his movement from there.

Now, much has been said of this episode, and you see where Jig and I had some disagreements. I’m pretty much just going to do a synopsis of everything that’s been said by everyone on this.

The first point folks made is about the ‘deification’ of MLK, and that has been done to some degree. I don’t feel we deified MLK, I feel like proper credit was given where proper credit was due, concerning the civil rights movement. In turn, I feel like we shouldn’t rest on King’s achievements (much like hip-hop shouldn’t rest and be defined on the deaths of ‘Pac and Big – another matter), but continue to work on the issues concerning civil rights and racism in this country.

The reason why there was talk about over-respect of MLK in the first place, though, is because of how he was portrayed on the episode in question. And I’m not tripping off the fact that he said the n-word, no, none of that. I just had an issue with how I felt like the civil rights movement was trivialized with the flashback to Rosa Parks, I didn’t like how they made MLK look unintelligent by signing the street team, and I especially didn’t like how he ‘ran’ to Canada.

To bring all of this together, concerning the ‘anti-PC’ movement and the Boondocks episode, and everything else: yes, I am a fan of racial satire, and yes, I do feel like shows of the sort are positive in some ways. That being said, I feel like these shows at times miss their marks, and when they do, it serves to expand the racial divide further and simply promotes more ignorance.

(Boy, I know the comments are coming after this one…)

Oh yeah, just a few more things…

‘Glory Road’ is NOT A CHEAP IMITATION of Coach Carter. I just can’t tell you guys how tired I am of hearing such. First of all, I need to say once and for all I’m tired of how we throw black achievements together…generalizing things ultimately makes us trivialize things, and I firmly believe that. The quality of what happened in each situation should be intriguing because of its similarities concerning the game of basketball, but also because of the situations concerning each. In fact, Coach Carter may not have even happened if not for the ‘Glory Road’ story, which involved the 1966 Texas Western team starting an all-black squad in the championship game. They defeated Kentucky that year, and it’s funny now, because I’m a fan of Kentucky basketball, and am very understanding of the positive and negative tradition of the program. Some might say “how can I root for a team that had a ‘racist coach’”, but the truth is Rupp’s actions were a sign of the times, and those times have changed because of the knowledge presented in that ’66 final. Now, Kentucky has a black coach, and the racial divide grows smaller.

One more thing, then I’m heading out...

You know how brothers will say to each other ‘what’s up dawg’? I’m going to try this with the youth, to see how impressionable they are…I’m going to replace ‘dawg’ in the previous quote with ‘king’. And I feel that should be done in reference to who our descendants were, and what our Father in heaven is. We should live as if we’re descendants of thrones in Africa, and infinitely more important, as if we are descendants of the throne up above. Love ya’ll and keep ya heads up.

The Good Doctor

P.S. So we have the Steelers and the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL. I think everyone wants the Steelers to win, and thinks that the Steelers will win by a lot because of Bettis playing in his hometown, the history, blah blah blah. But I’m here to tell you guys that this isn’t college football. Games aren’t won on tradition, and there’s a reason why the wild-card team playing on the road never made it to the Super Bowl, much less won that bad boy, and the reason is because after a while, people get tired, and injuries are more likely to happen. In addition to that, Seattle is a 4.5 point underdog. What?!?!?!?! Football players look at things like that, and they’re immensely motivated to win against the odds. That being said, the Steelers have two weeks to chill, and I’d like for them to win this game…and I’ll give you good folks a score later. (And with a Steelers win, The Good Doctor will go to 9-2 in postseason picks. Are you reading this, ESPN.COM?!?!?!?!?!? Nobody on your staff is that nice…)