Who doesn't love a good story?

Storytelling is universal. It is an essential aspect of the human experience. Right now, television is the medium of storytelling that captures the most attention in the public consciousness. There is a lot of discussion and debate about who gets to tell the stories we see on all the various platforms that encompass the term 'TV.'

The writer, director, and actress Issa Rae could not catch a break in Hollywood. She created her own web series Awkward Black Girl and found an audience hungry for her funny take on life as a young woman in Los Angeles. In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill of The Huffington Post, Rae expressed skepticism about the entertainment industry's sudden interest in showcasing people of color on TV. "Until you have people in positions of power that have varied experiences, nothing will change. Honestly, we're not on their radar. They don't know. They're not really thinking about us. If you have people in positions of power that don't have very many black friends, that don't understand the black experience, they're not thinking about it and there are not enough people concerned with it."

Television veterans and relative newcomers have recently had many opportunities to talk about telling stories from different perspectives.

Norman Lear on Good Times: 

"Just imagine this: There are no African-American families on television. Suddenly, you- Esther Rolle and John Amos- represent the first African-American couple with children on American television. You are the TV role  models of your community's people. That's heavy responsibility. I'm not sure at the time I understood this as well as I understood it some years later. But I kind of understood the heaviness- the weight on them."

Regina King of American Crime:

"[American Crime director] John Ridley uses the word 'reflective,' often, and Shonda, with 'normalizing,' I think those two words are so much better than using the word 'diverse.' I think when you look at American and what America is made up of, it's not what we see on TV. So as the stories start to get more broad, as they start to be told from different perspectives, then TV starts to become more normal. You start to have art imitating life more, and I am so excited that I get to be fully present during a time when this is happening."

Gina Rodriguez of Jane the Virgin:

"One: you need to write for human beings- that goes for any underrepresented ethnicity. We're human, we all want the same things, we all want love and success, we're afraid of failure, we want people to like us... You write for a human being, that's cracking the code, for any ethnicity..."

Constance Wu of Fresh Off the Boat:

"I don't think identity is purely determined by race and if a story wants to focus on other things that are important to the narrative, that's great. But it's not harmful to say that ethnicity plays an important part in identity and that that part of the story matters. It's not fodder for humor, it's just another unique element of humanity. Hopefully, we celebrate that. And we're also a comedy!"

Does anyone lose when television looks and sounds and feels a little more like America?

Help Wanted: GOP Diversity Coordinator

The Republican Party is staffing up in preparation for the 2016 presidential election. This job description was inserted in the programs of the American Heritage Ideas Conference and Gun Show held in Toledo, Ohio last month.


Help Wanted: GOP Diversity Coordinator

Job Description

The GOP, Party of Lincoln, is seeking a diversity coordinator. The coordinator will work directly with the Koch brothers to increase the number of minorities in the Party. The minorities to be recruited include, but are not limited to the following groups: white divorcees over 60; black grandmothers who love Jesus and tithe generously; Cubans; Filipino nurses; 'confirmed bachelors' who are white; Nigerian and Indian doctors working at major medical centers; mentally ill gun enthusiasts; recent converts to Christianity (Catholicism counts for the purposes of diversity); and any heterosexual man or woman who has completed at least two weeks of intensive gay conversion therapy. Also, black men interested in GOP membership must pass a background check.

This job requires extensive travel throughout the United States, but specifically to: Florida; California, east of Interstate 5; Indiana; Oklahoma; and any other locales where minority GOP recruits could be found. 

The role of GOP diversity coordinator is an exciting opportunity for the right person. The ideal candidate must be well-versed in Obama's history as a racist, Socialist-Marxist, Muslim overlord and Hillary's lesbianism. A key requirement for the position is slow dancing with Governor Scott Walker when he desires the light touch of a warm body against his frigid skin.

Good public speaking skills are essential. The best candidate for this job is well versed in race-baiting and inciting panic about the Homosexual Agenda. The ability to make up absurd talking points to justify the GOP's positions is a must. Applicants with Spanish language surnames and a virulent hatred of Mexican immigrants are highly encouraged to apply.

Please send your cover letter and qualifications via U.S. mail or fax. No online applications will be accepted. Senator Lindsey Graham does not send emails and neither do we. The Republican Party strongly believes in plausible deniability. God Bless America! 

The Republican Party
c/o Hope, Patriotism, Victory (HPV) Center
1984 El Pendejo Road
White City, Oklahoma 73116
Attention: Stacey Dash

“I thought they invented the feminist movement. I’ve learned feminism disproportionately from black women,” Steinem says. “I realize that things being what they are, the White middle-class part of the movement got reported more, but if you look at the numbers and the very first poll of women responding to feminist issues, African American women were twice as likely to support feminism and feminist issues than White women,” she adds.

Gloria Steinem speaking at Black Enterprise's Women of Power Summit. 

“There are so many different ways to communicate and I actually think it’s very beautiful and important that this movement remains leaderless or leaderfull with multiple leaders. From what I have learned, it allows the collective voice of a people to be heard rather than just one voice."

Black Brunch organizer Jova Johnson Vargas on Black Lives Matter and direct action, Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah: An interview with a Black Brunch organizer. Feministing.

 

 

Links for the voracious

Janelle Monae is a music mogul for the people.

 Source: Interview Magazine
 

 



Iris Apfel wants you to know that living a fulfilling life is all about having an insatiable appetite.



Source: On Wisconsin Magazine 

 

 

Shonda Rhimes and the power of loneliness.

 

Elliot Van Zandt, the black American father of Italian basketball.

 

The beautiful nuances of language.

 

A map of American Internet desire.

 

 

 







Thinking about Nina Simone

 

Nina Simone occupies a unique cultural space that cannot be claimed by any other musical artist, dead or alive. She is the patron saint of the lover and the fighter; the musical touchstone for the heartbroken; and the survivor. She was a master singer of standards and love ballads, and songs of protest. Those protest songs- Mississippi Goddamn; Strange Fruit; To Be Young, Gifted, and Black- helped galvanize the cause for civil rights around the world.

"My job is to somehow make them curious enough or to persuade them by hook or by crook to get more aware of themselves and where they came from and what is there, just to bring it out. This is what compels me, to compel them. And I will do it by any means necessary."

- Nina Simone: That Blackness

The choice to stray from love songs and popular themes cost Ms. Simone her career. There were years of exile in Barbados, Ghana and Liberia. She finally returned to public life in France in the 1980’s. Ms. Simone conducted interviews that allowed her to frame her own history. She spoke openly and passionately about her career to that point: the dreams of classical piano dashed; her rise as a singer of love songs; becoming an icon of the Civil Rights Movement; and ultimately the swift rejection by the majority of her fans.

In an expansive interview with British journalist Mavis Nicholson, Ms. Simone spoke about the great disappointment in her career:

"It is only normal to want acceptance from one's country, for one's gifts God has given me. And I am tired of begging for it. It took me twenty years of playing clubs, nightclubs, to get a decent, real accurate review of my gifts from the New York Times. It was the first time I had been compared to Maria Callas as a diva. All before that I had been labelled a Jazz singer, a Blues singer, High Priestess of Soul; which I am not sure what that is and I have studied piano for eighteen years.  Yes, I am tired. I am too old, asking for love from the industry."

Ultimately, a 1987 Chanel No. 5 commercial featuring her hit song “My Baby Just Cares for Me” re-ignited interest in her music, garnering her the love she desired and deserved.

Eighty-two years after her birth, Nina Simone remains a beatified presence in the cultural consciousness. Every time a person discovers her music, an angel gets its wings.

 



American exceptionalism is the new AP History

Oklahoma State Representative and patriot Dan Fisher (R) has rescinded his proposed bill to effectively ban AP U.S. History courses in Oklahoma public high schools. After serious prayer and hearing from outraged conservative donors who actually expect their children to learn shit, Fisher saw the shit stained light. The recalcitrant defender of the realm backpedalled faster than Rand Paul talking about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the Rachel Maddow show.

Before Dan Fisher pulled his bill, he commissioned independent American history experts at the local Chili's to develop the American Exceptionalism exam. The exam would use seminal sacred texts to test students on the accurate history of the United States.

Voracious DPC obtained a copy of some of the proposed questions on the American Exceptionalism exam.

1. If America were to adopt the original version of the U.S. Constitution as the law of the land, would mail order brides be considered 3/5 of a person?

2. Was President George W. Bush's use of the term 'strategerie,' an ingenious or brilliant way to confuse liberals with his greatness?

 

 

Source: The White House

 

3. Provide three examples of why God hates black people.

                     

Source: Smithsonian Digital Archive

4. Historically, what is the best way to find out if there are homosexuals and communists running rampant in the federal government?

5. When the Confederacy won the Civil War, did Jefferson Davis hang the treasonous scoundrel (and closeted Jewish homosexual) Abraham Lincoln himself, or did he ask his wife's friend's cousin Alexander Graham Bell to make Lincoln's death look like an accident?

6. Using 'The Holy Bible,' 'The Protocols of The Elders of Zion,' and 'Atlas Shrugged,' describe the key elements of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

7. Harry S. Truman went against the will of the people by desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces in 1948. What other treasonous actions have been taken by Democratic dictators since 1950?

True/False questions:

8. Was Harriet Tubman a voodoo terrorist who introduced AIDS to the United States?

9. Did Mexico sell the U.S. almost half of its territory in exchange for a crate of cast iron skillets?

10. Due to overforestation, too much clean water, and abundant healthy food sources, Native Americans were relieved when European colonists arrived. Weren’t they desperate to develop a large-scale market economy exploited by the few at the expense of the many?

   

Source: NYPL Digital Library