MLK
Forty years ago, I woke up, went down to the kitchen, and turned on my radio, like I did every day. I remember that it was very nice outside that day. I was in the eighth grade.
I only listened to one station back then—WABC-AM—because it played rock and roll. Instead of hearing Archie Bell and the Drells singingTighten Up, or the Beatles singing Lady Madonna, there was a very serious newscaster intoning something.
I remember thinking, “Uh-oh. This is not good.”
Then I heard the newscaster say that Martin Luther King had been shot dead the previous day in Memphis, Tennessee. Thinking back now, I'm amazed at how I was not totally shocked.
This was 1968, and to my young mind it seemed like every other year, somebody was getting assassinated: JFK, Malcolm X, or George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party. Some were good, some were bad. C'est la vie!
I really didn't know who Martin Luther King was. I only knew him from the barbershop. The barbershop? Let me explain.
Every two weeks, my dad sent me to the barbershop that was on the ground floor of our apartment building. (Six of us in three and a half rooms. The Waldorf-Astoria it wasn't!). As I sat waiting for my trim, I would read the Life magazines they had there, and I can vaguely remember reading stories and seeing pictures of MLK in that magazine, but I had no understanding of who he was.
I also remember seeing pictures of James Meredith in Life, being escorted into the University of Mississippi, surrounded by cops, and I did not understand what was going on there, either. That was in 1962 (I looked it up). I was eight years old.
Life magazine was my introduction to "black" people, because I had never seen one in real Life. I recall a photo they ran of those infamous drinking fountains, marked "Colored" and "White," and thinking, this is fucking crazy.
I grew up blissfully free from racial prejudice, because where I came from, black folks just did not exist. Black folks were like Belgians, or New Zealanders, or Venutians. Who knew? Who cared?
I cringe when I read the tortured writings of Irish-Americans who grew up in cities like Boston, where there is a strict racial divide: there's the black part of town, and there's the white part of town, and you never cross those boundaries.
“When I was six, my father told me never to go to the other side of Elm Street, because that's where the ******* are.” My father was a good, decent man, but he was prejudiced, and I realize that now. But I digress.
There have been many orations in American history that were at one time considered “immortal”: Washington’s Farewell Speech, The Gettysburg Address, MacArthur’s Farewell Speech, Kennedy's Inaugural Address.
What kid in America today has heard any of those? Not many, I’d wager.
But they all know the speech that contains the magic phrase I have a dream, that was written and spoken by a black man from Atlanta, Georgia. It is the finest oration our country has.
Martin Luther King died on this day forty years ago, but Martin Luther King is still very much alive.
Searching For Smart Eyes
Beauty and truth are in the eye of the beholder—and the smarter that eye is, the more truth and beauty it will behold.
You see Hillary Clinton on TV at a Pennsylvania tavern, getting boxed, knocking back shots and beers in front of all those cameras. I have no use for her, but I have to admire her political correctness—she was savvy enough not to take it too far, and grub a cigarette from the guy on the next bar stool.
There’s no point in a beer and a belt without a butt—trust me on this. Had the former First Lady whipped out a pack of Kools from her purse and asked for a match and an ashtray, then that would have impressed me!
She didn’t, of course, because Hillary’s bar-hopping was a fraud, an illusion, an attempt to fool those who sort of half-watch the news every night. Hillary, whose net worth is a hundred million dollars or more, wants you to think she’s just another “Average Joe.” Sure you are, baby. Now go take your meds.
The sad thing is, many people see this nonsense, and they believe it. That’s because although they may have smart brains, they don’t have smart eyes. I don’t have good eyes (I am very nearsighted, and wear contacts), but I do have smart eyes. They are a gift from my mother:
Long ago and far away, when I was a little boy, my mom had a friend named Nina. Nina was an interesting lady, very different, very “bohemian.” She was single, in her early thirties, and she had a job—which was very unusual for a woman in those days. One day, I asked mom what Nina’s job was.
“She’s an airbrusher,” she said.
“A what?” I asked.
Mom said, “Someday I’ll show you.”
Not long after that, mom was sitting in her chair, reading a magazine. She called me over. The magazine was opened to a page with a picture of the actress Katherine Hepburn. The picture was a classic black and white, 8x10 glossy.
“Remember when I told you that Nina was an airbrusher?” she said. “This is what she does. Look at the picture.”
I peered at it, and all I saw was a picture of a very glamorous, very sophisticated-looking woman.
Mom took her finger, and traced it along Katherine Hepburn’s jawline. “See how perfect it is?” she said.
“That’s because it’s not really her jaw. It’s a line that’s been drawn on the picture.”I looked, and my jaw dropped. She was right. Kate Hepburn’s “jaw” was really a thin black line that made it look perfect—but I could now see that her jaw was fake.
“Now look at her eyelashes,” she said.
I did, and saw that Kate had long, lush eyelashes—the kind that any woman would want.
“See how they’ve filled them in?” she said. “See how they’ve made them longer, and thicker? They’re not her eyelashes. That’s ink.”
I was amazed. I could now see that those sexy lashes were not real. They were just little dark clumps.
“What else?” I asked.
Mom then showed me how they had moved Katherine Hepburn’s widow’s peak, so that it was now centered exactly on her forehead, how they had removed the crow’s feet from around her eyes, how they had evened her teeth, and how they had almost completely re-drawn her lips, to make them look perfectly symmetrical.
“This is what airbrushers do,” she said. “They make people look perfect. Nobody really looks like that.”
It was my first lesson in smart eyes.
And ever since then, I have never seen anyone in the media and thought, I wish I could look like that. I assume the images I see have been airbrushed, and ninety percent of the time, I am right.
This does not mean that I am cynical. I am quite the opposite. I can appreciate beauty—true beauty—because I don’t fall for the scam that “beautiful” is always an airbrushed, blue-eyed “movie star,” with all the weight and substance of a Cheez Doodle. I look for—and find—beauty elsewhere. I find my beauty in real life, with real people.
And not only images can be airbrushed. The truth can, too, and it is done every day, on all ten thousand TV channels. As a smart-eyed adult, I can see that, and handle it. But our children can’t. We have to give them the gift of smart eyes, too.
In the times we live, kids must learn the three R’s, of course, but it is just as important that they be taught—as early as possible—that the millions of images and words they will be exposed to in their lives have only three purposes: to rob them of their money, or their minds, or their money and their minds.
We have to teach them that the media is nothing more than a cheap a magic trick: Just as we can show them that the lady isn’t really being sawed in half, or that the magician really doesn’t have a rabbit in his hat, we also must show them that the gorgeous girls on the covers of Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Essence do not exist, that the epitome of success is not a car, or a wristwatch, or a big house, or that just because someone is filmed bellied up to a bar, downing Wild Turkey, it doesn’t mean that she’s “one of the boys.”
Our children are going to spend so many hours of their lives looking at images, and listening to the “sound bites” that come from those images. As soon as possible, they have to learn that those images and those words are very seldom real.
If you are a parent, teach your children to have smart eyes, the way my mom did with me, all those years ago. Then they won’t be fooled.
Email me at: RichSullivan54@aol.com
For Whom Sean Bell Tolls
The problem is, the police don’t see them as human beings.
--Karen Hunter, on WWRL, 2004
The Sean Bell verdict is in, and the three defendants were acquitted of all charges. One side claims that justice was denied. The other side says that the prosecution did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
And both sides, at the moment, are caught up in emotion and passion. When you think with your heart, and not your head, you are not thinking clearly. I know that from experience. I’ll bet you do, too.
I am not an expert on the Sean Bell case. All I know about it is what I read in the papers here in New York: A young guy, at his bachelor party in some seedy strip joint (my bachelor party was at the seedy Baby Doll Lounge in lower Manhattan), through some horrible mixup, winds up getting shot dead by three policemen, one of whom was so passionate, he re-loaded his gun, and kept blasting away.
Sean Bell and his pals were not armed, and there were no weapons in his car. So why did the police—and it is important to remember that these policemen were not white, but black, and Arab-American—assume that there were?
I am going to try to be like Sherlock Holmes here, and attempt to figure this out with cold reason, and not let emotion, or passion, cloud my judgment. So let’s start with a basic premise on which we can all agree:
Whenever you hear a story about “50 Shots!” “70 Shots!” or “2,124 Shots!” the unfortunate recipient of all this hot lead is always a black man—always.
This is not my opinion, or my gut feeling, or some urban legend I read on the internet. It is a fact.
And why is that? How come we never hear about some freckle-faced Irish lad being turned into a Swiss cheese by the police? And why, when the cops pull an Italian kid from Bensonhurst over for speeding, and he reaches into his pocket, the officers don’t immediately assume that he’s reaching for his Saturday-Night Special?
The reason for that, I believe, is the media age in which we live. Unfortunately for black men who commit crime, their every bad move is being photographed, YouTubed, and splashed all over the New York tabloids.
American society has always had an underclass, the ones who do the nasty crimes. They don’t do insider trading. They do purse snatchings.
A hundred years ago, most of these low-end crimes: the muggings, the rapes, the beatings of old ladies for the change in their purses—were committed by Irish people, people who looked like me.
Fortunately for these Irish criminals, there were no 24/7 news stations back then. Nobody outside the neighborhood knew what was going on. Nobody was taking pictures on a cel phone. There was no Eyewitness News prowling around.
That has all changed. The sad fact is that there is a very small percentage of the male population who are not inspired by the audacity of hope, but who are shackled by the chains of hopelessness—and most of those men are young black men. That, too, is a fact.
People who have no hope do strange and irrational things. Because they feel they have no future, they act impulsively, with no thought of consequence. Why think about tomorrow, when you know that tomorrow is going to be just like today--and today sucks, just like yesterday did. If you can try to understand what it is like to feel that you have no future, it is possible to understand (not condone, mind you) why someone might shoot somebody because their shoes were stepped on, or they were “stared down” on a subway platform.
If there’s no tomorrow, then why not?
The police are well acquainted with the bizarre behavior of these hopeless people. They deal with them every day, and become paranoid. I can’t say I blame them. The cops play the odds, at least as they see them: The white guy is reaching into his pocket to get his ID. The black guy is going for his gun.
Of course, this is not true. But in police culture, it is believed. That’s why two out of the three shooters of Sean Bell were black. I wouldn’t call this tragedy a black vs. white issue. I would call it a black vs. police issue, and it must be addressed, because it is a cancer on our civic life. The cops and some young black men are dancing a deadly fandango, and if we don’t stop the music, then it will go on, and on, and on….
This is what I would like to see done to solve this problem:
First of all, I would require extensive psychological testing for anyone who applies to be a police officer. We are giving these folks the license to carry a gun, and shoot people. “Head cases” should be discovered immediately, and weeded out. The purpose of a law enforcement agent is to keep the peace. The best cops I know are incredibly gentle people. It’s the “cowboys” who cause all the trouble. I don’t think there is enough effort put forth to find them, and get rid of them.
Second, until the time comes when we all live in perfect racial harmony, I think the police should reflect the community. Black neighborhoods should be policed by black police officers. Hispanic communities should be policed by Hispanic police, and Asian enclaves should be patrolled by Asian cops, et cetera. You get my point.
Third, the police have to totally re-think this “undercover” BS.
The reason Sean Bell is dead is because a group of undercover cops were in the Kalua Club at four o’clock in the morning, trying to bust the owners for promoting prostitution, drug-dealing, gun-running, or whatever.
How many hours were these undercover cops in that place? You can’t be in a joint like the Kalua Club and not drink liquor. You can’t sit in a place like that and drink Pepsi, or green tea. You would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
I guarantee you that when it all went down, the cops were drunk. And Sean Bell and his friends were, too. But there is no law that prohibits a bunch of young guys from getting drunk at a bachelor party, as far as I know—unless of course, they are a bunch of young black guys. Then “boys will be boys” often turns into catastrophe.
If there were a problem with the Kalua Club, why didn’t the city simply suspend or revoke its liquor license? That would have shut it down. What is the purpose of sending “undercover” cops into the place, to sit there, and get bombed, and then be trusted to enforce the law? Alcohol and good judgment don’t mix.
This whole affair is so sad, and I am thinking rationally, not passionately. (I won’t have a drink for at least two more hours!) The bottom line is: One young man dead for no reason. Two children without a father. Three cops with ruined lives.
The death of Sean Bell affects us all, whether we realize that or not. It hurts us. It makes us smaller.
Many years ago—in 1624, to be exact—the poet John Donne summed it all up. He wrote:
Entire of itself….
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know for whom the Bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
Those words should be taught in the schools, and at the Police Academy.
