AMERICAN DREAMS:

Carnaval in Philly

Four years ago at the convention in San Diego J.C. Watts, the only Black Republican member of congress was hard to find, but this year Watts was co-chair of the convention and was highly visible at a various receptions and events in Philadelphia. Watts and other top Black Republicans like Colorado Lt. Governor Joe Rodgers were being showcased at GOP receptions that featured Earth, Wind & Fire, the Temptations and boxing champions Joe Frazier and Roy Jones.

Ground zero for African Americans at the GOP convention was the Zanzibar Blue, a Philadelphia jazz club where receptions were held for African-American Republican delegates, elected officials, party members and the press every night of the convention. Philadelphia has one of the largest Black populations in the country and if the average Black Philly resident casually strolled into one of the many Black GOP receptions at Zanzibar there would be few clues to indicate most of the several hundred people in the packed club were Black Republicans.

The large crowd at the Zanzibar was a far cry from the tiny group of Black Republicans at the last convention that was dominated by the likes of Black Republicans like Ward Connerly, conservative talk show host Ken Hamlin and disciples of Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell and other hard core conservative Black Republicans. This year, however, these old school Black Republicans were not to be found, replaced by many Blacks who had joined the party within the last few years like Las Vegas city councilwoman Lynette McDonald, who says she joined the party because of the GOP's philosophy of less government, community based problem solving and personal accountability. More

MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE

The Dotcom Deathwatch

The Germans call it schadenfreude: The delicious delight found while observing the failures and misfortunes of another person.

In America, it's called FuckedCompany.com. Lacking imagination to come up with the perfect word that depicts certain states of being so precisely, which those brainy Germans have a knack for with everything from sturm and drang to zeitgeist, we Americans go for the next best thing. That is, an expletive to draw attention.

Probably more people go to FuckedCompany.com than Schadenfreude.com (if there is one), not so much because of the name, no matter how well it sticks in the ear, or, how it's become the new Blair Witch-style Internet buzz.

Napsterization can only take you so far, as history is proving. No, it succeeds because it's so damn useful, fucking necessary even, as the bloom falls off the rose of Internet's promise of riches for anyone with a Web site. More

TABLOID HART:

Go, Pat, Go!

Forgive me if I'm a little confused here, Sanitation Engineers, but from what I understand there are now two Reform Parties. Numero Uno, we got what is now called the Reform Party of the United States of America, and Numero Two-o, we have the Buchanan Reform Party.

But I'm not the only one confused. From what I understand, in states like Iowa and Montana, they had the Attorney Generals literally pulling a name out of a hat to decide whether ole Pat Buchanan or physicist John Hagelin would appear on their state ballots as the "official" Reform Party presidential candidate, and a judge in Virginia --- one of the many states where these ole boys is suing each other for that $12.6 million in federal funds --- just threw up his hands.

I thought it was a robbery of the duty free shop. We ran for the plane which kept its distance from the terminal, baggage being hurriedly flung down and hauled up. When I reached Barbados I discovered that there had been a bloodless coup in Grenada and that the socialist Maurice Bishop had taken over.

Bishop appealed for foreign aid to the British High Commission in Trinidad, saying that if he did not get it he would have to turn to Cuba, but he was turned down. He appealed to the new American Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean, Sally Shelton (whose officials had stated at an introductory reception in her honour, which I attended, that there was no difference between socialism and communism) but she turned him down.