From our Mailbag 01/19/03 - 02/04/03



by YOU

THE WORLD - From Richard H., (No City Provided), SCOTLAND:

SUBJECT: Bob Powers

Hi Rod

I would like to get in touch with bob Powers. it is about his Frank Sinatra piece. i am working on a book about FS and would dearly love to email Bob direct.

Many thanks

Best wishes
Richard H.
Scotland


ROD RESPONDS: Richard, The article you reference has Bob Power's former e-mail address. If you'd read a more recent POWERSSOUND article (which everyone should, btw) you'd know that his new e-mail address is "oldbob@localnet.com'. You can reach him directly there. Cheers!

mind theatre

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From Rachel W., (No City Provided), AUSTRALIA:

SUBJECT: beauty pageants

Good God,

The parents involved in these "shows" should be arrested! what sort of sickos do this to their little girls???

Most of the parents I have observed involved in this sort of thing are completely whacko and should be committed.

rachel w


From [Name withheld by Request] Brooklyn, NY, USA:

SUBJECT: Shelby Steele

I was glad to see the following in letter's to the editor from this month's Harper's:

"Shelby Steele rightly argues that people should be treated as individuals and not as members of a race. People of color, however, are not the only ones in this country who have been elevated beyond their abilities by a corrupt system of privelege. One need look no further than the White House to see that white people have been using this type of affirmitive action far more effectively, and for far longer. - Ricardo Hinkle, NYC"

As the daughter of a white, middle-upper class, neo liberal , I am often shocked by the blatantantly racist comments I have to hear come out of my father's mouth like, "I'd like to hire more black guys, it's just there aren't any who have the skills I need." or in response to my describing a recent lecture I'd seen called, 'Race, Cancer, and Poverty' in which I learned that black men have the highest rates of cancer in this country, the reasons behind which, I felt were poor access to medical care, higher levels of stress, and other socio economic factors, he said, "I don't know why, none of the black guys I know are stressed out." I fear that his racist ideology is the norm amongst his class and peers. When I read that Shelby Steele article a few months ago, I thought oh, my god, I hope that my father does not get his hands on this article or he will come at me like, look all my opinions about affirmitive action are right on, this really smart black guy agrees.

I guess Shelby Steele will be standing behind George Bush on his anti-affirmative action band wagon.

Brooklyn, New York


RAHEEM RESPONDS: Thanks for your comments. I'm always amazed when I hear blatantly racist words coming out of the mouth's of supposedly "enlightened" people. And they're oblivious, that's the worst part. But, as you might already have seen on this "Letters" page and will see again this week, not everyone was as pleased with my taking Mr. Steele's analysis to task.


From Jer, (No City Provided), USA:

SUBJECT: Agreed! Indeed...

Saw your http://www.g21.net/tunanow14.html and could not agree more... My cohort Dave referrers to them as "Wiggers" LOL

We have design and host a number of Pimp related sites and you say everything we have always felt about the whole "Pimp" lifestyle... like this behavior will get you laid or something? funny...

Any ways, if we can ever help you or anyone you know, it would be refreshing to design and market an apparel line that is not pimp related...

Jer
Pavenet Internet Services
http://www.pavenet.net


CHARLIE THE TUNA RESPONDS: Jer, your message was so intelligent I am going to check out your site right away! Thank the Lord somebody else out there knows what's up and dislikes the poseurs as much as the Tunaman!


From Sylvia O., (No City Provided), CANADA:

SUBJECT: shelby steele

Raheem

I'm not from America. I'm a white mother in Canada. My kids are First Nations so our situation is a little different than yours. However, when are you and all those invested in maintaining barriers and hierarchical structures going to stop calling arguments by their structural names--neo con arguments. Raheem--let ideas flow--they don't need to be packaged. The absolutism of the fundamentalist isn't any more condusive to vital human experience than imperialism, colonialism.....

The most obnoxious construction in these discussions is the placement of the entire message into a derogatory box so as to negate all of the points being made. If we aren't out of the Civil Rights age and into the Age of White Guilt we are certainly tired of the old formulas. Many of us have mixed experience, mixed identities--we overlap the constricted identifications that make your arguments appear solid. We are in an age--call it what you like--where many white people have experienced similar lives as blacks and where many blacks have experienced similar lives to many whites. Asians and whites and blacks and South Americans and indigenous and Austrailians and Inuit have not only mixed their blood but their music and their food and their religions. Whether you like it or not colonialism has produced a certain reality that is nibbling at the edges of race presentations like yours. I am not saying the race discussion doesn't need to continue or that the bigoted pig heads like I met in Texas don't need to be addressed and dealt with. What I am saying is that liaisons and partnerships and border crossings are no longer rare. The exotic children of the future with blood and spirit flowing from many sources will create a new and hopefully more useful discussion--it may raise you and your fight to remain identified with impoverishment and tragedy and underprivilege to a new realisation and it may force the white and black bigots to realise that their plights, needs, privilege or claim to special status is narrowly thought out and makes a narrow return into a dark and inescapable corner.

I am not a neo con--whatever the hell that is. Call me what you want but don't think by calling me a name that you will limit my input into the conversation. I will bring up what I think needs to be discussed always threatened by those who will try and shut me down with names.

I have lived in an impoverished Indian reserve for the past 30 years. I've raised 4 children--3 half First Nations, 1 black from Brazil. I am helping raise one grand daughter who is half Filipino/Chinese and the other half whatever our family might be called. I have fought the fights of the sexually abused, chemically addicted, suicidal. So have a lot of us. We move between through, into and out of life as it presents us--it's not, from my experience, as fixed as your argument assumes. We will never be treated as human beings until we start seeing ourselves that way--you and me--and until we treat others that way--Shelby and others with ideas that push our edges. We are complex beings with complex experiences and complex ideas and you are closing in not opening out.

I worked for years with many First Nations people in my community for education, health, rights, you name it. We worked hard. We got some things we thought we needed. We got some things that are proving to be counterproductive. So what's new? You don't necessarily get what you thought. We gotta keep working toward making the outcomes useful to the problems. The Civil Rights movement is not what it was--you can't say it was. Nothing is the same 40 years later--it may still be needed, it still may be happening, but it got some stuff that it could do without and it hasn't got some stuff it needed. Why can't you and the rest of them just let that be?

Why defend something just because you started fighting for it? Why not look at the thing you are fighting for and make sure it's what you want and that what you're getting is what you need? Why not let the people who are examining the results apply good solid reasoning and ask important questions? Why not celebrate that blacks, whites, reds, yellows can have an intelligent discussion? Why shut down half of it? Why call it names to try and discredit it?

sylvia


RAHEEM RESPONDS: Sylvia, I'm curious to know if you wrote Mr. Steele a similarly long and passionate letter about his wanting to cut Cornel West or people like myself out of the debate? From the tenure of your letter to me, I doubt it. Like Mr. Steele, you want to have it both ways -- privilege and (self-)congratulations. Thankfully, our world doesn't operate that way yet.

Like Mr. Steele and Mr. Connerly, you seem to live with the misconception that the fight for human justice ended forty years ago -- when your own generation decided to opt out of it. I'm happy that organizations like AIM, NOW, the ADL, GLAAD and the NAACP don't see it that way.

Finally, as I've pointed out before, Mr. Steele failed to "apply good solid reasoning". He simply put an old conservative analysis into sheep's clothing to make it more appealing -- and, apparently, comforting -- for whites like you.


From Michael P., New York, NY, USA:

SUBJECT: Your interview with Vanessa del Rio

Dear sirs:

I am a fan of Ms. del Rio and I green with envy that you conducted an interview with her. What were the ground rules for the type of questions you could ask her? The reason being is that there were two replies she made I thought were worth reading. 1. she was thinking about writing a book and 2. the biggest misconception of VdR is that she swings from the rafters and has sex 24 hrs a day. Of course this is hindsight (20/20). I would have been interested with her opinions of the adult entertainment industry (contracts - $$ - how she could separate VdR from AMS -the amount of damage her body went through - drugs - and any advice she would give young females about sex/education etc. I thank you for the interview and your time for reading my email.

good luck
Michael Angelo P.

PS next time you have the opportunity to talk to Vanessa tell her I said hello


JEFF RESPONDS: Michael

Thanks for the praise, Michael. Interviewing Ms. Del Rio was one of the great thrills in my life and I think we were both pleased by how well it went (the interview that is).

It would be fun to find out where Naughty 'Nessa is four years later. Suggest it to this publication's fine editor and maybe it might happen.

Jeff Winbush


From Ella S., (No City Provided,) USA:

SUBJECT: "Ana & Mia the Coffin Twins" by Stuart Altman

The way in which Mr Altman writes his piece on the Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Bulimia internet movement leads me to believe that he is a man of intelligence. Unfortunatly as I read further,he speaks of never hearing of a male falling in love with a girls "razor ribs". I'm struggling to believe that he is actually under the impression that these girls (and I am one of them) are starving themselves in order to attract men. For a select few this may be the case, but on the whole this is something which doesn't even factor into the equation. We know that men hate bones! We want to be thin for ourselves and not for them.

- Ella S.
a proud member of the pro-ana community


STUART RESPONDS: Dear Ella: Thank you for your response. It's interesting that it always seems after someone compliments you for being intelligent there's always a "but" or "unfortunatly."

All kidding aside. You make a good point. I truly do not know the reason a majority of these women are anorexic or Bulemic. I never even heard of this Pro Ana Mia internet movement until a few months ago. It was upon reading an article that I checked out these websites and couldn't believe what I was seeing and decided to write an article about it. While what you say about women doing it for themselves is probably true, it would seem to me no matter what the reason that a person gets into this they should be strongly discouraged.

As far as men hating bones, just so you know I don't think women are too thrilled with them either. I don't base this on any research. Just the fact that I was very skinny and had trouble getting dates in high school. Then again it could have been my personality so lets not blame the bones.

I also see that you listed yourself as "proud member of the Pro Ana Community." I think if you wanted to you could have tried to tear my article apart. Instead you said I was a man of intelligence (Albeit with an Unfortunatly following) which to me means you agree with some points I made. So you must know as I do that this is unhealthy and dangerous. We all have our problems and weaknesses and I hope you can take care of yours. If you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for me, because you are the only one responding to my articles and it's nice to know someone is reading you in cyberspace.

Stuart


From Lou H-S, Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND:

SUBJECT: Bush's Financiers

Hi Rod,

Has anyone on your side of the world done any research into who financed Bush's campaign and how much each contributed? It seems to me (and a lot of people on this side of the world) you get the best President MONEY can buy.

Clearly a lot of the media is in his pocket (or probably more correctly he in theirs) as Nelson Mandella's speech criticising his leadership got very little air time or debate.

The media has an enormous influence on the public perception (which the politicians are only to aware of) and it is becoming abundantly clear freedom of speech isnt practised in the USA!

Kind Regards, Lou H-S. Christchurch.


ROD RESPONDS: Lou,

Thanks for writing! Actually, Mother Jones magazine regularly does this kind of reporting. I'd say take a look there for specifics.

It's [free speech] practiced yet, as I think our magazine evidences -- it's simply that most of the dissent is drowned out by the blaring trumpets of the Mouthpiece Media. Sadly.

Regards,
Rod

G21 Alum Makes Good

From Binyawanga Wainaina, Nairobi, KENYA:

SUBJECT: Dear, dear friends

Dear dear friends,

I am somewhat boneless right now; phase one of kwani is over!

It has taken nearly a year to get to this point. A year where I have made many friends, artists and writers of all types. Ngai! What a year! Bwanaa!

... and now Kenyans rush about in a frenzy, it feels almost like somebody had been holding our shirts as we tried to run. I don't think I have had a moment to think this past month. We have always wondered what miracles Kenyans may create if given the opportunity to think, and do for themselves, without a government that was jealous of individual pursuit. Now we shall find out. Kenyans abroad, come back - even if it is just to see your country beginning to find itself. We know many of you left because you were those who could not compromise your dreams; you were our most creative, our most innovative. It is you who can bring back ideas from the places you have resided, bring them in a way that works for us, without conditionalities.

What you see on this website is just a taster of what is to come. Our mission is to show ourselves, and the World, what resides in the lives, and hearts and souls of Kenyans. You will probably not have seen fiction of this quality from Kenyans since the early 'seventies. As with many other talents, writing has remained hidden in the notebooks, and hard-drives of writers who were afraid to show their truths. It is only now that truth has value in Kenya.

You will not have met any of these writers before. Athiambo Owuor, and Andia Kisia have not been published before. Muthoni Garland and Muhonjia Khaminwa have not been published in Kenya. All these writers show an maturity that will surprise the Kenyan prophets of doom, who hug to themselves the Makerere days, as if Makerere, and Nairobi University were the top of the hill, and all who came after, were walking downhill.

There is a generation of "literatis", many not writers themselves, who have created a mafia of petty ideas. They churn out endless literary essays, full of jargon, empty of ideas or creativity. These essays, though often critical of the old Kenya, possess many of its qualities. They embrace mediocrity - acting as literary praise songs for people who stopped innovating long ago; they seem unable to absorb the explosions of creativity that have surfaced over the past ten years all over Kenya. The rest of Kenya, the rest of the World, knows Kenyan writing through these essays. They act as a sort of crust, preventing artists from breaking through, from getting the attention of the rest of the country and the World. New things scare them; new things threaten their expertise, their living. Instead of broadening their ideas, they bludgeon new things into submission, so their crust may remain intact.

Some of these people are professors in our Universities, professors who cannot tell you who Yvonne Vera is, or Helon Habila or Zakes Mda. Some are publishers, who surround their mediocrity with coats of mumbles: Kenyans don't read they say; the market is terrible, they say; Kenyans produce sub-standard work others say. They don't say that the books they publish are boring, with covers designed to send readers running for foreign books. They seem to have forgotten that it is their job to seduce Kenyans into reading, to actively encourage quality writing; to find quality designs for their covers; to spend more money promoting the writers they do publish; to recapture the Kenyan reading market.

If people from Benin and Ouagadougou can read their own writers, Kenyans can too. You just have to provide things for them to read where Kenyans see themselves, and their issues brought out..

As kalamashaka say, " tafsiri Hii!"

This is the mission of kwani, to put our ear to the ground, and find out what new is happening, to source writers who have to say what Kenyans want to hear. Sample a taster of what young Kenyan writers have to say on www.kwani.org.

Look out for, subscribe to kwani print journal when it launches at the end of April.

Eight months ago, at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, when receiving The Caine Prize, I said that there are many Kenyans who are better writers than I am; I added that I have met them. Well, here they are, judge for yourselves ...

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