Blue_Tires
Blue_Tires's JournalWhitaker Gets Apology From NY Deli
The owner of a Manhattan deli, where Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker was accused of shoplifting and frisked, has apologized and says the employee who patted down the actor is "no longer with us."
Speaking to "TMZ Live," Anthony Galofaro, the owner of Milano Market, expressed his regret over Friday's incident and offered to "make a donation to a charity of Mr. Whitaker's choice to rectify this wrongdoing."
He said the employee who stopped the actor outside the deli was a "decent man" who was "just doing his job."
"We have a lot of shoplifters here," Galofaro said Monday. "It was very busy. He thought (Whitaker) took something and he wasn't sure."
The worker later apologized, but Galofaro said the man, a longtime employee, is "no longer here with us. … He doesn't want to come here, that's how much hurt he is. …It was a sincere mistake."
Still, Galofaro said he was unsure whether he would take the man back. "My job is to make sure this won't happen again," he said, adding that he is taking steps to retrain workers.
He also insisted that the incident had nothing to do with race. "It hurts me more than anything else what I've been hearing in the papers," he said about the accusations of racism.
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/forest-whitaker-gets-apology-ny-deli-200156859--abc-news-celebrities.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/forest-whitaker-stopped-frisked-upper-east-side-deli-article-1.1266100
America's 'Slave Narratives' should shock us
By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor
updated 8:37 AM EST, Sun February 17, 2013
... "If a woman was a good breeder she brought a good price on the auction block," said Hattie Rogers, a North Carolina resident, when she was interviewed in 1937. "The slave buyers would come around and jab them in the stomach and look them over and if they thought they would have children fast they brought a good price" ...
Charity Riddick, 80, interviewed in North Carolina, had a similar memory. "I belonged to Madison Pace in slavery time," she said. She had a brother whose first name was Washington, she said, but he was "sold away." Their mother "cried a lot about it" ...
Stearlin Arnwine, who was 94 and living near Jacksonville, Texas, when he was interviewed, said he would see slaves on the auction block, stripped to the waist for inspection by potential buyers. Women and their children, he said, would be crying and begging "not to be separated," but it did no good: "They had to go" ...
"My father was a slave, A.H. Stewart, belonging to James Arch Stewart, a slave owner, whose plantation was in Wake County," said Sam T. Stewart, 84, interviewed in North Carolina in June 1937. "When I was two years old James Arch Stewart sold my father to speculators, and he was shipped to Mississippi. I was too young to know my father" ...
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/17/opinion/greene-slave-narrative/index.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101655877
I just found a $20 bill blowing in the wind outside in a parking lot
and the only thought I have is sadness, knowing that there is someone out there missing $20...
Seriously; what in the hell is wrong with my mind?
Oscar Pistorius 'thought he was firing at intruder'
Source: BBC
South African athletics star Oscar Pistorius has denied murdering his girlfriend, and said he thought he was firing at an intruder when he shot her at his home.
He told a bail hearing that he loved her and never intended to kill her.
Prosecutors accuse him of premeditated murder. They told the Pretoria court that Mr Pistorius shot Reeva Steenkamp dead by firing through a bathroom door.
The hearing came as the victim's family held a funeral for her....
..."It was pitch-dark in the bedroom," it added. "I did not have my prosthetic legs on and felt extremely vulnerable."
According to the statement, the defendant thought Ms Steenkamp was still in bed, and he fired through the bathroom door believing he was shooting at an intruder.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21503370
wow...His "official" story is even flimsier than Robert Blake's...
EDIT: Another recap of the day's hearing -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/feb/19/oscar-pistorius-bail-hearing-live-coverage
Reeva Steenkamp's corpse was in the morgue, her body was on the Sun's front page
Years ago I worked at the Sun, and I rem ember a man from the circulation department giving a presentation to editorial staff on how to maximise sales. The chastening upshot, for a paper whose employees preferred to think its market dominance was built solely on great stories, thrillingly told, was that birds mean business. Of course, you'd get a big sales spike with some sensational splash about the royal family or a footballer or whatever, but those were effectively few and far between, and if you wanted to ensure the regular, bread-and-butter circulation boosts on which the paper relied, a female celebrity in a bikini was what was needed, under whatever sub-newsy pretext you could devise. A list of names and numbers was passed round. And there it was in black and white. If you put a picture of Caprice on page 1 – and any old stock one was fine as long as she had very little on – you could guarantee a 30,000 uplift in sales. Nell McAndrew would get you 20,000. Geri Halliwell would do 10,000. They had maths for it and everything.
I wonder if that same circulation department were rubbing their hands, or their trousers, or whatever it is they rub, when they saw that the paper would be splashing on Friday with a huge picture of Reeva Steenkamp pulling down the zip of a bikini top, even as her corpse was lying in a Pretoria morgue awaiting a postmortem. Steenkamp was shot several times on Thursday, allegedly by her boyfriend Oscar Pistorius, with the incident swiftly and widely declared a tragedy for South Africa, for sport, and for disability rights. And – presumably to a lesser extent, because it was scarcely suggested in the scramble to get hold of bikini shots – for her family and friends.
The killing has yet to be described as a tragedy for women, probably because in the continual clustertragedy that constitutes female representation in the media, Steenkamp is just another casualty, who obligingly happened to be hot. That the story leading the news for the entire day of the One Billion Rising global action opposing violence against women concerned a woman being allegedly murdered by her partner was unfortunate. That the death was covered in the way it has been begins to look like something else. But nothing new, obviously.
His attention drawn to articles which appear to eroticise violence against women, Lord Justice Leveson concluded in his report that they "may" infringe the Press Complaints Commission code. Mmm. Perhaps we can stop hearing that women's liberation has Gone Too Far The Other Way when encouraging people to get their rocks off over dead or maimed ladies only "may" be a wrong thing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/15/reeva-steenkamp-body-on-front-page
http://www.theweek.co.uk/media/oscar-pistorius/51532/prescott-hits-sun%E2%80%99s-titillating-reeva-steenkamp-cover
Josh Powell’s Brother Commits Suicide
Source: ABC
The brother of Josh Powell, who was long a person of interest in his wife Susan Cox Powell’s disappearance in Utah, has killed himself just a year after Josh Powell committed suicide in a fiery blast that also killed his young sons.
Michael Powell, who was Josh’s younger brother, jumped from a building in Minneapolis Monday, according to the Associated Press. He was 30 years old. Josh Powell was heir to his brother’s estate which included the life insurance policies on Josh, his sons, and Susan Powell. The Powell and Cox families have struggled in the years since Susan disappeared in December 2009. Police said Josh Powell was the only person of interest in her disappearance. She has never been found.
A police search of the home Josh shared with Michael and their father, Stephen, in 2011 led to the seizure of thousands of pornographic photos and videos that Stephen allegedly made, many of which were focused on Susan. Stephen made statements to ABC News that he was in love with Susan, and that she had been flirtatious with him.
Stephen Powell was arrested, tried, and is serving a sentence for voyeurism in Washington. Shortly after Stephen was charged, Josh Powell was ordered to undergo a psycho-sexual evaluation because of the content found in the home if he wanted custody of his and Susan’s sons, Braden and Charlie. In February 2012, Josh Powell killed himself and his sons in a fiery home explosion in Washington.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/josh-powells-brother-commits-suicide/
Men Are Not Constantly Thinking About Humping You
According to a new survey of married couples, more men than women are happy with their sex lives. Specifically, 80 percent of men reported being very happy or happy with their sex lives, as opposed to 61 percent of women. If that's the case, why are many women's magazines so busy telling ladies how to do sex better? When such a high percentage of men are pleased with the bedroom action, is it necessary to teach women how to fuck backwards and upside down between subway cars just to keep their man satisfied?
It goes hand in hand with the lie that women don't want sex often (or athletically) enough for most men. As sure as Trina brags in Frikitonia, "I'm a lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets," many women believe that the ideal girlfriend or wife is always up for some xxx-rated between-the-sheets shenanigans. It's not surprising women accept this as gospel. Who hasn't heard the lie that men think about sex every seven seconds? Combine that persistent rumor with the constant confrontation from a multitude of media that aims to make ladies as insecure as possible, and it's not hard to see why men are viewed as sex machines from the fuck factory.
Fortunately for everyone, this isn't reality. In fact, in the same iVillage survey, thirty-nine percent of men report having sex out of obligation at least sometimes. Imagine that! And according to the Kinsey Institute, the men and sex thinking numbers are significantly less terrifying — "54% of men think about sex everyday or several times a day, 43% a few times per month or a few times per week, and 4% less than once a month."
Interestingly, in one study, men's fantasies mentioned a partner's sexual desire and pleasure more frequently than did women's fantasies (Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004). For the amount of information that's out there telling women how to appeal to men's horizontal proclivities, it's fascinating that men might be more interested in their partner's desire and pleasure.
http://jezebel.com/5983572/men-are-not-constantly-thinking-about-humping-you?utm_source=deadspin.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation
For the record, the author of this piece does *not* speak for me...
45 Years Ago, a Stand That Turned Deadly (Orangeburg SC Massacre)
On a February night 45 years ago, a linebacker on the South Carolina State football team named Robert Lee Davis went with three or four teammates to a bowling alley just off the black college’s campus in Orangeburg. Theirs was not an act of recreation but of political protest.
As expected, the alley’s owner turned them away because only whites were admitted. Then the local police arrived to arrest the players for disturbing the peace. When other students nearby began to object, the officers drew their nightsticks and the beatings began.
Two nights later, on Feb. 8, 1968, Davis and a larger group of football players joined their fellow students in building a bonfire near the campus entrance in a demonstration against the police assault. This time, an all-white force of state troopers responded. By the time the lawmen were done firing, 3 South Carolina State students lay dead and 27 had been wounded.
The Orangeburg Massacre, as the event came to be called, has grown over time into a landmark in civil rights history. More specifically, it stands as a tragically valiant episode in the history of political activism by black athletes, specifically the football players and the coach of South Carolina State.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/sports/ncaafootball/south-carolina-state-stand-unmatched-by-any-made-on-a-field.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022334543
Reconstruction and Beyond: The 8 African-American Senators
The United States Senate has a long history of producing historic leaders, but has featured only eight African-American members. The following eight senators set a number of political and social milestones spanning the Reconstruction and beyond. Continue reading to learn more about their many achievements.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/reconstruction-african-american-senators/story?id=18368916
Presidential Proclamation: National African American History Month, 2013
In America, we share a dream that lies at the heart of our founding: that no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter how modest your beginnings or the circumstances of your birth, you can make it if you try. Yet, for many and for much of our Nation's history, that dream has gone unfulfilled. For African Americans, it was a dream denied until 150 years ago, when a great emancipator called for the end of slavery. It was a dream deferred less than 50 years ago, when a preacher spoke of justice and brotherhood from Lincoln's memorial. This dream of equality and fairness has never come easily -- but it has always been sustained by the belief that in America, change is possible.
Today, because of that hope, coupled with the hard and painstaking labor of Americans sung and unsung, we live in a moment when the dream of equal opportunity is within reach for people of every color and creed. National African American History Month is a time to tell those stories of freedom won and honor the individuals who wrote them. We look back to the men and women who helped raise the pillars of democracy, even when the halls they built were not theirs to occupy. We trace generations of African Americans, free and slave, who risked everything to realize their God-given rights. We listen to the echoes of speeches and struggle that made our Nation stronger, and we hear again the thousands who sat in, stood up, and called out for equal treatment under the law. And we see yesterday's visionaries in tomorrow's leaders, reminding us that while we have yet to reach the mountaintop, we cannot stop climbing.
Today, Dr. King, President Lincoln, and other shapers of our American story proudly watch over our National Mall. But as we memorialize their extraordinary acts in statues and stone, let us not lose sight of the enduring truth that they were citizens first. They spoke and marched and toiled and bled shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary people who burned with the same hope for a brighter day. That legacy is shared; that spirit is American. And just as it guided us forward 150 years ago and 50 years ago, it guides us forward today. So let us honor those who came before by striving toward their example, and let us follow in their footsteps toward the better future that is ours to claim.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim February 2013 as National African American History Month. I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.
BARACK OBAMA
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/31/national-african-american-history-month-2013
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