by John Walters

Booker Takes Aim

MH’s Bluegrass State correspondent (and childhood friend) Matt Dacey informs us about Kentucky state representative Charles Booker (D), who is taking aim at Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat. The Dems already had a presumptive candidate, retired Marine pilot Amy McGrath, but Booker, who is black, launched a campaign anyway with just $70,000 in his war chest.

Well, Booker’s district is where Breonna Taylor was murdered and he was out with the protester. McGrath was not. In a recent PBS televised roundtable in the state, he wiped the floor with her. The Democratic primary is within 8 days and Booker is within single digits.

Winner takes on Mitch in November. This is a litmus test. Fifty-four years ago, the University of Kentucky wouldn’t even take a black man on its vaunted basketball team. Now it might have one unseat the most (visibly) racist Senator in the country.

Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee’s latest film, Da 5 Bloods, has a trailer that completely drew me in. The story is sort of a reverse Saving Private Ryan (Exhuming Private Ryan?) with a trunk full of gold thrown in to the mix. And it takes place in Vietnam. And Spike says that every studio turned him down except Netflix.

And that infectious song in the trailer is “Time Has Come Today” from the Chambers Brothers, released in 1968.

Critics are calling this Spike Lee’s best film since 25th Hour (2002). Perhaps the best since his masterpiece, Do The Right Thing.

O’er The Ramp Parts We Watched

President Trump’s speech to the graduates at West Point was overshadowed by his slow and halting walk down a ramp afterward. Apparently those bone spurs have not fully healed.

No Bread, No Circus, More Racial Equality

(The Wendy’s in Atlanta. It’s not Sherman torching the city but it’s symbolically similar)

Call me crazy, but I don’t think the Ahmaud Arbery murder and the Central Park birder and the George Floyd protests and resignations of police chiefs and the revocation of choke holds, etc, is all happening in a vacuum. I believe that the absence, due to the pandemic, of all the distractions that keep this nation humming during its leisure hours (pro and college sports, movie releases, etc.) has provided more time for Americans, particularly African-Americans, to focus their attention on racial injustice.

Consider: Arbery was murdered in late February but his murder, which was videotaped, was not even investigated in depth until April.

Fifty-two years after the Chambers Brothers released it, The Time Has Come Today. Indeed.

And I’ll go further. Just as Rome, the world’s most powerful empire at the time and the people responsible ultimately for crucifying Jesus, eventually became the seat of Catholicism, I believe that one day the U.S.A., which brought black people over from Africa in chains and used their unpaid labor to help build this country (and make the South economically viable) will be a nation where the power rests with African-Americans. History and time have a funny sense of humor that way. One day far, far down the line men like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama and, yes, Colin Kaepernick will be seen as early and important figures in this movement. And I’m not equating the four in terms of historical import. But all four will be names worthy of mentioning.

As Charles Blow of The New York Times refer to it, “an insatiable rage” has finally reached its boiling point. And no wonder.

Stupefying

One of the WWWPs (World’s Worst White People) out there, Larry Kudlow, appears on CNN and tells Jake Tapper that it’s not America’s business which major corporations were giving seven- and eight-figure and even nine-figure bailout payments to as part of the coronavirus financial rescue. Sure, it’s our money but now it’s in their hands and they’ll do with it exactly what they want.

Dig, I agree with Kudlow that Americans who are working (many of us) should not be earning less per week than Americans who choose not to. I’m not against ending the $600 per week unemployment benefits. But if you want me to give you that, then in return I’d like a little transparency. As Tapper says, “That’s as swampy as you could imagine.”

He’s right.