Today, Stinque brings you two completely unrelated stories from the great state of North Carolina:

Our first item, comes to us from scenic Randolph County, where the local school board has voted 5-2 to remove all copies of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from public school libraries, after the parent of an 11th grader complained about the book. Ellison’s novel has heretofore been considered  a classic of American literature and an invaluable portrait of the black experience in America and landmark narrative of racial alienation at a time in our nation’s history when, in many regions of the country, African American’s were routinely denied, not just the vote, but the right to eat, shop and attend school in the same establishments as whites. The novel won its author the 1953 National Book award.

However, this assessment has more recently come under fire by members of the Randolph County school board. Speaking for the majority, board member and literary authority, Gary Mason, pronounced that he “didn’t find any literary value” in the work, and so it has been banished.

Our second story, gentle reader, comes to us from Charlotte, where, in a comedy of errors befitting a Three Stooges film, or Movie Night in Hitler’s Bunker, an injured African American man who managed to drag himself away from a horrible accident, found himself, first shunned by a terrified homeowner to whom he had turned for help, and then, riddled with bullets by a police officer who mistook the young black man’s pleas for help as an impending attack. Before making questionable decision to turn to white people in North Carolina for help with his injuries, Jonathan Ferrell played football for Florida A &M, where he majored in Chemistry.

Now, there may be some among you who would seek to find some link between these stories, to see an underlying commonality in a story about members of a white North Carolina school board who see no literary value in the great American Classic Novel of African American alienation and residents and police officers of a North Carolina city who react to the pleas of a wounded African American man with fear and deadly violence. But if that was your first reaction then allow us to assure you that you’re barking up the wrong tree and you couldn’t be more wrong. Trust us, there’s nothing to see here. Apples and oranges. Now, please move on.

He skates:

Title: “Harry Potter Schoolbooks: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them / Quidditch Through the Ages”

Author: J.K. Rowling

Rank: 28

Blurb: “The purchase of this book is not tax deductible.”

Review: “Although the wait for 2002 and ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ is going to be a hard one for a lot of people, these two brief but fun books should fill the gap admirably as well as supporting a great cause.”

Customers Also Bought: “Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer (6 Pack)”

Footnote: Nothing like a movie announcement to goose sales.

Harry Potter Schoolbooks [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

As mentioned before, I was in the city that day. I was riding a train in from Long Island as I was staying at my mother’s. I didn’t have a cellphone then but people were already aware of something bad having happened by the time I changed trains at Jamaica to complete the journey to Penn Station. From Jamaica you could see the towers. One of them had a huge plume of black smoke going up from it. In the train I said, Look at that! Maybe four did, looking up from their papers.

It was my second day of rehearsals for a new musical so of course there was no question of delaying or staying home. Because if the show doesn’t go on the terrorists have won.

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David Vitter is a piece of shit. He screamed family values in an ad that helped get him elected, then got caught fucking hookers. Prostitution should be legal, sure, but if you’re a guy that gets elected by claiming he’s loyal to his spouse and his family, and you’re not, you deserve to be thrown out of office. Somehow, Louisiana voters don’t agree with that sentiment.

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) on Friday sent a letter to the Senate Ethics Committee requesting an investigation of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for what he calls “attempted bribery.”

The letter responded to reports that Senate Democrats were shopping around a plan to deny government contributions to lawmakers’ health care plans if there is “probable cause” they solicited prostitutes. The proposal would effectively dredge up Vitter’s 2007 prostitution scandal unless he stopped pressuring the Senate to vote on an amendment repealing federal contributions to legislators’ health plans.

The graphic, by the way, was done by BlueGal – the hooker on the left, the wife (fittingly) on the right. Interesting ….

Talking Points Memo

Title: “How to Win Friends & Influence People”

Author: Dale Carnegie

Rank: 85

Blurb: “Learn:

• Three fundamental techniques in handling people
• The six ways to make people like you
• The twelve ways to win people to you way of thinking
• The nine ways to change people without arousing resentment”

Review: “I wouldn’t recommend using these techniques on close personal friends.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Think and Grow Rich Action Pack”

Footnote: Next time you try to cancel a service over the phone, thank Dale Carnegie for the scripted obstacle course the drone forces you through.

How to Win Friends & Influence People [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

We’ll be the first to confess that there are times when Michael Bloomberg comes across as an admirable voice of sanity in an otherwise insane world. The New York Mayor’s courageous stand on gun control would be one example. And even his much ridiculed legislative jihad against monstrous, sugar laden soft-drinks surely has a laudable concern for public health at its heart. But there are times when the man takes positions that can only be described as stupid.

This is one of those times. In an interview published today in New York Magazine Michael Bloomberg accuses Bill de Blasio, the current Democratic frontrunner in the race to succeed him, of running a racist political campaign for prominently featuring his mixed-race family in campaign commercials:

I mean he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote. You tailor messages to your audiences and address issues you think your audience cares about. 

It’s truly mind boggling that the man who is most responsible for, and is the most prominent defender of, New York’s controversial stop and frisk policing methods, and who later in that same interview insists that the best way to reduce crime in the city is to get guns out of the hands of “minority males” could accuse another politician of racism for running campaign ads that prominently feature his mixed-race family. But then, I guess in a nation that accepts the notion that anti-gay propaganda equates to promoting “family values” while relentlessly slashing taxes in the hopes of driving the nation into bankruptcy and then dismantling our meager welfare state constitutes “fiscal/deficit hawkishness…” well, why not… Hell, let’s take it one step further and note that our president is perhaps the most racist individual alive today for having the temerity to run for office without once hiding the fact that he is black and the child of a interracial marriage.

(Update: New York Magazine is now offering the following text and tagging it as a “correction:”

Well, no, no, I mean he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote. You tailor messages to your audiences and address issues you think your audience cares about.

The previous statement, in which Bloomberg describes de Blasio’s campaign as one characterized by “Class-warfare and racist” remains unchanged.)

(Via: The New York Times)