http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/ en Copyright 2010 Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:49:24 -0700 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss There was once this barbaric tradition, here, of Church Folk gathering at a crowded little buffet place after church. This restaurant, Furs, was crowded not because the food was so great (at times it reminded me a high school cafeteria) but because its process were so low. Low enough that the chain vanished from Ourtown a few years back. But, during its heyday, most Church Folk could be found congregating there after Sunday service, services they often groused about going too long, only to then spend hour upon hour gossiping at Fur’s. In this mix, you could always tell who the pastors were. They were the guys, most often the pot-bellied guys, wearing their hats. These men would get out of their fancy cars, just a s often ungracious, stereotypical Cadillacs and so forth, who would then don top coats and hats for the twenty-foot walk to the restaurant door. Being a guy who’d die naked if they’d let me, I could never understand why these pastors insisted on bringing these heavy coats and gregarious clown-pimp hats into a restaurant only a few feet from their car. It’s not as if these men had to march across the frozen tundra to get there. The wives would, just as often, put on mink and ridiculous gold lame “crown” hats, a quizzical display of prosperous bling considering going to Fur’s on a Sunday usually told the world what a cheapskate you were. Inside, many of the pastors would remove the heavy coat—which they wore just to show it off—and go through convolutions of finding an empty chair or such they could park their folded armor into before seating themselves—with their gregarious hats on—to eat dinner. Many, to my direct observation, did not even remove their hats when they prayed over the table. It was like a convention of Insecurity Anonymous, these people behaving like ten-year olds in desperate need of external validation. And, I’m not talking ball caps. I’m talking large, gregarious fedoras, some with bands and feathers and such. Pimp hats. Some of these men having removed their top coat and even their suit jacket, rolled up their sleeves, and dug into fried chicken and mashed potatoes while still wearing a large eyesore of a felt Fedora. Those were the pastors. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/03/casting_crowns.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/03/casting_crowns.html Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:49:24 -0700 “Barack Obama has grandly failed to lead the nation emotionally as well as rationally,” Newsweek's Jon Meacham wrote. “What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country. Like all of us, Obama has the vices of his virtues. He is cool and steady, but can seem cold and remote. He is thoughtful and thorough, but can appear eggheady and out of it. He appeals to the intellect, but often fails to make the visceral case for something.” Meacham’s engaging essay, The Trouble With Barack, is well worth the read. It is, despite my choice of quote, here, quite positive of the president, making the case that the conservative right’s scare tactics present a distorted view of Obama, presenting him as an extreme liberal when a sober review of the president’s record fins him just slightly right of center (including the president's health care reform ambitions, which Meacham describes as "just to the right of those of Richard Nixon"). But I agree with Meacham’s assessment of the president’s biggest failure thus far: to lead, to inspire. He’s been, for the most part, the Negotiator-In-Chief, wasting enormous amounts of time working within a Pollyannaish view of Congress—specifically the Senate—and, from what I can tell, wrongly assuming these men and women are, in fact grownups. The sheer vitriol going on in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, paints a picture of a deeply insecure gang of children. The sheer level of childishness—from petty agendas to dirty tricks—going on in the face of the worst economic crisis this country has ever faced defies description. These folks seem concerned exclusively with their own reelection chances. Their focus on the coming midterm elections inhibits every choice, every decision, as conservatives bank hard right and liberals move to the center, nervous about being blamed if things go wrong. Well, guess what, Sherlock: things HAVE gone wrong. And we DO blame you—all of you petulant, snotty-nosed children running the country. Democrats: you absolutely will get voted out of you fail to act, to do what we voted you nitwits in to do. Democrats spent eight years tip toeing around conservatives. Now we’ve thrown the bums out, but the Dems, idiots that they are, are still tip-toeing. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/03/the_trouble_with_barack.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/03/the_trouble_with_barack.html Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:47:02 -0700 Someone needs to remind Barack Obama that he’s the President of the United States. Republican leadership demanded there be no podium at the useless “bipartisan” discussion of health care Thursday, and the president agreed, saying he was simply grateful the Republicans were coming. After much discussion over the shape of the table (no, seriously), the parties came to an agreement of a series of desks arranged in a rectangle. The GOP will simply not accept this man as president and will go to any lengths to discredit, disavow or obstruct Barack Obama, including this nonsense with the desks. Republican leader Mitch McConnel actually had the gall to chastise the president for a perceived inequity in how much time the Republicans had as compared to the Democrats. To which Obama replied, "You're right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements because I'm the president. I didn't count my time in terms of dividing it equally." And, yes, he is. He’s supposed to be seated at the head of any table, at the front of any room. He’s not just anther Democrat in the room. Not some guy who lives down the block. He’s not just another politician. He’s the president. I can’t imagine George W. Bush acceding to such a ridiculous demand. Bush simply wouldn’t show up and he’d blame the Democrats for their idiocy over who sits where. Bush was the president. He wasn’t very good at it, but he was the president. In any room he was in, he was the president. I’m not sure who I’m more annoyed with, the Republicans for making such a stupid deal out of where Obama sits, or the president himself for, with all due respect, demeaning the office of the president by allowing these men to treat him like, or even make him seem like, just some guy from down the block. Mr. President, you knew this was a waste of time before you went there. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/hail_to_that_guy.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/hail_to_that_guy.html Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:51:56 -0700 As if they knew I’d be talking about the vacuum of leadership in the black community, the NAACP appointed Roslyn M. Brock, to succeed Julian Bond as the civil right’s group’s board chair and work alongside CEO Benjamin Jealous. Brock, 44, and Jealous, 37, seem ideally suited to inject youth and vigor into the aging organization, and I’m happy to pray for and support that progression. More than new faces, however, the NAACP needs a new voice. It needs a serious image makeover, and it needs to clear its throat and start speaking again. We live in a world of high-speed, instant communication with a 24-hour news cycle, but how often do we hear anything, anything at all, from the NAACP other than its anniversaries and rearranging of executive deck chairs? And, while the NAACP’s mission remains focused on civil rights, they seem to turn both a blind eye and deaf ear to the cancer of ignorance and moral ambiguity destroying the black family and, as I write about this week, silencing the black voice. The group awarded its 2009 Image Award to the increasingly raunchy Beyoncé for Outstanding Female Artist and to the foul-mouthed and salacious Jamie Foxx for Outstanding Male Artist, which suggests the NAACP, much like the black church itself, has bought in to the benign see-no-evil posture of not only tolerating youth-targeted media of questionable moral character but demonstrably awarding it. Which, I suppose, is fine. The NAACP does not present itself as an arbiter of morality so much as an avenue of social justice. And, though I realize I probably sound like a maniac or a prude to many people reading this, my ire at Ms. Knowles , Mr. Foxx and the rest is not so much about censoring their art form as it is about building a firewall between adult entertainment and children. Beyoncé's top constituency is not 30-year old women but 13-year old girls, to whom the singer is teaching lessons of sexual commodity. My frustration with the NAACP, the black church, and, I guess, everybody (since I seem to be the only one peeved about this) is there is not only no leadership in black America, there is, sadly, no accountability in black America. Ms. Knowles, husband Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Scrappy-Doo and the rest all know, good and well, they are selling sin to children. For, if they truly restricted purchases of adult material to, well, adults, their record sales would plummet. These people are no better than cigarette companies trying to get impressionable kids hooked, or drug dealers using them as mules. Beyoncé is hardly the antichrist, but she is increasingly crossing lines that demand a discussion of whether or not this is a positive person or a person of reasonable moral character. I honestly don't care if Beyoncé shakes her cakes, don't care about Lil Wayne's childish, insipid gynecological raps. But if these persons aren't serious about keeping the adult stuff away from ten and twelve year-olds, then, by any reasonable moral standard, they are corrupting children for money. And the NAACP hands these people a statue. An image award. Way to go. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/when_we_were_colored.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/when_we_were_colored.html Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:42:39 -0700 Most women who have ever been in my life became upset around the 14th of February because I didn't believe in St. Valentine's Day. I figured, (1) if I loved them, I shouldn't have to prove it and (2) being a robot and throwing money away just because Hallmark said we should is no way to do (1). The main problem with customs is they are customs, which is to say these rituals are so deeply embedded into our social DNA they rise to the standard of a religious obligation. Which is ironic considering I could talk most any woman I've been involved with into skipping church but skipping St. Valentine's Day was pure heresy. She would experience rejection. She would all but accuse me of lying when I refused to cooperate with this foolishness. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, of God or the bible involved in St. Valentine's Day, a seemingly benign distraction which actually tracks back to heinous pagan rituals. The custom of sending lover's greetings on February 14 began with an ancient pagan celebration called The Feast of Lupercalia, "Wolf Festival," a pre-Roman blood rite honoring Lupercus, the god of shepherds. The celebration featured a lottery in which the names of young girls were written on slips of paper and placed into a vase. Young men would draw a girl's name from the jar, and the girl would be his sexual companion during the remaining year. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius changed the name of the Lupercalia festival to St. Valentine's Day, and ordered a slight change in the lottery. Instead of the names of young women, the box would contain the names of saints. Both men and women were allowed to draw from the box, and the game was to emulate the ways of the saint they drew during the rest of the year. Not too surprisingly, this prudish version of Lupercalia proved unpopular, and by the fourteenth century they reverted back to the use of girls' names. The feast included blood sacrifices of two male goats (representing fertility) and a dog (representing purification). Girls and young women would line up to receive lashes from whips made from the skins of the animal sacrifices to ensure fertility, prevent sterility and ease the pain of childbirth. Paul's insistence that such ancient rituals no longer have any power [1 Cor. 9] have led pastors to tell me we are, therefore, free to emulate them; to use benign improvisations of these rites (St. Valentine's Day, Trick-Or-Treating) as agents of evangelism Which is faulty exegesis. Even though the Apostle Paul denied the power of pagan gods and rituals, even though he instructed his followers to not chastise the new Christians for eating the meat of idols, such selectively myopic interpretation of scripture misses the broader context: Paul himself never ate the meat of idols and Paul himself never included pagan rituals into his Christian belief. Just because Paul says these “gods” have no feet, have no real power, he is not endorsing our emulation of pagan rituals, behavior Paul condemns [I Cor. 10:20-21]. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/my_pagan_valentine.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/my_pagan_valentine.html Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:02:11 -0700 I woke up this morning and it was raining. And I said to myself, “Well, it’s about time.” Forecasters had been predicting this storm for most of the week, but no storm appeared. Instead there was sunshine and clear skies. And I quietly cursed under my breath because, for me, a storm has a special significance. You see, in sunshine and clear skies, people tend to wander out. Tend to drop by and interrupt your day. Tend to expect you to show up here and let’s go there and let’s do this or that. In sunshine and clear skies, people expect things of you and want things from you. But, in a storm, when the weather is bad outside, the newspeople tell you to stay home. People are much less likely to come ringing your bell or to expect you to show up or go here or do that. A storm provides the perfect excuse to do what you wanted to do all along—go back to bed. Huddle indoors. Be still, be quiet. As someone who works from home, I can tell you, a storm allows me to get things done. Sunshine and clear skies distract me, remind me of errands I need to run or people I need to see. But a storm closes the world around me for awhile, quiets my neighbor’s incessantly-barking dog and shrouds my home with darkness. And it is during those times that I can hear God. That I can feel His presence. That I can get things done. Sunshine and clear skies present their own inspiration, as I wander out into the hiking trails and the hills and see God’s glory painted across the sky. Storms, on the other hand, bring God’s glory to me, as I can see both His righteousness and His fearsome power, my house shaking, pelted with hail and wind. Sunshine and clear skies remind me of God’s love. Storms remind me of His righteousness. Sunshine presents opportunity. A storm, on the other hand, gives us time. Nobody expects us to be on time during a storm. No one blames us for not rushing across town during a storm. The clock stops ticking, and I suddenly find myself available to myself and to God because a storm is passing over. I can relax. The clock slows its ticking. All the noise and business of the day suddenly stops as everything seeks shelter. Lastly, storms remind me that trouble, like thunder, is the product of objects in motion. Thunder is only for a while, and then it moves on. Storms build my faith in the simple belief of trouble moving on. And that I should not become so fixated on the trouble that I miss the opportunity trouble brings. So, thank You, Father of mercy, for my storm, For the peace that storm brings me. Now, if You don’t mind, I’m going back to bed. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/weather_report.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/weather_report.html Sat, 13 Feb 2010 22:32:59 -0700 If the president’s State of The Union Address proved anything, it was that congressional Republicans (and many Democrats as well) simply refuse to accept this man as president. Racism being as intangible and often as inexplicable as sexism, I’m sure the number of white men apparently tweeting (using handheld devices to post to Twiitter.Com) while the president spoke seemed unbearably disrespectful, unprecedented in both scale and manner. Grown men behaving like teenage girls who can’t put the blasted thing down even for a minute. I have never before in my life seen such capriciously calculated displays of disrespect and, yes, irrational and overtly racist hatred aimed at a sitting U.S. president. I am told John F. Kennedy had similar detractors, particularly in the far right. But the rule has always been to show the president of the United States a reasonable and expected measure of respect and temperance, most especially during such national events as the State of The Union. Of course, Obama was heckled during last year’s address to a joint session of Congress (it wasn’t officially a state of the union speech). And every black man, woman and child knew what the talking head pundits debated and poked at with a stick: that Joe Wilson’s loathing of the president was—as is most other burgeoning irrational hatred directed toward the president—colored by racism. To deny racism plays any role in the surreal refusal to accept a duly elected sitting president simply insults my intelligence, and I’d guess that of millions of other Americans who sat horrified, watching flabby old men ignore one of the most provocative SOTU speeches in U.S. history. Which isn’t to say it was one of the best. Obama’s cautious tip-toeing around likely only added to the disingenuous front of these guys’ refusal to accept him as president. It boggles that so many of these men accepted George W. Bush—demonstrably and unquestioningly the worst U.S. president in modern history—while treating Obama with a contempt I can scarcely imagine. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/state_of_the_state.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2010/02/state_of_the_state.html Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:29:54 -0700 The Body of Christ News, a reader-supported monthly newspaper supporting African American churches throughout the state of Colorado, announced last week they would suspend circulation in the southern regions of the state because of lack of support from black Southern Colorado churches. “Southern Colorado would send information in for free coverage,” ,” their press release stated, “but only a few churches over the years would actually advertise. There has been very little support in the last six years from Southern Colorado. So when a decision had to be made regarding cutbacks – it made sense to stop service in Southern Colorado.” This is disappointing news, but is less indicative, I believe, of the economic downturn than it is a prevalent indicator of the overall malaise gripping African American churches and ministries in Colorado Springs, where the PraiseNet is based. We don’t usually focus on local Southern Colorado events because, like the Body of Christ News, this ministryh is not supported by local Southern Colorado churches. Trying to get black churches here to support one another and to join together for a common purpose is a lot like teaching cats to dance. And offering something for free, as BOC has, often enables that malaise. I never say the PraiseNet is "free" because "free" is a misnomer and a distortion of truth: it costs money to do what we do, what the BOCN does. The Body of Christ has been an important voice in black ministry, one that has likely gone underappreciated most especially here because our churches are so under resourced. This is problem I believe to have systemic causes stemming from lack of vision and leadership and a certain myopia or tunnel-vision that prevents our ministries here from seeing the grander horizon. The BOC is an important community tool. But it is a tool we have likely taken for granted. And, as the PraiseNet ultimately moved well beyond Colorado to support churches in Texas and California, Ohio and Minnesota and other places, it is truly sad that Southern Colorado did not make better use of resources God placed at their disposal. “I really tried hard to get Southern Colorado to support the Body of Christ News, but somehow people just didn’t see the need to advertise with the paper,’ states co-publisher Eva. PM Wynn Grove, host of The Word Network’s weekly Heavenly Sent broadcast.. Readers and churches can still subscribe to The Body Of Christ News by logging onto their website, www.bocnews.com. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/11/boc_news.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/11/boc_news.html Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:53:17 -0700 This ain't the sixties. White folk can't march around hollering "nigger" while we cower. It amazes me how the right wing doesn't get that. Sooner or later, somebody is going to get hurt. When the first shots are fired, they won’t be aimed at the president. They'll be aimed at some kid. Some black kid, some Latino kid, wandering through a park where these nutwing Tea Baggers are standing around hollering. The first acts of violence won’t have anything to do with politics or healthcare reform or taxes. It’ll be some black kid giving these racists the finger. Some homeless guy asking for a handout. The shot will ring out. And that will be the war. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, the Republican Party's most prominent African American official, has issued a press release criticizing former President Jimmy Carter for arguing that much of the opposition that President Obama is facing is due to race. "President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn't about race. It is about policy. This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president's wildly unpopular government-run health care plan that the American people simply oppose. Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn't create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation... As I wrote several months ago, being a black man willing to criticize President Obama is a real growth industry. Steele, who has been under fire from his own party for being, essentially, impotent and incompetent, has a vested interest in pleasing the wingnut crowd. But his unnecessarily bellicose and rabid new release only further undermines his standing, as he insults a president who himself has coolly played down the race issue. All of this posturing, on both the president and Mr. Steel's part, is for the benefit of white folk, as no black man, woman or child in America believes even a single word of Steele's statement, and recognizes the president's initiative as more political than substantive. Mr. Steele is a man headed for political oblivion and he knows it. The minute Barack Obama is no longer in the Oval Office, the GOP, who regularly eat their young anyway, will show him the door faster than he could ever imagine. I'm not quite sure what career track Mr.. Steele believes he is on, but he's being used--and knowingly so--by racists. At the end of that usefulness, he will have no friends and no future. I can't imagine what his play is, here. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/09/the_public_option.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/09/the_public_option.html Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:40:55 -0700 This man is a children's entertainer. No clowns, no balloons, no party hat. But, as sure as you're breathing, this man, the gangsta rapper who calls himself "The Game," is a children's entertainer. He knows it. His record label knows it. In fact, everybody seems to know it except you—the parent who stupidly puts money in this man's pocket, paying him to ruin the lives of your children. The record labels' public posture is this "gangsta" stuff is all adult entertainment. The industry has labeled its wares with big warning stickers to that effect, and stores aren't supposed to sell their product to minors. But there is no legally enforceable statute to prevent retailers from selling this stuff to whomever they want, and the primary consumers of this type of entertainment are teens and children. Fatherless children, I would imagine, are the most vulnerable to this mess because those kids are the most in need of role models. Risk is exciting. Breaking rules, and by extension laws, implies risk. Gangstas and bad boys are exciting. Half-dressed bad girls are titillating and appear to be popular in those videos. This prurient content promotes an attractive lifestyle to impressionable youth. White youth, perhaps living vicariously through black culture, are the primary consumers of this material, but the collateral damage is within minority communities. Blacks and Latinos may not, in fact, spend as much money on this stuff, but they absorb and emulate the culture, burning pirated copies and passing them along. It is life imitating art without much grounding in either, and with no real lessons in the consequences of negative behavior. Every time you pay that cable bill—whether you allow this stuff to be viewed in your house or not—you put money in this man's pocket. Cable and satellite companies may allow you to block certain content, but you are still paying for—and therefore financing—all of it. Even with a block on BET or MTV, those companies still receive royalty payments from the cable and satellite carriers, and that money flows on to finance the phony culture that is ultimately destroying the black family.

What you allow into your home reveals who you are.]]> http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/09/priorities.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/09/priorities.html Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:35:00 -0700 Reaching new heights of unprecedented displays of disrespect for the office of the president, conservative bloggers and cable news personalities are urging parents to keep their children home from school in order to prevent their children from watching President Barack Obama's planned speech to school children Tuesday at noon (EDT). It shocks and degusts me how baldly racist, and that's what it is, racist, the political right has become and how dangerous they are making the world by openly fomenting sedition by refusing to recognize Barack Obama as the democratically elected president of the United States. Even at the height of the GOP's loathing for Bill Clinton, there was still a grudging respect for both Mr. Clinton and the office of the president. George Bush, whose presidency was inarguably a gross failure and whose policies bankrupted the nation and plunged us into war, was still respected, by liberals and even the African American community, as the president of the United States. The conservative right's malicious and unprecedented hate campaign--a campaign of personal hatred against the man with indifference to the office--continues to heat up and go unchallenged by, well, anyone. It treads a very thin line between political protest and open sedition against the U.S. government, which can be charged as the crime of treason. The conservative right--often in lock-step with the religious right--continues to develop and deploy propaganda designed to engage this country's sad history of institutionalized racism to achieve a political goal: the removal of Barack Obama from office. These actions undermine the very principles this country was founded upon and risks unpredictable blowback as, once our political leaders make it acceptable for us to simply not recognize our duly elected chief executive (for not much other obvious reason than that he is black), it makes it that much easier for dissent to set in and harden, as we become selective in terms of which authority figures we choose to recognize in the future. By undermining the office of the president, and the entire electoral system, these people are literally undermining the future of our nation, which makes their tactics not only wrongheaded and ignorant, but an act of sedition against the United States of America. I only wish someone had the political will to charge them with that crime. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/09/schools_out.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/09/schools_out.html Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:25:39 -0700 Sorry to be gone so long, there’s been a lot going on that’s distracted me from this ministry. I think we’re out of the tall grass for now, and expect to return next Sunday with perspectives on the ongoing health care debate and other issues. We appreciate the prayers and inquiries of those who’ve been writing in asking where we’ve gone—believe me, it wasn’t our plan or our idea, but God opening doors and presenting ministerial and growth opportunities which required this editor’s time and attention. A few breaths in a neutral corner, and we’ll be swinging for the fences next week. We pray you’ve had a blessed August. —Editor http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/08/back_in_a_flash.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/08/back_in_a_flash.html Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:51:02 -0700 In a relatively timely and remarkably respectful and mature two hours, the life of Michael Jackson was celebrated at Los Angeles' Staples Center among thousands of Jackson's fans, while being watched or downloaded around the globe by billions. The memorial, yanked off most major news servers the day after, is likely to arrive on DVD in short order as the rush to cash in n Jackson's death begins. While I found the memorial's emphasis on Jackson's artistic and social achievements to be appropriate, I winced at Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas)'s way-over-the-top canonizing of Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus' introduction of a proclamation in his honor. I agree Jackson is most certainly innocent until proven guilty, but Jackson was also black only selectively and when it seemed to suit his purpose or the moment. I guess it's appropriate to celebrate his genetic disposition, but the model of Jackson's life was a man trying to escape the very family who celebrated him last week, if not the African American race as a whole (based on the emerging evidence of genetic hoodwinking and more lying on Jackson's part about the paternity of his children). I absolutely celebrate this man who has so inspired me over the years, but I prefer to do so with my eyes open. The louder flat note of the ceremony: notorious attention-seeker and comical black sheep LaToya's insistence on wearing a hat nearly as big as the Staples Center itself. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/07/jackson_memorial.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/07/jackson_memorial.html Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:05:53 -0700 The New York Post reported in March the Jackson clan had amassed and lost a fortune over the span of Michael Jackson's career, Michael being the main engine driving the Jackson family success. A string of failed ventures left the family bankrupt to the tune of $45 million, with Jermaine personally having more than $5 million in liens filed against him. Nearly al of the Jackson brothers live at least part-time at the family mansion in Encino, California, a property which teeters on the brink of foreclosure. Only Michael, who was beset by his own financial problems, Janet and, believe it or not, LaToya, are alleged to be financially solvent. The Post further alleges Michael wanted nothing to do with the family, perhaps resenting the family's 40+ years of exploiting Michael's talent to enrich themselves and lacking compassion for the family's rampant mismanagement of millions of dollars Michael generated for their well-being. The Post reports most of the Jackson brothers are unemployed or working menial labor jobs, with father Joe trying to promote singers in Las Vegas. The family is allegedly dependent on youngest sibling Janet to pay the bills at Hayvenhurst, their Encino compound, and alleges Janet has purchased a home for her parents in Las Vegas in anticipation of the family losing Hayvenhurst. If the report is accurate, Michael Jackson's sudden death may provide yet another opportunity for the family to exploit him, as an aging Katherine is a major beneficiary named in Jackson's will, and the brothers doubtlessly planning ways to cash in on their estranged brother yet again. Joseph Jackson, Michael's father, is already pimping his new record label, likely financed by promises of a big cash payout from Michael's estate, telling most every TV camera he can find, in sadly broken, illiterate English, that he plans on releasing many tracks from Jackson's archives--a suspicious promise as the distribution rights to Jackson's music belong to Sony Music, to which Michael owed tens of millions of dollars at the time of his death. The Jackson clan, most auspiciously the father and brothers, have always been an embarrassment to Michael, who survived a torturous childhood at Joe's hands and whose amazing gift was exploited by everyone in the family, a practice that now continues past his demise..Apparently, he can't even rest in peace. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/07/jackson_family_woes.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/07/jackson_family_woes.html Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:16:22 -0700 Whatever else happened in Holmby, it is not beyond reason to suspect Michael—either purposefully or passively—was ultimately responsible for his own exit. Jackson was reported to have been upbeat and in high spirits mere hours before his untimely passing, but the truth of addicts is most especially true of Michael himself: addicts lie. And Jackson had been lying to almost everyone he’d ever met for a very, very long time. A troubled, lost, lonely individual, in both physical and emotional pain, drowning in debt, exhausted, paranoid and training hard to keep up with dancers half his age. Jackson was huffing and puffing through CBS’ 40th Anniversary tribute which, sadly for Jackson, aired the day before 911. How much moreso had eight additional years of inactivity and drug abuse impacted his frail body? The sold-out 50-date comeback tour he was preparing himself for was, possibly, his only hope. And it’s just as possible he knew he wasn’t ready, he couldn’t go 50 rounds and he couldn’t perch himself onstage in a chair like a bloated Elvis. Most of the songs in 2001’s Invincible were pitched well below Michael’s former glorious alto, and Usher mopped the floor with him at his own tribute concert. Jackson was rumored to have had a fractured vertebrae in his back, which would certainly make performing pure agony for him. Michael was a wheezing, aging prizefighter who’d stayed too long in the ring—and that was nearly eight years ago. Among the many, many theories being floated out there was the inherent possibility that Michael knew, likely from the beginning, that he’d never finish that tour. That he’d been doing what he’s always done—lying. Perhaps first and foremost to himself. That the end of Neverland—not the ranch but the vision in Jackson’s head—loomed large was certainly true. In the final analysis, it was likely reality, not pain, that Jackson was medicating himself from. And that, quite possibly, it wasn’t drugs so much as truth that killed him. In the end, of course, the question should be, “Did Michael Jackson know Jesus?” From all available evidence, one might conclude that he did not, but only God knows what occurred between Jackson and Himself in those final moments. We can only pray that, as the circus now begins, that, somewhere among Jackson’s twisted legacy, some kernel of truth might emerge, some lesson learned. http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/06/michael.html http://www.praisenet.org/blogs2/praisenet/2009/06/michael.html Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:25:37 -0700