The Mystery of "Poverty"

This post is going to be a departure from the social commentary I normal give voice to.  As I write this, world leaders, captains of industry, scientists, celebrities and plain ol" rich people are convening in Davos Switzerland,- the highest city in Europe based on elevation- at the World Economic Forum to talk about their"commitment to improve the world."  In an Age where people can't seem to engage in civil discourse organically or digitally, this decades-old effort to facilitate the meeting of the minds of the people who by some accounts can ostensibly unfracture a global community separated by a smorgasbord of ideologies, theories and customs is noble. In the meantime, billions of people are still living on the margins as trillions of dollars in assets, resources and innovations are rapidly changing the way the average person lives.

Phillip Alston, a United Nations Special Rapporteur who visited several parts of the country recently published a statement on extreme poverty in the United States of America. Part of his information was gathered from the US Census Bureau using a metric called the Official Poverty Measure (OPM).  The report disclosed that in September 2017, more than one in every eight Americans were living in poverty( approx. 40 million) and almost half of them were living in deep poverty with reported income below half of the poverty threshold.  I keep wondering why I can't just flush the image of the walking dead-homeless, destitute- you know, the invisible people that depending on where you live you try not to see, recognize or acknowledge.  I have read the caricatured narratives about the purported "innate" differences between rich and poor that has fueled an almost hatred for people who find themselves outside of the land of Richistan.

The rich are "industrious, entrepreneurial, patriotic and drivers of economic success.  Conversely, the poor are scammers, parasites, and a word our President is often inclined to say disparagingly, losers.  There is no context given to why and how millions of people in the wealthiest nation in the world occupy an almost existential state of crushing privation, destitution and hardship in the looming shadow of urban sprawl and Silicon Valley and Wall Street hyper-affluence.  Maybe the charlatan, televangelist Peter Popoff can do a national tour and give all of the impoverished a tube of his miracle spring water which according to his commercial magically allows people to make requests for envelopes of large, unearned checks to just show up in their mailboxes.  He seems to be a fixture on BET after midnight.  What does poverty look like?  Does it have an aroma, a language, a pathology or a zip code?  I think I have an awareness of this un-American state because far too many people who have followed the manuscript of the American dream are finding themselves a hair's breadth away from Brokeistan--a place void of the amenities we give no thought to until our incomes, lifestyles are disrupted by things like divorce, extended unemployment ( the average American is 3 months away from being destitute without income) catastrophic illness, disability or the untimely death of the primary provider.

By my estimation, regular folks have as many as 15 or more different expenses: Rent/mortgage, groceries, credit cards, ( yeah, they do) utilities, phone, car note or bus passes, car insurance, health insurance, dental, life, *student loans,( nationally at 2 trillion) cable tv, wi-fi, clothing, gas for vehicle, misc-if you have children you understand. John Maxwell said," A budget is simply telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went."  I love this quote but those living on the margins are stuck somewhere between an episode of Survivor and The Great Race in search of the money that they are supposed to be telling where to go.  All of that intellectual property in the form of forward-thinking innovators gathering in Davos seems to be far removed from the staff at the gas station I frequent every other morning to get my $1.82 cup of Chai tea.  A few of them are what I call the invisible poor.  They work at least two jobs, are not federally subsidized and genuinely aspire to partake in the fullness of life this country offers.  I know this because they are not invisible to me.  I know this because my daily routine takes me through the hedges and highways of those who will never have a place at the table of the World Economic Forum.  The 3000 or more invitees to this prestigious gathering won't include those who intimately know the nuances of economic despair and distress.  That is the great tragedy.

                                                                             

                                                                Mister, is it true?


The Day of Reckoning is continuing its tumultuous peregrination across the entertainment, political and now sports domain.  Jerry "Mister" Richardson, the iconic, former NFL player turned franchise owner just abruptly declared he would be selling his team after an announced investigation into sexual misconduct centered around his "creepy old man" tendencies.  Richardson fashioned himself as a kind of antebellum-style Southern gentleman, regularly leaving personal notes and cash for his female employees to get manicures and ameliorate their appearance to meet the unspoken standards dictated by his expectations.

The aura and mannerisms of some NFL owners in general, a fraternity that is probably more exclusive than the clandestine Skull and Bones, engenders, at times, a kind of chauvinistic, if not sexist culture in which their pecuniary weight could be leveraged to allow them to rule like a plutocrat whose idiosyncrasies are not only never to be questioned, but ostensibly tolerated.  There is an ironic dichotomy in the allegations being levied against an owner whose influence placed him in the pantheon of the uber owners like Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones.  He has an Hispanic head coach Ron Rivera, an African American as the face of the franchise in quarterback Cam Newton, and a woman, Tina Becker, serving as chief operating officer of the team.  He will be forensically examined in light of the actual diversity his organization organically provides.  Somehow, one can not be mutually exclusive from the other.  Oh, did I mention that an allegation of a racial slur was part of the phalanx of offenses listed in the settlements.

NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) have become the legal instrument to shelter disparaging content of those accused.  From Harvey Weinstein to U.S Congressmen, this jurisprudent utility has become the de facto power play to protect from legal recourse after settlements have been reached.  Without fail the owners will close ranks and deflect, denounce or belittle the aspersions being cast on a towering figure such as Richardson.  His imprint in the state of North Carolina is legendary, almost folklorish.  Apparently "Mister" was just a man who liked to engage in "Jeans Day" at work with a kind of misogynistic indulgence that was supposed to be dismissive.  I guess he could not have known that the tsunami that began in Hollywood would transverse the country and find its way to little ol' Charlotte!

                                                                     Greek Life

The most recent deaths of Penn State, FSU and LSU pledges in the heralded, if not cloistered, world of Greek fraternities has brought the organizations under a much needed spotlight.  The question that under girds the tragedy of the senseless deaths of America's "best and brightest" at major universities is why would an otherwise erudite individual subject themselves to initiation rites that are tantamount to abuse at the high end and asinine, reckless, frat boy antics at the low end of the conduct spectrum?  Critics of the elitist, separatist culture of Greek organizations are going to launch a phalanx of  grievances to justify advocacy for the "death penalty"-expulsion of the chapters from the university.  Its proponents will market the virtues and societal benefit of these distinguished young men who when acculturated to the tenets of their charter embody all that's good in what will become the future leaders of this nation.

What's being lost in this tragic narrative is a Bacchanalian culture that permeates almost every secular university in this country. Alcohol, more specifically underage drinking, in its many incarnations, is as much a rite of passage on university campuses as going to sporting or social events.  Getting hammered, lit, wasted, totally drunk (sorry parents) is an inextricable and expected part of college life.  I have heard countless, gleeful recollections from alumni of prestigious schools about waking up in strangers' apartments or becoming so inebriated that their speech was slurred or projectile vomiting as their bodies fought to protect them from alcohol toxicity.

Beer kegs on the weekend ( actually it starts on Thursday evening)are transported like precious cargo to apartments, frat houses and private homes in every city in this country with a college campus.  Binge drinking is not an anomaly or aberration. National Lampoon's Animal House was not a caricature of college life to bemuse and dismiss.  A microcosm of this abusive alcohol culture in high definition can be seen at any Spring Break gathering.  If you believe that I embellish my position just look at the impact of cities that decided to ban alcohol consumption by college students during their forays into their zip codes for Hedonism 101.  Fort Lauderdale, FL for years was a prime destination for thousands of college students.  Intoxicated young men, plus high rise hotels was a petri dish for disaster.  In addition to students falling to their deaths because of alcohol impairment, the level of vandalism to properties became an untenable proposition no matter how many millions of dollars these spring breakers brought to the county coffers.

As a nation we rejected the idea of the prohibition of alcohol. We love our: bourbon, gin, vodka, whiskey, rum. tequila, brandy, wine, champagne and God knows BEER (ale, lager)! The ubiquity of alcohol is engendered by our do what thou wilt zeitgeist.  Thirty thousand plus people a year die from alcohol-related car accidents and thousands more die from alcohol-related diseases yet we WILL NOT  deny anyone over the age of 21 the "right" to imbibe at their leisure no matter the collateral damage to those who are not interested in luxuriating in the spirits so gleefully marketed with zest and fervor on every major network.  Miles Monroe said, "when purpose is not understood, abuse is inevitable." I have often wondered at what point the abusive element of the pledging process ( physical beatings, toxic level of alcohol consumption) became a measure of fraternal worthiness?

As a former naval officer, I understand and have gone through the indoctrination process, which in part mimics the physical and emotional rigor of the pledging process.  What is fundamentally different is that the "breaking down" process had a template and expected end in preparing me to become a commissioned officer in the United States military.  The ethos and pathos of Greek culture and their initiation process needs to be forensically examined and CHANGED!

                                                                When We Said I Do

Almost 24 years ago, the love of my life took a chance on forever by saying yes to my request to marry her.  This relationship has transversed three decades ( 90's, 2000's, 2010's) against a milieu of fashion trends, elastic social mores and ideological shifts that have dramatically altered the cultural landscape we once knew as newlyweds.

Our wedding, an endorphin-rich ceremony where I stood transfixed at my wife's transcendent beauty was the beginning of a journey of two hearts that had to do more than beat as one.  Our lives as a covenant-bound couple had begun and would usher in the "for richer, for poorer", the "sickness and in health", and test the notion of a love that is sealed by the Holy Spirit until death do us part. So much about the institution of marriage is conflated, distorted, and sadly vilified.  Many people approach it in a chemically-induced stupor, impaired by emotions, feelings and a belief that the rapturous high of each other's presence is sustainable no matter the rigors of life.

The truth is that the two becoming one flesh may be a seamless process physically, but emotionally, spiritually and ideologically the alchemy is a much more deliberative process.  I have long believed that God only allows certain things to be revealed within the covenant of marriage.  No matter how compatible, familiar and comfortable two people are before their vows, you are imbued with a new awareness, insight and understanding by God once you "jump the broom!"  Marriage is a fusion of at times antithetical views, life experiences, opinions and beliefs. The merging of two individuals as husband and wife is a life-long process- with love being the bonding agent, the sustenance supplied by God.

No matter how adept you are at planning the future, the vicissitudes of life will either serve as a sealant or corrosive agent to your union. The two will become three or more. Each year transforms the relationship into an amalgamation of new first:anniversaries, children's birthdays, promotions, home ownership, family trips, relocation and a variety of benchmarks to denote the new chapters of the ever unfolding life you share together.  One of the misunderstood components of this saga is the inevitable metamorphosis of each individual.  The two that became one flesh will evolve into mature incarnations of the doe-eyed couple that stood breathlessly awaiting to exchange their "forever' vows. The challenge within a marriage is to maintain a synergy, a synthesis as you two grow, mature, and develop into your future selves.  After the spectacular celebration of your public declaration of love and happiness, you will be inundated with moments that will either impenetrably seal your union or begin to form tiny fissures that, if left unaddressed, will over time become an almost uncrossable chasm.

 Stacy and I have been most fortunate to have raised two incredible daughters, opened our home to family and friends, donated countless resources anonymously to individuals and organizations and
yet imbibed deeply on the sweet and at times bitter moments of life. I am sharing this with you because after almost a quarter of a century of marriage, these tidbits are not things I picked up vicariously.  Even with the benefit of premarital counseling and incredible role models of robust, healthy marriages around me, these things were never explained to me in a measure that equipped me to navigate with confidence as these sometimes dystopic chapters had to be walked through.  Stacy Lynn Broussard, a young lady from the state of Louisiana changed my life.  She made me a husband, father, and provided me with life transforming love, support and insight.  What I want anyone reading this to realize is that the best marriages require diligence, patience, understanding and unequivocally the love of Christ to flourish.  I have had the time of my life with the love of my life!  I just want you to know that the optics of a great couple come with a lot of behind-the-scenes work which first and foremost include prayer for each other and the ability to acknowledge when you are wrong.  I believe in the incredible gift that is marriage.  I just want you to understand that it is not to be entered into lightly.  Selah

                                     I WISH IT WAS MORE THAN HIDDEN FIGURES

Another year of introspective review of artistry is probably how the more than 6000 members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would critique this year’s Oscars ceremony.  Even with Hollywood’s self-portrait as liberal, inclusive and a global repository of diversity and multicultural narratives, it always strikes me how the mosaic of black life in this country that is celebrated in film falls within a dystopic stricture of  grating dysfunction, marginalization and an existential threat of violence.

Slavery, civil rights and the slums is the corner store of ideas from which our American-ness can be transcribed.  A twenty-first century rendering of us as sentient beings is still representative of the glacial pace at which anecdotal offerings of the historicity of black people is being integrated.  The Birth of a Nation, after much pre-Oscar fanfare, was not only conspicuously absent from the list of nominees, but the polemic subject matter in light of the Dickensian political tone of the nation was unfortunate. For the first time ever, a black man won for best screenplay adaptation in Moonlight.

The rhetorical question is whether this particular effort was so substantially superior to the legions of others over the many decades before it that it singularly and finally warranted a statue? O.J: Made In America garnered an award and was considered by some critics a magnum opus of our culture on the issue of race and ambition.  What it masterfully chronicles in the seven and a half hour documentary is an existential dissociative disorder masked as ambitious assimilation. 

Ava Duvernay’s “13^th” graphically, pedantically and compellingly dispels the myth of the abolition of slavery legislated by the 13^th Amendment of the United States Constitution. It exposes the pathos and ethos that drives, nourishes and sustains the carceral state in this country.  It however, falls outside of the bandwidth of heralded discourse and content to be found in the black cinematic trinity (slavery, civil rights, slums) of Hollywood green-lighted projects.  Changing the tapestry of cinema to a more expansive, “blackish” diorama has everything to do with appetite and efficacy. 

Because our history is inextricably and violently interwoven into the broader conflicted, passion play of establishing a democracy, extracting stories that promulgate fully-evolved Americans of color comes with inherent risk.  Movie making has always been a collaborative environment.  The stakeholders may come with a holistic intent of exhuming the lives and biographies of those who were wantonly disregarded, but the financial viability always holds sway.  If the American cultural epicenter for cinema is going to be compelled to do more than tangentially mine the trace elements of black culture, then the voices, perspectives and eyes behind the camera, within the corridors of power must also be inclusive or this self-aggrandizing “awards” show will in short order return to its regressive mean of monochromatic expression. 

                                                   A Requiem on the Masculine Mystique


It seems that the ignominy of the Harvey Weinstein allegations has cast a shadow that looms like the sword of Damocles over power brokers in Hollywood, corporate America and Congress. The year after women, en masse, declined to endorse what would have been a watershed moment in Presidential politics--the election of Hillary Clinton-the "Me Too" hashtag has gathered inertia and rocked the sexist patriarchy of American culture.

The arc of power has always bent inordinately toward the male gender. Women have been subjugated to secondary, if not tertiary status across every strata of our culture that does not involve putative matriarchal functions. They have been commoditized, objectified and politicized since this country's inception.  What makes the national inertia behind this repudiation of sexual harassment so refreshing is that it comes in the shadow of the banal narcissism that inculcated this "boys will be boys" ethos in which women  were not only aware of the licentious environments that they could be subjected to in every arena, but the election of a President whose misogynistic behavior and edicts aggressively expanded the bandwidth by which this topic can be deliberated.

Women occupy executive boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies and Hollywood studios. They also serve as Presidents of major universities, four-star generals, commercial airline pilots, astronauts, and in the halls of Congress- all of which in as short as 50 years ago were untenable propositions. The patrician mindset that no only created glass ceilings for women, but condoned toxic environments (see Madmen or any television programming of a bygone era) in which women could be inundated with inappropriate comments, advances, touches and career-ending threats to yield to sexual propositions.  In the same year that DC Comics' "Wonder Woman" became a box-office bonanza, a galvanizing and liberating force has empowered legions of women to come forth and say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

What had ostensibly become an accepted yet derisive term-the casting couch- as a segue to sexual impropriety as standard procedure to get roles in Hollywood has become a flash point to remove the private shame of those who felt powerless in yielding to the hedonistic culture of pay to play with human flesh.  To witness the ossification of a practice of abusing power as a modus operandi is revelatory. It also speaks to the dichotomy that so many men hold on to as cursory.  When venerated journalist Charlie Rose was sacked at PBS because of salacious allegations, it shattered the veneer of the predatory boss or employer who fostered a zeitgeist of denigrating women.  Far too many men are raised on an unhealthy diet of pornography and domestic violence as entertainment as part of their optics of men's interaction with women.  I am not implying that those outliers alone inculcated the kind of toxic enclaves driving the national backlash that is reaping a whirlwind for those who engendered behaviors that were not only abusive but flat out wrong.

The rhetorical question is simply will this moment of reckoning become the touchstone to fundamentally and permanently shift the paradigm of the acceptable treatment of women in the workplace or will it be an aberration whose bandwidth will eventually shrink and slither back into the toxic quagmire that has too long been a part of the status quo.  We shall see!                                                                     

                                                   The Real Heft of Hefner


There has been quite a bit of bandwidth dedicated to whom many consider the progenitor of the sexual revolution's most iconoclastic corporate emblem, Playboy. Hugh Hefner, reported to have an IQ north of 150, provided the lubricity to transubstantiate pornography from a seedy, slimey back-alley industry to mainstreamed, glamorized "sleaze"- the main freight being the objectification of women- book ended by serious journalism featuring such heralded writers as William F. Buckley and Alex Haley.

Hefner sought to philosophically deconstruct theological sanctions-repeal and replace if you will-the prudish, outdated sexual constraint promulgated by moral exegetes. The Playboy philosophy hinged upon this single edict," A man's morality, like his religion, is a personal affair best left to his own conscience."

The scientific construct for this borrowed heavily from the Kinsey Report, an ideological gateway to libertinism. Hefner sought to introduce a new morality, part Aleister Crowley's "Do What Thou Wilt" and progressive advancement of social mores emancipated from the stricture of the cultural, moral and spiritual imprint accreted from the Elizabethan Age.  This new orthodoxy, engorged with sexual iconoclasm, has been celebrated as "a pure lyric of expression of the appetite of human nature."  Hefner commiserated about the incongruity of what people said publicly about sex and sexuality and what they did privately noting that this country's appetite for the forbidden was voracious and he believed insatiable.

He transformed himself into the embodiment of the sexual renaissance man; a strange alchemy of psuedo-erudition and sartorial panache all the while engaging in an unfettered sexual appetite.  His joie de vive made him the imprimatur of this brand of hedonism he sought to repackage as  sophisticated, counter cultural and eminent. He is heralded as an iconoclast who donated to social justice and civil rights causes while simultaneously openly advocating the patrician constraints of his empire's most prized commodity-women as objects of licentiousness.

 The previous paragraphs is my version of the academic, high-brow rendering thus far of his legacy.  For regular folks,sadly, Playboy, the magazine, became a ubiquitous, right-of-passage parchment for prepubescent boys who would, on far too many occasions, discover the dirty magazine in their father's hidden stash. The Bill of Rights for the new sexual Constitution actually delivered a bill of wrongs for conceivably millions of boys whose raging hormones would be skewered by this misogynistic imprint of women and sexual intimacy.  The curating of fetishization, masturbation and promiscuity left scar tissue and a framework for addiction to pornography whose impact was so pronounced that it more than marginally altered the psycho-sexual construct by which they would develop. There would be scores of studies done to demonstrate the neurological damage of this new ethos.

Dr.Tony Evans said that," pornography use is one of the greatest indicators that a man has lost touch with his manhood."  We were indoctrinated into voyeurism and depictions of sex not only bereft of constraint but entangled with violence or Caligulan type escapades in which self-gratification was the primary focus. There is an unspoken malignancy tied to the playboy iconography.  He inculcated a passive recklessness by positing that technology ( the creation of vaccines,abortifacients) would outpace the proliferation of sexually-transmitted diseases, out of wedlock births, and abortions that followed this self-centered odyssey of indulgence. His prescience would be a partial truth.

The internet made access to copious amounts of pornographic material seamless and removed the stigma of having to leave the clandestine confines of one's home to indulge in the salacious, digital ecosystem that brought a dark web of perversion right to your desktop, laptop or phone. Ironically, this proliferation became the death knell of the revolutionary magazine that sought to mainstream the ribald as racy prose and the topography of women as the sole source stimuli for men. The collateral damage, the legacy of this sexual utopia, is far greater than the image of a centerfold burned into boys and men's memories. This contagion created pathogens that are still destroying households around the globe to this day.