Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar

It is very tempting to blame the con artist from Queens for the pickle in which we now find ourselves. He rode down his brass-tinted escalator, opened his pie-hole and we have not been the same since. Russia’s boldfaced interference in our elections, disorder in our body politic, the threat of terroristic political violence on a scale not seen since the turbulent sixties; racists & fascists emboldened and no longer having to hide behind their white sheets, and an organized, concentrated effort to undermine and throw into disrepute every government agency there is.

Yes, we could lay it all at his feet of decaying mush, but alas, there is a bigger, more dangerous culprit: the news media. The media even more so than the enabling & complicit Republican Party is responsible for giving us the orange menace and for pumping the life-saving oxygen that he needs to stay relevant on the national stage. We all know that the Great Embarrassment cannot manage himself out of a brown paper bag to save his life. Everything he touches turns to shiite. Everything. Were it not for the $5B+ worth of free air time that the media so generously lavished on him, he’d have been sent back to his cockroach-infested hog hole long before election night of 2016.

The braying orange jackass can attempt to create mayhem and chaos, and he’s been trying hard, but he’d have failed hugely were it not for the massive assist from the media. And I’m not only talking about Fox, here. I’m talking about CNN, MSNBC, the networks, and newspaper outlets. They are guilty. They all have blood on their hands. The vast majority of anchors, reporters, and analysts understandably hate his guts and are visibly repulsed by him, but they keep him in the spotlight because of dollars over integrity. Keeping him relevant brings ratings. Only a pitiful few have struck the correct balance of covering a fiery train wreck without hyping the arsonist. Lawrence O’Donnell is one of the few. I’ll give two examples.

Election nights across the media landscape have devolved into being all about the one-term, twice-impeached former occupant. It’s all about keeping a tally on how many wins he has and how tight his hold on the GQP. Back in May when Pennsylvania held its Republican primary and the trump-backed candidate won, CNN and MSNBC went into a full-blown frenzy talking about his power over the party. One contributor even said that “trump won the election tonight.” It was a three-way race and his candidate barely managed to squeak through, but that was not the focus of the excitable talking heads on cable that night. I was rolling my eyes back so far that I was in danger of passing out.

Then Lawrence O’Donnell came on and brought the sanity. He took his fellow talking heads to task and calmly pointed out that no way was it a win for the Grifter-in-Chief. In fact, he pointed out, the narcissist was resoundingly rejected as twice as many people voted against him than for him. Boom!

Yes, 45 finally has something that President Obama never will, LMAO.”

Fast forward to the truly earth-shattering news earlier this week that the FBI paid a visit to the country club in Palm Beach, Florida. “The DOJ just handed the WH to donald trump.” “His supporters are up in arms.” “We’re looking at a civil war in this country.” “The former president’s supporters will be out in full force in the coming days.” I heard all of that on CNN. What? Millions of people will be out protesting against the DOJ and the FBI, blocking traffic, and shutting down businesses around the country?

It fell to Lawrence O’Donnell to cut through the hype and hysteria one more time and he did it brilliantly:

"There is no outrage. There is no uprising. Donald Trump who measures his self-worth by the size of his crowds has to be crushed by the zero turnout. Anywhere. Nowhere is there a crowd in America in support of Donald Trump.”

MSNBC’S Lawrence O’Donnell explains why there was no uprising of the 5.6 million Florida Trump voters or the nation’s 74 million voters after Donald Trump’s home was searched by the FBI and why the media continues to distort the reaction of a tiny number of Trump’s followers.

Despite the clown’s best efforts, and the hyperbolic, performative outrage of the right-wing rage machine, no crowds turned up to take over the streets of the US of A. Oh, as Lawrence pointed out, there were at most a few dozen people waving flags and making fools of themselves in front of the fake Taj Mahal on day one. On day two, I actually counted, and there were about 8 people aimlessly wandering around.

Let’s face it, the news media has been the wind beneath the wings of Stormy Daniel’s 90-second john. On his own, the loudmouth is a tiny-fingered, impotent vulgarian with a flaccid philosophy centered around himself and only himself. He would have long been consigned to history’s trash pile were it not for our craven media. That he managed to find himself sitting in the Oval Office — and in a position to steal this nation's top secrets —  is a damning indictment of the fourth estate.

Thank you, Mr. O’Donnell.

The Evans Family planned a birthday party at a  Kansas   City waterpark Saturday. However, when they arrived the pool managers refused to let them inside and told them the party was  canceled . According to  Fox 2 Now , the family believes they were not allowed in the park because of racial  discrimination .

Teens Noah and Isaiah Evans saved up $2,000 to host their birthday party with their friends at Summit Waves, according to KSHB 41 News. The waterpark directors told the teens, their family and guests upon arrival they were ‘uncomfortable’ with hosting the  gathering . Chris Evans, the teens’ father, took that as the directors being uncomfortable with a large group of  Black folks   and filed his  complaint   to the Lee’s Summit city officials.

A group of protestors gathered outside the gates of the park Monday in  opposition   to how this situation was handled.

More about the situation from Fox 2 Now:

Protestors said they didn’t know the Evans family personally, but they’d read social media posts indicating the family had a signed contract, permitting as many as 250 teenagers to attend.

However, a statement from the City of Lee’s Summit indicated the family had advertised the party on social media, leading around 500 people to show up for Saturday’s soiree, which is around twice the number they’d agreed to.

“That’s how I feel — that they were judged by the color of their skin, and that these are African-American teenagers and she may have felt uncomfortable, but if they paid and signed a contract, then, they should have been allowed to come in,” said Sarah Washington, a protestor.

The White House on Tuesday assured Black and brown communities that they will not be “left behind” in President Joe Biden’s soon-to-be legislative victory aimed to reduce inflation pain by lowering prices for health care and energy costs for millions of Americans.

During a White House press briefing, theGrio asked press secretary and presidential spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre about how the  Inflation Reduction Act  (IRA)—passed by Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Sunday and soon to be voted in the U.S. House on Friday—will reach Black and brown communities, who are in most need of economic relief.

Jean-Pierre told theGrio that Biden’s economic plan has “always been about making sure that it is economically fair” and asserted that the White House wants “to make sure that no communities feel like they’re being left behind.”

An old adage in the Black community says, “When America catches a cold, Black America gets pneumonia,” suggesting that when the general population experiences economic hardship or otherwise, as in the case of current U.S. inflation, Black people feel it much worse. According to national data, Black households make up a disproportionate share of  poverty  and  unemployment  rates, are less likely to have  health insurance  and pay more in  energy costs  compared to white people.

Food has the power to bring people together and get them talking. No one understands that better than the guys who make up  Ghetto Gastro , a Bronx-born culinary collective that is using food to create a movement. We sat down with co-founder Jon Gray about how he helped build a luxury lifestyle brand that is unapologetically Black.

Gray, a Bronx-native with a fashion and design background, developed the idea for Ghetto Gastro with friends and chefs Lester Walker and Pierre Serrao. The trio began combining their love of food, fashion and art to produce unique cultural experiences. The movement began organically. The group invited their network of influencers to house parties centered around healthy, high-quality food flavored with the ingredients of the ancestors. The food was thoughtfully showcased alongside music and art in a way that inspired conversations around topics like race and economic equality. But Gray says the idea was always to create something that allowed them to use food to share Black stories with larger audiences.

As the word spread, their footprint grew. And since 2012 Ghetto Gastro has partnered with well-known brands like Cartier and Nike and have appeared at pop up events at Art Basel and New York Fashion Week. But even as their popularity increased, the guys at Ghetto Gastro have maintained that they are not about code-switching. So everything about their brand, including their name, showcases the fact that they are representing the BX to the fullest. “People often have difficulty looking at things with Black roots as luxurious. So for us, that was super important,” he said. “We’re reclaiming [Ghetto] and defining it how we want to. I get a kick out of working with Cartier or The Met Museum and seeing a poster that says Ghetto Gastro.”

In the ten years since their launch, Ghetto Gastro has shown no signs of slowing down. In 2021, they rolled out a brand of pantry items, including pancake and waffle mixes made with ingredients from across the African diaspora like organic cassava flour. And they’ve recently partnered with kitchenware brand Crux to create CRUXGG small appliance items for  Target   and cookware for  Williams Sonoma . “We come from NYC, the home of the small kitchen countertop. So we thought about being a part of someone’s home and making things that can add value and look dope,” he said. And in keeping with their mission to give back to their community, five percent of their CRUXGG proceeds go to nonprofits that work to fight food insecurity.

In early July, a Twitter account called  The Zimbabwean  posted a thread highlighting the popularity of country music across Africa. The posts included videos – mostly phone footage from bars and weddings – that persuasively made the case for the claim. A man in a cowboy hat moonwalking to Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler; a group of women blissfully line-dancing to Kenyan country star Sir Elvis covering Wagon Wheel, a 2013 hit for Darius Rucker.

These snapshots of country music woven into the fabric of everyday African life sparked a nearly unanimous response: surprise and delight. The thread quickly gathered thousands of retweets and a stack of amazed replies. But many across the diaspora may have felt it stirred something deeper. I’ve spent years tracing my love of country music across generations and found it to be an underappreciated thread in global Black music and in Black British heritage.

If you’ve spent time in rural sub Saharan Africa one thing that might shock you is the popularity of American country music to the point where you can’t go to a bar, party, or wedding without avoiding it 🧵 pic.twitter.com/gpYC7fdq78