The Year that Was

Glee came in a 1992 film of Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson who played streetball hustlers in White Men Can’t Jump. Harrelson’s character gave Snipes a run for his money. In professional sports at the time, muscular blacks supplanted the fair-skinned players in the backcourt and the gridiron so it was fitting that the reality was celebrated.

Dumb and Dumber To led the box office the third weekend November, about the time OZ Tony Abbott stuck his foot in his mouth. He threatened to «front shirt» Putin at APEC in Beijing who in turn diplomatically avoided the Down Under PM. A movie review of Jim Carey and Jeff Daniel›s new dumber-dom said: «It makes a strange sort of sense that a movie about impervious stupidity would be impervious to criticism.» Yo, Mr. Abbott!

The PM redeemed himself in Brisbane during the G20 forum of the richest nations in the world while lightweight David Cameron of UK strutted like the sun still does not set on the British Empire but that was understandable from one whose forebears decongested the Isles of penal residents. Putin received the brunt of the leaders› distance due to Ukraine so he was smart enough to skip town as soon as the formal agenda was over.

It›s a white man colleague in Houston, an 80-year-old former Gulf Oil VP Ben Ball who flings his body into the «barbwires of history» to make sure the tar sands of Alberta do not make it to the Gulf of Mexico through the Keystone XL pipeline! John Boehner of the U.S. House of Representatives already rattled the chains on the White House, and the Senate almost got enough votes to pass the pipeline authorization bill before the end of the year. Sadly, I am too lucid enough to know that corporate designs will prevail!

The black guys are not getting any breaks. Since Obama›s ascendancy over Hillary in a Democratic primary, and his election to the WH vs Sen. John McCain of Arizona, I thought my faith in «We the People» was finally vindicated. That BHO would do a repeat performance vs the Romney-Ryan GOP tandem was short of miraculous. But I did not die smiling and went to heaven! I did see BHO exercise his office›s executive prerogative to forgive two turkeys from the oven! 

The advance in human evolution dances one step forward and two steps backward. Anti-black sentiment seethed this year. This skin-deep sentiment of the lightness of being prevailed on white men folks who voted in droves this past mid-term election to register objections to the «socialist» black guy at the White House. In turn, in his end of the year press session, BHO only entertained questions from females, a first, and while I dreamed Hillary and Elizabeth might make an all female presidential ticket, Hillary is now touted for the Supreme Court.

An Irish man once asked if it was fair for his high school graduate son to compete for social benefits against an Asian immigrant with a Ph.D. I didn›t give a hoot about the academic credentials but I did cringe at his assumption that the U.S. favored Caucasians. Orientals where I worked in Dallas ‹70s waited for the droppings after the leavings of the Afros and the Latinos who followed the Anglos. Recently, NYC white cop strangled an Afro, while a black cop killer picked up a Latino and an Oriental! Par for the course! Now, 25 NYC black cops claim insecurity in the company of white cops!

Fear of Afros manifested itself in the bitter aftertaste of the Trayvon Martin shooting, the affirmative action legacy of AG Eric Holder, the Bill Cosby «rape» history, the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by a uniformed officer in a playground while he played with a toy gun, and the hulk of Michael Brown›s bulk on Darren Wilson›s personal safety led the grand jury not to indict him in his shooting of the 18-year-old unarmed teenager who may or may not have had his hands up, while the prosecution now claims a witness lied!

Race intruded this year, even with the Chimu (Eloy) vs indigene (Heinz) characterization (go figure) in the recently concluded CNMI election.

Slavic Kievan Rus› unraveled, pitting Moscow against Ukraine, though more political than racial. War in Kashmir between India and Pakistan was hot again. Tibet Buddhists chant peace but Uighurs want sovereignty over petroleum under their desert in Xinjiang, an irritant on Beijing›s hegemony over its 56 nationalities, particularly on one that wields the scimitar›s edge to advance its cause!

In spite of the race war for the unbearable skin lightness of being, it›s the religious drums that beat the loudest. The U.S. demonizes Islamic jihadists but allows Eretz Israel to declare sole Hebraic claim to Palestine. Inter-religious relations started well when the Pope and the Grand Mufti prayed together at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. 

What bridges the Year-that-Was to the Year-to-Come transpires not on the oil politics of IS in the desert but whether the steeple at Main and Elm encourages a holy conflagration on the burnt pages of the Koran. 

Inshallah!