BOBBY FISCHER, TROUBLED GENIUS OF CHESS
Heinz Ducklau/Associated Press
Boris Spassky and Mr. Fischer, right, met at the XIX World Chess Olympiad in Siegen, in Germany, in 1970. More Photos >
Published: January 19, 2008
Bobby Fischer, the Chicago-born, Brooklyn-bred genius who became one of the greatest chess players the world has ever seen, died Thursday in Reykjavik,
Iceland. He was 64, and had for decades lived in obscurity, ultimately settling in Reykjavik after renouncing his American citizenship.
Related
Back Story With Dylan McClain and Shelby Lyman
Milos Vukadinovic/Associated Press
Bobby Fischer during a game in Sveti Stefan, Yugoslavia, in 1992. More Photos »
His death was confirmed Friday by Gardar Sverrisson, a close friend of Mr. Fischer’s. The cause was kidney failure, Mr. Sverrisson told wire services. Mr. Fischer was said to have been ill at home for some time before being admitted to the hospital on Wednesday.
Mr. Fischer was the most powerful American player in history, and the most enigmatic. After scaling the heights of fame, he all but dropped out of chess, losing money and friends and living under self-imposed exile in Budapest, Japan, possibly in the Philippines and Switzerland, and finally in Iceland, moving there in 2005 and becoming a citizen.
When he emerged now and then, it was sometimes on the radio, ranting in increasingly belligerent terms against the United States and Jews. His rationality was questioned.
In 1992, he came out of a long seclusion for a $5 million rematch against his old nemesis, the Russian-born grandmaster Boris Spassky. The match, in Yugoslavia, commemorated the 20th anniversary of the two men’s monumental meeting in Reykjavik and Mr. Fischer’s most glorious triumph.
Mr. Fischer won the rematch handily, but it was a sad reprise of their face-off in the summer of 1972.
In that earlier encounter, Mr. Fischer wrested the world championship from the elegant Mr. Spassky to become the first and, as yet, only American to win the title, one that Soviet-born players had held for more than four decades. It was the cold war fought with chess pieces in an out-of-the-way place.
Mr. Fischer won with such brilliance and dramatic flair that he became an unassailable representative of greatness in the world of competitive games, much as Babe Ruth had been and Michael Jordan would become.
“It was Bobby Fischer who had, single-handedly, made the world recognize that chess on its highest level was as competitive as football, as thrilling as a duel to the death, as aesthetically satisfying as a fine work of art, as intellectually demanding as any form of human activity,” Harold C. Schonberg, who reported on the Reykjavik match for The New York Times, wrote in his 1973 book “Grandmasters of Chess.”
The rematch 20 years later drew no such plaudits. By participating, Mr. Fischer defied an American ban on conducting business in Yugoslavia as it waged war on Bosnia. After dispatching Mr. Spassky, Mr. Fischer dropped out of sight again, partly to avoid arrest on American charges stemming from his appearance. He stayed in touch with a dwindling number of friends in the United States by phone, compelling them to keep his secrets or risk his rejection.
In 2004, he was seized by the Japanese authorities when he tried to board a plane to Manila and accused of trying to leave the country on an invalid passport. He was detained in prison for nine months while the various governments and his supporters in the chess world tried to resolve the issue.
In 1999, in a series of telephone interviews with a radio station in the Philippines, he rambled angrily and profanely about an international Jewish conspiracy, which he said was bent on destroying him personally and the world generally.
On Sept. 11, 2001, he told a radio talk-show host in Baguio, the Philippines, that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were “wonderful news.” He wished for a time, he said, “where the country will be taken over by the military, they’ll close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews and execute hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders.”
Even in his years of triumph, Mr. Fischer was volatile and difficult. During the 1972 world championship match against Mr. Spassky, Mr. Fischer’s petulance, even loutishness, was the stuff of front page headlines all over the globe. Incensed by the conditions under which the match was to be played — he was particularly offended by the whir of television cameras in the hall — he lost the first game, then forfeited the second and insisted that the remaining games be played in an isolated room.
There, he roared back from what, in chess, is a sizable deficit, trouncing Mr. Spassky, 12 ½ to 8 ½. (In championship chess, a victory is worth one point for each player, a draw a half-point.) In all, Mr. Fischer won 7 games, lost 3 (including the forfeit) and drew 11.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/crosswords/chess/19fischer.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin
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SUZANNE PLESHETTE, ACTRESS
Published: January 21, 2008
Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced actress who redefined the television sitcom wife in the 1970s by playing the smart, sardonic Emily Hartley on “The
Bob Newhart Show,” died on Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 70.
Associated Press
Suzanne Pleshette in 1974.
Ms. Pleshette died of respiratory failure, her lawyer, Robert Finkelstein, told The Associated Press. Ms. Pleshette had undergone chemotherapy in 2006 for lung cancer.
A native New Yorker, Ms. Pleshette already had a full career on stage and screen in 1971 when producers saw her on the “Tonight” show with Johnny Carson and noticed a chemistry between her and another guest, Bob Newhart. She was soon cast as the wife of Mr. Newhart’s character, a mild-mannered Chicago psychologist, and the series ran for six seasons, from 1972 to 1978, as part of CBS’s ratings-winning Saturday-night lineup.
Emily Hartley’s teaching job did not receive much attention, but the character was confident, sexy and anything but submissive. Mr. Newhart has said that one of his favorite episodes is the one in which his character learns that Ms. Pleshette’s has a considerably higher I.Q. than his.
Moviegoers knew Ms. Pleshette from a string of Hollywood features, and her low-key performances often transcended thankless roles in bad movies. She made her film debut in a 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy, “The Geisha Boy,” and came to the attention of teenage audiences in her second movie, “Rome Adventure” (1962), a good-girl, bad-girl romance opposite Troy Donahue, the beautiful blond heartthrob of the moment. (Ms. Pleshette played the virgin.) After making another film together in 1964, she and Mr. Donahue married, but lasted only eight months.
Alfred Hitchcock fans knew Ms. Pleshette best as the pretty small-town teacher who not only loses the guy (Rod Taylor) to the blonde (Tippi Hedren), but is also pecked to death by an angry flock in “The Birds” (1963). Because she was a Method actress, “Hitch didn’t know what to do with me,” Ms. Pleshette said in a 1999 Film Quarterly interview with other Hitchcock heroines. “He regretted the day that he hired me.” Many disagreed with that conclusion.
Suzanne Pleshette was born Jan. 31, 1937, in Brooklyn Heights, to Eugene Pleshette, who managed the Paramount and Brooklyn Paramount theaters, and Gloria Kaplan Pleshette, a former dancer.
An only child, Ms. Pleshette attended the New York High School of Performing Arts, then Syracuse University and transferred to Finch College, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Her professional career began in 1957 with her television debut, a single episode in a short-lived adventure series, “Harbourmaster,” and her Broadway debut in “Compulsion,” a drama about the Leopold and Loeb murder case. In 1959 she appeared in “Golden Fleecing,” a comedy set in Venice, opposite Tom Poston, whom she would marry more than four decades later.
Her real Broadway triumph came in February 1961 when she replaced Anne Bancroft (who had just won a Tony Award) as Annie Sullivan in “The Miracle Worker,” opposite 14-year-old Patty Duke. Her reviews were admiring.
Ms. Pleshette returned to Broadway once more, some two decades later. “Special Occasions” (1982), a play about a divorced couple, was so ravaged by theater critics that it closed after a series of previews and one regular performance. Frank Rich, writing in The New York Times, excoriated the play, but praised Ms. Pleshette’s performance: “The throaty voice, wide-open smiles and quick intelligence are as alluring as ever,” he wrote.
Ms. Pleshette had an active film career in the 1960s and the first half of the ’70s. She starred in several Disney movies, including “The Shaggy D.A.” (1976). Early on she dealt with heavier subjects, playing a flight attendant who survives an airline crash in “Fate Is the Hunter” (1964), a sexually compulsive heiress in “A Rage to Live” (1965) and a book editor trying to save a successful young author from himself in “Youngblood Hawke” (1964). Eventually, though, she seemed to settle into comedies, like “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” (1969), about a busload of unhappy American tourists.
But it was in television that she received the greatest recognition. She was nominated for an Emmy Award four times, first in 1962 for a guest performance in “Dr. Kildare,” twice for “The Bob Newhart Show” (1977 and 1978) and in 1991 for playing the title role in the television movie “Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean.”
She was never in a hit series like “The Bob Newhart Show” again (although there were efforts), but she continued to appear in television movies and as a guest in popular series into the 21st century. Her last role was the estranged mother of Megan Mullally’s character in several episodes of NBC’s “Will & Grace” between 2002 and 2004.
After her divorce from Mr. Donahue, Ms. Pleshette married twice. In 1968 she wed Tom Gallagher, a businessman, a marriage that lasted until his death in 2000. In 2001 she wed Mr. Poston, her long-ago Broadway co-star, who had also been a guest star on “The Bob Newhart Show” and a regular in Mr. Newhart’s second sitcom, “Newhart,” in the 1980s. He died last year.
Arguably Ms. Pleshette’s most memorable television moment was not in “The Bob Newhart Show,” but in the final episode of “Newhart” in 1990. Mr. Newhart’s character, Dick Loudon, was hit in the head by a golf ball and woke up to find himself in Dr. Robert Hartley’s bed, with his beautiful wife, Emily, at his side. The whole second sitcom had been a nightmare.
The episode was considered one of the most successful series finales ever, partly because it managed to remain a secret until it was broadcast. As time passed, some found the scene a useful metaphor for hopes that a difficult situation might turn out to be just a bad dream. In 1999 a headline in the humor publication The Onion read, “Universe Ends as God Wakes Up Next to Suzanne Pleshette.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/arts/21pleshette.html?ref=obituaries
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JAMES SORENSON, MEDICAL DEVICE PIONEER
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 22, 2008
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — James L. Sorenson, who overcame a learning disability and built a fortune in innovative medical devices and real estate, died here on Sunday. He was 86.
Tom Smart/Deseret Morning News, via Associated Press
James L. Sorenson at a ceremony in December 2007.
The cause was cancer, according to a statement from the Sorenson Companies.
Mr. Sorenson was Utah’s wealthiest man, with a fortune estimated in the Forbes magazine 2007 rankings at $4.5 billion. He was known both for his wealth, and for choosing not to flaunt it.
Mr. Sorenson was considered a generous philanthropist, giving millions of dollars to medical facilities, religious organizations and other causes.
James LeVoy Sorenson was born in 1921 in Rexburg, Idaho, to Joseph LeVoy and Emma Blaser Sorenson. His company biography describes his difficulties growing up in the depths of the Depression in central California.
Mr. Sorenson had dyslexia, a brain impairment that can make words and letters look jumbled, rendering reading and writing difficult and often leading to a reversing of words and letters.
He overcame the challenge, going on to become an astute problem solver throughout his career.
Mr. Sorenson started in pharmaceutical sales in the 1950s. While calling on doctors, he noticed problems and came up with solutions including a disposable surgical mask to replace cloth masks, which were less sanitary and had to be laundered.
Other inventions included the first real-time computerized heart-monitoring systems and an automated intravenous-drug pump.
Early in his career, Mr. Sorenson bought goat pasture in the hills above Salt Lake City for $25 an acre. That land is now some of the region’s most plush neighborhoods, overlooking the Salt Lake Valley.
Later, he developed an interest in genetics and established Sorenson Genomics, a company that assisted with DNA identification after the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean in late December 2004.
Mr. Sorenson is survived by his wife, Beverley Taylor Sorenson; eight children — Carol Smith, Shauna Johnson, James Lee Sorenson, Ann Crocker, Joan Fenton, Joseph Sorenson, Gail Williamsen and Christine Harris; 47 grandchildren; and 28 great-grandchildren.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/business/22sorenson.html?ref=obituaries
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LOIS NETTLETON, STAR OF STAGE AND TV
Published: January 22, 2008
Lois Nettleton, an actress whose dramatic and comic dexterity in theater, film and television earned her wide public recognition and deep professional respect for more than a half century, died on Friday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 80.
Carol Rosegg
Lois Nettleton in 2004.
The cause was complications of lung cancer, her friend Dale Olson said.
Ms. Nettleton, who had a soft, almost breathy speaking voice, made an indelible impression in 1973 when she took over the role of Blanche DuBois in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire.” Critics applauded the courage her character displayed in the face of corruption and broken, magnolia-scented dreams. In a review for The Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Rex Reed called her performance, starkly different from previous ones, “shatteringly brilliant.”
Her extensive work in television included the role of Norma in “The Midnight Sun,” a 1961 episode of “The Twilight Zone” about an ever-hotter Earth, which is considered a classic by students of the series. Her many other television roles included appearances on early dramatic shows like “Studio One” and “Armstrong Circle Theater” and more recent ones on popular shows like “Seinfeld” and “Cagney & Lacey.” She also appeared for three years on the daytime drama “General Hospital.”
Her movies began with a bit part on Elia Kazan’s “Face in the Crowd,” and she was one of the last contract players at MGM. In an interview with Back Stage in 2004, Ms. Nettleton said she was first cast as “the plain nice girl or the unhappy wife next door.” Her vehicles later became quite varied, ranging from the film adaptation of Williams’s “Period of Adjustment” to “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
Ms. Nettleton told Back Stage that “the joy in acting is playing as many different characters as possible.” She said she turned down many roles that did not interest her and favored “mature roles.”
Lois Nettleton was born in August 1927, in Oak Park, Ill. Her family was poor and her parents divorced when she was young. In an interview with After Dark in 1972, she said she used fantasy to escape her circumstances, developing an ambition to act in the process. She put on little shows in her backyard.
In 1948, she was Miss Chicago and a semifinalist in the Miss America pageant.
After graduating from high school, Ms. Nettleton studied at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, then moved to New York to join the Actors Studio, where she learned the Method approach to acting.
Ms. Nettleton made her Broadway debut in 1949 in “The Biggest Thief in Town,” with Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times calling her work “pleasantly fresh and disarming.”
In 1955, Ms. Nettleton was understudy to Barbara Bel Geddes in Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and occasionally got to play the role of Maggie. In 1959, she won a Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting performance by a nonfeatured actress for her portrayal of Shelagh O’Connor in “God and Kate Murphy.”
In 1976, Ms. Nettleton was nominated for a Tony Award for a Broadway revival of Sidney Howard’s “They Knew What They Wanted.”
She told Back Stage that she would have liked to have spent more time in New York concentrating on theater, but that she had to take care of her ailing mother in Los Angeles. There, she became best known for her television work, including being a regular on “In the Heat of the Night” and appearing in popular series like “Murder, She Wrote,” and “The Golden Girls.” She was nominated for several Emmies.
Ms. Nettleton was divorced from Jean Shepherd, the radio host and author; they met when she called his show. She left no immediate survivors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/arts/22nettleton.html?ref=obituaries
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LEONARD SPEARMAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF TSU
Leonard Spearman was named as U.S. ambassador to Rwanda and Lesotho.
Chronicle file
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Jan. 22, 2008, 12:39AM
The former president also served as a U.S. ambassador to African nations
By LYNWOOD ABRAM
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Leonard Spearman, a former president of Texas Southern University who oversaw construction of new buildings and other improvements at the school, died Jan. 16 from the effects of a stroke. He was 78.”He was one of the most dynamic of TSU presidents and was supported by the entire university,” said Howard Harris, professor of music and director of jazz studies at TSU.Spearman was a jazz fan who played trumpet, Harris said.”One of the contributions he initiated was the scholarship program for jazz students, and he was a supporter of classical music and all the music programs,” Harris said.He added that Spearman was known for being “always cheerful and available.”
“He tried to listen to the needs of the university and in making it a better place,” Harris said.
A native of Tallahassee, Fla., Spearman earned an undergraduate degree in biological sciences at what is now Florida A&M University. He also received a master’s degree and a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan.
Before coming to TSU, Spearman was a teacher of psychology at Florida A&M and at Southern University at Baton Rouge, where he also was dean of the junior division.
He was appointed president of TSU in 1980, succeeding Granville Sawyer, and served in that office until he resigned in 1986.
Spearman also held several federal appointments. In 1970 he joined what evolved into the U.S. Department of Education, eventually being named on separate occasions as U.S. ambassador to Rwanda and Lesotho.
After serving in Lesotho for two years, Spearman returned to TSU as a distinguished professor, teaching educational administration. He retired in 1998.
The TSU board of regents named the Leonard Spearman Technology Building in his honor in 2003.
Survivors include his wife, Valeria Benbow Spearman of Katy; a daughter, Lynn Spearman Dickerson of Baton Rouge, La.; two sons, Leonard H.O. Spearman Jr. of Katy and Charles M. Spearman of Alexandria, Va.; a brother, Rawn W. Spearman of Virginia Beach, Va.; two sisters, Olivia Spearman of Washington, D.C., and Agenoria Spearman Paschal of Miami.
A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the Roderick R. Paige Education Building at TSU, 3100 Cleburne.
lynwood.abram@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/deaths/5472674.html
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MAILA NURMI, ACTRESS WHO PIONEERED AS TV’S VAMPIRA
Jan. 15, 2008, 6:43AM
Associated Press
ACTRESS PIONEERED SEXY ‘GOTHIC’ LOOK
LOS ANGELES — Maila Nurmi, whose “Vampira” TV persona pioneered the spooky-yet-sexy Goth aesthetic, has died, coroner’s officials said. She was 85.Nurmi died Thursday afternoon at her Hollywood home, Los Angeles County coroner’s Lt. Fred Corral said. The cause of death has not been determined, Corral said.Nurmi created her Vampira character — reminiscent of Charles Addams’ spooky New Yorker cartoons — to host horror movie broadcasts on KABC TV in Los Angeles in 1954.With darkly mascaraed eyes and blood-red lipstick, Nurmi appeared each week in her revealing black dress and slinky fishnets to introduce such films as “Revenge of the Zombies” and “Devil Bat’s Daughter.”
“The Vampira Show” was canceled after about a year, but Nurmi remained a cult figure among B-movie buffs and is thought to have inspired the vampish Morticia Addams on “The Addams Family,” which premiered about 10 years later.
Maila Nurmi in Plan 9 from Outer Space
But Nurmi’s cultural resonance did not translate into long-term wealth. In 1989, she lost a $10 million lawsuit that contended Cassandra Peterson’s late-night horror hostess Elvira pirated her character.
“There is no Elvira. There’s only a pirated Vampira,” she was quoted as saying in an Associated Press story at the time. “Cassandra Peterson slavishly copied my product and made a fortune. America has been duped.”
Among Nurmi’s scattered film appearances following her TV career was a cameo in Ed Wood’s 1959 cult classic, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” Nurmi was played by Lisa Marie in “Ed Wood,” Tim Burton’s 1994 tribute to the B-movie director.
Nurmi was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjaniemi in Finland on Dec. 11, 1922 and emigrated with her family to Ohio, said Heather Saenz, a friend.
In her late teens she went to New York, where she fell in with a clique of actors and artists and moved with them to Hollywood to seek a film career, Saenz said. She worked as a chorus girl and model before appearing as Vampira, Saenz said.
Nurmi supported herself late in her life by selling handmade jewelry, Saenz said.
Saenz and her husband, Bryan Moore, met Nurmi in 2005 when they recruited her to serve as grand marshal in a procession of hearses sponsored by Los Angeles’ Petersen Automotive Museum.
Moore said he plans to transport Nurmi’s casket in a vintage 1951 hearse that appeared in a scene of “Ed Wood.”
Moore said he plans to transport Nurmi’s casket in the same hearse she rode in at the parade — a vintage 1951 vehicle that appeared in a scene of “Ed Wood.”
“So that’s going to be Vampira’s last ride,” he said.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Nurmi has no known surviving family, Moore said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/deaths/5455065.html
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ALLAN MELVIN, ‘SAM THE BUTCHER’ OF THE “BRADY BUNCH”
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Allan Melvin, a character actor best known for playing Sam the Butcher on “The Brady Bunch,” has died of cancer. He was 84.
Melvin died of cancer Thursday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, said Amalia Melvin, his wife of 64 years.
The jowly, jovial Melvin spent decades playing a series of sidekicks, second bananas and lovable lugs, including Archie Bunker’s friend Barney Hefner on “All in the Family,” and Sgt. Bilko’s right-hand man Cpl. Henshaw on the “Phil Silvers Show.” His widow said he was most proud of his role in the “Phil Silvers Show”.
Allan Melvin, promotional photoBut his place in pop culture will be fixed as butcher and bowler Sam Franklin, the love interest of Brady family maid Alice Nelson, who was played by Ann B. Davis. Melvin played the role from 1970 to 1973.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1923, Melvin grew up in New York and attended Columbia University.
He was appearing on Broadway in “Stalag 17″ when he began his decades-long television career with “The Phil Silvers Show,” playing a role his wife said was always his favorite.
“He was proudest of that show,” Amalia Melvin said. “I think the camaraderie of all those guys made it such a pleasant way to work. They were so relaxed.”
He saw steady employment as a voice actor from the early 1960s to the early 1990s, most famously providing the voice of “Magilla Gorilla” for the Hanna Barbera cartoon of the same name.
His other credits include several guest appearances on “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Gomer Pyle: USMC,” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
In addition to Amalia, Melvin is survived by daughter Jennifer Hanson and grandson Jon Hanson Jr. A daughter, Mya, died in 1970.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Ann
None of them have lived my life, none of them have my life experiences/outlook. None of them would probably even have the same values that I have.
Therefore, how can a man (Obama) truly speak of what I believe when he considered a rapist (Genarlow Wilson) as the “injured” party?
How can an adulterer (Jackson) speak for me, a woman who believes that men (and women) who marry should uphold their marriage vows?
How can a man (Sharpton) who crys so much for black justice for some (Jena 6) be so hatefully silent on justice for others (the Newark 7)?
NONE of these “so-called” black leaders speak for me.
Which is why I created my own blog to SPEAK FOR MYSELF. (I spoke for myself before my blog, and I still do in public life.)
No ONE black person can speak for ALL black people.
And for this fool, Russert, to imply such disrespectful idiocy is wrong and misguided.
ALL black people do not live-walk-think alike.
I am sick to death of ***wipes who think that EVERY black person in this country cannot think and reason for themselves.
But, what the hell can you expect.
When the Imus filth hit the airwaves, EVERYONE AND HIS UNCLE went running to the so-called “black leaders”.
Nevermind that it was BLACK WOMEN who were attacked and degraded.
Yep, that’s us black women.
No one in the end speaks up much for us but US.
Which is why no one in the media sought out black women for THEIR opinions on Imus.
No black person truly speaks for me. That goes especially for so-called black leaders.
I speak for me.
Until so-called “black leaders’ speak for all black people not just some (black men) and not others (all the while disregarding black women), I know that I am the only one who can give voice to my life.
“As Professor Kim points out , the idea that individual people of color are representatives of their entire race is relatively common.”
That is what is so sick about this mindset from outsiders. And so common.
Non-whites are not ALLOWED to be individual. We are all drone/borg monoliths who cannot possibly fathom thinking outside of the box, let alone have any convictions, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. We all obviously came from the same bee-hive community of thought. And God help the black person who does not live up to the lie that they can live up to what outsiders think of all black people.
Would it hurt to ask an individual black person what THEY think of something, they and they alone—instead of thinking that that particular black person has some kind Spock/Vulcan mindmelt link via all other black people in America?
But, no. That would mean the non-black would have to get up off their ass and truly engage individual black people in dialogue/discussion on what affects that particular black person. Yeah. Better to be lazy and stereotypical towards all black people. So much easier to do instead of according each black person their own individuality.
Therefore……….
……..Obama, Jackson, Cosby, Sharpton…………
…. NONE OF THEM SPEAK FOR ME.
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So, black ladies and gentlemen…have you been asked to be a spokeperson for the entire black race?
If so, in what capacity?
At school? Work? While sitting in a restaurant minding your own business trying to eat your dinner?
Did it concern crime? The state of health care? Employment or lack of employment/high unemployment numbers? The justice system? The educational system? The political machine (the Electoral College) that has run this country into the ground? Childcare? The proliferation of racist/sexist stereotypes in white-controlled media?
How were you called upon to be the proverbial “SPOKESPERSON” FOR THE ENTIRE BLACK RACE?