KELVIN WADE: The iPinion Years

  Published 2013/04/30 The Boston Marathon bombing was a cowardly act of evil and we mourn the ones killed and injured in the blasts. I hope the national outpouring of grief comforts the victims and the wheels of justice turn swiftly and the party(ies) responsible are caught and punished. Beyond that, I'm not signing on to any disaster porn. Perhaps it's just the 24/7 cable/internet news world we live in or some fetish we picked up since 9/11, but terrorist acts or national disasters are almost treated like sporting events. I expect to hear an anchor say, "Our continuing coverage of this latest tragedy is being brought to you by the new Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos!" The bomb blast footage has been aired over and over. An aerial shot of a pool of blood has been seared into the national consciousness. The focus on victims narrows to the tragic 8-year-old boy killed in the blast. This is not to say the deaths of children aren't the most awful thing, but I'd ha...

  Published 2013/05/06  Some people just need to be smacked upside their damn heads. There's just no way around it. I have to start the smacks at the top with President Barack Obama for not getting us out of Afghanistan yesterday. No way should our military be parked in the middle of a wasteland where warring tribes from the 6th century with no interest in being a functioning country blow each other to hell and back. Barack should've smacked his generals upside the head long ago. Senator John McCain needs a smack upside his head. Obviously there's the belated smack for running a 2008 presidential campaign with a slogan of "Country First" while simultaneously giving his slogan the finger by selecting a brain dead bimbette who proved not only was she unqualified to be vice-president but unqualified to be much more than a letter turner on "Wheel of Fortune." But McCain needs a current smack because he never finds a war he's not willing to engage. Whethe...

  Published 2013/05/07 "Dancing at the Shame Prom: sharing the stories that kept us small" is a new 242 page book edited by Amy Ferris and Hollye Dexter published by Seal Press. In this weighty tome are essays by 27 talented women sharing their intimate stories of shame and releasing that pent up pain and reclaiming their lives. The stories are moving, raw and honest but rather than share with readers the stories from the book, I'd like to share one of my own. I couldn't read this book without thinking of my own shame. It's a story I've told before but that I can tell now without wearing that cumbersome cloak of shame. On Mother's Day, May 13, 1990, my older brother Ken got a ride home from jail from a friend after being arrested the night before for disorderly conduct. Ken, a correctional officer at California State Prison Solano in Vacaville, California, put on his uniform, stripping off his nametag and patch and drove to the Parkway Lounge in Fairfield,...

  Published 2013/05/12  It was August 19, 2006 when I met my brothers, Orvis and Tony, for lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Fairfield, California. Our younger brother Scott would be with us from Canada within days. The evening before, Tony had called to tell me that our mother had passed away at the age of 69. She'd been sick and in the hospital, and her death wasn't unexpected. There are few things rougher than having a parent incapacitated in the hospital hovering between life and death. Our ordeal was complicated by the fact that we had to make a decision about whether to remove her feeding tube and let her die or not. It was an agonizing decision because the thought of pulling the tube and waiting for her to slowly starve to death didn't seem dignified to me. We'd put off the decision for a few days. Her death took the decision out of our hands. As we ate, I didn't want to think of the unconscious woman we'd been visiting in the hospital the past few weeks. ...

  Published 2013/05/24  I love going to the movies. From buying the tickets on Fandango so I don't have to wait in line, to indulging in the artery-hardening, wallet-draining snacks, to waiting for the movie to start to the previews of coming attractions, all of the pre-show events are as exciting to me as the feature presentation. And doing it with someone by your side is even more fun. Still, I've had some annoying and downright weird things happen at the movies. I recently went to see the hysterically funny and talented Robert Downey Jr. in "Iron Man 3." My girlfriend Cathi and I tend to sit pretty close to the screen, mainly because most people don't want to sit that close. That way we don't have to put up with people walking past us or sitting in front of us, for the most part. But, with the theater half full, this big ball of a man resembling Bluto walked in four kids all under the age of 6 and sat down two rows in front of us. Shoot. Me. Now. Little kid...

  Published 2013/05/31  There's a lull in the gun debate right now following the defeat of every reasonable measure in Congress. A certain percentage of the gun owning public believes we must have guns to fight government tyranny. Really? Is that what it's about? For most of us, when we think of John Wilkes Booth creeping into that darkened theater box and firing his derringer into the back of President Lincoln's skull and leaping to the stage shouting, "Sic simper tyrannis (Thus always to tyrants!)," we're on the side of President Lincoln. When we think of frame 313 of the Zapruder film that shows President Kennedy's head exploding in Dealey Plaza from an assassin's bullet, spraying blood and brains onto Jackie O and sending a piece of his skull flying 25 feet from the limo, we're horrified and saddened for the nation. And every April 19th when we see photos of the devastated Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, destroyed by  4,800 pounds o...

  Published 2013/06/03  Controversy swirls around a new Cheerios ad featuring an interracial family. In the ad, a clearly biracial child asks her white mother if Cheerios are healthy. Her mother explains the way the cereal purportedly helps lower cholesterol makes it heart healthy. The little girl runs off with the Cheerios box. Cut to a scene of the girl's black father waking up on the couch with a pile of Cheerios covering his chest. General Mills had to disable comments on YouTube for the commercial because of the hateful, racist posts the ad garnered. Though the overwhelming majority of the comments were supportive, still there were those that referenced Nazis and disparaged African-Americans. No doubt a large part of this story is just about YouTube. If you go to the comments section of almost any YouTube video you'll see some of the most vile comments from hateful trolls. These are most likely jobless Xbox-playing guys, living with their mothers, whose only sexual outlet...

  Published 2013/06/13 "The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews. "'It's the largest database ever assembled in the world,' said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is 'to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.'" That's not from whistleblower Edward Snowden's NSA leak from last week. That's from an article in the USA Today on May 11, 2006.  Privacy is a 20th century concept. Civil liberties are a quaint not...

  Published 2013/06/14 Wildwood, a popular Jersey shore beach town, has voted to ban sagging pants. Tourists complained about seeing underwear and arses as young men strolled along the boardwalk so the city has banned pants sagging more than three inches below the waist showing skin or underwear. I was hoping violators would get a foot in their butt crack but instead, it's a $25 fine. It's never been a good look seeing grown men sauntering around with their underwear pulled up over their waists and their jeans sagging below their butts. It doesn't mark you as a rebel. It marks you as an idiot. There's a reason why 62-year-old 2010 American Idol contestant Larry Platt's video of "Pants on the Ground" garnered over 9 million views and his single reached #46 on the charts. People are sick of seeing people's underwear in public and Platt's anthem arrived right on time. How did this fashion-don't get started? Snopes.com debunks the rumor that the pr...

  Published 2013/06/16 I've written many columns about my dad and when I've written about him being one of the first Special Assistants for Minority Affairs in the U.S. Navy and his 30 years of service, I'm filled with pride. After retiring from the Navy he ran a liquor store, opened a gallery for black art and eventually continued serving his country working for the defense department until his death in 2003. But my respect for him didn't come easy. And he was no Ward Cleaver. He had to work hard to earn my respect back. I suppose it was lying awake in bed, telling my younger brother to sleep and not to listen to our parents fighting in the next room, that made me never want to have kids. My mother was wracked with pain over my dad's suspected infidelity, and for his part, the bastard just laughed it off. The man had the gall to take me to baseball games with him and his secretary, and I was in the difficult position of not being able to say anything. It wasn'...

  Published 2013/06/26 I really don't like saying "the n-word." No, I don't mean saying "nigger." I mean using the euphemism, "the n-word." That's something I would expect a child who is not allowed to use profanity to say. But in our culture in 2013, we can't even utter the word in a non-derogatory context. We can't talk or write about the word "nigger" unless we cloak it as "the n-word" or all hell will break loose. The genesis for this column came from an email conversation with a friend inspired by the recent Paula Deen racial slur dust up. My friend, an older white gentleman, asked me about the inability to even use the word "nigger" in a non-racist context. The Prejudice Police will come down quickly on violators who don't say "the n-word" or "a racial slur." Somehow the word itself is so inflammatory that its mere utterance offends. Beyond that, words that sound like the word ...

  Published 2013/06/27  The world lost a literary heavyweight this week and few probably noticed. Richard Matheson died at the age of 87. He was my favorite wordsmith, a visionary writer who took the reader on a journey that often ended up not only in a different direction than the reader thought, but a different dimension entirely. He was wickedly good. He was the primary inspiration for me to write my own short story collections, "Morsels: Twisted Tales of Life and Death Vol. 1 & 2." Even if you've never heard of him and never read anything he's written, I bet you've seen a movie or TV show based on one of his books, short stories or screenplays.  He wrote for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Night Gallery" TV shows and many other shows.. Matheson wrote sixteen episodes of the "Twilight Zone," including the classic, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," where a young William Shatner sees a creature on the wing of the plane i...

  Published 2013/07/07 We're split over NSA leaker Edward Snowden. According to a new Huffington Post/Yougov Poll, 38 percent of Americans think it was wrong to expose government secrets while 33 percent say it was the right thing. Another 29 percent are unsure. I find myself in that unsure category. It's not because recent reports cast Snowden as an anti-Obama activist. It's not that Snowden used to be pro-intelligence under President George W. Bush, and anti-spying, anti-government once Barack Obama became president. Nope. While I'm interested in knowing about the government's domestic spying efforts, I'm wary of this manner of revelation. I question whether it's a good idea to have self-appointed leakers of government activities. Is it worth it compared to the harm done? It's not cut and dried for me. There are some who consider Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Wikileaks heroes for exposing the truth. I've never bought into that simply because t...

  Published 2013/07/11  If you're a fan of "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, then you know Stewart is in the Middle East directing a movie and comedian John Oliver is sitting in for him.  The movie Stewart is shooting is called "Rosewater" and is adapted from the book, "Then They Came For Me," by Maziar Bahari. You have to read this book. I'm sure you've read book reviews where a reviewer says, "I couldn't put it down!" or describe a book as a "page-turner." I'll say this much. It's been a long time since I've been so engrossed in a book that I literally stayed up all night reading it like I did with "Then They Came For Me." It's that captivating. Bahari, an Iranian journalist who wrote for Newsweek, left his pregnant girlfriend in his adopted home of England to visit his native Tehran, Iran, to cover the 2009 presidential election. The election primarily pitted reform candida...

  Published 2013/07/16  As a black man, I'm not shocked that George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. While it's heartening that many people, of all races, get it and are saddened and outraged by the killing of an unarmed teen, it's frustrating that some don't or won't see any racial undertones in the case. The verdict has the effect of saying Trayvon Martin caused his own death. The defense was successful in turning the teen into the scary land shark that many believe young blacks to be. The fear is this verdict coupled with Florida's Stand Your Ground law will make it open season on young black males. "Fucking punks. These assholes always get away." That's what George Zimmerman told the police dispatcher minutes before killing Trayvon Martin. If that's not profiling, what is?  He'd never seen Martin before. He had zero evidence that Martin was doing anything illegal. Yet in his mind he'd already decided that Martin ...

  Published 2013/07/22 It's not surprising to me that in a Huffington Post/YouGov poll respondents felt the Rolling Stone cover of a sultry looking accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was "inappropriate" by a 65 percent to 15 percent margin. Fifty-one percent says the cover glorified Tsarnaev's actions. For me the problem is that it's Rolling Stone. I love Rolling Stone magazine. They feature great, insightful journalism with such hard-hitting writers as the late Michael Hastings, William Greider and Matt Taibbi. It's not just a music magazine. However, if you asked the public to name the number one music magazine, an overwhelming majority is going to say Rolling Stone. And putting the photo they used on this cover says, "Rock Star." And when you do that, you can't help but glorify the alleged killer. So while Time and Newsweek have featured Osama Bin Laden, Hitler and Timothy McVeigh on their covers, those are newsmagazines. And whi...

  Published 2013/07/25  Like most Bill Clinton supporters, I thought his impeachment for lying about oral sex was BS. Obviously the Republican Party overreached, as evidenced by Clinton's weathering the impeachment with strong approval ratings from the public. I was also angry at prosecutor Ken Starr because he could've used discretion and decided that this wasn't a matter of national import. (Plus, he included the cringe-worthy detail of Monica Lewinsky performing analingus on Clinton. Ewww!) But I was also upset with Clinton. It goes without saying that it's not a good idea to cheat on your wife. But aside from that, this wasn't the early 60s. How could he possibly think this wasn't going to get out? How could he believe he, as President, could have sex with a twenty-something young woman and think she's not going to blab about it to her friend? And once out, the media wasn't going to sit on the info like they did for JFK. Most people were upset with C...