For the second time in my life, I get to fill out the decennial Census. The first time, I did it because I wanted to participate. But this time I’m doing it for the same selfish reasons everybody should stand up to be counted. I want what’s coming to me. I want as many elected officials as possible to represent my area and shovel pork into my neighborhood. I want electoral votes so there’s at least a chance presidential politics cares about my issues instead of annoying middle-America with their penchant for dutifully filling out paper work.

The importance of the Census cannot be overstated. Watch, I’ll try: the 2010 Census is the most important civic activity you will do this decade.

It’s vastly more important to fill out your Census form than to vote in an election — at least if you fill it out, others can vote for you. But if you don’t submit your information, you might as well not politically exist. I know people, mainly recent immigrants (more on them later) who vote regularly but don’t fill out the Census. That’s like playing craps and putting money on the pass line but not taking any odds. It’s dumb to not fill out the Census. Come on people, it’s only ten questions.

But make no mistake, each of those ten questions is hyper-charged, politically speaking. If you look closely, you can see the partisan fighting and tortured logic between every line. Democrats almost always have an interest in encouraging people to fill out the Census, Republicans do not.

And so we play our game. Let’s give the Census a close read (“close read” is the liberal arts equivalent to “actual research and knowledge”) of the 2010 Census. Tell your government what it wants to know, but know why it is asking you in the first place. continue »

Image by SuperFantastic via Flickr

This post is dedicated to a brother I passed on the street this morning. A green-clad man said: “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day” to which the brother responded “Yeah, you know, just trying to not get beat up.”

It’s kind of like that for black people on St. Patrick’s Day.

364 days of the year, I’ve got no problem with the Irish. But I don’t mess around and leave my house on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m too old, I’m too black, and no longer willing to risk bar brawls on a holiday. Don’t worry about me, I’ve still got Cinqo de Mayo and Purim and a host of other holidays that I can use to hide my alcoholism.

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s good time. If you love St. Patrick’s Day, keep right on loving it. No worries. Just don’t expect many of your black friends to join in the fun. As a “friend” told me on SPD-1996: “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Except you, Elie, ’cause you’re black.”

Don’t I know it. continue »

After the towers fell, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only New Yorker who assumed that we’d build them back up, and quickly. My favorite initial plan was to have four smaller towers flanked by one larger tower in an F-U gesture to future cowards.

That was a long time ago. So long ago that now I fear we will soon live in a world where T.V. shows and movies construct alternate realities as if 9/11 never happened. [SPOILER ALERT: We already live in such a world.]

And that would be fine if we had truly moved on from the tragedy. You grieve, you remember, you move on, it’s a natural part of life. But we haven’t moved on. Despite all of our sacrifices in blood, treasure, and liberty, all we are left with is our grief. Osama Bin Laden still limps around free. The TSA could demand rectal probing to get on an airplane, and we would submit “just in case.” And oh yeah, we’re apparently out of money — which is kind of exactly what the terrorists were trying to accomplish.

And there’s still this big, gaping hole in the middle of the city. Can we get anybody interested in doing something about that? continue »

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Over a year into the first presidency by a black man in the history of the United States, we’ve learned one thing about race in America: Bill Maher is the only white man in the country that can make a quality racial joke without sounding racist. I don’t know how we got here, maybe white people who listen to Rush Limbaugh honestly don’t know the difference between edgy commentary and racism Limbaugh spews on a daily basis? Maybe conservative media outlets have convinced white people that talking about race respectfully means the terrorists win? Who knows?

But here we are, living at a time when white people open their mouth to say something “clever” about race, they end up sounding like John Mayer instead of an intelligent human being.

Maher’s show is back after hiatus. And once again, he’s seemingly the only one that can find the humor in having a black President (the same way he saw the humor in having a retarded President) without actually offending people with a basic sense of humor. In fact, he’s the only white person that can find the humor of having black people and white people live together (as they do here and no where else on Earth) without offending people.  On last Friday’s show, one of Maher’s “new rules” was: “No black people in the Winter Olympics.” It was a funny bit. He’s not “pushing the envelope” with racial humor, he’s just not afraid of it.

Maher does such a great job, initially I thought more white people should come out of their shell and give it whirl. [Memo to SNL writers: aside from "The Rock Obama," your Obama sketches are stilted, flat, and make me worried that Fred Armisen is going to suffer a crippling identity crisis. Please hire the staff writers from the Chapelle show and get your act together.]

But after watching general white people (talking heads, journalists, celebrities, average people on the street) stumble through racial humor for a year, I now live in fear that some untalented white comedian (think: Dane Cook) will try to get on the trail Maher blazed and inadvertently start a full scale race war.
continue »

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We need a national discussion about racists. We need a very special episode of Oprah Winfrey about racists and how they should be dealt with in polite conversation. We need Obama to call a beer summit with Orly Taitz, Rush Limbaugh, and Tom Tancredo: he should get them together and let them determine what they want to be called.

We need all this because I am sick and tired of white people doing or saying racist things, and then acting like somebody else went too far when they get called “racist.” Last week, Tom Tancredo argued that the right to vote should be dependent upon literacy tests, a racist law people fought and died trying to change within the living memory of many Americans. He then went on to explain that if the racist law had been in place today, then we wouldn’t have an “illegitimate” president right now. He’s probably right, and I sincerely hope that one day Tancredo builds his time machine and is able to go back to the antebellum America bereft of indoor plumbing and modern medicine. Enjoy your truncated life expectancy Tommy, don’t let the flux capacitor hit you on the way out.

In any event, Rachel Maddow called him a racist, she called his supporters racist, and she took crap for it for a week. Unbelievable. When did calling somebody a racist become worse than actually being a freaking racist?

Maybe calling someone “racist” is the new N-word: only racists can call other racists, racist? If this is the case could somebody please forward me the appropriate country music song to illustrate the point?

Nobody asked me for my opinion on this rule change, but I can see why it is in the best interests of racists to make calling somebody a racist a social taboo. Clever plan. And with only liberals standing in your way, it just might work. continue »