Can diverse works of art be understood by people who have little to no understanding of its origins? This is an ongoing conversation I am having with my daughter. Similar to the conversations I have had with her about abstraction versus representational art .
We meaning all of us has grown up in a culture dominated by all things white. We know Marilyn Monroe to be the most beautiful on film and the all American suburban story . The great men in political history was George Washington and Abraham Lincoln . Great women in society might be Eleanor Rosevelt or Jackie Kennedy . For the non white people these images were always iconic . Art reproduced these ideals .
When African Art was discovered and placed it was the mysterious other, until artists like Picasso and Brancusi came along. Other’s took the elements and made it theirs too. Will we ever see the day when art from people of color will be considered a part of mainstream society? Instead of just being the other.
At the moment it’s a novelty. A trend. It’s been a novelty and trend before . It’s 2022 . Our world is a melting pot whether you like it or not . It should include all of the varying cultures just as much as the necessity to be bilingual in language. The world is constantly evolving. We must be able to communicate and navigate our ways through varying cultures. Let’s catch up. The sooner the better.
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About The Artist: Mikel Elam was born in Philadelphia. He attended the University of the Arts receiving his BFA in painting. He also attended the School of the Visual Arts in New York. He has been showing his paintings in numerous gallery spaces nationally and internationally for the last 25 years. Mikel is currently an artist in residence at the Fitler Club in Philadelphia.
Imagine how much trauma there must be in the world . All of the acts of disrespect on the planet and to the planet. In some ways we might be kinder to our pets . Not that there is anything wrong with giving our pets love . It just that we don’t give ourselves enough of the same energy .
Then we wake up and fake it . Fake life . Fake ego. Fake values and Fake intentions. Multiply that by billions of incidences throughout the world . I would say we are all in need of therapy. How can we think we are a good person if everyday we look the other way when something doesn’t suit us . Keeping silent when you hear a slur about someone else is the same as being a contributor. We are powerful beings if we try . We can make a difference in someone’s life .
Use technology with all of its faults . If someone is in distress call for help . Document it. The first time this was done was with Rodney King . Without the unnamed citizen who caught the beating , the incident would have just been erased. Reach out to someone you don’t know . Keep an open mind . Leave our judgements at home . Be present.
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About The Artist: Mikel Elam was born in Philadelphia. He attended the University of the Arts receiving his BFA in painting. He also attended the School of the Visual Arts in New York. He has been showing his paintings in numerous gallery spaces nationally and internationally for the last 25 years. Mikel is currently an artist in residence at the Fitler Club in Philadelphia.
True Believers and Tallywhackers (The Elephant’s Underbelly)
By
A.H. Scott
“Lord, lift us up where we belong….”
Oh no, it’s not a humming of a romantic theme from the film “An Officer and A Gentleman”, but, an undertone score of those who benefit from the perks of marrying well.
One might think that if someone mired in the off-the-wall conspiracy swamp of election lie lunacy tried to take one toe onto the grounds of the White House, that person would be turned around and be noted as persona non grata.
Yet, for a lady who married well, she is given carte blanche on not just entering the White House grounds; but, escorted into the office of oval. She comes with lists of ‘wants’, from suggestions for employees throughout an administration to propelling legal theories into overturning a failed re-election bid.
Some in the administration may humor this woman, while others may be humbled by which elite plateau she exists upon.
Oh yes, this lovely lady is a light in the darkness to show the way to victory. In fact, her maiden name was Lamp. But, that was before she wed a man in black. A black robe that is. Her name is Virginia and her beloved’s name is Clarence.
Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas is a conservative activist and her husband is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In the land of D.C. power is a key. The accelerant of power is a key to unlocking doors that the commoners shall never hold.
A question: Who is more powerful, a President who serves four to eight years in office; or, a Supreme Court Justice who has a lifetime appointment?
Ding! Ding! Ding! I hear a symphony!
Answer: Justice is Supreme.
Some may see the attack of January 6th as an isolated event. But, the fact is that it actually was just a mid-way point in an ongoing scheme of fallacy involving a tiny man with a bruised ego of not wanting to admit his loss in an election. It didn’t begin one day in January 2021, but ten months prior.
Screeches from Donald Trump’s mouth on the campaign trail starting in April 2020 about a possibility of him not being elected as being due to fraudulence and outright theft in that upcoming election of that November were just the greasing of the wheels in getting his supporters to believe his lies were truth and the truth were lies.
With the panoply of titled configurations in the conservative bloodstream known as ‘Stop the Steal’, ‘The Madison Sweep’ and all other kind of calliope chaos under the circus tent to keep Donald J. Trump in office by any means necessary, the planning and operation of Trump’s Big Lie came vividly to life.
Sandwiched between two pardoned felons, Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn is pillow-pusher Mike Lindell. No, that’s not some sort of double-entendre. Mr. Lindell really pushes pillows for a living as CEO of a pillow manufacturing empire. Alongside as crisp pickle in this buffet of audacity was another pardoned felon, Roger Stone.
As to Mr. Stone, it seems Roger always has a way of inserting himself in the middle of one thing or another. But, I shall get back to him a little bit later in this article.
With that being said, there is another person in the linkage of this chain of conservatives. His name is Mark Meadows, former White House Chief of Staff to Donald J. Trump and former Republican member of Congress from North Carolina’s 11th district. Both of these titles of Mr. Meadows have placed him in quite an interesting position of being point-man in this see-sawing situation.
Ginni Thomas is not some over-eager, collegiate, campaign volunteer stuffing envelopes, door-knocking, lawn sign posting, and silk-screening t-shirts for the cause. Far from that lowly place, she is at the pinnacle of power; where all that is needed is the right name and right spouse to be granted anything that is sought after.
Days after the election of 2020 to before the inauguration in 2021, a back and forth of text messages[1] numbering 29 was sent from Mrs. Thomas to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, proving one thing was clear; Ginni is a true believer in the labyrinth of ideological extremity. She isn’t even on the same page of working the type of self-aggrandizing grift that Donald Trump is. From jowl of Powell to the esoteric ofEastman, Virginia Lamp Thomas is earnestly all in for countering what she calls President Joseph R. Biden’s election win as ‘the end of liberty’[2].
Ginni Thomas being a true believer in whatever she believes in wouldn’t mean much to me or any other citizen of the United States of America, if she had remained Virginia Lamp. Yet, she is who she is and her husband just coincidentally happens to be one of nine persons who rule supreme.
The first black Supreme Court Justice was Thurgood Marshall, a legal lion who earned his roar from winning the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, which desegregated public schools.As civil rights legend Marshall had announced his retirement, many wondered who would possibly be a replacement upon the bench.
“It was in this spirit in 1981 that I joined the Administration as an Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education. I had, initially, declined taking the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights simply because my career was not in civil rights and I had no intention of moving into this area. In fact, I was insulted by the initial contact about the position as well as my current position.”– Clarence Thomas, Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1987[3]
Back when Clarence Thomas was nominated and introduced as a nominee for his current position to the American public by President George H.W. Bush on a sunny July day in 1991, little did the majority of us know of the variables which would surface during his confirmation hearing later in that year.
On September 10th, 1991 when the Senate Judiciary Committee (whose chairman was Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware) began an average, advise and consent confirmation hearing of reviewing the then Judge Thomas’ rulings over the years, it seemed as plain as vanilla.
Nothing to see here, nothing to cause a rumble or grumble. It was just your mellow tedium of questions and responses over precedents, legal codes, law articles, and judicial philosophy.
By September 27th, 1991, the hearings had come to a successful end, as Thomas was voted out of committee for a full floor vote to a somewhat speedy confirmation for him to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Preparing for the final Senate vote on Thomas’ nomination after debating on October 6th, 1991, suddenly everything was set off course for the heralding of a new Supreme Court Justice.
A leaked FBI interview with a former underling of Clarence Thomas when he chaired the EEOC named Anita Hill had been reported by NPR’s Nina Totenberg on October 6th. For the next five days until October 11th, the heat was on the Judiciary Committee to allow the University of Oklahoma Law Professor to testify on the character and fitness of a man who was to be exalted into a job with lifetime tenure.
Quite ironic it became when things turned unpleasant for Clarence Thomas, for although Anita Hill sat at the table giving her testimony about him; there was a shadow which hovered over the hearing room.
Daniel Arthur Mead played a part in how history of that moment in time now hangs in perpetuity for any retelling of the events of those days back in 1991.
Mr. Mead was mentioned only by his unforgettable stage name – Long Dong Silver. Anita Hill’s mentioning of this porn actor whose claim to fame was his above average asset was just part of what she had to deal with in being put-upon by her supervisor at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Clarence Thomas.
Oddly enough of what the EEOC is meant to prevent is not lost on anyone who still shake our heads in disbelief that Thomas wasn’t a protector of women, but more in the mode of a predatory archetype.
Anita Hill’s recollections of Thomas’ pornographic extravaganza of long dongs and amply bosomed women, down to just his creepy come-ons to her, hit a nerve for many women who were in her same position. Yet, even though Clarence Thomas was confirmed by members of the United States Senate, it was her courage and exposure of what kind of character that man actually is which has remained a lasting hallmark of Anita Hill’s heroism to this day.
The lives of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas intersected in 1981 to 1983, when she was an attorney-adviser to him at the United States Department of Education Office Of Civil Rights and she served as his assistant when he became chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1982.
After exiting her job at the EEOC in 1983, Anita Hill went on to becoming an assistant law professor at Oral Roberts University until 1986 when she became a member of the faculty at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Law.
Professor Hill was dignified and determined to move on from the events she encountered with Clarence Thomas back in the 1980’s, yet a person who had no first-hand knowledge of her life or even his back in 1981 to 1983 decided to ring her up from out of the blue in October 2010. It was good ‘ol Ginni Thomas, who had married Clarence in 1987, leaving Hill a voicemail in requesting her to apologize for the testimony given back in 1991 at the confirmation hearings of her husband. What is funny about that telephone voice-mail message[4] that was left for Anita Hill is that it is based off of what Clarence told his wife about whatever occurred back when he was alone with Anita Hill.
Well, I guess that proves Ginni is a true believer in all sorts of spheres; believing anything told to her from a man she wasn’t even with back in 1981 to 1983, as if he were Moses bringing down the tablets from off the mountain.
You would figure that some cases that are brought before the Supreme Court would be difficult for Judge Clarence Thomas to even touch with a ten foot pole. But, oh no – he goes chin forward without blinking or wondering whether it might make him look bad in the public eye. Public be damned! Decorum be damned!
One example of this is the case of Vance versus Ball State University.
Muncie, Indiana’s Ball State University was sued by Maetta Vance, a server who worked for Ball State University Dining under the catering supervisor, Saundra Davis. Vance contended that Davis made the workplace odious due to physical actions and racial harassment against her.
In a 5-4 ruling of the Supreme Court on June 24th, 2013 of a case involving workplace harassment which ruled in favor of the defendant, Ball State University[5]; it proved once more that the little guy or in this case, little gal seems to always be up against it.
And, guess who was one among the five who voted in the majority against the plaintiff, a woman suing her employer for workplace harassment by a supervisor. Yep, you guessed it – Thom Ass. Oops, I think I worded that wrong. Or, did I? (lol)
“I join the opinion because it provides the narrowest and most workable rule for when an employer may be held vicariously liable for an employee’s harassment. “ – Clarence Thomas, re: Vance v. Ball State University
Odd isn’t it, to see a concurrent opinion of the Vance v. Ball State University decision from the Supreme Court about a rule for employee harassment is written by a man who has his own questionable past with a person when he chairing the EEOC.
Is Clarence just a man of such high morality and unimpeachable virtue that has been misunderstood by so many of us for so many years? Or, is this just a dirty talkin’, ass-grabbin’[6], long-dong envyin’, big boob admirin’ man?If you want to think, hmm, to each his own, then on the other side of that it means keep them hands to your damn self, grubby grabber.
Yet, first impressions have a way of being set in stone. In the case of associate Justice Thomas, it might be the marble of the Supreme Court where he is ensconced within.
As with the aforementioned dangle of hung Silver in the land of public virtue and private vices, there’s more to be seen of the elephant’s underbelly.
What’s in a name, some might wonder.
In the Republican cage-match otherwise known as “Who Can Be the Most Vile?”, there is one person who is in the running for the title. His name is Representative Madison Cawthorn. And, he is shining star and a thorn all rolled up into one.
“XX chromosomes, no tallywhacker” – Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-North Carolina[7]
And, to think the man who followed in the tracks of Mark Meadows in representing the people of the 11th District of North Carolina is the same man who has such a way with words. I guess you could say Representative Madison Cawthorn is on a roll with letting it all hang out.
Speaking of which, Cawthorn’s big mouth[8] has a way of getting his hand spanked by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and defended in a nice, long stroke by a man who knows of dirty deeds first-hand.
Referencing of ‘first-hand’ and ‘tallywhackers’ – wow, the elephant’s underbelly definitely continues to be stroked mighty well and mighty hard. Ha! Ha!!
The GOP and cocaine orgies? Oh, Madison, make them clutch their pearls in hearing their dirty little secrets being revealed by you. McCarthy dismisses you, not because what you say. But, the fact that you said what you said for public consumption. Now, just the opposite you get defended by Roger Stone.
“And I can see why Washington elites would now be scrambling to try to deny it because maybe the voters back home won’t like what they’re hearing.”- Roger Stone[9]
Oh yes, that same Roger Stone, who’s dirty tricks and dirty deeds go back many a year. Having described himself as ‘try-sexual'[10], raunchy Roger knows of what he speaks when he stands up in defense of Rep. Madison Cawthorn. Using pseudonyms of “Swash Buckler” and “Nikki”, the adventurous Stones have been a couple of extraordinarily friendly and social beings in havens far from the pristine crowd.
Snark-Boy Rep. Cawthorn isn’t alone on the crazy train of blabbering when he talks about coke orgies, as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tosses and stirs in some unappetizing words into the political pot also.
With fervor in her voice, trying to earn some political brownie points from the whacked-out right wing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spouts off in defense of some of the January 6th capitol rioters. Calling the jail where they are being detained a ‘gulag’, she attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over ‘gazpacho police’[11]. No, you are not reading the wrong word. This is the word that came out her mouth. She said it and didn’t try to correct herself or even possibly stop the recording and then re-record what she wanted to say.
With both of these blockheads, one thing is for sure; if you say something with vigor and a sense of righteousness, then by God, it has to be held upward on the side of the angels. Ya’ both are lying like vipers in the pit; but, hey you guys keep on saying stuff over and over again. And, maybe just maybe you’ll believe your own hype one day. For now, ya’ll just keep thrashing your tallywhacker[12] and swimming in your soup.
Right among the conspiracy cacklers and disuniting schemers is Ginni Thomas, who has an ace up her sleeve to be on the side of what she considers righteous. As the wife of a Supreme Court Justice, she needn’t have to tell her husband of her wishes and wants, for each knows the other’s heart.
With the loose ends of court cases involving that which happened before, during and after the election of 2020 making their way up through the courts of appeals and making the final landing before the Supreme Court of the United States of America, anyone who has a spouse that has a vested interest in the ruling of a case should step aside and let the other judges do the judging.
In a time where the American system of democracy has never been before, as an overturning of an election and systematic coup is too close to being fulfilled; there must be a rejoinder. And, even the rarified bubble in which the members of the Supreme Court exist must be pierced and a code of ethics needs be implemented.
All other levels of the judiciary have a list of standards for conduct for the men and women who sit upon the bench. Yet, the Supremes get to just make up their own rules as they see fit.
Being blunt, it is as if some of the justices who sit on that bench exemplify the RDA principle of ‘rules don’t apply’; just for the sake of because they can. They sit up there in their robes of black and act like their decisions that affect each and every person in this country are handed down from a Celestial plain. Yet, they are above it, for they need never live under the same standards, laws, regulations or coda that the rest of us have to.
But, in the end, when they are addressed by any of us common folk, they are bestowed a title before their surnames are mentioned – Justice.
Thus, Justice Clarence Thomas goes on grinning with a (cow) chip on his shoulder and gravitas because of his point of position.
Alas, as Thomas prepares to slide back onto the bench at the Supreme Court, he will have a new colleague before the new session begins. She is associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black women on the bench of nine.
During her Senate confirmation hearing, the then Judge Brown Jackson was asked about recusal in an upcoming case that would be before the Supreme Court, involving affirmative action admissions policy at Harvard from where she is a graduate of.
Without hesitation or playing a game of weasel-words in answering this question from Texas’ tacky n’ trollin’ Senator Ted Cruz, this forthright woman said she would recuse[13] herself.
Now, the balls of his wife’s conspiracies, contradictions, and cravenness are in Clarence’s court, to show how stand-up or stand-above (the rest of us) he actually is.
I guess you could say her jewels of favor are in his hands. Or, maybe it’s his jewels of favor that are in her hands? Yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s all about friendship.
“My wife Virginia, my best friend in the world” – The Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of The United States Supreme Court[14]
Lucky by confirmation’s fateful thumbs up, a man of dubious honesty is granted an imprimatur of being honorable.
Will Justice Thomas set himself on a perch of propriety and judiciously stand on the side of recusal or, will he flip us the bird in the same fashion his late colleague, associate Justice Antonin Scalia did back in 2004, when giving a mocking retort during a conflict of interest dust-up over a case involving his duck-hunting[15] buddy and then vice-President Dick Cheney’s role in the George W. Bush administration’s Energy Task Force policy. Never a shrinking violet, Scalia rubbed salt into the wound of those calling for his recusal of the case with a pithy quip of the following pair of words – “Quack, quack”.
A roadrunner may catch the worm, but an appearance of conflicted interest can’t make a person who thinks any sort of rules don’t apply to himself squirm.
If past is prologue, good ‘ol Clarence will take the road of the long dong or the dirty bird, and so-called equal justice shall be bastardized and splat downward from up where he and his ‘best friend’ Ginni soar.
Thinking about this cuckooing (or, coup-coup-ing) couple brings an apt lyric from the magnificent Cole Porter to my mischievous mind:
“If you’re ever in a jam, here I am
If you’re ever in a mess, S-O-S
If you ever feel so happy, you land in jail, I’m your bail.
It’s friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship.
When other friendships have been forgot,
Ours will still be hot.” – “Friendship”, words and music by Cole Porter, 1939[16]
Beep, beep!
“When the fringe becomes normal and normal becomes the fringe; it is sanity to all that it shall hinge.” – A.H. Scott
End.
.
“True Believers and Tallywhackers (The Elephant’s Underbelly)” – The Footnotes:
1) –“Ginni Thomas Reportedly Pressed Trump’s Chief of Staff on Overturning the Election” – NPR
16) –“Du Barry Was A Lady” – Internet Broadway Database
https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/1024)
. About The Author: A.H. Scott is a poet based in New York City and frequent contributor to Tony Ward Studio. To read additional articles by Ms. Scott, go here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/everlast-putins-war/
. A.H. Scott’s book: Bad Guys Finish Fast & Good Guys Finish Last is available on Amazon!
Antiques. Radford, Virginia. Photo: Anthony Colagreco, Copyright 2022
Last November, Virginia elected a new conservative Republican administration. The new Attorney General is Jason Miyares.
Last year, the AG at that time, Mark Herring, set up a new unit in the AG’s office called the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), because the administration finally realized that Virginia had far too many innocent people in prison.
The new unit went to work immediately on questionable convictions.
According to a study by the Richmond Times Dispatch newspaper, about 15 – 18% of Virginia convictions are false. The Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) admits to 5%. With approximately 30,000 people in Virginia prisons, that’s from 1,500 to 5,400 innocent people locked up in Virginia prisons, their lives destroyed.
The creation of the CIU gave us falsely convicted people a hope that the state wanted to redress its wrongs and set us free. I spent considerable time and money getting copies made of important documents in my case, and submitted it all to the CIU last year.
One of Miyares first acts upon taking office was to fire the whole staff of the CIU! This left cases in progress there hanging. I wrote a letter complaining about this that was published on March 6 in The Roanoke Times newspaper. A communications officer from the AG’s office contacted the paper to demand a correction and say that the new AG had, in fact, expanded the CIU, renaming it the Investigations, Cold Cases, and Actual Innocence Project with all new staff under the direction of Theo Stamos, a prosecutor from Arlington, VA. Isn’t putting a prosecutor in charge of this new unit, which will now handle cold cases and investigations, like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse?
Why didn’t The Roanoke Times already know about this? Wouldn’t the AG normally send out a press release about such important news?
I recently got a letter from the Coalition for Justice in Blacksburg, Virginia. The situation is worse than I could have thought.
The Conviction Integrity Unit filed a petition for a Writ of Actual Innocence last year with the Virginia Court of Appeals for Terrance Richardson, a man serving a life sentence for the murder of a policeman, championed byAG Mark Herring.
After taking office new AG Miyares notified the court that the state had changed its position and asked the court to dismiss Richardson’s petition! Shouldn’t judging the merits of the 57 page petition prepared by the CIU and endorsed by the former AG be up to the court to decide?
Seth Shelley, one of the fired CIU attorneys, said, “My unit alone had 20 cases that were pending before the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court of Virginia. All of us are now gone.”
What will happen to those cases? Will Miyares ask the courts to dismiss them all, or just leave these people hanging with no attorneys anymore?
Should the AG, whose staff’s job is to oppose these cases, be able to fire the lawyers representing the petitioners?
Another fired attorney, Emilee Hasbrouck said, over the past year the CIU has helped two people get absolute pardons, as well as filing Richardson’s petition. She said these cases are thousands of pages long, with evidence spanning decades. She emphasized just how difficult it would be for new people to take over these cases.
Theo Stamos, appointed to take over the new unit, is a prosecutor from Arlington, and a woman. She has been criticized for her stances on bail and voting rights restoration. Miyares appointed her, so they must share common views. No one knows what she will do with cases already being worked on by the fired CIU lawyers. There have been no comments from Ms Stamos at all, and no further word from the AG’s office.
Somebody needs to do something about this! I knew we’d gotten a dictatorial didact in the AG’s office, but this is worse than we could have possibly imagined. The fired lawyers should sue to get their jobs back and continue to represent those people. Maybe they will lose some of those cases in court, but that is how the system is supposed to work. Our adversarial system of justice fails when attorneys on both sides of cases represent the same interests.
It is long past time that those of us who have been falsely convicted are given the opportunity to go before the high courts and be set free.
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author, former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine and veteran contributor to this blog. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. He is serving the 13th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read additional articles by Bob Shell, click here:https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/hypnosis-good-or-evil/
Editor’s Note: If you like Bob Shell’s blog posts, you’re sure to like his new book, COSMIC DANCE by Bob Shell (ISBN: 9781799224747, $ 12.95 book, $ 5.99 eBook) available now on Amazon.com . The book, his 26th, is a collection of essays written over the last twelve years in prison, none published anywhere before. It is subtitled, “A biologist’s reflections on space, time, reality, evolution, and the nature of consciousness,” which describes it pretty well. You can read a sample section and reviews on Amazon.com. Here’s the link:
