GWB: The Last Hurrah

by Barry Michael Cooper

"And now/ the end is here
And so I face/the final curtain
My friend/I'll say it clear/
I'll state my case/of which I'm certain
I've lived a life that's full/I traveled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Regrets/I've had a few
But then again/too few to mention
I did what I had to do/and saw it through/without exemption
I planned each charted course/each careful step along the byway
And more/much more than this/I did it my way"

-Frank Sinatra, My Way, 1967

12 January 2008

In an eight year presidential term defined by a stateside terrorist attack,
one of the worst natural disasters in recent American history, an extended war, and
an economy torn to shreds, President George Walker Bush, the 43rd President
of The United States, gave his final press conference from the White House, earlier
today. At times defiant, emotional, reflective, and self-mocking, President Bush
addressed 9/11, the war in Iraq, the economy, and of course, the big headline of
2005 (and quite possibly, the beginning of the end for his administration), Hurricane Katrina. I have
to admire this man, even begrudgingly. Nothing seems to faze him. At least that's how it
appears on the surface. What happens in the dermis of his soul is GOD's Business, and none
of mine. I'm sure the press corps will miss him: the gaffes, the non-sequiturs, the pinching smile and bobbing head as he acknowledges his own jokes. But as far as the American public as a whole, will they miss him? I guess it depends on their choice in the voting booth last 04 November 2008.

Anyway, Bush is not worried about how history will judge him, because, as he says, by that time,
we'll all be dead. He could be right. However, I wonder how he prepped himself before final press conference, his Last Hurrah? Did he sit back and with his eyes closed, patting Barney on the head, as
Frank Sinatra's secular benediction co-signed his acceptance of finality? Or did he watch this scene-- from the 1983 Brian De Palma film, "Scarface" starring Al Pacino--on the flat screen in the Lincoln Bedroom, a tear trickling down his cheek:

"What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of fu----' ass-----. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be. You need people like me. You need people like me, so you can point your fu----' fingers and say, 'That's the Bad Guy.' So? What that make you? Good? You not good.You just know how to hide. How to lie. Me? I don't have that problem?! I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the Bad Guy! The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again..."

Of course, I'm not saying George Walker Bush is Scarface. He is the outgoing President Of The United States. But what politicians and gangster both understand, is that real recognizes real. And watching Bush's final press conference, I thought Tony Montana was lookin' real familiar to him.

Hooked On The American Dream

by Barry Michael Cooper


Rod Blagojevich. Kwame Kilpatrick. And now, Mayor Sheila Dixon of Baltimore, Md. Earlier today, she was hit with a 12 count indictment, including perjury, fraud, theft, and misconduct. Supposedly, she also took some gift cards earmarked for underprivileged children in the city. Everybody wants to be a Prince (and in some cases, a Princess) of the City (and Rod Blagojevich, literally: his coif is Treat Williams as Danny Ciello from the landmark Lumet film). Excempt from rules and above the law. Politics is not only the new Hip Hop, but Politics is the new Crack, too. Red top, blue top, white rock...everybody wants to get hooked on the American Dream.

There's A Terrorist In My Homeroom Class

by Barry Michael Cooper

(Note: sandwiched between the 1999 Columbine massacre, and 9/11/2001, America was getting its' first taste of stateside terrorism. It was happening in middle schools and high schools across the country. I wrote this article for a now-defunct online magazine in 2001, after a bloodbath at Santana High School in Santee, Ca. Fifteen-year-old Charles Andrew Williams shot 15 people. Two of them died. He is now serving a sentence of 50 years-to-life. This is his story.)

"...Nothing will drive us away/ we cam be heroes/
just for one day..."
David Bowie, Heroes

March 9, 2001

Your name is Charles Andrew Williams. You are fifteen. Correction. You were fifteen. On March 5, at 9:25 a.m., you became timeless. Immortalized. Infamous. When you went on a shooting rampage which killed two people and injured 13, you lost your age. Your lost your name. And you lost your identity. Now you're reduced to a human jigsaw. Your life story has been scattered about and snapped into place by the media. And the pieces still don't fit.

"He's always picked on, he's scrawny, he's little. People think he's dumb."
-Neil O'Grady, 15, friend and classmate of Charles Andrew Williams.

You're in a daze as you sit in the back of the patrol car. The cuffs so tight, that they leave their pinched imprint on the insides of your wrists. A circular tattoo. The seats in the back of the patrol car are hard and plastic, and the more you shift to get comfortable, the tighter the handcuffs constrict. The muscle cramps in both thighs become more intense.

"The whole weekend he was talking about it, and me and my friends were like, 'You're not serious, are you?' And he says, 'I'm just joking.' And then he asked us if we want to do it with him. And we were all, 'You're just joking.' He was like, 'I am. I'm just messing around.'"
-Josh Stevens, 15, classmate and friend of Charles Andrew Williams.

The media swarms around the patrol car and the flashes from all the unblinking eyes of the DVC-Pro minicams explode in slo-mo like silent bombs. A mask of shock and malaise is painted on your face. One of your classmates, John Schardt takes pictures with his camcorder as you came out of the bathroom. He told reporters and anybody who would listen, that you were smiling as you emptied the chambers. But you're not smiling now.

"Andy is real nice. He was a sweetheart...I thought he was popular...he's very popular. I hung out with him and we talked about normal kid stuff. He wore the same goofy yellow shirt every day. He was just over at my house Saturday night."
-Thirteen-year-old girl who asked to remain anonymous, who dated Charles Andrew Williams last year.

Before you were timeless, you were fifteen, and when you were still fifteen, you had mad issues. You used to live in Brunswick, a small Frederick County town, in western Maryland. Your moms--Linda Wells--and pops--Charles Jeffrey Williams, divorced. You had friends in Brunswick. You miss your homies. You miss your moms. You haven't been around her in ten years. Linda moved with your older brother Michael, to North Augusta, South Carolina Your moms fawned over Mike. She placed an ad in the North Augusta High School yearbook that read, "Mike, thanks for being a great son. I am and always will be proud of you." Your moms never talked about you. A neighbor of Linda's in North Augusta, Sandy Ferarra, told the Los Angeles Times, "I never knew she had a son, I had never seen the boy." Charles took you with him to Santee, Ca. It's a northeastern suburb of San Diego. When a reporter told your moms what you did, she burst into tears. She said you were a good-natured boy. A day later, she apologized to the families of the dead. She told local CNN affiliate WJBF, "My heart goes out to them. They've lost their babies, their hopes, their dreams for their futures." When asked about you, her good natured boy, your moms seemed to have recanted that statement. "He's lost," she told another reporter. "His future is gone."

Before you were timeless, you were fifteen, and when you were still fifteen, you had mad issues. You used to live in Brunswick, a small Frederick County town, in western Maryland. Your moms--Linda Wells--and pops--Charles Jeffrey Williams, divorced. You had friends in Brunswick. You miss your homies. You miss your moms. You haven't been around her in ten years. Linda moved with your older brother Michael, to North Augusta, South Carolina Your moms fawned over Mike. She placed an ad in the North Augusta High School yearbook that read, "Mike, thanks for being a great son. I am and always will be proud of you." Your moms never talked about you. A neighbor of Linda's in North Augusta, Sandy Ferarra, told the Los Angeles Times, "I never knew she had a son, I had never seen the boy." Charles took you with him to Santee, Ca. It's a northeastern suburb of San Diego. When a reporter told your moms what you did, she burst into tears. She said you were a good-natured boy. A day later, she apologized to the families of the dead. She told local CNN affiliate WJBF, "My heart goes out to them. They've lost their babies, their hopes, their dreams for their futures." When asked about you, her good natured boy, your moms seemed to have recanted that statement. "He's lost," she told another reporter. "His future is gone."

"He was scrawny, he was funny. He tried to be everybody's friend."
-Aaron Brittingham, 17, friend of Charles Andrew Williams.

You didn't aspire to be timeless. You wanted to be popular. Some people get the two ideals twisted. But not you. You tried your best to get along. You cracked jokes. You tried to be nice. You tried to fit in. You shot hoops with the new kids. You rode your skateboard in the new neighborhood. Two of your skateboards were stolen. The bullies and the playa-haters made fun of how small you were. Called you the Indian In The Cupboard after the tiny character in the movie of the same name. Called you Bad Andy, after a TV commercial where a freakin' demented ragdoll always tried to throw salt in the game for the employees of Dominoes Pizza. The disses were relentless. Freak. Nerd. Dork. You tried to fit in. You stayed out past curfew. It was reported you even blazed a few trees of weed. But the haters wouldn't stop. It was too much. You knew it was time to make moves.

"We didn't search his backpack...only searched his body. We patted him down."
-Alex Ripple, 14, a classmate who got wind of the intentions of Charles Andrew Williams.

You bragged about all of the guns your pops had. You boasted about the access you had to the gun cabinet. A gun cabinet that Charles Jeffrey Williams insisted to police investigators was locked. You told your boy Josh Stevens and about twenty other people over the weekend how you were going to go on a shooting spree. Chris Reynolds, the 29-year-old boyfriend of Josh's mom Karen, heard you talking but didn't think you were serious. He even told you, "I don't want another Columbine here at Santana." And you told him, "No, nothing will happen, I'm just joking...I wouldn't be stupid and do something like that." You even said that your father's guns were locked up. Now Chris is crying on the evening news and grieving in soundbites. "I'm upset with myself for not doing anything, " he told one reporter. "I made a bad choice."

"He pointed the gun right at me, but he didn't shoot."
-Andrew Kaforey, a classmate who, after hearing the gunshots, came face to face with Charles Andrew Williams.

Monday morning. It's your day, dog. The next few minutes at Santana High School will alter the course of the rest of your life. The moment is seismic. What Kierkergaard would call his personal earthquake. Or was it Kant? Whatever. It's your Career Defining Moment. You have hidden the .22-caliber revolver in your backpack. You're in the boy's bathroom (hey, the bathroom motif is appropriate; is it true that you brought a water-gun filled with pee to school a few weeks ago, and sprayed people with it?). You pull the trigger. Bryan Zuckor, 14, and Randy Gordon are murdered. Shot in the back. Zuckor dies on the urine-stained floor next to a toilet. Gordon dies in the ER of Grossmont Hospital.

You walk out and reload as many as four times. You fire off more than 30 shots. You come face to face with Andrew, but you don't shoot him. John Schardt--yeah, remember him?-- has you in the crosshairs of his viewfinder and captures the work in a montage of still and live-action footage. The police will confiscate this evidence. But don't be surprised if it winds up on 60 Minutes. Or 20/20. Or Dateline. Or the highest bidder. You walk out into the quad and continue to bust off shots. Thirteen people are wounded. Schardt tells the media. "He had an evil kind of sadistic demeanor to him. It was incredible." Of course you were smiling! He was taking your picture! Duh?!

"...how saddened we all are to know that two students lost their lives in a disgraceful act of cowardice..."
-President George Walker Bush, weighing in on the actions of Charles Andrew Williams.

Here come the cops. You race back in the bathroom. You get on your knees and surrender. You tell the cops, "It's only me," as if it was just a game of charades. Or paint ball. But it's not. Randy Gordon will be absent from the Navy's basic training this July. He wanted to be a pilot. One of his friends, Chris Mazzi, 18, placed a sign in front of Santana High School that read, "You're flying now, Randy." Bryan Zuckor won't be skateboarding anytime soon. He won't be playing in anymore basketball games. His coach, Dan Scott, called him a "rebounding machine." He won't be there to help his mother, a single parent, with his two younger siblings. A neighbor, Ruth Ashcraft, expressed her anguish to USA Today. "He was her rock," she said. The President of The United States has gone on national TV and labeled you a coward. San Diego County Sheriff's Department Lt. Jerry Lewis said you were "an angry young man."

Well Charlie, you know what they say. Careful what you wish for. And boy, did you get it. Popularity. Boom! You done blew up, dog! On the local 11 p.m. news in Baltimore, Md.--near your old stomping grounds in Brunswick--they obtained a home video of you filming yourself in the bathroom, mugging, giggling, taking long, lingering shots of the toilet (what's up with that?), and your voice over: "I hate it there," you said, talking about Santana High School. "Nobody is nice there. They're stupid."

Your boys Josh and A.J. have caught the mad fame, too. They were crying on 20/20, remorseful that they didn't tell anybody about your plans. Josh talked about the song by the group Linkin Park, and the lyrics that you loved so much:"Things aren't the way the were before/ you wouldn't even recognize me anymore..." Thanks to you, they've been asked to transfer to another high school, for their own safety. You've even become an inspiration for other kids. A fourteen-year-old girl at a Roman Catholic middle school in Wiliamsport, Pa. An eight-year-old boy at a school in Philadelphia who came to school with a loaded shotgun and threatened a bloodbath. A high school freshman in Harlingen, Texas, who was caught with a "hit list." Do you know how popular you are, Charles? Do you ? Only God knows, as you ride to the police station, riding the ride that you will remember until you take your last breath. Okay; exhale. Now, it begins to come back to you. Before they place you on a suicide watch, it becomes crystal clear.

Your name is Charles Andrew Williams. You used to be fifteen years old. But on 03.05.01, at 9:25 a.m., you became timeless.

For Lack Of Honest Work

By Barry Michael Cooper

A Blessed and joyous New Year to one and all.

Hopefully, you woke yesterday in your right mind.

Hopefully, you woke yesterday in a warm house, in a comfy bed, under a ton of quilts and comforters, wiping the residue of 2008 from the corner of your eyes, and pulling the dawn of 2009, into focus.

Many of you will have jobs to report to on Monday morning. Others will be gnashing their teeth as they stare at pink slips. All of us will feel the pinch on some level. Some will still try to party like it‘s 1999. It‘s not. Don‘t forget what Prince said: “Life is a just party/ and parties aren‘t meant to last.”

It is what it is.

However, some people woke up into this New Year of 2009, with a square of sidewalk for a pillow, a cardboard box for a comforter, and an off-ramp to some suburb-exurb-expressway-near-you as the roof over their heads. Kissed on the lips by ten degree wind childs. Homelessness is a reality sitting outside our doorsteps and parked inside our driveways. It used to be a few paycheck away from me, Now, I‘m only a week ahead of it.

The queues at the soup kitchens are getting longer, and it‘s population is no longer confined to ex-cons and those discharged from mental institutions. It’s people from the banking industry, the entertainment industry, I.T., the auto assembly lines, health, construction, you name it. This recession is just the latest flotsam washed up by that F5-of-a-crossfire-hurricane-known-as President George Walker Bush. As we wade through the polluted maelstrom he and his administration created, I hope and pray a Providential wave of good will and grace, navigates President Barack Obama in into a channel of calmer waters. A Providential wave of good will and grace that can guide President Obama to help U.S. swim back to shore. But it‘s going to be a tough row. Most assuredly, it will get worse before it gets better.

It’s said there is a difference between sympathy and empathy is the level of compassion. Check it: two men were walking on a long road. One wore a pair of brand new and really expensive hiking boots. The other wore a pair of broken down oxfords: laces missing, and holes under both shoes. Broken-Down Oxfords is also limping on his journey. Hiking Boots says to Broken-Down Oxfords, “Aw man, I am sorry you‘re shoes are jacked-up, dude.” That‘s sympathy.

Empathy is Hiking Boots exchanging his expensive kicks with Broken-Down‘s dilapidated oxfords, and then Hiking Boots hoisting Broken Down on his shoulders, and carrying him for the duration of the journey.

I made a short film five years ago, “For Lack Of Honest Work“, so I could differentiate between the two. I used to walk six miles from my warm but humble abode in West Baltimore, all the way downtown to the Barnes and Noble at the Inner Harbor. En route, I saw a lot of homeless people. They would ask me if I had any change. When I could spare a few dollars, I would stop in Donnas Café on Charles and Madison to buy them a meal, or a cup of coffee. I was too wary of giving them money, as I didn‘t know whether it would atomize into sickly-sweet crack perfume, or a be gulped down in pint of Wild Irish Rose. I would listen to their stories. Most nights, I would have tears in my eyes as I recounted their moving and compelling narratives of how they fell through the floorboards of society. Or, as one person told me, “how they got there.”

I made “For Lack Of Honest Work” with my two “Sunz“, and scored it to a truly haunting track by the same name, composed by the great Todd Rundgren, from his 1985 masterwork, “A Cappella“. This is a short film--3:52--about a guy who reached his there, and how it overwhelmed him.

I disagree with Gertrude Stein: there is a there there. I guess this film is my interpretation of the there of the homeless. I wanted to know how it felt being an involuntary American Nomad. Walking with the shame of trying to look as if you have no shame--for circumstances beyond your control--as you stuff the entire contents of your life in a dirty overnight bag, with broken zippers. There. No place to sleep. There. No place to live. There. Sifting through garbage cans for your next meal. There. Given the severity of the economic forecast, maybe this film is a primer for my there. Or your there. GOD forbid. But GOD only knows, and GOD Willing, none of us will ever have to find out. But if we do, maybe we’ll find empathy and compassion...there. I hope you enjoy the film. Thanks for stopping by. Bmc

REQUIEM FOR THE ZOOTED

By Barry Michael Cooper

On a cab-ride to Harlem back in May, I thought I was having an authentic angel dust flashback as I passed 123rd and Lenox Avenue. Looking down the vista of renovated million dollar brownstones and condos, I remembered something Marshall McLuhan once said: "We look at the present through a rear view mirror: we march backwards into the future."

The past begins to reboot as a muffled procession of memories. On a cool August night in 1977, I was being questioned by a police officer regarding the attempted robbery of the Eighth Street Playhouse. Trying to pull focus through dilated pupils I attempted to describe the one guy I did remember seeing through the peephole of the theater's cash office door--a midget in his twenties sporting a Ceasar cut, a brown leather attache' at his feet and a sawed off shotgun pointed at the lock. As the cop’s bad breath began to ignite my eyebrows, it was at that moment that I had an epiphany: I promised myself that I would never smoke another $3 bag of angel dust again.

However, that particular epiphany button was stuck on repeat. I said the same thing a few weeks earlier on July 13th, the evening of the infamous NYC Blackout. Before my Esplanade Gardens--a honeycomb of middle-class high rise co-ops in Harlem--neighborhood dimmed, I was preparing to jump from the terrace of my girlfriend Mona's apartment.

My girlfriend Mona’s apartment on the 23rd floor.

Mona and I had smoked the mint-scented contents of horror, contained in a manila coin envelope and embossed with the image of a grinning red devil. We rolled with hysteria as her younger sister Sophie passed out from the ferocious high. "That bitch is dead!," we screamed.

I then began crying and apologizing to Mona for laughing at the “dead” Sophie's (who revived and stumbled off to her room) before going out on her terrace and hoisting one foot over the railing. Before somersaulting into the rippling cobalt-blue waters of the courtyard pool, Mona quickly grabbed my hand and said, 'Nah, that’s too fast. Let’s take the elevator.“ When Mona opened her apartment door, the hallway went black.

That would not be my last puff of the “zoo-bang“. I was quite partial to the allure of the peppermint scented flakes of parsley laced with animal tranquilizer. At 18, I was jobless, clueless, and angry. I had issues:

1. My family was unraveling.

2. I was two months home from my disastrous freshman semester at North Carolina Central University after failing all 14 credits while dropping tabs of "Purple Haze" in my Econ 101 class.

3. I didn’t move on to the Holcombe Rucker Summer League, because I got shook after the crowds clowned me at Col. Young Park's City-Wide Tournament, after I launched way too many air-balls from inside the key.

4. I didn’t know how to do The Freak dance at the Hip Hop parties at Harlem's Smalls Paradise and the Grand Ballroom in the Hotel Diplomat.

5. I heard rumors while I was at university, that Mona let some 14-year old bum hit it doggy-style on the fire exit in her building. When confronted, she smiled strangely and said the dude raped her.

Those were the flimsy excuses of a misguided eighteen-year-old, for smoking angel dust.

The strip of 123rd Street between Seventh and Lenox was an open-air cathedral of narcotics. I became a member of a multi-racial congregation of the bewitched who made their pilgrimage there. We were enchanted by the brain-spinning effects PCP. In the middle of the street the young barkers screamed, "Dust! Dust! Make ya head bust!", as they served the drive-thru customers curbside or redirected pedestrians to a brownstone basement apartment to score dust or the 'Chunky Doo Doo Black' ganja. At the 'whooop-whooop' of the NYPD, the barkers would alert the other dealers and then seemingly diffuse like smoke: "Ness! Raaaaaaaise Up!"

Known by grotesque names like "Rev. Ike," "Improve," "Busy Bee," and "Red Devil," angel dust was a profane chrism that fractured already-fissured souls. The evening news was rife with nightly accounts of young boys and girls decapitating grandparents, pirouetting from rooftops, snapping handcuff locks and beating down cops, until straight-jacketed with G-shots of Thorazine which literally fried their brains in the psych wards of Bellevue Hospital and Welfare Island.

Sometimes, the “zooty” was my pharm-fueled metronome as I danced dementedly through a gauzy awareness in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Diplomat. The legendary DJ Hollywood spun MFSB's "Love Is The Message" and chanted hypnotically to the spellbound crowds that packed the dance floor. When Hollywood intoned, "Say how do you take the bone out?", we screamed, "You don't, you leave it in!"

Being the youngest and most insecure manager in the Cinema 5 theater chain, I was hoping angel dust was the glue for my disconnected reality. It wasn't. I routinely bungled my box office cash count. I failed to comprehend that the usher and the camera operator in the projection booth who got high with me had set this robbery in motion. By GOD's Grace, I was too frightened to open the door to the cash office of the Eighth Street Playhouse. Despite the dwarf banging on the door and yelling for me to come out and call an ambulance for his fictional "sick girlfriend", the sawed-off shotgun in his hand was not a hallucination. After the last screening of Dario Argento's horror classic, Suspiria, I was truly spooked out of my wits on that cool August night in 1977 when the cop asked me to describe the perps. As if on cue, the dwarf walked out of the 8th Street Playhouse--the amputated Mossberg neatly tucked away in his leather attaché--with the conspiring usher and two other guys. Flashing an ominous smile at me, he tapped the cop on the shoulder and said, "I think I saw them running towards Sixth Avenue"

Back to the McLuhan payoff, a.k.a. The Here and Wow. Almost 30 years drug free, and in that yellow cab gliding past that northwest corner of 123rd and Lenox, I observed a sea of black, white, and Asian faces happily leaving their luxe town homes. As for the flashback: a chilly, 2008 May rain drenched all five boroughs that night, and pushed all of the Red Devils, Rev. Ikes, Improves and the other ghosts of trey bag-past into a wet gutter marked back in the day.

KENNETH COLES & GRASSY KNOLLS: THE SOLE ASSASSINATION OF A BUSH LEGACY

By Barry Michael Cooper

FINDING OBAMICA, VOL I.

"Shoe program, nigga!"

"Twenty-three hour lockdown!"



Denzel Washington as Det. Alonzo Harris in the
2001 Warner Bros. film, Training Day .

I'm sorry. I was laughing. I was lol last week, when that shoe came flying at George Walker Bush in Iraq. This was the pith of his "People-All-Over-The-World-Join-Hands-Form-A-Love-Train-Magical-Mystery-Create-The-Legacy-Tour". The President's Exit: stage right. With the guilt-free grin of a man truly weightless in the zero-gravity of his seared conscience, the The-Fantast-Known-As-Bush-43 screened the sequel to his cinema de l'absurde, Mission Accomplished!, for a nervous audience of Iraqi journalists and politicos. The storyline was a boring retread: WMD had been recovered. Saddam was neutralized and Osama Bin Ladin was no longer a threat. Most importantly, Iraq was thriving with the democracy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of free trade.

All Hail…The Liberator!

Um…no. GWB's dadist theater didn't ring true to his listeners. One Iraqi young Iraqi journalist--29-year-old Muntader al-Zaidi--even voiced his fatigue from taking cover from the shrapnel of Bush's exploding delusion. An exploding delusion which created the collateral damage of Iraq's slaughterhouse reality. This dude knew how to flip the script to read the writing on the wall. Iraq's economy was in ruins. The non-existent Weapons Of Mass Destruction had long ago dissolved into the leaky drainage of faulty intel. The trail of aborted U.N. fact-finding missions had tumbled into a rabbit-hole of disingenuous White House press briefings. Saddam Hussein's-strong-man-reign had evaporated into the virga of a scraggly peon trapped in a urine ditch. The dictator's removal created a power vacuum in the unstable region and was quickly filled with sectarian violence and terrorist opportunists. Worse but certainly not least, an estimated 655,000 Iraqi citizens had died, since the 2003 arrival of the coalition forces, according to the Washington Post .

So when that Zaidi tossed his Kenneth Coles--actually, a Ducati Model 271, made by Ramazan Bayan, an Istanbul cobbler--I don't think he was buying President Bush's post-modern recast of himself as John Wayne in some Fordian war epic. Especially when Muntader al-Zaidi spewed in Arabic, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" And as he tossed the second shoe, there was this lovely sentiment: "This is from the widows, and the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!"

Wow.

When I first saw the footage on MSNBC, for some twisted reason, I thought of Antoine Fuqua's 2001 masterpiece, "Training Day", and Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning portrayal of the corrupt L.A. Detective Alonzo Harris. In a pivotal scene from Act 3, Harris begins to realize that he is losing his feudal grip over his Blood gang member-minions in his urban kingdom, the Baldwin Village housing projects. When the gang members begin to revolt, Harris threatens them with jail time at Pelican Bay's Security Housing Unit, a.k.a, The S.H.U. program:

"Shoe program, nigga! Twenty-three hour lockdown!"

Initially, that surrealist moment of Muntader al-Zaidi tossing that shoe was pure comedy: "S.H.U. Program" = "Shoes thrown at President Bush during an internationally televised Program"? A Shoe Program? Get it?

Whatever. The mythic insanity of this footage became a comic goldmine for the ever-spinning news-cycle, and replicated on Leno-Letterman-O'Brien, The Daily Show, and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. In one week, it has stimulated over 2 million views on You Tube.

There is a possibility that al-Zaidi may have watched a DVD of "Training Day" dubbed in Arabic, but his interpretation may have taken on a more somber and sober meaning. "Shu" in Arabic can be transliterated as "What?" Throwing a shoe at someone in Middle Eastern culture is also a truly demoralizing insult: dirt and manure are on the bottom of shoes. Tread carefully to your own subtext.

Watching President Bush--as he stood next to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki at the Green Zone press conference on Sunday night, 14 December, 2008--intone his fictional take on a country he dismantled, might've prompted al-Zaidi to ask, "What?!" as in, "How dare you?!" Or maybe he felt his tossed shoe was symbolic of Pelican Bay's S.H.U. program, and synced it with suffocation of his beloved country under the wartime lockdown instituted by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Or maybe I'm just projecting. However, I did read somewhere that Muntader al-Zaidi told someone before he went to the press conference, that he thought it was a good day to be a martyr, so maybe a 45 A.C.P. was replaced by a pair of Ducati 271's. His dream of being the sacraficial-lamb-du-jour was fulfilled, when al-Zaidi was heard screaming as Green Zone security gave him a bone-breaking beatdown. But what if he wasn't patted down and scanned before he entered that press conference? What if Muntader al-Zaidi had been allowed to follow through and live out his Lee Harvey Oswald? Would I be laughing now? Would you?

Though President Bush adroitly ducked the projectile, his legacy was most assuredly assassinated by a pair of oxfords. Those optics will be embedded into our recall for a long time. But, to quote he and the V.P., "So? So what?" Talk about gangsta?!! What?! Or should I say, "Shu?!" Shockingly, days after the shoe-throwing incident, Bush and Cheney are no longer in a state of denial. The Confetti Twins--"So" an "So What?", as they responded to ABC Correspondent Martha Raddatz's pointed questions in separate interviews, about the decision to go to war--are finally admitting that they would've invaded Iraq with or without the substantiated intelligence regarding WMD's. Cheney also recently confirmed his belief, that waterboarding was a necessary tool for P.O.W. interrogations. George Walker Bush and Richard Cheney are two of the baddest gangsters that ever lived; bad enough to pound their chests atop the tallest skyscraper--named "We, The People"--in that once Shining City On a Hill. That same Shining City On a Hill short-circuited into an eight-year blackout. Yes, we have a new utilities guy--President Elect Barack Obama--ready to restore power, but one has to give The Confetti Twins their infamous due. To paraphrase that other gangster, Det. Alonzo Harris:

King Kong ain't got nothing' on them!

THE FINAL DAYS OF AN AMERICAN GANGSTA

By Barry Michael Cooper

When Politics Became The New Hip Hop, Vol. 3

I wasn't even going to post today, but I was a little disturbed by some comments I read on a bulletin board on HipHopDx.com, the Huffington Post of Hip Hop (shout out to one of the great editors over at HHDx, Jake Paine!). The warring texts were responding to a story about yours truly, and the episode I produced for BET's hit crime documentary series, American Gangster. On Thursday night, October 23rd, 2008, Season Three premiered with the tragic ballad of Larry Davis. The Davis episode of American Gangster was a ratings bonanza for BET, with about 2 million viewers tuning in, making it the #1 Original Series premiere of all time for the BET Networks.

On November 19th, 1986, an army of 30 heavily armed, NYPD police officers, had a warrant for the arrest of Larry Davis. Davis was suspected in the murders of 4 drug dealers in the South Bronx. In the '80s, New York City was truly A Tale Of Two Cities: rich and poor, white and black (and Latino), the powerful and powerless. Heavy-handed police tactics resulted in the death of Michael Stewart, who was arrested after painting graffiti in a subway station. Stewart resisted the officers' attempts to subdue him and was later savagely beaten while in police custody. Michael Stewart died 13 days later in a coma. There was also the murder of Eleanor Bumpurs, an elderly and mentally unstable black woman in the Bronx. The police had come to Bumpurs' apartment two days before Halloween in 1984, to evict her from her apartment, because she was four months behind on her $97 rent. When Bumpurs allegedly tried to throw boiling lye on one of the officers, she was shot and killed with a 12-gauge shotgun.

According to Davis, he didn't want to be another victim. As the cops stormed his sister Regina's house on Fulton Avenue, shots rang out. When the smoke cleared, six cops were seriously wounded, and Larry Davis was in the wind, escaping from the rear window from an apartment next door. For the next 30 days, there was an explosion in the media of a new black monster from the ghetto and an intensive manhunt that stretched across the country. When Davis was apprehended on December 6th, 1986, at the Twin Park Houses in the Bronx, he was cheered by the neighborhood like a Hip Hop John McClain who wasn't about to die hard, as a phalanx of more than 100 police officers, a cadre of NYPD armored cars, and a squadron of mini-cams aiming at the smiling Davis, trapping him in the cross-hairs of their lenses. He told anyone who would listen that he was working for the cops selling drugs. At that moment, the inner city action film had transitioned into a gripping, Sidney Lumet-ish, political thriller (I mean, literally: check out "Night Falls On Manhattan").

Let me cut to the chase. I was an investigative reporter at the Village Voice during that time, and I didn't believe Larry Davis. However, after interviewing Davis, some of his friends, family members (and even a few police officers who gave me the impression that "What happens in the Bronx, doesn't happen anywhere else"), his story began to ring true. In 1988, it rang loud and clear for two Bronx juries that acquitted Davis of both the murders of the 4 drug dealers, and firing on the six police officers in two explosive trials. Davis himself was represented by the late, great civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, and the controversial but brilliant Lynne Stewart. Davis' acquittal was a stunning referendum for New York's black and Latino neighborhoods, on the frightening police brutality and corruption in their communities. But it was a crushing blow for the NYPD, the Bronx Supreme Court, and former Mayor Ed Koch (who also makes a profound appearance in this episode).

In 1991, Davis was eventually convicted for the murder of a Manhattan-based drug dealer, and was sentenced to 46 years. In February of this year--after serving two decades behind bars and suffering from violent beatings from correctional officers and inmates--Larry Davis contacted my good friend and the creator/Executive Producer of "American Gangster", Nelson George (an award winning filmmaker, cultural critic, television producer and prolific author), supervising producer Mark Rowland, and the former president of BET Entertainment, film director Reginald Hudlin, telling them he wanted me to tell his version of the Larry Davis saga.

In my 1988 cover story for the Voice--titled "The Larry Davis Show"--I tried to GPS the locus of a Bronx Native Son who got lost on the road to the riches. Like Richard Wright's "Bigger Thomas", Davis was haunted with intelligence and intelligently misdirected. Had Davis made another choice with all of his precious genius, could he have been the guy we cheered on at Denver's Invesco Stadium, on an August night swelling with the technicolor dreams of change? We'll never know: a week before I was to interview Larry Davis, he was murdered in prison. Some say the killer was an inmate Davis had an ongoing beef with. Some say what happens in the Bronx--especially if you shoot and wound six police officers trying to do their job--will hunt you down to your grave.

I don't know what happened. There are many theories. However, the kids beefing on the HipHopDx message boards about who had the baddest mofos in their particular area codes--Nicky Barnes and Frank Lucas and Larry Davis repping the East Coast, or the Black Mafia Family repping the Atl, or Ricky Ross and the late Tookie Williams repping the West Coast--don't get it. These guys weren't American Gangsters. They were American Lackeys: they lacked real power, and they lacked real insight into the mechanics of The American Dream Machine. Some--like Davis and Williams--died in prison. Some snitched when they got pinched. They ruined lives. They ruined themselves. A few were redeemed, and when they finished their bid, they came back to the 'hood to try and make amends. Those who didn't are left penniless and hungry. Overwhelmed by a ravenous appetite for destruction which afflicted their poisoned souls. That's not Hip Hop. That's the basso profundo section in a Wagnerian mephisto waltz of bad intentions.

Watching a wacky send-up of American Gangster on You Tube, provided me with food for thought: the last days of an American Gangster are not spent in jail, or in the eternity of a graveyard.

The last days of a Real American Gangster are being lived out on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Real American Gangsters can flip the bird at the United Nations, dupe Secretaries of State, alienate powerful allies, invade countries, start wars, snatch oil fields, mourn the deaths of thousands of valiant men and women who risked their lives for a cause that had a dubious beginning and quite possibly, a grievous conclusion. They put their own presidential nominee--a proven war hero--in electoral peril. A nominee who is being swift-boated by a horrible economy, a hasty Veep choice, and the plummeting poll numbers of the Gangsta Opportunist Party. This Real American Gangster seems to have abandoned the teachings of his faith, and ignored the Providential instruction in the Bible, where Daniel 5 warns the king about the inevitable writing on the wall. This Real American Gangster doesn't seem to understand that he has been weighed in the balance, and has been found wanting. I hope This Real American Gangster is beginning to realize that the floorboards of our country have collapsed under the weight of his failed administration. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he just looks in the mirror and says, "Huh"?

Even if that mirror is Will Farrell on SNL.