Tavis Smiley

What do you drink during a Republican Presidential Forum on PBS?

coffee
I was thinking of alcohol. Like massive amounts of rum or tequila, but I am afraid I may fall asleep faster than you say Al-Qaeda, so I am actually doing a double espresso with a shot of milk ... un cortado as we say in the isla.

What about you? Come on over to the chat room and tell us all about it.

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Bill Clinton: Giving

If you see me in a suit it generally means one of two things: I am going to a wedding or I am invited to an event with Bill Clinton.

The work I have done for Kiva, both as a lender and a blogger, has gotten some attention. My Kiva diaries are among the more popular ones I write. A little while back I was interviewed by BBC World News as a lender. And most recently, I was invited to a private panel discussion for the release of Bill Clintonâ€™s latest Book, GIVING: How Each of Us Can Change the World. I do not have a copy of this book as of yet so this is not a book review, though that might come. Instead I want to discuss the event and some of the individuals and organizations that were highlighted.

Three people I have had previous contact with were on the panel: Bill Clinton himself, who I got to meet at a fundraiser for Christine Jennings, Majora Carter, an awesome NYC rising star, and Premal Shah, President of Kiva, the organization I have been working with that got me invited to the event. Rounding out the panel were Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Childrenâ€™s Zone (which hosted the event), Mark Grashow of U.S. - Africa Childrenâ€™s Fellowship and a 6 year old girl named Mackenzie who organized a beach cleanup for her birthday. The panel discussion was moderated by Tavis Smiley.

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Scenes from the PBS Democratic Forum spin room

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Why would Tavis Smiley hire an extremist republican hack like Frank Luntz?

I can't leave for Washington DC until I address the Frank Luntz uproar.

If you have not been following the latest (in a littany of) outrage in the lefty blogosphere, PBS had announced that tonight's Presidential Forum with Tavis Smiley was going to have as the sole broadcast commentator the infamous Frank Luntz. This is the notorious "pollster" of the GOP who publishes a "rule book" for republican candidates that teaches them how to attack their opponents as angry liberals.

Jeffrey Feldman --who ought to be the DNC's top communications strategist-- has this to say about Luntz :

» read more | liza's blog | 4 comments | email this blog | 1389 reads

Tavis, Obama and me at Howard University

Well ... it's not quite that way.

I just got word from Robert Cox of The Media Bloggers Association that I have been credentialed, along with another 21 bloggers, to cover the Democratic Presidential Debate at this Thursday night at Howard University.

It's this Thursday at 9:30pm with Sexy Beast
Tavis Smiley as the moderator. PBS is the sponsor of the event.

I'll have later today the final list of bloggers attending.

I just have to say that my head is going to explode just thinking of Tavis, Obama and me inside that bastion of American negritude.

YEARGGGGH bbs!

» liza's blog | add new comment | email this blog | 1384 reads

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Words to live by

These new-found tensions which are present at all stages in the real nature of colonialism have their repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature, for example, there is relative over-production. From being a reply on a minor scale to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism. The intelligentsia, which during the period of repression was essentially a consuming public, now themselves become producers. This literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style; but later on novels, short stories and essays are attempted. It is as if a kind of internal organisation or law of expression existed which wills that poetic expression become less frequent in proportion as the objectives and the methods of the struggle for liberation become more precise. Themes are completely altered; in fact, we find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the occupying power. The colonialists have in former times encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions which find their outlet in expression are in fact assimilated by the occupying power in a cathartic process. To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere. But such a situation can only be transitory. In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal. In the period that follows, the words of command are heard. The crystallisation of the national consciousness will both disrupt literary styles and themes, and also create a completely new public. While at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor, whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.