Spike Lee and Ray Nagin - What do They Have in Common

Spike Lee was born Shelton Lee in Atlanta, Georgia in 1957. He came from good African American stock his father being a jazz musician and his mother a school teacher where he was raised in Brooklyn, New York.

Lee’s When the Levees Broke aired as a four hour long documentary on the Katrina disaster replete with a appearances and comments by Lee himself. The pictures were hard to look at and the stories were heart rending. What was harder for many Americans to withstand was the obvious anti –Bush rant that Lee used the disaster as a platform from which to blast the president.

The IMDb (Internet Movie Database) which is touted as the earth’s biggest movie database quotes Lee for saying “I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to express the views of black people who otherwise don’t have access to power and the media. I have to take advantage of that while I’m still bankable”

Some may like to question whether Mr. Lee can differentiate between an “opportunity” and an “invitation.” Using “power and the media” is just that but must not be confused with an invitation. When someone represents a body of people there are usually some protocols involved. Politicians are elected, executives are hired, speakers are invited, preachers are ordained and teachers are schooled. Movie makers are no different than any ordinary citizen exercising their right to free speech, which means they may or may not be telling the truth and often means they are telling the truth only as they perceive it.

I would not make light of the New Orleans disaster. In fact this writer is a victim of hurricane Katrina. I would be ashamed to use the entire matter as a platform to further my political views. Both the documentary and the many interviews on the media following the airing of the film paint a picture for me that approach the comical.

If I took Spike Lee seriously I could envision the president slinking down in his chair with a devious look in his eye. Around him are his collaborators and staff. He asks them if the military has any weapon or technology with which to direct the hurricane toward New Orleans. They assure him they have no such capabilities. Undaunted the president asks if the demolition experts could possibly blow up the levees thus wiping out the poor people in New Orleans. Far fetched? Not to the mind of Spike Lee. It is a matter of public record that Mr. Lee made just such remarks on CNN on the evening edition of CNN, August 26, 2006.

It is also a matter of public of public record that after the massacre at the Columbine High School Mr. Lee said that Charlton Heston, the president of the National Rifle Association should be shot. He said he would like to take a shot at Heston himself. He apologized later for those remarks. No one may ever know how angry Mr. Lee is with the president but since the White House turned down Lee’s offer to air the documentary there for the president, perhaps discretion won out on that refusal.

At the peak of Mr. Lee’s not so veiled diatribe against the Bush administration for all the blunders that followed Katrina it seems he was suddenly and summarily overshadowed by another of his counterparts. Stand up Mr. Nagin. Perhaps this pair believes that one good foot in the mouth episode deserves another. Near to the anniversary of Mayor Nagin’s famous “Chocolate City” remarks he rose to trump himself yet once again.

During an interview with a CNN reporter Mr. Nagin said that we should be “fair.” His idea of fair was to forget talking about the slow recovery of New Orleans because New Yorkers hadn’t been able to fix one single hole in the ground (9/11) in five full years. He too has been cruising down apology lane ever since.

Has Mr. Nagin gotten too big for his office? Has fame supplanted the need to be level headed and honest for Spike Lee? Unfortunately it looks like yes answers both these questions. Using a natural disaster and a national tragedy for building a political platform is irresponsible and callous. It raises doubt about both Chocolate City politics and terms used in the film industry like “based on a true story.”

Rev Bresciani is the author of two Christian books including An American Prophet and His Message, Xulon Press. He is a contributing columnist for several online news and commentary sites. His articles have been read and enjoyed by millions online and in print. Visit www.americanprophet.org

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Travel Jokes
Traveling can be a humbling experience, particularly when you travel to a foreign country. Such experiences, of course, give rise to travel jokes.

Travel Jokes

1. Three brothers are sitting at the bar in a Moscow establishment. An older man is sitting at a table behind them and has obviously had too much vodka. He stands, walks up to the first brother and says,

“Your mother is a vicious, greedy woman!”

The brother tells him to shut up and go sit down.

After about 5 minutes, the old man stands and walks up to the second brother,

“I sleep with your mother whenever I want!”

Disgusted, the brother tells the old man to bugger off.

A few minutes later, the old man stands and starts walking towards the third brother. All three brothers turn around and yell,

“Dad, go home!”

2. You’re at a bad hotel when the bed mint moves.

3. “Visi, Vermini, Vomnui” – I visited, I freaked, I threw up.

4. The President’s Vacation

George and Laura Bush take a vacation to Crawford and decide to go the grocery store. In the checkout line, Laura recognizes the man working at the register as an old high school boyfriend. After chatting, they leave the store and George says,

“Wow, imagine if you had married him. You’d be married to a grocery store clerk now instead of the President of the United States.”

Laura rolls her eyes and says, “No. I’d be married to the President of the United States.”

5. “Veni, Veneri, Vamoosi” – I came, I caught a disease, I ran away.”

Typically, just the act of traveling produces more than a few funny moments. Get out there and go.

Rick Chapo is with NomadJournals.com - makers of travel accessories. Visit us to read more about Internet travel articles.

Avoiding A Traumatic Experience
Taking simple steps to protect our families from going through the “TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE OF HAVING A LOST PET” can be as easy as registering your pet with an online service like RecoveryPets.Com. The services provided by this company includes registering the pet by name, a description, a photograph of the pet, along with up to ten contact phone numbers or email addresses of the pets owner. Plus, a pet tag that never becomes obsolete and contact information that can be updated FREE for the life of the pet.

Each year millions of pets are reported lost or found, but a vast majority of these family members are never reunited with their owners. The main reason for this is the lack of accurate identification, and this is because most pet collars or identification tags contain obsolete or outdated contact information. Fortunately there are companies like RecoveryPets.Com that provide services to increase the chances of recovering a family pet if they should ever become loss.

Protecting our pets should be one of our major concerns, and by providing a means for lost pets to be returned to their owners is the mission of RecoveryPets.Com. For more information on the services that they provide, visit their website at: www.recoverypets.com

About the Author

Thaddeus Collins is the owner of RecoveryPets.Com a company that specializes in the global recovery of lost pets using a unique tracking number that is registered on the companies website, and can be searched if the pet becomes lost. For more information visit www.recoverypets.com

Conversation In An Age Of Confusion
What do people talk about when they all believe different things and nobody is sure what the other person believes?

Then you add to that the usual courtesy that most people don’t want to offend other people, especially when it comes to the topics people disagree about with the most intensity, such as politics and religion, which all but the most foolhardy consider way off limits, at least, in what is referred to as polite conversation.

Actually, the silence of the times is far wider. In fact, the silken muffler of a feared indiscretion is wrapped around virtually every significant area of human thought, from philosophy to economics.

So what are we left with? Certain relatively safe topics, like poetry, unless you’re among poets whose egos are hair-trigger ready to fire back their own preferences vehemently. History might also be a good bet, since the overall tale has been pretty well agreed on, unless, once again, you’re with historians who may be simmering with their own disagreements.

The result? Conversation generally defaults to entrancing topics like the weather. Many spend entire evenings discussing such substitute content as one trifling entertainment or inconsequential entertainer after another. Things get really exciting when someone happens to mention how someone else may look tonight. Then there’s always the daring raconteur who’s arrayed with an evenings worth of sexual allusions.

Listening to such excited vapidity, one’s mind wanders to the legendary salons of France, at their epiphany, home, we read, to forthright conversation about the headiest topics of the time, generally centered around the new insights and old illusions of The Age of Reason.

At vagrant moments, you cannot help but ask yourself if the human race ever get to another time when it has enough beliefs in common to enliven its social occasions with conversations that really are interesting.

Tom Attea, creator of Newslaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway and has written comedy for TV. Critics have called his writing ""delightfully funny" and "witty" with "good, genuine laughs."

The Benefits of Submitting Articles for SEO
There are millions of businesses in the world. Similarly, there are millions of web sites being used to promote each and every one of them. Some get lucky enough and always appear number one in search engines. However, most get archived in the last places customers will ever look for in a search engine. Clearly, luck can not be everything when it comes to giving your business the attention it needs. Itï¿½s a good thing thereï¿½s always SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the only way to go if you want your ads and web sites to stand out in the internet. SEO compliant articles will inevitably hit the right keywords at all times. This procedure comes from the meticulous task of picking out most probable keywords people from all over the world use in search of corresponding services. Through hitting as many keywords as possible, a certain website raises its ranking in various search engines such as Yahoo and Google. With this higher ranking, customers gain more accessibility to the site. As we all know, it is indeed very rare for people to check out web sites in the latter pages of search results. That is why articles need to be optimized by inserting the words with most hits in terms of customersï¿½ random typing preference probabilities. Through search engine optimization, a web site will earn higher in the engines and remains there as long as it is kept properly maintained. SEO companies also see to it that their clients are always on top of the results page. As such, you are guaranteed continuing surveillance of your siteï¿½s ranking day in or day out. They also have keyword generators which can spare you from the laborious task of assessing which key words need to be hit and which ones are futile to include in the article. It also allows writers to hit the taste of the masses which access the internet. Companies can now focus writing attractively for the keywords which sell the best. Other services rendered by sites can now be dissolved if the web isnï¿½t showing an interest for it, therefore eliminating deadwood in the business. With this wonderful innovation in web writing, each article will surely be given ample attention in terms of engine optimization and accessibility. The purpose of advertising and syndication will be fulfilled, instead of stagnating in a dark and shady area with abysmally low ranking positions.

Sandra Adams writes search engine related articles.To get free articles to display on your own site, please visit www.articletrader.com