Set your DVRs and Tivos for Wednesday and Thursday night as Soledad O' Brien gives a ranging view of what it means to be Black in America. The program starts each night at 8 P.M. Central. I'll have a review of the show up at Dallas South on Wednesday morning. I will say that I enjoyed the presentation very much and on Wednesday I'll let you know why I think everyone should see this special report.

The problem with satire is that most of the time people don't think it's funny.  Usually it's the very people the creator is trying to raise awareness about or advocate for.  The New Yorker, a so called liberal publication, isn't helping matters with this latest addition to media misx. Take one of my favorite movies, Spike Lee's Bamboozled from 2000.  I haven't met anyone besides myself who cares to much for it, or even lists it with Spike Lee's other joints.  When my wife and I saw it nearly a decade ago, people were walking out of the theater.  I got it, but I understand those who were not as amused as I was. In this instance, satire is unnessary.  We get it, folks think Obama's Muslim, blah, blah, blah.  The folks who came up with the Michelle Obama lynching picture used the same excuse as the New Yorker.  They're all pretty tired.  We get it.

Thanks to Nicole Stockdale, copy editor at the Dallas Morning News for giving me my first opportunity to appear in the Sunday paper.  See my civic pride column below. Is anyone proud to live in Dallas? I pondered this question after listening to a weeklong radio field trip that NPR's News and Notes program took to Atlanta. Each day, the show focused on various aspects of the city, with topics that ranged from reducing water flow at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to the success of the Atlanta University System. One thing was constant during each night of programming. Whether it was the mayor or a congressperson, a student or a cab driver, Atlantans spoke of their city with pride and enthusiasm. So I wondered what residents would say about our city if News and Notes host Farai Chideya were to bring her show to Dallas. My thought is that optimism and glad tidings would be in short supply. Many would probably harp on the same tired chords we always hear: Why are they throwing money away on the Cotton Bowl? When will DISD get its act together? What's up with the Trinity River project? I'm not suggesting that the skepticism isn't justified, but we are so accustomed to negativity ...

Make sure to check out the Points section of Sunday's Dallas Morning News. I have a column that is scheduled to appear dealing with...well I'll let you find out this weekend. If you like it or if you don't, make sure to write (or email) the Morning News to let them know.

Many of you may remember Dallas South and a few other Spear members were featured in a Philadelphia Tribune article titled Blogger Nation.  With that in mind, it give me great pleasure to announce that the Tribune has been recognized for their fine work.  Congrats to Heather Faison who wrote the article and everyone else there in Chicago. PHILADELPHIA, July 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), at its recent 68th Annual Merit Award Ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky, presented ten awards, including its highest honor, the John B. Russwurm Award for "Best Newspaper," to The Philadelphia Tribune, the nation's oldest black newspaper. In seven of the last twelve years, The Tribune has been named the nation's best black newspaper at the award ceremony. The Philadelphia Tribune, which has been serving the Greater Philadelphia region's African-American community for more than 124 years, took home, in addition to "Best Newspaper," five first place awards, including, "Best Special Edition," given for its 2007 Martin Luther King supplement; "Best Editorial," presented to its Sunday edition editor, Mike Bruton, for his editorial titled End The Chaos; Start Snitching; "Best Business Section," "Best Youth Section," given for its weekly supplement, The Learning Key ...

Thanks -as always- to Farai Chideya, Devin Robins, and all the folks at NPR's News and Notes for allowing me to participate on today's bloggers roundtable. I was on with Shay Riley of Booker Rising, and Arlene Fenton of Black Women Vote. We discussed the "fairness doctrine", Ralph Nader, and increased traffic at white supremacist websites.   Click on the picture above to listen to our segment.

Friday was a busy day. I started out with a 6 am visit to WVON - The Talk of Chicago. There I sat and watched my Texas A&M Chapter Brother (A-Phi) in a rare studio airing of his show. Fortunately the sun rises at 5 am in Chi-Town so it didn't feel quite so early. The Executive Producer of the Roland S. Martin Show Ms. Geneen Hartson greeted me when I arrived and walked me into the studio. It was quite cool of her because I only asked Roland if I could sit in the night before and he was cool with it, but I pretty much just showed up. The lead topic on the show was the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a Washington D.C. gun ban. The majority of the callers agreed with the Court's decision, which Chicago's mayor Richard Daley vehemently disagreed with in the Chicago Tribune. He vowed to fight to keep a similar ban in Chicago. At around 7 o'clock, one caller chimed in as a dissenter against the Court's 5-4 ruling. That was Father Michael Pfleger (more on that later). Roland tossed out ...

Fox News is not a news station. I'm amazed at how much credibility people give to a right wing PR outfit like Faux. Maybe it's because people don't have the chance to listen to their hosts on the radio. Driving around throughout the day, I have time to fly by Sean Insanity's propaganda filled 3 hours as well as Bill O'Reiley's radio factor. I keep getting emails asking for people to boycott Fox News. That's an unreasonable request because most of the people getting the emails don't watch Fox with any consistency. The closed minded race baiting crowd who believe in Fox have no intentention to stop watching. But back to the point, just because they call themselves "fair an balanced" doesn't meat that they are. There has never been a solitary action taken by the station to make one believe fair is their intent. Whether it's immigration or God forbid the thought of a black man running for POTUS, Fox takes the position of the hard right on at all cost. People should treat Fox as what it is, a tool to stir up fear; fear of cooky liberals, dangerous immigrants, fanatical Muslims, and angry black ...

Des Moines — Howard Witt, national correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, has won the 2008 American Judicature Society’s Toni House Journalism Award. Witt is the Tribune’s Southwest bureau chief based out of Houston. The award is named after the late U.S. Supreme Court public information officer Toni House. It honors outstanding journalism that enhances public understanding of the courts and contributes to the improvement of the administration of justice. The award will be presented at a ceremony later this year. Witt was selected as the recipient for a career body of work that has heightened public awareness of continuing racial disparities in America. Most notably, Witt wrote the first national story on racial tensions in Jena, Louisiana, now commonly known as the Jena 6 story. Witt’s other prominent stories led to the release of Shaquanda Cotton, a black teen who received seven years in jail for shoving her school hall monitor in Paris, Texas, and to a large civil award for Billy Ray Johnson, a mentally disabled black man in Texas who was beaten and left for dead by four white youths who received only a slap on the wrist in criminal court. Witt is the tenth recipient of the award. Previous ...

African-American Teen Unemployment at 32.3 Percent Is Six Times the National Average; Teen Summer Job Climate Worst Since World War II WASHINGTON, June 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) drew attention to the teen employment drought with a full-page advertisement in the USA TODAY. The ad raises the issue of minority teen unemployment, calling it the biggest crisis currently facing this population group. The ad reads as follows: The Biggest Minority Teen Crisis? -- Pregnancy -- Smoking -- Unemployment "Sadly, African-American teen unemployment is nearly six times the national average and almost twice that of teens in general. Find out more about what's preventing teens from finding work and what it means for their future at www.minimumwage.com." The national unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May from 5 percent in April driven in large part by the 3.3 percentage point jump in teen unemployment. Researchers at Northeastern University, who described summer 2007 as "the worst in post-World War II history" for teen summer employment, recently concluded that 2008 is poised to be "even worse." One of the prime reasons for this drastic employment drought is the mandated wage hikes that policy makers have ...