Our banner week on Occupy the Microphone!

Occupy the Microphone is on every day, LIVE AT FIVE! In the upstate, you can hear us at 105.7 FM and/or 910 AM, or you can listen to the livestream HERE. You can also download the show at our website, at Spreaker or at Talk Shoe. We are also circulated by the Black Talk Radio Network.



We got a lot of hits on our Memorial Day show, which featured a half hour of excellent antiwar music, followed by a half hour of interviews with veterans who are now peace activists and veteran-advocates, including Wade Hampton Fulmer (of Veterans for Peace), and Kevin Alexander Gray.



Thursday's show highlighted the Detroit Police Special Response Team's murder of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in May 2010, during a home invasion, which was being filmed for A&E network's reality show, "The First 48". The jury was seated this week in the trial of Officer Joseph Weekley, who has been charged with the murder.
(This is an ongoing, harrowing tale that we will undoubtedly be revisiting many times.)

Victim-advocate Amelia Pena talked about domestic violence issues with co-host Double A (both in photo above).



Friday's show featured local activists Eric Wood and Traci Young Fant. (above, co-host Gregg Jocoy with Eric Wood, Traci Young Fant and Double A.)

Traci discussed several upcoming local events, including OUT OF BONDAGE, which will be held at the Empowerment Zone, 775 Woodruff Rd, Greenville, SC, this Saturday, June 8th at 6pm.

Amelia Pena (mentioned above) will be one of the speakers, along with Winn Freeman, former addict and founder of Wisdom In Living Life Ministry. Also sharing their stories and testimonies will be Torah Speech, Sharon Totherow, Tabatha Duck, Laura Calhoun, Taurice Bussey and Maurice Walker, with a special musical performance by Jeff Redmond.



This free, life-changing community event is dedicated to the memory of Natasha Kerns and Kacy Roberson. For further information, call Traci at 864-235-3592.



Also coming up is the 2nd Annual Multicultural Festival, which will be at McAlister Square in Greenville. (also the home of WOLI studios, where we broadcast Occupy the Microphone). Another free event scheduled for Thursday, June 27th at 3pm. Volunteers, vendors, sponsors and displays are still needed. Sponsorship packets start at $25, while vendor-tables run for $45.

Again, if you are interested, get in touch with Traci, the human dynamo, 864-235-3592. (Traci, it was such a pleasure to have you on the show!)

Tune in tomorrow!

Voices Against Violence

I will be speaking tonight at the 4th Annual Voices Against Violence event.

I will be talking about the death of Sean Kennedy, gay-bashing and bullying.


Empowerment Zone
775 Woodruff Road
Greenville, SC
$5 Admission
6:30pm

Yall come, my radio show co-host Double-A diehard will be there too!

Today's show is up!

Charlie Sheen: Hero of the hour?

As you have undoubtedly heard, Charlie Sheen's live shows didn't go over so well over the weekend. Practicing alcoholics are never as funny as they think they are, in the long haul. With editing, yes. For a whole show, no. From ABC:

After all but getting booed off stage at the Detroit, Mich. debut of his live show, "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option," it's unclear if or how Sheen's month-long tour will proceed.

Anticipation ran high for the event. Ticket holders milled about the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit before the 8 p.m. start time, sometimes yelling Sheen catchphrases like "tiger blood" and "winning" to rev up fellow attendees. As of Saturday afternoon, all 4,700 seats at the theater had been sold.

...

Sheen managed to up the crowd's enthusiasm for the start of his act. Before his official debut, he played a montage of video clips including scenes from "Apocalypse Now," the film starring Sheen's father that Sheen claims to be obsessed with. He then strutted on stage with his "goddesses," Bree Olsen and Natalie Kenly, who proceeded to engage in a passionate kiss, much to the delight of the crowd.

They then went backstage to burn a bowling shirt similar to the one Sheen wore on "Two and a Half Men." While footage of the shirt on fire in a garbage can played on the big screen behind him, Sheen urged the crowd to hold up their lighters, asking, "Doesn't anyone smoke cigarettes anymore?"

The spectacle mirrored the ranting and raving Sheen's done online and in interviews over the past few weeks. But after that, things took a turn for the weird.

Sheen stood at a podium in front of a pseudo-presidential looking seal saying "Warlock States of Sheen" and launched into a nonsensical speech seemingly directed at his critics.

He started, "Tonight I am delivered by cyber cloud, with the stomp and glisten of heaven's produce section." He then talked about burning something "down from the mount of olive" and "gasoline rainbows." He frequently damned "trolls" -- presumably, "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre and his former bosses at CBS and Warner Brothers. He called Sarah Palin a "whore" for no apparent reason.

No apparent reason? Of course there is an apparent reason, that you media-swine refuse to take seriously: He's a misogynist pig.

The fact that so many people find his woman-hating amusing and worth celebrating, lets us know exactly how far we have to go.

Anna Holmes' piece in the New York Times, linked above, details all the woman-pounding Charlie has humorously engaged in over the years. And as a rich, privileged white man, he gets by with all of it (paging Chris Brown! Chris Brown, call your office)... and of course, since so many of the women getting pounded are mere actresses, models and sex workers, they 'deserve' it:

A woman’s active embrace of the fame monster or participation in the sex industry, we seem to say, means that she compromises her right not to be assaulted, let alone humiliated, insulted or degraded; it’s part of the deal. The promise of a modern Cinderella ending — attention, fame, the love and savings account of a rich man — is always the assumed goal.

Objectification and abuse, it follows, is not only an accepted occupational hazard for certain women, but something that men like Mr. Sheen have earned the right to indulge in. (Mr. Sheen reportedly once said that he didn’t pay prostitutes for the sex; he paid them “to leave.”)

Haha, ain't that funny? Is he serious or joking?--go the predictable onlooker-comments... ohhh, he's just being funny. Actually, I think he means everything he says, and he has repeatedly proven that he is willing to back it up with a nice right to the jaw, if any nearby female should argue.

Indeed, it’s difficult for many to discern any difference between Mr. Sheen’s real-life, round-the-clock, recorded outbursts and the sexist narratives devised by reality television producers, in which women are routinely portrayed as backstabbing floozies, and dreadful behavior by males is explained away as a side effect of unbridled passion or too much pilsner.

And so, a pricey live show-tour by a woman-hater, or should I say ANOTHER woman-hater (there are oodles of rock stars and hip-hop stars and country-and-western stars who have gotten plenty rich off of women-hating... paging Eminem! paging Ted Nugent! etc) ... and then I see Phyllis Schlafly (barfs for emphasis) on C-Span over the weekend, telling us that feminism is over with and no longer necessary, and what are these harridans and harpies still so pissed off about?

One wonders if she has flipped her channels lately, over to ABC (live video of Charlie at above link) or to the millions of other outlets that have advertised Charlie's zealously-sexist antics over recent months. Hello? What planet is Schlafly on?

They deserve each other, most assuredly.

Why is domestic violence against men funny?

As a kid, I grew up hearing the following song-spoof:

Rudolph the Bow-Legged Cowboy
Had a very shiny gun
And if you ever saw it
You would turn around and run

All of the other cowboys
Used to laugh and call him names
They wouldn't let poor Rudolph
Join in any Cowboy games

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say
Rudolph with your gun so bright
Won't you shoot my wife tonight?

And this was considered funny. Kids in Ohio used to jump rope to it at Christmastime, if the ice wasn't too heavy.

I cannot hear the holiday song "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer"--without thinking of it.

Danny has rightly pointed out that the current jokey-joke over Tiger Woods getting clobbered by the missus, is not cool. (In fairness: I owe the guys over at Feminist Critics one, for pointing this out to me.)

We now jokey-joke over men getting beaten up by women, the way we used to joke about women getting beaten up by men. It is understood, on some level, that he "deserves" it. If a man is cheating, he is considered by many to be fair game.

However, we can assume that many women-victims of domestic violence have been cheating also... and this would not be acceptable as an excuse for a beating, even if she was.

In addition: The prejudicial concept that "men are stronger" is rendered meaningless, when we are talking about women using weapons like golf clubs that serve to "equalize" us in physical disputes. The recent Saturday Night Live skit managed to be simultaneously misogynist and jokey-joke about domestic violence against men. However, it is also notable that it might be the first time I've seen any acknowledgment from the mass media that a man might actually be physically afraid of his wife.

I realized my own perspective had radically changed when I saw this again (caution, may trigger, etc):

Barbara Bain on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1963)



I hadn't seen this sitcom episode since childhood, and remembered it as patently hilarious slapstick (at which Dick Van Dyke always excelled admirably).

Now? No.

In fact, I was alarmed at how Barbara Bain's total viciousness is played for laughs. (In many ways, this is also misogynist, of course, portraying her as vengeful harpy.)

Your thoughts on domestic violence against men? Will we ever find it UNfunny?

Safe Harbor Candlelight Vigil for Victims of Domestic Violence

Becky Callaham, Executive Director of Safe Harbor, the women's shelter. The names and stories of the women were projected onto the wall during the ceremony.











Me and Cousin Bethie attended the SAFE HARBOR Candlelight Vigil last night at Bergamo Square in downtown Greenville. The vigil honored South Carolina women killed by domestic violence.

SC ranks 8th in the nation in deaths from domestic violence.

Photos of the candle-lighting below. (Admittedly, I am still learning how to take pictures--I do far better in SUNLIGHT. Hopefully, DEAD AIR readers will bear with me as I improve my photography skills!)

...

Photos 1, 2, 3: The candle-lighting ceremony.

Photo 4: Cousin Bethie holds candles.

Photo 5: Carolyn Wade, whom I knew years ago as a friend of Bill W, shared the experience, strength and hope that she gained as a survivor at Safe Harbor, and made us all cry.

She is a wonderful witness.

Photo 6: The featured singers were the Valleybrook Baptist Church Praise Team. Their pastor, Curtis Johnson, also delivered some great oratory about the underlying causes of domestic violence. Unfortunately, my photos of him were even blurrier than this one of the singers. Michael Cogdill, local newscaster, shared what it was like to grow up in a home with a violent father. (He was SO different from his 'objective' and unemotional newsman-persona, I almost did not recognize him as the same person!) Again, the photos weren't so good and the glare from the lights eclipsed his face.

It was a great ceremony and I was honored to take part.

~*~

Dead Air Church - Another Park, Another Sunday

Left: Purple heart and orange daisies.

~*~

I named this poem ANOTHER PARK, ANOTHER SUNDAY about 15 years ago, after a beloved Doobie Brothers song, which I have included below.

I never came up with another title, since I never expected to share the poem.

I found it while cleaning up after my hallway flood last week.

~*~



He is a decent person at heart, she said.
The park's ancient, wooden swings banged against each other
as we pretended to be swinging on them
dragging our feet, looking down at our shoes

Side by side, looking out,
looking away
stealing glances of each other

The swings creaked, they were forever uneven
The neighborhood children stood upright on them, wearing them down
(Do you, she asked, call it a teeter-totter or a see-saw?)

He is a decent person at heart, she said
turning her face up to the sunlit sky
where I could see the shimmer and glimmer of her tears
reflecting the sun and the clouds
The park's noises, children at the edge, arguing, screaming, squealing
Has one of them started to cry?
Should we go see?

He is a decent person at heart, she repeated, nodding.
She had made up her mind.
She would operate on this assumption, this decision.
She would conduct all of her future domestic business,
her science of cohabitation
with this in mind.

And as they left the park, she saw her rub her wrist
absently
the bruise bright and blue in the sun
as she touched her heart, as if consolidating
the place
where he was decent.
The only place.

The park fades quickly from my memory
my sun-bleached happiness fleeting, distracted

And what I remember
is his decency
and her bruise.


~*~

Doobie Brothers - Another Park, Another Sunday

[via FoxyTunes / The Doobie Brothers]