New poem: BEN AFFLECK EXPLAINS STARDOM FOR YOU

 "I lobbied [Henry Louis Gates] the same way I lobby directors about what takes of mine I think they should use. This is the collaborative creative process."--actor/director Ben Affleck, apologizing for asking Gates to remove a certain slave-owning ancestor of Affleck from an episode of the FINDING YOUR ROOTS television series.

now we know what true Celebrity is:

it occurs when a star can agree

to appear on a television show

on the subject of genealogy

and ask for a certain relative to be erased

in much the same way the star can demand

a newspaper or magazine or website

to kill details about his/her private life

or omit any outbursts committed

in the course of the interview

>

imagining how many other omissions

might have occurred

if Ben Affleck had switched his career

from making movies

to running for national elected office

Obama backtracks from original press conference statement re treatment of Henry Louis Gates.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2009&base_name=this_is_what_happens_to_a_blac

Here's a link to coverage of Obama's brief press conference statement, which seemed to be geared primarily to the White House press corps--and took too much refuge in formal, rather than plain-spoken language: http://news.aol.com/article/critics-charge-obama-is-anti-police/587294

Unfortunately, some white people still get upset when African Americans speak out on the subject of racial discrminiation/profiling. I'm old enough to remember when then-Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley was criticized in 1992 for expressing anger with the Simi Valley "not guilty" verdicts for the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King the previous year.

[UPDATE 7/27/09: It's now being revealed that the original 911 call from a neighbor made no mention of race: http://news.aol.com/article/henry-louis-gates-jr-911-call/589068.]