Afternoon Edition - 8/31/05

The Big Easy; The Huge Horror
New Orleans is said to be 80% underwater, with some parts 20 feet deep. Charity Hospital, the state’s largest public hospital, is having supplies canoed in from other locations; it has no power. At the superdome where over 10,000 folks have sought refuge – three suicides have been reported. The dome has no air conditioning, deplorable sanitary conditions and limited supplies, but it is presently the only place to bring in many of the rescued. Rescuers are comparing the conditions in New Orleans to that of a third world country.

What’s Good For The Goose; Is Not Good For The Other Goose
Matthew Limon is an 18-year old Kansas resident who is serving 17 years in prison for engaging in consensual oral sex with his 15-year old male high school friend. As it turns out, Kansas allows individuals as young as 12 to marry – with their parent’s consent of course – regardless of the age of the party their marrying. Most recently an out-of-state 22-year old man wed his 14-year old girlfriend. They crossed state lines to do so. The adult man had been having sex with the young girl since she was 13 – they even have a child to prove it. The state however is more concerned with the consensual interaction of two teenage boys that at best were exploring, as boys sometimes do, and at worst were having underage sex with a same sex partner. In any event, the state supreme court is reviewing Limon’s case. He has already served 5 years of his 17-year criminal sodomy sentence.

Feeling Tense Honey?
Yuk-Mouth Rapper Lil’ Kim, who is scheduled to begin her prison sentence in September, was reported to have had a verbal altercation with a flight attendant on her trip from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to NYC. Kim was heard asking the flight attendant, “Do you know who I am?!” several times and accused the sky waitress of being a racist. Ultimately, the flight took off and Kim had to trust her in-flight meal to the very person she harassed.

On Blast
My train ride into work today was a disaster. I was transfixed as a major argument that pitted a black woman and a Puerto Rican woman in a battle of words that included: ‘go back to your country’; ‘you guys are dirty’; ‘speak English, this is America’ and countless other insults. Today, the question for our bloggers is simple. Do blacks and Latinos recognize that they are both minority groups who nearly always share the same financial situations, neighborhoods and struggles? Are the differences between the black and Latino cultures distinctive enough to bring about these confrontations? What negative stereotypes do these cultures have about each other that can be diffused with an open discussion?

Keep passin’ the open windows…