Decision '08: Kareem vs Magic

Magic is clearly an UNCLE TOM!!!!!

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Not to be a shameless promoter, but this guy (read: a baller) got Kareem on record even before Hardball on this story: http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/01/17/kareem-abduljabbar

just shows that experience may provide judgement, but talent gets the Ws

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The book, "On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance," has already been published and I've read it. I'm not sure of the status of the Spike Lee documentary based on the book, but Chris Webber is supposed to be in it, so that explains the photo.

Yes, I knew that Kareem is a Barack Obama supporter but please don't tell me that Magic is tomming by backing Hillary Clinton. Let me explain something to you.

There were two African American senators from Mississippi during Reconstruction: Hiram Revels, who served out the last year of Jefferson Davis's term; and four years later, Blanche Kelso Bruce, an Oberlin College-educated former slave who served a full six-year term in the US Senate. Halfway through his term, Reconstruction was violently overturned and it became too dangerous for him to return to his home state, so his career in government depended on political appointments and he served as register of the US Treasury under three different Presidents. Never before had a black man's name appeared on American money. A great biography about him and his descendants was published last year: "The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty" by Lawrence Otis Graham.

The first African American to be elected to the Senate by popular vote (his predecessors were elected by the state legislature) was another Republican from Massachusetts, Edward Brooke, elected one year after LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act. He had more influence than his predecessors and in 1972 became the first black Senator to be reelected.

Here's the part I'm getting at. Carol Moseley Braun was elected from Illinois in 1992 as the first black woman and the first black Democratic senator. Both she and Obama had served as state legislators from Chicago, a city that counts for 80 percent of the votes in Illinois Democratic primaries. Moseley Braun shocked everyone by defeating the incumbent, Alan J. Dixon in the Democratic primary and it was due at least in part over his decision to confirm Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Justice.

Moseley Braun's election owed as much - probably more - to the united support of women across the color line, than to the support of African Americans. Women's outrage over how Anita Hill was treated by pro-Clarence Thomas senates during his confirmation hearing helped Moseley Braun galvanize the women's vote. She famously went after Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond over the Confederate flag but her single term was marked by some questionable expenditures.

Anyway, she paved the way for fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama to become only the fifth African American US Senator and like Obama, she didn't do it with monoethnic support. And finally, unlike Sen. Obama, Senators Clinton and Edwards have both proposed universal health coverage. How is that not a valid reason for Magic Johnson, or anyone, regardless of race, to support her candidacy?

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come on Matt, why do we put down folks for having an opinion, how sad, this is what we need, for folks to get involved, no matter what one's choice is. it great to hear Black men give their idea's during this possible historic vote, to have a female & a black choice, mean the U.S. is searching for a way to get out of this "Bush" war, feed & cloth & to change our views about what's happening here at home first! Johnny Dr Bugs

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