David's blog: Ken Blackwell

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

Last Thursday, Andrew-Bryce Hudson of the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center at Wright State posted an announcement to Wright State’s announcement listserv about an appearance to be held Saturday the 21st by Jeff Johnson.

Jeff Johnson,
BET star,
Youth advocate,
Blackwell campaign

Shortly after Hudson’s announcement was posted, another person posted a reply pointing out that Johnson was employed by Ken Blackwell’s gubernatorial campaign as its “advocate to young and urban voters” and saying that perhaps Hudson should have mentioned that fact. Hudson quickly replied with a simple “His appearance to WSU is non-partisan. Thank you.”

That sparked my curiosity. If Johnson’s appearance had been scheduled for several months, as is common for busy speakers, it could well have nothing to do with his work for Blackwell. However, if it had been scheduled recently, after his appointment, then perhaps it was for partisan reasons. I sent Hudson an e-mail asking only “How long has Mr. Johnson’s appearance been scheduled?”. Friday I hadn’t heard anything so I sent another e-mail saying that my question hadn’t been meant facetiously and that I really did want to know. Friday afternoon I saw a post on another matter from Hudson on the listserv, so I knew he was in the office. Today I sent a third e-mail saying that my question wasn’t outrageous nor was it posed impolitely and that I deserved a response, if it was just to say he couldn’t answer my question.

Well imagine my surprise when I received a phone call this morning from Hudson. I hadn’t included my phone number in my e-mails, so he’d taken the trouble to look it up. He said he’d only just received my second and third e-mails today and that it sounded from my third e-mail as if I thought he was ignoring me. I said that yes, I had gotten that impression, and he said he’d been busy with Johnson’s arrival. I said that I understood that but I’d seen he’d been able to post something on the listserv on Friday. He asked why I wanted to know how long Johnson’s appearance had been scheduled and said that he wondered if I’d had any conversations he’d not been a part of. I said that no, I’d seen his original posting and the replies and was just curious, and he said he didn’t like the tone of my e-mails. I said my first e-mail had simply said “How long has Mr. Johnson’s appearance been scheduled,” how could that have a tone, and shouldn’t that be public information. He finally gave me the information I’d been looking for, that Johnson’s appearance had been arranged “for about three months.” I thanked him and thought that was that.

However, I get the feeling that Hudson must be feeling defensive because he also took the time to send a reply to my e-mail, explaining that “[p]er our phone conversation today, you[r] email was not answered until today because of Jeff Johnson’s arrival on Saturday” (which I agree is reasonable—even if he had time to do other announcements related to his job on Friday, he wouldn’t necessarily have time to reply to every e-mail he received) and that “[a]gain, Mr. Johnson’s speaking engagement was arranged this past summer.”

Okay, so Jeff Johnson’s October 21st appearance’s being scheduled three months or so beforehand would put the arrangements at July 21st, before the August 11th announcement of Johnson’s joining Blackwell’s team. Simple enough, especially if Hudson had simply sent me an e-mail saying that, instead of taking the time to find my phone number and call me to question my tone and motives. Actually I can understand why Hudson would question my motives, because my motives were based on what he feared, a suspicion that he wasn’t being entirely truthful or forthright in his original listserv post or his reply to it, a suspicion that he has not allayed. Perhaps Johnson didn’t know on July 21 that he was going to work for Blackwell. Perhaps Hudson didn’t either, and perhaps Hudson wasn’t being disingenuous in omitting the info about Johnson’s employment by Blackwell in the announcement of Johnson’s WSU appearance. Or perhaps not.

Friday, October 20th, 2006

This evening, courtesy of MVFHC, I went to the Dayton Branch of the NAACP's annual Freedom Fund Banquet, the 55th year the dinner was held but the first time I'd ever attended.

The event was held downtown at the Convention Center, and so I can't help comparing the NAACP banquet to the Pride Dinner, which was held several years at the Convention Center and was the last dinner-style event I'd attended there.

The first comparison is that at Pride Dinners there were several cash bars set up around the periphery, but at the NAACP banquet there are none. Apparently the NAACP membership, made up of lots of African American pastors and their congregations, want attendees to be sober, although when it comes to fundraising, I'm not sure that's necessarily a wise tactic.

The food was better than I remember from years past. The menu featured chicken, of course, but instead of being bland institutional chicken it was actually pretty good and was served in combination with pork in a sweet sauce.

The NAACP entertainment in general paled in comparison to that of a typical Pride Dinner. Bless the little ACT-SO performers' hearts, but they weren't exactly enthralling. (And a lip-synching drag queen is? Point taken, but again, alcohol helps loosen an audience up).

Corrine Brown as seen from my distant seat

People certainly have no qualms about leaving the NAACP dinner early. NAACP Dayton Branch president the Rev. Dr. Robert E. Baines Jr. bragged about there being two tables for members of his congregation, Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, but after his part in the program, a bunch of Macedonians got up and left, obviously not caring to wait to hear the keynote speaker.

The NAACP pulls in higher powered politicians. You can count on local Democrats to attend Pride Dinners, but the NAACP banquet gets Republicans too, and not just local ones. Ohio's beloved Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell made a surprise appearance, I guess hoping to shore up what he considers a key constituency, but I was pleased to hear only lukewarm applause for him (Update 10/23: A friend who attended with me disagrees and thinks that most people in attendance probably will vote for Blackwell). And then there was the evening's keynote speaker, Congresswoman Corrine Brown of Florida.

Corrine Brown
in pink

Brown was fun, and though she was politic enough not to mention Blackwell by name, she didn't spare him any punches, exhorting the audience to vote for people not just cause they "bought a ticket to the NAACP barbeque" but instead because of their stand on the issues and their voting records and reminding us that we need to be vigilant to make sure this year's election is a fair one, unlike the 2000 election in Florida, in which 27,000 voters in her district had their ballots tossed out, and the 2004 election in Ohio, for whose handling Blackwell has been so widely praised (not).

I couldn't see Brown so well from my distant seat on the edge, but she stood out since she was pretty in pink, a color I guess she likes to wear other places too. Now Brown is prettier than a drag queen, but, bless her heart, I have to admit the comparison did cross my mind. I looked for a pic of Ms. Demure (of Harper's Bizzaroworld fame) in pink but couldn't find one.

Looking for websites tonight while writing this, I see that people are just plagued by expiring domain names. The Dayton Branch of the NAACP is one of only a few in Ohio listed on the NAACP website as having its own website (the big three, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati don't have websites), but daytonnaacp.org expired in June this year and was snatched up by a domain name prospector. Ms. Demure used to have a domain name for her show at bazzaroworld.com, but that expired and has been taken over too. Google lists an article about Ms. Demure on queerohio.com, but that just expired this month, though its proprietors may yet reclaim it. How difficult is it to keep track of your domain names, people?

Stupid idea: NAACP is commonly pronounced as N double-A CP. I think it'd be cool if they updated their name to American Association for the Advancement of African Americans, cause then they'd be the quintuple-A.