Rick Astley, Where Are You?

Ebony and ivory live together
in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard,
oh lord why don't we?
--Ebony and Ivory, Paul McCartney
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Any of you who have ever been Rick rolled might find this amusing, a small tidbit to follow Krishnamurti's lofty thinking on the unity of being.

I had a funny real life experience today in line with the clever "Stuff White People Like" (SWPL) site. A group of black guys and a girl joshing around with every cool (you think) thing you do, as a white person, and making it all seem rather . . . uptight

They were singing a reasonable facsimile of James Taylor's "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" -- heartfelt tune, right? except, when one of them jumped in with some scat or a soulful wail. Sweet Baby James didn't seem so soulful after that. Michel Buble? Yeah -- uptight, man.

The guys would punctuate their riffs with "My bad" in a very white boy-cool way, and I just had to laugh.

A great lesson that no matter how down you think you are, you don't know me.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Mr. Popeil, I'm in trouble.
Need your assistance on the double.
Oh no! Now how am I gonna make
My old vinyl car top look like new?
Mr. Popeil!
Tell me, what am I s'posed to do?
--Mr. Popeil, Weird Al Yankovic
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National Public Radio aired an interview with Ron Popeil Wednesday concerning Barack Obama's 30-minute infomercial. Mr. Popeil is known as the King of Infomercials, successfully selling on-air millions of his company Ronco's Veg-o-matic and Chop-o-matics, smokeless ashtrays, and Showtime Rotisseries in the 70's, items which still may be occupying some dusty corner of your or your parent's cabinet space.

Mr. Popeil offered that if Mr. Obama's product was good enough, the informercial might be to his advantage. (Ross Perot did well with his own in 1992, and perhaps that demographic was Obama's target.) Amazingly, there is still a sizable "undecided" cohort of voters. If you split down racial lines, Obama has the black vote in the bag. So his campaign managers are probably wondering how they might dispel any lingering fear or apprehension the undecided white voter might have.

The answer: market Mr. Obama like a Ginsu knife. White people buy those sorts of things, right? They do things like buying more candles than they can possibly use, at Bed, Bath and Beyond. It is not that we as group are a nation of Valentino's in need of soft bedroom lighting; it is that we read Martha Stewart Living and Yoga magazines, and think that certain combinations of scents and colors will bring us bliss.

Obama's informercial immediately conjured the idea of catering to the apprehensive white base, just that broadly. It reminded me of the blog Stuff White People Like, which is devoted to such ephemera. It tends to be spot-on, if slightly tongue-in-cheek. Simply put, the racial divide remains a problem, and we put little Band-aids on a festering undercurrent of discomfort.

Hot Ghetto Mess is another blog by Jam Donaldson, a 36-year-old black lawyer in D.C. showcasing what she calls "the dysfunctional elements of our black community." She pulls no punches, and got a BET program off of it. Her message to the black community is, "We've got to do better." We have all got to do better.

Bravo to Ms. Donaldson for sparking a debate. We have passed the knee jerk condemnation of Bill Cosby for even suggesting there might be a problem years ago. But we also need dialog between communities. Comedian Chris Rock can say, "Everything that white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people," and we can laugh, but what do we do about it?

Roger Cohen's writes elegaically in Wednesday's NYT that Obama's very name is likened to a lullabye. "He is the providential mestizo whose name — O-Ba-Ma — has the three-syllable universality of some child’s lullaby." Huh? These are things white people say.

A-weem-a-way, a-weem-a-way, Kum-Ba-Yah, and all that.

[I'll write about some of the real modern fractures between the races no one talks about, Sunday.]