CASH IN THE APPLE for
01-21-16
By Cash Michaels
WRAL DROPS
CBS, GOES NBC – Something historic is happening in the Raleigh-Durham market,
and it may take a while to sort out after it happens on Feb. 29th.
That’s when WRAL-TV will switch
network affiliations, leaving CBS,
and joining NBC. This is all timed to allow WRAL-TV to take advantage of
broadcasting Super Bowl 50 on
Sunday, Feb. 7th.
CBS and
WRAL have been joined at the hip for 30 years, and it’s safe to say that folks
have literally grown up watching CBS on the station, so this will be a change
many will have to adjust to. Each station’s news operation has it’s own
personality, and so does each network. WRAL and CBS seemed to fit each other
perfectly, each bringing a certain degree of seriousness to the table with
shows like ‘60 minutes’ and WRAL’s local documentaries.
NBC is a network that is currently in
the midst of strong primetime success, though its news operation is still
recovering from the demotion of anchor Brian Williams, who admitted that he’s
been lying about his experience in recent years. Lester Holt has been doing yeoman’s work, however.
Shows on
NBC are gaining audience, which is good. Its close association with cable mate left-leaning
MSNBC earns NBC News the liberal
moniker at times, making it a target of the right-wing. “The Today Show,” The
Winter and Summer Olympics, and the Super Bowl also make NBC a desirable
partner. Question is will the show biz persona it brings to the table fit the
more reserved-North Carolina-through-and-through WRAL has.
Guess
we’ll find out of Feb. 29th.
Meanwhile
WNCN-TV, the current home of NBC, will now play host to the CBS network.
Untouched in all of this Fox 50 and WTVD, which is owned by the ABC television
network.
Don’ worry,
we’ll get used to all of by May.
NEW “24” TO
FEATURE BLACK HERO – Well, it’s absolutely official now. When the series “24”
returns, it will not feature the exploits of agent Jack Bauer any longer. Kiefer Sutherland has left the series
for another show on ABC, and he’s made it clear he’s not coming back.
But the
same producers are in place, and they’ve come up with a new scenario featuring
a new hero who must effectively save the world (or at least a significant
portion of it) by the time the clock ticks the 24th hour. Fox has
given the green light for “23:Legacy”, featuring an all-new cast (what, no
Zoey?). Plotwise, a military hero comes home to discover that he’s key to
stopping a terrorist attack (what else?) and must enlist the aid of CTU to stop
it. So lots of action and intrigue, and maybe the new black guy will get more
lucky than Jack Bauer did with the women, who knows?
The pilot
will begin shooting shortly, so we should hear something more about who is
starring and when it will air in a few weeks.
It just
better be good, because Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer is a hard act to
follow.
NO BLACK
OSCAR NOMINEES AGAIN – It is getting to be a tired old record when the Academy
Award nominations are announced, and once again this year, there are no black
nominees in any of the major acting categories. There was the strong
possibility that Will Smith was
going to be tapped for his reportedly great performance in “Concussion” about
an African doctor who discovers the brain injury associated with NFL football
injuries, but nothing.
Popular
British actor Idris Alba was also
highly touted for his role in “Beast of No Nation,” but alas no nomination for
him as well.
Jada Pinkett Smith, Will’s wife, is
suggesting that African-Americans in Hollywood should boycott the upcoming
Oscars ceremony in protest (acclaimed director Spike Lee says that he’ll join her), and Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the African-American president of the Academy,
said that once again she was embarrassed, and would try harder to recruit more
blacks into membership.
David Oyelowo, who was crazily overlooked last year for his extraordinary performance as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in "Selma," has also joined the bandwagon, blasting the Academy Monday night during a special ceremony for its intolerance.
Of course, someone has to be different, and that honor now falls to actress Janet Hubert, the actress you'll recall who got fired from the NBC sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" because she couldn't get along with Will Smith. She cut a video essentially saying Smith needs to get over not being nominated, and ragging him just because his wife, Jada, spoke out.
This is no time for pettiness, but for Hubert, apparently it is.
David Oyelowo, who was crazily overlooked last year for his extraordinary performance as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in "Selma," has also joined the bandwagon, blasting the Academy Monday night during a special ceremony for its intolerance.
Of course, someone has to be different, and that honor now falls to actress Janet Hubert, the actress you'll recall who got fired from the NBC sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" because she couldn't get along with Will Smith. She cut a video essentially saying Smith needs to get over not being nominated, and ragging him just because his wife, Jada, spoke out.
This is no time for pettiness, but for Hubert, apparently it is.
Bottomline
is that Hollywood may be liberal, but it looks after its own, based on who runs
the place. Black people do not run Hollywood, not even a small sliver of it.
Until that changes, we will never see good work consistently recognized for
maintaining the highest standards of the industry.
By the way,
black comedian Chris Rock is hosting
the Oscars telecast this year, and he’s already called them the white BET
Awards. So I’m sure we can expect more from him on this.
Make sure you tune in every Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. for my talk
radio show, ''Make It Happen'' on Power 750 WAUG-AM, or online
at www.waug-network.com. And read more about my thoughts and opinions
exclusively at my blog, ‘The Cash Roc” (http://thecashroc.blogspot.com/2011/01/cash-roc-begins.html).
Cash in the Apple - honored as the
Best Column Writing of 2006 by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
Columnist Cash Michaels was also honored by the NNPA for Best Feature Story
Journalist of 2009, and was the recipient of the Raleigh-Apex NAACP’s
President’s Award for Media Excellence in Sept. 2011.
Until next week, keep a smile on your
face, GOD in your heart, and The Carolinian in your life. Bye, bye.
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NCNAACP VOTER ID
TRIAL BEGINS MONDAY
By Cash Michaels
Editor
Starting
Monday, North Carolina’s controversial voter photo identification provision
will go to trial in a Winston-Salem federal courtroom.
At issue - is
it constitutional to require that all eligible voters show an official photo ID before allowing them to cast their
ballot in an election, when not all eligible voters - most likely black and
Hispanic – have a photo ID?
According to federal law, one only
needs to be at least 18 years of age or older, and be either a natural born or
naturalized citizen of the United States, in order to vote. The North Carolina
state Constitution does not require a photo ID, despite a 2013 amended state
law.
Republicans
in North Carolina maintain that the photo ID requirement is a safeguard against
in-person voter fraud at the polls, although they’ve produced scant evidence of
any appreciable voter fraud to safeguard against.
Indeed,
attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case assure that the state won’t present
any evidence of such now.
Last July, presiding US District
Court Judge Thomas Schroeder separated the photo ID aspect of the NCNAACP v McCrory lawsuit against the state’s
Voter Information Verification Act before going to trial. Instead, the three-week
proceedings dealt with whether the voting restrictions of House Bill 589 –
passed by the Republican-led NC General Assembly and signed into law by Gov.
Pat McCrory in 2013 after the US Supreme Court gutted Section Four of the 1965
Voting Rights Act – violated the constitutional rights of African-American
voters by shortening the early voting period, and eliminating same-day
registration and provisional voting, among other restrictions.
Despite their defense of the voter
law, Republican lawmakers were apparently concerned enough about the
constitutionality of the stringent voter ID provision that they, without notice
and just prior to the July trial date, moved to soften some of its restrictions
in hopes that the judge would accept it.
Instead of requiring a government-issued
photo ID, like a driver’s license, for voting purposes, the amended version now
allows those without ID to vote due to a “reasonable impediment” after they
fill out a form, and then present alternative identification like a utility
bill baring their proper name and address.
Judge Schroeder determined that
there were still constitutional issues worth considering, and thus delayed
hearing arguments on it until now.
At press time, Judge Schroeder had
yet to render his decision on the issues dealt with in the first trial, and may
wait until after this 4-7-day proceeding to deliver a complete verdict.
However, last Friday, Schroeder did deny the NCNAACP’s petition for a
preliminary injunction to block the in-person voter ID requirement in the upcoming
March 15th North Carolina primaries, saying that the state had
undertaken a wide-ranging campaign to educate voters as to the change in the ID
law.
The NCNAACP charged last week that
that campaign has only confused voters because it is filled with false
information about the requirement for a photo ID to vote. They maintained that
voters were not being properly educated as to their rights if they didn’t have
a photo identification, or being instructed on what to do if they had any
reason for not having one when they showed up to vote.
Rev. Barber added that poll workers
had not been properly trained yet as to how to instruct voters when they did
come to the polls without photo ID.
While attorneys for the state are
expected to argue in court starting Monday that the law has now been relaxed
enough to pass constitutional muster, as shown in South Carolina when the same
“reasonable impediment” was applied to it’s voter ID requirements, attorneys
representing the NCNAACP, the US Justice Dept., and the Washington, D.C.-based
Advancement Project will maintain that any requirement to vote beyond the age
of eligibility and citizenship is a violation of constitutional rights, in
addition to the 14th and 15th amendment to the US
Constitution.
“Our challenge to voter ID is that
it is an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote,” Attorney Irving Joyner,
chairman of the NC NAACP Legal Redress Committee told reporters last week. “The
Constitution is the guiding principle that we have.”
Joyner said the “reasonable
impediment” feature may solve some problems, but not all of them, and some
people could still be denied the right to vote as a result, which is why even
the modified voter ID law is being challenged.
“Real people” are being injured by
North Carolina’s voting restrictions, said Denise Lieberman, senior attorney
for the Advancement Project. People like plaintiff Rosanell Eaton, a 94-year
old black woman who was denied the right to vote 70 years ago when she was
forced to take a literacy test. Now, as an eligible voter of seven decades,
again she’s having to unconstitutionally prove her citizenship beyond what this
required.
Another attorney for the
plaintiffs, Michael Glick of the Washington, DC firm Kirkland and Ellis, told
reporters Tuesday that “…the state knew that both the photo ID requirement and
the need to go through this separate “reasonable impediment” process would
burden African-Americans, and further deter them from coming to the polls in
the first place in light of that burden.”
Atty Glick added that unlike
in-person voting, there is no photo identification requirement for absentee
voting, which is fundamentally unfair because it’s more likely to be used by
white voters, whereas black voters demonstrably favor early in-person voting.
NC NAACP Pres. Rev. William Barber
says the fact that the state was forced to soften the voter ID law prior to
trial is a sign that the Forward Together Movement is winning the battle over
voter restrictions in North Carolina. Win or lose, the NCNAACP will still lead
the Tenth Annual Moral March on Raleigh/Historic Thousands on Jones Street
People’s Assembly Saturday, Feb. 13th , to push for voter
registration for the upcoming March 15th primaries and the Nov. 4th
general election.
“We still believe that [voter ID]
will not ultimately stand up in court,” assured Rev. Barber.
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LINDA COLEMAN
COLEMAN STRIVES FOR
LT. GOV AGAIN
By Cash Michaels
Editor
Editor’s note – There are a large
number of African-American candidates running for office in North Carolina
during the 2016 election, certainly one of the largest ever. During this
campaign season, we will focus on several of the campaigns so that our readers
know more about them.
For Linda
Coleman, it’s about the issues, and whether North Carolina families are being
treated fairly by this economy, and their government. With a life steeped in
public service, Coleman believes as lt. governor, she can make a difference for
those families, which is why she vying again this fall for the office.
“Public
service is what I love,” Coleman once told a questioner while campaigning in
Greensboro in 2012.
First Ms.
Coleman has to win the March 15th primary against Democratic
opponents Holly Jones, Ron Newton, and Robert Wilson. If she wins that, Coleman
will be on the November ballot, along with Libertarian J.J. Summerell, seeking
to unseat first-term Lt. Governor Dan Forest, who defeated Coleman by a slim
margin in 2012.
She wants
that rematch.
“The Republican majority
running things in Raleigh continues to unravel so much of what built our great
state…,” Coleman says on her campaign website, “… and all the while they’ve had
a cheering partner in our lieutenant governor. It’s time for a different
approach.”
Lt.
governor is an elected position separate from governor in North Carolina,
meaning theoretically Republican Gov. Pat McCrory could win re-election, and
Coleman, a Democrat, could be elected as Lt. Governor.
Beyond
being the next in line constitutionally in case, for some reason, the elected
governor is unable to fulfill his duties, or presiding over important events in
the governor’s absence, the NC lt. governor also presides over the NC Senate,
voting there only to break a tie. The lt. governor also chairs various state
boards and commissions, including the state Board of Education and board of
Community Colleges.
“Of course
education is very key to our future and our children’s future,” Coleman told
the African-American Caucus of the NC Democratic Party last November in Chapel
Hill. “And community colleges are important because they connect businesses to
the workforce training that’s done for this state.”
Beyond all
that, service as lt. governor can be a springboard for possible run for
governor in the future, political observers say. Indeed, Gov. Beverly Perdue
first served as a state lawmaker, then as a lt. governor before finally winning
the top seat in 2008, making history as the first woman governor in North
Carolina history.
If Coleman indeed wins in November,
she would be only the second African-American in the history of the state to be
a member of the NC Council of State – a constitutional panel of the state’s
nine top elected officials, chaired by the governor, who make important
decisions about the borrowing of money, the sale of state property, and other
matters.
When both
governors Perdue and Pat McCrory wanted approval of the Dorothea Dix property
in Raleigh, they both brought the matter to the NC Council of State, where the
governor, lt. governor, secretary of state, attorney general, commissioner of
Agriculture, commissioner of Insurance, commissioner of Labor, supt. of Public
Instruction, state treasurer and state auditor then voted on it.
The only
African-American ever to serve on it was the late Ralph Campbell Jr., the state
auditor from 1993 to 2005.
Coleman is the mother of two, a
grandmother of two, and “a proud product of the public school system of this
state.”
She was
born and raised in Greenville, earning her B.A. from NC A&T University on
Greensboro. She later earned a masters in public administration from the
University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
In her
public life and after teaching in the classroom, Coleman was elected to the
Wake Board of Commissioners, chairing that body. She was then elected to the NC House, serving
three terms, helping to past the Earned Income Tax Credit “which helped put
money back into the pockets of working families,” she says.
As a state
lawmaker, Coleman also helped to pass the Racial Justice Act, which helped
correct racial-biased death penalty sentences. Both laws have since been
repealed by the Republican-led NC General Assembly.
Coleman is
also proud of what Democrats accomplished in giving women access to affordable
health care in the state, tax incentives to small businesses, in addition to
more funding for education.
Indeed
Coleman has blasted Lt. Gov. Forest for suggesting that public education in the
state can be funded through the sale of license plates, like the special one he
has on his car.
“It is the
General assembly’s job to fund education, and that’s what we need to do,”
Coleman said recently.
Coleman then went on to lead as the
director of the Office of State Personnel from 2009 to 2012. She left that post
in 2012 to first run for lt. governor. She lost by a razor-thin 6,800-vote margin
to Dan Forest with 2.1 million votes cast for her statewide.
“Raleigh is just not working for us
anymore. We are working for Raleigh to fund the wealthiest among us,” Coleman
told the AAC-NCDP in November, noting how Republican tax reform has shifted the
tax burden from the rich to working families, and eliminated the childcare tax
credit.
“We need somebody to go to Raleigh
and say, “Listen, let’s start working for the people of North Carolina,” Linda
Coleman says about her candidacy for lt. governor. “Let’s bring North Carolina
back.”
-30-
TRIANGLE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 1-21-16
MLK MEMORIAL GARDENS TO
BE EXPANDED
The city of
Raleigh is spending $1 million to expand the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
Gardens, complete with additional parking, a picnic area, restrooms, and large grassy area for programs to be held.
The bronze statue of Dr. King, and the famous memorial brick wall will remain,
along with the water memorial. The gardens were dedicated in 1990, and has been
visited by thousands of citizens from across the state and nation. The Raleigh
Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Dept. is overseeing the expansion,
which should be completed by 2017.
GARNER POLICE DEPT
UNVEILS NEW MURAL
Last
October, a vandal spray-painted “Kill a Cop, Save a Child” over a mural on the
side of the Garner Police Dept. The criminal act outraged the community, and a
fundraising campaign was immediately started to repair the damage. This week,
the Garner PD unveiled a new police station, and with it, a new outside mural
featuring Garner police officers with children, portraying them as protectors
of the community. The new station is
located at 912 7th Avenue.
NCCU EAGLES HONOR CANCER-STRICKEN
CHANCELLOR
The North
Carolina Central University Eagles men’s basketball team made it clear this
week that the school’s chancellor, Debra Saunders-White, is in their collective
prayers as she battles kidney cancer. They wore special warm-ups with her name
emblazoned on them during Monday night’s game against Hampton University.
Ultimately the Eagles lost by one point, but Coach LeVelle Moton told the team
that some things are more important than basketball, and honoring their
chancellor in her gallant fight against cancer was one of them.
-30-
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 1-21-16
WEBSITE OF DR. KING’S
FULL ROCKY MOUNT “I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH LAUNCHED
[ROCKY
MOUNT] On what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s actual 87th
birthday, NCSU Prof. W. Jason Miller, who originally discovered a tape of Dr.
King’s Nov. 27th, 1962 first “I Have a Dream” speech in Rocky Mount,
unveiled a website where now the whole world can hear the entire 55-minute
address. The website address is www.kingsfirstdream.com
and features photos and information about Dr. King’s visit to Rocky Mount.
Prof. Miller is the author of the book, “Origins of the Dream,” and co-producer
of the upcoming film, “Origin of the Dream,” about the intellectual
relationship between Dr. King and poet Langston Hughes.
CONFEDERATE FLAG WAS FLOWN
AT STATE CAPITOL SATURDAY
[RALEIGH]
Unless you were in downtown Raleigh Saturday near the state Capitol Building,
you wouldn’t have known that the Confederate national flag was flown there to honor the birthday of
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which was actually Tuesday. Reportedly it was a
small flag flown right under the North Carolina state flag, and it was flown
Saturday because the Sons of Confederate Generals were having a program on the
state Capitol grounds. Gen. Lee’s birthday was actually Tuesday, Jan. 19th.
The Confederate national flag looks more like the American flag than the
controversial Confederate battle flag.
WAL-MART CLOSING 269
STORES, 17 IN NORTH CAROLINA
[DURHAM]
The Wal-Mart Stores chain has announced that its closing 269 stores worldwide,
with half of them in the United States. 17 of those shuttering are right here
in North Carolina, and while most of them will be smaller Express stores in
Four Oaks, Broadway, Red Springs and other smaller Eastern North Carolina communities,
the large supercenter in Durham near NCCU is also slated to be shut down.
Wal-Mart operates 11,000 stores worldwide. Some 10,000 employees reportedly
will be affected by the closings .
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