President Barack Obama standing with the Red Cross and the nation in the face of Hurricane Sandy's historic devastation . (Reuters photo by Larry Downing) As much as many of us prefer to believe we now live in a “post-racial America,” fairly staggering evidence continues to accumulate to the contrary. Former President Bill Clinton, Reverend Al Sharpton, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Huffington Post bloggers, and other public figures have spent  much of their time during the 2012 presidential election campaign sounding alarms against voter suppression targeting African Americans and Latinos. These proposed types of suppression have taken the form of newly-required photo IDs, the cancellation of early voting on the Sunday before the election , the requirement of a long-term address over a given period of time, and other recently-invented criteria. Moving beyond the immediate political implications of these attempts, Clinton has asked th...

President Barack Obama and NJ Governor Chris Christie survey damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and comfort victims . (Reuters photo by Larry Downing) Was it a matter of political irony or plain old-fashioned racism that prompted the lack of definitive media headlines proclaiming President Barack Obama ––currently immersed in managing the United States’ recovery from the impact of Hurricane Sandy––the overwhelming winner of the third 2012 presidential debate? Instead of headlines such as “Barack Obama Triumphs with Second Consecutive Debate,” or “Obama Slams Romney in Debate Showdown,” readers were treated to the likes of these from FOX News: “Third debate sets tough tone for campaign’s final stretch” and “ Obama scores hollow victory against Romney (if that's what it was).” Among the few bolder as well as more accurate announcements was: “Sargent: A pummeling for Mitt Romney in the final debate.” In addition, although the New York Times did not put it in the headlin...

Reuters poll indicating viewer responses to the second 2012 presidential debate . “I really think that one of the profound decisions the American people have to make now is whether they want to be governed by a president, or a boss. And I mean a boss!”   ––Bravo Television’s James Lipton in conversation with Chis Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball Show. Halloween is close enough to the date of the 2012 American presidential election that the idea of the country waking up to either a trick or a treat on November 7 serves as an appropriate metaphor for the intense anxiety that has characterized much of the current campaign for the White House’s Oval Office. Critics of Democrats have accused them of guerrilla decontextualization trickery in the form of a presidential administration that has delivered less that they believe it should have over the past four years. Likewise: critics of Republicans have charged them with attempting to force upon the country a potential l...

Cover of first edition of I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY featuring original art by celebrated New Orleans and New York artist Gustave Blache III . Recently I found myself on the verge of crossing over from ambivalence into guilt due to the amount of time and creative energy devoted this year to online journalism and other forms of prose-writing as opposed to a more luxurious immersion into the rich flow of poem-making. There were actually at least two instances in 2012 when I managed to combine the genres: the first came in February when writing about the death of WhitneyHouston and the second came, ironically enough, in August when writing about the life of one Michael Joseph Jackson. Although the poems included with the stories can stand well enough on their own, the fact that they were generated by journalistic concerns instead of employed as an initial means to a necessary end in themselves made me feel somewhat negligent. After all, where journalism was concerned I had ...