Let’s see. As I prepared to do my blog on yesterday, I tripped and fell and hit my head.
Not buying that? How about this, I knew if I had put the Clinton/Obama blog up in April you would have known it was a joke, so I did it on May 1st to throw you off. Don’t like that one either? What about this? Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

Yesterday I wrote a blog about a theory that I’d heard involving a Clinton/Obama ticket and how it would almost assure Democrats 16 years in the White House. We put up a For Real, For Real poll and even though most of the people who responded to the blog hated the idea, 42 percent who participated in the poll said they would vote for the ticket. Thirty percent said they would not vote for a Clinton/Obama ticket and 27 said they hated me for bringing the topic up.

I’m sorry I did bring it up. A lot of you told me you were disappointed in me and accused me of secretly working for the either the Clinton campaign or Tavis. Even though I kept saying, I wasn’t endorsing the idea, the fact that it was written on my blog made me guilty in the eyes of many of you. So, just as Obama had to denounce Rev. Wright, I’m denouncing yesterday’s blog. I’m moving forward and stepping away from that theory for good. Well, sort of. But let me just say to those of you who accused me of being a traitor. You should know me better than that. I was just trying to stimulate our thinking and remind us that we need to know what other people are talking about. And okay yes, I was trying to stir things up a little bit, too. I admit it. But these days, people, black people in particular seem less and less interested in being stirred up.

There’s one thing about the Rev. Wright interview with Bill Moyers that really stuck with me. He talked about the role of the black church in the black community. In his opinion, the role is not just to preach a nice sermon and tell the congregation what it wants to hear every unday. The role of the church in the black community is to reach outside of the four walls and to have hands on relationships with people who might not ever come to church. He says to be effective you need to bring the things and the people of the world into the church and the people of Christ outside of the church. The two worlds have to meet. Rev. Wright and preachers like him who do not insulate themselves or their congregations from things “of the world” stir things up. When I was a kid, that was the way black churches were. They were not just houses of worship, they were houses of politics, houses of debate and houses of activism. Like black radio back in the day, the black church was a place where black people could talk to black people about things they wouldn’t talk about to anyone else, and they weren’t afraid to do so.

I’m proud of having come from a black church and proud, as well, that the TJM has tried to hold up the tradition of black radio I grew up listening to during the Civil Rights movement. Many of us think everyone in the movement worked together harmoniously all the time. That wasn’t the case. There were lots of people with lots of ideas and that leads to a lot of heated discussions and arguments. But when you’re discussing or arguing with people who have your best interests at heart, you’re more open to hearing what they have to say, even if you disagree. That may have been the real reason I thought it was safe to share with you the idea of a Clinton/Obama ticket. I was thinking that I owed it to you to bring to the table a real scenario that is really being discussed. I thought we had it like that. To me, the black church and black radio are the two places that we should be able to talk about anything and everything that will affect the lives of black people. When we spend too much time filtering out things that make us uncomfortable or dressing up things that might be too ugly, are we doing anyone good?