Indigenous Traditions, Multilingual Voices in Hip Hop Today: A Panel Discussion will be held Thursday, Oct. 22, 3:30 p.m. at the Promenade Hall of the Overture Center for the Arts.
This will be a panel discussion featuring Frank Waln, Telmary Diaz, J. Ivy, and Baba Israel and moderated by Dr. Kyle T Mays concerning the role of indigenous and multilingual voices in modern hip hop culture.
Justice for Tony: A Vigil for Tony’s Birthday will be held Sunday, Oct. 18, 6:30 p.m. at the
Tony Terrell Robinson should have turned 20 this Sunday, October 18th. Tony Robinson should be growing into manhood this week. Tony should be at college this week. Tony should be surrounded by friends and family as he celebrates his birthday this week. Tony should not have a mural of him, Tony’s name should not be on shirts, and Tony’s name shouldn’t follow “Justice for.” Tony’s name should not be a hashtag. Tony’s mother should be celebrating this week, not mourning the loss and the death of her son.
Come out this Sunday, October 18th at 6:30 p.m., for a vigil for Tony Robinson. It is his birthday this Sunday. Come remember his name and make it shine.
(Reuters Health) – Parents who quit smoking may be less likely to relapse when they discuss the dangers of cigarettes with their children, a U.S. study suggests.
Researchers followed almost 700 ex-smokers with children for one year. Half of the parents received a series of mailers with educational materials explaining the risks of tobacco and activities to help them discuss these dangers with their children. The other parents served as a control group and didn’t get any help.
After one year, the parents supported by mail were twice as likely to still be abstinent.
More research is needed to explain why this happened because the findings came from a project designed to test something different – whether parents prompted to talk about cigarettes with their kids might help prevent their children from smoking, noted lead study author Christine Jackson.
It’s possible, however, that talking to kids helped parents cement their own identities as non-smokers, or that the conversations created a feeling of cognitive dissonance that made it difficult for participants to advocate against smoking while being smokers themselves, said Jackson, a senior research scientist at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
“Our research is important because it suggests an entirely new approach to helping adults, specifically adults who are parents of school-aged children, succeed in quitting smoking,” Jackson said by email.
To understand how parent-child conversations about smoking might influence tobacco use, researchers asked parents of children aged 8 to 10 years old to participate in a study when they called a smoking cessation hotline available in 11 U.S. states.
Parents were around 37 years old at the start of the study, and they had typically started smoking when they were about 16.
Most of them had tried to quit at least once before the current attempt and had a previous daily habit of at least 20 cigarettes, or about a pack a day. Many parents also lived in households with at least one or two current smokers.
The parents in the support group received six magazines with tips to prepare them for conversations about smoking with their children, as well as supplies to complete structured anti-smoking activities with their children.
Only 465 out of the original 689 parents remained in the study by the end of the year. When researchers counted all of the dropouts as parents who relapsed, the effect of the mailers remained meaningful, though smaller.
After accounting for the dropouts, parents who received mailers were still 58 percent more likely to remain abstinent by the end of the study, the authors report in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
In addition to the high dropout rate, other shortcomings of the study include the reliance on parents to accurately report whether they remained abstinent and the lack of data to explain why parents who received mailers were more likely to avoid tobacco.
Even so, the findings suggest that parents may reinforce what they know about the benefits of smoking cessation by teaching these lessons to their children, said Jonathan Bricker, a behavioral scientist at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.
“Humans tend to want to act consistent with what they teach others,” Bricker, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “By teaching your child, you hold yourself more accountable. If you teach it, you are more likely to do it yourself.”
Regarding the experiment’s original focus, Bricker noted, previous research has found parents who stop smoking when their children are young may cut the risk that their kids will start smoking by as much as 40 percent.
When parents quit, this can also nearly double the odds that any children who smoke may also quit, he added.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/1jDo9KK Nicotine and Tobacco Research, online September 27, 2015
Governor Walker is back in Wisconsin from his failed Republican Presidential bid. That can either be good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it.
On one hand, our Governor is finally able to dedicate himself fully to fixing Wisconsin’s problems.
On the other hand, Governor Walker has a lot more time to create a lot more problems here at home.
That’s exactly what is happening at the Capitol this week. We’ve begun to see legislative movement on a few key Republican bills that will dramatically change how we elect lawmakers, judges and local office holders.
The first bill would deconstruct the Government Accountability Board. The bill would split the agency from one entity that oversees government ethics and elections into two separate commissions. Each commission would be run by partisan political appointees instead of the nonpartisan retired judges who currently run the Government Accountability Board.
Does it sound familiar to you that Republicans want to put partisan political appointees in charge of our elections and ethics commissions? That is the structure we had until just a few legislative sessions ago, when a group of bipartisan policymakers created the Government Accountability Board. At least many Republicans are being honest that this bill is political payback for the John Doe investigation against Governor Walker. I believe Rep. Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said it best when he said, “Republicans want to turn our nationally respected system of nonpartisan watchdogs into partisan lapdogs.”
Another key bill would double campaign donation limits, open the floodgates to corporate contributions and expand the money people can give to political parties. Essentially, the bill will create the best democracy money can buy.
But these two bills are just the icing on the cake in the Republican plan to stay in power. Remember, one of Walker’s first moves as our Governor was to bust public employee unions. Then, he was caught on camera saying he would “divide and conquer” when it came to public sector unions. Now that he has made Wisconsin a “right to work” state, it looks like he has succeeded in his efforts. But why did he do it?
As with most instances, it’s not what Gov. Walker says, it’s what he means. He said he busted the public employee unions to save money and he said he did the same to the private unions to give workers a choice. I don’t believe either to be true. I think he went after unions because he knows unions tend to be more supportive of Democrats. If you take away your opponent’s political donors, it’s easier to stay in power.
I also believe staying in power was the very reason for our photo ID for voting law too. Just look at who doesn’t have a valid ID in Wisconsin. They tend to be college students, low income individuals, seniors and people of color. It is no secret these groups tend to vote more for Democrats than Republicans. They said the law was intended to clamp down on voter fraud. Yet, absent any real pattern of fraud, I’m left to conclude Republicans were really trying to disenfranchise voters so they could continue to win elections.
The pattern goes on and on. Take the partisan redistricting process we went through in 2012. Under the lines drawn by Republicans, Assembly Democrats collectively won about 174,000 more votes than Assembly Republicans. Yet, Assembly Republicans magically won 60 seats to the Democrats’ 39. In redistricting, Republicans clearly created the best district lines possible for their political party, not for our democracy.
These laws all seem geared towards rigging our election system so Republicans can stay in office. It is sad to see we have reached a time when your elected officials are no longer policymakers and statesmen and stateswomen, but instead just another bunch of politicians.
No matter what the issue most important to you is, I assure you this type of corruption will change the face of all our laws. No policy area is safe under this style of legalized election rigging. I know the prospects of turning the tide may seem dim. But if there is anything you should know about me, it’s that I will keep fighting on the side of justice.
As the Mahatma Ghandi said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” These may be difficult times, but it’s up to you and I to keep fighting. Together, we will win.
It may sound strange to suggest we have to practice being black. After all we are born into a racialized society and we live in racially defined spaces. Black is just who we are. We practice professional work — law, medicine, teaching, architecture, etc., or skills and talents — musical instruments, painting, athletic skills, or other special gifts. To suggest that we “practice” being black sounds as if I am talking about rehearsing a part or a role. It suggests that we are somehow inauthentic in our identities and representations. But practicing being black is not something we want to do. It is something we have to do!
I began practicing being black when I was 7 years old. Before that, I spent each day in a relatively carefree life. I loved living in a multigenerational household with my brother, my parents, and my grandfather. I loved how we laughed, loved, and lived our lives. I loved the foods we ate that were a mixture of South Carolina Gullah (rice EVERY day) and Philadelphia street foods like cheesesteaks, hoagies, Frank’s sodas, and Tastykakes. But, during the summer I was 7 years old something happened to change all of that. We received the news that a little 14-year-old boy from Chicago was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman in a little country town called Money, Mississippi. His body was beaten, stabbed, lynched, and drowned. He was unrecognizable to the people who loved him most — his mother, his uncle, and his cousins. All I could think about as the Emmitt Till murder unfolded was what on earth could a 14-year-old boy do to deserve what happened to Emmitt Till? My own brother was 14-years old. Emmitt Till’s death horrified me and changed me forever.
What I learned from Till’s murder was that it was important to “practice” being Black, especially in the presence of white people. White people are bothered when we have what they deem “too much fun.” You can see it in the shopping malls as they steer away from and yet glare at black youth doing what all youth do — talk and laugh loudly and play silly games with each other. Indeed, a group of black women in a book club boarded the Wine Train in Napa, California, last month and they were “having too much fun.” Their fun got them put off the train and arrested!
I had to have my own children, especially my sons, practice being black. They attended schools with white middle class kids and I had to give them instructions on how to behave in settings with them. My boys were teenagers when Rodney King was beaten within an inch of his life and my husband and I had to sit them down and go over the rules of “being black” so they could stay alive. They resented our cautionary tales and warnings.
“Why can’t we do what other kids do?” they asked.
“Because you’re black!” we sternly replied. It’s not fun practicing being black but it is necessary.
In the past few years we have seen so many black people who slipped out of “character” end up dead. Trayvon Martin was just trying to get away from a “creepy guy” but in doing so he slipped out of “character.” Jordan Davis was just sitting in a car listening to his music and not being “black” in the way a white man in the gas station who shot him thought he should be because his “loud music” was “threatening.” Eric Garner slipped out of “character” when he questioned a police officer who attempted to arrest him for selling individual cigarettes. Tamir Rice was out of “character” when in less than 5 seconds he was shot for playing in the park with a toy gun. Sandra Bland was out of “character” when she ended up dead in a jail cell after being arrested for failing to signal a lane change and then refusing to put out a cigarette she was smoking in her own car.
So, yes, those of us who manage to continue to live and go about our business practice being black in myriad ways. We pretend that white people are making sense when they claim to “want their country back.” We act like we don’t know racially coded language like, “I don’t watch professional ball anymore; I’d much rather follow the college game” or “You’re so articulate.” We understand that we are regularly singled out as the “token” black person because white people are not comfortable around more than a few token black people.
Having worked in academia for 30 years, I have practiced being black for a very long time. I have pretended that a “party” is an event where people eat, drink, and stand around talking to each other instead of putting on some jammin’ music and dancing the night away. I have rehearsed “small talk” and “chit chat” ad infinitum. I have listened to people drone on about their research projects as if the world would come to a screeching halt if they didn’t do it instead of engaging in the real work of alleviating human suffering. I have cultivated the “fake laugh” since real black laughing apparently gets one arrested.
Yes, I have had decades of practicing how to be black and I’m really good at it!
In conjunction with the nation’s Hispanic Heritage Month, a celebration of the various racial and cultural identities encompassed by “Hispanic” Sept. 19-Nov. 1, UW-Madison will celebrate Latin@/Chican@ Heritage Month with more than a dozen events hosted by the Office of the Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer in partnership with more than a dozen campus and community partners.
This year’s themes, is the result of collaboration among more than a dozen campus academic and student ethnic and service organizations, as well as the community. “Celebrating Identities,” goes to the heart of diversity within the Hispanic community, said Philip Denis, a campus and community liaison for the Division of Diversity, Equity and Educational Achievement’s Pathways to Educational Achievement program.
Exposure to culture, rather its growth in one’s own or learning about the cultures of others, is an important part of the Wisconsin experience, Denis said.
“On a predominantly white campus it’s important for cultures to be celebrated and appreciated, as well as providing an array of students with a sense of identity and connection. It also provides students from every background the opportunity to engage in different experiences.”
Depending on who you talk to, the media leans left, or leans right, or doesn’t lean at all. Politically, that is.
One thing’s for sure, though: the media, especially print media, leans way to the white.
And here’s the harsh truth about that: very few people really want to talk about it, and even fewer have the first idea what to do about it – at least in the short term.
By most measures, about 12 percent of newspaper journalists are racial minorities — considerably lower than the 40 or so percent of the total population. This number hasn’t changed significantly in the last decade, though it is up significantly from the 3.95 percent reported in the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ first census of newsrooms. In 1978.
Here at home, it’s much lower than even that 1978 number, which will surprise no one. At the only daily newspaper in the Madison area, it’s zero percent. Put together all the print outlets and you get to almost one percent.
Is that a problem?
Yes, says Wisconsin State Journal editor John Smalley.
“We want and need diverse voices,” Smalley says. “When you’re trying to tell stories from a variety of perspectives, it’s hard to do that without diverse voices.”
Former Capital Times reporter Gail Moore is a bit more blunt.
“If you don’t have a different perspective, that’s what we called, back in the day, propaganda,” she says.
Moore, recruited from the Milwaukee City Edition in the early 1990s, was very aware of her position as one of only two African Americans in the newsroom — the other being a copy editor.
“I was a novelty,” she says. “All these people were lily white. I had to be a serious, credible reporter.” She was credible enough to earn a spot on the newspaper’s editorial board. But she still appreciated the effort.
“I have only good things to say about the Capital Times,” she says, and is pleased to hear her old paper recently hired an African American reporter to cover education. “That’s like hey, the company I worked for is still doing the right thing. You’re getting a different perspective.”
It’s not that issues of race aren’t covered in all-white (or mostly-white) newsrooms, says Sue Robinson of the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism.
“There are a lot of well-meaning white reporters,” Robinson says, but they’re not necessarily trusted in communities of color and lack the background to understand the deeper nuances of what people of color experience day to day. “When they try to talk to people, they’re stymied. Maybe people will talk to them but don’t want to give their name. They come up against these obstacles time and time again that thwart their ability to cover these issues. Their coverage is fairly event-centric. There aren’t many deep dives.”
Robinson studies the way white reporters cover race issues, especially in cities that are considered “progressive” but remain plagued with persistent racial disparities. Her forthcoming book examines the way people in progressive cities talk about race in public spaces like journalism, looking specifically at Madison; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Evanston, Illinois; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She notes that in those cities, the daily newspaper newsrooms are virutally all white.
Another reason to be bothered by an all-white media is that it can perpetuate blind spots.
As we learned in an earlier Madison365 piece, the most “progressive” cities are often relatively oblivious to their own racial inequities. Could this be in part due to the whiteness of the media in those cities? After all, no one really wants to be racist, or to be called racist — least of all progressives. There may be a deep-seated incentive among white, progressive journalists in white, progressive cities not to cover racial disparity issues, thus perpetuating among their white, progressive readers that everything in their fair city is just fine and progressive.
That same sentiment — revulsion at the very idea of being seen as racist — may be one of the first obstacles to overcome when attempting to diversify newsrooms.
“When I talk to these reporters and editors, they’re very defensive,” says Robinson. “What about this? We did that! We hired an intern!” That defensiveness often prevents editors and publishers from actually discussing the issues.
The Capital Times, once an afternoon daily and now a print weekly with a strong online presence and a newsroom staff of about 20, proudly calls itself “progressive” and has made an explicit commitment to supporting work toward diversity and coverage of race issues. But whether or not that commitment extends to its own newsroom staff, we’ll just have to take their word for it.
Editor Paul Fanlund says the paper “recognizes the importance of diversity in the newsroom. We have been working on it and will continue to work on it.”
He refused to say, however, what “working on it” means, citing confidentiality of personnel matters, even though the question involved recruitment, not personnel. So why should anyone believe they’re actually working on it?
“People will choose to believe what they want to believe,” Fanlund said. “I know what we’re doing.”
The State Journal’s Smalley keeps no secrets when it comes to his newspaper’s whiteness and their efforts to diversify.
“I don’t get defensive because not having diversity in the newsroom is pretty indefensible,” he says. “It’s our loss and our failing. We just have to own it.”
Smalley says the State Journal makes efforts to make their job openings known to people of color by listing those jobs with the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, in the diversity section of journalismjobs.com and has reached out to the Urban League of Greater Madison, the City of Madison’s Affirmative Action Division, Joining Forces for Families and the YWCA.
So far, it’s all been for naught; every one of the more than 50 newsroom staff is white.
“In my time at the Wisconsin State Journal (since December 2008), we have had no African Americans in the newsroom,” he says. “Rarely do we come across a minority candidate.” Madison isn’t alone though, he says; his career has taken him to newsrooms in Iowa, Minnesota and La Crosse, Wisconsin and he says he’s never worked with a person of color.
Smalley puts the problem on the supply side.
“Everybody is trying to get candidates out of a very small pool,” he says. And not many of them want to live in Madison. “We have particularly brutal winters here. If you’re a family of diversity and you hear about all the disparities … (Madison) is a difficult place to recruit to at times.”
“If you have any desire to move any further in your career,” says the former reporter Moore,” you work here a couple years and the just get the hell out of here.”
“It’s hard to attract journalists of color to a newsroom where no one looks like them,” Robinson says. “They don’t get paid enough to be that token person. And any time they find someone good, they get snatched up by the New York Times.”
Indeed, the more desirable newspaper jobs seem more diverse; The Washington Post editorial staff is 31 percent people of color, and The New York Times and USA Today are both 19 percent, according to the ASNE census.
But Moore, one of only two African Americans in The Capital Times newsroom in the 1990s (the other being a copy editor), wants to hear no excuses.
“The State Journal does not feel like they have to have a minority reporter,” she says. If they really and truly did, they’d find one, she says. “They’re out there. They can find one. I’ll show you how the plan can be done. There are black reporters out there who are not working in their field, who would endure whatever to get back into it. I would tell them to put a different spin on the job ad.”
“We need people of color in all levels of decision making in these newsrooms,” Robinson says, calling the profession “entrenched” and unable to change until there are more people of color serving as editors and publishers. But editors and publishers are often former reporters; with no reporters of color, the future doesn’t look to hold a lot of editors of color.
This issue might require a long-term fix. Like, really long term.
“What we need to do in journalism schools is consider alternative qualifications, other than just grades,” says Robinson. “Journalism schools are not helping this problem.” She says the lack of students of color in journalism schools is rooted in achievement gaps going all the way back to elementary school age.
Smalley sees the mostly-minority middle school students who visit his newsroom twice a week to work on the Simpson Street Free Press as a potential talent pool.
“That’s a long road,” he says, “but you gotta start somewhere.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the nature of Dr. Sue Robinson’s forthcoming book.
When Jay Young moved to Madison in 2008, he wanted to make professional connections in his new hometown. This is often a difficult task, but he knew where to turn.
“I’m originally from Milwaukee and our Urban League in Milwaukee plays a vital role in the African American community,” he says. “My father got his trade through the Urban League back in the ‘60s so that type of continuity and history is important. When you move into a community like Madison as a young black man you’re looking for ties back to your heritage, back to things that were familiar to you and the Urban League is really the only beacon that shines bright for the African Americans in this community.”
Those connections are especially important to young professionals, who may not yet have established ties in the community, or who may simply relate to their heritage and their peers differently than previous generations.
Following the footsteps of its national chapter and the Urban League at large, Urban League of Greater Madison Young Professionals has created that connection, and has become a force to be reckoned with within the Madison community. YP, as it’s known, has made waves through a variety of outlets such as workshops aimed at workforce readiness, charitable events such as the most recent YP Cabaret, and through the development of a supportive network for young professionals of color looking to make an impact.
The Urban League has been around for 100 years nationally, and the Madison chapter was developed in the 1960s, despite the community’s belief that they didn’t need one. More than 50 years later, the Urban League of Greater Madison (ULGM) continues its mission to promote civil rights and has held the well being of the African American community at its core.
They have ingrained themselves in the fiber of Madison in the face of continual denial of any racial disparities and insistence that Madison is a “tolerant” and “diverse” city. Since the Race to Equity report highlighted the very real disparities, there has been more of a push for an open conversation and less of an ability to dismiss such organizations.
“The report wasn’t new to us. We knew the disparities, the report just gave us the ability to articulate it to those who wouldn’t hear,” says Corinda Rainey-Moore, interim president of the Young Professionals Madison Chapter. “Now people are more apt to open their doors, when before they were more apt to close them. People are more willing to at least engage in the conversation about how to help.”
Urban League of Greater Madison Young Professionals formed organically in 2010. Immediate Past President and one of the founding members of this chapter, Nia Trammell recalls, “we were tasked with addressing ills in the community so one of the ideas that came up in the group I was in was to start an auxiliary and we explored and found the National Young Professional Chapter. Since then we have supported the Urban League and their philanthropy and volunteerism.”
Trammell says many young professionals of color in Madison feel an absence of a space for them to make a difference. This need drew many of the board members and Young Professional members, including people like Jay Young, who’s now the Marketing and Communications Chair of the group.
Personal and Professional Development Chair LaKendra Adesuyi also sees her involvement with YP as an opportunity to give back. As a professional woman of color she recalls being helped by the Urban League. In 2012, she “jumped on the opportunity” to serve on the YP board. “I thought to myself how dare I not give back to an organization that had done so much for me,” she says. “I want to see that in the people that come into our organization and I want to be that for some of the individuals that are just looking to find their way in Madison and professionally.”
Adesuyi’s area, professional development, is the Young Professionals Chapter’s primary focus. They seek to help with workforce readiness and getting people employed and empowered with the tools they need in order to succeed. This is done through helping them with their interview skills, reviewing some resumes, and putting people in front of employers. This kind of work creates a lot of positivity.
“For what we are doing in the community now I just think there is a lot of opportunity for us to get involved and the networks are growing and I feel good about what we are doing,” says treasurer Renae Sigall. This positivity and hope for Madison’s future in terms of significant civil rights work is refreshing and is another aspect at the core of the Young Professionals Chapter.
“As far as individuals are concerned this is a great opportunity for people to bring their professional skills and work to the movement in general,” says Membership Chair Lauren Rock. “So I know a lot of people will have said we are advancing the movement, what does that mean, what does that look like? And I think it looks like me, it looks like you, it looks like anyone who is passionate about those issues and specifically passionate about those issues in the African American community and other marginalized groups Corinda had alluded to. I know I myself and everyone else around this table bring very unique skills and backgrounds all of us come from different career paths and got engaged in YP in various ways but I think we are all passionate about what it can provide and also very passionate about what we can provide to it.”
The Urban League of Greater Madison Young Professionals meets the fourth Tuesday of every month.
(Reuters) Lamar Odom, a former professional basketball player and reality TV star, was reported to be fighting for his life in a Las Vegas hospital on Wednesday after he was found unresponsive at a legal brothel.
The 35-year-old former Los Angeles Lakers standout and ex-husband of Khloe Kardashian suffered a medical emergency on Tuesday at the Love Ranch brothel in Crystal, Nevada and was taken to the hospital, the Nye County Sheriff’s Office said.
It was the latest episode in Odom’s roller-coaster personal and professional life.
Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center, where Odom was taken, declined to comment on Odom’s condition, citing patient confidentiality.
But celebrity website TMZ.com cited unidentified sources as saying Odom was in a coma and that some of his organs were failing.
Another outlet, E!, also cited unnamed sources in reporting that Odom suffered brain damage and at least one stroke, and was on a ventilator after taking multiple drugs. The E! cable TV channel airs the reality show “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”
The brothel’s owner, Dennis Hof, said that, during his three-day stay, Odom had been taking large amounts of “herbal Viagra,” a nonprescription product which can dramatically lower blood pressure and interact with other medications.
Khloe Kardashian, whose whirlwind romance with Odom was captured in “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and its spin-off, “Khloe and Lamar,” was at his bedside, TMZ and Us Weekly reported.
The couple split in 2013 after four years of marriage and their divorce was finalized in July, though she has remained in close contact with him.
Khloe’s half-sister, model Kendall Jenner, posted a tweet on Wednesday saying “please don’t go,” that was believed to refer to Odom.
Odom publicist Eve Sarkisyan said in a statement that “family and friends are extremely concerned for Lamar” but warned against “false information being circulated unofficially.”
Odom’s hospitalization followed a downturn in a 14-season career with National Basketball Association teams, including the Lakers from 2004-2011.
On top of the pressures of the life of a top NBA player, Odom, whose mother died when he was 12, had to deal with being a reality TV star after marrying Kardashian.
The 6-foot, 10-inch-tall (2-metre) athlete has long been reported to have had issues with cocaine abuse, although this has never been publicly confirmed. He has admitted only to using marijuana.
During the 2000-2001 season, Odom was suspended for violating the NBA’s antidrug policy. In 2013, he pleaded no contest in Los Angeles to a charge of driving under the influence and was ordered to undergo rehabilitation for three months for alcohol abuse.
Former teammates rallied to his support on Wednesday.
Lakers player Kobe Bryant left following a preseason game to visit Odom in the hospital. Others took to Twitter.
“I have been praying all morning for my good friend and Laker great, Lamar Odom, that God will bless him to pull through,” former Lakers great Earvin “Magic” Johnson, said in a tweet.
“What most people don’t realize about Lamar Odom is that he’s a better person than he is a basketball player,” Johnson said.
Former teammate Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat tweeted, “Everyone will ask why or say how could he do this or that. If you’re not walking in life thru his eyes, you will never know what it’s like.”
Odom won two championships with the Lakers in 2009 and 2010. Currently a free agent, he last played for the Los Angeles Clippers during the 2012-13 season and is no longer attached to any team.
Love Ranch owner Hof said Odom had arrived on Saturday.
“He was polite and reserved, and he told multiple employees that he was there to get some privacy and spend some time relaxing,” Hof said. While prostitution is illegal in most of the United States, brothels are legal in some parts of Nevada.
Hof said staff reported that Odom had been taking “herbal Viagra” capsules but that no illicit drugs were found in his room. Brothel employees found Odom unconscious on Tuesday and called police after he started vomiting, Hof said.
Despite their rocky relationship and divorce, Kardashian has remained close to Odom. In an interview with Complex magazine for its August/September issue, she said she still missed him and spoke to him frequently by phone.
“Lamar is genuinely one of the best people I’ve ever met, and everyone says that when they meet him,” Kardashian said.
You can almost set your watch by doomsday prophets.
Every year for the last two centuries or so, a few individuals will rise and predict that the world as we know it will end on a specific date or season.
The doomsday prophets are charismatic and drum a steady and persistent message of inevitable doom.
As a result, they attract a sizable contingent of followers — many of whom are lower middle class or poor — to sell their possessions, donate them to the cause, and follow the prophet.
And in every instance, the season and date will pass, uneventfully, without doom, and with it, the prophet’s credibility and respect.
In almost every case, the doomsday prophet claims that he has a special ability to interpret the Christian Bible in such a manner that allows him to predict when the exact day the world will end, Christ will return to earth, and God will administer a judgment on the earth that God created.
The doomsday prophets are undeterred by consistent messages in the gospel that only God knows when God will end things on earth. They push on, defiant, emboldened until their prediction is proven to be false.
Of all of the books of the Bible the doomsday prophets use to bolster their apocalypse claims, the book of Revelation is by far their favorite. They insist that the abstract imagery and the coded language in the book point directly to a fiery end to the world.
And Hollywood has done every favor imaginable for doomsday prophets and their reading of Revelation.
There are more movies than I can count with some Keanu Reeves-ish protagonist trying to save the world from the “anti-Christ,” the “four horseman, or some other image mentioned in Revelation.
What we think about an apocalypse shapes popular culture.
In fact, if our perceptions of the end of the world shaped by doomsday prophets and movies were at all tangible, they would have a hashtag and memes.
But, there are some things we should all know about this book that doomsday prophets use so frequently to predict the end of the world. Things I learned and pondered on in seminary.
First, we should know that the book we call Revelation wasn’t the only “revelation” in the early Roman Empire.
There were dozens of texts purporting to be revelations of the end of the world. The one that we read in the Bible is the only one the church fathers chose to include in the canon.
Next, the person who wrote the book we call Revelation wasn’t what we would consider a Christian.
The guy, John of Patmos, was a Jewish man who followed Jesus. He was very concerned about the followers who accepted Jesus’ teachings, but did not follow the Jewish laws and customs. Some of what we read in Revelation is a rebuke of people and culture that we would call Christian.
And finally, the boom of Revelation was not in and of itself a book about the end of the world — it was a book that called on the Jewish nation to rebel against the Roman Empire.
Without oversimplifying, John of Patmos would have been writing and preaching somewhere around the time the Roman army pillaged Jerusalem and destroyed the temple there.
This would have been to the Jewish nation, the equivalent of tearing down the White House and Washington. John of Patmos was using coded language like the “666” and such to send a call to arms to the Jewish nation who were living under an oppressive Roman authority.
This all matters to us because doomsday prophets have used Revelation to further their doomsday prophecies at the expense of the poor who follow them.
What is more, every time a doomsday prophet makes a prediction about the end of the world, and it is exposed as a false prediction, it gives ammunition to those who are already hostile toward Christianity, who already believe it is a sexist and racist religion.
Christians — real Christians — don’t need this added problem.
They already have 99 others they are working to solve — homelessness, poverty, racism, and the marginalization of women.
They don’t need this one, too.
