Pine Bluff, Arkansas - Get Above Your Raisin'! PLEASE!

The Valedictorian at McGehee Secondary School, about an hour's drive SE of Little Rock, should have been Kymberly Wimberly. (Yep. That's her name.) But she was forced to share that honor with another student - a white student - with a lower GPA. See, Kymberly is black. Letting her be the Valedictorian - the smartest, best student to graduate in the class of 2011 - would have "caused a big mess." So, the principal named another, whiter student the "co-valedictorian," even though he had a lower GPA.

What are you thinking? Are you asking yourself, "Did she take an easier course load?" Not according to the lawsuit she filed. It claims her transcript is loaded with advanced and AP classes.

Kymberly is a teen Mom, and managed to earn the valedictorian title despite this added responsibility. But, being valedictorian is not about chastity or propriety or other puritanical points of view. It's the title given to the person with the highest GPA in the graduating class. Period. Except at McGehee Seconday School.

It's 2011 and the schools is 46% African American. How could this happen?

The full truth will come out, but the allegations in the complaint are fairly detailed and easy to check with discovery and investigation. Having read about the lawsuit as summarized in the article, I'm convinced (for now) that an injustice occurred here. The case is yet to be litigated, and other facts may come out, but Kymberly's Mom works at the school and overheard her daughter's valedictory fate being discussed in the office.

Why would it be so messy if a black person was the valedictorian? Is it really so hard to accept that sometimes, the smartest person on the room is black? We should all be used to it now since this guy




is in our TV rooms nightly.

We have had decades to come to terms with our embarrassing history of slavery, segregation, civil rights abuses, and racism. But apparently, some people in Arkansas haven't gotten the memo. So, here it is:

MEMORANDUM

TO: Rednecks all over America

FROM: The rest of America

Re: Racism

Being white does not make you better, smarter, prettier or more powerful. It just makes you whiter. Get over it.

If you read this, please post and tweet the link so Kymberly Wimberly can get the recognition she earned, and so the administration at McGehee Secondary School can get the criticism they deserve.

If Fox News Viewers Only Knew the News

I have a job, so I didn't get to see all of Rupert Murdoch's unsworn testimony before the British Parliament. But what I did see was simply astonishing.

Rupert Murdoch was ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 13th most powerful person in the world in 2010. And yet, we are supposed to believe that he had no idea that his hand-picked people in the UK - people he says he trusted and still trusts - were bribing public officials and hacking people's cell phones.

It's easy to see how he can be so influential, what with having half of Scotland Yard in the pockets of his henchmen. Does his denial of EVERYTHING have any credibility at all?

It's like Emperor Palpatine claiming he had no idea that nasty Darth Vader killed those poor Jedi younglings.



(I know it's a bit childish, but be honest. There is a resemblance.)

In the aftermath of this scandal of criminal invasions of privacy and influence peddling, the commissioner and assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard have resigned, though claiming no knowledge of the bribes. But they acknowledge that they were responsible and failed to uncover and stop the corruption.

But not the Emperor. No. He denies any knowledge and insists that he is NOT responsible, despite have hand picked and groomed the culprits himself.

The most amusing part of this tragic story is that Murdoch's own FoxNews has hardly mentioned this scandal. When it was mentioned, it was brushed aside as just another hacking story. Oh, well.

The thing is, it's not just another hacking story. It's a story about criminal conduct being encouraged, condoned, and profited-from by one of the world's largest media empires, including its CEO, one of the most politically influential people in the world. When Emperor Rupertine pulls strings, powerful people in the US, the UK and Austrailia sit, stand, jump, run, bow and scrape at his command.

Ironically, the very audience who need to know that the people bringing them what they think is news are influence-peddling, cell-phone-hacking, criminal-enterprise-building liars have no idea - because their sole source for "news" hasn't told them.