Cleveland Health Department Declares Racism a Public Health Crisis, Immediately Outed for Systemic Racism
Another example of actions speaking louder than words.
The problem with having a reputation with “always being on the phone” is some days you try to do other things than stare at your small screen of blue retina death by staring at your big screen of blue retina death until 2 a.m. finishing my first-ever re-watch of Breaking Bad, a series I adored until the final two episodes.
The series should have ended with Jackie Hitler and his goons executing Heisenberg with a single shot to the skull then throwing his corpse next to the bullet-ridden bodies of DEA Agents Hank Schroder and Steve Gomez in a desert grave and driving off into the sunset with their new meth slave, Jesse Pinkman.
I admit though, that ending would have ruined the millions of dollars Netflix eventually paid producers for a two-hour movie about what happened to Pinkman that was so forgettable I don’t remember the answer to one of the more burning questions I had when the series ended.)
Instead we got a terminal cancer patient on death’s door going for a leisurely eight-mile hike in the New Hampshire wilderness to evade a nationwide dragnet by driving back to New Mexico to visit his wife in her apartment catch one last glimpse of the son he ushered into a lifetime of mental therapy.
Ten years later, I’m still wondering why the Nazis indulged Heisenberg in a conversation instead of shooting him dead as soon he stepped foot on the compound.
Don’t get me wrong, the ending wasn’t 1/3rd as bad as Season 8 of Game of Thrones, which was eight episodes that not only ruined my desire to ever re-watch the series but also the novels (that will never be finished).
Nitpicking of an all-time great show like Breaking Bad is due to being forced to believe a criminal mastermind like Heisenberg would leave a book with a hand-written inscription from his murdered former criminal partner on HIS OWN TOILET for months with his DEA brother-in-law stopping by.
I get that, in films at least, drug kingpins are susceptible to the occasional blunder that costs them everything but c'mon. And what was a a then-unsuspicious Agent Schrader doing taking a shit in the Whites’ master bathroom!? That was maybe the most psychotic moment of the series.
If you want to watch a true dirtbag get everything that’s coming to him in the perfect finale of a series almost as good as Breaking Bad, watch The Shield.
Anyway, this is why I always have to think long and hard before re-watching an entire series. People complain about “having to wait a week” for the next episode when it’s on television. Me, I need that forced timeout. Otherwise I’ll watch a season a day because I just have to know how that cliffhanger turned out like I don’t know already.
That’s a bad recipe for normal times. Thankfully these aren’t normal times, and I cut my ankle rehab from three months to one by staying off it as much as possible.
But people have been asking if I’m back. By the time a lot of you read this, my jaw will be unwired. My first act of freedom might be devouring a hamburger right in the doctor’s office. My second act will be spending the next four hours brushing my teeth and gargling prescription mouthwash. A
After that I might try this one weird trick called “exercise” before my soccer team, Aston Villa, loses to Arsenal and inches closer to their inevitable relegation.
IT’S A LOT EASIER TO DECLARE RACISM A PROBLEM THAN SOLVE IT
While Cleveland leaders were trying to quell protests last month, the notoriously corrupt Cleveland City Council declared racism “a public health crisis.”
Columbus and other cities around America have done the same. As always, I am a fan of anything that a racist person would read and make them more scared about the inevitable browning of America.
Unlike them, I look forward to a day when white men aren’t running things. As a white man myself (if that weren’t obvious already), I think 200+ years of running things in this country is enough considering the current state of affairs. I wish I spoke for all of us when I said we’re good on power for a couple of centuries. The earth would probably look a lot better.
But on the other hand I’m always skeptical of big talk from powerful people.
The health situation for black people compared to us whites in America is a goddamn travesty. There is no other phrase to describe it.
If I knew about the dismal black infant mortality rate for the last 10 years of my life, I assume so did public health officials. And we’re just getting around to declaring war on that byproduct of systemic racism now!?
Seems like an attempt by the powerful to show they’re actively working to cloud the public discourse about why they weren’t already working on that in the first place. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation?
Well, it turns out the Cleveland City Council is full of shit.
From Rachel Dissell and Jordyn Grzelewski of clevescene.com:
For nearly a year before the proclamations and promises, health department staff were filing complaints, resigning and, in recent months, talking to reporters about what they deemed to be a toxic culture within the department — one that was particularly centered on and harmful to Black and brown women.
It was these employees’ job to tackle public health issues compounded by the toxic stress of racism and long-standing racial inequities in health care, including infant mortality, HIV, and, now, COVID-19. Yet, many say that discrimination, micro-aggressions and outright racism within their own department made it difficult for them to carry out these urgent tasks.
It was a problem so pronounced that several white women quit their jobs, citing the mistreatment of their coworkers of color.
As Stephanie Pike Moore, a white data epidemiologist who resigned in February, put it: “This isn’t a healthy place to be.”
It's this department that will be tapped to help the city fulfill such a grand promise, and for staffers who describe permissive racism and discrimination, that promise rings especially hollow.
A former employee of the health department confirmed with me that everything in this story — and you’re going to have to click that link to support the good people at Cleveland Scene to read their first-hand reporting — is true, sans some minor, minor mix-ups of the timeline.
Now, not every Public Health Department that declared racism a crisis is full of shit-talking people too cowardly to clean-up their own department.
If I were to pick one of the big cities in Ohio to have been exposed in this way, I would have picked Columbus but that’s only because I live here. Cleveland is no shocker, which is a shame because I don’t follow Cleveland politics like I do Columbus. I like to envision myself moving there one day as a base of operations for following the Browns around the country like the degenerate I am.
Still, stuff like this sucks to read. A lot of people think “systemic racism” means that things would be fine if you just get rid of all the racists. No, it means the system would still be racist even if you got rid of the supremacists. There is only one solution to that kind of institutional rot: Burning it to the ground and starting over.
DEMS ON VERGE OF HAVING UNION-BUSTING ANTI-ABORTION NUTJOB SPEAK AT THEIR CONVENTION
Ohio elected John Kasich as governor during the height of the Tea Party movement, which at the time media outlets treated as a legitimate gripe about high taxes and not racist outrage about having a black man as president.
He responded by illegally attacking women’s reproductive rights and trying to bust public unions. And he was only unsuccessful because he tried to include the police and firefighter unions. Had he been smart enough to exclude those beloved groups, he might have gotten away with making Ohio a “Right-to-Work” state.
Nobody loves Kasich like Kasich loves Kasich, so of course for his next trick he tried to run for president and got tossed in the dumpster by a diseased game show host who wasn’t even trying to win the election.
When Trump beat Clinton, there was nowhere left for Kasich to go as the hostile takeover of the GOP was complete. Trump even went as far as to install his own stooge, Jane Timken, as head of the Ohio Republican Party. (Last week, the ORP ex-communicated Kasich’s boy, Matt Borges, the former chairman, for starting an anti-Trump SuperPAC.)
Kasich decided to become one of 12 prominent Never Trump Republicans that actually stuck to their principles. He decided to solve this quandary by re-casting himself as a moderate Republican, the kind that will surely return to prominence should Trump ever die or lose an election.
Of course this works on a lot of Democratic voters with goldfish brains. Centrist hearts are more warmed by Kasich hagiography than the specter of a conservative socialist crank from Vermont ever seizing a modicum of power in this country.
Another battle for another day, right? Well, that was up until yesterday when I read the Democrats were “on the verge” of inviting Kasich to speak at their cyber convention, where he would endorse Joe Biden for president.
Well, it’s a good thing Biden won’t need women’s reproductive rights groups and labor unions to beat Donald Trump… because I don’t see how any of those two groups will stand idly by while a freak like Kasich lies about his record on national television in a speech that would only serve in his desire to run for office again as “the last Republican with sense.”
I had recently resigned myself into voting for Joe Biden. Then of course this happens. My hope is somebody high in the Democratic National Committee leaked this to the papers to showcase to the sachems what a lead balloon this would be and they will respond in kind. But this is the Democrats we’re talking about so you can’t rule any level of incompetence out. Fun times in 2020, baby!
AREA DIPSHIT UNFAMILIAR WITH THE TERM “CANCELLED”
Say what you want about “Republicans,” and Lord knows I’ve said a lot on this page. They are much better than Democrats with messaging.
No, I don’t mean “Give more money to the rich and fuck over poor and brown people” is a good message. I just mean they are more consistent. Think about every prominent Republican. What do they preach? Abortion, Guns, Taxes. Rinse, lather, repeat.
People have told me I’d make a good Republican politician. Yeah, no shit. That message has been drilled into rightwing voters for the last 40 years. Billionaires have erected massive multimedia echo chambers to counter “the liberal media,” which is one of the greatest lies ever told in American politics.
The “culture wars” are big fodder for them. Right now, they’re doing all they can to show their voters they are the last line of defense against black militants and anarchists invading their tranquil suburban neighborhood and shooting them dead for listening to Toby Keith.
One of their big gripes is that it’s harder for very powerful people to get away with doing or saying dumb or shitty things. Congressman Jim Jordan, never accused of being a genius, unveiled his latest cultural gripe yesterday:
If Jordan’s tweet were true, New Orleans would need a new quarterback. Oklahoma State would need a new mediocre coach. The Houston Rockets would need another shooting guard to lead them to their annual second-round exit in the playoffs.
If being “cancelled” were so easy, Jim Jordan would be in prison for turning a blind eye to sexual assault of multiple Ohio State wrestlers while he served as assistant coach.
I’m not saying that to be glib, either. That many former wrestlers wouldn’t accuse a sitting U.S. Congressman of sex crimes if it weren’t true. Not like Jordan was the only one turning a blind eye at Ohio State during the terror of Dr. Richard Strauss’ era.
I wish it were that easy to be cancelled. Maybe then hobgoblins in both parties wouldn’t have seized Congress and they wouldn’t be on the verge of throwing the American economy off a cliff by letting the additional $600 in unemployment benefits expire next week in the middle of an exploding pandemic without a vaccine.
Maybe then I wouldn’t be on my last two shards of mental health crystals.
THOSE WMDs. The three exercises everyone should do… Don’t ever put your suitcase on a hotel bed… Lady Death: Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the greatest female sniper of all time… The story of, uh, that photo of the naked woman protesting Portland police.