Sitting by the computer after making the perfect cup of English tea, I am still amazed (for lack of a better word) at the breakout of riots across the UK. Over the past few days I have been scratching my head as looters took advantage of London neighborhoods like Brixton, Hackney, and Lewisham, and other British cities like Birmingham, Liverpool, and Leeds. I sit back in disgust and outrage as an American viewing from overseas, but also as a person who has lived and traveled throughout the UK.

The shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four, is what sparked the initially peaceful protest in Tottenham, London. People in the neighborhood were protesting unlawful and aggressive acts by police.  (It is now known that Duggan did not fire a shot at police.) Somehow, on Saturday, August 6, the protest turned violent and the people protesting started to assault police on the scene. The protest went from throwing sticks and bottles to lighting vehicles on fire and smashing the windows of shops.  I do not condone violence but there was definitely tension in the neighborhood between police and residents. The police did not take the right steps to calm the crowd.

Some chatter on Twitter by bloggers, journalists, and others has said that riots could start in the United States over the current situation plaguing our country. We have gun violence in schools, millions not covered by health care, rising unemployment, and a government caught up in its own nauseating partisanship fight. The victims in all of these are the working and middle class. So, why haven’t there been riots across the United States like those over in the United Kingdom? There are several reasons.

1. The United States has a history of civil rights and social movements.
There are still problems in this country, yes, but we have gone through the civil rights movement, gay rights, workers rights, rights for those who are disabled and disadvantaged, and all (for the most part) have been peaceful movements. We are constantly having dialogues in this country between the haves and those who don’t have. There are many outlets to voice your opinion in the US and if there is no outlet for your voice you can gain supporters and create one. Dialogues about race, immigration, youth, and poverty have not happened at all levels of society in the UK.

I remember living in London and bringing up a certain race struggle going on in the US and every one of the people in my presence ignored the conversation or said, “I am not going to get involved in that.” London has a culture of “let’s just get on with it” without getting at the root of the problem. I get the feeling that there is a sense in the UK that if you address a problem or controversial issue you can offend someone or be considered rude. So the conversation does not happen. Full Stop.

2. The police and authorities missed the ball.
It seems at this stage that authorities had no idea that these indiscriminate riots were being planned. I do give credit to the police in London for monitoring potential terrorists activities, and their extensive CCTV system (which no doubt will come in very handy to help identify looters and those who committed arson). But perhaps the Metropolitan Police Department is so caught up in catching terrorists that they have dropped the ball on domestic crimes and plots. The police did not have a full grasp of the situation and the Prime Minister and Home minister had to be called back from holiday to take control of the situation.

The United States has forces (local and federal) monitoring web traffic for terrorists, and domestic crimes. The authorities in the US are monitoring and taking down plots to disturb or disrupt, and they work together to make sure these crimes are not brought to fruition. The police did not have an understanding of the media used to spread information. Twitter, Facebook, and Blackberry Messenger were the top three ways the youth in the UK riots communicated which places there were no police presence. It took the London police three days to bring their force from 6000 to 16,000.

3. US police carry guns.
I really didn’t want to write this point, but I think it significantly contributes to why the UK riots won’t happen in the US.  Majority of UK police do not carry guns. Only under special circumstances or police in specially trained units carry guns. Youth are less likely to run amuck, looting, and setting fire to other people’s property when a person is running behind you with a gun. In the United Sates police have guns, shop owners have guns, and ordinary people on the street have guns. If people started to randomly attack stores because they could, there would be mini blood baths in the streets.

4. Lack of respect: Because they could.
There are pockets of youth all around the world who are rowdy, act up, and start trouble. But what happened across the UK is different. These youth, teenagers, and young adults didn’t attack police departments, government buildings, or symbols of oppression in society. They attacked local neighborhoods and shops. They attacked stores owned by their parents’ friends, owned by immigrants, minorities, and people just trying to make a living just like they are. A friend of mine who is a blogger in London went down to one of the areas while looting was going on and spoke with some people on the ground. Some people were saying they were attacking anything because the “cops taking the piss,” (because there was opportunity). Others said they did it because it was fun and they were trying to get ‘new clothes and kit’ for themselves, others said they were out there because their friend messaged them and said no police were there. Sounds like a mental breakdown in society, especially a society hosting the world for the 2012 Olympics next year.

As a result there is no more trust between a shop owner and his neighbor, police and pedestrian. The working class neighbors these kids came from are now worse off then they were before the riots. Absolutely nothing was accomplished. There were no rules, no set agenda, and no rallying voice. Just teens with nothing to do, and the opportunity to waste.

I don’t think the last point is specific to British youth. Or maybe it is. I’ve heard some “experts” describe what happened as a “new expression of anger.” Perhaps these youth are so angry that the only things they can lash out at are their own communities. Unfortunately three days into the riots and three men were killed in Birmingham in a hit-and-run while they were trying to protect their property. As of this writing 820 people have been arrested and NOTHING HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.

Furthermore, I didn’t hear the name of Mark Duggan mentioned the news today. I had to dig deep into the papers to find an article on him. Day four and the original spark has been forgotten.

Kameko Jones is completing her MS in Global Affairs with a focus on transnational security. You can follow Kameko on her blog and on Twitter.

In an 8-to-1 ruling, the court said the hate-mongers from the Westboro Baptist Church have the right to spew offensive speech under the First Amendment.

Members of the church, led by Rev. Fred W. Phelps, have been picketing near funerals of U.S. troops. They say military deaths are caused by America’s acceptance of homosexuality. The case that was before the Supreme Court stemmed from the 2006 funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church carried signs at his funeral that said, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” and “America Is Doomed.”

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What these this group is doing is horrible. As you saw from the NBC Nightly News story, they seem filled with rage. Margie Phelps, attorney and daughter for Rev. Phelps who was in the report, also thanked Snyder’s father for filing the suit and “putting a megaphone to the mouth of this little church.” She said, “We’re going to picket more.”

But I agree with the Supreme Court decision and Chief Justice John Roberts. The picketing, he wrote, “is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible.” But he also wrote the government “cannot react to the pain by punishing the speaker.”

“As a nation we have chosen a different course – to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate,” Roberts said.

Indeed. In some countries – even democracies in Western Europe – someone can be tried or sued for making hate speech, saying something offensive or even calling someone a derogatory name in a publication. People should act in a civilized manner, but the free exchange of ideas is important. Even if it means some ideas are bad, offensive or hurt someone’s feelings.

What do you think?

Do you agree with the Supreme Court decision? Should the members of the Westboro Baptist Church be allowed to yell, scream and hold up offensive signs at funerals? Do we need more limits on free speech?

Leave your thoughts below.

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“You vote in favor of something if you believe it’s the right thing. If you believe it’s the wrong thing, you vote no.” Sounds simple, right? Not in Congress, and sadly, not when it comes to giving additional healthcare to first responders and others affected from dust and debris due to the 9/11 attacks. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) passionately sets Congress straight.

Hef the activist? A documentary premieres this month that paints Playboy founder Hugh Hefner as a Civil Rights Activist. Skeptical? Check out this article and let me know what you think below. [The Root]

The Appleseed Project teaches participants how to shoot targets at 500 yards just in case the “revolution” comes. Where does this fear of Teotwawki (the end of the world as we know it) come from? [New York Times Magazine]

Cheerleading may be competitive, but it will never be a sport. [Double X]

Mel Gibson keeps doing it to himself. The list of his anti-semetic, racist and misogynistic tirades gets longer and a police investigation has been opened into the assault on his ex-girlfriend. And to further hurt his career, the NFSW audio of this conversation, which is purported to be him, has surfaced. [RadarOnline]

You may already know there’s no sex in the Champagne Room. There’s also no sex if you’re Middle Class. [New York Times]

Hot GOP. What’s behind the ogling and sexualization of Palin and other Republican women? [Newsweek]

Can you ask your church for a refund? This woman did. She sued her church for $250,000 – a portion of the money and gifts she claims she gave the church over 37 years – because a gay wedding was held there. [Clutch/theGrio]

This New York Times article delved into some of the issues involved in transitioning the military to allow homosexuals to openly serve. One issue is whether openly gay soldiers should be put in separate housing. Another is that families might request different housing, on religious grounds, if same-sex couples live close by. Others are concerned that service members who don’t adhere to anti-discrimination policies may not be promoted. An unnamed Army National Guard member who is a lesbian had concerns, too. She said, “Getting rid of ["Don't Ask, Don't Tell"] completely without modifying it is kind of worrisome. The number of incidents against gays in the military is going to increase.”

True. This soldier is rightfully concerned about the safety of herself and other troops. If the policy is going to be repealed soon, and that is far from certain, it doesn’t look like it will happen before a report on the repeal is due on December 1. All of this fear and worry, though, is over soldiers who may be homophobic. This hand-wringing is over the feelings of people who may be bigots and what they might do. But the bigotry I see is with the leaders, policymakers and pundits who want DADT to remain in place.

On the issue of gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, we’re not the norm in the West. Every other country in NATO, except Turkey, allows gays and lesbians to openly serve. When Britain and Canada allowed homosexuals to serve openly they only lost three soldiers each (yes, just 3). And when U.S. looked into how Canada changed their policy, a report showed that “negative consequences predicted in the areas of recruitment, employment, attrition, retention, and cohesion and morale have not occurred.”

Chances are, the same thing will happen with our military. There may be some bumps along the way, but our military effectiveness is not going to collapse on the day that DADT is repealed. My understanding of the military is that troops’ primary concern is to protect and look out for each other. I doubt that would change when in battle just because the next soldier over is a homosexual. Meanwhile, poll after poll shows more Americans think gays and lesbians should serve openly. Colin Powell, who used to be in favor of DADT but is now against it said, “Society is always reflected in the military. It’s where we get our soldiers from.”

If opponents of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” truly felt military effectiveness would be diminished or that it would be profoundly difficult to integrate openly gay and lesbian service members in the military, they shouldn’t support DADT. They should speak out against discrimination and homophobia in the armed forces. By not doing that, opponents of DADT reveal themselves to be the ones who are bigoted.

The life of these guys are so miserable because they have to spend time with their mothers-in-law and take their wives’ calls? What assholes. These guys are whining about how whipped they feel because they have to watch “vampire shows?” Having to do those things doesn’t break down the American man. Feeling that those things do break it down is being whiny. It’s the opposite of the manly-man they’re trying to be.

I never understood the whole “life is over because I’m married” line of thinking. First, the reasons “life is so bad” always seemed lame, like in this commercial. And second, no one forced these guys to get married in the first place. So, conclusion: Stupid commercial.

A few weeks later, I noticed an ad for Dockers khakis that said “Wear the Pants.” I saw it and others for the same campaign in a few places in Midtown, but didn’t initially pay too much attention to them. Then I thought about “Wearing the pants” in light of the Dodge ad. It turns out the Dockers campaign is telling men to “wear the pants” to bring back manhood. Wearing khakis is going to bring macho back?

Really?

Here’s the full ad (via NYDailyNews.com)

This ad really pissed me off.

“Once upon a time,” the ad begins, “men wore the pants and wore them well.” Later, the ad continues, “Men took charge because that’s what they did.” No, men took charge because women weren’t allowed to. Men wore the pants, remember? “The world decided it no longer needed men,” claims the ad. (It did?) We were “stripped” of our khakis (read: manhood, balls) and “left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny.” How? ”Disco by disco, latte by non-fat latte.”And while the ad claims, “The World sits idly by as cities crumble,” it seems to blames cities for the emasculation of the American man.

Disco was popular in cities with blacks and gays. The whole “Disco Sucks” movement and the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 are regarded as having racist and homophobic undertones: White, working class, rock music pushing back against black, Latino, gay urban disco. So, saying disco is a reason that men lost their mojo is ignorant at best. At worst, it’s offensive.

As a New Yorker, I find the anti-urban sentiment offensive. What offends me most about this ad, though, is that it yearns back to the time when women, gays and people of color were second class citizens. This ad sets itself up as harkening back to the 1950′s before the Women’s Lib movement. I really like “Mad Men,” but as a black man I wouldn’t want to be in it. As far as gender and racial relationships, it’s offensive to wish for that period in American history to return.

This manifesto isn’t on the Dockers site anymore. The two articles I’ve seen about the campaign link to the Dockers site, but the manifesto is no where to be found. As of just a few days ago, it’s still part of a huge poster in Midtown Manhattan. Whether or not it’s soon taken down, a bunch of people who are paid a lot of money thought this campaign was a good idea. They claim it was tested with women, “It’s not about men taking over again,” and it’s not about whether men are “gay, straight, whatever.” That doesn’t seem possible. It’s amazing that people who use cultural phrases or images don’t understand their meaning or why they’re offensive.

It’s worth noting that the two ads came out in a few months of each other. Dockers in December and Dodge in February. Both state that American masculinity is being threatened. Yes, there’s the “mancession,” more women graduating college than men, and boys not learning as well as girls in elementary schools. All are important issues for society as a whole, not just men. But Dockers and Dodge aren’t talking about those things. They’re talking about men being emasculated and dominated by women. The implication is that men are under siege, mostly by women. Guys, they say, need to man-up and once again wear the pants. (Dockers literally says this.)

The norms of what it means to be a guy in this country are changing. Masculinity is entering unchartered territory. More and more, men are equal partners with women at home and work. Sometimes, the man may be the one who stays home. All of that is ok.Real men know how to handle change. There’s no need to “wear the pants.” We don’t need to bring that type of macho back.

The controversy over what ads CBS has decided to show and what they rejected is important, though. Those decisions over what an expected 90 million people will see says a lot about CBS’s and the NFL’s points of view. It also says a lot about what they think the 90 million viewers want to see.

The network rejected ads from ManCrunch, a gay dating website, and the web domain and hosting firm GoDaddy, whose ads have been rejected from previous Super Bowl broadcasts. CBS has agreed, though, to air a pro-life ad from conservative group Focus on the Family featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow. There have been sexy ads that have aired during previous Super Bowls, including some from GoDaddy, and there will surely be some this year. There’s very little flesh in either the ManCrunch or GoDaddy ads, though. This seems to be more about sexuality than straight-up sex.

In the ManCrunch ad, two guy’s guys are on a couch watching a football game. Their hands touch over a bowl of potato chips, they share a glance and then they start making out. It’s nothing racier than something you might see on a late night sketch comedy (and apparently it’s already been done there). Here’s the ad:

In the GoDaddy ad, you have a gruff looking footballer who retires, comes out of the closet after leaving football, is flamboyantly gay, and starts a lingerie line using GoDaddy’s services:

See a pattern?

Two NFL-lovers who, while watching the game, realize they themselves want to be lovers. In the other ad, an ex-football player leaves the game and comes out of the closet.

Dan Neil says in the Los Angeles Times that there could be something going on here.

The subtext in both [commercials] is that football itself is, well, kind of gay.

…American football strikes me as a pretty homoerotic spectacle, beginning with the hypertrophic masculinity of the male form in tight pants and huge shoulder pads and ending with the most undignified gesture in all of sports, the hands-between-the-cheeks snap of the ball. Hike, indeed…The pats on the fanny, the showering together, the endlessly rolling around in the dirt. All things considered, I think figure skating is more butch…If I were one of football’s guardians, I might be a little touchy about it. Perhaps that is at the root of the ads’ dismissal.

Maybe. If Neil’s supposition is correct and the subtext (intentional or not) of both commercials is that football is “kind of gay,” no one had to make a big deal about it. CBS or the NFL could’ve just shrugged, laughed it off, or ignored it, but still aired the ad. Instead, CBS pulled it. So, was someone worried about the NFL being offended? Did someone worry about viewers being offended? CBS puts out generic statements when ads are rejected which read something something like the ad is “not within the broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday.” So, we don’t know.

Let’s get to the pro-life ad. It hasn’t been released yet, but it reportedly has Tebow’s mother talking about when she was sick while pregnant in the Philippines. She was told she should terminate the pregnancy, but she decided to keep the baby. Tim was born and grew-up to be a Heisman Trophy winner. The ad reportedly ends with “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

Is that going to play with a Super Bowl audience? How’s it going to fit with the violent – um, action movie trailers, sports cars and buxom women selling beer? Will the ad fit in with the game itself that has 250-300lb men slamming into each other at top speed?

It’s one of the strange things about America. Violence, on some level, is ok. Most sex, is not. On it’s face, it seems antithetical that a violent, macho game would have an ad that’s supposed to “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

The powers that be – not just those at CBS and the NFL, but also those in Washington – think the Super Bowl is an event that every American family should be able to enjoy. Remember how everyone flipped-out over the Jackson/Timberlake Wardrobe Malfunction in 2004?

Celebrate Football. Celebrate Family.

When 90 million people are watching, celebrating anything other than violence, in movies or on the field, or heterosexual sex, within marriage for the sole purpose of making babies, is unacceptable.

Neil also says in his piece, “The [ManCrunch] ad’s real transgression is to imply that football-loving straight men, the sort who high-five after touchdowns, might under the right circumstances act out sexually with another man.” Someone saying that gay sex is possible by the very men who are watching the Super Bowl is out of the question. Making that implication to almost 1/3 of the American population would be pretty ballsy.

This whole thing reminds me of something Bill Maher said a few years ago about how Americans who are homophobic really don’t have an issue with lesbian sex. They have a problem with gay male sex. “In America, when a man puts something in another man, it had better be a bullet.”

Violence is ok for family time. Straight sex is ok, too. Sex between two men is a no-no.

What do you think?

Are CBS and/or the NFL too conservative? Are they being anti-gay?

Is CBS being careful because of the Jackson/Timberlake Wardrobe Malfunction?

Does CBS have to be ideologically fair or neutral when choosing the ads that run on it’s air?

Leave a comment below.

UPDATE: I saw the Tebow/Focus On The Family commercial. With the exception of the “Celebrate Life” tagline at the end, it wasn’t overtly pro-life. I’m not sure what the controversy was for. It would have been easy to release the ad before the game to show how benign it was. It makes me wonder if the ad wasn’t revealed so it could be hyped. By doing that, everyone would be talking about the abortion issue and the ad itself. And since so many people know about the controversy, there wouldn’t be a need to say anything explicitly pro-life. It’s implied. Or did the controversy make CBS decide to have Focus On The Family pull back on the more blatantly pro-life rhetoric?

Thoughts?