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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Impeachment

“On the Next Episode of ‘Dumb MFers’…”

04 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, My Father, New York City, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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45, American Imperialism, American Narcissism, American Racism, Evangelicals, Fandom, Gospel of Prosperity, Idris Elba, Impeachment, Internalized Racism, Iran, MF, Motherfucker, Pitt, Qasem Soleimani, Reality TV, The Wire, Trump, White Supremacy, Whiteness


Pre-speech prayers over President Donald J. Trump (led by Pastors Paula White-Cain — laying on hands — and Guillermo Maldonado), Evangelicals for Trump coalition rally,, El Rey Jesús International Ministry, West Kendall neighborhood, Miami, January 3, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters via https://nationalpost.com/).

My wife can attest to this. Since the days of HBO’s The Wire (2002-2008), I have had the idea of Idris Elba doing a voice over leading into the next episode of an alternative television series. But instead of Elba narrating in his smooth American Russell “Stringer” Bell baritone, “On the next episode of The Wire,” I’d have him say, “On the next episode of Dumb Muthafuckas,” said exactly the way I’ve spelt it here. Then, the no-so-happy highlights from the next episode would ensue!

On the use of the MF word. I grew up around folx who didn’t use the n-word (with the notable exception of my idiot ex-stepfather, who said and wrote the n-word as “niggah” or “nigguh,” such were the influences of the late-1960s and 1970s on him). My mom would either say “Ns” or “Ens” (depending on spelling), or would grunt “un-un” in reference to Black folk she felt were assholes or fucking up in some way. But motherfucker, particularly the AAVE (African American Vernacular English) way of saying it as muthafucka? That could flow freely like the Hudson River after a spring or summer rainstorm, even during the Hebrew-Israelite years, though less so since we went evangelical Christian in the late-1980s! It could start a sentence and end a sentence, and in heated, violent arguments, often at the same time.

Screenshot of a younger Idris Elba as Stringer Bell in HBO’s The Wire (2002-2008), January 4, 2020. (https://hbo.com).

But it wasn’t just Mom. My father said “muddafucka” when he was in drinking mode growing up. I once played a game in my head, and counted up the number of times he used it at a bar in the Bronx to describe the other drunks, the barkeep, and other folks in the city. I lost count after 50, between “po’ ass muddafucka,” dumb muddafucka,” “git out of here, muddafucka,” and “Suck my dict, muddafucka!” And that was all in 45 minutes!

Their friends, their kids, and so many others I was around in Mount Vernon, the Bronx, and in Manhattan growing up all used variations of MF. I didn’t become regularly acquainted with the n-word outside of Roots or A Soldier’s Story until I went off to college and Pittsburgh. But when Bruce Willis said the line to Alan Rickman’s character Hans Gruber in Diehard (1988), “Yippee-ki-yay, muthafucka!,” he said it the way the Black and Brown folk I grew up around said it, and not the wimpy ways most Whites tend to use it. And every Black who was in the theater with me that night audibly gasped with delight

So when I use MF here, I am being tongue-in-cheek and as serious as a muthafucka. Especially when it comes to America’s daily reality TV show, 45 and his cabal of mostly obese in body, mind, and spirit privileged White man hell-bent on making America a blatantly White supremacist country again (see Mike Pompeo, William Barr, and Rudy Giuliani here, among a legion of others). They are stunningly craven, which also makes them stunningly stupid. They collectively are the person who comes along and knocks down the Jenga tower you have carefully constructed and deconstructed over several hours with a sledgehammer, and then burp in your face immediately afterward. All while not knowing the chain of events they have set off for themselves and for you. They are too orgasmically high on power and drunk off of spreading lies and fear to contemplate playing checkers, much less picking up a bishop to play chess.

And that’s why the show should be titled Dumb Motherfuckers. Because the 45 thesis is to destroy all of former President Barack Obama’s proverbial statues, statues, paintings, treaties, deals, orders, and obelisks in order to restore Whiteness in the White House. The problem is, the Obamas merely brought their Blackness to the White House. The government remained steeped in Whiteness in policies and in attitude the entire time Obama wore the trappings of American imperial power. But when your racism and narcissism is so great as to think that the first Black president was an affront to millions of Whites and some footsoldiers-for-racism Black and Brown folx, being a bunch of dumb motherfuckers lighting up the US and the world with tiki-torches is the result.

Screenshot of ancient Egypt’s Sphinx, complete with closeup of its smashed nose, January 4, 2020. (https://education.abc.net.au).

Now America enters season four of Dumb Motherfuckers. Season three ended with a cliffhanger, as the House of Representatives voted in favor of impeaching 45 on two counts. But, what will Nancy Pelosi do next? Will Mitch McConnell continue his pledge to march “in lockstep with the White House,” like a jackbooted SS officer in a parade at Nuremberg? Will 45 continue to play golf while the US continues its march toward full-on corporate plutocratic fascism? Stay tuned!

As of 36 hours ago, Dumb Motherfuckers‘ producers threw us a plot twist, assassinating Iran’s leading general, Qasem Soleimani, a sort of declaration of war, and certainly a violation of the Geneva Convention. Sure, this plot twist is a distraction from impeachment and the 2020 election cycle. But it is also another drumbeat toward a war that will cost hundreds of thousands of Black and Brown lives, and displace millions of people from their homes and their possible futures. But that doesn’t matter, right? Ratings, a.k.a., votes, do.

45 and his minions of motherfuckers don’t care about all that. Nor are they smart enough to know where this new plot direction will take them or the rest of the US and the world. What they do know is that there are roughly 60 million Americans who are down for anything that 45 does. If 45 ran over a White family with a steamroller, killing three children under the age of five and their Scottish terrier in the process, his fans would find an excuse, say he’s “making America great again,” call me a racist, and threaten me and my life. So know that they would support, “Bomb bomb bomb/Bomb bomb Iran,” just like the late Sen. John McCain did during his 2008 election run. And apparently, through prayers and supplications, through megachurches and the Gospel of Prosperity.

This is what makes watching Dumb Motherfuckers so frustrating, because it is all so predictable. The thinly-veiled imperialism, the rank anti-Black, anti-Brown, anti-Jewish racism, xenophobia as World War Z, and Islamophobia, the obvious women-are-meat misogyny, and the wicked hoarding of wealth. The use of blind patriotism and Christianity to rally Whiteness and White folk into supporting utter stupidity. Just like in 1968-1969, 1973, 1983, 1989, 1991, 2001, and 2002-03, from Vietnam and Grenada to Panama, the First Gulf War, and Afghanistan. Dumb Motherfuckers isn’t dumb just because the characters are dumb. It’s dumb because it will eventually leave the Whites who want to be rich and want Black and Brown people to suffer thoroughly and lethally screwed as well. But give the (White and internalized racism Black and Brown) public what it wants, right? Dumb muthafuckas — it’s a shame and a pitiful!

How Nixon’s Resignation Made Me A Self-Aware 4-Year-Old

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, My Father, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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48 Adams Street, Another World, Continual Memories, Days of Our Lives, Headstart, Home Accident, Hot Oven, Hot Stove, Impeachment, Memories, Memory Cap, Mom, Mother-Son Relationship, My Mom, Nixon, President Nixon, President Richard M. Nixon, Resignation, Richard Nixon, Seared Skin, Self-Awareness, Self-Discovery, Total Recall (1990), Watergate


President Richard Nixon delivering his resignation speech (cropped screen shot) ahead of impeachment over Watergate, abuse of power, August 8, 1974. (http://washingtonpost.com). In public domain.

President Richard Nixon delivering his resignation speech (cropped screen shot) ahead of impeachment over Watergate, abuse of power, August 8, 1974. (http://washingtonpost.com). In public domain.

I have a deeply personal perspective from which I saw President Richard Nixon’s resignation forty years ago. It’s a perspective that has ordered my steps nearly every day for the past four decades. If it weren’t for a kitchen accident and his televised resignation speech, I probably wouldn’t be the person I am today, or the person I’ve been over the past 14,610 days. Nixon and my kitchen accident combined to “pop my memory cap,” to quote a line from the original Total Recall (1990) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Total Recall (1990) scene where fake memories meet real ones (a.k.a., "memory cap scene"), August 5, 2014. (http://www.rellimzone.com/).

Total Recall (1990) scene where fake memories meet real ones (a.k.a., “memory cap scene”), August 5, 2014. (http://www.rellimzone.com/).

That Thursday evening, August 8, ’74, was the very first time I became continually self-aware, forming memories like a video camera records scenes, with thoughts of myself and the world around me. I didn’t understand everything I saw, of course. But I did know that I saw what I saw, and for more than just a few moments.

Seeing Nixon’s big head on my Mom’s 19-inch color Zenith wasn’t my first memory, though. I remember crawling by my Mom’s TV set in ’72 at our second-floor flat in which we shared a kitchen with another family in Mount Vernon, NY. I remember because it was the first time I’d seen numbers, the numbers being 1972 with a copyright symbol in front of it. (I told a graduate student friend of mine about this first memory once – she told me it would be impossible for me as a two-year-old to remember specific numbers. What did she know?) I also remember the closing theme song from the show that was on immediately before Another World, which I figured out in later years was NBC’s other soap opera Days of Our Lives.

"Tide Gives You A Fresh, Clean Wash" commercial (cropped screen shot), circa 1970 (guess our babysitter took this literally), October 14, 2013. (http://article.wn.com).

“Tide Gives You A Fresh, Clean Wash” commercial (cropped screen shot), circa 1970 (guess our babysitter took this literally), October 14, 2013. (http://article.wn.com).

Two other memories prior to August 8, ’74 stand out. One was me escaping from the front yard at 48 Adams Street and walking down the block to the local asphalt playground, with basketball hoops and jungle gym included. I remember playing with much older boys, having fun, and my Mom whupping me from the playground all the way down the block back to the house. The other was when our babysitter Ida bathed me and my older brother Darren in a tub full of scolding hot water with Tide Detergent. I was so angry, I called her a “Bitch!” Angry likely because I was itching all over, the b-word likely because my Mom and my father Jimme used the word like it was a period to end a sentence. Miss Ida backhanded me like I was going cross-court as a tennis ball at the US Open. All of this happened when I was three.

The flood gates opened the following summer of ’74, though. It started because of a traumatic injury. My Mom was cooking in the shared kitchen at 48 Adams, making some kind of chicken dish. She had the oven door open, having just taken the chicken out of it and having placed it on the stove. I asked her if I could have a bite. Of course my Mom said, “No, Donald, it’s too hot!” I didn’t listen. I tried to climb up to the top of the stove by using the open oven door as a step stool, and lo and behold, I scorched my right leg when I put it on the inside of the door. I remember my Mom screaming, “Oh my God!” as I fell to the floor, screaming along with her.

My second-degree leg burn, 40 years later - darker area circled is faded mark that was once on the right side of my right calf, August 5, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

My second-degree leg burn, 40 years later – darker area circled is faded mark that was once on the right side of my right calf, August 5, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

The skin around the burn area was gone (if it had happened today, it would’ve been a pretty good second-degree burn, and I probably would’ve ended up at the hospital), leaving a white — not pink, white — circular burn mark. My Mom applied ointment and a bandage, made me take two Bayer aspirin for the pain, and told me to calm down and be quiet. She plopped me down on the couch in the living room, which was slightly to the right of the TV.

I was still crying in pain from the shock of seeing, smelling and feeling my skin being seared in the kitchen. As my Mom sat me down, a man with a gigantic head appeared on the television screen, a man I vaguely knew as the President of the United States. I really didn’t understand much of what President Nixon said, but I do recall my Mom shaking her head, and Cronkite calling it a “sad time” for the country. Given how sad I already felt, I think I might have felt sorry for the man with the big head on the TV set.

From that moment on, I’ve had continual memories. I remember my Mom taking me to Darren’s Headstart program somewhere around South 2nd or South 3rd Avenue in Mount Vernon the next day to pick him up, seeing the man with the big head wave with his fingers sticking in the air before going on a helicopter ride, and then being dragged to Met Grocery Store on South Fulton Avenue for groceries, all with a painfully sore leg. Luckily, my Mom caught us a cab home.

And the week after that, we moved to 425 South Sixth, next to Nathan Hale Elementary, where I would go to kindergarten the following month. And the week after that, my father Jimme introduced Darren to The Clear View School, after an argument with my Mom about him “drinkin’ up all his money again.” Ah, the parallels between big historical events and key moments in my life haven’t stopped since!

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

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There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

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