Up Against The Wall, Michael. Now, Spread 'em!

John McWhorter said he has been telling friends for fifteen years that Michael Jackson would not live past fifty, although he didn't expect to be so precisely on the mark. An overdose, a botched medical procedure, or maybe just something as fortuitous as a car accident.

That is, I sensed nothing as mundane as a death wish or as common as self-destructive tendencies. It just always seemed to me that there was something unreachably and definitively absent about the man. For all of the eclat, there seemed to be nothing actually there - surely, before long he would just blow away.

I was no more immune than anyone else to feeling a loss oddly incommensurate with the fundamental evanescence. I grew up hearing the boy-child version of Michael crooning the Jackson Five's hits in that creamy falsetto, and in college, he helped me cope with the drudgery of my dining hall job as one cut after another from Thriller became a hit and played endlessly on the P.A. system. Almost every song on that album had the precious quality of bearing hundreds of listens - to this day, who in America doesn't jump to the dance floor upon hearing the opening vamp of "Billie Jean"?

Apparently even Iraqis do: the New Yorker told us recently that Michael Jackson is preferred music among Iraqi prisoners. How many other American pop songs of 1983 get them moving? People not born in 1983 can do snippets of the dance Michael did in the marvelous Thriller video. Ever try to do a moonwalk? Even if you got kind of good at it, Michael Jackson doing it can still take your breath away.

In the early eighties there was a good deal of talk about him as the world's greatest entertainer - and it was a rare instance where the hype was more than that. People used to say it about Al Jolson - but the modern viewer is baffled as to what all the fuss was about. They said it about Sammy Davis, Jr. too - and while he holds up better than Jolson, nothing he did makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. With Michael, there was The Voice, The Moves, and a whole somehow greater than the sum of the parts.

The problem was that as he got older, parts seemed to be all there was; the whole became increasingly difficult to perceive. The skin bleaching was strange enough - and his telling Oprah that it was vitiligo and expecting to be believed even stranger. Here was a black man - and one who was a megastar — actually using the kinds of products that look so peculiar and degrading in ancient black newspaper advertisements today. And then the facial surgery, which made him look not only whiter but more feminine.

The question, which he never even ventured an answer to, was why. Who was this personnage supposed to be? White? Gay? Perhaps we were to allow that he was just being "him." But leaving unanswered just who that "him" was supposed to be was, most charitably interpreted, too far ahead of our times. It left him a faintly gruesome cipher.

Or, why the high voice? As males mature their voices deepen: "High Talkers" of the kind depicted in the Seinfeld episode are vanishingly rare. Michael's castrato-style vocal tone was an affectation, more alteration, as it were, although likely one that became so much a habit for him that it was, in essence, him. How many men do you know who talk in a light falsetto 24/7?

One cannot help noticing a possible connection with Jackson's vaunted identification with children and his desire to inhabit the realm of childhood as an adult. And plenty of us are kids at heart - but most of us don't talk like them.

Here we will recall certain unsavory allegations as to how concretely and in what fashion Jackson was interested in connecting with children, especially non-female ones. It is unnecessary to dwell on the issue at this juncture, but what we did know is that he went through decades of adulthood without any outwardly apparent normal romantic relationship with anyone.



His relationships with his wives were rather oddly formal and brief - when Lisa-Marie Presley made sure we knew that their relationship included sexual relations, what was key was that she would feel the need to let us know that.

Never did we see Jackson with her or the other wife cavorting and consorting in the fashion of Brangelina or, in better days, Jon and Kate. These were "wives," not wives - recalling in Michael's earlier days his purportedly "dating" Brooke Shields. Today having become real to us with her memoir of postpartum depression, Shields back then was a rather saliently blank model and sort-of actress - for him, a kind of paper doll, i.e. "date."

Who did Michael Jackson really connect with? He was not one for hanging out with men or women of his age group, for example. Ask most people who Michael Jackson's best friend was and the answer would be Elizabeth Taylor. However, open up your laptop and start with a blank page. Your job is to script a scene between Jackson and Liz Taylor. How would you begin? What in the world did they ever say to each other?

During an interview with Barbara Walters, holding hands with then-wife Presley, Jackson mentioned that his father had sometimes scared him so badly that he regurgitated into his mouth. The childhood was horrific, in a way that would have left most people scarred. Jackson's response was apparently to seek a childhood he never had - but doing so as a grown man can only mean spending your life playing a part, even if you no longer know you're doing it.

It was sad to see. The essence of Michael Jackson as an actual human being was so elusive that it was especially flabbergasting to hear him, when making a public cri de coeur against his prosecution for child molestation, actually referring to something as immediate as an examination of his penis. More typical was his appearance on an early episode of the Simpsons - in the guise of an obese white man — and uncredited. Concealment as always, not really there or of this world, albeit in the world spotlight.

This quality of his was such that his career was likely over long ago. Thriller was perhaps the last moment when hit pop music for people beyond tween-age could be so basically innocent and unprobing of the individual soul. Even back then, part of the charm was the arrangement - his vocal skills acknowledged, Jackson didn't write or orchestrate that opening vamp to "Billie Jean" nor did he create the dense festival of sonic joys under "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing),"which are certainly part of the reason I have now purchased Thriller three times.

But even by Bad in 1987, Michael's crotch-grabbing in the video of the title song was a "bad" move indeed. It was fake - looking more like Diana Ross every year, he looked about as plausible taking a page from increasingly popular rappers as Bonnie Raitt would have. It wasn't him - at a time when pop was more and more about exploring the self. As time went by the hit singles were fewer and farther between. "Scream" from the HIStory album in 1995 was the last song of his that got around in any real way.

Six years later when Invincible never really rang the bell in the old way, Jackson interestingly cried racism (against Tommy Mottola). But if anything, the problem was that by then the question as to his own blackness was decidedly abstract. Or at least, he wasn't "real" as it was put by then. By 2001 black rappers were all over the pop charts with cuts about themselves, in da club, in da car, in da hood, in da honeez, all up in dat bizness, whatever - rap is all about the "I" as some more literary-minded aficionados have it.

But "I" is exactly what Michael Jackson never wanted us to see, if he even knew what it was himself. Interestingly, a Michael Jackson circa 1980 would be a smash on American Idol today - but would likely fail to get much of anywhere afterward like Taylor Hicks and Ruben Studdard. Winning over a cross-section spectrum of American call-in voters today requires a certain faceless, generic quality that does not translate into stardom in the real-world market of niches and attitude. Jackson was on his way to becoming a nostalgia act.

Michael Jackson's was an entirely constructed self. The temptation to call this "quintessentially American" in the vein of the story of our President's quest for self-definition must be resisted. The self that Michael Jackson constructed was a mask. Fittingly, Jackson was last officially sighted in public through the window of his van, wearing, as apparently was his custom, a veil over his mouth - i.e. a mask over the mask.

Michelangelo said that when he sculpted the David statue, David was already inside the block of marble and his job was just to take away what was not David. Jackson worked against nature's endowment just as diligently, but surely the pale wraith he became was not something that had been waiting to see the light of day. Rather, what Jackson seemed to find was a negation, a mangling of personhood - what else can we say of someone attending a court date for child molestation in his pajamas? The irony is that despite this man's towering stature as a keystone of American popular music's history, there is surely a part of all of us that sees the man as more fortunate resting in peace. (Jackson: Man Who Wasn't There by John McWhorter)

Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene at the age of 11 as a member of The Jackson 5 and began a solo career in 1971 while still a member of the group. Referred to as the "King of Pop" in subsequent years, five of his solo studio albums have become some of the world's best-selling records: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995).

In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular music and the first African-American entertainer to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. The popularity of his music videos airing on MTV, such as "Beat It", "Billie Jean" and Thriller—credited for transforming the music video into an art form and a promotional tool—helped bring the relatively new channel to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made Jackson an enduring staple on MTV in the 1990s. With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced hip hop, pop and contemporary R&B artists.

Jackson has donated and raised millions of dollars for beneficial causes through his foundation, charity singles and support of 39 charities. Other aspects of his personal life, including his changing appearance and behavior, generated significant controversy, damaging his public image. Though he was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993, the criminal investigation was closed due to lack of evidence and Jackson was not charged. The singer has experienced health concerns since the early 1990s and conflicting reports regarding the state of his finances since the late 1990s. Jackson married twice and fathered three children, all of which caused further controversy. In 2005, Jackson was tried and acquitted of further sexual abuse allegations and several other charges.

One of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, his other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records—including one for "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time"—13 Grammy Awards, 13 number one singles in his solo career—more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era—and the sales of over 750 million albums worldwide. Cited as one of the world's most famous men, Jackson's highly publicized personal life, coupled with his successful career, has made him a part of popular culture for almost four decades.

Inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1984, Jackson has had a notable impact on music and culture throughout the world. He broke down racial barriers, transformed the art of the music video and paved the way for modern pop music in his own country. Jackson's work, distinctive musical sound and vocal style have influenced hip hop, pop and R&B artists, including Mariah Carey, Usher,Britney Spears,Justin Timberlake and R. Kelly.For much of his career, he had an "unparalleled" level of worldwide influence over the younger generation through his musical and humanitarian contributions.

Throughout his career he received numerous honors and awards, including the World Music Awards' Best-Selling Pop Male Artist of the Millennium, the American Music Award's Artist of the Century Award and the Bambi Pop Artist of the Millennium Award. He is a double-inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1997 and later as a solo artist in 2001. Jackson was also an inductee of the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. His awards include multiple Guinness World Records (eight in 2006 alone), 13 Grammy Awards, 13 number one singles in his solo career—more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era—and the sale of over 750 million albums worldwide, making him the world's best selling male pop artist.

Queues for a Michael Jackson concert in Berlin in June 1988.He is characterized as "an unstoppable juggernaut, possessed of all the tools to dominate the charts seemingly at will: an instantly identifiable voice, eye-popping dance moves, stunning musical versatility and loads of sheer star power". In the mid-1980s, Time described Jackson as "the hottest single phenomenon since Elvis Presley". By 1990, Vanity Fair had already cited Jackson as the most popular artist in the history of show business. Daily Telegraph writer Tom Utley called him an "extremely important figure in the history of popular culture" and a "genius". His total lifetime earnings from royalties on his solo recordings and music videos, revenue from concerts and endorsements have been estimated at $500 million; some analysts have speculated that his music catalog holdings could be worth billions of dollars. Cited as one of the world's most famous men, Jackson's highly publicized personal life, coupled with his successful career, has made him a part of popular culture for almost four decades.

The King of Pop, Michael Jackson is dead. He took to the stage as a child star and went on to set the world dancing to the thumping rhythms of his music for decades, died Thursday, TMZ website reported. He was 50.

"We've just learned Michael Jackson has died," TMZ said.

"Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back," the entertainment site said.

There was no official confirmation of the reported death and spokespersons for Jackson could not be reached for comment.

Earlier, the Los Angeles Times said that the singer had been rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital by fire department paramedics who found him not breathing when they arrived at the singer's home.

The newspaper said paramedics performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation at the scene before taking him to the UCLA Medical Center hospital.

Jackson had been due to start a series of comeback concerts in London on July 13 running until March 2010. The singer, whose hits include "Thriller" and "Billie Jean," had been rehearsing in the Los Angeles area for the past two months.

The shows for the 50 London concerts sold out within hours of going on sale in March.

Jackson started out as a child star in the band "The Jackson 5" more than 40 years ago.

He has lived as a virtual recluse since his acquittal in 2005 on charges of child molestation.

There have been concerns about Jackson's health in recent years but the promoters of the London shows, AEG Live, said in March that Jackson had passed a 4-1/2 hour physical examination with independent doctors.

Thurgood Marshall. Mr Civil Rights.


Thurgood Marshall did more to improve the life of the damned, the
dispossessed, and the downtroddened than any other attorney in the 20th
century. He fought for the underdog in American society as an attorney
and as a justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. As chief counsel for the
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund for over 25 years, he fought
Jim Crow segregation in the snake pits and hell holes of the solid
South. He won 29 of 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court; and,
he should have won all of them. In a perfect and just world, he would
have. His record of successful cases before the high court stands
today unparalleled in American judicial history. President Lyndon
baines Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1967 where he
served for 34 years.



When he traveled in the South, Thurgood Marshall never confronted "Jim
Crow" headon; that is, he never sat in railway stations or lunch
counters reserved "for whites only". However, in forays down South he
could not always avoid person danger. In 1946 in Columbia, Tennessee,
along with other defense counsels, he drove 200 miles round-trip daily
from Nashville,TN to the trial in Colunbia,TN. There was no safe place
for a Black lawyer to stay in Columbia, TN. At one point police
officers picked him up and took him alone in their car, and charged
him with drunk driving. Carl Rowan wrote a detailed newspaper article
about how the police tried to lead Attorney Thurgood Marshall to the
banks of a nearby river where a lynch mob had a noose hanging from a
tree, ready to lynch him. Brave armed Black citizens came to his
rescue. A courageous white magistrate smelled his breath and
proclaimed him sober and he was able to return to Nashvill. (Crusaders
in the Courts, by Jack Greenberg, 1994, Basic Books, Harper Collins,
p. 31,32)

In the Jim Crow segregated South, he was so revered in Black America
that people mostly spoke of him in whispered tones. He is easily the
most important American of this century. He rose from an humble birth
to a position higher than any Black American before him. He built his
reputation slowly in jerkwater southern towns where he was outnumbered
but never outmatched and never outgunned in the legal arena. In
virtually every case he was fighting for the right against a twisted
white justice system administered by southern judges and sheriffs who
had few second thoughts about beating in black heads.

Thurgood Marshall was the only Black leader in America during the
Civil Rights era who could say that he defeated segregation where it
really counted; that was, in the courts. He legal strategy was based
on the U. S. Constitution. He forced civil and constitutional rights
to be extended equally to the poorest and blackest American citizens
as well as poor whites. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King would
never have won his first victory, the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott,
if Thurgood Marshall and his legal team had not first won a Supreme
Court ruling outlawing segregation on the city buses. Battles were
fought in the streets, but the victories were won in the courts.

Also, it was Thurgood Marshall who argued the case of Brown v. Bd of
Education before the Supreme Court. This case ended segregation in
public schools.

Thomas G. Krattenmaker, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown
University Law Center, said it best. He said, "when I think of great
American lawyers, I think of Thurgood Marshall,, Abe Lincoln and
Daniel Webster. In the 20th Century only Earl Warren approaches
Thurgood Marshall. Marshall is certainly the most important American
lawyer of the 20th Century."

Drew Days, a former law professor at Yale University Law School, said
that "Thurgood Marshall was the living embodiment of how far we as
Americans have come on the major concern in our history-race- and how
far we still have to go. He was the conscience of this nation. In the
law, he remains our supreme conscience."
(Thurgood Marshall, Justice For All, by R. Goldman and D. Gallen, 1992
bt Caroll & Graf Publishers, Inc, Ny,Ny, 141,142.)

Koko Taylor, a Force of Nature has been silenced!
CHICAGO – Koko Taylor, a sharecropper's daughter whose regal bearing and powerful voice earned her the sobriquet "Queen of the Blues," has died after complications from surgery. She was 80.

Taylor died Wednesday, 3 June 2009, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital about two weeks after having surgery for a gastrointestinal bleed, said Marc Lipkin, director of publicity for her record label, Alligator Records, which made the announcement.

"The passion that she brought and the fire and the growl in her voice when she sang was the truth," blues singer and musician Ronnie Baker Brooks said Wednesday. "The music will live on, but it's much better because of Koko. It's a huge loss."

Taylor's career stretched more than five decades. While she did not have widespread mainstream success, she was revered and beloved by blues aficionados, and earned worldwide acclaim for her work, which including the best-selling song and tunes such as "What Kind of Man is This" and "I Got What It Takes."

Taylor appeared on national television numerous times, and was the subject of a PBS documentary and had a small part in director David Lynch's "Wild at Heart."

"What a loss to the blues world," said Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy. "She was one of the last of the greats of Chicago and really did what she could to"Wang Dang Doodle" keep the blues alive here, like I'm trying to do now."

In the course of her career, Taylor was nominated seven times for Grammy awards and won in 1984.

Taylor last performed on May 7 in Memphis, Tenn., at the Blues Music Awards.

"She was still the best female blues singer in the world a month ago," said Jay Sieleman, executive director of The Blues Foundation based in Memphis. "In 1950s Chicago she was the woman singing the blues. At 80 years old she was still the queen of the blues."

Born Cora Walton just outside Memphis, Taylor said her dream to become a blues singer was nurtured in the cotton fields outside her family's sharecropper shack.

"I used to listen to the radio, and when I was about 18 years old, B.B. King was a disc jockey on WDIA and he had a radio program, 15 minutes a day, over in West Memphis, Arkansas and he would play the blues," she said in a 1990 interview. "I would hear different records and things by Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Sonnyboy Williams and all these people, you know, which I just loved."

Although her father encouraged her to sing only gospel music, Cora and her siblings would sneak out back with their homemade instruments and play the blues. With one brother accompanying on a guitar made out of bailing wire and nails and one brother on a fife made out of a corncob, she began on the path to blues woman.

Orphaned at 11, Koko — a nickname she earned because of an early love of chocolate — at age 18 moved to Chicago with her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert "Pops" Taylor, in search for work.

"I was so glad to get out of the cotton patch and stop pickin' cotton, I wouldn't of cared who come by and said, 'I'll take you to Chicago,'" Taylor recalled in a 2004 interview with The Associated Press.

When she first entered the city, she thought, "Good God, this must be heaven," Taylor said.

Setting up house on the South Side, Koko found work as a cleaning woman for a wealthy family living in the city's northern suburbs. At night and on weekends, she and her husband, who would later become her manager, frequented Chicago's clubs, where many the artists heard on the radio performed.

"I started going to these local clubs, me and my husband, and everybody got to know us," Taylor said. "And then the guys would start letting me sit in, you know, come up on the bandstand and do a tune."

The break for Tennessee-born Taylor came in 1962, when arranger/composer Willie Dixon, impressed by her voice, got her a Chess recording contract and produced several singles (and two albums) for her, including the million-selling 1965 hit, "Wang Dang Doodle," which she called silly, but which launched her recording career.

From Chicago blues clubs, Taylor took her raucous, gritty, good-time blues on the road to blues and jazz festivals around the nation, and into Europe. After the Chess label folded, she signed with Alligator Records.

In most years, she performed at least 100 concerts a year.

"Blues is my life," Taylor once said. "It's a true feeling that comes from the heart, not something that just comes out of my mouth. Blues is what I love, and blues is what I always do."

In addition to performing, she operated a Chicago nightclub, which closed in November 2001 because her daughter, club manager Joyce Threatt, developed severe asthma and could no longer manage a smoky nightclub.

Survivors include her daughter; husband Hays Harris; grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements will be announced, the label said.

Taylor was a mentor and inspiration to the next generation of female blues singers, said 30-year-old blues singer Shemekia Copeland, who first met Taylor when she was 15 at a club in New York.

"When I saw her, I couldn't speak," said Copeland, the daughter of late blues artist Johnny Copeland. "You can't ask a woman who sings blues right now who influenced them and not say, 'Koko Taylor.' If she didn't pave the way for us we couldn't do this."

Admiral Stephen Rochon, USCG: The Black Man Who Runs The White House.
No, not President Barack Obama. Let's return to the older dudes. Who is he? Rear Admiral Stephen Rochon is the White House Chief Usher. The Louisiana native is in charge of the domestic staff at the White House, and making sure everything runs like clockwork. He is the eighth person and the first Black person to hold this position. He was appointed to this position in 2007 under President George W. Bush after the previous usher retired after 20 years of service, and the Obamas decided to retain him.
However, don’t get it twisted. Ol’ boy ain t the butler. Admiral Rochon manages the day-to-day operations of the White House, with its 132 rooms, $13-million plus budget, and 90+ staff. He oversees the White House operations, maintenance and utilities and works with the White House Social Security on ceremonial events of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. If the president needs him, he’s on it.. If Mrs. Obama wants an environmentally-friendly, American-made swing set for Sasha and Malia, he’s testing the equipment on her behalf. When the Obamas host dinners, he’s there. When the Obamas say they want to make the White House more accessible to the public, he’s on it.
His job is to run a tight ship, of which he is very familiar. Admiral Rochon previously served as the Coast Guard’s commander of the Maintenance and Logistics Command Atlantic, where he was responsible for naval and civil engineering, financial management, personnel, legal, civil rights, electronic systems support, and contingency planning across 40 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, Europe, and the Middle East.
Admiral Rochon has a B.S. in Business Administration from Xavier University, and an M.S in National Resource Strategy from the NationalDefense University. He has earned the Coast Guard Distinguished Medal and three Legion of Merit medals.
Admiral Rochon is married and has four children.
When I was thinking about goosebumps moments, I mentioned that HGTV Special at The White House with The First Lady, and I thought it would be wonderful for Admiral Rochon, the first Black Chief Usher to be in service to the first Black First Family.

Ship that rescued American captain from Somali pirates was commanded by Black female admiral. ADM Michelle Howard rescued the M/V Maersk Alabama's captain.




Admiral Michelle Howard

(April 26, 2009) - While the facts surrounding the kidnapping and rescue of the Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips have been widely reported, less well-known is that ship which saved him was commanded by a Black female, Rear Admiral Michelle Howard.

ADM Howard received the assignment of leading the U.S. Navy's counter-piracy task force just three days before the Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somalia pirates.

“It's probably one of the most exciting missions the Navy has been on in for a long while,” ADM Howard told the Navy Times.

ADM Howard is the first of her 1982 U.S. Naval Academy class to reach the rank of admiral. In 1999, ADM Howard became the first African-American woman to command a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Rushmore.

She holds a masters degree in Military Science Arts and Sciences from the Army’s Command and General Staff College.

ADM Howard said the mission of her unit, Combined Task Force 151, will remain deterring and disrupting piracy off the Horn of Africa.

“Right now, the policy is, fight piracy, and I am all about that policy,” she said. “We are quite capable of staying out here and doing this mission.”

ADM Howard’s task force operates with U.S. warships deployed to the eastern Africa area as well as those sent from allied nations. Before her assignment to the strike group, Howard was the senior military assistant to the Secretary of the Navy.

OFFICIAL NAVY BIO:
Rear Admiral Michelle Howard is a 1978 graduate of Gateway High School
in Aurora, Colorado. She graduated from the United States Naval
Academy in 1982 and from the Army’s Command and General Staff College
in 1998, with a Masters in Military Arts and Sciences.

Rear Adm. Howard’s initial sea tours were aboard USS Hunley (AS 31)
and USS Lexington (AVT 16). While serving on board Lexington, she
received the Secretary of the Navy/Navy League Captain Winifred
Collins award in May 1987. This award is given to one woman officer a
year for outstanding leadership. She reported to USS Mount Hood (AE
29) as Chief Engineer in 1990 and served in Operations Desert Shield
and Desert Storm. She assumed duties as First Lieutenant on board the
USS Flint (AE 32) in July 1992. In January 1996, she became the
Executive Officer of USS Tortuga (LSD 46) and deployed to the
THE OFFICIAL BIO ON ADMIRAL HOWARD IS AS FOLLOWS:

Adriatic in support of Operation Joint Endeavor, a peacekeeping effort
in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Sixty days after returning from
the Mediterranean deployment, Tortuga departed on a West African
Training Cruise, where the ship’s Sailors, with embarked Marines and
US Coast Guard detachment, operated with the naval services of seven
African nations.

She took command of USS Rushmore (LSD 47) on March 12, 1999, becoming
the first African American woman to command a ship in the U.S. Navy.
Rear Adm. (Sel) Howard was the Commander of Amphibious Squadron 7 from
May 2004 to September 2005. Deploying with Expeditionary Strike Group
(ESG) 5, operations included tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia and
maritime security operations in the North Arabian Gulf.

Her shore assignments include: Course Coordinator/Instructor for the
Steam Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) course; Action Officer
and Navy’s liaison to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the
Military Services (DACOWITS) in the Bureau of Personnel; Action
Officer J-3, Global Operations, Readiness on the Joint Staff from
2001-2003; Executive Assistant to the Joint Staff Director of
Operations from February 2003 to February 2004; and Deputy Director N3
on the OPNAV Staff from December 2005 to July 2006.

She was the Deputy Director, Expeditionary Warfare Division, OPNAV
staff from July 2006 to December 2006, and currently serves as the

Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy.

Unofficial biography:
Michelle Janine Howard (born 1960) is an American Rear Admiral in the United States Navy. She is the first African-American woman to command a US Navy ship. In 2006, she was selected for the rank of Rear Admiral lower half, making her the first admiral selected from the United States Naval Academy class of 1982 and the first woman graduate of the United States Naval Academy selected for Admiral. In 2009, Howard was nominated for the rank of Rear Admiral upper half, and is being assigned as commander of Expeditionary Strike Group Two in Norfolk, Virginia.

Howard was born to retired Air Force master sergeant, Nick and Phillipa Howard. She is a 1978 graduate of Gateway High School in Aurora, Colorado. She graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1982 and from the Army’s Command and General Staff College in 1998, with a Masters in Military Arts and Sciences.

Howard’s initial sea tours were aboard USS Hunley and USS Lexington (AVT-16). While serving on board Lexington, she received the Secretary of the Navy/Navy League Captain Winifred Collins award in May 1987. This award is given to one woman officer a year for outstanding leadership. She reported to USS Mount Hood (AE-29) as Chief Engineer in 1990 and served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. She assumed duties as First Lieutenant on board the USS Flint (AE-32) in July 1992. In January 1996, she became the Executive Officer of USS Tortuga (LSD-46) and deployed to the Adriatic in support of Operation Joint Endeavor, a peacekeeping effort in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Sixty days after returning from the Mediterranean deployment, Tortuga departed on a West African Training Cruise, where the ship’s Sailors, with embarked Marines and US Coast Guard detachment, operated with the naval services of seven African nations.

Howard took command of USS Rushmore (LSD-47) on March 12, 1999, becoming the first African American woman to command a ship in the U.S. Navy. Howard commanded Amphibious Squadron 7 from May 2004 to September 2005. Deploying with Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 5, operations included tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia and maritime security operations in the North Persian Gulf.

Howard's shore assignments include: Course Coordinator/Instructor for the Steam Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) course; Action Officer and Navy’s liaison to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Military Services (DACOWITS) in the Bureau of Personnel; Action Officer J-3, Global Operations, Readiness on the Joint Staff from 2001-2003; Executive Assistant to the Joint Staff Director of Operations from February 2003 to February 2004; and Deputy Director N3 on the OPNAV Staff from December 2005 to July 2006.

Howard was the Deputy Director, Expeditionary Warfare Division, OPNAV staff from July 2006 to December 2006, and currently serves as the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy.

GULF OF ADEN (April 5, 2009) Rear Adm. Michelle Howard assumed command of Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 2 and Combined Task Force (CTF) 151 aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4), from Rear Adm. Terence McKnight,. Boxer is the flagship for CTF 151, a multinational task force established to conduct counter-piracy operations under a mission-based mandate throughout the Combined Maritime Forces area of responsibility to actively deter, disrupt and suppress piracy.

Obama is hip to the bone!
During his first 100 days as president of the United States, Barack
Obama revealed how different he is from all the white men who preceded
him in the Oval Office, and the differences run deeper — in substance
and style — than the color of his skin.
Barack Hussein Obama is the nation’s first hip president.
This, of course, is subject to debate. But watch him walk. Listen to
him talk. See the body language, the expressions, the clothes. He’s
got attitude, rhythm, a sense of humor, contemporary tastes.
This much is clear: Whether dealing with the Wall Street mess,
shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan or fumbling to fill his
Cabinet, Obama leans heavily on personal panache to push political
policies. Truth be told, his style is rooted in something elusive and
hard to define. Pure and simple, it’s hip.
“Being hip is being able to navigate your environment and others’
environments,” like the way Obama traverses racial boundaries, said
John Leland, author of the definitive book “Hip: The History.”
“Obama has this awareness that other presidents haven’t had. He’s
white, and he’s black. He’s an elitist, and he’s regular folk. He’s
not pinned down to a perspective.”
Young is to hip as old is to fogey — an essential characteristic.
Obama has modern instincts and attitudes that appeal to younger
people, and more than any other president in recent memory, that makes
him a role model. He is green, open, athletic, tech-savvy, healthy.
And his hip image certainly isn’t hurt by his wife, who is so
obviously cool — setting trends (Sleeveless! Tending her own garden!),
confidently mingling with superstars, gracing magazine covers coast to
coast.
Consider how, during the campaign, Obama used his personality — the
smile, the jaunty stride and the hip-hop verbiage — to disarm critics,
charm supporters and persuade fence sitters to elect him president. In
an against-the-odds campaign, Obama never lost his poise as he forged
a rapport with a new generation of voters while keeping old heads on
his team. He could go professorial on the need for health care reform
or describe the minutiae of Middle East politics. Still, he begged to
bring his BlackBerry into the Oval Office, a signal that he intends to
remain in touch with the 21st century. Very hip!
Once he settled into the White House, the hip parade didn’t subside.
Early guests included pop artists Stevie Wonder (a campaign
supporter), Alicia Keys, Will.i.am and Sheryl Crow — but also Sweet
Honey in the Rock, a group of socially and politically active a
capella singers with an indie, underground vibe.
Obama strutted onto Jay Leno’s stage and plopped down on the couch,
making him the first sitting president to do that. He unveiled his
March Madness basketball bracket from the Oval Office. And speaking of
basketball, who missed the sight of POTUS dressed in all black,
sitting courtside at a Bulls-Wizards game with a cup of beer and
high-fiving a trash-talking fan? How hip was that?!
It’s so hip that school kids in Albany, N.Y., coined a term for it:
“Baracking.” And it doesn’t stop there. Those in the know at Albany
High greet each other by saying: “What’s up, my Obama?” and they
respond to a sneeze with “Barack you.” Misbehavior is peer-corrected
with the admonition, “Barack’s in the White House,” which translates,
“Show some respect.”
Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University,
said it was “just really stunning” that kids were co-opting the
president’s name as a term of endearment and identification.
“This is the most emblematic, positive thing that kids could say,” she
said. “It’s connecting them to him, saying that there’s something
special in the connection between them.”
John F. Kennedy understood the nexus of Hollywood glam and Washington
power, but he wasn’t a hipster. Bill Clinton looked good in Ray-Bans
and did a nice turn with the saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” but
in his heart of hearts, Ol’ Bubba was a country boy from the Ozarks
with a need-filled, wonky core — not hip.

Obama’s hipness reinforces that he’s different, yet he’s comfortingly
familiar to Americans who want to revere their presidents as pedestal
material while demanding that they be approachable as the guy next
door.
So what’s hipness got to do with public policy? For Obama, everything.
His personal charisma is a nonverbal form of communication, sending
seemingly conflicting messages: the need for radical and sacrificial
change, yet the reassurance to Americans that he’s as sane and stable
as the guy in the next barber’s chair, said Roger Wilkins, who
recently retired as a history professor at George Mason University.
“Hipness is a way of presenting to the world that you know what’s
going on and that you’ve got things under control,” said Wilkins, who
served in the Johnson administration and has had up-close dealings
with every president since Kennedy.
“For Obama, his hipness exudes power. He just keeps on moving, no
matter what comes his way, and he doesn’t lose it. That’s being hip —
and I don’t see any contemporary public figures whom I would think of
as hip.”
True, Obama uses his hipster personality as a weapon. His enormous
popularity is a bludgeon that demands political respect, if not
support. For example, almost immediately after settling into the White
House, Obama left Washington to campaign in Ohio, Michigan and other
hard-hit states to sell his economic stimulus plan. It was an
effective effort at charm-school diplomacy, garnering
outside-the-Beltway support and applying pressure on Washington
insiders to get on board the Obama train.
The implication was that if you were not on board, you were not hip —
you were square. And who wants to be so uncool as to be on the wrong
side of the hip president, other than a few vocal anti-cools, such as
radio yakker Rush Limbaugh, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and
former Vice President Dick Cheney?
There have been a few other nationally recognized hip politicians: the
late Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of New York; former California Gov.
Jerry Brown, who is currently the state’s attorney general; and former
San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown come to mind. For a brief period in
the 1970s and 1980s, one might argue that Washington’s eternal pol
Marion Barry was hip; that was before drugs, booze and women brought
him low.
To be sure, the track record for hip politicians isn’t promising.
History suggests that the power of personality has limitations in
politics. It sours under public scrutiny.
So can it last? Can Obama’s hipness survive the weight and
responsibility of the office? Maybe there’s a reason presidents aren’t
hip. War-making, secrecy, aging, unpopularity, sternness and sobriety
— these are decidedly unhip. And all that could come in the next 100
days, because hipness is a trendy thing, subject to popular whim.
For now, with approval ratings over 60 percent, Obama is hip. But he
will have to find a balance between being hip and being powerful while
sitting in the world’s most watched fishbowl.
“Hipness is what it is! And sometimes hipness is what it ain’t,” goes
the famous song by Tower of Power. “There’s one thing you should know.
What’s hip today might become passé.”