Two White Dudes Invent Prosthetic Tail That Saves Winter the Dolphin’s Life; Morgan Freeman to Portray those White Dudes in “Dolphin Tale”

Wait a second... aren't those two actual scientists white guys?

A recent advertisement for a new family movie called Dolphin Tale had me intrigued. As a kid in the mid-90s, I was swimming in the ocean far away from my parents and the shoreline. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by a pod of dolphins.

Showing no fear, they allowed me to pet them before playfully swimming away. I tried to swim after them, but upon passing the second sandbar I stopped. Trying to stay above water (as the tide bobbed me up and down) to fully capture their majestic departure, I finally relented and swam back to the shore.

That memory came flooding back to me as I watched the trailer for Dolphin Tale. Debuting in theaters on September 23, Dolphin Tale is the extraordinary "true" story of the dolphin, Winter, the star attraction of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

Tragically, Winter lost her tail in a crab trap back in 2005. Heroically, two employees of Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics, Kevin Carroll and Dan Strzempka, were moved by Winter's story and motivated to develop an artificial tale for the dolphin. It should be noted here that both Carroll and Strzempka are white; in the film Dolphins Tale, the roles of the two white guys who actually invented the artificial dolphin tale have been lumped into a character named "Dr. McCarthy", played naturally by the numinous negro himself, Morgan Freeman:

Morgan Freeman … From Easy Reader on PBS' The Electric Company to the voice of VISA in television commericals to the Academy Award-winning actor he is today, Morgan Freeman brings a wealth of experience to his role as Dr. McCarthy in Dolphin Tale. But when he first read the script, he wondered who or what would play Winter.


“I wondered how they were going to do the dolphin. Where are you going to find a dolphin without a tail? I didn’t know about Winter at all.”

Once on set, Morgan got to know more about Winter’s tale while portraying an eccentric doctor who creates prosthetics for war veterans at a VA hospital.

Now you might be asking yourself: why does it matter that Hollywood has decided to put a Blackface on the actually inventors of the artificial dolphin tale, designed by two white guys, that save Winter's life? It's just a movie, which happens to be produced by the same people who brought us 2009's surprise hit The Blind Side.

It's important because a lot of people are going to see this film, and because most people believe what they see on television and in films, they'll come away thinking that a Black guy actually invented this prosthetic tail that helped saved Winter's life. I wrote a whole book on what I call "Black Fictional Images", entitled Hollywood in Blackface.  Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Will Smith are the go-to Black actors for creating positive images of Black people via portraying fictional Black scientists, inventors, doctors, and people who routinely save the world.

If you haven't picked a copy of it up yet, I highly recommend it.

That the casting director and script writer for Dolphin Tale would find it necessary to amalgamate the two white scientists who actually invented the artificial tail for Winter into a "Black Fictional Image" that could only be played by Freeman is one of the more egregious examples of Hollywood's policy of Blackfacing true events for the purposes of inculcation.

There was no "Dr. McCarthy"; this is a Black Fictional Image created with the expressed desire of convincing moviegoers that a Black person was involved in the tale of saving Winter the Dolphin. In this case, the artificial tail was invented and developed by a Black guy. People believe what they are told, what they see.

But the truth is always just below the surface. So who are the real inventors of the artificial dolphin tail that saved Winter's life and inspired the film?:

In December 2005, a three-month-old bottlenose dolphin found herself tangled in the ropes of a crab trap near Cape Canaveral, Florida. Fortunately, fisherman Jim Savage heard her cry and was able to free the little dolphin from the rope that was wrapped tightly around her tail and mouth. After making some calls, a rescue team came to help and she was taken to the Florida Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA). The team at CMA worked night and day to help Winter recover from the injuries and she began to make steady improvement. However, her tail was badly damaged and as the team feared, she lost her tail.

In 2006, Kevin Carroll, an expert prosthetist and vice president of prosthetics at Hanger heard her story and offered to fit her with an artificial tail. “My heart went out to her, and I thought I could probably put a tail on her.”

It took about a year and a half for Carroll and Hanger’s Sarasota, Florida Practice Manager, Dan Strzempka to develop the new tail for Winter. It was a more difficult task than Carroll originally anticipated. "When we fit a socket on a person, we have one long, solid bone and the socket isn’t moving in every direction. With a dolphin, it needs to move along with her full spine." One of the biggest challenges they faced was figuring out how to keep the tail from sliding off and how to propel a 400-pound dolphin 10 feet into the air. Carroll and Strzempka have since volunteered their nights and weekends to the CMA fabricating a series of tails, creating special liners, and developing new materials for her very delicate skin.

 But what about Dr. McCarthy? What about the character that Morgan Freeman will portray in Dolphin Tale? Didn't a septuagenarian Black male invent the prosthetic that save Winter's life? No. It was two white guys, members of that unappreciated race who invented (and sustain) practically everything that keeps modern society moving forward.

The only invention that can be created to a Black person is the Super Soaker, and even that is just an improved device for delivering concentrated blasts of water in a playful, weaponized stream of fun.

Two white guys and their contributions to the Winter story have been lumped together into the creation of palatable Black Fictional Image in Dr. McCarthy, played by the ubiquitous Morgan Freeman.  The rest of the cast is hideously white, like Super 8 or I am Number Four. Ashley Judd and Harry Connick Jr. also star in Dolphin Tale, rounding out a cast full of other white people. The insertion of a Black Fictional Image of Dr. McCarthy, played by Morgan Freeman, was perhaps necessary for this film to get green-lighted.

 Having too many white faces would have potentially made the movie un-filmable. USA Today ran a story on the actual white guys who invented the artificial tail for Winter, and how techniques used in the invention of the prosthetic device for the dolphin have been used to help humans:

When an animal is hurt in the wild, humans will come to its rescue if possible. With TLC, the animal is able to return to the wild, its lasting effect on humans limited to some warm memories.

The case of Winter, the bottlenose dolphin, is decidedly different. Winter lost her tail after being caught in a crab trap near Cape Canaveral in 2005. She was just 3 months old and 75 pounds, a rope was tied around her mouth, and she was losing circulation to her tail when a fisherman found her and called Florida's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. 

Now, Winter is getting an artificial tail that will let her swim much like she used to. The high-tech work also has made life better for an Iraq war veteran who lost his legs to an explosion.

The link between dolphin and war veteran is Kevin Carroll, vice president of Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics in Bethesda, Md., a dolphin lover who first heard about Winter's desperate situation on the radio. Winter had stunned her handlers when she used her flippers, typically reserved for navigation, to swim.

Carroll knew that if the dolphin continued to swim in this unnatural way without her tail, she probably would develop further problems in her spinal cord. 

Carroll, who usually works with human patients, offered his services to Florida's Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where Winter has been receiving treatment. 

Carroll's company began creating a flexible, silicon-based prosthetic tail. He planned to place the tail over a gel-like substance to hold it in place while protecting the dolphin's sensitive skin. Carroll says he tried several substances until he found a commercially available one that suited Winter. 

About a year later, he again experimented, this time on a human.

Brian Kolfage lost both legs and his right hand in a mortar attack Sept. 11, 2004, while serving with the Air Force in Balad, Iraq.

Kolfage, 22 at the time, received two leg prosthetics but continued to have a severe skin reaction. Carroll decided to experiment with the gel-like substance he had developed for Winter, using it to pad the irritated area between Kolfage's new left leg and pelvic area.

In what Carroll calls a "big breakthrough," the substance relieved Kolfage's discomfort. 

Kolfage, now 25 and working a desk job for Air Force security in Tucson, began walking again. "I really didn't think it would work … but it was like the difference between night and day," Kolfage says. "It was perfect." 

Carroll always expected to be able to apply some technology discovered with Winter to a human case, but he says the success of such applications is rare.

As for Winter, the 20-month-old dolphin has boosted aquarium attendance 15% to 25% and inspired corporate sponsorships and donations to the aquarium. 

Winter's progress is slow and steady. Carroll released a prototype of a prosthetic tail in April but has not permanently attached it to Winter, who cannot swim normally without it. 

Trainers, most of them volunteers, work with Winter up to six hours a day to acclimate her to the gel material. Carroll hopes to attach the socket-tail device in about a month and the full prosthetic in six months. 

Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics is paying for the entire project. Carroll and practitioner Dan Strzempka have been donating their free evenings and weekends to complete research and visit the dolphin at the non-profit aquarium where she will remain for the rest of her life. 

"I didn't realize it would take so long," Carroll says. "But I've committed for the long haul."

Again, the "Dr. McCarthy" you will see in Dolphin Tale doesn't exist; a Black guy - even one played by the charming Morgan Freeman - had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of Winter's artificial tail. It was two white scientists who invented Winter's artificial tail, but including this inconvenient truth in Dolphin Tale would make the movie too white.

So before some Black Web site like Thegrio.com, Theroot.com, or Newsone.com tries to claim yet another fictional Black invention, let's remember that "Dr. McCarthy" is not real; it's just two white scientists rolled into one numinous negro to elicit the necessary cinematic Black Fictional Image effect upon moviegoers.

Hollywood in Blackface, in action. 

Black History Month Heroes: August Gorman from "Superman III"

Finally, Superman delivers a Black computer programmer. No more waiting!

NASA shouldn't have to go to the ends of the earth to find a capable Black scientist. Hollywood has already given us Miles Dyson from Terminator 2; Dr. Ed Brazzelton from The Core; the genius Black hacker from Die Hard and the computer hacker from Transformers; not to mention Luther Stickell from Mission: Impossible.

Weren't they based on real people? 

Yet less than one quarter of one percent of the computer science professors in America are Black, a cause for major concern over the future of computing in general. The lack of Black participation in the creating of computer science is, of course, never brought up in polite conversation, for - paradoxically - their being non-participants wasn't a hindrance to its creation.

It's still a crisis that we must take seriously. Data on diversity in undergraduate degrees awarded in computer science can be found here, with links to post-graduate information here.

The great search for a Black scientist should start and end in Hollywood, an incubator for creating a false paradigm of positive Black intellectual giants pushing the bounds of man's perception of technology. Color Monitors: The Black Face of Technology in America is a book that discusses this very theme:

Following up on Ralph Ellison’s intimation that blacks serve as "the machines inside the machine," Color Monitors examines the designation of black bodies as natural machines for the information age. Martin Kevorkian shows how African Americans are consistently depicted as highly skilled, intelligent, and technologically savvy as they work to solve complex computer problems in popular movies, corporate advertising, and contemporary fiction. But is this progress? Or do such seemingly positive depictions have more disturbing implications? Kevorkian provocatively asserts that whites’ historical "fear of a black planet" has in the age of microprocessing converged with a new fear of computers and the possibility that digital imperatives will engulf human creativity. 

Analyzing escapist fantasies from Mission: Impossible to Minority Report, Kevorkian argues that the placement of a black man in front of a computer screen doubly reassures audiences: he is nonthreatening, safely occupied—even imprisoned—by the very machine he attempts to control, an occupation that simultaneously frees the action heroes from any electronic headaches. The study concludes with some alternatives to this scheme, looking to a network of recent authors, with shared affinities for Ellison and Pynchon, willing to think inside the black box of technology.

 Race in American Science Fiction is another (brand-new) book that discusses similar themes. The small percentage of Black students who actually take the AP exam in computer science, calculus and physics notwithstanding, one can imagine what a minute number of Black students across the nation have ever had a Black professor of computer science in college. If less than half of all Black college students have had a Black college professor (Black professors are normally clustered in Afro-American studies) one could logically surmise that less than one percent of one percent of Black students enrolled in computer science have had a Black computer science professor.

Those Black students who attend Auburn University help bolster that number significantly.

With lower scores on the mathematics portion of the SAT, Black students are at a severe disadvantage that no amount of proper cultural infusion through hip hop could ever remedy. Could this be why Black people aren't found in Silicon Valley?:

"Saying the Silicon Valley tech industry needs to do a better job of hiring native-born blacks, Latinos and some other minority groups, minority leaders picketed Google's Mountain View headquarters [Thursday], asking the Internet giant and other large valley companies to disclose their workplace diversity data," Mike Swift reported Friday for the San Jose Mercury News.

"The protest, organized by the Black Economic Council, the Latino Business Chamber of Greater Los Angeles, and the National Asian American Coalition was sparked by a series of reports in the Mercury News last year.

"Hispanics and blacks, the newspaper found, made up a smaller share of the valley's computer workers in 2008 than they did in 2000, even as their share grew across the nation."  

Jorge Corralejo, chairman of the Latino Business Chamber of Greater LA, told Journal-isms that the group had met with members of Congress and with U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and intended to continue to press their case in those quarters.

Faith Bautista, president and CEO of the National Asian American Coalition, said in a news release, "On the surface, everything is well for Asian Americans at Silicon Valley since up to 50 percent of their employees are listed as Asian Americans. Sadly, up to 90 percent are improperly classified as Asian Americans but, are in fact, H-1B visa workers from abroad."

The Mercury News story continued, "The protest drew about two dozen people to the Googleplex, as minority leaders criticized Google, Apple and 20 other Silicon Valley tech companies that refused to share their workforce diversity data with them. The leaders called on the federal government to review the H-1B work visa program that tech companies use to hire engineers from abroad, unless the companies comply.
"The groups are filing a complaint with the federal government, saying of 34 Silicon Valley tech companies from which they requested workforce data, just 12 agreed to share it. The groups are asking the government to force the companies to disclose their data. They said they singled out Google for Thursday's protest because of its growth and visibility."

As reported last year, the American Society of News Editors, recognizing that Internet companies are increasingly hiring journalists, added "online-only newspapers" to its annual diversity census of print newspapers. A Yahoo spokeswoman later told Journal-isms flatly, "We do not release our diversity statistics."

The nondisclosers are not all in Silicon Valley. Huffington Post did not participate, and neither did AOL, MinnPost.com, Salon.com, Talking Points Memo (TPM Media LLC), the Daily Beast, Bloomberg or Politico. All but MinnPost.com are based on the East Coast.

In its news release announcing the demonstration, the groups said, "The available data demonstrates that no industry may have a worse record in California in the hiring of Blacks, Latinos, Southeast Asian Americans and women than Google, Apple and Oracle. Based on data from the 12 Silicon Valley companies that [publicly] released their EEO-1 data, the minority groups' expert states that Google's Black employees, for example, could be at just one percent, Latinos at two percent and women at the 20 percent level. In contrast, Stanford, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, has an entering freshman class that has 17.2 percent Latinos and 11.1 percent Blacks.

How in the world can we ever expect to have advanced technology - courtesy of Black people in Hollywood blockbusters - if so few Black people are employed in the private sector helping bring innovation through diversity that is so sorely needed?

That we have reached a world blessed with the technology we have today despite Black participation in the creation of these technologies is a miracle. Silicon Valley's lack of Black people is an obvious indicator of culturally biased education system that will always be Waiting for Superman. Without Black people how can we expect to have innovation in Silicon Valley?

All of the great inventions - including the Super Soaker - are courtesy of Black people. Right? That's what movies have taught an unsuspecting American population through an ingenious form of behavioral modification.

Remember Superman III? That's okay, most people don't. Richard Pyror, one of the top entertainers of the day, starred as, well, a bumbling idiot who had an uncanny knack for computer programming:

August "Gus" Gorman (Richard Pryor), an unemployed ne'er-do-well, discovers a knack for computer programming. After embezzling from his new employer's payroll (through a technique known as salami slicing), Gorman is brought to the attention of the CEO, Ross Webster. Webster (Robert Vaughn) is obsessed with the computer's potential to aid him in his schemes to rule the world financially. Joined by his sister Vera (Annie Ross) and his "psychic nutritionist" Lorelei Ambrosia (Pamela Stephenson), Webster blackmails Gorman into helping him.

His scheme is described in greater detail here:

He develops a piece of software that activates whenever the company makes a payment that involves a fraction of a penny. The program rounds the payment down to the nearest cent, and shuffles the fraction into Pryor’s secret account. Across the entire company, the fractions divert thousands of dollars into Pryor’s hands. Managers at the company discover the scam, but conclude that its designer is so clever he would probably never do anything to reveal himself. At that moment, Pryor arrives at work in a brand new Ferrari. (This process — called salami slicing because you steal only a tiny slice at a time — was recycled with hilarious effect in the movie Office Space, which every manager ought to see if only to inoculate themselves against turning into Initech Division VP Bill Lunbergh, pictured.)

Gorman's scheme is apparent because he got "nigger rich" and showed it off. In reality, setting himself on fire with  crack pipe was the pinnacle of Mr. Pryor's real-life technological ability, a move that made Prometheus cringe.

There are of course Black students who excel at math and enter into a career in computer science. That number is low.

There are a lot of popular movies that highlight this small percentage of Black computer scientists in prominent roles. A lot.

August Gorman is one of those Black Fictional Heroes that help paint a false picture of the world. Movies play an important role in behavioral modification; and any time a dearth of prominent Black dentists, scientists, medical doctors, computer programmers or all around nice guys are depicted on the big screen, trouble ensues.

As to the question of why there are so few Black super villains, the answer to that should be obvious. Black people are always good!

Richard Pryor's Superman III scene is found here.

What is Black Fictional Heroes Month?

You knew it coming. Last year for Black History Month we brought you Black Fictional Heroes, an ode to the monumental roles Black people have had in Hollywood that have helped create positive images in the minds of movie goers, television viewers and those who consume vast amounts of popular culture.

A Black Virologist?

Though the real world produces a scarcity of positive examples of Black people (hence Spike Lee’s vain hope of locating Black men to become teachers, when less than 50 percent of Black males even graduate high school), Hollywood has helped craft the ideal (idol?) numinous negro to supplant the continuous  inundation of negative information that emanates from the Black community.

Television gave us The Cosby Effect, a by-product of that wonderfully fictional Black family that Americans invited into their homes on a weekly basis during the 1980s. Though 72 percent of Black children are born to single mothers (an incredibly high percent never makes it past the second trimester), the positive images from Bill Cosby’s sitcom denuded many of the negative stereotypes that white people held regarding Black people. “We’d love to have the Huxtable’s as neighbors,” thought many white people viewing The Cosby Show.

Though patterns of residential living suggest otherwise, The Cosby Effect is real. The power of Black Fictional Heroes is real.

NASA can scour America’s elite colleges for the next top Black engineer to no avail, but Hollywood can cast a Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Cuba Gooding Jr. or Morgan Freeman as a top virologist, mechanical engineer, molecular biologist or even God and viola, you have a fictional representative that millions upon millions will see.

What NASA can’t find, Hollywood and television can easily manufacture. That is the beauty of mass media, fabricating images that can create a massive amount of cognitive dissonance among the viewer. The media will constantly bemoan the lack of real-world Black architects, doctors, dentists, ballerinas, engineers, Nordic Gods, and even wine enthusiasts, but movies and television (even commercials) rarely has a shortage of Black people starring in roles reality simply can’t duplicate.

This is the idea behind Black Fictional Heroes. We at SBPDL love movies and through viewing hundreds if not thousands of films have come to admire the tenacity of casting directors in Hollywood who continue to perpetuate the idea of Black Fictional Heroes.

When you watch movies (or television and the commercials between programming) you allow your mind to enter a state of “increased suggestibility” that allows the implantation of the numinous negro phenomenon (what we call the Black Fictional Hero) to easily seep into your brain. Though sports provide the bulk of real-world positive examples of Black people, Hollywood works diligently to program the rest through a steady diet of fictional heroes:

Consider this passage from Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander:
I asked ... prominent psychologists, partly famous for their work with hypnotism, if they could define the TV experience as hypnotic and, if so, what that meant. I described to each the concrete details of what goes on between viewer and television set: dark room, eyes still, body quiet, looking at light that is flickering different ways, sounds contained to narrow ranges and so on. Dr. Freda Morris (former professor of medical psychology at UCLA and author of several books on hypnosis) said, "It sounds like you are giving a course outline in hypnotic trance induction."


Dr. Ernest Hilgard, who directs Stanford University's research program in hypnosis and the author of the most widely used texts in the field (said), "Sitting quietly, with no sensory inputs aside from the screen, no orientating outside the television set is itself capable of getting people to set aside ordinary reality, allowing the substitution of some other reality the set may offer. You can get so imaginatively involved that alternates temporarily fade away. A hypnotist doesn't have to be interesting. He can use an ordinary voice, and if the effect is to quiet the person, he can invite them into a situation where they can follow his words or actions and then release their imagination along the lines he suggests. Then they drift into hypnosis."


Now, if anyone were really honest about this, how could they say that the typical watching of television doesn't fit the same conditions necessary for hypnosis? Of course, some people will scoff at the idea that hypnosis is anything but Quack Science; for those I suggest researching the Department of the Ministry of Truth as described in George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four or Soma as referred to in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I suggest researching these two only if I can get those of you who still believe television is good or neutral to turn it off for a moment to bother to pick up and read a book.


The point of this is to show that television is a form of hypnosis. Hypnosis is described as "suspension of the critical factor" which expands on the idea of "increased suggestibility." A person who is hypnotized may accept statements as true that he or she would normally reject…

As I stated in my article (and confirmed by Marie Winn's book The Plug-In Drug) it is not what is on television that is bad, it is not the content that is damaging; it is the mere act of watching television that is harmful. Television is a displacement of time. It is a huge waste of time — in a hypnotic state — that implants other people's messages into the viewer's head.

Think about this: how often do you see movies or television shows where the villain is Black? Though Thug Report showcases the true color of crime, Hollywood would have you believe that only white guys are actively engaging in criminality. Television shows such as Law and Order utilize real-life crimes as plots, yet switch the races from Black culprit to white to ensure that people will watch.

The nightly newscasts that turn into veritable into Thug Report’s is a reality that most people find difficult to live in (though most move flee the problems by moving to whitopia’s), so TV shows and movies constantly manufacture white villains and criminals to root against, while a Black cop becomes the hero.

From the Super Soaker to creating Batman's arsenal

Ask yourself: How many movies or television shows have you ever seen where the Black guy was the villain? In Mission Impossible III, it was teased that Lawrence Fishburne’s character was a rouge member of the IMF, a double-agent for a terrorist cell. Instead, Billy Crudup’s white character was the traitor. To make it worse, he dared suggest Fishburne’s character (Brassel) got the job as head of the IMF because he was an under-qualified Black man, signifying his true immorality:

(Musgrave reveals himself to be the traitor)

Ethan: You told him. You told Davian Lindsey was coming, that's how he knew.

Musgrave: I thought you could get her back. But I wasn't going to let all people, to let Brassel to undo the work I've done. I took action, Ethan. On the behalf of all working families of America, the Army force, the white house. I've had enough of Brassel and his sanctimony. IMF director, he's an affirmative action poster boy. 

One of the lone recent movies where the bad guy is Black happens to be Unbreakable. Mr. Glass, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is a super-villain who pulls off acts of terrorism in a bid to find an unbreakable person.

What other television show or movie made recently has a Black antagonist? Movies where they save the world come out routinely, as do movies with a Black person portraying the President of the United States (funny that most of them are president when the world is ending). Name some that have Black bad guys.

Now come up with movies or television shows that have a Black person portraying the moral compass, always there with sage advice or a brilliant new intention. In the real world, the primary invention we have courtesy of Black people is the Super Soaker. In movies, the inventions of Black people help bring about artificial intelligence and the destruction of the world.

This Web site has documented Black Run America (BRA) for almost two years, a tyrannical ideology that governs every aspect of life in the former United States. It seeks to remove any and all vestiges of a once prosperous nation,and in movies we even see history under attack.

Why else would Morgan Freeman be cast in a Robin Hood movie? Because people believe movies and television are an extension of reality and perceive history to be accurately portrayed in them. Though England had almost no Black people in the nation as little as 50 years ago, it makes perfect sense for Freeman to be in 12th century Britain when you apply logic utilized by Hollywood.

Same goes for a Black person playing a Nordic God in Thor, or even a Greek God in Percy Jackson: The Lighting Thief.

Black people provide an endless comedy of errors in the real-world, though Hollywood and television work overtime to create positive examples of Black people through Black Fictional Heroes and compensate for the reality's deficiencies.

Search the archives for last years inductees and suggest new entrants into this illustrious Hall of Fame. Men like Morgan Freeman, Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Eddie Murphy have done more to create positive examples of Black people through their film roles then any bus boycott or civil rights speech ever could dream of replicating.

We will be highlighting Black Fictional Heroes all month, these men and women who have done more to artificially create the perception of equality through their films and television roles then any of the saints you will learn about during Black history month.

Just remember that Black people are more likely to engage in heroism than whites. Then you'll understand why Black Fictional Heroes month is so important.

Where are the Black people? The 2011 Academy Awards Nominees are Whiter then ever

Perhaps the Oscar should be white instead of gold

Editor’s note: Posts on self-esteem and shame are delayed for one more day.


Everyone loves movies. The escapism offered by viewing a film grants us the opportunity to visit exotic locations and live vicariously through glamorous actors and actresses. Computer Generated Images (CGI) - produced almost entirely by white people - have led to such films as Avatar, the entire Pixar resume of films and countless action movies, allowing directors (almost all white) to utilize scripts (written almost exclusively by white people) that will eventually be scored beautifully by composers (almost all white) while actors and actresses (with few prominent roles going to Black actresses) work their magic in front of the camera.

Watching movies (and television), one would imagine the United States still has a population that is 90 percent white, as it did in the mid-1960s. Though token Black characters appear in movies cast as characters without historical equals (sometimes in situations that have no historical precedent or basis in fact), Hollywood remains an institution teemed in an astounding whiteness.

Traditionally the embodiment of the most progressive, Stuff White People Like (SWPL), Disingenuous White Liberal (DWL) mindset and agenda, Hollywood is tragically stuck in a situation where they must market their movies to the rest of America. Because of the scholastic shortcomings and ineptitude of Black people, vocations such as director, screenwriter, producer, composer and the small armies of support staff that work on the production of  films are overwhelming white.

You aren't handed jobs in life, you earn them, which is a contradictory concept to our entitled Black friends. 

Whenever a Black director, screenwriter, composer, actor or actress comes along and woes Hollywood, critics (most of whom are white and rabidly DWL) and the American public, they will be pushed to the moon, regardless of their portfolio.

It is a constant, deafening refrain come awards season when Hollywood gathers to congratulate itself for producing vapid films of questionable merit and shockingly little entertainment value that the monster of enforced, codified diversity rears its ugly, ever-expanding head.

Hollywood films and television shows preach an undying devotion to the tenets of diversity (glorifying every racial group – save white people - and normalizing every sexual orientation, life-style, etc.) and never fail to pay homage to the concept of Black Run America (BRA), but when Oscar season comes around (and the Emmy’s) few Black people are ever nominated and the Academy Awards voters will be forever castigated if they fail to bestow the  Oscar upon that Black person who is nominated.

Take this CNN article, “Where’s the Diversity at the Oscars?” which laments the paucity of Black faces up for awards. Isn’t it 2011, not 1951? Where is the progressivism? Certainly not the cabinet of the new Republican Ohio governor, but you’re telling us that a Gabrielle Sidibe film couldn’t be found precious enough to be nominated?

Black actresses have a tough time finding roles that will win them acclaim. It’s been nine years since Black history was made at the 2002 Oscars, when Halle Berry and Denzel Washington both won Oscars. Other than that year, the past 70 years of the Oscars have been nearly monochromatic in their whiteness, with a few token Blacks winning every now and then to maintain the mirage of diversity.

What does that CNN article say?:

After the Academy Awards ceremony in 2010, there was a great deal of hope that the glass ceiling had finally been shattered in Hollywood.
"The Kathryn Bigelow" effect was coined by some industry observers who believed that her win for "The Hurt Locker," the first Oscar for a woman director, would open doors of opportunity for females behind the camera. The riveting film "Precious" yielded a best supporting actress win for African-American performer Mo'Nique, and the first ever statuette for an African-American screenwriter in the best adapted screenplay category went to Geoffrey Fletcher.

But that was last year.

This year there was a decided dearth of diversity in the Oscar nominations. There are no women or people of color among the director nominees, and the acting nominees are all white. Javier Bardem, who is up for best actor for his role in "Biutiful,' is a Spaniard and therefore European.

Which raises the question: Why in an era of ever increasing diversity among movie audiences is that not being reflected among the nominees for Hollywood's most prestigious award? Where are the diverse faces both in front of and behind the cameras?


It's a complex issue that involves both supply and demand. 

But historically far fewer meaty dramatic roles, which are beloved by the academy, have been written for or awarded to actors of color, and women behind the camera are greatly outnumbered by men.

"The stories that we would really like to tell usually don't get greenlit," said Rocky Seker, a former creative developer for a director with Sony Pictures and now a film curator who runs Invisible Woman ... Black Cinema at Large. "We're just not taken seriously. It's all a moneymaking issue."


Both groups also find it difficult to break into the big-budget Hollywood films that garner the attention to carry the momentum needed for nominations. Seker said she often comes across wonderfully made black independent films that just aren't able to get big-studio backing or distribution deals.


While Debra Granik and Lisa Cholodenko have both received critical acclaim for their turns as directors of "Winter's Bone" and "The Kids Are All Right," respectively, their films did not enjoy the same media attention as "Black Swan" or "The Social Network," whose male directors were nominated. (Granik and Cholodenko both were nominated for their screenwriting efforts.)


Cathy Schulman is a producer of the Oscar-winning film "Crash" and president of Women In Film, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing sexual equality in filmmaking. She said that when there are 10 nominations for best film, but only five director nominees, invariably it means someone will be slighted.


"On the one hand, I am very encouraged to see that there are women sprinkled throughout most of the categories, with the continued strength as we've seen before in art direction, in music and in other areas that we have consistently seen a strength in," Schulman said. "What does disappoint is the lack of women in the writer, director, producer roles and some of the other key departments like cinematography and editorial, though there is one woman, Pamela Martin, who has been nominated for editorial (for "The Fighter") and that is certainly well-deserved."


Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, said, "There are lots of reasons at both the individual level as well as the industry level that converge to suppress diversity both on the screen and behind the scenes."


Lauzen added, "The film industry does not exist in a vacuum; it is part of a larger culture, and our attitudes about gender and race are extremely deeply held. Those attitudes don't change overnight or with an Oscar win."

Hollywood and television have the ability to completely shape public opinion, steering debates on key issues any which way they desire. It is movies and television (plus sports) that have provided the bulk of positive (wholly fictional) examples of Black people, and it is through this medium that beloved stars like Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Jamie Foxx have become household names.

We have reached a point in Black Run America (BRA) where we have been trained to see Black people prominently in movies, television and sports, so that when they don’t appear racism is only acceptable culprit. The absence of Black people in any situation, whether it be vocation, avocation, awards ceremony or in academia can only be attributed to racism.

This is how the DWL mind thinks and increasingly all minds in America.

That the Oscars lack any Black nominees for Best Actor and Actress, Supporting Actor and Actresses, Director or for any discernable characters in Best Picture translates to unrepentant racism on the part of an entire industry that has been solely dedicated the complete, methodical destruction of anything resembling Pre-Obama America for the past 50 years (just take a look at Black Fictional Heroes).

Here at Stuff Black People Don’t Like, we don’t hide the fact that we love movies. It is obvious that movies and television have provided ample opportunities to promote agendas that would never, ever be accepted without careful behavioral modification placed in the story-lines (just check out White Dog if you don't believe us).

It’s just fitting that an entire industry is now thrown under the proverbial bus for not placating Black actors and actresses and the spattering of Black directors, screenwriters, producers, composers, animators, special effects designers, etc., enough.

A beast of monumental proportions has been unleashed in America. Black Run America (BRA) has made us so dependent on Black people that anytime a dearth of them are present, we feel racism is the only logical explanation for this situation.

#261. Dying First in Film

 There exists an unwritten rule in cinema: The Black character always dies first in the movie. Whether the film is action, drama, a love story or a psychological thriller, the Black character always dies first.

In the horror genre, this rule is normally pursued vigorously, as the Black person in the movie is of minor concern to the overall plot of the story. Having the antagonist of the film quickly kill off the Black person is a constructive way to make the viewer automatically lose all sympathy toward the villain.

The preponderance of Magical Negroes in film has assured the conditioning of movie-goers into believing all Black characters possess the innate ability to impact the hero/heroine positively, thus the sudden decimation of the Black character is grounds for instantaneous animosity toward the movie monster.

Black characters provide comic relief, for their all-too-brief time on the screen. Appearing to deliver a few stereotypical Black lines and enhance the compulsory diversity to the film, the Black character is the most easily disposable.

The demise of the Black character is highly memorable; normally the introducing the bad guy of the film in a most gory manner and helping setting the stage for the carnage that will inevitably ensue.

So in manner of speaking, the Black character is incredibly important to the overall film, their death signifying to the viewer that the movie is beginning to enter the actual noteworthy moments of the narrative.

Black Horror Movies (Blackhorrormovies.com) is Web site devoted to tracking and educating people on this cinematic phenomenon:

"No way. I've seen this movie. The black dude dies first."
-Professor Harry Phineas Block (Orlando Jones), Evolution 

"Ooh, I'm done! Brothers never make it out of situations like this!"
-Sherman "Preacher" Dudley (LL Cool J), Deep Blue Sea
 

"Did you know that the black guy doesn't always die first?"
-sinister email, The Mangler 2

"Everybody knows black guys get it first in horror movies. It's like Horror Films 101."
-Elvis (Raymond Novarro Smith), Bloody Murder 2

So you're watching a horror movie when he comes on screen. He could be a jock, a nerd, or a smelter in a haunted copper factory, but you just know he's gonna wind up on the short end of the meat hook. Why? Because he's black. You feel guilty for thinking it, but this scenario is so recognizable that it's become a joke. In fright films, being black has become as much a kiss of death as having sex, doing drugs, or saying, "Is anyone there?"

The theatrical device of killing off the Black character has become a crutch that writers and directors have used for far too long, ruining many films from having more Magical Negroes to help navigate the main characters safely through the film and into the inevitable sequel. Black people even recognize the danger they face in film recognizing the patterns that have emerged of Black characters meeting a grisly fate.

How many potential Fictional Black History Month Heroes have been unfairly snuffed out early in a film thanks to the strict and rigid application of this unwritten rule?

The illustrious list of Black thespians who have died in films is long and distinguished but demonstrates the sheer disposability of the characters they played.

Integral to the story only because of the significance their death entails, Black characters are begrudgingly one-dimensional and undeveloped. It is only in the pleas for help and agonizing final seconds of their screen time that the viewer feels any emotion for them.

In horror films, Black actors need only two things: Their Blackness and the ability to die. Some Black characters do survive films, but these brave and lucky souls are the exception to the unwritten rule.

Sadly, there is no truth to the rumor that Black people being loud at movies began when they would attempt to implore the Black character about to meet a grim ending to "go the other away" or "look out behind you."

The moral of the story is that Black characters are incredibly unimportant to the movies success, with only a handful of bankable Black stars in Hollywood that can be called upon to carry a film to profitability.

Easily disposable, the Black character’s involvement in film is a mere formality that eerily mirrors real-life Black people’s existence. Life is cheap in the proverbial ghetto, where Black-on-Black crime is shockingly more prevalent then the Black character dying first in a movie.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes dying first in film. Is this unwritten rule a parody of Black life in the ghetto, an acknowledgment by Hollywood of the propensity for Black people to be deplorably denied a full and rich life by Black hands or is it just a re-occurring theme because the Black character has so little impact on the overall story?

#709. Christian Bale's Movie Roles

Movies. Film. No medium has the ability to shape people's perceptions more than Hollywood's finished products. This is why vigilante films are so rare, and why they rarely receive publicity when they do come out.

Black people love movies, though some films they find more tolerable than others.

Black people find films where they don't save the world uninspiring and the lack of roles for Black actresses to be a depressing reminder of lingering prejudices among the casting agents of Hollywood.

Yet, it is through film that we have some of the most beloved and revered Black figures to cherish (fictional they maybe), so Hollywood has enabled some enduring myths to perpetuate that can't be entirely disqualified from celebrating.

However, a disturbing trend has become apparent in one actor's roles that warrants discussion here at SBPDL. Unlike Thomas Jane who is forced to wallow in relative obscurity, this actor has been the leading man in many of the top films of the 21st century.

Christian Bale.

It is obvious someone else noticed the pattern of Bale's movie choices, for leaked audio of him berating a stage hand for lacking courtesy on the set of Terminator Salvation was paramount in derailing much of his momentum (some might say it was 2009's equivalent of "pulling a Gibson").

Bale has played Patrick Bateman, a sociopath who worked on Wall Street in mergers and acquisition in the popular film American Psycho, where he killed a homeless Black bum for daring to offend his olfactory system.

Bale has played a pretty boy killer in Shaft, where he stole the show from Samuel L. Jackson's eponymous character.

Bale has played John Preston in Equilibrium, a film that saw him single-handily bring down an entire civilization, and he was cast as John Conner in the fourth incarnation of the Terminator franchise, where he is responsible for the future of mankind (both white-guy-saving-the-world movies).

He also saved the world in the dystopian film Reign of Fire.

And of course, Christian Bale has played the ultimate Alpha Male Bruce Wayne in two tremendously well-received films, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Hollywood made a mistake in creating a juggernaut in Christian Bale and attempts were made to tear him down last year with the release of the audio of his ill-mannered rant.

Christian Bale was treading on Will Smith's cape as the current star of Hollywood and this was unacceptable. His role of Patrick Bateman has become iconic for all the wrong reasons, and his role in Shaft provides the only memorable moments.

A defeated people can have no heroes, and in Black Run America those who are anointed can't have undue competition.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Christian Bale's movie roles, for the day a Black person portraying Bruce Wayne is but around the corner. Bale has played iconic roles that resonate with a certain segment of America that must continually worship only pre-selected individuals who promote acceptable virtues. For this, he must be castigated and relegated to movies few eyes will ever see.

An actor possessing singular focus, Bale is an enigma in modern society and thus, why he is part of SBDPL. He plays both heroes and anti-heroes, roles that must be purged from white actors henceforth.

Fictional Black History Month Invades the Real World

We at SBPDL have worked extra-hard to celebrate Black History Month correctly, identifying characters from cinema and television that have made outstanding contributions to world history.

Of course, these are entirely fictitious contributions but film and television help craft positive images of people through a form of "coerced reinforcement of positive values" that simply don't exist in the real world.

The Huxtable Effect puts this theory in perspective and articulates smoothly the origins of the positive light that Black people currently find themselves bathed in, in America:

Have you been following the discussion on the Huxtable Effect? The term refers to an idea circulating about The Cosby Show and its impact on how people voted in this year's presidential election. Many white Americans, it is believed, experienced their first realistic glimpse inside the lives of African Americans through the fictional Huxtable family. Some theorists say this appealing depiction of a middle-class black family on the '80s sitcom made possible the candidacy and election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Continually watching the same happy family in a loving environment - albeit a simulated, fictional one fueled with funny scripts - conditions people to accept Pavlovian responses to any perceived Black failure in the real world.

But what about the Cosby's...?

Well, Stuff Black People Don't Like celebrated Black History Month by profiling those characters from film who've helped create positive images of Black people in vocations to few Black people have dared to enter successfully.

Now, three teachers in California who found the challenge of celebrating real Black History Month for 28 days a daunting puzzle for the lack of eligible pieces capable of creating an image worthy of honoring. In essence, so few Black figures of prominence or relative significance exist in history - just ask Bill and Ted - that pop culture figures are deemed worthy of celebration:

Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers accused of giving children portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul to carry in a Black History Month parade have been removed from their classrooms, a school district spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Children from other classes at the school displayed photos of more appropriate black role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman and President Obama, Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said.

The incident occurred Friday at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School in South Los Angeles, where the student body is more than 90 percent Latino.

District Superintendent Ramon Cortines placed the teachers - all white men who teach first, second and fourth grades - on administrative leave on Tuesday while an investigation is conducted, Pollard-Terry said.

"The superintendent will not let anyone make a mockery out of Black History Month," she said.

This sad story underscores the importance of Fictional Black History Month at SBPDL, for if so few Black people have achieved anything of importance in real life, the fictional world of Hollywood must be utilized to fix the disparate impact of personages of historical influence from the Black community.

RuPaul is of course a celebrity of questionable sexual-orientation and Dennis Rodman also falls in that same category. Both have published books, starred in reality television shows and have similar tailors.

OJ Simpson was a college football and professional football players of marvelous talent, but he found extracurricular activities off the field to be a bloody good time.

You live in Black Run America (BRA). No deviance from the laws that govern BRA are tolerated in any form, especially in sullying the celebration of Black History Month with figures of disreputable merit.

Black History Month Heroes - Mr. Mertle in "The Sandlot"

Baseball. That quintessentially American game that once enraptured the entire nation when it was known as "America's pastime" is now but a shadow of its former self.

Like the washed up prize fighter in Raging Bull, baseball is a sport that has out-lived its usefulness and limps along on the glories of yesteryear and the memories of past great players in the bygone era of Pre-Obama America.

Don Henley sang a 1980s classic Boys of Summer, where he promises that "his love will still be strong, after the boys of summer have gone". SBPDL believes this song is of little relevance anymore, for the boys of summer are long gone as baseball fades into the realm of obscurity and of minor societal significance.

Ratings have been slumping for years and the deep disconnect fans have with the current crop of players competing on the diamond fail to rouse the same sentiments of loyalty that baseball players once commanded:

Baseball’s national networks felt the effects of a baseball season with only one significant pennant race and a dearth of compelling story lines, as Fox and ESPN saw their ratings decline.

Fox saw its Saturday afternoon numbers drop 10 percent to a 1.8 rating/2.74 million viewers. Fox ended its regular season Oct. 2 with a 1.2/1.7 million average for a Saturday afternoon schedule that had just one game with postseason implications. That’s 48 percent off 2008’s numbers, when the last weekend of the regular season featured three games that had playoff implications for Fox, drawing a 2.3 rating.

Baseball, we were told through the Black muse in Field of Dreams, is the one constant throughout American history... baseball has marked the time. The game had the ability to transcend generational gaps between family members, as grandfather-father-and son could attend a contest and quietly understand that the event unfolding before their eyes was a reflection of simpler times and the ultimate manifestation of innocence and youthful ambition.

Baseball is no longer these things, as the old stadiums where moments were immortalized are being torn down in much the same way Pre-Obama America is continually denigrated in the hopes that the current product being peddled won't be unfairly compared to the product it replaced (from an article written 12 years ago in The Weekly Standard):

This neglect by the media is nothing more than a reflection of popular taste. Fifty years ago, the three top sports in America were baseball, boxing, and horse racing. Horse racing has been displaced by legalized gambling and casinos. Boxing has descended to the point where the average person can't name the heavyweight champ. And baseball is living on its memories. In fact, the NBC Game of the Week for many years used to begin with the slogan, "The Tradition is Here, the Memories are Waiting." The game had not yet begun and it was already slotted for memory. Adrift in the age of TV, overtaken by football and basketball, baseball lives in, and off, nostalgia.

Remembrance of days past occurs when one steps on the baseball diamond, especially the fields of youth where dreams of heroic feats once filled young minds. Hitting the home run on a 3-2 pitch in the ninth inning to become the hero by winning the World Series was a fantasy for young men more universal then the desire date the most super of super models.

Striking out on those dreams occurs for most, but those dreams linger hauntingly in the stillness of every spring morning when young men gather to toss the ball around and take batting practice, with dreams of future glory filling their heads.

Rarely is it that we understand the importance of certain moments that will have lasting impact and one day be considered the most significant seconds, minutes, hours of our lives. They pass into memory with a joy reserved for lovers, but our recalled with melancholy fondness much later.

That was the glory of baseball, a sport which has seen better days and aspires for a return of proper importance.

One movie showcases the glory that is baseball and the games immutable bond of dreams and friendship with young men and it's appropriately named The Sandlot:

The film is told through the perspective of Scott Smalls, who is reminiscing on his first summer in Los Angeles. In 1962, Smalls moves with his mother and stepfather to a new neighborhood, and struggles to make new friends. One afternoon, he decides to follow a group of neighborhood boys, and watches them play an improvised game of baseball at a small field, which they call the “sandlot.” Smalls is reluctant to join their game because he fears he will be ridiculed on account of his inexperience.

Nevertheless, he chooses to play with them, but fails to catch a simple fly ball and properly throw the ball back to his infielders. All the other players, except for Benny Rodriguez, begin to jeer Smalls for committing defensive miscues, prompting him to leave the sandlot in embarrassment.

Benny, who is the best player in the neighborhood, shields Smalls from the insults of his peers, and invites him to rejoin their game. He proceeds to give Smalls advice and helps him earn the respect of the other players. In time, Smalls is accepted and becomes an integral part of the team.

As Smalls continues to play with the team, he begins to learn many of the customs of the sandlot, while experiencing many misadventures with his new friends. He learns that players avoid hitting home runs over the sandlot’s fences, as the property beyond them is guarded by a ferocious dog, called “the beast.”

One day, Benny hits a ball so hard, that he ruptures its leather, causing the balls entrails to come out. The group cannot afford to buy another baseball, and is forced to retire for the afternoon. However, Smalls runs to his step-father’s trophy room, and steals a baseball autographed by Babe Ruth, in hopes of preserving the game. The team is impressed with Smalls’ gesture, and allows him to have the first at bat with the ball. He proceeds to hit the ball out of the sandlot, but is shortly enveloped by fear once he realizes that he has lost his stepfather’s ball. The situation is further worsened when Smalls realizes that the ball was autographed by Babe Ruth, and is almost irreplaceable.

Smalls and his friends begin engineering elaborate plans to recover the ball from the beast. After five failed rescue attempts, Smalls prepares to accept his fate. Around the same time, Benny has an enlightening dream, where he is visited by Babe Ruth, who encourages him to run into the sandlot, and use his speed to recover the ball and escape.

Ruth leaves Benny with the words, “Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.” Benny rallies his friends the following morning at the sandlot, and prepares to recover Smalls’ baseball. Using his PF Flyers, he steals the ball from the Beast, and successfully manages to elude the dog as it chases him through town. At the end of the race, the Beast is injured after a fence collapses on it.

Smalls feels responsible for the ordeal, and helps the Beast (whose real name is revealed to be "Hercules") escape the rubble. Benny and Smalls then decide to tell the dog’s owner, Mr. Mertle (James Earl Jones), about the ordeal. They eventually learn that Mertle was a professional baseball player in 1927 and was a friend of Babe Ruth. Mertle, whose career was shortened after he was blinded by a stray pitch, agrees to give Smalls a ball signed by Murderers' Row – several of the best Yankee hitters in the late 1920s. In exchange, the boys are to visit Mertle once a week to talk about baseball. Smalls proceeds to give his stepfather the ball that Mertle gave him.

"Your killing me Smalls"... these words, spoken Hamilton "Ham"Porter as expresses incredulity over Scott Smalls lack of baseball acumen (he though Babe Ruth was a girl) showcase the bond baseball once had with young American males in Pre-Obama America.

Remember, in 1962 - when the film is set - the United States was 90 percent white and 9 percent Black, a far cry from the racial breakdown of the population now.

Baseball, a game rarely played by Black people now despite the prodigious efforts by Major League Baseball (MLB) to get inner city youth active in a game they care little for, can trace its decline in importance to the erosion of the white majority.

Black people were once denied the opportunity to play in the MLB, a great travesty of injustice that they are shockingly on a path to replicate as Black players in baseball are close to being a mere 7 percent of all players.

It wasn't until 1947 that Black people broke the color barrier, a feat performed by Jackie Robinson and one so important that Black History Month is routinely awash in reproducing this moment for a genuine lack of any other milestones or inventions worthy of celebrating.

Guilt is a powerful weapon and Black History Month instills an untold amount of guilt into the minds of impressionable white children who find the lack of significant Black contributions to world and American history puzzling, but with the knowledge of historic white oppression continually beat into them from Crusading White Pedagogues they become programmed and equipped to understand unpleasant realities through the eyes of future Disingenuous White Liberals.

The Sandlot refuses to wallow in the muck of white guilt and dares to tarnish the legacy of Jackie Robinson - a moment so powerful that his N0. 42 jersey has been retired by every MLB team - by casting James Earl Jones as the owner of Beast and the wise, erudite recluse who once played professional baseball.

However, if he played in 1927 then he would have been the first Black person to play professional baseball. Although stricken with blindness due to an errant baseball, the character of Mr. Mertle was a heroic Black baseball figure that predated Jackie Robinson by nearly a score.

His very presence in this beloved children's film has potentially damaged the obvious myth of Jackie Robinson, and thus, the No. 42 jersey is of no need for further retirement and should be eligible to adorn the back of one player from every team this 2010 season.

Stuff Black People Don't Like invites Mr. Mertle to the batters box of fictional Black History Month, for his inclusion in the film The Sandlot has the ability to confuse young people watching that have constantly been told about the inherent evil of whiteness.

Shockingly Mertle is a Black man and he played professional baseball in the roaring 20s. He is the true hero. More interestingly, the film took an actual photo of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx and airbrushed in Mr. Mertle's face on Foxx's (go to 3:29 of the first video to see this for your own eyes!!!)!!!

However, baseball is a game incapable of escaping the glorious memories of yesterday and will always be haunted by what it once represent. Resurrection of Pre-Obama America is impossible and it is becoming increasingly obvious that baseball was wedded to that particular institution.

So goes America, so goes baseball. An immutable bond exists between the two and both find themselves behind the count in the ninth inning, with two outs.