Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
After Bernie Mac got in trouble at a Barack Obama fundraiser the other week for telling… well, typical Bernie Mac jokes, I got to wishing, yet again, that politicians could tell the blunt truth the way comedians do. I briefly imagined a no-language-barred, HBO-sponsored debate between Republican Dennis Miller and Democrat Chris Rock.
Then I remembered.
Just five years ago the idea of a black president was not just a joke. It was the comic premise of a whole movie, Chris Rock’s “Head of State.”
Rock, with Bernie Mac as running mate, walked similar territory that Eddie Murphy had visited a decade earlier, in “The Distinguished Gentleman.” But Murphy’s con man congressman, who gets elected because of the lucky coincidence of having the same name as the dead incumbent (“Vote Jeff Johnson, the name you know,” he says, borrowing yard signs from the widow) could have been any shady character of any shade.
Other fictional black presidents, like Dennis Haysbert’s character in “24,” have fallen into the just-happens-to-be category. And in 1972, James Earl Jones took a serious take on the subject as “The Man.” But “Head Of State” bases its humor almost entirely on a notion that seemed laughable in 2003:
Narrator: “It seems that for the first time in history a BLACK MAN WILL BE PRESIDENT
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