Tag: Michelle Obama

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Four Nights in Cyberspace — the 2020 DNC

My chief fear, as the virtual DNC began on Monday night, was that they didn’t make the mistake of over-producing it. Not for the last time, I found myself wishing it were possible to have a real rough-and-tumble convention.

And, after a needlessly slow start, killing prime time with the kind of desultory welcoming and filler material ordinary conventions start with in the morning or early afternoon, the DNC got going and massed several strong speeches and moments. The point to keep in mind is that in normal convention years the strong stuff starts right away— at 8 p.m. CDT or 9 p.m. EDT.

Having Bernie Sanders on fairly early was a good move toward answering several questions at once. A runner-up in 2020 as he was in 2016, could the Vermont Senator, an

Bernie Sanders

icon of the progressive left, close ranks with the Democrats’ centrist standard-bearer? Though he had made a speech on behalf of Hillary on opening night of the 2016 convention, it seemed not to have cleared away doubters — either in the Clinton ranks or in his own — and the remaining sense of suspicion left a tuft of malaise stuck to the coordinated campaign.

What he said this time around, speaking on a studio stage to the camera, not only sounded fully sincere, it was less a concession than a bona fide endorsement of the candidate who had bested him, Joe Biden. Indeed, it was the first example, of many to come in the convention, of what might be called testimonials from The Friends of Joe Biden — a group of illustrious and/or affecting exemplars who could implicitly be compared to the cronies and satraps of the incumbent President.

Bernie professed himself open to liberals, moderates, and even conservatives — a statement that put him on the same unity-minded platform as Biden — and provoked this thought: Those folks who worried that Sanders could not appeal to a national electorate, what were they thinking? Nobody could have been more obscure than an Independent Senator from Vermont, and look at the national following he had inspired with his attacks on economic inequality! And, the reality of Trump now a given, who could doubt this time that Bernie’s following would come with him in full support of the Democratic ticket?

In juxtaposition to Bernie Sanders on that first night was John Kasich, the moderate former Governor of Ohio who had been in the Republican field of candidates in 2016 and now served to bracket the ticket’s potential from the other side of the political spectrum. (In a sightly jarring and probably unnecessary acknowledgment of his role, Kasich would say he doubted that a President Biden would take any “hard left” turns.)

Michelle Obama was not a matter of right nor left. Nor was the former First Lady an old-fashioned adornment to the patriarchy. She came across as a truth-teller and a judge, sounding this more-in-sadness-than-in-anger note: “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He 

Bennie Thompson

simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”

One more notable fact of that and subsequent nights: Mississippi’s venerable African-American congressman Bennie Thompson, sounding agreeably Old-Southern in his role as permanent Convention chair.

How about our girl Raumesh, one of several virtual testifiers on Joe Biden’s behalf to kick off Night Two of the DNC as sequential keynoters. Remember her floor speech from Phiadelphia in 2016? (Hillary, the state Senator from Memphis memorably said, was “a bad sister.” Unfortunately, she was also, arguably, a bad candidate.)

Raumesh Akbari

Raumesh Akbari, in any case, has been sprinkled with stardust twice — deservedly.

And, one thought, lookee at Caroline Kennedy and son Jack Schlossberg in a brief camera turn. Dang, he’s got those looks, almost a double for his late uncle JFK Jr.

A future-tense candidate?

Youth was similarly served by a pro forma nominating speech for Bernie Sanders by New York Congresswoman Aexandria Ocasio Cortez — AOC, as she’s increasingly called in tribute to her out-of-nowhere celebrity as an instant eminence of the left. Her speech was less about Bernie than it was about her wish list for the political future: “… 21st-century social, economic and human rights, including guaranteed health care, higher education, living wages and labor rights for all people in the United States; a movement striving to recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia …”

It may have been obligatory to give time at some point to John Kerry, the party’s unsuccessful 2004 nominee — or was that old footage of Edmund Muskie? Not much, in any case, was advanced from the moment. Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more effective links to the party’s past. It is impossible not to respect Carter nor to appreciate Clinton, for all the fresh tarnish on the latter’s image.

Caroline Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg

It was nice to see the friendship between Joe Biden and the late GOP maverick John McCain being remembered — not so much in the somewhat exaggerated hope of attracting fall-away Republicans as to remind the audience of Biden’s ability to work across third rails and party lines.

The absolute hero of the evening — both emotionally and ideologically — was the long-term ALS survivor Ady Barkan, who by his courage, perseverance, and very presence embodied the case for a revamping and extension of national heath care — a wider one, alas, than is envisioned (or at least publicly sanctioned) by Biden.

Jill Biden was a delight, and it was revealing to see her widen the domestic profile of her husband a bit further while giving us a preview of her likely presence-to-be on the national scene.

But, by all odds, the high point of Tuesday night was the roller-coaster ride across America in the form of the live roll call for President — the casting of the votes made sequentially from the scene of each of the nation’s 57 states and territories. What a trip, in every sense of the term! A virtue made of necessity — surely to be repeated in less pandemic future times.

Immigration had been touched on as an issue here and there on the Democratic Convention’s first two nights, but it became something more than that on Night Three when the nation was exposed to videos of 11-year-of Estela Juarez, daughter of an ex-Marine and an undocumented Mexican, crying over her mother’s forced deportation, alternating with excerpts of the President snarling about “animals” and his intention to “move ’em out.”

Estela Juarez

Yes, of course, Trump’s defenders would decry this as a trick of editing and would maintain that he was speaking of criminal elements in the illegals among us. Still, the images of Estela and her mother speak for themselves.

The evening would also see the wounded heroine, former California Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, survivor of a shooting at point-blank range in the back of the head by a zealot with a gun.

Another survivor of sorts was Hillary Clinton, the party’s 2016 standard-bearer, whose very presence, as much as her words, was a warning against complacency at the polls. It is pedantry of a sort, even nit-picking, to complain about certain kinds of style points, but here we go: “As the saying goes” is not the right way to introduce a certain famous comment by Ernest Hemingway, which, in its verbatim version, in “A Farewell to Arms,” goes, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Unmentioned by Clinton, as by most alluders to the sentiment, is the next sentence: “But those that will not break it kills.”

One very live and unbroken specimen is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who took her turn Wednesday night, as did Elizabeth Warren — both of them properly aggressive and examples of the unprecedented prominence of women in today’s Democratic Party.
At one point viewers were treated to a recitation of legislative accomplishments of Joe Biden, one of which was his sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act. This was appropriate, but also a little brazen, in that Biden, as chairman of the Senate committee looking into sexual-harassment complaints of Anita Hill against then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, had been regarded as less than properly vigilant.

The night would end with the two biggest moments — a take-no-prisoners address from former president Barack Obama who, from within his customary restrained persona, threw protocol aside and gave it back to his presidential successor, Donald Trump, followed by a This-Is-Your-Life bio of Kamala Harris, and then Harris in the flesh, to accept the vice-presidential nomination.

Obama stood before the cameras as an elder statesman, but you could still sense within him the wunderkind who came from out of nowhere at the 2004 Democratic Convention — the moderate, sensible presence that his political enemies insisted on trying to characterize as a radical Zulu. But Obama’s inner flame never materalized as firebombs; he could provide heat and light but never explosions. So it was this night:

“I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.
“But he never did. For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.”

There was no tit-for-tat to this, no understandable human response to the torrent of verbal abuse he has suffered from Trump. It was, more than anything else, a report card and a severe one.

Kamala Harris

And Harris, when she came on stage, was thereby largely enabled to eschew the tradition vice-presidential role of attacker, so as to complete the job of revealing herself to an America where she is still something of an unknown quantity. Smiling, and not without a fair amount of glamor, she described her scrambled ethnic heritage (part Black, part Indian of the East Asian variety), her stroller-view of the Civil Rights revolution, her rise in the legal world as a professional woman, and her simultaneous persona as a stepmother called Mamala. A homey presence altogether, but still a seasoned prosecutor and very much woke Senator. Someone who could plausibly say, “We can do better and deserve so much more.”

At the end of her remarks she was joined on stage by her husband Doug Emhoff, while the head of the ticket, Biden, stood awkwardly with his wife Jill a good 12 feet away. The two groups waved at each other and at the large overhead Jumbo screen showing a Zoom crowd applauding. No hands joined overhead of the two ticket heads, not in this socially distanced time. With the climactic night to come it all left an air of incompleteness. Or of expectation.

By and large, on the eve of the finale, the Democrats had managed to bring off a passable, even an impressive virtual show. Now, on Night 4, it was up to Joe to deliver. His surrogates, as well as his advance history, had created the profile of a likable, sincere and well-meaning presence. His adversary President Trump, had countered with a gaffe-prone bumbling caricature he called Sleepy Joe.

Thursday night would determine which of those personas would finish up on the stage.

Things didn’t begin all that auspiciously with some cheesy jokes in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus tried to riff on Mike Pence’s “foreign-sounding” name and declared, “I’m proud to be a nasty woman.” Functioning as the evening’s M.C., she would continue to be something of an edgy presence, only fitting into the mood of the Convention at the point later on when she spoke of her bout with cancer, thereby becoming one of the victims for whom Joe Biden is being posited as the hope.

Following a child’s reading of the Pledge of Allegiance, the erstwhile Dixie Chicks — now, post-George Floyd, just The Chicks — did the Star-Spanged Banner, and Sister Simone had to be in there somewhere because Senator Chris Combs thanked her by name when Wolf Blitzer of CNN cued him back in after a station break.

Civil rights icon John Lewis, memorialized upon his death two weeks ago, got one more lengthy reprise, and it seemed appropriate. Still, the evening was mounting toward Joe’s climactic moment, and everything else was patently build-up. Deb Haaland, a Native American member of the House from New Mexico, Cory Booker bloviating, Jon Meacham pontificating, Mayor Pete introducing all the old gang from the Democratic primaries who looked like Hollywood Squares as they traded Joe memories from their places on a Zoom screen.

Michael Bloomberg came on to boost the ticket and excoriate Trump. Smooth and fluent, he went far toward erasing the memory of that flat and defensive debate performance back in the winter that doomed his campaign and prepared the way for the revival of Joe’s.

There was a moment that mesmerized many onlookers when young Brayden Harrington, who met Biden in New Hampshire and was embraced there as a fellow stutterer, worked his way bravely through a reminiscence of the event before what he had to know was a national television audience.

Brayden Harrington

Then we got what looked like a sleepover image featuring the nominee’s four granddaughters, all smiles and fond recollections of their eminent senior kinsman. Steph Curry and his wife and two daughters would add their impressions, and the moment of truth got ever nearer as Biden’s two living children, son Hunter and daughter Ashley, prepared to bring him on with their own recollections.

Ashley is the daughter of second wife Jill, and, Hunter — he of Ukraine fame — is the survivor of two family catastrophes: a car crash that killed Biden’s first wife and a daughter and left both sons hospitalized; and the agonizing death from cancer of brother Beau, an ex-Marine war veteran and state Attorney General in Delaware on his way to higher things when the Reaper intervened.

Joe Biden’s all-too-obvious grief over Beau, coupled with the pummeling Hunter had taken from the Trump crowd, had created inevitably a sense of Hunter as a possible black sheep. He did not appear so Thursday night; in his coming-out before a national audience he looked and sounded like Joe’s son in every particular, more so than Beau in many ways. He was sympathetic and sincere about his dad, and Ashley, a bright presence, was another revelation.

And finally, after we got a filmed bio of the nominee’s life and times, the triumphs and tragedies, along with the curriculum vitae details of his long government service, there he was, all by himself, Joe Biden.

At this point, I am going to presume to borrow from a Facebook post by by former colleague and frequent partner on the campaign trail, Chris Davis:

“Joe did good. Between his lifelong stutter and a real affinity for putting his foot in his mouth, oratory never has been his thing. But tonight’s performance reminded me of the turning point in narrative cinema when filmmakers realized movies were fundamentally different than stage plays. This wasn’t the typical convention where viewers at home watched a public speaking event built to ignite a massive live audience. It has been intimate, if sometimes imperfect. One commentator positively described it as an infomercial, and that’s not a terrible comparison. I’ll continue to hold breath every time I see him on a live mic. But tonight Joe did good, and as several folks have pointed out before me, the medium really worked for him.”

Joe Biden

That’s one way of putting it. And the content of Biden’s speech complemented everything else that had been said and done earlier in the convention — in its concern for the powerless and the victims of injustice, its determination to transcend the Charleston debacle and fat-cat white supremacy and achieve at long last something resembling racial equity; in its defense of beleaguered pubic institutions like the Affordable Care
Act and the Postal Service; in its determination to revive our foreign alliances and confront the adversaries that the Trump administration has ignored or coddled; in its simple avowal that government is meant to serve and protect the American people.

“This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment,” Biden said. “This
is our moment to make hope and history rhyme.”

And with that the ticket’s two couples were on stage together again, waving at the applause on the Jumbo Zoom screen and, with obvious delight, turning to face the sky auspiciously exploding in fireworks.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

The 2020 Democratic National Convention Reinvents Televised Democracy

Michelle Obama speaking on the first night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

American democracy is messy, and it always has been. In fact, it could be argued that disorderliness is a feature, not a bug, of the Founding Fathers’ system.

One of the messiest aspect is the political nominating convention. They didn’t exist in the time of George Washington. Overtly campaigning for the presidency was seen to be uncouth, as Alexander Hamilton notes about Aaron Burr in Hamilton. Parties, themselves a concept Washington despised, chose their candidates through caucuses — the mythical “smoke-filled rooms.” But in 1831, the anti-elitist, conspiratorially minded Anti-Masonic Party decided to choose their candidate in the open. Andrew Jackson thought that sounded like a good idea, and the first Democratic convention took place the next year.
The conventions became a quadrennial gathering of the party faithful. Sure, most of the decisions were made by power brokers in the smoke-filled rooms, but delegates loved to get together and hoist a few brews while talking politics. It was a good bonding ritual for the parties, and entirely in character for a country whose founding revolution was hatched and planned in the taverns of Philadelphia and Boston.

Eventually, as democratic spirit spread, state-level primary elections developed. The delegate system was similar to the now much-despised Electoral College: Voters chose a slate of delegates who would then go to the national convention to cast proxy votes for their candidates during the roll call nominating session. Thus, John F. Kennedy was elevated by the grass roots in 1960. But the conventions were still the last word, and it was — and remains, at least theoretically — possible that convention wheeling and dealing could yield a different candidate than who won the primary vote. This is what happened during the Democratic fiasco of Chicago 1968, when Robert Kennedy was assassinated after winning the California primary, and the anti-Vietnam War Eugene McCarthy, who held an lead in pledged delegates, was passed over in favor of Hubert Humphrey, who hadn’t received a single primary vote. The party was bitterly divided, and Humphrey went on to lose to Richard Nixon. Since then, other attempts at old-fashioned convention shenanigans, such as Ronald Reagan’s run at Gerald Ford in 1976, have fizzled.

The modern convention is a coming out party for the candidates, and an opportunity for ambitious young politicos to get some exposure on the biggest possible stage. The conventions routinely attract the largest audiences of campaign season, doing not-quite Super Bowl numbers, but close, even in our fragmented media world. As such, the conventions have become made-for-TV spectacles with a political par-tay attached.
But here in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has made gathering the party faithful in a big arena an extremely bad idea. Who is going to conduct a campaign if an outbreak lays low your cadre of enthusiasts? Faced with an unprecedented problem, the parties were forced to scramble for solutions. Being the party out of power in the White House, the Democratic Party went first. Instead of gathering en mass in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they did what everyone else has done: gone virtual.

Children singing the national anthem at the 2020 Democratic National Convention

This could have been a disaster. Indeed, I was expecting a disaster when I tuned in for the first night of the Democratic convention on Monday. The festivities kicked off with a virtual “Star Spangled Banner” sung by a chorus of children who appeared only in separated images resembling a giant Zoom chat. It was a little corny, but hey, we’re talking about a political convention here, not a Cardi B show.

(Man, it would be great to be able to go to a show right now.)

For everyone who has ever had their Zoom meetings delayed by participants trying to figure out how to unmute themselves or bandwidth issues slowing conversation to a crawl, glitches are an expected feature of business and social gatherings. But aside from the occasional minor hiccup, the virtual Democratic National Convention has gone smoothly.

It has also been unexpectedly compelling, in a way that is tough to put a finger on. There is a certain primal power in a mass rally, with shoulder-to-shoulder masses cheering a single champion, elevated on a pedestal. The first person to exploit that power in moving images was none other than Adolph Hitler. With the help of his favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, he used the Nuremberg rally of 1935 to deify himself to his followers. The response in democratic societies has been mixed since the defeat of fascism in 1945. Punk rock, for example, was in its own way a response to the fascistic spectacle of arena rock. Donald Trump, more than any contemporary politician, understands the power of the rally, both to energize his followers and attract the cameras of national media outlets. But this virtual Democratic convention has seen none of that. If the Democrats are trying to differentiate their brand from Trumpism, it has worked. Instead of Trump’s seething ball of white nationalist resentment, nominee Joe Biden has been seen sitting calmly on a teleconference, listening to the problems of average Americans.

The lack of a podium has been a great equalizer. Normal people, like Amtrak conductor Greg Weaver and elevator operator Jacquelyn Brittany are exactly the same size as political power players like Bill Clinton and Chuck Schumer. There’s something bracingly honest about seeing the best speaker of the convention so far, Michelle Obama, deliver her impassioned plea for national sanity while sitting alone, just like everyone else. The convention is speaking the painfully familiar visual language of the Zoom call. The keynote address took advantage of the form by editing together 14 speakers, including Memphis-area state Senator Raumesh Akbari.

The keynote address, featuring Georgia’s Stacy Abrams (center) and Tennessee state Senator Raumesh Akbari (top right)

Best of all has been the Roll Call, the tradition where the delegates from each state are called on to formally enter their vote for the nominee. Normally, this would done on the convention floor, with delegates in funny hats shouting “The Hoosier State casts 11 votes for Bernie Sanders and 89 votes for Joe Biden!” into microphones. For the virtual convention, delegates picked spots in their states and delivered the votes virtually. The first voters, from Alabama, cast their votes from the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma, where the recently mourned John Lewis and other civil rights marchers were beaten to within an inch of their lives on Bloody Sunday. Puerto Rico’s delegates delivered their votes in Spanish. The lone Kansan spoke from the middle of a field. Rhode Island used the opportunity to introduce America to its state dish of calamari. The whole affair distilled the essence of American democracy: The real power rests not with the bigwigs, but with the normal people in their little towns, giving their consent to be governed, not ruled. The form may be different out of pandemic necessity, but it has proved unexpectedly poignant.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Three Black Women Could Challenge Trump

Currently, the three strongest Democratic challengers to President Trump’s reelection are all black women: talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, former first lady Michelle Obama, and Senator Kamala Harris of California.

Juan Williams

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon has said Oprah and the #MeToo movement pose an “existential threat” to the Trump presidency. Michelle Obama left the White House with a 68 percent approval rating, and got a new wave of positive attention this month when record crowds showed up to see her newly unveiled official portrait at the National Gallery of Art. As for Harris, conservative columnist and Trump booster Ann Coulter confidently predicted last fall that if she ran, she would be the Democratic nominee.

A black female candidate would attract a lot of attention with a challenge to Trump. Ninety-four percent of black women voted against Trump in 2016, as did 69 percent of Latina women and 43 percent of white women. Women of all races have led the biggest anti-Trump marches.

April Reign, an activist who founded the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, worried during a recent NBC interview that the clamor for a black female presidential candidate could be a trap. “Stop begging strong black women to be president: Michelle, Oprah, whatever,” Reign said. “It’s weird. And Lord knows when black women try to lead, y’all attempt to silence and erase us. So how would that work, exactly?”

Well, black women are already thriving at the top of the political ladder in lots of places. For example, black women are in charge as mayor of at least seven big cities: Atlanta; Baltimore; Charlotte, N.C.; Flint, Michigan; New Orleans; Toledo, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. In addition, a record 21 black women are serving in Congress, including Harris. All but one — Representative Mia Love of Utah — are Democrats.

Winfrey and Obama stand out among these black women because their political strength is only a subset of their power as cultural icons. They have fans among Republicans and Democrats. They attract people of all races. Their broad appeal, including among suburban white women, crosses the nation’s deep political divide.

Trump is already attuned to a potential challenge from Winfrey. After Winfrey conducted a focus group on Trump for CBS’s 60 Minutes, the president quickly lashed out at her via Twitter.

“Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes,” he tweeted. “The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!”

Oprah responded last week by telling Ellen DeGeneres: “I woke up, and I just thought — I don’t like giving negativity power. I just thought, ‘What?'”

Oprah said that she asked CBS to add a response from a pro-Trump member of the focus group to give the piece more balance. “So I was working very hard to do the opposite of what I was hate-tweeted about,” she told DeGeneres.

Longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone recently told the Oxford Union that Michelle Obama would be the strongest Democratic candidate. The then-first lady’s “When they go low, we go high” speech was one of the most memorable of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The big question with Obama is whether she is willing to go low and put her family through another brutal presidential campaign.

Harris lacks the name identification of Winfrey or Obama, but California’s junior senator comes from the most influential state in Democratic politics. Harris would have a strong claim to the deep-pocketed donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who helped fund her Senate election in 2016. The former state attorney general’s unflinching television interviews and TV grilling of Trump administration witnesses at congressional hearings have given her national visibility.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in an interview last August, “She’s going to be knocking on doors in Iowa.”

In 1968, New York’s Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Four years later, she became the first black candidate to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud,” Chisholm told supporters at her announcement.

It’s looking more and more likely that 2020 might be the year that a woman finishes the journey — and shatters not one but two glass ceilings.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Getting Buck

CREDIT: Courtesy of New Ballet Ensemble & School

New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay came to Memphis earlier this year to learn more about jookin, a home-grown dance style he went on to describe as, “a virtuoso hip-hop descendant of the Gangsta Walk,” and “the single most exciting young dance genre of our day, featuring, in particular, the most sensationally diverse use of footwork.”

Though Memphis has produced a number of extraordinary jookers, none is better known than Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, who’s coming home this week to perform in New Ballet Ensemble’s (NBE) annual holiday show, Nut Remix.

Courtesy of New Ballet Ensemble & School

Riley, who trained for a time with NBE, appeared in Memphis dance historian Young Jai’s video documentary Memphis Jookin: Vol. I. He first achieved notoriety when filmmaker Spike Jonze posted a cell phone video of Buck performing Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan, accompanied by celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Buck has since starred in a series of Gap commercials, danced with Madonna, and performed with the New York City Ballet and Cirque du Soleil. In 2012, he was listed as one of Dance Magazine‘s “25 to Watch,” and he has more than lived up to the prediction. As it happens, he’s also a great interviewee.

Courtesy of New Ballet Ensemble & School

Memphis Flyer: You’re a really fantastic ambassador for Memphis. Everywhere you go you make us look good.

Charles “Lil Buck” Riley: I love it. And I love the city. It made me who I am now. And I’ve learned so much from living in Memphis. We do have so much to offer. And jookin is only one of those things. It came out of the gangsta walk, and that’s been around since the 1980s. My mom used to do it. So it’s more than just a dance, we’ve made it into a tradition. And I love being an ambassador for the style because I understand it wholeheartedly.

You’re only 26 and have achieved a level of pop star success most dancers never know. How are you still so grounded?

It’s easy to be. I think it’s harder not to be grounded. It’s really simple to be grounded and stay humble. Some people try not to be. Some people gravitate toward that, and you see a lot of that in the industry. But — and this is something I don’t think I’ve ever talked about — I was born in Chicago and raised in Memphis. I moved to Memphis at a very young age. And I’ve been through so much in my life. I grew up with nothing. And I lived with my mom and my whole family in my grandmama’s basement. It’s all we could afford.

When you come from things like this, and you have so much perspective as to how your life has changed and turned around for the better, you want to do everything you can to uphold that. Because it’s more than just my skills that have gotten me to where I’m at now. It’s who I am as a person.

And, like you always say, jookers take their power from the earth.

Well, you know, it is a really spiritual dance. It was something born here. Kids grow up into it. We use our feet and it’s predominantly freestyle, so it comes from the soul. You spend time with just you and your body, you know? You learn a lot about yourself with this style.

Jookin isn’t just a Memphis thing anymore, it’s all over the world. But it’s still growing here with jookin studios and companies, and folks meeting in parking lots and barber shops learning the original gangsta walk. Do you keep up with what’s happening at home?

Absolutely. I already know what you’re getting at. I’m coming back to Memphis and whenever I come home, we have exhibition battles just for the fun of it. And I’ll get in and dance with anybody. I go to people’s houses and we have sessions in the garage. Those are my favorite moments, and those are the things I miss about Memphis. I miss my family the most. But then I miss the old way we used to do things. Sometimes I just can’t wait to get back home and in the garage with my friends where we can just go at it like we used to, and dance.

When you see your old friends after dancing with Madonna, is it weird?

I’m the same Lil Buck that left. They love it when I come back because they know how much I love Memphis and how much I love jookin. People don’t get star struck because they know where I’m from. They knew me before, and I still don’t consider myself a star. I’m just getting appreciated for doing what I love.

But you are kind of a star. We have lots of movie stars and rock stars. But pop culture only taps a few dancers every generation and you get to be one of them.

Exactly. That was my goal. Dancers used to be seen on the same platform as actors. Especially triple threats like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. They looked good. They dressed nice. They had a passion for what they were doing and went full out 100 percent. I want to bring that back. That level of respect.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re street performing or on TV in front of millions, you exude comfort and confidence.  

Everybody puts on their pants the same way. And street performing helped get me to that point. When I first started street performing, it was on Beale Street. When you’re street performing, you really have to develop your communication skills and learn how to be a people person. When I first moved to California, I performed in Santa Monica on the Third Street Promenade. And you’d get so many people down there and so many celebrities. If I noticed a celebrity was watching us, I’d make a joke. Everybody would laugh and they’d laugh too. And you get comfortable.

You’ve taught a lot of celebrities how to gangsta walk, from Madonna to Meryl Streep and Katie Couric. Who gets it and who needs to go home?

First of all, Stephen Colbert, he’s money. He absolutely should learn. He caught on to the buck jump so fast it was ridiculous. When you’re doing a buck jump it’s knee up, not foot down. A lot of people don’t get that. It used to frustrate the hell out of me. But Stephen Colbert caught on, and he looked good doing it. So he could do it for sure. Katie Couric? She would need a lot of work, especially if she wants to keep her heels on. But I love her to death. She did all right for a first time.

Who are some of your biggest Memphis influences?

I never really get to share about the people who really started me off and got me to this level and who gave me information that has stuck with me throughout my life and career. You know they call Marico Flake “Dr. Rico” for a reason: He’s a doctor of dance. He doesn’t just know about jookin; he’s a renaissance man who knows about a little bit of everything, from ballet to country dancing. Daniel Price is one of my biggest influences. When I sucked, he’d say, “All I can say, it don’t look gangsta enough.” And that would kill me.

Keviorr, aka “Tip Toe,” also kept it real. We used to be rivals. He was already known as an explosive jooker, because he’d been around all the old-school guys and had a reputation. I battled him at the Crystal Palace, not knowing who he was, because he used to go to East End Skating rink. I was the man in Crystal Palace, which was closer to Westwood. When me and him finally battled, everybody was around. And Keviorr was kicking my butt.

He said, “You’re good. I’m not going to talk bad about you. But you’re just going too fast. Your waves are too fast and people can’t see what you’re doing. You’ve got to slow down a little, that’s all.”

To hear that from the underground master of jookin? Man! Because he was like a ninja: Battle hungry and battle ready. If he said you were good, you were good.

Courtesy of New Ballet Ensemble & School

2008 production of Springloaded

And now you’re a citizen of the world, dancing your way around the world. But you still take time to come back and perform with New Ballet Ensemble.

Of course. Why wouldn’t I? That’s as simple as I can put it. That’s my home. I love living everywhere. It’s always fun to meet people and learn new cultures. But I love coming home. There’s beautiful and negative stuff all over the world. And in Memphis there is more beauty and negativity. It’s just the way it’s been advertised and the way we look at ourselves.

That attitude makes what you do really important, you know?

I am very aware of it. I know that with this great power I have comes great responsibility. It’s true. Corny as it sounds, it’s one of the realest lines I’ve ever heard.

Justin Fox Burks

NBE founder and CEO Katie Smythe with dancers

New Ballet Ensemble

Great Power. Great Responsibility. Great Dance.

Katie Smythe doesn’t know when she’ll retire, but the founder and CEO of Memphis’ New Ballet Ensemble (NBE) is looking ahead and fantasizing a little, imagining what her life might be like in the future, when she finally passes the baton to a new leader, preferably a former student who knows the school and understands the mission.

“Maybe I could call myself the Chief Creative Officer,” she says, smiling, trying on one of several new titles she might assume when she’s no longer running the show. “I could be that.”

Smythe has every reason to contemplate a happy future — 2014 has been an especially affirming year for her and for all the dancers, teachers, and students at NBE, a 13-year-old professional dance company and school that helped to launch the spectacular career of jookin ambassador Charles Riley, known to dance fans around the world as Lil Buck.

“In the beginning, I think everybody thought I’d lost my mind, even my husband,” Smythe says, recalling early responses to her business pitch. In 2001, the lifelong dancer and sometimes soap opera actress wanted nothing more than to create professional dance opportunities in Memphis, and to train as many students as possible, regardless of their ability to pay.

Smythe had a specific vision for the future, but even she couldn’t have predicted the impact that moves born in Memphis clubs, skating rinks, and parking lots could have when they were blended with traditional ballet and the various other international dance styles that would find a home at NBE.

“New Ballet sees the value in the fusion,” Lil Buck says, remembering when Terran Gary’s Subculture Royalty Dance Company first started sharing space at NBE in 2005. At first, there wasn’t much crossover between the street dancers and Smythe’s ballet students, but that changed.

In April, NBE’s reputation earned the company an invitation to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to perform original work commissioned for the National Symphony Orchestra’s “New Moves” mini-festival. NBE’s “Harlem” was choreographed by Smythe, set to music by Duke Ellington, and showcased the talents of NBE company member Shamar Rooks.

The Washington Post described the company’s performance as, “simply dazzling, eliciting an audience response that dwarfed all that had gone before.”

Justin Fox Burks

NBE dancer Briana Brown

This month, Smythe returned once again to the nation’s capital, this time with 17-year-old dancer and student Briana Brown in tow. Brown, who started training with NBE at age 7, represented her fellow students when the White House honored New Ballet’s educational branch, alongside 11 other life-changing after-school arts programs selected to receive the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award.  

Brown, whose smile threatened to break her face as she accepted a hug from First Lady Michelle Obama, called NBE’s award, “A huge responsibility.”

NBE brings its landmark 2014 season to a close this weekend, when the company partners with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for a very special revival of Nut Remix, the company’s locally bent but internationally flavored take on The Nutcracker. In addition to moving the company’s annual holiday show from GPAC to the Cannon Center, this year’s Remix also reunites two of NBE’s most successful alumni, Lil Buck and Maxx Reed, who spent five years web-slinging in red-and-blue tights, playing Spider-Man in the U2-scored Broadway musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

Lil Buck’s unprecedented journey from relative obscurity, dancing at The Crystal Palace skating rink in South Memphis to dancing with Madonna at Superbowl XLVI, is well documented. But Reed’s quieter story is also indicative of the kind of work that happens at NBE, and his career path represents a more realistic trajectory for working dancers.

“Ms. Katie literally found me dancing on the street corner,” says Reed, who was 13 and performing at the Cooper-Young festival with other dancers from DeWayne Hambrick’s Graffiti Playground, a Midtown-based program that offered free performing arts training to young people.

“Ms. Katie asked if I’d like to dance with some ballerinas and I said, ‘Nope,'” Reed recalls. “That just didn’t sound fun to me at all.” Instead of giving up, Smythe offered to get tickets for Reed and his mother to see the Chicago-based Hubbard Street Dance Company at GPAC.

Justin Fox Burks

NBE alum Maxx Reed

“It was amazing,” Reed says, recalling how the Hubbard Street performance awakened something in him. “I used to dance competitively, but it was expensive,” he explains. “And I quit after I heard my parents arguing about a credit card. I felt like I was too much of a burden or something.”

The Hubbard Street concert changed Reed’s mind about dancing with ballerinas. If Smythe could train him to dance like the men he’d seen and there was a chance that he could someday make money doing that, he was all in.  

“Here were these incredible technical dancers,” Reed says of Hubbard Street. “These powerful men were doing all these jumps and turns. They were like bears moving through space and eating up space in this incredible display of power and beauty.” The teenaged street performer was especially impressed by the chair-jumps and spins of a dancer named Christopher Tierney.

“Here’s the crazy thing,” Reed says. “On my first day doing Spider-Man on Broadway, I went back to the dressing room to meet my castmates for the first time. It turns out I was sharing a dressing room with Chris Tierney, the same dancer that I remembered jumping up on that chair. The dancer who made me want to be like him. We shared a dressing room and both played Spider-Man for three years after that.

In addition to playing the world’s most popular superhero eight shows a week for five years running, Reed has appeared in numerous commercials and music videos. He was hand-picked by Michael Jackson to audition as a dancer for Jackson’s farewell tour, and although he didn’t make the final cut, Reed says it was an honor just to “share airspace” with the King of Pop. Not too shabby for a dyslexic, severely ADD kid who remembers an elementary school teacher telling his mother that her son would never develop the skills required to succeed in life.

Reed knows as well as anybody how difficult things can be for kids who are socialized to believe they can’t succeed. He was reminded this summer, when he returned to Memphis to teach a youth dance program at NBE. After introducing himself to a class of young students, and telling them about all the cool things he’s done, an incredulous little girl’s voice rang out from the back of the room: “But you’re from France,” she said.

Reed shook his head and assured his pint-sized heckler that he was every bit as Memphis as she was. He describes the summer class and his students’ self-choreographed performance as the highlight of his career. “I want to come back and do this every year,” he says.

Even if she’s not planning to retire soon,

Smythe has what she calls a dream scenario: “I’d love for Charles and Maxx to become my succession plan,” she says. “They could run the place, and I could graduate to chairman of the board. And I could teach ballet whenever they need me.”

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Intermission Impossible Theater

New Ballet Ensemble’s After School Program Recognized by the White House

Briana Brown (L), Her grandmother Belinda Lowery (R), and Lil Buck (C). At the White House.

I could tell you what perfect beauty looks like. But it’s so much more effective to show you. Before going any further take a second to click on the video embedded below and watch as 17-year-old New Ballet Ensemble student Briana Brown receives some very good news. Also, pay careful attention to the face of her grandmother, Belinda Lowery. It’s the best thing you’ll see all day, I promise you.

New Ballet Ensemble’s After School Program Recognized by the White House

Now that your heart is all warm and happy, here’s the backstory. Today at 1:00 p.m.CST, Brown and 11 other young people from across the country will meet First Lady Michelle Obama, to accept the prestigious National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award on behalf of their respective after school programs. The award honors programs that go beyond basic arts training to change kids’ lives.

“It’s highly competitive,” says Katie Smythe, NBE’s founding director.

The White House award is being presented just days after NBE’s most famous alum, Charles “Lil Buck” Reilly was profiled in the Wall Street Journal. Buck, and fellow NBE alum, Maxx Reed, who performed on Broadway in Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, are both returning to Memphis this month and will dance with  Brown in Nut Remix, the fusion company’s annual, Memphis-specific answer to The Nutcracker.

Those interested in seeing the award ceremony live can watch at this link. Also, I asked Brown a few questions before she left for Washington D.C. Here’s a taste of what she had to say.

More to come. 

Intermission Impossible: What brought you to New Ballet Ensemble.

Briana Brown: I was seven years old and my mom brought me in because she had a friend whose daughter came here. My mom always wanted to keep me active and I thought it was a really cool after school activity. I started off with basic ballet training, but as the years went by I flirted with other genres like jazz, and a little bit of contemporary.

Was this your first experience with dance?

I took a little tap and did gymnastics, but it wasn’t serious. It was just something my mom tried out, but I didn’t like it.

What made New Ballet Ensemble different?

I was intrigued by how everybody was doing the exact same things together. It was different and I was interacting with people I might not even talk to otherwise. I was a single child at the time. I didn’t have that many friends or a lot of interaction with people at all.

But what is it that made dance more interesting to you than gymnastics?

It was about expression. It was a way to express yourself in a whole different way. Being onstage to tell a story instead of trying to beat someone or to win something. You’re performing and entertaining people. At the same time you’re having fun, so it’s win-win.

Was there a special moment when you knew dance was your thing?

It took a long time to realize this is what I want to do. I didn’t have my “Oh my God, this is important to me” moment until I was 12. It happened onstage, believe it or not. I was in a pose, and the curtains were closing, and I remember feeling so sad because I wanted to do more, to keep dancing. It was a performance of Nut Remix. I was snow. It felt like a movie: No, no! Don’t close the curtains! It just felt so great to be there, with the adrenaline, and the lights, and the people all around me. Wow. It was a pivotal moment for me.

What were your favorite classes in school when you started dancing?

English classes. Anything related to expression.

So dance was, for you, an extension of that, really.

Yes, it was.

New Ballet has changed a lot in 10-years. Can you look back and describe what it looked like to you through seven-year-old eyes?

When I started [NBE] wasn’t where it is now. It was still in the icehouse [on Central]. There were maybe 70 people in the room. And I think I was the only one that didn’t come prepared. Everyone had on a pink leotard, and pink tights, and ballet flats. I had on a white T-shirt and black pants. I was not ready.

The thing that’s neat is how, over the time you’ve been with NBE, the company and school has evolved into a unique place where classical and street styles mingle pretty freely. What’s it been like to watch that?

I’ve always thought that New Ballet was the kind of place that gathered people from every spectrum of our city. That’s exactly what Miss Katie [Smythe] did. She had a vision, and these people came together, and they formed relationships with each other based on their own individuality. That’s what creates things like Nut Remix. The Nutcracker is a classic ballet, but we take it to another level by setting it on Beale Street. That makes us unique. And it’s very special to me, having an opportunity to be part of a community where I can interact with so many people. So many kids don’t ever have a chance to interact with people who are different than them. Kids who go to school in Orange Mound don’t really interact all that often with people from St. Mary’s. At least not the way we do here. And the bonds we form are so strong. 

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Politics Politics Feature

GOP’s Hobbs in Another Obama Controversy

CREDIT: jb

Bill Hobbs, the Tennessee Republican Party communications director whose flirtations with notoriety have more than once gained him national attention, is on the hot seat again – once more because of a sally against someone named Obama.

Back in February, Hobbs put out one of his patented incendiary press releases, this one referring to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee by his whole name, “Barack Hussein Obama,” showing a photograph of the Illinois senator wearing native Kenyan clothes (misidentified as “Muslim garb”) on a visit to his father’s ancestral African homeland, and, as some read the release, imputing to Obama anti-Semitism or at least lackluster support for the State of Israel.

That release was roundly denounced in political and media circles and was explicitly repudiated by Tennessee’s two Republican senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker; by 7th District congressman Marsha Blackburn; by Republican National Committee chairman Mike Duncan; and by presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

At the time, there was speculation that Hobbs might lose his job, but the annual meeting of the state Republican Party’s executive committee came and went with Hobbs still in the saddle.

So at length Hobbs evidently decided to launch another Obama shot – at Michelle Obama this time, the candidate’s wife, who stopped over in Nashville last week. Coinciding with her visit was a new Tennessee Republican Party press release with an embedded video showing various Nashvillians finding fault with a stump statement by Michelle Obama; “For the first time in my adult lifetime I’m really proud of my country.”

The cameos in the video were devoted more to generalized patriotic fustian than to attacks on Michelle Obama per se, but by mid-week Senators Alexander and Corker announced through spokespersons that they were once again displeased. Corker’s chief of staff, Todd Womack, said Alexander had “strongly encouraged the national party and state parties to absolutely refrain from getting involved in negative personal campaigning.”

Meanwhile, Hobbs had succeeded in getting a rise out of Barack Obama himself. Appearing Monday with his wife on the ABC-TV show, Good Morning America, the candidate blasted the Tennessee GOP press release as “low class” and “detestable,” and said, “These folks should lay off my wife. All right? Just in case they’re watching. If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful – because that I find unacceptable.”

To which, Hobbs said candidate Obama had been ‘hypocritical,” “condescending,” and “scary,” and insisted on his right to be critical of Michelle Obama as a campaign surrogate for her husband.

  • Barack Obama drew both support and disagreement from another Tennesseean last week. Harold Ford Jr., the former 9th District congressman from Memphis and the current head of the center-right Democratic Leadership Council, first defended Obama – as did fellow MSNBC pundit Pat Buchanan – against an implied accusation of “appeasement” from President Bush, who, speaking to a meeting of the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, warned against diplomatic dealing with terrorists.

    But on NBC’s Meet the Press show on Sunday, Ford was coaxed into some mild criticism of his own concerning Obama’s professed willingness to start unconditional one-on-one discussions with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Said Ford: “I’ll concede, you cannot meet with foreign leaders — with terrorists, rather, those that lead rogue nations — without some conditions.”