HHR Interview with George McDonald – Republican candidate for the Mayor of NYC

Last week (May 10, 2013) I had the honor to interview George McDonald, 2013 Republican candidate for the Mayor of New York City. I asked George, which he prefers to be called, a series of questions on his campaign platform for Mayor and his views on what it means to be Mayor for New York City.

George does not speak the usual political talk and instead uses his experience as an entrepreneur, founder and CEO of The Doe Fund, which is a non-profit organization that helps homeless and formerly incarcerated New Yorkers change their life through the power of work, spirit to his candidacy and his passion to help the community reach its highest potential is set forth in his platform.

George is disturbed by the commonality of Americans and with the government saying that it is all right to stay in the middle class. George mentions how there is nothing wrong with an individual wanting to reach higher than just middle class. If one can set their mind to it then there is nothing one cannot achieve.

When asked if there is a platform to outreach the Latino communities of New York City George mentions how he want’s to reach out to every community because he wants to help everyone not just specialize on one group. Yet he did mention how the Latino communities play an important part of New York City and how Latino immigrant’s hard work ethnic has transformed them into successful entrepreneurs and benefited New York City.

George wants to instill the entrepreneurial spirit by turning human capital into capital. One of the major platforms that George wants to do is create business opportunities and have full employment. George also wants to make NYC a business friendly environment and making it a better environment for small businesses to start and for the current small businesses to prosper.

A Review of The Joshua Tree, 1951: A Character Study of James Dean

In The Joshua Tree, 1951: A Character Study of James Dean, Iconoclastic Productions presents a bold, vivid, and shocking portrayal of the sexual appetites of movie icon named James Dean, as portrayed by actor James Preston,  before Dean became a Major Star.  The film is predominantly in black and white as most film was in 1951; with much of this film being characterized as Film Noir.  The film is also in Black and White because there were no gray areas in life to James Dean.  Either a fact was a true thing, or it was opinion and fantasy. Either The Joshua Tree represented long life( like a Bonsai Tree) or, it did not.  James Dean saw life in terms of Black and White with a minor waffling of color.

James Dean starred in three exceptionally good films before he died in 1955 at the age of twenty-four.  The films were Rebel Without A Cause, East of Eden, and Giant.  One night, towards the end of the completion of the filming of Giant, and after the actor had been drinking and taking prescription medications, Jimmy Dean got into his red sports car and drove off of a Central California Embankment along the Coast.  Although at the time there were whispered rumors concerning Dean’s sexuality, and the belief  that he committed suicide rather than to live with the notoriety of his past, his death was recorded as a vehicular accident and rumors of Dean’s bi-sexuality, were not  addressed.

In The Joshua Tree, almost sixty years after James Dean’s death, however, Writer and Director named Matthew Mishory, documents encounter after encounter in which Dean engaged in sex with both men and women shortly before he was discovered and became a major star .  In fact, the only scenes which do not revolve around Dean’s almost exclusive homosexuality, are of two brief affairs with women and scenes of James Dean taking acting classes at UCLA.


Despite this one dimensional aspect of Dean’s Character being studied (his overt sexuality including a habit he had of sensually searing his flesh with lit cigarettes)  The Joshua Tree, 1951 is, to say the least, an interesting tribute to those factors which led to James Dean’s success as an actor, i.e.  His enormous appeal to both Men and Women.  This one-dimensional view of a year in the life of the twenty year old actor, however, deserves a high score for doing and saying that which no- one else had been willing to do and say about Jimmy Dean at the time of his death.  The movie, however, fails to connect the dots for people who do not have prior knowledge of James Dean.  On a scale of from one to ten, therefore, I am rating The Joshua Tree an eight. Parental Discretion is advised.  The Joshua Tree is available on iTunes, Amazon, XBOX, Play station, Nook, and Vudu  on May 7, 2013 by filmbuff.


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Cleo Brown is the movie reviewer for HipHopRepublican.com. She lives in Manhattan and has a Master’s Degree in Contemporary African-American History from The University of California at Davis and has done work on a Ph.D. in education at The University of San Francisco. She has published several poetry books and is featured inWho’s Who in Poetry.

Anthony “Rek” LeCounte: The Conservative Case for Jason Collins

 

It’s an interesting experience being a compound minority in America. On the one hand, people make offhanded assumptions about your politics, history, culture, preferences, and familiarity with the law based on your skin color. On the other, there are confident expectations of your tastes, mannerisms, speech patterns, and so on based on your perceived or confirmed sexual orientation. Being a black, gay man in a country that segregated my grandparents and still sanctions a broad array of legal discrimination against me produces precisely the kind of experience that most Americans—being white and straight—will never properly understand, although some do sincerely try.

Before we continue, let’s clarify a few things about me.

Politically, I lean libertarian (a popular disposition in the military community), but philosophically, I have much sympathy for traditionalism, which logically extends to committed gay families. Culturally, I love to watch football, particularly FBS, and am a zealous fanatic of the SEC (Gator denomination). I am largely ignorant of (and indifferent to) Cher or Barbra Streisand, was introduced to Lady Gaga by a straight fraternity friend, have a lukewarm appreciation for musical theater, would rather my food be fried than organic, abhor vegetarianism, prefer house music to hip hop (although the two occasionally blend magnificently), and grew up playing more soccer than basketball. I was exceptionally good at math in grade school. My teachers usually loved me.

My poison of choice is bourbon, usually on the rocks, but I will take a good Scotch. I learned how to change a tire, adjust automobile fluids, and properly handle a weapon in my youth. My Yale education notwithstanding, I feel at best a fragmented connection with those who marinate in “narratives of oppression” and are the target consumers of The New York Times (which I do occasionally read) or an ethnic studies department. I am not urban. If there is a personal hell, mine is based on New York City. Michael Bloomberg, naturally, plays the role of Beelzebub. He is too busy warring on freedom to take his Oscar.

Given how well-adjusted I sound, it may seem odd that I should care personally that a mid-30s NBA free agent has come out of the closet as a gay man in the twilight of his career. In truth, whether or not Jason Collins gets signed again is of infinitesimal relevance to my personal life. But when I see people bitterly contrasting the media treatment of Collins to that of Tim Tebow (of whom I was quite the fan) or bemoaning public confessions about private life, I am forced to remember that for all my well-to-do middle-American sub-urbanity, it still means something somewhere in America that some people are black and gay.