A movie for Mayor Funky's Joe Miller, his bleeding heart and the work he does in the Black Community

It's the X-mas season so it's time to be meaner than hell to balance out the equation.

Here's another stellar effort on my part:

By now a lot of folks might have seen previews for the utterly contemptible "The Great Debaters."

It's the usual saccharine self-help nonsense that is forced upon the public during the solstice holiday season. I'm sure there is an Oprah special on the way.

For folks who follow news and books about Kansas City . . . It's impossible NOT to make a comparison to a much celebrated but not very well read book by Joe Miller - Mayor Funky's demoted PR Flack.



However, the movie strays from Miller's tripe in one important area . . . According to the previews I've seen "The Great Debaters" seems to be a story of Black people HELPING THEMSELVES and succeeding, winning the day and applause in a competitive field that I consider to be pretty much completely worthless i.e. no cheerleaders or money involved.

Whereas Miller's opus recalls the tale of two white people saving the day for poor, disenfranchised Black kids in Kansas City . . . It's not really uplifting unless you're a white liberal desperately hoping to make a difference for high school students with a heart of gold.

Put simply, Miller's take on the subject was kind of like "My Fair Lady" or "Pretty Woman" with a hip-hop soundtrack comprised of those lame NY political songs that most college kids cite in their sociology term papers.

Recently, a group of KC debate students took in the film and gave their feedback. When the day comes that I actually care what high school students think I'll fold up this blog and get the job back that I had at a law firm for a while. But I digress . . .

The important part of this post is my point that it's easy to play the white knight in a book but the condescending tone of the work told me all I needed to know about the the Funkhouser Administration and The Black Community. Just like Miller, Mayor Funky pats "The Black Part of Town" on the head for his own political gain but then crassly ignores them when it's time for business. Let's not forget that former Pitch people Kendrick Blackwood and Miller probably planted a Cauthen hit piece in the pages of their old employer (that no other local news outlet picked up) as part of the FAILED campaign to fire the highest ranking Black guy at City Hall. And Miller's obvious complicity in THAT ACTION (according to me) as one of the Mayor's media people along with Funky's continued efforts at marginalizing Kansas City's minority community is really the guy's lasting impact on Kansas City.

Sadly, there isn't going to be a response from Miller to this post given that menstrual cramps or some other lame excuse caused him to take his blog "Kansas City Soil" down in much the same way the Mayor Funky has turned off comments on his own blog and blocked TKC from City Hall in an effort to thwart the rising tide of Internet criticism against his failed tenure.

Still, in the final analysis, the subject of debate really isn't worth dealing with in much detail and is obviously a distraction from the real (racially) divisive politics in Kansas City.

Also, I've always preferred Denzel's work at a villain. Training Day was a far more inspiring tale of survival and achievement than melodramatic accounts of people talking. My bad, Denzel was the hero in that movie, right? That's what I thought . . . I'm sure the film was a tragic drama involving some dumb white guy messing up Denzel's game just like American Gangster.



Anyhoo, I can only hope the Miller earned an uncredited rewrite on the "The Great Debaters" since he is an expert in the field of media representations of Black people who "are so well spoken" and no attempt to profit from inspirational stories of Black achievement would be complete without a liberal white guy at the helm.