Gail Collins is off today. Mr. Blow has been to the movies. In “Tyler Perry’s Crack Mothers” he says recent data do not support the ubiquity of black crack-mom characters in the movies. Not any more than data supported “Cadillac-driving welfare queens” in St. Ronnie’s day. Some things never change. Mr. Herbert considers “Paterson on the Brink.” Now that the bottom has fallen out of Gov. David Paterson’s election bid, the question remains: Is he still suited to be governor? Here’s Mr. Blow:
Mo’Nique is a favorite to win an Oscar next Sunday for her powerful and disturbing portrayal of an abusive mother in the movie “Precious.”
If she wins, I may grit my teeth at the depraved depiction, but at least her character is merely juxtaposed with the crack scourge and isn’t in fact an addict. That’s heartening since the crack-addicted black mother has recently made a curious comeback.
There was a time when this character was more relevant: in the 1980s and 1990s when the crack epidemic plunged whole communities into violence, fear and chaos. (To be fair, “Precious” is set in the 1980s.) But this character now feels like a refugee of time — and discordant with the facts on the ground.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan pushed the crack-baby myth. In 1991, “Boyz in the Hood” and “New Jack City” were released. In 1995, the late Tupac Shakur released “Dear Mama” in which he rapped: “Even as a crack fiend, mama/You always was a black queen, mama.” Part of its poetry was that it was impossible to tell if this was an address or a lament.
And then there was Whitney Houston’s breathtaking decline, and her infamous 2002 “crack is whack,” “I want to see the receipts” interview with Diane Sawyer. Receipts for crack, Whitney? Poor thing.
That seemed a sort of cultural end cap, and data suggest that it was with good reason.
A National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a report released last week, found that young black adults ages 18 to 25 years old were less likely to use illicit drugs than the national average. (For those doing the math, you’re right. Those are the children born during the crack epidemic.)
Also, a 2007 study of college undergraduates published in the Journal of Ethnicity and Substance Abuse found that young blacks’ rates of illicit drug use was substantially lower than their counterparts, with black women having the lowest rates of all.
Furthermore, data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that of the total admissions to treatment services for crack use, blacks outpaced whites in 1996, but whites outpaced blacks in 2005 for those under 30 years old.
Then came Tyler Perry with his inexplicable fascination with this cliché, and his almost single-handed revival of it.
In the last five years, he has featured a crack-addicted black mother who leaves her children in two of his films and on his very popular sitcom, “House of Payne.” (In one of the films, the character is referred to but never seen.) In another film, a main character is a drug-addicted prostitute. And in yet another, a mother leaves her family for the drug dealer.
It should be noted that “Precious” is “co-presented” by Perry.
Let it go, Mr. Perry. These never-ending portrayals perpetuate the modern mythology that little has changed when much has. Even for Whitney.
Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly described Mo’Nique’s character in the movie “Precious.” She was not a crack addict.
Here’s Mr. Herbert:
It’s not like David Paterson had a choice. His decision to give up on a bid for election to governor in his own right was a decision to scrap a campaign that had no real support and absolutely no chance of succeeding. The bottom had completely fallen out of his election bid, and the question now is whether the same is true about his governorship.
When you are the first black governor of New York and black elected officials and members of the clergy are gathering to light the path to your exit, you are in deep, deep trouble.
There are two immediate questions for voters: Why did the governor select David Johnson, a man with a troubled background and no demonstrated command of state government policies or practices (at one time he was the governor’s driver) to be his most powerful, most trusted adviser? And why, in the name of heaven, did people close to the governor, and perhaps even the governor himself, intervene to protect Mr. Johnson from an ugly domestic violence allegation?
These questions go to the heart of whether Mr. Paterson is suited to serve out the remaining 10 months of his term as governor. He is responsible for staffing his administration with the best people and for seeing that the great power of state government is used on behalf of the interests of ordinary New Yorkers, not as a club to protect his cronies.
Domestic violence was supposed to be an issue that Mr. Paterson knew something about. He was an advocate of tougher laws to protect victims and has not been shy about criticizing Hiram Monserrate, who was expelled from the State Senate after being convicted of misdemeanor assault for dragging his companion down an apartment building hallway.
The governor described the victim in that episode as “a classic case of a woman who was intimidated.”
But when Mr. Johnson was accused of attacking his longtime companion — stripping off most of her clothes, choking her, slamming her against a dresser, preventing her from calling for help — state officials raised a protective cordon around Mr. Johnson, not the alleged victim. Even as the frightened woman was seeking an order of protection from the courts, she was being urged by powerful state forces to drop the whole thing.
When she failed to show up in court just one day after a conversation with the governor himself, the charges against Mr. Johnson were thrown out.
There is something terribly wrong with this picture. For one thing, the case was a local police matter, but the woman complained to the court that the State Police had been harassing her, trying to get her to change her mind about seeking an order of protection and pursuing her case against Mr. Johnson.
The State Police? It turns out, according to sources cited by The Times on Friday, that Maj. Charles Day, the head of the governor’s own State Police security detail, personally contacted the woman. This is an outlandish abuse of State Police power. The police are supposed to be in the business of protecting crime victims — or alleged crime victims — not intimidating them.
The governor’s top criminal justice adviser, Denise O’Donnell, was not at all hazy about this. She quit the administration on Thursday, saying:
“The fact that the governor and members of the State Police have acknowledged direct contact with a woman who had filed for an order of protection against a senior member of the governor’s staff is a very serious matter. These actions are unacceptable regardless of their intent.”
Mr. Johnson was not arrested as a result of the woman’s complaint, which is not unusual. She alleged that he choked her, but choking is not a crime in New York unless there is evidence that the victim was injured. The charge raised against Mr. Johnson — and later dropped — was second degree harassment. That’s not even a misdemeanor. It’s a violation, the equivalent of a disorderly conduct charge.
But it was quite enough to get the big guns in state government rallying to Mr. Johnson’s side, and that should cause us to take a much closer look at people like Major Day, and the State Police superintendent, Harry Corbitt, who learned of the encounter between the woman and Mr. Johnson within 24 hours. He doesn’t seem to get that the State Police intervention was improper. Nor has he mastered the concept that cops are supposed to protect victims, not perps.
Mr. Paterson’s job now is to reassure the public that his overall judgment is sound and that he understands what was wrong about his behavior, Mr. Johnson’s behavior and the State Police’s behavior in the domestic violence case.
If he can’t do that, then he should hand the keys to the governor’s residence to the next in the line of succession, Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch.
It’s beginning to look like they need to put a revolving door on the New York Governor’s office…
