Corporations are immortal, amoral externalizing machines.  They exist above and outside the laws of man and God to rake in profits while making sure someone else pays the cost.  When insurance companies lose billions in the stock market, they raise premiums and are awarded government bailouts.  When electric utilities squander their monopoly profits on dangerous nukes, their rate payers and taxpayers must pay the price.  When manufacturing corporations pollute the soil, air and water, any health effects and cleanup costs are somebody else's problem.  Corporate accountability is unaccountability, pure and simple.  So when media billionaire Oprah Winfrey acts like what she is - a marketing machine, a corporation - nobody should be the least bit surprised.

Brand Oprah and Corporate Accountability

In the January 19, 2006 installment of Freedom Rider, "Oprah's Best Self" BC's Margaret Kimberly expertly skewered Oprah Inc. for promoting the bogus work of a white ex-junkie she had every reason to believe was based on lies. More than a few BC readers wrote commending Ms. Kimberly's work.  This is what one subscriber had to say:

Regular BC readers will know this is neither the first nor the worst instance of Brand Oprah's cynical abuse of the public trust to turn the dubious book of a self-serving liar into a best seller.  Back in April of 2004, corporate Oprah boosted the book and launched the career of HIV-AIDS huckster J.L. King, who has made a nice living ever since spreading the racist, homophobic myth that the rise in HIV-AIDS among black women is due to secretive and predatory bisexual black men on the so-called "down low". 

Unlike the Oprah show, BC actually consulted the Centers for Disease Control.  We interviewed real HIV-AIDS researchers, public health professionals, and advocates of testing and treatment. In our September 8, 2005 cover article, "The Low Down on the Down Low," they unanimously agreed that J.L. King's and Oprah Inc.'s lurid myth of bisexual black men on the DL as the principal transmission vector of HIV-AIDS in the African American community was unfounded and a dangerous misdirection away from real efforts to educate the public, combat the epidemic and save lives.

America, and especially black America, is still waiting for the apology to come from Oprah Inc. for boosting the fraudulent "Down Low" book of J. L. King.  As is the case with most corporate actions, obstructing the cause of HIV-AIDS education and treatment has arguably benefited Brand Oprah and boosted book sales for yet another of her favored huckster-authors, while others have paid the price. 

Those others, arguably, have been those who contracted or unknowingly spread the virus who might otherwise have heard accurate information and acted on it, as well as some of the already infected who have come forward later than they might have, or not at all, thanks to the misdirection of "down low" hysteria.  They, and we, are still awaiting Brand Oprah's apology for that one.

Solutions

We try our best to answer email from our readers, and mostly succeed.  Most write us about specific stories or events, but some readers come to us with more general questions, like this reader in the UK:

Our estimable editor and co-publisher Glen Ford answered Sandra thusly:

Back to the Plantation

Margaret Kimberly's weekly Freedom Rider offerings are always on the mark, and a favorite topic of reader email.  Her insightful column of January 26, 2006 "Hillary Clinton's Plantation," sparked several reader responses, including this one:

We thank Dr. Bob for his compliment, but wonder about the viability of several of his suggestions. 

To name just a couple, our own views are that for the time being, we must work inside as well as outside the Democratic party, and that our work inside it must focus on active opposition to both Republicans and to the Republican-lite and corporate funded DLC-style misleadership of the Democratic party.  This must include holding the Black Caucus accountable to the wishes of its constituents, to the demands of the Black Consensus.

The old and still-true saying is that there are two Democratic parties. One is the electoral party, the activists and voters who they call on every year or two around election time, and who are expected to go back home and be spectators till the next election. The other Democratic party is the permanent party, which meets with corporate lobbyists every day, and adheres to the boundaries of acceptable dialogue laid down in the corporate media.  Hence Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, to name just a couple of national Democrats, depend on mobilizing large bases of explicit leftists and antiwar activists - the sensible kind of people who know that imperial war is "doing the wrong mission".  Once safely installed in office, Democrats revert to membership in the permanent party, and will only say that the mission is being "done wrong." The same is true of state and local officials including dozens of African American mayors

We are also wary of fetishizing the United Nations. In Haiti right now, there are almost daily reports of UN troops from Canada, Jordan, Brazil and elsewhere drawing cordons around neighborhoods while Haitian police and paramilitary forces do the door to door wet work of massacre, targeting Lavalas supporters and their families.  In some other cases, UN troops have conducted the arrests and killings of unarmed civilians themselves.  When the UN in Port-au-Prince is willing to be used in the same fashion as the US Marines in Baghdad, the introduction of its so-called "peacekeeping forces" is but a wilted fig leaf covering the naked reality of empire and occupation.

Economic Development, African America and the Prison Industry

Several recent BC articles, including last week's BC cover, have mentioned the upcoming National Black Peoples Unity Convention in Gary, Indiana this spring.  Here is an exchange between a reader and BC editor and co-publisher Glen Ford on that subject:

Mr. Ford replied:

We hope someone will soon write that book, and send us a free copy to review.  We also hope that the upcoming convention, like the MMMs of 1995 and 2005 will also provide a space where representatives of differing tendencies will meet to see what common grounds exist, and explore how to pursue them.  Along with our co-publisher Mr. Ford, we note with some apprehension that although economic development is supposed to be the focus of this gathering, it nowhere mentions one of the biggest economic facts of life in black America today.  That fact is the massive expansion of the world's largest crime control and prison industry and its effect on our families and communities. 

The United States is 4.7% of the world, but accounts for a quarter of all its prisoners.  African Americans are one eighth the U.S. population but almost half the incarcerated.  An alarming percentage of young black people in their prime productive years are taken out of the "free" work force and upon their return saddled with the lifelong stigma of a criminal conviction.  The economic development consequences for our community are far-reaching, almost incalculable, and are not being talked about, much less dealt with.  We are forced to wonder aloud what relevance any black "economic development" summit that fails to aggressively tackle this issue can have to the black polity, especially to the entire generation of our youth which is being criminalized. 

Finally, a BC reader involved with the grassroots relief and empowerment efforts writes from Mobile AL about our prior coverage of black self-help efforts in the post-Katrina Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast.

We remain in touch with the good sisters and brothers in the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast, and expect to report on their activities again soon.  Send us your suggestions, your comments, and yes, your $50 subscriptions to keep BC going.  Click the "subscribe" buttons that appear somewhere on each and every page to do the latter, and email me at [email protected] for the former.  We try to answer most of our reader email.