While I was mopping my kitchen floor after the 100 year or maybe 500 year rain here in Colorado, Bad Mamma Jamma wrapped itself around my kitchen. Not that we sustained any flooding in my part of Denver I just wouldn't mop during the rain because we were tracking in and out through most of it busy with daily life as the rain poured and poured and poured and damn did I mention it poured?
Shes a bad mama jama
Just as fine as she can be, hey
Shes a bad mama jama
Just as fine as she can be
My TARDIS spun back to the 80’s. Damn, there is noway 30 years went by that fast. Spoilers. Reagan is just as popular for neocons in 2013 as he was for neocons in the 80’s. If you feel like stepping out the way back machine with me keep reading.
The 80’s was the time of "The Preppy" in the small town of Leavenworth Kansas where I lived. Memories of Patty Bailey, my history teacher, pushed me down in the seat of a blue plastic chair desk. My thoughts riffing back to discussions Patty Bailey asked us to participate in on Vietnam its dragging fatigue still reaching into the eighties to impart the importance of how useless, deadly, divisive, and without reason other than to appease the continued development of a monstrous Military Industrial Complex( MIC), it was. Few these days understand that Vietnam was not classified as a war. Patty made sure we understood the implications of classifying Vietnam as a police action versus war. She was on mission when she moved on to cover Watergate Patty made sure we did not underestimate the consequences of...Well...Being an unethical Dick.
The great irony of the eighties for me is that I spent them in a military town. My high school was pretty much as close to middle America small town idyllic as you could get. We had Patty to counterbalance the fact that we lived in a military town and the expectation for school meant we all pretty much participated in ROTC and were indoctrinated with red white and blue we love America thoughts. To this day it is hard to fight the the pull of the mindless I-love-this-land-God-bless the USA freak in me as I exit I-70 to Leavenworth. My sister recently reminded me that Colin Powell's daughter was a couple years ahead of us in high school and he was the commander at Leavenworth during our high school years. Freaky, I did not even remember that. The Purple haze of Denver seems to have affected my memory.
While writing this trip down memory lane I contemplated not using the song on the radio and choosing something less apt to cause controversy. Typically eighties the song definitely objectifies women as I view it from 2013 but- ahh hell whatever.
She’s built
She’s stacked
She’s as fine as she can be!
Full disclosure I am a full figured Black woman and rather than feel objectified I feel empowered to hear a that I am a Bad Mama Jama.
It was during the eighties that being a bad mama jama took on a another connotation. It not only means a good looking Black female with curves but I think it also came to mean a person who is kinda audacious and bold. We told each other we were Bad Mam Jama’s and we called out those in society we felt were Bad Mama Jama’s. During the eighties most Black people never thought that in our lifetime we would see a Black President. Somewhere in the world while I was living my irony, Barack Obama was living his own lessons of childhood and that young Black man would grow up to be the President of The United States of America yeah Bob Dylan times are a changing.
Frequently on this one of my most delicious of all websites the pride in acknowledging a never to be realized dream has become a negative. I am what some would call an Obamabot or some other supposedly derogatory term tortured from the Obama name (btw for those who use the term Obamabot as an argument it falls into the category of name calling, which, as you know makes for the very poorest of arguments). Which is really fucked up thing to argue because I have my disagreements with my President but that’s just it. He is still mine.
I feel the need to explain that for a lot of Black people Barack Obama is ours. Hes like family. We have this expectation that embodies Barack Obama often heard in Black homes: To whom much is given much is expected. He fulfills the spirit of that old saying. Often times in the media and world much is made of Black plight: single parent homes, teen pregnancy, Black on Black crime, educational/economic condition, being Black in general putting you at risk for whatever racist thing segments of American society will eventually throw at you. Oops. I might have went too far with that last but I don’t take it back its reality for us. So then comes this tall skinny chain smoking Black guy (okay I assumed he chained before if he didn't I bet he's tempted to now). He talking about something we could only sing about in hymns. Our hope was always to be some other day not today. I have learned to hate having to defer hope to some other day because I am Black.
I am willing to bet Barack Hussein Obama never made it off American school grounds growing up without some kid fucking with him because of his name. So from child to man he learned to take the shit the more important lesson he learned was to carry on. If you think he is not a deep man you are sadly mistaken. Hope and Change received, however, not everybody receives it. And if you didn't maybe it was not for you to receive.
He’s poetry in motion, a beautiful sight to see
He’s a bad Mama Jama Just as fine as he can be.