No time to “d*ck around”
Commentary by Chitown Kev
(Note: I am aware that I owe the Black Kos cuss jar my whole and entire paycheck.)
Due to a few circumstances (time, cancellation of some news columns), it has been a minute since I wrote a diary or even linked to a post having to do with English usage, words, and/or punctuation. And since The New York Times refuses to give John McWhorter something like William Safire’s old “On Language” column (I hate McWhorter’s politics but the more his columns focus on linguistics and language, the better and I will beat that horse until I am sure it’s dead!),
So yesterday, up jumped the usually staid New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie with a Bluesky doozy:
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i have said this before but if you are actually interested in influencing people beyond a narrow circle of too-online journalists you will be making direct to camera videos on tiktok, instagram and youtube. if you primarily post on text-based social media then you're just dicking around.
— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) 2025-12-15T19:26:52.753Z
Many things here….I can’t get into all of them but...many things!
I really don’t want to get into a conversation about whether the substance of Mr. Bouie’s opinion is correct (FTR, I think he’s right, for the most part) but...really!
First of all, I don’t think that I’ve ever heard or read a Black person use the phrase “dicking around.”
Make of that what you will.
Come to think of it, I haven’t heard too many white people use the phrase, either.
I did look up what the phrase meant. But let’s go with with the definition and usage that APR denizen David Michigan looked up:
1.
intransitive chiefly US, informal + somewhat vulgar
: to spend time idly or aimlessly
: to waste time
: fool around,
mess around
You're not spending money to dick around for 12 weeks and put your nose to the desk for the last two …—Kaylee Kean
I know I don't have time to dick around with people who aren't serious. —Derek Stonebarger
2. transitive chiefly US, informal + somewhat vulgar : to meddle with or manipulate (someone) : to treat (someone) unfairly
"Let's do the cover anyway," said our managing editor, who is famously unwilling to be dicked around by publicists. —Richard Corliss
I wasn’t offended by Bouie’s usage because that phrase describes pretty much what I do on Bluesky.
I aspired to do more on Twitter back when it was called Twitter but the phrase also describes most of what I did on Twitter, frankly, and I learned to roll with it.
So why did I take Bouie a little more personally than warranted?
Well...I had to think about that for a minute.
I am far too camera shy to do the work that Bouie seems to be demanding.
(People have said for years that maybe I have the vocal quality to do radio or podcasts or something of that nature).
And what about the work that I do here at Daily Kos?
I did start out here just “dicking around” because I liked the people and the subject matter but now?
I enjoy what I do and I’ve always kinda sorta wanted to do this. In print. text.
For me, something about text just connects in a way that nothing else does both for me and any audience that I might have.
So to the extent that I want to “influence” folks, that’s the way its gonna be.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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At a time when the Trump administration has been disparaging Black political leaders, Charm City’s young mayor has built a formidable case for himself. TNR: How Mayor Brandon Scott Curbed Violent Crime in Baltimore
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Brandon Scott knew from a young age that he wanted to be mayor of his hometown. Raised in a rough area of Northwestern Baltimore that hosts the Preakness Stakes—the second leg of the Triple Crown thoroughbred racing series—Scott would see the potential of his neighborhood on display every third Saturday in May. “When you live in a neighborhood where your neighborhood is the center of the sports world for one day, and then every other day you’re not treated as human, it forces you to make decisions at an earlier time,” he said.
Scott recalled the twofold shock of witnessing a shooting before his seventh birthday—both that it had happened right in front of him and that it hardly provoked any kind of reaction from the adults in his life. “No one really cared. We would go back to school like nothing happened,” said Scott, who was in elementary school at the time. “Pestering my parents, my aunts, uncles, grandparents, older cousins, everybody that watched me. Finally, my mom told me one day that if you want things to change you’ve got to do it yourself.”
So the DIY campaign began. In the span of a decade in local politics, Scott went from city councilman to council president to mayor, becoming Baltimore’s youngest mayor at age 36. Scott, vying to run a city long maligned as one of America’s “murder capitals”—and deemed a “deathbed” by President Donald Trump—made a firm vow during his campaign: He would be the mayor to reduce the homicide rate, which was then averaging well above 300 deaths per year, by 15 percent annually over five years.
The 41-year-old Democrat is about to enter his sixth year in office, and while Baltimore hasn’t reached his ambitious benchmark yet, it’s getting very close. With Scott at its helm, Baltimore has achieved what many see as remarkable progress: Homicides began a year-over-year downward slide in 2023, and the city will very likely close out 2025 at a new record low. In November, Baltimore recorded 15 homicides, contributing to a 30 percent year-to-date drop, according to the city’s reporting. That amounted to 127 murders so far for the year, as of last month. That’s still several times higher than the national homicide rate, but the lowest number the city has posted since 1970.
To reach this point, Baltimore has employed a model that showed promise in Oakland, California, and Philadelphia. Baltimore’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy (referred to by the jargony acronym GVRS) employs focused deterrence, using carrots and sticks. The carrot—access to resources, including mentorship and job training. The stick—accountability, namely the vow of arrest and prosecution under a new state’s attorney, Ivan Bates, who is also credited with the violence turnaround. The vast majority of the people involved with the program are not “hardened” criminals, according to Scott. “Most of the violence, in Baltimore and everywhere else, is interpersonal violence. People have conflict, which humans are going to have, but people don’t know how to resolve that conflict,” Scott told The New Republic in his office just before Thanksgiving. Along with systemic factors like redlining, deindustrialization, and a drug trade targeted at Black, brown, and poor neighborhoods, “you understand that you have a recipe, a melting pot that can cause these things to happen.”
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The Minnesota Democrat, an outspoken critic of the Trump administration's immigration operations around Minneapolis, said her son was let go after showing his U.S. passport. NBC: Rep. Ilhan Omar says her son was pulled over by ICE agents in Minnesota
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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said her adult son was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Saturday in Minnesota and asked to provide proof of citizenship.
“Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by ICE agents,” Omar, who said her son was born in the U.S., told WCCO-TV of the Twin Cities in an interview Sunday. “Once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go.”
Omar, who immigrated to the U.S. when she was 12 after having fled Somalia’s civil war, also accused ICE of “racially profiling” her community.
“They are looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented,” she said.
About 80,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota.
Representatives for ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and Omar’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An administration official previously told NBC News that ICE was not specifically targeting Somali immigrants.
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Farm worker Owen Salmon has picked apples in upstate New York for almost a decade, some 1,500 miles (2,400km) from home. In the midst of harvest season this year, Hurricane Melissa, a record-breaking category 5 hurricane, made landfall in Jamaica.
“It was terrifying,” said Salmon, whose wife and two children were at home near Black River, a town on the country’s south-western coast. “For days, I couldn’t hear from them. When I finally did, I heard my roof was completely gone. My wife and kids had to run for their lives, but thank God they’re alive.”
An estimated 90,000 households and 360,000 people have been affected by the damage wrought by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. Salmon is one of roughly 5,000 Jamaican workers who come to the US each year on an H-2A visa.
The H-2A guest worker visa program allows US farms and agricultural firms to hire foreign workers for temporary jobs. It plays a significant role in the US’s agriculture industry, which remains reliant on overseas labor at crucial points on the calendar: last year, more than 380,000 workers were authorized for H-2A visas, about 15% of the US agricultural workforce.
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When Bright Ansah, a nursing officer in Accra, goes searching for colleagues who have failed to show up for a shift at the overstretched hospital where he works, he knows where to look. “When you see ‘In God we trust’ on their WhatsApp status, that’s when you know they’re already in the US,” he says.
The motto of the US has been co-opted by Ghanaian medical professionals who are leaving the west African nation in droves. Many believe their faith has finally been rewarded when, after years of planning, they reach the promised land of the well-equipped, well-resourced hospitals of the US.
Since the Covid pandemic wreaked havoc on global healthcare systems, the number of nurses, midwives and doctors to have left Ghana has risen exponentially. It is estimated that at least 6,000 nurses left in 2024, driven by factors such as low wages, unpaid salaries and worsening infrastructure. While the US is a huge draw, nurses are also migrating to other countries including the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and the UAE.
Meanwhile, in May and October, Ghana’s foreign ministry signed agreements with Jamaica and Grenada to send hundreds of nurses to the Caribbean islands, expanding on a 2019 agreement with Barbados. In July, the health minister announced that more than 13 countries had expressed interest in establishing similar recruitment arrangements.
The government’s justification for the schemes is that Ghana has a surplus of nurses, with tens of thousands unemployed.
But Ghana is also one of 55 countries on the WHO support and safeguard list, which identifies nations facing the most pressing workforce challenges related to universal health coverage. And those working on the frontline of healthcare feel they are on the precipice of a crisis.
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