From ‘stay out of politics’ pleas by Josh Duhamel to draft fantasies from Rob Schneider, celebrity commentary is less insight, more noise

It was quite the weekend to be a celebrity. The last couple of days have reminded us that while Americans love celebrities, the closer you get to know them, the more you often don’t like them.

Celebrities are held on a pedestal in America, treated like gods, but many of them are just one-trick ponies. They have one talent: they can rap, or they can write, they can sing, they can act — but it doesn’t go much deeper than that. And often, when they open their mouths, they reveal how little they know about politics and society.

Celebrity Worship Has Limits

This is not a new issue. We saw this about four years ago when Ice Cube, who I’ll never forgive, opened his mouth and revealed his ignorance when he stepped into the political arena. Somehow, Ice Cube believed that the voice of a rapper was enough to bend the presidential race. He also revealed himself to be MAGA.

Over the last couple of days, several celebrities have also shown their collective asses to the world.

First, there was, most infamously, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, a member of the once hugely popular group TLC. To Black Generation Xers, TLC was huge. They dominated the radio waves in the 1990s and 2000s and were rocked by the loss of member Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes in a car accident.

Chilli’s Failed Spin Cycle

However, many Black people were shocked when Chilli was revealed to be a MAGA cultist. Yes, as much as she tried to deny it, she’s MAGA. Chilli was revealed to have made 17 donations to the Trump campaign and Trump-related PACs. Even worse, she shared a ridiculous conspiracy theory about former first lady Michelle Obama being a man.

Chilli is in the middle of a nostalgia tour featuring bandmate T-Boz, so this is the worst time for this to come out, and Black people are upset. They were so upset that Chilli tried to quickly spin the news.

“I WANT TO BE CLEAR: I am not MAGA and do not support any of the many policies that are causing great harm to the American people,” Chilli said on Instagram. “I made a mistake too many make: I did not read the fine print. I thought I was supporting causes against human trafficking and for veterans.”

She claimed she “accidentally” reposted the Michelle Obama conspiracy theory. But you don’t accidentally make about 10 donations to Trump-related PACs.

Very few people are buying Chilli’s spin. She needs to come clean and admit that this is who she is. She’s down with Trump. She also has to accept that she’s down with corruption, racism, terrorism, and murdering American citizens in the street, just to name a few of Trump’s sins.

More Stars, Same Shallow Politics

Then there’s Nick Cannon, the actor, singer, and all-around Hollywood man. Cannon is famous for fathering 12 children by six different women (he’s in an open relationship). Still, he called himself “conservative” on a podcast, according to Variety. He also said “he fucks with Trump,” revealing that he knows nothing about politics. He added that the Democratic Party was the party of the KKK, which shows he hasn’t kept up with politics for the last 60 years.

Cannon is a known conspiracy theorist, and he’s not a deep thinker either, so it wasn’t surprising that he again stuck his foot in his mouth.

Then there was Josh Duhamel, who said that actors should keep their politics to themselves because they risk alienating half their audience, and the idiotic Rob Schneider, a well-known MAGA supporter, who said that we should implement the draft.

In a previous era, Duhamel’s point may have made sense, but these are abnormal times. Americans are facing with tyranny, terrorism, and treason. The government has literally turned against them. This is not the time to sit on the sidelines. It’s time to stand up and be counted.

And if you can’t do that, you’re OK with the terror and obscenity of the Trump regime.

Buy me a Kofi.

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From Nazi-era family separations to ICE detentions, one cartoon exposes how state power still tears children from their parents

I got the idea for this cartoon after hearing reports about ICE making arrests at airports. In the cartoon, an ICE officer pulls a crying child away from a parent. My first thought was: How traumatizing is this?

It also brought to mind images from Nazi Germany, when children were separated from their families and sent to camps. The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. ICE has been accused of acting like Trump’s personal army. This reinforces that perception.

Those feelings became the foundation for this cartoon.

I created it as a split screen. On the left, under the word “Then,” a Nazi officer pulls a sobbing child away from his mother. On the right, under the word “Now,” an ICE officer stands in an airport immigration setting as another crying child clings to a parent in distress.

The child’s plea changes from “Mama!” to “Mommy!” But the fear is the same. The only thing that has changed is the setting. The horror has been updated.

This is not to say America is identical to Nazi Germany. Rather, it is about recognizing the visual and moral echoes that emerge when governments separate families and normalize cruelty.

When policy becomes trauma

The emotional center of the cartoon is the child. He is a symbol of panic, helplessness and loss. Adults can argue about immigration law, border enforcement and detention policy. Children live the terror of these policies.

Too often, stories about immigration arrests are told in bureaucratic terms. Officials use words like “processing,” “detention” and “removal.” Those terms may sound administrative, but they conceal a brutal reality. A child is still watching a parent being taken away. A family is still being shattered in real time. Children live with that trauma.

The backgrounds in the cartoon are significant. The left panel evokes the camps, fences and industrial machinery of Nazi terror. The right panel uses the familiar architecture of a modern airport immigration area. One atrocity belongs to the past. The other belongs to the present. But both scenes ask the same question: What happens when a society gets used to seeing some families as disposable?

Why I wanted the image to disturb people

Political cartoons are not meant to be neutral. They are meant to provoke thought, spark outrage and strip away euphemism. I created this because the public is too often asked to view family separation through the language of procedure instead of humanity.

The ICE officer is shown from behind, with his face partly obscured. He is less an individual than a representative of a system. Systems carry out harsh policies while hiding behind the claim that they are simply enforcing the law. History is full of examples in which legality and morality move in opposite directions.

If this cartoon makes viewers uncomfortable, then it has done its job. Some images remind us that history’s darkest lessons are wasted when we fail to recognize them in the present.

A cartoon about a car exposes how racial suspicion runs on class envy 

In this cartoon, a white man in a “Make America Great Again” cap glares from a ragged trailer porch. He clutches a report card of straight Fs and sneers at a smiling Black driver in a late-model Lexus. “He must’ve stolen that car,” the man says. 

It’s a tight little scene with a big message: In America, too many people see Black prosperity as a crime scene. 

How Did He Afford That? 

The joke lands because we know the script. A Black person enjoys something expensive, and someone decides it can’t be legitimate. That reflex didn’t arrive by accident. It’s the product of decades of TV news mug shots, redlined neighborhoods, and politicians who sell fear like late-night infomercials — such as President Donald Trump. 

This cartoon also reflects real life. My brother is a doctor who drives a luxury car. He’s seen the stares and felt the resentment. The unspoken phrase is always the same: “How did you afford that?” 

He’s regularly tailed by police. Another friend, a Black lawyer, gets the same treatment — followed, pulled over, then met with surprise when he calmly cites the law back to the officer. 

The dynamic also surfaced in a recent CNN interview with white voters upset about the economy. One man said, “There’s a Black guy in our community who drives a Lexus. How did he do that?” I thought, maybe he’s an educated professional? 

The Politics of Resentment 

The Republican Party exploits these tensions with a bait-and-switch. Instead of doing the hard work of improving life for working-class Americans, it tells audiences that people of color — Black people, Latinos, Asians — somehow stole a white birthright of economic superiority. That message has been in rotation for decades. MAGA is simply the latest iteration. 

Trump leaned into it. MAGA is built on white resentment. But ever the conman, Trump works the fears of working-class white Americans and delivers nothing. During his first run, he complained that his friends’ sons struggled to get into Ivy League colleges. But I’m sure he had no trouble buying his kids’ way into most colleges. 

But the unspoken threat was clear: Working-class whites were supposedly having college spots stolen by lazy Black people. It’s a cop-out for mediocre white students. Scapegoating Black and brown students is easier than studying for the SAT. 

This is how it works: Build political power by stoking racial grievance, then sell resentment as policy. It’s a circular economy of outrage — profitable for campaigns, poisonous for communities. 

Scapegoating Immigrants Won’t Fix Housing 

The MAGA GOP is still running the same playbook, especially on housing. The latest pitch claims that deporting millions of Latinos would lower home prices — that “illegal immigrants” are inflating the market. That’s not how housing works. 

Prices are high because supply is tight and deep-pocketed investors are buying up homes as assets, keeping ordinary buyers on the sidelines. In California, whole blocks sit dark at night because properties are warehoused by corporate money. A starter home now costs about $250,000 in the heartland — and far more on the coasts. Wage earners can’t compete with all-cash bids and institutional portfolios. 

Blaming immigrants won’t build a single affordable home. But fixing economic policy is hard. It’s easier for the GOP to play the race card. 

Grading on a Curve of Grievance 

That report card of Fs is the cartoon’s sharpest jab. It says the quiet part out loud: Underachievement seeks a scapegoat. Instead of asking for tutoring, job training, or better schools, the character chooses an easier fix — accuse. 

In real life, that mindset fuels bans on honest history, voter suppression, and traffic stops that turn into funerals. When you grade the world on a curve of grievance, you always find someone to blame. 

Here’s what the panel doesn’t depict but strongly implies: the grind behind that Lexus. Maybe it’s overtime, student loans, a side hustle, or a small business that finally broke through. The point isn’t the car. It’s the right to own anything without being treated like a suspect. 

Art works when it forces a choice. This cartoon offers two: Keep telling yourself that success you don’t understand must be stolen, or confront the systems that keep millions stuck on the porch with an empty cooler and a fistful of excuses. 

If America wants to be great, start here: Stop criminalizing Black joy. Trade suspicion for curiosity. The solution to this problem is complex and requires a serious answer — one not rooted in stereotypes or racial resentment. 

Buy me a Kofi. 

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The Pros and Cons of AI-Assisted Writing

Sometimes AI is scary, especially in the amount of information and content it can put out. And this is what I’ve realized as a writer: AI enables me to create content much faster than before.

Turbocharged Writing, Faster Than Ever

Essentially, it has turbocharged my content abilities. But the problem with AI writing is that it’s not perfect. I’ve created several AI bots. I have one bot that I’ve designed to write in my tone. I do this by loading my writing into ChatGPT. I also have an editing bot. Even when I run my voice-to-text program through it, the output still needs editing.

So here’s the problem: even when I use ChatGPT to create an article directly in my own voice using my AI bot, I still have to run that content through Microsoft Word to make it sound good. Maybe that’s my issue as an editor. Editors tend to be especially picky about both technology and text.

A Seasoned Writer and Editor

But I’m not happy with the content that ChatGPT generates. I think one of the problems is that ChatGPT was trained on a relatively primitive learning language model, so it still can’t write as sophisticatedly as a well-seasoned writer. You can often tell when you’re reading AI-generated writing because it tends to be overly wordy, which is why it has to be edited.

At this stage, I’ve found that I’m still a better editor than ChatGPT. That’s probably because I’ve been doing this for about 30 years. ChatGPT and AI are good at writing, but they’re not perfect yet.

Cartoon nails the angry toddler who shapes our headlines

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This cartoon about the president says it all without needing a single chyron. A red-faced, diapered man-child stomps across the Oval Office screaming, “I want Greenland!” Staffers huddle in the corner wondering whether to call for nursing duty. It’s slapstick, sure. But it’s also a tidy summary of the political culture we’ve been living in for years: governance as tantrum.

I created this cartoon about two weeks ago, but in the Trump era, disasters move at light speed. This cartoon is almost out of date, but here it is. Remember Greenland? That was about five crises ago — before two people were killed in Minnesota. But according to former intelligence officer Malcolm Nance, who is on the ground in Greenland, the threat remains. By the way, the Danes are hopping mad at Trump’s insults about their service in Afghanistan. A group of Danish veterans recently marched in protest. This is not how you treat your allies.

Spectacle Over Substance

I remember when serious policy required a binder full of facts, a sober briefing and someone in the West Wing who could count votes. Now we’re stuck in a world where impulsive demands and grievances gobble up airtime — and too often pass for strategy. The Greenland episode wasn’t a gag; it was the president’s real-life trial balloon, floated like a late-night tweet. The cartoon strips away the euphemisms and shows the raw id: want, demand, sulk, repeat.

However, the infantilization of power isn’t just annoying; it’s expensive. Every time Dear Leader throws a fit, agencies scramble, lawyers draft memos, diplomats make awkward calls, and we foot the bill. It’s governing by dopamine hit. Meanwhile, potholes remain potholes, school districts stretch pennies, and the big stuff — climate, housing, health — gets buried under a new outrage cycle. Nothing crowds out substance like spectacle.

Also, our European allies realize they can’t trust the United States. Many of them now look at the U.S. as a hostile country. Even if Democrats win power, what happens if another neo-fascist is elected?

The other thing the cartoon gets right is the atmosphere. Look at the background: toys, blocks, scattered papers. That’s what policy looks like when it’s built for the camera. We aren’t debating budgets; we’re sorting blocks by color to please an audience of one. The Secret Service agent’s whisper bubble — “Should we call the first lady for nursing duty?” — lands because it mirrors a question too many veterans of this era confess privately: Who’s the adult in the room?

Some readers will accuse me of being uncharitable, of failing to respect a disruptive style. Fine. But disruption that leaves no bridge, no treaty, no durable law is just noise. Statesmanship is boring on purpose. It demands constraint, not catharsis. The cartoonist understands the difference and uses diapers to make the point: If you can’t manage yourself, how do you manage a country?

Reward the Grown-Ups

There’s a deeper worry here. Tantrum politics trickle down. They teach supporters to cheer volume over results, to confuse cruelty with candor, and to treat government as a reality show where humiliation equals ratings. That corrodes our civic muscle. We start selecting leaders for their ability to “own” someone instead of solve something.

The remedy isn’t complicated. Vote for people who bring receipts, accept guardrails, and talk to opponents like neighbors, not villains. If a proposal sounds like a late-night impulse buy — especially one involving real estate across an ocean — it probably belongs in the clearance bin of history.

Until then, expect more cartoons. When leaders act like toddlers, satire becomes the most responsible thing in the room.

Buy me a Kofi.

How ‘Green Convertible’ Love Was Born

I wrote this song from memory, not imagination. It came from one of those days that etch themselves into your brain and refuse to fade. I was living in Oklahoma then — splitting time between Stillwater and Oklahoma City — and seeing a woman who made ordinary places look cinematic.

She was blonde. She drove a green convertible Mazda Miata. We met in Oklahoma City, pointed the nose of the car toward the lake and just drove. Sun on the dash. Wind turning conversation into laughter.

A Perfect Moment

We picked up picnic food, found a spot near the water and let the afternoon idle. There wasn’t a grand plan. No big speeches. Just two people, a blanket and the long, forgiving light that comes before dusk in the Midwest. When we finally rolled out, her hair was flying, the radio was low and I caught myself thinking, this is it. This is the perfect moment they tell you not to look for because it disappears if you stare too hard.

That feeling — calm, wide-open and a little unreal — became the spine of the song. I wrote it as R&B because that’s my natural go-to for love songs. R&B gives you room to breathe between beats, to let a bass line carry what words can’t. The groove moves, but it doesn’t hurry. Neither did that day.

The Memory Never Faded

Lyrically, I stayed simple. I wanted concrete details: the green paint catching the sun, the snap of a picnic lid, the way lake water smells when evening cools it. No metaphors that needed explaining. The chorus circles back to that drive, that sense of motion with nowhere in particular to be. Harmony stacks come in like the wind through the open top — present, then gone, then back again.

I didn’t know it then, but the memory never left. It lived in the back of my head. The song was always in me. I just didn’t know how to get it out. Then I discovered Suno and AI, and that did the trick. My memories became music. If you like my music, follow me on YouTube.

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Naming Alex Pretti as an Act of Resistance

Some songs are written to entertain. Some are written to sell.

And then there are songs written because silence has become unbearable.

“Say His Name (Alex Pretti)” was born out of that last category.

The phrase say his name has been flattened by repetition, dulled by hashtags and safely filed away by people who prefer their outrage abstract. But naming someone — actually naming them — is an act of resistance. It forces specificity in a culture addicted to blur. It disrupts the convenient drift from person to “incident,” from life to “case.”

This song exists because too often, the moment someone is killed, a second violence begins: the rewriting.

Writing this song wasn’t about chasing a hook or landing a clever bar. It was about freezing a moment before it could be edited out of history. Music has always been one of the few places where memory can’t be spun as easily. A verse doesn’t issue press releases. A chorus doesn’t hedge. Once it’s sung, it belongs to the people.

A Familiar Story

The headlines shift. Context is selectively trimmed. Character assassination masquerades as due process. We are told to wait, to withhold judgment, to trust systems that have already shown us whom they protect. And quietly, a name starts to disappear.

What struck me during the writing wasn’t rage — it was grief sharpened by pattern recognition. We’ve heard this story before. Different city, different uniform, same script. But this subject is white.

First comes the killing. Then comes the justification. Then comes the slow public amnesia. We’ve been down this road before. This song does the opposite. It repeats. It insists. It names.

Alex Pretti is described not as a headline, but as a human being: a healer, a protector, someone who ran toward pain when others ran away. That framing isn’t accidental. It’s corrective. When systems fail, art becomes a counterrecord — not neutral, not detached, but honest about where the harm actually landed.

There’s a line in the song — “killed by cowards” — that some will call inflammatory. That’s predictable. But clarity often sounds inflammatory to people invested in confusion. Cowardice isn’t volume or chaos; it’s the willingness to use power without accountability and then hide behind procedure afterward. Naming that isn’t radical. It’s accurate.

Naming Is Radical

This song doesn’t ask for revenge. It asks for truth. And truth is threatening precisely because it doesn’t need permission

Media loves nuance, and nuance matters — but not when it becomes a tool for delay. Not when it’s used to exhaust empathy until the public moves on. Naming someone is not the end of thought; it’s the beginning of responsibility.

“Say His Name” isn’t meant to resolve anything. It’s meant to interrupt. To lodge a name in the collective memory and refuse to let it be sanded down into abstraction

Because justice doesn’t start in courtrooms or statements.

It starts when we decide that some lives are not negotiable.

And that forgetting is not an option.

Say his name — not as a slogan, but as a refusal.

Alex Pretti.

Buy me a Kofi.

By Manny Otiko

A few weeks ago, I read a New York Times story about Erik Hagerman, a former Nike executive who had retired from corporate life to become a pig farmer. He was so devastated by the election victory of Donald Trump that he went on a “media boycott.”  So no social media or news for him. He said his life has become blissfully peaceful since he stopped following Trump’s antics.

Hagerman has been criticized for enjoying his privilege as a white, upper middle-class American. He’s so protected that is pretty much doesn’t matter who is president. Either way, he’s going to be fine.

don’t have that advantage. They have to stay on top of news and politics because their lives literally depend on it. I’m one of those people. I’m a black, immigrant journalist. That’s a triple whammy when it comes to Trump’s enemies!

In a way, I can identify with the former executive. After Trump’s election, I couldn’t watch the news for a few days. I took solace in watching sports and entertainment shows. But, since I work in the news media, I eventually got back into keeping in touch with what is going on.

However, watching the news nowadays is traumatic. Apart from watching Trump tear apart the American government and display third-world levels of corruption, I have also noticed a disturbing rise in ethnic violence.

America before Trump wasn’t perfect, but we seemed to be making strides towards racial harmony. But the election of Trump, who rode to power on a wave of white resentment, and the election of Barack Obama, seemed to unleashed a floodgate of racial animosity. It’s as if this country has jumped 50 years backwards. CNN commentator Van Jones described it as a whitelash.

Now, I read daily stories of mosques being attacked, black people being bombed, and other minorities being racially abused by Trump supporters. It reminds me a lot of living in 1980s Britain, which saw a rise of neo-fascists upset at the changing demographics and economic stagnation. They too decided their problems were caused by immigration. It was so bad that my parents kept me locked in doors when the National Front (now known as the British National Party) held their annual pro-white march through our neighborhood.

Living in solidly-blue California, you would think I would be safe. But according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were more than 1,000 racial incidents after the election of Trump and most of them were in California.

Last year, I wrote a story about African Americans who were arming themselves in the wake of Trump’s election. Being a liberal, who grew up in Europe, I have never touched a gun, but I started wondering if I should arm myself.

Fortunately, I haven’t run into any problems. But I talked to a guy who worked at my local mall, who said he was attacked by a Trump supporter because he was singing in Spanish. He happened to be a martial arts practitioner and the Trump fan was left with a broken arm.

But this is what life is like for racial minorities in Trump’s America. Always on edge, terrified by the news and never knowing where the next attack is going to come from.

Just as scary is realizing that a large chunk of the country voted for him because of his race-baiting policies. These people have been emboldened by Trump and now think they can openly speak their views. A few weeks ago, Dayanna Volitich, a Florida middle school teacher, was suspended after it was revealed that she hosted a white supremacist podcast. And Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, was punished after she said black students always have low test scores and shouldn’t be admitted to college. How many more of these people are going to come out of the woodwork?

So, I don’t have the luxury of ignoring the news. One day I could wake up to a Trump tweet saying all non-white immigrants, legal or illegal, are being expelled. Don’t say it can’t happen. As ESPN correspondent Jemele Smith said, Trump has surrounded himself with white supremacists, people like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka. And one of his cabinet members, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has said he wants to reduce legal immigration. In this political climate, ignorance is not bliss.

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