This post is inspired by a blog written by Michael Bowen at Cobb, titled, 'The Future Black Intelligencia [sic]'.

There's a considerable distance between People Often Presented as Black Intellectuals -- a rogue's gallery of culture warrior-hacks (Steele, McWhorter, Walter Williams, Sowell), dime store Designated Negroes (Armstrong Williams, Juan Williams, Joe Watkins), wannabe Designated Negroes/volunteer circus freaks (Dickerson, Marc Lamont Hill) and lo-cal eggheads (Fryer) -- and the bona fide Black intelligentsia. Say what you will about Dyson, West, and Skip Gates, but at least their production is structured upon good, old-fashioned scholarship. Research. Empirical discovery. You'd think someone whose specialty is linguistics, like McWhorter, would address the etymology, impact, and/or direction of Black dialect. I've surrendered hope Sowell or Williams will engage Black people en masse with practical applications of their economic ideologies.

But that's the current state of so-called Black Intellectualism, which is to say other than it's Black people doing the commentary, it isn't very intellectual. There's no doubt an endgame in sight, if it hasn't already been achieved, for these phonies. Most are still arguing over the aesthetics of Black franchisement, when that boat has already left the harbor. OTOH, Authentic scholarship on a wide variety of subjects is being conducted by countless numbers of anonymous Black people, every day, inside and outside of the academy, in every field of endeavor imaginable. And to the degree legitimate Black politics -- our exercise of civil liberties -- intersects with Black ethnic identity, there's a proper role for understanding the impacts of race.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the Blogosphere when it comes to how often I post new threads. When I first started to blog, my intention was to focus on ideas, rather than events or people, with the rare exception made for an extraordinary bit of news about something or someone of importance to me. I'd prefer to think I've stayed true to that focus over the course of time and have been able to pace my writing with just enough frequency to demonstrate I'm nowhere close to running out of ideas. Neither am I tired of fighting for those principles in which I believe.

Not too much has slipped by my radar since my last posts of the mid-to-late summer. I suppose many would find me guilty for forsaking my blog for those of others during this time. It's just that (again) this blog is more about ideas than people, places, and things, and it's the latter that have captured the lion's share of my attention during late Summer/early Autumn. I might comment at some later date on some aspect of the 2008 presidential election, for example. I've also been incredibly busy with one of my own projects that is now ready to bear fruit. As closure has arrived, or is imminent, with these events, I'll be blogging more if for no other reason to exercise my brain. I'm also convinced more than ever before in my own intellectual talent, and shall seek and exploit more opportunities for its public demonstration.

Having said that, I'd like to make note of the following (in no particular order of importance):

Barack Obama
Paul Newman
Issac Hayes
Xohm
Coskata
Micro-retail
'Public', 'non-commercial', and state-owned broadcasting media & telecommunications
GM
10 Commandments for Public Officials.

Whenever I navigate the blogosphere, I try to make note of bloggers' links to other, higher profile blogs, media outlets, and organizations. I'm partially motivated by self-interest -- hey... I like to get props, too. But I'm also generally interested in the blogosphere's integrity as a medium. The Daily Koz, Instapundit, etc., have become reputable voices of New Media; a grassroots reformation of how people create, distribute, and acquire information. The fact of bloggers' influence is affirmed by the pace at which traditional media outlets (newspapers, radio, & television) are incorporating blogs and their content.

It might be more accurate to say traditional media is co-oping the blogosphere. Parts of it. Slowly. It's a low risk proposition; a newspaper publisher invites bloggers to submit their RSS feeds and reaps their (free) content, along with a few more eyeballs in return for blogger face time and the stamp of authenticity. I've noticed many of the blogs I frequent -- Cobb, Dark Star Spouts Off, Stereo Describes My Scenario, Blacksmythe -- announce their ever more frequent appearances on NPR's News and Notes with designated negro Farai Chideya. Again, I understand traditional news media's pimping punditry over real journalism. Kabuki theater is cheap and it sells. I even get these bloggers getting the big head to forget the unwritten courtesy of adding the most prolific (and entertaining) contributors' blogs to their blogrolls. The irony is this part of the blogosphere is becoming just as self-absorbed as the 'mainstream media' they're supposedly reforming.

Enter public broadcasting... or what passes for public broadcasting in the U.S.. It seems logical to me that the first and most aggressive media outlets to embrace the blogosphere should be our non-commercial radio and TV stations, and their networks. In theory, non-coms are supposed to be community-oriented. However, the culture at many non-com stations is as monolithic and tin eared as the commercial outlets. For example, News and Notes is a news/talk program that ostensibly reports the 'Black' perspective. Part of each program features a bloggers' roundtable -- individual non-journalists (!) presumably invited by Chideya -- that is supposed to represent the diversity of Black opinion on a variety of subjects. But from what I can tell, the roundtable merely rotates the same clique of amateur pundits. Which begs the question: given the technology available to NPR and News and Notes for incorporating millions of Black voices, why do they settle for a tiny few?