N-words in celebrity land, and a Pennsylvania Shell game.

I swear you Negroes are so sensitive. White folks just don't know how to act around you. Pretty soon you won't have any friends at all. Poor Gwyneth Paltrow. She tried to be down with you all and all she got for her troubles was a twitter firestorm. Come on now, what's a little "N-word" between friends?

Anyway, some of you celebrity Negroes who are used to white folks (unlike those Negroes in the hood who never see white folks) are jigging coming to Gwyneth's defense.

"...a couple of nights ago, a similar milestone occurred in Paris with Jay and Kanye's Watch The Throne Tour. It was at this show that my friend Gwyneth Paltrow tweeted something that got me a little twisted. I follow Gwyneth on Twitter and when I saw her tweet about the “N*ggas in Paris” show in PARIS, I said ‘Damn everybody is there but me.’ I’m a bit older and I don’t get to jet-set to concerts like I used to, but when I saw Gwyneth was there, I must admit, I got a little jealous. The tweet she sent has since angered some in the black community, since she used the n-word. But when I saw it, it didn’t faze me - not even one bit.

I have to throw my hand up and stand up for Gwyneth. I know her intentions were not to be offensive ... she was just proud of her friend, Jay-Z. My words are in defense of her.

I don’t have a permanent answer to the n-word controversy that appeases everyone. I remember when I tried to fix it and said we should maybe beep that word and a few others on the radio, Oprah quoted me as if I said not to use the n-word. However, for the record, I have NEVER told any artist not to use that word or any word in my life and I never will; a poet can choose their own words to describe whatever they want in their art."

Ahhhm....Russell, I have a news flash for you: Gwyneth is not a poet. But I get your point. Still, if I was Gwyneth, I would just stop hanging around you Negroes.  

Finally, as another governor fights for his political life tonight, my governor is busy selling out Pistolvania to Shell Oil. $1.7 Billion??!! That can buy a lot of school books.

My friend Will Bunch wrote an excellent article exposing Governor Big Oil:

"They are the world's second largest corporation by revenue, and last year Royal Dutch Shell made an astronomical $31 billion in profits - more than triple what the global oil giant was earning just two years earlier.

But Gov. Corbett apparently doesn't think the hard-earned cash you fork over every time you pull into a Shell station is enough.

He wants to give them your tax dollars, too - perhaps as much as about $1.7 billion over the next 25 years.

It would actually be too kind to call Corbett's corporate-welfare scheme involving Shell's planned ethane-cracking plant on Pennsylvania's far western border a tax break - because the deal has already won state approval to avoid taxes, in a specially created Keystone Opportunity Zone. So this proposed new deal - which was being negotiated in secret until long-time Harrisburg journalist Pete DeCoursey broke the news Monday - is essentially just a straight-up cash giveaway to Big Oil.   

For a facility it is already planning to build here.

In the state where it arguably would have been built anyway without a single dollar of tax incentives, since this is where ethane wells are already being drilled.

Did I mention that this is the same Tom Corbett who wants struggling unemployed folks getting food stamps to prove they don't have money stashed away, whose steep 2011 cuts to school funding deeply exacerbated an education crisis that's risking everything from school plays in Upper Darby to the janitor who cleans your son's classroom here in Philadelphia? I guess janitors didn't realize the threshold to get Corbett's attention is $31 billion.

"It's essentially a big giveaway of money we didn't have, to attract a company we were already getting," said Sharon Ward, the director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a progressive think tank, who called the proposal "unprecedented." [Article]

This is not "unprecedented" this is the new normal here in America: Corporations first, people second. Oh wait...corporations are people. Never mind.