I love Halloween. Since I was a little kid back in Bed-Stuy when my grandma would take me trick or treating at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, onto high school when I dressed up as a member of the Black Panther Party. My favorite costume was during Halloween of sophomore year, when I went as Kwanzaa (Maulana Karenga would be so proud). This year I considered going as Shirley Chisholm, but I couldn't find a wig that would do her justice, then after brainstorming and trying to come up with another powerful black woman I thought of going as DebraLee. After quickly scratching that I finally decided on going as a lumberjack.I would really like to ride with Ms. Lee. She is at the helm of a major media company, a post that is usually reserved for men. She's highly educated and clearly quite able. But I haven't been able to fully cosign on her. I think its because instead of exercising her considerable power within the company and making her voice heard in the upper echelons of Viacom she seems satisfied to just cash her checks. But perhaps I'm being too harsh, perhaps she is simply a cog within the well oiled machine that is Viacom. However, I think that that is too simple and takes away her agency and autonomy. At the end of the day, she is a capitalist and although she may well be disgusted with the misogynist and coontastic images on her network but she probably feels she has too much to loose if she takes a real stance and says enough and be unbought and unbossed like Sister Shirley before her. Look at what happened to Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch. At least he has his severance package to dry his tears.
