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SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

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SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

Tag Archives: mental illness

Daily News

13 Thursday Mar 2008

Posted by Vivrant Thang in Feeding The Music Jones

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

alabama murder, chapel hill murder, coverage of natalee holloway case, Daily News, donnie album, eliot spitzer case, hiv and aids rate, khandi busby, lack of media coverage for black women, mental illness, one in four girls has std, phylicia moore, reactions to news stories, safe sex, student found dead in pool in Ghana, teen girls with stds, woman stuck to toilet for two years, woman throws kids off bridge

by vivrant thang on daily news

donnie-cd-cover.jpg

I’m long overdue for a side eye of the week post. I guess you can look at this as a combination of side eye of the week and “makes me wanna holler” as several stories in the news this week either caused my side eye to twitch or depressed the hell out of me.

Coverage of the murder of the UNC Student Body President

Let me be clear. This was a heinous, senseless act and I am disgusted that two young, black males are accused of this crime. If  When they are found guilty, I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen to them. If they are guilty, they deserve it.

My issue is not a nothing new. I watch the morning news while getting dressed and all I hear all about this case and similar cases like the coed in Alabama. Why do I have to go into the blogosphere to hear about the Lester Street murders? (I can’t even talk about the animal that committed this crime. Ya’ll already know I’d like to see him tortured, dismembered and then fed to a pack of rabid dogs).

phylicia.jpgThe slaughter of these adults and babies was surely one of the most tragic cases Memphis has seen and I had to go digging for information. Surprise – I couldn’t even find a direct link on CNN. However, they have 1000 stories on every aspect of the Chapel Hill case. I bet if I was to search on the Natalee Holloway case, I’d find 2000 posts. If I want to hear updates about Phylicia Moore’s case, again, I have to rely on the black blogosphere. Never mind the fact that she was in Ghana doing mission work and not pissy drunk and sneaking off to screw strangers.

Thank the Lord for new media.

Spitzer Debacle

Along these same lines, I am beyond tired of hearing about the Spitzer case. I am as disgusted by his hypocrital ass as I am at all the others that have come before him and will come after him. (Kwame, I’m looking at you first though because you won’t get the hell on. I don’t know who has a more disillusioned sense of entitlement, you or Hillary.)

Why must I endure all this coverage about the life of his hooker and how hooking is her mission in life? Oh I get it. Sex sells. Nothing will change that. I just am way over this trash thrown in my face in lieu of news that matters. I guess the problem is who it matters to. 

Kansas Woman Sits on Toilet for Two Years

When I saw this story, I literally had to read it a few times to fully comprehend it. Actually, I still can’t and I’m quite disturbed by the whole thing, including the boyfriend’s complicit behavior.

Some people will surely make a joke out of what is no laughing matter. Can you imagine the trauma this woman must have gone through to reach this level of psychosis? It happened in her childhood and she never got help. At this point, I just hope they can convince her to get treatment.

Dallas Woman Throws Kids and Self Off Bridge

0313busby.jpgI haven’t recovered from the horror of the Banita Jacks case and now this. Luckily, God wasn’t ready for them and their lives were spared, although I can’t imagine how the kids will mentally recover.

Yet again, the system has failed. The kids were taken away numerous times. They tried to help her regain control of her life, to no avail. Her family was well aware that she was beyond unfit, psychotic and suicidal. She was still allowed to maintain custody. And she goes and throws them off a freaking bridge into traffic. Do I entirely blame her? It’s hard not to. But the warning signs were there that she was deranged. No one cared about this black girl and her kids. I’ll try to find comfort in the fact that they didn’t end up rotting for months on end.

Mental illness is not a joke.

Geraldine Ferraro Comments

I’m not going to waste my time on her ludicrous comments. Besides, field negro handled it quite nicely. Just another reason for Black folks to tell Hillary what she can do with her “apology.” I’m wondering why she didn’t throw one in for slavery while she was at it. With the state of the housing market and these high ass gas prices, I sure could use that 40 acres and mule right about now.

One in Four Black Girls Has an STD

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I wanted to do a separate post about this because I’m beyond troubled. Not surprised, but disturbed at how times have changed. My condo community shares property with a high school and so I get to see these girls daily. So yea, it’s no shocker.

I think back to my high school days when it was a big deal that so-and-so was “doing it.” I left high school and even made it through my first year of college with my virtue technically intact. Today, sex is par for the course. These girls are “inspired” to be Good Girls Gone Bad. Virginity is a joke. I get that. I don’t believe in preaching abstinence. We are so far beyond that. The cherry is busted and apparently diseased.

We’re talking about HPV as the most prevalent disease they are infected with. Pretty soon, we’re going to be talking more about those other three letters. 70% of new cases were Black women. If we don’t find a way to reach these teens, we’re going to see that age group making up a larger percentage.

When I think about the Little Miss Vivrant Thangs I’ll have someday, I just want to lock them away from this world until they are grown. Likely they would emerge and become raving whores. What’s a child raised by a no-shit-taking baby boomer to do?

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What’s Going On: The Banita Jacks Case

17 Thursday Jan 2008

Posted by Vivrant Thang in Feeding The Music Jones

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Aja Fogle, banita jacks case, banita jacks daughters, benita jacks banita jacks murder case, Brittany Jacks, case of woman killing four girls, depression, four girls deaths, mental illness, N'Kiah Fogle, Tatianna Jacks, washington dc murder, what's going on marvin gaye

by vivrant thang on what’s going on and the daily news

marvin.jpg

Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today

I often joke that the future Mr. Vivrant Thang will not only need to have the patience of Job, but should also have experience dealing with mental patients in order to live with me for the rest of his life. It’s cases like this that remind me that there are some issues that just aren’t a laughing matter.

I was talking with The First Lady yesterday and realized that people outside the area may not have heard about this case, although it has been picked up nationally.

It’s a difficult story to report on several levels because so much of it doesn’t make sense and there are so many details that are still unfolding. I suspect there are some things that will never be fully explained because there are no explanations.

banita-jacks.jpgLast week, authorities arrived at the home of 33-year-old Banita Jacks’ to evict her from her DC residence. Instead, they essentially stumbled upon a house of horrors. Inside the home were the badly decomposed bodies of her four daughters; Brittany Jacks, 16; Tatianna Jacks, 11; N’Kiah Fogle, 6; and Aja Fogle, 5. It’s unclear how long the children had been dead. The medical examiner says at least two weeks.

Jacks claims they were possessed by demons and died in their sleep some time before her electricity was cut off , which was back in September 2007. However, the girls were found to have blunt force trauma, stab wounds, and ligature marks around their necks. Jacks also admitted she starved them before they “died.”

There are many more details to this story which you can read about here and here. After you read them, I’m sure you’ll be left with several questions.

Here are my issues.

There were 30 family members in the courtroom at Jacks’ first appearance. Where were these same family members when these girls went missing?Reports have said that the family would come over there and she wouldn’t answer or she wouldn’t let them in. See, this brings up an issue in the Black community that I need to talk about in another post. We don’t have “Big Mommas” anymore. Big Momma would have gone over there to see about her babies. If Jacks’ would have dared to fix her lips to say that she couldn’t come in, she would have been backhanded and shoved to the side.

Apparently, there was a grandmother to two of the girls in the picture. She gave the same sob story about trying to contact them but had gotten cussed out and turned away. I guess she gave up.

What about the two fathers of the oldest girls? Did they not notice their daughters were missing? No, because neither of those negroes were paying regular child support so they probably couldn’t have cared less about seeing the girls. They probably were glad not to have seen or heard from Jacks. We won’t even get into how social services and the school system failed this family. Just like any inner city, you got a bunch of lazy heifers and negroes sitting up there collecting fat checks while claiming they are underpaid and overworked. Sure, the system needs major reform and Mayor Fenty wasted no time cleaning house, as he should have. It’s unconscionable that a school social worker actually did her job and after a visit to the home in April, had to plead for authorities to help the girls. At that point, they had missed over a month of school and were essentially being held hostage in a nasty house by a deranged mother. The social worker reported all of this and the cops went over there and left, apparently without laying eyes on them. Those girls could have been dying then. Can you imagine how terrified they must have been? The older girls probably tried to comfort the younger ones while dealing with their own hunger and fear. Horrible.I know there are rules that have to be followed, but officials seriously dropped the ball here.

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Cellmates of Benita Jacks have said she admitted to killing the girls and that she is “crazy.” There is no question in my mind that this woman is indeed mentally ill. Apparently after the father of the two youngest died of cancer, the family situation changed drastically and something inside of her snapped. Why didn’t someone recognize this and get this woman some help?

Mental illness is a serious problem in this country that is not being addressed. We are quick to dismiss someone as “crazy,” and keep it moving until something like this happens. A girl that I hang out with on occasion is battling depression and I am the first to admit that I often avoid her or become impatient with her moody behavior and what I deem stand-offishness. I don’t know the extent of her illness because she doesn’t talk about it, but clinical depression is also nothing to ignore.

It’s time for us to go back to the days of it taking a village to raise a child. If we don’t start speaking up and getting involved when something ain’t quite right about a situation (and not stopping until there is a resolution!), we are going to keep losing our children.

Based on some accounts, it seems Jacks was a good mother before she snapped. So if she had gotten some help, there’s a chance this tragedy could have been avoided. Who knows what these girls could have accomplished had they actually had a chance at life? Perhaps this? Or any of this?

Sadly, we’ll never know.

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