Shirley Chisholm 1925 - 2005

Shirley Chisholm has gone and died on us. I’ll admit that I haven’t thought of that name in quite some years. But we all knew about Shirley back in the day, from when she became the first Black woman elected to Congress to running for the office of President of the United States and actually sticking it to the Man by winning over a hundred and fifty delegates before withdrawing from the race. I think she later said that she ran just to show muthafucker’s that she could and to show the Man that he better not take her lightly and shit. All I know was that when I was in high school, Shirley Chisholm along with Angela Davis was the shit. One was known for taking it to the Man, and the other one for showing the Man how far she would take it.

So in honor of Shirley Chisholm how about we take a look back at 1969, the year she entered office and see what was going on around these parts back then.

First off we all know that 1969 was the year Richard Nixon entered the White House as the 37th President. Yeah, if George W. Bush is known as the stupid president, then Nixon was known as the lying assed thieving asshole president. The most I remember about Nixon was Watergate and that he visited China. And I remember when he was here in Kansas City for the Republican convention. I only remember that because my father along with the local bomb squad he was a member of, worked the convention and whilst there the old man got to meet Dolly Parton.

The Stonewall Riots, which signaled the beginning of the “Gay Movement”, also went down in New York in 1969. This happened in New York’s Greenwich Village during the raid of a local gay bar. It seems that the cops were rousting the customers of this gay bar and instead of rolling over like before; the Gay’s decided to push back. The ensuing riot lasted the good part of a week and involved thousands of people and showed that even if you’re walking around with a busted O-ring and like swilling down a healthy dose of cock every now and then, you can only be pushed so far before you start pushing back.

In 1969 Jack Kennedy fulfilled his promise of sending men to the Moon before the end of the decade due to the fact that the crew of Apollo 11 landed and walked all over that muthafucker during June of that year. You know, nowadays the only time a space launch makes the front side of the paper or TV is when the son of a bitch blows up and shit. But back then every fucking launch was a huge deal and we all sat around riveted watching the fucking TV with only three channels that when you wanted to change shit, meant you had to get up and walk across the fucking living room and flip the damn thing. Oh, and don’t get caught by your father when that muthafucker was in a TV watching mood or the fucking reception was screwing up. The old man would make your young ass stand at that fucker all night either changing channels or fucking with the antenna. “Boy, change the goddamn channel”! You’d grab that giant round knob and “CLICK”! “CLICK”! “CLICK”! You’d switch from channel nine to channel four. “Dammit, find something else on”! “CLICK”! Up to channel five. “CLICK”! “CLICK”! “CLICK”! Back to nine. “Good leave it there, that sissy muthafucker Flip Wilson’s on”.

It’s memories like that that make me love the Internet. No turning the giant knob or whatever, plus 1969 was the year the Internet came online.

"and the monkey flipped the switch"