Jackson Free Press

You know, Harvey Johnson told the JFP once that The Clarion-Ledger was still institutionally racist, and doesn't even know it, and they have done little—consistently, any way—over the years to prove that it's not true. After Lumumba's historic (whether you like him or not) win, THIS was the front-page news story this morning. And we can all be pretty positive that it wouldn't have been there had Johnson or Lee won the election.

Beyond the negative slant, it is filled with Eason's analysis of whether he thinks the mayors can get along with the emphasis on Lumumba. I went and looked at it because I saw a lot of people complaining about it on Facebook, and I see why. There is a good story to be done about regional cooperation, but this ain't it. And it's bad timing, to boot. The question I keep asking about their city reporter is: Does he have an editor!?!

Of course, if you scroll down and read the comments, you can see who such a piece is likely pandering to. Shudder.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2013/jun/05/12074/

Gov. Phil Bryant stepped in it yesterday when he blamed working mothers with the challenges in education. Since then, we've seen people posting tributes to their working mothers on social media. We'd like to collect them here, as a tribute of sorts to the amazing women who have built America, both from the nursery and the workplace. Click below to read one of my tributes to my mother who had to work at factories to put food on the table while she helped me lift myself up however she could. She was remarkable, and I miss her dearly.

Please add your tributes below.

I guess it's no surprise that Gov. Phil Bryant told The Washington Post that education went to pot when women started entering the workplace: We're guessing he's a fan of FOX News, and they've been hawking that meme, Melanie Tannenbaum blogs at Scientific American. Even thought it's news to us who never look at FOX News, apparently they've been arguing this issue there of late, with a bunch of men blaming working mothers for behavioral and educational problems, even though serious research shows otherwise. Imagine.

Tannenbaum writes:

[W]hen looking at samples where the families were on welfare, children whose mothers worked while they were very young (1-3 years old) actually performed significantly better on measures of overall achievement and had significantly higher IQs , although there were no differences when it came to performance on formal achievement tests. On the contrary, when looking at samples where the families were not on welfare, there were no differences in overall achievement or IQ between the children whose mothers worked and did not work during their early childhood years, although higher SES children whose mothers worked while they were young actually did slightly worse on formal achievement tests.

What if we look at whether or not the child is coming from a single-parent household? Same story. Children who lived with single mothers performed better on measures of overall achievement and IQ if these single moms worked while the kids were very young. Children who lived in two-parent households, on the other hand, showed no differences in overall achievement or IQ, but did worse on formal achievement tests if their mothers had worked.

And what about behavioral problems, like externalizing behaviors (aggression or impulsivity) or internalizing behaviors (depression or anxiety)? After all, if lower-income children whose parents work outside the home have higher IQs but also have higher rates of depression and anxiety, that’s still a problem, right?

Sure, it would be a problem — if that were the case. But it’s not. Once again, the pattern is the same. Children who lived with single mothers who had worked outside of the home while the kids were very young actually exhibited significantly lower rates of overall behavior problems, significantly lower rates of aggression and impulsivity, and marginally lower rates of depression and anxiety. Children from two-parent households showed no such difference in overall behavior problems, aggression, or impulsivity, though they also showed lower rates of depression and anxiety. So, across the board, when mothers worked outside of the home where their babies were very young, it didn’t matter if they were single mothers or members of a two-parent household. Looking across a wide variety of racial and socioeconomic groups, studies either found no relation between employment and behavioral problems, or they found that children whose mothers worked while they were young actually had fewer behavioral problems and better academic outcomes than their counterparts whose mothers stayed at home.

The data keep telling the same story, no matter how you …

The campaign to elect Chokwe Lumumba as Jackson's next mayor just posted a video of rapper Ludacris endorsing Lumumba for mayor and urging Jacksonians to vote today.

You can see the video here.

The secret, underground Quentin Whitwell write-in campaign could be doomed if they don't get an emergency endorsement from Chingy in the next hour.

Yes, he did. The Washington Post is reporting that our esteemed governor, Phil Bryant, blamed working mothers for the problems in the education system:

Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became “so mediocre” in regard to educational outcomes, he said:

"I think both parents started working. The mom got in the work place."

Bryant immediately recognized how controversial his remark would be and said he knew he would start to get e-mails. He then expanded on his answer, saying that “both parents are so pressured” in families today. He also noted that America seemed to be losing ground internationally in regards to educational outcomes because other nations began to invest more in their own school systems and make progress.

And folks are worried about Chokwe Lumumba's views.

What will the election of new Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba mean for our somewhat besieged city and the communities that surround it? (anyone who lives in the Jackson metro area and who doesn’t believe that as Jackson goes so goes the metro area is being both short-sighted and provincial). How will he choose to govern the city, and how will his lifetime of civil rights activism and his career as a defense lawyer influence his decision making and term as mayor?

OK, Snark King, it's your turn.

I've had it in the back of my head to blog about a really offensive post by The Clarion-Ledger's city reporter Brian Eason for weeks now, but it had fallen to the side in the need to report actual news. But while cleaning up my desk today, I started noticing a pattern—first from a clipping of another snarky thing he wrote calling a whole city office stupid, and then I saw a blog post belittling an enterprise story by our staff this week, but without actually saying what was in it or linking to it. So here's my Friday afternoon round-up of what I've been noticing about Mr. Eason's snark, which I assume is meant to be humor, except none of it is funny.

No. 1. Don't dare compare crime to terrorism, dumb little council candidate. After 20-year-old minister Corinthian Sanders decided to get involved enough to run for City Council, he made the mistake of saying that the "terrorism" of crime was one of his top priorities (as if he's the first to ever say that here). Sanders told the Jackson Free Press: "Let’s talk about getting our lawbreakers, criminals—I call them terrorists….(If) you can’t go anywhere without killing someone or robbing someone or terrorizing someone, that’s terror, (and) you’re a terrorist; you’re a domestic terrorist.” The mention of the word terrorism tickled Eason's funny bone. He snarked:

"To my knowledge, no major terrorist attacks have occurred or been planned on our streets, and the Jackson Police Department reported no terrorist incidents in 2012, according to its published crime stats. But maybe that’s what the terrorists want us to think.

"Lest anyone think Sanders is trying to politicize the Boston Marathon bombing, rest assured, his commitment to fighting terrorism on the streets of Jackson predated the explosions at the marathon.

"But while Sanders listed counter-terrorism as his No. 2 priority, right behind “protect, improve and increase affordable housing,” none of his competitors — or, indeed, any other candidates in the entire metro area — mentioned local terrorism as a problem worthy of their consideration.

Eason's blog post shows he later clarified what Sanders meant, and quoted Sanders' above words from the JFP in an addendum to the snark-post, but that nasty horse was out of Eason's barn by then. That's what you get for running for office in Jackson, Corinthian. The ire of a native Dallasonian. And I really don't know what all his references to monkey videos on your Facebook page were about, and don't care.

No. 2. In a post called "Common sense? Not at clerk's office," Eason showed the entire staff of the Jackson city clerk's office not to mess with him, no sir. He was irked that he couldn't get election results from the clerk's office at 11 a.m. the day after the primary. They didn't have certified results available, yet, and gave him a bit of a runaround. OK, it's fair to …