Melissa Harris-Perry's History Making Show Starts Today

Cornel West and the fundies may not like her, but I definitely have much love for 38 year old Tulane political science professor and rising intellectual superstar Melissa Harris-Perry.

She is the founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Tulane and previously served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and Princeton University.

And from the bio, 'Her academic research is inspired by a desire to investigate the challenges facing contemporary black Americans and to better understand the multiple, creative ways that African Americans respond to these challenges.”   She also writes for The Nation and is an MSNBC contributor and fill in host for Dr. Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell.

Translation, the sistah got it going on to the point that MSNBC couldn't deny what she brought to the table and made her the first tenured African-American female professor to have her own national cable show.

She will definitely bring MSNBC's viewers up to speed on how African-Americans view the nation we live in from her learned perspective. 

Cornel can hate on her all he wants, he still doesn't have his own TV show and she does.

I will definitely be getting my butt up later this morning to watch the Melissa Harris-Perry Show which runs from 10 AM-12 noon EST.

Draw For 2012 FIBA Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournament Held

There are twelve women's national teams still in the running for the last five spots in the 2012 Olympic women's basketball tournament.  

Our Canadian neighbors and Puerto Rico are two of those squads.  They discovered during the draw held on February 15 what groups they are in and who they will be competing against in the 2012 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament For Women when it tips off in Ankara, Turkey on June 25-July 1.

The four groups ended up shaking out like this:  

Group A:  Japan, Puerto Rico, Turkey
Group B:  Argentina, Czech Republic, New Zealand
Group C:  Croatia, Korea, Mozambique
Group D:  Canada, France, Mali

Top two teams in each group advance to the June 29 quarterfinals.   The Group A winner will face off against the runner up in Group B.   The Group C winner will face the Group D runner up and the Group D winner will face the runner up team from Group C.

The four quarterfinal round winners will automatically qualifying to go to London and the four losing teams head to the semifinals to begin the knockout competition for the final spot in the Olympic women's basketball tournament.

The Loser in the [A1 v B2] game will face the Loser of the [C1 v D2] game.
The Loser in the [B1 v A2] game will face the Loser of the [D1 v C2] game.

The winners in those semifinal games will face each other in a pressure packed July 1 matchup in Ankara with a trip to London on the line.

The victor in that matchup gets the last qualifying spot and prepares to pack for the 2012 Olympic games and all the once in a lifetime experiences that go with it.  Everyone else goes home and begins their preparations to qualify for the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women in Turkey and the 2016 Olympic women's basketball tournament in Rio.

Shut Up Fool Awards- NBA All Star Weekend Edition

We recently received the wonderful news here that the 2013 NBA All Star Game will be played on Sunday, February 17 in beautiful downtown Houston.  

In addition to the 62nd NBA All-Star Game being played at the Toyota Center, it will also host the NBA Rising Stars Challenge and NBA All-Star Saturday Night.   The NBA All-Star Jam Session, the hugely popular interactive basketball celebration, will be held at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
It'll be the third NBA All-Star celebration hosted by Houston, and my hometown proudly hosted the event in 1989 and most recently in 2006.

So now that you are aware of it, you have a year to book some cheap airline flights and come on down and experience some Lone Star hospitality.  You may even see me wandering around downtown and the George R Brown with my Rockets gear on. 

This year's edition of NBA All Star weekend is happening in Orlando on February 24-26 and I'll probably watch a little bit of it along with the skills contests that Saturday.

It's also Friday, and as you longtime TransGriot readers know that means it's time for the TransGriot to select this week's Shut Up Fool Award winner.

It's tome for Moni to determine with you TransGriot readers help what fool, fool or group of fools continue to exhibit All Star level stupidity and ignorance and deserve to be recognized for it.

These SUF awards also continue to point out what my Shut Up Fool inspirational mascot Mr. T says, fools are everywhere.

So enough jibber-jabber, time to get to SUF business. 

This week's nominees are Fox News Noise, the Republican Party, National Organization for Marriage, the GOP House leadership, Pat Buchanan BuKKKanan  PETA, Eric Bolling, Robert Vandervoort, Rosalie Porter, Peter Brimelow, Herman Cain, Andrea Tantaros, Dana Loesch, Ted Nugent, Gretchen Carlson, Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA), Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Gov Scott Walker (R-WI), Gov Chris Christie (R-NJ), and Rep Steve King (R-IA). .   

Honorable mentions goes to New York Magazine for their racist graphic of President Obama accompanying a Dan Amira story on gay marriage and LA shock jocks John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou for disrespecting Whitney Houston by calling her a 'crack ho' .  

This week's Shut Up Fool Award winner is Rick Santorum's presidential campaign megabucks money man, Foster Freiss.  

He opened this mouth during an MSNBC interview yesterday with Andrea Mitchell to make this jaw dropping comment that momentarily rendered the veteran journalist speechless.  

'You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly.'  

He (and Santorum) then cluelessly tried to pawn off his conservaignorance as a joke during a later MSNBC interview with Lawrence.O'Donnell



I think it's time for the Republican Party to change their party mascot from the elephant to a woolly mammoth with a Klan hood to more accurately reflect where their party is in 2012, building that bridge back to the 20th century BCE.

Foster Friess, shut up Fool!.  .

.