I am Amber Cole’s father. I am angry, confused and completely at a loss. I love my daughter. I want to guide her without suppressing her. That is not always easy.  Children need protection from their worst inclinations. That is not always easy. I am trying to convince her that the world will still love her if she keeps her clothes on. I do not know if she can hear me, or if she is listening. She would listen to her mother, if her mother was not busy. Doing something, anything that is not parenting.  I want her mother to spend less time being “empowered” and more time being aware and engaged with our daughter. I want her mother to be a better role model, not a BFF.  It takes two.

I am Amber Cole’s father and this should go with saying: I am angry with those boys. But I knew those boys. Those boys were my friends. I grew up with those boys, hung out with those boys. But I was always The Other Guy – the boy you do not see on the tape. The one who, because of religious beliefs, self-respect or common sense decides to have no parts of such a thing. He is a nerd. He is an outsider. He is long gone, at home reading and writing. I want to meet The Other Guy and shake his hand. I’m trying to raise The Other Guy. But it is not easy. Girls don’t like The Other Guy. Being the Other Guy is not as cool as being one of the boys. I want to raise my boy to not be that kind of cool. Being a gentleman is cool. I want him to get the chance I did not have. I want him to to wait for that special girl.

I am Amber Cole’s father and I have seen the video. You probably have too. I would like to ask her mother’s boyfriend, Karrine Steffans or Kim Kardashian where my daughter learned that. How she became proficient at such a difficult act. I want to know who has been teaching my little girl how to act like a woman while I have been trying to teach her to be a young lady. Teens don’t have the tools they need to express, explore and comprehend the consequences of careless intimacy. I want to know what kinds of people we are allowing to look after our children when we are not around. I want to know why my 14 year-old knows so much about oral sex.

I am Amber Cole’s father, and I am not raising a slut. White feminists can teach their own little girls to find empowerment through their crotches – my brown little girl cannot afford to be that carefree and cavalier with her life choices. Slutlife is the hard, lonely vocation of rich, educated, privileged white women who will fuck The World, contract social diseases and still, somehow find a husband. No black woman ever got far being a slut. I want to know what kind of women “slutwalk,” while young impressionable girls of all kinds look on with wonder and admiration. I want to know why these same women run to protect Mylie Cyrus but just shrugged, nonplussed for my little brown girl. I want to know what the fuck those dumb bunnies are thinking. Most of them do not have daughters. I want my daughter, the woman, to have healthy, vibrant sexuality. My little girl should have other priorities. I am her father.  I will protect her and every woman in my life with my life.

I am Amber Cole’s father. Don’t ask where I was that afternoon, because you already know. I was at work, just like you. I do not live with her, cannot always talk to her, cannot always be there. Not the way I want, and there are few laws to help me. To protect me and my rights. No one cares that I cannot be the kind of father I would like to be, until my daughter is a link, a hashtag, a trending topic. A punch-line. The subject of what may be the most widely seen piece of child pornography in history: A 14 year-old giving oral while two other boys watch and laugh. You say what you would do, what you would say, but you have no idea. We are all great parents with other people’s children. You blame me. Do not judge me. I love my daughter as much as you love yours. I am doing the best I can. I need the help of a partner who at times seems to be modeling the kind of behavior I am discouraging. We are fighting. Pushing and pulling, in no one’s best interest. Why can’t this be about my daughter? No, this is not about blame. It takes a village that starts with parents — all parties must be accountable. But parenting? Yeah.  To do it well–even after all these years –it still takes two.

Kid sex is as old as time, but that realization doesn’t make me feel any better.  Amber Cole is my daughter.

I am jimi izrael. I am not really Amber Cole’s father.  But she is my daughter.

You do not think so. But she is your daughter too.

Click on the cover and order your copy of "The Denzel Principle" from St. Martin's Press. Listen to excerpts of the book on "The Denzel Principle Mixtape" parts one and two. Join the author jimi izrael on Facebook.

(for “No Wedding, No Womb)

Ladies, back in the day, it was easy to get pregnant: you’d be crunched up on the backseat of a car, moaning as the man made it rock and roll. He’d shake, rattle and eventually roll off of you and if he didn’t use a condom, you weren’t on the pill or he didn’t do a Pull n‘ Squirt™, 9 months later you’d be a mother — Oops.  That was back in the day. Now, there’s spermicidal foam, female condoms, diaphragms, contraceptive film and tons of shots, pills for before, after and the meantime. Legal abortions are readily available. Women have more agency over their reproductive systems than they have ever had.  Black men—obviously—are to blame—right?

When I read articles blaming black men for the rising tide of single mother births, I never see the schematics of the solar-powered, remote controlled leg-opener black men are given just after puberty that compels young black ladies to spread their legs. C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. It’s obviously equipped with a mental de-capacitator that brain-washes girls so they can’t say “no” or find the “family planning” section of the local drug store, where birth control options for women are plentiful. I don’t know how this part comes up missing time after time in these articles condemning the irresponsible black man. Maybe it’s just bad editing, but I never read anything fresh about what role black single mothers play in their own lot. I know I’m getting long in the tooth-and I hope someone would tell me if things have changed—but last I checked, it takes two to tango. That is, the last time I was making babies, that’s how it was going down. That fact alone suggests to me that the irresponsibility occurs on both ends. Big Time. Both parties need to own up and face the music. Back when my grands was doing the Do-Nasty, women had an excuse to get knocked up.  Those days are over. Many women want the baby but don’t want the men – Essence Magazine and Oprah have said for years that women don’t need men and many women believe them. How do I know? I’ll tell you.

As I mention in my book, my mentor and friend Margaret Bernstein writes for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio and she co-wrote a series in December of 2007 about the decline of Mount Pleasant, an inner-city neighborhood in Cleveland. She talks to a 44 year-old woman who got pregnant at 18, who’s 18 and 15 year-old turned up preggers (the 18 year old, TWICE). They all live under her roof and as of this writing, there is no man in sight or on the horizon. You know why? “I think marriage is a good thing,” she says. “You want that companionship. But I can’t get with these men staying in the bathroom longer than I do, leaving the toilet seat up and watching my every move. I’m just so particular. . . . My mother, she took out the garbage. She didn’t need no help. She wasn’t one of those people that needed a man to screw in a light bulb or put up the Christmas tree. My mother educated herself.”  What she’s suggesting is that it’s a lot easier to be a “strong black woman” than be compatible with a man. They’d rather not be bothered: as long as he sends in checks to kick in on the rent and upkeep, they could do fine without him. Sure, she could use the help, but a man’s help ain’t the kinda help she needs. To hell with giving her kids a stable home environment and a balanced upbringing–doing it by yourself, she reasons, enables you to treat yourself to the little luxuries in life—like having the seat down and ready when you have got to pee. Revolving lovers. Screwing in light-bulbs and taking out the garbage, evidently, provides a liberating sensation many of us could not imagine.

Now, she comes from a coven of these “strong black women”—women who, against all conventional wisdom—decided that it made more sense to try to parent a kid by themselves than compromise and you know, be a woman and try to work it out with a man. And she passes this pathos down to her kids, who will no-doubt pass it on to their kids, and so on. It wasn’t subliminal, she wasn’t hypnotized—she was modeling behavior. She made this choice of her own free will. Her, her mama, and her mama’s mama decided they would rather do it on their own than have some man tell them what to do. Women like this inevitably end up on public assistance or on Oprah, bemoaning the lack of good men. Or both. As hard as it is to believe, some women want a baby but don’t want a man to interfere how they raise it or cramp their style.

Men –maybe black men more than most—are stupid creatures entirely unaware of the value of their sperm. We skeet wildly with no mind to the name and shame we put on the next generation. Mothers don’t tell their sons to shop around and be careful anymore –increasingly they don’t tell them anything. Young men are raising each other while mom is at work.  Some of these women are single by choice. Some by circumstance. But if women are diligent about advising their daughters, there is no reason for single mothers anymore –there are simply too many ways for women to own their choices. It has to be a hustle for some women afraid to engage the world, content to retreat into motherhood as an excuse.

If we are honest with one another, we all know The Days of the Oops are over.

Youthful indiscretion is one thing—been here, done that. But after a certain age, single women don’t get pregnant anymore unless they want to.

It has been awhile—I know. I’ve been busy.  Many of you are new here—welcome. You have been drawn here to try to figure out more about the author of the Denzel Principle and maybe get some idea of what kind of crank would write a book like that.

Lessons last longer than advice. There is good and bad advice, but what you learn from lessons never changes. Ever. The Denzel Principle is a book of lessons from an experienced man, without any filters. Steve Harvey wrote a great book of funny advice… with the fabulous Denene Milner co-writing. Hill Harper also wrote a good book, where a bachelor talks to other people’s advice and tells you what he thinks about what they think about relationships. My approach was  to be honest with women without any filters or co-writers and be courageous by drawing the story and the lessons from my personal life. The Denzel Principle” is a book of lessons.   As I re-animate my personal blog, I may or may not get to that. But I got one thing on my mind that I do want to talk about.

I think the first thing to do is to address my oft-mentioned “misogyny,” “misogynist screeds,” “relentless misogyny,” me, the “resident misogynist” and the like. Sexism and misogyny are different: Sexism can be and often is discriminatory, but is most often pro-information and pro-empowerment for a particular gender. Misogyny is oppressive, hateful and destructive towards women.  Both are pretty subjective.  However, we could safely call me a sexist in the same manner that you could call Oprah Winfrey a sexist. Sexism Oprah has a distinct, passionate point of view drawn from her life in her skin, and so do I.  Unlike Oprah, I sometimes choose to use plain talk (what I like to call “barbershop language”) to underscore ugly truths. I write the way many men talk when they have nothing to lose by being frank and honest.  I recognize that style doesn’t resonate with everyone, but what can you do? Well, if you’re a woman, sometimes you call me a misogynist, and use this label to taint everything I say. It’s the same tactic black people use when they call some white racists, or gays use when they call some heteros homophobic. But we’ll get to that later. Suffice it to say that here, there and everywhere many of the critics have written about the book, citing The Denzel Principle as an ugly addition to the canon of essays I’ve written for The Root.com that attack, oppress and degrade black womankind.

Ok. First, let’s figure out what we are talking about.

» Continue reading “Misogyny and Me”

With all the talk about Chris Brown and Rihanna, I’ve been talking and writing a lot about domestic violence. Chris and Ri were not married, are not related or cohabitating, so their incident comes more accurately under the heading of assault or another term I am hearing a lot of lately –Intimate Partner Violence.

I’ve been trying to broaden the conversation because I have been assaulted by women, and I know how helpless you feel as a man caught up in it. Every man I know has a “crazy bitch” story, as in “that crazy bitch tried to punch/cut/stab/club me. “ I don’t know what happened between Chris Brown and Rihanna, but I know that studies suggest that women instigate these crack-ups more times than we think. I really feel Byron Hurt’s attempt to get at men who abuse women, because we can all agree those “men” are sub-human. But while he wrote out the 10 excuses men use for hitting women, I kept waiting for the women’s list. I’m still waiting. I dig B’s idea, but I think we have addressed the equation from one end for long enough and found that it doesn’t work. The numbers haven’t gone down, and there has been no change. So it may be time for a new approach. Shaming, blaming propping up the double standard and polarizing the conversation doesn’t move it forward. We have to not just acknowledge that women hit men and that it is wrong, but figure out how to stop it. Trying to emphasize he frequency or disparity in the numbers misses the point, since some much of IPV involving women hitting men goes unreported. I think we have to agree that it’s wrong or agree that there is a double-standard.

First, let’s figure out what exactly we’re talking about.

» Continue reading “Ten Things Men Can Do When Women Attack”

I planned to attend my 20-year high school reunion, but mostly, I ended up just going to the meet and greet, which was the night before. I paid and everything for the reunion, but I had my son Saturday night, so that pretty much trumps everything.

My best friend came by and picked me up, and off we went. Back before I moved back to Cleveland—almost six months ago–he was pumping up the reunion—“y’gotta go, dawg!”—but it wasn’t that interesting to me. There was no one in particular I wanted to see. But the more I thought of it as fodder for writing, then the more sense it made to go. Like I said, I ended up not going to the reunion itself, but the meet and greet was probably as good as it was going to get.

» Continue reading “High School Reunion Rules”

Retired New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan recent skermishes in divorce court serve to underline why there need to be changes in the child-support laws—and I have come up with the perfect solution. It’s a fact: men that make a lot of money get taken to the wash in divorce court, and that makes sense to me: if your wife is a (quantifiable) partner in your success, then she should be compensated for that investment. Quantifying that investment is complicated, but no matter: alimony, in a lot of cases, is warranted.

People that say ‘the child support solution is to wear a condom’ are generally pretty stupid people who would have you believe they were born in a manger with Three Wise Men bringing gifts. 85% of us were not planned. Most of us were conceived in the back of someone’s car or, like me, on a couch in my grandmother’s basement.The only reason she keeps the couch, she says, is because I was conceived on it.How about that?

Well, that’s another matter entirely.

Re: child support, men should pay up, because the purpose of child support is to provide care to child long after a relationship or marriage has been terminated. That makes all the sense in the world. The vast majority of mothers need this money to make ends meet and support them while they try to make a go of it, single-parent-stylee. I’m down with that. What’s confusing to me is the idea that support should somehow make the child’s life on-par with the father’s life. Nah. These laws are antiquated, and assume that women don’t cake like men do. If Mommy is losing like that, and we want the kid to live like Daddy—>shrugs<—I say Daddy should be given custody. That makes more sense to me.

Most often, the amount paid to the mother seems to be more about adult support than child support, and it’s not uncommon to see mothers riding fine, iced down, and find your seed out there in holey shoes and moth-eaten Old Navy gear, eating pot-pies for dinner. The women sometime don’t work, and child support becomes their primary income. And there is no way to know how much of that is being used for her upkeep, and not the kids. So how do we fix that?

Child support should not be based on the income of the father—that’s ludicrous. That’s basically encouraging women to use children like paychecks and lay back. And if you need child support to survive, again, you should consider giving custody to the father. I think there should be a different formula for determining child support that encourages all parties involved to be responsible parents.

The Ultimate Child Support Solution goes like this:

» Continue reading “The Ultimate Child Support Solution”

Sen. Joe Biden has been named Sen. Barack Obama’s choice for Vice President. The best thing people of color can say about Biden is he’s like cold faucet water: you can add any flavor you like. He doesn’t have any rep at all with black folks. He called Obama “articulate” once, but he can be forgiven for his imprecise language: white people everywhere are struggling to come to grips and articulate their emotions about discovering an eloquent black man, what, with his relentless swagger and terrorist fist bump. Obama looks familiar to Us, but to white America he remains an extraterrestrial, and Biden has been to this point as bereft of adjectives as most of his ilk. So obviously, he gets a pass.

With Biden and all his cool credentials and no heavy additives, pollutants or bitter taste, Obama going to add his flavor and essentially make political Kool Aid, which was the best thing for the party. I doubt the Clinton supporters will be sipping, and I see some salt her game that her supporters might throw in the mix. But let’s face facts: Obama needed a white man in his stable. Flat out. I’m not an Obama supporter: in fact, I haven’t chosen sides one way or the next. I like to keep my politics to myself. Suffice it to say, however, as white men go, he could have done a lot worse than Biden.

Actor Julius Carry III has passed on.  Drop some curl activator or Sta-Sof Fro… for Sho ‘Nuff.

Me and Gary Coleman have yet another thing in common. I recently just put my divorce to bed too.

Signing the papers wasn’t traumatic at all–I was more concerned about missing my flight than the dissolve of my marriage. I wanted out in the worst imaginable way, but I wasn’t going without my son. See, here’s a free tip to all you Dads on your way to divorce court: the mistake you, Alec Baldwin and others make is getting the divorce out of spite in a huff, then leaving the child custody piece to be ironed out, or relying on the mother to do the right thing. Fuck That. If you feel you’ll make the better parent, fight for it. Fight like a muthafucka. Get your priorities right–sell those spinning rims and hire yourself a lawyer. And not no TV rent-a-lawyer, or a laywer/real estate agent, or anyone who will do it pro bono. Because they may have a law degree, but very often they will fuck you up by not reading the fine print. Hire someone who knows what the fuck they are doing. Someone who knows that, as a man, once you give the divorce, you have no cards left to hold. So play that muthafucka WELL. Spend that lawyer money. You’ll buy $200 Jordans but not pay for a lawyer? Ok. Truth to tell, you don’t need your kids anyway.

In other news, Dame Dash got his house foreclosed on! I remember meeting Dame for the first time at a Vibe event some years ago… dude was THE self-promoter, talking about building this empire. All these years later, he got it right, kinda. Hope he bounces back and keeps his crib.

Onward

Ok, the reborn Cleveland Scene just had a joint to celebrate being back in style and shit, and had the best spread I’d seen in a while…. Sushi and the whole nine. A lot of stuff I didn’t even know what the fuck it was, but it was crazy-tastey. I hate those small-ass plates they give you at shit like this, so I’ve devised a method to get the maximum use of every square inch of your plate.

Now, look at my plate:

The key here is to put food on the plate in a counter-clockwise fashion and build upwards, like the Aztecs. Food like sushi makes this easier. Plate-building is a skill budding journalist and writers will need to know as the lay-offs are coming fast and furious. When the food is free eat a lot. I mean, sure, I don’t know what it was, but I’m not dead , right?