Charlotte Squawks X: Ten Carolina Commandments bills itself as Saturday Night Live meets Broadway. Since it invites the comparison, I feel free to make it.
Saturday Night Live, after being embroiled in controversy over its lack of black female cast members unless you counted Kenan Thompson in a dress, at last added Sasheer Zamata. However, this year’s edition of Squawks didn’t get the memo, as it has no African American women in the cast. Unless you count the big guy in a short skirt, spangled heels and a bad wig rubbing against the Pat McCrory stand-in. That would be Kevin Harris, a perennial show favorite when he dons drag. To some, that appearance may have left them wanting more. To others, it was hardly subtle and not all that funny. The Flip Wilson Show was a long time ago.
Will the Democratic South rise again?
It was almost but not quite like being in the middle of the action on Inauguration Day. If you opened the door of the restaurant on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol, you could practically hear echoes of President Obama’s speech and Beyonce’s rendition of the National Anthem, real or lip-synched. But it was all a little muddled. You could say the same about the state of the Democratic Party in the South.
I watched the inauguration ceremonies on big screens in the eatery, surrounded by Southern Democrats with a plan. I listened to strategies designed to re-establish the party’s dominance in the region it once owned. Because of issues of race, social issues and habit, for starters, it won’t be easy.