The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I see a lot of people bashing "Liberation" for being a Queen-rip-off; possessing "awful" lyrics; and/or listing it as the worst, or at least one of the worst songs off Will of the People . While everyone has the right to an opinion, all the negativity surrounding the song prompted me to post a positive write-up of it. First off, while there are undoubtedly Queen-influences present in this track, I see them as much less overbearing than in some other songs - most notably "United States of Eurasia" (love this track too, by the way). The most obvious said inspiration occurs between the verse and chorus, where multiple vocals are layered - somewhat reminiscent of "Bohemian Rhapsody." That's it, though, and such a musical maneuver is far from rare in Muse's catalog. Hell, just look at this album - the same type of sound transpires at the very tail-end of "We Are F-ing F-ed" (another great song). Queen has long been a ma...

Just imagine for a second your child is relaxing at home with their boyfriend or girlfriend. They're in bed, watching a movie, when your child falls asleep. Then, out of nowhere, there's a loud bang at the door. Your child and her partner are startled; don't know what's going on. Your child is unarmed, but their partner legally has a firearm, and as the seeming intruder breaks in, he/she fires. The intruders fire back and hit and kill your child in the process. In the ensuing grand jury trial, none of the three intruders are charged with killing your child. It's almost as if your child's death was ignored. Oh, and by the way, said intruders were cops. How would you respond? - Would you say your child shouldn't have put himself/herself at risk of being approached by law enforcement in the first place? - Would you say the cops did nothing wrong and shouldn't be charged? - Would you believe the officers' word over your child's attorneys and witnesse...

  I’ve long asked the questions, “Why is our nation so divided?” and “When did it start?” I’ve heard some on the left point fingers at right-wing talk radio, Fox News, and Donald Trump. Similarly, I’ve heard some on the right blame social media, identity politics, and Barack Obama. While I personally feel as though talk radio, networks like Fox, Donald Trump, social media, and perhaps to a lesser extent, identity politics, have exacerbated the divide in recent years, this is not where it started. As a matter of fact, the divide started long before – approximately 150 years ago. While technically the Union may have defeated the Confederacy, the Civil War never truly ended.   It’s been said that African-Americans were freed from slavery at the conclusion of the Civil War, but this isn’t entirely true. In the decades, generations, even centuries that followed, black Americans have had to fight for voting rights; employment opportunities; even being allowed in the same public ...

I just received the following comment on episode 7 of my podcast ( I Feel Snitty ), entitled, "Blue Crimes Matter": - "Thank you for speaking out for minorities. It means so much." You can check it out here: https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/e/blue-crimes-matter/

I just received the following comment on last week's episode of my podcast ( I Feel Snitty ), entitled, "Blue Crimes Matter": "Great episode this week!" You can check out the episode here: https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/e/blue-crimes-matter/

I received the following comment on episode 7 of my podcast, I Feel Snitty , entitled, "Blue Crimes Matter": "What I love most about Craig is the humanism he brings into his Podcasts. People often become distracted by wanting to draw you to their opinion that they lose you mid-monologue. Here we find someone who approaches societal matters and issues with sane facts and he does so with humour and cognition." To check out this particular podcast, just click on this link:  https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/e/blue-crimes-matter/ To check out any of my other podcasts, click on this one:  https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/

What do you get when a white police officer kills an unarmed black man via a chokehold? Five years in prison. Oh, check that, unemployment five years later. In this episode, I talk about the recent news involving former Officer Daniel Pantaleo getting fired five years after choking and killing Eric Garner and how the seeming law enforcement-vs.-Black Lives Matter debate isn't as black and white as many suggest. In addition to this, I try to explain to my fellow whites what it actually means when someone says "Black Lives Matter!" No, as Inigo Montoya said in the classic film, The Princess Bride, "I do not think it means what you think it means." You can listen to the episode in its entirety here: https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/e/blue-crimes-matter/ You can check out all of my other podcasts at this link: https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/

NBA sharp-shooting veteran Kyle Korver recently wrote a column entitled "Privileged" and I felt the need to talk about it here today. Since I feel Korver's article is of great significance, I'm going to share and dissect the entire piece. Here's how it starts: "When the police break your teammate's leg, you'd think it would wake you up a little. When they arrest him on a New York street, throw him in jail for the night, and leave him with a season-ending injury, you'd think it would sink in. You'd think you'd know there was more to the story. You'd think. But nope." A good, intriguing start to the article, as Korver hooks the reader with a sense of mystery and comes at things from a rather personal perspective. Let's continue... "I still remember my reaction when I first heard what happened to Thabo. It was 2015, late in the season. Thabo and I were teammates on the Hawks, and we'd flown into New York la...

While I was at home battling a case of the stomach flu on Saturday night, I had no idea what I was about to get myself into when I decided to order the film The Hate U Give On-Demand. The film may be based on a novel, but given the increasingly strong relevance it has in our society and the seemingly personal nature of the picture, it felt more real than other such films, as real as a documentary. THUG (The Hate U Give) centers around a young black man being pulled over, pulling out a hairbrush from the backseat of his car and getting shot and killed by a white officer, with a friend of his in the passenger seat. The young woman is understandably shaken by the event. While she lives in a black neighborhood, she gets educated at a predominantly white school and tries to separate those two lives the best she can. Having to regularly split her identity into two, she soon starts losing herself. Members of the Black Lives Matter movement start protesting the incident, especially after a...

Do you remember that game we used to play as a kid, often referred to as telephone ? You'd start by telling the person next to you something random, like, "Johnny has a crush on Maxie." The person next to you would then supposedly spread that same message to the person next to them, and so on and so forth, until the final person in the group blurted out what he or she was told, which often times wound up being something like, "On September 22nd of 1976, a little boy named Johnny once killed an ant he called Maxie with a magnifying glass. He was then grounded for 2 weeks." Unfortunately, social movements have often times followed the same path as this childhood game and, at a certain point, the initial purpose and message appears to be lost in the midst of varying tangents. This has rung true for the Black Lives Matter movement and more recently, the Me Too movement, both of which I'm a part. I'll focus on the Me Too movement. It initially started as a ...

As long time readers know, I've handed out awards for Douche of the Day, Douche of the Week, Douche of the Month, even Douche of the Year, but today, for the very first time, I'm dishing out an award for Douche of the Century. When speaking with Jim Gray on Westwood One Monday night, former Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka let his voice be known about the NFL players National Anthem protest. I'll save the best quote for last, but here are just a few appetizers before I provide the main course: - "Is this the stage for this? If you want to protest, you've got a right to do that. But I think you're a professional athlete. you have an obligation to the game." - "I don't see a lot of respect for the game. I just see respect for their own individual opinions. ... Respect the game, play the game, when you want to protest, protest when the game's over, protest whatever other way you want to." - "I don't care who you are, or ...

Before their Friday preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick drew headlines by sitting during the national anthem. Kaepernick later explained his actions, saying: "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder." This protest by the Pro Bowl quarterback has generated strong reactions both for and against, with many giving him credit for taking a stand (figuratively speaking) on an important social issue, and others decrying his actions as unpatriotic. Now, while we all have the right to voice our opinions on whether or not we feel Kaepernick was right or wrong in his words and actions, let's get one thing straight - his peaceful protest was anything but anti-American ...

I'm getting a little tired of the us-vs.-them rhetoric we hear so often nowadays, especially with regard to law enforcement and the Black Lives Matter movement. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It's perfectly rational to be both pro-cop and pro-Black Lives Matter.  First off, no matter who we want to pin the blame on, I think many have misunderstood the intent of Black Lives Matter (BLM). BLM activists aren't saying only black lives matter; they're simply saying black lives matter too. Many black-Americans feel like their voices have been ignored and like their lives mean less than those in other demographics (perhaps 3/5 of a person), to the point where they've decided to stand up and say, "Hey, our lives matter too!" So for those who like to counter chants of "Black Lives Matter!" with "All Lives Matter!" while that's technically true, it illustrates your lack of understanding for the BLM movement. Allow me to provide an ...

Like I said, I was on a roll with trending hashtags on Twitter yesterday. Here are my posts from yet another - #WhitePrivilegeMeans, ordered from the most to the least popular (all my tweets can be viewed at this site - https://twitter.com/CraigRozniecki): 1) #WhitePrivilegeMeans not being second-guessed when attending a prestigious college, driving an expensive car, or working a high-paying job. 93 Likes, 44 Retweets 2) #WhitePrivilegeMeans not having to constantly prove you were born in this country after being elected president. 52 Likes, 24 Retweets 2) #WhitePrivilegeMeans not feeling the need to create a White Lives Matter movement due to numerous unarmed white men being killed by cops. 53 Likes, 23 Retweets 4) #WhitePrivilegeMeans never needing a WET channel to view white entertainment. 36 Likes, 19 Retweets 5) #WhitePrivilegeMeans not needing an awareness month to symbolize the successful fight against years of persecution to attain equality. 36 Likes, 14 Retw...

I will be co-hosting The Tracy Fort Show in about an hour (from 2-4 pm EST), where the following topics will be discussed: The FBI's ruling on Hillary Clinton's emails, Alton Sterling and Phlando Castile, gun violence, the Black Lives Matter movement, and drunken hurdling. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thetracyfortshow/2016/07/07/our-weekly-politics-discussion-with-craig-rozniecki

I always found it ironically humorous how most members of the Republican Party countered the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement by saying, "All Lives Matter." In light of their rejection of Syrian refugees, this is increasingly so today. Here are the two groups' bumper-sticker-worthy slogans regarding the subject and how they should be interpreted: BLM's Slogan "Black Lives Matter!" Interpretation BLM: "Like everyone else's lives, Black Lives Matter too!" GOP's Slogan "All Lives Matter!" Interpretation "All Lives Matter! Well, except for: Women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trannies, Muslims, blacks, Latinos, low- and middle-classes, Syrian refugees, agnostics, atheists, etc."

In response to the Black Lives Matter movement gaining steam across the country, conservative anti-BLM activists have decided to start their own movement, called All Lives Sort Of Matter. Founder of the movement, Billy-Bob Redneck of Hickman, Nebraska, released the following statement on the group's homepage, which can be found at http://www.youmightbeahillbillyif.com: "How dare them colored folk tell the world that their lives matter! What about everyone else? Don't all of our lives sort of matter at times? I mean, the black folk's lives mattered when they were pickin' cotton! Women's lives matter when the house gets messy after another one of those Jeff Foxworthy-used-to-be-funny bashes! Mexican lives matter when I shoot another hole in the roof with one of my twelve unlicensed guns named after the seven dwarfs! Them Indians' lives mattered until we took from them what was rightly ours back in the day - the United States of America! Homo people's li...

For as much as they discuss and scapegoat the movement on their show, it came as no surprise to anyone with half a brain for Fox & Friends  co-hosts Steve Doocy, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Brian Kilmeade to introduce the new game "The Six Degrees of Black Lives Matter" on their show yesterday. Doocy started the show off by saying, "As my lovely co-host Elisabeth recently pointed out, Black Lives Matter is definitely a hate group. They may have formed after unarmed black people were killed by cops or Fox News superhero George Zimmerman, but the fact remains they took the mic away from Bernie Sanders at a rally and said a really nasty chant toward cops in Minnesota which resulted in no one getting hurt, and I think that's evidence enough to prove they're a hate group. But just how evil are they? Elisabeth, Brian, and I were talking earlier, and we've all concluded that no matter what the random topic of evil, we'd be able to connect it to Black Lives M...

Since its inception following the not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, I've been a firm supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yes, "all lives matter," but it seems that black lives often get tossed to the side like they're of little or no value, to the point where many decided to stand up and say, "Black lives matter (too)!" However, like with all movements, as well as the police force, Black Lives Matter is far from perfect. I, for one, just from a nationwide perception standpoint, didn't think taking the mic away from Bernie Sanders at a rally was the wisest of moves. Did it create a buzz? Yes. Did it inspire some people to join the cause? Yes again. However, did it sway people who were on the fence about the movement? Unlikely. Then this past weekend, during a march at the gates of the Minnesota State Fair, for approximately thirty seconds, some Black Lives Matter members were heard chanting, "P...

Almost immediately after I stepped into a bar last night, I was approached by someone who wanted to tell me about a Fox News segment he recently saw regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. I didn't say much of anything because I could tell he was intoxicated, the two of us were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, and four days following the death of a friend, I was really in no mood to involve myself in a heated argument. So, as I often times do, I just listened, tried understanding his point of view, but in the end, felt he missed the bigger picture. His major point, as I often times hear with conservatives, was, "Black lives matter? What about black-on-black crime? Blacks are killing other blacks, so why don't these blacks prove that black lives matter by not killing each other?" He then cleverly looked at the opposing argument, saying, "I got into a heated debate with a black friend of mine, who pointed out white-on-white crime, but there's ...