I’m off jury duty and I’m back now. I was assigned to a criminal case prosecuted by one of District Attorney Steve Cooley’s gang of Black folk persecutors and it took two long, tense and tiresome days for the judge in that case to fully appreciate the depth of my contempt for the Los Angeles County Superior Court before he threw me out. I may recount some of my experiences on jury duty at a future date, but now, I must play catch-up and talk about the things in the community that ticked me off while I was fooling with that stupid court.

The first of which is this: What the L.A. Times did to Rep. Maxine Waters’ grandson, Mikael Moore, is racist, dirty and evil incarnate and it made me mad. In a story in which The Times was ostensibly portraying the 32-year-old Moore as a fine young man doing an excellent job in Washington, D.C., working as Waters’ chief of staff, for no reason and apropos to absolutely nothing, The Times’ reporter writes that Moore’s mother and father (Waters’ son, Ed) have never been married. What is that?!! That bit of superfluous personal information had no bearing on the young man’s abilities, which the story was about, nor on Waters’ House ethics charges, about which The Times is gleefully dragging her and her family through the muck.

Since The Times saw fit to go out of its way to include that extraneous item about Moore in his story, why didn’t they use his story to remind us that former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter didn’t marry the boy who knocked her up and she and her baby daddy aren’t even friends anymore? Why didn’t Moore’s story also mention how former senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards made a baby with one of his non contraceptive-using aides while his wife was being treated for breast cancer?

That reportage would have been just as out-of-place as the item they printed about Moore. The Times’ goal is to trash Black leaders every way and as hard as it can. I hate The Times. According to my subscription bill I received today, I owe them for two months worth of newspapers. I’m not paying them a dime, and they can stop throwing that racist thing in my driveway any time they want. I’m not paying for it ever again.

The second item I want to deal with is that Sam Somebody blog which attacked me, Damien Goodmon and Forescee Hogan-Rowles last week under a headline which read: “Betty Pleasant and her Sleazy Friends.” Now, I’m not nearly as angry about this Sam person’s blog as I am about The Times thing because I can’t do anything about The Times except scream and cuss, but I can work Uncle Sam and his sleazy friend, Bernard Parks, who I believe is Sammy’s source for his attack on us. We all know from experience that whenever Parks wants to go after someone, he does it by trying to vilify and criminalize them — I guess that’s the old time cop in him.

Damien, for whom I publicly expressed my admiration, got Parks’ goat when he went off on him at a recent MTA Board meeting and talked about Parks‘ alleged improprieties with respect to the MTA, including questionable campaign contributions which I wrote about last year. When Damien concluded his tirade against Parks, one of Parks’ emissaries sidled up to him and said: “I understand you’re having some difficulties with the law.” In less than 24 hours, Damien’s “difficulties” became public knowledge and fodder for that Sam person’s blog. Apart from this latest attack on Damien, these are the people I personally know have been vilified and criminalized by Parks: former LAPD chief Willie Williams; former Inglewood Police Chief Ron Banks; James Harris, Julian Rogers, Anthony Samad, Anthony Thigpen and the late Frank Prater. No doubt there are others; I just don’t know them. And I want to.

Parks’ DNA is all over this Son of Sam blog because he included Hogan-Rowles in it. She is the only person so far who has filed to run against Parks for his city council seat next year. And magically, this Sam thing has chosen to cast Hogan-Rowles as one of my sleazy friends because she “may have committed an ethics violation.” Well, we all know there is no “may have” in this regard with respect to Parks. In addition to what’s going on with that MTA thing that Damien is talking about, I fully reported last year on how the Ethics Commission slapped Parks with multiple ethics violations, many of which were questionable transactions between him and his chief-of-staff son. (Don’t we have laws against nepotism in this city? I asked this question before, but everyone keeps ignoring it. Do I have to do everything myself?) Not only that, the District Attorney’s Office has spent almost six months so far investigating how Parks took a homeowners exemption for at least two years on his Windsor Hills home in which he did not live because he had to set up housekeeping some place in the 8th District that he represents. The issue is this: Parks has to live in a house to claim the exemption and he has to live in a house in his district. He can’t live in two houses at the same time and his pretense of doing so is a violation of one of two laws and that is some serious sleaze.

This is Black folks’ business. I don’t understand why Parks would involve Uncle Sam in this. I’m wondering if perhaps Parks has fallen out with Earl Ofari Hutchison, who usually carries his water in the White media. Son of Sam needs to mind his own business, because when it comes to Black communities in this city I own ’em. He’s out of his league and he needs to stay where he belongs. Sam wrote in his blog that I told some friend of his to tell Sam that I said to “kiss my ass.” I don’t remember doing that, but I don’t deny doing it, as those are three words (among several others) I have no problem saying. So, in conclusion, I reiterate to Sam: “pucker up.”

DATEBOOK — The Greater Los Angeles African American Chamber of Commerce will hold its summer membership mixer Friday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. in the Lexus Club at Staples Center. … Ward AME Church will host its free legal clinic Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the church, 1177 W. 25th St. Special assistance in expunging criminal records will begin at 11:45 a.m. Free legal counseling will be available in the areas of criminal law, bankruptcy, employment law/workers’ comp, family law, landlord/tenant issues, personal injury, probate, wills and trusts, immigration law, tax law, nonprofit and housing issues.

Actor Louis Gossett Jr. will be signing his new autobiography, “An Actor and a Gentleman,” Tuesday from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Museum of African American Art. The admission and parking are free. … 100 Black Men of Los Angeles will hold a Back 2 School Health Fair on Aug. 28 in Leimert Park Village from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Health screenings and tests for various diseases and conditions will be given, as well as vision checks and prevention and intervention information. It is free and open to the public.