Pitts' Stop

Understanding Michael Jackson

I thought I had exhausted any capacity to feel sorry for Michael Jackson. Watch this video of Joseph Jackson being interviewed at the BET Awards three days after the death of his son and you'll understand why I was wrong. Just amazing. The depth of the man's unconcern is apparently bottomless. "Papa Joe" is a real piece of work.

It's Not Just A Republican Thing

Kathleen Parker wrote an interesting column on the revelation of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's infidelity.  Here's an excerpt:

A wise man once said that love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

No one who managed to get through the torture of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's news conference admitting to an affair would disagree.

Yes, I know, shocking. Another Republican affair. Next thing you know, we'll learn that a Democrat hasn't paid his taxes. There does seem to be a pattern of failure in those matters about which people purport to care most.

If we were feeling charitable, we might say something about man's fallen nature and his attempt to repair himself through public works. Thus, Republicans touting family values can't seem to stay zipped. Democrats raising taxes can't seem to spare the change come April.  

I'd quibble, though, with the (probably unintentional) inference that infidelity is a GOP-centric failing.  After the misadventures of Kwame Kilpatrick, Eliot Spitzer, Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton himself, you'd sprain your cheekbones trying to make that argument with a straight face.  I think it's truer to say - and this may have been what she meant - that when infidelity shows up in the party of so-called "family values," it brings with it a stench of hypocrisy you don't get when Democrats do the same thing.  The odor is particularly rank in this instance, considering that Sanford famously called for Clinton to resign when the president was found to be a lying scumdog.  That's something Sanford, now revealed as a lying scumdog himself, has declined to do.

That said, I don't either party can really claim the moral high ground on the question of infidelity.  To the contrary, the political boneyard is littered with the careers of Democrats and Republicans who could not keep it zipped.  To which the only proper response is to keep  shaking your head and marveling at the seemingly boundless capacity of great men for stupid and self-destructive behavior. 

Somewhere, I guarantee you, some Republican senator is even now hoisting a glass and whispering, "There but for the grace of God..."  To which the Democratic congressman at his side is saying, "Amen."

Into A Nearby Phone Booth...

Those who complain that the president is being worshipped as some kind of god can now relax.  It's become increasingly apparent to me that people do NOT see Barack Obama as a god.  No, he's just your basic, ordinary, garden-variety superhero.

My first clue was when I saw this    in my local comic shop around the time of the election.  But I laughed it off (ha ha ha) and besides, the same company also produced a similar tribute to John McCain.

Then I spotted this just a week or two ago at the same comic shop.

And the coupe de grace?  Check out this hilarious video, the latest from the political satirists at Jib-Jab.

So no, he's apparently not a god, just your average faster-than-a-speeding-bullet, more-powerful-than-a-locomotive super dude.  Which leaves me wondering: since he's got Air Force One, you think he'd mind if I borrowed the Fantasti-car?

And In Other News, Last Night The President Yawned

The trivialization of American news continues unabated.  For the latest illustration, click the video. My favorite part? The "Breaking News" notice at the bottom of the screen.

Rule No. 1: When You Are In A Hole, Stop Digging

Here's an update on Rev. Jeremiah Wright's latest incident of opening mouth before engaging brain.  Note that in all the hocus pocus and flim-flammery of supposedly stepping back from the incendiary thing he said (and if you're not up to date on that, see my previous post), he never even attempts to address the core issue: his claim that some Jewish conspiracy is keeping him from seeing his former congregant, Barack Obama.

Jewish conspiracy?  Please.  I can explain why Jeremian Wright can't get close to the president in four words: Obama is not stupid.

If Jeremiah Wright had a lick of sense, he would take the hint and shut up.  Which means we can expect to hear from him again.

Obviously, He's Off His Meds Again

As if last year's bizarre performance before the National Press Club was not embarrassment enough for one man for one lifetime, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is back with a theory about how "them Jews" are keeping him away from his one-time congregant, Barack Obama.   Apparently, he finds that easier to believe than the much more likely truth: Obama would rather be dipped in gravy and dropped into the lion's cage than be seen with him- especially considering that he now adds a rather pungent whiff of anti-Semitism to his list of sins 

Somebody please refill the reverend's prescription.

Please Read This Before My Head Explodes

I apologize for being grumpy.  But I find myself once again frustrated by an ill-informed few seeking to "correct" me on the question of what conservatives have or have not done in the American human rights struggle.  They've done precious little, as it happens, but to make that point is to invite smug rejoinders based in shallow understanding of history, but presented as though it were Talmudic wisdom.  Frankly, it rather insults the intelligence.

The most recent example: Sunday's column on "racism" and Sonia Sotomayor.  In it, I wrote the following: "Having no record of their own of responding compassionately to social grievance (ask them what they did during the civil rights movement and they grow very quiet) conservatives have chosen instead to co-opt the language of that grievance."

This led to irksome, entirely predictable emails like this one from Tom DeMatteo in North Carolina:

"You are too smart to not know the history of the Civil Rights Act in Congress. You know that it was Republicans in the Senate that broke a Democratic filibuster to bring the law to a vote. And I'm sure you know that Republicans in both houses that voted in a higher percentage to pass the law. So I ask, why try to mislead those who don't know the history?

And then there's this gem, which showed up on the message board from "xavierq" 

"Did you also conveniently forget Conservatives were the ones that freed slaves? Where were the southern liberals then?"

Lord have mercy, the conservatives freed the slaves?  I swear, I read this stuff and I cannot decide whether it reflects simple ignorance or fatuous disingenuousness. On the chance it is the former, let me just offer the following brief lesson in basic American political history.

First off, there is a reason I used the terms "conservative" and "liberal" as opposed to "Republican" and "Democrat." in that column. Although in our modern era Republicans are synonymous with conservatism and Democrats with liberalism , it was exactly the opposite from the Civil War era until the middle of the last century  The Republicans were the party of racial moderation and radicalism (a radical being defined as someone who wanted to free the slaves) in that era.  It was the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who fought the Civil War and a Republican representative, Thaddeus Stevens, who sought (unsuccessfully) to anchor the freedmen with 40 acres and a mule.  It was southern conservative Democrats who founded the Ku Klux Klan and like-minded groups, using terrorist violence to roll back progress and intimidate the newly-freed blacks.

Thus, African Americans voted solidly Republican until about the middle of the 1900s.  Two things changed that: 1) Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, desegregated the defense industry and his wife took became active in African American issues, including standing up for Marian Anderson when the black singer was denied permission to perform at Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin; both actions won African-American hearts  2) Democrats John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson made civil rights a cornerstone of their administrations, even though they knew it would anger the many racists in their party. Indeed, when he signed the Voting Rights Act, Johnson famously predicted it would cost Democrats the South for the next 25 years.

Sadly, he was right, as disaffected Southern conservatives soon deserted the Democrats and migrated to the GOP where they remain, a force of intolerance and opposition to this day.  In effect, the two parties exchanged racial ideologies between 1865 and 1965.

So it's useless - a historic shell game - to talk about what Republicans did for black folks in 1865 as though it has some bearing on what that party is now.  The fact is, neither "Republican" nor "Democrat" still means what it did during the Civil War or even the Civil Rights movement, and it's specious to pretend otherwise.  The only constant is not the parties, but the ideologies.  And Southern conservatives - whether represented by Democrats of the old days or Republicans of the new - have never stood up for African Americans or, indeed, for any marginalized and oppressed race, religious creed or sexual orientation.

That's just fact and it is, at noted, ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst, to pretend otherwise.  If conservatives want a better record on social issues, they should build one instead of putting so much energy into misrepresenting the one they have. 

I hope this sets the record straight once and for all.  My doctor says if I blow out another blood pressure monitor he's adding the cost to my bill.

Really? Is That Seriously The Best You've Got?

The Grand Old Party's descent into incoherence is picking up speed at a rate that should be alarming to anyone who recognizes the dangers of one party rule.  Bad enough party poobahs comically overplayed their hand last week with regard to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" remark (Rush Limbaugh comparing her to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke).  Then there was the criticism that erupted because...wait for it...President Obama took his wife to see a play in New York City.

As detailed in this report on Politico, the Republican National Committee issued a statement which said in part: "As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan’s theater district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills. ... Have a great Saturday evening – even if you’re not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense."

Ahem.  May I just make the obvious point here?  Any time a president "jets off" somewhere, it's at bleeping taxpayer expense!!!  Even if,- just to pick a random example - he's flying down to his ranch in, say, Crawford, Texas to host his daughter's wedding.  So unless they're seriously making the argument that no president should leave the White House ever except on official business, it's hard to figure why the party wasted its time and, more importantly, mine, with a comment of such transparent stupidity.

I mean, c'mon, GOP, surely you can do better than that.  It's like you're not even trying anymore!

 

You Wanna Wipe That Smile Off Your Face?

 

Seriously, wipe it off.  As this story in today's Washington Post informs us, smiling is henceforth verboten, kaput, defunct and prohibited for anyone trying to secure a driver's license in the state of Virginia.  Turns out the ban is not as nonsensical as it sounds.  There's actually a good reason for it.  But still, what a depressig sign of the times...

It's Called Weaselling Out

Homestead update:

tvaldemoro@MiamiHerald.com

The popular Veterans Day parade in Homestead -- one of the oldest in the county -- may be called off after a controversy erupted over the Confederate battle flag being flown last November.

The board of directors of the Homestead/Florida City Chamber of Commerce unanimously voted to recommend disbanding the 47-year-old parade after the Miami-Dade chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People launched a campaign against the city and chamber over the flag.

The seven-member executive board of the chamber's military affairs committee will decide whether to heed the recommendation at its June 4 meeting. The military affairs committee organizes the yearly tribute to military personnel and veterans.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans marched in the Nov. 11 parade for the first time, flying the Confederate battle flag.

The battle flag is a controversial part of American history. Some view it as a symbol of Southern pride, others see it as a symbol of racism, stemming from slavery and the Civil War.

''They didn't want military people to be heckled or mistreated by anyone at the parade,'' said Mary Finlan, executive director of the chamber. ``The occasion is not meant to be construed negatively.''

In a statement to the media, the board said, ``the parade has been greatly diminished due to the controversy . . . ''

The executive board of the military affairs committee has the final say on the matter. The chamber's recommendation will carry some weight, said Jeffrey Wander, chairman of the military affairs committee.

He declined to comment on what the group might decide.

The chamber said the Homestead event is ``Miami-Dade County's oldest and largest Veterans Day parade.''

The city of Homestead had donated $2,000 of in-kind services to the parade but had no say in who would participate in it, Homestead spokeswoman Lillian Delgado said.

Leaders from the NAACP, which is trying to prevent future displays of the battle flag in city or chamber events, were not assuaged by the chamber board's vote.

The civil rights organization is proceeding with plans for a June 13 protest in Homestead. It also is considering a boycott of chamber businesses.

''Canceling the parade is a head-in-the-sand approach,'' said Brad Brown, first vice president of the Miami-Dade chapter of the NAACP. ``It's a way of trying not to deal with the issue.''

He raised some doubt about the parade being disbanded.

''They've just made a recommendation. It's not a decision. You don't know whether or not it is going to be canceled,'' Brown said.

While the Confederate battle flag's appearance has upset some in the community for six months, the issue escalated in April, after the Homestead City Council disbanded the Homestead/Florida City Human Relations Board.

The human relations board had met with all parties -- the chamber, the NAACP, the Sons of Confederate Veterans -- but rejected a proposal from the veterans group to fly other, less controversial Confederate flags along with the battle flag at a future parade.

Homestead officials have said the city needed to remake the board so that its Homestead members would take up only city issues. Mayor Lynda Bell also wants to see more Hispanic members on the board, saying the board should reflect the city's growing Hispanic population. Previously, there had been one Hispanic member from Homestead on the board, which was created in 2002 after black city workers in Homestead complained of discrimination.

Former board vice chair Patricia Mellerson said canceling the parade was not the answer.

''It's a disservice to members of the community to discontinue a parade that has been going on for 47 years,'' she said.

tvaldemoro@MiamiHerald.com

It started during a day of patriotism. The Sons of Confederate Veterans waved the Confederate battle flag as they marched for the first time in a Veterans Day parade in Homestead last November.

Six months later, the Miami-Dade chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has launched a campaign to prevent future public displays of the flag, a divisive symbol that speaks of racial wounds to some and Southern heritage to others.

Black leaders met this week at the Covenant Missionary Baptist Church in Florida City to strategize about the simmering dispute over the flag's appearance at the Nov. 11 parade, sponsored by the Homestead/Florida City Chamber of Commerce.

Among the options they're considering: a possible boycott of chamber businesses and recruiting candidates to run against the Homestead mayor and council members in November.

Homestead Mayor Lynda Bell said Tuesday afternoon that the city was the wrong target. She reiterated that the city did not organize the parade and had no say in who marched in it.

''I'm very concerned that the NAACP has been misinformed and is being deceived by some for political purposes,'' she wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. ``We are genuinely perplexed that the NAACP did not make an effort to speak with anyone at the city before taking a position against us.''

A HURTFUL HISTORY

Since the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag has been a controversial symbol in American history. For some, it represents Southern heritage and evokes pride. Supporters have brought the battle flag to such events as January's 24th Annual Kiss Country Chili Cook-Off and Concert in Pembroke Pines.

For others, it serves as a harsh reminder of slavery and racism. Thousands of white Mississippians, for example, waved Confederate flags when then Gov. Ross Barnett declared in 1962 that integration would never take place on his watch.

''Initially, we all thought this [Confederate flag-waving at the Homestead parade] was a matter of stupidity and all it would take would be to educate people that the flag is a symbol of terrorism,'' said Bradford Brown, first vice president of the Miami-Dade NAACP chapter.

''Instead, it dragged on. And the city of Homestead went one step further and decided to dissolve their part of the Human Relations Board,'' he said.

Last month, the city council disbanded the Homestead/Florida City Human Relations Board, which was created in September 2002 after black city workers in Homestead complained of discrimination. It aimed to resolve issues involving race, immigration, police profiling, employment and housing.

The advisory board took up the issue of the flag display for six months, but did not come to a resolution with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the chamber. The veterans group proposed flying less controversial Confederate flags at a Homestead public workshop, Bell said. But the board rejected that, ''insisting instead that the Sons of Confederate Veterans be banned entirely from all future parades,'' Bell said.

She said the changes to the human relations board, which she suggested, were implemented to make the board more reflective of the city. Hispanics make up about 60 percent of Homestead's population.

The city council will consider an ordinance governing the new Community Relations Board next month and the mayor will appoint new board members, subject to council approval.

The mayor also said the chamber of commerce's Military Affairs Committee -- not the city -- sponsored the Veteran's Day parade. City spokeswoman Lillian Delgado said Homestead contributed $2,000 in services for the parade, as it does for the annual Rodeo and Martin Luther King Jr. parades.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT

Jeffrey Wander, chair of the chamber's Military Affairs Committee, said his group didn't know that the Sons of Confederate Veterans would march in the parade, as they had never marched before in the Homestead parade.

He said he didn't know if they would march again -- but said the chamber could not ban them from participating in this November's parade. He said they have the right to express themselves under the First Amendment. He also feared a lawsuit if restrictions were imposed.

''I wish people would ignore it. It would probably go away,'' Wander said.

Supporters of the Confederate flag have written to The Miami Herald.

''I don't understand why, in 2008 as we are all taught to be tolerant, people cannot be tolerant of me as a white Southern man and my right to fly a Confederate flag,'' said David ''Chili'' Baglin of Cutler Bay. ``The Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism to me. It is only a symbol of my Southern heritage that I am proud of.''

The NAACP and black residents who met Monday night were not swayed.

''We're calling a press conference on June 11 at Homestead City Hall,'' Bishop Victor Curry, president of the Miami-Dade NAACP chapter, told an audience of nearly 200 people.

``The following Saturday, we march. All that we heard today needs to be shared with the community.''

Bell said the NAACP should wait and predicted the civil rights group would like Homestead's new board, which will address topics such as disability issues and specials needs children.

''This board will be structured more like the Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board,'' she wrote in her e-mail. ''At the end of the day, I would think that everyone, including the NAACP, would be delighted and pleased that this Mayor and Council is working to be responsive to the entire community.'' Former Homestead Mayor Roscoe Warren and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Katy Sorenson pledged to use a softer approach -- diplomacy behind the scenes -- to work with Bell and the council to resolve the dispute.

''I'm confident we will work it out,'' said Warren, Homestead's first black mayor, who started the board in 2002. ``You don't want to elevate this [dispute] to the state and national level.''

Meanwhile, Curry hinted at a possible boycott of chamber businesses at a time when most industries have been hit by the recession.

He also set his sights on the November elections. Curry pledged that the NAACP would register new voters and raise the issue of the flag if council members did not ban it from future parades. Five of the seven council members will be up for reelection in November, including the mayor.

''Someone is going to be a casualty,'' Curry said.

It Simply Isn't Right

Some of you may remember me writing (see below) about the case of a man named Troy Davis, who is facing execution in Georgia, even though there is serious and substantial doubt that he is guilty of the crime of which he was convicted.  In the face of his latest legal setback, the NAACP has launched a letter writing campaign calling on Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue to commute Davis' sentence.

I urge you to read the column below, then click here and add your name to list of those demanding justice.

October 6, 2008 Monday

LEONARD PITTS: EYEWITNESSES ALONE ARE NOT ENOUGH

The first time, Troy Davis came within 24 hours of death. The second time, he came within two.

Last year, it was a Georgia clemency board that stepped in to block his execution. Last month, it was the U.S. Supreme Court. Davis, the 39-year-old convicted killer of Mark MacPhail, a Savannah, Ga., police officer, was granted a stay to allow the court to consider whether to hear his appeal for a new trial. A decision is expected today.

When news of Davis' latest reprieve broke, MacPhail's family reacted as you would expect. His mother, Anneliese, 74, told the Associated Press, "I'm furious, disgusted and disappointed. I want this over with. This has been hanging over us for 19 years." She said she'd like to punch Davis in the face. She said she is angry at his entire family. She said her son will not have justice until Davis dies.

Your instinct, faced with such a rawness of agony, is to defer. To have a loved one ripped away as MacPhail's family did -- he was shot three times in 1989 while trying to break up a parking lot altercation -- is to enter into a confederation of suffering any one of us could join in the time it takes to thrust a knife or pull a trigger. Grief of such magnitude confers moral authority that trumps other considerations, and your heart, if you have one, will require you to yield to it as surely as subcompacts do to 18-wheelers.

This is human. This is compassionate. And it is also a mistake, at least where capital punishment is concerned.

For what it's worth, the case against Davis is not exactly airtight. No murder weapon, DNA or other forensic evidence implicated him. Rather, he was convicted solely on the testimony of nine witnesses, seven of whom have since recanted. Two of them say police bullied and intimidated them into fingering Davis. Of the two witnesses who are sticking to their stories, one is a man named Sylvester Coles, nicknamed Redd. Some of the other witnesses now say he's the one who shot MacPhail.

This all means nothing to the MacPhail family, and that's understandable. But the question here is: Should it mean something to us?

I submit that it must.

Last year, Brandon Garrett, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, studied 200 cases in which people were freed from prison after DNA evidence proved them innocent. He found that erroneous eyewitness identifications were the leading cause of wrongful convictions, occurring in 79 percent of the cases he studied. And in one out of every four, those IDs were the only direct evidence against the accused.

Not that you need a study to prove the unreliability of eyewitnesses. Just try to remember and describe the woman who cut you off in traffic this morning or the UPS guy who made a delivery to your home. Now imagine doing it with someone dead and your blood pounding and police demanding answers.

Yet on this flimsy basis, we make decisions about someone's life or death?

That's ridiculous and obscene. And it is evidence of moral cowardice that we countenance the ridiculous and the obscene so complacently and complaisantly, never daring to look too closely at what is happening here. Because if we look we might accidentally "see," and then, by God, we might be compelled to act, to admit that capital punishment is incompatible with justice and to gather the courage to say to families like the MacPhails: Look, we feel your grief and our hearts break for you, but what you're demanding we do is wrong, if for no other reason than that we, being human, just may conceivably make mistakes.

Yes, we owe the MacPhail family our compassion and understanding. But you know what? We owe Troy Davis' family something, too.

 

 

Your Mother Doesn't Work Here

This story is simply priceless...

Rotten office fridge cleanup sends 7 to hospital

   The Associated Press

     SAN JOSE, Calif. -- An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill. Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday, after the flagrant fumes prompted someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in.

    What they found was an unplugged refrigerator that had been crammed with moldy food.

    Authorities said an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess. The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.

   Authorities said the worker who cleaned the fridge didn't need treatment - she can't smell because of allergies.

Dying Under a Microscope

Here's a video excerpt of the L.A. Times interview with Farrah Fawcett on which today's column is based.

Holding Court In The Streets

 

A reader in Alabama, a self-described "middle aged white man" emailed the following response to today's column on Christians and torture.  I found it a very powerful testimony well worth the few moments it took to read.  I think some of you, at least, might feel the same.

 

Dear Leonard;

 

"...I've spent all but the last ten years of my adult life serving the wrong side. Let's just say I wasn't the first person you would have wanted to come to if you were looking for compassion or mercy! Having been forgiven for it all by an act of mercy so huge I can't wrap my brain around it, how could I NOT extend some of the same to my fellow man? Yet in my own family, I have a sister who proclaims her zeal for Christ loud and boldly and yet refuses to see me as her equal socially or spiritually! According to her, when I appeal for mercy for one of the many "bad men" who pop on the radar screen of life, it is nothing more than a kinship I feel with them because of my own past.

 

   In the street life of the "old school', we had a saying called "holding court in the streets." Basically, it was a decision to play judge, jury and executioner at the spur of the moment. It invariably involved gun play and invariably, someone died! The very same people who would sit in those jury boxes, profess the Lord as their Savior and sentence someone to die for "holding court in the street", are now "holding court in the streets" themselves! They either forget or never did comprehend just exactly what it means to be a Christian. They are beginning to sound eerily like the crowd that stood at the foot of the cross and screamed for an innocent man's blood not understanding that "there is none righteous. No, not one". Based on Christendom's collective behavior, it needs to heed the words of their professed leader when He said:

     "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven."

 

The GOP: Off The Heezy Fo' Sheezy?

We had a meeting many years back in a conference room of this very newspaper, at which we were asked to brainstorm ideas that would appeal to younger readers and make them think us hip.  I doubt there was a person in that room under 30, most of us with mortgages and marriages and kids and cats at home and at some point the entire thing began to seem an exercise in futility.  I found something absurd in the idea that we were qualified to sit there and decide - apologies to Tower of Power - What is hip.

From where I sat, the very use of the word illustrated the problem.  I don't know what term young people use to designate that which is groovy, righteous and all the way live, but I'm pretty sure "hip" - a term that dates from at least the 1950s - is not it.

All that to say: Will somebody please tell Michael Steele to shut up?

Don't get me wrong: I consider the chairman of the Republican Party an affable fellow who is likely a whole lot brghter than his recent series of gaffes and clarifications would lead you to believe.

I like the guy.  But he is, if Wikipedia can be believed, 50 years old.  So would somebody ask him to please, please stop trying to approximate the slang of young people in his heroic but misguided attempt to give the GOP "street cred?"  No more "this is how we roll."  No more "off the hook."  No more "hats to the back."  Please?

Does Steele not understand that by the time terminology filters up to people our age, it is, by definition, obsolete.  So to use it is to make yourself that most pitiable of creatures: the old person who doesn't know he is old.  I mean, I suppose there are geezers who can pull that off without sounding awkward; Steele isn't one of them.

A funny thing: my youngest son met Steele a few weeks ago when the chairman went shopping at the store where he works part-time.  As Bryan was helping Steele to his car with a heavy package, they had a brief conversation.  Bryan says, "You're that Republican, right?"  And Steele smiles and admits that he is.  And he says something to the effect of,You’re the future of America.  Make wise decisions in life.

Which was good advice, exactly the kind of thing you'd want a 50 year old to tell a 24 year old.  My son was impressed and you'll notice this happened without Steele telling him he was off the heezy fo' sheezy.  So I wish he would leave sounding like a young Republican to the young Republicans.  Like Meghan McCain, for instance.  She seems hip. 

Or whatever word means hip these days.

Minnesota, You Can Do Better

 

Meet Michele Bachmann.  You may remember Bachmann, conservative Republican representative from Minnesota, for her stunning suggestion during the campaign that an investigation be launched to determine which members of Congress are "un-American."

Not content to rest upon that "laurel," she is back with a triumvirate of truly incomprehensible recent comments reflecting an intelligence that can only be described as Simpsonian (as in Homer J.)

1.   "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back."

"Armed and dangerous?!" Because the lunatics in the woods cradling their rifles don't get enough encouragement from the voices in their heads?  Now they get it from an actually member of Congress?

2.  "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

Wow.  Stop the presses.  New headline: "Democrats Cause Flu!"  Wait, what's that?  You say Gerald Ford was president last time there was a swine flu outbreak?  You say he was a Republican?  Oh.  Well, never mind.

3.  "FDR applied...the Hoot-Smalley Act, which was a tremendous burden on tariff restrictions."

This gem came in the middle of a speech critical of Democratic economic prescriptions.  For the record: American history records no "Hoot-Smalley Act."  There was, however, a Smoot-Hawley Act, co-authored by Republican Sen. Reed Smoot and Republican Rep. Willis Hawley and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, also a Republican.

In other news, in the wake of devastating poll numbers and the recent defection of Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democrats, Republicans are debating whether the path to power lies in becoming more conservative than they already are.

Which leads inevitably to the follow conclusion: Palin-Bachmann - 2012. 

Remember, you heard it here first.

I Told'ja So

I'm not trying to turn this humble forum into a book club (see previous post), but I cannot resist crowing over the fact that Douglas Blackmon's book, Slavery By Another Name  won a Pulitzer Prize last week.  Not that I had anything to do with the book, but I did recommend it to you quite highly in a column that ran last summer.

I found it a remarkable and compelling workand am pleased to see my verdict seconded by the Pulitzer committee.  Blackmon sheds light on an obscene and little-known aspect of American history, the fact that African-American men by the hundreds of thousands were re-enslaved for almost a century after the civil war by a conspiracy of cops, courts and landowners. 

So let me take this opportunity to congratulate Douglas Blackmon on an honor well deserved and to urge you to add his book to your reading list.

You Must Read This

I just finished one of the best books I've ever read.  I've got to tell somebody and you're elected.

The author, James McBride, is well known for his memoir, The Color of Water and his novel, Miracle At St. Anna, neither of which I've read (a situation I fully intend to rectify).  His most recent novel, Song Yet Sung, had me from its luminous opening paragraphs:

"On a grey morning in March, 1850, a colored slave named Liz Spocott dreamed of the future.  And it was not pleasant.

"She dreamed of Negroes driving horseless carriages on shiny rubber wheels with music booming throughout, and fat black children who smoked odd-smelling cigars and walked around with pistols in their pockets and murder in their eyes.  She dreamed of Negro women appearing as flickering images in powerfully lighted boxes that could be seen in sitting rooms far distant, and colored men dressed in garish costumes like children, playing odd sporting games and bragging like drunkards - every bit of pride, decency and morality squeezed clean out of them."

If you can read that and not want tor read more, you are a much stronger person than I. 

McBride's writing is lyrical and elegant, as he weaves this consuming, exciting and profoundly atmospheric story of rage, redemption and the search for a runaway slave who has visions of the future - the future that is us.  You cannot, particularly if you are African American, read of Liz Spocott's dreams without ruminating on what yesterday would say about right now, what our forebears would think of what we have become and of the world we have built upon the foundation of their suffering.

Song Yet Sung is a hell of a book.  I was going to write a column about it, but as a 2008 release, it's a little old for that, so I'll content myself with singing its praises in this forum.  And the highest praise I can give it is the highest praise any writer can give another: I wish I'd thought of it.

Seriously, you need to get this book.

 

 

Putting the "Twit" in Twitter

Having mortally offended the Twitter Nation (which includes my pal Howard) in a column a few weeks back that questioned the very point of that medium, and having barely survived the resulting firestorm of protest from angry tweeters, I am taking a vow of silence on criticizing those who are addicted to the 140-character communiques.  Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau, however, has taken no such vow.  We learn in recent strips that his idiot newsman character, Roland Hedley, is a Twitter addict, allowing Trudeau to take a few sharp jabs at the medium.  The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist himself had a few interesting things to say about Twitter in a recent interview.  Please note, Twitterians (that includes you, Howard!), that I pass it along without comment.  (Hey, my mama didn't raise no fools!)