They Always Remember You

The great Mos Def...

Pick Em Standings!

Here they are folks. Props to D-Sel for getting these out. Sg and Dwayne are just murdering.

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Open Thread At Noon

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You Sir, Have Offended My Honor

Via Andrew, Brian Chase gets what seemingly, to this day, eludes people about bigotry:

My great-grandmother was a wonderful woman.  Her home was one of the warmest, most comforting places I have ever been, and many of my best memories as a child revolve around her kitchen.

My great-grandmother was also a bigot.  As a child, she patiently explained to me that the Ku Klux Klan was a force for good (they built schools!).  She thought that Brown v. Board of Education was one of the worst events in U.S. history, equaled only by the end of mandatory school prayer.  In response to a horrific string of murders of black children in Atlanta, she commented that such a thing shouldn't happen "even to children like that."

My great-grandmother was a product of her time.  The odds against a working-class Southern woman born over a century ago being anything other than a bigot were slim to none, but even now it feels kind of gross and traitorous for me to acknowledge her bigotry.  She clearly met any reasonable standard for the word 'bigot', yet applying the word to her feels disgusting...

And yet it's true. I'm sorry, I have loved--and love--many people in my time. Many of them were bigoted against some group, somewhere. This expectation that "good people" won't be bigots is rather amazing. I came up in a world where it was nothing to hear the word "faggot" bandied about. Where those people awful human beings? Nah. Were they bigots? Yep. And I will tell you, without a moments hesitation, that I was one of them.

Catch The Ball

I don't really think Roy Williams is T.O. in the drama-sense, and I doubt they'll be much of a distraction. Still, they aren't particularly self-aware:

"I'm the No. 1 receiver," Williams said. "But things are just going No. 2's way."

"He gets the ball thrown correctly his way," Williams said of Austin. "I'm stretching and falling and doing everything. Everybody [else] who's been here's balls are there. Our footballs [from Romo to Williams] are everywhere right now."

There are a few problems here. It should be said that, especially early on, that Romo was off and he hung Williams out there for a brutal hit against Denver.

That said, I think anyone who watches the Cowboys knows that Williams isn't "doing everything." Roy Williams has caught only 38 percent of the passes thrown his way this season. That's worse then Patrick Crayton who was benched a couple weeks ago. I think worse than that is veiled unwillingness to take responsibility, the notion that he's doing everything, but the football thrown to him are everywhere.

I was just googling around and found this old Football Outsiders post at the time of the trade which pretty much predicted what Williams would be. Herm Edwards was on ESPN this morning discussing Wiliams, and as usual, broke it down to the essentials--"Just catch the ball. And when you catch the ball, run with it." I think Roy will have a big game this week. I'd be shocked to see him come up small after all of this.

Off-Line

Sorry guys, I'm riding around reporting today. The house is yours. Be cool.

Oh, and I just saw that Blindside trailer again. I think part of the problem is a structural one. The movie really seems centered on Sandra Bullock's character. Having read the excerpt, but not the book, I didn't get the sense that she was the protagonist. She was a very important character, but the story felt a lot more collective. At the time, the Times Magazine literally had a cover with all the people, black and white, who'd made Oher possible. Mass market movies just tend to be more reductionist.

Steve Harvey Is Giving Marriage Advice

And he ain't half-bad. Man, Good Morning America is another world. It's amazing to see this dude cross-over, and see the times. You got this black dude giving relationship advice to black, white, Asian women. Perhaps it shouldn't be that shocking. But I was born in 75, we didn't really have that in the 80s. We had more in the 90s. But now...

Anyway, Good for Steve.

Rihanna

You know I just watched her on GMA, and she came off really well. I don't mean like she "made you feel sorry for her" well, just sharp and really honest about why she went back.

I've talked some about this case, and the broader issues it raised. I feel a little stupid about doing that now. In one post I used nationalism to explain why I tended to focus on agency and responsibility. But what I missed is how community works in the notion of responsibility. Abuse, from what I know, often works in concert with isolation and shame. The slave may be ashamed. The oppressed black person may be ashamed--but he isn't isolated from other slaves or other oppressed black people. Moreover he isn't surrounded by other apparently free and unsegregated black people. In other words there's a community of oppressed people.

How do you have responsibility without community? Perhaps, you can, but I can't really imagine it for myself. What so often keeps me in line, and has kept me in line over the years, is not my own expectations, but the expectations of family and friends. These are people who are, for all intents and purposes, like me. In some cases they're carrying burdens that I didn't.

My Dad grew up dirt poor in West Philly. My Mom grew up in the projects of West Baltimore. Out of my father's seven kids, five of them grew up in single parent homes. Out of those five, three of them grew up, for some period, in the projects. But six out of seven of them graduated from college. (I'm the seventh. I'll tell you about shame.) The point is that I've been surrounded by people who were "like me" or, in the eyes of society, "worse off then me" and they achieved. That community empowered me and allowed me to exercise what I so now arrogantly claim to be "individual agency." If my Mom, raised in the projects can do it, if my Pops, who lived on a pick-up truck after his father was evicted, can do it, then I better make it happen. But what am I without those expectations? Without that community?

Watching Rihanna actually talk about being ashamed and going back, it became clear to me that for the abused, women, as a whole, are probably not the empowering community, other abuse victims are. And through shame, abused women are cut off from that community, and often from any community, and sucked into a world orchestrated by the abuser. Put differently, it's very hard to be a nationalist when you are isolated from other co-nationals. Individual agency isn't very individual at all. It depends on the village.

Awse

Heh, from comments:

Why are posters here, and the media generally, ignoring the fact that these results were driven by Maine's overwhelming number of black churches?

Some Real Mature Women, And Some More Of They Friends...

David Brooks on romance:

Once upon a time -- in what we might think of as the "Happy Days" era -- courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts -- dating, going steady, delaying sex -- was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They didn't fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments.

People are thus thrown back on themselves. They are free agents in a competitive arena marked by ambiguous relationships. Social life comes to resemble economics, with people enmeshed in blizzards of supply and demand signals amidst a universe of potential partners.

I deeply suspect that social life, in the realm of romance, always resembled economics, if not always a free market. I don't mean to be glib, or assert that there have been no changes in how people date. I haven't been on the market in over a decade, and very few of my friends are out there, so I really wouldn't know. But, and there is no kind way to say this, I don't actually believe David Brooks knows either.
 
Do people mostly meet through texting today? Are schools, friends and work largely irrelevant? Is it true that there are no social scripts for young people? Or is Brooks merely unfamiliar with them? Did people not meet at jazz clubs back in the 50s, at the Drifters show, or at the beach? And taking Brooks' point, has the actual essence of dating changed that much? Are young people better or worse of for it?

I read Brooks's column and thought of the 80 and 90 year old slaves interviewed by the WPA. There is a lot in those oral histories that is, as they say, old and true. But there's a lot that's old and false. A constant refrain is the notion that the "moving pictures" were ruining young people, and the next generation wasn't worth anything. To be clear, that would be the same generation that gave us Martin Luther King, and effectively finished the Civil War.

This is a theme residing in the conservative soul--a professed, thinly-reasoned skepticism of the fucked-up now, contrasted against a blind, unquestioning acceptance of the hypermoral past. This is a human idea--most people, like those slaves, believe some point in the past was better. And indeed, in some case the past was demonstrably better. But the writer who would argue such has to prove it. He can't just accept his innate hunch. He has to bumrush and beat down his theories of the world, And should they emerge unbroken, that writer might have something to tell us. It's got to be more than justifying your prejudice. It's got to be more than those meddling kids.

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Open Thread At Noon

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Apropos Of Everything

Isley Brothers version after the jump for ya'll still on that "The Black Man Is God!" tip.

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A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

From Rod:

Unless I'm missing something, in the 31 states in which voters had a say on whether or not gay marriage was going to be the law of the land, they all rejected it. Every single state. Even California, the national bellwether state on liberalizing social trends. Even Maine, in the most liberal region of the country.

You can come up with all kinds of theories about why this is, blaming the voters for being bigots, accuse the churches of playing dirty, whatever. The plain fact is, every single time it's been put to a popular vote (as opposed to allowing a tiny number of elites to vote on it), gay marriage has been a loser.

Do I think it always will be? No, I do not, in part because homosexuality is far more accepted by young Americans, and in part because heterosexual America has already conceded the philosophical grounds on which traditional marriage was based (which is why younger Americans are more comfortable with gay marriage). Nor do I believe that the voters are always right. But unless you're prepared to call more than half the country bigots -- and I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, gay marriage supporters are, and let that self-serving explanation suffice -- maybe, just maybe, you ought to ask yourself if there's something else going on here. And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harrassed.

I probably wouldn't use the word "bigot." I don't think, for instance, that half this country thinks hate crimes against gays is a good thing. But I have no problem believing that half the country--maybe more--is deeply prejudiced against gays. This generally fits into my view of all -isms. I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans. Following from that, I think prejudice is one of the many forces that influence how we vote. Hence the notion that half this country is deeply prejudiced against gays really doesn't shock me. 

The obvious parallel is civil rights. It's quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the South could not have been struck down by a majority vote; interracial marriage was banned in Alabama until 2000, and even then, some 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep it. It's quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the North, enforced through housing segregation, restrictive covenants, block-busting realtors, and the federal government red-lining could not have been defeated by a majority vote.

But more than that, the sense that prejudice is actually not a common and potent force among straight people today, and white people then, that the group intent on discriminating is "essentially good" is the most remarkable parallel. Rod believes that most of the people voting against gay marriage aren't prejudiced against gay people per se. That reminds me of  National Review, in 1957 arguing that most of the people intent on preventing blacks from voting weren't actually anti-black:

The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?

National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.

Thus those who are known to be primarily motivated by ethnic prejudice were, in their time, seen by conservatives as guardians of civilization. Likewise heterosexuals now are presumed to be about something more than base prejudice.

Conservatives pride themselves on their skepticism, and generally dismiss liberals as soft-headed Utopians. But in so many ways, political conservatism is Utopianism for the powerful. It isn't broadly skeptical of human nature, so much as it's broadly skeptical of people its agents don't particularly like. Hence the sense that Americans are intrinsically "good people," that this country "is the best nation that ever existed in history," that the South is home to "the greatest people that have ever trod the earth," and that the murder of four little girls in Birmingham was the work of a "Communist" or "crazed Negro," which had "set back the cause of white people."

Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country--like many countries--which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, and gender discrimination. And yet we don't seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination.

Without Bias

I'm looking forward to the ESPN joint tonight on Len Bias. I was a kid in West Baltimore when he ODed. I had no game, but you had to play around my way. There just wasn't much choice. We had a milk crate nailed to a telephone pole that we used to play on. My older brother Damani (Big Bill, if you read the book) used to invoke Bias's name whenever he shot the ball. When Bias died, it broke all of our hearts. Around our way, it was like someone had killed the president. In all honesty, given those times, and give that the president was Reagan, it was worse.

But more than that, I think Bias's death was one of the reasons that, for black folks in my generation, coke wasn't something played with. Between that, and the crack epidemic, we tended to regard coke as the province of addicts. We had our thrills--a 40 and and a blunt--but coke usage was something we felt people should be ashamed of. (Not coke-selling, mind you.)

Don't take this the wrong way, but we thought of coke as some dumb-white-shit. That's not a point of moralism, as a kind of prejudice. We thought of it as along the lines sky-diving, mountain-climbing, and ski football. I don't know if the numbers even back this up (though I'm sure someone is about to tell me.) But this was more about the attitude of the time (late 80s to mid-90s) and the particular group of black people I ran with. The attitude was basically one of, I have no problem rotting my liver out with Mad-Dog and Cisco, but that coke shit ain't for me.

When I got to Howard, you almost never saw people using coke at parties. People did shrooms, and some adventurous cats would pop E. But coke would get you laughed at. You might even catch a ass-whipping for bringing out some coke at a house-party. The shit just wasn't cool. Even now whenever people mention recreational coke usage, I kind of instinctively bristle. I don't really understand coke as a recreational drug. Call it cultural bias.

Election Day, Meh...

Josh Green on the overhype:

Along with tarot cards and goat entrails, a lot of people believe they can divine hidden meaning from the results of off-year elections, like the ones in Virginia, New York and New Jersey on Tuesday. I'm skeptical. For one thing, nobody bothers to wait for the polls to close anymore--the "meaning" of the results has been hammered out in advance. A GOP sweep will be taken as proof that conservatives are resurgent and President Obama's agenda is in trouble, while Democratic wins in New York and New Jersey--Virginia is hopeless--will demonstrate that conservatives have gone off the deep end. (Any other combination will mean a dull night for cable television.)

A year after Obama's landslide victory and the expanded Democratic margins that brought in the House and Senate, the political landscape has changed, but not nearly to the degree that the "pre-" post-race analysis would have you believe. It's changed marginally--and only marginally--in the direction that almost anyone could have predicted a year ago: As campaign promises give way to actual policy tradeoffs, as the political world stubbornly fails to morph into something resembling those embarrassing old Coke commercials where everybody holds hands and sings, Democrats are falling back to earth a bit and an impatient, naive sliver of the electorate is growing jaded. But that's it.

Heh

That DoubleX post got me reminiscing...

UPDATE: And may I add, what a weird time it was.

Racist!

Politico reports:
 

The House ethics committee is currently investigating seven African-American lawmakers -- more than 15 percent of the total in the House. And an eighth black member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), would be under investigation if the Justice Department hadn't asked the committee to stand down.

Not a single white lawmaker is currently the subject of a full-scale ethics committee probe.

The ethics committee declined to respond to questions about the racial disparity, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus are wary of talking about it on the record. But privately, some black members are outraged -- and see in the numbers a worrisome trend in the actions of ethics watchdogs on and off Capitol Hill.

There really isn't much you can say about this story because it's almost entirely anonymously sourced. I can't really speak too much about the ethics of Congress, but the ethics of running a piece like this, with an implicit claim of racism but no actual on the record accusers, rubs me wrong.

Maybe there is some racism here, but I really have no idea, in part because I can't evaluate the credibility of the accusers. I think these sorts of stories run because "racial disparity" generates a lot of hits, and lots of links (yep, I'm guilty) and a lot of heat. The actual veracity of the claim is pretty irrellevant.

What If....?

No not The Watcher on Spiderman and the Fantastic Four, DoubleX is wondering what the world would be like if Hillary Clinton had won. Here's Hanna Rosin:

I had a twinge of regret, when I was reading that White House as frat house piece last week. It's not that I think Obama needs to play co-ed basketball, God forbid, or have more people who look like me in his inner circle, as Dee Dee Meyers boringly suggested. Obama seems perfectly familiar and postfeminist just like me and all my friends. It's just that there are laws of nature no amount of bean counting or feminist revival can change. And those include the fact that a pack of boys in the workplace will blithely interrupt their work day to play basketball, or watch soccer, and a pack of girls will routinely watch out for how each one is feeling every day, and that's just how it is. I know that now, because for the first time I work at a women's magazine. It's neither good nor bad, although I like it better, and it would have been surprising and cool to see it play out in the White House.

Not a bad impersonation of Uatu.

The "throw more women at the problem" idea struck me as unimaginative, also. There seemed to be something deeper at work. Anyway, that's kind of what I like about this comment. While eschewing, as Hanna says, a kind of "bean-counting" diversity, it points out that putting a women in charge would, almost necessarily, make some things different culturally. I think that's true of Obama--I just don't think you have poetry slams at the White House if Hillary wins.

Open Thread At Noon

It's yours.

To Be Clear

It needs to be said, very loudly, that the post on The Blind Side, is not taking a shot at the book. It's looking at what sort of stories make to the screen, and in what form. No one is arguing that book isn't more nuanced. Having only read the excerpt, I wouldn't dispute that at all.

Speaking Of Which...

The Avatar trailer is really visually stunning. I'm not really feeling much beyond that, though. To the extent that effects enhance a great narrative, I'm all in. To the extent that it becomes a show in and of itself, I'm all out.

Story-telling is actually one of my long-standing beefs with MMOs. WoW did a good job of pushing story-telling forward, but it's hard to go as deep as some of the great single player games. I'd like to see the next big MMO go a little further in terms of story-telling. There has to be a way to do something more than kill xx number of orcs, a better way to hide the architecture. Should they not tell you about XP and levels? Should the process of "leveling up" be a little more mystical? I don't know...

Anyway, here's the trailer. I don't think I can take another "good white man save the natives" story. When do the natives save themselves? When the natives start investing in cameras.

A Totally Uninformed, Utterly Prejudiced Notion

I recoiled when I saw the poster for The Blind Side. I didn't read the book, but I did read the excerpt in the NY Times, which I liked a lot because Michael Lewis is, well, brilliant. But when I found out the film was coming all I could think was "No way am I seeing that." To some extent I think it has to do with a longstanding beef about how blacks show up in movies. So many of our roles involve us as these kind of disconnected aliens without much attachment to a community. In a lot of those roles we're often "saved" by the benevolence of white folks.

Denzel is probably one of the most popular black men in black America, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that, in his movies, he so often has his ties to black people on display. His wife is usually black, or he may have kids or a brother who's black. In The Pelican Brief he even rocked the Howard Law sweat-shirt. The sense has been that, though he's walking into the world of "them," he's always repped for "us." He's always been about demonstrating that there's a black community that produced him.

It's not fair to bring that kind of prejudice, or these kinds of expectations, to bear on The Blind Side. First and foremost, there is no one story, no one kind of narrative. Everyone doesn't find that kind of support in their community. Some people are, indeed, "saved" by white folks. (You could make an argument for me.) People have the right to tell those stories. I do think, to an extent, this is about how whites often encounter blacks--as individuals and not in the presence of their full community. More than that, I think it's about how I see the world, and the desire to see films that reflect that.

But like I said, it isn't right to put that sort of pressure on people who are just trying to tell a story. If I don't like it, I should go tell my own. Meh. I guess I have to go see the film, now.

Joeidiocy

You can watch Lieberman talk about his willingness to kill health care reform over the public option. I don't think you should though. Frankly, I just don't believe him. And I don't believe Harry Reid, either.

I was in the camp of people who thought that Lieberman shouldn't be punished for his endorsement of McCain. I was very wrong. Lieberman now says he will endorse other Republicans in upcoming election. I don't see how you allow a guy like that to remain in any sort of position of power. I just don't see it. If he wants to be an independent, that's fine. But make him an independent.

This isn't about chasing out moderates, or chasing out independents. It's about chasing out sanctimonious politicians who'd rather indulge their bruised feelings, than play their position. It's worth re-reading Rick Hertzberg definitive commentary on what motivates Joe Lieberman. Here's Hertzberg discussing Lieberman's half-assing during the Gore campaign:

Lieberman's seat was up that year, and he decided to run simultaneously for senator and Vice-President. Lyndon Johnson had taken out a similar insurance policy forty years earlier, but there was a difference. The governor of Texas in 1960 was a Democrat, so when Johnson resigned his Senate seat after the election a Democrat was appointed to replace him. The governor of Connecticut in 2000 was a Republican. If Lieberman had made way for the state's popular Democratic attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, who would have won easily, and if the Supreme Court had allowed Gore to take office, then the new Senate would have split 50-50, with Vice-President Lieberman breaking the tie in favor of the Democrats. But, by insisting on having it both ways, Lieberman single-handedly guaranteed that the new Senate would be Republican--either by a 51-49 margin under a Gore Administration or (as it turned out) by the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President Dick Cheney. This was more than just routine political expediency. It was what was known that year as a character issue.

A character issue. Joe isn't out for "real America." Joe isn't out for "the political center." Joe isn't out for moderates. Joe Lieberman is going for delf. It's that simple.

Open Thread At One

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Mad Men

You know the rules.

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The Dead Tree Edition

Spend some time with Nadya Labi's fascinating account of a mother and a step-father to take child kidnapping:

Todd Hopson does not come across as the sort of person who would hire a kidnapper. His idea of excitement is watching Seinfeld reruns. He is quick with a one-liner if conversation flags. He clears his throat repeatedly, a nervous tic that may be related to his fondness for cigars. During most of our time in Costa Rica, he wore the same outfit--a khaki shirt with lots of pockets, jeans, and bright-white sneakers. But while Hopson may seem like a softie, his resolve is strong: he would rather break the laws of Costa Rica than his word to Andres.

In late August, even before Todd filed a Hague application, he contacted Gus Zamora, who was feeling the pinch of the recession. It had been nine months since his last recovery. "If somebody asked me to find his dog or cat on a roof, I'd do it," he joked. Gus offered to do the job for $25,000, including expenses--about a third of his usual rate. Still, Todd had to borrow money against his house to pay the fee. Gus planned to take two trips to do the recovery, and Todd agreed to pay him $10,000 before the first and $15,000 before the second.

In September, Gus flew from Tampa to Costa Rica to rendezvous with Helen and do reconnaissance in Siquirres. From the start, Helen resisted doing a recovery; she didn't want to break any laws and possibly jeopardize her ability to return to Costa Rica. Todd felt he needed her cooperation, however, because she had access to Andres--and Andres's passport had her last name on it. (A child traveling with adults without the same last name might raise suspicion.) At Todd's insistence, Helen agreed to meet with Gus.

One day, while doing surveillance with Helen, Gus saw an opportunity to grab Andres. But Helen called him off, deciding instead to rely on the local lawyer she'd hired to regain custody. By February, however, Helen was fed up. She had just returned from a visit with Andres, and she was furious that she could not take him anywhere--not even an ice-cream shop--on her own.

"After I go through all the pain and drama of childbirth, they come and take my son away," she told me. "Hell, no. I decided, 'Gus, come here. I'm not waiting for the law, for Jason, for nothing.'"

It's a really good piece, and it's important to recognize that a lot of the cases apparently come about when mothers flee abusive husbands. In the other cases, the story strikes at something elemental in all parents. A child kidnapping is a violent act perpetrated against the parental bonds. I never understand people who get it in their head that thier child doesn't "need" the other parent. I understand when their issues of, say, abuse. But I've seen this a lot in my life, where parents use custody as a weapon. It's an incredibly selfish act, and in the cause of raising children, it's sabotage.

I Have To Admit

That Gladwell article changed how I watch football. It just did. I can't relish the big hit the way I used to. It's weird, because I think this is the argument that football is about more than just smashing into some dude. I still love watching the game. I still like the quarterback play, the sacks, the running back play etc.

But I watched Felix Jones lay some defensive back out yesterday. Normally I would have been leaping up in the air. But it just didn't feel the same. I don't see football going away. But I do see change coming.

NFL Open Thread

I just watched this piece on Tom Cable and domestic violence on Outside The Lines. Wow. I don't see this dude being in the NFL next season. That probably doesn't have much to do with domestic violence.

Anyway, let's go folks.

Pick 'Em Ratings!

Check it out guys and gals...

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Texas Justice

Rod Dreher offers up some, even if Rick Perry can't:

This is not only a problem for Rick Perry. We live in a democracy. It's on all of us. If Texas really did kill an innocent man, that's a terrible tragedy. But if Texas and its governor lack the courage to face the truth and deal squarely with it, the tragic act will be magnified by deep and lasting disgrace, and we will all stand condemned by our collective moral cowardice

The whole piece is pretty great, and I urge everyone to read it. I picked out this part because I think that the responsibilities of citizenship need to emphasized. It is a weak to lambaste crooked politicians, while doing nothing to rid ourselves of them. It is demagoguery to blame Washington (or Austin) and pretend as though you have zero say in who gets to live there. Take back your name.