In the year of the dragon, lots of men disappear...

Burris not backing down on the race issue

A good comment.

I live in Chicago. In fact, my Congressman is Bobby Rush, and while I am not in the "Cracker Ass Cracker" demographic, my family is full of people who are. I've not heard from any who are impressed with Mr. Rush's argument. They don't necessarily feel the "anguish" as you put it, of this ham-handed nonsensical move (I think that we should ban the word "lynch" from politics unless we're you know, referring to a literal instance. It's like everyone being a "Nazi" of some kind. Give me a f*cking break), but everybody knows Obama is on the other side of this equation and that not seating Burris does not, by any stretch of the imagination mean, that a black senator from illinois, appointed by someone who's not as messed up as Blago, will not eventually be seated.

I think the "now or never" race card has simply lost it's bite. Illinois has sent black senators to the capital twice and we're the only state since reconstruction that has. There's no political race panic here and I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that these men will not be able to create one.

Bobby Rush on CNN

The Cracker-Ass-Cracker Vote

Some thoughts on Blago and Burris

Roland Burris in effect

Blago names a senator

The real problem with black on black crime

The shocking rise in black homicide

The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report.

The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a "worrisome divergence," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.

The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14 to 17. In 2000, 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites, 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142, up 34 percent.

The numbers in The New York Times graphic and most of the James Alan Fox report fail to control for the change in the population of young black males over this time period.

According to U.S. Census data, the number of blacks aged 15 to 19 rose by about 15 percent between 2000 and 2007.

So even if any individual black teen's propensity for crime was unchanged over this time period, the aggregate amount of black-teen crime would have risen by 15 percent. In other words, in that New York Times graphic on perpetrators, just based on changes in population, the number of perpetrators would have been expected to rise from a little over 800 to nearly 1,000. Knowing that, the actual rise to roughly 1,150 doesn't seem that noteworthy.

I don't want to be glib about a very real problem. But  the nature and tragedy of black on black crime doesn't excuse inflation and exaggeration. I've learned my lesson about this, after hearing people--black and white--parrot inane foolishness like "they're more black men in jail than college." Or better still the "70 percent out of wedlock" stat which every intellectual likes to whip out to show how gangsta rap destroyed the Negroes. Glib cuts both ways, you know.

That said...

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong.

Tis the season...

The "Wasn't Me" Defense.

Hey, Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: Halfrican American actress Halle Berry. "As a Halfrican American, I am honored to have Ms. Berry's support, as well as the support of other Halfrican Americans.

An issue close to my heart

The war on Kwanzaa

In some ways, Kwanzaa seems more and more entrenched in Americana each year. Recently, Sandra Lee on the Food Network put her culinary touch on the celebration with her Kwanzaa cake. And U.S. presidents are obliged to acknowledge the celebration. Barack Obama has been invited to celebrate Kwanzaa in Flint, Mich. on Dec. 29.

But all the commercialization and lack of real observance makes me wonder where the celebration will be in a generation or two...

I could have Peter King's job

Look I've been a Cowboys fan since I was five and saw that gorgeous blue star on the silver helmet. But seriously, we commit too many penalties under Wade Phillips, and tend to come up big in the small games, and small in the big games. Love the players. The team, not so much.

What's beef...

Message: do not fuck with the Jews.

Karl Rove on Bush's reading

It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.

By coincidence, we were both reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." The president jumped to a slim early lead and remained ahead until March, when I moved decisively in front. The competition soon spun out of control. We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book's pages -- its "Total Lateral Area."

We recommended volumes to each other (for example, he encouraged me to read a Mao biography; I suggested a book on Reconstruction's unhappy end). We discussed the books and wrote thank-you notes to some authors.

At year's end, I defeated the president, 110 books to 95. My trophy looks suspiciously like those given out at junior bowling finals. The president lamely insisted he'd lost because he'd been busy as Leader of the Free World.

Really Karl? I did that same contest at the local library--when I was six. Anyone who actually reads books knows that reading the words off the page is half the job, at best. The hard part is digesting the book, getting to its essential themes and then weighing them against your own body of knowledge. Look I love books, was raised in the business of publishing books and printing books. But watching a pundit--or president--brag about reading a book a week, is like watching a freshly-minted 21-year old get smashed at a wine-tasting. Only a rookie would set that sort of goal--and then brag about it. Either that or, you know, someone who doesn't really read...

Open NFL Thread

The best candidate for RNC chair...

RNC candidate Chip Saltsman's Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called "Barack the Magic Negro," first played on Rush Limbaugh's popular radio show.

To all a good night

This is painful to watch

On Chad Pennington

Let go by the Jets in August after eight years of service, Pennington, 32, is having a career renaissance with the resurgent Dolphins. Winners of one game in 2007, the Dolphins are 10-5 and can claim the American Football Conference East crown by beating the Jets on Sunday at Giants Stadium. Pennington has thrown for 3,453 yards, a career best. He has completed 67 percent of his passes, and his passer rating, 96.4, is the second best in the N.F.L., behind Philip Rivers's 104.0.

Hold on, I hear somebody coming...

Not sure what this means

Warren opposes gay marriage; 70 percent of black voters in California supported Proposition 8. Warren is pro-life; in 2004, a Zogby poll tabulated that while about half of Americans overall were pro-life, 62 percent of blacks were.

Black Reverend Joseph Lowery, heading up the rear doing the inaugural benediction, has the positions Warren's detractors prefer: pro-choice, in favor of gay marriage. These, however, cannot be treated as default "black" views, because so very many black people of all walks do not share them. Warren and Lowery will represent two variations on black ideology, of which the one Warren represents is arguably the dominant one.

Do Warren's un-PC views really merit so much agita over his participation in the inaugural? Let's try a thought experiment: Suppose Obama had invited black megastar preacher T.D. Jakes instead. Jakes heads a 30,000 member Dallas church, reaches millions more with the television show The Potter's Touch, and was designated "perhaps the most influential black leader in America" by The Atlantic. His church runs outreach programs as well as anti-poverty efforts in Africa. Yet like Warren, Jakes dissociates himself from those who "support abortion, homosexuality and other things I see as unscriptural."

Still, I suspect that progressives' reaction to Jakes' inclusion would be vastly less indignant. Surely the justification for that view would not be that black people, shall we say, "cling to" religion because of the exigencies of their past and present. No--there would be a sense that for a black preacher, views like Jakes's were something to let pass as "diverse," unsurprising in a pastor of any color, with his presence as an articulate and inspiring figure in black America more important than ideological details at such a momentous event. Why must Warren be fumigated against, then? Because as a white person, he's supposed to know better? What other difference between Warren and Jakes is so crucial?

Right. Because, the interwebs have been utterly silent on the role black voters in California played in passing Prop 8. And no one protested Obama campaigning with Donnie McClurkin. No that didn't happen.

Jokes aside, this really is a text-book case of shifting the burden of proof. John literally offers no evidence that the scene would play out as he imagined--He just conjures it and then assumes it's true.And then of course there's the capper:

Black he is not, but at the inauguration ceremony next month, Rick Warren will be every bit as much in line with the black American soul as Aretha Franklin.

Right again. Because the black soul can be reduced to being against gay marriage. No wonder I can't dance.

Of course then you read something like this...

In the 110th Congress, there were 236 Democrats in the U.S. House, 49 in the Senate, and two "Independents" who caucused with Democrats. Of those 287 congresscritters, 74 were members of the New Democratic Coalition, which is affiliated with the DLC. Overall, 25.8% of the Democratic members of the 110th Congress were openly affiliated with the DLC. An additional 31 members of Congress are affiliated with the Blue Dogs, but not with the New Democratic Coalition. If the Blue Dogs are included, the overall DLC-Blue Dog membership in of Democratic congresscritters increases to 36.6%, and 38.1% in the House.

Now, compare this to Obama's cabinet selections. Of the eighteen cabinet members (not counting Joe Biden, who I have seen listed as a cabinet member at times), sixteen are Democrats. Of those sixteen, eight are affiliated with the DLC, or 50%. Obama's Democratic cabinet selections have twice the DLC representation of the Democratic membership of Congress. This list does not include Rahm Emanuel, who will be the first White House Chief of Staff during the Obama administration. Nor does it include national security advisor Jim Jones, who supported McCain during the election.

The center and change

The Warren pick is exactly the kind of move you'd expect from a figure who rose to national prominence in 2004 by telling the country that there is not a black america, nor a white america, but the United States of America (that may be the single most italic-worthy sentence of the current millennium.) The problem is that it is not true. We want it to be and more than any politician in recent history, Obama is the beneficiary of a vision of America that we believe in but which does not exist. At least not yet...

It's been my observation that change usually begins on the political margins and has to fight its way to the center. Organized labor was considered a bunch of un-American radicals for decades before the Wagner Act in the 1930s. Civil Rights groups sat on the fringe for a half-century before gaining enough influence for Truman to denounce lynching and integrate the military. Domestic violence was once a fringe issue.

Groups advocating "change" whether of the FDR sort or the Reagan doesn't usually come from the center (unless maybe the "change" is realizing that there actually is a center.) The most important changes of the 20th century -- social security, civil rights, legalized abortion -- have evoked huge controversies and lasting divisions before they came to be generally accepted (that has yet to happen with abortion but it probably will.)

So we get to Obama's fundamental paradox: how do you preserve national unity and institute change simultaneously? That's a hard trick to pull off.

As per Warren, Obama was elected by people who are by and large at least moderately pro-choice and he had the benefit of high levels of support from the gay and lesbian community. For the latter folks, legalized marriage is "the change we need." On the other hand Obama's invitation to Warren is meant to convey a kind of just the kind of post-partisanship that he promised.

In case anyone was wondering

Do we believe the Titans yet?

Music execs are still dumber than you

You wouldn't make it in postracial America

Kenyatta: "I need a Barbie half-head. Erm, a black one"

Black Dude working at Toys R Us: "We're all out of the black ones. But, we got plenty of the white ones!"

Kenyatta:  "They'll kill me if I show up with that."

Black Dude, nodding: "Yeah, I know right?"

The Andrews

Sam Cooke--The Greatest

The color of change

A useful dissent

By all means, gay-rights advocates can continue to compare marriage equality to the system of segregation, and to compare those who support civil unions but not marriage equality to hard-core segregationists. But they shouldn't expect anyone who knows anything about segregation, or anyone with family members who actually remember segregation, to listen to them. In fact, they can expect to alienate them fully. Cloud has said that to overturn Prop 8 activists will need to "reach out" to African-American voters. But I would counsel that comparing the first black president of the United States to a segregationist is not the best way to do that. There have always been people who, in seeking to make their cases against various forms of bigotry, have used the stories of other historically oppressed groups as props and little else. It is one of the most infuriating manifestations of racist paternalism in our political discourse. Gay couples being denied their right to marry doesn't have to be exactly like segregation to be wrong.

Russell had a record of blocking civil rights reforms whenever possible. Obama has supported non-discrimination laws, civil unions, and health care coverage for same sex couples. He scored a 94 on the Human Rights Campaign's legislative scorecard this year. He is not a "good natured" bigot in the form of Russell, whose false genteel exterior belied a career based on outright hatred, he is a political opportunist whose legislative record on gay rights remains encouraging in the face of outrageous cultural and political triangulation.

Some final thoughts on Warren

Obama reminds me a little bit of Richard Russell Jr., the longtime Senator from Georgia who -- as historian Robert Caro has noted -- cultivated a reputation as a thoughtful, tolerant politician even as he defended inequality and segregation for decades. Obama gave a wonderfully Russellian defense of Warren on Thursday at a press conference. Americans, he said, need to "come together" even when they disagree on social issues. "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," he said. Russell would often use the same tactic to deflect criticism of his civil rights record. It was a distraction, Russell said, from the important business of the day uniting all Americans. Obama also said today that he is a "fierce advocate for equality" for gays, which is -- given his opposition to equal marriage rights -- simply a lie. It recalls the time Russell said, "I'm as interested in the Negro people of my state as anyone in the Senate. I love them."

Continue reading "Some final thoughts on Warren" »

Rahm seems to be in the clear?

And you always fear, what you don't understand...

Open NFL Thread

Nail to hammer

People who are upset about a politician doing something they don't like that's essentially symbolic in nature -- like the selection of Rick Warren -- often have difficulty articulating to skeptics exactly what the nature of the problem is. Simply digging up more and more quotes of the offending person's offending activities doesn't answer the reply "so what? it's just symbolism..."

A brief point to make is that it's very easy for a person who isn't part of the minority group that's being symbolically dissed to dismiss someone else's concerns as merely symbolic and not that big a deal. But it's worth considering how much public policy acts consistently to reaffirm the symbolic commitments of majority groups. If Barack Obama were proposing to eliminate Christmas as a national holiday and end the White House Easter Egg Hunt, nobody would be surprised to see people get very upset even though the concrete stakes would be low.

Warren is not a symbolic figure. He's a religious leader who mobilizes his flock and leverages his public influence in order to affect electoral outcomes. The most prominent example was the Proposition 8 ballot initiative -- as opposed to, say, the Proposition 8 symbolic logo design contest -- in California. Warren used his power and prestige instrumentally, not symbolically. And Obama is giving him more power, and more prestige, which he will, quite assuredly, deploy in an instrumental fashion.

Meanwhile, I'd also note that the people deriding concerns about Warren as "symbolic" are the same people who were dancing in the streets when Obama won the election. When the symbolism mattered to them, they weren't spending a lot of time noting that Obama's basket of policies was really pretty standard for a Democratic candidate and so people shouldn't get exercised over the symbolism embedded in his victory.

The arrogance of white America

I'm confused. I thought the 'electric slide' was about the whitest thing you could do. It sure seems that way at every family wedding I've ever been to. Black people don't line dance, do they?

And because it's Friday

He complains
at my scent and does not think
I comprehend, but I speak

English. I speak Dutch. I speak
a little French as well, and
languages Monsieur Cuvier
will never know have names

If he were to let me rise up

from this table, I'd spirit
his knives and cut out his black heart,
seal it with science fluid inside
a bell jar, place it on a low
shelf in a white man's museum
so the whole world could see
it was shriveled and hard,
geometric, deformed, unnatural

Sweeping statements are the enemy of poetry

For many decades American poetry has been a private activity, written by few people and read by few people, lacking the language, rhythm, emotion, and thought that could move large numbers of people in large public settings. In response to the news about Obama's inaugural, Derek Walcott, who is about the only poet I can think of who might have pulled it off, but wasn't selected, said, "There have been great occasional poets--poets who write on occasion. Tennyson was one. I think Pope was another. Frost also." It's not an accident that Walcott couldn't name a poet born after 1874. And even Frost, who was chosen by J.F.K. to read the first inaugural poem in American history, botched the job, composing a piece of triumphalist doggerel that compared Kennedy to the Roman emperor Augustus. The eighty-six-year-old Frost kept losing his place in the winter sun's glare, the wind whipped his pages around on the podium, and finally he abandoned the effort, as if he'd never really had much conviction in it, and instead read from memory an earlier and better poem, "The Gift Outright."

There are many good reasons not to have poetry at the Inauguration. Maybe the president doesn't enjoy it. Not many people read it. And the lion-share of poetry is awful. Of course this also true of boxers, blogs, novels and magazines.But because poems are supposed to be the arena of the high-minded, bad poetry manages to come off not just as another category of bad art (like bad TV, or a bad movie) but as haughty, snobbish and elitist. It comes off as the sort of thing endorsed by people who say things like "hip-hop isn't music," or writers who condemn every practitioner of genre post-1874 as "lacking the language, rhythm, emotion and thought that could move large numbers of people in large public settings."

Look, there are many counters here. The most obvious being that someone needs to hit George off with Nas, Jay or Doom. Somehow I think George would still beef with me over whether it was poetry or not. Fair enough. But if this...

I drink Moet with Medusa, give her shotguns in hell
From the spliff that I lift and inhale..

Or this...

So now your rolling with us, like co-defendants
No phony business, should know the difference
From suprems solo, it's the style ancient as Moses scripture
It's latin kings, black kufis and white justice
Amongst us, crime invades the mind of youngsters...

 Isn't poetry, but Beowulf (which I love also) is. If this...

You heard holler, broad or dude, we need food
Eat your team for sure, the streets sure seem rude.
For fam like the Partridges, pardon me for the mix-up,
Battle for Atari cartridges, put your kicks up.

...isn't poetry but Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is, than I need to start driving a cab. Maybe I do need to start driving a cab, but for other reasons. Anyway, by George's own definition--having "language, rhythm, emotion and thought that could move large number of people in large public setting"--hip-hop is the most vibrant form of poetry out there today. Even if it doesn't, as I suspect, move George.

[MORE]

Continue reading "Sweeping statements are the enemy of poetry" »

For those who missed it...

Franken For The Win

One thing I don't understand about this "traditional marriage"

Because it's Friday--And Elizabeth Alexander is great

Continue reading "Because it's Friday--And Elizabeth Alexander is great" »

The only inaugaration question that matters

I'm starting to wonder if Barack is going to kick off the Electric Slide on the National Mall after the inaugural. The combination of Joseph Lowery, Aretha Franklin and Elizabeth Alexander is almost enough to make me think this will be somewhere between a grand state function and the Image Awards.

Best journalism of 2008

You're not really a huge power broker of the female variety until some bitchy man writes a nasty biography of you, a literary pap smear meant at once to diagnose and humiliate. Edward Klein, the sort of writer who prefers a book-jacket photo to show him nuzzling a tough-looking canine, would seem the man for the job. Like his earlier book about Hillary Clinton, and like Christopher Byron's book on Martha Stewart and Jerry Oppenheimer's book on Barbara Walters, Klein's Katie: The Real Story proceeds from the notion that of all the forces responsible for his subject's protean success, the least significant is actual talent. According to this logic, the star's fortunes depend entirely on how "nice" her female fans believe her to be; the idea that these famous women might have some expertise or ability of greater value to viewers than the mere force of their apparent pleasantness seems never to occur to these writers.

Owned IMO

Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time's Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. "If Politico and Halperin say we're winning, we're losing," Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters.

The NAACP threatens boycott of the networks

More on torture

Truman made his decision with the full knowledge that the world would someday judge him by his actions. You drop a nuclear weapon on a populated city, it's not going to go unnoticed. So the choice between being condemned for incinerating tens of thousand of women and children within the blink of the eye or being condemned for extending a war that, at the very least, killed thousands more of your own citizens that necessarily surely weighed heavily on his mind.

Bush on the other hand, did what he did in secret, or tried to anyway. If his administration had it's way, very little if any of this would have ever been debated in the light of day. They were too cowardly to face the music, either of their own citizens or of history.

Our latest entrant into the blogosphere...

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the Rod Blagojevich affair this much is clear: his primary offense is not being corrupt but in being boring and vapid. Once, in the days when women had names like Madge and men still smoked cigarettes on fire escapes, American politicians offered entertainment and charisma in exchange for their dishonesty...

Curley. Long. Tweed. Daley. These were men who took pride in their work and gave the historians something to work with. Even their names carried a sort of adjectival flourish. But just as the end of the Cold War took with it the days when assassins were talented professionals (even the failed attempts at knocking someone off -- Castro's exploding cigar, for instance -- betrayed a certain flair for originality) ours is an era of failed corrupt imaginations. These days the Dark Hand guys cannot manage to rubout a garden-variety former-agent-turned-dissident without leaving a radioactive cookie trail all the way back to Moscow. It's enough to make Lenin roll over in his cryogenic crypt were that not also a casualty of the new order.

But I digress.

Blagojevich's contribution to history is a mouthful of unwieldy consonants and the boyish cowlick camouflaging his forehead. Material for cartoonist but hardly enough to build a decent conspiracy theory. Daley's hand in the election of 1960, now that will be fodder for barroom speculation into the next century. James Curley allegedly sold pardons to convicts when he was governor of Massachusetts,  won his first political campaign despite the fact that he was in a jail cell and later served two years as mayor of Boston while incarcerated. Boss Tweed was convicted of stealing somewhere between 40 and 200 million, escaped from prison and managed to make it all the way to Spain before he was apprehended. These were guys who could inspire assassins and outsized shows of public mourning. Compared to that kind of gifted graft, Blagojevich's ham-fisted declarations ("I want money!" "This fucking thing is golden!") sounds downright amateurish.

Indeed to my mind, Blago is disgrace to urban America's fine and respectable history of corruption.

Quid pro quo or it's Senator Blagojevich

The wild and wooly world of post-racial America

Coates,

Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a SNITCH.

LOL

he should stand up and be proud about it.

I don't know if I can function in this new post-racial America. Yesterday on the train to Baltimore I helped a white lady with her bags--and she seemed perfectly confident that I wouldn't make off with them. And now comes news that black men from the South Side are bragging about the speed at which they drop dime. Indeed, what's next? Toby Kieth covering "Rebel Without A Pause?" Jay-Z converting to HInduism? High-end chefs serving bean pie for desert? Actually that last one would be so awesome. The Muslim Sleeping Pill (hot bean pie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream) gone high end.

Fools

Memo to all other married N.F.L. players, never EVER go to a strip club that has cameras on the inside, with your jump off, on the same night your teammate shoots himself in the leg.

Jeebus, the news just keeps getting worse and worse for Antonio Pierce of the Giants. In a minute I am betting him and Plaxico are gonna have a Shaq/Kobe beef going over all the trouble Plax has got him in. But I have to ask, who goes into a strip club that has cameras in it? I can just about guarantee you that "Head Quarters" is about to see a significant drop in business. Ill just tease you with the lead to the whole story, but you GOTTA go to the New York Post website to to see just how bad the put him on blast as only the Post can.

It is of course worth noting...

It's hell up in Bridgeport

54 percent of Connecticut voters said they disapproved of the way Lieberman is handling his job, while 38 percent said they approved. The numbers are the lowest approval ratings Lieberman has faced since the poll started tracking his popularity...

Forty-two percent of those surveyed said Lieberman's support for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the presidential election made them think less favorably of him; 43 percent of voters said it made no difference. 30 percent of those who supported Lieberman in his 2006 general election said they would now vote for someone other than Lieberman if the election were held again today.

Lieberman's colleague, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), also faces tough approval numbers. 47 percent of Connecticut voters said they approved of the way Dodd is handling his job, while 41 percent they disapproved. A 50 percent approval rating is considered healthy for incumbent politicians.

A hamfisted moderation

The great liberal let-down

Liberal Interventionism

...when skeptics of far-flung war-fighting hear that someone or other wants to do more to prevent mass killings of civilians abroad, they shouldn't just assume that what the person has in mind is starting a lot of new wars. That is what Robert Kagan and Max Boot have in mind. And it's what some Democrats have in mind, too. But other people -- usually the people with a real interest in humanitarian issues and the crisis-afflicted regions, rather then generic Very Serious People -- are talking about actually finding ways to prevent people from being killed, not finding new pretexts for killing people.

In defense of torture

For instance: The use of the atomic bomb. I think it's very, very difficult to justify Harry Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in any kind of plausible just-war framework, and if that's the case then the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities - and indeed, the tactics employed in our bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan more broadly - represents a "war crime" that makes Abu Ghraib look like a trip to Pleasure Island. (And this obviously has implications for the justice of our entire Cold War nuclear posture as well.) But in so thinking, I also have to agree with Richard Frank's argument that "it is hard to imagine anyone who could have been president at the time (a spectrum that includes FDR, Henry Wallace, William O. Douglas, Harry Truman, and Thomas Dewey) failing to authorize use of the atomic bombs" - in so small part because I find it hard to imagine myself being in Truman's shoes and deciding the matter differently, my beliefs about just-war principle notwithstanding.

The same difficulty obtains where certain forms of torture are concerned. If I find it hard to condemn Harry Truman for incinerating tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, even though I think his decision probably violated the moral framework that should govern the conduct of war, I certainly find it hard to condemn the waterboarding of, say, a Khalid Sheikh Muhammed in the aftermath of an event like 9/11, and with more such attacks presumably in the planning stages.

More jungle love for the jungle loved

JG: You know, nowadays, in liberal Jewish circles, it's considered a little odiferous to mention that you'd rather have people stay in than go out.  I can't imagine it's the same in liberal black circles, but is it?  Do you get pushback when you talk about the importance of this kind of solidarity? 

TC: It depends what circles.  In New York, you can't really say that.  In Atlanta you can.  In D.C. you probably can.  In L.A., I bet you can't.  The thing is the higher you go up - at least in New York - for whatever reason shit gets more integrated.  In Atlanta and D.C., there are worlds filled with high-level people and all of them are black, and interracial marriage is rare.  It is just not the case here.  Even in Harlem.

JG: It's funny how quickly things turn - a generation ago in the Jewish community, especially in New York, it was just assumed that you'd marry in, and people who didn't do so were looked at as outliers - not Malcolm Gladwell outliers, outliers like "Why'd you do that?" outliers.  I remember meeting a couple of kids in school who were the products of intermarriages, and, particularly in my ethnically-charged New York environment, they seemed to be sort of homeless.  But now it's rude, in many circles, to even advocate for in-marriage.  And by the way, just so you understand, I'm not for in-marriage - if that's what you call it - because I'm prejudiced against everyone but Jews. (Actually, there's a lot of Jews who think I am especially prejudiced against Jews - you should read my mail). This has nothing to do with outsiders; this is only about self-preservation. We've been around for a long time, and my suspicion is that there's a reason for this.  I'm not diving into theology here, but I have this feeling that peoples don't survive the way the Jews have survived for nothing.  That said, intermarriage has in some ways revitalized the Jewish community - converts, everyone knows, make the best Jews.  And the byproducts of intermarriage - well, all I have to say is Scarlet Johannson. (You didn't know, did you?) Black-Jewish marriage, of course, has brought us Joshua Redman, Lisa Bonet, Lenny Kravitz, Slash, and Sophie Okenedo.  As Adam Sandler would say, not too shabby.  I know a lot of Jews who say that if Jews are going to marry out, they might as well marry African-Americans.  I know this sounds strange (it certainly would have sounded crazy to my grandmother) but at least when you marry an African-American, you're getting someone who already understands Passover.

Headed to Baltimore in the Ford Explorer

The Irony of the American Blogosphere

...any book that makes a broad call for caution against a kind of state-sponsored rationalist utopianism, gets a thumbs up from this Conservative. That is the fundamental lesson that we keep trying to teach. But when Jonah Goldberg says so, y'all get hysterical.

The Atlantic should never have put me on

...employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc.

A thought on politicians shouting Niebuhr

Sorry for the lack of politics

...this morning on MSNBC there was a lengthy discussion of Obama's involvement in Blagojevich's corruption. Of course, there was no evidence of any involvement on Obama's part. Nor, despite this being a news channel, was there any original reporting of any kind whatsoever. There was, however, a ton of time spent criticizing the Obama campaign's PR strategy with regard to this issue -- the suggestion being that had Obama adopted a better PR strategy, then people wouldn't be on television making evidence-free guilt-by-association accusations against him.

This str[uck] me as odd. The people making the accusations kept acknowledging that they had no evidence. One might think that communicating to television personalities the fact that there was no evidence of wrongdoing on Obama's part would constitute a good PR strategy. Given that they knew there was no evidence of wrongdoing, they should have ceased implying that there was wrongdoing. But they didn't do that at all. Not, I would submit, because of any failings on Obama's part, but because Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, John Heileman, Mark Halperin, and Pat Buchanan don't care at all about the accuracy of the impression their coverage gives.

Eventually, they got around to the idea that Obama hadn't criticized Blagojevich in sufficiently harsh terms and that the reason for this was that Blagojevich has unrelated dirt on Obama and/or Rahm Emmannuel. Several of them deemed that likely, though none of them had any evidence for this proposition.

With a crime record like Charles Manson...

I was supposed to be writing the most beautiful poems

Let him in

Now Vietnamese-American Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao, who defeated disgraced Rep. William Jefferson in Louisiana, is hinting that he might make an effort to join the CBC. The caucus should let him in, along with anyone else who wants to join. Like Cohen, Cao will be representing a mostly black district. I don't see the CBC as any different from any other Congressional group formed around a specific set of principles, and I understand the CBC's desire to keep itself focused on the unique circumstances and desires of their constituents. But people like Cao should be let in, if only because excluding them causes more problems than it's worth. Those people interested in crafting a policy agenda that caters to the needs of constituents in America's mostly black districts will remain part of the caucus. Those who are just trying to make a point will eventually leave, and once it's clear that anyone who wants to can join, it will cease being an issue worth making a big deal about. And we won't have to listen to Republican histrionics about "reverse racism."

The arrogance of Barack Obama

In Barack Obama's appearance last month on CBS's "60 Minutes," the conversation turned to the president-elect's long-time love of Lincoln.

"There is a wisdom there," Obama told interviewer Steve Kroft, "and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful."

Humility? Obama's frequent invocations of Abraham Lincoln -- a man enshrined in myth and marble with his own temple on the National Mall -- would not at first blush say much about his own instincts for modesty or self-effacement.

And now there are early rumblings of a backlash to Obama's ostentatious embrace of all things Lincoln, with his not-so-subtle invitations to compare the 44th president to the 16th, the "Savior of the Union."

Simply put, some scholars think the comparisons have gone a bit over the top hat.

Start your own blog

Robocop Rap

The new Wolverine movie will suck...

It's tasteless because it isn't funny

And when I swing my sword, they all impeachable

Gaming addiction

As I noted in Daedalus also two years back, taking away the game doesn't solve the problem because gaming problems are not fundamentally rooted in the technology. Calling it a "gaming addiction" distracts us from the real problems.

Thug Passion explained

What goes in a Thug Passion and will drinking one give me street cred?

A Thug Passion sounds like some not recommended combination of Cognac and grapefruit juice.

Gingrich reaches out to Cao...

Post-racialism--the mortal enemy of my career

A perplexing new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama's racial saga: Many people insist that "the first black president" is actually not black.

Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-and-half, multiracial _ or, in Obama's own words, a "mutt" _ has reached a crescendo since Obama's election shattered assumptions about race.

Naming parks after Klan founders

Given my upbringing, I have a higher tolerance for this crap than I should. I know, for instance, that many people view this stuff innocently from a subjective perspective (not defending, just explaining). I also draw the line at removing statues and other artwork. I didn't like it when the Taliban destroyed art it found distasteful, so I think old statues should remain too.

But naming a park is different. It just seems like a gratuitous insult that could be easily remedied without sacrificing art or history or whatever. Plus, it's Nathan Bedford Forrest. I mean, he was selected as the first Grand Wizard of the KKK for God's sake. I know there is some back and forth about Forrest's leadership role, but that's beside the point. He was selected as the Grand Wizard, clearly played a significant role in the early organization, and has become closely associated with it.

Tennessee taxpayers should be proud.

What a way to go out...

NFL Open Thread

David Gregory talks really, really fast

Thought for the day

Because It's Friday...

Continue reading "Because It's Friday..." »

Colin Powell shouts out the Boogie Down

A bad time for the Empire, and other NFL talk

As the preseason Super Bowl favorites struggle in the final month of the season to simply make the playoffs, wide receiver Terrell Owens has expressed resentment toward Tony Romo, apparently jealous of the quarterback's relationship with tight end Jason Witten. Owens thinks Romo and Witten -- close friends and road roommates who came to Dallas in the same offseason -- hold private meetings and create plays without including Owens, according to a source who speaks regularly with Owens' teammates. Owens believes these discussions have worked to his detriment and Romo seeks to deliver the ball to Witten regardless of whether Owens is open.

A quick rant

Because It's Friday...

Continue reading "Because It's Friday..." »

Pragmatism and evil

...through a kind of collective category error, they have alighted on a far more general moral to the story: ideology, in any form, is dangerous. "Obama's victory does not signal a shift in ideology in this country," wrote Roger Simon in Politico. "It signals that the American public has grown weary of ideologies." No less an ideologue than Pat Buchanan has come to this same understanding: "If there is a one root cause to the Bush failures," he wrote, "it has been his fatal embrace of ideology."

If "pragmatic" is the highest praise one can offer in DC these days, "ideological" is perhaps the sharpest slur. And it is by this twisted logic that the crimes of the Bush cabinet are laid at the feet of the blogosphere, that the sins of Paul Wolfowitz end up draped upon the slender shoulders of Dennis Kucinich.

...in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, "pragmatists" of all stripes--Alan Dershowitz, Richard Posner--lined up to offer tips and strategies on how best to implement a practical and effective torture regime; but ideologues said no torture, no exceptions. Same goes for the Iraq War, which many "pragmatic" lawmakers--Hillary Clinton, Arlen Specter--voted for and which ideologues across the political spectrum, from Ron Paul to Bernie Sanders, opposed. Of course, by any reckoning, the war didn't work. That is, it failed to be a practical, nonideological improvement to the nation's security.

Both senses of the word also course through the life of Obama's hero, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was, most historians agree, deeply pragmatic in the first sense. As the cable news networks have reminded us ad nauseam, Lincoln brought political foes and countering viewpoints into his cabinet, creating a "team of rivals" that many see as a blueprint for Obama. (When Kroft asked Obama if this was the case, he replied that Lincoln was "a very wise man.") Lincoln was also pragmatic about the institution he helped end: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it," he wrote to newspaper editor Horace Greeley in August 1862, "and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

This is a kind of pragmatism that to our modern ears comes close to colluding with evil, and it shows how even the most "pragmatic" decisions are embedded in a hierarchy of values: in this case the integrity of the nation over the human rights of millions of its residents. But as Louis Menand argued in his book The Metaphysical Club, the sentiment expressed in Lincoln's letter to Greeley was widely shared: "For many white Americans after 1865, the abolitionists were the century's villains.... They had driven a wedge into white America, and they did it because they had become infatuated with an idea. They marched the nation to the brink of self-destruction in the name of an abstraction."

No one should ever, ever forget that Lincoln said that. Not because it makes him a bad president, but because points to the limits of naked untempered, pragmatism. Indeed the history of black people in this country offers evidence that pragmatism is, itself, just another ideology. Lincoln may well have been a great president, but on arguably the most vexing question facing this country, his record is mixed. He opposed slavery as an institution, but also opposed equality and voting rights for blacks. To my mind, his thoughts on race were pedestrian, ordinary, and unimpressive. He was, in a word, pragmatic.

The true idealogue was Frederick Douglass--mostly because he really had no other choice, if he wanted to live free. Pragmatism doesn't allow you to physically resist slavery as Douglass did. Pragmatism doesn't tell you to flee North. It's principle--and what is ideology, but a core of unmoving principles--that made Douglass an abolitionist. It's principle that told Douglass he had the right to love whoever he wanted. Meanwhile pragmatism gave us one the most cowardly and shameful acts in this country's history--the retreat out of the South, which left blacks at the mercy of a thugocracy.

As Hayes, reminds us, we should be skeptical of those who make a fetish of pragmatism. The scariest thing, to me, about Barack Obama's cabinet is that many of the people who are saluting him, the ones celebrating his "pragmatism" and alleged rejection of the nutty left, are the same people who were dead wrong about the greatest foreign policy question of our era. That's just a feeling, But it's the reason why I get so vexed over reporters parroting the talking points of any administration. Our job is to think, to question--not to babble on about the latest cute handle Obama has awarded to his cabinet.

I think this is it for Jr.

As Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to pick Illinois' next U.S. senator, businessmen with ties to both the governor and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed raising at least $1 million for Blagojevich's campaign as a way to encourage him to pick Jackson for the job, the Tribune has learned.

Blagojevich made an appearance at an Oct. 31 luncheon meeting at the India House restaurant in Schaumburg sponsored by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak, a major Blagojevich supporter who also has fundraising and business ties to the Jackson family, according to several attendees and public records

Jackson Sr. denies any role

Don't pump fake me now...

A spokesperson for a people, for a people without a spokesperson

What if it is a lifestyle...

World of Warcraft is now allowing sex-changes...

Things I should have brought to your attention yesterday...

That so many news organizations would quote me and identify me as representative of a certain viewpoint without even bothering to contact me doesn't make it difficult to see that I am being stereotyped and used. If you are a "reporter," and you are quoting me--in a forum where I can't possibly respond--but not actually bothering to contact me, then you don't actually care about my thoughts on Obama's personnel decisions so far. Even though those view happen to be quite detailed and mixed, they don't care. Instead, two quotes I wrote, out of about 60,000 words I have published since the election, have been constantly recycled used to fit their established narrative. What I actually think, be damned.

Obama presser live...

Especially the blacks and the Jews...

Actually I think there's more overlap here than anyone imagines -- Jewish women have, in the past, routinely been stereotyped as ugly, frigid, demanding, and spoiled. I didn't know many Jewish girls outside of Hebrew School growing up, because I went to public school here in DC, but I remember having entire classes set up around discussing the anti-Semitic sexism of the term "JAP" and how ubiquitous it had become at certain colleges. The whole joke of that "shiksappeal" routine on Seinfeld back in the day was that, while Jewish men think Jewish women are kind of meh, Jewish men find shiksas (non-Jewish women) irresistible. One can read Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, as virtual companion pieces. In both there's a notion of idealized white womanhood that excludes Jewish women and black women...

There's frustration over the way Jewish women are often stereotyped, but I don't get the impression that there are many Jewish women who read Jewish men dating non-Jewish women the way some black women look at black men dating interracially. It's more that, in general, there are a lot of sexist and anti-Semitic notions of how Jewish women are that people still seem to subscribe to, and a standard of beauty that says it's better to look like Scarlett Johansson than Rachel Weisz, just like some people still think it's better to look like Mariah Carey than Megan Good.

The man who dropped dime

The identity of another important figure in the case against Mr. Blagojevich, known only as "Individual A" in the complaint, also became apparent on Wednesday. Law enforcement officials said he was John Wyma, a lobbyist, fund-raiser and close adviser to Mr. Blagojevich, who went to the federal authorities in October with a tale of corruption that helped lead to the use of wiretaps on Mr. Blagojevich and eventually the governor's arrest on Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes.

Mr. Wyma's assertions did not center on the vacant Senate seat but on different accusations of corruption included in the case against Mr. Blagojevich. The lobbyist said Mr. Blagojevich was improperly squeezing recipients of state aid for large contributions in an attempt to amass a $2.5 million campaign fund before Jan. 1, when a new state law takes effect barring contributions from state contractors.

PTI guys on Clinton Portis v Jim Zorn

JJ Jr.'s presser

Mike Huckabee scares me...

I study white people, I'm writing a paper on you...

Racist Obama rap song..

There will always be books

I'm sorry Ms. Jackson

That's just the thing. Someone like Jackson should have known Blago was radioactive. Hell, I knew just from reading the blogs and I live on the East Coast. For someone in Ill. Democratic political circles not to know it is just as astounding as Blago's conduct.

Flipping the script on race

"The biggest challenges we face right now in improving race relations have to do with the universal concerns of Americans across color lines," [Obama] said. "If we are creating jobs throughout this economy, then African-Americans and Latinos, who are disproportionately unemployed, are going to be swept up in that rising tide."

"I think that more than anything is going to improve race relations," he said, "a sense of common purpose.''

Another one of those uncomfortable "interracial" posts

Black women who oppose interacial dating have different reasons than most. I think it's closer to the manner in which some Jewish women must hate the idea of a Shiksa. But even that doesn't quite get it. The opposition comes out of a specific, and yet broad, historical experience of never being held up as anyone's flower of virtuosity, but instead as un-feminine and oversexed.

I'd have to disagree with Coates and say that his comparison does "get it." Jewish women can look to a "specific, and yet broad historical experience" that's unpleasant from all angles. Jewish women have been stereotyped as whores (by 19th century European Christian men) and as prudes (by 20th century American Jewish men). Historically, oppression of Jews has led to rape of Jewish women, as has oppression of blacks led to the equivalent situation. And of course, as Coates implies, things look better for exogamy-friendly black and Jewish men than for their female counterparts.

The word shiksa is derived from the Hebrew term sheketz, which means "abomination," "impure," or "object of loathing", depending on the translator.^[1]

Despite its etymology, the term shiksa is widely used and accepted in the United States, where it is often used in a humorous way.

The word "siksa" (pronounced "shiksa") in Polish Gentile culture is a pejorative (but often teasing or affectionate) word for an immature young girl or teenager. It literally means "pisspants" and is roughly equivalent to the Engish terms "snot-nosed brat", "young squirt" or "young goat" ("kid").

Although it has Hebrew origins, it was conflated with the Polish word "sikać" ("to urinate") and is therefore a false cognate that is actually equivalent to the Yiddish word "pisher".

Frankly folks, I'm out of my league here. I want to hear more. Is there any resonance between how black women and Jewish women see themselves? Does any of that extend to inter-ethnic dating? Which reminds. We have a spokesperson for the Whites and for the blacks. We really need one for the Jews. I think Joe Leiberman works.

From the department of laying down with dogs...

Joe Wurzelbacher lashed out Tuesday at former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, the man who made Wurzelbacher famous as "Joe the Plumber."

Wurzelbacher told conservative radio host Glenn Beck that he felt "dirty" after "being on the campaign trail and seeing some of the things that take place."

Recalling a conversation he had with McCain about the $700 billion financial industry bailout in September, Wurzelbacher said: "When I was on the bus with him, I asked him a lot of questions about the bailout because most Americans did not want that to happen."

"I asked him some pretty direct questions," he continued. "Some of the answers you guys are gonna receive -- they appalled me, absolutely. I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him."

Asked why he didn't leave McCain's campaign if he was "appalled" by the candidate, Wurzelbacher said, "honestly, because the thought of Barack Obama as president scares me even more."

Blago, Blago, Blago

I really hope it isn't Jr.

Can we watch Voltron now?

Start your own blog

About that Blago/Obama connect...

He also appears to think little of the president-elect, whom he calls a "motherf***er" at one point.  

"F**k him," Blagjoveich says of Obama during a lengthy call with top aides and his wife recorded on November 10th, "For nothing? F**k him."

In another section of the complaint, Blagojevich expresses exasperation that Obama and his team aren't willing to offer him an inducement in exchange for appointing  an aide, apparently Valerie Jarrett, to the Senate. Blagojevich "said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but 'they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F**k them,'" says the complaint.

In the words of Avon Barksdale, Governor, they seent your ghetto-ass coming from a mile away. I wonder if this is why Valerie Jarrett pulled out. I swear the last year has been one big blaxploitation flick. Without the guns. And without the white girls...

Warcraft vs. Your Girlfriend

Ashley, you have never been willing to accommodate my World of Warcraft needs, or even to compromise the slightest bit. Last month, when your mother was in a car accident, you called and not only demanded I drive you to the hospital but insisted I stay there to provide "emotional support"--despite knowing full well that I had booked that evening off to fight forest trolls in Zul'Aman. When I suggested you take a cab and that I join you in three to four hours, you unleashed a string of expletives that even my therapist found disturbing. You also refused to wait until we finished off the eagle boss, the one who drops the helm piece I have been trying to get for months.

For the record she turned out fine anyway. Many paraplegics lead rich and rewarding lives.

Also, what you stumbled upon me doing with that Level 64 blood elf in the back room of the Silvermoon City Inn was neither "sick and perverted" nor "cheating on you." We were role-playing. That I called you by her character's name later that evening was just a weird coincidence. I do not wish your body looked like that. You and I both know that it's physically impossible for humans to have those proportions, at least while retaining all of their internal organs.

Gubernatorial Fail

Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested by federal authorities on Tuesday morning on corruption charges, including an allegation that he conspired to effectively sell President-elect Barack Obama's seat in the United States Senate to the highest bidder.

Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, called his sole authority to name Mr. Obama's successor "golden," and he sought to parlay it into a job as an ambassador or secretary of Health and Human Services, or a high-paying position at a nonprofit or an organization connected to labor unions, prosecutors said.

He also suggested, they said, that in exchange for the Senate appointment, his wife could be placed on corporate boards where she might earn as much as $150,000 a year, and he tried to gain promises of money for his campaign fund.

If Mr. Blagojevich could not secure a deal to his liking, prosecutors said, he was willing to appoint himself.

Incredible. Blagojevich was already under investigation. And then he tries to sell Obama's Senate seat? I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. This dude tried to auction the Senate seat of the President-Elect of the United States. Wow. They haven't even invented a machine that can calculate the Fail Factor here. I do believe we have gone to Interstellar Fail. Intergalactic, perhaps.

Again with the cucumber sandwiches...

Can we stop with the "cucumber sandwiches" bit? I have never had a cucumber sandwich, and I don't know anyone who has.

I have kept silent in the past, but now I must object to this campaign by some African Americans to demonize cucumber sandwiches. I'm as white as they come, and I find the taste of cucumbers disgusting. But I feel honor bound to defend this vegetable from the attacks of certain radical black ideologues.

This unjustified savaging of an innocent vegetable -- which was first cultivated by brown-skinned people in India -- is particularly ironic, given that the cucumber is a member of the same family (Cucurbitaceae) as the watermelon.

From DougEMI:

I feel like I am selling out my people because I have never had a cucumber sandwich. I would assume you use mayo instead of miracle whip to make more WASPy.

I am determined to get cucumbers next time I go shopping

Goeffrey Canada on the Colbert Report

He's Black. Get over it.

If identifying biracial people as black "validates the separation of the races" then there is perhaps no one contributing more to the cause of these neo-segregationists than Barack Obama himself. "My view has always been that I'm African-American," Obama told Chicago Tribune reporter Dawn Turner Trice back in 2004. "African Americans by definition, we're a hybrid people." In seeking a validation of her own ideas about race and racial identity, and by casting Obama as the victim of a reductive racial vocabulary, Arenas simply ignores the will of her subject. But racial categories are only unjust insofar as they prevent people from identifying how they wish. Arenas is doing exactly what she is attempting to prevent, forcing Obama into the racial category of her, rather than his own, choosing...

There is a strain of paternalism, manifested in Arenas' op-ed, that seeks to define African-American culture solely within the context of oppression. Viewed in this light, all black cultural idiosyncrasies are the result of persecution, and are therefore cultural pathologies. It's not that black folks really like soul food, it's that we are drawn to it by historical trauma. If we only understood our tragic condition, we would all be eating cucumber sandwiches and Special K, jamming to Coldplay instead of Jay-Z. Likewise, we need to be emancipated from the antiquated definitions of American blackness that include everyone from the blond, blue-eyed Walter White to Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey. Except such analysis ignores the cultural, intellectual, and artistic traditions that evolved from such oppression, and therefore is unable to appraise their value.

The Curse of Doug Flutie

The only flakes floating around football today are the folks who no longer believe in the Curse of Doug Flutie. The Curse is alive and well and stronger than ever, casting its web of defeat around anyone who employs the architect of the Curse, Wade Phillips, and rewarding those teams that free itself of his shackles of ignorance.

If you didn't believe in the Curse before, this is a good time to grab an oboe or sousaphone and hop on the bandwagon. After all, some phenomena are beyond the explanation of logic, science, human perception or, even, the blind, sober reasoning of the Cold, Hard Football Facts.

San Diego employed Phillips from 2004 to 2006 - a period during which the Chargers failed to win a playoff game and suffered two humiliating postseason losses at home to inferior foes. In the 2004 wildcard playoffs, Chargers kicker Nick Kaeding missed an easy 39-yard field goal in overtime, allowing the underdog Jets to pull out a shocking 20-17 victory in San Diego. Last year, the Chargers were 14-2, the AFC's No. 1 seed and undefeated at home when they suffered an improbable 24-21 loss to a 12-4 New England team that did everything in its power to lose (including three picks thrown by Tom Brady) but somehow came out on the winning end.

Continue reading "The Curse of Doug Flutie" »

One last non-story

Billy Dee Williams says, "Step away from the minister..."

President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend church services since winning the White House earlier this month, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.

On the three Sundays since his election, Obama has instead used his free time to get in workouts at a Chicago gym.

Asked about the president-elect's decision to not attend church, a transition aide noted that the Obamas valued their faith experience in Chicago but were concerned about the impact their large retinue may have on other parishioners.

This is the kind of reporting one would expect from the Christian Broadcast Network, whose editors and reporters presumably view less than weekly religious observance as an offense against God, and as a sign of moral depravity in a public official, but why is this presumably secular publication making such a big deal about it? I regard as an invasion of Obama's privacy.

If nothing else, the tone of the responses reflect how defensive the left still is on faith. The Media Matters post was four times longer than my item, and I don't really think that a single story and a blog item constitute "such a big deal."

I've lost interest...

Fear of a broke planet

The other day, I got in a cab and there was a news report on the back seat television about soaring unemployment in New York. An info-screen on an ascending elevator ride in Manhattan suggested that we were all only going one way -- down. The news zippers in Times Square were full of reports of crumbling consumer confidence even as people streamed in to the stores beneath them.

Once I made it to my office, it got worse. An RSS feed from Reuters was waiting on my desktop saying, "U.S. employers axed 533,000 jobs from payrolls in November, the most in 34 years." My e-mail inbox not only included a note from a friend that she had been laid off, but it was flanked by contextual ads from Google labeled "Unemployed?"

I have a pal who is persistently I.M.-ing me because he is at loose ends after being laid off, and my social networks are rife with digital fretting and various versions of, 'Did you hear about so-and-so?' Why, yes I did. Over and over.

Every modern recession includes a media séance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in. The same digital dynamics that drove the irrational exuberance -- and marketed the loans to help it happen -- are now driving the downside in unprecedented ways.

The recession was actually not officially declared until last week, but the psychology that drives it had already been e-mailed, blogged and broadcast for months. I used to worry that my TiVo thought I was gay -- doesn't everyone enjoy a little "Project Runway" at the end of a long, hard week? Now I worry that my browser knows I am about to lose my job.

I guess this means no play-dates, huh Rod?

As for me, I don't care what color you are, if you're a kid who listens to hip-hop, I don't want my kids playing with you. I want my kids to have consciences that find hip-hop's lyrical content and themes repulsive. Which is to say, I want my kids to have a strong and uncompromising sense of character.

Symbols matter

I missed this...

Video games and torture

...Now while this means that WotLK is not yet torture for me, there is some torture involved. Specifically, this quest. Basically, you have to take some kind of cow poke and zap a prisoner until he talks...

I did zap him, pretty well in disbelief -- I thought that surely the quest-giver would step in and stop it at some point? It didn't happen, though. Unless there's some kind of awful consequence further down the line, it would seem that Blizzard's designers are OK with breaking the Geneva convention.

Pretty much no matter how you treat this, issues happen. If you, as Bartle suggests, give some kind of "opt-out" reaction to enable an in-character revulsion to torture, you just stuck a deep political statement into a game where dwarves tool around on Harleys and one of the first NPCs you see as a deathknight is called "Siouxie the Banshee". If you *don't*, you just trivialized a deep political statement, or more damningly, shown you don't really have an opinion on the subject.

Which is all very ironic considering that games like World of Warcraft are all about slaughtering millions of creatures so you can take their stuff and get more powerful so you can take more stuff from more creatures you slaughter. In that context poking people with a painstick before you slaughter them seems like a minor issue.

Continue reading "Video games and torture" »

The case against Eric Shinseki

From everything I've heard, Eric Shinseki is an admirable and decent man and deserves commendation for his service aside from having been visionary about stabilizing postwar Iraq.

That said, in my year-and-a-half since putting on ACUs [Army Combat Uniforms] I've heard only bad things said about him by the rank and file, and that's for something unrelated to Iraq: Shinseki is apparently the genius who decided that we should all wear the beret (which is useless as it provides no shade or or rain or wind protection, and particularly nasty because it takes two hands to put on right, and weighs a ton when wet) as part of our regular uniform in garrison.  For that, well, I resent the dude a little as do I think most soldiers.

Here's one other point that is not as widely known as Rumfeld's and Wolfowitz's bullying of Shinseki: Despite being unfairly treated, despite being 100% vindicated by subsequent events, Shinseki kept his grievances entirely to himself. Although my book contains accounts of Shinseki's inside arguents with Rumsfeld et al, and his discussions with his own staff, zero of that information came from Shinseki.

I made a complete nuisance of myself requesting an interview, or a phone conversation, or an email exchange, or even some "you're getting warmer" guidance from him. Nothing doing, in any way. (I did track him down at an ROTC commissioning ceremony where he was speaking; he greeted me politely, but that was it.) I am confident in the accounts I presented, which came from a variety of first-hand participants; but Shinseki, who could have had a lucrative career on the talk show/lecture circuit giving "I told you so" presentations, has not indulged that taste at all.

Hope all is well, kiss the plantiff and the wifey...

Change clothes, and go...

NFL Open Thread

Shinseki to Vet. Affairs

Read this story...

 A fighter's dressing room before a fight is a study in controlled anxiety. Some men pace, others hide. Inside Rampage's windowless dressing room, Ibarra is pacing around on the beige industrial carpet. Rampage's championship belts are laid out on the couch.

In the center of the room, Rampage is being stretched by three men. The hood of his sweatshirt is pulled up over his head as the men quietly work him over. "Push on my leg," Jackson demands. The men push down his butt and massage his shoulders, slowly and deeply, in preparation for the beating he will take. Jackson grunts softly. After a while, the stillness of the scene, and the occasional muffled sounds from the black-clad figure, take on the feel of a solemn ritual passage from one state of being to another, like the male equivalent of giving birth...

Ibarra looks at his watch. "Champ, can I have a word with you please?" he says, drawing the fighter into the bathroom for a quick conference. Rampage emerges 30 seconds later and clasps hands with each of the men who have helped him prepare for the fight. "I just want to thank all of you guys," he says, the emotion in his voice fighting with the imperative to save every last drop of his energy for the ring.

"Can I have a sip of water?" he asks Ibarra. As the fighter holds a disposable plastic cup of water between his gloves, Ibarra smears Vaseline on the outside of his wristband to apply to the fighter's face between rounds. The room falls silent again. The only sound is Rampage's slow, deep breathing.

"Do you hear that rhythm?" Ibarra asks me. "That's his rhythm." The fighter takes off his hood to reveal a shaved head, and practices another clinch with Chris. He howls like a wolf, and then breathes deeply. "I need some more water," he says. The fighter looks over at me and gives me a long stare.

Ibarra gathers everyone together in the center of the room.

"Let's pray, fellows," he says, before asking for "no injuries, and victory in Jesus' name." The commission man raises up his head to speak.

"You got about two minutes before that walk," he says. "Two minutes before that walk."

Zach, Ibarra's assistant, takes Rampage's chain and wraps it around his neck. At the last minute, Ibarra grabs a scissors and cuts open the cuffs of Rampage's sweatshirt so he will be able to lift it over his head when he enters the ring, and then everyone goes out the door and into the cement-block corridor that leads to the ring. His hood is off as he readies himself for the plunge through the black curtain and into the sold-out arena filled with more than 11,000 screaming fans. Ibarra stops him. "Hey, Burt, he's the champion, he doesn't go in first," he calls out to the man in charge of logistics. "The champ goes in second."

Rampage puts his hood back over his head and waits, a hulking, solitary figure breathing in and out in the fluorescent light...

Sorry for the lengthy quote. Read the piece. And then subscribe to the magazine. It's a beautiful thing these guys do.

And because it's Friday

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

Out in the streets, they call it murder

This is real talk

Because It's Friday...

A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and Black people
call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will. 

Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air. 

We are beautiful people
With African imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with African eyes, and noses, and arms
tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun. 

We have been captured,
and we labor to make our getaway, into
the ancient image; into a new 

Correspondence with ourselves
and our Black family. We need magic
now we need the spells, to raise up
return, destroy,and create. What will be 

the sacred word?

Why bother

Continue reading "Why bother" »

Water break

Spoiler Test

Understanding the black anti-gay marriage sentiment

I do not approach this topic from a religious standpoint but as one of the Black Yes on 8 voters from LA County I simply disagree with everyone here....

People make the argument that a stable gay relationship is just as good as a stable heterosexual one. I can see that argument. However...

I think children growing up in a gay household is as harmful to their sensibilities (i.e. - thinking that it is acceptable and normal) as children growing up in a household where the parents are swingers or the hetero parent has a different man or woman in their bed every week.

Courts take away parental rights for that kind of behavior... But we are supposed to think that children growing up in a gay household is ok?

Black people know first hand how dysfunctional family units can destroy a community. If we redefine marriage as being between essentially between anyone and anyone, what further damage do we want to do to an institution already on the decline in this country?

Continue reading "Understanding the black anti-gay marriage sentiment" »

The politics of The Wire (again)

To the extent many liberals try to explain all of the problems of poor blacks on racism, the show was a powerful rebuttal.

t's a testament to the genius of the show that its depiction of Baltimore (and by extension, America) offers fodder for liberal, conservative, leftist and libertarian readings - much like reality itself! In this sense, The Wire is the rarest and most precious of beasts: A work of art that's intensely political but rarely devolves into agitprop.

The bogus "Clinton people" narrative

What is a "Clinton person"? Apparently, it's any Democrat under about fifty or fifty-five years of age who has had work experience in the executive branch of the federal government.

The theory seems to be that a "Clinton person" would be inclined, at best, to reproduce the policies and actions of the Clinton Administration, including the accompanying mistakes, or, at worst, to serve the interests of "the Clintons" should they prove divergent from those of the Obama Administration and the nation.

This is the sort of reasoning that led to needless unhappiness the last two times Democrats were in power. Jimmy Carter's circle regarded Johnson, who mired the nation in Vietnam and then handed the White House to Nixon, as a failure. They weren't about to have any "Johnson people" in their White House. Clinton's circle regarded Carter, who allowed himself to be paralyzed by a few hundred Iranian "students" and then handed the White House to Reagan, as a failure. They weren't about to have any "Carter people" in their White House.

It didn't seem to occur to either crowd, Carter's or Clinton's, that old hands, far from being eager to repeat the errors of the Administrations of which they had been a part, would be especially keen to avoid them. Also, they would know in detail what those errors were.

Continue reading "The bogus "Clinton people" narrative" »

A good way to fight black homophobia...

Now here's something interesting...

Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr Obama's paternal grandfather, became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after the war. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.

"The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed," said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango's third wife, the woman Mr Obama refers to as "Granny Sarah".

Mrs Onyango, 87, described how "white soldiers" visited the prison every two or three days to carry out "disciplinary action" on the inmates suspected of subversive activities.

"He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down," she said The alleged torture was said to have left Mr Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly antiBritish. "That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies," Mrs Onyango said. "My husband had worked so diligently for them, only to be arrested and detained."

The President-elect's relatives have told how the family was a victim of the Mau Mau revolt.

Obama's drug czar

Brooklyn we go hard...

Jay-Z on iLike - Get updates inside iTunes

And while we're talking football...

Foolishness

In what prosecutors called "a strong case," Burress faces a mandatory sentence of 3 ½ years in state prison, with a maximum of 15 years, on each count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Benjamin Brafman, Burress's lawyer, said Burress planned to plead not guilty to both counts.

Everybody wants somebody...

Yglesias in the club throwing elbows

I liked reading 538.com during the election season as much as anyone, and still think it's an insightful site with a lot of interesting things to say. That said, I've been kind of surprised by the post-election surge of praise for Nate Silver. You would think, based on some of the commentary, that his innovative and complicated formula wound up giving us some incredible insight we couldn't have gotten from anywhere else.

Black Friday

In a day-before story, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution advised readers to leave the children at home, at least the ones not big enough to carry the loot, because they will just slow you down: "Strollers and crowds just don't mix, though we know a few shoppers willing to use four wheels and a child as a weapon. Younger children may also be seduced by the shopping mania and pitch a tantrum that slows your progress. That said, teens and young adults can be an asset to a divide-and-conquer shopping strategy. And you'll have someone to help carry the bags..."

In the wake of death by shopper, Newsday, the daily paper on Long Island, wrung its hands in the opinion page blog: "Was this deadly rush to lower prices an illustration of the current economic malaise (people mobbing Wal-Mart because they fear they can't afford higher prices elsewhere) or just proof that even a recession can't suppress stuff-lust?" Then it added, rather unfortunately, "This awful death is another Joey Buttafuoco-like stain on the too-often sordid image of our island."

But on the run-up, Newsday offered a "Black Friday blueprint," with store openings listed so shoppers could plot strategy, including noting that at 5 a.m., the Green Acres Wal-Mart would open and customers could expect to buy a 42-inch LCD television for $598. Many continued to pursue that particular bargain even as Mr. Damour lay dying.

Continue reading "Black Friday" »

Talking fatherhood...again

Where I get off the "old-school hip-hop" train

Dredging up primary dirt between Clinton and Obama

Drive-by in the day, then murder you in the dark...

Although President-elect Barack Obama's decision to keep Robert M. Gates at the helm of the Pentagon will provide a measure of continuity for a military fighting two wars, many of Gates's top deputies are expected to depart their jobs, according to senior defense and transition officials...

The anticipated turnover of many key positions suggests that although Gates will help provide some continuity, the status quo will not necessarily endure at the Pentagon.

But don't say he's a black guy...

Besides their impressive resumes and political star-power, a few of President-elect Barack Obama's top cabinet choices have something else in common -- hoop dreams.

Though these days Eric H. Holder Jr., Susan E. Rice and Gen. James L. Jones, may be more comfortable handling policy memos than shooting free throws, at one point they were very much at home on the court.

And as the basketball-loving president-elect assembles his so-called team of rivals, it appears he may have - coincidentally -- put together a pretty competitive group of players.

More on Jindal

Just to take an example that Ta-Nehisi uses, did Obama make some compromise on the Democratic Party's no-restrictions-on-abortion-at-any-time-no-shut-up-I-CAN'T-HEAR-YOU-LALALALALA platform?  Because as far as I know, he's still toeing the party line there.  And that's just about as extreme, as far from the average American's opinion on abortion, as Bobby Jindal's. 

On the other side, I don't see anything wrong, or "EXTREMIST", about Bobby Jindal being a devout Catholic who wants to enter into a covenant marriage.  He hasn't indicated any plans to stop Ta-Nehisi and I from living with our partners without benefit of the marital sacrament, or from getting married, should we choose, the good old-fashioned way, with its 50% divorce rate.  I think the option for covenant marriage is a good thing for the government to provide, but then I'm a libertarian.  I like people to have as many choices as possible, as long as those choices don't hurt others.

Besides that, I'm willing to bet that Ta-Nehisi has never seen Jindal in person.  I have.  And while "swarthy" may play a small role in the Obama comparisons, it's mostly along the lines of thinking that the Republican Party's first non-white candidate would help heal the party's image a bit.  The reason that they're comparing Jindal to Obama is that, in person, he comes off a lot like Obama.  He's extremely positive, he's personally charming, and he's kind of skinny and his ears stick out.  Like Obama, Jindal is something of an odd duck; he looks like the president of the Paramus, New Jersey High School Chess Club, and talks like a good old boy with a plantation somewhere back in the Bayou.  The combination is disconcerting for northern journalists, and a little bewitching.

The thing about Obama that people, apparently, still don't get is that thus far he has proved himself a damn good politician. He is not simply the eloquent black dude who won--although he's that too. He's the dude who reinvented campaign fundraising, who pioneered the use of social networking, who won Virginia and North Carolina, who ended 50 plus 1.

Obama's also the dude who's turned universal healthcare, massive public works projects, and an office of urban policy into the machinations of a centrist or a center-right Democrat.  But most importantly Obama opposes dogma. He is a progressive pragmatist trying to tackle issues by creating the broadest coalition possible

And I'm sure that complacent Democrats dismissing him as a goober with a God complex suits his current plans just fine.

From Paul Dunbar to MF Doom

Been on this game as long you can wheelie your Schwinn
Turn the corner spinning, bust that ass and get up,
Dust off the mask, whoever laugh give em a head up.
He got jumped, it pumped his adrenaline,
He said it made him tougher than a bump of raw medicine.
To write all night long, the hourglass is still slow,
Flow from Hellborne to Free Power like Wilco.
And still owe bills, pay dues forever,
Slay huge, when it comes to who's more cleverer.
Used to wear leather ski with the fur collar
And charged fee for loose-leaf, words per dollar
You heard holler, broad or dude, we need food
Eat your team for sure, the streets sure seem rude.
For fam like the Partridges, pardon me for the mix-up,
Battle for Atari cartridges, put your kicks up.

How did I miss this?

The ever crucial Fred Barnes seal of approval

Clinton, for all her shortcomings, doesn't hail from the surrender-at-all-costs wing of the Democratic party.

At once weird and yet oddly interesting

NFL Talk

However, I just gotta ask (not trying to hijack a post, but).....can we please talk about football? ;)

The journey into white music continues...

Not the way to introduce Susan Rice...

If we all had some Hil, up on Capitol Hill...

Barack Obama CRUSH Puny Malik Shabazz!!

Malcolm X was one of the naysayers to American possibility whose vision was permanently crushed beneath the heel of Obama's victory on Nov. 4. Though his ideas had nothing to do with the ultimate form of nonviolence - voting - those desperate to praise him will pretend now that he was actually a civil rights leader! This has been going on for an unforgivably long time, especially among black academics.

Malcolm X had nothing to do with Obama's accomplishment as did none of the other militants who preached their own version of separatism and gleefully attacked the civil rights movement as offering no more than pie in the sky and misleading black people.

Unforgivably long!!! Misleading black people!! Other Militants!!! Meddling kids!!!!

It may be true that "other militants" had nothing to do with Obama's win. It is certainly true that people who said Obama wasn't black (Stanley Crouch) had even less to do with Obama's win. But as Adam points out, what is literally and demonstrably false is Crouch's claim that Malcom X "had nothing to do with Obama's accomplishment. How do we know this? Because Barack Obama said it in his memoir:

In every page of every book, in Bigger Thomas and invisible men, I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even Du Bois' learning and Baldwin's love and Langston's humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art's redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels. Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me.

If you are writing columns on the president-elect of the greatest power in world history, who happens to be black and you can't even bother to crack his memoir, than you are more than Leeroy Jenkins. You do not simply fail in epic manner, but more like Palin, Couric and "all of them," like M.C. Hammer hounded by creditors. You are Plaxico at the bar, shooting yourself with your own gun. And in so doing, you ascend to the 37th chamber--the chamber of intergalactic fail. All bow before the master.

UPDATE: Put the link back to Crouch's article in there.

UPDATE 2: Tessa makes an even better point. Crouch's contention that Malcolm's "ideas had nothing to do with the ultimate form of nonviolence-voting" is also factually wrong. Given Crouch's knowledge of that era, I'm tempted to call it a blatant lie. But we'll leave it that. Look there's a lot to criticize Malcolm for, especially in his early days with the Nation. Just like there's a lot to criticize MLK for--his womanizing repeatedly endangered the movement he was leading. All that I ask is that you stick to facts. As Tessa notes, in arguably his most famous speech, The Ballot or The Bullet, Malcolm very specifically addresses the black people and voting:

They're becoming politically mature. They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends, it's possible for them to see that every time there's an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who's going to sit in the White House and who's going to be in the dog house.

A bad sign for Bobby Jindal

Last weekend, 18 days after Barack Obama decisively defeated their candidate for president, a mostly Republican crowd of self-described conservatives received their first introduction to someone many prominent members of the GOP think could be the party's own version of Obama.

...social conservatives like what they have heard about the public and private Jindal: his steadfast opposition to abortion without exceptions; his disapproval of embryonic stem cell research; his and his wife Supriya's decision in 1997 to enter into a Louisiana covenant marriage that prohibits no-fault divorce in the state; and his decision in June to sign into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, a bill heartily supported by creationists that permits public school teachers to educate students about both the theory of "scientific design" and criticisms of Darwinian evolutionary concepts.