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In the year of the dragon, lots of men disappear...
31 Dec 2008 10:37 pm
Happy New Year boys and girls. 2008 has been good to me--but not as good as the people who read this blog. Hope 2009 is beautiful for every one of you. With your support--as well as the continued insanity of this post-racial age--it'll be a good one for this blogs. Kiss your wives. Hug your daughters. Give a pound to your sons. We're off.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Happy New Year, TNC.
You and Andrew have helped to ease the turmoil of this past year, and I am glad to have found your blog.
Nineteen days until the nightmare ends and the Dream begins!!
Right back atcha, TNC. Congrats on a successful blogging year for you! Best of luck in 2009!
Good luck and good spirits attend you and yours in 2009, Ta-Nehisi.
Hope 2009!
I hope and pray that this year I can find a way to ignore all the political news. This past year was incredibly exciting, but somehow I feel I got too personally involved in the election. Involved not in the physical sense but more in the emotional sense. Like being obsessed with a sports team, hanging on every pitch.
The Obama/Hillary rivalry was amazing and truly historic - but it drained me. It was like one World Series game, that went into like 50 extra innings, and lasted six months! It was like two seven game Yankees vs Red Sox series played in 2002 and 2003, an epic battle among the most charismatic and powerful rivals, the most incredible drama imaginable...
And I can't handle this shit anymore. It wears on the nerves.
My resolution is to trust that Obama will do the best he can, and to ignore the rest of the bullshit as much as I possible.
That means I'm quitting reading tons and tons of blogs. Because most are regurgitating the same bullshit.
But I ain't quiting this blog. Ta-Nehesi's blog is hands down Top 5 Dead or Alive, and that's just off one LP.
I'd like to see him take it to the next level. On this blog. But also with a new book. And not some collection of essays, though I'm sure he could do that fine. But rather a novel. Beautiful Struggle is evidence in these eyes that Coates has got a fantastic novel in him. A Fitzgerald meets James Baldwin meets Junot Diaz kind of book. I just hope we get to read it some day.
There's no way to go but up. I hope.
To Coates et all
Happy New Years!
Peace and Blessings to you and yours.
Yes. We. Can.
I just celebrated either the last Christmas and New Year that my father will be alive, or the last that he will know who I am.
At this point, an Obama administration is the only good thing I'm expecting 2009 to bring.
"I just celebrated either the last Christmas and New Year that my father will be alive, or the last that he will know who I am.
At this point, an Obama administration is the only good thing I'm expecting 2009 to bring."
My father's about to turn 81, and he's seen better days, and I'm worried. But I don't think he regrets his life, and I know I don't. He voted for Obama in November, and believe me, that was a miracle I never thought I would see on multiple levels.
I hope good things surprise you in 2009. Just think of the good surprises we had this year.
Zacksback,
That sounds terribly hard. Here's hoping some good surprises show up while you're working through difficult times.
What about our husbands? ;-)
Happy New Year, to you and everyone here. This is a great crowd to be part of.
Peace, love, and progress in 2009 to everyone, especially to our brothers and sisters in the Gaza neighborhood.
Thanks for making it happen, T-NC.
TNC - Thanks for the great blog. Yours is one of only a very few that I want to continue to read post-election. (Football, comics and politics - how can you go wrong?)
The only thing Andrew has on you is his compulsive/incessant posts - always something new to read (which I love). I guess kids take a little more attention than Beagles! Happy 2009.
Happy New Year! This is my first ever comment, but I've been reading for several months now and find the blog entertaining and enlightening. I see that TNC is going to be at Book Passage in the Ferry Building in San Francisco on Jan. 15, so perhaps some of TNC's Bay Area blog readers will come out to see him? I'll be there!
Ta-Nehisi -- I think you and your blog are awesome. So happy Chinese New Year to you too (from a dragon who grew up in Chinese places). My four favorite bloggers are you, Andrew Sullivan (that passion of his kills me, even when he gets on my nerves), Hilzoy, and Steve Benen.
Hope 2009 goes well for you.
best way to start the new year...being hung over! happy new year everybody...fully enjoyed this blog and the scrappy bunch of commenters who populate it...keep up the good work all of you!!
Happy New Year, everyone.
2009 will be a very interesting year. I know many things will not pan out the way we dream --they almost never exactly do-- but I am sure we will start getting out of the hole we got ourselves in. Having a real president matters.
Be good and be well.
All the best to you, too, TNC. It's been a great addition to the intellectual quality of teh Internets to have you around.
Happy New Year Ta-Nehisi and to all who post, discuss, break down politics, poetics, NFLatics,teh-tics, meh-tics, ebonics, hebronics, and fight the good fight--remember Sam Cooke, and bring it on home. Yeah!
Happy New Year TNC and all bloggers who post here! 2008 was a wild ride, 2009 will be even better.
Happy New Year everyone.
Hope everyone has a better 2009
TNC, In my hungover haze right now, I'm recalling a conversation I had last night with an absolute stranger about your blog. I'm not sure if there is a bigger compliment. He was glad I said your name because he didn't know how to pronounce it.
Coates,
Happy New Year. Have a good one.
And since you already mentioned it, I hope you're blessed with a daughter this year. :)
Aw, you know a New Year's greeting had to come from the east side to your west side of our hometown!
We are very pleased to have made your aquaintance with your ideas and community via this blog. 2009 gonna bring more of the best!
These made me tear up.
Nothing like a good father:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2Ap3DyvLg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU60QH4YJs8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63U9MZ1EZ4o
Hope! for a wonderful new year to everyone. T-NC, you've attracted an interesting community here -- unlike any that The Atlantic has ever seen, I imagine. The highest compliment I can pay you is to say that I've learned things here that I never would have found elsewhere. And I've had plenty of laughs, too. Who could ask for more?
Prosecco and cucumber sandwiches for the house.
Happy New Year TNC. Your blog kept me sane this fall, especially during the Sarah Palin mania. Your post about Obama's maternal grandparents is one of the most beautiful pieces I have ever read. Thanks for everything. Here's to a great 2009 with plenty of Wire references.
Blessings on you and your family. On us all, and all of our families. Whether there are mothers, fathers, children or whatever. We ARE all family, whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not.
I so appreciate the poetry, the music, the from-the-heart reality checks. And the focus on the children.
xoxo
Kathleen,Ben, John and Julia (the whole famn damily)
p.s. check out Invincible (album name Shapeshifters), a female Detroit rapper who kicks it.
"Give a pound to your sons..." What? I have to give them a terrorist fist jab? lol
All the best to you TNC and all the folks here for a great 2009! Thanks, T, for one of the best blogs around!
Almost a year ago to the day, January 3rd, my little state in the midwest shocked the world...Yes.We.Did. I celebrated a little last night but will celebrate even more (and with a few more bottles!) on January 20th -- the beginning of our *era* and the end of an *error*!
I'll try to be optimistic about 2009, but I'm mostly in the mindset best put forth by Harvey Birdman's Phil Ken Sebben:
"two heavily armed men in a bunker fighting extradition"
lol
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year TNC, and everybody.
Having just spent much of the last two days in the arms of a smart and lovely new friend from Missouri by way of Chicago, all I can say is, here's to this post-racial age. I can't help but think I owe you all, in some vague way. So thanks, gang. 2009 is looking better already.
All the best in the New Year... Many thanks to you TNC for a great blog and a great group of correspondents.