Open Thread At Noon

I Woke Up Early On My Born-Day...

Apologies To The French

Marc Laffineur, the vice-president of the French assembly and a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling center-right party, the UMP, took issue with the French culture and foreign minister's remarks supporting Mr. Polanski, saying "the charge of raping a child 13 years old is not something trivial, whoever the suspect is."

Within the Green party, Daniel Cohn-Bendit -- a French deputy in the European parliament whose popularity is rising -- also criticized Sarkozy administration officials for leaping too quickly to Mr. Polanski's side despite the serious nature of his crime. On the extreme right, the father and daughter politicians Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen also attacked the ministers, saying they were supporting "a criminal pedophile in the name of the rights of the political-artistic class..."

The mood was even more hostile in blogs and e-mails to newspapers and news magazines. Of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by the French daily Le Figaro, more than 70 percent said Mr. Polanski, 76, should face justice. And in the magazine Le Point, more than 400 letter writers were almost universal in their disdain for Mr. Polanski.

That contempt was not only directed at Mr. Polanski, but at the French class of celebrities -- nicknamed Les People -- who are part of Mr. Polanski's rarefied Parisian world. Letter writers to Le Point scorned Les People as the "crypto-intelligentsia of our country" who deliver "eloquent phrases that defy common sense."

I seem to have mistaken "Les People" for "the people." My bad.

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The Limits Of Compassion

The Agape Community Center in Roseland has long been a sanctuary, a refuge for students who want to finish their homework, take Bible study courses or simply escape the chaotic streets in their Far South Side community.

But this place of refuge became the scene of a deadly melee Thursday when dozens of teenage boys converged in a vacant lot next to the community center, beating one another with fists, feet and 2-by-4s.

When it was all over, 16-year-old Derrion Albert lay on the gravel, his body dented and damaged from the pummeling. A youth worker at the center dragged Derrion's slight frame into the center, but it was too late. He died a short time later.

Witnesses and police said Friday that the Fenger High School junior was not a target but simply passed by the community center and was swept into the violent altercation. Walking from school, he fell victim to the violence plaguing some of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods.

The honor roll student known for his love of computers became the third Chicago teenager killed this month. At least seven more have been shot.

Chad Pennington Down

Open Thread At Noon

Taylor Branch On Fresh Air

Am I Missing Something Here?

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let's just start right there, because that's the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in "exile" (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never -- poor baby -- being able to return to the U.S.). Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she'd rather not see him prosecuted because she can't stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let's take a moment to recall that according to the victim's grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

Live From "Take Back America"

In the halls and from the stages of the conference, there were constant warnings of fascist, anti-Christian campaigns to break down American morals and sovereignty. Rev. Rick Scarborough, a pastor who advised Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, pounded the podium at his Friday afternoon speech, warning that the president's pro-gay agenda was endangering Christians who spoke out against gay rights.

"The day the president put his hand on the bible," said Scarborough, "his minions were changing official White House Website to reflect a whole new understanding of civil rights, to refer to homosexuals." The Bible, said Scarborough, called these people "sodomites, which no one wants to talk about because it reminds them of their behavior."

Some activists followed this up with a breakout session on "How to Counter the Homosexual Extremist Movement," where they learned about transgender awareness days at public schools. And some went to "How to Stop Feminist and Gay Attacks on the Military," where they were informed that upwards of 200,000 active duty members of the military might quit if "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is repealed.

When I was young and kids would gather to jump someone, they'd always make up a story to conceal the cowardly act. In other words, instead of just beating you down, they'd say something like, "I heard you were messing with my cousin." Or they wouldn't just walk up to you and take your walkman, they'd say, "Hey shortie, lemme see that." The idea was to create a just narrative for an unjust act. If you'd been messing with the dude's cousin, if you'd let him "see" your walkman, then were no longer an innocent.

I thought of that old custom reading this. The notion of being besieged--the idea that Obama is a threat to gun-owners, that the gays somehow want something more than to just live out their lives in peace--is essential to justifying the fear-mongering. Much like no one says "Me and my friends are going to kick your ass, because we feel like it," no one ever comes out and says, "I hate fags" or "I hate niggers." What they say is that the feminist are attacking our military, or the president "hates white people," or the president is giving out reparations disguised as health-care.

From West Baltimore To Wall Street

"I had a friend from my paramedic job come visit me in the city a couple months back and bring his brother and a few of his brother's friends, who all work physically demanding construction jobs.  The construction guys, who are all stocky but in various stages of growing beer guts, somehow got into a fight with this group of guys who were built like lumberjacks.  It was a draw.  I later found out that the lumberjack guys were all "Big 4" accountants - CPAs who somehow had better arms and fitness levels than those who actually used their bodies for a living."

To Many Mics, Not Enough MCs

Again On Spoilers

Open Thread At Noon

Last Night's Mad Men

For Goldfish Funerals

Mr. Coates (I decided to show you much respect after your New Yorker article), you did not seem to have much to add to the discussion. You almost seemed disengaged, or perhaps, tired.

Moreover, it struck me as interesting that for the first two questions, your answer was "I don't know...." It was almost as if you did not want to give the questions any thought or analysis. I was surprised since you are such a deep thinker and offer such prolific opinions on so many other issues.

Overall, my take-a-away was that you truly do not view the Cosby Show as the cultural or sociological touchstone that so many others -- in the MSM and academia -- consider it to be.

Growing up in a low-income family in public housing, raised by my grandmother, the Cosby Show had a strong impact on me when I watched it. Up the that point, TV had never had a show about an upper-middle class black family. And one where neither of the parents (both professionals), nor the children (all in school) were dysfunctional (ok..Densie, the Lisa Bonet character, was a bit flaky. But nothing too extreme, like drug use, etc.).

On Big-Footing

NFL Open Thread

The Doctor Is Out

Yoke The Joker

Know When To Fold Them

At this point, ACORN needs to take their lumps, finish their internal investigation, and clean up their act.  In the meantime, the least they can do is avoid handing the Glenn Beck crowd free additional ammunition.  Fair or not, shooting the messenger isn't helping their cause.

The Irrepressible Traficant

Open Thread At Noon

E.L. Doctorow--Badass M.C.

His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped from bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, a galvanized iron boiler, a rolltop desk, a sausage skin.

His escapes were mystifying because he never damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from. The screen was pulled away and there he stood disheveled but triumphant beside the inviolate container that was supposed to have contained him. He waved to the crowd. He escaped from a sealed milk can filled with water. He escaped from a Siberian exile van. From a Chinese torture crucifix. From a Hamburg penitentiary. From an English prison ship. From a Boston jail. He was chained to automobile tires, water wheels, cannon, and he escaped. He dove manacled from a bridge into the Mississippi, the Seine, the Mersey, and came up waving. He hung upside down and strait-jacketed from cranes, biplanes and the tops of buildings.

He was dropped into the ocean padlocked in a diving suit fully weighted and not connected to an air supply, and he escaped. He was buried alive in a grave and could not escape, and had to be rescued. Hurriedly, they dug him out. The earth is too heavy, he said gasping. His nails bled. Soil fell from his eyes. He was drained of color and couldn't stand. His assistant threw up. Houdini wheezed and sputtered. He coughed blood. They cleaned him off and took him back to the hotel. Today, nearly fifty years since his death, the audience for escapes is even larger.

Civility My Ass

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News."

"I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans."

Give Bipartisanship A Chance--Again

"I've had discussions with senators that aren't on the committee that could possibly work with us to try to get back into a bipartisan mold," Grassley said. "I think, though, that it'd be very helpful for people who aren't on the Finance committee or even the HELP committee...would kind of take the bull by the horns themselves and try to coalesce around something that could eventually become more bipartisan."

There are two relevant angles here. The first is why anyone in the Senate would be prepared to negotiate in good faith with Chuck Grassley at this point. Max Baucus bent over backwards to give Grassley an insurance-industry-friendly bill, filled with concessions and ideas that Grassley had already embraced, but he still walked away. Worse, he refused to take a serious, honorable approach to the talks as they dragged on for months.

The second is why Grassley would even bother. He obviously doesn't support health care reform, and has made a series of efforts to kill it. Why go through the motions again, immediately after spiking the Gang of Six talks?

Football As Shakespeare

Open Thread At Noon

That's Texas Justice

If anyone had any doubt that the Texas justice system operates in a parallel universe, look no further than the latest decision by the state's highest court in the case of death-row inmate Charles Dean Hood. On Wednesday the Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) said it wasn't interested in examining whether there was a conflict of interest in Hood's 1990 trial simply because District Attorney Thomas S. O'Connell Jr., Hood's prosecutor, had had a long-term sexual relationship with presiding Judge Verla Sue Holland, an affair the two tried to hide for 20 years.

In 1989, Hood was convicted of murdering Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace. The Holland-O'Connell affair was first reported by Salon in 2005, quoting anonymous sources. Judge Holland refused to either confirm or deny the affair at the time. A year ago this month, Holland and D.A. O'Connell, both since retired, acknowledged under oath that they had had a long-term sexual relationship, which was never revealed during more than a decade of appeals by Hood's lawyers. In her defense, Judge Holland said the affair ended more than two years before Hood's trial. But O'Connell also testified that the two had discussed marriage, and recalled that the affair continued as late as mid-1989 -- just before Hood's trial. He said the two continued to have a "good relationship," sans sex, during and after the trial. He said the two took a trip together in 1991.

The Banhammer Pt. 2

The Last Temptation

Some commenters here have labeled Prince "sex" and Michael Jackson "dance," but I have to say MJ's music makes me think of sex, just in a different way than Prince's. Prince is openly and unabashedly sexual, and MJ presents a much more repressed sexuality. It's the twisted relationship to human sexuality that often results from the interference of religion in the matter. (Not that religion is the only thing that can cause such twisting, but it's a major offender, and likely had a big influence on MJ's relationship to sex.)

I relate to this aspect of his music because of my Catholic upbringing and my honest attempts, during my formative years, to actually be a "good" Catholic girl. I'm happy to say I'm not a good Catholic girl anymore, but my sexuality has been forever affected by the experience of trying to be one. So when I listen to Prince's lyrics, I hear a portrayal of what I wish I could be. It's like a form of entertainment that lets you temporarily imagine you are what you are not. And MJ's music comes closer to representing what I actually am. And for that reason I find the sexual aspects of his music more uncomfortable but also more affecting than Prince's.

Be The Change

He dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot.

Dumping salt on saltines aside, the real question isn't what Bloomberg  eats, but how much. This is one of the subtle things I've noticed in my time moving amongst people of various class backgrounds. I'm trying not to generalize here, but I think people of a more "upper-class"  background really eat differently.

I'm sure exceptions to this abound. But it's only been in the last, say, five years of my life (and really since I've come to New York) that I've seen people who routinely only eat half their entree, then split dessert, and still don't finish. I think it has a lot to do with the stress of being broke. I know that's been the case for me.

UPDATE: From comments:

Big-Footing David Paterson

Like Obama, Sharpton also very much wants to prevent the return of his old nemesis, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The reverend, who didn't see eye-to-eye with Obama early in the 2008 campaign, has long since become an ally and player - particularly on education.

He now appears to be very much part of the White House strategy to convince Paterson that remaining in the 2010 race is not only bad for him, but for the party and the president.

As Sharpton Tweeted early this morning:

"I hope that leaders put the agenda for the people ahead of personal agendas. We cannot let reactionary forces win back seats of power."

"I have been on the phone the last 24 hours talking with the White House, NY Governor Paterson and other leaders around whether he should run."

Sharpton has been an outspoken supporter of the governor's and a close friend, too. He came up with Paterson, along with Rep. Greg Meeks, as a wave of new black leaders in the city.

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Open Thread At Noon

Connecting The Dots

Murder At The Ivies

The New York Times, one of several Ivy League house organs, has already published five articles about Le's disappearance and murder and the apprehension of suspect Raymond Clark III. The Boston Globe has published at least six stories about the case, and the Washington Post has run at least three briefs from the Associated Press. The Times of London, published five time zones away, can't seem to sate its appetite for Annie Le news. Even the proletarian New York tabloids--the Post and the Daily News--have gone ape for the story.

The elite press and the tabloid press (in which I include cable populists such as Greta Van Susteren) approach Ivy murder from different angles.* Members of the elite press identify with Harvard and Yale--even if they didn't go there. They may work for someone who went, or wish they'd gone, or hope their children go. The same applies to many Times readers, pre-selling the story on both the supply and demand sides. The murder-happy tabloid press, on the other hand, has always taken special joy in showcasing the pain of the high-and-mighty.

The gap between elite and tabloid narrows every time bad things happen to privileged people. The difference is that tabloids never stop to justify or explain their prurient interest. If this how-the-mighty-fall stuff is your sort of story--and I'm thinking it is, since you've read to the end of this piece--don't bother with the Times. The emotional ride you seek is hawking tickets right now at the Daily News and Post.

Yeah basically. But there's also the "I can't believe this happened at Harvard" effect which Shafer notes. There's a cheap counterintuitivity that I think editors go for. And maybe consumers, also.

I'm Gonna Thrill Ya Tonight...

Prince always could play in many different styles and would out play just about anybody of that era. I saw Prince almost every time he came to Detroit, which is saying a lot because the D was his early home away from home. His expert showmanship and stage presence are worthy of several pages as are his musicianship and songwriting craftsmanship. Yeah his lyrics had many of us reaching for the softer sides of our personality- got us plenty of pussy-. Prince helped break open the door to diverse sexual escapades more than Michael Jackson. Mike was afraid of the pussy but Prince wallowed in it.

Now is the time,
For you and I to cuddle close together
All through the night,
I'll save you from the terror on the screen.
I'll make you see.

Cosbyology

Is Cosby a conservative? Poussaint says absolutely not. "I would definitely consider him a progressive liberal," he says. "He's just always been demanding of people educationally." The Atlantic's Coates and Manhattan Institute scholar John McWhorter think otherwise. "Cosby's rhetoric played well in black barbershops, churches and backyard barbecues, where a unique brand of conservatism still runs strong," Coates wrote, adding recently "he's much closer to the conservatism of black nationalism than to the conservatism of Shelby Steele." Comparing Cosby's feel-good brand of lecturing to the churchy hucksterism of Tyler Perry's comedies and dramas, McWhorter wrote: "Cosby is too grouchy in his presentation to reach the unconverted; the message is more effective from a woman filtered through the warmth of the maternal rather than the admonishment of the paternal." (Cosby has stated emphatically that he doesn't watch Perry's shows.)

Open Thread At Noon

The Fight Against Gayness...

"Pornography is a blight," Schwartz told an audience in a crowded room of the Omni Shoreham hotel. "It is a disaster. It is one of those silent diseases in our society that we haven't been able to overcome very well. Now, I may be getting politically incorrect here. And it's been a few years, but not that many, since I was closely associated with pre-adolescent boys, boys around 10 years of age. But it is my observation that boys of that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people. They speak badly about homosexuality. And that's because they don't want to be that way. They don't want to fall into it."

Schwartz told the crowd about Jim Johnson, a friend of his who turned an old hotel into a hospice for gay men dying of AIDS. "One of the things he said to me," said Schwartz, "that I think is an astonishingly insightful remark... he said 'All pornography is homosexual pornography, because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards."

That comment gives says a lot more about the speaker, than it does about Heather Hunter. Talk about a fear of sex...

Mad Men Open Thread

Save Health Care Reform?

The Atlantic Politics team asks the question on somebody's mind: "Can President Obama's media blitz - appearances on five Sunday talk shows this weekend - save health reform?"

Save health reform from what? Consider the recent developments: Two weeks ago, four of five committees had passed their bills, and one committee was tangled in an interminable and opaque process. Last week, that committee produced a bill that, though not perfect, is pretty close to the other bills on the table. On Friday, the committee chairman and the crucial Republican have both announced that the subsidies need to be raised, which addresses the main problem liberals have with the legislation. Later this week, the Massachusetts Senate is expected to allow an interim replacement for Sen. Ted Kennedy, giving Democrats their 60th vote.

Obama's weekend blitz wasn't meant to save health-care reform. It was meant to push it those final 10 yards. He could fail in that effort, but that's where we sit: incredibly, incredibly close to the finish line. Closer, by far, than we have ever been before.

Meanwhile, Megan starts (glumly) referring to a health care reform as "established fact"--though she argues that it'll cost the Dems the House. Predictably, I disagree with the latter. But more to the point, I think this is the danger in "up to the minute" media, and why Obama is wise to ignore a lot of it. There was a lot of sound and fury this Summer, and a lot of banter about race this Fall. And despite the pile-up of bodies, and the play-action, I'm not sure that the GOP has really moved the ball. It just doesn't look like much had changed.

NFL Open Thread

The Ban-Hammer

For Friday

Passion Pit - The Reeling from phantomcolor on Vimeo.

This Week In The NFL

All Of My Purple Life

Women, not girls, they rule my world
I said they rule my world
Act your age, not your shoe-size, Mama
And maybe we can do the twirl.

Open Thread At Noon

Smoking Silliness

Let's step back and recall how we got here. When tobacco fighters began to outlaw smoking in elevators, buses, restaurants, bars, and public buildings, their stated rationale was to protect nonsmokers trapped inside. Then the crusade moved on to apartment buildings, extending the same theory: You can't smoke in your apartment, because the smoke seeps under your door into hallways and other people's apartments.

Now this rationale has moved outdoors. Way outdoors. David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner who led the anti-smoking fight in the 1990s, says New York City is doing the right thing, because "the majority of the population today doesn't want to be breathing in tobacco smoke, whether indoors or outdoors."

That's true. I hate tobacco smoke. I don't want to breathe it anywhere. I don't want the tiniest particle of it to touch my lungs, even if my nose doesn't notice it.

But do I have the right to that standard of purity? If so, doesn't that justify a ban on smoking absolutely anywhere? Forget parks and beaches. If you smoke in your backyard, aren't you violating my airspace? In fact, aren't you violating my airspace by lighting your grill or driving your car down my street? How far does my right to clean air extend?

But think of the children!

"We don't think children, parents, when they're standing at soccer games, should have to be breathing in smoke from the person next to them," Farley said after unveiling the city's 10-point plan alongside Mayor Bloomberg. "We don't think our children should have to be watching someone smoke."

Man, if you live in New York, and the worst your kid sees is someone smoking a cigarette, you're doing really good. Seriously, if this is your top concern, maybe you should live in Utah.

The NFL And Conservatives

"This Is How We Lost To The White Man..."

I agree with President Carter that racism is playing a role in recent outbursts against President Obama.

During President Obama's speech on the status of health care reform, some members of congress engaged in a public display of disrespect. While one Representative hurled the now infamous "you lie" insult at the President, others made their lack of interest known by exhibiting rude behavior such as deliberately yawning and sending text messages.

Various polls prior to the election indicated that between five and ten percent of Americans would never vote for an African American president. That number, of course, only includes those who actually admitted to their prejudice. How many others harbored such feelings but did not respond honestly when asked the question? And how many people oppose Obama's plan because the President is African American?

In "Birth of a Nation," D.W. Griffith used white actors in black face to portray black legislators as having low intelligence and acting like fools. Today, we have a band of real life congressional fools seemingly bent on blocking any meaningful reform of the health care system. But if we allow even one American to die simply because he or she cannot afford treatment, we are creating a shameful scenario that could aptly be called "Death of a Nation."

BILL BILL BILL PLEASE AND TO THINK I ADMIRED YOU, WELL YOU ARE DEAD WRONG! HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE, BUT TO DO WITH HIM JUST BEING AN IDIOT AND A LIER!

I am so disappointed Bill Cosby is following this line of thinking. I thought he was above this.

Off Reporting

Fantasy Football Pick Em

One final reminder for anyone interested in participating in the fans of TNC football pick 'em league. About 35-40 people have already joined. The sign up information is here:

http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/pickem
Group ID#: 61825
Password: tanehisi

To reiterate a few things, scoring starts in Week 2, so you have not missed out on anything if you didn't sign up last week. Just get your picks in by Sunday and you'll be fine (you can always join after that, but you'll be at a disadvantage compared to teams that have already earned points). The rules are simple -- just pick the winner of every NFL game each week -- and a full rules explanation is posted on the message board on the pick 'em league homepage. Finally, just a reminder, the Yahoo ID you use to sign up will be visible to other league members, and you'll have a choice as to whether you want your email to be displayed. If you want to keep these things private, it's easy to create a free Yahoo account just for the league and be sure to choose to hide your email account when you're setting up your team (or anytime after that by editing your team settings).

Time To Talk Music

Flip And Pop My Collar Like The Fonz

These people are going off the deep end entirely: open panic at a black president is morphing into the conscious fanning of racial polarization, via Gates or ACORN or Van Jones or a schoolbus in Saint Louis. What we're seeing is the Jeremiah Wright moment repeated and repeated. The far right is seizing any racial story to fan white fears of black power in order to destroy Obama. And the far right now controls the entire right. 

Do they understand how irresponsible this is? How recklessly dangerous to a society's cohesion and calm? Or is that what they need and thrive on?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

I got a note from a good friend yesterday expressing shock, and anger, about Drudge and Malkin's usage of that alleged racial beat-down on a school-bus. On some level, I wonder if something's wrong with me. I'm neither shocked, nor angry. This is exactly how I expected these fools to respond to a black president.

If anything, I'm a little giddy. For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades.  Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us.

It's intensely grating to live say, in Atlanta, and have some dude in Harlem crowned as your unelected leader. It's even more grating if said dude's agenda seems, in large measure, come down to standing in front of cameras and tweaking his opponents. It's no mistake that O'Reilly and Sharpton would break bread together at Sylvia's--they feed each other.

But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.

It's about time.

Open Thread At Noon

The Fight We Want To Have

Responding to an audience question at a town hall at his presidential center in Atlanta, Carter said Tuesday that Wilson's outburst was also rooted in fears of a black president.

"I think it's based on racism," Carter said. "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president."

But Wilson's son disputed that.

"There is not a racist bone in my dad's body," said Alan Wilson, an Iraq veteran who is running for state attorney general in South Carolina. "He doesn't even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won't comment on former President Carter, because I don't know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it's just not in him."

"It's unfortunate people make that jump. People can disagree - and appropriately disagree - on issues of substance, but when they make the jump to race it's absolutely ludicrous. My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race."

Carter, a Democrat, said Joe Wilson's outburst was a part of a disturbing trend directed at the president that has included demonstrators equating Obama to Nazi leaders.

I don't think Carter called Joe Wilson a racist. Tha said, one reason some of us try to avoid this discussion is because of its enormous potential for distraction. From a black perspective, I care about the disproportionate number of black people who are sick and dying, not the contents of Joe Wilson's heart. 

Still, there's an element of this society that enjoys this debate. It really has nothing to do with health-care, or any other issue, as much as has to do with being confirmed. Some of us desperately want black people to acknowledgethat we are not our forefathers. Some of us desperately want white people to acknowledge that the spirit of those forefathers still haunts the land. We enjoy having this fight. We get something out of it--just not a  health care bill.

Get Your Weight Up. Not Your Hate Up.

Impressed

Technical Difficulties

It's Kanye's Fault

When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call "expressive individualism." Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine. Before long, self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention. Muhammad Ali would tell all cameras that he was the greatest of all time. Norman Mailer wrote a book called "Advertisements for Myself."

Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private "Crossfire"; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan's egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don't even notice it anymore.

This isn't the death of civilization. It's just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day "Command Performance," comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It's funny how the nation's mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

Open Thread At Noon

How To Represent

It isn't easy always being out. You don't want to deny something but you also don't want to be entirely defined by it. It was a lot harder in 1991 when I was suddenly turned into a poster-gay for a few minutes. Suddenly I had to be a spokesman; suddenly I was the gay pundit; suddenly my own writing on these issues seemed to be political acts requiring political resistance (mainly from fellow gays), simply because I was out and in public - and so few others were. People project all sorts of stuff onto you, good and bad, when that happens; and the handful of us in the public eye had to just carry on, hoping that the full scope of our work would eventually overshadow one aspect of our lives, but that our gayness could be celebrated as well. Anything but lies. And as more and more people are openly gay, and as more and more of them seem completely like your next door neighbor, it becomes easier.

The Apology

I'll Show You How To Race-Bait Properly

The black candidate, former Mayor Willie W. Herenton of Memphis, has argued that Tennessee needs a black voice in its currently all-white delegation. He is running a blistering campaign against Representative Steve Cohen, a fellow Democrat with a precarious hold on the majority black district.

"To know Steve Cohen is to know that he really does not think very much of African-Americans," Mr. Herenton said in a recent radio interview on KWAM. "He's played the black community well."

"This seat was set aside for people who look like me," said Mr. Herenton's campaign manager, Sidney Chism, a black county commissioner. "It wasn't set aside for a Jew or a Christian. It was set aside so that blacks could have representation."

It's A Just A Dude With A Blog...

Open Thread At Noon

Mr. Campbell...

Doom Sing Soprano...

Race Is A Factor But...

To see that, just look at what that movement's leading figures said and did during the Clinton years.  In 1994, Jesse Helms, then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claimed that "just about every military man" believes Clinton is unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief and then warned/threatened him not to venture onto military bases in the South:  "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He better have a bodyguard."  The Wall St. Journal called for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the possible "murder" of Vince Foster.  Clinton was relentlessly accused by leading right-wing voices of being a murderer, a serial rapist, and a drug trafficker.  Tens of millions of dollars and barrels of media ink were expended investigating "Whitewater," a "scandal" which, to this day, virtually nobody can even define.  When Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden, they accused him of "wagging the dog" -- trying to distract the country from the truly important matters at hand (his sex scandal).  And, of course, the GOP ultimately impeached him over that sex scandal -- in the process issuing a lengthy legal brief with footnotes detailing his sex acts (cigars and sex talk), publicly speculating about (and demanding examinations of) the unique "distinguishing" spots on his penis, and using leading right-wing organs to disseminate innuendo that he had an abandoned, out-of-wedlock child.  More intense and constant attacks on a President's "legitimacy" are difficult to imagine...

Other than the fact that Obama's race intensifies the hatred in some precincts, nothing that the Right is doing now is new.  This is who they are and what they do -- and that's been true for many years, for decades.  Even the allegedly "unprecedented" behavior at Obama's speech isn't really unprecedented; although nobody yelled "you lie," Republicans routinely booed and heckled Clinton when he spoke to Congress because they didn't think he was legitimately the President (only for Ted Koppel to claim that it was something "no one at this table has ever heard before" when Democrats, in 2005, booed Bush's Social Security privatization proposal during a speech to Congress). 

Continue reading "Race Is A Factor But..." »

NFL Open Thread

And South Carolina Shall Rise Again

Thomas Jefferson removed condemnations of slavery from the Declaration of Independence to appease South Carolinian slaveholders. State loyalists helped the British recapture the state in 1780 from the patriots. By 1828, state icon and Vice President John C. Calhoun was advocating state "nullification" of federal powers.

In 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede -- and even threatened to secede from the Confederacy because the other southern states refused to re-open the slave trade. In 1856, on the Senate floor Congressman Preston Brooks bloodied an abolitionist senator with a cane.

Well into the 20th century, South Carolina's black citizens observed the Fourth of July mostly alone; the vast majority of whites preferred instead to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day. In 1920, the state legislature rejected the women's suffrage amendment, finally ratifying it a half century later.

Open Thread At Noon

It Begins...

Balancing The White Man's Check Book

You can almost hear Robinson fighting with himself as he typed these words.  He was already envisioning his appearance on Morning Joe the next day where Mika would suggest that "playing the race card" has no place in the debate.  Then Robinson would be cowed and have to spend the next 10 minutes reassuring the good white folks on Morning Joe that he really wasn't suggesting that Wilson was a "racist" but that he was saying that race "had played a role" in the whole episode.  One can see why Robinson just doesn't want to go "there."

But poor Eugene is not the only black person in media who doesn't want to go there.

Coates has his "suspicions" but is "not prepared to go there."  He suggests that we cannot prove that Wilson is a racist because we are not "mind-readers."  I believe that this is a true cop-out on the part of Coates.  In private company among other Black people, I am certain that his "suspicions" would have been expressed less timidly.  I anticipate that Jonathan Capehart will be on the tevee tomorrow tip-toeing and tap dancing around reality too.

So this is why Black Folks Tend to Shout... It just gets to be too much.  Yesterday unbelievably Joe Wilson took to Youtube to suggest that he "would not be muzzled."  No indeed.  The people who will remain muzzled (at least in mixed company) are going to be us Black Folks who really want to SHOUT.

Again, With The Racism...

Joe Wilson's outburst should not be swept under the rug as just rude discourse....I don't think the burden is on African-Americans to prove that the "Lie" outburst is tinged with racism...As you know, we have history on our side...From the Birthers movement to the uproar over Obama talking to school children 9that's just the recent shit..) sometimes a duck is a duck...

You are a thorough cat when it comes to research...The fact that you had the insight to show that political particism once meant fools physically assaulting each other in Washington, showed there is a bigger picture...But let's talk about such conduct over the last 40 years...The truth is, in my lifetime, I've never heard any person holding political heckle a sitting President in that manner, on national TV....To say that race is the only reason Wilson shot his mouth off is too simplistic...But it is certainly part of the equation......No one has to bait me into that thinking...It is what it is...

I am disappointed with your statement of "not going there" in considering race. It seems to me to be a cavalier dismissal of a valid factor. When did it become so scary for people not to be able to at least consider the possibility? Give us credit as your readers to know that everything is not about race but also to know that opinions can be tinged by race. We know as well as you that it doesn't have to be "either-or". I also understand that we cannot get into people thoughts but we have to be able to at least prescribe and discuss possible motives for disrespectfulness.

This is the same "your not the boss of me" attitude that many professionals get when they assume leadership positions. Resistance can often be traced to gender, age, sexual orientation and yes-race. I clearly understand that race is not the only factor but it is a factor. (I also think that this mentality came into play in the Skip Gates affair.) My frustration is that we, as black Americans, are censuring our own thoughts. We have become so sensitive to attacks of "playing the race card", being Farrakhan or Sharpton apologists, being paranoid, being racist, etc. We no longer want to raise the question when it is perfectly valid for fear of getting our teeth kicked in. This lack of deference to the POTUS was surprising to me at the town meetings but from a member of Congress just boggles my mind. Race is not the only factor but it is still a factor in this hyped "post-racial" age. You can argue that the Clintons saw similar malice but not this early in the term and they are a much more contentious couple.

I enjoy you column and blog because you are willing to question your views but also the comments from your readers do seem to have a diverse discourse that gives me plenty to think about. I have followed you for a while and hope that your youth, your increasing popularity with centrists and your friendship with Andrew Sullivan is not dissuading you from calling it as you see it. To paraphrase Chris Rock when Bill Maher tried to bait him to absolve Michael Richards of racist charges after Richard's tirade, "What does it take to be called a racist nowadays? Do you have to be caught shooting Medgar Evars?"

The Civilized World

Open Thread At Noon

You Lie Pt. 3

At first intending to challenge Sumner to a duel, Brooks consulted with fellow South Carolina Rep. Laurence M. Keitt on dueling etiquette. Keitt instructed him that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing, and suggested that Sumner occupied a lower social status comparable to a drunkard due to the supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks thus decided to attack Sumner with a cane...

Brooks survived an expulsion vote in the House but resigned his seat, claiming both that he "meant no disrespect to the Senate of the United States" by attacking Sumner and that he did not intend to kill him, for he would have used a different weapon if he had. His constituents thought of him as a hero and returned him to Congress. However, Brooks's attack on Sumner was regarded in the north as the act of a cowardly barbarian. One of the bitterest critics of the attack was Sumner's fellow New Englander, Congressman Anson Burlingame.

When Burlingame denounced Brooks as a coward on the floor of the House, Brooks challenged him to a duel, and Burlingame accepted the challenge. Burlingame, as the challenged party, specified rifles as the weapons, and to get around American anti-dueling laws he named the Navy Yard on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls as the site. Brooks backed out of the challenge, claiming that he would be murdered on his way north. Burlingame's reputation as a deer hunter and a deadly shot with a rifle could also have been a factor.

You Lie Pt. 2

You Lie

The Public Option

Echoes Of The Golden Age

I Guess I'm A Conservative, Too

It is one of the most astounding projections in public life that the conservatives should have, with great success, turned Obama's speech to schoolchildren into an example of the conservatives' own Kulturkampf. They have convinced great numbers of people that Obama is out to sway the minds of the young with some subtle political agenda: i.e. they have convinced great numbers of people that Obama is William Bennett's heir.

It could be that, in their eyes, Obama poses a greater threat to their cultural domination than handwringing liberal pundits, so strangely eager to declare Obama ineffectual, would have us believe. After all, the most potent part of Obama's campaign strategy was to attempt to make a pragmatic synthesis of conservative emphasis on personal responsibility with liberal faith in a benevolently activist government. Fusing those two world-views together was exactly what Obama did in his speech to the schoolchildren, as he promised better educational environments in exchange for students' commitment to their own lives.

The obvious thing that separates Obama from many conservatives, is marrying a belief in individual responsibility with the notion that government should do more that just get out of the way. No disrespect to Obama, but this kind of "conservatism" is unoriginal, and is as old as black American political thought, itself. It's likely as old as American political thought, but I'm talking here about what I know.

Frederick Douglass didn't simply believe that Union forces should march through the South freeing slaves, he believed that the slave, themselves, had a responsibility to fight for their freedom. Harriet Tubman did not need to read "Self-Reliance," to understand that her freedom, and the freedom of black people, would ultimately be in their own hands. Indeed Tubman and Douglass believed (correctly) that unless the slaves fought, in some form, they wouldn't be free. Ida B. Wells was hard on the broader country for allowing lynching, but she could be particularly viscous toward black men whom she thought had allowed it to happen.

That sort of thinking extends all the way up through Malcolm X's "Ballot Or The Bullet" speech (promoting power through electoral politics, and entrepreneurship.) You can find traces of it Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson also. Of course, Bill Cosby has all of it. I don't know when it became taboo for black people to say "Do your homework," to their kids and "Reform health-care" to their government. A lot of this is about the cheap way we report stories and the need for an obvious conflict. Again, it's very hard for me to object to a guy like Barack Obama, given his own story, saying to kids, in essence, "Go kick some ass." I think most parents, profanity aside, feel the same way.

Get Retarded

Open Thread At Noon

"Reasonable Republicans"

Tyler Perry Goes High Brow

It's a complex, nuanced piece, and seeing Tyler Perry getting a writing credit gives me serious pause.

Directing? Fine.

Producing? Cool.

But writing and adapting it? From someone who writes flat, two-dimensional woman characters in all of his work? Even under the best of circumstances, I would be skeptical of a black man tackling a project like this. To bring Shange's vision to light would take an understanding of why this work of art is so deeply intertwined with black women's articulation of their own struggles under racist, patriarchal oppression - something that unfortunately, many still deny to this day. Black women's voices are often lost in discussions of race (because all the blacks are men) and discussions of gender (because all women are white) and Ntozake Shange was beyond brave to put down all of these ideas and present them for public consumption even in the face of heavy criticism from black men when the play was released.

This seems like an obvious project for which Perry could recruit talented African-American female writers and directors, throw a lot of commercial weight behind the project, and prove not only that he can make commercially successful movies but that he can help other people make commercially successful movies. It's not like there are no options out there. Perry could have tapped Kasi Lemmons, or Gina Prince-Bythewood, or Angela Robinson, to name just a couple of options. Perry could, by helping any one of those women make and market a terrific project, give them an enormous career boost.

But he's not going to do it. And since he launched 34th Street Films, an arm of Tyler Perry Studios meant explicitly to promote the work of other filmmakers, almost exactly a year ago, IMDb lists just three projects the studio has under development: For Colored Girls..., Hot Tub Time Machine, a dudely comedy with some high-profile white stars written and directed by four men, and Georgia Sky. (He probably also deserves some credit for helping to produce Precious, which looks like it could be absolutely extraordinary.) It's the company's first year, and maybe things will be different. But until Perry turns over a high-profile project that he could do, but could be better done by another writer or director, to someone else, I'm not really going to believe that he's interested in developing the work of other directors.

One More Word On The Willingham Case

On Van Jones

Jones was wrong, actually, in disavowing his support for 9/11 conspiracy theory. He signed the document, which can only mean that he supports the idea that 9/11 was planned, or that the Bushies knew something more than they have said, or at least that the charge is plausible enough to require investigation.

 

But support for that idea is hardly unknown among people of the left - and often gestural in its own way; look one of these types in the eye and ask "Do you really think George Bush and his cabinet engineered the murder of thousands and have kept the secret for eight years?" and watch the nervous pause and the look off into the distance. Speculations in this vein hardly meant that Jones was not sincerely committed to working within the government to do good.

I don't have much sense of "the left," sinceI mostly experience my fellow lefties in cyberspace. But, speaking for myself, when I hear "9/11 was an inside job," I start thinking that debates about Area 51 aren't far behind.

Open Thread At Noon

This Week's Mad Men Thread

The Proper Response To The Bumrush

Obama's Socialist Agenda

From Last Week

Barack Obama definitely the first black man to get attacked by the right for telling kids to study hard and stay in school.

It's A Beautiful Day

Where You From?

I had a similar experience about 25 years ago in the South Side of Chicago, and I recall that the group of kids that attacked me when they first started to cluster around me, asked something like, "Who do you know?" -- which sounds like they were thinking along the lines TNC is saying here. Of course, I had the street savvy of Little Lord Fauntleroy, so I just shrugged my shoulders and walked along until they pulled out chains and clocked me in the head a few times...and then they ran away....

The Mile-Low Club

Everything the Broncos have touched in the last five months has turned to crap. Even in the lead-up to this most interesting of practice games there was another slap in McDaniels' face: Star wide receiver Brandon Marshall had to be suspended for two weeks for insubordination, and there's no telling if this 6-year-old football player will show up more mature when the suspension ends.

As if the 27-17 home loss didn't hurt enough, Denver is faced with another bit of wonderful news: Orton suffered what appeared to be a wound to the index finger on his right (throwing) hand. That's only the most important finger to throw the football. The wound would have to heal, and the finger would have to be flexible enough to throw a football 13 days from now, in the season opener at Cincinnati. If Orton's finger can't heal in time, then backup Chris Simms would get the nod ... assuming Simms' high-ankle sprain is healed in time, and there's no telling if it will be.

Uh-oh. Now there's something new for the Broncos: Storm clouds, the kind that roll in over the Rockies many afternoons and drench the plains. I found the vanquished more interesting. From his car early this morning, McDaniels sounded a little edgy. Almost angry, but not quite. Defiant might be a better way to put it. I can see what Pat Bowlen saw in him, and still sees in him. Bowlen shows no signs of wavering on McDaniels, no matter how many things keep going maddeningly wrong, and I think the owner would have loved to have heard his coach as the nightmare of the loss sank in.

I don't understand how they blew it with Jay Cutler.

The Logic Of The Bumrush

A Primary Challenge For Obama...

I Don't Know What Van Jones Was Thinking

....The petition had called for "immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur" and demanded "an immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Congressional hearings, media analysis, and the formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry." (Other signatories included Ralph Nader, environmentalist and author Paul Hawken, Rainforest Action Network founder Randy Hayes, and John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.)

Open Thread At Noon

Liberals Moving Right On Crime Policy

And Put Him Under My Padlock...

A long time ago, I attended the funeral of a teenage boy who died the way Wade Edwards did, in a car that flipped badly and killed him quickly. I remember standing at the burial site, under a hot Los Angeles sun, a large crowd of us waiting for the parents to arrive. The cortege turned in through the gates, snaked up the winding road, and pulled up to where we were gathered. For a long time nothing happened, the car doors all stayed closed, and you realized--in a misery of embarrassed voyeurism that occluded even the sadness--that a drama was going on inside the car containing the mother, that getting her to stand out in the sunshine with us was going to involve someone persuading her to allow her son to be dead.

At last the car doors opened, and you felt you should look away, but that wasn't right either, and so you watched, and it was a bad thing. At first, the procession faltered forward. The family made it down to the graveside, and a rabbi spoke. The pine box was lowered into the ground and the time came for the boy's brother to spade the first shovel of dirt onto the coffin, and that's when things fell apart. I'd known the boy well--he had been a student at the school where I taught English--but I hadn't loved him. In fact, I had never loved anyone yet, because I was years away from having a child of my own, and until you've done that you're just guessing about love, gesturing toward it, assuming that it's the right name for a feeling you've had.

Things fell apart when they tried to spade in the earth, and there was screaming and titanic grief, and you were in the position of watching someone being forced--physically forced--to bear the unbearable. At last it was done, and the family stumbled back up the hill to the air-conditioned cars with the liveried drivers, and the mother collapsed into one car, and the door was shut solidly behind her, sealing her into her shadowed madness.

"You are so hot," Rielle Hunter said to John Edwards 10 years after he and his wife buried their first boy, and after they had started a new family, and after they had given their all to a presidential campaign--with the personal losses and long separations that come with it--and after Elizabeth had been diagnosed with cancer and undergone a disfiguring surgery and chemotherapy and lost her hair and been handed a recalculated set of odds about her life expectancy with two very small children who needed their mother. "You are so hot," Rielle Hunter said, because she turned out to be another woman with a cavalier attitude toward wives.

Uhhh...Michael...

Fitfully funny with a low joke-to-minute ratio, "Extract" plays like two irreconcilable and unfinished sketches, neither particularly fertile comedic terrain. The first revolves around Joel's beef that his wife has sexually closed for business by the time he comes home from work, a weak bit that Mr. Judge tries to exploit with repeated close-ups of Suzie cinching her sweat pants. At the urging of his friend Dean (Ben Affleck, delivering a real performance), Joel hires a part-time pool cleaner and full-time moron, Brad (Dustin Milligan), to service her. The second sketch involves the attempts of a vamping con artist, Cindy (Mila Kunis), to scam Joel by cozying up to a dim factory worker, Step (Clifton Collins Jr.), who's suffered an-on-the-job injury.

What's most striking about "Extract," beyond the scarcity of jokes and absence of actual filmmaking, is its deep well of sourness, which at times borders on misanthropy. In his first live-action feature, "Office Space," a comedy about the indignities of that modern hell we call a desk job, Mr. Judge took aim at the dehumanization of organizational life. In "Idiocracy" he expanded his sightlines to include corporations and consumer culture. The received wisdom remains that 20th Century Fox, which backed the movie, dumped "Idiocracy" into the marketplace because of its anti-corporatism: it mocks Fox News along with brand-name companies that run ads on media outlets belonging to Fox's parent company, the News Corporation. What was often left unsaid amid the ruckus is that the movie conceives of its own audience as cultural dopes.

Judge has always been hit or miss for me--though I love his hits. Satire's a hard business. I think King Of The Hill is brilliant, but The Goode Family not so much. I'm on pretty familiar terms with the species of liberals Judge was trying to satirize, so I was all in for it. But the show felt dated--like a collage of jokes you'd make about liberals circa 1995.

Echoes Of The Sushi Age

Roger Keith Coleman

Open Thread At Noon

Chuck Grassley's Turn

Yet Grassley is not immune to the pressures from his party. Iowa Republicans have been trending rightward; socially conservative Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee won last year's presidential caucuses there. Opposition groups have been running ads in the state criticizing Grassley for his role in the health-care negotiations, and back in Washington, Senate GOP leaders have made no secret of their anxiety about it. "Senator Grassley has been given no authority to negotiate anything by all of us Republicans on that committee," said Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate GOP whip. What's more, Grassley's term as ranking Republican on the powerful tax-writing panel will expire at the end of 2010; he stands to assume that spot on the Judiciary Committee, but the Republican leadership could block him from getting it.

About That Roxanne Shante PhD Story

In Defense Of Hitler

If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?

Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?

Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?

Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser's fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?

Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps...

Winston Churchill was right when he called it "The Unnecessary War" -- the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.

It's amazing to see Buchanan still fighting this one. Dude is a fossil. Yglesias has more.

From Willingham's Prosecutor

Always omitted from any examination of the actual trial are the following facts:

1. The event which caused the three childrens' deaths was the third attempt by Todd Willingham to kill his children established by the evidence. He had attempted to abort both pregnancies by vicious attacks on his wife in which he beat and kicked his wife with the specific intent to trigger miscarriages;

2. The "well-established burns" suffered by Willingham were so superficial as to suggest that the same were self-inflicted in an attempt to divert suspicion from himself;

3. Blood-gas analysis at Navarro Regional Hospital shortly after the homicide revealed that Willingham had not inhaled any smoke, contrary to his statement which detailed "rescue attempts;"

4. Consistent with typical Navarro County death penalty practice, Willingham was offered the opportunity to eliminate himself as a suspect by polygraph examination. Such opportunity was rejected in the most vulgar and insulting manner;

5. Willingham was a serial wife abuser, both physically and emotionally. His violent nature was further established by evidence of his vicious attacks on animals which is common to violent sociopaths;

6. Witness statements established that Willingham was overheard whispering to his deceased older daughter at the funeral home, "You're not the one who was supposed to die." (The origin of the fire occurred in the infant twins bedroom) and;

7. Any escape or rescue route from the burning house was blocked by a refrigerator which had been pushed against the back door, requiring any person attempting escape to run through the conflagration at the front of the house.

Open Thread At Noon

Sickening

Publishing Other People's E-Mail

I'm a huge fan, but, I think Dan W and tlc got it right. Just what was wrong with GG's behavior here? You're acting as if the email in question was sent to GG from JK in a clearly off-the-record exchange.

What journalism school did you go to, that teaches the precept that information that you receive is unpublishable merely because it came from a source that the emailer thought was off-the-record? And, a listserv email? Please.

"The problems inherent in a list like journolist (confidentiality, chief among them), is another discussion, in and of itself."

WTF. In the context of your complaint against GG, that is THE context. I must admit, the merits of each one's arguments aside, you really blew this one.

I can't really think of an instance where I'd publish someone's off the record e-mail. I'm a Greenwald fan, obviously, but I don't see much difference between what he did and what Mickey Kaus did a few months ago. The problems inherent in a list like journolist (confidentiality, chief among them), is another discussion, in and of itself.

Executing The Innocent

Mixing It Up With Your Readers

Racist Gender Testing

OK, but what are we looking at, or for, exactly? The thick thighs, the muscular arms, the broad shoulders, the wide jaw line, bushy eyebrows and faint mustache? Are these the physical attributes that define Semenya as inherently male, just plain unattractive or a record breaker?

The issue seems to directly question race, beauty and who gets to set the standards. White and western is more female and more beautiful, black and African is less so.

"As a beauty editor, I looked at her face and thought it's a beautiful and very interesting face," said Tai Beauchamp, 31, a beauty and lifestyle expert. "[It's] not a face that is so different from some of the African models that we love." But even that small pinch (definitely not even a handful) of women--Alek Wek, Liya Kebede--are still the exception rather than the norm to our ideas of female beauty, despite two Vogue Italia issues dedicated to black models the most recent being the "Black Barbie" issue.

I think there is a case to be made about beauty standards and black women, and this country's nasty history trying to de-feminize black women. It's also fair to say that, in some respects, our beauty standards differ along race/class axis. I suspect if you polled men on whether they thought Serena Williams was beautiful, you'd see a race/class variable at work.

But as deplorable as it may well have been to submit Semenya to gender testing, I don't really see the race angle. I think part of the problem is most of Andrews quotes come from people who work in the world of fashion. But the aesthetics of fashion aren't the same as the aesthetics of men, or even women (that said Liye Kebede is just murderous.) Maybe other dudes are different, but I don't exactly look to fashion week for a parade of the world's most beautiful women.

We are getting into tricky terrain here, I know. I'm trying to be respectful. If you're going to hit "submit" on your comment I'd ask you to do the same. And yeah, you're right. I'm PC as a mutherfucka.

Reporting

Open Thread At Noon

So...The Real Housewives Of New Jersey...

An Al Jolson Riff