Around the Web
*Jayson Blair, great white hope
Via Blah3, Dennis Hans wonders if Jayson Blair hasn't been misrepresented. He asks 'What if Jayson Blair were black?' A good question.
This is not a matter of who is or is not "authentic." I consider everyone authentic, from Pat Boone to Eminem, from Clarence Thomas to Malcolm X. I'm authentic and so is Blair. But Blair is an authentic black man who grew up in an upscale white neighborhood with upscale white friends, doing things that white kids do in white settings, going to school with white classmates and learning from white teachers.
In other words, Blair's perspective and values were shaped by middle-class white people. Answers a question I've been wondering about: Where did Blair get his entitlement complex from?
I also have a related one. I am identifiably mixed-race. Why do so many white people who consider me brainy credit it to my white ancestry?
Hans' full article, at Take Back the Media, deserves reading.
*People are strange
The upright Gen. J.C. Christian informs of us a good and fitting mascot for a high school -- the bomb.
In 1945, the people of Richland, Washington finally learned what their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons had been working on for the last two years. It wasn't poison gas or jellied gasoline bombs after all. It was something better, it was Fat Man, the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, or more accurately, the plutonium which gave Fat Man the power to vaporize thousands.
The people were so proud of what their labor accomplished that they changed the name of their high school mascot. No longer would they be known as the Beavers, they were now the Richland Bombers. Their new logo featured a mushroom cloud, the new symbol of American potency.
Boggles the mind. What victory song do they play at football games? Let me guess.
That's right, come on, sing the song
That's right, everybody say
Got a lion in my pocket mama, say!
Ah, and he's ready 2 roar!
Yeah!
Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?
Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?
You do remember the lyrics to Prince's 1999?
Read the rest of the general's entry at Jesus' General and laugh . . . or perhaps, cry.
*You can't get there from here
Crow Girl at Magpie can tell Ever Quest from reality. She is not remotely swayed by the Middle East peace plan that would give the Palestinians less than a third of a loaf. Via Haaretz she explains why.
In the current political circumstances that prevail on the Palestinian side and on the Israeli side, there is apparently no possibility of implementing the road map either. The Israeli government is building an extensive system of fences, roadblocks and roads in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that allow more or less normal life for the 200,000 Israelis there.
But this system in effect prevents any kind of normal life for nearly 3 million Palestinians. To put it more simply, in order to ensure what are perceived as Israel's security needs on both sides of the Green Line (1967 borders), the state of Israel is making life hell for the Palestinians.
Danny Rubenstein's article notes the latest fantasy is part of a pattern of let's pretend about resolving the conflict. To bring about real change, he suggests the Israelis end the policies of exclusion and using foreign workers that have resulted in half of Palestinians who need jobs being unemployed.
*And fun was had by all
I know you've spent a night out with friends, hanging out together a bar with good music, knocking back imports or microbrews. Telling lies. Laughing. And, afterward, you should have gone out and burned a cross or two. That's according to Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi, who believes the activities involved in hanging out lead to carpentry and pyromania. Nuff said.
