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  • Distract, Distort, Demagogue

    f nothing else, the sycophants genuflecting to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign are experts at creating diversions. When things go bad, they call out the troops to fill the airwaves with misdirection. Or they heave Hail Mary passes, hoping to connect with their easy-to-anger supporters. In fact, they’ll do just about anything except admit to the…

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  • Why Obama Can't Get Mad

    I’m sick of folks yapping about how Barack Obama needs to do a war dance on John McCain’s head. Sure, McCain and his GOP allies are telling lies and appear to bear no cost for repeatedly doing so. And, yes, the Democrats’ response has been, to say the least, lame and tepid. I understand; it’s maddening to…

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  • For the Bible Tells Me So…

    “Let he who is without sin be the one to throw the first stone….” John 8:7 Imagine the fun that right-wing, fundamentalist Christians and their henchmen bloggers would have if 17-year-old mother-to-be Bristol Palin were black. It’s not hard. Visit any news Web site and read the comments that flow from the mention of teen…

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  • The New Tavis Smiley, Beware!

    A talent show is underway to select Tavis Smiley’s replacement on “The Tom Joyner Morning Show.” It was inevitable that this process would come down to a series of on-air, laugh-out-loud challenges rivaling American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance? Perhaps it’s the spirit of equal opportunity or the clarity of competition, but…

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  • Remembering Stephanie

    Journalists like me rarely admit to liking people in the news. But I have no qualms or shame in admitting that I shed huge, salty tears after hearing that Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the Democratic Ohio congresswoman, died Wednesday from a brain aneurysm. She was 58, and she was my friend. I came to know…

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  • King James and the Spirit of '68

    Does it really matter whether LeBron James endorses Barack Obama for president? And why should anyone care that he recently threw his support—and money—behind the presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign? After all, James is 23 years old, plays basketball for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and is one of the stars of the 2008 Olympic hoops team.…

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  • Bored on the Fourth of July

    The Fourth of July is complicated for me. It’s my country’s birthday and a national holiday. But I’m not going to wave a miniature Old Glory or dress up like Uncle Sam in red, white and blue. If I go out after dark to see fireworks and listen to John Philip Sousa’s war music, it’s because…

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  • Why Barack Owes Clarence Thomas

    Lately, I’ve had the most spirited debates with my students and friends, and I always come away feeling like the loser. I, for argument’s sake, draw a straight line between Barack Obama’s White House aspirations and the embarrassing spectacle of Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation. As soon as I dare utter “Thomas” in the same…

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  • The Death of a Movement

    One day, one hour and 47 minutes after three bullets struck him down in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen, Robert Francis Kennedy, the junior senator from New York and likely Democratic presidential nominee, died at 1:44 a.m., June 6, 1968. It would take years, decades even, for historians to make sense of that single event.…

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  • Café au Lait, Sans Politics S’il Vous Plait

    I’d had enough of the political horse race which seemed to consume every intelligent – and not so intelligent – conversation for months. So I left the country, hoping a week in France would rescue me from the unending palaver about the Democratic presidential campaign. It didn’t work. Seems the folks over there are just…

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