in every society, in every generation, the roles we are expected or even allowed to play are subject to debate, contest and change. can an irish catholic be president? can a working class guy be a blue chip ceo? can a black doctor deliver white babies? can a woman be a fighter jet pilot? can [...]
Patricia A. Turner: To suggest that bad people were racist implies that good people were not. Jim Crow segregation survived long into the 20th century because it was kept alive by white Southerners with value systems and personalities we would applaud.
In the last 24 hours I’ve had the pleasure to experience two novel and fun works of art: The Exterior World, a sarcastic animation by David OReilly and Standard Loneliness Package, a kindhearted short story by Charles Yu. Neither would be considered a realistic depiction and yet I found both honest and, in different ways, [...]
A few minutes ago, I was sitting near two men in their 50s at an airport in Chicago. They were talking current events, headlines. The economy, the dollar. One was wearing a Cleveland Indians jersey. The other denim shorts. Their light banter, over light beers, drifted to immigrants. There was no vitriol, just frustration. Can’t [...]
I began this current journal, XSML, with the intent of reducing my own notes to extra small, XML-friendly updates. Increasingly, I have been drawn by the allure of the 140 character limit of Twitter. I may get a round Tuit and synchronize my use of Twitter with this blog. For now, here’s a dump of [...]
From a recent New Yorker story on Freudian psychoanalysis in China: I asked what problems he sees most often among his patients. He answered, “If a grandfather, for example, was criti- cized and abused in the social upheaval of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, then he couldn’t take care of his child, so the child was [...]
I’m in my car, stopped at a red light, on the phone. Right outside my passenger door is a sixth grader in a public school uniform, eating his after-school snack. The kid throws the snack wrapper on the sidewalk. Seeing this, I honk at him softly and imitate his gesture. The kid looks confused. Then [...]
The original snap was: #thingsfatpeoplehatedoing. Here are some snaps back – one-liner’s, survey results – that caught my eye: Jasmine Lewis: going to the doctor Black Dynomite: shopping for clothes Bucky Dolla: walking up steps Jasmine Lewis: eating a salad at a restaurant with skinny people.. knowing their hungry as shit.. Black Dynomite: wasting food Miss Brii: [...]
Yesterday I spent some time thinking about the differences between grifters and leaders and how the public stage beckons and rewards them both. So much so that, from a certain distance, and if viewing only a single scene, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two kinds of players. Today, Josh Marshall eloquently disabuses [...]
My parents just sent me a story in the Washington Post by Anne Kornblut that focuses on the personal slights and favors that underpin so much of our politics. In other words, grade A standard political journalism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I recently celebrated just such a report by Ryan Lizza in [...]