Just a few items worth mentioning:
• Heather Childers is Fox News’ Generic Blonde No. 117. (If you watch Fox News for any period of time, you learn that a whole lotta white people really do look alike.) Anyway, after the University of Connecticut won the NCAA men’s basketball championship last week, Childers announced on the air that UConn won “the NAACP basketball championship.”
She was probably fired immediately, not for biffing on air but for hinting to Fox News viewers the existence of actual people of color.
• Another thing: I’m tired of TV announcers saying that basketball fans dislike Kentucky coach John Calipari because he exploits the one-and-done phenomenon in college basketball. That’s ridiculous. I dislike Calipari because he cheats.
If your response to that is that everybody cheats (I don’t believe that), then I will say that Calipari is so bold (and/or bad) at it that he got caught twice and had the records of two Final Four teams from two different schools vacated by the NCAA for wrongdoing.
• During the early part of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, it was reported that some debris floating in the Indian Ocean was spotted by a Thai satellite. I’m betting that 98.7 percent of all people who heard that report had as their first reaction, “How the hell did Thailand get a satellite?!”
• There was an episode of The West Wing where a crew of astronauts was stranded on the International Space Station and would die if not rescued within a few days. It so happened that the United States had a top-secret military version of the space shuttle that could have been used to effect the rescue. However, the Bartlet Administration was unwilling to reveal the existence of the extra shuttle and was going to let the crew die.
I’m not much of a conspiracy buff, but how much do you want to bet that some agency somewhere in the U.S. government and/or military knows exactly where that plane went down, but doesn’t want to say so for fear that it would divulge the existence of some new technology?
• My son, Alexander, introduced me to an online game called 2048. The deceptively simple game is the most addictive thing since Tetris. After about a week, I developed an algorithm and beat it, but it is insidious. I believe it is a communist plot intended to slash the productivity of American workers.
• University of Alabama running back Altee Tenpenny (and no, that is not a name made up by Key and Peele) was busted over spring break for possession of marijuana. He’s the second Alabama running back busted for drugs during this offseason. Tenpenny was driving in North Little Rock, Ark., when he got pinched.
His arrest was first reported by a local radio station that goes by the name of “The Buzz.” That’s just too easy.
• I must make note of the passing of Peter Matthiessen, who wrote one of the most significant books I’ve ever read. Matthiessen was the ultimate iconoclast. Born into a mega-rich family, Matthiessen insisted at age 15 that his name be taken off the Social Register. He graduated from Yale and, along with George Plimpton and others, founded The Paris Review, a literary magazine.
As it turns out, he was using the Review as a cover for his activities as a spy for the CIA. (He would later say that his work for the spy agency was the only thing in his 86-year life that he regretted.)
He is probably best known for his books At Play in the Fields of the Lord, about missionaries in South America, and The Snow Leopard, which recounts his spiritual journey through the Himalayas. I recommend Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can): Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution. Sal Si Puedes is actually the name of the barrio in San Jose, Calif., where Chavez was living when he started his United Farm Workers movement. It’s a really cool book and, like many other things written about Chavez at the time, it debunks a lot of the revisionist nonsense that is being pushed in his name by the likes of Dolores Huerta.
But that’s not the book that I was originally talking about. Matthiessen’s masterpiece, in my mind, was the spectacular In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, the sprawling and meticulously researched account of the deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota during what is referred to as either the Pine Ridge Shoot-out or the Oglala Firefight. Matthiessen tells the story through first-person accounts of Native Americans who were involved, and then again through official FBI documents.
Bob Robideau and Dino Butler were put on trial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and were, quite stunningly, acquitted by an all-white jury. One of the accused shooters, Leonard Peltier, had escaped to Canada and wasn’t part of the first trial. After the shocking not-guilty verdicts in the first trial, the U.S. government captured Peltier and put him on trial, using a whole new body of freshly cooked “evidence.” Peltier is still in prison and a whole lot of us keep hoping that our country will eventually get a president with the testicular capacity to grant Peltier a pardon.
Lord knows Obama won’t, but maybe someday Hillary will.
This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2014.
Do you hate Derek Rose? He is the guy that actually or allegedly let someone else take his SAT.
Do you hate Marcus Camby? He is the one who took money from an agent?
These are the allegations/admissions which resulted in the NCAA sanctions against UMASS and Memphis. These are the crimes or the cheating the blame for which you place on John Calipari.
Or is it ok for “people of color” to cheat and let a person of, fuck, I don’t know…person of non-color (???) take the blame.
Oh….I know. I’m a racist for asking those questions. How dare I speak to the actual incident and not the hype. How dare I actually know what the fuck happened as opposed to blindly posting tripe on the net.
I love Derek Rose and Marcus Camby as basketball players. I don’t even mind that they “cheated.” I think the problem is the archaic, slave system of the NCAA.
But, hey, you go ahead and, without research or forethought, blame it on Calipari.
Bleating sheep….in this nation.
Danehick:
“There was an episode of The West Wing …” What’s next, a quote from “Leave It To Beaver”?
“I developed an algorithm…” Gee, Danehick once again can’t get thru a column without telling us what a genius he is.
“…some agency somewhere in the U.S. government and/or military knows exactly where that plane went down…” And JFK was assassinated by a team of sharpshooters hired by the mob because Marilyn Monroe lost her marbles from drinking water with copious amounts of fluoride and wanted him dead … right? You are getting as crazy as the rest of those conspiracy theory nuts.
Just as stunning as O.J. being acquitted by an all-black jury.
I guess Tom belongs to that group who refuse to learn from history. 2008. ” Bengazi Hillary ” is moving her personal belongings into the White House before the primaries even start. People are saying we should save money and cancel the election. Just swear her in and call it good. Low and behold, this rat crawls out of a Chicago sewer and kicks her square in the ass. It’s called don’t count your chickens, Tom.
Good call on Peltier.
Dear Danehick Sux,
Einstein was a genius. Stevie Wonder is a genius. I’m not a genius and have never claimed to be.
However, an algorithm is simply a set of rules designed to solve a problem in a finite number of steps. It’s nothing fancy. I suppose I could have used “developed a plan of action” but “algorithm” is more correct.
Pace yourself, CW – putting all that stupid in one paragraph is going to see you blow out a knee in the first quarter.
Amen, AtticStatic. CW’s first sentence only makes sense if Peltier had been acquitted by an all-Indian jury, which no prosecutor in America has ever allowed. Still trying to figure out how that connects to the 2008 primaries…it’s like Kafka tried writing a Teletubbies episode!
For once, I can agree with TD, at least about the writer, Mathiessen, and the railroading of Leonard Peltier.
Dude, you watch a bunch of dumb ass Dorito TV.
Fletcher, Tom’s last sentence said maybe Hillary will. Right now she’s just a regular citizen (thank God). Therefore, she can’t pardon anyone. Should she be elected president some day ( God forbid), she can pardon Peltier or whoever (whomever) she pleases. This tells me Tom has assumed that she’s a lock to be elected. Just like people did in 2008. You were probably still in grade school then. I guess that’s why it confued you.
AS, nice to see you back. I was worried you got caught in a mouse trap up there.
Ok, thanks for pointing out the last sentence I missed reading. Tom harbors a lot of assumptions, as readers can divine; sadly, so do you. You’re fairly “confued” yourself if you think a recent student would reference Kafka.
Confused ?! I do believe it is you who’s confused. Pardon my typo. Please re-read what you wrote and what I wrote. I may be crazy but I believe it was you who mentioned this Kafka guy, not me. I couldn’t tell you who Kafka was (is) if my bike depended on it.
The only thing I remember about The Snow Leopard was that he never saw one. Which in American populist Buddhism meant the trip was a success.
Obviously I was the one who referenced Kafka, CW. Your confusion persists.
Not only his confusion, RJ – but his pride in his own ignorance.
Two on one. Par for the course around here. Maybe you two should go out for a latte ( dutch treat until you get to know each other better) so you can discuss my ” ignorance” face to face. Meanwhile. I’ll bet whatever you wish that both you mutts will be still toiling away at age 56. The same age I turned in my papers and have been living very comfortable ever since. Ah, to be ignorant.
Tom, You forgot Mumia. Better watch that, people might suspect that you are actually a white Republican. BTW- Have you ever heard of Ray Robinson?