YOUR TRUTH IS MY TRUTH

Career Suicide the Foolish Way

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:11:00 -0400

Most of us would think that former Congressman Jessie Jackson, Jr., and former KPMG audit partner Scott London have little in common. After all, Jackson, the once popular House member representing the 2nd congressional district of Illinois, and London, formerly the head of KPMG’s audit practice in Los Angeles, lived and worked in two vastly different worlds. But the truth is both men committed career suicide in similar ways: They both engaged in activities that sank their respective careers for what amounted to a nothing more than trinkets and trash. Jackson threw away a bright and shiny political career simply to purchase expensive bedroom furniture for his kids and Michael Jackson memorabilia by raiding his campaign chest, while London ditched his 30-year stint at KPMG by tipping off his golfing buddy about the financial goings on of two publicly traded companies his firm audited, all for about $50,000. Both men also acquired Rolex brand watches as a byproduct of doing their dastardly deeds. Both admitted their acts and are facing time in Club Fed.

When asked why they did the crimes, neither could articulate a rational reason. In fact, they both seemed genuinely mystified, as if they were dementia sufferers. They shared that all-too-familiar deer-in-the headlights, glazed-over look. What’s more, neither man acted in a particularly shrewed manner to hide his unlawful activities. Their actions seem more inept than wily.

So, those of us who have watched both tragedies play out in the media are left with trying to divine how two guys who pretty much were set for life could fall so quickly for so little gain. To my way of thinking, it was merely a case of two men who had grown weary of their stations in life but who could not simply say “I quit” and walk away. In my view Jackson and London— much like those hapless souls who want to commit suicide but who don’t have the nerve to do it themselves who instead trigger deadly confrontations with police officers who predictably end it all for them—desperately wanted to get off their respective career merry-go-rounds, but lacked the courage to do it straightforwardly by saying “I’ve had enough.” So, they let the feds do it for them in ways that they had to know would surely lead to their respective downfalls.

And the shared love for Rolex watches? Well, let’s just say they knew, in the end, come what may, they’d have lots of time on their hands in the next chapters of their lives.

In the News...JC Penney should have known better

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 19:43:07 -0400

There are no two ways about it: I’m a news junkie. And today, while reading online, I came across an intriguing story about JC Penney. In brief, it seems JC Penney is having a lousy year. Sales and profit are way down from last year— apparently because it embarked on a new sales strategy earlier this year that has alienated its customers.

What did Penney’s do to achieve this fate? It started telling potential customers the truth about merchandise pricing. Specifically, it set prices on all its items at a level that was below full price and promised no future slashing of those prices via couponing or sales. In other words, it went to a transparency-in-sales pricing model.

Well, potential customers aren’t buying it—not because they don’t trust JC Penney, but rather because they believe they can buy the same items at other retailers at a price below what Penney’s is offering when the very same items go on sale at competing stores.

According to the news article I read, some behavior economists (Gabriel and Laisbon) are saying Penney’s is the victim of “shrouded sales” information. That is, in most retail environments, sellers try to extract as much money as they can from buyers by withholding key pricing information. They cite hotel room and computer printer pricing as examples. Hoteliers are known for offering rooms at prices that don’t reflect the full price of a night’s stay. While they may offer the room at $100 per night, they add on parking, wi-fi, long-distance telephone, and mini-bar fees, that drive the price up to $120 a night. Similarly, computer printers are now commonly available at less than $75, which is affordable for most shoppers. but the pricing of the ink cartridges far exceeds the printer cost, sometimes ten-fold over a year’s worth of printer use.

These same economists say that savvy shoppers take advantage of this pricing model by exploiting the shrouded costs while taking advantage of the below market pricing. For example, the savvy hotel guest who rents the $100 a night room avoids renting a car and uses taxis to avoid the hotel parking fees; she eats breakfast at Starbucks and uses free wi-fi; and she avoids the mini-bar and telephone fees by packing snacks in her luggage and using her cell phone. As for the computer printer purchases, savvy shoppers have learned to buy laser printers rather than ink jet ones.

So where does all this leave JC Penny? In the lurch. Savvy shoppers wait for better deals at stores offering coupons and sales. Less savvy shoppers substitute other stores for similar merchandise offered at Penney’s, thinking the Penney prices are too high!

I guess there’s no profit in trying to modify the shopping behaviors of the American shopper. Ask JC Penney. It now knows all about us.

The USPS sucks!

Sat, 26 May 2012 06:32:30 -0400

Went to my local U.S. Post Office today, and boy was I reminded of how woefully inefficient this taxpayer-funded service really is. I stood in line with about five other good citizens who all shared that awful feeling that there’s got to be a better way to run an organization than what we were experiencing at that moment in time.

It’s as if USPS management has never heard of computerized systems or Six Sigma or just plain old-fashioned systems engineering. It appears that every customer request has to be handled manually, from dispensing stamps, to handing out paper forms to request special mail handling, to finding mail held for a few days at the recipient’s request. Has it never dawned on anyone at the USPS that the we are now in the second decade of the 21st century and that operating this service the way it was done in the 1950’s will not cut it anymore?

I know the service is losing money left and right. I think, based on today’s experience, I now know why. Nobody wants to be transported 50 years back in time merely by walking through the front door of the USPS in search of satisfying one’s basic postal needs.

Whatcha Say?

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:56:31 -0400

I’m no English language scholar. In fact, English courses bored me to death in high school and college. But now, after years upon years of reading the written word, advocating on behalf of others, and puting my thoughts in writing to earn a living, I’ve learned to appreciate the power of language . And what I like most about English is how new phrases of five words or less interject themselves into the spoken word to capture a once-uncommon-but-now-very common, well-recognized phenomenon.

Two of my favorite examples of new-born phraseology are: ”Baby daddy” and “white-mama hair.” Baby daddy is the more recognizable of the two. Prior to the 1970’s, it was fairly uncommon to encounter a single woman who birthed and raised a child outside of marriage. Today, more than half of all children born in America to mothers under 30 are born outside of marriage. Typically the fathers of these children are effectively absent from their lives. Thus, it’s quite common for a young, unmarried mother to refer to the father of her child, who offers little or no emotional or financial support to the mother or the child, as “my baby’s daddy.” The phrasing changes if some type of support is present. The child’s father is then characterized as “my boyfriend/fiance and my baby’s daddy.” So, “baby daddy,” in two words, captures not only the father’s biological connection but his lack of commitment to the mother and child.

“White-mama hair” is of more recent vintage, primarily because of the marked increase in biracial children (black/white) over the last 20-30 years. The phrase derives from the well-documented phenomenon of white mothers generally being incapable of properly grooming their biracial daughters’ hair because its texture is foreign to the mothers’ hair-styling experience. This leads to their daughters’ hair always appearing in need of some serious grooming. Given the rise of such mother-daughter combinations, the phrase “white-mama hair” captures the essence of this hair-styling problem for many biracial girls.

Although “white-mama hair” has yet to achieve an entry in the on-line Urban Dictionary, I first picked up on the phrase when it was used by attorney/cable television contributor Jami Floyd, herself a biracial child of a white mother, in a 2008 Glamour magazine article on “race and looks.” In the article, Ms. Floyd admits that she, too, suffered from white-mama hair as a child.

How popular phrases like these achieve breakthrough to become part of common English usage is a mystery to me. However, they are proof positive that language, like a mutating virus, constantly reshapes itself as the need arises to express new societal realities.

Watcha say? Was it a Hard "G" or Hard "C"?

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:25:58 -0400

I’ve been following closely the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin killing. Judging by the heat being generated by public outrage, George Zimmerman should get ready for an arrest and homicide trial. At the least he’s facing a manslaughter/negligent homicide charge. And a separate federal civil rights violation charge is not out of the question.

Several things about what happened that fateful night on February 26 intrigue me. But the one that towers over the rest is whether at one point George utters a barely audible racial epithet during his conversation with the police dispatcher. Those who have listened to the tape before and after it was digitally enhanced have reached no consensus on whether he did. I have listened to the tape unenhanced and believe George did utter a racial epithet. What’s more, even his “friend,” Joe Oliver, does not rule out this possibility.

So, let’s start with Joe Oliver’s perspective and go from there. Joe says that he’s listened to the 911 tape several times, and that he sometimes hears a hard “g” and sometimes a hard “c.” Either way, Joe implies the word George used rhymes with “noon.” Thus Joe is on record as concluding that either George said “fucking goon” or “fucking coon.” Curiously Joe never stated in the TV interview I saw that he (Joe) ultimately concluded the word George in fact uttered was “goon.” What a friend!

Is it likely that George called Trayvon a goon? I don’t think so. The American Heritage Dictionary, College Edition, 1976, defines a goon as “a thug hired to commit acts of intimidation or violence.” It also states the term is used as slang for a “stupid or oafish person.” On the internet a goon has several other, more comtemporary meanings as defined by the Urban Dictionary: 1. a real man or nigga; 2. low-level gang member; 3. cheap wine; 4. someone hired to rough someone up; 5. a mind-numbing annoyingly irritating person; and 6. a slow-witted or goofy person.

None of these definitions appears to fit the context of George’s state of mind at the time he uttered his nearly inaudible phrase on the tape. He didn’t know Trayvon, so it’s unlikely he was passing judgment on Trayvon’s intelligence—unless he thought the so-called suspicious young male was stupid for trying to get away from him by running. But George had already conceded on the tape that “they always get away.” So, I would think that George would have thought that Trayvon’s running away from him could prove successful, not a stupid, futile act. Nowhere does George indicate that he thinks Trayvon was a paid enforcer or intimidator and, therefore, the classic “goon” as defined in most dictionaries. Moreover George never indicates in his conversation with the SPD that he thought Trayvon was a gang member, irritatingly annoying, or goofy. Finally, it’s hard to imagine that George thought of Trayvon as a “real man” in the machismo sense. So, in light of George’s likely state of mind as he stalked Trayvon, it defies logic that he would have used the word goon to describe Trayvon or his actions that fateful evening of February 26.

That then leaves the c-word, a derogatory term for a black person. As I previously stated, George’s friend, Joe Oliver, is on record as having said he hears George utter it or the g-word on the tape. If it ain’t the g-word, which defies logic, Joe, it has to be the c-word. Right?

N.B. Does uttering a racial epithet make George a racist? Not necessarily. President Obama explained this possible dichotomy using his white, Kansas-bred grandmother, Virginia Dunham, as an example. In a speech during his 2008 presidential campaign he described her as “…a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or etnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

Miss Pope, why didn't you believe me?

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:53:00 -0400

As far back as I can remember, I loved reading and writing. To this day, long since I graduated high school, college and graduate school, my mother still accuses me of always having a book in my hand—day and night.

In elementary school all the kids thought of me as being the school’s best writer of love poetry. And on those rare occasions when we were assigned the task of reading aloud some of our poetry in the classroom, they all waited with bated breath to hear mine, giving me a thunderous applause when I finished. But despite my growing writer’s rep, one incident involving a writing assignment in grade 6 still haunts me decades later.

Miss Pope, our sixth grade language arts teacher, asked the class to write an essay on “Why I Like to Write.” I went home that afternoon and gave the topic some serious thought, and before I knew it I was composing an essay about how writing made me feel like an omnipotent god, in that writing gave me the power to create worlds heretofore unknown, to populate them with characters of my choosing, and to make decisions about whether they lived or died in the world I created for them.

Obviously, I wrote all this in the language of an 11-year-old who no doubt had been watching one-too-many “Twilight Zone” episodes on television, but write it I did. Miss Pope returned my essay to me a few days later marked “A,” but in front of the class began to question me regarding whether I had actually written the essay myself. I insisted that I had and she reluctantly said she believed me, but the way she said it told me that she really did not. I was crushed that she would doubt me, as I was a top student in her class.

I’m amazed the pain of that day has stayed with me as long as it has. I’m not sure why. It certainly didn’t change the trajectory of my scholarship in her class and in all the classes that followed it. Maybe it’s because I admired Miss Pope immensely and her questioning my integrity shook the core of my admiration for her. Or maybe for the first time in my young life I realized that teachers have the power to encourage or discourage their students, and when a student turns in an extraordinarily good piece of homework, the teacher’s decision not to applaud that effort but to question it makes that teacher the antithesis of what he or she should be.

Years later, as a college sophomore, I found myself sitting in an English class when I was called upon by the prof to read from an essay I had written per her assignment. At my conclusion, she told the class that this was an excellent example of the kind of writing she expected from all of us students. She applauded my work, thereby giving me the precious gift of encouragement.

I wished Miss Pope could have been there that day. I think she would have finally believed me. But then again, given the passage of years, she probably would not have remembered the incident or, for that matter, me.

What's up with that?

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:24:05 -0400

While watching television this morning, I saw the photos of the three deceased shooting victims from the Chadron, Ohio, high school shooting this week. I was surprised that one of the victims is black. Then again, I don’t know why I was surprised because it seems a pattern is emerging from these high profile criminal acts, and that pattern is—despite the high schools where these mass shootings take place are overwhelming white, the warped-minded shooter always manages to take out a black kid.

Fact: The population of Chadron is 99.5% white. One would think the high school population would reflect this demographic. If so, then the odds of a random shooter taking out a black kid are less than 1 out of 100 or less than 1%. So, how come the black kid was 1 of 5 victims (20%) and 1 of 3 (33.3%) of those killed?

A similar pattern arises from the Columbine shooting. Columbine is a suburb of Denver that has a population that is .5% black. Again, assuming its only high school has a population that mirrors the suburb’s demographics, of the 13 students killed, none should have been black. Yet Klebold and Harris, the columbine shooters, took out a black kid among their victims, yielding a black victimization score of 8.33%. Again, the black victim was an “over representation” of blacks among the class of victims.

If the Chadron shooter is to be believed, we can’t blame his choice of victims on racism. After all, he allegedly told the police who interviewed him that he chose his victims at random. And there is no evidence that Harris and Klebold sought out Isael Sholes, the black kid at Columbine.

So what’s up with the black kids being over represented in these massacres? I blame it on visual symmetry. Yeah, that’s right: visual symmetry. You know, the kind of thing that causes your eyes to focus on something or someone that breaks the look of an overall image, such as a fly in your glass of milk, the one red umbrella in a sea of black ones, or a shark fin breaking the surface of water near the beach. I guess the most often quoted use of visual symmetry is a statement attributed to the former owner of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes who defended his not hiring dancers of color because their presence would destroy the visual symmetry of the dance line. This same owner prohibited his dancers from tanning, he said, for the same reason.

That there is a scientific basis for the existence of visual symmetry cannot be debated. No doubt it is common to most, if not all, creatures and probably relates to the survival instinct. For thousands of years our use of visual symmetry enabled us humans to spot game hiding in the bush or in a tree and to spot early on that predator headed in our direction to make us its latest meal—primarily because we could see that “something” was “different” in our field of vision. And although civilization and migration has taken us far from the savannahs of Africa, our genes still carry this well-developed sense of honing in on something different when looking at a sea of sameness. See paper by Wolfe and Friedman-Hill, On the Role of Symmetry in Visual Search, MIT, 1992.

Applying this understanding to the Columbine and Chadron shooters and assuming no racial targeting initially, in scanning for targets among a room full of white kids, any nonwhite kid would catch their attention due to their innate sense of visual symmetry and end of being shot and possibly killed far in excess of the nonwhite distribution in the student population.

None of this is to absolve the killers at Columbine and Chadron of murder. What they did cannot be defended. However, assuming they did not walk in into their respective overwhelmingly white high schools on the mornings of the shootings with a goal to kill a black student, human nature—backed up by scientific research—offers an explanation of why two black students found themselves targeted for senseless deaths.

Books I've recently read; books I'm now reading

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:54:02 -0500

Now that I’ve slipped the bonds of corporate life, I have lots of time to read what I want, not what I need to. So my reading choices of late are totally idiosyncratic. I just read whatever strikes my fancy as I stumble upon various and sundry book titles referenced in articles posted on the internet. I use the cockroach approach to book selections, which leads me to reading the pages of all sorts of literature at odd hours of the night

I just finished two books that could not be more different. They have as much in common as, say, Al Sharpton and Ann Coulter, if you get my drift. The first is titled The House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chestnutt and published at the turn of the 20th century. It’s the hackneyed tragic mulatto story of a beautiful black woman who passes for white (with the aid of her successful lawyer brother who is also passing) in Reconstruction-era South Carolina and , as you no doubt already have guessed, falls in love with a white man to the manor well born. So, the plot is nothing to blog about, but Chestnutt’s lyrical, erudite writing style does make for an engaging read.

Check out the book’s opening paragraph: ”Time touches all things with destroying hand; and if he seem now and then to to bestow the bloom of youth, the sap of spring, it is but a brief mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed by the wrinkles of old age, the dry leaves and bare branches of winter. And yet there are places where Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has departed, and to which he seems loath to bring the evil day. Who has not known some even-tempered old man or woman who seemed to have drunk of the fountain of youth? Who has not seen somewhere an old town that, having long since ceased to grow, yet held its own without perceptible decline?”

Good stuff, huh? Chestnutt won the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1928 for distinguished literary achievement in 1928.

Copies of The House Behind the Cedars are available at your local library. Go grab a copy, and tell your friends, too.

The second book I recently finished is The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy by William Strauss and Neil Lowe. I loved this nonfiction because its premise is quite persuasive. The authors first argue that time is cyclical, not linear, and therefore the old adage about history repeating itself is fact, not fiction. They further argue that the cycle of history is about 80 years, the approximate length of the average healthy American’s lifespan. They make their case by looking back over the last 500 years to show that a distinct pattern of history that moves in High (growth), Awakening (maturation), Unraveling (crumbling institutions), and Crisis (perilous) stages, each stage lasting about 20 years and each stage always unfolds in the same order listed above. What’s more, there nothing much we humans can do to change the cycle—short of self-annihilation, something we are clearly now fully capable of doing.

Now here is the kicker: The book was published in 1997, at which time the authors predicted a period of Crisis beginning about 2005. They weren’t that far off, given the Great Recession hit America hard beginning in September 2008. If Strauss and Lowe are right, now that we’re four years into the current Crisis period, the next High period can only be 16 years away. I’ll do my best to wait for it.

Factoid: The authors explain why they believe the faces of the four presidents on Mt. Rushmore are not carved in chronological order of the dates each man served in office; Lincoln’s face is last, looking from left to right.

I’m now reading Crash Course, a book about the rise, fall, and rise again of the American auto industry, which definitely has gone through the cycle of history laid out by Strauss and Lowe. More on that one later.

Word up

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:57:01 -0500

I can’t recall a time when I didn’t love to read books. Some weeks I devour 3 or 4 books. But lately I’ve developed the annoying habit of proofreading books as I read them. I really, really don’t like doing it, but what can I say? I simply can’t help myself.

But to make matters worse, I have become obsessed with one word in particular as I read/proofread myself to bliss. That word is “none.” Years ago I discovered that “none” is a singular noun, meaning it always takes a singular verb. I was mortified, knowing full well that I had sinned countless times in using “none” with a plural verb, as in: “None of my friends have any money.”

And so, like a heathen freshly converted to religion, I took a sacred vow to never sin again—and to save other wayward sinners as well. My problem is, however, that there are lots of sinners when it comes to this grammatical faux pas. They turn up in the best read books and periodicals of America. I find them daily on the internet, blog after ungrammatical blog. They haunt the New York Times best seller list and frequent The Wall Street Journal.

At times I can’t help myself. When I spot a misuse of “none” in a newspaper article and the writer has an email address appended to it, I email him/her to advise of this mortal sin. “Sir,” I say, “None” is the subject of your sentence. It is a singular noun, meaning “not one” and thus takes the singular verb, not the plural form as used in your article.” I never get a reply. Is it because they don’t believe me or do they, too, feel embarrassed, having sinned publicly and no doubt serially? Or do they simply feel it is none of my business?

Carl called me

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:50:16 -0500

My buddy, Carl, and I have been friends for decades. He’s among my closest. I know we met when we both were spending a few years in Ann Arbor, but I can’t recall our actual meeting. I just remember that we clicked, and it’s been a steadfast friendship, despite the the passage of years and our living hundreds of miles apart since we left AA.

He telephoned me on a Sunday afternoon. It was great hearing from him. You see, Carl’s been going through some tough times lately due to long-term health issues. So, it really, really was great to hear his voice on the line. He sounded strong and vibrant, a much improved version of himself. Just a few months back he was feeling at his lowest about his health and the timbre in his voice told me all I needed to know about how low he was feeling. So, his calling me is a turning point I think.

I’m not sure why Carl befriended me, but I know why I am fortunate to have him as a friend. He’s well-read, erudite at times, iconoclastic about life, tells funny stories about his growing up in Detroit, and knows more by historical events than I can ever hope to know. In short, he teaches me stuff and makes me laugh. What more can you ask of a friend?

Carl’s a native Detroiter. Truth be told, he’s lived in Michigan all his life, although choosing not to return to Detroit after completing his education at UM. I, on the other hand, have lived half of my life outside my native state, Georgia, in four locations. I suppose there’s as much happiness to be found in staying put, as Carl has done, as there is in being a wanderer like me. But I must confess, living my entire life in one state or region of the country has never appealed to me.

I’m glad Carl called me. I hope he calls again, and soon.

Whatcha Say? Words Gone Wrong

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:33:02 -0500

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about misunderstandings created by uttered words—especially words associated with racism but which, when examined in the full context of their usage, are free of racist invective. Three examples come to mind. Two are of recent vintage; one occurred several years ago. All make my point.

A few days ago, ESPN fired an employee and disciplined another for using the phrase “chink in the armor” while publicly referencing the basketball play of wunderkind Jeremy Lin of the NY Knicks. Apparently ESPN management believes the use of the word “chink” in that phrase in reference to Lin was an overt act of racism, so much so that in addition to the employment actions it took, ESPN issued a public apology to Lin. I, and many students of the English language, strongly disagree with ESPN’s take on the matter.

Clearly ESPN’s management failed to understand the use of “chink” in this commonly used phrase has absolutely no association with the use of “chink” as a racial slur. The phrase has been a part of the English language for over 500 years and has nothing whatsoever to do with disparaging people of Chinese descent. The phrase uses “chink” to refer to a gap or small opening in armor plating (popularized by midieval knights). While its origin of usage is now lost in the sands of time, it’s difficult to imagine that it arose out of racist feelings toward the Chinese. Having a “Chinese person” in your armor makes absolutely no sense today and most likely did not 500 years ago.

What’s equally troubling to me is that Lin must have believed he was a victim of a slur as well. When told of the apology from ESPN, he accepted it. What are they teaching at Harvard these days?

This way-over-the-top ESPN incident reminds me of a similar misplaced accusation of racism in Washington, D.C., over a decade ago. There, a white D.C. government finance official, while in a meeting with a roomful of his black co-workers, used the term “niggardly” to describe resources available to the government to meet its upcoming budgetary needs. He was quickly accused of being a racist for using the N-word—despite having worked without incident for the predominately black D.C. government for over twenty years. Grammarians quickly rushed in in to point out that the term “niggardly” (meaning stingy or miserly) has a totally separate origin and meaning from the N-word and the two share nothing in common other than the first four letters in their spellings. When one of the more vocal of the accusers was confronted with this fact, he responded that the different meanings of the two words didn’t matter because he (the white official) “should have known better.” Known better than what? Known better than to have used a semi-homonym in front of a man who did not know the difference in meaning between the N-word and “niggardly” and when explained the difference continued to feign outrage?

And the accused? Well, he resigned from his post, saying he should have known better. Again, known better than what? Known better than to think the truth is a defense to accusations of racism? Fortunately, after the then mayor was fully enlightened regarding the meaning of niggardly, he rehired the official.

This brings me to my last example of words gone wrong. Late last year a white Chicago teacher with 25 years in the CPS system was given a five-day suspension for actually using the N-word in his mostly black class of middle school children. But he and his students say that he used the word as a teachable moment for the class after he confiscated a note from one of the female students who had used the N-word in the note. His was an attempt to get the students to understand how wrong it is to the use that word—even among black people. Well, the teacher’s timing was off by a few minutes because, as he began his lecture, the principal walks into the classroom and hears him using the N-word; hence, the suspension. Clearly if the facts are as reported my the teacher and his pupils, the use of the N-word in this context was devoid of racist content. For his part, the teacher has sued the CPS and the principal to clear his name. My money is backing the teacher.

Bottom line: I know racial slurs are used all too frequently. And, yeah, I get it that in our American pluralistic society, sensitivity to the feelings of others is a virtue. But when a word is a not used as a racial epithet, let’s not rush to make it one. Even CPS middle school kids know the difference.

I wish ESPN, D.C., and the CPS had understood this truth before engaging in their separate but equally misguided racial-epithet which hunts. Oops. Did I say that?

Melissa Harris-Perry

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:37:00 -0500

I’m a cable news junkie—so much so that I rarely watch network TV news anymore. I work out every other day and the gym that I use always has 3-4 cable news stations tuned in and viewable from the treadmills . So, I find myself watching MSNBC day and night quit a bit. Plus, its left-tilting viewpoint suits me just fine.

But what makes MSNBC stand out of late is that it has given Melissa Harris-Perry, a long-time guest contributor, her own show. And, man, is she outstanding. In fact, I think she’s the “Whitney Houston” of cable news. She’s got the high-octane IQ, in-depth knowledge of American politics (Currently Poli Sci prof at Tulane after fleeing Princeton. Thank you, Cornell West!), and the verbal skills to hold her own against any talking head in her presence. Also, she comes across as super comfortable in front of the camera. This is remarkable for someone who is not a trained television personality.

What can I say? She has a certain je ne sais quoi about her. And I like it.

Her show is on weekends from 10-noon. Check it out! You will not be disappointed.

Whitney Houston

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:06:00 -0500

I watched Whitney Houston’s 3.5 hours homegoing ceremony. It was a grand sendoff. But what was up with Jesse Jackson? He sat to the right of the pulpit without opening his mouth during the entire event. That’s got to be a first! So, why the prominent seating if he had no speaking role? I’m clueless. Somebody enlighten me, please.

Another curiosity. I don’t understand why Marvin Winans kept getting out of his seat and striking a pose as others were singing their solos. He did it way too frequently. And was he wearing a Catholic bishop’s vestment? I saw a color photo of Archbishop Tim Dolan in the NYTimes yesterday, and his vestment looked identical to what Marvin was wearing. Odd choice on Marvin’s part. I don’t believe he’s Catholic.

Kevin Costner did a good job with his story about Whitney and her getting the leading lady role in “The Bodyguard,” but does he deserve the over-the-top media attention via video replay he got on most of the TV stations I watched after the ceremony ended? It’s as if no one else spoke fondly of Whitney during the ceremony.

No, I don’t know who the Caucasian woman with the big hair was sitting to the right of the floor piano in the black dress. But if you do, please let me know. I’d like to solve that mystery.