Collateral Damage of Intra-racial Oppressive Stereotypes

Tonight as I watched Oprah Winfrey's show about "Dark Girls" I was distracted from the program's message of persistent racism by an inner voice that murmured that perhaps black people were collateral victims of oppressive stereotypes about beauty that whites had initially inflicted on themselves

Black Nephews vs. Black Daddies

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine carried an article "Data You Can Believe In" (Jim Rutenberg, 6/23/13) that gushes about how a gaggle of young number crunchers were responsible for identifying Obama's wavering supporters in the 2012 campaign, then targeting torrents of media messages to these waverers with high precision and minimum cost, thereby ensuring Governor's Romney's defeat.

Post Racial Banality

The following note was composed and sent last night in response to an email that I received yesterday from a friend that commended the wisdom of Dr. Benjamin Carson, the eminent pediatric surgeon who expressed opinions that were implicitly critical of some of the liberal/progressive policies espoused by President Obama. Here's a link to a Youtube video of Dr. Carson's remarks:

Tales of Two Cities

I just finished bingeing my my way through the first season of "House of Cards" -- the American remake of the British "House of Cards" three season shocker TV series that first aired in 1990. The British version was produced by the BBC, the American by Netflix. Netflix broke new ground for binge addicts like me by releasing all 13 episodes of the show's first season on Friday evening (2/1/1). Last month when I first heard about the upcoming American remake starring Kevin Spacey, an actor who has portrayed subtle menace in other productions that I've enjoyed, I watched the BBC original (also on Netflix) in a two day binge in preparation for the American debut.

Choosing the Good We Do

In a world in which so many things go wrong every day, the set of wrongs that any person chooses to try to put right are a tiny fraction of all of the possible good deeds that he or she could do. This applies to presidents and paupers alike. Indeed, the good deeds that we choose to do define who we are to ourselves and to anyone who pays attention to what we do.