Drawing Muhammad

I did a stupid thing yesterday (so what else is new?) and commented on a Facebook thread about Pamela Geller’s Muhammad-drawing event in Garland, Texas. The thread was started by a fellow progressive who (I thought at first) feels as I do, that freedom of speech must be protected in this country even when we deplore how […]

Who You Gonna Call?

Do even white people trust the police any more? What should I do if a cop wants me to pull over? Try to keep rolling until I can stop in an area where there are witnesses, hoping someone will take a cell phone video in case things go sideways? Is the cop going to tase me if I don’t bow and scrape? Do I have […]

Thursday Bag o’ Comments

Two things that distinguish online from print news are links and reader comments. Online news articles include embedded links, making it easy for readers to call up sources and related stories. This is the best thing about online news IMO. The worst thing about online news is reader comments. Print newspapers and magazines filter comments, generally […]

Saturday Bag o’ Nuts

The Nut Tree was a landmark of my younger days in California. In my last year of high school and first year of college, my friends and I expressed our newly-found independence and adulthood by driving from Sacramento to San Francisco on weekends. The Nut Tree, just off the freeway south of Sacramento, was a mandatory coffee stop. That […]

Mau Mau Mike and Southern Baptist Bigotry

Mike Huckabee once said this about Barack Obama: Which prompted the following response by Stephen Colbert: The important thing isn’t where the Mau Mau Revolution happened. The important thing is for people to start associating Barack Obama with the words “Mau Mau.” After all, wherever not in the United States the President grew up, he had […]

Thursday Bag o’ Statuary

Ugh, relatives in the heartland. Again. I unfriend out & out racists when they reveal themselves on Facebook, unless they’re kin (I did unfriend a nephew, but it was over animal cruelty). In the wake of Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson and the protests that followed, some of my relatives have started sharing white supremacist chain letters and […]