O-2 !!!!!!!!...the second time is always better !!!

Mac Thomason, R.I.P.

When I first began blogging, I originally intended to have both a journal that focused on politics and current events, and another on college sports.  The college sports blog, named Condredge's Acolytes (after the first African-American year-long starting QB for an SEC school, Condredge Holloway), was intended to be open, inviting other contributors.  The most enthusiastic contributor was Mac Thomason, who worked as a librarian in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and he provided invaluable analysis of SEC football, as well as personal encouragement to me in pursuing this interest.  He had started his political blog, War Liberal, at roughly the same time I did, and we had exchanged links early on, so inviting him to participate was a no-brainer.

It is with great sadness to report that on Saturday Mr. Thomason has lost his battle with testicular cancer.   This tribute, by sportswriter Joe Posnanski, who like myself never had the privilege of meeting him, but who also enjoyed the clear prose he brought to the blogosphere, beautifully describes the loss that those who loved and admired Mr. Thomason feel today.

Best Springsteen commentary ever:  And one in which the writer doesn't feel the need to point out the hackneyed use of the sexist term "baby" in every song...someone has noticed that the last twenty-five years haven't been all that great:

The musical decline of Bruce Springsteen has been obvious for decades. The sanctimony, the grandiosity, the utterly formulaic monumentality; the witlessness; the tiresome recycling of those anthemic figures, each time more preposterously distended; the disappearance of intimacy and the rejection of softness. And the sexlessness: Remnick adores Springsteen for his “flagrant exertion,” which he finds deeply sensual, comparing him to James Brown, but Brown’s shocking intensity, his gaudy stamina, his sea of sweat, was about, well, fucking, whereas Springsteen “wants his audience to leave the arena, as he commands them, ‘with your hands hurting, your feet hurting, your back hurting, your voice sore, and your sexual organs stimulated!’ ”, which is how you talk dirty at Whole Foods...

(snip)

Nothing has damaged Springsteen’s once-magnificent music more than his decision to become a spokesman for America. He is Howard Zinn with a guitar. The wounded workers in his songs do not have the authenticity of acquaintance; they are pious hackneyed tropes, stereotypical class martyrs from Guthrie and Steinbeck. Springsteen’s sympathy is genuine, but his people are not. His 9/11 and recession songs are bloated editorials: “where’s the promise from sea to shining sea?” His anger that “the banker man grows fat” is too holy: “if I had a gun, I’d find the bastards and shoot ‘em on sight” is not a “liberal insistence.” I prefer Dodd-Frank. The drawl in his voice is a production value, the grit a mannerism. A few minutes with one of Johnny Cash’s last records and it is impossible to take Springsteen’s vernacular seriously.

For those who desire that we have the best judicial system in the world, and not see the Supreme Court as just another partisan branch, that was a close call.  Here's the decision.  I would like to see the Constitution amended at some point to prevent narrow 5-4 decisions being used to invalidate laws passed by Congress, a preference on my part for the elected voice of the People over an unelected elite of law school profs and former corporate appellate litigators, but thanks to the Chief Justice, that's a problem for another day.

Another fake Pulitzer "nominee" gets busted !!!

This time, it's the appropriately-fake LA Times pundit Jonah Goldberg....

Since Charles Murray's book about the so-called "white working class" is getting a lot of press, I thought I'd repost my responses to the cliched questions he proffered two years ago as a way of distinguishing class differences.