Seriously? The Boys Choir of Harlem is no more? How did that happen and no one know about it? You would have at least thought BET or TV One…
Never mind.
Now usually I don’t do this, but here’s a post I wrote over on the Stet Sports Blog regarding the Washington Redskins and their history of minority hiring practices. Some people enjoyed it, some didn’t.
Interested to hear what you think about it.
Only in D.C., and likely, only at 14th and U St. will you find a throng of snowball throwing revelers of all races being threated by a cop with a gun.
According to this blogger, it surely is.
No one can figure out how to use it effectively. It’s not that people don’t understand the basic notion of how to compose a WAVE, or even how to add in other people, but it’s not nearly as fluent as it was made out to be.
I’m pretty sure I know how to use Google Wave, and recently discovered that a couple of my contacts had profiles. But I’ve yet to engage in a meaningful community conversation on Wave, and that’s disparaging.
Maybe Twitter still has the lion’s share of the ‘real time’ interactive community, and maybe enough people don’t have it. But for what I was hoping would be a tremendous social networking component for my blogs hasn’t panned out to be; and it appears it hasn’t because people aren’t all that interested.
I’ve found that Inside Charm City has leveraged the Wave for good, engaging people via Twitter to come aboard and discuss local topics. But for sports fans and and cultural pundits, can we really jump in the pool and ride the wave?
It remains to be seen.
If her ideals are misguided, if her politics be jaded and her values be tainted, at the very least, you can be thankful that Lady Liberty and her children aren’t driven to fanatical violence.
Just check out these headlines from the last hour.
Deadly Bomb Hits Market in Pakistan – New York Times
Eight killed in Kabul suicide bomb blast in diplomatic quarter – Times Online
And that’s just two headlines within the last hour. Don’t get me wrong, every minority in this country should be allowed five minutes on nationally broadcast television to read prepared remarks about what they don’t like about America. The history of extortion, division and separatism is wide enough that everybody should at least know how everybody without a voice really feels.
But to her credit, America is decent enough to ingrain within her citizens that radicalism leading to violence should be less than a passing thought. I know a few people who have known other people who have survived a bomb attack or political coup by military force. Neither of those people were born in America. They came over here shortly thereafter those incidents.
And if we can cut through all of the cynicism to at least acknowledge that, no matter race, religion or creed, it’s very unlikely that we’ll be snatched out of our homes, killed, tortured or separated from family on those pretenses alone. America deserves a little credit for that, because given the emotional climate within her borders and outside of them, that could easily be the case.
Maybe it’s apathy, maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s because Americans deep down believe in some sort of equity for all people; at the very least, in their right to be alive.
The biggest curse in American culture is selectivity; selective history, selective opportunities, selective standards for ethical treatment. But the one thing that they do not select is for terrorism to be a regular part of life, and for that, we all should be flag waving patriots.
I don’t know how long that lemonade and iced tea has been a cultural staple in Baltimore, but I do know that we don’t call it an Arnold Palmer. It’s a half-and-half.
Unfortunately, the city of Baltimore won’t be getting a ‘This is SportsCenter’ spot to legitimize it’s claim to the beverage, so, I guess that’s that.
