"Let's Stay Together" - Al Green
- I pointed this Krugman item out to Roy this afternoon, so gobsmacked was I that Jack Welch's concubine would not only attack Barack Obama, which is par for the course, but also Al Green as somehow un-American and exotic. (Now I am old enough to remember when Let's Stay Together was a huge #1 hit, back in the days when Top 40 radio was eclectic, integrated, and not lacking in artistry.) Who doesn't like Al Green?!! Who is more American than Al Green? Who makes you prouder to be an American?
One is struck by the implicit racism in all this -- Al Green as the other, something less than American. (Krugman links to this Financial Times piece from which this wonderful excerpt is drawn.) It's amazing to what degree these people -- and I love calling them these people -- don't understand how much of American popular culture is black culture.
- On a sadder note, I don't have anything profound to say about the Colorado shootings. It seems to me that we, as a society, decided some time ago that these kinds of massacres were tolerable and we would take no real steps to prevent them from happening in deference to the imagined Second Amendment right of lunatics to be lethally armed with assault weapons and high capacity magazines. I have to say, I am one of those who agreed with the Democratic Party's decision to walk away from gun control. It seemed to be having a really negative effect at the ballot box while not really amounting to anything of substance. I am not really sure what should be done at this point, but it is surely madness to have such a heavily armed society.
[Please consider this and all posts these days to be an invitation for your input on anything that grabs you.]
