Wednesday, March 08, 2006

WORN OUT.

I admire the bloggers who can do this day in and day out, even the disingenouous ones on the Fascist Right. I can't. I'm trying to get to the point where I can do this at regularly once a week. It's not from lack of time or material that I found myself incapable of committing thoughts to screen; there's more than enough material. That is in fact the problem. There is more than enough material. There is too much material.

Where to begin: This morning the NYT tells us that the Congressional GOP have come up with a way for George the Third to keep spying on us without following the Law. Yet there is no great outrage as our rights are trampled in the dust.

The Today Show does a segment on a cheerleader who fell and broke a bone in her spine, but Katy Couric, that paragon of journalistic virtue, held her up as model of perky optimism because as they were wheeling her away on a stretcher, she kept right on cheering. In a way, it's kind of a funny image. Except that nearly half of sports related injuries for young women occur during cheerleading with a huge portion of those resulting in serious injury. There was a Real Sports segment on this over a year ago. It's not a topic for laughter or for cheerlading.

Gordon Parks died. Photographer; Film-maker; Composer. I knew Mr. Parks, not well nor intimately, but he seemed a gracious man. And in a time when being Black was akin to being a crime in this country, he created images which still stick with us, he directed a movie which made it cool to be Black (Shaft), and he lived his life gracefully and graciously. The earth is diminished by his passing.