Adrian Morgan: Islamic Indoctrination in American Classrooms

http://www.FamilySecurityMatters.org

April 17, 2007

The First Amendment to the US federal constitution was written in 1789, and was ratified by the States in 1791. It states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The interpretation of the First Amendment and in particular its first clause, referred to as the "Establishment of Religion" or "Establishment" clause, has a direct bearing on how federally- funded public schools can teach religion. Alan Brownstein, a constitutional law expert from the University of California at Davis' School of Law states: "From a constitutional perspective, schools can't teach the truth or falsity of religious belief, and atheism would fall in that parameter."



Public schools can teach about religions, but can neither denigrate one religion nor promote another. When 9/11 happened, children were confronted with the spectacle of Muslim terrorism on their TV screens. Sadly, for children growing up in America, their understanding of why Islamic terrorism takes place is not likely to be explained at school. There are "problematic" verses in the Koran, advocating violence against "unbelievers". These include Sura 8:12: "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them."

Sura 3:151 states: "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority: their abode will be the Fire: And evil is the home of the wrong-doers!" Sura 9:25 declares: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful."

Sura 9:29 states: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." (Jizya was a tax which non-Muslims had to pay to their Muslim overlords).

The First Amendment was originally designed to prevent the conflicts which (Christian) religion had caused in Europe. Now, it is being employed by the politically correct to present an anodyne and inaccurate portrayal of Islam in US public schools. Sura 4:34 specifically states that a husband has the right to beat his wife if she is not submissive. Problematic Suras such as this are not likely to even be mentioned in public schools, for fear of being seen to break the terms of the First Amendment by "denigrating" Islam.

Already schools in America are being taken to task by Muslim activists who perceive that their religion is not treated with enough "respect". In December 2006 Baltimore County School Board in Maryland was accused of inaccuracy in its teaching of Islam. The claim was made by Bash Pharoan, who is president of the local American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and head of Baltimore County Muslim Council.



Bash Pharoan

Pharoan was complaining about resource sheets given to students in seventh and tenth grade. He has been whining for three years that the sheets do not show respect to Mohammed, founder of Islam, because they merely call him "Mohammed." "Omitting the word prophet is disrespectful", Pharoan claimed.

He also objected to the description in the resource sheets of "jihad". He accepted that the sheets refer to its meaning as "struggle" but objected to the statement: "Muhammad justified his attacks to his followers by explaining that to weaken those who opposed the spread of God's word was a virtue, and that those who fell in battle would be rewarded in heaven. Thus the idea of the jihad became the holy war of the Muslims against 'the unbelievers."

The issue of how Islam is taught in schools has become a political hot potato. In California one school, the Excelsior Elementary, took its teaching of Islam to seventh graders to extremes. School pupils were made to dress up in Islamic clothing, to memorize Koranic verses and even to fast during their lunch hour to mimic Muslim behavior during Ramadan. The Five Pillars of Islam were to be learned, pupils were encouraged to say "Allahu Ackbar" and using dice, the children played a "jihad game". The materials employed at the school stated: "From the beginning, you and your classmates will become Muslims."

The games were neither new, nor exclusive to Excelsior. In 1994 the Joseph Kerr Junior High School in Elk Grove, California displayed a banner stating "There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet" while children ran around in Islamic garb. In summer of 2002, Byron Union School District, which governs Excelsior, became subject of a lawsuit. This suit was brought by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center said of the Islamic sessions at Excelsior: "No federal court would have permitted a class where public school students were taught to 'become Catholics' for three weeks, selected a saint's name, wore identification tags that displayed their new name and a Crucifix, and engaged in Catholic religious practices. Here, however, students were subjected to Islamic religious indoctrination and propaganda and the courts turned a blind eye. The Supreme Court missed an opportunity to demonstrate that the Establishment Clause is to be applied the same to all religions and is not just a weapon to be used only against Christians."



U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton

On 10 December 2003 U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton issued a 22 page ruling which claimed that Excelsior was not violating the constitution as it was not indoctrinating students into Islam. TMLC pointed out that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional in 2002.

The simulations of Islam as practiced by Excelsior Elementary School were recommended in a textbook published by Houghton Mifflin, entitled "Across the Centuries". The publishers have defended this book, claiming one major critic had not read the book. William J. Bennetta of the Textbook League has read the book, and still condemns it. "Across the Centuries" is one of several controversial text books available in US schools.



The book "Across the Centuries" was republished after it was reviewed by Susan L. Douglass, an American-born Muslim who works for the Council of Islamic Education (CIE) which was founded in 1990. She is also associated with the International Institute of Islamic Thought, whose president declared that jihad was the only way to liberate Palestine.

CIE describes Douglass as "an American-born Muslim social studies educator and author, with experience in teaching, curriculum and instructional design. She has a Master’s Degree in Arab Studies (History) from Georgetown University and a B.A. in History from the University of Rochester. Ms. Douglass is an independent consultant who has served as CIE’s principal researcher and writer, contributing to projects involving textbook review, analysis of curriculum and standards, teacher training, and development of supplementary materials."

For nearly a decade, up until 2003, Douglass taught at the Saudi-funded Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1993 the Islamic Assembly published "Answers to Common Questions to New Muslims." In this a question was posed: "Now that I am Muslim, can I keep my non-Muslim friends that I have known all my life?" The answer was given: "You should try to remain away from mixing with non-Muslims because mixing with them removes your religious zealousness and pride from your heart and may lead you to having love and compassion in your heart for them. ...it is obligatory upon a Muslim to be free of the people of infidelity and to hate them for the sake of Allah."

The agendas of those who maintain that religions are discriminated against should always be examined. Bash Pharoan, who maintains that Baltimore County School Board is not respectful of Islam, has demanded that Jewish school holidays be banned. This move was made in June 2006 after his three-year campaigns to have the Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha introduced into school calendars was not accepted. He described his vindictive proposal thus: "This issue is about equality, about equity."

On June 13, 2006, the school board ruled that there would not be official Muslim holidays. The reasons were purely financial. There are very few Muslim students and teachers, and the Baltimore County School Board already allows these to stay at home on their holidays. Only when more teachers in the county were taking Muslim holidays (with substitute teachers costing $59.66 to $103.05 per day) would these holidays become universal. Bash Pharoan, unable to get his own way, then argued that there should be no religious holidays for anyone.

A similar situation arose in 2005 in Hillsborough county in Florida. Here the politicking was manipulated by Ahmed Bedier of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). In October 2005, Hillsborough County School Board approved a calendar for 2006 to 2007 which had removed holidays for Yom Kippur and Good Friday. Since December 2004, Bedier had argued that Eid al-Fitr should be included as an official school holiday. On November 8, the school board took another vote, and religious holidays were reinstated, though with no Eid holiday. Bedier said: "I'm disappointed but I'm satisfied. We're back at square one. If others are getting their holidays, it gives us hope we'll get ours as well someday."

Issues of holidays are trivial compared to the material which purports to educate students about Islam. If such material is of itself biased, then the primary duty of education is undermined. In 2004, Georgetown University hosted a seminar for teachers, federally funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act. The university (already a recipient of $20 million from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal to "educate" the West about Islam) is one of 18 centers of learning that provide resources to educationalists.



Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal

Among the study materials on offer is the "Arab World Studies Notebook", which makes some bizarre claims, such as Muslims arrived in the Americas before Columbus and spread through the Caribbean and into Canada. This preposterous claim was later removed, but other contentious passages remained, including comments suggesting Jews have no claim to Israel. The book is edited by Audrey Shabbas, who has hosted more than 268 seminars for teachers in 155 cities since 1987. A joint publisher of the book is Dar al Islam, based in New Mexico. According to JTA, Susan L. Douglass is an associate of Dar al Islam's Teachers Institute.

Books which promote Islamic radicalism have made their way into school districts through donations. In 2001, the Omar Ibn Khatab Foundation made a donation of 300 Korans, entitled "The Meaning of the Holy Quran", to Los Angeles city school district. In 2002, these copies of the Koran had to be removed, as it was found that they contained anti-Semitic footnotes, such as: "The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts. Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."



Susan L. Douglass

The public schools in America are partially protected from Islamist indoctrination by the First Amendment. Though imperfectly applied and interpreted, the Establishment Clause prohibits religious indoctrination from entering the classroom. Through the efforts of Susan L. Douglass and the Council of Islamic Education, a biased assessment of Islam is entering public schools via textbooks produced by mainstream publishers.

The extreme and uncompromising form of Islam known as Wahhabism is still being taught in the numerous Saudi-funded schools that exist in North America. Being independent of the US government, such establishments are not subject to the terms of the Establishment Clause. The Saudi-funded Islamic Academy in Virginia, where Susan L. Douglass formerly taught, has already produced three graduates who were jailed in 2002 on suspicion of planning a terrorist act.

Parents should make themselves aware of what their children are being taught about Islam in school. Demand to see study sheets. Demand a list of approved textbooks, and check these out in your local library. Talk to teachers, principals, or write to your local school board. If you think your child is being indoctrinated, write to your Congress representative. You have a Constitution which prevents religious indoctrination by government bodies. For this privilege you should feel fortunate.


Adrian Morgan is a British writer and artist who regularly contributes to Islam Watch, Family Security Matters, Western Resistance, Spero News and Faithfreedom.org. He has previously contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society. His Global Politician articles deal with issues relating to Islam and terrorism.

Peter Robinson: Remembering Pat Buckley

April 16, 2007 6:00 AM

http://www.nationalreview.com

She Adored Her Husband


In 1988 I took a leave of absence from my duties as a White House speechwriter to spend February and March in Switzerland with William F. Buckley Jr., helping him pull together the materials for On the Firing Line, the book based on his PBS television program. WFB and I worked in the Château de Rougemont, the residence he rented each winter. Originally a monastery — an Englishman had turned it into a home in the middle of the 19th century — the Château comprised a ground floor with a vast kitchen and the enormous, dungeon-like room in which WFB and I worked; a state or main floor with a formal sitting room, a library, and a dining room that seated 20; an upper floor with countless guest bedrooms; and, on the top floor, quarters for half a dozen servants. Grandeur, sumptuousness, splendor — those were the words I’d have produced if you’d asked me to free associate. Yet when Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr. arrived one afternoon from New York, she strode into the library, noticed me in a corner, then flung her fur onto a sofa, performed a slow turn, and said, “This heap.”

That was Pat. She was theatrical, witty — and exacting. The next day, flowers appeared in every room, the food was suddenly so much better that even I could tell the difference, and guests began to appear — guests who would visit the Château for lunch, drinks, or dinner each day until the Buckleys returned to New York. Dr. and Mrs. John Kenneth Galbraith. WFB’s sisters, Priscilla and Jane. The king and queen of Greece. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Moore. Taki. Mr. and Mrs. James Clavell. Van Galbraith. Baron and Baronne Lambert. Dick Clurman. Valentino. They had nothing in common but their esteem for WFB — and the delight they displayed in Pat’s company.

How many magazine evenings on Park Avenue, weekend luncheons at Wallacks Point, or formal dinners in hotel ballrooms did Pat oversee, attending to the menus, planning the seating, and then making certain the guests enjoyed themselves — and that they rose to her standards? I saw her flirt with Henry Kissinger, charm Ronald Reagan, and dress down a German prince who had insulted one of her friends. (The prince made amends by sending Pat and her friend such enormous arrangements of flowers that even Pat had to approve.) How many times did she pack WFB’s bags before he departed for speaking tours? Or assemble hampers of food and wine for his overnight sails? “Ducky,” I heard her say to WFB, who was running late for a taping of Firing Line, “I simply will not permit you to leave looking like that.” She produced a brush and a can of hairspray, then did her best to subdue her husband’s cowlick.

Because, of course, it was all for him. The attention she lavished on decorating their homes, the exquisite sense of fashion with which she dressed, the entertainments, the humor, the provocative conversation, the endless and fascinating parade of guests — Pat provided WFB with color and drama and ceaseless stimulation and fun. When one week in Switzerland WFB fell ill — so ill that for the first time in more than a decade he failed to file a column — Pat nursed him herself, taking his temperature, giving him his flu medicine, taking him broth. In sickness and in health, she adored her husband.

When we Robinsons visited the Buckleys at Wallacks Point last summer, Pat insisted on our bringing all five children. Entering the dining room, we discovered that Pat had added a cushion to the chair in which our four-year old would sit, and that she had instructed Julian, her longtime chef, to prepare a side dish of French fries, but that she had relaxed her standards in no other way whatsoever. Fresh flowers, starched napkins, silver cutlery, delicate china, three full courses. Before dessert, Pat gave our children the same lesson she had given me at the Château de Rougemont almost two decades before. “Pay attention,” she said. “I’m going to show you how to use a finger bowl.”

— Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is author of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, among other books.

Don Feder: Atheism isn't the final word

Books making the case against God seem to be multiplying, becoming more strident and absolute with each turned page. Though no one can prove or disprove God’s existence, our history reveals the unmistakable footprints of something greater than man.

USA Today

April 16, 2007

Oh, for the days when one could safely stroll into a bookstore without tripping over the latest atheist title. Ironically, by writing their tracts, in the long run atheists might boost belief.

My local Barnes & Noble has the following titles on display — Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ; The Quotable Atheist; Letter To A Christian Nation; God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist; and The God Delusion, which is a New York Times best-seller.

Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., has become the first member of Congress to announce that he doesn't believe in God. He's probably just looking for a book deal.

Why the sudden outpouring of atheist advocacy? Perhaps it's a way for the cultural left to assert itself in the face of the religious right. Or maybe it's meant to show that the anti-God argument can be framed more intelligently than in a Bill Maher monologue. Whatever the impetus, as a believer, I welcome the phenomenon. After all, the great enemy of belief isn't disbelief but indifference.

Let the godless write their books and the faithful answer them. The disillusionment with religion that dominated British intellectual circles after World War I helped to shape the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. The surviving son of atheist icon Madalyn Murray O'Hair is an evangelical Christian.

The books referenced above assert that the debate is over and that atheism has won, but atheists have been saying that for more than 200 years. Since the French Enlightenment, the death of God has been confidently proclaimed. Religion has been made obsolete by egalitarian revolution, industrialism, or science, they insisted. Yet, early in the 21st century, faith endures.

Outlasting the Soviet Union

For 70-plus years, the Soviets tried everything imaginable to kill religion: show trials, mass murder of clerics, confiscations, indoctrination and even attempts to co-opt religious symbols and ceremonies. But belief survived, while scientific socialism is now defunct.

In China, where communism's war on God continues, the home-church movement thrives. Half a world away, America has the highest weekly church attendance in the industrialized world, notwithstanding attacks on faith from Hollywood, academia and a judiciary seemingly intent on purging religious symbols from public spaces.

In the USA — the most science-oriented society in history — Christian bookstores, radio stations and TV programming proliferate. It seems as though a hunger for the Creator is imprinted on the human heart.

What would a world without God look like? Well, for one, morality becomes, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult. "Thou shalt not kill" loses much of its force when reduced from commandment to a suggestion. How inspiring can it be to wake in the morning, look in the mirror, and see an accident of evolutionary history — the end product of the random collision of molecules?

A universe that isn't God-centered becomes ego-centered. People come to see choices through the prism of self: what promotes the individual's well-being and happiness. Such a worldview does not naturally lead to benevolence or self-sacrifice.

An affirmation of God can lead to the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and the Declaration of Independence. In terms of morality, a denial of God leads nowhere.

There are no secularist counterparts to Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce (the evangelical responsible for abolition of the British slave trade), Martin Luther King Jr., or the Christians — from France to Poland — who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.

True, terrible things have been done in the name of religion. Terrible things have been done in the name of every noble concept, including love, charity, loyalty and kinship. Yet, the worst horrors of the modern era were perpetrated by godless political creeds. The death toll from sectarian conflict over the ages is dwarfed by ideological violence, from the Jacobinism of Revolutionary France to the charnel houses of communism and fascism.

This is not to say that atheism leads naturally to guillotines and gulags, but, just as "love your fellow man as yourself" can be corrupted, so too can liberty, equality and fraternity.

Signs throughout history

There is no irrefutable evidence for God's existence or non-existence. But, if you look closely, his footprints can be discerned in the sands of time.

Jews introduced the world to monotheism. They also were the first people to perceive history as linear— an unfolding story moving toward a conclusion. Is it a coincidence that this tiny, originally nomadic people generated the ideas that shaped the Western world, including equality, human rights and a responsibility to our fellow man? Jews are the only people to maintain their identity during two millennia of exile, and then return to their homeland and re-establish their nation.

Mark Twain wrote: "The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up, held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished.

All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" Had Twain been a believer, he might have answered his own question.

America's survival and rise to global pre-eminence are equally improbable. Challenging the greatest empire of the 18th century, America should never have won its independence or should have self-destructed during the Civil War.

Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the genius of our infant republic lay not in its farms and workshops but in its churches whose "pulpits flame with righteousness."

Atheists are free to disbelieve and to try to propagate their disbelief in books and other intellectual forums. But saying the debate is over doesn't make it so. A bit of humility might make their case more convincing. Then again, humility is itself a religious concept.

Don Feder is a former syndicated columnist and author of Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?

Cathy Young: A rush to injustice in the Duke 'rape' case

David Evans (far right) became the third lacrosse player to be indicted on May 15, 2006.


Boston Globe

April 16, 2007

In May 2006, the women's lacrosse team at Duke University announced their intention to wear sweatbands with the word "innocent" for a Final Four game at Boston University's Nickerson Field. This gesture was a clear statement of support for the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting an exotic dancer at a team party. In response, New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton suggested that "cross-team friendship" had overridden the women's common sense. In the online magazine Salon, writer Kevin Sweeney chided them for lack of solidarity with rape victims.

Now, it looks like the women's lacrosse team had it right. Last week, North Carolina attorney general Roy Cooper dismissed all charges against the Duke Three. He also explicitly stated that the men were innocent and that no attack had occurred. It's as full a vindication as the justice system can give.

Cooper described the case against the men as the result of "a tragic rush to accuse." This rush came not only from prosecutor Mike Nifong, who now faces serious charges of misconduct, but also from the media, the academic community at Duke, and feminist advocates for rape victims.

As writer Charlotte Allen has documented in The Weekly Standard, academics were quick to tailor the still-unfolding case to a narrative of sexual abuse of a downtrodden black woman at the hands of privileged white males -- males who, in the words of Duke literature professor Wahneema Lubiano, represented "the politically dominant race and ethnicity [and] the dominant gender." Much of the media echoed this narrative, albeit in more readable form.

Yet serious doubts about the accuser's credibility existed from the very beginning. Her story kept changing, even on such significant details as how many players assaulted her. The material evidence did not corroborate her charges and in some instances contradicted them. The other stripper who was at the party said that she did not believe the woman was raped.

But many people wouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good crusade. Eighty-eight Duke faculty members signed a statement, drafted by Lubiano, that expressed solidarity with the students who rallied against the accused. Its language was drenched in a presumption of guilt.

On a national level, one leader of this crusade was Wendy Murphy, a Boston-based former sex crimes prosecutor and an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law. Murphy, a frequent cable news commentator, is a foremost champion of the dogma that women who accuse men of rape always tell the truth. In one discussion on MSNBC, she proclaimed, "I have never, ever met a false rape claim. . . . My own statistics speak to the truth."



Former Duke Lacrosse coach, Mike Pressler is now coaching at Bryant College in Rhode Island.


Whatever Murphy's "truth" may be, her television appearances on the Duke case became a gold mine of disinformation. Among other things, she falsely asserted that there had been allegations of other sexual offenses involving the accused men, that the woman was violated with a broomstick and had tears in her genital area, and that the defendants had refused to cooperate with the police. She also speculated, without evidence, that photographs might exist of the actual assault and that the victim probably had traces of a date-rape drug in her blood. On several occasions, Murphy also derided the principle of the presumption of innocence, except as narrowly applied in the courtroom.

Unfortunately, Murphy's views are not unique among feminists. In January, when the most serious charges had already been dismissed, Gail Dines, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston, wrote an online article criticizing CNN for airing a special sympathetic to the accused. Citing Murphy as her source, she asserted that prosecution still had a strong case. She voiced "anger at the way the media humanized these men as victims and dehumanized the woman as the perpetrator of a lie."

In fact, it's about time we humanized men who are victims of false accusations of rape. Feminism has made great strides in bringing attention to the tragedy of rape and the pain of its victims. Now, the Duke case may bring much-needed focus to the tragedy of false accusations. It is not anti female to say that some women do lie about rape -- any more than it is anti male to say that some men rape women. The vindication of the Duke Three may in the end be a victory for true gender equity.

Cathy Young is a writer for Reason Magazine.

Alan Sepinwall: Wiseguy says goodbye

Vince Curatola as Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni

April 16, 2007 5:03AM

Newark Star-Ledger

Last night's episode of "The Sopranos" said farewell to one of the show's most memorable characters. For the benefit of the unspoiled, we'll save the character's identity until after the jump, followed by a farewell interview with the actor in question.

So, as anyone who clicked through knows by now, the dearly departed was none other than Johnny Sack, who succumbed to lung cancer in a prison hospital. A few days before the episode aired, I got on the phone with Vince Curatola, a onetime masonry contractor who got into acting on a whim at middle age and almost missed his "Sopranos" audition because he wanted to smoke a cigarette.

How did you find out Johnny was going to die?

(Producer) Terry Winter called me in mid-June and said, 'Johnny's going to get sick, he's not going to make it.' I liked the idea of how he was going. I felt that it would have been inappropriate for poor Johnny to bleed out in the street with a shank in his back. He was a boss; that's not for him.

So you liked the story?

In that way, it would give Johnny some closure, an ability to talk to his family, say, 'Look, I'm going on a long trip, I'm not coming back.' It was an actor's dream to go from diagnosis many weeks later to his death. Plus, my wife Maureen's brother Tommy died at the age of 61 from cancer a few months before we got the script. He was an iron worker at World Trade, and he got terribly sick, and we watched him go, and sure enough, in comes this script. Because I'm on the board of Hackensack University Medical Center, I was able to gain access to the oncologists and do the research, and one of them helped Terry with the technical terms in the script.

As an actor, then, you didn't have to look very far to find some experience to draw on for this story.

My mom was 39, never smoked a cigarette in her life, died of lung cancer. I don't know what to say. That kind of a diagnosis is 50-50. Johnny's didn't work out well, but I kind of felt that even though he was going, he said to his brother-in-law he'd like his insurance to be pieced out, he was stoic and organized to the end, that's me in my life. Every time I get on a plane, I say to Maureen, 'This paper is here, and these papers are there.'

In a way, it has to be nice for you to get to make your exit early in this season, when you'll get more attention than if it had happened later.

I'm glad because I would not have been happy going to the end of the season going, 'Can you tell me what's going to happen?' It freed me up, career-wise. I already have a movie lined up.

What do you think Johnny added to the show?

Johnny's always been intelligent, and Tony doesn't have a whole lot around him in his crew who are bright. It was a bonus for Tony to be able to deal with a boss in New York who could speak English, could make his point known. I think Tony needed somebody like that. the reason Johnny put up with Tony, there was money in North Jersey, but I think he also liked Tony. If they were both contractors, the way I was before I got into acting, I think they would have been bowling buddies.

In your mind, did Johnny buy that big house in North Jersey because he wanted to give Ginny a mansion, or was it a power play?

That was a power play. That was saying, 'Look, we're here, we're gonna watch you very closely. If you're going to go buy 12 Rolls Royce, we're going to see that in your driveway.' That was definitely a calculated business move.

One of the things that always made Johnny distinct, especially after Bacala's wife died, was his unwavering devotion to his family.

No one else had that note to play. I think that's what rounded Johnny out. You could look at him in all of his meetings and all of his dealings and all of his mania and go, 'He's not completely an animal. Look at how he loves his wife, his children.' That's the advantage he's had over every other character. He showed that if he had to walk away from the money, he would.

How was it working with Sydney Pollack in your final episode?

Tremendous. First of all, he came on the set very humble. He didn't come on the set blasting like you would expect a guy with his name to do. He was a gentleman, so much about the scenes. He's consummate director, but he's an actor, so he got the whole thing. He worked like hell. We're used to the rhythm of the crew, he's not, and he was very solicitous to everyone.

Do you have a favorite episode?

"The Weight" (the season four episode where Johnny tries to kill Ralphie because of the 90-pound mole joke) was big but not my favorite. I kind of crave more business relationships with my men and Tony than going to the family. We know Johnny's devoted to his wife, but I didn't need an entire episode about that.

I tend to mesh them all together for some strange reason. It's hard for me to slice up the pie again. I think somewhere back in season five, Tony and I, the Lorraine Caluzzo situation, those were some of my favorite episodes.

There's been this tradition on the show that the cast will take you out to dinner when your character's been killed off.

You said 'killed off.' Johnny just died.

So what did the cast do for your send-off?

Nothing. We stopped the tradition now. We made a rule that anything in the second half of the final season, there's probably going to be a lot of funerals, so nobody has any time.

TV shows aren't shot in sequence. When did you play the deathbed scene?

I shot it the first day of the episode of a three and a half week schedule. We had to use the worst makeup -- we'd set up six different makeups, we start out the first day with the most horrendous one. The last day that we shot was the day of the diagnosis, so we went completely in reverse.

I know you weren't working with any of the regular castmembers on this episode, but how did they treat you in the days and weeks leading up to it?

Everybody patted me on the back and applauded and said, 'I wish it was me.' Because I could get out faster and get some closure. There's a lot of closure here. 'Something's going to happen? Great, let's do it now.' Not that I don't love what I'm doing on the show, but I want it to be in the past now. From a practical standpoint, I got to move on more quickly than some of the others.

Alan Sepinwall can be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com

Kinky Friedman: Cowards Kick Away Another Piece of America's Soul

The New York Post

April 15, 2007

Author, musician and former Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman has been friends with Don Imus since 1975, when they met on stage at The Bottom Line.

I met Imus on the gangplank of Noah's Ark. He was then and remains today a truth-seeking missile with the best bull-meter in the business.

Far from being a bully, he was a spiritual chop-buster never afraid to go after the big guys with nothing but the slingshot of ragged integrity. I watched him over the years as he struggled with his demons and conquered them. This was not surprising to me.

Imus came from the Great Southwest, where the men are men and the emus are nervous. And he did it all with something that seems, indeed, to be a rather scarce commodity these days. A sense of humor.

There's no excusing Imus' recent ridiculous remark, but there's something not kosher in America when one guy gets a Grammy and one gets fired for the same line.

The Matt Lauers and Al Rokers of this world live by the cue-card and die by the cue-card; Imus is a rare bird, indeed - he works without a net. When you work without a net as long as Imus has, sometimes you make mistakes.

Wavy Gravy says he salutes mistakes. They're what makes us human, he claims. And humanity beyond doubt, is what appears to be missing from this equation. If we've lost the ability to laugh at ourselves, to laugh at each other, to laugh together, then the PC world has succeeded in diminishing us all.

Political correctness, a term first used by Joseph Stalin, has trivialized, sanitized and homogenized America, transforming us into a nation of chain establishments and chain people.

Take heart, Imus. You're merely joining a long and legendary laundry list of individuals who were summarily sacrificed in the name of society's sanctimonious soul: Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Joan of Arc, Mozart and Mark Twain, who was decried as a racist until the day he died for using the N-word rather prolifically in "Huckleberry Finn."

Speaking of which, there will always be plenty of Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons around. There will be plenty of cowardly executives, plenty of fair-weather friends, and plenty of Jehovah's Bystanders, people who believe in God but just don't want to get involved. In this crowd, it could be argued that we need a Don Imus just to wake us up once in a while.

There probably isn't a single one of Imus' vocal critics who come anywhere close to matching his record of philanthropy or good acts on this earth.

Judge a man by the size of his enemies, my father used to say. A man who, year after year, has raised countless millions of dollars and has fought hand-to-hand to combat against childhood cancer, autism, and SIDS - well, you've got a rodeo clown who not only rescues the cowboy, but saves the children as well.

I believe New York will miss its crazy cowboy and America will miss the voice of a free-thinking independent-minded, rugged individualist. I believe MSNBC will lose many viewers and CBS radio many listeners.

Too bad for them. That's what happens when you get rid of the only guy you've got who knows how to ride, shoot straight and tell the truth.

A Cold Kind of Beauty

The Grand Canyon

Understated in all seasons, the desert is even more subtle and spare in winter. It seems deserted. It's not, of course. It's just holding its breath.

By Sally Shivnan
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 21, 2001; E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com


THE DESERT IN WINTER is missing certain things, like rattlesnakes. And that cruel, unwinking eyeball, the summer sun. This is good, but not, in itself, reason enough to visit.

Winter in the desert is not the most beautiful time there (that would be spring), and not the most active (any other season would be more lively for flora and fauna).

Still, it is the perfect time to go.

Perfect because you might, for instance, find yourself standing beneath golden, sun-washed canyon walls, listening to the coyotes call to each other, their eerie howling echoing off the rock and no one around for miles, just you and your traveling companion and the invisible coyotes, and the Rio Grande flowing slowly, silently, through the golden canyon.

Or you might walk into the elegant old El Tovar Hotel at that most notoriously overcrowded of national parks, Grand Canyon, and find yourself seated, without a reservation, at what your waiter calls "the happiest table in the room," the little table for two by the big stone fireplace, where you luxuriate in an unhurried, wonderful meal. The waiter says he can bank down the fire if you get too warm, and you tell him he must be kidding -- it's winter out there, it's cold outside!

El Tovar Hotel (Grand Canyon)

Or you're knocking around the visitor center at Canyonlands National Park, the exhibits and the movie and the bookstore all to yourself. The clerk informs you with a smile that they're not charging the usual entrance fee this time of year. She is a volunteer, a retiree here with her husband, and in exchange for a roof over their heads for the winter they share their expertise with visitors -- they know all the great trails to hike, the best things to see. The visitor center doors swing open a few times each day, bringing a little conversation; the sun pours in the windows, warming the room. Outside, the same sun is toasting the already-warm colors of the sandstone, the red and ocher mesas and spires of this country, and melting the fine tracings of snow high up on the rock.

I don't want to exaggerate that sun. It would be a mistake to portray it as tropical. However, it is not possible to exaggerate the effects of the summer sun, which is the point here. Desert hiking in the winter is bliss -- overheating is never a problem, even when scrambling up slick rock or trudging all day out of some canyon. The extra layers of clothing might annoy some people -- peeling off with walking, layering on again at lunchtime -- but the weight of these can never begin to approach the weight of all the extra water, the minimum gallon per person per day, that must be carried in summer.

The hiking is comfortable for another reason, too. Desert hikes generally involve a variety of terrain, including up-and-down stuff that is notable for being steep but not prolonged (the exception being masochistic trips in and out of certain famous, deep canyons). None of those all-day grades you enjoy in the mountains. Instead, a little scrambling, bouldering and shouldering rewards the hiker almost immediately with exhilarating views of The Other Side of This Thing, and of Where We've Been. The desert offers more variety -- a new, wide-open view at every turn -- than mountain ranges, and exertion comes in bursts. And none of those thick collections of trees to block the view, as you find in your Rockies and your Appalachians. No dense, nasty, rock-hiding plants here. This is the land of rock, the Nothing But Rock tour.

Mesa Arch, Canyonlands NP

There is always something to look at.

And the weather is wonderful for looking. In truth, maybe not always wonderful. It can be a little cool, especially at higher elevations, but this is one of the trade-offs of winter desert tourism, in exchange for not being broiled alive. If you like to dress in layers of fleece and down, and get a kick out of seeing your breath in the morning, this is the trip for you. It never rains, gray clouds are rare, snow is never more than a picturesque dusting and the night skies are clearer for stargazing than at any other time of year. Camping opportunities are wide open and sometimes free, and hotel and motel discounts are in force. The "No" part of the "No Vacancy" sign is off for the duration of the season, allowing the traveler to wander about the country, affordably and warmly.

I have to add that I am one of those particularly cold-natured people, and on my recent travels I wore a great deal more clothing than my friend Jim did, who mostly sprinted about in a sweater and pointy fleece hat, looking like a desert elf. We had mild days, some warmer than others, but even in the high desert January temperatures were in the fifties and even sixties.

And everywhere we went, we met people who really wanted to be where they were, who had gone out of their way to find the desert in winter. From the hard-body mountain bikers hanging around Moab, Utah, to the kindly retirees in their RVs, who had chosen these quiet, empty locales over the balmy climes of Florida or California, they were all there on purpose. And it may have been my imagination, but the locals -- waitresses, store owners, guys at gas stations -- seemed more relaxed than I'd expected. There may be less money flowing into local businesses this time of year, but the tourist pressure is off for a few months, and it shows.

Arches NP, Utah

Some of those businesses are closed until spring, another necessary trade-off in winter. In Moab I got downright whiny passing all the funky coffee bars and bookstores that were sealed up tight for the season. The consolation is that the playgrounds of the desert, places like Grand Canyon, Arches in Utah and Texas's Big Bend, are nearly empty. These have occasional signs on the way to the overlooks that warn "Congested Area," which we found amusing, but disturbing, too, in the pictures they conjured of summer traffic jams in such remote and pristine places. We felt smug when we read park brochures urging us to try this or that trail despite the crowds, promising us we wouldn't be disappointed. We never were.

But none of these reasons, even all added together, is the main motivation for visiting the desert in winter. The real reason, of course, is the desert itself. Understated in all seasons, it is even more subtle and spare in winter. The desert is deserted, or at least seems so.

It's not, of course. It's just holding its breath.

The flowers are long evaporated and the plants have withdrawn into themselves. The ocotillo has dropped the tiny leaves along its thin spiny stems. The little barrel cactus is shrunken, hiding under its cloud of spines. The general colors of deserts, the gray-green of cactus and sage, the pale, almost non-color of wheatgrass, are quiet to begin with, and even quieter and drier now. Where flowers used to be, paper-dry seed heads are held up for the wind and the birds to take away. The yucca flower's stem still towers over the yucca, crowned with an elaborate cluster of papery open cups that retain the shapes, though not the color, of the blossom. The beauty of the flower is remembered in the seed.

Walking in all that quiet one day, I heard the canyon wren, whose song is unmistakable, a series of sweet, descending notes that lengthen a little toward the end. The calls came from a curving wall of light-colored rock just ahead and above me, which seemed to give the notes an echoing ring and sharpness. I couldn't see the bird but could only look where her song was, as if I were glancing at the notes themselves.

Sun's Eye, Monument Valley

I walked on and found cottonwoods along a wash, feathery and silvery without their leaves, and the leaves around them on the ground a pale, translucent gold to match the silver.

The textures of the desert are more subtle in winter. What is there is more difficult to see, but this is offset by the fact that what is seen is heightened, because of the absence of distractions. Everything that catches the senses is sharp and striking.

Which is not to say I didn't feel a pang of regret for spring at every turn when I was there. I did. I longed to see the claret cup cactus in bloom, its flower just that, a cup of red wine. I would love to watch javelinas, those straight-snouted, coarse-haired wild pigs of the desert, chomping and slurping at the fruit of the prickly pear. The winter visitor must cope with this lack by returning to what is at hand, finding expressions of spring in winter.

Consider the paperflower, whose fine stems, all tipped with small flowers, grow together into a sphere about as big as a good-sized cantaloupe. The flowers dry and the little seedpods remain, and the globe ripens to a brilliant gold. The golden blobs are distributed all about the desert floor, shocking against the dull earth, and so intensely delicate on close inspection, like impossible origami, the ultra-thin stems, leaves and flowers as dry as dust and bright as the sun.

Winter is the season of rest, when the animals and plants wait, with deep desert patience, for spring. The earth is slowly soaking up the little water from the crusts of snow that come and go, but doing nothing with it, holding onto it.

The snakes are in their dens. Animals that are still out and about are almost all nocturnal, from mountain lions to owls to tarantulas. There are tracks in the sand, anywhere the soil is soft, reminders of the world that comes to life at night. Coyotes, kit foxes, pocket mice -- their footprints are storylines running in all directions in the sand. The weight of the fox's paw determines the sink of the crisp-edged print, and the digging-in of his claws shows him picking up his pace. I feel like telling all the animals that in these colder months they really could come out in the daytime if they wanted to, but they are creatures of habit, of ancient adaptation. The ones that do appear -- the raven soaring in empty canyon space, the hungry coyote loping along a road -- are startling in the winter quiet.

And it is so quiet. Jim turned to me once and said, Hear that? The sound of white noise in your ears? Yes, I said, I hear it too. Very soft, like tape hiss.

That's what we heard when everything else was taken completely away.

Sally Shivnan is a freelance writer in Churchton, Md.


Monument Valley

Details: Winter Deserts

GETTING THERE: Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque are jumping-off points for the Colorado Plateau. Southwest and America West fly from BWI to Phoenix for about $290 round trip. From Phoenix, it's about a 3 1/2-hour drive to Grand Canyon National Park. From there, you could continue driving northeast through Monument Valley (about 2 1/2 hours) and on to Canyonlands and Arches (another 2 1/2 hours). Or you could fly into Salt Lake City -- Canyonlands and Arches are a four-hour drive south.

WHERE TO STAY: Winter is the only time you don't need reservations at the national parks. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is closed in winter, but on the South Rim the historic, rustic-elegant El Tovar Hotel has doubles starting at $116 a night (303-297-2757). Camping at Mather Campground is $10 a night, and the adjacent Trailer Village has RV sites with hookups for $20 a night.

http://www.grandcanyonlodges.com

Camping at Canyonlands is $5-$10 per night, and there are gorgeous new bathrooms at the Squaw Flat campground. Nearby Moab has many inns and motels, like Aarchway Inn, with doubles at about $50 a night (800-341-9359), and Kokopelli Lodge, about $30 a night (888-530-3134). The campground at Arches is closed for construction this winter, but the park is only five miles from the motels of Moab (www.discovermoab.com).

WHERE TO EAT: At Grand Canyon, El Tovar is the place. Dinner for two, with drinks, runs about $80. For inexpensive, great Mexican food that you'll see the locals eating at tables all around you, try Amigo Cafe in Kayenta, Ariz. (U.S. 160 at U.S. 163), or Romo's Cafe in Holbrook, Ariz. (121 West Hopi Drive).

WHERE TO HANG OUT: The parks offer great hiking, scenic drives and uncrowded exhibits and activities through the winter months. Monument Valley's 14-mile loop is an all-day dirt road, beautiful but not recommended for low-clearance vehicles or big RVs (info: Navajo Tribal Park, 435-727-3353). Numerous outfitters there and at Canyon de Chelly offer jeep, horseback and hiking tours led by Navajo guides. In Flagstaff, Ariz., visit the Museum of Northern Arizona, devoted to the natural and cultural history of the Colorado Plateau (Highway 180, three miles north of downtown, heading toward Grand Canyon, 520-774-5211).

INFORMATION: National Park Service, 800-365-2267, www.nps.gov.

The Grand Canyon

A Desert Primer

Sonoran, Chihuahuan, Mojave, Great Basin -- which desert to see in this land of big western deserts? In winter, the choice is guided by climate rather than the variety of vegetation, which would be more a factor in springtime (and which might send you to the lush Sonoran Desert).

• The Great Basin, in northwestern Utah and Nevada, is the biggest desert in the United States but also the coldest and most likely to get precipitation.

• The Chihuahuan includes the rugged, haunting expanses of Texas's Big Bend country and reaches into southern New Mexico and Arizona.

• The Sonoran Desert includes much of southern Arizona around Tucson and Phoenix and extends west from there, giving way to . . .

• The Mojave Desert, which crosses into California and includes the stern landscapes of Death Valley.

If forced to pick one area for exploring, I would head for a place that is not one of the defined deserts at all but is more accurately described as semidesert -- the Colorado Plateau. Roughly centered on the Four Corners, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet, it features such wonders as the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley, as well as Canyonlands and Arches national parks.

The Colorado Plateau is a geologic fun land, a broad expanse of colorful layered rock uplifted gently over time and eroded everywhere into extraordinary formations and canyons. It is also an archaeological treasure -- the land of the ancient Anasazi, who covered the desert stone with their art, and built their homes in the soaring cliffs, and understood the dry world in all its seasons better than modern-day visitors ever will.

Mitch Albom: Where do they go to get their names back?

Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty

April 13, 2007

Detroit Free Press

The Duke players made their statements and the cameras cut away. Too bad. That's when the real story started.

I'd like the cameras to keep rolling. I'd like them to follow Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans after the crowds disappear, in the months and years ahead.

I'd like to follow them when they apply for a job, and the company interviewing them has a staff meeting and someone in that staff meeting says, "Maybe we should stay away from this guy. After all, that whole rape thing ..."

I'd like to follow them on their dates, when they go to the home of the women they love, and the families look at them and pass the potatoes and wonder, deep down, "Is our daughter safe?"

I'd like to follow them through airports, when people recognize them and scowl. I'd like to follow them buying groceries, when someone reads their credit cards and says, "Aren't you the guy who ... ?"

I'd like to follow them when they have children, and those children are in school, and some kid comes up and says, "I heard your daddy got away with it."

I'd like to follow them when they sit at a computer, and they Google their own names, and up comes 1,000 stories that mention "arrest," "charge," "accusations" and "rape."

And then I'd like those same cameras to follow the woman who made up these lies -- a woman whose name is still not being widely released, as if an obligation remains to somehow protect her -- to see how her life is going.

The power of words

I don't usually get biblical with this column, but there's a reason slander is considered such a sin in that book -- and in many other religions. Because once it's out there, you cannot take it back. Slander can shadow a life forever.

So I'd like those cameras to film the now-empty streets that once held protest rallies against the Duke players. (One of the signs at those rallies read "Take Back The Night," a kind of odd sentiment considering the woman they were supporting worked night hours as an exotic dancer.)

I'd like the cameras to film all the knee-jerk pundits and columnists who so craftily referred to that woman as a student and single mother but had no problem referring to Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans as rich, white lacrosse players. In other words, it's OK to identify one party by skin color and what they do, but not the other.

I'd like the cameras to follow the Duke lacrosse team, and film the abuse its members endured from opposing fans and opposing players. Sure, the team held a party with booze and hired dancers. I'd like to film every person in America to ask them, on camera, if they ever drank when underage, or attended a party with exotic dancers. (Bachelor party, anyone?)

I'd like to ask if that made them rapists.

Evans told the media that Duke's lacrosse players "have gone to hell and back."

But they're not really back.

A never-ending story

So it is astounding that no charges are being filed against this woman -- who changed her story so many times, a stenographer would have run out of paper. Why does she not face jail time? She did something awful. She ruined lives. Isn't that what critics said about the accused Duke students? They did something awful? They ruined lives?

Weren't the Duke players prosecuted in part to discourage others from evil behavior? What is to discourage the next woman from lying the way this one did? No charges? No penalties? No name released?

Rape is rape. Slander is slander. Both should know no color -- black or white. Both should know no class. And both should be punished.

But all I'm hearing is "Oops, our DA was too aggressive. Sorry." That's not exactly justice. The cable networks loved this story last year because every day there was a new development. It had "legs."

So I'd like to see the story covered the same way from this point on. Follow these three young men and report on the moment the shadow of slander is finally gone.

Talk about legs. They'll be following them the rest of their lives.

Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or malbom@freepress.com.

Mark Steyn: Imus go down to the idiocy again

Radio talk-show host Don Imus speaks with Rev. Al Sharpton (not pictured) during Sharpton's radio show, in New York, April 9, 2007, where Imus apologized for insensitive remarks he made last week about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Chicago Sun-Times

April 15, 2007

I was at LaGuardia the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual four-hour delay brought on by yet another of these April snowstorms Al Gore has arranged as a savvy marketing gimmick for his global warming documentary. Anyway, as always when you're at the gate for hours on end, there's nothing to do but watch CNN. I gather air traffic delays now account for 87 percent of CNN's audience. If it's just a routine holdup of two or three hours because the gate agent hasn't shown up, you know you'll be out of there before Wolf Blitzer's said goodnight. But, if it's something serious, like a light breeze at O'Hare, you know you'll be watching Larry King right through to the plug for tomorrow night's full hour with Tina Louise.

So I had the pleasure of sampling a typical evening's lineup of Don Imus coverage, from Wolf bringing us up to speed on the various networks that have fired him to Paula Zahn hosting a balanced panel of three African Americans and a guilt-ridden honky. It would have been a bad day for Ahmadinejad to drop the big one because nothing was going to prize CNN from their Imus-In-the-Morning-Noon-and-Night coverage.

Pundits are supposed to have opinions on everything, but to be honest I had no strong views on the scandal roiling the nation. I've never listened to the Imus show. The closest I get is if I happen to be driving around of an afternoon listening to WXZO from Burlington, Vt., and I hear one of their promos for the show, usually consisting of a 60-second highlight. In all the years of that condensed acquaintanceship with Imus, no "highlight" has ever struck me as funny or insightful. But I assumed that was simply because I'd left it too late: As with "Days of Our Lives" or "As the World Turns," if you've missed the first seven or eight decades it's hard to get into it.

So I don't know whether calling the Rutgers basketball ladies "nappy-headed hos" is a mean old white guy's racist slur or an artful parodic jest on the way black women are talked about by black men -- or at least by the ones on the record charts. After all, the only way mean old white folks know the expressions "nappy" or "ho" is because they heard 'em from hip young black folks. Indeed, one could argue it's a tribute to how non-racist America is that an elderly Caucasian would wish to talk like a gangsta rapper. What was it Martin Luther King dreamed of? A nation where men would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characterizations?

Alas, it's not that simple. Apparently, when two hip-hoppers are up on stage doing their "Who was that ho I saw you with last night?"/"That was no ho, that was my bitch" shtick, they're just keepin' it real. When a white guy does it, he's just keepin' it real unlikely he'll find gainful employment again. Unless, of course, the networks are now proposing to apply the Imus standard to all performers, in which case the Grammy Awards will last 10 minutes (Best Liner Notes on a Polka Album and Best Tony Bennett Celebrity Duets CD of the Last Two Months).

It's a good rule of thumb in American scandals that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, the outrage over him will always be more idiotic. Let us take the easiest ones first. "I've received hundreds, if not thousands of e-mails, both internal and external, from people with very strong views about what should happen," said Steve Capus, president of NBC News. "And many of them are people who have worked at NBC News for decades, people who put their lives on the line covering wars and things like that." Is that a lobby group yet? War Correspondents Against Racism? Capus was taking no chances. "This decision was made after listening to the people who work for NBC News, who have placed a trust and respect the trust that America has given us."

Is it written somewhere in the Media Code of Ethics that you're not allowed to fire anyone without sounding like a pompous self-regarding bore? Playing catch-up and terminating Imus 24 hours after MSNBC, CBS chairman Les Moonves left NBC's "trust" and "respect" and "respect for the trust" in the dust: "We are now presented with a significant opportunity to expand on our record on issues of diversity, race and gender. We intend to seize that opportunity as we move forward together." That sounds like a helluva morning show you're developing there, Mr. Chairman. Unless it's just off-the-peg meaningless pap to be forgotten as soon as the press release is shoved in the filing cabinet.

Needless to say, Moonves fired Imus after first meeting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where a white guy can be fired for racist remarks without his employers having to prostrate themselves before clapped out professional grievance mongers and shakedown artists. But dream on. Two men who slandered the Duke lacrosse players not just as racists but as rapists (by the way, has the Rev. Jackson come through on his promise to pay for the "victim" to go to college?) are the go-to guys when it comes to judging rhetorical excess in respect of varsity sports teams. Surely even a network president isn't such a craven squish he can go through a meeting like that with a straight face?

And saddest of all were the Rutgers basketball gals themselves. Almost a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, 40 years after the civil rights era, a group of young black women who've achieved great success went on TV and teared up because of a cheap crack by an over-the-hill shock jock. As a female correspondent to the Powerline Web site commented:

"Here are these tough women on top of the world and they are so fragile that a remark knocks them down. Hey, why wouldn't they have said 'F--- you? Who the heck is this fool Imus? We are queens of national basketball and there is no stopping us now. We can be and do anything we choose to be or do. . . . We don't need Al Sharpton to protect us. . . . ' But no, they look devastated and say they are damaged irreparably.''

Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.

George Will: Taking a Bat to Prejudice

April 15, 2007

The Washington Post

Like many New Yorkers leaving home for work on April 15, 1947, he wore a suit, tie and camel-hair overcoat as he headed for the subway. To his wife he said, "Just in case you have trouble picking me out, I'll be wearing number 42."

No one had trouble spotting the black man in the Dodgers' white home uniform when he trotted out to play first base at Ebbets Field. Suddenly, only 399, not 400, major league players were white. Which is why 42 is the only number permanently retired by every team.

Jackie Robinson's high school teachers suggested a career in gardening. Robinson's brother Mack had finished second to Jesse Owens in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Whites who won medals found careers opened for them. Mack, writes Jonathan Eig in " Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season," wore his Olympic jacket as a Pasadena, Calif., street sweeper, while Owens found himself racing against horses at county fairs, "one small step removed from a circus act."

To appreciate how far the nation has come, propelled by what began 60 years ago today, consider not the invectives that Robinson heard from opponents' dugouts and fans but the way he had been praised. "Dusky Jack Robinson," as the Los Angeles Times called him, alerting readers to the race of UCLA's four-sport star, ran with a football "like it was a watermelon and the guy who owned it was after him with a shotgun."

That cringe-inducing fact is from Eig's mind-opening book, an account of a 28-year-old man "filled with fear and fury" and terribly alone. It includes unfamiliar details about familiar episodes. There is Lt. Robinson's 1944 refusal, 11 years before Rosa Parks, to move to the back of a bus at Fort Hood, Tex. And shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a Kentuckian who until 1947 had never shaken hands with a black person, crossing the infield to put a hand on Robinson's shoulder when Cincinnati fans were being abusive.

But Eig is especially informative about the dynamics among the Dodgers, who, like many teams, had a Southern tinge. The most popular player was nicknamed Dixie (Walker) and one of the best pitchers was the grandson of a Confederate soldier. The Dodgers' radio broadcaster, Red Barber, a Mississippian, considered resigning, then thought better. Radio presented Robinson as television cameras could not have -- as, Eig shrewdly writes, "all action," undifferentiated by visual differences from his teammates.



After the opening two games against the Boston Braves, the Dodgers played the Giants at the Polo Grounds in Harlem. The president of the National League, fearing excessive enthusiasm, suggested that Robinson should develop a sprained ankle. He did not, and the crowds were large, dressed as if for church -- men in suits and hats, women in dresses -- and decorous. Soon a commentator wrote, "Like plastics and penicillin, it seems like Jackie is here to stay."

The Dodgers were not. Ebbets Field's turnstiles clicked 1.8 million times in 1947, more than they ever had before or would again. But in 1947, in a Long Island potato field, Levittown was founded, offering mass-produced, low-cost housing emblematic of postwar suburbanization. Dodger fans were moving east on the island. After the 1957 season, the Dodgers moved west.

Only 25,623 fans went to the game on April 15, 1947 -- 4,000 fewer than on Opening Day 1946 and 6,000 fewer than the ballpark's capacity. Perhaps some white fans were wary of being with so many blacks. Usually blacks were no more than 10 percent of Dodger crowds, but on this day they may have been 60 percent.




By 1956, Robinson's last season, he had lost his second-base position to Jim Gilliam, a black man. Robinson died of diabetes-related illnesses in 1972, at 53, the same age Babe Ruth was when he died. Ruth reshaped baseball; Robinson's life still reverberates through all of American life. As Martin Luther King Jr., who was 18 in 1947, was to say, Robinson was "a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides."

"Robinson," writes Eig, "showed black Americans what was possible. He showed white Americans what was inevitable." By the end of the 1947 season, America's future was unfolding by democracy's dialectic of improvement. Robinson changed sensibilities, which led to changed laws, which in turn accelerated changes in sensibilities.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson's middle name was homage to the president who said "speak softly and carry a big stick." Robinson's deeds spoke loudly. His stick weighed 34 ounces, which was enough.

georgewill@washpost.com

Michael Wilbon: Robinson Cleared a Path, but Fewer Are Following His Lead

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Mike Lupica- 3 Big Words: Imus is Fired

CBS quiets shock jock, but storm won't go away

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, April 13th 2007, 4:00 AM


The storm that came to be known as "The Perfect Storm" because of the book by Sebastian Junger sank a fishing boat called the Andrea Gail in 1991. Everything that happened then is explained now by a collision between a high-pressure system and a low-pressure system and the remnants of a dying and unnamed hurricane. Even now, all this time later, the storm that made the Andrea Gail famous in a book and in a movie is described as an "unprecedented weather condition."



The perfect storm that ended, for now at least, one of the most famous careers in the history of radio began last Wednesday morning, a little more than one week ago, with these three words:
"Nappy-headed ho's."


Don Imus said those words on the "Imus in the Morning" radio program, still being simulcast then on MSNBC. He was talking with his producer about the Rutgers women's basketball team that had lost the NCAA final to Tennessee the night before and "ho's" had been introduced into the conversation and then Imus, trying to be funny, upping the ante, brought race all the way into it with "nappy-headed."


No one knew it at the time, not Imus, not any of his bosses in radio or television, but something had started now. Like something happening out in the ocean before anybody really knew or saw. Something that would become one of the most unprecedented storms in the history of broadcasting. And we were all about to be reminded, all over again, that race is still the main event in this country, more than war, more than anything.


On the last radio show Imus will do at WFAN, on a morning when he raised another million dollars for charity in the space of a few hours, he said, "If I don't say it, we're not talking about it."


Those three words never changed, not once. George Carlin, who has guested on "Imus in the Morning" over the years, used to have a routine about the seven words you could not say on television. Clearly, we have now added a few more.


But no one knew when he said them.


Even 48 hours later, after Imus issued an apology, that apology only brought this response from Myles Brand, the president of the NCAA, and Richard McCormick, the president of Rutgers:
Brand and McCormick referred to Imus' original comments as "unconscionable." They concluded by saying, "It is appropriate that Mr. Imus and MSNBC have apologized."


Nothing about a firing. That would first come from the National Association of Black Journalists. The NABJ issued a call for Imus to be fired, and suddenly the story was being reported that way, starting with ESPN. Suddenly the apology wasn't the story anymore. Even with that, the story was not played big in most Saturday newspapers.


Al Sharpton was in it now, though, saying fire the guy or else. So was Jesse Jackson. Was Jackson going to be outdone by Sharpton? On what planet? Then Imus was appearing on Sharpton's radio show. The three words had not changed, but now they were everywhere.
The storm was dominating everything.


Finally on Tuesday the country saw the women of Rutgers basketball, the ones at whom those three words had been directed, saw Essence Carson and Heather Zurich and Kia Vaughn. And all of the elements for the storm were in place, even before sponsors began to run the other way. We had race and gender together. We had the faces of the college kids who had gotten hit by Don Imus, age 66, white. In a fight like this, particularly with networks and advertisers, youth wins every time, whether it is white or black.


Once MSNBC took Imus off its air - for three words the people doing the firing first heard, and could have been outraged by, early Wednesday morning - Imus had no chance, whether the women of Rutgers basketball agreed to meet with him or not. Did you think CBS, Imus' radio boss, was going to look less noble and virtuous than NBC?


Again: On what planet?


"I've been dishing it out for a long time," Imus said yesterday. "Now it's my turn. I get that."
What nobody got, back at the beginning, is that those three words would silence a show like his, while prompting at the same time what is now routinely described as a National Conversation. The game had changed and Imus had not changed with it. Now there is a whole new game, one where the three words that Imus used on television and radio turned out to be career-enders, at least for now.


A white man said these things about a predominantly black basketball team, said them after one of the great triumphs of their young lives, and no one wanted to hear afterward about the good he has done behind a microphone, the National Conversations he has had about Walter Reed and returning veterans and autism and sickle-cell anemia and all of the rest of it.


Imus himself talked Monday morning about context and proportion and happened to be right. But by then nobody was really listening to one of the most famous voices in this country, one of the most famous voices his medium had ever produced.


Now all those who went after him as hard as they could, who acted as if the only solution was his firing, say they don't want this conversation about race and women and what has happened to the airwaves in this country to end with this firing.


Only they don't get to decide that. Because even after those three words and the perfect storm they caused, the best place to have the kind of conversation they are talking about would have been on the show they just got canceled.



Related Articles


Cleric wanted him gone, but then felt his pain
I-man cranky, mean - and a born survivor
Web spun backlash
You're Don for, CBS tells Imus
It's bigger than Imus
No solo act in I-mess