Ta-Nehisi Coates sat down for an interview with Dennis Young at Deadspin. Coates nailed the interview on the first question.

Dennis Young: Right at the beginning of your book, you talk about the Cosby article and how it was in some ways a “failure.” And daily blogging is great because you can fail all the time—you write again that day, or the next day. How has writing changed for you now that you can’t do that, that you can’t fail publicly now?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Oh, I think you still can. And I think you still will. I think all writers do. The only question is, are you gonna admit it or not? That’s the real difference. But you’re gonna fail. There’s just no way around that. I don’t know how one finishes their career and feels like “every piece of published writing I have is a success.” I do think it’s true that the writing that’s published in a book or in a magazine tends to be more finished, fact-checked, copy edited and all of that, but failure better be a part of your process if you’re trying to grow.

I have read the works of many writers who make me want to hide under a rock when I attempt to translate my thoughts into prose, but regardless of the esteem with which I hold these writers—Coates included—I recognize that while they will always soar closer to the light than I can dream, they are just as unlikely to reach that end as I am.

What Coates has to say about never being finished is also good:

You should never say you’re done with a question, you should never declare that you found the answer. I guess it’s true, I felt like certain things had been answered for me. But there are always other related questions that I maybe hadn’t taken into consideration when I wrote that.

When I was learning to paint in watercolors, I shared a few with my father who had a Fine Arts degree and was very good. He told me that he always hated water colors because you couldn’t fiddle with them.

When you’re painting in oils, the painting is never really finished. You can always take a palette knife to the canvas the next day are repaint a section. With watercolors, if you try to change something, you likely to just end up with mud.

I learned that lesson when I was writing on tight deadline for a publication that had three deadlines—0800, 1300 and 2100—each day. Often my editor would be standing over my typewriter (yes an actual clacking typewriter) ripping copy from the machine as I wrote. Meatball journalism has certain benefits that we miss in the age of laptops.

Because I’m struggling with writing a major African American character in my current novel, I paid particular attention to what Coates had to say about his own 19th century research:

Dennis Young: Do you think that instead of claiming power over black people being the animating force behind Trump’s election, it was power over Latinos?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: I don’t think those are in competition at all. The answer is yes! Yes to both. For instance, if you look at the history of white supremacy in this country, it has rarely been the case that it was singularly directed at black people to the exclusion of all other groups.

When Al Smith, a Catholic and the governor of New York, was running for president, when he goes down South [in 1928], what is he greeted with? He’s greeted with burning crosses, because he’s Catholic.

White supremacy has never been an either/or phenomenon. It’s never been like that. There have been different moments when different groups are more prominent. I think black people have been particularly prominent. But there have obviously been huge swaths of history where Native Americans were the primary [target].

What I think about black people in this country is I think the construction and idea of niggers is central to the idea of being white [Emphasis mine, JH]. If you completely took that out, you would have a really hard time defining “white.” Or “white” would have to be something totally different. Notice I don’t mean actually black people, but the construction of and the stereotypes that they put on black people. I think that’s central to being white. That doesn’t mean that those forces aren’t or can’t be directed at other people.

It’s very, very important that I be clear about this. That is not to diminish Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, for instance. It is certainly not to diminish the anti-Latino rhetoric. When I talk about the white supremacy of the Klan in Mississippi in the 1920s, it’s not to diminish their anti-Catholicism. This thing, man, it forms, and it shifts, and it moves around, and it takes different shapes. There was a piece just this Sunday in the New York Times on the alt-right and these racists, and how they love Asian women.

But what I would argue is, in general, and there are always exceptions, is the one element that you have always needed is the construct of the nigger. In America, that’s the one thing whiteness and white supremacy has not been able to do without. It has been essential to it.

Coates finishes up with his view on sexual harassment, violence and rape and how the conversation has taught him a little bit about what it might mean to White:

Dennis Young: I want to go back to what we were talking about with Diana’s work, with news of sexual harassment in sports reaching people it maybe wouldn’t otherwise. I just listened to the interview you did with Marc Maron, and you said that before Harvey Weinstein and everything that’s come after, you had no idea that it was like that. Why do you think you had no idea?

Ta-Nehisi Coasts: Why would I? When you’re in not just the protected class—by which I mean a class that’s not actually going through the thing which has happened, the oppression—but you’re actually in a class where you’re benefiting from it…You could say—I feel so white having this conversation. Like, I’ve learned what it means to be white. It’s about power, right? White people say “well, I didn’t do X, Y, and Z.” Okay, you didn’t do X, Y, and Z but I can give you all the ways in which you’re benefiting from the fact that X, Y, and Z happened.

So I think “well, I’ve never harassed anybody,” right? But I could also give you all the ways in which I benefit from a climate that makes harassment possible. I know it’s there. And I guess I was kind of aware of that, but if it doesn’t happen to you, if it’s not really happening around you, in your space, how would you know?

It probably was happening around you with women you know, right?

Okay, and I’ve heard that before. It wasn’t like I hadn’t had women around me say X, Y, and Z happened to me. But to understand it as a pervasive thing that is basically true and exerts influence throughout the workplace…that’s another thing.

There are plenty of white people who understand that there is racism in the world. Do they get that? Yes. One of their black friends says that the cops stopped them and did something—yeah, okay, okay, I get that. But that ain’t the same as seeing Eric Garner choked to death. That’s different. It’s not the same as seeing cops down in Ferguson in SWAT gear pointing at people saying “I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off,” on camera.

So that’s the equivalent of Jodi Kantor reporting on Harvey Weinstein pulling out his dick.

That’s exactly it. It’s not like if somebody told me “Hey, sexual harassment is a pervasive and huge problem,” I would have been like “No it’s not.” I would have said “Yeah, that’s probably true.” But to feel it, and to understand that it’s true, instead of saying that I suspect X, Y, and Z? Totally different.

And when you’re in the class with power, you gotta be an extraordinary person to see it that way. And I am not a particularly extraordinary man.

I get it a lot more now when white people come up to me with reactions to the work. I don’t know that I completely understood that before. I get the desire to say “not every white person.” One of the things I got right away was that that can’t be my response to anyone that I’m talking to, to say to any woman “Yeah, but I didn’t.”

This is what this is like. Okay, I get it now. I got the urge to say that, I understand like the guilt and the embarrassment. Even if you didn’t do X, Y, and Z, you’re still implicated in it. Because you are implicated in it ultimately.

Yes.

*Gotcha!

I first encountered the music of Janis Joplin at band camp in August of 1969. I would turn 14 in the next month and enter Warren High School as a freshman.

Damn but I was fucking clueless.

I wouldn’t actually see Janis sing until two years later when I worked as an usher at the Colony Theater in Marietta, Ohio. I watched Woodstock more than a dozen times during the week that it ran there. The two performances that I remember most vividly were by Janis and the other tragic figure there: Jimi Hendrix.

I heard something in Janis’ music that I’d never heard before. Nick Coleman did too. In Janis Joplin: the singer who screamed a very American pain, for The Guardian, Coleman writes:

But what did we know of her really? Very little. I remember registering at the time (probably from advertising copy, poster art and LP sleeves) her vivid personal iconography: round, tinted specs, feather boas in her hair and a hungry grin that opened her face to the sky. I also think I acquired the knowledge that she was Texan, that she was a roustabout and that she had expired only recently, as part of the same hippy decimation that had disposed of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, all of them victims of excess of one kind or another. Had she lived, she would have been 75 this month.

I left this comment on Coleman’s piece:

I saved two posters from my youth and preserved them on archival mountings behind non-glare glass. One, an original movie poster from 2001: A Space Odyssey (I was an usher at the theater) and the other, a black and white of Janis singing, her head tilted back and the microphone held close to her lips.

Both hang in my office, but the latter gets the place of honor. This image is the first I hang—from my college dorm room to my corporate office—where ever I go. When I’m blocked or feeling down, I just look at Janis’ face and get over my pitiful self.

She will always have a piece of my heart…

Can we agree this lying waste of human genome is an embarrassment to our nation?

From Robicheaux by James Lee Burke:

He was the trickster from folk mythology who flung scat at respectability. But he was a far more complicated man, in essence a Greek tragedy, a Promethean figure no one recognized as such, a member of the just men in Jewish legend who suffered for the rest of us. If there are angels among us, as St. Paul suggests, I believed Clete was one of them, his wings auraed with smoke, his cloak rolled in blood, his sword broken in battle but unsurrrendered and unsheathed, a protector whose genus went back to Thermopylae and Masada. p. 322

Will Patton reads another description of Clete from The Glass Rainbow.

The fact that there has been little public hysteria—as there usually is when something the corporate establishment feels hurt—tells you all you need to know about our priorities here.

RTA faces a fiscal strangulation. It’s due to a change in levy of the sales tax on Medicaid. RTA says it will cost some $20 million in revenue annually. The tax will disappear due to a Medicaid ruling.

That translates into the need to cut 1.8 million fewer trips for workers; 700,000 fewer trips to local schools and 300,000 fewer trips to health appointments. The figures are from a letter by George Dixon, RTA board president; Dennis Clough, v. p., and Joe Calabrese, RTA general manager.

That’s the result too of an original sin—use of the regressive sales tax to fund this mass transit.

Do we pay for roads and streets with a sales tax? No, of course we don’t.

Mass transit sorely needs adequate state, county and even local financial help.

It is a crucial urban need, not a luxury or part-time service.

But Cleveland’s top legal and corporate leaders—so typically—in the Continue Reading »

Previously: FOR ONLY $1,500 YOU TOO CAN MAKE SHIT UP…!

So, I finished reading Monique Morris’ excellent work: Pushout: The Criminalization Of Black Girls In Schools over the winter break and sent copies of my notes to some educators whose opinions I value. I haven’t heard back yet, but a story this morning on The Root (more on this below the fold) prompted me to start posting my notes.

Over my years as an educator I have worked with dozens of young Black women whose educations were at risk. None, I’m happy to say, as threatened as those Morris interviews and works with, but still in serious danger of becoming a dropout pushout. What is a pushout? Morris explains:

The central argument of Pushout is that too many Black girls are being criminalized (and physically and mentally harmed) by beliefs, policies and actions that degrade and marginalize both their leaning and their humanity, leading to conditions that push them out of schools and render them vulnerable to even more harm. We can counter the criminalization of Black girls in schools by first understanding what their criminalization looks like, and then by building a common language and framework for making sure that struggling Black girls are not left behind. We can all get behind a fair and effective education strategy that provides quality education for every young person. p. 8-9

From Pushout: The Criminalization Of Black Girls In Schools by Monique Morris

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

As I mentioned above, Anne Branigin’s New Studies Find That Positive Feelings About Blackness Improve Academic Performance for Black Girls for The Root spurred me to start posting my notes. The central premise of her post is that:

Young black women with “strong racial identity” are more likely to be academically engaged, curious and persistent.

I find myself paying a lot more attention to hair and dress after reading Morris’ book and processing what I see through a different lens. I may not be woke, but I’m at least not asleep at the podium.

Also recommended by The Root are:

After you watch the video read Victoria Bennett’s comments and the responses to her.

As Picliucci begins to erect his scaffold for being a Stoic in the 21st century, he first focuses on two ideas: understanding the nature of the world and the nature of human reasoning:

The theoretical framework of Stoicism is the idea that in order to live a good (in the sense of eudaimonic) life one has to understand two things: the nature of the world (and by extension, one’s place in it) and the nature of human reasoning (including when it fails, as it so often does). p. 21

From How To Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy To Live A Modern Life by Massimo Picliucci

I think anyone could spend several lifetimes achieving either of those two goals. We all think we know the answers, but I would suggest that thinking so is a sure sign that we don’t. Take something as simple as a book. Several years ago I embarked on a project to read deeply rather than reading voluminously. Each year I select one book—this year it is the four volume set: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell—and read that book in a continuous loop. On average I have read each book about five times—I may need to make the current reading a multi-year project, but I’ll see.

My point is that I am no longer the person I was yesterday and I am not yet the person I will be tomorrow so Picliucci’s points may only be relevant in the moment. Can that work?

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

I met Aaron Godfrey briefly at the December Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus meeting in Middleburg Height. He’s a bit raw in a good way and because I believe that early money is best, I’ve already made a contribution to his campaign. I’ll be making another when I buy a ticket to his Kick-Off fundraiser at the end of the month. You should too.

Godfrey writes:

Please join us on Wednesday, January 31st from 5:30-7:30pm for the kickoff fundraiser for Aaron Godfrey’s campaign for Ohio’s 16th District US House seat! It will be held at Zig’s Pub & Grill, at 1854 Snow Road in Parma. With your $35 ticket, you’ll be able to have your fill of pizza, wings, salad, pop, and domestic beers!

Questions? Feel free to email at godfreyforcongress@gmail.com or cathybelt@att.net and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Aaron Godfrey is a lifelong progressive running for the Democratic nomination to represent Ohio’s 16th District in the United States House of Representatives. Coming from a lower-class family, and struggling to get into and stay a part of America’s middle class, he knows the struggles facing countless Ohioans today. He knows from firsthand experience how hard it is to obtain a quality education, and how you pay for that education. He has felt personally the pain caused by a broken healthcare system, and he knows (as well as his family and most of his friends) the challenges that wage stagnation create.

If elected to the US House, Aaron will be fighting hard to protect every-day Americans – not the wealthy elite. He will support the Affordable Care Act, and work to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, quality healthcare. He will fight to resolve the student loan debt crisis by advocating avenues for relief, while working to pass legislation that will completely revamp how student loan debt is handled in this country, to bring real relief to a generation drowning in debt. Beyond that, he will do everything he can to make college accessible and affordable for everyone who wants to attend, and make sure that job training programs—such as vocational schools—exist for those who do not want to pursue a college career. Additionally, Aaron will run his office as transparently as the law allows, while doing everything he can to remain accessible to the people, whether via online communication, or frequent town halls across the district.

In short—Aaron Godfrey is running for Congress to do the work of the people. To represent them, and bring their issues to DC: not the issues of the over-represented rich. For too long, the 16th has been represented by a Congressman and a party that do not care about the voice or the will of the people. Aaron is here to change that—because, like you, he’s sick of not having any real representation in Congress.

Jim Bupkis Renacci is moving his car-selling skills elsewhere—hopefully to Walmart—and the field to replace his vacated seat is already heating up. I’ve told Aaron that I’ll do what I can to help his campaign because I’m discovering that North Royalton is not as conservative as I first thought.

I hope to see you at Zig’s.

Ralph Nader has a long history of writing open letters to presidents. I imagine that those missives were duly delivered to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and dutifully read by presidential staff and, on occasion, brought to the attention of the president.

I doubt that that happens anymore. What I imagine happens in the what passes for the mail room under President Donald John Trump is that the mail is scanned for checks or cash and then rapidly sorted into two piles, a small one that contain fawning words of admiration and all others. The former gets to gets recorded in a format that Trump can listen to while eating McDonald’s cheeseburgers and the rest are shredded.

Still, Nader has to try. In An Open Letter to President Trump, he writes:

President Donald J. Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

January 9, 2018

Dear President Trump,

Let us all wish and work for a peaceful and just New Year.

The American people are spending a significant amount of time observing and thinking about your presidency and its robust tweeting operation as President. Three areas of interest and concern comprise this letter’s purpose:

First, with news of the forthcoming medical examination by your physicians there will be renewed interest in your medical records and medical condition. This is true of all Presidents, but more so with you, because you have not been as forthcoming or anywhere near as complete in your disclosures about the state of your health during the campaign and since you became President last January.

The other concern relates to your diets and habits. You have what some nutritionists colloquially call a “cardiac diet”—full of foods containing fat, salt and sugar. A recent report said you drink about 12 cans of artificially sweetened diet Continue Reading »

Finding anyone in America, or anyone who has ever watched American television, that cannot recite the Miranda Warning must be nigh on impossible. And the first seven words—You have the right to remain silent—come first for a very good reason: they are the only words you must hear, understand and follow any time find yourself in police custody. As Homicide: Life On The Street, Season Five, Episode 11 of Homicide: Life On The Streets The Documentary preached.

I do wish that I could believe the myth that the police are our friends and they exist to protect and serve us, and I’m certain that many fine and dedicated men and women in both our police forces and our district attorney offices are our friends and do exist to protect and serve us. That is not, however, enough. If events in the 21st century have taught us anything, they have taught us this: police can fuck you up regardless of your guilt.

Take the case of Kirsten Lobato. Jordan Smith, writing in 17 Years After Being Convicted of a Grisly Murder in Vegas, Kirstin Lobato Sees Her Charges Dismissed for The Intercept, explains:

On December 29, more than a decade after she was first sent to prison in Nevada for a murder she did not commit, Kirstin Blaise Lobato saw the charges against her dismissed. “It is the end to her nearly 17-year nightmare,” said Vanessa Potkin, director of post-conviction litigation for the Innocence Project, which took on Lobato’s case. “It’s over.”

Lobato was twice convicted of the gruesome murder of a 44-year-old homeless man named Duran Bailey, whose body was found behind a dumpster off the Las Vegas Strip just after 10 p.m. on July 8, 2001, covered in a thin layer of trash. Bailey’s teeth had been knocked out and his eyes were bloodied and swollen shut; his carotid artery had been slashed, his rectum stabbed, and his penis amputated. It was found among the trash nearby.

Despite a crime scene rich with potential evidence, Las Vegas detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle ignored obvious leads and instead focused their investigation on 18-year-old Lobato, based solely on a third-hand rumor.

There is the problem. Our justice system is not interested in justice. Rather, those involved need, demand, closure rates and convictions because those are the scores by which they are judged. And everyone involved, except the accused, are trained well on how to achieve those goals. Consider this earlier scene where Detective Frank Pembleton demonstrates how to get a confession from an innocent man. Or for a longer version, you might watch how Morgan Freeman destroys Gene Hackman in the 2000 movie Under Suspicion. Police and prosecutors—Dick Wolf’s famous duo—bring their prejudices and preconceptions to every crime scene and work out from there to prove themselves right.

Consider the cases of of George Papadopoulos and Reality Winner. Peter Maass, writing in How the Interrogation of Reality Winner Reveals the Deceptive Tactics of “Exceedingly Friendly” FBI Agents for The Intercept, begins:

In late January, George Papadopoulos did what a lot of Americans do when FBI agents ask for a few minutes of their time—he agreed to talk. It’s a decision he likely regrets, because in October the former adviser to President Donald Trump’s election campaign pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI. He is now a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The court files in the Papadopoulos case say little about the conditions of his chat with the two FBI agents. We don’t know how long it lasted, where in Chicago it took place, what its tenor was, or whether Papadopoulos was aware the agents probably knew the answers to most questions they asked. One thing, though, is clear: Papadopoulos engaged in a form of self-harming behavior that defense lawyers always advise against—saying “yes” when a pair of friendly FBI agents knock on your door and ask to chat.

His interrogation was recorded but the transcript has not been released, so it’s impossible to know precisely what the FBI agents might have said that gave Papadopoulos the impression it would be in his interests to talk and to lie. But in another high-profile case, involving former NSA contractor Reality Winner, the government released a transcript of the interrogation. It provides a verbatim example—and a rare example—of how FBI agents ingratiate themselves with unsuspecting suspects and intimidate them into saying things that bring doom upon them.

The interrogations of Winner and Papadopoulos were what the FBI likes to call “noncustodial,” so they were not read their Miranda rights—because, the FBI claims, they were not arrested or detained at the time of the interrogation. (Winner’s lawyers have argued in court filings that she was effectively detained and should have been Mirandized.) By avoiding the obligation to inform suspects of their right to a lawyer and the right to stay silent, the FBI makes it easier to get Americans to say things—whether truths or lies—that will be used against them. The Fifth Amendment protects people from testifying against themselves, of course, and the Sixth Amendment provides the right to legal counsel, but law enforcement authorities get around these constitutional protections by contending that some interrogations are noncustodial. The result is that suspects are enticed into talking before they realize the jeopardy they face and the rights they possess.

“Because warnings are only required prior to custodial interrogation, one way to minimize the impact of Miranda on investigations is to try to conduct interrogations whenever possible in noncustodial settings (such as the suspect’s home or on the street, without arrest-like restraints),” notes an article in Police Magazine, which caters to the law enforcement community. The article bore the headline “How to talk to suspects without Mirandizing.”

There’s a problem with that kind of advice—the presence of law enforcement officers can turn homes and sidewalks into coercive environments, making the distinction between “custodial” and “noncustodial” a murky if not artificial one. The Winner transcript, which was released in September, offers an unusual look inside one of these home interrogations. In its early we’re-on-your-side phase, the interrogation pivoted on Winner’s love of dogs and her CrossFit workouts.

Innocent people are detained, charged, imprisoned, summarily executed in the United States. This recent events have taught us. We continue to suffer these crimes upon our persons today and the only reasonable response to any law enforcement request for assistance might be this: I certainly want to assist you in any way I can, and if you’ll leave me your cards, I’ll have my lawyer schedule an interview in his office as soon as is possible. Good day.

Redding was 26 when he died. I was 11.

Stuart Miller, reporting in Inside Otis Redding’s Final Masterpiece (Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay for Rolling Stone magazine, writes:

When the phone rang at the Stax/Volt studios in Memphis in late November of 1967, guitarist Steve Cropper was surprised to hear Otis Redding on the other end, calling from the airport. “Usually Otis would check into the Holiday Inn or whatever hotel he was staying at and then he’d call for me to come over and do some writing,” Cropper recalls. But this time Redding was too excited to wait. “I’ve got a hit,” he told Cropper, so he wanted to come straight to the studio to flesh his idea out into a full-fledged song.

Redding was right. When “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” was released less than two months later, it became the singer’s first million-seller and first Billboard Number One single.

He never heard the final release—50 years ago today—though, Redding died in a plane crash on 10 December 1967.

From his memorial website:

The Redding Family will be joining the world on December 10, 2017 in remembering Otis Redding 50 years after he died tragically in a plane crash at the age of 26. Redding was flying with his band in his twin-engine Beechcraft, when it crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wis. that tragic day in 1967. The world lost a great musician and a great man on that day.

His music and his legacy, however, live on, with his widow, Zelma Redding, and children (Dexter Redding, Otis Redding III, and Karla Redding-Andrews) keeping the flame burning for generations to come. Zelma and her daughter Karla keep Otis’ dream alive with the Otis Redding Foundation, serving the communities around the state of Georgia and beyond with the finest world-class music and arts education for its youth.

Just days before his untimely death, Redding was recording what was to become his most famous song, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” which was written on a houseboat in Sausalito, Calif. The record was released on January 8, 1968, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles charts concurrently, and becoming the first posthumous number-one single in U.S. chart history. “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” is the #6 most played song on American radio and television for the 20th century, with over 10 million broadcast performances. The song also has over 100 million streams on Spotify alone, averaging 650,000 streams a week. It received two Grammy® Awards in 1969, for Best R&B Song and Best R&B Vocal Performance.

Play it again…

Our first woman president will not be Ivanka Trump. Let’s just get that said and move on to a reality based world.

Jake Nevins, reporting in Oprah Winfrey’s stirring Golden Globes speech prompts talk of White House run for The Guardian, writes:

The notion of the talk show host and entrepreneur running for president against Donald Trump in 2020 was raised by the awards’ host, Seth Meyers, in his opening monologue.

“In 2011, I told some jokes about our current president at the White House correspondents dinner, jokes about how he was unqualified to be president,” Meyers said. “And some have said that night convinced him to run. And if that’s true, I would just like to say, ‘Oprah you will never be president.’”

After Winfrey’s speech her partner, Stedman Graham, told the Los Angeles Times: “It’s up to the people. She would absolutely do it.”

Celebrities used Twitter to urge Winfrey to run. The comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted “Oprah/Michelle 2020” while the actor Leslie Odom Jr wrote: “She’s running. A new day is on the way.”

She’d get my vote. OK, OK. I was just being stupid.

From Guardian Sport:

On the eve of the NFL playoffs, fans of the Cleveland Browns, who haven’t made it past the regular season since 2002, protested outside their stadium with a sarcastic ‘perfect season’ parade. Fans criticised the owner, billionaire Jimmy Haslam, over the perceived mismanagement of a team which has won just one of 32 games they’ve played over the last two years.

Go Browns…!

It was quite a show with thousands braving frigid Lake Erie weather to celebrate (berate?) (castigate?) (deflate?) their Cleveland Browns on a far below freezing Saturday.

To get that many people out under those circumstances certainly places Browns fans among the most fanatical, or hapless of sports fans.

They were (protesting, celebrating) you pick the word—a victory-less season with 16 losses.

What was laudatory was that the crowd—estimated about 3,000—used the opportunity not only to have fun but the collect a tidy sum that will go to help feed those in need.

I noticed another piece in the Pee Dee that said the Browns give millions in charity. I’d like to see proof of that because I think that’s promotion talk, not real dollars from the likes of cheating Jim Haslam.

I do know that Haslam escapes any property tax on the heavily publicly subsidized stadium from which he takes most if not all receipts.

The last time I looked (2014)—because the Pee Dee, protector of the privileged doesn’t—Haslam, whose company robbed common truck drivers of millions of dollars, was freed of paying $9.5 million in property taxes on a stadium worth some $275 million.

Even worse—and something that deserves a real SHAME PARADE— Continue Reading »