Also: Andrew Gillum Is Winning by Being His Natural, Black Self.

If you only listen to the scare tactics you believe that the supporters of our president are legion (they’re not) and that a massive invasion column of virile young brown men are about to storm our border to take our jobs and our women (they’re not) you have another listen coming. Because I believe that hearing objectionable speech—with limits—is important for democracy, I read stories from National Review every morning. The lead story today is David French’s It’s Time to Calm Down about the Caravan. French writes:

To Americans, the message is equally clear. There is no cause for alarm. To the extent that members of the migrant caravan do complete their trek through Mexico, they will not be permitted to storm border crossings, and we have sufficient resources to secure our border and enforce our laws. We will apply those laws fairly and treat migrants humanely, but we will apply the law.

In other words, we can handle this. The migrant caravan is not an emergency. In fact, unless and until it gets hundreds of miles closer (while still retaining its size), there’s not even all that much cause for concern. Even if it arrives in some strength, there is no way for a group that size to sneak across the border, and the most powerful nation in the world has more than enough resources to meet the migrants when they attempt to cross, detain them, and begin the necessary legal proceedings.

In fact, the whole front page this morning is sending the message: take a breath, or as the Brits would say: Stay calm and carry on.

And Fox News? take a feckin’ breath.

Holy Ghost by John Sanford: Chapter 5—

Zimmer stood in the kitchen, his nostrils slick with Vicks, and looked at Andorra’s body with disgust: “He was a good ol’ boy, and that’s no way to end up, all rotten and falling apart.”

The Merriam-Webster Word Of The Day is: Lycanthropy, a delusion that one has become a wolf; the assumption of the form and characteristics of a wolf held to be possible by witchcraft or magic.

I’m not certain precisely when journalism ceased to be a craft and morphed into a profession, when blue collar reporters schooled on the streets were replaced by white collar journalists schooled in, well, school but I know that was a very sad day. Kurt Vonnegut explains why.

Advice? Somebody should have told me not to join a fraternity, but to hang out with the independents, who were not then numerous. I would have grown up faster that way. Somebody should have told me that getting drunk, while fashionable, was dangerous and stupid. And somebody should have told me to forget about higher education, and to go to work for a newspaper instead. that is what a lot of the most promising and determined young writers used to do back then. Nowadays, of course, you can’t get a job on a newspaper if you don’t have a college education. Too bad.

—to Paul Kody on 25 January 1994, p. 354

I have given nearly the same advice to every student who has talked to me about becoming a journalist. There is nothing you can learn in a journalism school that a good editor can’t teach you in two weeks.

Found in my electronic chapbook under KURT VONNEGUT: LETTERS…

So, this morning I reread Erin Durkin’s Midterm elections: early voter turnout surging in several key states in The Guardian and was happy for the good news. When I got to the end of the story, however, I paused and thought: Fuck, what about Ohio?

What about Ohio indeed. I emailed Durkin’s story to several Ohio journalists with the question, Why isn’t Ohio part of this story…?, as the subject line. After I hit send I allowed the question to churn in the back of my mind while I worked on other projects. Durkin focuses on three states: Georgia, where Republican Brian Porter Kemp faces Democrat Stacey Yvonne Abrams (top left); Florida, where Democrat Andrew Demese Gillum faces Republican Ronald Dion DeSantis (top right); and Texas, where Democratic Robert Francis O’Rourke faces Republican Rafael Edward Cruz (bottom left).

Now, look at the top race in Ohio between Richard Adams Cordray and Richard Michael DeWine (bottom right)—must not make battle of dicks joke—and ask yourself: why isn’t voter turnout surging in Ohio?

I like Cordray. I voted for Cordray, but I vote in every election. I haven’t missed an election since I turned 18. The people who study voter turnout don’t care about me. I’m dependable. So is Cordray. He’s not going to cause any surges, however.

Also: Stephen Colbert—Trump Warns Of ‘Young, Strong’ Men In The Caravan.

Midterm elections: early voter turnout surging in several key states by Erin Durkin.

In Georgia, where a razor-thin governor’s race has been roiled by accusations of voter suppression, turnout has been huge, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. On the first day of early voting this month, turnout was triple that of 2014: 69,049 people cast ballots, up from 20,898.

Last Saturday, the wait to vote at the main election office in Cobb county stretched to three to four hours, the paper reported.

In Florida, where another hard-fought governor’s race pits progressive Andrew Gillum against Trump ally Ron DeSantis, more than 2.7 million have already voted in person or by absentee ballot, a record high for a midterm, Politico reported. That means more than a fifth of active voters in the state have already exercised their right.

Texas has a long record of low turnout – just 28.9% in 2014, second to last among all states. But it has spiked this year, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

About 2.4 million people cast ballots in the first days of early voting in the state’s 30 biggest counties – more than the total number of early and absentee votes in the entire voting period in 2014, the United States Elections Project found.

There are two British television shows that I can watch over and over and over: Rowan Atkins’ Black Adder and (yes, I am a feckin’ Ted Head) Dermot Morgan’s Father Ted.

In a word, they are both brilliant.

They are both up next in my video-watching experience.

Holy Ghost by John Sanford: Chapter 4—

Virgil downloaded the photos to his iPad and walked back to the business district, checking the photographs for holes in the foliage or any other place where the shots might have come from.

Spoiler alert (of sorts) Chapter 4 contains an extended scene involving a mistreated dog. I didn’t care for the scene—as I’ve aged I’ve become more and more affected by animal cruelty—but I thought that Sanford would only put in such a passage because the significance would be made clear by the end of the book.

I was wrong.

The Merriam-Webster Word Of The Day is: caterwaul, to make a harsh cry; to protest or complain noisily.

Sometime during my lifetimes, perhaps even before I was born, my country ceased to have a two-party system. Republicans and Democrats—with a few shining exceptions—do not serve We The People, the shameless toadies serve Mammon. I fear that Ralph Nader is flogging a dead horse political party when, in Democrats: Headline “America Needs a Raise” Now Before Elections, he writes:

The top Republican politicos must be thinking with adversaries like the Democratic Party, who needs friends. Since 2010 the GOP minority has taken over the majority of state legislatures, Governorships and now the three branches of the federal government.

Polls consistently show most Americans oppose the catastrophic Republican agenda. The American people support raising the frozen federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour; want to protect Obamacare; want law enforcement to punish Wall Street crooks and prevent consumer rip offs; support forming labor unions and protecting labor rights; favor prosecuting the student loan and the for-profit school rackets; want the Republican Party to stop voter suppression and judicial disenfranchisement, and want injured people to have access to the courts. Despite all of these unpopular Republican Party positions, the Republican Party keeps winning.

Even in next month’s elections, which are supposed to produce a blue wave of Democratic victories, the polls are tightening. Trumps polls are edging up, in spite of the belligerent loud mouth’s daily foul and lying invectives.

To see the anemic Democrats, watch the debates between the various candidates. A recent debate between Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill and Republican Josh Hawley, whose office of attorney general is a widely reported mess, is illustrative. Hawley Continue Reading »

Also: Trevor’s Is Trump’s Rhetoric To Blame For The Florida Mail Bomber?; Seth Meyers’ Trump Attacks the Media as His Allies Blame “Both Sides” for Violence: A Closer Look and Stephen Colbert’s Hate Is Not What America Stands For.

Given his decades of work to ensure fair elections around the world, I wondered if President James Earl Carter (the only president I voted for twice) would speak out about the election in his home state.

He has.

October 22, 2018

To Secretary of State Brian Kemp:

I have officially observed scores of doubtful elections in many countries, and one of the key requirements for a fair and trusted process is that there be nonbiased supervision of the electoral process.

In Georgia’s upcoming gubernatorial election, popular confidence is threatened not only by the undeniable racial discrimination of the past and the serious questions that the federal courts have raised about the security of Georgia’s voting machines, but also because you are now overseeing the election in which you are a candidate. This runs counter to the most fundamental principle of democratic elections — that the electoral process be managed by an independent and impartial election authority. Other secretaries of state have stepped down while running for election within their jurisdiction, to ensure that officials without a direct stake in the process can take charge and eliminate concerns about a conflict of interest.

In order to foster voter confidence in the upcoming election, which will be especially important if the race ends up very close, I urge you to step aside and hand over to a neutral authority the responsibility of overseeing the governor’s election. This would not address every concern, but it would be a sign that you recognize the importance of this key democratic principle and want to ensure the confidence of our citizens in the outcome.

Sincerely,
Jimmy Carter

(Thanks Mary Jo for the heads-up…)

It’s Time to Listen to Black Women. We’ve Been Talking About Police Sexual Violence for a Long Time by Andrea J. Ritchie.

The issue is clearly not that no one is talking about sexual violence by police—black women have been talking about it for decades, and demanding action. The #MeToo moment is no exception: Tiffany Haddish shared a #MeToo story of rape by a police officer in training when she was 17, and many more can be found under the hashtag #CopsToo, coined by Women’s All Points Bulletin.

The issue is that people are not listening to the Black women who have been talking about it.

Michael Harriot, writing in What Did You Think Would Happen? for The Root, points to the central issue:

They will talk up the need for gun reform. Someone will inevitably probably point to the importance of mental health care while others will attribute the act to a lack of armed security (as our president did). But all of the circular logic will skirt the one inescapable reason that tragedies like this are becoming increasingly more prevalent:

White fear.

White people are afraid and this is what they do when they are afraid. It is a recurring historical truth that has existed since Christopher Columbus did not step foot on American soil. Whenever this country brings up the prospect of equality; whenever white America faces an existential change; whenever their fears are stoked by someone for political gain, white people do the same thing.

The Ku Klux Klan is not a hate group. It is a fear group founded when a bunch of white guys started wondering what was going to happen when all those slaves they had beaten and shat upon for almost a century suddenly became citizens and had the right to own guns.

If you need further clarification, here’s a South Parkesque version…

Telling Untold Stories: Playwright and Performer Dael Orlandersmith Gets Under Our Skin by Maiysha Kai.

Holy Ghost by John Sanford: Chapter 3—

Virgil, Holland, and Zimmer talked a while longer—Virgil asked whether there were any known anti-Catholic bigots around town, but neither one of them knew any.

How About Nikki Haley for Speaker? by John Fund.

Next month’s election could deliver a close enough result that it will be very difficult for the House of Representatives to organize itself and elect a speaker.

If the House deadlocks, the Constitution allows the body to select a non-member to serve as speaker and run the place. It’s never happened before, but at the beginning of this century, few thought figures such as Barack Obama or Donald Trump could ever be elected president.

On Capitol Hill, there are whispers that a surprise candidate for speaker could be Nikki Haley, the retiring United Nations ambassador and former South Carolina governor

So, Republicans now want to cower behind Haley’s skirt?

In my early days of blogging I was obsessive about stats. I probably checked them at least once a day. I’m not sure when I began tappering off, but I know that I haven’t checked mine in more than a year. Mano Singham posted a milestone today, 9 million unique page views (congratulations Mano!); and I just had to take a peak at my own. I confess that I am amazed that after nearly 14 years—my blogiversary, 9 November, will be next week—so many people are still reading. My first post was titled LEARNING FROM HISTORY…

The Merriam-Webster Word Of The Day is: Shambles, slaughterhouse; a place of mass slaughter or bloodshed; a scene or a state of great destruction, wreckage; a scene or a state of great disorder or confusion; great confusion, mess.

Last year Mano Singham posted: The Problem with Apu and the ‘immigrant tax’ and wrote:

The Simpsons have had a very long run, so long that some of the original voice actors have died. It is time for the show to retire Apu. If they do, I hope they at least give him a dignified farewell.

The first comment on the post came from sonofrojblake who wrote:

Wouldn’t it be better for them to evolve him? Reveal he’s been putting on that accent all those years to make them feel comfortable and he’s tired of it and not going to take it any more and actually sounds like he’s from Queens or something? Teachable moment, followed by continued but more equitable representation?

I thought that, and Mano agreed, that the suggestion was genius. Mano responded:

That’s a pretty good idea. You should send it to the show’s writers. I’m serious.

Whether sonofrojblake took Mano’s advice or not I may never know because Apu is gone—I’m sure that the debut of Hasan Minaj’s show is purely coincidental—and at least one conservative is not happy.

Pradheep J. Shanker, writing in PC Kills an Indian Star for National Review, vents:

The PC attack on Apu, the most famous immigrant on The Simpsons, came to a conclusion this week as producers finally admitted that the character was being permanently shelved.

As I wrote earlier this year in pieces for both National Review and Ricochet, this conclusion was inevitable. We have seen time and again that once political correctness is injected into such an issue, the only solution is to ban the controversial item from the social consciousness altogether.

And then Shanker slips into the sonofrojblake stream:

The irony is that The Simpsons, more than any other Hollywood outlet, had the ability to let Apu evolve with the times. The show has a three-decade history of characters who grow, change, and even die. In fact, Apu himself has changed a great deal, even getting married and having children. So it was absolutely possible, in theory, to have Apu evolve in a way that satisfied our modern sensitivities.

However, for the show-runners, the decision is a commonsense one: Why have a public, possibly ugly debate with racial overtones when they don’t have to? Apu isn’t a central character to their stories (and in fact did not appear in any episodes last year).

So, would this have been a Sorry To Bother You moment…?

Yes, Breathing While Black is now a thing. So much so that Ashley Nkadi has actually compiled her own list of 100 Things Not To Do #WhileBlack.

Black Navy Sailor Attempting to Help ‘Stranded Motorist’ Shot and Killed

#StephonClark: Sacramento DA Promises to Take Her Sweet Time Making a Decision on Police Shooting

TV Crew Filming Police Brutality Scene in Eric Garner’s Neighborhood Kicked Out by Angry Residents

‘I’m White! I Got You, Girl!’: #SouthParkSusan Narrowly Escapes Mollywhopping

White Nationalist Who Threatened Stacey Abrams’ Campaign Poses for Picture With Brian Kemp

Nike Premieres Kaep Merch and New Logo—and Sells Out Within Hours (But There’s Still Hope)

Texas Voting Machines Are Reportedly Switching Votes for Beto O’Rourke to Ted Cruz

#StephonClark: Sacramento PD Completes Investigation of Officer-Involved Shooting

Previously…

Someone has been reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine…

Robert Bowers, Cesar Sayoc, Scott Leader, Steve Leader, Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright, Patrick Eugene Stein, Alexandre Bissonnette, Michael Hari, Michael McWhorter, Joe Morris, James Alex Fields, Jr., Brandon Griesemer, Nikolas Cruz… Medhi Hasan, writing in Here Is a List of Far-Right Attackers Trump Inspired. Cesar Sayoc Wasn’t the First—and Won’t Be the Last. for The Intercept, is proven right even before the ink was dry:

Update: October 27, 2018, 4:30 p.m. EDT—Minutes after this story was published, news reports confirmed that multiple people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh had been killed by a gunman. The gunman taken into custody has been linked to anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant posts on social media. At least 11 people were killed and six injured at the Tree of Life synagogue.

The really weird part here? Bowers hated Trump too, posting: Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist. “There is no #MAGA as long as there is a [Jewish] infestation.”

Here in Ohio please vote for Former U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach. I did.

Heather Cox Richardson in When Trump demonises opponents, unhinged partisans take their cues for The Guardian, writes:

Last week was not the first time in American history that a crazed assassin has tried to change the trajectory of the government by killing political enemies. In 1865, when it was clear that the confederacy was about to collapse, prominent southerner John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices set out to behead their Republican opponents by killing President Abraham Lincoln, his vice-president, Andrew Johnson, and the secretary of state, William Henry Seward.

The grand tragedy that martyred President Lincoln seems to dwarf the farce of a MAGA-inspired former exotic dancer, Cesar Sayoc, mailing homemade pipe bombs to Democratic leaders. But the same misguided patriotism inspired both.

In both eras, the course that led to assassination attempts started when a small group of wealthy men recognised that their economic interests ran counter to those of most voters. Setting out to shore up their waning influence, by limiting access to information, dominating government and warning supporters that political enemies were urging minorities to harm them, they built a fervent following. Those followers came to believe America was a white man’s land and saw those challenging their leaders as dangerous radicals.

Holy Ghost by John Sanford: Chapter 2—

Five months later, Mayor Wardell Holland told Virgil Flowers that there weren’t any available motel rooms in Wheatfield., and not even over in Blue Earth, down I-90

The Merriam-Webster Word Of The Day is: Multitudinous, including a multitude of individuals, populous; existing in a great multitude; existing in or consisting of innumerable elements or aspects.

In Barack Obama takes aim at Donald Trump for ‘making stuff up’, The Associated Press reports:

Barack Obama criticised Donald Trump’s tenure in office on Friday in a series of speeches in Milwaukee and Detroit that took aim at the president and other Republicans for “making stuff up”.

The speeches were among Obama’s sharpest and most direct critiques of his successor, but he was careful to not mention Trump by name. He said the “character of our country is on the ballot” in the first midterm election since Trump took office.

Obama cited a recent Trump comment that he would pass a tax cut before the November election. “Congress isn’t even in session before the election. He just makes it up,” he said.

“Here’s the thing. Everything I say you can look up.”

Nor did Obama spare the Republicans more broadly. They were were lying when they said they wanted to protect people with pre-existing conditions while trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he said, a reference to Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker.

“What we have not seen before in our public life is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying. Just making stuff up,” Obama said. “Calling up down. Calling black white. That’s what your governor is doing with these ads, just making stuff up,” he said.

55 Years Ago, Someone Blamed a Bombing on a Racist Politician by Michael Harriot, who ledes:

Now, we know.

When 19 sticks of dynamite planted by Klansmen exploded inside the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, killing 11-year old Carol Denise McNair, and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson, it was not the first time white supremacists had bombed a home or place of worship in Birmingham, Ala. It was not the second. It was not the 10th, nor was it the 40th. It would also not be the last.

Fifty.

Although the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing is the most famous of these, it was not a lone incident. Bethel Baptist was bombed three times. Explosives were planted at the home of Rev. A. D. King twice in two years, including 50 sticks of dynamite in 1965. Between 1947 and 1965, homes, gathering places and churches in Birmingham, Ala., would be bombed 50 times.

But on that September day in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was about to step into the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta when someone delivered the news.

I’m torn by this because I can’t separate private-citizen Donny Trump—whom the First Amendment says can spew all the vicious invective he wants—and President Donald John Trump who, as our president responsible to all citizens must be held to a higher responsibility. As Harriot notes, Dr. King understood that difference. While I am a rabid advocate for free speech and firmly believe that the only acceptable response to objectionable speech must always be more speech and never censorship, the words of President Trump carry far more weight and bear far more dread consequences than those of private-citizen Trump.

War Of The Wolf by Bernard Cornwell. Chapter 12 begins:

Chapter 12

Many a carcass they left to be carrion,
Left for the white-tail’d eagle to tear it, and
Left for the horny-nibbed raven to rend it, and
Gave to the scavenging war-hawk to gorge it, and
That gray beast, the wolf…

I had to smile. “Horny-nibbed raven?”

Cornwell suggests that he is not finished with Uhtred of Baddanburg. (Of this I am well pleased.) In the Historical Note, he concludes:

War of the Wolf is set in the early 920s. Uhtred, though born a Saxon (his mother was a Saxon, his father an Angle, though for fictional purposes I usually conflate the two), thinks of himself as Northumbrian. Hie is surprised by the word Ænlisc, English, but that word will come to have real meaning in his long lifetime. Englaland, England, does not yet exist, but its birth, in blood, slaughter, and horror, is close. But that too is a story for another novel.

The Merriam-Webster Word Of The Day is: pamphleteer, to write and publish pamphlets; to engage in partisan arguments indirectly in writings.

War Of The Wolf by Bernard Cornwell. Chapter 11 begins:

War cries were loud Ravens and eagles.
Were eager for corpse-meat, the earth trembled.
Men let fly their spears, file sharpened,
Bows were loosed, shields blade-struck,
Bitter was the onslaught…

“Onslaught,” I said quietly.

In his Historical Note—one of the aspects of Cornwell’s writing that I always enjoy—found at the end of the book, he writes:

The poem fragments in Chapter 10 are my own, but try to imitate the form of Old English verse, while those in Chapters Eleven and Twelve are very free translations of existing poems.

The Tariff President Says ‘We Don’t Have Tariffs’ from Steven Colbert.

The Merriam-Webster Word Of The Day is: holy writ , a writing or utterance having unquestionable authority.

I am reminded here of the oft-repeated justification by Bernard Cornwell’s fictional Sergent Obadiah Hakeswill that his actions were correct because: Says So In The Scriptures. I’ve sometimes wondered if Cornwell was a taking a poke at religious moralists who often use the same justification for heinous behavior.

Yes, Breathing While Black is now a thing…

ACLU Files Discrimination Complaint on Behalf of Black Students in Central California

Black Voters in Georgia Say Something Funny Is Going on With Their Voting Machines

Finally! Black Poll Worker Calls Cops on Suspicious Caucasians for #LurkingWhileWhite

Iowa Teacher Under Investigation For Wearing Blackface to Halloween Party

Maya Little Is Not Backing Down

‘Whites Don’t Shoot Whites,’ Said Alleged Kroger Shooter Who Killed 2 Black People

Random-Ass White Woman Rolls Up on Spanish Speaking Family and Demands to See Their Passports

Brian Kemp Caught on Tape Warning His Donors About Black People Voting… Again

NJ Mom’s 911 Call About Racist Man Prevents School Shooting in Kentucky

Librarian Calls Cops on Student for Brazen Attempt at #StudyingWhileBlack

The Most Pathetically Racist Robocall You’ve Ever Heard Against Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Andrew Gillum

Previously…

War Of The Wolf by Bernard Cornwell. Chapter 10 begins:

We gathered at Heagostealdes, a large village just south of the great wall.

Puppeteer Caroll Spinney Announces Retirement from Sesame Street.

Puppeteer Caroll Spinney today announced that he is stepping down from the roles of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, which he has performed on Sesame Street since its 1969 premiere.

“Big Bird brought me so many places, opened my mind and nurtured my soul,” said Spinney. “And I plan to be an ambassador for Sesame Workshop for many years to come. After all, we’re a family! But now it’s time for two performers that I have worked with and respected – and actually hand-picked for the guardianship of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch – to take my alter-egos into their hands and continue to give them life.”

A lifelong artist, Spinney developed a love of puppetry at an early age. He explored puppeteering throughout his childhood and adolescence, and even used money from his performances to pay his college tuition. After serving in the Air Force, he performed as a professional puppeteer in Las Vegas and Boston in the 1950s and 1960s, eventually meeting Jim Henson at a puppetry festival in 1962. When Henson was creating the Muppets of Sesame Street, Caroll’s unique combination of talent and heart proved to be perfect for the new show’s larger-than-life bird. He joined Sesame Street’s inaugural season in 1969, and he’s been performing with the show ever since.

I’m from the Captain Kangaroo generation but I knew Sesame Street from watching the shows with my brother and sister who are respectively 17 and 15 years younger than I am. Grover was my favorite character and this was my all-time favorite outing for the wiry little monster.

Sam Allard, writing in Serial in Cleveland, Ep. 7 Recap: The Snowball Effect for Scene, ledes:

It’s difficult to believe that Serial’s Cleveland-based third season could be nearing it’s homestretch, in part because examples of the systemic issues the podcast has exposed feel like they’re in infinite supply, but it’s true. There are likely only two or three more episodes remaining. The show will be off next week (Nov. 1) and will return the following Thursday (Nov. 8) for what Koenig calls the season’s “final episodes.”

Episode 7, titled “The Snowball Effect,” returns to East Cleveland and the fallout of a case involving Jesse Nickerson. Nickerson was beaten by two police officers at Forest Hill Park after an arrest in 2016. When the officers were held criminally accountable for their actions — gasp! — Nickerson becomes a target of the East Cleveland police, constantly harassed and cited by them in clear retaliatory actions. Just like Ep. 6, this installment demonstrates powerfully that a legal victory, when it’s against cops, is hardly a victory at all.

Related to the Serial series is the story—also written by Allard—that broke yesterday: Ohio Supreme Court Declines to Hear Appeal in Arnold Black Case Featured in Serial Season Three. There Allard ledes:

The sixth episode of Serial’s Cleveland-based third season was a tough listen. It focused primarily on the city of East Cleveland and the aftermath of a police brutality case there. The victim, a man named Jesse Nickerson, appeared to emerge victorious after the two cops who beat him up in Forest Hill Park were held criminally responsible, but Nickerson suffered enduring consequences in the community. His case will continue in tomorrow’s episode.

The story of Jesse Nickerson was preceded by another case of police brutality in East Cleveland, one involving a man named Arnold Black. Black’s case appeared to have a triumphant ending as well — a jury awarded him $22 million in damages — but that decision was thrown out by the Eighth District Court of Appeals. And today, the Ohio Supreme Court decided not to hear Black’s appeal, meaning he won’t see damages for his heinous treatment.

Noah is spot on here, making two points on minorities and guns and minorities registering to vote that I have made again and again. I also strong advocate that every minority organization should sign up all of its members for concealed carry permits.

I discovered wargaming in the common room of Newsome Hall at Colorado State University during Winter Quarter when I walked in on a Tractics game in progress. I still have my original boxed set and a several ammo crates filled with 1/285 1/87, 1/76 and 1/72 scale models of WW II German vehicles. I was originally introduced to Dungeons & Dragon the following quarter, but didn’t really get into the game until I was on board the USS Bainbridge in 1976.

Over the next four years I played hundreds of games, but D&D was my favorite. My friends and I spent many, many long weekends at The Brewery—the home of Dave Brewer—in San Diego playing D&D. I particularly enjoyed the role of Dungeon Master and had developed my world, Silvenstone, to great detail. I was particularly known for my seagoing dungeons.

I still have the games and the books, but have only played solo over the past few decades. I do miss those times and watching this video makes me miss them all the more. I have a hard time thinking that my infatuation with gaming began more than 40 years ago.

I own up to the fact that I live in a, mostly, media-free bunker. I haven’t had a television capable of receiving broadcast channels 25 years. I subscribe to only one streaming service (Netflix) and I only listen to—and support—public radio stations. I use multiple ad-blocking programs on my computer. I regularly read on newspaper online—The Guardian—and I have a short list journalist—like Sam Allard—whom I read daily or weekly.

All of that means that I don’t see political advertising, especially like the political advertising examined in Sam Wolfson’s Five of the most bigoted and divisive political ads from the 2018 midterms for The Guardian. The ads are fearmongering at its worst and made me feel as if I was watching trailers for horror movies. Wolfson writes:

With the midterm elections looming , a number of adverts are using inflammatory tactics to paint political opponents as unsafe or untrustworthy. There have been attempts to link ethnic minority candidates to Islamic terrorism or gangsta rap culture, as well as an effort to portray Democrats as threatening a return to lynchings.

The ads are mostly funded by Super Pacs which can raise unlimited amounts of money to run political advertising. Pacs are not allowed to coordinate with the candidates they’re asking people to vote for, meaning they are able to run inflammatory advertising while candidates can plausibly deny any responsibility. [Emphasis mine, JH]

The Congressional Leadership Fund, which is closely associated with Paul Ryan, has a particular reputation for running what critics see as sometimes race-baiting attack ads and has already raised nearly $100m for the 2018 election cycle.

Other controversial ads have been funded by the National Republican Campaign Committee which is the official campaigning arm of the Republican party.

I watched several of the ads featured in Wolfson’s piece and they’re flat out disgusting. I mentioned the vile Democrats will start lynching black folks again ad from Black Americans for the President’s Agenda before, but there’s a good reason that Wolfson leads with this ad.

I understand why William Shakespeare put the words The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers into Dick the Butcher’s mouth: Dick is a criminal. I feel something of the same way about anyone in public relations, advertising or marketing because they have no allegiance to truth except when truth might serve their clients. My position is grounded in the first day of my journalism ethics class at Ohio University when the professor asked for a show of hands to determine what programs each student was in. When he came to the advertising and public relations students he told them:

You don’t belong in the journalism school because what you’re learning to do has no relation to journalism. You should be in the business college. What we’re going to learn here has nothing to do with what you’re going to be paid for in the future.

Clearly the professor, a former newspaper journalist, had nothing but contempt for those students. As a journalists, he had spent a career dealing with the people they wanted to become. They were anti-journalists. Even when they hide behind the we-have-a-positive-story-to-tell-excuse, they’re lying.

Consumer protection laws provide some cover for the people they try to exploit, but we have no such protections when faced with political lies and manipulations. Many people thought that Lee Atwater’s Willie Horton ad for Republican presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988 was a low point. Atwater wasn’t even close.

War Of The Wolf by Bernard Cornwell. Chapter 9 begins:

At Bebbanburg, the sea kept up its ceaseless beat and the wind brought the smell of salt with the sea bird’s cries.

Confederate monuments, mostly commissioned and positioned not to honor war heroes but to to intimidate civil rights activists, are a hot button now and the depiction of generals Robert Edward Lee and Thomas Jonathan Jackson riding with Jefferson Finis Davis, president of the Confederate States Of American,is the largest such monument. Begun in 1964 and completed in 1972, the bas-relief’s history has never been hidden.

Georgians are embroiled in a gubernatorial race deliberately focused on the gender and ancestry of two candidates: the white male Republican Brian Kemp and black female Democrat Stacy Abrams. For her part, Abrams has bigger fish to fry. Shah writes:

Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate in Georgia, who is running in a hotly contested race to try to shift the long-time red state blue–and become the nation’s first black female governor in the process–has previously criticised the monument.

After the Charlottesville violence at the Unite the Right rally last August, Abrams condemned the carving in a series of tweets.

“Confederate monuments belong in museums where we can study and reflect on that terrible history, not in places of honor across our state,” she wrote. “[T]he visible image of Stone Mountain’s edifice remains a blight on our state and should be removed.”

But the politics of the issue are difficult–not least because you can’t easily take down a sculpture carved into side of a mountain–and more recently Abrams has said that although she stands by her position, dealing with the monument is not top of her list of priorities.

We don’t need to, nor should we, attempt to pull a hood over these memorials to slavery and white supremacy. We need context and education that destroy the myths.

Act II, Act III and Blackface is Racist, Megyn.