Shots in the Dark

Some colleagues and I watched President Obama’s remarkable, wonderful, inspiring talk on race and Trayvon Martin yesterday. I think we were all moved by the President’s candor, maybe even his vulnerability. (Who would have thought that the words “that includes me” could feel so powerful?)

When he was done, we discussed the impact of his words, and one person present, Well, there’ll be a blowback from this—a lot of Americans won’t like it.

And I thought, how could that possibly be the case about words, facts, sentiments, that are so obviously truth?

But of course I knew he was right.

So here’s Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post, charging that the President’s words were “as surprising as they were gratuitous…. today was all about seeing things, you see, from the narrow perspective of race.”

Oh, shut up.

On Twitter, conservatives called Obama a demagogue and a racist who “always makes things worse” and “will emote in the future if there are points to be scored.”

Oh, shut up.

One conservative trope: that Obama was going to, or perhaps even trying to, incite a riot.

Which, in addition to its ridiculousness, is also racist, in that it implies black people can hear a beautiful discussion like that and instantly just take to the streets looting and setting things on fire.

Tammy Bruce, who is both an idiot and a racist, wrote about Obama’s comparison of himself to Trayvon that she “had no idea Obama sucker-punched a watch volunteer and then bashed his head in.”

Oh, shut up.

Aside from just wanting these people to just go away, I do have a couple of thoughts. One is that American conservatives are stuck in a ritual of knee-jerk opposition that is unhealthy for their party. Two is that their reactions only confirm the type of latent and open racism that Obama was talking about. And three, it shows how deeply the level of snark and cynicism promulgated by some prominent conservative pundits, like Ann Coulter and Fox News generally, has penetrated conservatism. There’s just no gravitas in these remarks. It’s all sneering and one-liners.

Again, bad for the GOP…and probably worse for the country.

That cry of the baby orca is heartbreaking….

Spiderweb and morning dew….Usonia.

Harvard’s Samantha Power once blasted the U.N. for failing to intervene in Syria and said that the U.S. would lead the way in addressing genocide there. Now that she’s on the inside of power, the Washington Post points out, rather than standing on the margins as a critic and human rights activist, she’s defending the Obama administration’s middle-of-the-road policy.

I’d still rather have Samantha Power in the State Department than lots of people—she’s so passionate and smart—but it is interesting to see the evolution of an outsider into an insider.

I am so pissed-off and demoralized about the furor over Rolling Stone’s “The Bomber” cover that I’ve been taking to Facebook and posting, which is probably the world’s greatest time-waster other than Twitter.

But as soon as I get a little time, I mean to put down some more coherent thoughts here.

How can you not get choked up watching this? A much-deserved tribute to one of baseball’s greatest—and greatest gentlemen….

His salary for teaching at City University of New York has been reduced from $200, 000 to $1—a sign that when the public knows about outrageous expenditures at public universities, those expenditures are unsustainable. Sadly, the public gets less angry when such monies are spent at private universities, despite the fact that they are supported by the public through their tax-free status.

Meanwhile…and speaking of university buckraking…there’s a debate going on in New Jersey over the president of Rutgers sitting on two corporate boards of companies that do business with the university.

The New Jersey Star Ledger reports:

A report in The [New Jersey] Record earlier this week detailed [Rutgers president Robert] Barchi’s work on the board of directors of the lab supply company VWR International and the pharmaceutical research firm Covance. Barchi collected $317,000 in fees and stock awards last year for his advisory role at the companies.

Barchi’s Rutgers salary is $650, 000 a year.

That would put him at about $250, 000 less than Drew Faust, who gets paid about $900k by Harvard but also makes about $300, 000 a year from sitting on corporate boards—although in her case, it’s just from sitting on one corporate board—Staples’.

No one has ever articulated a very convincing reason for these already extremely well-paid university presidents to make still more money adding their institution’s credibility to corporate boards—at the expense of their institution. But I guess it’s nice work if you can get it.

Writing in Texas Monthly, Robert Draper argues that Texas is not as reliably Republican as Texas Republicans will tell you.

Demography is the driver of this runaway freight train. The 2010 census found that the state’s population had increased by 4.3 million over the previous decade and that more than 3.3 million of the new inhabitants were minorities. Of these, an astounding 2.8 million were Hispanic, historically a reliable constituency for Democrats. These numbers conveyed a new reality: the Texas political landscape was getting friendlier for Democrats and tougher for Republicans.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the GOP’s decision to elevate the abortion fight wound up boosting the Democrats?

Backed by investor Ken Lerer [Huffington Post], my old friend Kerry Lauerman is starting up a website designed to explore the relationship between animals and humans.

(Or, one might say, the relationship between different species of animals, including humans.)

Buzzfeed reports:
“Our thinking is that the topic of animals, animal rights and the relationship between animal and people is an issue that’s on the cusp of exploding,” [Lerer] says.

I’ve long suggested much the same—like, for example, on June 6 of this year:

As regular SITD readers know, I’ve long argued that one of the great changes of the 21st century will come in human interaction with animals. As we learn to communicate with animals and better understand and appreciate their intelligence, our relationships with nature, God and ourselves will be forced to change.

This website, to be called The Dodo, is a great idea, and Kerry is a really gifted editor…I will quickly become a devoted reader.

An Irish family was walking along a beach in Rush when it came across 30 tope sharks, maybe a yard long apiece, stranded in a tidal pool.

They picked the sharks up by the tails, put them in a bucket, drove them to a spot where the water was deeper and set them free.

What a wonderful message to send to children—that is some seriously good karma.