I suppose it was inevitable: Don Imus of “Rutgers Nappy Headed-Hos” fame is back on radio as of Monday and one can only begin to wonder about the why of his return.
Continue reading → Return of the Racist: Don Imus on ABC Radio
Handguns are made to kill people. We know this in our bones because of murders in Far Rockaway and Fulham and Orange and now, once again, in Newark. The bloodshed in New Jersey, spewed Gangland style, killed three kids and injured another on an abandoned schoolyard in a tonier part of Newark — where this sort of thing doesn’t happen — called Ivy Hill.
I thought the whole reason we are slogging through the war in Iraq is to keep the Terrorists “there” and not “here?” That, at least, is the war drum President Bush has been beating and still beats. In a 2003 interview — published on the White House website — Bush makes it clear the Terrorists will remain “over there” as long as we stay there engaging them in Iraq (emphasis added):
Q: Well, what about the suggestion from your critics that while you won the war, the peace is being bungled? THE PRESIDENT: They’re wrong. We’re making great progress in Iraq. We’ve got a pretty steep hill to climb. After all, one, we’re facing a bunch of terrorists who can’t stand freedom. These thugs were in power for awhile, and now they’re not going to be in power anymore, and they don’t like it. And they’re willing to kill innocent people. Their terrorist activities — we’d rather fight them there than here.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day in 
America and while the day is intended to celebrate Saint Patrick, it is really a day for celebrating the Irish and getting drunk.
There are all kinds of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
We have parades. We have pints of green beer selling for a nickel a glass. We wear green or live in fear of getting pinched.
Beyond the laughter, the bawdiness and the ubiquitous curse of The Green Beer — I wonder about a deeper cultural and ethnic issue bothering the whole idea of getting drunk in the name of a Saint in celebration of cultural icons.
If there another national holiday dedicated to one culture — where the overarching idea of the day is to get blasted and bleary-eyed?
Is there a reason people live to get drunk on St. Patty’s Day?
Do we honor the Irish by getting falling-down drunk?
Is there a genetic predisposition in the Irish population for alcoholism and, if there is, what does that say about our need to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by imbibing?
We have all been subject to “Brown Paper Bag Experiences” when others evaluate us not by our inner selves — but by our outward appearances — and many times they wrongly judge us by jumping to incorrect conclusions. In my article, Coercing Faith, Gordon Davidescu posted this Brown Bag comment:
I think the best analogy (or at least the one I just came up with now) is this: Say you see a person walking down the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. Given New York’s liquor laws you know that he has some sort of alcoholic beverage inside. However, you don’t know if that alcoholic beverage is a beer or wine, or even a wine cooler – unless it is taken out of the bag. Converting is sort of like removing the bottle from the bag. Being Jewish means you have a Jewish Soul – but not everyone with a Jewish Soul hidden in their paper bag realizes that they are Jewish until they take it out of the bag – converting, that is.
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