Award-winning columnist, writer, speaker and editor
Horrific crimes deserve fitting punishment.
Lately we’ve had no shortage of the former: a Boston bombing on a beautiful marathon day, news of a decade-long ordeal for three women held captive in a Cleveland house of horrors, a Philadelphia doctor who twisted his oath by murdering helpless infants.
When justice doesn’t seem quite enough, is vengeance the only thing that will do?
In a story earlier this year, marking ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s move to the 11:35 p.m. time slot, I predicted a promotion for NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, which proved true when he was named Jay Leno’s heir on the network’s “Tonight Show.” I didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see that one coming. Over the weekend, NBC announced Fallon’s “Late Night” replacement – Seth Meyers. And no one is surprised.
It’s not that all white guys look alike or practice the same type of comedy. Meyers, SNL’s head writer, most prominently made his mark at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011 in an appearance that mocked Donald Trump and won raves. Fallon’s nice guy persona contrasts with Kimmel’s mischievous bad boy. Leno and David Letterman over at CBS almost qualify as senior statesmen by now. But despite a tweak or two around the edges, late-night shows have hardened, with their opening monologues and guys-behind-a-desk format. The next generation promises to operate within the same narrow demographic.
This is happening while the Washington political world, never known for taking chances, is making noises and trying baby steps toward diversity. A two-term African American president reflects the electoral power of a changing America, and both major political parties are noticing in policies that profess to reach out.
Looking back, I realize how understanding my parents really were, how they only wanted the best for me, how they really weren’t there just to judge, even when I made a stupid mistake. But during those teen years, my thought process was seldom that clear. There’s a reason why the lament “my parents don’t understand me” has become cliche.
Luckily, the generational disconnect never caused irreparable harm.
If a bill that has made it through a North Carolina House committee is passed, it won’t just repeal a four-decade-old law, opponents worry it might cause unintended and lasting consequences. That the bill is drawing headlines is notable, considering how tough it’s been to stand out in the flurry being considered by the Republican-controlled state legislature. Protests and arrests have followed bills on voter IDs, unemployment benefit cuts and other conservative proposals. Then, again, this bill deals with teens and sex.
When the NRA brought its annual meeting to Charlotte in 2010, I covered it for Politics Daily, but even if I hadn’t had the assignment, I might have stopped by. The convention center floor was certainly a spectacle, filled with displays of guns, ammunition, camouflage clothing and more. It would have made an entertaining afternoon out, especially with my husband – the serious gun owner in the family — who loves gadgets of every type.
I knew, though, that having to wade through the signs warning of an Obama gun grab would be a turn off for him. Excuse the weaponized puns, but he would have recoiled from the loaded rhetoric predicting ominous government conspiracies. I advised him that if he just wanted to see the “stuff,” he should stay away.
Compared to this year’s NRA meeting in Houston, the 2010 extravaganza seemed positively quaint in retrospect.
Where’s Atticus Finch when you need him?
Finch, of course, is the honest lawyer, a heroic seeker of justice and hero of Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The intensely private Lee has sadly made new headlines for a lawsuit she has brought against the son-in-law of her former literary agent over the copyright for the only novel she ever wrote. Finch, though unsuccessful in his most important case, bolstered the image of the profession and is said to have inspired young men and women to take up the law.
In 1947, when Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, the world was not integrated. The movie “42” would have to last a lot longer than a couple of hours to tell the whole story: the death threats, the insults from fans, opposing players and his Dodgers teammates, Robinson’s separate and unequal trials, the pressure to perform in the face of it all. He was jeered, then cheered by thousands and faced it alone.
There wasn’t a closet big enough for him to take refuge in.
This week Jason Collins, a National Basketball Association center, became, as he writes in his Sports Illustrated cover story, “the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport.” Is he the Jackie Robinson of 2013? No.
Is he unbelievably brave in his own way? You bet.
As Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, looked on, he might have been wondering if the moment will ever come for him.
Pop culture in America has always broken rules and crossed lines authorities created to keep races apart. Jazz, a uniquely American art form, could not have been created without a fusion of cultures. There has been pushback, too, with denunciations from 1950s adults who saw racial subversion and contamination in Elvis’s hips and Little Richard’s shouts, and their grown-up children who just don’t “get” hip-hop.
What is the lasting effect if you’re caught “trending” as the news of the day? Your name lives on, part of an electronic and social media trail that lasts forever.
It’s not that the women, the mothers, don’t blame both brothers Tsarnaev as law enforcement officials continue to investigate the bombings at the Boston Marathon and its aftermath, horrors that killed and maimed. There is no limit to the anger and rage aimed at the two of them.
But while the back story for the older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, provided a simplistic explanation that made it easy to keep him at a distance, 19-year-old Dzhokhar’s is a different American tale.
