Things Not to Do in Minneapolis-St. Paul

It's the little things that make someone take notice of you. The way you wear your hat. The way you sip your tea. The way you tap your foot in a stall in the men's room of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The headline of the story I read at CNN.com was "Craig: I did nothing 'inappropriate' in airport bathroom." For me, the headline should have read: "Minneapolis Supercops Hip to Gay Sex Signals!" God, as Mies van der Rohe told us, is in the details. And the details of how Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) got popped for alleged lewd conduct are so arcane that even some of those TV CSI cops have gotta be going "what the huh" on this one. Craig was ID'd by police Sgt. Dave Karsnia, who was working undercover in the bathroom because, apparently, after the stress of going through security, airport bathrooms are a hot spot for a pre-flight happy ending. Oh, those Midwesterners.

Anywhooo...

According to the police report filed by Karsnia, Craig entered a stall next to his and blocked the door with a rolling suitcase. Karsnia's razor-sharpened "I know what those people are thinking" instincts told him that "individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall." To a lesser cop, such blockage might appear to be the result of the stall's 3-by-4 dimensions. But lesser cops end up writing parking tickets in Milwaukee, not working vice in an airport men's room. Karsnia adds that Craig "then tapped his right foot," a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct.

Note to anyone using a public toilet in Minneapolis: Turn off your iPod!

Craig did, in fact, engage in other damning behavior, such as "running his hand underneath the partition wall three times," which, in truth, does scream gay sex. But clearly the most damning indictment of Craig is, well, his damning indictment of himself. Craig pleaded guilty to the charges and paid about five bills in fines.

Now, I've got to tell you, I don't care about Craig's sex life, no matter what kind of encounter he may — may — have been looking for, as long as it was with a consenting adult. But pleading out to those charges on that scant evidence? I get maybe he was hoping this would all go away, but pleading guilty rather than fighting such a weak charge? He took his suitcase in the stall and tapped his foot? Was Craig vacationing on Mars during the O.J. trial?

In the dog days of summer, I guess Craig's misadventure in June does the job of salaciousness passed off as breaking news. To me, the bigger news is the supposition that was passed off as sleuthing.

1:11 PM ET | 08-29-2007 | permalink | trackbacks (0)

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The War(s) They Fought

Tuskegee Airmen in Italy during World War II.

Bettmann/Corbis

There are three things I've found out here at the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. convention outside Dallas — TAI being a organization that "works to honor the accomplishments and perpetuate the history of the legendary young African-American men who enlisted during WW II to become America's first black military airmen, ground crew and mechanics."

I learned that my uncle was indeed a Tuskegee airman and that I'm officially too old to join the Air Force and/or the Air Force Reserve. I also learned about a medical condition called cupping of the optic disc.

I'll dovetail all that, but it starts like this: Ever since I found out my uncle was a Redtail — the nickname of the Tuskegee Airmen because the tail sections of their planes were painted a bright red — I've wanted to know all about his service, what it was like for him flying in North Africa or Italy. But he never wanted to talk about it. I'm finding that a lot of guys here this week, though they want to keep alive the history of the airmen, don't want to give many details about their personal experiences.

Part of this, I think, is generational. As one of the airmen told me, back then — then being the World War II era — EVERYBODY fought the war: the soldiers in the various theaters and folks on the home front, which really was a home front with rationing and war bond drives and civil defense teams... There was shared sacrifice all around. So, when the war was over, it was over. Everybody lived it. No need to talk about it.

And some memories are just too painful to dig up.

Like cupping of the optic disc. I was talking to a gentleman here named Eldridge Williams, who was telling me the story of his involvement with the Redtails. When the Tuskegee Airmen were formed, Eldridge wanted desperately to fight for his country. Same as a lot of blacks throughout history who wanted to defend freedom, no matter their nation, to that point, had done little for them. Even though we were in a war against oppression, there were still plenty of whites who thought blacks were beneath service. One was a doctor who, Eldridge says, examined him and wrote on his record that Eldridge had cupping of the optic disc.

Eldridge says he had no such thing. When I talked with him, despite his age, Eldridge didn't even need eyeglasses.

Regardless of whether the diagnosis was accurate, Eldridge believes that medical report kept him from flying. Despite the fact that Eldridge says he went on to train airmen at Tuskegee, to help get these young men in the air so that they could fight for our country, Eldridge told me he felt like he'd failed. Failed because he never got the wings he knew he could earn. Failed because he did not challenge the doctor who he said lied on his medical exam.

Eldridge, of course, did not even come close to failing. But such is the pain of the men who wanted not just to serve but to go above and beyond. And such is their stoicism that they rarely complain or seek undue honor. They played things however the dice tumbled, and they moved on.

And I understood why my uncle never talked much about his days with the Redtails.

That's when I went over to the Air Force recruitment stands and found out, yeah, I'm too old.

Hey, here's another take on oppressed people fighting for our freedoms I wrote for The Huffington Post last Fourth of July.

11:56 AM ET | 08-24-2007 | permalink | trackbacks (0)

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Earth, Space, Hendrix: The Most Significant Album Ever

Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970.

Evening Standard/Getty Images

August 1967 was the height of the Summer of Love. It was also the crowning month of an amazing year of music. It was the year Pink Floyd released its first album. The Stones released several. There was the Monterey Pop Festival. Plus, there was a little album from the Beatles that was dropped to, oh, a bit of notice.

Also, the most significant music album ever was released in the U.S. on Aug. 23.

That was when America was introduced to the absolutely astounding debut record from 24-year-old Johnny Allen Hendrix. Jimi, to the world. At a time when both musicians-as-artists, as well as studio recording techniques, were evolving at an accelerated pace, Hendrix possessed a singularity. As a self-taught guitarist -- left-handed, no less, on a flipped Fender Stratocaster as opposed to a true left-handed guitar -- he was an unparalleled virtuoso. Beyond his sheer ability, what made Hendrix Hendrix was the absolute fearlessness of a nuke scientist he owned when it came to mixing and blending styles. Rhythm and blues, free jazz, soul, rock... A cocktail he called the melding of earth and space -- earth being the music itself, space being a psychedelic approach to phrasing, playing and recording. Added to all that was Hendrix himself -- the hair, the clothes, the casual attitude toward life, the open use of and references to drugs and the obsession for creating perfect music.

Hendrix's musical philosophy is put on raw display in an album that is track by track nearly flawless. "Purple Haze," "Manic Depression," "Hey Joe" ... Side two begins with the soulful "The Wind Cries Mary," then launches into what is the greatest straight-ahead rock piece ever written: "Fire." Rounding out the album are "Foxy Lady" and "Are You Experienced?" In between and among all that is a tour de force by a man who was born to invert expectations of music and who played what how.

And that is the prime significance of Are You Experienced? and Jimi Hendrix. There was, of course, no shortage of black music stars, particularly at that time when Motown was in full flower. However, there were few, if any, prominent black rock stars. To the contrary, the modus operandi of rock had been for white acts -- be it Pat Boone or Elvis, the Beatles or the Stones -- to lift from black R&B, repurpose the music and sell it to white audiences. Hendrix flipped the script, took the rock format, infused it with soul and funk and gave a visage of color to rock and roll.

The influence of his artistry was powerful and pervasive. A direct line can be drawn from Hendrix to nearly every guitar icon of the era: Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton (who would remain close friends with Jimi for the remainder of his life). It was Paul McCartney who got the Jimi Hendrix Experience -- Jimi's ultra-lean band with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell -- into the Monterey Pop Festival. At the festival, it was Stones' guitarist Brian Jones who introduced the Experience.

Unfortunately, no matter that Hendrix "stole back" black music and openly acknowledged and credited countless R&B legends who influenced him, like many blacks who live how they please, Hendrix was often accused of not being "authentically" black; of being a sellout for his style of music, for not having black band mates and for dating white chicks. Basically, he was given crap for being himself rather than the kind of black that others perceive and dictate black should be.

You'd think in 40 years such puerile questions of "authentic" blackness would have been long answered, then consigned to the potter's field of racial identity. Take a look at what nonsense Barack Obama still has to put up with, and you see that, sadly, they have not.

Changing racial politics was beyond even someone as unique as Hendrix. It's unfortunate his talents should be lost on those who see race more than they are able to hear music. The lesson, of course, is that if some would open their eyes and ears as wide as their mouths, they might learn something. For the rest, who have and who continue to allow themselves to be, well, experienced, they are the richer for it.

4:17 PM ET | 08-21-2007 | permalink | trackbacks (0)

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Sex, Checks and 'The New York Times'

Former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald (left) and Justin Berry, the subject of Eichenwald's story about Internet child pornography, testify before a U.S. House committee in April 2006 about sexual exploitation of children online.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Crack open a bottle of hand sanitizer before you read this. The story of Kurt Eichenwald and Justin Berry is sordid in every way. It goes a little something like this:

On Dec. 19, 2005, The New York Times publishes a piece by Eichenwald about child pornography, featuring kid-porn "star" Berry. The story receives much acclaim. Berry's adult enablers and molesters are busted.

Simultaneously with the article, the Times publishes an essay by Eichenwald that supposedly details how he came to discover and make contact with Berry.

By January 2006, questions have arisen concerning Eichenwald's reporting on Berry while at the same time personally trying to get the young man off drugs and out of porn AND helping to pursue a police investigation of the purveyors and users of Berry's kiddie porn site. On Jan. 15, Byron Calame -- the Times' public editor at that time -- publishes a piece concerning the Eichenwald/Berry situation that essentially claims no journalistic lines were crossed. Executive Editor Bill Keller proclaims: "The question is did Kurt's intervention color the journalism. I can't see that it did in any significant way, except in the sense that it provided a dramatic conclusion to his story."

It's a shame the Times staff didn't dig a little deeper into their own story. Surely their investigative pencils were sharpened, having just recently used them to write up a 6,000-word self-expose on their Judy Miller/Scooter Libby scandal.

They did not.

Got your sanitizer ready? This is where it starts to get really grody.

Continue reading "Sex, Checks and 'The New York Times'" »

3:57 PM ET | 08-15-2007 | permalink | trackbacks (0)

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The Short, Fast (L.A. Celebrity) Career of David Beckham

David Beckham of L.A. Galaxy juggles the ball Wednesday during a training session at RFK Stadium in Washington.

Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

If you're an Angeleno, you can't help but recall those heady days when the cry on the lips of everyone from Long Beach to Venice Beach was: The Beckhams are coming! The Beckhams are coming!

But that was oh so last month.

As I write this post, David Beckham is maybe, finally, going to overcome an ankle injury and see some play for the L.A. Galaxy.

But does anybody in L.A. even care anymore?

Other than diehard soccer fans, certainly few who were caught up in the initial wave of Beckhamania.

Remember the throng of e-voyeurs who watched as the Beckhams -- David and his wife, Victoria-nee-Posh -- scouted a house to live in, a school for their child? Recall, do you, the lavish Hollywood shindig thrown by Hollywood A-listers as an official welcome to Tinseltown? All front page news here in L.A.

Now, to find a mention of Beckham, perhaps playing a game, you've got to flip (or click) to the sports page of the L.A. Times. Appropriately enough. But then, you have to drop down past a story on Vegas sports book tennis betting before you get any mention of Beckham. And that comes wrapped in larger story about the Galaxy in general.

How did it happen? How did this guy fade so fast? Two things: One, of course, is Beckham's ankle, which he injured early last June, then aggravated again later that month. Certainly, the injury is not Beckham's fault. But when so much is made of what a guy is getting paid, and then he cannot do the one thing he's actually collecting the duckets for... Well, that don't go over real well in fickle L.A., where you can throw a stick and hit a star -- which is why I keep a lot of sticks around the house -- and sporting events have to get in line behind movies, TV and celebutantes for attention. There's a reason the second-biggest television market in America doesn't have a football team.

Secondly, well, Posh could have made a better entrance. Her NBC reality special came off as vain and self-absorbed, and I stress came off because there was actually some high satire and sarcasm in it. However, the American public doesn't much go in for satire and sarcasm. Except for the NPR audience. They looove sarcasm!

But with a gaggle of ditzy one-name blondes already getting drunk and tossed in jail out here -- Paris and Nicole -- another just seemed like overkill (not to imply that Posh Spice Beckham has or will ever get drunk and tossed in jail or that getting drunk and tossed in jail is confined to women and blonde women in particular).

Ironically, in the world of football, even without playing Beckham's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing: getting bums in the seats. The 45,000 fans expected to turn out for the Galaxy versus D.C. United game at RFK Stadium in Washington would be the most for a United home game in six years. And I gotta tell you, anybody who chooses to wear the number 23 because that was Michael Jordan's number is okey doke with me. So however things work out, I wish the guy well. Even if he can't be a big Hollywood celebrity, he can always settle for being an exceptional athlete.

2:42 PM ET | 08- 9-2007 | permalink | trackbacks (0)

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This Time, Will Dr. King Really Be a 'Commie'?

If art is singular expression, then by nature the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent.

Things are bent in Washington, D.C., where the Martin Luther King memorial is being built.

You probably haven't heard this, as the story primarily involves people of color but not crime, so the MSM has pretty much given the story the go-by. The MLK Memorial Foundation just swapped out the sculptor of a centerpiece statue of King. The issue? The foundation put a black American to the curb -- Ed Dwight, who besides being an artist was also the first black American astronaut -- and brought in a Chinese man. Not a Chinese-American. A Chinese guy from China. Lei Yixin.

This one is tough. When I heard it, my gut reaction was: no. No way should somebody who's not a black American do up the national memorial likeness of one of the most prominent of us.

I wasn't the only one with the feeling in my gut. There's an entire Web site dedicated to keeping Dr. King "ours."

But you give it a second, you put your initial passions aside, and it is possible to see things in a different way. "No" softens into "why not?" Why not let Dr. King go global? Weren't he and his message phenomena beyond the Lower 48? What King borrowed from Ghandi, he lent to the likes of Ivan Cooper, the Northern Ireland civil rights activist. And perhaps a Chinese person getting the job is not outsourcing work, but exporting the ideals of freedom. We've seen how well that plays when distributed by the muzzle of an army gun. Better we should try to inspire. Better we should try by sharing "our" man of compassion with the world.

Being able to see Lei Yixin not as "the Chinese guy," but as one of Dr. King's "children" is what Dr. King preached: judging people by their content, not their pigment. I think you can extend that to a person's place of origin. Certainly it can be extended to the political system under which they live. And how wonderful would it be for an oppressed people to be able to sculpt an image of the personification of freedom? Not to mention the high irony as J. Edgar Hoover, among King detractors, accused the doctor of being a commie or a commie tool.

However...

The intent of the MLK Memorial Foundation might not be as high-minded as all that.

It's possible the reason a Chinese artist has been selected to shape Dr. King isn't to spread the love, as it were, but to get some green. The Los Angeles Times reports that in exchange for selecting Lei as the sculptor, Dwight says, the Chinese government may donate as much as $25 million to the memorial foundation -- one quarter of the estimated $100 million price tag. The foundation, of course, denies this. But if it is true, if the foundation ends up accepting any significant amount of money from the Chinese government, it will not merely negate any nobility in the act of Lei's selection, it will also bastardize everything that Dr. King stood for. His dream of a better world inverted into a simple grab for cash.

Only time will tell.

Although not everyone is paying attention, some of us are definitely watching.

6:22 PM ET | 08- 3-2007 | permalink | trackbacks (0)

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Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Fox?

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.)

Win McNamee/Getty Images

So I was going through one of my favorite news, information and pop culture Web sites, The Huffington Post, this past weekend when I came across an interesting thread that blasted Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) for appearing on Fox News Sunday, calling him "this week's FOX Democrat. Shame on him."

Shame on Russ Feingold for appearing on Fox News?

I saw Feingold on FNS. He acquitted himself excellently.

X-SELL-ENT-LEE

Chris Wallace asked questions that could be considered only somewhat vast-rightwing-conspiracy slanted, if at all. But there was certainly nothing from so far left ... well, right field that Feingold couldn't handle. So why "shame on him" for not being afraid to take it to the "other guy's" house and state his case? For me, the shame oughta be on the liberals who want to flay their own for having the mettle to stand in the Foxlight. It's a tactic from the left that's becoming more and more prevalent.

Sure, Fox News makes its bank in extreme opinion. I've already registered my disgust with John Gibson. But do they opine any less than Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews over at MSNBC? (Disclosure: I cohost Morning Joe on the network, though I hope by now that's not actually a disclosure for anyone anymore. BONUS DISCLOSURE YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW: NPR's Juan Williams and Mara Liasson appear on Fox News.)

The far left feasting on their own is, of course, hardly a new phenomenon. Already there are nearly half a dozen pejoratives reserved for any liberal who would dare to be a guest of "the enemy." Quite ironic when you consider that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose to sit down with actual "enemy" Bashar al-Assad (as have Republicans), and in light of the current Obama/Clinton dust-up over Obama's remarks that he would go "toe to toe with the leaders of rogue nations."

So, why should elements of the far left slam Dems who have no fear of li'l ole Fox News?

They should not.

If the far left wishes to monitor and watch and hound the Fox, please, by all means. Though I wish they would do the same for The New York Times, which has had substantially more scandalous reporting in the last 10 years -- from Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg to coverage of Wen Ho Lee and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq... But for Pete's sake, leave fearless guys like Feingold alone. The Dems are at least trying to reclaim the mantle of tough guys (and gals). They should not allow the weak sisters of the bunch to trip them up.

3:38 PM ET | 08- 1-2007 | permalink | trackbacks (0)

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