"Say for Pay"

Wait, did Susan Estrich just admit to not knowing exactly what it was she was talking about, while using her law professor expertise to opine on Fox News? Seems to me, that's what's getting us in all these pseudo-troubles:

Recently, I found myself on Fox News defending the "Ground Zero mosque" before I'd fully thought it through. Truth be told, when someone called to set up the "hit," I thought they were talking about another mosque project I'd heard about on the radio. So there I was, invoking the First Amendment, arguing that our enemy is terrorism, and that the only way we would ever win that fight is by gaining the support of the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are not our enemies and who we need to respect as friends. All true.

Then the mail started coming in. I don't need the latest Time poll to tell me that 60-plus percent of Americans are against the project. My e-mail told me that.

When I discussed it with my son later, he asked me whether I actually agreed with what I'd said on television...

"No kiddo, but somebody's got to pay the mortgage this month." (I kid.)

Now I do have a legit law degree, but I don't profess legal expertise Fox-level style. Still, as a child, I did stand roadside for the funeral cortege of Elijah Muhammad*, and I was pretty good at those connecting-the-dots puzzles too. So hear me out:

If you end up with black Muslims as neighbors, people, don't fret. Self control, strong values, a commitment to home and family -- generally, these play out in good ways when they become rooted in a multi-ethnic neighborhood. (I hate to use the word diverse -- that sounds too artificially created, too measured, too ... liberals-just-trying-too-hard to me.)

I couldn't help but connecting the dots, jumping from Estrich's Friday column --trying to explain why all these years later, we must remain overly sensitive to the concerns of some groups, even if paying heed to those sensitivities might mean blindly following poorly thought out policies that might be negatively affecting other groups -- to Bob Herbert's column Saturday.

Who benefits from making it appear that the poorly conceived "War on Terror" is now spun as some kind of "War on Islam"? Who loses? Why should Americans remain any more suspect of our Muslims than any other foreign group choosing to exercise their legitimate freedoms here?

Because they won't / don't assimilate? (see Europe.) Hogwash. See decades of Muslim Americans living here -- in America -- peacefully. Because they hold gender roles some don't agree with, and sometimes choose to educate their students at home, or in private settings? Well, if we can live with the Catholics ...

Seriously, what better argument for a more fair civil society -- as Judge Walker recently invoked -- so that those ethnic and immmigrant children who might not share all the traditional values are free to spread their wings and evolve as Americans? Isn't that what this country is all about, nevermind what the hired-gun expertise is today professing for pay?

When then-Senator Obama spoke at the nominating convention giving the keynote way back when **, he turned my head. Lifted my eyes up from whatever I was reading, to the tv screen. Didn't get my vote in 2008 as I judged his presidential candidacy premature, but he did turn my head with that one speech.

Can you imagine if he had come out the next day, and ... clarified it down?

Say what you will about Ronald Reagan and Bedtime with Bonzo, (and we did!), his acting days were well behind him when he took office. He might have used his talents to help sell some lousy ideas, but there never was the underlying suspicion that he was just mouthing the words -- reading the lines and you weren't sure if he meant what he was reading.

With this young president, why knows really?

Michelle, his wife, gave him the necessary solidity that pushed him over the edge, if you ask me. Her Chicago roots, the mega Christian church, the family ambiance that just can't be beat... if you voted for a fresh breath of air, surely you got that.

But now, we wonder. Why can't he say what he means, and stick to it, no matter what the Fox talking heads are paid to spin? I liken American voters' predicament to those Afghan peasants wondering if they should throw in their lot with the American-backed government and troops, or keep their heads down, understanding that it's best not to commit to someone whose track record shows no guarantee of security over time.

Again, Herbert has it right. Best to look within:

Education tells us in a new report that the on-time high school graduation rate for black males in 2008 was an abysmal 47 percent, and even worse in several major urban areas — for example, 28 percent in New York City.

The astronomical jobless rates for black men in inner-city neighborhoods are both mind-boggling and heartbreaking. There are many areas where virtually no one has a legitimate job.

More than 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. And I’ve been hearing more and more lately from community leaders in poor areas that moms are absent for one reason or another and the children are being raised by a grandparent or some other relative — or they end up in foster care.

That the black community has not been mobilized en masse to turn this crisis around is a screaming shame.
...
Blacks in America have a long and proud history of overcoming hardship and injustice. It’s time to do it again.

*I went home for lunch that day, and waited until the crossing guard broke into the procession to let us cross Chicago Road (South Park Avenue) to return to school. He was a fallen man, of course, but what do you think happened to all the black leadership that buried him that day? Did they just disappear, like all that vanished BP oil spill crude? I think not.

**

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Fully rooted, mature plants you generally aren't disappointed to find compromised on the ground after the first good storm has passed through... Fwiw.