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September 2014

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Americans want answers. Several months ago Iraq’s second most populous city, Mosul was overrun by a well-armed, well-organized, well-funded group of ‘militants’ called ISIS (now the Islamic State). Since then, thousands of Iraqis have been displaced, hundreds of Iraqi soldiers have been murdered and two American journalists have been beheaded. And the American people want knowledge and reassurance – two goals that in this instance seem to be at odds. In an address a couple of weeks ago, President Obama said flatly that he didn’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIS yet, a statement that drew criticism from the professional left and right. Joe Biden several days later delivered his own address – a sort of save – in which he promised to chase ISIS to the ‘gates of Hell’, which is still not a strategy, but did reassure the likes of Chris Matthews and presumably Al Franken and…

Chris Rock tells a hilarious and revealing joke about the pristine and mostly white community of Alpine, New Jersey that he calls home. Chris Rock, we all know, began life in a working class community in NYC and began working in comedy clubs when he was in high school. After years of toil that led to global fame, he bought the home of his dreams. According to him he had to make ‘miracles happen!’ to buy that house. Of course he was probably expecting his neighbors to be equally famous people: titans of industry, world-renowned innovators, maybe a few heirs and heiresses. But Chris Rock’s white next door neighbor was a dentist.  Not the guy that ‘invented teeth’ as Rock says, but a ‘pull your teeth’ dentist. Blacks often pay a surcharge in pursuit of a sense of accomplishment, but end wasting money in the process. Bruce Levenson, the majority owner of…

Sports fans often imagine that they have a kind of partnership with their favorite teams: their cheers make a crucial difference in those final moments of the game; their ticket purchases make the team economically viable and thus competitive; their commitment to sameness protects the team against the forces of ‘political correctness’, ‘candy-assness’ and other meddling. So, when a star athlete jumps ship or a team leaves town or the team itself reaches a plateau and begins to appeal to a new audience, the old fans feel betrayed and neglected. The fan has in a sense lived vicariously through the team and its players – something I call ‘vicarious ballin’ – which I think explains some of the push back Michael Sam has gotten since coming out of the closet and pursuing a career in the NFL. Reactions to the Sam announcement have of course run the gamut from outright…