We're coming back.

From here.

Never once was a Christian. Buh-bye.

Via.

So I guess Rudy Giuliani has finally shed the last vestiges of the only moment in his life that he was ever truly great: the week he helped lift New York City up out of a cloud of ash.

It's almost repfreshing that he's getting back to the old, pre-9/11 Rudy, that sneering douchebag and petty demagogue.

Open it up, Rudy. Let the country see the man underneath the myth.

Fill in the blank.

Ben Folds opening for John Mayer is like ____________ opening for _________________.

A. Bruce Springsteen, Air Supply
B. Lucinda Williams, Carrie Underwood
C. Bob Dylan, Kid Rock
D. Wilco, Jack Johnson

Actually the correct answer is D, because both Folds and Tweedy are recent legends, while Mayer shares wilth Johnson a place on sleepy-dreamy-lite-rock tip. A, B, and C represent my knee-jerk reaction when I heard about this tour. Maybe I was hasty.

Yeah, I know, I don't really want to get in the way of all the people calling for the reform of black culture and the banishment of 'ho' from the hip-hop lexicon (though what's up with doing that and giving Imus a pass?), but I suspect I might. Here's why. Old Eazy-E was nasty and Snoop Dog isn't better. But none of them have rapped about a real person or group of people, innocent, accomplished, un-famous but easily identified being whores. That's it. All sorts of hip-hop bullshit flies around, bitches and hos and whatever else, but no ordinary people get called out by name. No rapper says, "Lorraine S. Smith, of Lanham, Maryland, is a bitch." Simple as that. Here are the women Imus and his buddies called "hard core hos" and "nappy-headed hos." Nice.

(With apologies, I'm slowing ramping back up the blogging in multiple locations right now. So, a tentative "I'm back" is probably in order.)

I am fascinated that a lot of the media discussion around the Don Imus disaster has focused on either the power and ferocity of the 24-hour news cycle or the presence of bad language similar to that of Imus and his producers in hip-hop lyrics. It's interesting because it largely misses the point. In fact, it misses a bunch of points.

First, as is well-documented, I've got a real thing about the old free speech. I'm a huge fan of it. I would proverbially join Voltaire in disapproving of what Imus said but defending to the death his right to say it. And civil libertarians crying crocodile tears for Imus right now have argued convincingly that we will lose opportunities to have discussions like this one if we make it impossible for buffoons to make off-color remarks on nationally-broadcast radio and television shows. I don't think there'll be any problems on that front. Frankly, Imus wasn't doomed by a bloodthirsty attack on his right to speak freely. He was doomed by the right of advertisers to take their money elsewhere. No advertisers means no platform. The effect may have been to deprive Mr. Imus of his show, but it he is as free as the rest of us to go to public parks and speak his mind, write letters to the editor, hand out leaflets and brochures, publish a website to defend himself and more.

Another factor ironically contributing to Imus' downfall was the bear-attack* phenomenon. Gwen Ifill among others has mentioned that all the people who go on the show were running as fast as they can from their own Imus problems. America's media and political universe is not populated by the bold and the risk-taking. This is not new information. When it became clear that Imus was going to go down, it was hard to hear from the noisome sawing of wood on the trunk-end of the Imus limb. His former friends are now just hoping he falls far and fast enough that the collateral damage is limited.

But the main area I've noticed receiving little attention in the Imus debacle is the role of sport. Everything Don Imus and his producers and booth-mates said was despicable, racist, sexist and clearly the product of the unfortunate but classic bully-culture of many white males of a certain age threatened by women and black people. But how did this wave of bad acts converge on the Rutgers womens basketball team?

Distressingly, there wouldn't have been much of an outcry if Imus and his gang had called an NFL squad a bunch of thugs or an NBA team a crime syndicate. Why? Because Americans act like they own sports teams. In the same way we take credit for their victories and call them by their first name, we heap abuse on them when we don't like their performance one day, we call into radio shows to slam them, we colorfully call for their ouster as the starting quarterback/regular rotation pitcher/power forward. We act like we OWN them.

This is not a defense of Imus, but he and his little band of trolls (all of whom say loathesome things routinely) were in that space when they started down the disgusting road on the Rutgers team. This is a morning radio show; you pick something to mock and you roll on it, like a dog, milking it for everything you can. But you do this to the powerful, the famous, the politically connected. Just ask Senator Clinton or former Vice-President Gore.

Normally, our athletes fit into this. Average salaries for male pro players of almost every stripe are outlandish. Despite fitful attempts by the NCAA to control matters on this front, even the male elite college basketball and football teams are afforded near-star status by adulating boosters and the ephemeral possibility that they will soon become pro superstars. The salaries and adoration and endorsement contracts and limousines and rock-star parties and routine run-ins with the law are all treated by the average person as part of the bargain. "Of course I get to blow off steam screaming for Drew Bledsoe's head on a platter! He made $6 million last year." Women's teams are something entirely different.

The Rutgers womens basketball team which has demonstrated such poise amid this embarrassing media circus can hardly afford to be modest. Women's professional basketball hasn't quite produced any superstars who broke out of the sport's realm, though the WNBA remains a fairly solid business proposition. The Rutgers women went to the top of the NCAA tournament (where they fell under Imus' jaundiced eye) mostly a squad of juniors, sophomores and freshmen, so no-one .) By contrast, most reports put Imus' salary at $10 million.

And that's where the most unjust piece of this injustice comes into play. For $10 million a year, Imus gets to spew his vitriol, and gets to be, in a strange way, the exhaust valve for all the backhand bigots and racists who listen and come onto his show with a benevolent smile and the belief that their getting away with something. And for mostly nothing but a love of basketball, the women of the Rutgers basketball team -- a concert pianist and an aspiring teacher from Liberia and on and on -- get to be treated like they've got their million dollar salaries and Bentleys and top-round draft picks awaiting them when they get home, so they don't feel bad about being called "nappy-headed hos" by three white guys earning millions for bullying strangers from the safety of a sound-proof booth. That's why a lot of media people noticed this particular Imus-stench more than the others. There isn't any way for Imus to take back the things he and his sidekicks said. And unlike when Imus and his pals call Senator Barack Obama a "young colored fella," there isn't anything material and meaningless that we can use to take away our guilt.

*"If the two of us are walking in the woods and we're attacked by a bear, I don't need to run faster than the bear; I just need to run faster than you."

The New York Times today covers the story of Sam Ross. He's a townie from Fayette County, Pa, about thirty miles from where I grew up. He went to the Iraq in the Army, lost his vision, one leg and the hearing in one ear when some unexploded ordnance detonated, and was sent home in a coma. After his recovery, he obviously suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and slowly descended into drugs, alcohol and depression until he snapped and tried to burn down one of the trashy homes he lived in when he was a kid. He had a raw deal from birth, stuck amid what people might consider trailer trash. Our military convinces people to join up as a way to lift themselves out of this kind of situation. When they get blown apart, the Army doesn't do anything but drop them right back in with a lump sum payout and a date at an obviously overwhelmed and under-equipped VA hospital. What happened to Sam Ross was predictable, preventable and dead wrong.

Today, he sits in jail, charged with attempted murder and arson from the rage-driven attack on the trailer-home he lived in as a child and when he returned from Iraq. Read his story.

For like a year, folks who don't get listened to have been talking about the subprime lending disaster. Last week in little-watched testimony, we got a look into the future and it was ugly:

Defaults on mortgages given to financially strapped homeowners at high interest rates have pushed neighborhoods in cities like Cleveland past the "tipping point" of urban blight, Cuyahoga County Treasurer James Rokakis told the House Government Oversight subcommittee on domestic policy.

[...]

Rokakis said the number of mortgage foreclosures in Cuyahoga County soared from 3,500 in 1995 to 7,500 in 2000 to 13,000 in 2006, "with no end in sight." Problems are particularly severe in Slavic Village, where 900 homes were abandoned in the past several years, he said.

While Rokakis stressed there's a legitimate role for responsible subprime lending, he said lax underwriting standards and bonuses for brokers who sell mortgages that generate higher interest rates and excessive fees contributed to the "foreclosure tsunami."

Inez Killingsworth of the East Side Organizing Project faulted "all levels of government" for ignoring problems before they got out of hand, and the banking industry for consigning many Cleveland neighborhoods to predatory subprime lenders. She said Ohio's foreclosure rate is three times the national average.

"Our neighborhoods are becoming ghost towns," she said. "You can't get out. You can't sell your property. The value keeps decreasing."

John Bolton admitted that he blocked early cease-fire opportunities during last summer's Israel/Lebanon War to give Israel a chance to destroy Hezbollah. He only let the cease-fire go through when it was clear Israel's plan wasn't working.

I don't even know what to say. Beirut was essentially destroyed in the conflict. and thousands of Lebanese were displaced and their homes obliterated. Another thousand or so died -- innocent civilians all -- and scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians died as well.

Bolton said he was "damned proud" of what he did.

I used to think that people made fun of President Clinton more than any other public figure. I still think he had it worse than any president before or since. However, it appears you can't beat the French for making light of their political leaders. I first noticed this atrocious image of Nicolas Sarkozy in this AFP item on the French election. I searched for images of the right-wing presidential candidate to compare them to the clown-faced ridiculousness of this drawing, and lo and behold I found a completely unintelligible treasure trove of bizarre Sarkozy imagery. Little of it even marginally attractive. Good luck, dude. French people must hate their politicians more than we do.

Funny thing about ABC News' stultifyingly insider-focused and rapidly more wing-nutty "The Note" today: No mention of the little matter of the conviction of the vice president's chief of staff on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. Nothing. Not a word.

If the flailing of the House of Windsor isn't enough to convince you that the very idea of royalty may be bad for a culture, check out the eerie effects on the royal women of Japan:

Japan's Empress Michiko has fallen ill with symptoms linked to psychological stress, the Imperial Household Agency has said.

The 72-year-old empress was suffering from intestinal bleeding, nose bleeds and mouth ulcers, an agency spokesman said.

Empress Michiko will take a short break from her duties to recuperate.

Her daughter-in-law, Princess Masako, has been suffering from a stress-linked illness for several years.

Masako, a former diplomat, has been seen in public only rarely since late 2003 because of what the palace calls an "adjustment disorder".

Her troubles have sparked debate about the lives of royal women within the confines of the very traditional and conservative Imperial Household Agency.