By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 4, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Much ado about nothing.
This entire episode with Jason Russell (founder of Invisible Children) crusading to make international criminal Joseph Kony famous…has been misunderstood and blown way out of proportion.
At first I, too, was stunned to read that Mr Russell was discovered near San Diego running naked in the streets, shouting nonsensically, pacing, slapping the sidewalk and interfering with traffic.
But I kept reading.
Russell is a graduate of USC (University of Southern California).
I attended USC for over a year back in the early 80’s before returning home to Louisville (and Bellarmine College).
The kind of behavior exhibited by Mr Russell was NOT abnormal for many USC students and now seems perfectly sensible to me once it has been place in its proper context.
Sure, trying to make Joseph Kony famous can make anyone a little crazy. But trying to survive the social, cultural, economic and academic pressures at USC will lead even the strong among us to regularly meltdown publicly in the Southern California area.
Jason Russell wasn’t mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted from the success of having millions of supporters cheering him to capture the world’s most infamous criminal.
He was probably merely having a flashback from his freshman hazing at USC.
They’ve seen the polling – they can read the writing on the wall. Demographics are destiny: young people overwhelmingly (2:1) support gay marriage. Middle-aged people (45-65) and mixed; seniors against.
So the process of generational replacement over the next decade will just continue moving the center further and further left on this issue. (The last issue I can remember with a generational split this stark is polling on interracial marriage around the time of Loving v. Virginia – ’67-68.) Clearly, Republicans are wise to begin what will be a long retreat from their rhetoric around this issue.
And as POLITICO notes this morning, some smart Republicans are also beginning to take the longer view on immigration. Alienating young people and Latinos in a country that will be increasingly dominated by them in coming decades is a huge political loser.
Unfortunately for Republicans, small symbolic steps won’t enough to sway many folks this fall. Undoing the damage from this year’s nasty primary (and the forces that led to it) is a multi-cycle proposition.
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Apr 4, 2012 at 7:00 AM ET
My dad and I circa 1968
On this day in which we remember the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., we re-run this piece — in which the RP honored King, his father, and contributing RP Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s father — that first appeared at The Recovering Politician on April 4, 2011.
Today — as on every April 4 — as the nation commemorates the anniversary of one of the worst days in our history; as some of us celebrate the anniversary of the greatest speech of the 20th Century; my mind is on my father. And my memory focuses on a winter day in the mid 1970s, sitting shotgun in his tiny, tinny, navy blue Pinto.
I can still remember my father’s smile that day.
He didn’t smile that often. His usual expression was somber, serious—squinting toward some imperceptible horizon. He was famously perpetually lost in thought: an all-consuming inner debate, an hourly wrestling match between intellect and emotion. When he did occasion a smile, it was almost always of the taut, pursed “Nice to see you” variety.
But on occasion, his lips would part wide, his green eyes would dance in an energetic mix of chutzpah and child-like glee. Usually, it was because of something my sister or I had said or done.
But this day, this was a smile of self-contented pride. Through the smoky haze of my breath floating in the cold, dense air, I could see my father beaming from the driver’s seat, pointing at the AM radio, whispering words of deep satisfaction with a slow and steady nod of his head and that unfamiliar wide-open smile: “That’s my line…Yep, I wrote that one too…They’re using all my best ones.”
He preempted my typically hyper-curious question-and-answer session with a way-out-of-character boast: The new mayor had asked him—my dad!—to help pen his first, inaugural address. And my hero had drafted all of the lines that the radio was replaying.
This was about the time when our father-son chats had drifted from the Reds and the Wildcats to politics and doing what was right. My dad was never going to run for office. Perhaps he knew that a liberal Jew couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in 1970s Kentucky. But I think it was more because he was less interested in the performance of politics than in its preparation. Just as Degas focused on his dancers before and after they went on stage—the stretching, the yawning, the meditation—my father loved to study, and better yet, help prepare, the ingredients of a masterful political oration: A fistful of prose; a pinch of poetry; a smidgen of hyperbole; a dollop of humor; a dash of grace. When properly mixed, such words could propel a campaign, lance an enemy, or best yet, inspire a public to wrest itself from apathetic lethargy and change the world.
Now, for the first time, I realized that my father was in the middle of the action. And I was so damn proud.
– – –
Click above to watch my eulogy for my father
My dad’s passion for words struck me most clearly when I prepared his eulogy. For the past two years of his illness, I’d finally become acquainted with the real Robert Miller, stripped down of the mythology, taken off my childhood pedestal. And I was able to love the real human being more genuinely than ever before. The eulogy would be my final payment in return for his decades of one-sided devotion: Using the craft he had lovingly and laboriously helped me develop, I would weave prose and poetry, the Bible and Shakespeare, anecdotes and memories, to honor my fallen hero. In his final weeks of consciousness, he turned down my offer to share the speech with him. I will never know whether that was due to his refusal to acknowledge the inevitable, or his final act of passing the torch: The student was now the author.
While the final draft reflected many varied influences, ranging from the Rabbis to the Boss (Springsteen), the words were my own. Except for one passage in which I quoted my father’s favorite memorial tribute: read by Senator Edward Kennedy at his brother, Robert’s funeral:
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Read the rest of… The RP: My Father, RFK, and the Greatest Speech of the 20th Century
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 1:00 PM ET
My friend Billy Reed — who happens to also be the dean of Kentucky’s sportswriters — wrote an incredible piece on Kentucky basketball last week for Si.com prior to the UK/UofL showdown. I share it with you here to demonstrate the kind of writing I aspire to — someday:
Outside my home here in Louisville, all hell is breaking loose. Insults and predictions are dropping like bombs. Rational people are fleeing bars and restaurants in search of sanctuary. Offices have become battlegrounds, families are being torn apart, and minor events such as weddings are being reorganized. I now know what Edward R. Murrow must have felt like when he was reporting about the siege of London during World War II.
In more than a half century of covering basketball in Kentucky, I thought I had just about seen it all. Heck, even though I was just a kid in 1955, I remember the flag over the state capital building in Frankfort being lowered to half-mast because Georgia Tech had ended the Kentucky Wildcats’ 129-game home winning streak (still the national record). That was my first clue that basketball wasn’t just a game in my native state.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t prepared for the madness that surrounds me this week. I guess I always knew that Kentucky and Louisville would someday meet in the Final Four. But I never dreamed that it would cause all serious work in the Commonwealth to grind to a virtual standstill. I never dreamed that Anthony Davis’ brow would get more radio and TV time than anything since Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier for the first time in 1971.
To put it into context, this is Super Bowl week in Kentucky. Even folks who only have a casual interest in hoops — yes, we do have some of those — are suddenly expressing opinions and making bets and generally acting like fools.
Naturally, the national media has been in town this week, trying to ferret out basketball crazies to interview. This makes me nervous because when they find somebody like the guy who has the UK logo in his glass eye, it doesn’t exactly reflect well on us. But we can’t deny the obvious. You may have heard about the two senior citizens in Georgetown, Ky., ages 69 and 72, who almost came to blows arguing about Louisville and Kentucky during their dialysis treatment.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Which part of speech best characterizes you?
A video by Grammar Rock got me thinking, each part of speech has a certain personality– verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
I would like to say I’m most like a verb—a person of action and activity.
I don’t want to be a preposition. They are sneaky trying to go over, under and around things. You can’t trust ’em.
Maybe I’m most like an conjunction today. I try to bring people together to do more than they can do separately.
OK, really I just want to post the video of Conjunction Junction. It was my favorite song by Grammar Rock. And is still pretty cool all these years later.
The RP was spotted in this picture scouting a new, young 17 foot center named David [NO LAST NAME] in Florence, Italy. Apparently by the RP’s hand gesture, David is proficient from behind the 3-point line — amazing for a young man of his size.
Shortly after this picture was taken, the RP was arrested for climbing on top of David and hanging a UK hat on his head.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Sports can bring people together. It can divide us, too.
In sports we find heroes to admire and role models who are coping with the game they play so well… in similar ways we find ourselves coping with life. But unlike us they show courage, confidence, and skill….we want to have these too. But don’t.
So we watch and try to learn. And cheer. And talk trash. And cry on the inside (and sometimes the outside too) when our team fails.
And when they win ….on a night like last night….we swell up with great pride.
Because sports also symbolizes factions, groups, and even states.
The “team” we cheer for identifies us. They represent us. When our sports team wins, we win. When our sports team is superior, we somehow feel superior. When they fail, we feel their pain and question ourselves.
They–our athletes–remind us we are not alone but part of something bigger— something more important. A community that ties us together and reinforces our worth– in some vague way. And not just our worth….but our worth among “our people.” Our tribe.
Sports is at once inherently frivolous and yet unquestionably profound. On the one hand, so arbitrary; and on the other hand, so primitive and instinctive.
We humans seem to need conflict and great causes and great battles. Athletic competition has served as a substitute for war. A tool for diplomacy during Cold War detente. And an avocation and form of entertainment during peacetime.
And last night…sports has provided about as much fun as a 4.4 million people can have sitting down. And make those same people feel a good deal prouder of about their state. And a little bit prouder of ourselves. For tonight, at least. And maybe tomorrow, too.
And you thought it was just a silly game with a ball….
The University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball team and the Big Blue Nation weren’t the only winners last night
The First Annual No Labels/Recovering Politician NCAA bracket contest — “No Bracket No Pay” — is now crowning two champions.
The overcall winner — of the original 68-team bracket contest — was “Nate.” “Nate” please identify yourself to claim your prize. In second place was Butler University student Scooter Stein, whose mom happens to be Kathy Stein, the beloved State Senator from Lexington, Kentucky. The RP came from way back in the field of 77 to finish a respectable 7th.
Here's our goofball winner of the Second Chance tourney with his prize, an original bottle of "Duff" beer, available only in Italy, Argentina, and Springfield, the fictional home of Homer J. Simpson
And in the “second chance” bracket — featuring picks for the Sweet Sixteen forward, the winner was…The RP himself! By picking the winners of every single game in the Sweet 16 except for Louisville’s surprise wins, and then accurately predicting the 8 point margin of victory in the finals (the tiebreaker), the RP edged out Friend of RP John Johnson for the title. How fitting that the guy who started this site dedicated to second acts wins the second chance tourney.
Or is it part of the greater international Zionist conspiracy? You decide!
Congrats to all, and don’t forget to go to NoLabels.org, and make your voice heard about “No Budget, No Pay”
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
(Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images)
What a night! Or should I say what a morning?
The girls and I woke up at 3AM here in Florence, Italy to watch our beloved University of Kentucky Wildcats capture their eighth NCAA national basketball championship.
Sheer euphoria.
I’ve tried for a few years to put into words what the Wildcats mean to me, as well as their profound impact on my home state. It really is more than a kids’ game — Kentucky basketball delivers sound public policy.
For my fellow members of the Big Blue Nation; for the uninitiated who don’t understand what the fuss is all about; and for the cynics who decry the professionalization of amateur sport, I offer my latest column for The Huffington Post: “Why Kentucky Basketball Matters.” Enjoy:
An uninformed visitor to my old Kentucky home this week might conclude that they’d mistakenly walked onto the compound of a Prozac-fueled utopian cult.
An odd but euphoric delirium had descended upon the hills, hollers and hamlets of the Bluegrass State. Men and women walking more upright, a bounce in their steps, a huge grin on their faces. You couldn’t meet a stranger: In grocery stores and city parks and shopping malls, neighbors who months before felt nothing in common were now greeting each other with warm words, high fives, and fist bumps.
Weeks from now, we’ll return to our regional camps, our partisan corners. But for now, we’re united; the sun’s shining just a bit brighter.
The Wildcats have once again won the national championship. Kentucky basketball matters.
Much ado about nothing.
They’ve seen the polling – they can read the writing on the wall. Demographics are destiny: young people overwhelmingly (2:1) support gay marriage. Middle-aged people (45-65) and mixed; seniors against.
