Daily Blues & Views

I hear the calls.  I feel the anger and frustration.  The storm clouds rain down for a good while and then lift.  But back come the calls, the patience wears thin.  We may not be able to wait this one out.  This time the opposition is fierce. People have had enough of horse racing.  Too many deaths in the last year.  Almost 40 at Santa Anita alone.  "The Great Race Place" is fast becoming the great wasteland. I'm unabashed.  I love horse racing.  Like horses, themselves, it has been an important part of my life an experience.  The recent rash of break-downs and controversial decisions are all part of the sport.  They always have been.  Somehow the media attention that currently swirls around the coverage of the sport has become a vicious vulture with talons ready to sink deeply. I'm worried for the industry, but mostly because the image portrayed is not always fair and impartial.  Having been a correspondent for...

I am watching the response to the New York Times 1619 Project carefully.  This project is centered around a supplement magazine being widely distributed around the country right now.  In some circles, it is regarded as a keepsake, a valuable possession, an heirloom. As this country grapples with the issue of reparations for African Americans,  it has become abundantly clear that many of us know very little about our own history.  There is some vague sense that slavery was wrong and that it had consequences being felt today, but in the area of specifics, as a nation, we are deficient. I knew I wanted to be a history early on.  It was secure employment, something not always counted on in the house in which I grew up.  My father was a casualty of the Great Depression, having to drop out of college and support his new wife in the early 1930s.  I loved many of my teachers, especially my history teachers, so it was natural for me to pursue the goal of tea...

Last week we marked the passing of Cokie Roberts, one of the "founding mothers" of National Public Radio.  Cokie was a living metaphor for honesty and integrity in political journalism and it's no wonder the tributes have been pouring in all week.  Of course this is all set in vivid relief by the current state of affairs and the relationship of the current occupant of the White House with the press corps.  In many ways we seem to be marking the passing of civility along with integrity. Cokie Roberts interpreted the the news in a way that was free of bias and represented the product of hard work, good contacts, and a lifelong commitment to accuracy.  No wonder so many followed her stories and came to depend on her for their political news. At the risk of being called a name dropper, I have a story to tell  the day I crossed paths with Cokie and her well-known news partner Linda Wertheimer. A colleague of mine once served as the Director of the National Coun...

"...I am interested in making a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see..."                                  Flannery O'Connor The above quote is mostly attributed to Flannery O'Connor, one of our culture's most influential and outstanding writers.  The diminutive Southern woman was a devout Catholic and suffered the pain that comes with Lupis, the difficult disease.  No wonder, many say, that her short stories are laced with all manner of violent and insufferable scenes and people. Distortion, especially in this day and age, attracts attention.  To manipulate that attraction in the interest of advancing positive and humane ideas is possibly pure genius.  "First," as the old joke about the farmer who struck his mule goes, "you get his attention." It was with this idea in mind that I watched the first episode of a new fantasy ser...