I'm off for the weekend. Good weather means light blogging. But here are a couple of snippets for pre-weekend reading, although hopefully readers will get out and about as well.

Eric A. shows cautious signs of optimism over an emerging liberal media. Real liberals this time.

And go brave the Salon Day Pass for this piece on reading for Black Geeks. ZZ Packer is on my reading list and I read this book by E.L. Konigsberg over and over when I was 9. Not mentioned but also worth a look-see are The Egypt Game for kids and Octavia Butler for the sci-fi subset of Black Geek bookworms.

And just so we all keep our eyes on the ball, there's still a war going on.

Good piece on the legacy of Strom Thurmond. I can't pretend to grieve for a segregationist who "first came to national attention in 1948 as the States' Rights candidate after Southerners walked out of the Democratic convention to protest the party's new commitment to civil rights." Nor will I dance on his grave. Suffice to say it marks the end of an era and the beginning of something else.

How Appropos

Michael Savage would be proud

A parody Web site called Agitproperties.com has drawn fire from FOX News legal beagles for selling an amusing line of 'FAUX News' and 'O'Reilly Youth' t-shirts and similar merchandise.

It's Michael Savage day and I'm realizing that I can't quite bring myself to even temporarily rename this blog "Michael's Musings & Migraines: Musings on Me, Michael "Savage" Weiner." Just writing it here and now makes me feel dirty. Besides, Atrios does a better job than I could.

Whoa...New Blogger

I was going somewhere with the previous post before blogger decided to vamp it up, and now the thought is gone. I think the general gist of it is that the stalemate over the DuSable statue is a good example of how very complex the issue of race is. What's the real travesty here? Is it the fact that it took so long to acknowledge DuSable? The fact that because he was African-American there is so little documented history? Or the fact that his monument is held up due to a question of accurate representation? All of these matter.

P.S. I had hoped to tie in some of these ideas with some more thoughts on the Affirmative Action ruling but I don't have time to be thorough. I will leave you with this rather gratuitous and unrelated thought: Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, even White Conservative pundits; but do not take it upon yourselves to explain to all us minorities how Affirmaive Action is racist against us. You only reveal your own ignorance.

Interesting piece on the DuSable Monument Controversy.

One of things that has always struck me about the controversy over the statue, is how much the question of his race affects the debate over his physical appearance. How straight his nose should be, the texture of his hair. The larger question in all this is should this controversy further delay construction of the statue? For a lot of Chicagoans it means something to have a DuSable that looks African American.

When I think that I actually share a country with the people that took this poll, I wonder whether or not we deserve democracy.

President Bush last week said the rest of the world should join the United States in declaring that it "will not tolerate" nuclear weapons in Iran -- a vow that most Americans appear willing to back with force. By 56 percent to 38 percent, the public endorsed the use of the military to block Iran from developing nuclear arms

Interesting how hard it is to type with blood shooting out of your eyes.

UPDATE: Ah perspective. Go read it and feel a little better.

Neal Pollack reminds us to send the message to Michael Savage that there's a slight difference between infringing on a person's right to free speech and simply calling him out for being an asshole.

Should hopelessness be this funny? Probably not, but at least if you laugh while drinking hemlock it bubbles out of your nose.

There's a lot of back and forth about what today's Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action at U of M means; who won and who lost. I say complete or not, affirmative action supporters should declare victory . I'm not happy with the undergrad ruling. How is it more fair to give points to legacies than it is to give points to minorities? But at the end of the day affirmative action is still constitutional, and frankly we're hanging onto it with out fingernails.

This was a very stressful case and I'm relieved it's over, which isn't to say that I won't be keeping an eye on the issue.