Street Cleaning

Imad al-Hashemi and Laith Mahdi Latif, Baghdad street cleaners, earn roughly $8 in bonuses for cleaning up the streets of human remains - fingertips, scraps of flesh, heads, and torsos - after bombings.

A Slight

Anthony Fontane, a roofing contractor and single father of a 13-year old son, was shot to death at a birthday party for a young man himself killed several weeks ago in a carjacking. According to reports, Mr. Fontane was pointing a finger at a woman from his old neighborhood when a man standing next to her took offense at the gesture. A fight broke out and, after walking outside to the parking lot, Mr. Fontane was allegedly shot to death by Donte Guzman, 19.

Kwanzaa

Of the diminishing popularity of Kwanzaa among African Americans, Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs asserts somewhat remarkably:

Black Americans were never a monolith, but more and more we seem to be splintering into factions. Kwanzaa has brought us together, providing a common ground.That's why it's so important that public observances of the holiday continue.

Whatever divisions exist among African Americans, they cannot be healed by celebrating Kwanzaa. The significance of this so-called observance, which is the creation of black cultural nationalist Maulana Ron Karenga, has largely been overblown. The reality is that the observance never really took hold among African Americans and that its decline in popularity hardly comes as surprise because it is rooted not in the cultural experience of African Americans but rather in one man's imagined African past and its cultural traditions.

No Room

A Japanese woman, aged 89, suffering from vomiting and diarrhea, dies after an ambulance spent two hours contacting 30 hospitals that refused admission because they were full or no doctors were available for treatment. The deceased woman's name and specific cause of death are being withheld.

Frank Morgan

Alto saxophonist Frank Morgan,73, is dead. Like many musicians of his generation, Morgan came under the influence of Charlie Parker and also, unfortunately, emulated Parker's more self-destructive tendencies, namely, heroin addiction. As a result, Morgan spent thirty years in prison for crimes related to his heroin use. After kicking his habit in 1985, Morgan fulfilled his promise with some of the best recording of the last twenty years.

In the early nineties while hosting a jazz show on WPFW-FM, I was asked to interview Morgan in conjunction with his appearance at Blues Alley. This proved to be no ordinary interview for me. First, I was called upon to do the interview not face-to-face but over the telephone. Not the best method for an intervewer of limited experience. And second, Morgan, for whatever reason, was something less than a cooperative subject. As expressive and free-flowing as he was on the bandstand or in the recording studio, he was short and laconic with me, often limiting himself to one-word responses.

An Inconvenient Slip

Yesterday CNN conservative talk show host Glenn Beck appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" hawking his recently published book An Inconvenient Book. When the conversation turned to the various presidential candidates, Mr. Beck uttered the name "Osama" but quickly caught himself and correctly identified the individual in question as "Barack Obama." Mr. Beck's slip suggests a level of discomfort with a candidate decidedly different from the standard mode.

Bush's Democrat

In an interview with ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, President Bush declared his apparently unwavering support for Pakistani President Pervez Mushariff saying that Mushariff "hasn't crossed the line" and that he "truly is somebody who believes in democracy." To put it charitably, it is difficult to comprehend what Bush means in seeing Mushariff as a democrat. This is the general who has imposed emergency rule in Pakistan, rejected calls to relinquish his military leadership or share power with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and placed judges and opposition leaders under house arrest. And yes, this is the same general who seized power in a military coup from the democratically elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

Snoop Dogg

Snoop Dogg, the rapper, Madsion Avenue huckster, and occasional criminal offender, supposedly is one of the best practitioners of his chosen art form. Since I don't have any of the gentleman's recordings, I'll accept the representations of his legion of fans and admirers that the gentleman is a gifted and talented performer. But what I find objectionable about Snoop is when he expounds nonsensically about matters that should be left to others. In a recent London Independent interview, he said: "I'm a nigga, so I'm not gonna ever be treated fair. There will always be some new niggas coming out, gangbanging, not giving a damn, just living their life, because that's what America breeds. We're bred to do that shit, so you can't get mad at us. You gotta get mad at the system." What a curious combination of fatalism, victimization, and braggadocio.

Better Late Than Never

Last Saturday the Minnesota Vikings organization reversed its decision to withhold a week's salary from wide receiver Troy Williamson because Williamson missed a game while making funeral arrangements for his grandmother, the woman who raised him. Granted, it took a meeting between Vikings head coach Brad Childress and a veteran players council to rescind the initial boneheaded decision but better late than never. Williamson annunced that he would donate the one week's pay - $25,588.24 - to a charity to be determined in memory of his grandmother.

Same Old Story

The rapper T.I. is reputedly one of the top figures in the game. Last Saturday he was scheduled to receive the "Best CD of the Year" award at BET Hip-Hop awards in Atlanta. Unfortunately, he never made it to the show because he was arrested earlier in the day for possession of three unregistered machine guns and two silencers and for possession of firearms by a convicted felon. "When a dog bites a man," John B. Bogart wrote, "that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." So it goes with rappers. That folks like T.I. get busted before receiving an award happens so routinely that it almost passes unnoticed and therefore hardly constitutes news. That a rapper actually manages to get himself to an awards show without being arrested or, worse, shooting somebody or being shot at, now that's news.

Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus

David Yaffe's essay "Spirit Chaser" in the October 22nd issue of The Nation magazine captures the incomparable tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins' September 18th Carnegie Hall concert with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Christian McBride. This concert was occasioned by the discovery of broadcast recordings of Rollins' 1957 Carnegie Hall debut. Rollins plans to issue the material from both performances on his label, Doxy, in the spring. Although I missed the September 18th performance, I had the good fortune of hearing him at the 50th Monterey Jazz Festival on Sunday, September 30th. One thing is certain: the years have not diminished Rollins' creativity and inventiveness.

Thomas Speaks

Watching Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas make the rounds promoting his memoir "My Grandfather's Son", I am struck by three things. First, that Thomas is an extremely angry and bitter black man, as many commentators note, isn't especially noteworthy - the nation is full of angry black men of Thomas' generation. But what is noteworthy is that Thomas apparently still harbors anger and bitterness stemming from his 1991 confirmation hearings, where Anita Hill came forth to accuse him of sexual harassment. Then Thomas famously lashed out at liberal Democratic Senators and others for conducting a "high-tech lynching" against him for being an uppity black who dared to think for himself. Yet the salient point, a point lost on the Justice, is that despite the allegations, the Senate confirmed his nomination and he has gone on to become a stalwart on an increasingly conservative high court. Second, Thomas' complaints about slights and mistreatment heaped upon him betray a whininess that is decidedly at odds with his narrative of employing a fierce determination and self-reliance in overcoming life's obstacles. Ironically, he seems to embrace a sense of victimization he so roundly condemns in others. And finally, why, after 16 years, is he now speaking out on the controversy surrounding his nomination? Aside from settling old scores, exactly what does he hope to gain?

Resolve

The irony is so inescapable that it's amazing that nobody, to my knowledge, mentions it: those most insistent on staying the course in Iraq, George Bush and Dick Cheney, showed a similar resolve in avoiding military service in Vietnam. The Decider famously disappeared in the Alabama National Guard. The reptilian Cheney considered military service not a high priority, so much so that he requested and was granted no less than five deferments.

GOP Hypocrisy

Much has been made, and deservedly so, of the hypocrisy of Sen. Larry Craig after the relevation that this social conservative pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct stemming from a sex sting arrest in a Minneapolis airport restroom. But equally hypocritical are the foot tapping Craig's Republican Senate colleagues who tripped all over themselves in condemning his behavior and calling for his resignation when no similar demand was made of Louisiana Sen. David Vitter who garnered headlines for procuring the services of a prostitution ring that masked itself as an escort service. Apparently for the political party of God and family values, some adulterous affairs are less egregious than others and therefore more tolerable.