Marion Brown 1931-2010

Alto saxophonist Marion Brown died in a Hollywood, Florida assisted living facility after many years of ill-health.

Ginni's Olive Branch

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas' wife, Virginia, left her husband's accuser Anita Hill a voicemail message requesting apology and explanation for allegations of sexual harassment leveled nineteen years ago in Senate confirmation hearings. I get it that a wife would want to protect her husband but what's the point after damn near twenty years? Viewed in the most charitable way, Mrs. Thomas's actions come off as nothing short of bizarre.

Solomon Burke 1940-2010

The singer Solomon Burke died yesterday on a plane in Amsterdam, reportedly en route to a gig. The cause of death is unknown.

Columbus Day

On the occasion of Columbus Day, the observations of the late Hans Konig come to mind. Konig, then writing of the 500th anniversary of the explorer's arrival in the Americas, stated:

The miserable truth is that those first encounters on the Indian side quickly led to last encounters. The Indians of the Caribbean were destroyed within two generations by the Spanish discoverers. Not one of them was converted to the Catholic faith, which was supposedly a prime motive of those voyages. They died when they were hanged, in rows of 13, ''in honor of the Redeemer and His twelve Apostles,'' according to the original Spanish documents.

They had their hands cut off when they did not bring in their quarterly quota of gold dust. Their chiefs were roasted on fires of green wood. When their cries kept the Spaniards awake, they were silenced with wooden slats put over their tongues. Ten years after the first landing, the miserable native survivors started killing themselves by eating poisoned roots.

Yes, Christopher Columbus was the first European to sail to America in recorded history. But Columbus set into motion a sequence of greed, cruelty, slavery and genocide that, even in the bloody history of mankind, has few parallels. He organized an extermination of native Americans. He was also as mean, cruel and greedy in small matters as he was in vast ones.

Fashionable Idiocy

Admittedly, I know next to nothing about fashion, particularly women's fashion, but it strikes me as an exercise in idiocy that the red sari worn by the emaciated Michaele Salahi, she of the publicity crazed couple that crashed a White House dinner, would fetch $7,000 at auction. Given their gate-crashing escapade, the Salahis deserved to be outfitted in prison jumpsuits.

Unspoken Kinship

Tom Joyner, the self-described "Fly Jock" and indefatigable worker for all things African American, observed in a recent blog post on the travails of Bishop Eddie Long and Democratic Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.: "You all know what I'm talking about - an incident that no matter what your politics, your economic status or your religious affiliation, you hurt, despair and even a tinge of betrayal because even though you may have had no personal connection, there was an unspoken kinship between you and person or people being accused."

With all due respect to Mr. Joyner, this is nonsense. I feel no kinship, spoken or otherwise, with Bishop Long, who allegedly sexually exploited four young men,or Rep. Jackson, who is implicated in political and sexual scandals. If these two gentlemen have disappointed or embarrassed anyone, it is the 25,000 congregants who comprise the New Birth megachurch and the constituents of Rep. Jackson's district.

Tony Curtis 1925 - 2010

Actor Tony Curtis died Wednesday night from cardiac arrest. He was 85 years old. I was first exposed to Curtis in his roles playing opposite Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones and opposite Kirk Douglas in Spartacus. Curtis was one of the last leading men produced by Hollywood's studio system.