The Race to the Lede

Or vice versa…
Race issues are a huge part of the current thread of the Grey Lady’s new blog, The Lede, mostly from the rarefied (or whatever the opposite of that is) world of popular entertainment. In particular, we offer you this discussion of Michael “Kramer” Richards non-apology apology for his recent paleo-racist tirade on a stage in Los Angeles, and this discussion of Rupert Murdoch’s abrupt decision to yank the O.J. “hypothetical” murder reenactment (both the book and the t.v. show) given the (all-bad) controversy it has generated.
Richards’ tirade, while hurtful, was, in the end, a tirade that said more about him than anything else; he certainly offended feelings and reopened troubling emotional wounds… and frankly, he destroyed his own career. But who knows? We are, of course, a nation of second chances, where a former Klan wizard is now the dean of liberal senators… so perhaps Richards can spend the rest of his life making amends… who knows?
Simpson’s malfeasance (assuming one accepts the verdict of a civil jury and rejects that of a criminal jury) involved killing two people, one of whom was his ex-wife and mother of his children. And there was, of course, a huge racially charged element to the whole thing… still, another wound suddenly reopened (especially for the victims’ families.) Bad taste was… an understatement.
And there we are. The year that the Republicans (arguably) lost control of Congress because racial demonizing (in particular, that of Latinos, though some… like me, for example… might accuse them of using “gay” as code for other things) finally backfired on them… race still has the potential to remain a hair-trigger issue. And, as the racial economic gap widens and other objective measures arguably get worse, we get no closer to an appropriate reconciliation and ultimately solving these charged problems…
Le plus que ca change… Deep sigh.