Justice Thomas, what’s your deal? Do you just like to be the outsider? Do you just like to be different? I can understand that, but it’s really hard to understand how you can be the lone voice, even among some REALLY hardcore conservatives like yourself, of dissent.
However, on principle, I appreciate that you stand up for what you believe. But I really don’t understand you, and it leaves me shaking my head, raising my eyebrows, and shrugging my shoulders all at the same time.
Sometimes I think I'm pretty morbid. I tend to think about what will happen or how I'll feel when someone I love dies or some catastrophe happens. I don't know why I do it, but I've been doing it for a long time. I think in a way I believe it will help me cope whenever the inevitable happens: it's my strange way of trying to be prepared. But time and time again, no matter how I thought I'd deal with the death of someone I love, the pain and feeling of confusion I get never compares.
So I find myself here today. My favorite singer, my favorite celebrity, my favorite artist. Just my favorite. Michael Jackson is amazing. He was a trailblazer and the truest epitome of an icon. A phenomenon that won't be topped.
Oddly, I have thought about this day. I guess because I knew it would happen. Someone cannot live in such extreme pain but for so long. I take heart, though, in knowing that the suffering--both physical and emotional--is over here on Earth.
There are few people who cause me to be star struck, and only a few are entertainers. But I'm star struck by Michael, always. I've never met him or even come close to him, but I didn't need to. His presence comes though the TV, the radio, the records, the cassettes, the CDs. My mother took me to see Michael perform at the BAD tour in October 1988. I was six years old in the first grade. I understood its magnitude then and I understand it now. It's still the most amazing concert I've ever attended, and I look forward to telling my children all about it.
Tonight I will cry for a man I never met, but for a man I feel I've always known.
Today the music died, but it will live on forever.
Today, amid no real fanfare it seems, the United States Senate apologized to the nation for the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow. There's not a whole lot to say about this. Black folks haven't needed an apology, especially this late in the game, but it's nice to have. Honestly, the Obama presidency was the best band-aid possible (notice it's a band-aid, not a cure; no apology or history-making election will cure the ills of the past and their repercussions felt in the present). But I was taught that when you make a mistake, you say apologize. And though Tom Harkin (D-IA) didn't own slaves and supported then-Senator Obama in his quest for high office, he represents a body of people that legitimized slavery and supported unequal treatment of a race of people for centuries. He also sees the effects of slavery each time he takes the floor in the Capitol. Not one black man or woman stands with him in that chamber. That's a disturbing result of Jim Crow. Needless to say, it was long overdue for the Senate to apologize. I'm glad it was done. But let us not forget that there is still MASSIVE work to do.
