Bent Out of Compton

Last time David Brooks referred to Compton was in a column of 2012 when he alleged that Tupac (born in Harlem, ranged from Baltimore to Marin City and is most associated with Oakland) represented the city, which in fact had far less to do with his artistic development than his career as a Shakespearian actor, since he never spent any significant time there at all). Via Spin

Shorter David Brooks, "Who Is Driving Inequality? You Are", New York Times, 23 Aprl 2020:

Apparently inequality is my fault, for being better than everybody else. And you too, probably, if you read the column and you waited till after your kids grew up for your first divorce, contributed financially to their music lessons and SAT tutoring, and read aloud to them at bedtime. Unlike some people who were working night shifts at the 7-Eleven instead. This is why your law partner children earn 40 times as much as a secretary, while in 1960 they only earned five times as much, though I'm not sure if that's because future law students back in the day had more music lessons or there wasn't any 7-Eleven for a future secretary's parents to work in in those days. But who would refuse to read bedtime stories to their kids or fail to marry their mothers or insist on working in a 7-Eleven just to prevent inequality? That would be perverse!

Poem: Honoring it more and more

President Trump cherishing the bust of Dr. King. "Nice Reverend! Doesn't bite, does he?" Via BizPac Review.

Some time after 7:20 PM on January 20 in the Oval Office, during the inauguration festivities for President Donald J. Trump, Zeke Miller of Time Magazine noted that a bust of Winston Churchill by Jason Epstein seemed to have replaced the Charles Alston bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. that President Obama placed to the left of the fireplace in 2009, and sent a couple of tweets to that effect, but realized half an hour or so later that both busts were actually there, deleted the erroneous tweet, and sent a correction at 8:14. It was a "story" for less than an hour. It was never published.

The bust is still there, too, though the rather fine Norman Rockwell picture that hung on the wall above it at the end of Obama's term—of workers, some of them black, restoring the flame of Liberty high above New York Harbor—is gone, and that space is now occupied by a portrait of slaveholder "populist" president Andrew Jackson looming with his fierce Trumpical frown over Dr. King's head, as if he were wielding a whip.

Eleven days later, in any case, at the White House commemoration of African American History Month (also known as Black History Month, but President Trump doesn't use that, because as people in truly American places like Staten Island often suggest, "Black History Month, doesn't that sound a little racist?"—though it is not true that he has officially changed the observance's name), instead of the usual informal remarks, he read an intensely felt and personal poem, in which his pain at the unjust suspicions to which he was almost subjected for half an hour brings him into deeper connection with the African American experience:

"My African American"

Hudson River Park, by the helipads, May 7, photo by me. Couldn't find a relevant picture I liked, and it's my blog.

Some sidelight on that ghastly moment at the Trump airport rally in Redding, California yesterday, with the full Trumpian text lightly edited from C-Span—

It begins, for starters, with Trump riffing on how protestors are handled at the typical Trump rally, lying a good deal—

WHEN WE HAVE A PROTESTER INSIDE WHICH IS NOT VERY OFTEN I SAY A VERY GENTLE. PLEASE DO NOT HURT HIM. TAKE CARE OF HIM AND HE WANTS TO SHOUT. IF HE PUNCHES YOU IN THE FACE SMILE AS -- AS YOUR NOSE IS POURING BLOOD OUT OF IT. A VERY NICE. 

—and giving voice to that body fluid obsession. And then he starts to tell a story,

WE HAD A CASE WHERE WE HAD AN AFRICAN AMERICAN GUY WHO WAS A FAN OF MINE, GREAT FAN, GREAT GUY. I WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING ON WITH HIM. 

Thinking about that African American of the First Instance reminds him, he's got one right here. As if he thought they probably know each other. Like, "I want to find out what is going on" with the hero of the story, and this guy is of a similar color?