Pick your poison/sin

By acknowledging the importance of personal accountability in our lifestyle choices, we can reduce the incidence and mortality of many chronic diseases currently impacting individuals and families in our state.

-Jenny Sanford, Faithful First Lady of SC

• Adulterous sex with a Jewish Woman on Easter
• Adulterous sex with Miss Argentina on Father's Day
• Connubial sex with your "faithful first lady" wife, born and raised in Suburban Chicago (evil tongue does her homework!)
• Actually ingesting more than a can of TAB and a half-bite from the "Buttermilk Fried Chicken, Shrimp and Grits, Fried Oysters, Sweet Potato Pone" Low Country Platter

Which would you chose?

In case anyone is wondering why I am being so hard on the aggrieved Mrs. Sanford.. take yourself to the Healthy South Carolina Challenge web page immediately (who was first interested in childhood obesity, btw? Jenny or Michelle?). It is here that the first lady offers up the following:

Swimsuit season is here and the pressure to go sleeveless is rising faster than record high temperatures. So what can the average American, who does not have a personal trainer on standby or daily healthy meals cooked by a professional chef, do to get toned arms and a tighter midriff section? The answer: Take it outdoors for some fun and free summer activities that will have you burning calories just in time for bikini season. Here are eight workout ideas to do on your own or with the entire family

Unfortunately, the list of South Carolina's Biggest Health Problems from more reputable sources does not include stress over bathing suits and jiggly upper arms(or that pesky cellulite that just doesn't want to go away) or making crucial choices between the services of a personal chef or just schlepping to Whole Foods and/or Kroger to get the stuff and make it yourself.

My curiosity with regards to First Lady Sanford led me to this conclusion:

Personal accountability = Pick your poison/sin.

Sphere: Related Content

Slumming. 21st Century style. Still wrong after all these years.

Evil tongue speaks. CNN listens.



It isn't gentrification. It is revamped good old-fashioned slumming ratcheted up for the new millennium.

The quotes in "Got $100 dollars. Welcome to your new Detroit home" say it all.


Exhibit A:

"Those artists are doing a good thing; they are at least helping to stabilize neighborhoods that would be all but lost," said Mike Shedlock, an investment adviser who blogs frequently about Detroit's economy.

For less than a few thousand dollars, Cope and Reichert snapped up a dilapidated bungalow in a north Detroit neighborhood called "BanglaTown," for its unexpected mix of Bangladeshis, African-Americans, Polish and Ukrainians and the occasional shady character.

Scrappers had cleaned the house to the bone. The copper had been stolen; the electrical wiring was stripped.

But no matter. Here was a chance for Cope and Reichert, who run a popular Detroit art store, to rehabilitate the 1920s brick house into a bastion of energy savings, with solar panels, LED lights, recycled wood and high-end insulated windows.

They're installing a security system that exemplifies elegant efficiency with hurricane-proof windows and steel doors replacing burglar bars. They are also experimenting with running their air-conditioning on a car battery.

The project became known as the Power House. Cope and Reichert wanted to create a central place to power homes nearby and, in turn, revive a neighborhood's sense of community.

Exhibit B:

The trick was getting their friends not only to cheer the concept but invest in it by moving next door.

"It was much easier than we thought it might be," Cope said. "We told everyone that Detroit is an interesting city to work in as an artist, and the neighborhood is diverse. But, really, it came down to money."

Oh. This glorification of earnest white hipster saviors here in Detroit has got to stop.


Or be torn apart unmercifully. Sphere: Related Content

Back on the road

I just came across an article about Detroit's position as number 3 in road rage. I did so with more than some interest. Over the last 10 months or so, I had been coming to the conclusion that Detroit has some of the most disgruntled, meanest, nastiest folk of anyplace that I have ever lived. This feeling seems to have intensified even more so as the economy worsened... here at ground zero. All the NYTs articles in the world cannot underscore what it is like to live here in Detroit and drive about the Detroit metro area during this time. Even in my traitorous Nissan Murano, I had to fight back the tears as I drove by the Chrysler Assembly plant and saw the sea of unwanted/wasted energy Jeeps waiting to be shipped nowhere. The nastiness on the roads (of which I could tell many a story of both maneuvers and contorted faces full of hate and rage) seems to be a more concentrated version of the general mood here in "U.S. economy meltdown/American dream long gone/bailouts that will only grease the palms of the already well to do" Central.

See. Even the evil tongue is raging!

It isn't despair or anxiety that you see most blatantly here these days. It is a palpable level of rage. From city to suburbs. The students. The cashiers. The mail carriers. The drivers for sure. Young and old. You see it even more so after you come back from elsewhere in the country. Recession/Depression has hit there too, but here in the Detroit Metro area... Oh. It is hard to even describe it. You can see it in people's eyes. You can especially see it in the suburbs. In the eyes. In the foreclosures. In the boarded up storefronts. New construction in process gets more than a double take. It is both rare and seemingly stupid.

This is not a lament for the times when people were nicer to each other (when was that again?) or for when dinner was on the table waiting for you when you got home from your peaceful drive home (and when was THAT again? and who is the YOU in that bucolic scene from the American Dream)? Nor is this an ode to all of the happy young white artisans who have moved here --and not only from the suburbs like they used to. This is not a hopeful wish that their dreams (and heartfelt artistic projects--the 21st century version of slumming with the natives?) come to replace the "unhappiness and rage in the face of adversity" that is much more the standard m.o. in southeastern Michigan.

No. I make note of all of "this" because it has been bubbling here for a long time (where you decide to place the needle on the record/what track you decide to start with--this is for the kids who don't know the glory of vinyl and needles) in this so-called most segregated city in the country.

God, how I love the way that cities seem to almost be in competition for the title.

What seems so new and sadly amazing right now, at this particular moment in history, is this:

I firmly believe (conveniently the project that I am working on this summer) that Detroit is one of the capitals of the 21st century. The road rage "big 3" title is just one part of the complexity in which Detroit exists as both symbol and material reality of what very well lies ahead for much of the world. Anybody that knows anything about the evil tongue's multiple research projects knows that this is a continuation of a larger project that I started when I lived in Seattle.

Here in Detroit, the rage of the middle class (those who "lived" the American Dream in all of its variations) is everywhere. I do not think that we in academia, let alone those in government, have the tools to understand. It is not quite like the rage of those in Iran. How convenient. But part of what I will be working on this summer is to argue and make sense of the idea that this "anger" (or that of the Battle in Seattle/ WTO "riots" in 1999 ) is more than just "a sign of the times."

Not quite Marxist. Not quite Neo-liberal. Not quite the end times.

Very very much situated on that unknown route called the 21st Century. Sphere: Related Content

Sad day in dry gulch

On Friday our wonderful governor out here in Michigan territory "signed a slew of new laws."

One of these wonderful new laws is the "wine law." It basically is a way to "protect" Michigan's wine growers by basically prohibiting any kind of direct wine shipment to consumers. Dare I say that Michigan wine (the state is ranked number 9 in wine production in the country) is pretty much no good. I have yet to taste any Michigan wine that I would not classify as rotgut. Sweet fruity wines reminiscent of Ripple. No joke. Nothing that is even remotely "fine" on the palate. Sorry homefolk. Plus for some reason the wine selection that you can find in any "good" wine shop here is just kind of lame compared to everywhere else I have lived. Sorry homefolk again.

But this new law (which is basically a workaround for the Federal Court ruling that found that Michigan's previous "no shipment of wine from suppliers outside the state" was unconstitutional) brings a major major tear to my eye. Perhaps unknown to the folk that know the evil tongue.... I loves me some fine wine. This means no more shipments from my favorite Winery/Wine Club. Bye Bye Red Diamond Club. This also means no more lusting after the daily dirt cheap deals that I often cannot afford, but still salivate over when the alerts enter my inbox from Winestilsoldout.

Oh the shame. How will the UPS man be able to know my dirty little secret of wine consumption sent to me from sinful exotic places like Oregon and New Jersey?

Oh the joy I felt when I would see the tell tale boxes marked with the "must be delivered to someone 21 years of age" green stickers.

Oh the damage to my ritual of a bottle of "fine" luxurious wine per grading session (well maybe not quite a bottle... but a wee bit to make the grading go down a bit easier). Oh the damage to my sorta pride and joy wine collection.

Oh the damage to my idea that there is hope for the truly snooty pooty existence while living here in Detroit.

Oh the damage to my pocketbook since I never, ever bought wine that wasn't ever a serious bargain (which of course is always a relative term).

I bet Miss Kitty would not stand for this. And certainly not Festus. Not one bit at all. Sphere: Related Content

Postcard from Kingston

A test of river water near the spill showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders, said John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., which owns the electrical generating plant, one of the authority’s largest.

Mr. Moulton said Friday that the levels exceeded safety limits for drinking water, but that both metals were filtered out by water treatment processes.

"Tennessee Ash Flood Larger than Initial Estimate." NYT , 12/26/08

My parents retired here to Kingston,TN for a whole host of reasons. Many of these reasons mirror those of the loads of other people like them, the last of the great pension holding retirees of the 20th Century, who have retired here from the Midwest. Low taxes, easy climate, low cost of living (this IS Appalachia after all), good health care (thanks to the U of TN in Knoxville and the legacy of "Oak Ridge"), friendly "southern" culture, and the beautiful TVA lake system.

As has been the case since my mother died 3 years ago, the girls and I have been coming down to spend time with my father at Christmas and for a longer stint during the summer vacation. We arrived on Christmas Eve, 3 days after the "largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States" took place. 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic ash in the form of a nasty sludge has "escaped" its retaining pond and is now in the river/lake system that is at the heart of Kingston's Watts Bar Lake recreational area. (I am proud of that last bit...proof that I am on the ground... only the semi-native would know the importance of Watts Bar Lake...take that CNN and NYT). Lakefront McMansions as well as single-wide trailers were equally affected by the ash/sludge. All of those who depend on the Kingston water treatment plant and live elsewhere along the lake, including my father whose lakefront house is far away at least in mind's eye from the accident, are certainly at risk for some kind of exposure... even if as the TVA suggests is true... will only be minimal.

The first summer we spent here, when my mother was still alive undergoing radiation in the ironically excellent cancer center at the U of TN (a result of the region's dual claims to fame in tobacco consumption and proximity to nuclear testing/power production), I took my then 2 year old and 6 month old daughter to the beautiful wildlife areas that surrounded the TVA electrical plant. In the shadow of the huge stacks, and with the TVA's efforts to soften the blow of its intrusion into "real nature," the girls and I were befriended countless times by soft-spoken white Tennesseans who were always extremely friendly and curious about the "northern"spoken woman and her two beautiful "pretty girls." The bumper stickers on their cars and the tee-shirts they wore reinforced my decision to never ever mention politics, social issues, religion, or my increasing need for a "tonic" to calm my frazzled nerves during that horrible summer for me.

Every visit has made me think that this part of TN demands an intense ethnography. There are so many reasons why. The mixture of "northerners" with their American Dream retirement expectations, White East Tennesseans of both relative wealth and extreme poverty (again... this IS Appalachia), black East Tennesseans who are few in number and largely in poverty, the Asian (mainly from India) immigrants who come here to live out their versions of the American Dreams in the convenience stores and gas stations of the region.

So here we are in Kingston during one of its most horrible times. I will add that the last time that Kingston was in the national news was in August of 2005 when a modern day "Bonnie", a white prison nurse shot up the jail and killed a deputy in order to free her "Clyde," a black man standing trial for robbery at the Roane County Jail in downtown Kingston. The two were on the run for days. I remember joking with my father about going down the hill to the courthouse and waving to me via CNN.

The day after Christmas, the girls and I loaded up in the car to go to the Kroger grocery store for my Starbucks. The 2 -year-old Kroger is truly a testimony to the changing demographics of Roane County and Kingston in particular. Yuppscale food products and the Starbucks stand in the grocery store certainly must be looked upon as a slap in the face to the longtime residents who shop at the store. A stand alone Starbucks store just off I-40 and in the same plaza as the Kroger opened and closed (during the big retrenchment earlier this year) in less than a year. I never got to feed my yuppified addiction there sadly.

In order to get to the Kroger we had to drive down one of Kingston's two major roads. It is the road that passes by the courthouse, curves along the breathtakingly beautiful Watts Bar lake, continues past the funeral home where my mother's body was taken, goes on over the newly built bridge (contested because there was an eagle's nest that would have to be "removed" in order for the old one to be demolished and the new one built) over the river that stands as the "marker" between the sludge and the water treatment plant, past the brown "state" sign that directs you to the "TVA wildlife area" that the girls and I frequented, and continues on to the Kroger shopping plaza.

I had planned to slow down when we passed the entrance to the area anyway, but I didn't even have to on purpose. As we neared the entrance road, I saw a convoy of empty hauler trucks turning in front of me to go down the road to towards the area of the plant. I had to slow down. As I watched them turn in front of me, I saw that the drivers looked much like many of the men that I see here. Looking much like the Russian men that I saw when I took the Trans-Siberian from Khaborovsk to Moscow. Older than their years. Worn out by hard, hard lives. Poor, poor white people and MEN at that. Yes, here in Eastern TN those truck drivers helping to clean up a major environmental disaster (and probably getting paid not nearly enough to compensate for any risks they may be taking) had that look I have come to see all too often here. Something about their bodies and reflected in their eyes that easily (perhaps unfairly) allows me to imagine them as contemporary renditions of the men that Dorothy Lange photographed during the LAST depression. I wonder what stock images come to their minds as they look upon me and my children. I also must add that when I ran into the local Walgreens to buy some batteries (reminder to those shaking fists in condemnation of the ash/sludge debaucle... throwing away batteries of any type into your regular household waste is a MAJOR environmental problem that nobody really seems to want to adress or try to fix in this country...did somebody say unfettered leaking/burning/leaching of majorly bad chemicals?) earlier, there was a huge bin of "Obama, 44th president of the U.S" caps on clearance. Maybe people (including the truck drivers) around these parts couldn't afford them or more likely they were missing the big sale because they were too busy this Christmas season hooting and hollering at "Obama the Magical Negro" sent out by TN Republican National Chairman, Chip Saltsman.

I remembered all the talk I had just heard on CNN right before we left of the danger to the residents near the sludge and the risks posed to people LIKE US who were being exposed to the toxic chemicals in the air and in the water. Yet here were these men entering on the Kingston side of the plant to have the sludge scooped into their trucks and then driving them off on the other side of the plant on the "Harriman side" to take it off to who knows were. Their windows were down. The stereotypical lit cigarette that dangles out of the corner of the mouth of hardworking men in MY mind's eye was there in just about every instance.

Cancer stick minor in comparison to the sludge that these men are helping to clear away.

You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”

Yeah, right.

My northern lefty suspicions were confirmed when I read the tiny Roane County newspaper yesterday. It was filled with multiple thinly-veiled references to the ability of anyone to trust anything said or done by the TVA.


I had also already decided that I was going to buy us some bottled water. My father had some bottles already that he just had around, but I was (and as I write this while still in Kingston still am) concerned about the water. The breathing in of the materials I knew I could not control, but I figured that I would sleep better knowing that we were drinking bottled water. I was prepared however to not find any at the yuppie Kroger. I was thinking that I would have to drive to Knoxville the next day to get some for us.

I ordered and got my soymilk latte, the girls' organic vanilla milk and blueberry muffins, and a cart for us to load up our water, if we were so lucky. We made our way to the bottled water aisle. I looked at the various carts of other shoppers and noted not one bottle of water. I knew it, I told myself. Futile! But I would check it out anyway...maybe there would be some ultra bourgie organic water that folk didn't want to pay for. My northern price mentalite might actually make the water seem a bargain, I told myself.

Much to my surprise it looked a regular day in the bottled water aisle. Plenty for anyone who wanted to buy it. I loaded up my cart, victim of the "hype" it would seem. My daughters laughing and begging me to let them put the demon plastic jugs of water (that would either be burned or buried to release THEIR toxins in due time) in the cart and asking me why we needed water anyway. I whispered to them that grandpa's water might be a little dirty and so we would get this so that we could have clean water.

...ashamed to say to them and think to myself that Kingston would certainly never be the same for them, me, my father, and anybody else around these parts ever again.

No matter their position "in the foodchain."

Sphere: Related Content

On Spongebob and halitosis

It goes without saying that this has been one of the most charged presidential elections that I can remember. This is even more the case as I think about how Adah and Roxanne have absorbed much of what is in the air these days, and not just at home. The following are real life entries in my "kids say the darndest things about presidential candidates" diary from this past week:


1) I am upstairs sorting clean laundry. Girls are downstairs being entertained by Spongebob (yes... that is right Waldorfites and Mr. Obama... I let my young children veg to Spongebob while I do household chores. I will admit that I always laugh when they sing "aye, aye cap'n").

All of a sudden I hear cheers and clapping.

"Hooray. Hooray. Hooray. "

"Mommy, mommy! Obama is now president. Obama is now president. Yay. Obama is president."

I run downstairs and am just in time to see the end of a Obama/Biden ad. On Nickelodeon?

I remind the girls that it was "just a commercial" and that Obama had not been elected.

I must add here that I do believe that Spongebob has taught the girls many important life lessons. I'll never forget the day that 3 y.o. Roxanne asked me: "Why is it that some people, like Mr. Krabs, love money too much?"

Yet, I suppose Adah's response to my bursting of their pre-election confidence is just as telling a life lesson:

"You mean commericals lie to us about presidents too?"


2) Today the girls were looking at a handout that Adah brought home from school. It was in the form of a kid's newspaper and was structured to get kids to ask adults about the electoral process and the candidates that they preferred and why. Adah started reading the part which listed McCain and Obama as the presidential candidates. Roxanne screamed, " I want McCandy Cane." Adah screamed over her loudly (with a wee bit of a NYC accent... and classic Shaviroesque tone), "No way, Roxanne. McCain is an evil, bad man. He should never, ever become president." Roxanne, who I am not sure realized that she was making a joke out of John McCain's name when she did it, then shot back the following:

"Yeah, you know what, Mommy? John McCain has really stinky bad breath. It is the worst breath on the face of the earth." Sphere: Related Content

Quiet Acts/Emails of Desperation

Today alone, I have received 4 emails from various companies that I have ordered from during the drunken excess of the last 10 years, instructing me to "keep my chin up." The latest one tonight from King Arthur flour "takes the cake" as it were.

The fact that they all came today/tonight is interesting. It would seem that over the weekend all hell must have broken loose (for the billionth time) in the boardrooms of corporate America. No, it is not quite "THE DEPRESSION".... yet. But get those emails out there pronto. Tell them to not worry. We are on their side. Keep buying our stuff/using our services [We are on their side, right?]

But here is the troubling part of these corporate appeals to "our" strength during bad times. As only the latest example of this community service, King Arthur's homespun wisdom and ode to community (" we are all in this together") with no glitz (damn! the tongue loves herself some glitz) and so buy our flour, bake bread with your children (wholesome, wholesome, wholesome) and help to change the world is just plain creepy. It seems more than just opportunistic. It rubs me (others?) the wrong way. It is capitalism that isn't rooted in war bonds or victory gardens. It is like much of what is going on these days, not unexpected or shocking, but just plain impossible to really digest/make sense of.

The telling cherry on top of it all really is at the beginning of the message of hope and uplift—where we get a list of all those other crises in American history that King Arthur flour has helped to get us through. My personal favorite is "the countless financial downturns" bit.

If only. Sphere: Related Content

Big Daddy McKane/Bridget McCain/That one over there

What could bring the tongue out of beginning of the term hibernation? Not Palin (Plenty of folk asked me why I had not written anything... I felt like it all was being said. How could I add anything more?). Not the financial crisis (after living in Japan during the mid 1980s and Seattle during the mid 1990s... I can say that I know the meaning of "drunken spending." Living in Detroit in the late 2000s... I can say that I also know the meaning of "the beginning of the end").

It is the coded "that one" comment that just "slipped out" of McCain's mouth tonight.

This came from the man who is the father of a "very dark-skinned" (his words, not mine) adopted daughter. Not the little brown ones of the Bush, Sr. fame.

No... this is Bridget McCain, the daughter who found out about all of the racist stuff being said about her by Repubs (allegedly the Rovester himself during the last presidential election/primary) one day while googling herself. The official story is that she found out and came to her parents wanting to know why the President hated her... she/her phenotype became a crucial issue in the "Bangla Boating" of McCain in the South Carolina primary (she was identified as McCain's illegitimate black daughter). The story also goes that Cindy McCain admits that she was too high on the drugs that she was lifting/stealing/appropriating from her charity to step in to protect her young daughter.

I will never forget seeing Bridget during the final glorious family scene at the Republican National Convention last month, decked out in a garish green dress. I was reminded of a dress that Nella Larsen's main character in the classic Harlem Renaissance novel, Quicksand, is forced to wear. Helga Crane who has a black father and Danish mother is instructed to wear the dress at a party celebrating her "presentation" to Danish society. Her exoticness is ramped up by the earnest bad faith of the white people who love and fetishize her. They have no idea at all just how messed up they and their "love of her" really is. Pet negro? No. Something much sicker and emotionally toxic.

When I saw Bridget McCain (the picture I include here doesn't really show her... it is one of the few pics out there... how telling) standing there with her family last month, I felt nothing but pain for the young woman. There she stood in the garish green dress, full body straining against the fabric (you know that she was wearing a serious full body "shaper"... cutting off her circulation, pinching, and cutting, limiting her ability to breath--the glory of lyrca helping to hold it all in) next to her skinny blond mother and sisters. Pictures of her in any light, let alone flattering, are hard to come by. Just try to find some. I dare you. Her blond sister is everywhere online, labeled a hottie (lucky her). The painful smile Bridget, the adopted one, had on her face was one that I recognized--or at least could easily project my take on her with ease.

It was the smile that comes from being the obvious spot of color who stands out and knows it. Who knows how to behave in polite white society (in this case the ultimate version of polite white society), but knows that she will never ever be a part of it. Who knows that they may accept you, but you will never ever truly be like them, despite their claims to the contrary. The smile that comes from the ability to read and see the contexts around you, better than many white adults, even at your young age. The smile. A survival strategy of the highest order.

Bridget McCain already knows the drill/reality. I could see it. I know I could. I am not against transracial adoption/international adoption. But I think it was child abuse for that child to grow up in that home. And may I add, that Bridget McCain does not get as much of a share of her maternal grandfather's wealth as her siblings, including John McCain's children from his first marriage. When the executor of the will, Cindy McCain herself, has been asked about this, she states that "it will be worked out later."

There she stood off to the side. Literally and symbolically, cut off from the rest of the McCains.

That one over there.

So it really should come as no surprise that tonight McCain let out the "that one" over there comment. I asked Shaviro if he thought it would have been racist if I had not screamed out instantly, "That was f-in racist!" He said, "Condescending yes. Racist. Not so sure, I would have called it that without you saying it."

But take it from me, the evil tongue. Such a comment was code that was unmistakably about race for at least two groups of people. Black folks in America of all ages.

And the white folks of a certain generation and social location (many, but not all of whom were probably the ones who ate up the idea of McCain's dirty little miscegenated offspring).

It is a comment that was a wink, wink to white voters who will not ever vote for a darkie. It confirmed what they knew. Smart Ass Nigger. It was not a slip, I don't think. I think it was scripted. Planned. A risk by a "maverick" who didn't really care that he would blatantly offend black folk (and their non-black loved ones who had to be schooled about just how offensive such a comment was).

I just pray to all that is unholy that tomorrow the McCain camp does not issue a statement that claims that people are just being too sensitive about McCain's comment.

"How could he be racist? How could that comment be racist. Why, John and Cindy McCain adopted 'that one' from Bangladesh all those years ago. And just look at her today." Sphere: Related Content

Joseph Biden: The Fat Blaster, Hydroxycut, Lipovarin VP choice

Biden, huh?

Okay. Not that you care what I think, Mr. O. But come on! Joe Biden?

I know that you and your people strategized long and hard about your VP choice.

Perhaps he will serve the purpose that you chose him for. "Rare mix of change and experience...uniquely suited to be my partner as we work to put our country back on track.''

But to me (the jaded evil tongue) your choice in Biden just seems to be saying:

"Hey. Don't worry. The boy will have a man behind him. Watching his every move. Making sure that your vote will not be wasted. Making sure that he stays in line."

The less evil version of Mr. Cheney?

Perhaps it is a shrewd move. It seems so unbelievably calculated. Yet perhaps the American public will eat it up just like those of us who spend millions of dollars every year on bogus diet products.

Oh the seduction in the promise of being able to eat as much as you want, whenever you want, whatever you want, and still have the hot body that will make the heads turn as you walk down the street. No need to exercise. The pounds and inches just melt away.

Everybody knows the only time that kind of weight loss happens is if you are terminally ill or on serious uppers. But no matter, keep hope alive. You can have it all-- the promise/illusion of hope, action, change. And you don't have to sacrifice anything because a "regular" (read seasoned white man... even if he is a Catholic...gulp) guy will still be there minding the shop. Biden, as VP choice, underscores what I have felt all along about Obama. He is indeed change compared to Bush, but I have yet to be convinced that his administration would move the U.S. in any real progressive and substantial ways.

Yes. Indeed. America may gobble the ticket up. Maybe. And at least we know that Mr. Biden already has a fondness for his new charge:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Gag. Sphere: Related Content

HBO: The Wire (Detroit)

Since my mother died two years ago, I have been talking to my father almost every day on the phone. Such filial piety is tough. It also has really made me feel that I am part of the "Sandwich Generation" that I imagined I wouldn't be joining until much later in my life. The juggling act of small children and widower father sometimes seems the most difficult thing I have ever done.

Over the past year or so, all of our conversations have almost always included this bit of dialogue:

Evil Tongue's Father: So what is up with your boy, Kwame, today?

Evil Tongue: Um, oh yeah. Well ... (I then report whatever the latest development is that day and there is almost something new every day).

And so it has gone.

My father hates Detroit more than anything. The corruption and scandal that is everywhere you turn here these days just underscores what he already felt. He hates coming here. Wonders how I ever moved here. Wonders how I can raise my kids here. Tells me almost weekly that he could never live here.

But the reality is that he did live here. He was one of the young Detroiters who left the city in the early 1960s. He was part of the beginning of the Great Exodus (as opposed to the Great Migration of which he and his mother and siblings were part of the end when they moved from Tennessee to Detroit in the mid-1950s). He went West to find his fortune (Illinois). And he did for the most part. He tells me that he left Detroit because even back then "nobody was really hiring." He is thus both disgusted by and sympathetic to (if pressed) the economic realities that face Detroiters today.

When I spoke with him earlier today, I had not yet read the newspaper. So when he asked the question, I could not tell him the latest development that I just found out about this evening.

It seems that Kim Worthy, the Wayne County Prosecutor who has "gone after" Kwame Kilpatrick... and refuses to back down or make any deals is in major financial trouble. She makes 128,000 dollars/year , but her 337,000 dollar house is in foreclosure. She owes thousands of dollars in property taxes (on it and a rental property) and has a federal tax lien on the house as well. Thanks to an automated anonymous phone campaign, Wayne County residents also know that she "sent her child to a pricey Oakland county private school."

I am sure I know what my father will say when I tell him about all of this tomorrow.

But for me, I just don't know anymore. On top of all the scandals and the FBI investigations of just about every person, place, and thing associated with the city's government, this summer has seemed to have even more of the trademark Detroit fires. With all of the abandoned buildings and vagrants in an extremely dry summer, the large plumes of black smoke and the screaming sirens of engines responding to 4 alarm fires have become almost commonplace. Sometimes you can smell the fire before you see it.

The houses and apartment buildings, corner markets, office buildings, factories, warehouses, and sometimes ironically even the fire houses that helped to fuel Detroit's/America's economic heyday (now long gone) going up in smoke.

And now we have Worthy joining folk like Ed McMahon (and Joe Q. Public) as poster child for the foreclosure victim/overextended American. All of this as she is in the national spotlight as the prosecutor of "King Kwame," as he is disparagingly called these days.

What we are experiencing here in Detroit is not just a sad soap opera. I am becoming more and more convinced that Detroit is the living example—past, present, and future—of America. A story and a location perfect for a path breaking Hollywood production full of imagery, contradiction, irony, graft, greed, sex, lust, lies, violence. Conveniently, Hollywood/ "entertainment" is one of the last industries in which the U.S. has an edge. It is one of the most profitable exports that we have today. Take that China.

Duke John Wayne meet King Kwame Kilpatrick (and Kim Worthy too). Sphere: Related Content