Nipsey Russell Is Happy in Heaven
We had a historic election yesterday, but you wouldn't know it from Omni so far. We figure you've got that pretty well covered elsewhere in your reading and viewing, but I've just found a way to note it in a bookish way, with Colson Whitehead's op-ed piece in this coming morning's New York Times on the true ground-breaking importance of President-elect Barack Obama :
Yesterday morning, I woke up to a new world. America had elected a Skinny Black Guy president.
I never thought I’d see the day. What were the chances that someone who looked like me would come to lead the most powerful nation on earth? Slim.
Whitehead's new novel, Sag Harbor, an autobiographical coming-of-age story--following three rather fiercely nonautobiographical (and lovely and smart) novels, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, and Apex Hides the Hurt--comes out in April. I came across his sporadic but very funny blog (where he regrets that he couldn't squeeze a Nipsey Russell joke into the Times piece), and he already has a video talking about the upcoming book ("a lot of tedium, a few insights, but not much to show for it"). Apparently the weight thing is a bit of a theme, since he introduces it by saying, "I look a bit puffy, if you ask me. Beer gut!"
--Tom
on November 06, 2008 at 07:49 AM
Time to give up our national illusion that USA is the most powerful country in the world. China has more population and the USA has given away our capacity for production to them, Middle East has the oil, while USA gave into oil companies and killed all initiative to find alternative fuels until too late, Canada has the water, while the acquifers in the USA are getting lower, our educational system is failing, and our transportation system is falling apart because monies for maintenance is bled into the "Iraq war" and our economy is in shambles.