News Round Up

I interrupt this vacation musing to show you the articles that caught my eye in the past few weeks:

This doesn't mean that Trayvon will get justice.  Though having Zimmerman's wife arrested for perjury was fun. 

I am guessing that Fox News will not lead with this even for the sake of obfuscation.

I am a total sucker for this campaign -- though I have been told by others that it feels like overstepping.  I don't know if Starbucks will be successful in raising awareness to the issues of unemployment in the United States, and I am fairly certain that these campaigns cannot in and of themselves "fix" our economic woes.  But, I can say that I am impressed with their gumption ... perhaps it is all smoke and mirrors, or maybe they will just reform themselves into a more caring corporation... I don't know, but I am buying a mug!

I was saying to a friend the other day, I just wish someone would give this guy a break ... a tryout, something.  And it turns out someone had! I don't know what will come of this, either -- perhaps it is just another publicity stunt for these NFL teams.  But, I hope that it is some guys trying to give this guy a break.  He deserves one. [Apparently, the Seahawks have asked Banks to join the minicamp.  Keeping my fingers crossed that his life will get back on the track he wanted before he was wrongly imprisoned.  Boy would that be some lemonade.]

I was tickled to read this story ... though when I read it, she had been cut off... and when I pulled it up to include it here, she had gotten the social media reprieve (this is foreshadowing for something that I am plotting to write about...someday, in my free time).

I was going to end on a high note, but when I pulled up the draft Sunday afternoon, there was another story that could not go unreported: Rodney King's death.  What struck me the most is that he is only four years older than me ... and he always has been.  But back when the beating happened and the trial happened and the acquittal happened, four years difference seemed like an eternity.  Now it puts my graduation from college, a month after the acquittal, in distinct relief between what could have been and what might have been and what was ... in Rodney King's life, in my life, in the lives of all of us brown and black people who live on the edge of the American Dream, sometimes getting a toe-hold and sometimes watching from behind a chain link (or barbed-wire) fence. [Um...this, too, might be foreshadowing for something else I have been meaning to write, in my free time.]

There is more ... but it will have to wait for later in the week or next week ... for instance, I didn't miss President Obama's executive order (wonder if he read my post?!), but I just can't write about it yet ... I haven't even been able to read about the reactions.

Stay tuned...