Sparky, did you get some lunch?

Aww, you're sweet. I found a Clif bar in my desk drawer, so I'm fine until I leave in an hour or so.

Ha! I was thinking "do Ewoks count?"

I am bummed because I've admired Helen Thomas for YEARS. She chose a crap way to retire.

This is what I was trying to say.

Does that make one an anti-semite, though, in general opinion?

In general opinion, I don't know. In my opinion, no.

I think you could pretty much 100% count on some people taking it that way, so it's an argument you would want to frame up very carefully.

I guess we can't speak for general opinion, but we can for ourselves. I am with megan. In my opinion, no.

I think you could pretty much 100% count on some people taking it that way, so it's an argument you would want to frame up very carefully.

Like opening with, "If we ran the world after WWII, and knowing what we know now, what would we have done."

I was wondering if there is any way possible that Helen Thomas was just being old and crotchety, but I just heard the clip and dammit, there's not.

Aww, you're sweet. I found a Clif bar in my desk drawer, so I'm fine until I leave in an hour or so.

I was stuck in a staff meeting from 1 until a bit after 2, and I didn't see your lament until after. I wish I could have been more timely.

Next time, just call me and we'll go to lunch.

Totally true, brenda, with the necessary framing.

Steve and I had a thoroughly interesting discussion with some extremely successful African-Americans (friends of ours, whom we met at a sports bar where we all bonded about Philly teams - Suzi knows one of them, it's Coach B) where they talked about how desegregation was one of the things that actually hurt Black communities. We started talking about the Negro Leagues (and how they provided a lot of success/money/esteem to Black communities but were completely dissolved once MLB accepted Blacks), but it expanded to Philadelphia and other places.

It was fascinating because as a white liberal who went to an inner city HS, it had never occured to me to see segregation as anything but evil. And obviuously it IS evil. But the result, according to Coach B and his brother, was that the successful people left the community for the suburbs, leaving the existing people with no up-close middle class (or rich) folks to model after.

Now *that* is something that I could never bring up without completely framing the discussion because who am I to know? And I don't pretend to. But it was SO interesting. We actually sat and talked for 5 hours, when ostensibly we met at the bar to watch the baseball play-offs.

I remember hearing something like that not to long ago, but the argument wasn't that desegregation was bad, it was that desegregation without providing established black communities with support was a mistake.