Well, here we go, another week. Here are some things that have grabbed my attention:
- Football bonded them. Its violence tore them apart. — Someone brought this story to my attention today saying, “Great work from Babb and Washington Post.” My reaction was that Kent always does good work, as I think I’ve said before. I had seen this story over the weekend, and almost read it. If I’d noticed his byline, I’d have read it. The good news is that all of you can, too. Kent has tweeted out a “Gift link so everyone can read.” Try it and let me know if it works…
- India just passed China in population. That’s good news for America. — This is a column by Max Boot. Yes, that does sound encouraging, although of course the future is impossible to know. It’s always possible that Indian politics could take an unpleasant turn. But there I go looking at the dark side…
- Effort to dissolve DHEC headed to SC governor. Here’s what’s in the final plan — That’s one a them there newfangled kinds of headline. At least, the last part is. Headlines used to give you news, and the first part of this one does that. But the “here’s what’s in the final plan” part tells you “Click on this and we’ll tell you something.” But you don’t care about that, do you? Anyway, the thing that grabbed me about it was that the story can’t fully tell you what this bill will do, no matter how many times you click on it, because the details aren’t in it — at least, on the health side. As the story says, “the bill doesn’t parse details about how the agency would be structured.” So, it’s about to become law, but we don’t know the details? Huh. As Gilda Cobb-Hunter suggests, this bears watching…
- Limiting what novelists can write about won’t help readers — This is a column by Kathleen Parker. My reaction to it was, you want to worry about books being “banned?” Worry about it happening before the books are published, or even written. That’s what this is about. Unfortunately, I don’t see a “gift link” for this one. So if you can’t read it, maybe I’ll post about it separately, with some excerpts…
- Cunningham: With Biden trailing Trump, we need a third option for president in 2024 — As usual, Cunningham is full of… nonsense. I can’t think of anything more likely to get Trump elected — if, you know, he is the nominee of the former GOP. My man Joe Lieberman doesn’t think so, but hey, nobody’s perfect. I saw a tweet this morning from someone who said, “Wait is Cunningham really aligning himself with the disastrous no labels crowd? Man that’s incredibly disappointing.” Actually, it’s more the other way for me. “No labels” is a group that, at least in theory, I would see as having good points. But the fact that they’ve hired Cunningham lowers it in my estimation.
- Why Some Companies Are Saying ‘Diversity and Belonging’ Instead of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ — I liked this story because it started with an anecdote about a company that until the 1950s required its (apparently all-white), male workers to wear bowties. Now it’s trying to diversify. That’s fine in my view, as long as all the new folks are also required to wear bowties. Standards are standards, right? They always have been, as you can see below…

I certainly wore bowties regularly back in the ’50s. You’ll note also that I had a sort of hipster haircut…