Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore -- not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-'90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

In the Wake of Newtown, Tennessee Goes for Its Guns

National Dec 19 2012, 10:32 AM ET

In Tennessee, the state legislature is considering arming its teachers. It's worth giving some attention to those who are now putting for their plans. Here Evan McMorris-Santoro talks to Tennessee state senator Frank Niceley:

State Sen. Frank Niceley (R) told TPM on Tuesday he believes it's time for that to change. He plans to introduce legislation in the next session, which begins Jan. 8, that will require all schools to have an armed staff member of some kind. The current language of the bill -- which is in its early form -- would allow for either a so-called "resource officer" (essentially an armed police officer, the kind which most Tennessee high schools have already) or an armed member of the faculty or staff in every school in the state. The choice would allow schools that can't afford a resource officer to fulfill the requirement without having to pay for anything beyond the cost of the training and, presumably, the weapon. But Niceley said schools should use the wiggle room to train and keep on hand armed staff not in uniform. That's the best way to protect students, he said.

"Say some madman comes in. The first person he would probably try to take out was the resource officer. But if he doesn't know which teacher has training, then he wouldn't know which one had [a gun]," Niceley said by phone. "These guys are obviously cowards anyway and if someone starts shooting back, they're going to take cover, maybe go ahead and commit suicide like most of them have..."

"Look at it this way, you never see one of these whacko shooters go to a gun show and start shooting. They don't go down to the police station and start shooting," he said.

Yes they do:

The Southfield man killed by police after opening fire inside police headquarters Sunday was a veteran, described as a kind man who had lost the ability to speak.

Harold J. Collins, 64, had been battling health problems for many years, including a tumor on his face, when he walked into the Southfield Police station on Sunday and without a word, tried to fire his gun on an officer behind protective glass. He was shot and killed by Southfield Police officers, but not before a Sergeant got shot in the left shoulder.

That was last month. And while you may not see "whacko shooters" down at the gun show, you do see scenes like this:

A chilling video shown in Hampden Superior Court today captured the moment an 8-year-old boy from Connecticut fatally shot himself with an Uzi submachine gun at a 2008 gun show in western Massachusetts.

The video, which showed the boy squeezing the trigger and the automatic weapon suddenly tilting upward and then backward in his small hands before he apparently shot himself, elicited shrieks from shocked spectators in the courtroom and the jury box.

Earlier Dr. Bizilj of Ashford, Conn., said he and his son Christopher, as well as Christopher's older brother, Colin, 11, had checked out the Oct. 26, 2008 show at the Westfield Sportsman's Cub and had a lunch of hamburgers and hot dogs before they decided they were interested in firing the submachine gun.

Bizilj testified that his father-in-law, who was also along for the trip, shot the Uzi, then Bizilj shot the Uzi, and then Colin fired the Uzi. But the Uzi jammed for Colin and a "rangemaster" -- the person in charge of safety on the range -- switched the group to an even smaller "micro-Uzi" gun. Colin fired that weapon a little more.

Then, Bizilj said, Christopher said, "Dad, can it be my turn now?" Bizilj said his youngest son fired 10 rounds, then the gun jammed. Bizilj said he was taking pictures and fiddling with his camera when he looked up to find his son was no longer in the viewfinder.

He rushed over to find his son on the ground and put his hand behind him to pick him up only to find his head had been grievously wounded.

"I think you can imagine this has gone through my head a thousand times," Bizilj said, referring to his decision to bring his sons to the show.

When you see people using words like "coward" in a debate over arming elementary school teacher, you start to understand there is something more going on here besides the preservation of life. A man must have a code.

'Order at Universal Gunpoint'

National Dec 18 2012, 11:50 AM ET

The other day I tried to nail down what, specifically, bothered me about the "more guns" solution to American violence. Over at The American Conservative, Alan Jacobs makes the point with which I was struggling:

But what troubles me most about this suggestion -- and the general More Guns approach to social ills -- is the absolute abandonment of civil society it represents. It gives up on the rule of law in favor of a Hobbesian "war of every man against every man" in which we no longer have genuine neighbors, only potential enemies. You may trust your neighbor for now -- but you have high-powered recourse if he ever acts wrongly.

Whatever lack of open violence may be procured by this method is not peace or civil order, but rather a standoff, a Cold War maintained by the threat of mutually assured destruction. Moreover, the person who wishes to live this way, to maintain order at universal gunpoint, has an absolute trust in his own ability to use weapons wisely and well: he never for a moment asks whether he can be trusted with a gun. Of course he can! (But in literature we call this hubris.)

Is this really the best we can do? It might be if we lived in, say, the world described by Cormac McCarthy in The Road. But we don't. Our social order is flawed, but by no means bankrupt. Most of us live in peace and safety without the use of guns. It makes more sense to try to make that social order safer and safer, more and more genuinely peaceful, rather than descend voluntarily into a world governed by paranoia, in which one can only feel safe -- or, really, "safe" -- with cold steel strapped to one's ribcage.

I've talked a lot about the presumption of goodness in our society. For instance, there needs to be some sense that the mere act of arming oneself might invest you with a particular hubris, that there will be side-effects from arming educators, that placing weaponry in our elementary schools affects our broader conception of ourselves as a society.

One of the points of a democratic society is to put brakes on our animal impulses -- impulses which are universal across humankind. I think much of our recent firearm legislation -- Stand Your Ground, for instance -- runs in the exact opposite direction. I wonder if Michael Dunn would have said one word to those kids had he not been armed.

It assumes, as Jacobs puts it, an "absolute trust" in ourselves. Jacobs cautions against making law out of white elephant events, and I think that's generally correct. But I can not escape the fact that Nancy Lanza was, as far as we know, a responsible gun owner. She was following the theory of "more guns." Those guns were then used to kill her.

UPDATE: Cleaning up the McArdle comments, which are all off-topic. I don't think it's smart to teach people to rush a guy armed to the teeth in body-armor. But I also don't want half the comments in the section wondering at Megan McArdle's prospects. Please do that somewhere else.

The Magic Johnson Rule of French

Global Dec 18 2012, 11:00 AM ET

In my long effort to learn French there days when I am painfully aware of my 37-year old brain. I had such an instance about a week ago. I was working with my instructor to answer a series of questions. The questions required negotiating a few basic tenses which in turn required the conjugation of few basic verbs--avoir, aller and être. This is really basic stuff, that a dude with a year and a half of French under his belt should be able to do with some ease. Imagine a point guard on the varsity basketball team who still has to work on his dribbling, or a shooting guard who still has to work on his jumper.

But that's the point. Athletics is all about "practice" and a significant portion of "practice" is repetition of basic skills. When I used to watch football as a younger man, I would wonder why the starting quarterback would get all the "reps" in the week before a big game. Isn't it the backup quarterback who needs the most practice? But the quarterback's success is based on his ability to repeatedly execute the playbook as though it were second nature.

People often will say that you've become fluent when you can stop translating. When I say the phrase ça va for instance, I am not thinking "Hmm I need to greet someone in French. How do I do that? Oh right..." I've said the phrase ça va so much that it now corresponds to a thought, or a feeling, in the same way that "Hello" does. To be fluent in a language is to experience a good portion of the vocabulary and its essential rules on that level of thought and feeling. Tom Brady can't really "think" as the blitz is coming at him. He has to be fluent.

Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kosciusko, and Slavery: Annette Gordon-Reed Responds

National Dec 17 2012, 4:40 PM ET

Last week I took a look at some of Annette Gordon-Reed's writings on Thomas Jefferson and his old friend Tadeusz Kosciuszko. When Kosciuszko left the country, he asked Jefferson to use his American estate, upon his death, to free as many slaves as the money would allow. On Kosciuszko's death, Jefferson declined to do so citing his age. I was (and am) critical of that decision. Professor Gordon-Reed was kind enough (and concerned enough) to write me and further detail her thoughts. They are offered below, with her permission, in their entirety.

One final note before I cede the floor: This whole conversation has the potential to get ugly. I am not one who believes in decorum for decorum's sake. But my hope is that we can talk about this with great passion, but without undue rancor.

First, Ta-Nehisi, thanks so much for giving me space to present my views on Jefferson and the Kosciusko will. Your posts on this matter suggest that you think it obvious that TJ made an immoral choice when he refused to remain as the will's executor. As you indicated, I have a different take. In addressing this issue, I write not as a defender of Jefferson. I would never, as a scholar, take the roles of either "defender" or "prosecutor" as they are both antithetical to my conception of the scholarly enterprise. Others may take a different view.

I have known about the Kosciusko will for many years. I've yet to discuss it in my works on TJ, because I think it more appropriately handled in the two-volume biography of TJ that I am going to write and in the intellectual biography that I am currently working on with historian, Peter S. Onuf. I, too, was inclined to be very critical of TJ about Kosciusko until I began to read the documents related to the matter --the multiple wills, letters, Supreme Court opinions, and the briefs in the cases-- and relate them to what I knew of TJ's circumstances and the actions he took when he was deciding what to do about the will.

To briefly recount the relevant facts, in 1798 TJ helped Kosciusko draft a will that provided funds to educate and emancipate enslaved people. TJ agreed to be the will's executor. Kosciusko returned to Europe and, over the years, wrote three more wills (1806, 1816, and 1817) that put his 1798 bequest in jeopardy. In fact, the will he wrote in his own hand in 1816 contained a clause that explicitly revoked all previous wills, and was the basis of the 1852 Supreme Court case that finally killed the 1798 bequest. In an 1817 letter to TJ, Kosciusko referenced the 1798 bequest as if it were still operational. His 1817 will covered his European property, but contained a provision that the will's beneficiaries apparently believed gave them the right to the funds in the 1798 will.

When TJ learned of Kosciusko's death, he voiced reservations about remaining as executor, citing his age--he was approaching 75--saying that seeing to the provisions of the will, "would take a longer course of time than I have left of life." He then learned of Kosciusko's 1806 and 1817 wills when the beneficiaries and representatives wrote to him claiming all or part of the funds covered by the 1798 will. At this point, TJ was sure he did not want to be the executor, adding the prospect of litigation to his list of reasons for bowing out. Although he would not be the executor, TJ then took steps to insure that Kosciusko's intent would be honored, and TJ repeatedly indicated in his correspondence that this is what he wanted. He asked John Hartwell Cocke (39), a well-respected Virginian who also had anti-slavery sentiments, to take his place. Cocke, amenable at first, declined formal appointment when it became clear the will's education requirement would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement. No white schools wanted to admit blacks, and white communities were hostile to the idea of setting up a school for them. Acting on the advice of U.S. Attorney General, William Wirt, TJ formally placed the will with the Orphan's Court, which appointed Benjamin Lear as the administrator.

A Farewell to Arms

National Dec 17 2012, 10:03 AM ET

While we are having this discussion over Newtown, political scientist Patrick Egan asks us to remember that, overall, this is a much less violent country than it was a few decades ago, and it is also a country in which people own fewer guns.

I think it's easy to fall into a conversation about "America's gun culture," but we should keep in mind that we are talking about a shrinking group of people who collectively own a shocking number of guns:

A decreasing number of American gun owners own two-thirds of the nation's guns and as many as one-third of the guns on the planet -- even though they account for less than 1% of the world's population, according to a CNN analysis of gun ownership data.

To state the obvious, there is something more than self-defense at work here.

On Parenting a Mentally Ill Son

Health Dec 17 2012, 9:30 AM ET

While we're all talking about what might done about gun safety, it's also worth talking about what might be done in the realm of mental health. This piece, provocatively entitled "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother," is really worth a read.

Liza Long recounts her long fight to help her young mentally ill son, and the great fear that he will someday harm her, her two younger children, or someone else:

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me. A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings knew the safety plan--they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me.

Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn't have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

We still don't know what's wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He's been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood-altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

This piece is a gripping read. I think, as parents, we think of our influence as all-powerful. When a kid succeeds, we like to point to the home; when he doesn't, we do the same. And yet here is an illness that has no respect for the old words of "discipline" and "toughness."

With that said, I didn't hear any mention of a father in this piece. I don't want to overstate the value of fathers, and some fathers (chronically abusive ones, for instance) can contribute the most by exiting the scene. Yet, on some level, parenting is work, and when all hands are called to deck (as must be the case when your son is threatening murder and suicide), a set of hands here is missing.

These spree shooting are almost wholly perpetrated by men. Perhaps this is just a matter of genes. But I also wonder about what we (as fathers) are communicating to our boys about what the world owes, and the methods they may use to secure it.

A World of Maximum Guns, Cont.

National Dec 16 2012, 1:45 PM ET

Gawker flags this quote from Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America:

Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones. The only thing accomplished by gun free zones is to insure that mass murderers can slay more before they are finally confronted by someone with a gun.

There is an interesting psychology at work here. Nancy Lanza, the mother of mass murderer Adam Lanza, was a gun collector who kept arms so that she might be "prepared for the worst." But Nancy Lanza's weapons did not prepare her to defend against the worst, they prepared her to be destroyed by the worst -- along with her neighbors and several small children. Pratt's answer is not to question the preparation which killed Nancy Lanza, but to duplicate it ad infinitum.

Meanwhile Gawker alerts us to a gentleman in Indiana, who threatened to set his wife on fire, then enter the local elementary school and "kill as many people as he could." Police searching the man's apartment found 47 guns and ammunition hidden throughout the home -- doubtlessly assembled so that he too might be "prepared for the worst."

A World of Maximum Guns

National Dec 15 2012, 6:38 PM ET

This is probably as good a time as any to link to my colleague Jeff Goldberg's piece which argues for more gun safety measures along with a larger portion of the citizenry bearing firearms. You can read Jeff's update to his article here. Among his points:

People should have the ability to defend themselves. Mass shootings take many lives in part because no one is firing back at the shooters. The shooters in recent massacres have had many minutes to complete their evil work, while their victims cower under desks or in closets. One response to the tragic reality that we are a gun-saturated country is to understand that law-abiding, well-trained, non-criminal, wholly sane citizens who are screened by the government have a role to play in their own self-defense, and in the defense of others (read The Atlantic article to see how one armed school administrator stopped a mass shooting in Pearl Mississippi). I don't know anything more than anyone else about the shooting in Connecticut at the moment, but it seems fairly obvious that there was no one at or near the school who could have tried to fight back.

As I've said before I really don't have anything against self-defense. (My Pops is veteran of both the Vietnam War and the Black Panther party.) But I'm not sure that, in America, people lack the capacity to defend themselves. As Jeff's own reporting shows, the country is awash in guns. What the country is not awash in is people who have the desire to carry guns on their person. With that in mind, it's worth gaming this out and not simply asking whether we should encourage more people to carry guns, but what such a world would look like.

It is human to wish that Dawn Hochsprung, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary, who died heroically yesterday, enjoyed some weaponry beyond her body. But are we then asking for a world in which the educators of small children are strapped? Do we want our hospital workers, our librarians, our baby-sitters, and little league coaches all armed? What is the message that such a society sends to itself and its children? What does it say about its government's ability to perform the most essential of services--protection? And is it enough to simply be wholly sane? What do we say to the ghost of Jordan Davis, shot down over an argument of loud music, by a man who was quite sane? And where does it end? If more mass killers don body-armor, should we then start fitting ourselves in kevlar too?

This is not my area of expertise, so I am open to your thoughts. But I would hope to not live in a country where it is easier for a kid to access a gun, than it is for an adult to access the vote.

The Cory Booker Show

Politics Dec 14 2012, 3:00 PM ET

The Times compares Newark's superstar mayor's national profile with his local profile:

Last spring, Ellen DeGeneres presented Mr. Booker with a superhero costume after he rushed into a burning building to save a neighbor. But Newark had eliminated three fire companies after the mayor's plan to plug a budget hole failed.

In recent days, Mr. Booker has made the rounds of the national media with his pledge to live on food stamps for a week. But his constituents do not need to be reminded that six years after the mayor came into office vowing to make Newark a "model of urban transformation," their city remains an emblem of poverty. Cory Booker's promise -- captured in two books, two documentaries and frequent television appearances -- was to save a city that had been hemorrhaging residents, industry and hope since the riots that ripped it apart 45 years ago.

But a growing number of Newarkers complain that he has proved to be a better marketer than mayor, who shines in the spotlight but shows little interest in the less-glamorous work of what it takes to run a city.

I met Cory Booker once, and immediately understood why he would appeal to an Oprah. He is really likable, really smart, and generally impressive. But its never been clear to me that his success nationally was matched by success at home. The ending for The Times' article is rather damning:

Asked about complaints from residents and business owners that garbage is not picked up, abandoned buildings are not boarded up and public spaces are in disrepair, the mayor talked about a new system that allows him to track which streets need snowplows and which departments are paying for too much overtime -- even when he is out of town.

He invited a reporter to see the system in action. He then called to apologize that he could not be there: "I'm in and out of New York all day." Instead, his staff demonstrated the system.

Mr. Booker was on his way to host a reading at a bookstore on the Upper West Side, filmed by CNN. He then spoke at a benefit at Cipriani and attended a movie premiere at Google's New York headquarters. Afterward, he announced on Twitter, "I sat on a panel with Richard Branson."

Connecticut School Shooting

National Dec 14 2012, 1:15 PM ET

MSNBC is reporting that there are twenty six people are dead -- eighteen children and eight adults. The Atlantic Wire is updating the story.

What we know:

Eighteen children were killed on Friday morning in a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., about 65 miles northeast of New York City, according to a person who had been briefed on the shooting. Another law enforcement official said preliminary reports suggested there could be as many as 20 fatalities.

UPDATE: I think everyone should read this post from Jim Fallows.

Effete Liberal Book Club: Walter Johnson's 'Soul by Soul'

Personal Dec 14 2012, 12:30 PM ET

Here's your space guys.

ESPN's 'First Take' and Manufactured Dissent

Entertainment Dec 14 2012, 11:04 AM ET

As dumb as Rob Parker's comments were, I think it's important to look at the "substantive" charge that Parker made: that RG3 consciously distances himself from African-Americans. If you check out the video, Stephen A. Smith pretty much accepts the substance, while rejecting Parker's ham-fisted classification system of brothers and "cornball brothers."

But even that "substantive" charge is manufactured. Dan Steinberg points out that Griffin "has been asked about his race repeatedly this season. He has not, to my knowledge, ever brought the subject up himself." He also does the justice of pointing two of those responses. Here is a response that RG3 gave last week:

"Whenever you can relate to the population of the team that you play for, I think it makes it that much more special," Griffin said. "I don't play too much into the color game, because I don't want to be the best African American quarterback, I want to be the best quarterback.

"But to the fans, and to the fans who think that way and look at me as an African American, it's important that I succeed, not only for this team, but for them," he continued. "Because it gives them that motivation, that hey, you know, an African American went out and played quarterback for my Washington Redskins. So I appreciate that; I don't ever downplay anything like that. Whoever I can go out every week and motivate to do better and to try to go after their dreams, I'm up for that."

Here is the response that led to Rob Parker inveighing against "cornball brothers":

"For me, you don't ever want to be defined by the color of your skin," Griffin said. "You want to be defined by your work ethic, the person that you are, your character, your personality. That's what I strive [for]. I am an African American, in America, and that will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that."

"I am [aware] of how race is relevant to [some fans]. I don't ignore it," Griffin said Wednesday. "I try not to be defined by it, but I understand different perspectives and how people view different things. So I understand they're excited their quarterback is an African American. I play with a lot of pride, a lot of character, a lot of heart. So I understand that, and I appreciate them for being fans."

Griffin also addressed the persistent stereotyping of African American quarterbacks, saying he hopes his passing ability will set him apart. "They're always going to try to put you in a box with other African American quarterbacks: [Michael] Vick, [Cam] Newton, Randall Cunningham, Warren Moon," Griffin said. "But there are guys like... Warren Moon and Doug Williams who really didn't run that much. I think that's the negative stereotype when it comes to African American quarterbacks, that [all they do is] run. But those guys threw it around, and I like to think I can throw it around a little bit. And that's the goal -- not to go out and prove anybody wrong, but just to let your talent speak for itself."

These answers are different, but they really aren't contradictory. They are the kind of answers you give when you are repeatedly asked the same question over and over. Whatever differences there are between these two answers they are mostly important if you are, as First Take is, in the business of professional disagreement. The evidence of RG3 distancing himself from black people (however you define that) is really thin. But if you are looking for it, as opposed to trying to fairly ascertain how another human feels, you can find it.

Whatever First Take does, actual reporters should stop asking the question. It's embarrassing and demeaning. For them.

For Griffin it's a trap. If he declines to talk about race than that is evidence of "distancing." If he talks about it, he will eventually say something that will leave him subject to the rantings of someone like Parker.

Obama's Drug Warriors, Cont.

Politics Dec 14 2012, 11:00 AM ET

Barbara Walters digs out some news on marijuana legalization:

"We've got bigger fish to fry," Obama said of pot users in Colorado and Washington during an exclusive interview with ABC News' Barbara Walters.

"It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal," he said, invoking the same approach taken toward users of medicinal marijuana in 18 states where it's legal.

It's worth watching the video where Obama is even more direct.

What I think is that at this point, Washington and Colorado -- you've seen the voters speak on this issue. And as it is, the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions. It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal.

This is typical Obama, and about what I would expect -- carving out an argument that attempts to appeal to the most people while not interfering with Washington and Colorado.

Watch More News Videos at ABC | 2012 Presidential Election | Entertainment & Celebrity News

ESPN's Laughable Arbitration of RG3's Blackness Is Predictable

Entertainment Dec 14 2012, 9:00 AM ET

RG3 said the following in an interview with USA Today:

Griffin acknowledged his appreciation for black Washington Redskins fans proud of his transformative debut season -- and noted how he hopes to erase lingering stereotypes concerning African-American quarterbacks.

"For me, you don't ever want to be defined by the color of your skin,'' Griffin said at the end of Wednesday's post-practice news conference in reference to a question about Martin Luther King, Jr. "You want to be defined by your work ethic, the person that you are, your character, your personality. That's what I've tried to go out and do.

"I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.''

The sports world is atwitter with Rob Parker's asinine reply:

"My question is, and it's just a straight, honest question: Is he a brother, or is he a cornball brother," Parker said. "He's not really. He's black, he does his thing, but he's not really down with the cause. He's not one of us. He's kind of black, but he's not really like the kind of guy you really want to hang out with."

Parker said he wants to know more about Griffin's personal life before he can accept Griffin as authentically black. "I want to find about him," Parker said. "I don't know because I keep hearing these things. We all know he has a white fiancee. Then there was all this talk about he's a Republican, which there's no information at all. I'm just trying to dig deeper into why he has an issue. Because we did find out with Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods was like, 'I've got black skin, but don't call me black.' So people wondered about Tiger Woods."

Asked by fellow panelist Skip Bayless about the fact that Griffin braids his hair, Parker said that's an aspect of Griffin that he approves of. "That's different, because, to me, that's very urban," Parker said. "Wearing braids is, you're a brother. You're a brother if you've got braids."

Expect Parker to be somehow censured by ESPN. But as stupid as Parker's comments were, what he will be punished for isn't so much stupidity, as a lack of savvy. First Take is an interesting animal. It baits outrage, and often over the minor decontexualized quotes. (We have no idea, for instance, what RG3 was actually asked, or how the subject even came up.) The point is to get as close to the line as you can without crossing it. Parker didn't get the memo.

He also didn't quite get his lines straight. Toward the end, you got the vague sense that Parker knew he'd played himself. There's that befuddled look on his face and the notion that braids can rescue you from the ranks of "cornball brothers," and the notion that having a "clean cut" (like Nas?) somehow makes you less black. The whole thing is ridiculous. But it's a kind of ridiculousness that will happen given First Take's formula.

Obama's Drug Warriors

National Dec 13 2012, 1:00 PM ET

Talking Points Memo's Benjy Sarlin looks at perhaps the most depressing aspect of the Obama presidency:

According to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the Judiciary Committee is planning a hearing early next year to examine federal policy towards two states that legalized marijuana in November.

Colorado and Washington each passed ballot measures in 2012 permitting residents to enjoy the drug recreationally and setting up a system to regulate and tax its use. But there's still a cloud hanging over the pot party. Federal drug laws are still unchanged and the White House has made clear that it's not on board with legalization on any level.

President Obama and the Justice Department are still considering their best response. Options include lawsuits to block portions of the state referenda or even federal prosecution of low-level drug offenders, a job currently left to state and local governments.

I think it's really easy to make jokes abut this sort of issue, but marijuana arrests are an actual problem in the black community. As the NAACP California chapter put it, "marijuana arrests are a civil rights issue." And an employment issue:

In the low-income and heavily black and Latino district of Central Los Angeles, for example, people given a court appearance summons were ordered to appear at the Central Arraignment Court on Bauchet Street. The defendants often did not realize that they had been charged with a crime because the summons looks like a traffic ticket. They appeared before a judge who told them they had been charged with a misdemeanor, and that if they plead guilty they would be fined up to $100.

The judges routinely recommended defendants waive their right to a trial. The vast majority of defendants wanted to be released and put this experience behind them. They accepted the judge's recommendation and plead guilty. Most people found the money to pay the fine and court costs and gave it little thought until they applied for a job, apartment, student loan or school and were turned down because a criminal background check revealed that they had been convicted of a "drug crime."

Twenty years ago, misdemeanor arrest and conviction records were papers kept in court storerooms and warehouses, often impossible to locate. Ten years ago they were computerized. Now they are instantly searchable on the Internet for $20 to $40 through commercial criminal-record database services. Employers, landlords, credit agencies, licensing boards for nurses and beauticians, schools, and banks now routinely search these databases for background checks on applicants. The stigma of a criminal record has created huge barriers to employment and education for hundreds of thousands of people in California.

I don't think it follows that because Obama used marijuana he should necessarily switch positions. But I would hope that it would give him some empathy. In America, Barack Obama was able to become president, despite his drug use. That is a good thing.

The Django Wars

Entertainment Dec 13 2012, 10:30 AM ET

I haven't seen Django Unchained, and won't see it, anytime soon. With that said, I'm really happy the movie exists because of moments like this:

If you aren't naturally attuned to the frequency at which internet conservatives are currently shaking with rage, you might've been surprised when you visited right-wing aggregation site the Drudge Report this morning and were confronted with the following headline, in 40-point type: "'N*GGER. N*GGER. N*GGER. N*GGER. N*GGER. N*GGER. N*GGER.'" Clicking on the headline wouldn't satisfy your confusion: it linked to The Hollywood Reporter's review of Quentin Tarantino's new slave-revenge movie Django Unchained -- a review that barely touches on the word's use in the movie. It's just a review...

This isn't the first time Django Unchained has been on the Drudge Report this week. On Monday, it got a photo and headline above the main story: "UNCHAINED: Foxx Jokes About Killing 'All The White People' In New Movie..." Above the headline, Drudge had a production still of Foxx, in a cowboy hat, holding a revolver.

The link took readers to Jamie Foxx's Saturday Night Live monologue, which was one of Monday's big "stories" in the online conservative media. "Black is in," Foxx had riffed. In his new movie, he said, "I play a slave. How black is that? [...] I get free. I save my wife and I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?"

As Max Read notes, the response is reverberating out through right-wing media. This is not me merely taking pleasure in the wailing of my enemies. It is me taking pleasure in my enemies being forced to cope with other stories. It's me taking pleasure in the world being forced into something beyond the "Good Old Confederate/Never Meaning No Harm/Never Owned No Slaves/Yankees Raped And Killed My Wife/I Fought To Protect My Home."

More, I'm hoping we get more stories that are willing to do something different, more stories that are going to trouble our memory. My previous criticisms aside, I'm less concerned that all of those stories appeal to everyone. (The reviews so far are really good.) I just really hope Django (and Lincoln) clear some room for more of their kind.

The Morning Coffee

Personal Dec 13 2012, 8:30 AM ET

This semester I was brought up to MIT through the university's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program. I am, from time to time, called to talk before students, which is always a great laugh to me, because the last thing I thought when I left school was that someone might get it in their head to bring me back.

This was more than just "talking" though. This was an actual class. Instead of seeing myself as teaching a "liberal arts" class, I did my best to simulate the actual process of being a practicing liberal artist. There are good reasons why it's hard to make one's living off of one's writing. I think it's good for kids to be exposed to those reasons. In other words I wanted to bring all the terror, trauma, joy and good humor, all the violence that the craft brings. I tried to do that, and at every step the kids responded. Perhaps I'll say more on that later. I had a blast, but I don't want to be unfair to my kids, all of whom worked their ass off for me (and ultimately for themselves.)

My schedule meant leaving my wife and son, for half the week. I spent a lot of time in preparation, thinking about the soccer practices which I would miss. I thought about the parent days at school from which I would be AWOL. I thought about my manful (there is no better adjective) attempts at affecting some sort of equitable split in the chores. And I thought about the emotional absence. In other words, before I left for the semester I spent a great deal of time considering what my absence would mean to my family. But I spent almost no time considering what the absence of my family would mean to me.

The error of my ways became apparent roughly a day after I left. It was really a kind of unexpected awful. I have long thought of fatherhood and partnership in terms of duties, in terms of what I owe other people. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make good on that debt. What became apparent to me up top was how little consideration I'd given to what I got out of fatherhood and partnership.

Perhaps this goes to my frustration with pathetic, self-pitying, self-loathing "Man Art."Almost all of it is about what the world allegedly takes from you, and none of it is about what the world gives you back. I don't want to speak for other dudes, but I think it's important for me to say that I've gotten a lot.

Anyway It's the end of the semester. I'm on a train headed home. I am really feeling Wilson Pickett right now. Here is art beyond the borders of the man-child.

The Forever War: Art for the Grown and Sexy

Entertainment Dec 12 2012, 12:05 PM ET

One other accolade for Joe Haldeman's The Forever War—it was not a book about a boy trapped in a man's body. I feel like I spend too much of my life consuming art and consuming non-artistic writing obsessed with the inability of men to grow up. (Some of it on this site, I admit.) I'm just really, really tired of it.

There is a love story at the heart of The Forever War, but it isn't at the center of it. It sort of grows with the book, and in that sense I felt that it matched my sense of real life. Are a man's romantic relationships an important part of his life? Yes. But that part works along with like fifty other parts. In that sense, I appreciated how the romance was important and moving, but along with a lot of other things. More that the romance wasn't just "Do I commit or not?" which seems a rather eternal artistic question.

I'm just sort of bored with it. I feel like it only represents a certain sort of man. I know that some great art has come out of that question. Mad Men is stupendous. But I don't know that I can do another season of Roger, Pete and Don attempting to manage the infinite pursuit of ass and all which that might mean. I'm just tired. I can't keep looking at the screen, or tossing my paperbacks across the room, yelling "Be a man!" To be a boy or not, isn't the end of conflict. And it isn't the end of story-telling.

It is good to see a dude in love with a woman, and pining for her in the way that dudes do. ("Poor Marygay," the stoic Mandella remarks to us.) It is good to see a dude who isn't dark, brooding and pathetic. It is good to read a woman who was not some pixie dream-girl, but was just, like, a woman. And it is good to read a book that was post man-child, that was on some grown man shit. Throw in some lasers and wormholes, and all the better.

Some Clarification on Thomas Jefferson

National Dec 11 2012, 2:59 PM ET

Yesterday I wrote about Thomas Jefferson's refusal to execute the will of his friend Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and use his American estate for the purchase and subsequent liberation of his black slaves.

A commenter pointed out that my post renders this incident with a kind of simplicity that evades the actual reality:

The story of Kosciuszko's will is considerably more complicated than is suggested by this story. It was actually something of a legal scandal. Kosciuszko's "American will" was a letter to Jefferson with instructions for what to do in the event that he died intestate. However, he subsequently drew up multiple wills in Europe, which led to litigation upon his death. The case was in court for decades, with the beneficiaries of one of Kosciuszko's European wills eventually being awarded the bulk of the estate.

So Jefferson had good reason not to carry out Kosciuszko's instructions. Indeed, if I recall correctly he never actually had possession of the money at any point during the litigation.

First of all, I plead guilty to simplifying, and my apologies to everyone for that. The story is more complicated than a racist, malicious Jefferson simply refusing the last request of a friend.

This particular point has been a part of the ongoing dispute between the historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Henry Wiencek. Here is Gordon-Reed's chronology of events and subsequent defense of Jefferson:

Wiencek also excoriates Jefferson for his handling of Tadeusz Kosciusko's will. Kosciusko, the Polish patriot and supporter of the American Revolution, drafted a will in 1798 that included a bequest of funds to purchase and emancipate slaves, naming Jefferson as executor. According to Wiencek, the matter was crystal clear, as it must be if he wants to present yet another example of Jefferson's implacable evil: "Kosciusko had made him the executor of the will, so Jefferson had a legal duty, as well as a personal obligation to his deceased friend, to carry out the terms of the document." Jefferson "refused" to act.

Jefferson's legal duties, however, were inextricably paired with potential liabilities of which Wiencek seems wholly unaware. Long story short: Kosciusko screwed up. After the 1798 will, Kosciusko wrote three more wills, the last one in 1817, the year he died. In the one written in 1816, he explicitly revoked all his previous wills and made bequests to other people in Europe. He made no mention of excepting the American will from this revocation, though a reference he made in a letter to Jefferson in 1817 indicates he thought his 1798 bequest still valid. Jefferson may have believed that too.

But he also knew that whether Kosciusko's statement revived the bequest was a legal question that would have to be answered in court--a high court, no doubt, given the large sums of money involved. Upon learning what Kosciusko had done, and that there were competing wills, Jefferson, in his mid-70s, transferred his duties (and, this is important, his potential financial exposure) to a court that then appointed an administrator.

As Jefferson knew, this was a litigation disaster waiting to happen. Indeed, the case became an American version of Bleak House's Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, dragging on from the 1820s to final resolution before the Supreme Court in 1852, which declared that the 1816 will had, in fact, revoked the 1798 bequest. Using money from the bequest to free slaves when others had potentially valid claims on the estate would have been extremely risky. If Jefferson had done that and it was later determined that the claimants had a right to the funds, he could be liable for repayment. Once he gave his powers over to the court, Jefferson's responsibilities--and the threat of financial entanglement to his already precarious financial position--were over.

Wiencek offered the following reply:

Gordon-Reed the law professor had some fun with the tragic fate of Kosciuszko's will, and may have befuddled the jury with irrelevancies. Long story short: In his will Thaddeus Kosciuszko left Jefferson a very large sum of money to free his slaves ("I beg Mr. Jefferson," he wrote, to free his slaves and give them land); Jefferson declined to carry out the will. Gordon-Reed's position is that this was a non-issue because the will was fatally defective.

But Jefferson's grandson didn't think so: Just months after Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, Jeff Randolph tried to revive the Kosciuszko bequest, "to save some of the Slaves left by Mr Jefferson, from a Sale by his creditors." Jeff Randolph was not deterred by any potential financial risks such as Gordon-Reed darkly evoked. Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson himself thought the will would stand. When Jeff Randolph made his enquiry about saving slaves in 1826, the will's administrator, Benjamin L. Lear, replied that "I had a conversation with Mr Jefferson on the subject at Monticello about three years ago, in wh: he approved very heartily the plan I then proposed to adopt"-- a plan to free slaves from elsewhere, not Monticello. Jefferson had no interest in releasing his extremely valuable slaves, but he believed the bequest was perfectly valid.

I should also add that Wiencek is not alone in his criticism of Jefferson. Historians Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges (whom the quote below comes from), along with Jefferson historian Merrill Peterson, have criticized Jefferson in the same vein:

Kosciuszko died on October 15, 1817. After several years of vacillation, Jefferson withdrew from his pact of honor with Kosciuszko by pleading in a Virginia court in Charlottesville that he could not serve as executor of his friend's estate and would not use the money to free his slaves. As William Lloyd Garrison would say many years later, "What an all-conquering influence must have attended his illustrious example," if he had taken the lead to abolish slavery. Merrill Peterson, for all his admiration for Jefferson, was anguished by this retreat: "The object of [Kosciuszko's] will was lost. Had Jefferson felt stronger about the object, he would have ventured the experiment, despite statutory obstacles and the shortness of years, for the experiment [of freeing his slaves] was one he often commended to others and, indeed, one he may have himself suggested to Kosciuszko."

Why did Jefferson, while throwing himself energetically into the creation of the University of Virginia, plead that he was too old and tired to carry out Kosciuszko's will and betray the trust of his Polish compatriot? One of the key reasons was Jefferson's allegiance to the Old Dominion aristocracy and his devotion to sustaining the economic and cultural leverage of the white South in national politics. He also feared offending friends, especially slaveowners already shaken by the actions of others in Virginia who had released slaves from bondage. In a time when we are accustomed to seeing the current president reject scientific analysis on fearsome problems, stack regulatory commissions with those devoted to non-regulation, and stake out policy positions on the basis of insider friends and their deep-pocket interests, this earlier abandonment of an honor-bound pact with Kosciuszko has a peculiar odor.

Annette Gordon-Reed's defense implicitly assumes that Jefferson bears no moral culpability, that Kosciuzko is ultimately (and seemingly totally) at fault. Writing three different wills -- the last of which revokes all previous wills -- strikes me as fairly strong evidence in favor of such an opinion, if we are talking about your garden variety slave-owner, circa 1817. But Jefferson was not and is not your garden variety slave-owner.

It was Jefferson who claimed that "the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other."

It was Jefferson who asked, "[C]an the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?"

It was Jefferson who asserted that slavery is plague upon the slaveholder: "With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him."

It was Jefferson who, taking it all, in saw the cataclysmic coming of slavery's end -- "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!"

When that revolution came, some 700,000 Americans were killed. Faced with the chance to put down his name among those who sought to forestall what Jefferson himself believed to be divine wrath, Jefferson declined.

One need not judge Jefferson by today's morality. Judge him by his own. If this is too much, judge him by those who were inspired by his words. Jefferson was not the only figure who faced legal hurdles in his effort to pursue emancipation. Edward Coles was so determined to liberate his family's property that when he inherited his father's plantation he concealed his intent from his family members, lest they contest the will:

On June 10, 1807, the elder Coles wrote to his son that he and Edward's brother Tucker were both ill and summoned Edward home to oversee the harvest of Enniscorthy's crops. Coles left Williamsburg without a degree on June 25. In the winter of 1808, John Coles II died, leaving Rockfish, a 782-acre plantation in what was then Albemarle County (later Nelson County), to Edward Coles. His father also willed him a dozen slaves. Coles prepared to receive his inheritance knowing he would free the enslaved men and women, but he did not tell his family lest they intervene and somehow prevent the transfer of property.

When Coles informed Jefferson of his plan, he did not simply wish Coles well, instead he urged Coles to continue holding slaves:

[I]n the mean time are you right in abandoning this property, and your country with it? I think not. My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, & be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them.

Taking all of this in context, I don't think it's sufficient to, on the one hand, laud Jefferson as the great father of our country (which he is), and then render him blameless in his behavior of Kosciuzko. It's a strange standard that would have Jefferson as the best of his generation, and yet have us judge him against the worst.

It is certainly true that Jefferson had good reason to not enter the fight. So did Edward Coles. So did Robert Carter III. Cowardice often enjoys good reason. Courage enjoys higher reason.

Thomas Jefferson and the Divinity of the Founding Fathers

National Dec 10 2012, 2:13 PM ET

An alert reader points out that I missed perhaps the most disturbing angle of Thomas Jefferson's long relationship with the slave society of America. In 1798, the Revolutionary War general Tadeusz Kosciuszko, hero of America and his native Poland, named his good friend Thomas Jefferson as the executor of his will. Kosciuzko wrote the following:

Thaddeus Kosciuszko being just in my departure from America do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentary disposition of my property in the United States I hereby authorise my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others and giving them liberty in my name, in giving them an education in trades or otherwise and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neighbours, good fathers or mothers, husbands or wives and in their duties as citizens teaching them to be defenders of their liberty and Country and of the good order of society and in whatsoever may make them happy and useful and I make the said Thomas Jefferson my executor of this

Kosciuzko died in 1817. Jefferson declined to execute his old friend's will. It has often been said, in Jefferson's defense, that he could not have emancipated his slaves without subjecting himself and his family to some amount of poverty. I find that argument about as morally compelling as claiming that a billionaire banker must continue dealing fraudulent balloon-payment mortgages, lest he sink into poverty. Doing the right thing hurts. That's the point.

But even taking the argument at face value, it doesn't actually reflect history. In his lifetime Jefferson only freed two slaves. With Kosciuzko's will, he had the chance to free many more. Jefferson declined, and when he died, his human property was divided like cattle and put upon the auction block.

There's a temptation here to rage against a man who preached the evils of slavery in public, actually tried to talk others into continuing to hold slaves in private, and then refused to act on his own words, even when it would have cost him nothing. I think this instinct only works if you understand slavery strictly as an economic system. But as we've discussed before, slavery was the foundation of antebellum society. Like, say, home-ownership, the owning of people and pilfering of their labor, was a social institution.

From James McPherson's This Mighty Scourge:

"The conflict between slavery and non-slavery is a conflict for life and death," a South Carolina commissioner told Virginians in February 1861. "The South cannot exist without African slavery." Mississippi's commissioner to Maryland insisted that "slavery was ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity." If slave states remained in a Union ruled by Lincoln and his party, "the safety of the rights of the South will be entirely gone."

If these warnings were not sufficient to frighten hesitating Southerners into secession, commissioners played the race card. A Mississippi commissioner told Georgians that Republicans intended not only to abolish slavery but also to "substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races." Georgia's commissioner to Virginia dutifully assured his listeners that if Southern states stayed in the Union, "we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything."

(As an aside, I love that last quote. Someone commented the first time I posted this "Ha Ha--You forgot black president!" Moving on.)

An Alabaman born in Kentucky tried to persuade his native state to secede by portraying Lincoln's election as "nothing less than an open declaration of war" by Yankee fanatics who intended to force the "sons and daughters" of the South to associate "with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality," thus "consigning her [the South's] citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans ..."

This argument appealed as powerfully to nonslaveholders as to slaveholders. Whites of both classes considered the bondage of blacks to be the basis of liberty for whites. Slavery, they declared, elevated all whites to an equality of status by confining menial labor and caste subordination to blacks. "If slaves are freed," maintained proslavery spokesmen, whites "will become menials. We will lose every right and liberty which belongs to the name of freemen."

Jefferson may well have intellectually understood slavery's great evil, and I don't think any non-slave has explained it better. But there is no reason why this immunize him from the social pressures of his class. Jefferson may well have not liked holding slaves. But he loved the society that came from it. That society was a republic of white supremacy. And the next generation following Jefferson would dream of stretching that republic down into the tropics. The way Lenin believed in communism, the way we believe in capitalism, that is the way Jefferson's heirs believed in white supremacy -- so much so that they would come to denounce Jefferson.

From the great John C. Calhoun:

I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions.

It seems clear to me that one can salute the ideas of a founding father, and at the same time condemn his cowardice when it came to putting them in practice. In other words, Jefferson can be both the intellectual father of this country and a notorious violator of the very ideas he put forth.

But is that too cerebral an approach? When we say "founding father," do we actually mean God? From ekapa in comments:

... For a nation whose foundational myth is deeply invested in virtue rather than conquest, a founding father who is a sociopath is extraordinarily problematic since virtue by its very nature is a personal rather than abstract quality.

Yes, Jefferson's contributions were indisputably brilliant and awesome in their import, but in the realm of virtue, brilliance and perception are not leading indicators. In effect the foundational myth of the USA is one of personal morality. This is a nation whose basis is is personal rather than some abstract heroic or divine dispensation. Acknowledging Jefferson's sociopathy if done seriously and thoughtfully, threatens the edifice.

I think this gets at a lot of what I've been missing. I don't really think of Jefferson as "virtuous." I don't think of Lincoln as "virtuous." I'm trying to think of anyone (outside of my family and friends) who I'd apply that to, and I'm coming up blank. I just don't know these folks like that. I've long thought that Malcolm X's recreation of himself was "virtuous." I think King was "courageous" which is a sort of virtue.

But getting back to this comment, I think it hits on a lot of the problems when we talk about Jefferson's moral failings. It's not enough for Jefferson to have laid the ideological foundation for equality. He had to have practiced it, too. And anything contradicting that, anything that can't be hand-waved away in a kind of "Yawn!ManOfhisTimesTLDRMovingOn" sort of way, really troubles the waters.