I once made a comment...

...about American history and my Scottish friend, Jamie, said, "What American history?" Touche.

But after reading the obituary of British politician Jeremy Thorpe in the Times today I have some sense of what he meant (my emphasis):

John Jeremy Thorpe was born in Surrey on April 29, 1929, the son of John Henry Thorpe and a maternal grandson of John Norton Griffiths, both of whom had been Conservative members of Parliament. An ancestor had been speaker of the House of Commons in the 1400s.

1400s? Were there even any Indians here in the 1400s?

Also, I just have to include the following paragraph, which is so typical of a New York Times obit:

He had also cut a suave, dashing figure, resplendent in bespoke Edwardian suits, thick gold watch chains and his signature trilby, a narrow-brimmed hat that he wore at a rakish angle over darkly saturnine features.

Just when you think...

...you've heard every schtick, you read this in the New York Times:

Kent Haruf pulled a wool cap over his eyes when he sat down at his manual typewriter each morning so he could “write blind.”

Mr. Haruf, who wrote the novel, Plainsong, among others, died at age 71. Also from his obit:

After Mr. Haruf finished his first drafts, usually well before lunch, he would pull back his cap and take a look.

“He only got off home row a couple of times and typed gobbledygook,” Mrs. Haruf recalled. “That’s not bad for all those years.”

Imagine how well he would have typed without the cap over his eyes.

True confession: I sometimes...

...walk my dog, Stewart, without a leash.*

Why? I don't know; maybe it's because he seems to want to stop every three feet or so and sniff something -- and that's a real pain in the butt. Maybe it's because every once in a while he just suddenly breaks into a trot. Or maybe I'm just a shameless scofflaw. Sue me.

But, whatever the reason, I know I'm breaking the law. And every so often a cop will stop and tell me to put Stew back on his leash. I usually mutter something like, "Certainly officer," and comply (at least until the cop is out of sight). It's the law, and it's the cop's job to enforce it. I get that. And if he were to give me a ticket I'd probably bitch and moan but end up paying the fine anyway. I'm a grownup and understand the rules of the game.

Why do I bring this up? In my last post I talked about how ridiculous it was to blame the death of Eric Garner on New York's cigarette taxes. I tweeted the piece at a few writers making that argument and one of them, Robert Tracinski, actually responded:

I would answer you, but David Harsanyi already did.

Tracinski linked to Harsanyi's piece in The Federalist, "Yes, Stupid Laws Help Kill People," in which he said, among other things:

I’ve seen numerous tweets discounting this argument as preposterous. It’s something akin to blaming jaywalking for the death of Michael Brown, we’re told.

And, while I hadn't heard that, I thought, Yes, it is akin to blaming jaywalking for the death of Michael Brown.

(Full disclosure: my father is the only person in America to actually get a ticket for jaywalking. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there at the time. But, then again, you had to know my dad.)

Or, to put it another way, if a cop stopped me for not walking Stewart on a leash, and I died as a result of the encounter, surely you wouldn't blame the misguided leash laws for my death, would you? Instead, you'd probably ask something like, What happened between the time the cop stopped him and told him to put his dog on a leash and him dying?

Right? So, I still think it's crazy to blame Eric Garner's death on cigarette taxes. But that's the kind of wrongheaded thinking libertarians indulge in. I know; I used to be one.

* Actually, I almost never walk him on a leash.

I heard Rand Paul...

...last night blame the death of Eric Garner on cigarette taxes and I thought, Wow! I used to think like that too. Libertarianism sure leads you down some crazy rabbit holes!

And then today I find out that this tortured logic actually has some legs.

Now, whatever you think of the Garner case, I should hope we can all agree that it wasn't cigarette taxes that were responsible for this poor man's death, any more than it was the public sidewalk he was standing on at the time. 

As Danny Vinik put it in The New Republic:

Eric Garner is not dead because New York City imposes high cigarette taxes. He’s dead because a cop put him in a chokehold.

As a former libertarian, I can attest that this is where the ideology takes you sometimes: every bad thing that happens is ultimately caused by the government. People like Sen. Paul start there and work their way backwards. In other words, he already knew what caused Mr. Garner's death before it even happened! Libertarians like to pride themselves on relying on reason rather than emotion, but it's actually very lazy intellectually. Imagine: Ask me a question, any question, and I'll automatically give you the answer, It's the government's fault. Convenient, isn't it?

It's not only lazy but also devoid of all human emotion. A man died for crying out loud -- that's what's important here. We can talk about what happened -- and why -- all night long, but let's not get sidetracked by cigarette taxes.

Ian McLagan, a keyboardist...

...with the British rock bands the Small Faces and later the Faces, died at age 69.

While I found a live version of  “Itchycoo Park” on YouTube, the Small Faces' best-known and most successful song which reached the Top 20 in the U. S. in 1968, I just don't like it as well as “Every Picture Tells a Story,” on which Mr. McLagan played organ and sang backing vocals. And, again, there are a number of good live versions of it on YouTube, but none which feature Mr. McLagan. So this one will have to do. But it's a great rock song, isn't it?

The New Yorker cartoon of the day:

Yesterday I wrote a post...

...about Ferguson that I began first thing in the morning and reworked off-and-on all day until I finally hit "publish" in the late afternoon. I still wasn't entirely happy with it, but sometimes you just have to be content with getting something out there.

(My son took the unusual step last night of texting me to say how much he liked the post -- something he almost never does. So it mustn't have missed the mark by too much.)

I think the best thing I read about Ferguson yesterday was from Andrew Sullivan's blog (my emphasis):

I haven’t come across any new, dispositive facts to change my mind about the complicated specifics in the Michael Brown tragedy. But there is one dispositive fact that is hard to miss and that keeps impressing itself upon me every time I read about Ferguson and its meaning. There is a near-universal consensus among African-American men that there is a crisis about their role in American society, and particularly about their interaction with the police. You can cavil, or criticize or feign shock or refer back to the specifics of the Ferguson case. But it’s there and it’s real and any crisis between any segment of the population with respect to law enforcement is a crisis for the entire society.

I also read this excellent interview with Chris Rock by Frank Rich of New York Magazine, which is a must-read. Money quote:

My mother tells stories of growing up in Andrews, South Carolina, and the black people had to go to the vet to get their teeth pulled out. And you still had to go to the back door, because if the white people knew the vet had used his instruments on black people, they wouldn’t take their pets to the vet. This is not some person I read about. This is my mother.

And that reminded me of The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson, another must-read which I am forever recommending. (I've mentioned it many times in this blog -- it changed the way I look at black people. While reading it, I initially thought: Every black person in America should read this. A little further on, I thought: Every American should read this.)

Finally, last night I went to a meeting at a fieldhouse in a local park called by officials from the CHA. (That stands for Chicago Housing Authority, for you out-of-towners.) They are studying what to do with some 80-plus acres (did I hear that right?) in the University Village/ Little Italy neighborhood that they have been tasked with redeveloping. (The project began several years ago but was put on hold by the recession.) The consultants last night were getting input from the local residents and intend to complete their study by next September.

The crowd there had to be at least half African-American and many appeared to be low-income. They were quite vocal about what they wanted and needed from the CHA. I also learned a new acronym, ABLA. According to the park's website:

Built between 1938 and 1961, the area's four large housing complexes, known jointly as ABLA, include: the Jane Addams Houses, Robert H. Brooks Homes and Extension, Loomis Courts, and Grace Abbott Homes.

This was the first of three planned meetings, the next one scheduled for February. It's a diverse group with different interests and priorities. I didn't get a great "feel" for what the heck was going on, but I hope to absorb more over time. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and I almost forgot: before I went to the meeting I watched Jon Stewart's show from Monday night. The clip above is excellent; jump to about 6:40 if you're pressed for time -- but it's a must-see.

The day definitely had a theme.