Tonight I'm having trouble blogging on anything specific, but a number of good bloggers don't seem to be having my problem. Here are a few blogs you should read tonight if you want something significant to ponder ...

For instance, Strange Women Lying in Ponds discusses an article by Leonard Pitts that decries the current generation gap amongst African-Americans. Pitts notes that the current generation of African-American young adults seem to have "no tether to the sacrifices that made their lives possible," and Brant goes Pitts one further, arguing that this applies to this entire generation:

The irony is that because America has essentially achieved nearly every goal of human history -- generations free from want, free from disease, but also FREE FROM STRUGGLE -- young people have been alienated from the very things that make up the stuff of life itself. People have an inherent need to struggle, to strive to overcome nature's daily taunts. ... There is a void in the soul of young people, and all manner of nonsense stands ready to fill it. And what fills it is a sort of nihilism (fed by youthful narcissism) masquerading as struggle.

The Commissar at Politburo Diktat writes a revealing post about the blogosphere itself and its class system. In the Commissar's opinion, there are three levels of blogs, and he discusses his experiences (and his prior persona) in an example of the closed-off nature in the highest-level blogs when he attempted to get a link to his latest blogmap:

The blog-states, eg. Fark and Plastic, are nearly impervious to contact with "outsiders." The Commissar, having looked at the blogs, understood that many of them had Forums that required enrollment. No problem (or so thought the Commissar). He enrolled in Plastic, submitted the Map, and fatuously awaited a flood of Plastic-driven traffic. Wrong. The map was submitted to a queue, where Plastic members evaluated it, and instantly determined that it was not a "Write-Up," but a mysterious "QL." The Commissar was a newbie; he had f*cked up.

Demosophia writes an extensive review of the new HBO miniseries Angels in America and doesn't much care for it. In fact, he views it as an "ensemble lie" that according to Andrew Sullivan intends to perpetuate the tinfoil-hat notion that conservatives attempted to block a cure for AIDS in order to commit genocide against the gay community. The notion that a group of people could get together to do such a thing frightens him:

But the notion that a group of highly talented entertainers can get together and present a drama filled with deliberately manipulative emotional nuance in order to sell a false version of reality is a little frightening. For an example of the corrosive potential of such a project see almost any Oliver Stone movie, especially JFK which sells the travesty of Garrison's destructive and half-insane conspiracy theory (planted by the KGB, according to recently revealed documents) as fact, even though it has been thoroughly debunked and even though the climactic court case resulted in the wrongful conviction and public destruction of an innocent man.

Although I am opposed to the death penalty, Saint Paul at Fraters Libertas writes an interesting argument for having the option available. He quotes from the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, from which the TV series Homicide sprang, and surmises that police interrogating Alfonso Rodriguez in the disappearance of Dru Sjodin could use a little more leverage:

Simon’s scenario is one of a suspect who has waived his Miranda rights - which, amazingly, is something most skillful detectives can accomplish with a suspect who’s a non-professional criminal. Although Rodriguez has already lawyered up and has been through the system many times, I think his metaphor of “the Out” remains applicable. But only with a death penalty.

The detectives (or now, prosecutors) can empathize with him. Tell him it wasn’t his fault the state of Minnesota let him free to rape again, and this time to kill. They can tell him they know he’s not a bad person, he just has a sickness that needs treatment. But, the public is in a frenzy, demanding his death. And the only way they can save him, to get him the nurturing and help he truly deserves (sniff), is by getting his cooperation in finding Dru. And if he doesn’t, there’s no way for them to help him avoid the icy fingers of death closing around his throat.

Finally, for a laugh, read this post from a couple of days back at The Cheese Stands Alone. The title is somewhat misleading -- at least the subject matter was not what I thought it might be -- but as LeeAnn notes at the bottom of her post, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

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