Is it just me, or do I feel amusement over the death of South African white supremacist leader, Eugene Terreblanche? The 69-year-old Terreblanche was bludgeoned and stabbed to death with clubs and a machete in an attack Saturday at his farm near the town of Ventersdorp in South Africa’s North West Province following an apparent dispute over wages with workers according to South African police.
If you hadn’t heard of this foul piece of human excrement, Terreblanche and his supporters are best known for trying to block South Africa’s effort to end apartheid. The group used terrorist tactics in a bid to stall the country’s first all-race vote in 1994, killing more than 20 people in a wave of bombings on the eve of the elections. Terreblanche himself was convicted of the 1996 attempted murder of Paul Motshabi, a black man who worked as a security guard on his farm. He served about three years of a five-year sentence, and he was also convicted of setting his dog on a black man in an earlier incident.
While I can’t say that I’m glad that someone is dead, even if they are reprehensible, but I am reminded of Malcolm X’s statement when JFK was assassinated, saying that the “chickens have come home to roost.” ‘Nuff said.

This week is The Masters golf tournament and Tiger Woods is there, playing in his first tournament since his November car accident and the revelations about his serial adultery. He did a press conference today where he once again, participated in the public flogging of his image.
Now, let’s let him go play golf. The rest is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS!!!

I am vaguely aware of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews. She’s pretty enough, I guess, but she’s not drop dead gorgeous in my opinion, and I don’t even remember if she’s particularly good at her job, since I know enough about football that I generally ignore sideline reporters as superfluous at best, annoying at worst.
But, it seems that Ms. Andrews, who was secretly videotaped nude in 2008, has been receiving death threats according to her attorney. Apparently, several threatening e-mails regarding Andrews have been sent to sportscaster Dan Patrick since last September. The lawyer said that the e-mails began as mostly sexual, but that since March they “are specific, they’re violent, they identify the location and method of intended murder.” The FBI began work on the case last week and believes it has identified the individual responsible for the threatening e-mails. In addition, Ms. Andrews is getting round-the-clock security,
Huh? What’s going on here? Ms. Andrews is attractive, like I’ve said, but she’s no Eva Mendes. And to think that some couch potato thinks he has any shot at a date, or moreover sex, with Ms. Andrews or any other female celebrity is absurd. (Most of them have no chance with most women period.) To threaten to kill someone who doesn’t know you’re alive is madness.
It should be said that the publicity hasn’t hurt Ms. Andrews – who is doing reportedly well on the show, “Dancing with the Stars,” but if we’re handing out death sentences for participating in reality television shows, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich would be on my list long before getting to Ms. Andrews.

I know that ordinarily, when one thinks of people in the comics industry, you think of people with artistic temperaments, and, if we’re talking about comics store owners, guys of limited scruples. Well, we lost two men in the industry over the past couple of weeks who were anything but.
First, my condolences go out to the family of Dick Giordano. Mr. Giordano has cost me thousands of dollars over the years, but it has been for the best. As former Editor-in-chief at DC, Mr. Giordano saved DC Comics. The Superman-Batman-Wonder Woman publisher had been getting its clock cleaned by Marvel for over a decade. Brining real life problems into the lives of imaginary super-heroes had worked for Marvel, but DC was hurting from the bad television shows, and heroes who were out of step with the times.
Mr. Giordano helped to change all that. He was at the helm of the company as the time of Watchmen, Dark Knight, re-envisioning The New Teen Titans; redoing Superman, Camelot 3000 and so many others. I was a committed Marvel-geek until I was introduced to the DC universe through these stories. I became a fan of the DC universe while Dick Giordano was in charge. In addition, Mr. Giordano was a skillful artist and inker. He was a craftsman and an excellent storyteller. He knew what would work, and what wouldn’t.
Finally, he was a class act. I met him several times at conventions back in the late 1980s and early 1990s and he was always cordial, professional. He listened to what fans had to say, and explained why decisions were made. I knew that he had become less active, but I guess it was the loss of his wife of 37 years that had a great deal to do with him stepping down at DC. He was a giant in this industry.
Usually, “class act” and “comics store owner” don’t appear in the same sentence, much less the same article, but Joe Sarno was also a class act. When I left college, I had gotten re-hooked on comics, but I didn’t know where to go. The only store I knew about was in Evanston, not worth a very long trip. So, I found a store on the North Side of Chicago, and there I met Joe Sarno. Mr. Sarno was one of the longest tenured comics dealers even back then – 1982. I remember driving many miles to his store to pick up “The Death of Captain Marvel” graphic novel and the “Silver Surfer Special” by John Byrne.
We got to talking on one of my visits and he asked why I drove so far to get comics; there was a store in Evergreen Park, less than one half the distance to his store. “Why didn’t I go there,” he asked. Good question – but surprising. He was getting money from me, and he could have withheld the information, but he didn’t care, he wanted to help me out. So he introduced me to my comics shop – All-American Comics, and my friend, owner Carl Bonasera, a relationship that remains intact for 28 years (another class act, by the way).
Occasionally thereafter, I would see Mr. Sarno at conventions and I thanked him various times, and he didn’t remember me, of course, but he was also very cordial and nice. He was glad that he had helped me continue in the hobby.
Quality men; they will be missed.

The Houston Chronicle (picked up by the Huffington Post) is reporting that “contrary to historical trends, some of the toughest challenges” facing the 2010 Census are not “counting the traditionally undercounted groups such as African-Americans and Latinos. Instead, a new and growing threat to an accurate national head count is coming from anti-government conservatives who may not fill out their forms to protest against ‘Big Brother’ in Washington.”
The Chronicle reported that “As of Friday afternoon, only 27 percent of Texas households had filled in and returned their census forms — well below the national average of 34 percent — according to computer data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In Texas, some of the counties with the lowest census return rates are among the state’s most Republican, including Briscoe County in the Panhandle, 8 percent; King County, near Lubbock, 5 percent; Culberson County, near El Paso, 11 percent; and Newton County, in deep East Texas, 18 percent. “
For months, many right-wing activists and politicians have been criticizing the Census and urging people not to return their census forms. The anti-census rhetoric grew so heated that three Republican congressmen publicly chastised Rep. Michele (“lunatic fringe”) Bachmann (R-Minn.) last year for declaring that she would not fill out her census form. “Boycotting the constitutionally mandated Census is illogical, illegal and not in the best interest of our country,” said Reps. Patrick McHenry (N.C.), Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.) and John Mica (Fla.), members of the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives. Even crazier Fox News nut case Glenn Beck found Bachmann’s anti-census stance baffling. As reported above, evidence suggests that some conservatives are sympathetic to the message.
Of course, sending in the Census form costs nothing more than 5 minutes of your time (unless you’re really dumb – ‘nuff said); the postage is paid by the government. And it is your way of being counted – determining the number and pattern of representation, and, maybe most important, making sure that your area’s share of Federal and State tax dollars come back to your community. But if you don’t want to be counted, fine. In fact, there’s far too many Texans for my money anyway.
I have an idea, all of the tea party idiots should move to Texas and then secede. As long as they take Bachmann, Beck, and Limbaugh (oh yeah, Rush is moving to Costa Rica as a result of the health care bill passing, right?) with them. I guarantee there won’t be a second Civil War – hell, I’d volunteer to help move their stuff out.

Everyone knows that the man with no allies and “no country” is the African-American Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele. He got his position only as an attempted response to the nation’s first black president, and ever since, he has had to back peddle on any comment that goes against the far-right maniacs that control the party.
Well, I guess he is making the best of a tough situation. The Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong (also on today’s Huffington Post) has posted a story about Steele’s lavish lifestyle on the road.
Strong reports that Steele “once raised the possibility of using party money to buy a private jet for his travel,” and has run up some substantial tabs at some of our nation’s nicest hotels.
Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,946.25 at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.
Wow! I guess Tiger Woods isn’t the only black man thinking with the smaller head.

But that is definitely the problem with Republicans (and to a lesser extent Democrats) – do as we say, not as we do. These people (mostly men) tie themselves to the pole holding the American flag, or a cross, or whatever; give speeches all over the place talking about “family values” and other ways (notably religion) to try and retain some sense of superiority over other people, and all the while, they are having gay sex, cheating on spouses, or going to bondage clubs.
Of course, people like Steele and Supreme Count Justice Clarence Thomas are two of the most self-hating African-Americans in positions of authority today (Thomas’ Caucasian wife is proud of being a tea party supporter) . Having achieved what they have achieved, they seek to deny that they probably had help from affirmative action or other programs, and worse, would like to deny that opportunity to people of color that come behind them.
The gay congressmen who hide their sexuality and then blast equal rights are just as bad. Be black; be gay; be proud; support others like yourself. Don’t be hypocrites. But, of course, to the narrow minded, change fearing bigots and the willfully ignorant, this is not how to get elected.

There has been a mini-controversy here in Chicago regarding Ozzie Guillen, web sites, his son Oney and Tweeter. The ever outspoken manager of the White Sox is one of the few public figures who has his e-mail address available, and people use it. Often, unfortunately, racial epithets get sent to him.
The White Sox themselves upped the ante by having television camera follow the team during spring training for a show to be broadcast on the MLB Network. Of course, the program is probably sanitized within an inch of its life, but you never know, anything can happen when combustible personalities like Guillen, GM Ken Williams, and owner Jerry Reinsdorf are involved.
Anyway, after the show began filming, Ozzie Guillen was going to have his own web site, but Williams didn’t like that and forbade it. Then he was going to have a Tweeter account, but that was nixed as well. Then the focus centered on Guillen’s three sons, particularly middle son Oney, who worked for the team. Fearing comments that may cast a bad light on the organization, Oney stepped down. But the whole Guillen family need to learn a basic lesson – don’t bitch about your boss in print.
Guillen and Williams, despite winning the team’s first World Series title in 88 years, are both very strong, opinionated individuals. They both have their opinions and their differences in opinion. And working for a professional sports franchise in a media center like Chicago, the two have made comments that they have both had to apologize for, or withdraw when they hit the papers.
As you can tell, gentle reader, I am opinionated, which is why I have paid my own money to fund the rantings and ravings you read here periodically. I tell everybody that it’s cheaper than therapy (it also keeps me from wanting to go postal at times). However, if you go through the almost 500 posts I’ve placed on this site over the past 3 years or so, you’ll never see a mention of my workplace. You can probably figure out what industry I work in, but I make a habit of not commenting on work. Is my job perfect? Far from it. Do I never deal with the stupid, the incompetent, the mean? Unfortunately, no. I do like the work that I do, but I admit being addicted to checks. I like getting money, and you never know what may find its way into whose hands. So I never rant about work. By the same token, I never complain about the Indignant Wife and the Indignant Children. I don’t think personal issues should be worked out in a public forum.
I know that Ozzie Guillen and family are outspoken people; and I know that in many circles, Guillen can do no wrong as the only manager of a Chicago baseball champion since early last century. But people do get fired; professional sports coaches and managers are hired and fired in revolving door type fashion. As much as the Guillen men need an outlet, they have to pick the right forum. Or find a good therapist.