More Mark Sanford - Make Him Stop

So, it turns out the Governor of South Carolina, in all his Narcissistic glow, doesn't know a crisis consultant! There are many very qualified people here in the Northeast that I could recommend to him, like my old colleague and friend Gene Stevenson. Gene has advised large multinationals on difficult issues and CEOs and CFOs on difficult times, imagine how busy he is right now and he might just make time for Gov. Sanford because I know how much he loves Charleston - so I'm sure they could work something out.

But in the meantime someone make him STOP. This interview, in which he rubs salt in the wounds he inflicted on his wife and his family is appalling. "I have found the love of my life," "I crossed the line many times before" and my all time favorite: "I'm trying to fall in love with my wife again!!!" IT'S DONE. IT'S A WRAP, SHOWS' OVER FOLKS - time to go.

This MO-RON gives two days worth of interviews to the AP. I'm sure that like Bill Clinton and John Edwards and Strom Thurmond

(please don't forget ole Strom) before him he figures if he talks long enough the reporter will just love him too and "feel his pain." He must be a transplant and not a real South Carolinian.

Remember Jesse Jackson is a native South Carolinian (gotta add him in here since the Jackson death has caused the great political sump pump to bring both he and formerly Big Al Sharpton).

The Death of Michael Jackson - some random thoughts

The Death of Michael Jackson is strange, as his life was strange; and sad, as his life was sad.

I'm bothered by his death I suspect partially because it was unexpected - I like order in things and hate it when people re-order my day or my week. With his death Michael Jackson abruptly ended a large part of my youth that I was hanging on to I think.

We all thought him more than passing strange. I can't count how many times I've joked that only in America could a little Black Boy from Gary Indiana become and eccentric old White woman in one lifetime. Michael Jackson's death on Thursday re-order my thinking about my own youth. We were contemporaries. I'm 47 and he was 50 so in a since we grew up together. Which is one reason we all sort of understood his strangeness. Our lifetime has been one of tremendous change and adjustments. Michael didn't make all the adjustments.

His was a life perpetually in search of his lost childhood - the one we all had watching him - in fact I think he had more than most because his ability to spend and travel and play far exceed all the folks I know. Then he quickly shifted to parenthood.

Lots of us never understood the screaming crowds of foreigners who bought all those damn tickets to concerts in Europe or who fainted in the stadiums. Strange how a stoic group of people became so excited by Michael Jackson. But we knew ALL the songs. We knew all his phases and we weren't in line with his choices but we expected him to live a life like we all did. Like Jermaine did, like Tito did, Like Randy did. You can blame his father for lots of things but dragging his family out of a empty steel town aint' one of them.

Now we have our Elvis moment. I remember the weekend Elvis died and all the outpouring. In the days before the internet we relied on the radio for up to the minute news and the fact that he died in the toilet struck me as fitting but it didn't change my day or my weekend. I didn't realize he was only 47 he just seemed old so I thought "why all the fuss over a washed up singer?" In the same way that my teenager thinks all the Michael Jackson coverage is overdone. In fact it was my teenager who told me, by the way, TMZ is reporting Michael Jackson died while we were on the way to lacrosse practice in the same tone he used to ask if I was waiting for him or not. Strange how nonchalantly he was able to end my youth this rainy summer.

Martin Bashear

Is it just me or isn't Martin Bashir strange?

I told you so!

On Feb. 19 I said Chris Brown was an Abuser. Yesterday he said it too?! Brown struck a plea deal for Felony Assault. 5 years of probation and 180 days community service. No one takes a deal like that with those kind of lawyers unless you are gonna get your ass kicked at trial. To get a client to cop to felony assault the evidence and the down side risk must have been overwhelming. You do have to ask yourself: did any other felony assault plea get probation and community service only in that courthouse yesterday though.

"Mark Geragos, Brown's lawyer, said the plea represented the singer taking responsibility for his actions _ which included beating, choking and biting Rihanna during a fight early Feb. 8, according to police." Interesting work by Geragos getting a two way stay away order - so now Brown can on Larry King, don't think Oprah will have him, and argue it was an abusive relationship. See this NY post article also.

Go buy his records now - I think not - but I'm usually wrong about this stuff, this is the same country that forgave Kobe Bryant.

Free Iran??!! Nah, Let them Do it!

If the Iranian people want to be Free and remove that fundamentalist puppet Government they should do it themselves. Why are US "right wing" conservative voices screaming that our president hasn't done enough! Didn't we learn anything from our failed attempt at nation building in Iraq or Nicaragua or Panama or should I continue....no recent American President has been successful at exporting Democracy - why, because it doesn't' work. If the indigenous people don't want Democracy we can't sell it wholesale to them.

The beauty of the struggle in the streets of Tehran is that it is true, organic and therefore sustainable - not run as a proxy by other governments. This makes sense to me in the same way Cuba makes sense to me. When the great Cuban people are tired of that Godless dictator THEY will replace him not us!