Leo P. For President!

Before 9/11, I never had much use for newspaper columnists and/or pundits who weren’t on the Sports page, but Leonard Pitts, Jr. has become a major favorite of mine. He’s one of the few columnists in the papers these days who I actually look forward to reading. Pitts doesn’t really lean to the left or the right (though the conservatives label him a liberal, but then again consider the source…), and ironically, I first became familiar with his work via a conservative friend (yes you, Tom!) in the aftermath of 9/11 (as did a lot of people, I think) with a piece he wrote that began "You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard..." Leonard P. is very down-to-earth and well-written, and like singer Don Henley--whom I praised yesterday--he has a way of cutting through the B.S. in his work. It’s refreshing to read someone’s stuff and feel like I’ve learned something while not having been talked down to. His column just today was about the whole Michael Richards thing and how so many black people are suddenly (and rather hypocritically) revising their own policies on using the N-word. A brief sampling: “…are you telling me that nearly 20 years after hip-hop made that word unavoidable, it takes some white TV actor losing his mind to make black folks see what should have been obvious all along?” That’s just a sample, and I urge everyone to hop on the Miami Herald website and check out his previous columns, which deal with many other topics besides racism, by the way--his post-Katrina stuff is particularly good. I’d love to see this guy run for President, too. Hell, I’d vote for him…