Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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I never listened to the stories he told. Either “Speed Racer” was on or the new Fantastic Four was out or the Spinners were on the radio. Whatever. I never listened. Things were not good between us. He had a drinking problem, which meant he had a hitting problem. I tried to stay out of his way. But sometimes, when things were quiet and his mood contemplative, my father just wanted to talk, to tell me who he’d been and what he’d seen in the years before I came along, the yea...
There’s a joke I tell behind Miami’s back. I’ll be elsewhere in the country and someone will ask how race and diversity are viewed from a South Florida perspective. I reply that, according to the Census Bureau, Miami’s polyglot population represents what America will look like in about 40 years. And if America really understood that, it would be worried. Rim shot. My point is that, for most of the years of the American experiment, our dialogue about race and diversity has bee...
This is for a reader who demands to know why I write about gay issues. His conclusion is that I must secretly be gay myself. Actually, he doesn’t express himself quite that civilly. To the contrary, his e-mails — which, until recently, were arriving at the rate of about one a week — evince a juvenility that would embarrass a reasonably intelligent fifth-grader. The most recent one, for example, carried a salutation reading, “Hi Mrs. Pitts.” We’re talking about the kind of thin...
The rappers are mad at Oprah again. Just one rapper, actually: the gentleman who calls himself 50 Cent, but whose 1994 mug shot identifies him as prisoner No. 94R6378: Jackson, Curtis. Mr. Cent — “Fiddy” to the cognoscenti — was one of a trio of rappers (Ice Cube and Ludacris were the others) who lambasted the Queen of All Media last summer for being insufficiently willing to promote hip-hop. Now, Mr. Cent renews the attack. In an interview in Elle magazine(!) he charges...
The N-word has had few friends better than comedian Paul Mooney. Put aside that the word was long a staple of his act. Put aside the promotional pamphlet he once sent out that screamed the word in big, fat type. Consider instead what he told anyone who argued that blacks should stop using the word. He replied that he said it a hundred times every morning. “It keeps my teeth white.” Last week, the selfsame Paul Mooney joined the Rev. Jesse Jackson and California Rep. Max...
Santa Claus has cancer. It started in his esophagus and spread to his liver. He’s being treated, but chemotherapy has sapped his appetite and energy and he’s down about a hundred pounds. He’s worried about money, too. The treatment costs more than $16,000 a month and his insurance doesn’t cover it. Santa Claus is named Larry Stewart and he’s a wealthy 58-year-old businessman who lives in a suburb of Kansas City, but he used to be a down-on-his-luck 20-something living ou...
One day, maybe 20 years ago, I ran into Eddie Levert. Eddie, a charter member of the legendary O’Jays, is one of the greats, a singer of thunderous power. Back then, his son Gerald was just starting out as a professional singer but already, people were remarking how much he sounded like his father. “You better look out,” I told Ed. “He’s gaining on you.” “Aw, don’t tell that boy that,” growled Eddie. “It’ll go to his head.” For all his feigned indignation, he couldn...
Today’s topic: flaunting homosexuality. Exhibit A: Doogie. Meaning Neil Patrick Harris who, in another life, was the title character in “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” the tale of a boy genius who becomes a doctor. Recently, Harris was outed on a gossip Web site. His response in a statement to people.com said in part: “I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest.” That was it. No muss, no...
Maybe we ought to give Prohibition another try. Granted the attempt to outlaw drinking wasn’t exactly a success back in the 1920s, but maybe it’s time to have another go at it. Don’t we owe that much to the public figures who have become the unwitting victims of fool juice in recent months? First, there was Mel Gibson, actor, minding his own business, tooling happily down Pacific Coast Highway, until alcohol jumped inside him and made him say terrible things about Jews. Then,...
• “... The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Par...
Today, we’re going to administer an IQ test. One question only. Here’s the scenario. Let’s say you get hurt at home. Let’s say you cut off a favorite appendage with a hedge clipper or fall victim to the old step-on-a-rake gag. Let’s say you have chest pains, stomach cramps, bruises, contusions and lacerations. Let’s say your forehead is hotter than Eva Longoria in August. In Phoenix. In a bikini. A really small bikini. Fresh from the pool, her skin moist and giving you...
Good morning, gentlemen. I don’t know your names yet, but I want to talk to you about the man you killed. I read about it in The Miami Herald. How Lemroy Lawrence walked out of his house in Miami Gardens about 9 p.m. Tuesday to get some papers from his truck. How you approached him out of the darkness. How there was a struggle. How he was shot in the back. Police put out a description of the suspects they’re looking for, a description of you: young, black, and male. Maybe you...
In 1989, photographer Andres Serrano exhibited a photo he called “Piss Christ,” depicting a crucifix submerged in urine. It raised a furor and was condemned on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Nobody was killed. In 1999, artist Chris Ofili exhibited a painting he called “The Holy Virgin Mary” in which the mother of Jesus has an exposed breast made of elephant dung. It drew a rebuke from the mayor of New York and crowds of protesters. Nobody was injured. Last year, a Danish...
I’m probably going to have to apologize for this column, so let’s get that out of the way: I’m sorry. I did not intend to offend Islam or its followers. I respect Islam and, indeed, all the ways humanity worships and seeks its Maker. With that taken care of, let us get right to the point: Would somebody tell the pope to stop explaining himself? We are, for those of you who haven’t been keeping count, up to at least the fourth clarification and/or expression of regret from Po...
“Can you show me the doll that looks bad?” The two baby dolls are identical except that one has pale skin, the other is dark. The little black girl, maybe 5 years old, has been holding up the pale doll, but in response to the question, she puts it down and picks up the other. “Why does that look bad?” the interviewer asks. “Because it’s black,” the little girl says. “And why do you think that’s the nice doll?” asks the interviewer, referring to the light-skinned doll....
On Sept. 10, 2001, this nation was more than a quarter-century past its last real crisis. This is not to say the intervening years were uneventful: They were not. Those years saw three attempted presidential assassinations, a shuttle explosion, an impeachment and sundry hostage takings, military actions and political scandals. But there had not, since Watergate, been a true “crisis,” no event of the kind that shakes a nation; that stops it cold and takes its breath and makes i...
Leonard Pitts may be a genial person with whom a conversation would be enjoyable. His newspaper editors apparently consider him to have a way with words. Yet, he lacks sufficient understanding to write about biblical interpretation (Aug. 30 CNJ). He points to a church he assumes is applying scripture accurately only when some people find it advantageous. Certainly that is wrong (Romans 12:9). However, their error does not justify the same error when preached by Pitts. He argue...
I offer three cheers for Katherine Harris. Harris has brought this nation together, done a more effective job of uniting people than any prayer breakfast, sensitivity class or Benetton ad I’ve ever seen. Thanks to her, Christians and Jews, Muslims and atheists, Republicans and Democrats are now standing as one and saying, “That Katherine Harris, what a moron.” Really warms the heart. Harris, GOP senatorial candidate from Florida, produced this united front by doing an inter...
First Baptist Church of Watertown, N.Y., fired Mary Lambert for being a woman. They say the Bible told them to do it. Nothing against women, says the Rev. Timothy LaBouf. The church is just trying to obey 1 Timothy 2:11-14, which says in part, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” So, after 54 years as a Sunday school teacher at First Baptist, Lambert was given the hea...
So I read in the paper where another man is about to be lied to death. The first such story I am aware of was published last year in the Houston Chronicle. It concerned a street punk named Ruben Cantu, who was executed in 1993 for shooting two men, killing one. Cantu was sentenced based on the word of a single witness, the shooting survivor. That man now says it wasn’t Cantu who shot him and that he was pressured to say otherwise by police. The Chronicle concluded that C...
Satire is my favorite form of humor. In the hands of its most deft practitioners, it makes the ridiculous so plain, the idiotic so obvious, that you cannot help but laugh. Take “All in the Family” as a sterling example. Literal-minded folks may have taken umbrage at Archie Bunker’s litany of racial, ethnic and religious insults, but we who fancied ourselves hip got the message, understood that the point was not to further bigotry but to make us see how absurd bigotry was....
I write this in order to say I told you so. Not for me. Well, maybe a little bit for me. But also for some people who would probably never publicly say it for themselves. As a general rule, good soldiers toiling on government payrolls don’t do that sort of thing. Columnists toiling on newspaper payrolls, however, do. Two years ago, the National Intelligence Council produced and presented to President Bush a 50-page report on the future of Iraq. Its forecast: continued i...
With apologies to the makers of the 1994 film, it’s never been “the madness of King George” that troubled me. No, it was the arrogance, a hubris so awesome and awful you tended to forget George is not, in fact, a king but a president. One might have been forgiven for forgetting, since President George W. Bush has governed pretty much as a King George would have: by fiat and decree. So the Supreme Court’s recent rebuke of the Bush administration and the administration’s chasten...
We begin with the obvious: Florida is an American state. Miami is an American city. And Sherdavia Jenkins, who died in Miami just over two weeks ago after being struck by random bullets, was an American child. So I would have thought it uncontroversial to observe, as I recently did in a column, that her death and the indiscriminate slaughter of American children — in Miami or anywhere else — qualified as “an American problem.” Apparently, I was wrong. That is, at least, the fe...
“Don’t believe the hype” — Public Enemy I feel sorry for Shawn Carter. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. It seems that in recent weeks, Carter, a rap star and music executive known professionally as Jay-Z, has pronounced himself angry with the makers of Cristal champagne. Cristal, you should know, is frequently referenced in rap lyrics as a synonym for the high life, for pimping and drug dealing your way into an existence where the women are always willing, the luxury cars always...
