Dana Blankenhorn

Agnew Time

The "nattering nabobs" speech of Spiro Agnew, delivered on November 13, 1969, may be the most misunderstood speech in the history of American rhetoric.

It is taken by liberal historians to be a speech putting them down, a speech against free speech. Its purpose, however, was vital to a proper understanding our own time. Its purpose was to set limits on debate, and to read extreme rhetoric outside those limits.

That's what we need now, badly. We need an adult to set limits on how far rhetoric can go. You can have free speech, but past this line you're inciting a riot, and must henceforth be called out of bounds by thinking adults.

What conservatives have been doing, what the haties have been doing for months, is demonizing the President, demonizing his causes, demonizing his followers in the most violent way. It is the fault of the President that they have been allowed to do this unchallenged for months. 

Violent rhetoric leads to actual violence. We have already seen some of it. We are going to see more. And the only way to prevent further violence is to push away the incitement leading to it.

Blogging for Money

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 36 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Hard as it is for me to believe I have now been blogging professionally (not here) for five years.

During that time I have brought in well over $100,000, writing blog posts.

I have learned a lot about the market in that time, and I have developed a winning process for writing blog posts that sometimes draw a large crowd and sometimes draw a small one.

So this week we're going back to the original A-Clue.Com beat, Internet Commerce. Here's how you might make good money in the wonderful world of blogging.

Symphony of a Decade

With this decade just about played-out, we are about to get a host of stories talking about an "album of the decade" or a "story of the decade."

Before the decade ends, my nominee.

It's not Harry Potter, good as that was. It's not something from Green Day, also quite excellent.

It's the Boss. Bruce Springsteen.

Springsteen's three studio albums of this decade are the symphony of these times. Each is a masterpiece. Taken together they tell a coherent story. No other artist of the rock era has accomplished anything like this. Some have done great albums that told the story of a moment in time, but none has tackled a whole decade.

By the year 2000, moreover, Springsteen was already entering his sixth decade, a time when most rock artists have long-ago retired, given in to self-parody, or gone on the "oldies" circuit. Rock is a young man or woman's game, always has been. The Boss could have easily rested on his laurels.

Then 9-11 happened.

Our Gang

A few weeks ago my part of Atlanta was galvanized by the issue of crime.

A white guy of about my age, outside with a weed-wacker on a Saturday morning, whacked and now in critical condition at Grady Hospital. He's still in intensive care, but they hope he will be out in a few weeks.

Best I could gather from reading between the lines of reports on our neighborhood bulletin board is that this was a gang initiation or, perhaps, a stupid loss of temper between two guys trying to impress the same girl. The suspects at this writing are still at large and until they're caught we won't know.

Last weekend a protest demonstration was held. We went. There were about 150 people there, including political candidates, cops and neighbors.

By my count over 80% were white. Kirkwood has changed a lot in the last decade but it's not 80% white. Far from it. More like 40%. Maybe less.

More important the whites of Kirkwood are different in important ways from our black neighbors. We're  wealthier. We're better educated. We're more likely to be in our 30s, 40s or 50s. We're more likely to be gay, less likely to be regular churchgoers. If we attend any service on Sunday's it's the "church of the brunch" which meets at every breakfast bar in town.