A while back, Taylor Branch, author of "America in the King Years", said at a lecture I attended that in America there are only two popular views of the civil rights movement. In one, civil rights aren't an issue anymore, and there is no need to discuss them, because blacks have legal equality so there is nothing more to be done (a view accepted by our Supreme Court at the moment). In the other, the civil rights movement was a complete failure because there is still racism in America. Nothing in between.

When someone like McNabb speaks the truth about how he's treated, and the scrutiny he's under, it's only news because there really are people who don't and won't see the subtle racism in our society. As Branch went on to say, the civil rights movement wasn't a failure, because it spawned and inspired the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and numerous other successful movements. But it also wasn't a complete success. White people in this country are too willing to deny their own racism, while taking advantage of white men's privileges. Don't believe me? Who's more likely to get pulled over driving ten mph over the speed limit in Brentwood, me or Charles Barkley? And who can afford better to live there? Not the same answer, huh?

is that these people have to personalize it to "I know these gay folks and they're just as good as me." If I didn't know a single gay person, or a single gay person who wanted to be married, it would still be right. And it would still be right even if I wasn't part of a straight couple myself.

Standing up before Dean Wormer and saying that he's not going to stand there while Wormer insults the United States of America.

Symbolism is important to the creation of change. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the I Have a Dream speech in Detroit a few weeks before he gave it again in Washington. The first time, it didn't resonate. The second time, it became a part of everyone's (well, maybe not the schools in Jena, I don't know) American History curriculum. The legends that surrounded Rosa Parks worked, even though we now know that there was some hocum involved in her saying she wanted to sit because she was tired. If she'd said instead that as secretary of the local NAACP she had planned the protest, it might not have made international headlines.

In these times, when we can expect a knee-jerk reaction all over Fox News to anything the right doesn't like (ask Max Cleland), choosing good symbolic things to protest, and to protest sincerely, is as important as it ever was. Jena is an easy message to send because the symbolism of the nooses on the trees is not missed by many. And the school officials denying that the black students of today got the message resonates so well as well.

So the Yankees were almost the first team since the 2000 White Sox to average six runs a game. How many games did the 2000 White Sox win in the playoffs? Oh, right, zero. They were swept by the Mariners.

The Yankees offense (and the Red Sox pitching) get to fatten up their stats by playing the hapless Devil Rays and Orioles 38 times every year. Some years they're genuinely good, but others it's all light and illusion. Front line pitching usually does it. And the Indians and Angels have the front line pitching.

King wrote, "The over-under on a nationally prominent typist writing a "who cares about the Rockies and Diamondbacks?" column is Friday at noon."

Bill Simmons posted this on espn.go.com on October 11, 2007, at 1:55 PM ET: "No matter how much you love baseball, it's nearly impossible to care about the Colorado-Arizona series. You might watch it, you might enjoy it, you might even gamble on it ... but unless you're an absolute baseball nut or a Rockies/D-backs fan, how could you honestly care who wins when neither franchise is older than Jamie-Lynn Spears? It's like going to a wedding in which you don't know anything about the bride or the groom."

Frankly, I find it much harder to care about the ALCS. It's been a long time since I've seen a team in the postseason as focused as these Rockies seem to be. I loved what Jeff Francis said after the game, they weren't analyzing how they got this far, they're just going to ride the feeling as long as they can.

I was sitting quietly reading something while nursing my hot chocolate at my local hangout this afternoon, and some dude starts shouting into his Bluetooth headset while taking about five minutes to add cream and about every other additive they have to his coffee. He had his back to me the whole time, so he couldn't see the daggers my eyes were blasting at him, and he was so freaking oblivious to the barista, to the other customers, to pretty much everyone in this large atrium, all of whom could hear every word of his stupid business conversation.

My idea of the hell he deserves is where his Bluetooth doesn't work, and every single person whose quiet he has interrupted is standing around shouting into phones in unison and glaring at him, and he can't leave, he can't shut his eyes, he just has to take it.