Report from Birmingham

Once a week or so, I make a scan of the latest articles on the Siegelman-Scrushy situation. And then I go on to look at the most recent editorials and make a quick check to see if there is any movement in the involved Federal Courts. And in making this sweep, I’ll usually take a detour down the Internet’s back-alleys, from the seedy bars and pubs of the Net to the more up-scale sophisticated cigar rooms, and finally to the Internet version of graffiti-strewn restrooms, where I’ll read what is written in all of these places as text messages stuffed in bottles and cast adrift across disparate forums. There’ll be wide spectrum of scrawled notes, from almost-informed impassioned arguments, to factual news blurbs, to the exposed raw nerves of hatred and the blind invectives of anger. The latter encompasses everything from small lives that have been bowed by a failing economy, from the ever-fresh frustration of stolen Southern Honor, to the embarrassment of Bull Connor’s dogs splashed across Life Magazine, to a still-simmering racial divide that quietly and quite voluntarily segregated itself in the aftermath of the 60’s, to the moral high-ground afforded by the close almost gang-like association to a political party. And to fear. Simply fear. And crisscrossing this uneven landscape is the perception of shady politicians from Bush to Clinton to Obama, and from Blagojevich to Jefferson to Cunningham to Sessions.

Continue Reading–106 words [...]