Mind the Gap

Happy Fourth of July from Roxie's World and the Department of Righteous Indignation. Take ten minutes out of your holiday to watch Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" on Shrub's decision to commute Scooter Libby's sentence. (Here is a transcript.) Keith would probably frighten us if we didn't agree with pretty much everything he says. As it is, we declare him Watchdog of the Week and thank him for offering up a fiery "j'accuse" to enliven our celebration of (what's left of) American independence.



Once Keith has gotten you all hot and bothered, you can cool down by listening to my Uncle Bobby's song, "Peace Begins With Me and You," which we've loaded into the Music Box in honor of the day. It's from his album, Turn Row Blues, which you can purchase here. Uncle Bobby is such a righteous dude that he said y'all could have this song for free, but the Music Box doesn't allow copying. :-(

Need some inspiration? A reminder that the task of realizing the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence is yet unfinished and belongs to all of us? Click here to see the sermon Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on July 4, 1965 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. It's called "The American Dream" and so is steeped in a rhetoric of American exceptionalism that would be troubling if it weren't so strategically valuable to King's cause. "It is marvelous and great that we do have a dream," King declares, "that we have a nation with a dream; and to forever challenge us; to forever give us a sense of urgency; to forever stand in the midst of the 'isness' of our terrible injustices; to remind us of the 'oughtness' of our noble capacity for justice and love and brotherhood."

The moms headed out this morning to catch one of their favorite community events, Takoma Park's fabulously funky Independence Day parade. They sat on the curb across from the firehouse with their peace flag held out in front of them and watched the spectacle roll by: the steel drummers and the bag-pipers, the belly dancers and the tumblers, the advocates of attachment parenting, immigrant rights, compact fluorescent bulbs, and 9/11 truth. They laughed and applauded and got a little teary at the goofy, glorious wonder of it all.

We still live in the gap between the "isness" of injustice and the "oughtness" of our noble ideals. On this day, citizens of the United States and denizens of Roxie's World, mind the gap -- and do what you can to narrow it.

Peace out, beloveds.