It Took A While, But...

They warned us this would happen. Not on the first day, maybe not the first year or even the first term, but they told us so. We were put on notice that the Supreme Court would tilt just enough to the right to let women, minorities, and the poor slide out of justice's scales and into the gutter.

Maybe next time we'll listen.

Ruling in favor of a group of students who were denied nothing (nothing!), the Supremes eviscerated the legal legacy of diversity in our public schools. Louisville had a policy that classified students as white or non-white for the purposes of allocating available slots in particular high schools. Their goal was to have no school with less than 15% minority enrollment, providing a realistic racial balance within each school regardless of the neighborhood where it was built. Not in this country!!

"Joshua", the boy at the center of the Seattle schools case, didn't so much as ask for a spot in a school and get denied. "Joshua" got everything he wanted. He went to the school of his choice, took the courses of his choice, and got dissed by the cheerleaders of his choice, we imagine. The Supremes seized on this miscarriage of justice to announce (through Bush appointee and Chief Justice John Roberts):

"In design and operation, the plans are directed only to racial balance, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as illegitimate."

Remember... we did this. No Bush? No Roberts, no Alito (who simply grinned and nodded throughout the decision). Heaven forbid racial balance should ever be achieved. In a predictable, yet sadly ironic, footnote, the lone minority on the court, Clarence "Uncle" Thomas, shuffled and smiled broadly throughout the reading of the opinion. In the most perverse note of all, the opinion compares itself favorably to the landmark school desegregation ruling: Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, noting that it is following in the footsteps of Brown by condemning race-based student classification.

Only the most willfully ignorant and perverse onlooker could compare the exclusion of black students from most schools in Topeka to the Louisville goal of ensuring access to all schools for children of all races. This decision shows the court's eagerness to gut the social advances of the last 50 years and has nothing to do with upholding the goal of a "race-blind" society. Women, Gays, workers of all stripes, the criminally accused, the mentally ill, and any other vulnerable, historically put-upon person has reason to sit up and take frightful notice of the opinion.

Little will change in Seattle or Louisville, in truth. Only a handful of students ever fell into the equation that required identification of their race to resolve a placement question. Rather, this is a shot across the bow, courtesy of the two men who swore before Congress to uphold the Supreme Court's precedents, to anyone who has taken two steps forward since 1964. If the announcement of the Court's decision didn't change your day, you weren't paying attention.

Pay attention, already. You're next.

Dear O.J.

Poor O.J.

At some point, if you can get past the beheading and the glove and the blood and the Akita and the Wrongful Death verdict..... You just have to wonder whether he'll ever get it. So we've decided to lend a decidedly Midwestern perspective to a very raw, open letter to the man. We hope it will spare him further embarrassment in the media. Unless he insists.

Dear Mr. Simpson,

Folks in Kentucky, for the most part, still aren't over the whole slavery thing. Add to that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Brown vs. Board of Education, sharing water fountains, interracial dating and, well, that little murder thing we all watched on CNN. You will start to understand why Louisville is not the best place for you to spend the money you still owe the Goldman family for murdering their son.

We would like to take this opportunity to say that we always liked Kato. He reminded us of Gilligan with a libido and a very open view of sexuality and recreational drugs. He's our kinda guy. If you hadn't murdered anybody, we'd probably come to your house to watch him lay out in a Speedo. We also want to say that we don't like your late ex-wife's sisters much. We understand that grief makes people do and say horrible things, but come on.... That Denise chick had a head start on Bitter before you ever came along.

We think you should be in jail, but you're not and that's the way our system works. Good on you for having the money to buy the best defense team available. We're sure Johnny Cochran thinks of you often as he meanders the various levels of Hell looking for a scotch and water. We think the rest of them will probably get eye cancer or have their genitals rot for taking your money, but we can't really make that happen. Congratulations on your win.

You seem to have hit the wall when it comes to picking your way around a potential media nightmare. First there was the book that isn't a book. Then there was the TV Interview that didn't happen over the book that isn't a book (which was about the thing you didn't do, but if you had...). Now, you've been summarily dismissed from one of Louisville's finest eating establishments. So we're going to help you out a little. Mostly, this is so we don't see you on TV or the AOL homepage as much. But in a rare stab at good karma, it's also so we can help a teensy bit.

Take out a map of the U.S. Any size will do, although we know first-hand that past the age of 40, the larger the better. Amen? Now, find California. Draw a heavy black line around California and then put a large X through everything north of San Francisco. The part of California left is safe for you to golf in without suffering what you went through in Louisville.

Now, go all the way over to Florida...no, all the way... Find Miami. Draw a tiny circle around Miami. You can golf and eat in that circle. Everything else is off-limits. Don't go to Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana (except New Orleans, if they ever rebuild it), any Carolina, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana...oh hell. Just stay in those two areas and you'll be good.

It is partly a race thing. So you can call Al Sharpton, if he's not busy pulling his foot out of his mouth over Mormons not being Christians (an assertion we think is theologically sound, but still a horrible thing to say into a microphone when you are the High Priest Of You Can't Say That). But mostly, it's a You Got Away With Murder Thing. We know you did it. You know you did it.

And y'all just cain't eat here no more. K? Thanks, hun.

We wish you a low handicap on the course and firsthand knowledge of how it feels to be almost beheaded.

Much Love,

The After Therapy Editorial Staff