I was plenty stupid when I was young, but Ralph Northam was a special kind of stupid.

The record states that I graduated from Floyd Central High School in 1978. Of the 1,300 or so students in the top four grades at the time, perhaps a half-dozen were African-American and Latino -- and I might well be exaggerating.

It is a dead certainty that far more of my contemporaries were aware of Stonewall Jackson than the Stonewall riots, because LGBTQ was neither an acronym of record back then nor a component of the curriculum.

It simply cannot be overstated: Diversity was not a default condition in the locale of my upbringing. 

At the same time, I count myself fortunate to have been raised by parents who displayed few outward manifestations of prejudice or intolerance. My mother began her studies at the University of Kentucky during the period of its integration. My father's philosophy of life revolved around working hard, doing your duty and being honest. He seemed generally colorblind according to limited criteria, although I suspect he made exceptions. Some of his friends sure did.

Ever since the Ralph Northam scandal broke, I've been trying to recollect whether anyone ever "did" blackface during my time at FCHS. It seems likely in the context of the time, and yet I can't remember any instances of it. I cannot recall feeling the urge to do so myself. Extending the perimeter of shaky memory to four years at IU Southeast, did blackface occur? I don't think so, at least in my immediate vicinity. My group at the time was capable of incredible feats of obnoxiousness, and we desperately wanted to BE the Deltas in Animal House, but minstrelsy (see below) wasn't a part of it.

Be aware that these ruminations aren't to be regarded as backslapping, and I'm making no claims to perfection. We all have a long, long way to go, and as an individual, all I can do with any degree of certainty is improve myself, and to be a positive influencer when the opportunity presents itself.

It's more like an immense sigh of relief that amid my many transgressions and personal issues over the years -- these are numerous and distress me greatly -- at least I was never as terminally stupid as some guy who was otherwise smart enough to be a damn doctor.

There Is No Argument for Ralph Northam to Keep His Job, by Elie Mystal (The Nation)

I’m pissed off that I have to write about soon-to-be-former Virginia governor, Ralph Northam. It’s 2019 and I have actual work to do. There’s no way I should have to stop what I’m doing to join the “national conversation” about why dressing up in blackface disqualifies you from a leadership position in society. They don’t make astrophysicists pause their search for a unified theory of gravity to convince an idiot cat to come down from a tree. The emotional labor this society puts on black people is exhausting. Nobody should have to waste time explaining why Doctor Blackface can’t have his career anymore, and black people shouldn’t be charged with administering the final dose of morphine to put Northam out of his misery.

This is a killer paragraph at The Economist.

Mr Northam has so far resisted calls for his resignation, which have come from every major Democratic presidential candidate, both of Virginia’s senators, its Democratic congressional delegation, the Virginia Democratic Party, the state’s Legislative Black Caucus and its chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Nancy Pelosi, Douglas Wilder (Virginia’s only African-American governor, who served from 1990 to 1994), his own attorney-general and Terry McAuliffe, his predecessor, have also called for Mr Northam to step down. Waiting in the wings, meanwhile, is Justin Fairfax, the state’s 39-year-old African-American lieutenant-governor. Mr Fairfax has sensibly remained quiet, neither calling for Mr Northam’s resignation nor offering any public statements of support.

A working knowledge of minstrelsy is helpful to understanding the idiocy of blackface. Like other aspects of history's usefulness in navigating the present, it helps to actually pay attention to the homework assignment.

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History of Minstrelsy (University of South Florida) 

This exhibit explores the history of minstrelsy, its significance in American history and theater, and its enduring legacy. Utilizing materials from the USF Tampa Library's Special Collections African American Sheet Music Collection, it is possible to trace the history of blackface minstrelsy from its obscure origins in the 1830s to Hollywood jazz superstardom in the 1920s.

Minstrelsy in America, for all of its frivolous humor and popularity, was an exploitative form of musical theater that exaggerated real-life black circumstances and reinforced dangerous stereotypes during the 19th and 20th centuries. The fact that blackface minstrelsy began in the antebellum period and endured throughout Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration, with performers collecting and adding cultural aspects from each era to their performances, hints at the impact, popularity, and complexity of the minstrel show.

White supremacy and the belief in black inferiority remained at minstrelsy’s base even though the structure of the performances and subjects discussed in the music varied over time. The genre shaped the nation’s views on race for over a century and reinforced white superiority well after the abolition of slavery. While some today assume that minstrelsy’s blackface has roots in the American South because of the genre’s focus on black degradation and slavery, minstrelsy was born and evolved initially in the North.

For the majority of whites living in the pre-Civil War North, slavery and black people were a distant reality, one that evoked mixed emotions. If slavery was the commodification of black labor, minstrelsy, with its focus on presenting authentically black songs and dances, was the commodification of black culture. However, the depictions of blacks in minstrel performances were exaggerated, dehumanizing and inaccurate. Instead of representing black culture on stage, blackface minstrel performers reflected and reinforced white supremacy.

After emancipation in 1865, African American performers, seeing minstrelsy as an opportunity for advancement, contributed a humanizing element to their portrayal of blacks even though they also performed in blackface. Black performers during the Jim Crow era combined blackface with the newly popular genre of vaudeville and brought a black political agenda to their stage performances. During the 1930s, minstrelsy lost its widespread popularity to jazz but could still be seen in aspects of American society such as film. The popular film The Jazz Singer (1927) was about a white man wanting to become a blackface performer and featured Al Jolson, the most well-known performer of the decade. At the time, the film was the biggest earner in Warner Bros., and its success indicated that the age of minstrelsy in American history was far from over. Even in the twenty-first century, the racial stereotypes derived from minstrel shows can still be seen in popular culture.

SATIRE ALERT: DNA's Minstrelsy Walk is September 18.

Yes, the talent show is real. Unfortunately, the Confidentials will be in Belgium at the time.

As they say, the show must go on.

The Minstrelsy Walk is not real. It's satire. But these folks have a dicey history, you know -- and I just couldn't help it.

That's because I have a history, too.

Rachel Dolezal and minstrelsy ... or, the thoroughly depressing week that was, Part 4.

Ten years ago, I finished an informative book, and wrote these words in this space.

My friend Jon gifted me with “Where Dead Voices Gather,” by Nick Tosches, whom I consider one of the finest American writers of our time. Tosches specializes in biographical portraits of entertainers (Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin) and doomed outcasts (Sonny Liston), and he also writes novels.

In “Where Dead Voices Gather,” Tosches manages to top his own lofty standard, basing an entire volume of compelling historical, musical and cultural testimony around the almost completely undocumented life of one Emmett Miller, a stalwart of blackface minstrelsy in the 1920’s. As in all his non-fiction works, Tosches does not fail to address the simultaneously disturbing and exhilarating essence of what it means to be an American.

At some point on television last week, now perhaps almost quaint and nearly forgotten amid various other vile outrages occurring shortly afterward, Rachel Dolezal made a point.

"I don't put on blackface as a performance," Dolezal, the former president of the Spokane, Washington, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), told interviewer Matt Lauer. "I identify as black," she said.

The history of minstrelsy in America may or may not be relevant to any of this, but as a white male desperately trying to parse the nuance produced by the Dolezal case, notions of masks and disguises seem plausible in part. For a balanced overview of the genre, a History of Minstrelsy exhibition at the University of South Florida library looks very solid, indeed.

Also, earlier in the week that was, local free-lance writer and activist Erica Rucker pointed to this article.

Black Like Her, by Jelani Cobb (New Yorker)

I pass it along, unsure whether it matters at all. There was Dolezal unfinished, then the church shooting -- horrifying.

The past week was depressing and also frustrating, because I don't like the feeling that comes with the realization of knowing so very little about the whys and wherefores of our community, assuming it is even proper to continue viewing it as a community.

All that's clear to me is that I have a lot to learn.

Wrong teleprompter, bub.

It’s sublime narcissism, indeed, for Indiana’s property tax “revolutionaries” to imagine themselves populating an Ayn Rand novel and announcing that they intend to stop the engine of local government.

The only difference is that good, bad or indifferent, the original John Galt at least had a counter-proposal. The current crop doesn’t. They’re playing roles in Rand’s novel – just not the ones they think.

People like New Albany’s resident nutty professor have latched on to this issue for one reason and one reason only: As a means to sate a lifetime of pathological grudges while camped safely on the sidelines of relevance. Along with the Steve Prices of the world, they can offer nothing save for civic decay management. That simply isn’t enough for a 21st century city, although I suppose that at the end of the day, it scratches an itch.

The wrong one, but an itch.

An apogee of narcissism.

"It sure looks like to us ~ you did your homework Valla Ann!"

Steve Price compares himself to Jesus Christ. A captive city yawns. Somewhere, a dog barks.

Okay, it’s only fitting and proper that I should be the one to divulge the truth to you before you read it in Trogland. Yes, it happened. I was ejected from last night’s city council meeting.

I know, I know … just because Steve Price thinks he’s Jesus is no reason to lose my temper. But apparently he does. And I did. Alas, it occurred.

In retrospect, it should have been obvious that a bad moon was rising when the council considered second and third readings of the Summit Springs development on State Street, and for the second week running, the 1st district’s Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey was surreptitiously beamed from the chamber by playful space aliens, who placed in his stead a strange conciliatory figure waxing constructive about the virtues of development and a widened tax base.

C’mon, guys – give us our famous ward heeler back. Not really.

Just ten days ago, the council approved a first reading of the Summit Springs zoning change by a resounding 8-1 margin, with 2nd district CM Bill Schmidt alone in opposition. Last night, with councilmen Blevins and Zurschmiede absent, the vote had reached 5-1 (Schmidt one again opposing) when it came council president Larry Kochert’s turn, and he provided sweeping justification for his “slippery” sobriquet by … abstaining.

I laughed aloud, and was immediately affixed with a presidential glare.

When Kochert’s turn came for the third reading, he looked directly at me, sarcastically said “thank you,” and voted against the ordinance, remarking that only then – at the last possible moment, and having first voted in favor of the measure prior to abstaining on the second reading – could he reveal a hitherto unspoken objection, which had to do with jurisdiction for future zoning decisions.

To repeat: 4th district CM Larry Kochert recorded one vote for, one abstention, and one against … and all three stances were taken at various times on the exact same ordinance.

Is it any wonder we laugh?

No, it isn’t, but having done so openly, I feared that the worst was yet to come, and of course come it did, for if there ever were a legislative body that confirms the adage, “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” it’s this one.

My end came as 3rd district CM Steve Price took advantage of the heaven-sent opportunity afforded by his predictable tabling of further discussion of ten new police cars to, yes, prattle on for another five minutes about the very same ten police cars, which of course meant that the discussion would not be about police cars at all, but about specific nuances of CM Price’s stance v.v. take-home police cars.

CM Price’s monochromatic strumming yodel was forcibly rebutted by colleague Bev Crump, which segued into a brief period of accusatory chaos that mercifully ended with fellow councilman Jack Messer asking why the council was persisting in discussing business that had already been tabled in favor of yet another committee.

CM Price responded that he must be given time to respond to his “accusers” on the police force, and when, somewhat remarkably, CM Kochert seemed inclined to agree, the time finally had come for CM Price – previous crusader against “Nazis” in the VFW, defender of “raped” taxpayers, and linguistic mangle artist extraordinaire – to don his rubber mask of Larry Linville's best Frank Burns face and whine loudly that the council might as well bring on “the cross and nails.”

As the room dissolved into embarrassed laughter, I remarked that Price’s performance was his best ever, and this prompted a buffoonish jackal to turn and heckle me. Shrugging, I responded in the only appropriate way under the circumstances: I asked the man, otherwise known as the newly scrubbed and streamlined council candidate Dick Stewart, if he’d come to the meeting to race-bait, or just to masturbate like always -- and that did the trick.

With CM Price now waving his arms and demanding I be removed, CM Kochert actually did the right thing and tossed both Stewart and myself. Rest assured that if there had been a home plate that I could have used my hands to cover in dirt, or a water cooler to heave, it is likely to have happened.

Chief Harl was officious and pleasant, and permitted me to visit the restroom before exiting. My only regret is that Professor Erika didn’t hang around to witness it, although Auntie V's hired camera got all of it on film.

Verily, it has never been my intention to “gonzo blog,” or be part of the story. From the beginning, I’ve felt that it was enough to provide reports that admittedly entertain, but also provide the reader with insight into the city’s council meetings.

But there are times when the breathtaking inanity exhibited by the likes of my 3rd district representative is enough to shatter the firmest of one’s resolve. Last night was just such a night. Sorry ‘bout that, although I’m not promising it won’t happen again.

Why? Because the answer to New Albany’s dilemma simply does not lie in Steve Price’s preferred state of degradation, deprivation and yokeldom, although there’s some solace to be derived from the fact that as he warbles and croons the “we can’t” defeatist line, plenty of people aren’t buying it. They both “can,” and “are,” and there's little that he's yet been able to do about it.

Lacking any constructive notions for how the pie might get bigger, and mired in the tattered depreciation logic of the landlord, our councilman seeks only to wrap his fingers around the piggy bank and keep the hands of others as far away as he can.

Yet ... if one possesses as chief operating wisdom such a naked contempt for progress and success, it stands to reason that he must seek to permit as little as possible to actually occur, lest the doom of cognitive dissonance creep through the bolted doors of his perception.

That's a fine way of protecting one's own limited bailiwick. It does not improve the community, or benefit future generations. In fact, it is nothing more than the expressed public will to fail.

We need to put a stop to it, and a chance is coming ... first in the primary, and then ...

Hail, Toga Party!

Can Guido be far behind?

10:00 p.m.: Tribune coverage is here.

We're told that this afternoon, former mayor Doug England will announce his candidacy for (surprise) mayor in 2007, joining incumbent James Garner and challenger Larry Scharlow in what should be an immensely entertaining Democratic primary.

It is not known whether GOP 6th district council hopeful Dick Stewart will stage an impromptu performance of minstrelsy in blackface on the sidewalk outside, if Auntie V will attend disguised as an amok NASA astronaut, or if debit cards will be accepted in lieu of unmarked bills.

England's last race in 1999 ended in defeat at the hands of Regina Overton (R), who was elected mayor by a margin of 57% to 43%. In turn, Overton was defeated by Garner in 2003.

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Don't forget: NAC "Meet 'n' Greet" is tonight, and you're invited.