Why doesn't the cable network, I asked her, do a show on the "experience" of Japanese-Americans, also some of the most prosperous of all Americans -- despite the World War II "relocation" camps and California's anti-Japanese laws, once passed to prevent them from owning farmland?

I don't compare this in kind or in degree to slavery, but it's 2008 -- with a black man possibly on the brink of attaining the presidency of the United States. Can we move on? The problems of the "black community" have to do with the welfare-state-induced breakdown (or, more accurately, non-formation) of the family. This causes a disinterest in education, and leads to poor values, reckless and irresponsible breeding, as well as a lack of the job skills necessary in an information-age society. We also have grievance groups -- black "leaders"; the oh-so-sympathetic media; fear- and guilt-laden whites who refuse to say (as they do to their own children) work hard and play by the rules; and many reluctant blacks who refuse to preach the message of "no excuses, hard work" for fear of being labeled "Uncle Toms."

I told my sister-in-law that nearly half of Harvard's black freshman class consists of blacks from the Caribbean or Africa -- areas less prosperous with far less opportunity. Care to explain that?

I told her that I bet many of the "talking heads" live comfortable middle-class lives or better -- some, no doubt several, tenured college professors who, not so deep down, believe that they were smart enough or worked hard enough to have made it, but the other poor SOBs, well, they need a more compassionate government, a less racist society to pull them through.

So, try to relax. Thanks to editing, they can make anyone sound like Elmer Fudd.

--Larry