Privilege and Power
There's an interesting apocryphal story told by journalist Bob Costas in Ken Burns' excellent documentary, Baseball . An Englishman and an American are having a conversation, and at some point it becomes an argument. The two resort to insults. The American says "screw the Queen". The Englishman says "Oh yeah, screw Babe Ruth". The American thinks he can insult the Englishman by insulting a person who has done nothing to achieve her position other than the luck of birth. As Costas says, it has nothing to do with any personal qualities good, bad or otherwise. Who does the Englishman think embodies America? Some scruffy kid who came from the humblest of beginnings, hung out as a toddler behind his father's bar in Baltimore, a big badly flawed individual, who strides with great spirit and possibility. I thought of that on reading a troubling story regarding the South Carolina State Supreme Court's decision to eliminate the results from one bar exam ques