Super Bowl Sunday

In between getting ready for the big game today (or whatever activities may be on one's table), there are two extremely good and important articles at NY Times today.

The first is a damning breakdown of America's use of contractors to clean up our messes in Iraq and elsewhere, including such startling facts as the number of claims of abuse of contract against contractors. Particularly startling is the fact that one employee at just one of the hundreds of privately-contracted corporations costs taxpayers $104 per hour, and this comes from an administration that claims to care about how government money is spent. Right after the Iraq war, there was some disturbance, even in the mainstream press, that companies like Cheney's former employer Halliburton were getting no-bid contracts. There was consternation once. This article reminds us why we should still be concerned abou this.

The second article is an absolutely outstanding analysis of the language of race, and why Joseph Biden's comments wer actually emblematic of the obstacle of racial stereotypes we as Americans still have to overcome. The author shows how white American society seems to have different expectations when it comes to African-Americans' intelligence and personality, expectations that subtly reinforce hierarchies of race very innocently and, as D.L. Hughley says, "insidiously." Both are well worth checking out in the downtime today.