an eerie but more successful echo

I’m referring to this story:

“Kansas City Chiefs tight end Leonard Pope, whose nickname is ‘Champ,’ lived up to the moniker last weekend when he saved a 6-year-old boy from drowning in a swimming pool.”

Nice work by Leonard Pope in saving the boy. But my first thought on reading the headline was touched upon by the story itself at the very end:

“The Chiefs are an organization that has dealt with a similar tragedy. It was 28 years ago this month that star running back Joe Delaney drowned while trying to save three children from drowning in a Louisiana pond. Two of the children died.”

That Delaney incident was terrible, and I remember it with painful vividness from high school. He was an extremely promising young player, and obviously his death came from totally out of the blue. The Leonard Pope story is a strange positive echo of the more tragic Delaney case, as if light were being cast by a pre-existent shadow.

And it could have happened to any of us. If you were walking down the road and saw three boys drowning, presumably you’d instinctively try to help them as well. My recollection (though memories can be erratic after 28 years) is that Delaney couldn’t even swim; he just couldn’t stand there and do nothing.

Poor Joe Delaney:

more on Tweets from Tahrir

That’s the book I reviewed for the L.A. Review of Books. I didn’t realize it was on Amazon yet, but JUST FOUND IT THERE.

There are 10 reviews up, all of them 5 stars, which rarely happens (there’s always a naysayer or two even for very good books). But having obviously read the book myself for purposes of writing the review, I’m not surprised. It was a fascinating experience to relive a major recent historical event in Twitter format. More than that, it’s one of the most moving books I’ve read in quite awhile.

Have a look at the book, if you get the chance. Looks like it’s only $12. (I’ll buy myself a copy; what I read were galleys, well in advance of publication.)

“9 Most Shocking Wikileaks Secrets”

The Daily Beast has an article of that title. My favorite on the list:

“7. U.S. Offers Payouts in Exchange for Guantanamo Detainees

U.S. authorities were so anxious to resettle Guantanamo prisoners abroad that they were ready to strike any deal with a foreign country willing to take them. Officials offered Kiribati, a tiny island nation in the Pacific—population 98,000—millions of dollars in incentives to shelter Chinese Muslim detainees. They also bribed Slovenian officials to take an inmate in exchange for the chance to meet President Obama. Belgium, meanwhile, was told that taking Guantanamo prisoners would be a ‘low-cost way…to attain prominence in Europe.'”

The point made to Belgium is priceless.

I’m a Wikileaks fan. There were cases where they should have edited some names out for safety purposes, and yes, there may be a bit of a robotic poke-America-in-the-eye thing going on, which is always the cheapest way to look politically serious in certain circles.

But that’s not really the point. Journalists are supposed to break big secret stories, and Wikileaks does that by the bucketload. If I were the U.S. government I’d be furious at them too, but they’re just doing their job. It’s their job to reveal secrets, not help governments protect them. And despite the “none of this is surprising” theme struck by some, I’ve actually learned quite a bit from reading their leaks.

LARB article title was changed

Not usually my style. And it was the editors’ decision, not mine. But it works very well here. [ADDENDUM: Good, they changed the title to “Egyptian Spring.” I didn’t tell them to change it, just as I didn’t tell them to use it, but it’s a bit more presentable in Egypt now.]

I speak of MY REVIEW of the edited collection Tweets from Tahrir, which appears in today’s issue of the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Romney escapes untouched

Debate coverage HERE.

None of his rivals wanted to go after him. Hey, they may as well just nominate Romney. I can’t stand watching him for personality reasons, but at least his candidacy is not an insult to the United States, which is more than can be said for a few of the others.

He also has sufficient gravitas, which is what I’d like the Republicans to nominate this time just to press the reset button on the Palin Circus of the last 3 years.

Nonetheless, Obama’s not losing next year.

Dark Chemistry on vacation

For the past few days I’d been wondering why we hadn’t heard anything lately from the always fresh and enjoyable Dark Chemistry blog.

Looks as though I simply wasn’t reading that blog closely enough. Craig is on vacation, and may not be posting again until the end of the summer. READ HERE.