Reopening old wounds

Last week, President Obama and Fantasia both managed to reopen old wounds that their opponents can take advantage of.

Within the last week or so, the president managed to get himself involved with a very sensitive topic when he said that Muslims "have the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero." This was after he had avoided weighing in for a few weeks. Even though today's rapid news cycle forced him to take a position, he should not have said that, especially given how the wounds from 9/11 are still fresh in many New Yorkers' minds less than a decade on. Now, the president has reopened all of the talk of him supposedly being a Muslim. Those consistently refuted rumors that he had to deal with during the 2008 campaign now have resurfaced as one out of every five Americans falsely claim that the president is Muslim. With some people in this country sincerely believing that the United States is at war with the Islamic religion, Obama's statements were not helpful to say the least.

As for Fantasia, I remember a 2005 opinion column in which editor Tom Blount said "Let's hope High Point 'gets over' Fantasia's negative remarks and, for her sake, let's pray that something she does or says doesn't come back to haunt her 30 years from now." Unfortunately, Fantasia's Joe Namath moment has come a lot sooner than anyone could have ever predicted. In a matter of days, it was revealed that she's being sued by  her lover's wife  

after an allegation that the Season 3 "American Idol" winner was in a sex tape with the woman's husband and, also, her overdose on the 10th that Charlotte officials are now calling a suicide attempt.

Given these revelations, Fantasia just gave her enemies fresh ammunition because these people wanted the "Welcome to High Point" signs honoring her taken down because they either hated her status as a single mother, comments that she made about her former hometown in her autobiography, or both. The only good thing about last week's events in Charlotte is that the Tea Party did not field any candidates in this year's High Point elections because if it did, then, there would be a renewed push to have the signs taken down since it's safe to say that virtually all of Fantasia's bashers lean to the right. I just hope that her upcoming album doesn't take a hit because of the bad press.

Financial Reform

If the recent fuss over financial reform taught the public anything, it's that it is really hard to redo something once it has been undone.

If Congress had not been so gung-ho to get rid of Glass-Stegall 11 years ago, we would not be tumbling towards a depression. But like everyone else, they must have believed that the stock market would continue to go up. There are legitimate gripes that the recently passed financial reform law doesn't put an end to "too big to fail" and provides loopholes to some of the megabanks that got us into this mess. Some of the very people who got G-S repealed are still in Washington--as lobbyists--so reinforcing the Depression-era rules would have been a big hurdle to overcome.

Brett Favre latest

Even if he means it this time, Brett Favre did himself no favors because he's done this retirement stuff for the last seven years to the point that the public is numb to it. As a result, he is in danger of suffering from The Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome if we are sitting here in October talking about a 2-4 Vikings team faltering with Tavarias Jackson and Sage Rosenfels.