Ilk

SUPREME COURT Justice Clarence Thomas went before the National Bar Association July 29 and pleaded for reason.Thomas told the gathering of black lawyers that he had a right to think for himself, that his fellow blacks have "singled [me] out for particularly bilious and venomous assault" and that his being black didn't mean he had to think a particular way. Then Thomas posed a question."Isn't it time to move on, to realize that being angry with me is no solution?" the justice queried. "Isn't it time that we respect ourselves and each other as we have demanded respect from others?"

CLEVELAND -- Hundreds of thousands of black men march on Washington, and an entire nation takes notice.The Atlanta Braves rally to the tomahawk chop, the Cleveland Indians wear Chief Wahoo on their caps, and hardly anyone cares.Sorry to interrupt the World Series, but if we're going to end racism, let's end racism.End it so no group suffers.End it once and for all.Oh, no one wants to hear this, especially the white majority, especially during baseball's showcase event.But how can a nation inspired by an event as moving as the Million Man March continue to allow such blatant racism against Native Americans?

The Rev. Al Sharpton's desperation is showing. His recent attacks on presidential candidate Barack Obama and his threat to withhold his support have exposed the trick behind Mr. Sharpton's magic act. His audience is leaving the tent, and Mr. Sharpton is scrambling for relevancy. Mr. Sharpton has been challenging Mr. Obama's credentials in the black community and saying that the Democratic senator from Illinois is the darling of white leadership, according to Democratic sources. Mr. Sharpton told CBS News that he is withholding his endorsement until after his National Action Network summit next month.

AS A white Southerner who voted in the 1948 presidential election, I think Sen. Trent Lott and the resultant commentary are giving 1940s-style white Southern segregationists a bad name. I lived in Georgia in 1948. It and six other of the 11 states of the old Confederacy voted for President Harry Truman. We Crackers gave the president three times as many votes as we gave Mr. Thurmond. That was a predominantly white vote, too. Most Southern blacks were still disenfranchised then, and many if not most, of those who weren't voted Republican.

THE TERRORISTS who attacked India's parliament Dec. 13 killed 12 people, including themselves. They achieved their probable goal, to drive India and Pakistan to war or its brink. If the purpose was to change the subject in Pakistan, to create tension with India greater than the alliance with the United States, to divert troops from Afghanistan's border, it has worked. Two nuclear powers stand at the abyss, missiles targeted, politicians threatening war. India is greater in population, geography, arms, technology and economy.

Those who remember the Academy Award-winning documentary "Scared Straight," which showed a group of lifers from New Jersey's Rahway State Prison terrifying a bunch of cocky juvenile delinquent boys with tales of jailhouse horror, will understand when I say that MTV's "16 and Pregnant" is the chick version. The show follows teen girls who find themselves pregnant — from the pregnancy test all the way to the delivery room and home again with baby — and it includes graphic scenes of pain, both physical and emotional.

L. Dennis Kozlowski, whose excesses damaged the reputations of everything from shower curtains to ice sculptures, is now in a New York state prison for at least seven years. He is lucky that his sentence was not determined by a jury of his peers. Even as some lawyers moan that it is unfair to send business executives away for years or even decades, there is a stunning lack of sympathy for them from those who used to be their peers: people who are or were at the top of large corporations.

The network fall TV season is only two weeks away from its first early rollout of new series. So it's probably time to start preparing for the really bad news: You are going to see the worst collection of sitcoms in recent memory.In fact, the sitcoms of the 1999-2000 TV season are so bad that that you can't help but wonder: Is the sitcom dead?Take "Shasta McNasty" from UPN, featuring three teen-age members of a hip-hop group living together in Venice Beach. Based on the pilot, the one black and two white members of the group don't do much singing.

Compiling an end-of-the-year list always makes me a little nervous. I worry I'll leave off an artist whose work was tight, whose effort deserves a mention. But for some reason (chiefly space limitations), I can't get everyone in. This year wasn't so hard, though. When thinking about the "best" CDs of the year, sales and critical buzz don't matter much to me. "Best" means that the artist stepped his game up and, in the process, set a higher standard within his genre. It's music that either added something fresh to current trends or bucked them altogether with a vibrant and memorable approach.

Dr. Bruce L. Rollman was single when he began studying divorce rates among physicians, but married by the time he concluded the research."So I was anxiously following this issue," says Rollman, lead author of "Medical Specialty and the Incidence of Divorce," published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.He -- and his wife -- can be reassured by the findings: Internists such as Rollman have among the lowest rates of divorce in the profession. Almost as low (the difference is not statistically significant, Rollman quickly notes)