In transition

"They said 'nigger go home!'"-- Charlayne Hunter Gault, challenging on air composure.

It was just coincidence that my local affiliate aired the Dead Like Me VIP episode an odd 26 hours after Gwen passed away. What that last tweet refers to is unknown, and what twitter does with dead letter accounts such as these is curious, like Nimoy. The dowager used his COPD for a penny article and felt horrible. It was just a penny article. The man had universal recognition, and it was not as if the dowager landed a scoop to kill the fellow, or her cultural resentment had anything to do with Ifill's stricken state. 

She was not a very penetrating anchor. Personable. Charming, more weight to her thought processes within that "happy black" demeanor than Oprah, but on air she folded to easily when challenging sources. The knowledge that MacNeil/Lehrer productions would make her chief co anchor was a given, but could not shield the lowly from astonishment of such a reversal. (I would have gladly sacrificed Trudy Richardson in her place, however.) She had power, and while not uber wealthy, she had economic security, and yet could not do anything but confirm that minorities have poor health outcomes. Spastic is too old for shock, but having her resentment challenged, that has almost a youthful vigor to it. Sometimes we zig, following the crowd, truly disconcerted, even as she was mocked, mostly in silence. Gault and spastic would understand each other as enemies more readily, in the traditional sense. Uppity black liberation liberal versus angry cripple who needs to relearn some manner. Gault, however, is granted a concession. She went back to, and reports on Africa. That is proper, and spastic wants nothing to do with it, with exceptions made for Egyptians. Gwen would have simply been hurt or saddened by my hostility, though I was of course perfectly civil to her online. She would not have remembered.

Yet, as Ellen Muth's Georgia narrates in conspiratorial overtones, mourning celebrity is a unique American byproduct, especially if we're in the dark about terminal conditions. I did not know Miss Ifill got it through the uterus. Being in this age group, I get nervous. If the system failed her, assisted euthanasia seems humane to poverty constricture. This is not aggrandizing, or trying to make it seem romantic. Charlayne sees racial epithets as dehumanizing, and what she may have seen in Liberian slums may top anything I'd suffer, even if I put myself on the street to avoid taking Trudy apart with my bare hands, as she isn't worth institutional imprisonment, but Gault cannot enter into disability in real world terms. In the Congo, we're still demons, and West African superstition is alive and very well in the inner city. Dehumanizing slurs are nothing Charlayne. Dismissed. Generationally, Koppel was the best anchor on air. Not particularly kind, he pushed his sources, and we're beginning to lose that. I will push some strands from this a little further later. And if you really want to help Haitians, then repatriate them and give their half of a barely livable island back to the Dominican Republic. Think a little larger.