Remembering Dean Smith

Breaking news this morning that Dean Smith passed last evening. Amid all the deserving accolades as a great basketball coach, more moving are the accolades for being a great man of principle and integrity. His former players speak of his role as mentor, father figure, someone who stayed involved in their lives long after their careers at UNC. And, his commitment to social justice.  This from the AP story:

Smith's church served as a base for his advocacy. He joined the Baptist congregation soon after arriving in Chapel Hill, helping build it from a 60-person gathering on campus to a full church with 600 parishioners. It was booted from the Southern Baptist Convention and the North Carolina Baptist State Convention in 1992 for licensing a gay man to minister.

"He was willing to take controversial stands on a number of things as a member of our church — being against the death penalty, affirming gays and lesbians, protesting nuclear proliferation," said Robert Seymour, the former pastor at Binkley Baptist Church. "He was one who has been willing to speak out on issues that many might hesitate to take a stand on."

I remember the day in the 1980s when David C and I went to Chapel Hill to meet him. He had agreed to tape a radio spot for the nuclear weapons freeze, playing off his strategy of a four-corners freeze offense in basketball. After the taping he graciously gave us a tour of the then-new Smith Center arena.

In an era where principle and integrity seem to be lost, it is worth pausing to remember a man who exemplified both. 

The heart of Pope Francis' mission

Two recent Washington Post op-ed columns on Pope Francis “apostolic exhortation,” The Joy of the Gospel, focus on his denunciation of unjust economic systems.

Eugene Robinson concludes that

The basic positions Francis takes on economic and social justice are not new; all recent popes have expressed a similar critique of modern capitalist society … But no recent pope has been so forceful in denouncing the “idolatry of money” and making the inexorable rise of inequality one of the church’s central concerns.

And E.J. Dionne seconds that judgement

He’s not the first pope to denounce our unjust economic system. … The difference is that a concern for the poor and a condemnation of economic injustice are at the very heart of Francis’s mission. 

The reaction to Michael Weiner's passing

Adam Kilgore ‏@AdamKilgoreWP1h

Michael Weiner was the rare man who reached the top of his world with pure intelligence, competence, integrity. He needed no politics.

Ian Desmond ‏@IanDesmond201h

Michael Weiner, we will miss you. Thoughts and prayers to his family, friends, and associates. #Love

Ken Rosenthal ‏@Ken_Rosenthal1h

I tweet links all the time, but this time I ask you to actually read. Michael was that special. http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/michael-weiner-players-association-head-dead-at-51-remarkably-courageous-kind-112113 …

Mark Zuckerman ‏@ZuckermanCSN14m

Can't imagine anyone dealing with illness with more grace than Michael Weiner did. A remarkable man, mourned by all of baseball tonight.

Aaron Boone ‏@AaronBoone_ESPN2h

Baseball and the world lost a good man today. R.I.P. Michael Weiner

 Retweeted by adam dunn

Torii Hunter ‏@toriihunter482h

Thoughts and prayers go out to Micheal Weiner and his family. He was one of the most intelligent men I've ever known. #RIP #trueleader

andrew mccutchen ‏@TheCUTCH222h

Michael Weiner worked even thru his sickness. He didn't look at it as an excuse to quit. He never gave up on us even when at his worst...

andrew mccutchen ‏@TheCUTCH222h

... you truly will be missed. Prayers go out to his friends and family. An amazing person to us all

Jake Peavy ‏@JakePeavy_442h

Devastated on hearing the news of Michael Weiner's passing. A man of integrity & humility...Will be missed greatly but always remembered!

Albert Pujols ‏@PujolsFive2h

Sending prayers to Michael Weiner's family tonight. Words can't describe the kind of man he was. I will miss you, my friend.

Max Scherzer ‏@Max_Scherzer2h

My deepest condolences to the Weiner family tonight...He had a special and unique way to connect to everybody that never will be forgotten.

Michael Weiner

All of baseball mourns the passing of Player's Association head Michael  Weiner. "You hear these clichés all the time," said Dodgers pitcher Chris Capuano. "People say, 'This person is one of a kind,' or, 'They're extraordinary.' But to meet someone with that kind of prodigious intellect and mind who also has a warm heart and is a normal, down-to-earth person and so kind -- there aren't a lot of those people out there."

Too Many Books

Two books that caught my eye this week. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote The Bully Pulpit, on the relationship between Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and their joint relationship with the press. Reviewer Bill Keller writes:

If you find the grubby spectacle of today’s Washington cause for shame and despair — and, really, how could you not? — then I suggest you turn off the TV and board Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest time machine. Let her transport you back to the turn of the 20th century, to a time when this country had politicians of stature and conscience, when the public believed that government could right great wrongs, when, before truncated attention spans, a 50,000-word exposé of corruption could sell out magazines and galvanize a reluctant Congress. The villains seemed bigger, too, or at least more brazen — industrial barons and political bosses who monopolized entire industries, strangled entire cities.

 And, in light of today’s strained relationship with Islam, a book on Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders. Reviewer Kirk Davis Swinehart writes that:

In “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an,” her fascinating if somewhat meandering new book, Denise A. Spellberg traces the partial origins of American religious toleration to a single day in 1765 when Jefferson, then studying law at the College of William and Mary, acquired an English translation of Islam’s sacred text. He never claimed that the Quran shaped his political orientation. Yet Spellberg, an associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin, makes a persuasive case for its centrality. To oversimplify: What began as an academic interest in Islamic law and religion yielded a fascination with Islamic culture, which disposed him to include Muslims in his expansive vision of American citizenship. 

In both books, it seems there are lessons that would do us well today. 

The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

Thomas Friedman in today’s New York Times on a new book by Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit titled My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. The book, he writes, has a way of thinking about Israel:

“that to understand Israel today requires keeping several truths in tension in your head at the same time.

 “First, that Israel, at its best, is one of the most amazing political experiments in modern history, so much better than its critics will ever acknowledge. Second, Israel at its worst, is devouring Palestinian farms and homes in the West Bank in ways that are ugly, brutal, selfish and deceitful, so much worse than its supporters will ever admit. Third, Israel lives in a dangerous region — surrounded by people who hate it not only for what it does but for what it is, a successful Jewish state — but its actions matter, too. It can ameliorate or exacerbate Arab  

Strikes me as being right on the mark. 

Too Many Books

There are too many books being published that I would love to read, but just don’t have the time. So, I rely on reading book reviews a way of keeping in touch with what’s being written. My favorite part of the Sunday New York Times is the Book Review. I also keep an eye on the Washington Post and a few others. Here are my picks from this week’s books.

Marie Colvin was a journalist who covered armed conflict. Last year she was killed by a rocket attack in Syria. Two books, On the Front Line, a collection of her reporting, and Under The Wire, an account of her final weeks. The reviewer wrote that these books “pay homage to this formidable woman, who tested the limits of an extreme profession.” As Colvin once wrote: “Simply: there’s no way to cover war properly without risk. Covering a war means going into places torn by chaos, destruction, death and pain, and trying to bear witness to that.”

As one who has always been fascinated by the law, the careers of two prominent lawyers of our time caught my eye. Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law is an autobiography by Alan Dershowitz, whose resume of “legal issues and controversies … is breathtaking.” And appeals court judge Richard A. Posner offers his Reflections on Judging after a distinguished 30 year career. The reviewer notes that Posner is one of those judges who, while not on the Supreme Court, has earned “by dint of relentless merit … legal authority akin to that wielded by the Nine.”

Finally, The Brothers looks at the careers of Allen and John Foster Dulles, and concludes that  “Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. “The Brothers” is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of “inconvenient” regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world.”