Behind every news exposé, be it sporty (Barry Bonds and steroids), vengeful (outing CIA operative Valerie Plame), or just plain titillating (those tidbits about Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress), there is almost always a confidential source. Without confidential sources (and the reporters who love them), Watergate would simply refer to an upscale Washington hotel and C.J. … Read more
In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, farm animals overthrew the evil Mr. Jones and created a utopia where “all animals are equal.” However, the pigs, who led the uprising, gradually began acting more like the hated Jones. By the book’s end, the pigs had morphed into porcine Mr. Joneses and the farm into a place where … Read more
On November 2, 2004, perennial candidate Kevin Kolosky will achieve something that few, if any Minnesota lawyers ever have: He will have run for judge nearly as many times as he has argued before a jury. Starting in 1994, literally weeks after passing the bar exam, Kolosky started campaigning, opposing whatever hapless soul he believes … Read more
Remember Brian Herron? Just three summers ago, the former Minneapolis City Council member was the poster boy for political graft after the FBI videotaped him accepting a $10,000 bribe. This very public crash-and-burn earned him a year in prison and spawned an investigation of the entire Minneapolis City Council. Political wags claim that Sharon Sayles-Belton … Read more
Thirty columns ago, in the very first issue of The Rake — March 2002 — I wrote that “being a real brother is not as important as being a real man. Real men think for themselves and live with the consequences of their decisions.” I admit that I took some defiant pride in the not-so-veiled … Read more
This past May, my mother told me that my father, Clinton Collins, Sr., was probably going to be posthumously inducted into his high school hall of fame. Right about that same time, actor Bill Cosby began catching hell from certain so-called African-American leaders and their liberal apologists because he said publicly what most black people … Read more
Until a month ago, I did not think that I lived in “the ghetto.” North Minneapolis, the inner city, and even, on occasion, the ’hood—but not the ghetto. However, that was before a string of troubling incidents occurred in my neighborhood—and before I got some surprising reactions to them from some of my South Minneapolis … Read more
Assigning guilt by association is as American as motherhood, apple pie, and Chevrolet. The thinking goes something like this—if X is a bad person, and you are somehow tied to X, then you must be a bad person, too. This becomes especially true if those ties are familial, and person X is accused of a … Read more
My mother taught me that little ditty in 1968, when I was nine years old. We had just become the first black family within a country mile of our new home in the then lily-white southeast Denver. I was no stranger to the word “nigger.” I heard it often from the lips of black people. … Read more
Remember when Sammy Davis, Jr., belted out, “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” in the theme from Baretta? The message was that you should be willing to pay the price if you’re willing break the law. But the implication was that punishment for the crime had a clear beginning and end. … Read more