Analysis by Daniel Starling

A national controversy broke out last week in Kansas City, striking at the heart of a philosophical divide over politics, race and the role of government here, and throughout the United States.

Over the last couple of years, the KC Metro has been bruised and battered by a number of ethnic and political quarrels that rival those bloody times of the 1850’s and 1860’s--sans the rape and pillage part.

Rampant murderous violence on the East Side, discriminatory dress codes enforcement at publicly financed Power and Light, the controversial firing of a Black City manager, the rise of nationalism at anti-immigration rallies targeting Hispanics, a local Black Congressman is spat upon the steps of the Capitol during debates over health reform and an academic turned Tea Party candidate for Secretary of State in Kansas pens one of the most controversial state-rights laws in Arizona.

These divisions along political, ethnic and religious lines are percolating above the coffee pot rim of politics pitting a new conservative movement known as the Tea Party against old Civil Right's stalwarts like the NAACP, thus stoking the fire of this always raucous debate.

Over the past months I followed the Tea Party fairly closing, attending a couple of rallies here in the Metro area, mostly out of curiosity on how this nascent outsider political movement would fair during this election cycle.

So I was also quite impressed to see the NAACP come to Kansas City for their 101st national convention and take on what they called “racist elements” in the predominately white, middle-class Republican political group that has been gaining popularity in the area.

by Steve Shapiro

A famous print ad campaign that began in the late Sixties for the fur company Blackgama featured superstars such as Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, and Judy Garland otherwise naked but for a draped fur around them, with the tag “What becomes a legend most?”  The idea that a Blackgama mink would endure, like its celebrity endorsers, runs against the primeval notion of fashion as here today, gone tomorrow.

The arts harbor a similar paradox: the need as Ezra Pound declaimed to “make it new,” like the demand that the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev gave to his Ballets Russes before each performance—“Étonne-moi!” (“Astonish me!”)—runs counter to the ingrained sense of art as promoting surprise, while equally creating work that will be viewed as a commodity. Any real artist must be a businessman, too.

Architecture looks like art, and quacks like art: but is it art? Among the arts, only architecture has a standing requirement that it first be utilitarian. The Taj Mahal, Chartres, Versailles, Mount Vernon, Jefferson’s Monticello, even the Flatiron Building in New York: each building, in its own way, is a work of art; but first all of them pass muster as structures to house people, whether for secular or religious reasons.

by Steve Shapiro

It is often said that sports—at least, certain sports, such as baseball, tennis, gymnastics, and to writers like Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates, boxing—are the closest thing to art. An athlete is like a ballet dancer, if one ever saw Ricky Henderson steal a base by graceful, lithe steps; an athlete must have the prowess of an opera singer, able to use his body to perform; a true athlete knows his sport in an almost aesthetic sense, the way that the impeccable Arthur Ashe did (and today’s self-interested celebrity tennis stars do not). 

Baseball has been in the news extra this month: the passing of George Steinbrenner, the volatile owner of the New York Yankees, was coincidental with the publication of a new biography on another sports impresario, the old Kansas City A’s owner, Charlie O. Finley; and the release of a set of stamps which focus on the Negro League Baseball stars was celebrated at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, at 1616 E18th Street.

The outpouring of attention given to both the players and the owners, beyond the sports pages, is evidence of the depth to which baseball has fixed itself in the national imagination.

by Karen Land

I am a “dabbler” in endurance sports. But not until 3 months ago when my mother was diagnosed with Uterine Carcinosarcoma, did I really begin to understand the true meaning of endurance.

When I was a little girl, Mom and I often watched all of the big marathons - Boston, New York City, Olympic - on television. From the starting line to the finish, we marveled at the runners, especially the women, who could cover such distances with amazing speed and focus and desire. Track and Field sprints didn’t interest us - it was the people who go FAR who captivated and excited us. “How can they do that?” we’d say to each other, inspired by such endurance.

By Tim Herbers

According to some sources the Chiefs are headed for another long season of embarrassing losses, while others claim Kansas City is on the verge of breaking into the middle group of teams in the league.

With training camp starting in a couple of weeks, the truth is that no one knows exactly what the season holds, not even Scott Pioli or Todd Haley.

Even so, I believe there are four major factors that will have an enormous impact on Chiefs win total this year.

By Daniel Starling

President Barack Obama visited town yesterday lauding local green energy stimulus programs with a visit to Kansas City-based Smith Electric Vehicles defending his push for green jobs and the Federal Stimulus package used to finance it.

President Obama praised the creation of 50 new clean energy assembly line jobs at the electric delivery van manufacturer located at the former site of the TWA overhaul base near KCI airport.

The company, which produces the Smith Newton, was the recipient of a $32 million federal grant via the controversial multi-billion dollar Federal Stimulus package.

The President toured the facility, met with the company’s C.E.O. Bryan Hansel and the workers whose jobs are owed in part to the investment of federal dollars into the start-up company’s future.

On hand to greet the President were Congressmen Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo), Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) and Senator Claire McCaskill, who the President described as “a friend and tireless defender of the people of Missouri.”

“The reason that I here today is that you are doing more than building electric vehicles,” said President Obama. “You are helping us fight our way through a vicious recession and building the economy of America’s future.”

by Cleon Rickel

It’s Water 101. Class will be in session and even if you don’t show up for class, it’s still not one you want to flunk.

Openings are still available for this year’s three-day Marais des Cygnes Basin Leadership Institute starting July 29th, according to class coordinator Lesley Rigney. Although the classes will be conducted within a 17-county area in Missouri and Kansas in the Marais des Cygnes-Osage River watershed, the classes are open to anyone and draw people from Kansas City, outside of the river basin.

That’s because the classes offer lessons about water quality that apply to the entire region, she said. Besides, water doesn’t stop at the county or state line, she said.

What runs into rivers and streams is a particularly acute question for cities and water districts in the Kansas City region.