Word: johnson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nice to think that his case was exceptional. But it is the burden of Caryl Phillips' latest searching meditation on outsiders in England that Turpin's story is much too typical. Beside him, in the triptych that makes up Foreigners: Three English Lives, is the story of Samuel Johnson's Jamaican servant, Francis Barber, who ended up in penury, though Phillips' narrator remembers him as "at one time, probably the foremost negro in England." Then there's the story of David Oluwale, a Nigerian who stowed away as a teenager to come to England in 1949, dreaming of becoming...
...aliens. Yet where others complain about history, Phillips sets about remaking it, in more inclusive terms. As befits his theme, this new book is a hybrid, a mix of history, fiction and first-person reportage, its opening section delivered in the 18th century voice of a friend of Johnson's, the closing one in a collection of voices (white, West Indian, African), recalling the quiet, solitary-seeming Oluwale as he walked around the streets of Leeds. Yet all the pieces are linked by a sense of deep loneliness and the bitterest ironies. Barber, like Oluwale, is found in an infirmary...
...Kitts himself, though brought to Leeds as a boy, and now living in New York, Phillips has seen the struggle from both sides. What gives his accounts their particular sting is that even good intentions seem of no avail. Barber, for example, was treated with unwavering kindness by Johnson, who had him educated, saw him almost as a son and worried about what would happen to him after his own death. The Barber story is narrated by a self-styled philanthropist who wishes that "all ebony personages" be resettled in Africa or the West Indies - but only because the English...
...wish I could say I was surprised. In truth, Pats fans already knew that Belichick doesn't play by Marquis of Queensberry rules. This February former linebacker Ted Johnson alleged that Belichick made him practice even after he suffered a concussion and that today he has brain damage so severe that he can barely get out of bed. But in Boston those earlier revelations - like these new ones - haven't hurt Belichick's popularity a bit. And there's only one thing that could: losing...
...While Coburn and DeMint might look at Bush, who has grown the government quicker than any President since Lydon Johnson, as a Johnny Come Lately, they welcome his pledges to veto this year's spending bills if the Democrats add a penny more than what he asked for in his budget. In fact, they would like to see more of Bush on this issue. "He should take on Congress," Coburn said. "There isn't oversight done on the vast majority of spending out there...