No Mailbag Tonight Because......

Sometimes I tell viewers that the 'Mailbag' is empty. I'm almost always lying.

Its rarely a matter of no email at all. Its usually more 'can I actually use any of this stuff on the air?'

Sometimes it will look like McGinty's Mailbag is burting at the seams, when all I really have is 14 press releases and an urgent notice that I have won the Bulgarian Lottery Sweepstakes.

Other times, we have emails from viewers, but they're too nonsensical, too complex or just too dang mean to use. Here's one that came in right after that 14 year old kid was shot by the cops after he allegedly fired at them from the seat of a stolen mini-bike.

Sorry, its a sad story to begin with anytime you have a 14 year old carrying a gun. Blame should be place where it belongs, with the parents. Maybe had they spent more time with there son they could have kept him off a stolen bike and taught him why he shouldn't carry a pistol. Yes, it sad but at the rate he was going maybe this will save some innocent victim he would have encountered between the age of 14 and 21. Our streets are a little safer without him.

Now, c'mon. Our streets are a little safer without him? Perhaps true, but too insensitive after a kid has just been shot down. Especially since the circumstances of the shooting were and are still in dispute. Or how about this gem?

Reported today that hormone thearpy used to treat women for breast cancer was dramatically less effective for black women than for white women; resulting in a higher mortality rate for black women.
Those of us in the know fully understand that the cracker is behind this racist disparity. Perhaps the honkey has harnessed the molecule, or possibly cracker MD's are substituting a placebo. Regardless, it's racism on the part of crackers; and therefore, hormone thearpy should be banned.........

This guy writes me all the time, and I actually like what he's trying do here. (You do get it, don't you?) But I worry the satire might be lost on some folks, who may not be ready to hear words like 'cracker' tossed around. I could be wrong.

But I'm not wrong about this guy...whose writing about the Jena 6:

A hate crime if there ever has been. That is the reason network news is burying this. Black people are f***ed up on race. They can't get past their hate. I'm sure as hell am going to help them though from now on....

That kind offer from somone calling himself "Duke Lacrosse." Hoo Boy!

So you see what I'm up against here. Give me email I can use!!! Mailbag@wusa9.com

No Home Training

"I absolutely was offended."





That's what my Iranian-American friend said about the reception Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got at the hands of Lee Botinger, the president of Columbia University.


Bollinger called Ahmadinijad a "cruel and petty dictator"-which is almost certainly true, but in this context just looked like a capitulation to all the critics who made it plain they didn't think the Iranian leader should have been invited in the first place.


"You don't invite somebody and then insult him



right to his face," she said.

And she was right. It was just plain rude and I was embarrassed.
Look, Bollinger is obviously a big defender of freedom-of-expression or he wouldn't have invited Ahmadinejad in the first place. All he had to say was something like: "We honor our own beliefs by having you here, and in no way do we endorse yours."


Fair enough. But Bollinger's move was just a cheap shot at a man who came to talk in front of an audience he already knew was very unfriendly.

Not that the audience didn't have good reason. The man is a Holocaust denier, for Godsakes, and has said before he wants Israel wiped off the map. His anti-semitism and autocratic rule deserve no defense. But from where I sit, it is not about his values--its about ours.
Now let me be clear, my friend is no fan of the Iranian leader either. First of all she says he is far too homely to be leader of a country with so many good looking people, but mostly she says he is "crazy."
But apparently not as looney as he sounded to Americans when he appeared to say they don't have gay people in Iran. You see, my friend speaks Farsi, and she says the translator got it wrong. He didn't say Iran has no gay people.
She says what he was trying to convey is there is no gay 'culture' as we have here. No official recognition, no 'gay' rights, no openly gay people in congress...that sort of thing.
I was actually relieved to hear that. Ahmadinejad may be a kook by our standards. But a kook completely out of touch with reality would be immeasurably worse.

Agggghhhhh!!! Ahhhhgggggggggggg!!!!!

Back when I was about 13 years old, if the Redskins lost I'd be in a funk for much of the week.

Frankly, I'd forgotten what it felt like to be so sincerely
and fiercely disapointed after a major 'Skins defeat. Probably because my expectations had been lowered by years of pitifulness and stinkiness. But we were 2 and oh. And like that old girlfriend you know is no good for you, my heart got invested in the team and the new quarterback..and then THEY GO AND LOSE

LIKE THAT!!! AHGGGGGGG!!!

Well , that pretty much sums up my feelings this Sunday evening. Can you believe it?
Its just friggin' football. And now I'm in a really bad mood. Redskins. Goshdarnit.

Sympathy for the Devil

Hey! Did you just feel that? Ouch!! There it goes again.

Something bizarre and totally unexpected has been pricking at me for the last day or two and I just figured out what it is: Its the tiniest bit of pity for OJ.

I am actually starting to feel sorry for the guy. I know, I know...he got away with killing two people and ought to be in jail now. But the sight of the chubby now 60-year-old former pro baller being dragged around in handcuffs in this latest bit of silliness is just too pathetic to feel anything but sad.

60 years old and all he's been through....and still not an ounce of good sense!!

The Nnamdi Factor

There is this scene in the movie "Jerry Maguire" when a bunch of kids run up to Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character asking for an autograph.
At first he's happy to be recognized but a few seconds later you see kids scattering and hear Gooding's voice screaming, "I am not Hootie!!"

I can feel his pain. For reasons I cannot truly explain, there is a fairly sizable cohort of people out there who think I am long time DC broadcaster Kojo Nnamdi. I meet them regularly out in public--Its 'Hey, Kojo.' or 'Love your radio show, Kojo.' or the always popular but slightly uncertain 'Aren't you Kojo?'
Read my lips: I. Am. Not. Kojo. NOT KOJO. Look at Kojo. He's got a full head of hair and a beard, for Godsakes!!!
Now before you accuse me of hatin' on Kojo, let me say Kojo Nnamdi is a good friend of mine. In fact, he taught me much of what I know about doing interviews when I worked with him back in the 80s at WHUR. And now he's got my old talk show gig on WAMU. I wouldn't mind being Kojo. But like they said in the film "The Highlander," 'there can only be one.'

Here's an old picture of me with (a little) hair and a beard. Perhaps this is more Kojo-like. I don't know.
I'd like to be able say this is some sort of racial phenomenom...as in all Black people look alike to others. Problem is, its only Black people who seem to think Kojo and I were seperated at birth. Or at least they are the only ones who say so.

So I am left with questions: What is it about me and Kojo that seems so inextricably linked in the minds of so many? Do we really look that much alike to people? and perhaps most importantly --Do people come up to Kojo and say "Hey Derek, when ya coming back to radio?"

For Want of a 9 volt...

If you were watching last night's 5pm news, you saw something you almost certainly had never seen before.

In the middle of his forecast, meteorologist Topper Shutt stopped, looked down at a device in his palm and told the TV audience to "hold that thought" and then just walked out of the picture.

What the heck was that?!

At the time, Jennifer and I didn't have a clue. But we quickly found out. You know all those graphics with temperatures and clouds and radar you see moving around behind the weather guy aren't really there at all. Here's what you see.

But the screen itself actually looks like this:

The graphics are actually being projected there from a computer which is in turn being controlled via a small remote Topper carries around. Yesterday, for the first time I've ever seen, the thing died in the middle of the forcast. The battery just failed. And when the evening forecast of muggy temps and possible rain refused to give way to the 7-day...Top realized he had little choice but to tell folks to chill for a few while he went to get a new 9 volt. Live TV! Who'd a figured?

Anyway, sports commander Bret Haber was watching the whole thing unfold out at Redskins Park, and 3 minutes later was hinting hilariously that perhaps he may have stolen Top's battery.

He was just kidding. I think.

Losing Effi

Marion Barry was not himself. Or at least not completely so. I've covered the ex-mayor for more years than either of us would likely care to think about, and while I can't claim to know him as a friend--I do know him like a boxer knows an old respected adversary.
I've seen him punch his way out of a corner when we reporters thought he was one tough question away from falling. I've seen him arrogant and joyful, working the crowd like the God-gifted pol he's always been. I've seen him humbled and I've seen him when I suspected he was merely feigning humility.
This was different. Effi had just died. Her seemingly endless endurance and faith finally exhausted by Luekemia. Barry, the master of making folks think what he wants them to think, looked truly forlorn and sad. And to be completely honest, I felt very sad for him.
She had been his wife for 14 years.
"I still love her," he told us.
But the reality was as DC's first lady, Effi Barry had in many ways been defined by her ability to somehow maintain her own dignity in face of the repeated public indignities imposed by her troubled husband.
Yesterday I wanted to ask Barry if he had regrets. If he had ever asked forgiveness and did she offer it? Did he ever wish he hadn't lost her?
But it wasn't the time for all of that. Its just not right to punch a man when he's already down.

PS. I am hereby pledging to do what I should have done years ago and get my bone marrow typed and matched in case I can help someone someday. You should ALL do the same.