Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004. He is the author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood. His column runs every Sunday and Wednesday.
On Sept. 11, 2001, he wrote a column on the terrorist attacks that received a huge response from readers who deluged him with more than 26,000 e-mails. It was posted on the Internet, chain-letter style. Read the column and others on the topic of September 11.
Email Leonard at lpitts@MiamiHerald.com or visit his website at www.leonardpittsjr.com
You can also chat with Leonard from 1-2 p.m. Wednesdays, or submit questions ahead of time.
Satire is tricky. It makes its point by exaggerating wildly with a straight face. In inflating a thing beyond all common sense or propriety, it seeks to render inconsistencies and hypocrisies glaringly apparent. What makes satire difficult is that sometimes, people don't realize they are being had.
Leonard Pitts Jr. won't be online today. His chat will take place as usual next week, and he will answer your questions then. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Success breeds separation. That's the thing no one tells you, the thing sometimes you don't realize, the thing that might make a child turn from his own potential. Success is like a pyramid, broad at the bottom, but narrow at the summit; the higher you go, the fewer people go with you.
MCCAIN'S SERVICE
I have no idea when reverence fled these shores. That it did, however, seems obvious. What else can you conclude when the service of military men becomes a routine object of mockery and misinformation in the name of politics? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John McCain: traitor.
OPINION | LEONARD PITTS JR.
In the 17 months that Barack Obama have been pursuing the presidency, the senator has faced a crude and shameless campaign from conservative pundits, GOP functionaries and assorted ignoramuses in the peanut gallery to prove him a secret Muslim.
TEEN PREGNANCY
So all we know for sure is that something happened in Gloucester, Mass. What that something was depends on whom you believe. Last week on its website, Time magazine quoted Gloucester High Principal Dr. Joseph Sullivan as saying that, of 17 girls who became pregnant during the school year, nearly half did so as part of a ''pact'' to have and raise their babies together. Sue Todd, president of a group that runs a day-care at the school, told Time she had heard a similar story from a social worker.
Someone is going to think this column is racist. That person -- he or she will be white -- will be unable to point to so much as a semicolon that suggests I believe in the native superiority of my, or any other, race. Rather, the accusation will be based in the fact that the column discusses race, period. It's a phenomenon I've seen many times, most recently when a friend of mine told me that a friend of hers regards me as racist because I write about race. To which I gave my standard answer: If...
MEDIA
And then somebody brought a chicken into the newsroom. A sign affixed to the bird -- a statue of a rooster in full crow -- said: ``Brought in by a Santeria priest . . . to help save our jobs. Make an offering.''
I had thought it was just me. In reading the cover story in the new issue of The Atlantic, however, I have learned that I am not alone. There are at least two of us who have forgotten how to read.
POVERTY
A few words about white trash. I've always found that term offensive, its ubiquity notwithstanding. I have a number of reasons, but the most important is that it is a gratuitous insult to the white poor. Of course, they are one of the few groups remaining one can insult with relative impunity.
