What?  No, not this one.  Not that it isn’t interesting, or that I have anything really to add to it except that I read it, disagreed with its conclusion, and yet retained my respect for Byron York as a columnist and conservative.  We try to leave obsessive own-goal feuding to regional bloggers: like, say, South Carolina’s.  If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been doing this sort of thing long enough to know that somebody would ask, I wouldn’t have noted it; but somebody would, so I might as well save us all valuable time.

Anyway, the interesting column that I wanted to bring up was this one:

President Obama’s home is in the same Chicago neighborhood as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.  On Saturday night, the overlapping of Obama’s and Farrakhan’s worlds made for a strange, and sometimes testy, encounter between the Secret Service, the press corps covering the president, and the paramilitary security force, the Fruit of Islam, surrounding Farrakhan.

The really short version is that a bus full of reporters covering the President’s attendance of a friend’s barbecue – remind me again why people want the job of chief of state? – were within what turned out to be the security perimeter of Louis Farrakhan’s house.  Who is apparently paranoid all to heck and gone, because more and more of his personal security force kept showing up, despite the repeated reassurances of the US Secret Service that, no, really, this has nothing to do with Louis Farrakhan.  Said situation was eventually resolved when somebody called somebody who called Farrakhan, thus straightening everything out.  No real confrontations, but slightly surreal for the reporters.  Possibly disquieting for them, but it’s hard to tell at third hand.

Byron focused mostly on the fact that this… intersection of the President’s and Farrakhan’s security forces is likely going to be repeated in the future, given the (honestly, accidental*) proximity of the two men’s Chicago residences.  Personally, I’m more interested in why Farrakhan feels that he needs a personal security force – at least a dozen, from one count.  And whether Farrakhan has ever considered that if he really does need a security force, then maybe he’s indulging in behaviors that he shouldn’t…

Yes, yes, I know: rampaging optimist, here.

Moe Lane

*This is 2010, people.  People don’t need to live near people in order to be in regular contact with each other… which also means that somebody is not necessarily in contact with somebody else just because he or she lives nearby.  And people have to live somewhere.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.