Boy, I'm glad Andrew Sullivan is back blogging regularly. His peculiar politics and views on U.S. culture always perk my interest. Anyway, his article on Jacko is a must-read (yeah, who would have thought?)

Michael Jackson has more support among Japanese teenagers than American blacks - and for understandable reasons. He looks more like a character from a Japanese anime cartoon than anything resembling a black American male. He is not Tiger Woods, declaring himself post-racial. He is far more retrograde and repulsive figure: a person who has become a reverse minstrel, a black man finally reincarnated through surgery as a white androgynous waif. He is therefore a racist in the most profound sense - and one that neither blacks nor whites want to claim.

Sullivan's notes on Tony Blair's mini-resurrgence (well, maybe *relative* ressurgence is more like it) are of note, as well.

The honeymoon is over. Novak is, of course, over the top, but the truth is that Blair is deadly serious about aid to Africa and resuscitating Kyoto. He's working on Putin, already has Europe in his pocket on this one, and is shoring up his standing at home by taking on the French on the EU rebate. I wonder if the president knows what's coming at Gleneagles.

Uh, he doesn't.

I'd also like to point out that you know there's a leadership vaccuum in Europe when a guy who was barely re-elected and has no discernible mandate among the *political middle* of his own country remains the preeminate politician for an entire continent. Methinks the books written on Blair in 30 years time will be very interesting.