If Rush Limbaugh were a Democrat and a university president, he'd be John Silber

Former BU president and Democratic Gubernatorial nominee John Silber just passed.

I do extend my sympathies to his family.

It is often said that one should not speak ill of the dead. In this particular case, however, I have been speaking ill of the deceased since the early 1990s. I see no reason to stop now.

As a public figure and academic leader, John Silber was a loathsome philistine. William Weld remains the only Republican I've ever voted for, and that is because Silber was such a racist bastard I couldn't bring myself to give him any more power than he already had.

And by the way, I personally -- privately -- heard damning judgments of the man as a college president from both Howard Zinn and philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.

If you manage to piss off BOTH of those guys, you probably need to check yourself.

There is a crack, in everything -- Happy Birthday, Leonard Cohen!

Happy 78th birthday to Leonard Cohen.

For reasons I can't quite explain, Cohen seems to have become some sort of sensei for me at this point in my life.  Did you ever read an author, listen to a musician, or meet a person that you were suddenly -- blindingly -- convinced had something essential to teach you?

Maybe its because I'm a slowly aging Jew enticed by Buddhism, who aches in the places he used to play, like Cohen himself.

Maybe its because I, like Cohen, revel in the reality that I am a cracked vessel -- because that, as he says, is how the light gets in.

Don't know.  I do know that I'd love to spend an evening of conversation with the man, over a bottle of peaty scotch.

I will probably have to settle for seeing him in concert in Boston in December.