Outrage: It's all the rage in America today

OUTRAGE HAS become a defining moment in the nation's psyche, not only from the Tea Partyers, but also from a lot of other people who cannot sit still on a hot summer evening and get a therapeutic laugh from Seinfeld. ( You might already see the extent of my TV diversions.). So where to begin to make my case?

Thanks to the fact that we have an African-American president, slavery is making it back in the hot discussion of America's values. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, full of rage, lashed Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert for morphing LeBron James into a "runaway slave" - which was kind of shocking inasmuch as runaway slaves never left town as a zillionaire with expectations of starring on a NBA championship team. Gilbert, of course, had lit the fuse with a clinically isolated example of searing outrage aimed at Mr. James - who lived through the experience without a single hint of anger about his new digs.

It reached a point in that exchange of outrage that some others took umbrage that Zydrunas Ilgouskas, the Cavaliers Eiffel Tower center (and equally immobile) did not produce the same outrage from the fans when he joined his itinerant teammate in Miami. Once again, the connective tissue was outrage, which never seems to tire sports fans.

And wouldn't you know that Rep. Michele Bachmann, the loony Republican from Minnesota, again expressed her outrage that President Obama was, in her words, channeling us into a "nation of slaves." Some Republicans are outraged daily by Michael Steele, the party's national chairman. The latest outburst was produced by Steele's accusation that Afghanistan was first conceived by Obama. My only conclusion is that the GOP hawks do not want to be denied the honor of calling it their war.

The NAACP slammed the Tea Partyers with a resolution charging them with racism - a charge that was heatedly denied by the TP upper classmen who have yet to explain why there are so many racist placards at some of their outings.

Glenn Beck, who markets outrage between commercials, is doubtless at sixes and sevens now that surveys have shown that he has lost half of his audience. Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican, was outraged by the Administration's demand that BP set up a fund to pay off people stricken by the oil spill. He meekly apologized to BP, calling Obama's effort a $20 billion "shakedown."

It looks like NASA's prediction that 2010 will be the hottest on record will be realized - not all of it by global warming.