Race Card

With a heavy heart and enormous emotions, Bob DeFazio brought his team of advisors together in the boardroom of Irwindale Speedway. In the background, with the sound muted but horrifying and unthinkable images still flashing across the screen, the TV set played on. It was 9 a.m., Sept. 12, 2001. Almost exactly 24 hours earlier, airplanes had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City and changed the world forever. DeFazio was then, and still is, the general manager of the suburban racetrack that runs various stock car races on Saturday nights from late March through Thanksgiving.

The Perry factor Re "A new dynamic joins GOP race," Aug. 13, and "Perry steals Bachmann's thunder," Aug. 14 A candidate playing the race card is viewed as smarmy. I can only hope that the same rejection comes to politicians playing the God card. The GOP has a whole field of candidates playing the God card because the party itself has been redefined by a fundamentalist Christian base whose adherents believe they are called by God to force their beliefs on others.

Recently I've heard public figures make all kinds of excuses, either to get an advantage or to absolve their behavior. There's the race card, the gender card, the "I was bullied so I have to be a bully" card, the "I am an alcoholic so I didn't know what I was doing" card, the "I thought I was taking vitamins" card, the "I love my country so much and I worked so hard for it that I had an affair" card and many others. I laughed at all those people and their pathetic excuses — until I found myself playing the senior card.

Steady rain and poor track conditions caused Santa Anita to cancel its race card for Saturday, when five stakes events were supposed to have been held. Three of the stakes -- the Las Virgenes, the Robert Lewis and the Strub -- have been rescheduled for next Saturday. Poor weather conditions also caused cancellations at several tracks around the country. It's the fourth time during the current meeting that weather and track conditions have forced Santa Anita to cancel races. "We had a lot of rain, and the thing doesn't drain as it's supposed to," track spokesman Mike Willman said.

Bonus babies Re "Bank bonuses spark talk of a levy," Jan. 12 Maybe all the bonuses that the federally bailed-out bankers, stockbrokers and AIG executives received should be turned over to organizations trying to build a new Haiti. Robert Remes Dana Point Though there may be some element of unfairness in taxing big banks that have already returned the federal money they received (with interest), given all the facts and circumstances, I'm not really troubled.

There is so much to enjoy about the Democrats' Harry Reid problem, and yet I find the whole spectacle horribly depressing. First, let's recap the bright side. The addlepated and vindictive Senate majority leader deserves the grief he's getting for saying -- according to the new book, "Game Change" -- that Barack Obama would make a promising Democratic presidential contender because he's "light-skinned" and can speak "Negro dialect" only when he wants to. Just last month, Reid insinuated that fellow senators standing in the way of "Obamacare" were carrying on the tradition of the racists who stood in the way of civil rights in the 1960s.

Toyota Speedway at Irwindale and other Southern California short tracks that host racing mostly on Saturday nights are gearing up for the 2009 racing season. The Irwindale facility, considered one of the best short tracks in the nation, is a half-mile paved oval that features late-model stock cars. Trucks and smaller cars called bandoleros and legends also compete at Toyota Speedway, which also hosts demolition derbies and figure-eight races.

What does it say about racial politics in America that two days after the first African American president is inaugurated, Robert Downey Jr. is nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for essentially playing a part in blackface? Of course, the role in "Tropic Thunder" is comedic, a politically incorrect spoof on Method acting run amok. Downey plays an Australian actor so committed to the truth that he has his skin medically darkened so he can portray an African American commando.

Re "Misplaying the race card," Opinion, Sept. 23 I am incredulous. Jonah Goldberg wants to blame the Democrats for playing the race card. It was the Nixon administration that devised the GOP's Southern strategy to appeal to Southern whites upset about civil rights gains by blacks. GOP members have opposed the Martin Luther King holiday, affirmative action and sanctions against apartheid in South Africa. Their icons have included Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and the Confederate flag.

RESEARCHERS have identified a new culprit, food marketers, to help explain why overweight and obesity rates are higher among African Americans (68.9%) than among whites (59.5%), according to statistics reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In a review of 22 studies published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health, they found that advertisers specifically target African Americans with unhealthy food messages. In television and print, high-fat, high-calorie foods are more heavily promoted to African Americans.