from "Live at Jazz Standard Volume One"
by Russell Malone
MAXJAZZ
written March 23, 2007
A front-page story in the WSJ reports that Keith Kakugawa, an old high school buddy of Barack Obama, made a surprise (if not unwelcome) phone call to the presidential hopeful last week -- almost thirty years after they had parted ways from Honolulu High School … and within a week of Kakugawa being released from prison. While Obama went on to college and political stardom, Kakugawa pursued an alternative career path that landed him in prison three times in connection with cocaine possession. Kakugawa apparently dialed-up Obama from a pay phone in L.A. to catch up and perhaps receive a helping hand.
The WSJ duly notes that Kakugawa is now homeless and living out of a “battered, dulled-silver 1989 Mazda 626, with nearly 156,000 miles on the odometer.” What’s worse is that Kakugawa doesn’t even get to claim sole residency in the car – he’s sharing it with another dude (a hip-hop rapper dubbed “Bobby Bang”). Wow! That’s some insightful, detail-rich factual reporting. I can’t help but think that voters now know more about the crappy car that Kakugawa is sadly calling home than it does about Kakugawa himself. A cover page story this is not. I wish Kakugawa well and hope he gets his life back on track, but evoking that sentiment is certainly not the point of the WSJ story. I’m not sure what the WSJ had in mind when it decided to run this as a page one story. Is this campaign fodder? Am I missing something here? I wag my finger in shame at WSJ. Next time, please publish a story that will help me to better understand the candidates in the upcoming election - distant as it is.
