No, it doesn't mean someone from Manchester

What is Bush's overall ethical world view? He is a conservative, yes, but also a blind, deceitful ideologue about Iraq. He speaks of duty, but makes consequential calculations when it suits. He demonizes "evildoers" in the name of Christian belief, but is open to negotiation on the sacredness of life and the value of individual freedom. Indeed, Bush often trumpets his Christianity, but he really resembles the Manicheans, the early-church heretics condemned by Saint Augustine because their good-versus-evil world view undermines personal responsibility.

From George W. Bush: a muddy morality, a review of The President of Good and Evil: The Morality of George W. Bush by Peter Singer.

Management does not unconditionally endorse the views of Saint Augustine, by the way. With the sorts of rhetoric that gets flung about these days, I half-expect some Bush supporter to attack me for some damn fool thing Augie wrote back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

And that's if it's one of the Bush supporters who believes in dinosaurs, and not that God was just fucking with us burying fossils here and there.

Not doing so good on my conversion to conservatism, as you can see. For a start, I read Angela Davis: An Autobiography back in me formative years.

From a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century, Angela Davis describes in full the story of her life: from Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School to the U.S. Communist Party; from her political activity in a New York high school to the Soledad Brothers; from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

In spite of voluminous print devoted to Angela Davis, a curious privacy has always surrounded her--a privacy still intact. Until this publication, no one had managed to provide us with the whole story: What was her childhood really like? How deep were the influences of a Southern and a European education? What precipitated her into political activism? What was her relationship with the Soledad Brothers? How did she elude the FBI? Where did she go? What did she do? Who helped her?

This book tells not only what happened, but more important, how she felt about the events, the people, and herself.

A powerful and commanding story told with warmth, brilliance, humor and conviction. Of the turbulent sixties, Angela Davis is the last and, perhaps, the only triumphant figure.

So when someone casually dismisses her as a "moonbat character," oddly, it doesn't sit well.

However, I'm confident Michele has perfectly valid reasons for not caring for Angela Davis.

I'm resisting -- not very well, had to delete a sentence to that effect -- the urge to toss some snarky little accusation of bigotry her way. Because, you know, starting off by putting someone on the defensive goes such a long way towards creating an environment conducive to adult conversation.

Let's try this the grown-folks way. Michele, have you read Angela's autobiography, or another of her books, or heard her speak? Or did you just select her name at random from the author list at Seven Stories Press?