First let me put my cards on the table. I consider Jemele Hill, sports columnist for ESPN.com to be as incisive and interesting as they come. She has been a frequent and fearless guest on my radio show and is always aces on the air. That's why I'm so gobsmacked by Jemele's latest column, subtly titled, Laud the Courage in Tim Tebow's Stand.

In these past weeks, we've lost J.D. Salinger, Howard Zinn, Louis Auchincloss, Robert Parker and Kate McGarrigle, Eric Rohmer, all of whom meant a great deal to me at one point or another in my now quite long life.

Markese Bryant (aka Doo Dat), born and raised in East Oakland, knows firsthand the effects of pollution and poverty in local communities of color. Now he's a leader in the movement to build an inclusive green economy through campus organizing and community education.

It's easy to describe the readers I have in mind when I write my column in The Nation: the 185,000 Nation subscribers, who are mostly liberals, progressives and leftists of various sorts, college-educated, over thirty, up on the news. I know quite a few of these readers, and hear from them all the time. Beyond the magic subscription circle, there's the larger community of feminists, other journalists, and writers I admire, including a few dead ones in my head.