RoJo's World XC blog

Let's Run's Robert Johnson is in Amman covering the World Cross Country Championships.  His first-person account of the trip is some of the more interesting writing I've come across on his site.  It also reveals much about the author.

 

Brothers Robert and Weldon Johnson both went to hoity-toity eastern private colleges, but have always come across to me as people who don't think particularly deeply about anything except running.  Check out RoJo's description of his flight to Amman: "...don't call me racist as you'll see later that at least one other person had the same impression - I was struck by how white the whole plane was."

 

I suppose there are an awful lot of white people out there who fear that merely mentioning the existence of race will be perceived as tantamount to racism.  Stephen Colbert ridicules this idiocy to great effect.  But if a supposedly superior education doesn't rid you of this nonsense, surely living in New York should.

 

Anyway, further on RoJo expresses near terror at the possibility of being recognized as an American in a majority-Muslim country, being convinced he's in mortal danger of public execution.  This is before he sees the McDonalds and Starbucks everywhere.  Did he really think the IAAF would pick a war zone to run a championship?

 

I don't mean to run it down --it's all interesting and good.  First-person writing is always more interesting than the dry "jsut the fact's, ma'am" stuff we get from "journalism".  I hope these guys do a lot more of this stuff.