Meet the Peeps

Meet the Press, the crown jewel of the Sunday morning talks shows, determined yesterday that the future of black America was topic worthy of discussion and invited a panel of black luminaries, most of them from the past, to talk about the future. The panel included Bill Cosby, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Moderator David Gregory began by quoting from a report that put a few facts in their depressing context: "The unemployment rate by race: among whites, 6.6 percent in December; among African-Americans it's already in double digits, 11.9 percent, up three points." In the course of an an otherwise bleak discussion about all the problems facing "black America," Cosby told a poignant story about how he got his mother, father and brother with him in the voting booth when he voted for Obama.