Pardon for Jack Johnson?

This one will be right up Obama's street. It will be symbolic, with the emphasis on the bolic (ks) part. He'll make a big production about it. But it will mean absolutely fuck all.

John McCain is appealing to the US President to grant former heavyweight champ Jack Johnson a pardon.

McCain is of Scot-Irish descent, probably of Ibrox stock. Charlie did terrible things to him in Nam (not least letting him know that Celtic beat Inter Milan to claim the European Cup in 67).

Bhoys beat Internazionale, long time, beat them long time, they chanted well into the night. Bastards.

McCain was asked last year how he felt about losing the Presidential election to Hope and Change.   He said that he was sleeping like a baby – he wakes up every hour and cries, wakes up every hour and cries, wakes up every hour and cries.

The Johnson appeal comes amid confirmation that the US Justice Department has refused to back a posthumous pardon for the fighter.

Johnson was sentenced to three years in jail in 1913 – five years after he became heavyweight champ – for transporting women across state lines for  immoral purposes.

Speaking to the lads on this subject in the Duck 'n Drake, most agreed that transporting women across state lines, or any line for that matter, for immoral purposes was a good thing.

They even agreed that in the interest of sexuality equality that they would be willing to allow a woman transport them across a state line for a purpose – as long as that purpose was immoral.

One of the boys ventured the opinion that even if the woman concerned had no car that he'd walk – or get a taxi – across the state line with her in anticipation of her coming over all immoral once they got to the other side.

Immoral women were a good thing, the world hadn't enough of them was the general consensus.

Anyway, it's alleged that least one of the women Johnston transported across state lines was a hooker. Another women ended up being his wife. It is alleged that she was on the game also and Johnson only married her so she couldn't testify against him. Both women were white.

Johnson fled the country to France after the conviction but returned to serve a ten month jail sentence a few years later.

It is accepted that the charge and conviction was racially motivated.

Ken Burns's film, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, explored the case against the boxer and the sentencing judge's acknowledged desire to "send a message" to black men about relationships with white women.

So over to Obama, fresh after accepting the Nobel prize for peace just few days after signing off on sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan to kill and be killed.

Comedian Tom Lehrer said that political satire died in 1973 when Henry Kissinger, the man behind the carpet bombing of Cambodia and God only knows what else, was award the Nobel prize of peace. It's still dying Tom.

I can see Obama now on the White House lawn as he grants Johnson his pardon, his voice all a tremble – very like Blair – with the poignancy of it all as the compliant media swoon at his feet.

The word reconciliation will be used liberally. The world will cheer – a minority will throw up.

Blessed are the cynics said Nietzsche because they see the other side.

Jack Johnson was born in Texas in 1878. He died in a car crash in 1946. He was the first great heavyweight champion of the modern era – and he was very fond of women, some of whom were, allegedly, immoral.