“Gone to Soon”
Esquire pens fluff piece on Michael Brown’s absent father.
WIth a title like this…
MICHAEL BROWN SR. AND THE AGONY OF THE BLACK FATHER IN AMERICA
…You’d think maybe Esquire would have touched on the absent father epidemic in America’s black community.
You would be wrong.
Because they’re Americans and this is the day Americans consecrate to gratitude, the Brown family tries to stick to easy topics—food, sports, music, children, absent relatives—everything but the nightmare that has changed their lives forever…
…Cal’s mom comes down to smoke a cigarette, taking off a shoe to rub her foot over her tiny toy poodle. Brown goes upstairs and comes back with his baby daughter on his arm, dressed in a holiday dress and pretty shoes. He props her on the cushion and she stares ahead with a sleepy, solemn face. Then Rev. DeVes Toon of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network arrives with an uncle of Oscar Grant’s—the man whose death at the hands of a California police officer was memorialized in the movie Fruitvale Station—and he describes his latest idea for a publicity campaign: pictures of families at their Thanksgiving tables with one seat empty, propping up a picture of their lost child. “You gotta keep the heat on them,” he says. Through peaceful means, he adds…
…Brown runs out to his car, with Cal chasing after him. He’s sure it’s a mistake—it has to be a mistake. He and Cal just got married three weeks ago and Michael was his best man, grinning nonstop in his rented suit. How could he be dead?
The article did not mention the quote on the shirt.
“Gone To Soon“
They missed that.
