Here’s a travesty for ya. Brother Ray is dead at 73, and the “liberal media” spends a week frothing at the mouth with an endless barrage of Ronnie Raygun flim-flam, while reducing the great Ray Charles to a mere footnote. For those of us with our hearts and souls still intact, we know the score. Charles was the high priest of soul and he was more important, far more relevant, and damn-it-to-hell, a BETTER AMERICAN than that B movie hack who talked an asleep at the wheel nation into giving him the job of Commander in Chief some twenty odd years ago. Ray Charles’ skill as a song-writer, band-leader, singer and arranger, were practically unparalleled, and his complete mastery of every genre he tackled is unrivaled in the history of pop music. His voice spoke to millions, and there is no higher degree of respect than the outpouring of love shown him by his contemporaries. “When Ray started singing, that was it. Everyone else was playing for second,” said no less than Stevie Wonder. One of Charles’ many nicknames perhaps says it best. His friends referred to him as simply, “The Genius.”