Category Archives: Current Events

Nov9

Allegedly

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A leading news story this week is following the happenings at Penn State University where long time assistant football coach Joe Sandusky has been arrested for multiple counts of sexually abusing children — allegedly. These allegations have already ended the careers of two other former Penn State officials and are threatening to bring down several more, not the least of whom is 84 year-old head coach Joe “JoePa” Paterno who has become the winningest coach in FBS (Division I) history in his 46 year tenure at the helm of the Nitanny Lions.

What catches my attention is the nature of the alleged crimes. Sandusky is accused of sexual abuse. Of all the crimes a person can commit in the 21st century in America, NONE causes more nausea and media hype than sexual abuse of minors. Even if the abuse is alleged and not proven. I don’t know the intimate details of this case and Sandusky may very well be the worst sexual predator since Richard “the Night Stalker” Ramirez terrorized Southern California. He may, however, be an innocent man and that is the problem.

Sexual abuse and sex crimes in general are the witchcraft accusations of our day and age. In medieval times, to accuse someone of witchcraft was the fastest way possible to legally assassinate that person’s character — if not his or her physical body. Accusations of sex crimes accomplish the same insidious results today.

Let me go on record right here that I have no sympathy or softness for criminals of any stripe be they murderers, rapists, or politicians. I think anyone who forces himself upon a woman or child sexually should not be tried but taken out and shot. Luckily for many people, I don’t make the laws.

I have no problem with laws against sexual abuse. What I have a serious problem with is hypocrisy and no part of our legal system in the USA is more hypocritical than crimes and allegations dealing with sexual abuse. To accuse a person of sexual abuse is to end his career and smear his character beyond all hope of redemption. Proof is handy, but not necessary. All that is needed is the allegations. THAT is what I have a problem with.

Back in the middle ’90s when I first started teaching, the news featured a middle school teacher in New Jersey who was released from prison after serving five years for sexual misconduct with two of his female students. It took years of trials and FIVE YEARS of prison before one of the girls cracked and tearfully admitted the entire encounter had been made up by her and the other girl because the teacher spurned their advances. That was in MIDDLE SCHOOL. The worst part of the whole affair is the teacher, even after being released, has YET to clear his name because too many people seem to think along the lines of “even if those girls made up that story, he must be guilty of something else for them to think of doing that to him.”

Don’t laugh and please don’t dismiss me. This stuff happens.

Let me say again that I have no truck with sexual abuse or sexual misconduct — if it is proven. I just want the hypocrisy and the witch-hunting to end. To me nothing is more hypocritical than the various state and national Sex Offender Registries. Just about every person convicted of a sex crime of any nature is required to have his or her name placed on the SOR for THE REST OF HIS OR HER LIFE. The nature of the sex crime is immaterial.

This is hypocrisy at best and blatantly unConstitutional at worst.

Juliet was 13; Romeo was 14 or 15 at most

A violent serial rapist is placed on the same SOR with a young man who didn’t know and didn’t think to ask if the girl he took home from the frat party was over some arbitrary age of consent. This is wrong on both counts. The youngster has no business having his future ruined by a mistaken ID check and the violent serial rapist has no business being out of prison.

I have a buddy right now who is on the SC SOR for the rest of his life because when he was a 17 year old high school senior, he had sex — CONSENSUAL sex, mind you — with his 14 year old freshman girlfriend on prom night. Her daddy found out what the rest of us had known for a good while — namely his little Snow White had drifted. He had my friend arrested for statutory rape. My bud plead guilty (after all, he DID do it) to avoid prison, but he had to register on the sex offender list. He lost his college scholarships, had his college acceptance revoked, and to this day, he’s still on the SOR and it is nearly impossible for him to get a job.

A person commits a crime and is sentenced to X number of years to pay for that crime. If the crime is robbery, once the sentence is completed, the person is completely free. Even MURDER is the same way. We don’t have a National Murderer Registry. Let a person commit some sort of sex crime, however, and even after the person pays his debt to society in full, he still has a life sentence on a completely publicly accessible registry. In most states this means he will have a devil of a time finding a place to live legally, a job, or even a place to EAT.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me how this is not a violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the US Constitution?

One last time, let me say IF A PERSON IS A VIOLENT SEXUAL PREDATOR, he or — rarely — she should HANG. Pedophiles should be locked away forever, not put on a registry. Their crimes are too heinous to describe and study after study has shown they are incapable of being rehabilitated.

But what about the Humbert Humberts? Why should they be punished for a lapse of judgement with Lolita?

I think the most hypocritical part of the sexual attitude of the country in general and the SOR in particular is the egregious double standards found everywhere sex is concerned. “Children” in middle school sing along to their favorite songs like “My Milkshake brings all the boys to the yard” and “I wanna lick you like a lollipop” but when they ACT on those sexual overtones, THEY are not punished but woe betide anyone a little too old who falls under their spell.

The world has changed. I don’t like it. In fact, I pretty much despise it. For one thing, I want to know where all these “girls” were when I was in middle school. Most girls I went to school with couldn’t wear freaking LIP GLOSS until they were 15. I remember going to high school and seeing all the freshmen girls who were finally allowed to wear makeup trying to learn how. Poor things ended up somewhere between Mona Lisa and Tammy Faye Bakker.

It’s different now, though. Adolescents have always been curious about sex but now they are subtly ENCOURAGED by the media and the entertainment industry to ACT rather than just be curious. Then, when they do, it’s the “adults” who are punished. This is wrong and a miscarriage of justice on too many levels.

Back to Coach Sandusky. Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. At the moment, the state’s strongest piece of evidence is the testimony of ONE janitor with perfect recall of an even that happened in 2002. I barely remember breakfast yesterday and this janitor remembers all the details of a fleeting event over 9 years ago.

Like I said, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. It doesn’t really matter now though because in the minds of the public, a once lauded and supposedly conscientious man will forever be “a predator.” If he is guilty, he should bear the full weight of punishment . . . but can’t we wait until he is tried before we hang him?

Some people — allegedly — think that might be a good idea. I happen to be one of them.

 

Nov2

October’s Over

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Goodbye October

October is a month with few equals. The air has that delicious crispness in the morning, forcing us to put on a sweatshirt or jacket. The trees are dressing out in their autumn splendiferous golds, oranges, and reds; and, most of all, the sky is that shade of blue that proves to everyone that God Almighty is a University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill fanatic. If He wasn’t, then why did He make the sky Tarheel Blue? October is truly a month of magic and beauty.

For the record, I hate October with a rare passion.

October IS a beautiful month. It was my Granny Wham’s favorite month of the year and its arrival signaled to Papa Wham the need to get the car tuned up and round up the Igloo cooler because it was time to take a ride up to Caesar’s Head State Park for a picnic lunch and a scenic drive down part of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I still hate October.

My loathing of the tenth month is not without good reason, though. Simply put, October has historically been the most brutal month of the year for me physically, emotionally, mentally and any other — ally you care to think of.

Mama and Daddy split up in October. Their divorce was final in October. We lost my childhood home in October. Four of my six long term girlfriend relationships ended in October. I always started wrestling in October and when I was an athlete that meant painful soreness in all parts of my body; when I was a coach, it meant the end of seeing home before dark and having any Saturday to myself for five months. Papa John had his first bad stroke in October. I was fired from my teaching job in October. I was told I wouldn’t be a librarian anymore in October and — as the hood ornament on this hoopdie car of life — Papa John died in October.

October has not been good to me over the years. Mama and I both dread October because “If it’s going to happen to us, it’ll happen in October.”

Perhaps you’ve noticed I only managed two posts in October. It wasn’t for lack of material. It was lack of time and sanity. In a month that traditionally has seen my mood and fortunes go south with the great V’s of Canadian geese, 2011’s version was no different. Allow me to list this month’s misadventures for your edification.

  • Mama went in the hospital for ten days and at one point, the doctors and I didn’t think she was going to survive the night. I couldn’t give myself over to the hysteria I felt however because . . .
  • With Mama in the hospital, I was responsible for Granny’s care so I had to arrange with hospice and Medicare and NHC nursing homes for an emergency placement for Granny.
  • Budge’s brother dropped off the face of the earth. We know he’s alive, but that is ALL we know.
  • Our beloved niece has resumed her on-again-off-again feud with her mother which got her kicked out of the house and she moved down here for a total of two days before packing up and taking off again for God-only-knows where.
  • Budge had a sinus infection for the entire month of October and this latest round of antibiotics is finally bringing it under control. Now a sinus infection may not seem like a big deal, but it triggers Budge’s migraines and that turns it in to a big deal.
  • Our favorite neighbors of the last 12 years moved almost out of the blue.
  • Ect, ect, ect . . . those are just the big points. It was a horrible month.

So, October 2011 is gone and I cannot say I’ll miss it. In fact, the only GOOD thing about October at all is my beloved stepdad, Rob, turned 50 this October AND October contains my Deuce’s birthday and kicks off her holiday season. Other than that, the tenth month is the pits.

Here’s hoping November is better and I’ll get more writing posted!

Love y’all and keep your feet clean.

 

Sep11

Zeros

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What is it about adding a zero to an important anniversary that imbues that date on the calendar with extra mystique and weightiness? A child’s ninth birthday is not nearly as important as his 10th. No special gift marks a 49th wedding anniversary but the 50th deserves gold and the 60th, diamonds.  The only answer I can think of is that the additional import of a five or a zero is a nod to something deep within our inherently decimal nature.

Today, we add the first zero to the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the beginning of what is euphemistically known as The Global War on Terror.

This tenth passage of years means something more but I don’t really know why.

The victims trapped in the collapsing Twin Towers will be no deader. The passage of a decade has not lessened the heroism of the policemen, firefighters, and E.M.T’s who stormed the towering infernos that day, many dying with no idea what was waiting for them, only that people were in there who needed their help.

3652 days brings us no closer to understanding the thought processes aboard United 93 as high above a pasture in rural Pennsylvania, a plane full of doomed men and women rose up against the infamy, tyranny, and injustice of the moment and attacked where others may have retreated  or sat silent and in doing so saved an unknown number of lives at the cost of their own — passing into legend with the words, “Let’s roll.”

It’s been ten years now since our school secretary appeared at the window of my classroom door waving frantically for me to come over so she could utter the incomprehensible words, “They’ve just flown two planes into the Twin Towers!”

It’s a different world now.

Last night, Budge and I went to Cameron and Deuce’s home to watch football and between games, Laura brought out copies of Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times all dated September 12, 2001. The burning towers dominated each cover. Jacob, Cameron’s nine year old son, was fascinated by what he was seeing and reading and I faltered a time or two as I tried to explain the events of that day.

The Towers have never stood in Jake’s lifetime. The United States has never been wholly at peace in Jake’s lifetime. Budge has three classes of 4th graders who were all born in 2002. They know nothing about the America in which I lived my first 30 years.

How do you explain to a nine year old who is looking at the iconic photo “Falling Man” why a person would choose to jump out of a 100 story window rather than risk being burned alive? How do you describe or explain what “panic” really feels like? How can you help one so close to life’s beginning understand what goes through the mind of someone who knows without doubt that he has lived his last day, last hour, last minute?

Why does adding this zero bring the pain so close to the surface once more?

God only knows, and He isn’t saying.

Requiescat in pace, heroes and departed of 9-11-01. We, the living, have not forgotten.

Jul26

Illegal Hypocrisy

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I tolerate much offensive behavior without protest, but four things consistently anger me beyond my ability to remain silent. They are — in no particular order — lying, abuse of the helpless (elderly, children, and animals), Clemson football play calling, and bald-faced hypocrisy. At the moment, I’m pretty well pissed because  too many politicians and people are such hypocrites on illegal immigration. Immigration hasn’t out front lately with all the media coverage going to the “debt crisis.” (Debt crisis! Come to my house; I’ll SHOW you a debt crisis) Yesterday, though, I saw some stuff on Facebook in the comments section of President Obama’s page that remind me of how ugly this debate really is.

Here’s the problem as I see it; the story of Europeans in America is a story of raping and robbing, of deceit and destruction. When English Pilgrims and Jamestowners got off the boats, they would have ALL died if not for the grace of God and the kindness of the natives. How they repaid God’s grace is a matter for theological debate, but how they thanked the Indians is a matter of historical record: smallpox infected blankets, blatant disregard for Indian culture, and complete dishonesty in treaty after treaty. Sure doesn’t say much for people who founded a country supposedly based on “equality of all mankind.” (Of course they meant all free, white, male, landowning, and educated kind.)

Down South America / Central America way, the Spanish were at least honest. A conquistador would simply ask “Do you have gold? Good, we will take it all. Thank you. Now, you are my slave; carry your — I mean — my gold to the ship.” Then, a wonderfully pious priest would ask, “Do you believe in God? Who is that? He isn’t the real god. Convert immediately and live or cling to your stupid backward ways (that built at least 3 flourishing empires) and we’ll torture you until you beg to convert then kill you so you can go straight to Heaven.”

By the end of the 20th Century, Indians controlled less than 10% of the continents they kept and tended so well for thousands of years. One would think they were just waiting to be discovered and exploited by the white man. Deemed savages because they didn’t understand or practice ownership of land and didn’t worship the Christian’s God — at least not by that name anyway — they were worthy of extermination as in “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

Well, folks, karma is an ill-tempered bitch with a long memory. If the Hindu reference bothers you, then how about a Christian reference?  Apostle Paul in Galatians, “Whatever a man sows, he will reap.” For 500 years, European “immigrants” have destroyed and exploited the native people. Now their descendents want some of it back.

Thus begins the hypocrisy.

We took this land by force with the fervent belief it was our Manifest Destiny. Now people are pissed off at people, mostly brown people from Mexico, who want a piece of the pie. We wanted, nay, demanded, the whole cupboard and pantry yet begrudge them the crusts they want. Here’s the deal, our ancestors set out in rickety ships to “find a better life.” The new wave of illegal immigrants walk across deserts with no water while avoiding crazy, trigger-happy “Minutemen”  to do what?

“Find a better life.”

What made our ancestors so right and the new “illegals” so wrong? We didn’t feel the need to obey native laws or customs, so why do we cry foul when what went around has come back around?

I know people will want to say “that was different.” How was it different, exactly? Some will go on about how a lot of the illegals are criminals and represent a danger to our safety. Really? Well,  a lot of Indians died because Europeans wanted land, so I’d say the Indians were in danger, but apparently that’s okay with everyone .

Rash Limburger and his ilk love to blather about how, “They’ll take (or they’re taking) all our jobs!” Really? When is the last time you saw an illegal looking Latino individual working a white-collar job? Just exactly what jobs are these people stealing? Let’s see . . . landscaping? I’m sure hundreds of Anglo-Americans will line up to fill all the landscaping jobs once we deport the illegals. I mean, who doesn’t want to spread mulch, cut grass, and dig irrigation trenches in 100 degree heat and 90% humidity? How about highway construction? Sign me up to stand behind a dump truck full of 600 degree semi-molten tar and rock ready to spread it with a shovel! Household staff (aka “maids”)? Custodians? Slaughterhouse workers? Dish washers? The fact is, suspected illegals fill jobs Anglo-Americans have mostly abandoned but still need doing! Why begrudge someone a job you don’t want?

An acquaintance of mine owns his own full service car wash. He employs a large number of Hispanics, but it wasn’t always like that. According to him, in the first years he filled his staff with college students home for the summer or high school dropouts learning a hard lesson. Now the last ten years, he can’t get students or dropouts. When he asks them why they are leaving — the ones man enough to show up and tell him anyway — they say the work is “way too hard for the pay.”

He says he never has a problem with his Hispanic workers though. Men and women alike are always neat, clean, prompt, and hard-working. He doesn’t have to do nearly as much supervision as he once did because his workers are a community. Many of them live together, eat together, and go to and from work together. They police themselves, and as he puts it, “They push a lot of cars through and make me a lot of money.” He acknowledges some of them may be illegal but whenever he’s asked for it, they’ve the correct required paperwork.

This country was founded on the ideal that you could come here with nothing, work hard for a long time, and eventually “have something”. We even have a name for it. It’s called The American Dream. So why are we — a country of rebels and renegades, eccentrics and entrepreneurs — so incensed at a newer, hungrier wave of people coming in — just like our ancestors did — to grab a share of the pie we stole from them originally and have been hogged to ourselves for 200+ years? They want the same thing those early colonists wanted — a better life.

We even have one advantage over those natives’ ancestors who greeted our European progenitors; we can be relatively certain they don’t plan to exterminate or enslave us.

That’s what I think, anyway.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean!

Jul24

“I Hope I Die Before I Get Old” . . . Club 27 Adds A Member

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What is it about 27? Astrologists blame Saturn. I blame fame. Of all the members of Club 27, I don’t think ANY of them were really comfortable with just how famous they became at such relatively young ages. Hendrix just wanted to get high and play guitar. Janis loved to sing her heart out and she had a pretty crappy voice . . . but she still hits me right in my soul whenever “Me and Bobby McGee” shows up on my iPod. Pete Ham and the rest of Badfinger were supposed to be the next Beatles, until they weren’t and Pete hung himself. The Lizard King? I don’t know about him. He was ONE WEIRD DUDE. Pigpen drank. I mean, how can you get cirrhosis of the liver at freaking 27 years old? I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I liked the Dead’s sound much better with Pigpen than their later psychedelic stuff. Pigpen sounded good even if you WEREN’T high. Robert Johnson? I think the Devil called in his marker. I don’t think young Mr. Johnson really knew what kind of deal he was signing at the crossroads that dark night . . . and yes, I actually believe he sold his soul to the actual Devil in exchange for the ability to play and sing the blues like no one before him and a pitiful few since him.

Whatever curse the 27th year holds doesn’t really matter. All I know is that I’m sad right now and I really think I could cry but it would just make my head hurt worse and that wouldn’t help anything. Unlike a lot of my feelings and emotions, I can tell you EXACTLY the first and, til now, last time I felt this sick inside — April 9, 1994. I was on my way to my crappy job as a dye tech at a textile plant and I heard on my truck radio that Kurt Cobain was dead. I remember distinctly thinking, “Well, she finally killed him.” I still think she did too. Her PI found the body and they were always a train wreck anyway. She just got a little too out of control and shot him then staged the scene.

Now, Amy Winehouse is gone. It was just a little over a year ago I had this nagging feeling in my gut and head and this little internal voice kept saying, “Man, why don’t you try to get in touch with her? She’s a mess and she ain’t always been like that; maybe you could talk some sense into her.” Obviously, I figured that would have been stupid to even try, so I just pushed that feeling away. I wonder, though, if — by some miracle — I DID manage to get to talk to her personally if I could have changed anything. I mean, I’m just a middle age hick from a Podunk town in a Podunk state. I really doubt she’d have listened to a think I had to say . . . but I still can’t get over the memory of that feeling.

I hope y’all will forgive me for picking the picture of her off the cover of “Back to Black.” That’s how I want to remember her — clear-eyed and soaring, not strung out and falling down. She was really a very voluptuous and beautiful young woman with an amazing, smoky voice that belonged in an old Hollywood black and white movie. I heard she started losing so much weight because a magazine critic mentioned in an article that Amy looked a little heavy in the hips. If that’s the case, I hope that writer is happy now. More likely though, the fame led to the drugs and the drugs led to the grave. It’s like I said on Facebook — sometimes that limelight is so bright and hot it can burn the heart and soul and finally the life right out of a person who didn’t really want all that fame in the first place. I just don’t know.

I doubt you will, but I hope you rest in peace, Club 27 . . . you left us WAY too soon with a lot of music  unwritten and unsung.

The rest of y’all remember I love you and keep those feet clean.

Jul11

My Thoughts on a “Caylee’s Law”

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I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback telling me how “right on” I am with my previous post demonizing (deservedly) Nancy Grace for her larger-than-credited role in the Casey Anthony Trial. I’m betting I don’t get the same feedback on this post, mainly because I figure this post is going to upset more than one person. I, however, ascribe to the position held by Femi-Nazi Gloria Steinem (probably the ONLY thing she and I would agree on) when she said, “The truth shall set you free, but first it shall piss you off.”

Let the pissing off begin.

I personally don’t think Florida OR the US needs a “Caylee’s Law.” I think it is bogus and an attempt by pathetically pandering politicos to cash in on the furor surrounding the wildly unpopular verdict in the Anthony trial. While we’re on the subject, let’s go a little deeper, shall we? Take a look at the pictures in the following gallery, s’il vous plait?

I won’t keep you in suspense. These are all dead children who have or will have legislation named for them. These are the namesakes of Ginny’s Law, Adam’s Law, The AMBER Alert, Chelsea’s Law, etc, etc. Now that you know what they are, do you notice anything missing?

How about a Jakwuan’s Law? Maybe a Juan-Carlos Law? Bubba Ray’s Law? Leqweshia’s Alert? Thao Po’s Law? Mayeller’s Law?

Where are all THOSE laws? Why are all the dead children laws named for middle class White kids?

I’ll tell you why. They represent the greatest potential for political photo ops and sound bites. Dead, raped, and / or kidnapped W.A.S.P. children are ratings boosters for today’s Don Henley-esque “Dirty Laundry” news cycle. Dead colored kids or dead white trash / redneck kids? NOT SO MUCH.

Oh, no he didn’t! Yeah. As a matter of fact, he did. Does anyone who reads my blog — besides Ronald Taylor — realize just how skewed public perceptions are when it comes to finding lost or murdered children? I’ll grant you that a greater statistically valid number of white children are kidnapped and / or killed each year than other children, but where is the outcry over the missing black children? How many young black boys did Wayne Williams murder in Atlanta before pressure mounted on the authorities to “Do Something?”

Casey Anthony stayed in the spotlight for three years and prosecutors could do little more than wring their hands. Earlier this year here in South Carolina, a black woman murdered two of her children in Orangeburg. It was out of the news in less than a week. Why?

Why all the psychoanalyzing Casey Anthony, Susan Smith, and Andrea Yates, but most people can’t even name ONE black mother/murderer or ONE black missing child. The ENTIRE WORLD knows who Jon-Benet Ramsey is. She has movies and memorials and web pages to perpetuate her memory. Can anyone — ANYONE AT ALL — tell me who Celina Janette Mays is? Since I’m fairly certain no one can, I’ll tell you who she is. She is a beautiful young black girl who went missing from her home in Willingsboro, NJ on December 16, 1996. That’s nine days before Jon-Benet was found murdered in her basement under what can only be described as bizarre circumstances. Where are Celina’s memorials? Where are her made for TV movies?

I know this must look like I am saying dead and missing colored children are more important than dead or missing white children. I most emphatically am NOT saying that. I believe the death or abduction of ANY child is a tragedy. I assure you, as anyone who knows me can attest, if Caylee had been MY daughter or granddaughter, the City of Orlando and State of Florida would have had to spend MUCH less money on a trial since I would have plead guilty to first degree murder with VERY exacerbating circumstances. I don’t have much faith in lawmen, with the possible exception of the Texas Rangers and the R.C.M.P. Those are two organizations bad people would be wise not to cross. I have no problem with vigilante justice.

I’m afraid the lack of attention on missing and murdered colored children is a symptom of something much more insidious. I think the lack of media attention is the direct result of things not being all that different now than they were in 1955 when young Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. I think the media, despite Oprah’s near canonization and BETs success, is a white man’s game and white children make the news. People of color are marginalized, and I think it’s because of a subtle attitude of “that’s what you can expect from them.”

I even have one concrete example — Ennis Cosby. Ennis Cosby, for those who don’t know, was the only son of beloved comedian Bill Cosby. Ennis was murdered in 1997 while changing a tire on the side of the road. Even though Ennis had never had any history of drug use or even any negative history at all, because he was a black man in a bad neighborhood, initial media kneejerk response was “drug deal gone bad.” Eyewitness testimony from Ennis’ friend present at the murder soon cleared the air, but that initial reaction was black = bad.

People of color are not the only marginalized group though. The poor and those on the fringes of society don’t get much news coverage of their tragedy either. If a girl goes missing from a trailer park in Detroit or El Paso, well, she must have just run away. Really, bossman? Even if she was NINE?

To bring this back around to Caylee and land this plane, I don’t think laws named for dead children are a good idea or good legislation. I believe Caylee is in a better place, ala Martina McBride’s “Concrete Angel”. Do we REALLY want to memorialize her with a law that remembers only her death?

Finally, I’d like to pose the question of how much have things changed in this country? July 4th was a week ago. How far have we come towards “all men (and women) being created equal?” In my opinion, not very far at all.

After all, not all slavery involves shackles and chains.

Love y’all and keep the faith and feet clean.

Jul7

Lay Blame at the Right Feet . . . or Mouth

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Monday’s “not guilty” verdict in the Casey Anthony murder trial has a tremendous segment of the population livid with anger. Moms all over the country, joined by more than a few dads, seem quite prepared to form a lynch mob and travel to Orlando to administer the justice the jury did not.

That anger has just one problem — it is woefully misplaced. If people want to be angry with someone and blame someone for the debacle of a trial they should ignore the jury, prosecution, and even the defense. The blame for this miserable failure of justice should be placed squarely on the doorstep of one Nancy Ann Grace lately masquerading as a journalist on CNN and before that a prosecutor somewhere. If her handling of the Caylee Anthony murder case is any indication of her skills as a prosecutor, it’s little wonder that she is no longer trying to put criminals behind bars.

Three years ago, Nancy started calling for Casey Anthony’s blood on her talk show. She went on ad nauseum about how guilty Casey was and what a monster she was and over and over she kept calling for a trial that would hang the vile party girl from the tallest tree in Florida. Unfortunately for Ms. Grace, she forgot that in this country, people are only sent to prison — or the death chamber — when they are convicted by a court of law, not the court of public opinion.

For the record, I am certain in my own mind and heart that Casey Anthony killed her daughter. I’m equally certain she is an evil, detestable monstrosity of a human being who is on the Red Line Express Long Black Train to Hell in a Handbasket. Finally, I’m positive the jury handed down the correct verdict based on the law and the judge’s instructions. If the prosecution had not be put under such scrutiny and constant pressure by Nancy Grace, that verdict may have never been handed down and Ms. Anthony would be on her way to a prison cell now instead of on her way to the talk show circuit. I cannot tell everyone just how thankful I am that Oprah is off the air because I don’t think my nerves or digestive system could handle that interview.

What most people are focusing on is the not guilty verdict for the count of First Degree Murder. I can promise you that right from the start of the trial, the prosecution had ZERO chance of getting a conviction for FDM. By definition, First Degree Murder is premeditated. That means you sat down and planned out exactly when, where, and how you were going to kill this person. Premeditation, by further definition, implies — nay, requires — a motive. Furthermore, I truly feel Casey Anthony is INCAPABLE of premeditating a murder and coverup of this magnitude because doing so would require her to think about someone other than HERSELF for more than 30 seconds and I simply don’t think she has that ability. In any event, the prosecution NEVER effectively presented any scenario involving a motive for Casey to kill Caylee. You can get a conviction for 1st Degree Murder without a body. You cannot get a conviction without a motive.

Nancy Grace kept up a steady stream of harping on “the massive amount of evidence.” Yes, the amount of evidence was quite large, BUT, none of it lead anywhere. Define “the smell of death.” Where is the receipt or credit card statement showing where Casey Anthony purchased a bottle of chloroform AT ANY TIME DURING CAYLEE’S LIFE? Sorry, but all the prosecution convinced the world and jury of is that Casey Anthony is an ugly, cruel, blight on the earth’s population — but that’s not the same as proving she committed 1st Degree Murder and should have been sentenced to death.

That is another factor to keep in mind. The prosecution was angling for the death penalty and Nancy was on TV squawking about how appropriate she felt that punishment would be. Now, with that in mind, put yourself in the jurors’ places. If you convict this woman and she is sentenced to death, in a very real way, you have taken the life of another human being. Not everyone is capable of doing that. Not everyone is LIKE CASEY ANTHONY! If you are going to have someone put to death based on your word, you had better damn sure KNOW they are the person who committed the crime. Otherwise, sleeping may get difficult around the execution date.

Again, I loathe and despise Casey Anthony. I think she overdid her regular routine of chloroforming little Caylee into unconsciousness so Mommy Dearest could go have some “Me / Slut time” at the clubs. Once the child was dead, she was disposed of. Had the prosecution taken the death penalty off the table and pressed HARD for Second Degree Murder, which requires no premeditation, I think the jury would have been convinced.

Our legal system worked exactly as it is supposed to. According to reports now reaching the blogosphere about interviews with actual sitting jurors and not alternates, it appears that the majority of the jurors believe Casey Anthony is a murderer, but the prosecution failed to prove it.  Make no mistake, justice WAS done in this case. Most people are angry because most people don’t REALLY want justice; most people actually want VENGEANCE. Most people want the guilty punished in the most heinous way possible, which is just as it should be — until an innocent person is wrongly convicted or, God forbid, executed.

The electric chair doesn’t give a mulligan.

So the jury was correct and if Nancy Grace had spent more time doing something about that godawful hair helmet of hers and less time rabble rousing for a witch burning, the Orlando sheriff’s department could have taken five or ten or more years to build an airtight case against a witch. As it is, a murderer walks the streets of the home of The Happiest Place on Earth scot free and set to make a truck load of money on book deals. I only hope she remembers ONE thing when she contemplates her wonderful luck . . .

She still has a Judgement to stand, this Judge cannot be swayed by fancy rhetoric or forensic tricks. Ms. Anthony — and Ms. Grace too, for that matter — would do well to keep in mind that paybacks REALLY are Hell.

Love y’all!

May19

It’s the End of the World as We Know It . . .

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And I feel fine. My apologies to Michael Stipe and the rest of R.E.M.

Harold Camping, current Doomsday prophet.

So by now you’ve probably heard that the world is going to end this coming Saturday. According to 89 year old self-taught theologian, Harold Camping, the numbers all add up and it’s all over but the shoutin’ as they used to say. From his readings of the Bible, Mr. Camping has worked out the exact day and hour of The Rapture, the supernatural event when Jesus is returning to gather His faithful home. The prediction has spread like wildfire among fringe Christian groups and folks all around the world are, in the words of the old gospel song, “gettin’ ready to leave this world.” A group of atheistic animal lovers has even started a company to address the needs of the beloved pets who will be “left behind” as their owners are Raptured.

As for me, I plan on going to our church’s Saturday night service like Budge and I usually do. Sunday, we’ve got a full day of doing nothing planned, pretty much like always. I’m not really worried about The Rapture taking place this weekend for one simple reason — when Jesus Christ Himself was on the earth teaching His followers, He specifically told them that He didn’t even know when He would return. The only Being in the universe who is privy to that date and time is God the Father and while Mr. Camping IS as old and white headed as most people seem to figure God is, he’s not God.

Ergo, he doesn’t know squat. He’s just another member of the lunatic fringe like that idiot Fred Phelps and his congregation of inbreeders out in Kansas. Just another person heading up a group of like (and feeble) minded people carrying signs and giving non-believers the world over just another reason to mock Jesus and Christianity.

At least the members of Heaven’s Gate had the tact and decency to kill themselves rather than spreading their kooky comet-following message all over the internet.

My Aunt Betty had this painting called "The Rapture in Dallas" hanging in her living room. It scared the crap out of me when I was a kid.

Don’t misunderstand me though. I was raised in a fully Rapture believing and Rapture ready home and church. To be completely honest with y’all, I never figured I’d see forty years old because I believed whole-heartedly that my family and I — based on the steeply declining condition of the world — would be gone in the Rapture well before then. Obviously that hasn’t happened . . . yet. That’s right — yet. I don’t discount the possibility that the Rapture could take place, but it’s not one of the major doctrines of Scripture, it’s very divisive to the Church, and it’s just not a mountain I’m prepared to die on.

All that said, however, growing up steeped in the belief of an imminent Rapture did lead to one of the most “terrifying-then-and-hysterically-funny-now” events of my life. I was a junior in high school and enjoying my best, and last, season as a starter on the school wrestling team. I got home from practice one Tuesday afternoon and the house was empty, which was odd because Mama should have been home. I sat down to a bowl of ice cream and waited. After half an hour, I started to get concerned. One very important thing for y’all to know is this was 1987 — before answering machines were commonplace and way before cell phones were ubiquitous, if they even existed.

This series is pretty close to the beliefs I was taught growing up. If you've read any of it, you know why I was freaking out.

I called Mama’s work, no answer. I called Papa John to see if Mama was over there. No answer. I called Granny and Papa Wham. No answer. Finally, I called out to Aunt Mary’s and I KNEW she was home because her car was in the yard when I came by and she’d be getting supper cooked for Uncle Carroll. No. Answer.

I went into a blind panic and started calling around and everywhere I called either no one answered or I got a busy signal. Now at this point, most rational people would have figured something totally explainable was at work. Well, I was reasonable and I came up with the only logical solution I could think of — The Rapture had come and Jesus took Mama and the rest of my family and I had been left behind! When that realization hit me, I almost upchucked my bowl of ice cream. If you’ve ever studied what some churches teach on the Great Tribulation period that will follow the Rapture, you’ll know what had me in a twist. Seven years of Hell on earth ruled by the Antichrist — Satan’s agent. Anyone who converted to Christianity during that time would be hunted down and publicly executed. Plagues of demons in the form of scorpions. It’s not a pretty picture and that’s exactly what I thought was waiting on me because everyone I knew was a Christian and loved WAS GONE. I was alone and left behind.

When Mama got home thirty minutes later and came into my room to ask my help in getting the groceries she’d stopped off after work to pick up without telling me, she found me sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor rocking back and forth nearly in shock. When I realized it really was her and not a vision of some sort, I nearly broke her back and neck in a bear hug. To this day, I have never felt more relief about anything than I felt at that moment.

Why couldn’t I get in touch with anyone? A car had taken down a telephone pole nearby and service was interrupted. Calls went through like normal, but they wouldn’t connect anywhere.

So be careful what you scoff at!

Love you all and keep those feet clean.

Apr20

Of Birds, Bees, and Frogs

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Amsterdam, Paris, Vegas . . . they got nothing on the Country Walk Lane Froggy Bordello.

I am a pimp. Not in the “how I dress flamboyantly” sense of the word (but with all my purple, who knows?), but in the “male who handles prostitutes” term. I am running a brothel for frogs. My backyard and pool have become a red-light district for amphibians.

Even as I am typing this, outside my living room window, the sounds of illicit frog romance is filling the night. If I were to gently pad to the back door, ease out onto my deck, pick up my spotlight, then flip it on and point the beam at the pool’s surface, I would witness a veritable tsunami as forty or fifty froggy “johns” dive into the green water to escape the penetrating light of “the authorities.”

I did not intend to be the owner of such a den of amphibian iniquity and vice. Unfortunately, I failed to buy a cover for my above ground pool and its new liner at the end of the last swimming season. I wasn’t overly worried about debris because I don’t have many trees in the back and none of them overhang the pool. All winter, the pool weathered the weather like a champ. Once or twice I took some GI Joes I found in the front yard (courtesy of the hellions next door) and sent them ice skating on the coldest days. (Okay, I’m from a small town in the sticks, it doesn’t take much to entertain me)

Another satisfied customer waiting for the party to crank back up.

Then came the spring. As the weather warmed, the pool greened. Since my deck doesn’t circumnavigate the pool, I cannot clean it with the vacuum until the water warms enough to get in it. Unfortunately, it’s plenty warm enough for the diatoms, euglenas, and algaes long before I feel comfortable subjecting my mammalian nether regions to the water. As a result, I don’t have a pool so much as I have a wonderfully symmetrical pond — probably for the next month or so. Then the fun part starts.

Not only do I have to get the pool chemically balanced, vacuumed, and cleaned out, but I also have to find a way to clean up the Times Square of the anura order. Maybe I can get Rudy Gulliani to come down and “clean up” around here?

Anyway, if you know how to encourage these wonderfully cacaphonic bufoae and anurae to look for love in some other places, please let me know! Otherwise, I’m afraid that the chlorine from the pool cleaning in a few weeks is going to cause a massive infanticide among the nascent tadpole population. Ah, such is life. The parents do all the loose living and the children bear the brunt of the punishment.

Circle of life, indeed!

Love y’all and keep those feet clean!

Mar18

Are You Talkin’ To Me?!

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Most of us have watched a young Robert De Niro playing cab driver Travis Bickle posing in the mirror with a gun and an attitude while repeating over and over, “You talkin’ to me?” It’s a great scene but it’s just one more way in which we realize dear Travis is a bean or two short of a full bowl of chili.

Now, yesterday, I was walking around in the Garden Tools section of Lowes — or as I like to describe it, Toy R Us for males — when this guy down the aisle a bit from me starts flailing his arms around and screaming and he’s looking dead at me. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, this was not my first rodeo with babbling lunatics involved. I taught high school and middle school — I’m ready for anything. So, I stopped and adopted a good defensive posture to let dude know I wasn’t backing down from his craziness. Oh, and I also reached over and picked up a nice double-faced axe just in case I had to get all Gimli from Lord of the Rings on Rainman here. Luckily (for both of us since nothing adds pounds like “jumpsuit orange”) before I could yell out a cool dwarven war cry and get in touch with my Viko-Celtic roots, the guy turned and I saw it — he had a freaking BLUETOOTH MICROPHONE IN HIS EAR.

This idiotic phenomenon has become a pox, nay a plague, a veritable pestilence on the good graces of our public spaces these days. One can hardly walk around a mall or even a park without coming upon someone babbling incoherently to himself about picking up the milk and cat food or laughing maniacally to herself while continually repeating, “I KNOW, right?” Just about the time we get ready to pull our wives and children close and sprint to the other side of the aisle / sidewalk / track, etc, the goober turns around to reveal the blue blinking light practically embedded in his or her ear.

They have been assimilated.

No, really, watch somebody sporting a Jawbone and tell me she doesn’t look like she forgot to take off some makeup props before she left the Star Trek set where she was trying out for the part of Seven of Nine in the upcoming Broadway release “Star Trek: The Musical”. (They aren’t really making that play . . . at least I don’t think they are but with this Spiderman fiasco, who knows. But I digress). All over the highways and supermarkets of America, people are turning into Borg. I refuse to believe resistance is futile!

Now I admit, I hate cell phones on general principle. I am of the ilk who believe if someone isn’t home when you call, he or she doesn’t want to talk to you right then. Were it not for Budge and Mama’s dual insistence, I wouldn’t have one of the wretched, brain rotting devices. Cell phones are the final straw that is going to usher the barbarians through the gates.

 

Come ON now, Dude! Seriously? Two words: Voice Mail.

When the day has arrived that I cannot rid myself of the dregs of a two bean burritos lunch in Target without hearing a tinny version of MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” coming from the next stall — followed by some fool saying “Hello?”, we are truly on the downhill slide of the slippery slope. You are pooping you fool, you need to concentrate and so do the rest of us!! Besides, do you really want to consider the environment you are placing near your hands, mouth, and ears?

 

Um, EWW!

Then we have the drivers barreling down the road yakking away into their “hands free device.” Apparently, hands free has become a euphemism for “wreckage inducing contraption.” You are theoretically controlling a huge hunk of steel, aluminum, glass and rubber down a stretch of autobahn at well over the posted speed limits, so you need to be concentrating on the predicament at hand, not arguing with your mother over a stupid bunch of bananas she wanted to leave you but you had no need for! For the love of all that’s holy, just TAKE THE BANANAS and HANG UP THE PHONE!

Yes, Brethren and Sistren, the ubiquitous Bluetooth in the ear is the ultimate sign the apocalypse is upon us. Not long ago, if you sat animatedly jabbering to yourself complete with hand waving and hair tugging, the nice kind men in the white coats would come and gently take you to a softly lit comfortable room with lots of padding on the walls where you could wait while being fitted for your cute jacket with the sleeves that tie in the back.

Not anymore. The rabid Bluetooth invasion has made it impossible to tell the disturbed from the merely obnoxious. Just last week, I was having a date night with Budge and watched a man and woman sit two tables across from us, both carrying on extremely animated conversations — just not with each other. All the while, that cute little blue light kept pulsing around both their temples.

Really? You can’t take that ear funk coated spit stained hunk of Bakelite out of your face long enough to talk over a meal to the person IN FRONT OF YOU?

Why, YES, as a matter of fact I AM a raging douchebag!

We are all doomed.

If I owned a restaurant, I’d have a Faraday Cage built into the walls of the building. It’s not that I’m a Luddite or something. I love technology. I just hate that rules of decent behavior and civility haven’t kept pace with the times!

So, in closing, I love y’all, but if you are walking or driving around talking to yourself because of a little chip in your ear, I’m going to make fun of you, laugh at you, and think you are a goober — especially if you cut me off in traffic because you aren’t paying attention!

Til then, keep those feet clean and those Blueteeth put away!