The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
-George Washington-
Friday, September 21, 2007
Ever wonder why our courts are jammed and justice is often slow?
I can hear the Asst. D.A. addressing the grand jury now. "An onion is considered a deadly weapon if and only if the grand jury determines that an onion can cause serious injury or death when used as a weapon."
Yeesh.
Don't get me wrong - this is certainly a poor way to treat your half-your-age trophy wife. Is it worthy of arrest, however?
There was little doubt about it this time. Most of you were in synch, and pointed right to August's American Asshole like a compass points to north. Pedophile blogger Jack McLellan is our man!!!
Jack has made a lot of news by taking perfectly legal pictures of children on the street and posting them on his blog with a lot of perfectly legal nasty talk about what he'd like to do to them (which really makes J.K Rowling a little more of an asshole in my opinion - I mean, she thinks her kid has a media problem?). He never actually does anything about it, which is why he's an asshole rather than a criminal, but he's rather vocal about it and wants us to know that instead of photographing these kids he could be grabbing them. And he perpetuates the stereotype of the blogger that lives out of his car and can't keep a job.
There's really not much more for me to say about this waste of sperm. Let your comments do the talking.
And of course, it reminded me of this post. Now, some folks disagreed with me then, and that's okay. They brought up valid points and disagreed in a respectful tone. But a lot of right-wing bloggers were tossing all sort of insults toward the editors of the papers who cut the Opus cartoon. Cowards, they were called. Islamic lapdogs. Anti-American. Terrorist apologists.
And those were the nice ones.
As I pointed out at the time, however, none of these people have a masthead on their blogs saying who and where they are. It's easy to be brave when no one is paying attention to the man behind the curtain.
Are any of these bloggers willing to come out of the closet, or are they only brave when no one knows where to find them? What risks are they willing to take for their right to say whatever they want whenever they want to?
Are they willing to risk death for free speech?
Are they willing to risk the lives of people around them for it? The people in their office? Their carpool friends? Total strangers on the bus who don't know what they said, or why?
Their own families? Their tiny boys and girls who don't even know for politics and terrorism yet, bless their innocent little hearts?
You know, I'm skeptical about that. Maybe because these same people aren't willing to back the right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure. Maybe because they won't even speak up to their employees in Washington for their own right to privacy. Perhaps because, despite the hot air of nine years ago, they won't demand the truth from their government. And why is all this?
Well, because they are afraid.
They have good reason to be, too. After all, it isn't as if we're any safer than we were six years ago. It's not as if INS suddenly became competent. It isn't as if cargo is being checked on out docks as it enters America. It's not as if a damn thing has been done about the southern border except some more guys on horseback. And it isn't as if the fundamentalist whackjobs they're afraid of are anything close to rational.
So while the idealist in me condemns to the very core this attitude of death for insult, this my-religion-is-the-only-true-one-and-I'll-kill-you-to-prove-it mentality, the pragmatist has another view.
That is, until we have a government that IS concerned, really concerned, for making this a safer country, those with a responsibility for the safety of others, like the editors of major newspapers, just might want to pick their fights a little more carefully for awhile. Of course, I do not mean copping out on verifiable, true news stories no matter who looks bad in them.
But really, when it comes down to it, whose life is a cartoon worth?
And here I would have bet that Giuliani would be the first to concede that he has nothing of substance to offer.
But as long as we're going to play the "pretty-wife-as-a-reason-to-vote-for-me game", allow me to present Elizabeth Kucinich.
I mean, yummers. Big yummers. Great bolshy yumminess.
She seems intelligent, too. Too intelligent to let her husband strap the family dog to the top of the car for a long trip, at any rate. Which puts her ahead of Mrs. Romney by quite a margin.
Remember, a vote for Kucinich is a vote for wifely hotness!!!
Well, I have a few things to say in response to that column.
First of all, let's not pretend that this isn't a stacked deck being presented here. This is an obvious example of cherry-picking. I don't believe for a second that Vick was the only guy caught abusing dogs this year, and many other examples of violence against humans do make the news. We see them every day, on every media outlet, do we not? I can easily replace these examples with the guy that chopped off his neighbor's dog's head and left it on her porch in a gift-wrapped box and the Laci Peterson case and draw the exact opposite conclusion. My neighbor's sweet dog Hito was stabbed last year. That certainly didn't make the news. If he bit someone, though, it would, because of his breed.
Secondly, it really begs the question of how not being aware of an event means that we don't care about it. Don't we have to be aware of something before we can have a real opinion of it? Can I love or hate someone whose very existence I'm oblivious to? So if something isn't in the news, is that because I don't care about it? Doubtful, at the very least.
Furthermore, there are examples of both that get justice done, and examples of both that do not, just like any other crime. Not every robbery is solved. Not ever car that is stolen is recovered. Murderers do get away with it sometimes. Does it follow that because Michael Vick was caught and punished while a particular murderer is not that no one cares to find the murderer? If the murderer is caught while a dog abuser like Vick goes undetected, does that mean that those particular dogs are suffering due to a lack of concern on the public's part?
You see how easily this unravels. And he's the one getting a paycheck out of it.
Let's play devil's advocate, though, and pretend this guy is actually making a point that would be strong enough for a high school debate team. I still have answers.
First, we tend to consider helplessness in choosing what victims to care about. If a child is assaulted by a grown man, that concerns most of us more than if that same man assaults a 6 foot 240 pound weightlifter. Why? Because we figure the weightlifter is more capable of taking care of himself. If Vick had killed a bear that was on his property, instead of dogs, there wouldn't be a problem because few people would look at a bear coming at them and see it as helpless.
Dogs are, though, even pit bulls. Hito might take someone else apart, but he sees me as an authority figure, and is genetically predisposed to submit to me, as was Angus. I could, if I were scum, kill him by walking right up to him and doing it. I might have to do it fast, but Hito would let me get close enough to do it, and allow me whatever contact it took to do it. He trusts me. That is what makes it so bad. It isn't so much that we value dogs more than people, it's that we're appalled by such a gross violation of an innocent creature's trust. For the same reason we would want an adult to be imprisoned for assaulting a child, but would be inclined to let the weightlifter deal with his attacker and go about his business once the aggressor is properly folded, spidled, and mutilated.
That is not to say that adults can never be helpless. Of course they can. In general, however, people will always be considered more capable of taking care of themselves than domistcated animals are.
But beyond that, aren't we basically inured to violence against other people? We see it on the news every day. We understand that we don't see ALL of it because it simply would not be feasible to give every single act of violence against people media attention. There are only twenty four hours in a day, after all, and who has the constitution it would take to absorb it all? Even the most callous amongst us would eventually say "enough!"
We dismiss a lot of what we do see, anyway. Dead children in war zones are called "collateral damage." Every time there's a rape case in the media you can bet that someone will say she was asking for it by dressing or acting the way she did. Excuses are made for police that shoot down unarmed men that later turn out to be guilty only of not being white. Sympathy is given to kids that kill their parents because they claim to be abused. We are, on the whole, quick to find excuses for people that use violence, and quick to use violence in response.
If we weren't we wouldn't jump so quickly to war, and there would be no one downplaying the need for diplomacy prior to war, as we have in our country now. We wouldn't have the death penalty, either. We might, without the inuring, follow our oft-brandished religions and seek redemption for the guilty, rather than death.
We play violence, too. It's in our movies and TV shows. It's in our video games. Hell, it's in some of our board games (and I LIKE "Risk"). We teach it to our kids with toy guns and toy soldiers and games like "Cowboys and Indians", where there are no reasons, just one group of kids pretending to shoot another for no other reason than "They're the Indians."
I'm not saying these things cause violence, so unruffle those feathers. I'm saying that they blunt the edge of our attutude against it. Violence against people is something we live with every day, starting at a very young age. We become inured, to an extent. Those of us who don't eventually crack up.
We don't have such a daily exposure to violence against animals, however. Kids never play "Cows and Butchers." Children caught abusing animals are normally punished for it. And we don't see dogfights and cockfights in the news every single solitary day.
And yes, we love dogs, because their loyalty and love is so much easier to count on than another person's.
Does that answer your loaded question, Mr. Martin?
Well, I'm sure they would be very proud of him now.
Here's the part that really gets me, though (italics mine).
The teen then described how he walked into the kitchen, shot his dad three times in the back, then shot his mother, 46-year-old Penny Brighton, while she began to run away, police said in the report. Brighton pleaded not guilty after being charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Brighton faces a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted.
So we get to spend time and money proving in court that he's guilty of what he just confessed to. I'm not knocking the system- it's all him. What a wad.
I was standing at the very edge of the stage, as close to the performer as you could get. He was only a few feet above me, so I could watch his movements very closely. Turning around to look at the enrapt audience, I saw that no less than half of them were staring at him with their mouths hanging wide open in sheer amazement. I absolutely understood.
As Stanley Jordan fits most comfortably in jazz circles, I was stunned to see his name listed in the Launchpad's upcoming artist list. At the time I'd been in the Duke City for about 7 or 8 years, and never had a reason to go to the mainly punk downtown club. Getting there, I found pretty much what I had expected; bare walls, a small, bare stage tucked into a corner with absolutely no backstage area, and a bar. Upstairs had pool tables, but was no less spartan. Well, some of the finest shows I've ever seen have been in such rattraps, so this only gave me one thought - "I can get pretty damn close to the action here."
Forty minutes after showtime the only thought I had was "Is Stanley Jordan going to show up? I knew this was too good to be true." He popped in the back door , adjacent to the stage and easily accessible by anyone, about five minutes later, looking a bit harried. Driving alone from Colorado can be a bitch, I guess.
And I mean alone. He pulled up to the back door, unloaded his own equipment, and went to work setting it up while we watched and experienced a renewed interest in the bar. I determined where he was setting himself up on the stage and stood directly in front of it, and waited. Another half hour, and he stood in front of us with a couple guitars, a few amps, and his own little mixing board on a little mixing board stand. No band and tons of empty space.
And he proceeded to blow our fucking minds. One may argue that other players are as good or even better than Stanley, but there is no one, no one, that plays like him.
Stanley makes exclusive use of the tapping technique invented by Jimmie Webster (most folks say) and popularized by Eddie Van Halen, Steve Hackett, and Michael Hedges among others. While most rock guitarists use the technique to play faster, Stanley uses it to elevate the instrument's capabilities. Using this technique as he does, he not only gets every finger on both hands involved, but he enables the instrument to create chords and melody at the same time.
To illustrate this, I'm going to go into new ground here and post a video. This is because you really, really, need to see this to understand how incredible it is. I really can't explain it to you. Also, I'm holding out on you a little, as this video shows a guitarist doing something that I, in all my extensive audience experience, have never seen anyone else do. The song is a familiar one - I'm certain you know it- and it is just past three minutes into the song that my point should be made for me (if it hasn't been already by that time), and the point is that no discussion of great guitarists or of technically astounding musicians of any type is complete without the name Stanley Jordan.
See my point? I have been listening to Stanley a bit more lately, since I have plans to see him perform again soon. While the solo performance was great, I'm hoping for a full band this time, simply because the band on this underground recording I have is astounding (I wish I knew who they were, especially the guy on violin, although there's a pretty wicked pianist here as well). This is an audience recording, but the best kind. The band is right up front, every instrument is clear and in good proportion, and the highs and lows are all present and accounted for. You can still hear the audience around the microphone, though. They aren't obnoxious (in fact, they're a pretty fun crowd who is into the music, it seems) but they are there. In this way these type of audience recordings are my favorite undergrounds, because I hear everything as if I were in the audience.
The song is called Footprints and it comes from the New Potato Cafe' in Nederland, Co. on June 8, 1997. I'm going to educatedly guess that this place isn't usually a punk club.
Also, to help you understand the way we felt while standing in the audience at the Launchpad (why would a punk club have chairs, after all?) that evening, here's a short solo cut from the Spectrum Club in Montreal sometime in July, 1985. It's a jaunty little blues piece called Fun Dance. While you listen to it, remind yourself that this is one man with one guitar, and that's all.
I was brought up to not say "nigger". There was no question that neither the word nor the intention were welcome in my parent's home. I didn't really need to have that drilled into me, either, since I had no desire to use the word. Although there were no black people in the little country town I grew up in, my italian/cherokee combo gave me the darkest skin in school, so I got to be the "nigger". I know exactly, intimately, the feeling of isolation that this word can bring.
I don't care for racism at all. As a result, I never thought much of the "black people can say it, but white people cannot" chain of logic. There is no way I can think about it without considering it racist as well. After all, "white people can sit under this tree, black people cannot" is racist, right? "White guys can wolf-whistle at white women, black guys cannot" is certainly racist. In fact, any time that one racial group says that they are allowed an activity that others are not allowed only because of their race, it is racism, pure and simple.
Now, I'm obviously not stumping for the right of whites to say "nigger." They have no such right. I simply never understood why black people wanted to. It never seemed "empowering" to me. In fact, if your idea of "empowerment" is to sound like a Klan member that would just as soon have you dangling from a tree, then I would say you have some serious issues.
More than that, though, I question the sincerity of any black person who says "nigger" and complains about white people being racist. ANYONE can be racist. Anyone of any color and any background. White folks don't have an exclusive on racism. We've certainly done the most to perfect it, but we're not the sole perpetrators.
So I'm glad to see black people standing up and saying "Enough! Let's be done with this damn word already! Save it for Uncle Tom's Cabin and Blazing Saddles! It's just not helping anything." (Of course, I'm the only one to literally say those words, but those words convey the feeling that these people's actions gave me.)
Maybe now we can be rid of this word and all the words like it. Eventually, maybe the intentions that spawn such words will go. This isn't people deciding how others can talk, it's people deciding what they are willing to listen to, and if people won't listen to comedians, actors, rappers, or anyone else that uses slurs, even if they are "taking the slur back", then perhaps people who want an audience will come to the conclusion that they are not being edgy, topical, and hip. Maybe they'll realize that they are offending and alienating those same people that they seek to identify with.
Maybe this will lead to a small victory against one of society's biggest evils.
