Are You Drunk or High?

I haven’t picked on Ricky for a while now. I realized that I couldn’t continue banging my head against the ideology wall anymore. Did that for years in those painful family gatherings, got over that, and moved on to a better place. I really don’t need to waste time and money letting Ricky’s pronouncements occupy any of my therapy hours.

But – just once more, bear with me. I just read this article: ‘Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Pink Balls’ on the Huffington Post.

Seems Ricky’s homophobia disallowed use of pink bowling balls at a bowling alley campaign stop.

Ummmm…. Ricky…. what about blue balls?????  Isn’t that a bigger male problem?????? Perhaps you should read this Cosmo Sex Q&A.

Actually, I’m happy Ricky chose the black ball. To blackball means:

ostracizing someone socially, e.g. prevention of finding local or field-specific employment, blacklisting from a club or other organization

Such an appropriate ball for Ricky!

I found the article on David Rabe in The New Yorker magazine (referred to in yesterday’s post, “What have we learned since My Lai”).  “Land of Lost Souls,” by John Lahr, November 24, 2008. Quote from the article:

Rabe sees war, and its sanctioned murder, as part of “the eternal human pageant”—the search for identity. “The poison was not so much that we did what we did as the way we denied that we were doing what we could see ourselves doing on television,” he has written. His Vietnam plays bear witness to the fog of war; his later plays are testimony to the postwar psychological blowback—a fog of denial, in which the characters are lost to themselves

Amy Davidson, a senior editor at The New Yorker magazine, reported on Staff Sergeant Robert Bales’ wife’s appearance on the Today Show. She poses the question “what can we learn from Karilyn Bale?” Matt Lauer posed this question:

“Did you say, Sweetheart, did you do this?”

I think this is irrepsonsible, shallow and terrible journalism by Matt Lauer and NBC. We can’t learn anything from it.

General John Allen is correct, it’s the type of reporting that fuels specualtion. (Remarks by the General are in the article)

“Speculation in the media and through anonymous commentary serves no one’s purpose in our interest and in our earnest desire to see justice done here.

Amy Davidson gets closer to better journalism:

 Should we just be quietly confused? Or do we owe it to the victims in Afghanistan to give their stories a certain specificity—not by jumping to conclusions, or denying Bales the due process he deserves, but by asking many more questions?

The flip side of what Allen calls speculation is complacent agnosticism. But not everything can be subsumed in discussions of character and good or bad will.

Davidson’s piece is on the surface simplistic, but I found myself thinking about it most of the day. Aha! A sign of good journalism. I’m challenged to think, consider and search for more.

Complacent agnosticism…..

In 1971 I saw David Rabe’s powerful drama ‘Sticks and Bones” at Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York City. Rabe, who served in Vietnam (remember that war?) wrote about a disabled vietnam soldier who returns home to his family. The family, a parody of the “Ozzie and Harriet” Nelsons, the TV family all America tried to emualte, cannot understand, refuse to understand their son’s war experience, nor his disabilty. In fact, he doesn’t want to be with his family. They are now as alien to him as he is to them. David retreats to his room hallucinating visits from a young vietnamese woman. Ozzie and Harriet refer to this hallucination as the “yellow whore.”

Under the perfect Nelson facade, Rabe reveals the layers of bigotry and prejudice. The evil then were the slanty eyed Vietnamese in the faraway place called Southeast Asia, light years from the safe living room of the Nelson family. The evil now are the Taliban, in that faraway place called Afghanistan.

The Nelson’s of Rabe’s play personify Davidson’s “complacent agnosticism.” To me, Rabe’s writings (“Sticks and Bones” was one of a trilogy) are superb journalism. His critical eye, unafraid to report the difficult facts we’d rather not see or hear (because we might be hearing and seeing ourselves) is the kind of reporting we should expect from the media.

I think I remember reading a great article  in The New Yorker Magazine about David Rabe. I think I’ll search the archives and I recommend readers of the magazine, readers of this blog and The New Yorker staff do the same.

Instead of abusing poor Karilyn Bale on the Today Show, we need some serious, well thought, well researched journalism that challenges us to think crtically and teaches us not to ignore the layers of prejudices in ourselves. Amy Davidson’s style, short and sweet, tickles our “be curious” nature in a provacative way.

Read Davidson’s article, “What Sergeant Bales’s Wife Didn’t Ask”

The Vietnam Plays: The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Stick and Bones. By David Rabe (Kindle version also available)

Sticks and Bones, a play in 2 acts, by David Rabe. There are some good reviews on this Amazon page.

Wife of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales on the Today Show.

Grieving Afghan woman. March, 2012

 Women and children, My Lai, Vietnam, March 16, 1968. They were killed seconds after this picture was taken.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was incarcerated at Fort Leavenworth, March 16, 2012 for the killings of 16 Afghans.

According to a CNN poll, nearly three-fourths of Americans think George Zimmerman should be arrested for shooting Trayvan Martin. I bet the poll results are pretty accurate. I think that three-fourths of Americans could easily draw that conclusion based on the facts, conjecture and opinions they’ve heard and read reported by the media. Perhaps Zimmerman will be arrested, based on the facts and evidence that will be uncovered by law officers and a legal system that just had a fire lit under their collective butts.

I think every American just had a fire lit under their butts. It’s like we all woke up and realized America is still plagued with bigotry, hate and fear. Unless you are white and privileged, citizens and non citizens in America fear the system. After all the anti war protests, stirring Martin Luther King speeches, the Chicago Seven, Million Man Marches, the Cesar Chavez farmer’s movement,  the women’s movement, the Civil Rights Act, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, America still can’t make good on the intentions stated in the Preamble to our Constituion:

…to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

If George Zimmerman is arrested and tried for shooting Trayvan Martin. I think America should be prepared to also put on trial the NRA, Gun Maufacturers, State and Local Legislatures and Law Enforcement Agencies, Congress, the pundits and shock jocks. More importantly I think we should prepare to put ourselves on trial. Let’s stop dancing around this. As Barack Obama, the first non white president of the U.S. said:

I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this happened.

The Sanford shooting reminded me of something.

Many years ago I was selected to be on the jury for a criminal case in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was a trial to determine the guilt or innocence of a young African American citizen on possesion of crack cocaine with the intent to sell.

The trial started with the judge telling us to expect a multi day trial, not to speak to anyone in the hallways or outside the court building and to report to the court house officials or police if anyone we did not know approached us. We would be accompanied to bathrooms by a court guard. There was a possibilty that we might be sequestered.

Wow, I thought, this is the real deal! This is exciting and interesting, but also very creepy. One young white male juror freaked out and demanded to be dismissed as he was very busy in his job and didn’t have time for this. The judge (a woman) gave him a real hard time about this blantant disrespect for the judical system, but in the end dismissed him. They guy would probably drive to a quick verdict just to get out of court and back to his more important life. He was replaced by a middle aged African American woman. Probably this was a win for the defendant. Our judge then challenged the rest of us, “anyone else have a problem?” We all looked at her and decided that collectively we didn’t have a problem.

So I started looking around the courtroom. The defendant not quite 20, was sitting with his lawyer. He was dressed in a white shirt and tie (a concession to his lawyer I figured) and sports pants with stripes and and sneakers (expensive ones), no earrings, no gold chains. He looked pretty ordinary. But, I kept thinking about the judge’s warnings about anyone approaching us (the jurors). I thought about the neighborhoods in Cambridge where this man would be with his friends, or the high school hallways he might walk with his gang. My son had friends in this neighborhood and school. Yep, from everything I’ve seen in the news, and the TV crime shows, this could be one scary kid. Just remove the white shirt and tie, and replace with a hoodie and the picture is complete.

Next: My Day in Court

Shaima Alawadi, a 32 year old Iraqi mother of five was beaten and critically injured in her in Southern California. She was taken off life support and died. Her body will be flown to Iraq. The Iraqi government will pay the costs.

A threatening note was found near the victim, similar to one she received a week before.

“A week ago they left a letter saying, ‘This is our country, not yours, you terrorists,’” the daughter, Fatima Al Himidi told CNN affiliate KGTV. “So my mom ignored that, thinking (it was) kids playing around, pranking. And so the day they hurt her, they left it again and it said the same thing.”

Ms. Alwadi always wore a traditonal Muslim Scarf.

The company profile page of Kel Tec, the manufacturer of the gun that killed Trayvon Martin. The company is doing quite well. They are the 5th largest manufacturer of firearms in the world and have begun construction on a new 12,500 sq. ft. building to house materials needed just to keep up with demand.

We strongly support the individual right to keep and bear arms as defined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. All employees are members of the NRA.

I’ve watched enough episodes of Bonanza* with posses and lynch mobs to know that America and individuals in America have fought hard for a fair and just legal system. Sheriff Roy Coffee spent a good deal of his time trying to manage rogue posses. Ben Cartwright spent a lot of his time taming his hot headed sons. I know the poor Mormons kept getting run off land by gunfire and murder.

I believe that it is correct to let this system work to sort out the facts and the intent of the law in the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. Burden of proof is the job of the prosecuting attorney and any federal investigation. The police are responsible for supplying the prosecutors with facts. There is due process to follow. Law and Order has always done a pretty good job of describing this process. It’s not unusual, nor outrageous for a suspect to not be arrested until there is sufficient evidence to do so. How long did it take for serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky to wind up behind bars (and then out again waiting trial at home)?

Did Trayvon Martin “look suspicious” because he was a young black man in a hoodie, or simply because he was someone who did not live in the Sanford gated community? Probably both. I think all young men, teenagers, look suspicious. My son and his pal (white boys) used to get stopped just because they had backpacks, or that they hung out with that Hispanic group in the white, class conscious Massachusetts suburban city. The email list of my informal Vermont Neighborhood Association group was ablaze with emails of fear when the same son walked home in the dark singing an Allman Brothers song. He was called “Singing, Howling Man.” The assumption was he was deranged and dangerous. The City Boy was afraid of the critters in the woods and was singing to warn them off.

I am not that naive that I don’t think racial profiling had nothing to do with this. And I believe that racial issues are more intense in certain areas of our country.  I am also not that naive that I think that fear, hatred and bigotry only exist in certain areas of our country. I think Obama is correct that this tragedy points to an ongoing and fundamental problem in our society. We need to stop dancing around the issues of prejudices that continue to be a blight on our society.

Beyond the hoodie though, here’s where I think things went terribly wrong for Tryvan and George. Zimmerman had a gun.

Notice that politicians and law enforcement are distancing themselves as far as they can from the gun issue (how and why did Zimmerman have a gun) and from the laws that allowed this to happen. Jeb Bush didn’t mean for the “stand your ground” law to be used this way. The NRA who is really pro guns for self defense is suddenly really, really quiet.

As alcohol fuels arguments (think about that bigoted, loud mouthed relative at a family dinner), the shock journalists, the painful GOP campaign, and our owns fears fueled the reasons for this tragedy. What we think and say in our homes, to our friends, what we watch on TV is the fuel of escalated emotions. There are few to no Ben Cartwright’s on TV who work to calm tensions, seek truth and justice and disarm the hot heads. Rather we watch NetFlix so we can watch vigilante adventures, movies with the names “Die Hard” or “Robocop” or “Death Wish.”

We armed George Zimmerman with fear, bravado and a gun. The perfect ingredients for tragedy.

*One reason for Bonanza’s success was the show’s attention to script development. The characters were allowed to grow and evolve; story lines crossed into controversial topics, exploring racial tension, domestic violence and substance abuse. Each of the Cartwright men developed relationships with women on the show; although almost every woman that came into their lives died tragically. (from TV Land)

Coptic Orthodox Christians are mourning the death of Pope Shenuda III. He was the head of Church of St Mark . The Coptic Church is the largest Christian Church in the Middle East.  The Church also has members in Europe, Canada, the United States, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

A mourner in Egypt said this about his Pope:

“He was – as a religious man – averse to getting involved in politics. However, he managed, in a clever way, to relay the fears and needs of Christians to politicians.

“He did this very well because he always had his fingers on the pulse of the Coptic masses,”