The Wrong Questions

Last night, I caught myself asking, “Why Oklahoma City? What did they do to anybody?"

The area was hit with tornadoes only two weeks after the community of Moore was devastated by a twister. One of the tornadoes that affected the region last night was reported in Moore, though it was only a shadow of the earlier version. Even so, it was a tornado, and it was Moore. Last night’s destruction over the general area was widespread.

When you ask a question like, “Why them?” you are heading down the road preacher Pat Robertson wants you to travel – do you really want to go there? He has answered such questions, of course, by saying that disasters are visited upon areas that deserve it because of some pervading pattern of immorality, like Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible.

But by those standards, parts of both coasts of the United States, including the place I’m living in, should have long since broken off and sunk into the sea – but I’m still here. And when you think of hotbeds of immorality, well, Oklahoma isn’t the first place that comes to mind.

So if you can’t think of a reason that God visits catastrophes on places like Oklahoma City, then you’re led to another question: Does God send such things? If he (she) doesn’t, who does?

The ultimate and most disturbing question is: If such awful things are allowed to happen to good people, is there a God at all? I would bet there is more than one person in Moore asking that question this morning – and most of us probably wouldn’t blame them.

We yearn to have such questions answered, and over time, we realize that nobody, least of all the Pat Robertsons of the world, can answer them for us. Peace is only achieved when we can answer them for ourselves – or when we can agree to stop asking those questions and move on to more important ones.

The only real progress comes in the answer to this: What are you going to do about it? That’s also a question that requires an individual answer, and answering that one is how we grow. Perhaps we can give God credit for helping us do that. Or not.

We don’t all grow the same way. It may be momentarily inspiring to see those people on TV standing in front of their flattened homes, telling reporters how they’re not discouraged and how they plan to rebuild in the same place. But for others, the answer may be, “I’m outta here!”

In the great scheme of things, of course, there is no “outta here” – if you live in the Plains and decide to leave, you’re simply trading in tornadoes for something else: hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, blizzards, wildfires or combinations of all of them. Building somewhere else isn’t going to keep s**t from happening to us.

It’s what we build after it happens to us that matters. It’s not about simply replacing a physical structure or possessions. It’s about whether tragedy can be transformed into a solid foundation for building a new life. That’s the question we should be trying to answer.

But if at this moment you’re standing in front of your flattened home, and you don’t feel like coming up with the answer right this minute to inspire the rest of us, well, far be it from me to judge you for it.

The Really Thin Red Line

I haven’t had anything to say about Syria in a long time, mainly because it’s been too upsetting, and like many in the West, I just wanted to think about other things. But that is a luxury we may no longer be able to afford.

President Obama said a while ago that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons would represent a “red line” that if crossed, would trigger a U.S. response, though it’s never been made quite clear what that is. It would seem, however, that there is much more evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria than there was for the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein, which triggered our launch of the Iraq war.

It’s almost impossible to count the number of horses that have left the barn here. Red lines are fine as far as they go – but what has already happened south of that line? The use of bombs and heavy artillery on civilian populations, Hundreds of thousands killed, atrocities too numerous and horrible to detail, and more than 1.5 million refugees fleeing to surrounding countries – a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

So the options that remain are bad ones. The Pentagon has a set of responses ready to be implemented, primarily for the securing of the chemical weapons – steps which may soon be necessary. And the talk of arming the rebels against the Assad regime continues. The European Union has the go-ahead to do so, but it’s a faint green light indeed: it’s simply a failure of European nations to agree on anything, so the current ban on such supplying of weapons will simply expire.

The West worries about the supplied weapons falling into the wrong hands. But it may be a challenge to find the right ones. Those who eventually come to power in Syria will probably not be our friends. The population will never forgive us for failing to come to their aid in their time of need – especially after watching what we did in Libya.

The bottom line is that we are going to be involved in Syria, whether we like it or not – sucked or dragged in kicking and screaming, choose your metaphor. Let us hope and pray that peace talks will eventually succeed and that somebody figures out what to do with the Assad family. But Syria is going to be our problem for a long time to come.

And I’m waiting for someone to talk me out of the idea that it didn’t have to be this way.

Race to the Cellar

It’s astonishing to me how two men with a couple of sharp instruments and a twisted interpretation of Islam could throw a nation of millions into alert mode, but that’s exactly what happened in the U.K. this week.

The two murdered an innocent British soldier in the London district of Woolwich in especially unpleasant fashion. Some officials called them cowards, but they weren’t at all. They remained at the scene of the crime and welcomed documentation of what they had done by people in the area with smartphone cameras, finding a willing audience for their insane ideas.

As if this weren’t enough, the footage (funny how we persist in using antiquated terms for digital information) made its way not only onto the Internet, but onto respected news outlets like the BBC. Pictures of one of the suspects holding a bloody meat cleaver were on the front pages of many newspapers.

We often hear the argument these days that information is now democratized, that we’re all reporters, and that we don’t need the traditional “big brother” media outlets to get out the news. In desperate search of ears and eyeballs, the media succumb to this intense pressure to share every single detail of a crime perpetrated by those seeking maximum distribution of it, partly on the grounds that such distribution will happen anyway.

Just to mix metaphors – and I’ve used this one before – we are like 12-year-olds sitting around a campfire in the dark, trying to one-up each other with a more shocking ghost story – and there’s nothing more effective than a ghost story that’s true. The result is, we get desensitized to normal levels of horror, and the bar is raised – or lowered, depending on your point of view.

I hope that some day, as we all get used to playing with our new electronic toys, that editors will be appreciated again. Freedom of speech is precious – but so is the freedom not to speak – or to deny full voice to an infinitesimal minority of individuals whose only goal is to scare us to death.

When Will We Ever Learn?

What’s wrong with me? What chip did I not come with?

Yesterday, London witnessed a horrible crime. Two crazies, armed with a machete and a knife, murdered a 25-year-old British soldier outside the Woolwich barracks of an artillery unit.  Seeing passersby with smart phone cameras, one of the suspects mouthed threats, held up the bloody machete and shouted something about Allah before armed police shot and wounded the two.

A grisly and shocking incident by anyone’s standards, to be sure. But some in the UK are calling it the worst incident of terrorism in the city since the bombings of 2005. The graphic footage is all over TV and the Internet; Downing Street went into crisis mode, with Prime Minister David Cameron cutting short his trip to France to meet with a security committee. Reporters are asking folks if they feel safe walking the streets. Has the new era of “lone wolf attacks” begun? the columns ask.

I don’t mean to minimize this whole thing, but these guys didn’t crash a plane into a building, release a lethal chemical agent, or even blow up a bomb full of ball bearings. They used a machete -- can’t get much lower-tech than that. And one person died – not 10, not hundreds, not thousands -- one.

Is there a chance that this has been overblown in some way? What exactly is wrong with this picture?

For one thing, the crazies got exactly what they wanted: PUBLICITY.  Some media – even respected outlets -- have been showing this graphic footage repeatedly. There was little regard for the victim of this crime, whose family could as easily have seen the whole thing on TV or the Internet before being formally notified of the death of their loved one. There used to be conventions about self-censorship. Not anymore. Some have called what was put on-screen to be just short of a live execution. I bet that day isn’t very far off.

Overnight, there were attacks on mosques. Today there are reports that the perpetrators were “known to security services,” so there’s sure to be am investigation into who dropped the ball. Two additional people have been arrested for alleged conspiracy.

I can’t help thinking there’s a rodeo we should have been to already, and a movie we should have seen before. Is there something that can be done differently the next time? We’d all better figure out what that is, and soon.

Obama's Rough Patch

So we thought that perhaps once President Obama’s second term began, Congressional factions would have little choice but to concentrate on getting stuff done. What were we thinking?

Opponents of the President are basking in the steam from the boiling pot, with no fewer than three scandals brewing. There’s the security failure at Benghazi; the selective targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS; and the Justice Department’s acquisition of AP phone records to track down a leak.

The Benghazi issue has been characterized by the administration as a “sideshow.” Not a good word choice, as it involves an apparent failure that led to the deaths of four people, including a U.S. ambassador. Is the White House itself at fault? So far, probably not, but it’s generally agreed that a ball was dropped – the question is, who dropped it? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, because of her failure to read cables asking for more security for diplomatic personnel in Banghazi? She wouldn’t be the first CEO to have glossed over a communication. And I bet all her Republican critics in Congress have read all the bills they vote on, right? Still, the administration failed to get ahead of this problem, and at the very least, it turned into an unnecessary PR crisis.

The IRS? Its selective targeting of Tea Party groups is inexcusable, and this scandal comes at a really bad time, as the implementation of Obamacare is supposed to come with the agency’s oversight of the program. The only thing that mitigates it,  IMHO, is that some of these Tea Party groups were seeking tax-exempt status, and the IRS was trying to dig into whether that was really appropriate. IMHO again, if we had a simple, clear and sensible tax code, this problem wouldn’t exist in the first place, but that, as they say, is a separate animal.

The least important of these scandals for the average American seems to be the DOJ’s acquisition of the AP’s phone records, supposedly because it “only” involves the media. Many forget that the records will lead authorities to government officials who had confidential contact with reporters, and going forward, officials may be spooked about ever talking to a reporter again. Are we living in East Germany? If we can’t have a free press doing its job, we may not have a democracy, either.

At the bottom, or the top, if you prefer, of the AP thing is Attorney General Eric Holder. IMHO once more, if anyone in the Obama administration should be falling on his sword, it’s this guy. We’ve already been through Fast and Furious with his non-answers. President Obama would save himself a lot of grief by showing Holder the door as soon as possible.

Impeachment? Well, I’ve seen this movie before, so I’m going to take my popcorn and go home.

Fascination with the Monsters Among Us

I think it’s very clear to most of us by now that most people are fine human beings – but not all. And often, we think they’re the former, and they turn out to be the latter. Now we have a school bus driver from Cleveland, Ariel Castro, accused of kidnapping and holding three women in bondage for 10 years. This is the lead international story, and every day, new horrors surface.

How many of us are shaking our heads in disbelief, calling for the eternal torture of the alleged perpetrator, while lapping up every “breaking news” detail that’s breathlessly delivered to us by anchors and reporters, some of them shaking their own heads? How much is a part of us enjoying this story? Do you think maybe the news media folks know this?

That said, I wonder if devoting 45 minutes of every hour to this isn’t a bit much. Sometimes, I think the news producers aren’t good at gauging when most of us yearn to change the channel and see something else. Maybe it’s just that I and some of the rest of you have seen this movie already: “Manhunter” or “Silence of the Lambs.” How long do you think it will be before the Cleveland movie comes out?

I think the Stockholm Syndrome has been covered well past the point of exhaustion. If there is a live topic here, though, I think it’s about privacy. Where is the bright line between minding one’s own business and intervening where it might save victims many years of grief? When do we pick up the phone and call 911 to report something suspicious, or is that just paranoid meddling? In a world where privacy is a vanishing commodity, where does our duty to respect it end and our duty to help another human being begin? If we help, are we heroes? And if we don’t, are we, in some small measure, accessories?

These questions may make us squirm a lot more than the story itself does.

Calling Jack Bauer

There’s a lot of interesting terminology being thrown around about the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect who’s in the hospital. First, there’s “terrorist.” I personally don’t have a problem with that one. But then we have heard calls for this guy to be treated as an “enemy combatant,” which would open the door to long detention without trial and certain interrogation techniques.

That one hasn’t gone anywhere, however, and they gave Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a Miranda warning. But now they say that the bombs these two brothers allegedly used were “weapons of mass destruction.” Really?

The crude bombs, packed with nails and ball bearings, were designed to cause maximum injury, and they did. But are they really WMD? Like chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, whose mythical existence in Iraq caused us to go to war? I wonder. But WMD use brings the death penalty.

The surviving brother, like his deceased sibling, is an American citizen. But he’s also of foreign extraction, and he’s said to be a follower of Islam. Were he a white Christian, I’m wondering if we would be discussing him in quite the same terms.

So when they get around to questioning him, does he have information that would tie him to, say, Al Qaeda training abroad? I would guess most of us profess to be opposed to torture – but then we consider all those bombing victims without an arm or a leg today. And then, we think, well, maybe in this case….

Dick Cheney must be smiling inside right now.

Facebook and the Demise of Goodbye

A former colleague and good friend announced plans a few months ago to sell her local home and move to another state in a completely different part of the country. She has many good friends in my area, and amid all the preparations associated with getting the house ready for sale and making moving arrangements, she had to squeeze in time to say goodbye in person to her friends individually, as she had decided not to have a final gathering. 

My turn came, and we had dinner and said our goodbyes. I was fully aware that I would likely never see this individual again in my lifetime. My friend’s new city is not an obvious “bucket-list” place. My wife and I would probably not pick it out for a vacation, and neither of us have any family in that area or any business reason to go there. And as we talk about lifetime, while I have a ways go yet, in the great scheme of things, there’s not all that much of that left.

The modern difference in all this, however, is that my former colleague and I are Facebook friends. I was reluctant to join FB a few years ago, but she was one of the first to welcome me to it when I did. Being part of a younger generation and being who she is, she “shares” (there’s another word whose future I’m worried about) almost everything, and as she writes beautifully and her posts are almost always interesting, she has a large following.

In the old days, when you said goodbye in person in the circumstances described here, that might be it, unless you wanted to rack up phone bills or exchange letters (remember those?). There was goodbye, because there would be physical distance, so it really meant something.

In my friend’s case, she would not be leaving for about a month after our dinner, but she continued to post on FB, and I continued to follow. As there’s a drama king in me, I was moved to say goodbye on FB several more times; I’m a movie buff, and the best ones always seem to have logical endings. Anyway, she finally launched her cross-country road trip to get to her new home, FB posting, of course, all the way, and I and her large group of friends were able to “follow” her. It felt almost like she hadn’t left at all.

As in real (as opposed to virtual) life, there are all kinds of relationships possible on Facebook, and you can control their intensity, both on “input” and “output.” You obviously can control what you write and who sees it, as can your friends. You can “hide” the posts of the most annoying people from your input stream (“news feed”), and there’s even the nuclear option: you can “unfriend” someone.  

But “goodbye,” as some of us used to know it, can just about disappear from your life, if you choose, in our new ultra-connected world -- as perhaps time and distance already have.

Crime and Punishment: The New Normal

It took us more than 10 years to catch up to the top perpetrators of 9/11. It took less than a week to catch up to the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing. Do we need any more proof that a new day has arrived?

It’s largely about cameras. To paraphrase Allen Funt, we should be smiling all the time. Chances are we’re in somebody’s viewfinder or on a screen. Not a pleasant prospect for many of us who prize our privacy – but then there are times when we need those cameras. The FBI reviewed security camera recordings of two suspicious characters in the bombing. They put out press releases with the best shots, and within hours, they had crystal-clear pictures of the suspects, supplied by the public, because everybody has a camera now, either in their smartphones or as compact standalone equipment. Looks like the days of those police artist sketches are numbered. Funny how the suspects in all those sketches seemed to look exactly alike anyway.

The two suspects in the Boston case knew in short order they had nowhere to hide. Their pictures were everywhere. A convenience market security camera caught them in the process of a carjacking. Confrontations with law enforcement followed; one suspect was killed, the other one was captured alive, hiding in a boat in the backyard of a home. The public were on high alert. In the case of Suspect Two, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a homeowner noticed blood coming from the boat. A police helicopter with a thermal imaging camera determined that Mr. White Hat was in there, and that he was alive, though wounded. Police finally were able to capture him, and when the news got out, citizens lined the streets wildly applauding every law enforcement vehicle leaving the scene.

But it wasn’t simply about good police work. It couldn’t have been done without cameras, the media – social as well as traditional – and alert citizens. We should borrow one of the hands we’re clapping with, and pat ourselves on the back.

As well as the folks who invented smartphones.

Plain Speaking

It was interesting how long it took authorities to start using a certain word following the Boston Marathon bombings (indeed, I got the impression that “device” was a euphemism for “bomb,” which it took a long time for even the media to use, but that’s another program).

But “terrorism”? It took a really long time for authorities to use that one. It’s almost like I heard them trying to get it out, but not quite able to do it: “T-t-t-t-t-t…”

The FBI agent-in-charge, during a news conference, said the investigation was a criminal investigation, but only a “potential” terrorism investigation, if I heard him right. My question is, if even one person plants bombs that end up killing at least two and injuring well over 100, how is that not terrorism?

The reason, of course, is that the T-word seems to imply foreign, rather than domestic involvement – at least that’s how it has been since 9/11. Authorities don’t want angry mobs running around beating up people named, say, Osama (a not uncommon name in the Arab world). Actually, the use of maiming ball bearings in the explosives seems to imply foreign involvement much more strongly. But of course, home-grown folks can plant bombs, and even use ball bearings. The Internet provides the instruction.

There are other words and phrases that bother me when it comes to this stuff. I think I’d much rather be an honest-to-goodness “suspect” than a “person of interest.” I guess the latter is someone the cops really want to talk to but don’t have to charge. But if CNN tells the world I’m a “person of interest,” everyone’s going to believe I committed the crime anyway.

Terrorism, though,  is what it is. It doesn’t require half a dozen guys from the Middle East to do it. One individual, even with white skin – and a big enough grudge -- is perfectly capable of it.

Peeling the Onion on Guns

The call for gun control and the need for improved school security have been linked since the Newtown, Conn. shooting, but while linked, they are very separate issues in some respects.

While the Congress can’t seem to get its act together on gun control, some states are carrying the ball just fine. The governor of Connecticut has signed one of the toughest gun laws in the nation, requiring background checks for gun buyers, restricting magazine capacity to 10 bullets, and requiring those who currently own weapons with larger magazines to register them by next New Year’s Day. Personally, I would go even further, requiring everyone who buys a gun to be licensed, similar to what’s required of drivers. That would include training and passing some sort of test.

The argument about registration being a precursor to the government’s confiscation of guns is, to me, so bogus and outlandish that it defies description. It will not happen in this country in anyone’s lifetime. Even if such an initiative were launched, the confiscators would have to pry weapons out of millions of sets of cold, dead fingers. It would be Civil War II.

But what about security in schools? The NRA has called for an armed security officer in every school, and I don’t have a problem with that. Many high schools have had “school resource officers” from local police departments for decades – not a radical concept.

And what about teachers or school administrators carrying concealed weapons? Actually, I don’t have a problem with that either, as long as strict background checks were in place. Perhaps there should be a limit on how many teachers or administrators per school would be packing on campus – and that information should be absolutely confidential. True, it could increase a school district’s liability costs, but when the rubber hits the road, if it limits the damage a crazy person could cause at a school, it might be well worth it.

Older men like me often repeat themselves, so I’ll do it here. The Second Amendment is not sacred text, nor is the Constitution itself. That’s why there are things called “amendments,” and even they can be repealed as justices become enlightened.

Gun control is not, in the end, a legislative issue. Someday, for example, alcoholic beverage consumption won’t be a habit, but that will require a cultural sea change. Prohibition, one of the aforementioned amendments, was repealed because it didn’t work. On the other hand, it’s not inconceivable that smoking will virtually disappear in the lifetimes of many of us, because it just isn’t cool anymore. That’s really how the gun problem will be solved, and that will require of us something in short supply these days: patience.

Bait and Switch

There have been disturbing reports surfacing lately about the food supply. Turns out some of what folks thought was beef in the UK was at least partly horsemeat. And that fish they charged you big bucks for might not be what you thought it was.

Look, I am not a foodie fanatic. If it tastes OK, I’ll probably finish it. If I stick a fork in a piece of meat and I don’t hear a whnnny, the packager will likely get away with it, and I’ll never know the difference.

But I should.

Here in California, many of us worry about genetically-modified food. An initiative to require disclosure of such modifications failed. It was a good idea, but there were problems with the measure – I even voted against it because of them. But GMO may be the least of our problems, if they can’t even tell us what it is that we’re putting in our mouths now. Where is Upton Sinclair when we need him?

If it’s part horse instead of all beef, just tell me. If it’s tuna instead of red snapper, let me know. I might surprise you and try it anyway if you make it worth my while. Be honest! Look at how much the organic food people charge for their products. There’s a market for all choices and price points, but nobody will buy your stuff again if it’s revealed later that you lied.

When I was little, I was a picky eater. My mother actually disguised food that I swore up and down I’d never consume, and tell me later that I had just eaten it. I never noticed until it was too late.

But aren’t we all a little old for games?

Sexuality and Reality

 The U.S. Supreme Court has opened arguments on California’s Proposition 8, the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits same-sex marriage. Proposition 8, as we remember, was heavily backed by the Mormon Church. Religious institutions have been at the core of the opposition to gay marriage. But what's really the subject here?

Homosexuality is not normal, some may say. But what does “normal” actually mean? It really was never intended to mean “right” or “correct.” It means “common.” And homosexuality is less common than heterosexuality, no question – but that’s all you can say about it.

I would submit that there is no basis for throwing around the word “normal” when you talk about human sexuality, when there are entire websites and magazines devoted to FEET, to offer just one example. Did not Dr. Kinsey establish a long time ago that there are almost as many strokes as there are folks?

Sexuality is by no means a static target. People can have one kind of persuasion at one age and a different kind as they grow up. Or not! What governs sexuality – genes? Experience? Does it matter, as long as consenting adults are involved?

Can homosexuality be “cured”? If you’re trying to tell me that those who practice this therapy are experts in brain wiring, which is what is required, I would beg to differ.

If a certain percentage of non-human mammals, supposedly governed strictly by instinct, practice homosexuality, then what is “natural”?

Is a loving homosexual relationship that lasts for decades any less valid than a heterosexual marriage that lasts for six months?

There would seem to be too many easy answers for moralists to too many big questions.

The Need to Stay Awake

You’ll hear a lot and see plenty of footage today about the 10^th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. I have no profundities to add. We did get rid of the not-so-nice guy that was running the country and helped establish a more-or-less stable democracy there -- some days more, others less.

Then we have to ask ourselves whether it was worth it. We may not like the answers we get, but the fact is, most of us slept through this war and are only waking up because the Afghan war is slowly ending. Thousands of American lives were lost. Most of the service members returning home have been damaged in some way.

While we may know someone, or know someone who knows someone, in a family that has been directly impacted by these conflicts, the blows were softened to the point where most of us felt almost no impact. No sacrifices were demanded of us. There was no rationing of rubber, paper or gasoline. We weren’t asked to buy bonds to pay for these wars. There was no draft, and many who served had to do it three or four times. Many weren’t young people – they were professionals, often from the ranks of public safety, who were doing the fighting.

During World War II, government did its best to keep us awake. It’s very cynical to say that in these modern conflicts, government almost prefers that we sleep, except maybe at holidays like Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, or the opening ceremonies of the Super Bowl. As we wake up, it’s just like we’ve been in a hotel, and the management is shoving the bill under the door.

There will always be “good” wars and “bad” wars, necessary and unnecessary ones; they may even be fought with machines or devices instead of people. All the more reason we need to be awake – because there are always those who would prefer that we stay in bed.

But that bill will still be arriving in the morning.

Catholicism and Me

I am a long-since-lapsed Catholic, but having been raised in this faith, the election of a new pope remains a story that catches my attention. The white smoke/black smoke thing is no less dramatic now than it was when I first heard CBS correspondent Winston Burdett, in his incomparable style, intoning, “Habemus papam!” My earliest pope, BTW, was Pius XII.

Why did I lapse? Many reasons, but a common thread that runs through many organized religions is that they get too complicated. I recognize the need for the Ten Commandments, but it usually doesn’t stop there. Catholicism added all kinds of stuff about meatless Fridays, venial and mortal sins, confession, penance, etc. I actually sort of miss the Latin Mass, believe it or not, and preferred just going to the service and leaving without having to turn around and greet others in neighboring pews, but that’s a side issue.

The meatless business was kind of annoying. We used to have one of those calendars with fish on it. On Fridays and certain days in Lent, as I recall, the fish was colored blue, and that meant no meat at all that day. If the fish was an outline only, that meant you could only have meat at the “principal meal” of the day.

Once we were invited to a barbecue put on by a non-Catholic family, on a Friday, of course. They served me steak, and I ate it -- probably the best I’d ever had. I was terribly guilty about this, and felt the need to mention it in confession on Saturday. The kindly priest said, “In this case, you didn’t really sin; it would have been rude, as a guest, to refuse the main thing they were serving you.”

“But Father,” I replied in deepest shame, “I had seconds!”

I was often terrified as a child to take an airline trip if I hadn’t been to confession. If something should happen to the aircraft in flight and I was not in a “state of grace,” the only solution was to make a “perfect act of contrition” while the plane was going down. I despaired of ever having the presence of mind to be able to do that, so my knuckles were white on the smoothest of flights.

Don’t even get me started on what the Church put in children’s heads regarding sexuality, especially males. Impure thoughts, self-abuse, etc., some of you may know the drill. Of course, we’ve learned in recent years that many of the priests were not too adept at practicing what was preached in this area.

The election of Pope Francis I could mean a significant shift in the way the Church does business. His humility and experience working with the poor have been praised. Many of the faithful also hope that he will do something about financial corruption and increase transparency, as well as deal more forcefully with the child-abuse issues. And, of course, he is the first non-European pope.

But he isn’t expected to do a lot of reforming in basic church doctrine. The “thou shalt nots” that sent me on such guilt trips as a child are expected to largely remain, so I don’t think I’ll be un-lapsing anytime soon.

Something to Watch Over Me

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster, largely concerned with the use of government drones to kill noncombatant Americans on American soil, may seem like a far-out hypothetical. The White House says the President doesn’t have the authority to use drones that way. But that doesn’t put the discussion of drones to bed at all. This may be the first eruption of lava in the coming volcanic debate over drones, which we think are being used only as a convenient means of getting rid of faraway bad guys. Wrong!

The fact is, drones are already being used right here for law enforcement surveillance purposes. More than a dozen states are said to be trying to pass legislation restricting police use of drones. I would not like to be a legislator or an attorney trying to sort out the legal issues involved. What’s the difference between a drone flying over your head and a helicopter? What’s the difference between a drone flying overhead and the street cameras used in many communities today?

Some argue that drones can have really beneficial uses for public safety – looking at a brush fire to see where it’s advancing, which can be a dangerous pursuit for a human being in an aircraft. Or, as I’ve read on the Internet, drones can be used for very benign reasons, for example, to inspect sensitive environmental areas from the air and the changes occurring in them.

What’s really scary, though, is that private citizens are going to get widespread access to these things, if they don’t have it already. You think you can sunbathe nude in your backyard because you have a high fence around your property? Think again. And suppose someone just wants to follow you around for whatever reason? Are these going to be standard tools for paparazzi? BTW, I'm sure it would be fun for a private pilot, trying to dodge all this new aeronautical junk.

One of my earlier posts here was titled “The Privacy Horse Has Left the Barn.” Well, he’s getting farther and farther away from the barn as time passes, and I’m not sure I like where he’s headed.

Don’t be surprised if you hear the sound of bleep hitting the fan over all this, and very soon.

The OOOOOnly Way to Fly?

Next month, new regulations from the Transportation Security Administration go into effect, allowing those of you who insist on traveling with such things as Swiss Army knives, hockey sticks, golf clubs, ski poles, lacrosse sticks and baseball bats to take them on an airplane with you. The changes have sparked something of an uproar from flight attendants, who are worried about being exposed to dangerous implements.

Before 9/11, people used to travel with unbelievable amounts of junk, which made it difficult to find a place to mash your carry-on bag in the overhead compartments. In spite of all this, I don’t recall there being regular knife fights or batting practice on airliners, so exactly what the difference would be  now, I don’t know. Are airline passengers angrier and more aggressive? I could actually understand that, inasmuch as we will still not be able to take water bottles on board and will still have to take our shoes off in security. Have all these rules kept us safe? Have they made us feel safer? Perhaps they did at the beginning; now, I’m not so sure. The whole experience is demeaning, but we put up with it because flying gets us there faster, unless it snows, gets foggy, there’s a computer glitch, an airport security breach or some other issue. As for aggressive passengers, if they stopped serving alcohol in coach, would that calm folks down, or make them worse?

A friend of mine is moving to a new state, and has decided to travel there by RV with her three cats. She figures she can’t take the cats to most hotels. Inasmuch as she has the time for the trip, she may have the right idea. Though I wouldn’t relish the idea of traveling and sleeping in a confined space with three cats (or even one, for that matter), these RVs have refrigerators, microwaves, beds, toilets, even showers. None of the humiliation associated with an airport, or even the inconvenience of packing and unpacking bags and checking into hotels of various cleanliness levels. You don’t even have to be subject to restaurant food in strange towns not in the Michelin guide. I just hope I never get stuck behind her vehicle while traveling through a scenic national park, or I might start behaving like one of these aggressive airline passengers.

When I traveled to Israel by air many years ago, the El Al security people were tough. They didn’t rely on all these rote motions and machines. The trained agents looked you right in the eye and asked you a bunch of questions, carefully gauging your reactions. If anyone was going to catch a terrorist, it was going to be them.

Maybe we’d all feel better if the TSA were able to tell us how many terrorist incidents they’ve actually stopped, thanks to all the pain involved in boarding an airplane. Oh well, there are lot worse forms of transportation.

Do we have a vote for cruise ships?

Language Arts

I haven’t looked this up yet, but what are the two most popular “event” shows on TV? I assume No. 1 is the Super Bowl, but the Oscars must not be far behind. I don’t think I have missed an Oscar telecast in half a century.

One of the first production numbers out of the box this year was the Gay Men’s Chorus singing, “We Saw Your Boobs” as part of a bit with William Shatner playing Captain Kirk. Whether you think the bit was funny or misogynistic, for me that wasn’t quite the point. If the same number were to hit the air 30 years ago, the plug would have been pulled after about 10 seconds. Now it’s everyday humor.

A friend of mine has a 5-year-old son. She and he watched the Oscars together, and the next day, the little boy was running around the house singing, “We Saw Your Boobs,” which, of course, was less than thrilling for his mom.

When I was growing up, “boobs” were fools, not part of a woman’s body. I have always hated the latter use of this word, feeling that it’s demeaning to “breasts,” but even that word is a euphemism for “glands,” which is what they are, but kind of an ugly word, and not nearly as nice as the euphemism. Curious that we generally don’t have nicer words for our parts, male as well as female, but I think the late George Carlin was in this space long ago.

Cut to Washington, D.C. this week, where Speaker John Boehner, upset that the Senate hadn’t taken action on a bill sent over by the House, called on senators to “get off their ass.”

Another friend of mine – a woman -- who was actually defending the “boobs” song, was more upset about Boehner’s quip, and said that while “boobs” might be demeaning, “ass” was a curse word. That was a new one on me. I think the DBU, the Donkeys and Burros Union, might have something to say about this!

When I was in boarding school, we had to attend chapel, and at Christmas, the selected hymns were carols. When we got to the line, “Ox and ass before Him bow,” there was always a little snickering on the part of some.

My favorite use of this word, though, was in an edition of New West Magazine many years ago. It was a display ad for a public relations agency in L.A. whose name escapes me now, so I’ll have to make one up. In any case, it featured a donkey standing on the stripe in the middle of a two-lane road, and the wording was, “At Bartleby and Goldblatt, we put our ass on the line every day for our clients!”

So where am I going with this discussion, aside from bemoaning the degradation of our language in public discourse? Maybe it’s just an SEO scheme on my part to see if the use of these words will drive traffic to this blog. I’ve already tried "porn" and "knockoff handbags" as tags. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Oscarization

This is America, and what we do here really well is the award ceremony. There are few greater turn-ons in life than listening to the crackle of the paper as that envelope is opened, and we find out if our opinion has been validated, or in some cases, if we won our money. 

Almost every professional pursuit now has an annual awards ceremony. Some even do it more often. When I was in radio news, I occasionally had to cover local meetings of community service clubs if there were an important speaker. I went to one luncheon that included an awards ceremony, which must have lasted three hours. Every member of the organization received an award. At the end, they made the emcee leave the stage, so that they could give him one.

Even I have received a few awards (for broadcasting), so have attended more than a few ceremonies. At first, the organizations I was part of gave out relatively few awards, but then they started adding categories – in part, of course, so they could collect more contest entry fees. But that made the ceremonies longer, and in some, they allowed the recipients to give acceptance speeches – BIG mistake in a broadcasting awards event. My organizations did not use the Oscar technique of saving the biggies for the end – they did those first so the TV anchors could get back to their stations for the 11 p.m. news. I was getting a “smallie” on one particular night, so my time was close to the end, and I had to give a speech to those few remaining in the banquet hall. It was about 1 a.m., and not having much to say that hadn’t been said, I offered to take those left in the audience out for early breakfast. I had enough cash on me to cover them easily.

The Oscars, of course, are special. Tonight, I have a rather elaborate party to go to. The first thing we have to do is fill out Oscar ballots with our picks for all the categories, and we each chip in a buck to the pot, which the ballot with the most correct answers wins. This year, it’s interesting, as there are more than a few horse races. And some of the partygoers are serious – they do heavy research on this. Americans don’t like to lose—ANYTHING.

Also for this party, the guests are asked to bring a food item related to a nominated movie. In some cases, this is easy (French bread for “Les Mis”). For others, it’s hard (Canadian wine for “Argo”?). But if you need help, there’s apples for “Lincoln,” pie for “Life of Pi,” or Philly cheese steaks or crab dip for “Silver Linings Playbook” – even Raisin Bran for that one if you’re cheap. I have a relative who’s especially excited, as he’s a James Bond fan, and as “Skyfall” is nominated in several categories, he gets to mix shaken-not-stirred martinis in his very own 007 shaker. I think we’re going to be driving him home.

BTW, the food items don’t always have to be completely edible, they can be symbolic. I remember spending an afternoon gluing peas in lines to a paper plate for “The Aviator.” My wife had to construct an elaborate papier-mache chocolate dessert for “The Departed.” We also made substitutions of edible for inedible items: pate for cat food (“District 9”). I can’t remember what we did for one called “Winter’s Bone” – had to come up with something for Tennessee squirrel stew.

But don’t get me wrong. I love the Oscars. I was watching when Sasheen Littlefeather picked up one for the protesting Marlon Brando, and when someone named Bob “streaked” across the stage, and David Niven made a deliciously British remark about that fellow’s “shortcomings.”

In the end, the Oscars represent an increasingly rare phenomenon in the modern world: the true collective experience. We need to hang on to those while we can.

Wall to Wall to Wall...?

One of my hobbies is listening to the live streams of radio stations in local cities where news is breaking, as I was once a radio news director. This week, I listened to a station in Kansas City, where a huge explosion and fire engulfed a popular downtown restaurant, killing one and injuring many others.

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The discussion on the talk portion of the station’s programming involved not only the circumstances of the fire, but also the coverage of it in local electronic media. The hosts on the station I was listening to noted that the previous evening, the station’s broadcast of the University of Missouri basketball game was interrupted to cover the breaking news. Many listeners approved – but a few complained about missing their game. Similarly, a TV station in town that offered wall-to-wall coverage of the explosion and fire got complaints that popular TV shows were being pre-empted. One young woman texted, “We get that there’s a fire in Kansas City, but can’t we see ‘The Bachelor’?”

Journalism purists like me were shocked that audiences could be so callous about a breaking news event. But one caller on the radio station today came to their defense. “Showing the same fire footage over and over,” he said, “and repeating the same information several times does not constitute ‘coverage.’”

When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, radio stations did not drop their regular programming. Of course, they had no tape to replay over and over, so they simply reported the news they had and went back to their regular programs. That was all people expected. If they wanted a full report, they waited until their evening network news show.

These days, stations could do the same thing, if they wanted: report the information available, then return to regular programming until there was new information. But they don’t – sometimes, ”wall-to-wall” is the way to go.

But why? Is it to serve the public and make sure that the station is there for them in a time of crisis? Sure – but there’s more to it than that. The other part is, “How can I show up better than my competitors? If we don’t do it, will they?” Then there’s the issue of a viewer or listener tuning in for information in an “off” moment and finding only regular programming, then searching for the station that’s doing the coverage  -- which often involves the same reporter/anchor babble until the next hard information becomes available.

And some potential audience members just don’t care. Are they lesser human beings who have failed to evolve? Or are they actually entitled to a legitimate choice?

Different strokes, as they say, for different folks.

Just Another Day in the Universe

What on Earth (literally) is going on here? Meteors hitting Russia? Asteroids flying by closer than our communications satellites? Were the Mayans right after all?

Turns out, Earth has seen this movie before. Our lifetimes are so short, and our historical attention spans so limited, that we may think something is “happening,” but it’s all part of a very big routine, occurring on a low frequency that’s at the edge of our ability to process it.

Meteors have hit Russia before, and cosmically speaking, not all that long ago. Something very large hit northern Siberia in 1908, laying waste to vast stretches surrounding the point of impact. It was truly devastating, but it affected a relatively unpopulated area, so few were around to record it – plus, it was before the era of modern communications.

Something very big created Meteor Crater in Arizona long ago. It’s a nice tourist attraction now. Lucky you weren’t camping nearby, right? Another enormous crater, this one the remains of a volcano, is a huge tourist attraction in Oregon: Crater Lake. It used to be Mount Mazama, which erupted thousands of years ago, covering much of the Northwest in feet of ash.

In our recent past, there was a 9-point earthquake in Japan. But what about the historic quakes that have happened in unlikely places? The New Madrid quakes in the early 19^th century featured two bigger than 8 points in Missouri. There have been significant damaging earthquakes in places like Charleston, South Carolina (1886) and Boston (1755).

Don’t forget the enormous 1859 solar flare that caused telegraph wires to burn. If the same thing happened today, what would happen to the North American electrical grid?

I’m sorry that this post isn’t going to help you sleep better at night. It’s not about defending ourselves against these cataclysms – that’s a little above my pay grade, other than to tell you to have the usual emergency supplies on hand.

But these events occur periodically, maybe just to remind us that on a cosmic scale, s*** happens, and that we don’t have as much control over events as we like to think we do. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Cluster Fubar

Just in case anyone’s wondering, the “F” in Fubar can also stand for Fouled (Up Beyond All Repair).

Christopher Dorner is dead, as best can be determined at the moment, and that’s a good thing, but Tuesday was bizarre in many respects. It was Mardi Gras day, and then there was that other thing…oh, yeah, I forgot, the State of the Union address.

The Dorner incident, for the most part, did not represent journalism’s finest hour, as reporters badgered the PR people for the LAPD and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office with stupid, repetitious questions, calling on them to “speculate.” On the other hand, one television reporter for KCAL-TV in Los Angeles performed almost heroically, relaying the sound through his cell phone of an intense gun battle between Dorner and the cops. It was historic audio, as one anchor observed.

There were conflicting reports about Dorner being dead and in the burning cabin. “Multiple sources” told reporters that he was dead; the LAPD said no body had been found yet, and that as far as they were concerned, he was still alive. The San Bernardino Sheriff’s spokeswoman said that authorities believed that Dorner couldn’t have escaped, even though the body hadn’t been found. LAPD kept saying it was San Bernardino’s case all along, so why their spokesperson had to comment at all, I don’t know. The media were blamed for running with the dead-Dorner story without confirmation, but if multiple people, perhaps some wearing uniforms, tell you something happened, you’re inclined to believe it, right?

Did the Dorner incident say anything about guns in America? No; he was an ex-cop, trained in all those things. It perhaps does say something about how quickly respected and well-trained people can become unbalanced.

But it must be hard walking down the streets of Hollywood now, with all the saliva flowing from movie producers’ mouths over this one. I have no doubt we’ll see the premiere happen early next year, if not sooner.

The Big Thaw

Spring is only a few weeks away. The ice, still solid enough on northern lakes to support heavy trucks, is imperceptibly weakening as the sun angle increases a few degrees each day. When the ice finally starts to break up and water reappears, it will seem as if it happened all of a sudden, but the process will have started much earlier – we just couldn’t detect the evidence of it.

It’s my feeling that thaws are breaking out all over. Take immigration reform – an insoluble problem for decades. But Romney lost the election, many say, because of the Latino vote. It wasn’t some wild political swing. For decades, Latinos have been having more children than folks of other ethnicities – there are simply more of them, but the evidence is only now making headlines. True, not all Latinos are Democrats, but a lot voted that way. So now even Republicans are talking about immigration reform. Positions frozen for decades are unfreezing.

The same is happening with gun control, although it took a terrible tragedy to spur the breakup of long-frozen positions on that score. The NRA is no longer a solid block of immovable ice, or at least the block is smaller than it once was. Women will be officially allowed combat roles in the military – unthinkable until this month. Will widely accepted gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana be next? I wish the big thaw would extend to tax reform, but that ice is pretty thick yet.

Then there’s the economy. The struggling stock market has actually been improving for years, but it seems like it happened just last week, when the Dow closed above 14,000 for the first time in recent memory. Home sales are increasing; money is flowing again.

Even internationally, I hear ice cracking. Iran has agreed to return to the talks on its nuclear program. Is this simply deception, or is a hard frozen position melting? Even some members of the Syrian opposition are no longer ruling out talks with the brutal Assad regime.

Is common sense actually starting to bloom? I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced something is going on. Spring is a hard season not to like.