Give Me Your Tired, Etc....

I have often said that if I ran for Congress and were elected, I would introduce two bills. The first would reduce the tax code to a single 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper (assuming for the moment that some of us still think in terms of sheets of paper) Anyway, Bill No. 2 would reduce the immigration code to three sheets. That involves live human beings, and it’s a little more complicated.

Immigration is back to being the top issue in our border states, and the crisis we’re dealing with now is the flood of those fleeing from Central American countries whose governments have apparently lost control over organized criminal elements – if they ever had it in the first place. These violent gangs have taken to targeting children – using them as bargaining chips in their deadly games. Naturally, their parents feel the need to ship them to a safer place. If there were ever a case for asylum, this would seem to be it. Except that if we automatically welcome these kids, how many adults might be using this issue to get them, or themselves, a free pass here?

One of the biggest headaches is adjudicating each case to see who is a legitimate asylum candidate. This flood of border crossers wasn’t anticipated, so there’s a shortage of judges who can deal with them?  What do you do with these immigrants in the meantime? Angry NIMBY crowds have shown up wherever the buses full of these people roll, demanding they be sent home.

It’s important to note that the U.S. is not the only country affected by this. Residents of dangerous places tired of living in a constant state of fear are also seeking entrance to countries to the south, even in South America.

Some perspective might be useful. What we’re calling a border crisis is a joke compared with what is happening in the Middle East. What would we do if we lived next to Syria, and a million people showed up at our doorstep?

In spite of my three-page fantasy, I have no solutions, but when it comes to immigration, there are two principles to keep in mind. First, immigration law is not set in stone. If government decided there was a critical need for one-armed cello players, the laws would be adjusted to solve the problem. One real-world exception in the code has been offering foreign capitalists special immigration status if they start a company in this country, or relocate one here, that creates jobs. Countries make these kinds of adjustments all the time.

The second principle is, since immigration law seems to require flexibility to fill a need, the rules are often going to be changed in the middle of the game. There is going to be an unavoidable element of unfairness which has to be accepted.

And there is a third principle. If we want to continue in the notion of American exceptionalism, we can’t blame those in dire circumstances in their home countries for wanting to come here, right now. Many of these people are getting here at great expense or great personal peril, as did the ancestors of many in the NIMBY crowds wherever those buses arrive. All that a substantial number in those crowds had to do was be born here. They were just lucky. Where is the fairness in that?

Deportation seems like a quick fix, but there are no quick fixes to this problem. The best we can do is engineer a system that is as fair as possible while being as flexible as possible. And we need to elect people capable of such a task. If we can’t find them here, maybe we should import some.

Facebook Apps I Think We Need

On the way down to the Ferrari showroom, I sez to myself, “Self, get ready for Easy Street! You’ll make a fortune designing Facebook apps – ones that are really necessary, to block certain things at those times that we’re just tired of seeing them. I even have names for the apps:

QuizBlock: Haven’t we all had enough of these blessed quizzes? I don’t care what kind of Downton Abbey character or Renaissance figure you “got,” what your governing emotion is, what breed of dog you’d like to be, or where you’re supposed to live that you don’t. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s you taking the quiz.

ListBlock: 10 Characteristics of a Good Boss; 10 Decisions You Should Have Made 10 Years Ago, But Didn’t; Five Most Common Deathbed Regrets, do I need to go on here?

FoodBlock: Why is it that I’m never hungry when you post what you ate at the fancy restaurant in your city that I’ll never get to?

NewsoftheWeirdBlock: I get it! The world is full of not-very-smart criminals, or people who insist on nakedness or sex in inappropriate places.

A few others, included in the deluxe software package: CatBlock, DogBlock, ToddlerBlock, and, of course, FlowerBlock.

But here’s one everybody needs: BS-Block, to shield you from pithy, quasi-spiritual philosophical sayings, usually posted in the morning, with calligraphic fonts, sometimes over puffy clouds, or flowers (but FlowerBlock may handle those).

But hey, never say never! I’d have to put a toggle button in most of these apps, because moods change, and like me, you might find yourself not only wanting to see these things occasionally, but becoming an “offender” yourself in one or more of the categories shown. (Guilty as charged!)

I wonder if they’ll let me have the Ferrari on a really long-term installment plan?

Lines in the Sand

Iraq AGAIN? Didn’t we just FIX that place?

One of the reasons we in America have trouble caring about the Middle East is that we have something quite a few other places in the world don’t: stable borders. When’s the last time a map of this hemisphere actually changed? When was our last real border dispute? “54-40 or fight?” The Confederacy tried to create a new country, but that failed. We still can’t rule out Texas seceding from the Union, I suppose, but it’s unlikely. Our best security feature is the oceans on either side of us.

The irony is that while we’re called the New World and the Middle East is considered the cradle of civilization, most of the countries we see on the map there today haven’t been there all that long. The most stable of them, Israel, has only been a country since 1948. Syria, Iraq and Lebanon were places, but they weren’t really countries until occupying Western powers created borders for them in the early 20^th century. Is Iraq behaving like it’s really a country right now? I think it was Joseph Biden who said some time ago that Iraq could actually be three countries – and some thought he was nuts.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Turks controlled everything in that area. It was called the Ottoman Empire. A friend of mine jokes that these days, the Ottoman Empire is just a furniture store in New Jersey.

Now we have an extremist Islamic faction that wants to create a new state encompassing Syria and Iraq (not a new idea, BTW), at which they could very easily succeed. Then there are the Kurds, who control portions of Iraq, Syria, and even Turkey. I’d be willing to bet that they’re going to end up, when all is said and done, with their own country.

The human cost of all this instability is beyond belief. Aside from the deaths and injuries, millions have been displaced from their homes in Syria. Now, Iraqis who are on the wrong side of the religious factional fence are fleeing theirs in large numbers. These folks may not even be sure what country “home” is now. This is literally a very foreign concept to us on this side of the pond.

It is my belief that whether we like it our not, the West is going to have to get involved in this mess in some way (As an aside, it’s very interesting that we’re jumping up and down because the ISIS group is beheading people, while we didn’t say boo when the Syrian government turned a mechanized army on civilians). I don’t know what form that involvement will take, but we’re going to find we can’t just stand by and let the region shatter.

Yet it seems clear that the map is going to be changing pretty radically again in a short period of time, and the cartographers at the National Geographic better keep their digital paintbrushes wet.

Gender Wars, Take 2?

This is a subject about which I may have some unwelcome things to say, and how many friends I will have at the end may be slightly in question.

There has been much talk since the Isla Vista shooting about misogyny, the prevalence of rape on college campuses, and similar topics. #YesAllWomen, says the hashtag, will be sexually harassed, if not assaulted outright, by a man at some point. Men counter, but not all men are like that (which usually means “I’M not like that!”). But enough are.

Among the most debated issues is dress. Rape victims are naturally offended when the cops ask them what they were wearing. Of course, it shouldn’t matter what a woman was wearing, there is NO excuse for sexual assault of any kind. But can it be a factor?

Taking up a different crime for a moment: The same cops often tell us around the holidays not to leave a wrapped gift in the back seat while we’re away from the car. Someone may break in and steal it. Of course, it’s a crime, and most wouldn’t do it. But the temptation may prove too much for somebody, who may even feel entitled to steal.

When it comes to dress, most women in my experience, especially the attractive ones, know that dress sends a message, and they usually know exactly what message they want to send, especially if it’s a first date – or a job interview. They want to be attractive, of course, but there are degrees and intentions. I’m not talking about wearing short skirts or showing cleavage here. Sometimes it’s the exact opposite: a beautiful woman may dress down somewhat and cover more, because she wants her beauty to be just an a-ttraction, not a dis-traction. Or, she wants to send the right socioeconomic message.

Hugh Hefner and others succeeded in liberating Americans from sexual repression, but he also opened the door wide to the fetishization (don’t make me say that fast) of women. The media, including music and games as well as TV, print, film and the Web, create strong impressions in young straight men’s brains, often long before flesh-and-blood females do. The sad part is that men and women usually learn to be gender warriors long before they learn to be friends.

We go on and on about how human civilization is speeding up global warming, and the steps we must take to protect the planet. What is modern culture doing to our souls? Why is it all of a sudden so much more dangerous for women? Why do some men feel such sexual entitlement in what seems like an otherwise free and equitable country?

Am I saying here that women should be walking around in burkas and men in black suits? Or that men who assault shouldn’t be held accountable? Not at all! What I am saying is that just as things are way out of balance in our physical environment, they are similarly out of balance in our cultural one. What can we do to restore that balance? And in the meantime, don’t parents have the responsibility to raise both male and female children to respect others -- and how to navigate safely through what can sometimes be a dangerous world?

A Time and a Place

I’ve been reading about the #YesAllWomen movement, which has now attracted well over a million followers (I’ve never known exactly what to do with hashtags, but I have to pay attention to this one). Even trying to write about it is like walking into a very dense minefield, but here goes.

The movement, as many of us know, was touched off by the Isla Vista killer, who preceded his attack on women at UC Santa Barbara with a long manifesto about it not being fair that women weren’t attracted to him and that he was still a virgin at 22. So here we are, talking about the prevalence of misogyny.

I’m hearing an echo. “Not all men will harass women, but at some point, all women will have been harassed by a man” sounds a little like, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims.” Was the killer a sexual terrorist, who has thrown us into a new period of suspicion and mistrust between the genders?

Where did the killer’s misogyny come from? His sense of entitlement to the sexual favors of females? Sexual attraction is natural and beautiful, but we’re Americans, we’ve never quite learned what do with it and where it belongs in our lives. Why was virginity a “thing” with the twisted young man in Santa Barbara? Why was losing it a goal (used to be that keeping it was – and BTW, when did virginity get to be a male issue, anyway?).

After Isla Vista, we’re scrambling to find who’s to blame for the killer’s feeling that women owed him something. In a radio interview I heard, one analyst suggests that it could be Hollywood, for producing streams of films in which the nerdy, unattractive guy gets the beautiful girl. No wonder, he argues, that clumsy young men have a sense of entitlement. I don’t know if I’d go there, but do the media bear some responsibility? Does the same art that has the power to educate us about ourselves infuse us with a sense of, “If it’s happening for him, why can’t it happen for me -- right now?”

Ours is not a culture of patience. Still a virgin at 22? I wish someone could have told that Santa Barbara guy that if he had just been able to wait a bit, some woman would come along and find him attractive. He wouldn’t even have to deserve it.

In the really old days, losing virginity wouldn’t have been a big deal for a young man. The experienced older man was there to accompany the younger one to the bordello. It’s terrible to say, perhaps, but there was something honest about this approach. Instead of steaming himself up about being a virgin at 22, why couldn’t Mr. Isla Vista have just paid for it somewhere and gotten it over with in 20 minutes?

Whatever happened to courtship? A young woman I know told me a while back that while she was constantly bedeviled by much older men being attracted to her, she had to concede that older men knew how to treat women, and most young men these days had no clue.

Courtship is not an alien concept. It is built into much of the animal kingdom by instinct, with rituals among some birds being unbelievably complicated. There are no short circuits with those species -- it’s a process. And at the end, there is a time and a place for the sexual act.

I persist in the idea that human beings, whether we realize it or not, have very similar wiring. Here’s hoping that more of us – especially men – will learn that the best sex is part of a real relationship, which takes a while to develop – usually more than the two hours in a movie.

In the meantime, in the words of Rodney King, can’t the genders all just get along?

Rowing Upstream

The unraveling of the VA scandal, much like the exposure of NSA spying, has been brought to us through journalists chronicling the stories brought to them by a special form of American hero: the whistleblower.

When we read these stories, our outrage boils up instantly: why wasn’t this obvious wrong corrected earlier? It’s sometimes easy to plug ourselves into the scenario: surely, that’s a whistle I would have blown, we say to ourselves, were I in that position. Would we, now?

As the recent Frontline series pointed out, Edward Snowden is only the most prominent in a long chain of those who tried to call attention to what was going on in the NSA. Snowden may well be considered a hero, especially historically. Not to take anything from his achievement, but he was a contractor. Many of those who blew earlier whistles were career employees of the agency, or at least in related government positions. Their actions resulted in their lives being ruined by those who didn’t want their boats rocked.

This isn’t the kind of heroism that brings instant adulation, like the passerby gets from the TV crew when he pulls a driver from the wreckage of a burning car. Whistleblowers usually are branded as traitors or turncoats. Those whom they thought to be friends shun them, and the negative consequences of their actions can persist for years in the form of psychological or even physical persecution. Whistleblowers’ stories make wonderful movie scripts, but their heroism is resolved in only two hours, and  a movie can’t make us fully appreciate the pressures they were under and the self-doubts they faced: wondering on a long string of mostly sleepless nights if they had really done the right thing.

It’s about rowing upstream against a fierce current. Those who blow whistles aren’t just exposing what needs fixing. They’re usually fighting powerful, entrenched systems and cultures with many players. Things had been done the wrong way for a long time by people who found it profitable – or at the very least, less stressful -- to go along. Performance bonuses, in the case of the VA, made it tempting for administrators to cook the books about wait times for veterans needing treatment.

In such cases, the CEO or the agency head is usually forced to fall on a sword. That individual knew or should have known, the story goes. But this individual may not be the villain of the piece. The transgressions are often committed by lower-level folks – the people in the middle who make the faulty system work for them. And it’s usually other people in the middle, or those at lower levels, who blow those whistles, because they have seen what’s happening on a daily basis.

Here’s to those upstream rowers, those light sleepers compelled to lead us, sometimes kicking and screaming – to the truth. The whistle-blowing, of course, is just the first step in the process. The rest of us, or those representing us in a position to right wrongs, have to hear the whistle and respond.

Isla Vista and the NSA

Before all of us who are outraged about NSA spying demand that the whole apparatus be flushed down the toilet, maybe there’s an overlooked beneficial application.

The shooter in the UC Santa Barbara incident telegraphed his murderous intentions by posting them on the Internet before he carried them out. Maybe an intelligence whizbang could figure out how to flag such pronouncements instantly so that the authorities could step in to prevent these tragedies (and then, of course, the authorities have to act). Allegedly, the system was set up to catch foreign terrorists. Wasn’t Isla Vista a form of domestic terrorism? Is a twisted romantic passion any less dangerous than a twisted religious one?

Gun control is a wonderful idea, but crafting legislation that plugs all the loopholes immediately is virtually impossible. Richard Martinez, whose son died in the Isla Vista shooting, called Congress and the national leadership a “rudderless bunch of idiots.” Wrong. They are not rudderless at all. They know exactly where they’re NOT going. Maybe this time, they will be prompted to do something, but we have to accept that it would likely be largely symbolic. Still, we have to start someplace.

As many observers have told us, the problem is cultural. You are not going to take guns out of the American psyche with a few pieces of legislation. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t end the love of slavery, and we’re still not through with discrimination. It just takes time.

The unbalanced young man who carried out the Isla Vista shooting apparently never learned that a sense of entitlement when it comes to women doesn’t lead to success in that sphere. Where did his sense of entitlement come from? And where did his conviction that the use of a gun would make him feel better come from? Movies? TV? The Internet? Bad parenting? A chemical imbalance?

As for Congress, a female religious leader from the 19^th century, Mary Baker Eddy, speaking about women’s suffrage, felt that  a reasonable means of making it happen would be to raise a “nobler race for legislation” and that it would require an “elevation of society in general.” That takes time, and she was speaking about women’s suffrage more than 50 years before it came along.

If I may put it very bluntly, the holders of outdated views have to die off before a full cultural change can take place. In the meantime, it’s up to young people of child-bearing age to start raising that “nobler race,” and demand that those profiting from the gun culture change their ways. That means everyone, Hollywood included.

But we have to do what we can when we can. If you hit the Congressional mule over the head with enough logical 2-by-4s, will it eventually get the message?

Marking the Calendar

This is the time of year when we bloggers and columnists are supposed to be reminding our readers of the true meaning of Memorial Day, and telling you not to forget its solemn purpose of remembering the war dead while absorbed in barbecuing, partying, or shopping. I’m here to cut folks just a little slack.

These things are not mutually exclusive, and it’s a simple fact that some of these holidays are seasonal markers. Memorial Day, for example, has always signified the traditional beginning of summer, coming way before the official solstice in June. Where I grew up in the Northeast, it was the day you could begin filling (or using) your swimming pool, if you had one. Folks barbecue outdoors this weekend because, well, they can – generally it hasn’t been warm enough up to this point. The beach and mountain resorts start charging summer rates. Even gasoline prices go up. On the other hand, our newspapers will be full of inserts or wrappers about stores having sales. Is it really all that sacrilegious?

Labor Day plays a similar role on the calendar. It’s the traditional start of the school season, and marks the beginning of getting back to business after the summer. The plight of the American laborer just doesn’t dominate the thought on that day.

Even Christmas and Easter serve as seasonal markers – in fact, it’s said that Christmas was originally an extension of a winter solstice observance and Easter the start of spring.

So partying doesn’t mean we don’t think about the “true meaning” of all these days. We do. But thinking about true meanings doesn’t require us to feel guilty about relaxing, celebrating with others, or even trying to pick up a bargain or two.

Not to end on a downer here, but what Memorial Day does get me thinking about is not only how many service members we have lost in necessary wars, but in the unnecessary ones (yes, there is a difference). And what have we been doing to help those who have survived such conflicts? Not nearly enough, the headlines are screaming now. We need to take a minute to think about them, too.

Eyes Wide Open

Frontline’s two-part series, “The United States of Secrets,” was quite an eye-opener. For many of us, perhaps, our eyes were already open a crack, thanks to Edward Snowden. But the program added some length to the toothpicks.

If you’re like me, you probably had it in the back of your mind, at least, that the NSA and many large tech companies knew everything about you based on your behavior online or on mobile, but thanks to the whistle-blowers (of whom Snowden is the most famous in a rather long line), now you know the extent of it.

Now we have to decide how much it bothers us, and what we’re going to do about it as individuals. Because it doesn’t bother everyone equally. You may insist that the practice of storing your data stop, on principle, but that’s probably not going to happen, at least for quite a while. So the only thing left that you control is your own behavior. Are you willing to drop out and disconnect? Again, probably not. But at least now, you can’t say you don’t know what the price of living in the modern world is. And in the end, if it doesn’t change your daily life, you may actually make peace with it.

If not, are there enough of us out here so outraged by what we have learned that we are willing to put our vote where our anger is and elect those who would forbid these practices? To be honest, if Barack Obama were running for a third term, I don’t know if I’d vote for him again. A big part of his platform was transparency, but it seems there’s even less of it in government now than there was under W. His director of national intelligence lied to Congress about the extent of data collection. It wasn’t prevarication, or dissembling, or misleading – it was a LIE.

OK, so are we safer for what’s been going on, now that we know about it? Is 9/11 going to be our last Pearl Harbor? What major attacks have been broken up, thanks to the Program? Well, of course, they won’t tell us that (I’m almost ready to shout, “So at least make something UP!”).

As for search engines and other information companies, are there any out there promising NOT to collect our data, that can perform as well as Google or the other biggies? That we might even have to pay for to use?

Mr. Snowden et al have done their jobs. Now it’s down to us.

The Media Spotlight's Narrow Beam

I know this is going to sound a little perverse, but while the story of the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls is a tragedy, why has it captured the imagination at the expense of everything else?

That’s an easy one. There’s the word “schoolgirls,” meaning children. And we have an evil Islamic militant group, Boko Haram. And a powerless government that can’t or won’t do anything about it. And, of course, celebrity re-tweets, can’t forget that. And then, throw in the charges that we’ve never paid attention to Nigeria in the past because it’s a black African country. Now we have guilt in the mix. This reminds me of the story of the crazy African gang leader of a couple of years ago – what was his name again? Similar worldwide fury.

Question 2: What are we, the U.S., going to do about the Nigerian situation, exactly? Well, we’ve sent in a tem of specialists to help the Nigerians. Good move. But no “boots on the ground.” Because we’ve been a little injudicious in the past decade or so with where we have put our boots, there’s no stomach for any large-scale military help, schoolgirls or not.

But while we’re all agonizing about the schoolgirls, where has the world been for the past three-plus years, watching Syria degenerate? A lot more than 250 children are dead, and millions of people have been displaced. The century, as I may have said before, is relatively young, but this could rank as one of its great tragedies, and it’s far from over. I’m afraid that we will end up having to pay much closer attention to this one than we’d like. And lately, there have been warnings about a major famine involving millions in South Sudan, the world’s newest country.

OK, too many fires to put out, and maybe at this moment we can’t deal with any of them. All I’m saying is, just because the beam of the media spotlight is shining on a situation that needs it, let’s not forget how narrow that beam is – and how much else stays in the dark.

Help Them, Jesus (Or Whoever)

Ruling in a case out of Greece, NY, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, decided that it’s OK for legislative bodies to have their sessions introduced with a prayer. The use of an invocation does not conflict with the doctrine of separation of church and state, the court said, because it does not coerce anyone into following a faith.

So how does a city council, for example, deal with a decision like this? Well, nobody is holding a gun to legislators’ heads here – if they go without an invocation now, there’s no reason they have to start. But if they do decide to adopt this, is there a fair way to do it?

In one town I worked in as a reporter, I covered city council meetings, and the council’s practice back in the day was to invite a different member of the clergy to open the meetings with a religious message. Priests, rabbis, and ministers appeared in rotation.

This particular town did not have an imam, at least one who represented any sizable congregation. I can’t wait to see what happens if a city council in some town invites an imam to open their meeting with citations from the Qu’ran. I’d like to be there to see how the conservative prayer boosters react to that one.

And don’t forget the less-established U.S. religions or practitioners of spiritualism. Will a Buddhist monk clothed in saffron bring a prayer wheel? Will a witch show up, cauldron and all? Will the New Ager hand out pyramid hats for the council to wear as the meeting begins?

And how about agnostics --  “May God be with you….I guess…”  Then there are atheists, who probably won’t be able to go much beyond “Good luck!”

How about making it the mayor’s job to pick out a different citation each week, read it, and afterward ask the audience to guess where it came from? That might be fun.

Look, I actually like the concept of opening a public meeting with an invocation – it sets a nice tone. But does it work? Are meetings opened with prayer any less contentious than those that aren’t? Are the decisions made by public bodies any wiser? You be the judge.

Hardwood Justice

As the attorneys say, let’s stipulate to a couple of things:

1. Donald Sterling is a pig.
2. He should not own an NBA team.

From this point on, I might get a little perverse. The penalties against Mr. Sterling sound good, but how do they stand up legally? I need a lawyer to help me.

So they kicked him out of all NBA activities. At the same time, they fine him $2.5 million. Would you feel obligated to pay a fine to an organization that has ostracized you? I could see one or the other, but I'm not sure about both.

Adam Silver said the NBA would try to force Sterling to sell the Clippers. I don’t know how you’d compel an individual to sell his property. In this case, one ploy might be to kick the Clippers organization out of the NBA altogether. Messy on the schedule, and perhaps unfair to the players, but would it force Sterling to sell the team at a fire sale price? At that point, the new owners would have to apply to have the team rejoin the NBA, and the other team owners would have some say-so over the worthiness of the buyers.

A big sticking point is the league constitution. Does it have language dealing with the moral turpitude or racial attitudes of owners? If not, the NBA better put some language in there before accepting new owners.

And remember that the offensive comments that led to the action against Sterling, as even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar points out, was secretly recorded – essentially legal in most places, but kind of smelly.

So while many offended by Mr. Sterling may be thrilled about the NBA’s bold action, I submit that legally, it’s only half-time in this particular game. But I am notorious for bad legal advice.

Lewd, Crude...and Funny?

Here we go again! Joan Rivers compared her living arrangements with her daughter to the women held captive in a Cleveland basement. Uproar. Apology demanded, but Rivers isn’t caving. “I’m a comedienne,” she says.

This kind of joke should not be a complete surprise to those who know her work. Most of her TV appearances are mild dilutions of her stage shows. The material is pretty crude.

But this is her product. This is what she serves, and with the statement, “I’m a comedieene,” she has hit the ball firmly back to our side of the court. If she were to offer an apology, what would it accomplish? Would it change her shtick?  I think we know the answer.

You place an order in a Chinese restaurant. The waiter may not speak much English, but usually he knows when to say, “Spicy!” So if you order that dish, it’s too late to complain. Maybe you think a restaurant serving that kin d of food should stop serving the dish in question or even go out of business. It won’t, because there are enough people who like “spicy.”

Sometimes, the chef puts too much spice in that dish, even for those of us who may like his cooking. But if we frequent the place, we’ll probably suck it up and return on another day.

In the sport of boxing, the competitors are often warned about low blows, in which punches are thrown to the crotch. Most of the time, it’s an accident, but sometimes, it’s deliberate. In such a case, the referee can deduct a point from the offender’s score, and the victim gets a full five minutes to recover (which victims rarely take). And then the match continues. Those things don’t usually end a boxer’s career.

Many psychologists – and lay people – have tried to analyze humor. We’ve heard “Tragedy plus time equals funny,” or, courtesy of Woody Allen, “If it bends, it’s funny; if it breaks, it’s not funny.” The shrinks will tell you that surprise is necessary to humor, but the surprise is not complete: there has to be something in our soul that knew the punch line all along; the joke simply brings it to consciousness. If it’s a total surprise, well, it’s not funny, it’s simply shock. But some of us develop a taste for it, or at least expect it.

In Joan’s case, “I’m a comedienne” is an honest response to her critics. In the Chinese restaurant, if Chef Wong overdoes it with the MSG and a diner complains, is he going to change what’s on the menu? Probably not, especially if he knows the tables are still filled each night.

Are we going to deduct a point from Joan and let the match continue? Joan is leaving that decision up to us, which seems entirely appropriate to me.

Approaching the Bench

I had always been able to dodge this bullet. The summons to jury duty would come, and I’d call in to find out if I had to report. For years, I had been able to obtain an excuse, or I simply wasn’t needed, but this time I knew my number was up.

The military draft is a thing of the past, but jury duty, which is one of the last vestiges of an American call to service, is still with us. It has been softened to the point where the least amount of hardship earns you an excuse: pre-paid family plane tickets to a vacation spot are often enough. So the jury pools have to be large in order to allow prosecution and defense in criminal cases, or plaintiff and defendant in civil cases, to seat an acceptable jury.

The selection process is arduous, with the judge and the attorneys for both sides questioning each candidate to determine suitability. Our pool in my part of California included top tech executives and talented medical professionals as well as common laborers and stay-at-home moms.

This “voir dire,” as it is called always turns up the drama in people’s lives. Our case was one involving driving under the influence. A surprising number of people had very strong views on even the least amount of alcohol consumption. A fair number had a child, a sibling or a close friend injured or killed by drunken drivers. Others had family members in law enforcement, which the defense usually hates. Those who had significant prior jury experience are also undesirable to the lawyers, though you would think experience would make “professional jurors” good choices. Each side gets a certain number of peremptory challenges – they can bounce you off the jury for no stated reason. Finally, there are those who have hearing problems, those who can’t understand English, those who insist that they can’t be fair -- and those who are faking these things to get excused. But once I was seated, the lawyers kept me, telling me after the trial that since I am a former journalist, they thought I would be fair. I responded that it’s only because jury duty pays almost as much as journalism (LOL).

How does a DUI case even merit a jury trial to start with? Ours was somewhat complicated. Police officers got a call about a car being improperly parked on a residential street in a local city. The caller suggested that the car might be a traffic obstruction. Responding officers found a young man sitting in the driver’s seat. He was obviously drunk – a later breath test showed his blood-alcohol level to be 0.26 – more than three times the legal limit for driving. He actually admitted to the officer that he had driven there from a party and that he had been in the process of driving home to a nearby city. Apparently, he had decided he couldn’t make it and called his mother to come get him. But the cops arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence.

The legal problem for the prosecution was that nobody actually witnessed this young man driving the car. His admission of having done so wasn’t good enough for conviction. According to the legal instruction given to the jury, there had to be additional pieces of evidence – in this case, circumstantial -- to prove that he had driven the car. The vehicle was badly parked, but not egregiously so. It had front-end damage, but the young man’s mother testified she had driven into a loading-dock railing where she works a week or so earlier (the family couldn’t afford – or didn’t believe in – body work). Their version of events was that the young man had walked to his parked car from the party site – though he couldn’t seem to tell anyone the address of the house where the party had taken place, hosted by his friend Scott.

The legal deck is stacked in the defendant’s favor, perhaps properly so. Juries have to accept an alternate explanation of events, if it’s reasonable. In fact, the defense doesn’t have to put on a case at all. It’s up to the prosecution to prove its own version beyond a reasonable doubt, in a manner which makes alternate explanations implausible.

This jury leaned overwhelmingly toward not guilty. I voted that way reluctantly, believing that the young man had indeed driven the car, but deciding the evidence beyond his admission wasn’t quite there. The prosecutor, a young woman, tried her best to connect the dots – there just weren’t enough dots. The defense attorney, also a young woman, portrayed her client as a kid who had done the right thing. He had decided he was too drunk to drive and called for help.

The final vote was 11 to 1 for not guilty. But a unanimous result is required for a verdict in a criminal matter. One of the women on the panel -- a newly minted graphic designer and mother of three – would not be shaken from her vote for conviction, even when one of the other jurors got particularly hostile toward her during deliberations. Since there was no hope of full agreement, the judge declared a mistrial. He wasn't happy with us.

I too was upset with the “score,” but I reminded myself later that this isn’t a football game or a boxing match. An individual’s livelihood is also at stake. Apparently, the 25-year-old defendant had had a fight with his girlfriend over the mysterious Scott, who hosted the party. The young man was upset about the love triangle and took to drinking vodka. I believe that he got in his car and drove away, but determined that he was so drunk he couldn’t continue, and pulled over on a residential street to call his family. Had a passerby not felt the parked car was a traffic hazard and called the police, the defendant might have slept in his car all night and nobody would have been the wiser.

I felt kind of sorry for him. I think it was actually fortunate that he over-imbibed to the point where his blood-alcohol reading was 0.26 a full five hours after the party Had he consumed just a little less, he might have felt confident enough to continue driving, and possibly cause an accident. Before we judge him too harshly, are there very many of us who drink socially, who have never tried to drive a car when perhaps we shouldn’t have, even only once?

The wheels of justice grind VERY slowly. There is no concession to the dramatic timing we might see in movies or on TV. It’s tedious. Our judge tried to lighten things up with stories about British common law, San Francisco history, college campuses, etc., but his gravelly voice was soporific. The young prosecutor had charts, graphs, exhibits and a PowerPoint presentation, but just couldn’t put her case over the line, and I felt kind of sorry for her, too, it being her first one. I told her I was grateful it wasn’t a double-murder; she would have needed four moving vans to introduce all her stuff. Fortunately, she has a sense of humor, or I would have been slapped with a writ or something. 

The defendant in our case might not have gotten off completely Scott-free, so to speak, as the prosecution can decide to retry, but that seems unlikely here.

Many believe that military service makes a better American citizen. Following my experience, I think jury service, at least once, does the same. Perhaps going against the negative grain left by the O.J. Simpson trial (officially 20 years old this year), I believe that court cases open to the public should be televised or available by live stream. The court system is something about which most of us labor under a woeful level of ignorance.

This is a long read, so if you’ve gotten this far, I thank you for your service, and my gavel is coming down to declare this post closed.

Hard Sell

Today I walked a couple of miles down to the local ice cream/candy shop. Covering the distance isn’t good enough – I always need a pleasurable destination. Anyway, they have a new offering: Chocolate Coma (double Dutch ice ream, fudge, shaved dark chocolate and cocoa nuts). Hang on a minute: Chocolate COMA? Really? Couldn’t they have stopped at paralysis or something?

So you thought you lived in a liberated country that had pulled up its Puritan roots. Think again. Apparently, the association with depravity and hellfire (Decadence or Devil’s Food) isn’t working anymore to discourage us from chocolate. Now it’s severe physical disability or death (yes, I have seen Chocolate Suicide Cake).

But actually, these designations attract us, not scare us away. If it sends us to the hospital, the grave, and maybe eternal damnation, it must be pleasurable, right? Or intended to be. What’s the most common word you find in porn film titles? Do you think maybe it’s “sin," or variations thereof? I am not an expert in this area, of course, but I think it’s a safe bet.

Does pleasure always have to come with a correspondent unpleasant price? You would think so. And the higher the price, it naturally follows that the greater is the pleasure. So we pay the price, even if the experience threatens to leave us comatose. We were raised that way.

You’ve got to give the related industries credit for trying. How many studies have there been telling us that chocolate is good for you, or that you will live longer by drinking more red wine? But are these any match for about 15-plus centuries of Western-culture guilt trips, most of which now seem to be related to food? You be the judge.

At my current consumption rate, I should live for quite a while yet. But I think I know where I’m going in the end. Oops.

Apples, Oranges and Other Fruit

You’ve already heard me join the chorus of those who think CNN has spent too much time on the story of the missing Malaysian airliner. But I want to be clear: it doesn’t mean it’s not a big – and fascinating -- story. I’m only questioning the time spent on it with no new significant facts.

I wonder if there are really “better” stories than others. You can complain all you want about why more time hasn’t been spent on the Washington mudslide or Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine, or for that matter, the ongoing war in Syria, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced all over the Middle East, which some are calling the great tragedy of this century. It definitely qualifies as that so far.

But can we really compare all these things? Journalism involves the editorial judgment of human beings, who are never going to agree completely on what is most important. It’s also about timing. There was a moderate earthquake in L.A. last night, and for several hours, it was the top story for millions in that area, and made national headlines.

The missing airplane story fascinates on many levels, in addition to being a tragic story of families’ loss. We do love a good mystery -- though there are those who would say that the mystery is getting better billing than what’s happening in the lives of those surviving families.

But solving the first part of the mystery – the whereabouts of the presumably downed plane -- is actually the question those families need answered the most right now. They can hardly be blamed, after three weeks of not having that question answered, for coming up with the conclusion that they’re being lied to or that there’s some sort of conspiracy.

We have also heard the term “disaster porn,” for those of us (I’m pleading guilty) who are drawn to those kinds of stories. Am I getting my cheap adrenaline rushes on the shoulders of others’ losses? Perhaps, but the time will certainly come when the shoes will be on my own feet. And separating “disaster porn” coverage from legitimate concern about victims is not as easy as one would think – though most discerning news consumers know that kind of “porn” when they see it.

As for the missing plane, that first answer those families have been seeking may only be hours away. But exactly what happened to Flight 370 will be a mystery for a long time to come. It’s the story that will keep on giving. There will be books and movies.

It seems like no coincidence that there have been Amelia Earhart specials on other channels this week.

Good Grief

While watching the unfolding drama of the missing, and now officially presumed lost, Malaysian airliner, I was a little put off to see so many pictures of grieving family members shown by the news media. What actually constitutes good taste in such coverage?

As a news reporter, I was often called upon to cover the aftermath of tragedy – fatal traffic accidents, house fires and the like. The last thing I ever wanted to do was approach a distraught surviving family member and try to get a comment – but I took it to be part of the job. A lot of the time, as perhaps you’d expect, the answer was, “No thanks,” – and usually more forceful expressions thereof.

But I began to notice a distinct difference in the responses I got from different groups of people. If the survivors were white, they usually wanted nothing to do with the news media. They made us feel like vultures (easy in my case). But Latino survivors seemed to have little compunction about talking. It almost seemed as if the survivor wanted to talk about the departed. What was unpleasant to one was therapeutic for the other.

Now this is an impression – I don’t really have the standing to draw some well-researched ethnic or cultural conclusion. But am I completely wrong in my suspicion that attitudes toward response to death may differ accordingly?

Memorial services in some cultures aren’t subdued events, what some of us would judge as quiet and respectful. People make noise! In some cases, people attending such events are actually hired to make it. You don’t get any points for a stiff upper lip.

In our ultra-connected world, the trend seems to be shifting toward the public end of the spectrum and away from the private. When someone dies accidentally, it’s the norm now to see candles and flowers pile up at the site of the tragedy, depending on the esteem in which the deceased was held, and even see crowds of mourners gather, who are happy to let their grief show. More and more, it seems to be a shared experience -- and media consumers expect it to be.

I am one of those people who don’t do death very well. I am not good at words of comfort and tend to be very careful when dealing with anyone who has suffered a loss. Usually, if I try to say anything profound, it sounds silly and blows up in my face. The worst was trying to get that comment out of that survivor and be “sensitive” at the same time. Nobody was ever fooled about what I was doing.

But it’s like any exercise in human relations: you have to let the other person guide you. And when it cones to grief, there are indeed different strokes for different folks.

Selfie Consciousness

I did my first selfie a couple of weeks ago. I was in a hair salon, and since my regular stylist was off (isn’t this beginning to sound a little much already?), I let an apprentice stylist, who had only recently acquired her cosmetology license, take care of me. While this was happening, I thought a picture of me in the salon chair with her working on me might be fun for Facebook posting, so I tried to take a picture in the salon mirror while I was sitting in the chair. It didn’t work. But the 20-something woman was thrilled to be in the photo with me, and showed me how to put the smartphone camera in reverse mode. Done! So I posted it, and the selfie was well-received – in fact, the highest-grossing post in my FB experience so far. Already, I’m using Hollywood expressions like “grossing,” although that could be taken another way entirely.

So what exactly has happened to me? Do I need therapy?

Look, I am not a kid. I was born in one of the Truman administrations. There was no easy technology for selfies – consequently, the word did not exist – and even if there were, how many of us would have been doing it then? Unless we were headed for a movie or modeling career, we just weren’t raised to think that way.

I still feel a little strange when having to pose for photos, usually during holiday seasons. Most of the time, I don’t feel like smiling in photos, but force myself to do it anyway. Do you know why the people in all those Victorian-era photos never smiled? I used to think, well, it was the Victorian era, what exactly was there to smile about? Of course, it wasn’t because all our forebears were sourpusses. Smiling for photographs simply hadn’t been invented yet.

Maybe it’s me. I like photography, but don’ t feel compelled to take pictures of people. On a trip once, I wanted to take a picture of an iconic Northern California bridge near Big Sur. An attractive young woman was sitting on a rock overlooking the scene. When she saw I was about to take a picture, she turned around and put on her best 10,000-watt smile. I told her to turn back around again and look at the bridge. I just needed her for perspective. Talk about sourpusses.

But getting back to selfies.  The older generations may castigate the younger ones for being too self-absorbed and believing that everyone else cares about the trivialities of their lives, starting with pictures of themselves in every conceivable setting – or function. But motive is important. Is it about making an impression, or is it about genuine sharing? It’s probably a mixture.

A lot of it has to do with a sense of the audience. If you’re beautiful, it’s easy, nobody is going to complain, as long as you have the material to selfie with – selfie away! Most of us, though, don’t have it that easy – we have to think about the interest/entertainment value of what it is we’re posting. If it’s boring, the poster will be accused of self-absorption, but if it’s done with grace and style, the poster will be asked for more, even develop a following.

When all is said and done, I think the “sharing” world of social media is a good thing. It’s teaching us we have a lot more in common than what separates us – we’re just not as unique as we think we are. But it’s also teaching us what to share, when to share it, and how often. Yes, we all have to learn a little showbiz.

Babbling On

The disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight, with 239 souls (as they say in aviation) aboard, will constitute one of the most fascinating stories of 2014 – maybe even the decade. But it’s an unusual journalistic challenge for the cable news channels: when to cover it, and when to put it on the shelf temporarily and talk about something else – anything else!

There seems to be no shortage of ex-pilots, aviation experts and others willing to share their theories. We’re learning an awful lot about how the Boeing 777 works, even how to reprogram the plane’s flight computer – I think there are some 8-year-olds out there who could do it. And there are all the fancy interactive maps, etc.

And then an actual “fact” advancing the story swims by, and all the channels leap on it. More often than not, the “fact” contradicts yesterday’s “fact” and prompts a whole new round of appearances for the experts. And sometimes they disagree. I heard one of them complaining that there were too many wild theories out there about conspiracies, etc. in the plane’s disappearance. Another expert countered that he actually believed at least one of these was credible, and that no door should be closed on anything. Who would have thought that Al Qaida folks would train as pilots and fly planes into the World Trade Center towers? Good point.

But at this writing, we still don’t know much of anything, and we may not know much more for a long time. It took two years for searchers to find what was left of the French airliner that fell into the Atlantic east of Brazil. This story is not like an earthquake, a court case, or a terrorist incident like the Boston Marathon bombing, which affect a large number of people and come with multiple witnesses, and facts that are flowing almost too fast to digest.

To my mind, a cardinal principle of broadcasting is, the longer you spend time live on-air talking about something for which you have no additional facts, the more likely you’re going to say something controversial, insensitive, or just plain stupid. I speak from experience!

The other night, a news anchor, introducing an aviation expert of Irish descent, first wished him a happy St. Patrick’s Day. As if the obligatory bow to this fellow’s ancestry was going to squeeze more information out of him. And remember, the story involves the disappearance or loss of 239 human beings, so wasn’t that greeting a little odd? A mystery, I guess, is more compelling than a tragedy.

Let’s face it. There are other stories going on in the world that aren’t necessarily more important to an audience (that’s an editorial judgment), but at least supply us with new information as they unfold. Ukraine. Venezuela. Syria. Auto recalls. Would we have more – or less – respect for a news outlet that cuts back on coverage of a fascinating mystery like this missing airliner until there’s a substantial break in the story? Or at least just report a new fact and spare us the babble unless it's worth massaging?

This is one of those cases, it seems to me, where you can’t go wall-to-wall without quite knowing where the other wall is.

The Ties That Bind

Today is the 25^th anniversary of the World Wide Web, and it actually has someone credited with inventing it: Sir Tim Bemers-Lee, who is also credited with creating the first software to browse it with. I swear, I thought the Web was older than that (and I know there’s a difference of some kind between the WWW and the Internet, but don’t ask me to explain it). And where exactly does Al Gore fit in?

I had always been of the opinion, perhaps since childhood, that human beings have this irresistible drive to be connected, and that wireless communication made life dramatically easier. Via amateur radio, I was able to talk to folks all over the world, but there were so many low-level practical uses. Example: two hams could agree to meet for coffee. If one were late, he could let the other know by radio; if he got lost, the other could “talk him in.” Decades before cell phones.

For journalists, Web connectedness is, of course, indispensable. It wasn’t all that long ago that when there was an earthquake in Southern California, where I lived, I had the devil of a time getting a magnitude and location on it. I had to rush to the newsroom and call Cal Tech and hope there was somebody there who could read the meters and talk to me – and if it were early in the morning, the on-duty seismology tech usually wasn’t in an accommodating mood. Eventually, our local emergency manager got a pager that would display the Richter scale reading and the location automatically. I wanted one. He told me it cost $25,000. These days, I get alerted to big earthquakes all over the world, by email, for free (beyond the cost of the Internet connection).

A retired newsman I know recently visited Myanmar (Burma), and was able to send those of us on his friend list real-time photos of that beautiful country. He reminded me that it wasn’t all that long ago that war correspondents in Southeast Asia risked their necks just to get a few feet of battle film transported to a place where the major TV networks had access to it.

We all know how social media have changed relationships. There’s the old joke about two Facebook friends meeting for lunch and being bored to death -- so up-to-date on each others’ lives that they had nothing to say.

Perhaps that shows how this lovely connectedness has an invisible price. We can add all the wires, towers, satellites and bandwidth we want to make connections more and more real, but in the end, we have to accept that it’s all artificial tethering, and while incredibly useful, is only a substitute for real human contact.

Maybe it’s like this: Did you ever visit a place of great beauty with your camera, and were so concerned about getting pictures of it that you neglected to actually experience it? I’ve often thought that sometimes, you have to go back to the place  – without your camera -- just to soak it in.

But look, I’m not talking about unplugging here, not by a long shot, just recognizing that we have a constant challenge before us: putting all this electronic interaction in its place, and remembering that it’s part of life, not a substitute for it.