'Splain It to Me

There has been almost wall-to-wall coverage of the alleged murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers belonging to a special crime-fighting unit called Scorpion. It’s a familiar pattern: a young Black man pulled over initially for a traffic violation and then being tased and beaten by the police.

What is unfamiliar, of course, is that the five police officers involved were also Black. So, what was going on here? That’s what I don’t get. Some may say, well, it’s a policing matter, race wasn’t involved. I’m not sure that’s the case, but I don’t know what IS the case.

Could these simply have been power-hungry cops angry because their orders weren’t obeyed? Or, were they trying to show fellow law enforcement officers that just because they were Black, Black suspects weren’t going to get special treatment. Or, was the message to the Black community that there is zero tolerance for crime, and they had to get the point across with harsh treatment of a community member? Was it simple group-think or the result of training or expectations? For heaven’s sake, they were wearing body cameras, weren’t they concerned that their actions might be met with some pushback later? Why didn’t other officers intervene? Why didn’t paramedics help Mr. Nichols? Didn’t anybody learn anything from George Floyd’s murder? Why, why, why?

Many have compared the video captured on those bodycams with the video of the beating of Rodney King by L.A. cops more than 30 years ago. It might be useful to remember that it wasn’t just the 1991 beating of King that sparked the fiery L.A. riots, but the failure of a Simi Valley jury the following year to convict four police officers charged in the case. The Memphis response seems very different, in that the police chief moved swiftly to fire the five officers and disband the Scorpions. The district attorney followed up with murder charges against them. Yes, the officers are innocent until proven guilty, and we don’t yet know what mitigating factors, if any, may still come out.

But there are other familiar patterns here: police officers behaving badly, followed by calls for police reform by outsiders. But the most common come from the media, as in, “We’re about to play this shocking video, but it may prove disturbing for some viewers, and you may want to take your kids away from the TV.” I’m getting a little tired of that one too. But it would be nice to get some answers to the “why” questions.     

 

Secrets and Lies

So now we have two Presidents, the current one and the former one, who took classified materials home. Donald Trump called the documents “his” and allegedly lied about what he was still keeping after the FBI came to Mar-a-Lago to collect it. In the case of President Biden, he said he didn’t know that there were such documents in an office he used back when he was vice president. More documents were found in a locked garage at his home in Delaware.

Unlike Trump, Biden has been cooperative about turning the materials back in – except he didn’t reveal what had been going on to the public until after the November mid-term election. Of the first set of documents, he said he was unaware of their existence at the private office - but he’s a lawyer, and what about the well-known attorney phrase, “knew or should have known”?

While the responses of the two men have been vastly different, I think the “average bear” couldn’t entirely be blamed for lumping the two cases together, I personally think there are bigger questions here, such as, who allowed them to take these materials - or helped them do it - in the first place? Clearly, it’s not just about these two men. There is a systemic failure here that needs addressing.

If someone tries to shoplift a pair of jeans from a department store, an alarm goes off to store personnel as soon as the item leaves the building. Couldn’t classified materials somehow be treated the same? Spray the pages with something that triggers an alarm? I don’t know.

There are many people in Washington with high-level security clearances. Should we be searching their garages?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: I don’t think Mr. Biden should run for President again. Don’t misunderstand me: we have been very fortunate to have had him in this position the past two years, and I am grateful we will have him for two more. But this documents matter is just another bat the right wing can use to beat him up. If he bows out for 2024, it will de-fang their investigations and highlight the waste of time and money involved in pursuing them.

Besides this documents stuff, we have more important things going on at the moment, like whether our country will pay its debts and who really is running Congress, just for starters. Our plate is a little full, don’t you think?

Tying the Ribbons on It

 The title here, of course, denotes the final part of gift-wrapping, bringing something to a conclusion, which is happening on a number of levels now.

Let me start  out by saying that I really hate gift-wrapping. If I have to wrap something that fits in one hand, I inevitably destroy four rolls of wrapping paper and eight of Scotch tape. If there is a pattern in the paper, it always gets on the box cockeyed. The worst part is tying the ribbon. And if you’re in the room watching me, you would hear some language you’re not used to. I’m sure I would be given lifetime membership in the longshoremen’s union. At the end, there are scraps all over the floor. And later, when the gift is presented, after all my agony, it takes the recipient only about 20 second to tear it off and open the box.

I had what I thought was a great idea for a game show.  In my show, each contestant gets the same four items to wrap, and they are supplied with boxes of different shapes and sizes, along with rolls of paper, ribbon, tissue, and tape. They have to wrap the gifts using as little paper and tape as possible. They are judged on their color choices, how tight the corners are, etc. And it’s a race -- who gets it done the fastest. I figured if they had cupcake tournaments on TV, this kind of thing couldn’t be left out. Well, it hasn’t; it’s been going on in some form for a long time. Just another party I’m a little late to.

But I digress. We’re getting a couple of big gifts, depending on your point of view, from the January 6th committee: their recommendations for charges against the former President and their advice about how to avoid another insurrection. Then, there’s  the release of the former guy’s tax returns. Widening out our lens, we can add year-end gifts that include the retirement of Nancy Pelosi from the House speakership, the release of Britney Griner from Russia, and even Harry and Meghan making their definitive case against the British tabloids and their own treatment by the royal family.

What will Santa bring us in 2023? Some early coal in our stockings, again, depending on your point of view - a blizzard of subpoenas and endless House investigations. But hey, Santa, in case you’re taking requests for the new year, how about defeat of COVID and related diseases, a pause in runaway inflation, and maybe even an end to the war in Ukraine, just for starters? Oh, and immigration reform, if there’s room in the sleigh? I know that’s a lot for you, the elves, and the reindeer, but we just have to ask.

 

Smile, You're on Lensa AI

 I haven’t done it, and probably won’t, but a number of friends have. Lensa AI is a smartphone app. Customers pay about $4, upload some selfies, and in aa few minutes, the app spits out a slew of stylized computer-generated images based on the photos. “Fairy Princess” is a popular avatar choice. I’m willing to bet that most of the app users are female.

A good friend tried it out but gave it a clear thumbs down. She said most of the images didn’t look like her at all, and she was right. But a couple were closer than others.

I have another good friend, an artist living in Florida named Beth. One of the things she has done over the years is to paint unusual portraits of clients based on the photos they send her. Naturally, she charged money for the finished product -- not a lot in the art world these days, but still enough to compensate her for her time. So, the idea that a computer can do this and turn out 50 pictures in half an hour for 4 bucks is a little disturbing to her.

I and several other friends have tried to reassure Beth that these art-bots will not replace her, or artists like her, whether they paint or do digital work. If you have an actual Beth portrait of yourself on your wall, you know that the image, painted by a talented human, is priceless. Even if you’re concerned about real monetary value, the portrait’s uniqueness will make it valuable, maybe more so in a world of bot pix.

As an aside, there are AI programs that can write now – pretty well, in fact -- for routine things. Are news stories next? If so, they’ll be messin’ with what used to be MY space, so I know how Beth feels.

By the way, when you input images to the AI app, they don’t have to be yours. Did you have permission to do it from the one in the pictures? How will you use the results?

We do have to think about these issues. But I will never be convinced that bots will replace humans. We can have all the self-driving machines we want, but there will always be situations where we need Sully to land the plane. And while Hal the computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey”  didn’t come with an on/off switch, Keir Dullea was still there to disable him when he got out of line. We’re not going anywhere.

 

Just Sayin'

We all know that we can’t, or don’t, say the full F-word on broadcast radio or TV or in polite company. Except we say the abbreviation “F-ing” this or “F-ing” that now on a regular basis. Are we being “nicer”? I don’t think so.

OK, well, Cassidy Hutchinson didn’t have much choice, when quoting the former President while testifying to the January 6th committee, except to say “F-ing.” And, of course, he was certainly not the only President to audibly use the F-word. In print, we now replace one or more letters of the word with hyphens or asterisks.

I guess this is my age showing. I use the full F-word only when I’m REALLY angry or upset. But what’s worse Is, I hear the sanitized version creeping into my own daily language, which, I’m sorry, modern folks, has been coarsened as a result. If you see a cockroach on the floor with pretty colors on its back, it’s still a cockroach, and your house isn’t clean (sorry again, even cockroaches have fans).

I recently saw a movie in which a really beautiful British actress liberally used the F-word, and I was a little disappointed. Sexist and shallow of me, I know. Looks, gender, and nationality should not interfere with self-expression, and in her case, she was working from a script. But I thought, have we Americans now corrupted the Brits, who created the world’s most eloquent curses and oaths hundreds of years ago?

Actually, it’s not us who invented the F-word. I looked it up, and it more likely was the Germans or the Dutch, and even then, it had a mostly different meaning.

I do have to recognize that language is fluid. As a young student I once looked up a then-dirty word in the Oxford English dictionary and it was listed with the advisory “not in decent use.” But these days, you hear it quite a bit. I’m going to leave out what it is.

About the F-word, though, I guess that linguistic ship has sailed too, and the only way left to cleanse it is to use it in full all the time so it no longer shocks anyone. But what will replace it when we’re angry or ecstatic, or trying to make an important point? I will leave that to you young whippersnappers.

 

 

Still Afloat

The great American ship of state has been righted. Go out on deck and look at the waves. They are choppy, but not deep red.

Votes are still being counted, though, and when it’s all over, we will still have a politically divided country. And there is still plenty to bail out of the boat: inflation, crime, immigration, energy issues, voting rights, assault weapons, and what happens with abortion.

The division is actually a little worse than before, with the House of Representatives likely to fall under Republican control. The saving grace is that in the House, there is no filibuster. Whether Kevin McCarthy becomes Speaker is an open question, but whoever that is will have to unite a deeply fractured caucus. Republicans may be cheering the expected ouster of Democrat Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker’s chair, but she was really good at herding cats, as they say, and she had years to perfect that skill.

Looming over much of this, of course, is Donald Trump. But I think the election demonstrated clearly that his light is fading, Soon, there may only be enough left of it to brighten the walls of a prison cell, either a federal one, or one in Georgia. Ironically, if there is a second Civil War, that’s the state where it will be fought, via the runoff for an important US Senate seat.

What of President Biden? You have heard me on this topic before, but to repeat, it’s my view that he should not run for a second term. I say that in the spirit that he should quit while he’s ahead, and he is definitely ahead, having accomplished arguably more than any of his recent predecessors. Yes, he has made some mistakes, but what President hasn’t?

The other reason I think he should step aside for 2024 is that it will take the steam out of any investigations a Republican-led House may have in mind for him or any drive for impeachment. His son Hunter’s activities will be old news. Biden wouldn’t be resigning.  He will still be around for two more years, and not forced to please anyone just for the sake of re-election.

Such a decision by Mr. Biden – and perhaps another, to stay away from endorsing a successor -- would open the door to new Democratic talent, and there is plenty of it available, as the midterm elections have shown us. That goes for the Republicans too, by the way. Our ship can’t just float. It’s time to start charting a new course and get underway.

 

 

 

Memory Lapses

Here we are, close to a week before the election, and the horses are on the home stretch. Abortion had the early lead after the summertime Supreme Court decision throwing out Roe v. Wade, which energized Democrats, especially women. The news was filled with horror stories about pre-teen girls being forced to flee their states to get an abortion, or mothers having to bear children in spite of possibly fatal consequences.

But that was then. Now it’s the “economy, stupid,” crime, and immigration -- issues which favor the Republicans. Abortion isn’t quite doing it anymore; the news has mostly moved on. Did abortion simply peak too soon? Too bad for the Democrats that the court ruling didn’t happen In September to accommodate short attention spans.

What about democracy itself – why isn’t that important? The problem with democracy is that you can’t eat it, put it in your gas tank, or heat your house with it. It’s like the operating system in your computer – it runs in the background, and all the apps you use depend on it, but you don’t have to think about it until it’s hacked or corrupted. The January 6th committee tried to keep it alive, but even this issue is secondary, or even tertiary now, or so it seems.

And then there are the polls. The sky is turning red, everybody better get used to it, they say. What are those who don’t like that to do about it? Throw up their hands and binge-watch The Crown?

In some ways, locking out the news is not a bad idea. All this horse-race reporting can uplift us or depress us. We can easily be manipulated, whether our own hue is of red or blue. But staying out of the game completely, because we think it’s over, is a lousy idea.

Voting is not something we do when the rest of our lives is sorted out. It can determine HOW the rest of our lives WILL be sorted out. And this year, it might even take a little courage, with others eyeballing us as we walk up to the ballot dropbox in some places. But if we look at some third-world countries, where voting really IS dangerous, some of them still manage much higher election turnouts than we do.

Yes, it may be more difficult to vote this time. But If we don’t exercise our right, it may be much harder the next -- and we will miss it when it’s gone.