1-800-You Don't Have to Do That

 

I know, too many letters there. But I want to talk about crisis hotlines. There are 1-800 numbers to call (and other means of contact) for rape victims or those contemplating suicide or having a mental breakdown, among many other reasons. But what about those who are just very angry and want to do a bad thing, especially with a gun? Is a general crisis line good enough? Might a number they could call safely, anonymously, and for free, to talk with a counselor trained specifically to deal with them, be useful? If there isn’t already something exactly like that, maybe there should be.

The risk, of course, is that without some physical intervention, the caller may go out and shoot someone anyway. But if there were one last base to touch, might they be talked down from their plans?

I am 100 percent supportive of reasonable nationwide gun laws, such as background checks, waiting periods, and an assault weapons ban. Red flag laws are great too, but sometimes, nobody sees the flags, and maybe there simply are none. People with perfectly clean records are suddenly moved to get a gun, which they can do legally and often too easily. Then, how many times have we heard people say after an incident that they had no idea the person they thought they knew was capable of such a terrible act? How many dormant volcanoes are there out there – people with lava boiling inside? We don’t always know when they might erupt.

I get that many shootings are motivated by revenge, as in the case of workers fired from their jobs or those whose significant others just dumped them. But why do shooters attack schools, churches, shopping malls, and theaters? Most are not political terrorists. Maybe they just feel powerless or ignored and want to make a statement, to be somebody, to count. I am all in favor of not mentioning the names of or glorifying shooters, but I do think we have to know something about their motives. Clearly, a mass murder is a response way out of proportion to what’s bothering them, but could someone on the other end of a phone line or chat box convince them of that?

We are constantly hearing pleas to help the underserved, but it would do us well to provide some safe outlet for the dangerously underHEARD. As I have said, by the time somebody shows up at a school with an assault weapon, it’s way too late.

 

 

 

 

The Answer, Ashbey, Is Yes

 

 

“Aren’t you guys tired of this?” Those were the words of Ashbey Beasley to reporters following the shooting that left six people dead, including three children, at a private religious school in Nashville. An Illinois resident, Beasley and her son, both mass shooting survivors themselves, were on vacation in Nashville to visit family when the shooting occurred not far away.

The media are indeed tired of covering these, and we consumers of news are equally tired of seeing the same pattern of coverage after each incident.  Unfortunately, though, the media are participants in this drama. It could be argued that they have paved a road to attention for the shooters, who know that attacking a school will provide maximum exposure for them and whatever cause motivates them. Many outlets, at least, are starting to avoid mentioning shooters’ names for that very reason, and that’s a bit of good news.

The bad news is, we have all been conditioned now to expect continuous coverage of these tragedies. Sometimes, the facts only dribble out, and in between dribbles, the anchors and experts fill the time with speculative babble. Gone are the days of a quick bulletin followed by, “We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.” I remember that when the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana hit the news on a Saturday night in 1978, CBS broke into a movie to report what information it had, then sent us back to the movie, which was, as I recall, “The Demon Seed,” in which a computer wanted to have sex with  Julie Christie. That kind of come-and-go coverage couldn’t pass muster today, but I don’t know what the alternative is now.

That said, the wall-to-walls on mass shootings are the 2x4s repeatedly hitting us over the head to remind us of our gun problem here in America. I was thinking, if we didn’t have these things, would we be paying any attention at all to the gun violence, or gun accidents, occurring around us daily?

We all know that when an individual shows up at a school site with an assault weapon, it’s already too late. We think, and we pray, and we talk about all this, but nothing  much happens.

President Biden has issued executive orders aimed at implementing reasonable gun measures, including a ban on assault weapons, but concedes that his authority is limited and that not much can be done without Congressional action. So how many more times do we have to see THAT movie?

Bank Shots

 

I am no economist, and if I offer you financial advice, you’d be wise NOT to take it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But like many of you, I’m still trying to get my head around this banking crisis, if that’s what we have here.

After depositors started pulling money out of the Silicon Valley Bank and collapse was imminent, the federal government stepped in to backstop the depositors. Some critics have called this a bailout, while the government insists this was different from 2008, because the bank executives and stockholders this time were not protected. The executives had made some bad investment calls, and stockholders are considered risk-takers, and they lost.

The bank had invested a lot of money in long-term Treasury bonds, which seemed like a safe idea when interest rates were low, but thanks to the Federal Reserve’s raising them to fight inflation, the bonds, purchased at the time they were, have lost much of their value. And SVB catered to the tech industry and startups. As for banks catering to niche industries, though, haven’t banks in agricultural areas had to handle many farm accounts?

I personally hate high interest rates. It’s like having to pay extra for air. There are other causes of inflation besides high prices, spenders willing to pay them, and workers demanding more money. The pandemic and supply chain problems were no help. The Fed has only one tool to control inflation, though. It’s like using a huge sledge hammer to drive a nail, but the nail still has to be driven.

It’s no accident that banks traditionally have occupied imposing buildings, often the tallest in town, with marble floors and ornate fixtures that oozed “stability.” We say things like, “You can take that to the bank!” But it’s not the rock-solid building, or even the money in the vault, that provides stability, it’s depositors’ trust. Potential account-holders may shop around for a friendly bank that doesn’t beat them up with fees, but if an institution calls itself a “bank,” folks don’t usually have to ask, “Is my money safe here?” If trust disappears and everyone wants all their money out at the same time, however, most any bank would collapse.

The finger-pointing festival is in full swing, but the truth is, regulations, or the lack thereof, are only part of the problem. Many in both government and the private sector missed their share of red flags here. I do believe that the system is safe,  but it’s up to the powers-that-be now to keep depositors from going to the mattresses, so to speak.

Chernobyl, Ohio

That may be a bit of an exaggeration right now, but so far, it appears, we don’t have all the answers as to how much damage was done by the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, that spilled a particularly nasty chemical called vinyl chloride. Thousands of fish and numerous animals have died in that area. Government officials have tried to convince residents that they can drink their water and live safely in their homes, but quite a few still smell something in the air and water and are complaining about various ailments, like skin rashes and bronchitis, and some are worried about the long-term effects on their health.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was blamed for not visiting East Palestine soon enough and was beaten to the punch by Donald Trump, who was handing water bottles with his name on them out to beleaguered residents (no paper towel rolls, though). The Democrats blamed Trump for relaxing rules governing railroads while he was president. Whistleblowers blamed the Norfolk Southern railroad for overloading its cars. Environmental crusader Erin Brockovich blamed everyone for not taking the residents’ worries seriously. Will the area have to be declared an uninhabitable wasteland, and residents relocated and paid for their lost houses? We don’t know yet. That might fall to Norfolk Southern.

In the early stages of a disaster, it's less about why these things happen and the demographics of those affected than it is about how we respond, because accidents are going to happen once in a while, no matter what regulations or penalties for noncompliance are in place. It’s amazing how much DOESN’T happen, considering all the toxic stuff that travels on rail cars or in freeway tanker trucks daily without our even knowing about it. Do we really WANT to know? Dangerous materials that are necessary to make ordinary bits of our modern life work are whizzing by us all the time.

The first priority after such accidents is not determining who’s at fault or who has possession of the political football. It’s about responding to the emergency, listening to the people in the area and believing them, without trying to minimize anything to make them feel better. In the end, people CAN handle the truth.

In radio news, I had a saying: If you give people what they really need when they need it, they will never forget you for it – and if you fail to do that, they will never forgive you for it.

'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.