Mom

As most of you know, my Mom died on September 24.  I was honored by my family by being asked to write and deliver the eulogy at her funeral last Thursday.  Below is the text of the eulogy.  It gives you just a little glimpse of how wonderful my mother was.  Thank you all for the cards, prayers, kind words and time you have given to me through this difficult time.

    We gather here today to mourn our loss, but more importantly we come today to celebrate the life of a remarkable woman, one who has touched each of us in a different but equally important way, a woman who I had the privilege throughout my life of calling mom.
    As I thought about what I was going to say today, one word kept coming to mind – strength.  That is what I am going to speak of today, my mom’s strength.    You would never know from looking at her that mom could be as strong as she was, a little girl from Geneva, Ohio, barely over five feet tall.  But for anyone who knew her, it is no surprise that she was known on the playground in her youth as Toughy Tanner, for although small in stature, she had an inner strength that allowed her to stand up not only for herself but for anyone she loved without hesitation.
    It was this strength that helped her survive what was at times a very difficult and troubling childhood.  More importantly it was her strength which made sure that her children were spared such difficulty and that the cycle was broken with her.
    It was this strength that allowed her to raise seven children, five of whom were 13 months or less apart.  At three different times, my mom had three children in diapers at the same time.  For myself, who sometimes finds it challenging to take care of one child in diapers, this seems almost superhuman.
    It was also my mom’s strength that moved her to leave the relative comfort of her life as a homemaker to take a job at Syracuse University so that she could guarantee that her children would have the benefit of a college education.  Her strength sustained her through 18 years at SU, typing so fast that to me it seemed that her hands were a blur, even though she suffered from painful and debilitating arthritis.  She kept working as her health became worse, so that she could see me, her last child through school, and yes, her date of retirement was the very next day after the date on my diploma.
    Later in her life, it was her strength that sustained her through her many ailments. From COPD, to cancer, to heart problems, she faced each ailment head on and fought them courageously.  Whenever her strength would fail her, she could lean on my dad to whom she was married for 55 years and together they would pull each other through.
    But it was in the last few months and weeks that we really saw my mom’s strength as she fought her last battle.  She did not go quietly into that good night.  She held on until she knew it was time for her finally to leave.  And what was truly remarkable was the strength to know when it was time to stop fighting that truly showed what a remarkable woman my mom was.
    There was not a dry eye in the hospital room at St. Joe’s when my brother Mike arrived a few weeks ago as we all came knowing the end was near to say goodbye to my mom.  When she saw him and realized that all seven of us were there, she said “Now everybody’s home.”
    Mom, now you’re home.  We love you and we will surely miss you.  But we have your strength, and that will carry us through these next weeks and months and we will always know whenever times are tough that we can lean on your memory and your strength will carry us through.
   

The Worst (and Best) Thing I Ever Bought on Ebay

I have bought lots of things on Ebay over the years.  Most of the items have been exactly as advertised and I have come by some fantastic deals and items that I would not have been able to get anywhere else.

However, there is one item that was far from this standard, but was so incredibly bad that it has to be one of the funniest items I've ever seen.

Now, this isn't like those XBox boxes that people spend $300 to buy and then realized they literally bought the box that the XBox came in.  It's not that bad, and I really can't say that it was entirely fraudulent, although it was certainly not the most forthcoming seller ever.

I wanted to purchase for my wife the entire West Wing collection on DVD.  When we first started dating, the West Wing was a weekly date night for us.  We would usually have dinner and then return to her house and watch the West Wing together (with lots of kissing during commercials for good measure).  For Christmas that first year, we each bought each other the first season of the show on DVD.  Of course, if you have ever looked at the price for the entire series, it is quite expensive.  So, I perused the wonderful world of eBay in order to find a deal.  Most of the items were listed at or near the retail price for the series collection.  However, there was one collection that was very reasonable.  There were some things that raised some questions in my mind -- not the least of which being the Chinese lettering above the title.  The seller assured me that the unopened package was (or at least appeared to be) what it purported to be.  So I placed a bid.

At first, the bids remained very low.  It looked as if I was going to get this import (counterfeit) for a steal.  However, at the last minute, the bidding went a little crazy.  I hesitated before raising my bid limit, but I really wanted to get this for my wife and it was still cheaper than I could get it anywhere else, although it was becoming far from a steal.  I ended up paying $75 for the collection -- still not terribly bad for 7 seasons of a television show.  Well, that is if it proved to be what it was advertised to be.

The large box arrived in time for my wife's birthday.  I was very excited about it and wrapped it up nicely for her.  When she opened it, she was very happy with my purchase at first, but then had a confused look on her face -- why were there Chinese characters on the front of the collection?  Were these even in English?

As we opened the box it got worse -- There were seemingly hundreds of DVD's none of which were labeled.  They did have the West Wing labels from each season on the DVD's, but no indication as to which disc was from which season and in what order the discs were.  We decided to put in the first disc and see what it did.  It did have the first episodes from the first season, however, there were English subtitles.  No problem, we just went to the disc menu and took off the subtitles.  No dice.  Subtitles remained.

OK, so there is a problem.  Can't get the subtitles off.  But the episodes were there.  The language selections were also interesting.  We had the following subtitle choices: English (check); Portuguese (interesting choice); Chinese (I think); and what I can only guess is Korean (?).  Unfortunately, the audio was only in English, because it would have been great to hear them speaking in Korean, well, at least I would have thought this was interesting.

As my wife became less and less impressed with my bargain online shopping, I decided to do my best to make the most of the situation and label the discs.  This involved a painstaking process of bringing up each individual menu on each individual disc and then labeling which episodes were on which disc.  However, everything worked.  Well, except for the last season.  That was in the wrong format for U.S. televisions.  But, we can watch it all we want in Europe.

It wasn't until later that we discovered the best part of my purchase.  This was included on the back of the very large velvet lined box in which the discs came.  In the great tradition of Chinese counterfeiters, the makers of this particular collection cut and pasted things from various sources in order to describe the contents of the package.  This sometimes leads to interesting spellings and grammar such as a knock-off of the upside down tomato grower I found at a flea market which had apparently been spelled phonetically by the counterfeiter as it listed the product as the "Topsy Tourey".  It also leads to some great product descriptions such as "Super Fantastic Fire Making Device for Crazy Lucky American Capitalist Smoking Cowboy Man" for a cigarette lighter.

On this collection this is how this manifested (this is funnier if you say it aloud in a fake Chinese accent) (formatting and grammar mistakes from the original):

"Special Features: Lauren Bacall Hosts You Must Remember This: A Tribute to Casablanca;A spellbinding Backstage Tour  Bacall on Bogart Features the Award -Bunny and the Looney Tunes Gang Premiere  Episode Who Holds Tomorrow?From the 1955 TV Series Adaptation of Casablanca Screed Guild Players Radio Production of Casabl anca Feature The Film's 3 Top-Billed Stars Scoring Session Outtakes Gallery  Production History Gallery Includes Photos,Press Materials,Studio Correspondence,Memorabilia And More."

But, if you thought that was all, wait...we've got more!  Apparently in other countries the television series "The West Wing" was actually an action film.  I had no idea of this, but just check out the following from my exclusive one of a kind collection:

FRANCHISE PICTURES PRESENTES A RENNY HARLIN FILM: SYLVESTER STALLONE "THE WEST WING" BURT REYNOLDS, KIP PARDUE, TIL SCIWEIGER, GINA GERSHON, ESTELLA WARREN, CRISTIAN DE LA FUENTE, MUSIC BY BT LINE PRODUCER MARY MCLEOD, CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS REBECCA SPIKINGS, TRACEE STANLEY, EDITED BY STUART LEVY AND STEVE GILSON, PRODUCTION DESIGNER CHARLES WOOD, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY MAURO FIORE, EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS ANDREW STEVENS, DON CARMODY, KEVIN KING, PRODUCED BY ELIE SAMAHA, SYLVESTER STALLONE, RENNY HARLIN, STORY BY JAN SKRENTNY AND NEAL TAVACHNICK, SCREENPLAY BY SYLVESTER STALLONE, DIRECTED BY RENNY HARLIN.

Oh, and apparently it is rated PG-13 (PG in Canada)

I don't know about you, but I had no idea that Sylvester Stallone played such a prominent role in the West Wing.  I think that Aaron Sorkin has some explaining to do.

Anyway, most of the discs play just fine.  One day we'll make the investment in the non-felonious version of the series collection.

By the way, e-mails to the seller went unreturned.  A negative review was left, and I never bought any other DVD's on eBay.  It did make for a good laugh though.

May 8, 2012 -- VE day (Victory for Equality)

May 8 has been since 1945 known as VE day since that was the day in which the Nazis finally surrendered to Allied forces in Europe.  May 8, 2012 is a chance for the forces of good once again to strike a blow for freedom and equality in North Carolina by defeating the ill-conceived, divisive and ignorant proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. 

It is my honest hope that this will happen.  But, I'd also like to encourage everyone to use this as an opportunity to completely screw with the GOP majority in both houses of the NC General Assembly who put this travesty on the ballot to begin with.

Although they are claiming (without blushing) that they put it on the primary ballot in May instead of November to avoid the appearance that they were trying to boost Republican turnout in November's presidential and gubernatorial elections, the simple fact is that it was placed on in May for purely political reasons.  There is a Republican presidential primary in 2012, while President Obama will be unopposed in his re-election campaign.  Furthermore the race for Governor will also almost certainly have several Republicans vying to replace Bev Perdue who will probably not be opposed in a primary.

It isn't terribly difficult to see the cynicism and political brinkmanship the GOP is employing in placing this measure on a ballot where they are certain to have an overwhelming advantage, since Republicans will have a reason other than the constitutional amendment to turn out to vote, while Democrats will not.

So, let's screw with them.  Seriously, cynically, screw-tacularly mess them up and show that we are tired of the political games we have seen in the past year coming out of Raleigh.

It's not that hard, really.  Here's what I am proposing:

1.  North Carolina has open primaries.  That is, that Independents can vote in either party's primary. 

2.  If you are a Republican and you oppose the gay marriage amendment, I applaud you and hope that your voice will become louder in your party.  There is nothing you have to do except turn up and vote as you already would.

3.  If you are a Democrat and you oppose the gay marriage amendment (I'm hoping it's most of you, but we are in North Carolina after all), switch your party affiliation (it's ok, you can switch it back later) to Unaffiliated prior to the May 8 primary.

4.  For all of you who are already registered unaffiliated and for all of you newly minted former Democrats who are now registered as unaffiliated, simply go to the polls on May 8 and request a Republican ballot.

5.  Vote against the amendment as you would have done anyway.

6.  (Here's the good part).  There are plenty of crazy mother****ers running for everything in the Republican Party.  Most of these will still be plugging along in the primaries come next May.  So, by all means vote for the craziest mother****er you can for every position.  For President I suggest either Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain (there's also the gay guy who is running for the Republican presidential nomination -- I don't know his name, but wouldn't it be great if he won the NC primary?).  For Governor there is always more than a few crackpots trying to get the nomination, usually someone whose entire platform would require homeschooling and institute some Congregational sect as the official state church of the State -- vote for them.  Continue for any and all other positions on the ballot.

If enough people in North Carolina do this, the state's GOP could actually end up destroying their own chances of victory in every state race in November, not to mention the fact that it could really screw up their Presidential nomination process.

It would serve them right.  Since the North Carolina GOP took control of the NC House of Representatives for the first time in 141 years they have used it as an opportunity to institute a program of radical socially conservative policies which have turned back the clock of progress in North Carolina decades.  Instead of focusing on jobs as they promised, they have spent their time attacking women, abortion rights, education, the poor, teachers, unions, state employees and any other group they saw as being "the other."  It is my hope that their insane agenda will lead them to be turned out of power for another 141 years at least.

How many of you are willing to do this?  I am already registered as unaffiliated, and I plan on carrying out my plan for myself.  Let's unite and work together to make May 8, 2012 a true Victory for Equality and a slap in the face of political cynicism!

My Memories of 9/11

It seems that everyone is writing about their memories of September 11, 2001 everywhere.  Newspapers were filled with reporters remembrances of where they were and what they were doing on that fateful day.  Facebook and Twitter were filled with statuses (stati?) talking about each individual's experiences on that day.  Online sites listed members posts about loved ones touched by that day.

So, I thought I would share my own memories.  However, as I sat down to think about this, I discovered that really, my experiences were not that different than most people's that day.  I heard about the attacks, went back to my office and spent the day watching in horror as the events unfolded, went home and drank a lot.  That's more or less what most Americans did that day -- at least those who were not touched directly by the attacks by either being present at one of the sites attacked that day or by losing loved ones in the attacks.

But what I didn't see many people talking about was the odd emotions that swept through the remainder of that week and in the months following the attacks.  That is what I wanted to write about here.

Like many Americans my first reaction to the attacks was one of rage.  Anger gripped me almost immediately and the feeling was that we had to strike back at those who did this immediately and overwhelmingly.  As was the case everywhere, this anger mixed with a newly found Nationalism that fueled an unacceptable level of nonchalance toward U.S. government abuses over the next several years.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After the anger subsided somewhat, what overcame me was an unbelievable feeling of sadness.  The picture on every channel was of the newly christened "Ground Zero".  Death, destruction and mourning was all that one saw everywhere.  How soon we forget the countless fliers with pictures of missing friends or relatives that were hung all around Manhattan hoping beyond hope that someone would come and say that the person on the flyer was found alive.  But those calls never came.

What was even odder was the fact that we had to go on with our lives as normal.  We got up on September 12 and went to work and tried as best we could to go about our business.  But, how were we supposed to act?  Do we act as if nothing happened?  Do we walk around as if in mourning?  Is it ok to laugh?

A couple of days after, I went to a previously scheduled wine pairing dinner at a local restaurant.  The featured speaker from the winery was not able to attend due to being stuck in Chicago and having all commercial air traffic still grounded.  I was there with a number of local businesspeople, attorneys, doctors and judges.  I swear to God, nobody knew what to do.  The typical banter and small talk that I am always uncomfortable with anyway was missing from this particular evening.  Even though every American had this new shared experience, it was like we had forgotten how to communicate comfortably.  It was as if we were students on the first day of grammar school, uneasily approaching each other, waiting for the other to break the ice.  Eventually, conversation commenced with the usual insincere politeness, but still this had to be one of the oddest experiences of my life.

Young people might not yet really understand this, but September 11, 2001 was pre-Facebook.  There were some social network-like sites out there, but generally this type of instant communication and shared openness about everything in your life was not the norm back then.  I mention this because I experienced for the first time the potential of such new media in the days and weeks following 9/11.  Leo, a firefighter with the FDNY and I person I knew only from  the Black 47 message board, was not on duty that Tuesday morning.  However, he had been called to the scene shortly after and was participating in the clean-up and rescue operations following that awful day.  Cell phone service was down in New York, as were land lines in lower Manhattan.  There were no smart phones then, at least as we knew them.  People generally did not text each other (why would you type on a phone when you can just call the person?).  After countless hours at Ground Zero with the stench of death surrounding him, breathing in noxious smoke and debris, Leo was able to get to a working online computer.  The only way he could think to let everyone know he was ok was to post it on the Black 47 message board.  Seeing this, other fans of the band got in touch with his family to let them know that he was ok and would be in touch as soon as he could.  It was pretty incredible to play a tangential role in this experience and it forecast the amazing power of social media that would go on to within less than a decade help organize revolution across the globe.

Leo went on to post more on that message board.  He gave a gripping account of what he was experiencing as he and his fellow firefighters dug through the remains of the World Trade Center.  He wrote with heartbreaking detail the sights, sounds and emotions that surrounded him as he searched in vain for his fellow firefighters.  He wrote what it was like to attend so many funerals in such a short period of time, each one for someone with whom he was friends and for whom he would give his life without hesitation, and how the sound of the bagpipe, which he had enjoyed in celebration his entire life, was now a sound he dreaded hearing.  He encouraged those in the NYC area to attend the funerals since there were not enough firefighters to show up en masse as the practice for a firefighters' funeral, especially one who died in the line of duty.

What was coming through most in these posts was an overwhelming fatigue.  It was a fatigue which many of us felt in the weeks following 9/11.  Although we weren't literally sifting through human remains as were the teams at Ground Zero, we were dealing with what were almost unthinkable attacks and the unfamiliar emotions that they wrought.  It was as if we were all in a daze.

About three weeks after the attacks, my ex-wife and I were planning to attend a Black 47 concert in Baltimore.  We had plane reservations and were staying with her friends in the area.  Obviously following the attacks, our plane reservations didn't make it through.  Although air service was back in place, flights were so overloaded and routes so limited, that our flight was canceled.  We drove to Baltimore and got ready for the show.  At the outset, it was very much like the dinner I attended a few days after the attacks.  There was a sense of uneasiness still among the crowd.  We enjoyed the opening act -- O'Malley's March, led by then-Mayor of Baltimore (now Governor of Maryland) Martin O'Malley.  Black 47 took the stage probably around 11 or so.  The experience was quite frankly cathartic.  This mix of Irish immigrants and native New Yorkers put out such positive electrifying pure emotion that it finally gave me the excuse to let loose and simply celebrate life.  The lead singer Larry Kirwan had watched the sad events of 9/11 transpire in person from the roof of his apartment in The Bronx.  He saw victims jump from the towers in one last desperate attempt to escape the flames, or perhaps one last act of defiance against those who sought to take their life against their will.  The band lost many fans and friends in the towers' collapse, notable amongst them Father Mychal Judge, whose death certificate was numbered the first among those killed on that awful day.  But despite their first hand experiences and their immediate losses on that day, they gave us permission to live again and to go on with our lives, perhaps with a new appreciation of everything we had.

In the years since, there have been many reasons to celebrate and to mourn.  I have seen illness, addiction, divorce, death, depression, eventually though leading to healing, spiritual rebirth, love, marriage and the birth of my daughter who has given me an entirely new view of life and more reasons to smile every day than I probably had cumulatively in my life prior to her birth.  Three years after the events of September 11, 2001, a close friend of my wife (then my newly engaged fiancee) gave birth to a son.  Although they had hoped that the child would not be born on such a day of loss and mourning, it was in a way the greatest example of the healing and rebirth that I and hopefully the country as a whole had experienced -- that this would now be a day of celebration of new life and of the possibilities brought about by the best in humanity rather than a remembrance of what the worst in humanity can bring.  That is how I choose to remember 9/11 and to live my life, celebrating whenever I can and doing my best to overlook all who would try to bring me down.

It's The Income Disparity, Stupid

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Madison, London, San Francisco, Athens.  All of these places have been the scene of public uprisings and social unrest during the last six months.  All of the social unrest has one thing in common, something that most of those in power would like you to ignore.  That is that in all of these cases, the leading cause of the unrest was the increasing and alarming disparity between the incomes of the wealthiest percentage of the populace and the vast majority of the common people.

In cases such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya the unrest led to revolution and the unseating of the corrupt dictators that perpetuated a society in which the majority of the population was kept in both economic and political bondage for the benefit of the political leadership and its friends.  In Athens and London the unrest led to mass rioting, violence and looting.  In San Francisco and Madison, the protests were smaller and more peaceful, but both the cause and the State's impulse to quell the unrest were the same.

There was little attention paid to the role that economic disparity played in the "Arab Spring."  However, much of the unrest that led to the uprisings against governments throughout the Arab world was led in great part by the unsustainable economic conditions which left many workers, especially workers who were young and educated, without any chance at a meaningful and prosperous future.  This hopelessness combined with the unveiling of the abject corruption in the leadership of these nations exposed by the WikiLeaks document dumps, was the key cause of the uprisings causing (so far) the governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya to fall.

In London, the government and media went out of their way to portray the youth rioting for several nights as mindless criminals and thugs out to have their fun destroying property and stealing.  The leadership responded overwhelmingly by issuing harsh sentences for relatively petty crimes (one youth was sentenced to 6 months in prison for stealing a $10 bottle of wine) and suspended sentencing guidelines in order to allow judges to impose even stiffer penalties to these defendants than would normally be allowed by law in order to deal with this criminal element.  Of course, they ignored or dismissed arguments that these riots had anything to do with the harsh austerity programs imposed by the Cameron government, or the high levels of youth unemployment, or the response to the corruption within the Cameron regime exposed by the hacking scandal of Rupert Murdoch which involves high level members of Cameron's government.

The fact is that the youth in London were acting no differently than the bankers in the institutions that were bailed out by Cameron and his cohorts throughout Europe and the United States.  The only difference was in scale (the bankers looted trillions of dollars from investors and central banks who were all to glad to bail them out once the bottom fell out of the economy whereas the rioters took mainly small ticket items) and status (the highly connected, highly paid, highly educated bankers were portrayed very differently by the leadership and the media than the youth taking part in the rioting and looting).

The fact that social networking sites such as Facebook were used by rioters to communicate (as was the case in the uprisings throughout the Middle East) caused the Cameron government to look for ways to limit access to such sites including blocking internet access during the riots, a tactic that was widely criticized when used by governments in Egypt and Syria prior to these uprisings, and subsequently used by BART police to quell protests in San Francisco.

But the fact is, that it wasn't Facebook or the Internet that led to the uprisings or unrest.  And denying access to such sites will not address the issues that led to the uprisings and unrest.  What the Cameron government and the leadership in the U.S. is failing to see is that the unrest is being caused by a broken system wherein criminal activity by the rich and powerful is rewarded and even encouraged by the government who creates laws to make such criminal activity easier and reaps the benefits of it while at the same time making it harder and harder on those that make up the vast majority of society who are finding it more difficult every day just to keep their heads above water.

Don't think it can happen here?  The United States reached the highest level of income disparity in its history in 2009 -- even higher than in the midst of the Great Depression, this according to the most recent Census results.  The ratio of youth employment (the percentage of non-institutionalized persons between the ages of 16-24) last month reached its lowest point in history -- 44.8%.  Congress and the President have passed spending cuts which will further disaffect millions of Americans as services and benefits on which they rely are reduced or cut off entirely.  At the same time, the Obama Administration is seeking to push settlements with the TBTF banks which would amount to less than a slap on the wrist for all of the illegal and fraudulent activity in which these banks engaged leading to the economic collapse of 2008, while at the same time delaying the implementation of reforms and regulations required under the anemic Dodd-Frank Bill which would help to prevent future such abuses.  Aided by Supreme Court decisions granting corporations First Amendment protection, political campaigns are being flooded with corporate donations dwarfing anything that could ever possibly come from common citizens all being made with the understanding that those politicians receiving the funds will do everything in their power to further enrich their corporate donors.

The United States is ripe for severe social unrest.  We are already seeing the first signs of this, not just in protests like in Madison and San Francisco, but in outbreaks of mass violence in Charlotte, Kansas City, Philadelphia and other major cities across the nation in the last few months.  2012 presents itself as the year in which the U.S. could see widespread and violent social unrest on a level we have not seen in decades, if ever.  While our leaders ask "Why?" and seek to quell the spread of violence through the use of tougher laws, greater criminal sentences and the repression of social media, I will be sitting back and reminding them "It's the income disparity, stupid."  Until that is addressed, we will continue to see the unraveling of our society economically, socially and morally.

Bill O'Reilly is a Sociopath

A sociopath is commonly defined as one who entirely lacks a sense of empathy.

Bill O'Reilly fits that description to a T.

After the self-described evangelical Christian Anders Breivik bombed the offices of the leading political party in Norway and then inexplicably murdered dozens of young boys and girls attending a summer camp sponsored by that same political party, O'Reilly went apoplectic even by his standards.  What made O'Reilly upset was not Breivik's actions but the fact that the "media" kept reporting that Breivik was a Christian.

According to O'Reilly it was impossible that Breivik could be a Christian because a Christian would never commit mass murder.  File this under the same O'Reilly philosophy that explained the proof of the existence of a Supreme Being as "tide goes in, tide goes out."

Never mind the undeniable fact that throughout the last 2000 years there have been multiple and repeated examples of Christians committing mass murder (just take for some of the not so controversial examples, the Conquistadors in what is now the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico, the Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts and the Spanish Inquisition to name a few).  The worst thing about O'Reilly's outrage isn't the logical and factual fallacy of his point of view, it is the fact that he would fail to see the obvious parallels of this radical evangelical's twisting of Christian teachings to his own violent ends and the same actions by radical evangelical Muslims who do the same with their religion.

Imagine that it is 2001.  You are a Muslim man living in a quiet American neighborhood with a wife and kids, working hard at your job, being active in your community and doing your best to be a good American and a good Muslim.  Suddenly because of the actions of a small group of radicals who claim to speak for your religion, you are demonized in your own community, treated with suspicion everywhere you go, your allegiance to your own nation is questioned and your religion is smeared night after night after night by people like Bill O'Reilly who do everything in their power to portray you and everyone who believes in your religion to be an enemy of the state.  During the next 10 years, people in elected positions start questioning your right to be able to practice your religion openly, the simplest things such as building a place of worship in your community are met with vocal opposition and even violence, Congressional hearings are convened about the growing problem of American Muslims, you hear terms like Islamist, Islamo-fascist and Sharia law start to seep into the everyday language of our media.  And of course those who are spreading this hysteria for their own political gains know absolutely nothing about your religion, but are simply passing on narrow negative stereotypes which bear little if any relation to reality.

How would you feel?

Perhaps the same way Bill O'Reilly felt when met with just the fact that this Norwegian terrorist had adopted a warped version of Christianity that reflected badly on O'Reilly's view of his religion?

Of course, if Bill O'Reilly had the least bit of empathy he might have used this as an opportunity to attempt to understand what millions of Muslims in the United States and across the world felt in response to the small percentage of their religion who would use it to spread violence and hate.  If O'Reilly had one ounce of simple basic human understanding, he could perhaps take his argument about Breivik not representing the views and actions of the vast majority of Christians to the next logical step of seeing that Al Qaeda and the other radical Muslim terrorists did not represent the true teachings of Islam or the beliefs of the vast majority of Muslims across the planet.  If Bill O'Reilly wasn't a sociopath, he might have used this as an opportunity to spread understanding instead of fear.

But, that's not Bill O'Reilly.  Bill O'Reilly is a sociopath.  Not only did O'Reilly castigate the media for portraying (accurately, mind you) Breivik as a radical evangelical Christian, but in turn used it to further attack Muslims.  Of course he was only furthering the party line of Fox News and News Corp. in general.  This could be seen by the media giant's take on the Norway attack from the get go.  The Daily Mail's headline the day of the attack put in above the information about the bombing and shooting in Norway in quotation marks "Al Qaeda Attack".  On Fox News Channel they would present stories about Congressional hearings on Homegrown Jihadists and use them to transition into stories about Norway's homegrown terrorist, giving the impression that he was somehow a Jihadist rather than someone who was inspired to his violence by his perception that Norway was becoming too accepting of Muslims and other non-Christians.

Of course, I have not heard a single person in the media or elsewhere claim that Anders Breivik in any way, shape or form represented the views or actions of mainstream Christianity or even a large group of Christians.  It was obvious to everyone that Breivik was a very disturbed individual who represented a very small and very misguided group of Christianity that in no way represented what a vast, vast majority of Christians believe.

If only Bill O'Reilly would stop saying that Muslim terrorists represent the mainstream views of Islam.

Of course, that would mean that he wasn't a sociopath.  And he truly is.

Dreams Deferred

I'm going to do something a little unusual in this post.  I'm going to talk just a little bit about my job as a prosecutor.  Specifically about the thing that bothers me the most in my job.  It's not what you think.  You would think that it would be seeing hardened criminals beat their charges or the destruction that victims of crime suffer in their lives as a result of the crimes perpetrated against them, but it's not.  The worst part of my job is seeing young men and women constantly come through the court system throwing away any chance they had at a successful life all for what is in the best case a fleeting benefit.

Most of those we see come through the court system fit into a pretty common pattern.  Most of them drop out of school usually around the 10th grade.  Almost all of them have single parent homes, if that.  Many of them have parents and other family members who have been to prison.  It is not surprising that most of these young people end up wearing an orange jumpsuit, sometimes it seems they are almost destined for it.

However, today I was struck by two young men -- boys really -- both of whom had thrown their futures away for some short term gratification.  Unlike most of those that we see, both of these young men had been given a clear path out of the dead end future facing so many of our youth in our impoverished locale.  One had graduated from high school where he had excelled in football, earning a scholarship to North Carolina A&T, where he dropped out after one year to return to the same streets from which he had escaped and now had been caught selling drugs.  The other had been a good student at his high school, earning honor roll awards and had been a member of his school's ROTC program.  Instead of taking advantage of the path to success that all of those combined had, he instead broke into an occupied home late at night earning him a first degree burglary charge and an almost certain trip to a long prison sentence.

I once heard that the only thing awaiting young high school graduates in rural Southern towns were the three "M's" -- marriage, military or mill.  Now the mills are all closed, the military is becoming more and more selective the worse the economy gets and it seems that nobody gets married these days.  The three M's have been replaced by the three "P's" -- prison, pregnancy and pharmaceuticals.  We are slashing spending on education on both the Federal and State levels.  Class sizes are growing.  Good teachers are being laid off and many who dreamed of going into the profession are finding the school doors closed to them as there are no jobs for them.

When you look at everything that is wrong with our educational system, you can almost understand why selling drugs are burglarizing residences may seem like a reasonable career move for young people.  We cannot continue this trend. 

I don't come here with answers, only questions.  What can we do to provide a brighter future for our youth?  What can we do to get these young people to realize that there is more for them than prison, than crime, than dead ends?  All of our children are worth better than what we are giving them.

I'm tired of seeing kids who once had a future being sent off to prison because they can't see their own worth or their own path to success.  Let's as a community do more to help them before they are standing on the opposite side of the courtroom from me.