Silence is Permission

Note: this is a blog that I somehow did not post after I wrote it. However, the underlying philosophy continues to be a national issue, so I decided to post it this morning.

There are two issues with which I have issues this week: the first is the Glenn Beck controversy and the second is the involvement of the organization ColorofChange in the Glenn Beck controversy. First and foremost, I believe in freedom of speech, especially as the actor, Michael Douglas, delivers the message in the movie The American President: those who rile us up with divergent views are the ones whom we must support most vigorously. It is through lively dissension that we affirm the rights provided to all citizens by our founding fathers.

When my students read The Crucible, they really do not comprehend the premise Arthur Miller used as the inciting incident, the McCarthy "better dead than red" campaign that mirrored so much of what happened in Salem, Massachusettes during what came to be known as The Salem Witch Trials. In Salem, young girls named residents of Salem as witches, panic ensued, lives were destroyed, the faith of the community was shaken, and the strength of our fledgling democracy was challenged. During the 1950s, a similar event occurred, piloted by Senator Joe McCarthy, who outed rich and famous people as communists without a shred of evidence, creating panic in the press and guilt by association. The fear engendered by that historical event lives today in the entertainment industry: few are brave enough to stand up and admit that s/he voted against Senator Obama in the last presidential election. Anyone who admits a lack of support for a candidate whose qualifications and credentials are, at best, limited is branded a racist in the media and the offers of employment suddenly vanish.

In California, about twenty-five years ago, it was the McMartin Pre-School debaucle wherein allegedly 125 children were sexually molested by the family who owned the preschool. It took time, but all of the charges collapsed; however, not before the McMartin family was destroyed by overly-zealous prosecutors who used the publicity as a springboard for advancing their own careers. The evidence was manufactured, with children carefully guided into conversations about "bad" adults inappropriately touching their "private places," with dolls used as props to point to those places if the children did not understand. Little children are vulnerable to suggestion and the testimony seemed on the surface to be overwhelming, but was nothing but cheesecloth that could not withstand the test of time.

Glenn Beck asserts that President Obama is a racist, basing his belief on his observations of the President's conduct both during the campaign and his newly-begun tenure in the White House. Additionally, Beck cannot process that the President of the United States, regardless of who occupies the office, actually told the world audience that the police acted "stupidly" in arresting a person who became combative during a response to a call from a neighbor about two unknown men apparently breaking into a nearby home. Because the President claims to be African-American and the homeowner is African-American, but the responding police officers are white, The President's off-the-cuff remark did, indeed, seem racially biased.

Believe what you will: that's the right we defend in this country. I never have to agree with what you say or believe, but in this country, I accept your words and your belief as your right to freedom of speech. However, not so the organization ColorofChange, which has contacted the advertisers whose commercials air during the commercial breaks on Glenn Beck's TV show. The bottom line for ColorofChange is that advertisers either discontinue supporting the Beck show vis a vis their advertising dollars or deal with the consequences from ColorofChange. It's always about the money, and if the advertisers don't come into line, there's the additional taint of racism to go along with the financial devastation and bad publicity.

An article in the LA Times contains the following information:

ColorofChange.org quickly targeted companies whose ads had appeared during Beck's show, telling them what he had said and seeking a commitment to drop him. The goal is to make Beck a liability, said James Rucker, the organization's executive director.

"They have a toxic asset," Rucker said. "They can either clean it up or get rid of it."

ColorofChange interferes with the democratic process by making the decision for the advertisers with implied financial and political consequences for failure to withdraw their support. Racism is, by definition, based on the assumption that one's own ethnicity is superior, a status implied by the actions of ColorofChange. Sometimes, if a problem is ignored, it goes away; however, if a spotlight is focused on it, the problem gets far more publicity than it would have without all the publicity. (Note: the issue died a natural media death when Beck counter-attacked: ColorofChange, your 15 minutes are up!)

Major advertisers should be standing up for freedom of speech, taking ColorofChange to task for not supporting freedom of speech, rather than supporting their tactic of targeting anyone who questions the political organizations and decisions of this country as racists. Open debate diffuses political dissension because citizens have not just the right to be heard, but the personal responsibility to speak out. Sometimes, it's not about the money: it's about the principles. Rather than labeling selected individuals who stand up and speak out as "whack jobs," we should all be wearing proudly OUR "whack job" buttons as we speak openly and often and vigorously in public about what we believe, why we believe it, and question decisions that do not appear to be in the best interests of WE, the people. Our silence is their permission.

Follow up thoughts: the issue of racism is going to dog the President throughout his tenure as individuals seek to ascribe their racial feelings into the political environment, such as President Carter's comment that the individual who challenges the President's policies is a racist. However, I heartily applaud President Obama's comment to Dave Letterman that he was black before the election ... . Enough said.

SB2PS = 5H

The plan was to leave SB at noon to avoid the worst of the Sunday travel traffic, so I pulled out of my brother's shop at high noon, drove to the main street, and could not believe the long line of densely-packed vehicles! As I waited in stunned silence for my right turn into the traffic lane, it became "traffic on the 5's" on KNXT 1070. Believe it or not, a small plane had made an emergency landing on the freeway that is parallel to my brother's business. Really. Three cars had run into the plane and damaged it, as well as their vehicles, but no injury to any of the people involved. Just traffic rerouted off the freeway and through a very small town, and currently at a standstill.

It took me 45 minutes to travel from Goleta to Montecito, a 15-minute drive in heavy traffic; then, it took me another 45 minutes to travel from Montecito to Ventura, a 20 minute drive. At that point, I had the internal conversation: do I pull off, find a restaurant, and eat a nice Sunday dinner before traveling farther east, or do I take my chances and deal with what lies ahead? It can always get a whole lot worse before it gets even a little bit better.

I next encountered a major accident at the 134/405 junction: all lanes of traffic stopped, so everyone bailing to the left and getting on the 134, which was my direction. On the 210, an accident happened perhaps 2 minutes in front of me, resulting in an overturned vehicle across 3 lanes of traffic. I was early enough to go to the far left shoulder and around it, but I was hearing about the traffic tie-up for the rest of the drive home, which included two more traffic tie-ups, one for an car engine fire and the other for a brush fire!!

The LA freeways are not for the faint of heart on a good day, but on a bad day, they intimidate the strongest daredevils to challenge the asphalt and emerge unscathed, especially in the mile or so immediately after the obstruction, when the road-racers who were clipping along about 80-85 have to make up the time they lost waiting for the lanes to clear. They floor it, weave in and out of lanes, and somehow make it out alive most of the time.

I arrived home at 5 pm to be greeted by Mia, whom I had left home with far too much food/water for 3 days alone. Her greeting was the same I get every day I go out to run errands or go to work and then return: happy butt wiggling, some vigorous head petting, belly thumping, and dog kisses before she goes back to her floor pillow for a nap. Would that leaving people to fend for themselves could be that easy.

Shank's Mare

Can you remember kids walking to school? I do. For the younger children, parents walked with them, sort of like a leg-pool of one parent walking a small group to the school, making sure it was clear to cross the streets and adhering to all the other walking rules. When the children got into the upper elementary grades, they got to walk by themselves because by then, they knew the way to and from school, as well as all the safety rules, OR they had received a bike from Santa and could pedal themselves to school and home.

Of course, that was back when drivers were many fewer, including moms who stayed home and daddies who drove to work. The drivers who were in the cars and on the way to work concentrated on driving: no cell phones, no on-board videos playing, no putting on make-up, reading the paper, sending a text message. Drivers were content to just drive the car to work.

Today, one of the local school districts announced that no buses will be available for high school students: walk, carpool, ride a bike, or take the city bus. The district had to make many challenging decisions to work with the funds that are available, so some levels of the multi-sports' programs have been cut ... and kids are not going to ride the (school) bus to school.

There are guidelines for the younger kids: Students in lower grades will be bussed if they live farther from schools than the following distances:

• 1 mile, grades K-3.
• 2 miles, grades 4-5.
• 2.5 miles, grades 6-8.

The person who wrote this news release evidently is not aware that one rides a bus, but the kiss given before entering the schoolyard is fondly called a buss: the students in the lower grades are going to be transported (bused), not kissed good-bye (bussed) by the district.

Parents are up in arms: MY kid is NOT going to walk when ... it's hot, it's cold ... it's too early in the morning ... there's too much traffic ... fill in the blank. On the other hand, walking is healthy and this Valley has one of the highest rates of Diabetes II in SoCal, so the exercise will benefit the children's health issues. Many of the children are also fat, one of the first differences I noted between where I used to live and living here, so walking to school may trim and tone children who are carrying too much weight on their young bodies.

One parent wants to know how the family can afford to buy a car so their child can get to and from school, an expensive solution to an affordable problem: buy them a city bus pass, buy the child a bike, car-pool with a neighbor, OR walk with them on the first day of school so they know how to get there the next day. No one "has" to buy a high school student a car!

We are a nation of lazy people and over-indulged children who need to "go green," as well as live within a budget. Bus transportation has always been free on the surface, but OUR TAXES pay for those buses and because the people refuse a tax increase to pay for all the free services available in the Great State of Caly-phone-ya, WE ARE BROKE.

Get over the personal inconvenience and retrain your child to be a responsible (junior) citizen who can get to school and back home again, one way or another.

Sign of the Times

As I drove home from the first day of the new school year, I passed a business that proudly brags on a colorful sign out front that there is a MANGER'S SPICAL in progress.

I'll be skipping that opportunity because if the sign reflects the MANGER's skill level, woe be unto anyone who falls prey to the over-worked, under-paid staff working for said MANGER!

Articulate

I've been holed up in the office for 2 days, finishing the book editing and prepping for the first day of school ... tomorrow! The farthest thing from my mind has been the news, so when I adjourned to the bedroom to fold clothes and put fresh sheets on the bed, I turned on the tiny TV to ketchup on what's happening outside the office.

"As of yet," the news reader said 3 separate times in her report about a child abduction. What the heck does "as of yet" convey besides the inability to construct a meaningful phrase to say that there is no suspect at this time.

A concerned parent was interviewed for her immediate reaction to the situation. Perhaps she was nervous about appearing in a TV interview and unsure of what she wanted to say, but she repeated "I mean" at least a half dozen times. If she didn't mean it, she probably wouldn't say it, so repeating "I mean" distracts from what she means, rather than enhances it.

The rhythm of the interview became "as of yet, I mean, I mean; as of yet, I mean, I mean; as of yet, I mean, I mean." With just the right melody, there's great potential for a hit rap, right?