I’m going to have to revisit the “Smokey and the Bandit” movies. I think there’s a line in there about “I’m going home and smack your momma”… That’s how I’m feeling right about now. My mother set me up for failure, she didn’t teach me how the world really works. She taught me a bunch of idealistic crap like, patriotism, equality, honesty, hard work and honor. What a chump I was to believe it…
Okay, turning the sarcasm down for now…
Back when Bill Clinton got in trouble with the intern, I didn’t care at all. The private sexual actions of a man barely concerns me. Until he lied about it while under oath. I thought that was one of the worst things he could have done. I’m not an adherent to either political party, I distrust them equally but when it was discussed, I thought he should get into trouble for lying. And everyone told me to stop being so upset, stop witch-hunting the President. “Of course he lied, you would too.” No, not true. I might lie, I’d do whatever it took to save my marriage, deny the intern, whatever… up until the point that I was sworn under oath. Once I was sworn in, I’d have to come clean. Completely. You just can’t lie in court.
That’s another one of those idyllic concepts my mother drove into my head. No matter how embarrassing, no matter how incriminating, you can’t lie in court. You tell the truth or you plead the 5th. Some of you would just LOVE to get me on the stand and ask some of those uncomfortable questions to see just how honest I’d be… Unfortunately for me, I’d be brutally honest. I’d spill every dirty little secret. Years ago, a man I love had some trouble and got pulled into court for it. I was called to give a statement and as much as I knew it would hurt him, as much as I wanted to lie to protect him, I couldn’t. I told the truth. Since childhood, my brain has always known that lying under oath is very, very bad.
So you people ridiculed me and said that I had my priorities out of whack (and some of you even went so far as to call me a liar) because I said I would be honest about marital infidelity if questioned in court. Time has gone by, the issue is forgotten and now we have Roger Clemens facing thirty years because he lied under oath. And a lot of you people are saying we should crucify this guy. Many of you are the same people that said I was wrong for thinking we should crucify Clinton!
One of these two cases involved the most powerful man on the planet compromising himself and disregarding the very system of government he represented, the other case involves a baseball player using drugs… If you’re going to make allowances for the severity of the situation, doesn’t it seem to you that the public has them backward? I don’t care if Bill had some fun time in the oval orifice, that’s between him and Hillary. I don’t care if Roger shot horse tranquilizer into his nutsack, that’s between him and his team/fans. I don’t care. But someone did. And they cared enough to bring them both into court over it. And once they were in court, they are compelled to tell the truth.
I say nail them both. I don’t believe in any gradient for the crime of perjury. This is a black and white offense. You did or you didn’t LIE. It makes no difference to me whether you are lying about plugging an intern with a cigar, where you were the night of the murder or the spelling of your middle name. Perjury is a tool to keep people honest and let the rest of the court system work. The punishment should be severe enough to keep people from slipping into some self-preservational dishonesty. The system is imperfect but it completely breaks down if we don’t all follow and enforce the rules we have put into place to hold the system together. Rules and regulations are there for a reason. Either enforce them or abolish them.
That’s twice now that my mom has been wrong… Last week I found out that I should judge a man by the color of his skin and this week I found out that lying under oath is alright under popular circumstances. Soon they’ll try to tell me that hard work doesn’t count as much as kissing the right butts at work…
Hey guys, thanks for commenting on some posts recently. It gets to feeling real weird in here when I’m all alone. I keep posting even when no one says anything, but it’s really cool to see your comments… Thanks!
If the Catholics really believe in Eternity, the same eternity I’ve been taught, then what’s all the fuss over a few centuries in Purgatory?
Since I touched on what I consider to be frivolous records the other day, I figured I’d continue with something that bothered me a few weeks ago…
I’ve been listening to interviews with Diana Nyad, the 60 year-old woman who is trying to swim the Florida Straits from Cuba to Key West. The attempt keeps getting put off because of politics so I keep hearing more and more about her. She got swept in to the Gulf on her previous attempts when she was younger and wants to go out there and prove she can still do it at 60. Okay, personal endurance, good for her.
But as she explains the history of marathon swimming, I keep hearing about other records and exceptions and secondary records and that’s the part I just don’t like. The first woman to swim this… the first African American to swim that… How about just making it the first person, that’s it. Who got there first? Whether they happen to be black, white, male, female, Chinese or Mormon is irrelevant.
The only objection I could understand would be that women and other minorities had fewer opportunities to explore and attempt new things back when records were made. I guess that’s a well thought out and reasonable objection… Over-ruled.
Holding up the flag and proudly saying “I’m the first (insert minority here) to do what a white man already did” is just crazy to me. It screams second place. We all know that the white man is the devil, he’s responsible for everything bad in this world from slavery to tooth decay. So change it. Go make your own records, stop impersonating the white devil by duplicating his events and claiming your second place trophy.
Do it better, do it faster, do it cleaner… whatever, but make your own mark. Following in the footsteps of those that came before you is natural, but get a footprint or two off the trail. “White man X climbed this mountain for the first time fifty years ago. But I’m the first to do it naked.”
So after listening to this and getting slightly riled up, they go to commercial: “The Jacksonville Black Artist Festival. Bringing artists of African American heritage together to display their various art…”
I almost blew out a vein. THIS is the shit I’m talking about! I’m not the guy that goes out there and screams about the Miss Black America, the United Negro College Fund or the NAACP being examples of reverse racism. The word “reverse” is my problem. To me the words “racism” and “bigotry” stand alone. Same thing with “hate crime”. Bullshit. Crime is crime and should be punished accordingly regardless of who the victim is. Every time we draw a line between ourselves we’re reinforcing this bullshit division of the races that I still can’t fucking believe exists. You’re creating an “Us and them” situation and that sucks, no matter who the “us” is. Why do we institute this volunteer segregation? Would the event have been any worse off if it had just been the “Jacksonville Artist Festival”? Why should the color of the artist’s skin matter to me?
The commercial made it perfectly clear that this was not art about Africa. This was art and performances of all sorts by black artists. If you go into most libraries, the books are grouped by genre and then sorted alphabetically. If you like Psychology, you go to 150. If you like Physics, you go to 530. So out here, if you like art about the continent of Africa you’d go to the African Art Festival. I get that.
But if you walked into a library and they had black authors of all genres sorted out into one section and called it the Black Writer’s Section it would display the level of stupidity of this Black Artist Festival. Alex Haley, Lisa Williamson, Langston Hughes, Octavia Butler and Terry McMillian all lumped together because of the color of their skin?
You want to know the worst part about this? When I began writing that last paragraph I sincerely meant it. Then I read it back and realized that this very thing happens in schools and libraries across the country every February… Makes my words look tongue-in-cheek but they weren’t written that way. I just don’t understand why we still think it’s necessary to single a person out by the color of their skin.
Back when I was young, I grew up in a small town up north. We had just one black kid in my junior high (this was around the time of the “Thriller” craze and I SWEAR to you that black kid’s name was Michael Jackson). I never saw black people in my town, I just didn’t grow up around them. But even back then, when it was a complete non-issue, my mom taught me that skin color was not important. Now these organizations and events are telling me otherwise.
Sorry mom, I just don’t fucking get it anymore…
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