Lessons Learned

What would Cliff Huxtable do? Presented with a situation in which his father (for dramatic purposes) had been convicted of a serious crime (sexual assault for realistic purposes), what would the America's Top Sweater Model say? To his family? To his friends? To himself? 
Here are some things he said back in the late eighties and early nineties: 
"If you call a female surgeon 'old', she will tear you apart."
"Rudy, hurry up and become president because we need you now!"
"No, no, don't take my bubble thing."
"Look at me when you lie."
It would have to be "a very special episode," but that is what we came to expect from The Cosby Show, back in its heyday. Kids smoking pot. Kids drinking. Teenage pregnancy. Teen sex. And somewhere in that mix, you might expect that the star of the show would have picked up some of the wisdom that he was spouting, and applied it to the problem faced by the elderly Huxtable drugging and sexually assaulting women. 
Or maybe it was a matter of working the line of "who would ever believe..." Not Bill Cosby. Not the Doctor of Education who used to introduce every episode of Fat Albert with the phrase, "This is Bill Cosby comin' at you with music and fun, and if you're not careful you may learn something before it's done."
No. This was not a very special episode. This was a decades-long crime spree that cannot be legitimized the the times or how we used to do things. It was a man using his power and privilege to force himself and his urges on women who were not given any chance to refuse. These are no longer "alleged" victims. These are victims of a system that is only now starting to tip back in favor of those who have been attacked. The applause and praise now belongs to those women who stood up and waded through the public's disdain for them while waiting for someone, anyone, to listen. 
Cliff Huxtable would be happy with that outcome. Sorry "his father" wasn't able to get the lesson. 

Slow Walking Makes Sense In A Swamp

There has been quite the hue and cry coming from the White House recently over the pace at which new members of the administration are being confirmed, or not, but "obstructionist" Democrats. It would be worth noting at this point that our previous president spent most of his last year in office trying to get a Supreme Court Justice appointed. This attempt was blocked by Republicans who felt that it was their right and privilege to block such a nomination via the ominously named "Biden Rule," that somehow made not having a ninth justice a better thing than confirming one during an election year. Once the new "President" was elected, the Republicans moved with their majority in both houses of Congress to get their guy in. Full speed ahead.
It also seems worth mentioning that, at this point in Washington D.C., entire careers can be made sitting in front of confirmation panels answering questions and waiting for the wheels of the swamp machine to churn out what it hopes is quality public servants. This is the way the game is played these days. This is how we end up with folks like Ronny Jackson vying for posts like head of the Veterans Administration. Not the infielder who played with the Angels and the Orioles, but the physician to the "President" who has been rushed up to the big leagues after his patient had a notion that he was ready for that kind of exposure. 
Turns out Ronny wasn't really ready. Questions about whether he had the experience to manage the massive department of three hundred sixty thousand employees serving nine million veterans were not the only issues. Drinking on the job and over-prescribing medication were the top concerns for many who felt that Doctor Ronny might not be the right choice to lead the Veterans Administration into the light. 
Apparently Doctor Ronny agreed, withdrawing his name from consideration before any full and almost certainly tawdry discussion of his qualifications began. 
Somebody push the reset button. It's time for fresh meat. 

Where There's Smoke

I was sitting on my back deck, having lunch with my wife and mother in law, when I detected a scent of burning weeds. Weed, actually. "It smells as if someone is exercising their mandated rights," I said, to the initial mystification of my luncheon companions.
I took a quick sniff, and my wife took the cue, breathing in her own clue. We needed to stop for a moment to explain exactly what we were noticing to my mother in law. And from there the discussion turned to the composition of the Declaration of Independence, which legend has it was written on hemp. The one I stood in front of with my wife and son on a Fourth of July many moons ago in Washington D.C. was not hemp, but animal parchment. This explains how it has survived so long and why no one has tried to smoke it.
But I don't live in Washington D.C. I live in California where it is perfectly legal to enjoy some personal use cannabis on a Saturday afternoon. Proposition 64 doesn't give complete and full recreational use and harvesting, but it does mean that a certain learned response from my youth will fall by the wayside: I no longer have to look suspiciously over my shoulder to see who is toking up with the intent of narcing someone out. I can now turn my attention to those who refuse to separate their recyclables.
Which may be the direction Cheech and Chong will be taking in the future. This past week, everyone's favorite stoner duo announced that they would be turning their comic focus in new directions. Like into unpasteurized dairy products as well as getting into importing exotic reptiles and taping and distributing football games without the express written consent of the NFL. Life on the edge with relics from America's past. 
Like the Declaration of Independence. 
And that insatiable hunger for the Family Size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. 
Making America Great Again. 

Get Off My Back

I am reasonably certain that I sleep on my stomach because I am trying to stay off my back. It is a leftover instinct I carry with me from my wrestling days. When I reference my "wrestling days," I am calling to mind a period of three months in my eighth and ninth grade years. A total of six months. I carry these months with me as baggage, referring to them as "when I was a wrestler," or "when I was wrestling." I was on the team because I saw it as my escape from the big red Bandie stamp that was already affixed to me and my legacy. If I was ever going to be allowed into the dating pool, I had to find something that would break the stigma of playing Sousaphone in the back row. And memorizing Monty Python skits. And carrying a lunch box.
Could I have just up and quit band? That was not the prescribed course for my family. We tended then and now to continue to show up until we are asked not to. My older brother was in band. He was on the wrestling team. That seemed like the path to follow. The Monty Python and lunchbox would have to remain part of my enigmatic persona as I struggled to find my way through junior high.
Wrestling was not easy for me, as I had a limited amount of coordination and struggled to keep my own arms and legs out of a tangle, let alone with anyone else. But I understood that getting my shoulders pinned to the mat was the end. Getting stuck is not something a wrestler wanted to be. It was a defeat for you personally but for the team as well. Lose a match on points and you give the opponent's team three or four points. A pin would cost you six. I know this still because it happened to me more times that I care to remember. But I do. When the referee's hand came slapping down on the mat and the ignominy was doubled down by the whistle in my ear, my instincts told me to just keep sinking into the floor and disappear. No need to go back to the edge of the mat where my teammates were sitting. It guaranteed a very long week of practice with an unforgiving group of my peers who were ever more sure that I was just there to take up space, not to compete.
So I worked on the thing over which I had the most control: Not losing. Stay off your back. Flop around like a trout on a landing, but stay off your back. At the end of ninth grade, I went to the B Mat tournament, representing my team. It was a bright, late winter morning, and the sun coming in the gym windows was a stark contrast to the way I remember all those practices before in the dark, downstairs gym. I won my first match by forfeit when the kid from another school didn't show up. He probably slept in that day. In the second round, I was matched against a guy who was every bit as gangling as I was round. I wrestled him to a standstill, and in the third period, I was ahead on points. I won that match, and moved on to the finals.
It would be nice to finish this story with the underdog rising up to conquer his fear and winning the trophy. Nope. I got pinned. Fast. I got the second place ribbon and walked away. That was my last wrestling match. More time for Monty Python. 

Upon Which We Build

Emo Phillips used to do a bit about how disappointed he was when he finally met his mother's friend whom she described as a "cat person." Just a normal person who happened to own a lot of cats? No fangs? Not even whiskers?
I have had a similar reaction many times to the restaurant chain called The Waffle House. If the construction was waffle based, or at least emulated waffles in some way, I would be more impressed. Maybe using maple syrup for caulking. Instead they exist as prefab roadside stops for carbohydrates and lots of coffee.
Perhaps this explains why a half-naked man chose to shoot one up in Tennessee over the weekend. He killed four and wounded two others in Antioch, just outside Nashville. His weapon of choice was the ever-popular killing machine, the AR-15. After another brave customer was able to wrestle the gunman's rifle away from him, he shed his only remaining piece of clothing, a green jacket, and ran off into the early morning.
Takeaways: The hero in this exchange, James Shaw Jr., was unarmed. He had only a mixture of courage and fear to drive him. A good guy without a gun. The crazy guy who started the trouble with his assault weapon had been previously identified as having mental problems. He did nothing to diminish that assertion over the weekend. He was still able to get his hands on an AR-15. Authorities took his gun permit away. Then his dad gave him his gun back.
More defense will be raised about blaming the gun rather than the nutjob with the gun. If this was a guy who, in May 2016 in a parking lot in Illinois and at the time his family told authorities he was having "delusions" involving Taylor Swift and believed the singer was stalking him and harassing him, I would suggest he not be allowed to have access to a stapler, let alone a semi-automatic rifle. This wasn't a school. This was a Waffle House. Will patrons have to pass through metal detectors to sit down to their hash browns and pecan waffles? Will they be asked to carry only clear bags in and out? 
To preserve the freedoms of our Second Amendment? 
That's as crazy as building a house out of waffles. 

Fifty-Fifty

I had a brush with fame on the day my buddy got married on Long Island. We were standing on the curb outside his building in Manhattan, waiting to pile into a half dozen different vehicles for the ride out to the wedding site, when a tiny old lady tottered out to stand near us. At this point, my buddy's dad took the opportunity, as he had all weekend, to announce his son's pending nuptials.
The little old lady looked up, "Married?" She gave a little shrug. "Some marriages work. Some don't." And with that, she ducked inside a waiting Lincoln Town Car and sped off into the waiting day.
"That was Martin Scorsese's mom," my buddy whispered, "She lives upstairs from me."
I thought about Mrs. Scorsese and her many cameos in her son's movies this past Sunday when I read our "President's" tweet defending his renewed relationship with North Korea: "We are a long way from conclusion on North Korea, maybe things will work out, and maybe they won’t - only time will tell....But the work I am doing now should have been done a long time ago!" 
It was suggested, by the host of Meet The Press, that the U.S. may have given too many concessions to Kim Jong Un in order to make a summit between these two countries regarding nuclear weapons. Mister Kim, who is no longer referred to by our "President" as "Little Rocket Man" or any of the sobriquets our chief executive had been lobbing at North Korea's head of state just a few months ago. Presently, the "President" reserved his funny nicknames for the aforementioned host, Chuck Todd. He called him "sleepy-eyed" Chuck Todd. As for the concessions, there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding. The White House would have us believe that North Korea has agreed to denuclearizatoin, Experts who aren't in the White House believe that this is an opportunity for Kim Jong Un to have his country recognized as a nuclear power. 
So, on the plus side, our "President" has decided to toss his amusing epithets at members of the press, and he no longer seems bent on a "fire and fury" solution. The down side is that the world doesn't seem that much safer with either of these two fellows having access to nuclear weapons.
It should be noted here that my buddy's marriage ended in divorce.
Some relationships work. Some don't.

Live With It

Sometimes news stories land close enough together in the croquet game we call "life" that it bears noting. Last week, Walter Moody Jr. was executed in Alabama. He was put to death for the murders of federal judge Robert Vance and civil rights lawyer Robert Robinson back in 1989. Convicted in 1991 on seventy-one counts connected to the mail bombing of these two men, Mister Moody maintained his innocence during his stay on death row. His appeals were heard as high as the United States Supreme Court, and were denied. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement that "Moody's appeals finally came to a rightful end. Justice has been served."
Justice, or something like it. 
Prisons, especially death row, is filled with innocent people. Just ask them. Of course it makes nothing but sense that anyone who faced the ultimate penalty would object most strenuously to the suggestion that they were guilty. It's all about survival, after all. There have been a few exceptions to this rule, but it is precisely for this reason that we have an appeals process in place for capital cases. It's an expensive proposition, costing millions of dollars more than a sentence of life imprisonment. The time that Walter Moody spent waiting his execution brought him to an ironic point in his life where the urgency switched from blind justice to just getting the sentence carried out before he died of old age. Kind of the ultimate "you can't fire me, I quit" scenario. 
Meanwhile, in California, Vicente Benavides was released from prison after serving twenty-five years on death row for the rape and killing of his girlfriend's nearly two-year-old daughter. A quarter of a century after it was concluded, it turned out that false medical testimony was presented at his trial. Turns out it was more likely that the girl had been hit by a car and left for dead. Sorry, Mister Benavides. Here's your twenty-five years back. California has the nation's largest death row with nearly seven hundred fifty inmates. Only thirteen have been executed since 1978. The last took place in 2006. Currently, condemned inmates are more likely to die of old age during decades of appeals.
Please feel free to consider this confluence of events, unfolded as they did over the years. 
We have to live with that.