Squirrel!

Between the umpteenth call for an “honest discussion on race” – which is never really honest nor a discussion – and the general mismanagement of the truth by the media, I’ve been stuck.

I’ve started and stopped so many pieces.  I get focused on one thing and then – damn – somebody tosses out another heaping pile of crapola masquerading as fact I just can’t resist.

Maybe that’s the plan.  If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. 

That seems to be this Administration’s policy.  And the media plays right along.  So much bullshit is being shot in the air; it’s hard to think it’s a coincidence. 

So in an effort to break out, here are some quick hits:

Trayvon. 

I am so sick of hearing about Trayvon.  Especially from those who couldn’t be bothered with the facts, and certainly from his parents who didn’t give a rat’s ass about him until he was shot. Now he’s a “symbol.”  Okay, I’ll go with the symbol analogy if they insist.

So here’s what Trayvon symbolizes for me:

• A punk gangsta culture that glorifies bad behavior …
• A black community that only hears and sees what it wants to believe …
• A media willing to withhold facts and twist the truth to follow a narrative …
• Shameless black leaders who will do anything to keep themselves in the spotlight …
• A baseless cause célêbre for charlatans and nit-wits not interested in facts …

Look, Trayvon was no innocent youngster who was accosted and shot by a rabid racist just for being black.  He was a gangsta wannabe who picked the wrong guy to whip up on – somebody who had a gun.  Tough luck, Trayvon.  If it wasn’t George Zimmerman who punched his ticket now, it would have been someone else later on for sure.

Did he deserve to die that night?  No.  Could his death been avoided?  Sure.  He held all the cards and played a bad hand. 

Next? 

George Zimmerman.

The media had it in for him from the beginning.  NBC even got caught editing his 911 call to make him seem like a racist.  They had to invent the term “white Hispanic” to keep the race baiting angle alive. 

It was a near perfect storm for the media – black kid shot because he was black in a gated (read: “white”) community; white town watch cop wannabe with a gun exacting vigilante justice;  white police resisting charging the white town-watch guy; Obama getting involved “If I had a son …”; racism, the South, prejudice – it had it all.    

Except that was all bullshit as it turns out. 

Zimmerman was no racist.  Far from it. He tutored black kids.  He took a black girl as his date to the prom. His mother is Hispanic; his father white. He wasn’t exacting vigilante justice – he was defending himself against a younger, taller, more athletic man who was beating the crap out of him.  The reason police initially didn’t want to arrest and charge him was they had no probable cause – and as it turned out that was the right decision.    

That people were surprised when he was acquitted – despite all the judicial misconduct by the judge and prosecutors – honestly astounds me.  The fact that some were outraged at ”the injustice” of the outcome shows that some among us simply aren’t that bright. 

Unfortunately, they vote. 

Riley Cooper. 

When is a racial slur not a racial slur?  When a black person uses it against someone who isn’t black.  Or when a black person uses it in everyday conversation.   So in the Trayvon fiasco, Trayvon calling Zimmerman a “creepy ass cracker” wasn’t racist.  As a Southerner, cracker is definitely a racist term – perhaps the white equivalent of nigger.  But on the stand, a black woman friend of Trayvon’s didn’t see “creepy ass cracker” as racist. 

Fast forward to a white Riley Cooper who has had a few drinks at a Kenny Chesney concert and gets captured on somebody’s cell phone referring to a bunch of security guards as niggers.  Now had he been at a rap concert, he’d have heard the word nigger a lot – from performers.  He’s probably also heard the word used a lot by his black teammates referring to themselves or other blacks. 

But no, he was at a Kenny Chesney concert.  And now it’s a big deal. 

How will his black teammates respond?  Will they forgive him?  Will fans forgive him?  How will his career be affected? What can he do to atone properly for such offensive behavior?  

Please remember that Riley plays for the Philadelphia Eagles.  This is the team that took Michael Vick – a man who tortured and killed dogs as part of a dog-fighting business – and made him their starting quarterback when he was released from prison. 

Is calling someone a nigger as bad as killing dogs for sport?  Apparently so if you’re a white guy. 

   

Now, I’m not saying Riley should have used the word.  It was in supremely bad taste and uncalled for, and frankly as a public figure he should know better. So he did a stupid thing in the heat of the moment.  But let’s get real.  When multiple black basketball players can call somebody a faggot or worse and get a slap on the wrist and a fine, and a convicted dog killer can be a celebrated quarterback, where’s the proportionality? 

The straight poop. 

A newspaper article the other day was about how tough it is for poor women to afford disposable diapers for their kids.  Some poor women skipped changing their kids’ diapers, or rinsed and reused them to make ends meet.   

And before you ask, the reason they have to use disposable diapers is because some of them don’t have access to a laundromat.  Plus, some laundromats don’t allow people to wash diapers. 

Now of course a charity has sprung up to provide free disposable diapers to poor women – and that’s what the article was really about. 

I suspect that free disposable diapers will eventually become an entitlement.  Environmentalists will go nuts because of the landfill issues, but advocates for the poor will cheer. 

Plus it’s certainly easier and more politically correct to give away free disposable diapers than to tell poor women not to have children they can’t afford in the first place.   

On a related note:

Summer school lunch programs.

That’s not free meals for kids in summer school.  That’s free meals throughout the summer for school-age children, because their parents won’t or can’t feed them otherwise.   

Some parents have become so dependent on schools to feed their kids breakfast, lunch and in some cases dinner, they can’t imagine having to pick up part of the load when kids aren’t in school.  So they don’t.  According to news articles, even during the regular school year, teachers know to stock up on energy drinks and snack bars for Mondays and the days after holidays because a lot of their students don’t get fed at home on the weekends and holidays.

So where’s all the food stamp money going?  Not to feed peoples’ kids, apparently. 

This is simply outrageous.  But it’s a sign of the times.  Nobody wants to deal with the root cause of all this – people having children because they can, not because they can afford them financially or are prepared to take care of them. 

You’d think some brilliant person in Health & Human Services would have figured that out by now.  It’s pretty simple. 

But we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings now, do we? 

Prejudice against the poor. 

A new one from this week’s newspaper.  Seriously, there was a story about some study that showed people are disgusted by the poor and the homeless, and don’t want to have anything to do with them, even though they feel guilty about that. 

How unfair. 

Just because someone off their meds is wearing five wool overcoats in July and screaming at the sky about aliens beaming cosmic rays at them is no reason to cross the street.  Go on, walk right up to them and shake their crud-caked hand while they pee themselves and shriek invectives at you. 

After all, they’re just like you and me. 

And the poor? 

Well, there but for the grace of God … deciding to stay in school and getting a degree … not getting pregnant out of wedlock … not having a litter of kids by different baby mommas and poppas … not having a drug or alcohol problem .. and having a work ethic – well except for all that, there go you or me.

Sorry.  The Bible says the poor will always be with us.   Yet it never said we should try to increase the number of them.

However, we seem to be making it more advantageous to be poor now than at any other time.  That means fewer people are opting to take the steps to avoid being poor. 

Does that mean the poor and homeless disgust us?  No.  But it may mean that we’re all suffering a bit of donor fatigue when it comes to footing the bill for personal irresponsibility. 

That’s it for now.