Free Speech

April 11, 2007

If you have a problem with people saying what they think, you might want to stop reading right here.  Because unlike Imus, I won’t be coming back later to apologize for saying it.  As far as I know we still live in America.  I still have a right to free speech.  If you don’t like what I say, you still have a right not to listen to it. 

I understand why a politician will apologize for making a remark that most intelligent people will naturally notice is remarkably stupid, like Imus did.  They have a future riding on their ability to appeal to a majority of the people in their districts. 

Entertainment personalities, especially “shock jocks” like Imus, on the other hand, are supposedly making their living by saying incredibly stupid things on a regular basis.  Why should they bow to the pressure of public opinion and apologize for saying it?  Hell, why bother apologizing for it at all?  It’s out there for all time now anyway.  You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, dude.  All you’re gonna do now is smear it all over the counter.

Imus has a right to say whatever stupid thing he wants to say.  As long as he doesn’t violate any FCC rules and regs he can say anything he likes and we have no right to censure him.  If we don’t like what he says we have the option of simply turning him off.  As long as Imus keeps his dumb ass off my property, he can say all of the backwardly stupid, inbred thinking, family-tree doesn’t branch kind of stuff he wants to and I’ll defend his right to say it to the death.

I don’t have to agree with him, what he says, how he thinks, or even the fact that in some areas he obviously can’t or hasn’t thought.  It doesn’t matter that I believe that he is probably making remarks like this out of some sort of self hatred.  He has a right to be an idiot on the air if he wants to and he doesn’t have to apologize to anyone for it!  He owes no one an apology for being less than a decent human.  Being a creditable, decent, humane individual isn’t a requirement for having your rights protected in this country.

We in America need to remember that we are guaranteed the right of free speech.  We don’t need to apologize to anyone for the things we say.  Whatever stupid, ignorant, ill thought out, uneducated, pitiful opinions we might have, we are free to state them to the world if we want to and we don’t owe apologies to anyone for them. 

We are free in this country to be idiots, racists, bigots, and fools if we want to.  It’s a free country.  So, I say:  Go Imus!  Talk it up!

Just make sure you stay away from my house because your right to free speech ends at my property line.  I have no problem with temporarily seceding from the Union and kicking your sorry ass from here to next week. 

Barring that, talk on, ya idiot!  I’ll defend your right to do so on the public airwaves until America isn’t America anymore.  Which could be next year if we keep on in the same way we’re going now.

I’ll put the coffee on the for the Homeland Security guys, just in case.  If having sex on an airplane is in their domain, defending Imus’ right to be an idiot might be too.  *sigh*

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Posted by thought4food

Red vs The Steam Roller………..Or, No, Red, It’s JUST YOU!!!!

April 6, 2007

I used to live on a very busy corner in town.  (see Great Quest For The Head Of The Possum post)  The house was at the bottom of a very steep hill, ” A very steep hill”.  When it snowed,  all you had to do was look at that bit of road and you could tell how much because no one would drive up it. 

One nice summer day I was sitting on the couch in my living room reading, while my dearest husband was sleeping.  He worked night shift then and he slept during the day.  It was a normal day.  As much as you can call any day with me in it normal.

It slowly came to me that something wasn’t right.  I wasn’t sure exactly what it was.  I looked up, I looked around.  I didn’t see anything wrong in the house.  I looked back down and started to read again.  Then it seemed like the couch was beginning to vibrate…..but no, it was the house that was beginning to vibrate.  Now that was odd. 

I got up, pulled aside the curtain on the door and looked out just in time to see a steam roller knock one of the brick supports out from under my porch roof, ride up onto the porch, hit the house, and then fall through the porch floor into the hole underneath it.

Well howdy!  I turned and walked halfway into the bedroom, turned and walked back to the door to look again, walked halfway back to the bedroom again, back to the door.  I realize that I have absolutely NO “a steamroller just hit my house” etiquette.  I have no idea what to do.  I am saved by my dearest husband’s voice calling from the bedroom inquiring as to what the !@#$%^ just occurred. 

I walked into the bedroom to explain and he is halfway out of bed and halfway into his pants.  I told him a steamroller hit the house.  He asked if I was OK.  I said yes.  He said OK.  He then proceeded to add to my already vociferous bad word vocabulary by leaps and bounds.  I was impressed!  And pleased.  You can never have too many bad words to choose from.  Especially in a situation like this. 

We went back to the door and gingerly went outside.  Not easy since the door bumped the part of the steamroller that was still above the porch floor when we opened it.  As we came off the porch a very pale, agitated, wet and odoriferous gentleman scampered up to me asking if I was OK.  Not quite in full grip of all my faculties yet, and not realizing who he was, I simply told him that I was fine.  Turns out he was the man driving the steamroller. 

People began showing up fairly quickly.  As I said in a previous post, the entire world passed our door 3 times a day at this house.  A steam roller sitting where the porch used to be drew a fair amount of attention. 

It just so happened that our landlord had a business just across the street and he saw the whole thing.  Bless his heart, I believe he nearly had apoplexy on the spot.  Everyone was very excited.  Especially that poor smelly fella that was driving the thing.  Eventually he began to explain to my dearest husband what happened.

He had driven the steam roller to the top of the very steep hill to use it paving a parking lot that was located just below the top.  As he got near the driveway to the parking lot, the brakes gave way on the steam roller.  He tried the emergency brake, but that gave way as well.  By that time, the steam roller was well on its’ way down the hill.  He decided that he would turn the roller towards the curb, with the idea that rubbing against the curb would stop it, or at least slow it down.  No such luck. 

By the time he realized that it was getting away from him and he wasn’t going to be able to stop it, he was fast approaching the intersection.  He couldn’t see beyond our house to see what was coming andhe was very frightened, so he bailed out.  The odoriferousness came from the fact that after he bailed out, he realized that what could have been coming was a bus load of children.  The imagery was too much for his bowels. 

When the steam roller was rolling down the hill scraping against the curb, I felt it shaking the house.  When it reached our driveway, it turned slightly and ran up into our yard, crushed a bush, abolished the brick porch post, broke through the brand new 2 x 6 flooring of the porch right before my eyes, hit the house about 3 feet to the left of me and the rest is history.

We made the front page of the paper.  The insurance put a new porch on the house and bought us a new table and chairs to put on it.  And we were known for years afterwards as the people who’s house got hit by the steam roller.

I ask people this all the time……….Is it just me, or do things like this happen to you too? 

 The answer is always………No, Red, It’s Just YOU!!!!!

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Tried As An Adult

April 3, 2007

Where, in any logical manner of thinking, is this a good idea? We do not trust children under the age of 21 to have enough judgement or enough ability to divine the consequences, to buy alcohol.  We don’t believe that children under the age of 21 or 18 to have the mental facilities to understand the significance of signing a contract.  We will not allow a child under the age of 18 to put his life on the line for his country.

We will however, decide that we find a child’s actions maddening enough to decide that we want to punish him as an adult.  We decide that because his actions resulted in  devastation, he certainly must have known all along that it would come to pass. 

How can we hold children to such a high standard over criminal actions only?  We don’t hold them to such standards in any other area of their lives.  We do not believe in their ability to judge the consequences of their choices in the legal arena, in the military, in the area of mind altering drugs.  Why should they be able to judge the consequences in that one area only?  What is it about crime committed by youth that so infuriates us?

Is it guilt?  Is it the fact that this country should be protecting our children so much better than we are?  Is it that our social services departments are geared specifically towards keeping families together rather than towards the welfare of our children? 

Why is it that we find it so easy to say that 16, 14, 12 year old children knew with an adult certainty that what they did was wrong and that they knew precisely what the consequences would be?  That they perpetrated whatever crime it might be with malice and knowledge of all that would befall their victims at the end?

We would never decide that those same children, if found not guilty, could then sign a contract with their lawyers, go out and buy a mixed drink to celebrate, or be allowed to drive home from the courthouse.  They could not then go join the army and defend their country after being tried as an adult and found not guilty.  They are only considered adults for this one, very particular, thing.

What is wrong, wrong, wrong with this picture?

We can’t have it both ways.  Our children are either children or they aren’t.  They are either too young to make informed decisions or they aren’t.  Regardless of how we feel about the devastation they may cause.  We call them children specifically because they are not equipped to make rational, informed decisions.  There is an age of majority because children have not been prepared for adulthood until then.

The real problem is that we don’t really prepare children for adulthood at all.  We send them to school to learn some arbitrary set of lessons, and send them out into the world with no real knowledge of how the world works.  We have absolutely no markers of progress for children except for certain religions.  We have no standards of progress except for a high school diploma, which basically means that you can sit still for 12 years and not be too annoying.  You don’t particularly have to learn anything.  And you don’t have to graduate high school with anything of value under your belt.  You don’t have to be able to read if you can make a 30 yard pass, or even if you’re just quiet and don’t make trouble.  You don’t have to be able to balance a checkbook, know what compound interest is, or understand the importance of a good credit rating. 

You don’t have to understand self esteem, or even have any.  You don’t have to understand self respect or respect for others.  You don’t have to understand helping, sharing, kindness, sympathy, empathy, or just plain being nice. 

We build our schools like prisons and our prisons like schools.  If we paid our teachers like professional athletes, can you imagine what kind of presidents we would have?  Instead, we put them in jail if they have a fight in school.  We expel them from school for having aspirin.  We charge kindergartners with sexual abuse for kissing their friends, and we try children as adults.

The question I keep asking myself is this:  What the hell are we thinking?

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Posted by thought4food

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