DAVID HUNTER IN HIS OWN WRITE

"LET THEM EAT CAKE," SAID MARIE ANTOINETTE

2011-10-21T14:06:00.002-04:00

The late Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, made the “let them eat cake” phrase because she had no idea what was really going on in the world, but lost her head, anyway. Today, there’s no excuse for most people to ignore current events.

If you watch the news -- local or national -- you have probably noticed that there are a lot of people with signs occupying parks and malls. As a matter of fact, the name they are using began as “Occupy Wall Street,” though the scope has spread.

As of 10/15/11, there were protests going on in 100 American cities, from Orlando to Anchorage, with events reportedly planned in 82 other countries. Critics, of course, are downplaying the demonstrations, characterizing them as unorganized mobs with no central goal.

When enough people are angry, sometimes the unrest precedes the stated goal – awaiting leaders or pivotal events. Laughing at such a large movement of people is a bad idea, as is ignoring them. Mohandas Gandhi, who had a lot of success directing peaceful mass movements of the poor, had this to say: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Gandhi was speaking of the British Empire, which he forced to its knees in India, but his nonviolent resistance was adopted from a 19^th Century American named Henry David Thoreau. Martin Luther King Jr. later used Gandhi’s tactics to fight festering racial injustices in this country. Every movement starts somewhere.

The current crop of angry people are calling themselves the “99 percent,” but that’s rhetoric. The majority in this country still have a job and a place to live. Many are scraping by, but not yet angry enough to join the occupation. The question is, what percentage of the population of a country as big as the

U.S.

must take to the streets before things turn nasty?

The Tea Party movement, whose members often refer to themselves “as the American people,” emphasis on “the,” comprise an estimated 14 to 20 percent of the population. Even so, they have managed to bring the country to a virtual stand-still by frightening weak-willed politicians into signing impractical pledges to never raise taxes.

Imagine the effectiveness of a group of people that may already have the sympathy of half the population, if and when they do coalesce into a focused and determined movement. As the young who sold their souls to the banks for a degree that means nothing now, and their elders continue to lose jobs and homes, they will only become angrier.

Recently a question along these lines made the rounds on the Internet: “What kind of person believes that paying two or three percent more tax on millions is wrong, while cutting a school teacher’s salary by 20 percent is all right?” It is not an outlandish question because it is happening as tax revenues dry up and social services, schools, police and fire protection shrink.

As with every other every large group, there are a few who are there for purposes of mischief and worse. I haven’t personally been on hand for any of the occupations, but people I trust have and they tell me that many of the protesters are laid-off professionals, students with advanced degrees and no jobs and those who were living the American dream before they lost their homes.

If 14 to 20 percent of the population, mostly well-fed, secure in their homes and concerned primarily with how much they have to pay in taxes can cause government to grind almost to a halt, you have to wonder what an even larger percentage of angry people without jobs, medical care, and homes might do.

It’s something to think about while jeering at the crowds.

AMERICA'S CURMUDGEON IS STEPPING DOWN

2011-10-02T13:56:00.002-04:00

Andy Rooney is retiring -- or at least retreating from his full time job -- as America’s favorite essayist and grumpy old man. For more than three decades he has been the dessert at the end of the “60 Minutes” television show with his short segment, “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney.”

Rooney began his career as a writer for Stars & Stripes while in the Army during World War II. Along the way, he wrote for Arthur Godfrey and his Friends and The Gary Moore Show. He began writing CBS News "essays" in the 1960s, beginning with "An Essay on Doors" in 1964, proving to bigwigs that he could make anything sound interesting.

The idea that the mundane things of life could be just as interesting and spectacular events, was an idea that took root with the “beat writers.” Most people think of Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Gingsberg or even Charles Bukowski when the beat generation is mentioned, but Gene Shepherd of A Christmas Story fame was also in the movement . Millions have laughed at a little boys quest for a Daisy air rifle.

While not a beat writer himself, Andy Rooney understood the concept of the mundane, even trivial as a source of wonder and humor. He became a master of the understatement and dry wit such as, “No matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with,” and “It's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular,” and “To ignore the facts does not change the facts.”

In a world moving at warp speed, there were those who thought that Rooney had become dated and uninteresting. Myself, I don’t think good writing can ever be dated. I didn’t watch Rooney’s segment every week, but I’ll still miss him.

Andy Rooney is a man with class.

NEANDERTHAL WOULD HAVE BEEN SHOCKED AT OUR BEHAVIOR

2011-09-28T17:08:00.003-04:00

Fifty thousand years ago or maybe earlier our ancestors were caring for the sick, injured and elderly – sharing precious resources with members who could no longer produce. If only we could say the same thing about modern Americans, some of whom now advocate a form survival of the fittest – or those who can afford health care – that would have shocked Neanderthal.

Read about a more compassionate branch of our species in Heritage.

Complaints Only Heard in Wealthy Nations

2011-09-17T15:47:00.001-04:00

There are places in the world where people are still dying from malaria; places where there is no clean water; places where children are starving and places where revolutions are in progress.

Only in wealthy nations do we hear people complain because cable is out for a little while; or because it takes the power company a couple of hours to get the lights back on after a storm, through which we sat safe and dry in houses with giant television screens, a land-line telephone and a cell phone in every pocket or purse.

The next time you decide to throw a fit because you find instructions printed in other languages as well as English -- think about it. A large segment of the world would be happy to change places with you.

HEROES TO THE FRONT

2011-08-26T15:39:00.003-04:00

“… Sept. 11 first responders, the emergency workers who helped with the rescue and recovery efforts 10 years ago, will be denied entry to the 9/11 National Memorial on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Mayor Bloomberg confirmed that the day would be reserved for victims' families. “

“…we're working to find ways to recognize and honor first responders, and other groups, at different places and times," a spkesman for the mayor said.

Poet Rudyard Kipling noticed how soldiers were treated in peace time and wrote this poem called Tommy about a British soldier, and it seemed appropriate in light of the above news. Here are a few lines.

TOMMY

Rudyard Kipling

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

OLD SONGS WITH NEW WORDS

2011-08-17T12:34:00.001-04:00

She Got Michelle Bachman Eyes

Her hair is helmet smooth, her words are less than wise,
Her touch it does not soothe, she got Michelle Bachman eyes
She’ll cut you don’t you know, and she won’t think twice
With her pupils all a’glow, she got Michelle Bachman eyes...

She's Always A Crazy
(Apologies to Billy Joel)

Bachman rants against handouts
She can’t stand socialist louts
She preaches against all that welfare cash
While she and her hubby scoop it up fast
And she only reveals what she wants us to see,
Blame it all on the tea
Cause she was always a crazy to me.

Copyright 2011, David Hunter

THE GHOSTS OF DEFUNCT POLITICAL PARTIES FADE INTO THE MIST

2011-08-05T13:38:00.000-04:00

American history is filled with the fossil record of failed political movements. Dixiecrats, Know Nothings, Citizens Party, Constitution Party, Independence Party, National Party, Nullifier Party, People’s Party and the Toleration Party, to name but a few. How much have you heard about any of them lately?

All the now-defunct parties flourished for a time and then they were gone. Most were better organized than the Tea Party conglomeration. It would take several volumes to explain exactly how they came about and how each expired, but there are things in common we can cite.

Either the area of interest upon which these groups focused was too narrow or they veered into the political fringe. It’s true that the American people are easily distracted by fireworks and sound and light shows, but they have consistently distrusted and rejected extreme movements, whether they be on the left or the right.

In the recent confrontation over the debt ceiling, that intractable, my-way-or-the -highway group opened a lot of eyes by showing a willingness to crash the economy rather than bend at all. How much damage a crash would have caused is open to debate, but the kamikaze attitude was unmistakable.

Tea Partiers have already forgotten that the voters give and the voters take away, sometimes very rapidly.

Even those who flunked out of Civics class in high school know that compromise means give and take, yet the concept seemed beyond the understanding of the freshman politicians who rode in on the initial wave of anger generated by outside Tea Party supporters who pumped huge amounts of money into local congressional elections.

The flash-in the-pan movements never last very long. Thank God.

I REMEMBER WHEN THERE WERE CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS AND LIBERAL REPUBLICANS

2011-07-08T19:16:00.005-04:00

And I remember when a church pastor who tried to tell his congregation how to vote would have been out the door the first time he did it.

Of course, in those days nobody questioned a person's religion based on his or her politics, because we knew the two were personal and seperate.

In those days, we were willing to agree to disagree, and nobody would have attacked a decorated war veteran's patriotism, no matter what party got his vote.

We had a thing called honor and respect for those who stepped up to serve, even if we didn't personally like them.

Those days were far from perfect; there was state-sanctioned discrimination which gave way slowly to the efforts of good people who knew it was wrong.

Even then, we didn't toss backhanded insults at the family members of politicians with whom we disagreed. Honorable people left the family members of politicians alone.

We've come a long way, baby -- but somewhere along the road we left the best of what we were.

PITY THE POOR CORPORATIONS

2011-06-30T13:23:00.001-04:00

Joseph Heller’s novel, “Catch-22” tells the story of a group of bomber pilots and crew members in a fictional combat squadron stationed in Italy during World War II. All the pilots and crew members want to go home but a certain number of missions have to be flown in order for that to happen.

The problem is, that every time the crew members reach the required number of missions, that number is raised again. The only other way for anyone to get out of the unit is because of insanity.

The “catch” from the title is this: To be declared insane it is necessary for crew members to ask for a transfer based on insanity -- but asking for the transfer proves that crew members are sane because any sane person would want out of the unit.

Many female and former female employees of Wal-Mart have been placed in a similar situation by the right-thinking justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s an interesting story that ends with a feat of legal sleight-of-hand that would have made Harry Houdini jealous.

The original case has been working its way through the judicial system for some time, most recently as a class-action suit, but the Supremes have now ruled that the plaintiffs don’t have enough in common to be called a “class.”

Women in 4000 or so Wal-Mart stores across the United States had claimed that the practice of leaving promotions to local managers, with no standard policy, led to generalized discrimination against female employees.

The Supreme Court agreed that Wal-Mart has no standard policy for promotions and for that very reason the class action suit couldn’t be allowed to proceed -- because Wal-Mart allowed mostly male managers a free hand in promotions.

More than 70 percent of Wal-Mart’s hourly workers are female, but women represent less than 10 percent of store managers and 4 percent of district managers, according to the lawsuit.

It’s pretty easy to see why current and former female employees might have begun to suspect a deliberate policy of corporate discrimination against women. Not so, ruled the majority of our nation’s highest court.

By implication, all the would-be plaintiffs in the class action suit had merely jumped to conclusions based on statistics. Mind you, statistics have been consistently used to prove other forms of discrimination, but the current Supremes are not big on legal precedents.

Individual lawsuits against Wal-Mart alleging discrimination can go forward, the Supremes said.

It will be more difficult, of course, because the Supreme Court has ruled that statistics don’t count – and in order to win discrimination suits, the individuals involved would have to talk their fellow employees, many still drawing Wal-Mart paychecks, into testifying on their behalf.

This would be some feat considering that the Supreme Court has just crushed an effort to make Wal-Mart accountable for how employees are treated.

It’s a novel approach to judicial thinking. Nobody denies that the policy of leaving promotions strictly to the discretion of mostly male managers has caused discrimination, but Wal-Mart the corporation can’t be held responsible because the people running it never created a fair, uniform code that covered all the 4,000 stores involved.

Furthermore, the Supremes didn’t even order Wal-Mart to fix the system-wide policy. Corporations have rights that apparently outweigh human rights. If the courts interfere with corporations, who knows what it will lead to – and who else has enough money to support politicians in the manner to which they have become accustomed?

ANOTHER NOT-SO-SUBTLE ATTACK ON SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION

2011-04-15T17:58:00.003-04:00

By a 70-23 vote, the Tennessee House of Representatives recently approved and sent to the Senate a bill that protects teachers from discipline if they discuss alternatives to prevailing scientific theories, more specifically, evolution.

We all know what a great problem we’ve had with the number of teachers charged by secular humanists with not teaching evolution.

Sponsor, Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, said the purpose is to promote "critical thinking" in science classes. What Dunn really means is, “We’ll find a way around that pesky First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

As a matter of fact, the Tennessee Constitution’s Declaration of Rights, Article I, Section 3, is also very specific on this matter and clearly states: “…no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.”

Apparently there is a gene in the DNA of some that blocks the comprehension of the line between state and religion. The authors of the U.S. Constitution and the Tennessee Constitution were just a few years removed from both political and religious oppression and strove to make sure it never happened here.

We need only look at the first act of Christian leaders after they were taken off the list of outlaw religions by the Emperor Constantine, just after the penning of the Nicene Creed. The Trinitarian majority immediately asked that Arius, who was not Trinitarian, be banished.

Religion is not irrational but religious zealotry always is. When any believer of any religion crosses the line between gathering converts by persuasion and enforcing any religious belief by power of law, it becomes a threat to religious freedom. There have been few exceptions in the history of humanity.

The theory of evolution does not deal with the spark of creation, the prime motivator, God or whatever we choose to believe brought the universe into existence. It is simply the theory of gradual change. Most thinking people have never seen a conflict between evolution and the existence of God.

On the other hand, it is impossible to teach creationism or intelligent design without bringing religion into the equation. There are private religious schools for those who wish to deny their children access to the world outside religious studies.

Religion and the teaching thereof is for church, Sunday school and family devotions. It is illegal to teach religion in a school paid for by tax dollars. The constitution of Tennessee is even more specific in its language than the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Rep. Bill Dunn and his cohorts in the Tennessee House have once more attacked the constitutional separation of church and state and they were not even creative about it. This state has enough problems without the religious right trying to reignite a battle that has already been fought so often.

Religion is personal matter to be studied in places of worship and at home. If the “alternate theories” taught in science classes include, let’s say, the Hindu story of creation, we all know who will scream the loudest.

DONALD TRUMP AS PRESIDENT ?

2011-04-11T18:19:00.003-04:00

Breathes there a man with soul so dead, that in his heart he hath not said, “Get that woman a breast enhancement!” (Apology to Sir Walter Scott.)

Donald Trump is hinting that he may run as a candidate for President of the United States. The Daily News has pictured him as a clown (see photo), but learning to be a clown requires a lot more work than inheriting a fortune.

In a contest for “Most Shallow Man Alive,” I can see Trump emerging victorious. But, the idea of this country being run by a man whose first act of office might well be to order a breast enhancement for the Statue of Liberty is not something I like to contemplate.

RANDOM MUSING ON A FRIDAY

2011-03-11T13:54:00.000-05:00

It’s strange the things we remember.

At the age of nine or so, I caught some kind of stomach ailment – which we just called a “belly ache” back then. For several days I couldn’t keep anything on my stomach.

Then, on a Saturday night, my Aunt Coba brought her kids to the house along with a brand new Campbell’s soup called Bean with Bacon. Well, it was new in Knoxville, anyway.

While we watched a short-lived television series called The Buccaneers, starring Robert Shaw as a reformed pirate, I ate not one bowl, but two of Bean with Bacon soup and kept it down.

Ever since, when I open a can of Bean with Bacon soup, I’m transported back to 1957, sitting cross-legged in front of a black and white television screen on Virginia Avenue, and feel strangely comforted.

IT WAS A GOOD DAY

2011-03-03T17:37:00.000-05:00

It was a good day and then I answered the telephone.

LOGIC IS ALIEN TO SO MANY

2011-02-16T12:09:00.003-05:00

In 20 years as a newspaper columnist it has never ceased to amaze me how many people think they are applying logic to a given subject when they don’t even get within rock throwing distance of logical thinking.

Most of the rhetoric generated by what I write has nothing to do with my actual words, but are rants about something readers have assumed I believe about something that may or may not be remotely connected.

Example: I recently commented on an uproar over a Planned Parenthood website listed on material handed out during a class on sex education. More specifically, it was a video geared towards young people about the dangers of unprotected sex that upset so many people.

My column was aimed at the dangers of leaving young people in the dark about protecting themselves against disease and pregnancy.

The video was not shown at school but was available on the Planned Parenthood’s website. In order to see it, students had to look it up on their own time. In Tennessee, there is a standard curriculum for sex education, no matter who teaches it, so I suggested it was Planned Parenthood’s association with abortion, not the video that had upset so many parents.

I did not state a position on abortion and was upfront about the fact that the video was almost guaranteed to offend parents. I pointed out that it was not geared towards parents but towards the most savvy generation of young people in our history. Then I emphasized that the video was not shown at school.

Most of the e-mail that came to me was favorable, but less so on the electronic version of the newspaper. The readers proceeded to say that I had endorsed abortion, was teaching a liberal slant on education and that I was an “aging hipster” trying to hold on to my youth.

None of the criticism addressed my subject matter. Instead they attacked abortion, which proved my point. In all likelihood, most who sent nasty comments never watched the video, at all.

If you push the “up” button on an elevator, it goes up and if you press the “down” button it goes down. I guarantee that a column expressing this opinion would result in letters attacking elevator companies for jerky rides or building owners for not keeping the elevators cleaner – with the occasional criticism that elevators sometimes fall, even when the “up” button is pushed.

Logic is a position that many people never discover. Instead, they use the comments section as an excuse to call names and release venom.

READING AND AGREEING WHAT IT MEANS, ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS

2011-01-06T19:15:00.000-05:00

It’s the second day of Republican control in the U.S. House of Representatives and I’ve been watching cable news off and on as I move through my house from one task to another. Today, they are reading the U.S. Constitution out loud.

Reading the Constitution is a good thing that one would hope every member of Congress has done before getting elected. It probably isn’t true, but it should be.

The Constitution is not difficult to read. I haven’t memorized it, but I started reading in high school civics class and have returned to it time after time to clarify points through the years. I think it is the finest document ever produced by the minds of human beings.

A lot of people smarter than I am have spent a lot more time than I have reading the Constitution. Being able to read it has never been the problem.

The problem has always been agreeing on what it means and whether it is a living document dedicated to principles and meant to change with the changing times, or whether it is to be read as some read scripture – literally and with no room for compromise.

It has always seemed evident to me that it was meant to be a living document, dedicated to principles and flexible enough for changing times. The Founding Fathers wrote in the means to do just that, but made it difficult to do. It’s worked pretty well.

As of today, Republicans in the House have proposed a rule change that would require the writer of every proposed law to cite the section of the Constitution that supports the proposed law – which brings us back to the point that the reading is not the problem, but agreeing on what it means.

When a member of Congress proposes a new law, presumably he or she believes, at least, that it is permitted by the Constitution. But we can easily have the same section cited by opposing parties with widely differing interpretations.

Before it becomes law, the President has to sign it or veto it. If there is a veto,Congress has to override it before it becomes law. Eventually, the law will be upheld or overturned by the courts. Adding the Constitutional citation to a proposed bill changes nothing. The spectacle going on is for show.

The Founding Fathers didn’t believe all the eggs should be in one basket. That’s why they built in a balance of power.

Also this week, I have watched many the new Representatives stand in front of the cameras and deny that they are politicians, obligated to special interests -- unlike all those who came before them

To those who make these claims, let me say, you became a politician the moment you ran for office and those of us who were paying attention, watched millions of dollars from outside some districts flow in to put you in office.

If you don’t come though for those who see you as obligated to them, two years from now their support will go somewhere else. Of course, you can always tell yourself it’s the lesser of two evils to bend a little because people like you are needed in Congress.

That line of reasoning has worked to salve many a troubled conscience.

If you politicians – Republicans and Democrats -- really want change, stop taking campaign money from those who buy your influence. It won’t happen, though, as long as those with the gold make the rules.

WHAT YOU DO TRUMPS WHAT YOU SAY

2010-12-19T18:17:00.000-05:00

The moment someone says (or writes) to me, “You are not a good American,” I know there’s no use in responding.

What the phrase actually means is this: “You do not accept my narrow defintion of what an American really is, so I know I’m a better person than you are.”

Intellectually and logically the person who makes such a flat statement is locked in. You can scream and shout from a preconceived notion, but you can’t have a discussion, which takes two open minds.

The rule applies if something else is substituted for,”American” – say, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Republican, Democrat, Hindu, Buddhist or Libertarian. We are all free to define ourselves as we wish and not under any obligation to accept another person’s definition of who and what we are.

Who and what we are is the result of our actions, not our beliefs. Think about it. Belief alone never fed a hungry person, built a shelter, put out a fire, stopped a crime in progress or stepped up to volunteer for military service in time of war. Action is required for all of them.

This is not to disparage belief because belief is the spark that sets the action in motion. But accusing other people of being unpatriotic because they disagree with your politics does not make you a good American anymore than mocking someone else’s religion makes you a good Christian.

Years ago I heard story about a man in a cemetary putting flowers on a grave. Nearby, another man dressed in colorful ethnic clothing was kneeling by a grave and placing an ornate bowl full of rice on that grave.

“When do you think that person will come and eat the rice?” the first man asked. “When the person for whom you are leaving the flowers comes to smell them,” the second man said.

OH HAPPY DAY!

2010-11-03T12:05:00.000-04:00

I’m as happy as Snoopy dancing on his toes with his nose in the air. The televison attack ads have stopped for a while.

WHAT YOU DO SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WHAT YOU SAY

2010-10-31T18:09:00.000-04:00

The moment someone says (or writes) to me, “You are not a good American,” I know there’s no use in responding.

What the phrase actually means is this: “You do not accept my narrow definition of what an American really is, so I know I’m a better person than you are.”

Intellectually and logically the person who makes such a flat statement is locked in. You can scream and shout from a preconceived notion, but you can’t have a discussion, which takes two open minds.

The rule applies if something else is substituted for, “American” – say, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Republican, Democrat, Hindu, Buddhist or Libertarian. We are all free to define ourselves as we wish and not under any obligation to accept another person’s definition of who and what we are.

Who and what we are is the result of our actions, not our beliefs. Think about it. Belief alone never fed a hungry person, built a shelter, put out a fire, stopped a crime in progress or stepped up to volunteer for military service in time of war. Action is required for all of them.

This not to disparage belief because belief is the spark that sets the action in motion. But accusing other people of being unpatriotic because they disagree with your politics does not make you a good American anymore than mocking someone else’s religion makes you a good Christian.

Years ago I heard story about a man in a cemetery putting flowers on a grave. Nearby, another man dressed in colorful ethnic clothing was kneeling by a grave and placing an ornate bowl of rice on that grave.

“When do you think that person will come and eat the rice?” the first man asked. “When the person for whom you are leaving the flowers comes to smell them,” the second man said.

Exactly.

GETTING BACK TO CONSTITUTIONAL BASICS

2010-08-19T19:20:00.000-04:00

Some high-ranking Republicans have come out in favor of repealing the section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees citizenship to any person born in the United States -- as a means of immigration control.

I immediately called my local representative from local 521 of the Mainstream Media Elite (M. M. E.) and was told to come out against the idea or lose my membership card. But I’m going to defy my M.M.E. representative and let the chips fall where they may. The dues are getting too high, anyway.

In fact, let me go on record as saying that proponents of the repeal such as Sen. John Kyl (R. Arizona) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R. South Carolina) are being too conservative – no pun intended. Why not go back to the source?

The first 10 amendments – Second Amendment, excepted, of course – which we sometimes refer to as The Bill of Rights, are at the root of the immigration problem and most of our other social ills. The First Amendment is particularly troublesome since it is so broad.

Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a free press and the right to peacefully assemble and complain is a virtual formula for disorder and dissent. There were those among the Founding Fathers who opposed the Bill of Rights but they were shouted down by radicals whining about an “age of enlightenment” and “equality.”

Repeal the first 10 amendments and, among other things, it will remove the obstacles to a national religion, which many people wanted in the 18th Century and some still want today. Or amend the First Amendment to say: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, as long as the religion is Christianity.”

Let us not forget the damage done by the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed a person’s right to vote, regardless of race, creed color or previous condition of servitude. It took the vote from its rightful owners and gave it to those with a bad attitude about class distinctions.

While the country was still reeling from the Fifteenth Amendment, a group of radical feminists pushed through the Nineteenth Amendment and gave hormone-challenged women the right to vote. Tell me we haven’t strayed too far from our white, male dominated culture, the one that God intended for this nation.

Come on, Republicans, stop pussy-footing around. Go to the source of the problem.

LETTING GOD OFF THE HOOK

2010-08-09T12:42:00.000-04:00

In his recent unsuccesful race for governor in Tennessee, U.S. Congressman Zach Wamp (R.) made God his running mate, or so it seemed to many of us.

To paraphrase political writer, Jesse Fox Mayshark from Metro Pulse, a Knoxville weekly, in a comment he made as a panelist on WBIR television election night, "I think politicians who use God as a character witness in their campaigns ought to acknowlege that it wasn't God's fault when they lose."

COMFORT OVER STYLE

2010-07-30T19:04:00.000-04:00

One year, when I was about 15, I bought a pair of stylish, pointed loafers to go with my continental cut slacks. The tight continental style had just replaced baggy slacks with little buckles in the back and shoes with flip-up tongues the size of small boats.

Fashion was more important to my younger self than physical comfort. My extra wide, though small, feet were never designed for anything with a pointed toes. So when I wore those pointed loafers to the fair, I was in agony within a few minutes and it got no better as time passed. I limped for days.

I won’t say that was the last time I wore anything that made me feel uncomfortable, at least physically. Anyone remember the knee-length calypso pants with belts that tied? My father got a good laugh every time I put on what he called “girly pedal pushers,” which they resembled. Fortunately, it was a short-lived fad.

Adulthood put me in various types of uncomfortable garb. There were hard hats on construction jobs, coveralls in factory work and for the last couple of decades in the public labor force, gun leather and a uniform plus a Kevlar vest, followed by ties and business casual dress.

When my work no longer took me into public, I pretty much settled into blue jeans. These days during the summer I usually wear short-sleeve Latin-type Guayabera shirts with embroidered stripes that my friend Jim Dykes turned me on to. “Comfortable, neat and hide a handgun well,” Dykes said when he gave me the first of them.

In cold weather, it’s jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a leather vest for the same reasons. I wear Rockport walking shoes the year round. They’re tough, practical and very comfortable – a long way from pointy-toed loafers.

A few years ago, I began to notice that the food, which inadvertently fell from my fork when I was dining in public never made it to the napkin correctly folded in my lap. It ended up on my shirt. One afternoon, while dining with an older friend, I noticed that he solved the problem by using his napkin as a bib.

It was something to think about and I did. Then I realized it was the old question of comfort versus style. I haven’t entirely cured myself of the desire to be stylish, but if my wife Cheryl and I are seated at an out-of-the-way table, I will use my napkin as a bib. Cheryl thinks it’s a good idea.

Slave to fashion that I have been, I have always sought to avoid what I find to be the most uncomfortable of all social situations – sitting in a barber chair. In a barber chair one is hostage to the conversation of other customers and that of the barber.

Through the years I have tried to avoid it in various ways – from letting my hair grow to shoulder length, which I found intolerable, and by wearing a flat-top until I realized it required more maintenance than other haircuts. When I saw my son buzz off his own hair while visiting back in May, the germ of an idea came to me.

Last week, I took a deep breath and told the barber to peel my head – then asked what number guide she had used. The following week, I bought a set of clippers and yesterday I successfully used them. I can now avoid the barber shop forever more.

Can someone shout, liberation!

2010-07-15T16:10:00.000-04:00

RINGO STARR AS SEPTUAGENARIAN

2010-07-15T15:48:00.002-04:00

Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr formerly of the Beatles, turned 70 years old last week. He was the oldest of the four lads from Liverpool who led “the British Invasion,” but not by much. George Harrison, the youngest would have been 67 this year, had cancer not gotten him.

When I heard that Starr had become a septuagenarian I was in my car listening to a “Golden Oldies” radio station – you know, pretty much what I’ve always listened to for nearly 50 years. It came as a jolt when the disk jockey announced it, right after a Beatle song featuring one of his few vocals while he was drummer for the Beatles.

The announcement took me back to February 1964, when I sat on the floor in front of a 26 inch Motorola television with my brother and sister and three of my cousins waiting for Ed Sullivan to introduce the Beatles, a British band we had only heard and read about prior to that night.

When they opened with “All My Loving,” I knew something magic was taking place and by the time they broke into “She Loves You,” I was swaying in time with the music. Their simple melodies and lyrics would evolve drastically through the years, but in February of 1964, they were electrifying.

Years later, in his song, “Willie, Waylon and Me,” David Allan Coe wrote the words, “They say The Beatles were just the beginning of everything music could be…” I knew they were something special the first time I heard them. Prior to that night, the phenomenon called rock and roll had eluded me.

When I first heard the Beatles, though, it was as if a frequency opened in my brain and the music flowed in. It came as a shock when I discovered that not all my peers viewed the mop-topped quartet favorably. In fact, many who didn’t like them then now despise them, especially John Lennon, the intellectual of the group.

When John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban was captured in Afghanistan, a columnist referred to the rumor that the young man had been named after John Lennon as evidence that his parents were unfit and had doomed their son by their admiration for a depraved drug user and anarchist.

While I viewed the Beatles in general and Lennon in particular, as a positive force, thinkers looking for answers and challenging button-down, prepackaged answers that others so easily accepted, many of my generation viewed them as a Satanic force, corrupting youth.

To a large segment of my generation, Elvis Presley was all-American and wholesome and the Beatles were drug-using foreigners with funny accents. Even when it became common knowledge that Pressley was not the clean-cut paragon of virtue his publicists had presented, his fans shrugged it off as youthful indiscretions, not a chosen lifestyle.

Through the years I’ve come to view the Beatles as a dividing line of my generation, between those who – to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw – “see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ and those who dream things that never were and ask Why not?’"

THERE'S NO EXCUSE FOR SLOPPY JOURNALISM: MEA CULPA

2010-06-19T13:42:00.009-04:00

The week of June 14, I posted a piece called “A lie can travel far while truth putting on its shoes.” The piece was written after I searched for the origin of a quote accusing Randy Prescott, a British Petroleum executive, of having made the statement, “Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp.”

The reason for my involvement with the story was a call from my son, Dave, who makes a hobby of squashing unfounded Internet rumors and chain letters. An angry Face Book post (dozens, actually) gave the impression that Prescott had made the statement as a flip remark and contained the BP exec’s alleged phone number and e-mail address. A virtual cyber-lynching was in progress on the Internet.

I tracked the source of the quote to The Lens, an online publication covering the New Orleans area. The quote came from an article titled “Five years after Katrina, the return of disaster capitalism?” The byline was attributed to Karen Gadbois and the quotation was near the end of the article: “In the words of fellow BP rep Randy Prescott: ‘Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp.’” No context was given for Prescott’s statement.

In my post, I put the quote in context and made the statement that, “The editor of the National Enquirer could take lessons from the people at The Lens.”

Over the next couple of days I heard from Steve Beatty, Managing editor of The Lens, twice, asking for corrections. He pointed out a factual error: I had placed the meeting of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Saint Bernard Parish. He was correct; there was no excuse for my error. The true location was Jefferson Parish, Metairie, Louisiana.

(I took down the contested post and a second post, "Yes, Virginia, Writing Out of Context is Also a Lie," after Beatty questioned my integrity and my credentials, in order to do further research.)

Beatty also called me to task for making the statement in my post, “This is what happened,” as I was laying out the context of the Prescott’s statement. Beatty was correct. It was sloppy journalism and might have given the impression that I was present, though I thought I had made it clear.

In an analysis of the emotions raised by the Gulf oil spill titled “Americans Rage Against BP For Better And Often For Worse” that appeared in the Daily Finance, analyst Sarah Gilbert looked at the original article that appeared in the Lens and concluded pretty much as I did that Prescott’s answer to a simple question from a restaurant owner about the safety of Gulf seafood was, was parlayed into a firestorm.

In summary: Randy Prescott made the statement and it was a poor choice of words. Hindsight is 20/20, however; Beatty, the editor of The Lens would have done well to let the story die a natural death instead of trying to defend a misleading statement that led to the character assassination of Prescott; I wrote a sloppy story and let hyperbole creep in.

Here are corrections you asked for, Mr. Beatty. Randy Prescott is probably still waiting for your apology for a sensationalistic, out-of-context quotation that made him a national villain.

A DINOSAUR IN A CONNECTED WORLD

2010-06-18T12:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I told my son, Dave who is in Massachusetts -- during a cell phone conversation -- that his mother and I were thinking of upgrading our cell phones, maybe even to smart phones. There was a pause as he seemed to be looking for the proper words.

“Smart phones would be an extra expense for nothing. You and Mom only use your phones for telephone calls.” He knows about these things because is a programmer and software designer.

“Maybe if I had the features I’d use them.” I replied. I didn’t even try to suggest that my wife and his mother would surf the Internet on her telephone. She has never upgraded to a phone with a camera.

“You use your computer and it does everything you can do with a smart phone.” He had me there. My computer goes with me on the rare occasions I travel and I’ve never used the features I have on the cell phone I own now, except for the occasional picture to use as a screen saver.

The conversation made me face up to the fact that I am a dinosaur in this connected world. I’ve learned to get by on the computer, but it isn’t natural for me to communicate any way other than the telephone, if given a choice.

I probably won’t get a smart phone and I’m certain my wife won’t.

BP'S FORMULA FOR CULTURAL CAR WRECKS

2010-06-17T12:47:00.002-04:00

There’s an Old West story about a British aristocrat of the 19th Century who pulled up to a ranch in his buggy and asked a cowboy, “Could you tell me where I might find your master?”

“He ain’t been born yet,” the cowboy replied.

The story is a classic example of a culture clash. To the British man, the question made sense and was not intended to be offensive – but that’s not how the cowboy perceived it.

We Americans and British share a common heritage but we’re still separated culturally by a fairly sizable ocean. They eat chips and so do we, but their chips are French-fried potatoes and our chips are their crisps. They have biscuits and we have cookies. We have lunch and they have tea-time.

Still, we usually manage to communicate fairly well. Bring in an executive from Sweden, say BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg , who has English as a second tongue and you have the set-up for a linguistic car-wreck.

Svanberg set out to be soothing and ended up ruffling the feathers of Americans, just as the British aristocrat angered the cowboy.

"We care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies who don't care, but that is not the case with BP, we care about the small people," Svanberg said.

Being called “small people” or “little people” does not set well with Americans.

Svanberg has apologized but people are still furious. I have to ask, doesn’t BP have some American executives who speak our dialect? He or she might not be any more diplomatic than the rest of BP’s spokesmen, but the insults would go down easier.

KIRSTIE ALLEY AS AN EIGHT HUNDRED POUND GORILLA

2010-05-28T23:26:00.005-04:00

Valerie Bertinelli was on “The Bonnie Hunt Show” this morning. As expected, the conversation turned to Bertinelli’s resurrection as a skinny woman and her association with the weight loss program, Jenny Craig.

Almost inevitably talk moved on to the subject of Kirstie Alley, who was also a spokesman for Jenny Craig until she ballooned up again. Bertinelli told Hunt that, “I wish everyone would just leave Kirstie alone,” or words to that effect.

Come on Ms. Betinelli, when a person presents herself as a roly-poly fat woman on a semi-scripted reality show called "Kirstie Alley's Big Life," making big bucks in the process, it’s a little disingenuous to portray her as a victim.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room will be noticed.

OUTLAW JESSE JAMES WHINES ON NATIONAL TELEVISION

2010-05-26T16:19:00.007-04:00

I was a terrorized kid," James, 41, said about beatings he received from his father on a recent television interview.

As a result of his lack of self-worth, he said, "I grew up with a huge amount of shame and fear and abandonment." He was talking, of course, about his recent infidelity to actress Sandra Bullock.

Geez, are there any men left in America? What is wrong with a man (or woman) standing up and saying, "I have no excuse for what I did. I won't discuss it any further."

"I made a bad choice" has grown as worn out as the phrase used by Nazi war criminals who stood at Nuremberg and said, "I was only obeying orders."

Come on, Outlaw Jesse, you did it because you wanted to and because you could. Sandra Bullock has been a much better person than you have. Grow up, Jesse and take responsibilty for your actions.

Ideology Driven Education

2010-05-26T13:08:00.001-04:00

The Texas Board of Education recently made wholesale revisions of the state curriculum. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care what they teach in Texas but the sheer size of population is bound to have an effect on education eleswhere because textbook publishers tend to aim for the widest market.

Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was replaced on a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century by John Calvin who believed in a theocracy, defined by his interpretation of what God wanted.

The rationale for removing Jefferson from the list is based partly on his letter to the Danbury Baptists in which he expressed his opinion the First Amendment built “a wall of separation between Church & State.” It probably didn’t endear him to the elected educators that he was a Deist or Unitarian, depending on the source.

Also changed were all references to “capitalism” and “free market” which the majority of the board thinks have negative connotaions. Mind you, these people think capitalism is the greatest economic system on this planet, but now it will be called “free enterprise.” The people who call themselves conservatives (their term not mine) shouldn't be practicing historical revision.

Knox County (TN) was recently poised on the precipice of ideological revisionism, but stepped back just in time,

LOYALTY WORKS BOTH WAYS

2010-01-30T15:05:00.001-05:00

If I ever doubted that Knoxville was football country, the local depth of passion for the game was driven home in the mid-1990s.

The television show I was watching one afternoon was interrupted with a special news bulletin that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had begun bombing Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As I listened for details, the national bulletin was in turn interrupted by the local station to cover some detail of then-University of Tennessee quarterback, Peyton Manning’s career.

I don’t remember what Manning had done to trump a national news bulletin, but I understood from then on the priority of news in Knoxville. I’m not criticizing, just putting it out there.

Football has been in the news so much lately that even a non-fan like me couldn’t help but notice what has been going on. I know, it’s practically un-American, but I didn’t get the gene.

As I listened to the debate going on around me – in grocery stores, barber shops and the doctor’s office – it occurred to me that a college football coach, these days, has less job security than a demolitions expert with shaky hands.

There are a lot of variables in putting together a football team over which a college coach has no control– the scramble for recruits, the number of injuries sustained by players, whether the recruits measure up to the promise they showed in high school and even the character of individual players.

Apparently, coaches are now held responsible for such things – no excuses allowed. Nor does an exemplary career make much difference these days. Winning is the bottom line.

Take Johnny Majors, for instance, who was from a family football dynasty every bit as impressive as the Manning’s.

After a stint at Iowa State as head coach, he went on to lead the University of Pittsburgh to a national championship while he was there, before returning to his Alma Mater, UT. While here, he took the Vols to three Southeastern Conference ((SEC) championships.

In 1992, after coronary bypass surgery, Majors was forced to resign and was replaced by his faithful and loyal assistant, Phil Fulmer. Recovery from bypass surgery can take months and some people were resentful of what they perceived as the abrupt and shoddy treatment of a hometown hero – including yours truly.

Phil Fulmer had a successful career with three SEC championships and a national championship. However, after a 5-7 losing season in 2008, he was replaced with Lane Kiffin, former head coach of the Oakland Raiders.

It seems that what goes around really does come back around.

Few individuals, with the possible exception of Barack Obama, have ever been the focus of such high expectations as Kiffin. Had the new coach walked into town across Fort Loudon Lake, I would not have been surprised.

Things, however, are what they are, not what we want them to be.

After a controversial year and a mediocre 7-5 record, Kiffin did to his bosses what they had done to their last two coaches – and he didn’t even kiss them or take them to dinner first.

When it comes right down to it, whether it’s a relationship between individuals or a coach and his school, loyalty must flow both ways to mean anything.

Or put another way, we should dance with the one whom we take to the prom, even if our secret dream lover comes by and tries to lure us away.

It’s the only decent thing to do. Decent behavior counts for a lot. Or least it once did.

THE EVIL ROY SYNDROME

2009-09-02T18:45:00.002-04:00

In 1972 there was a made-for-television spoof of B Grade Westerns called “Evil Roy Slade.” John Astin played the most dangerous outlaw in the West. In the film, Slade falls in love with woman named Betsy Potter who decides to reform him.

“You don’t have to be Evil Roy Slade,” she tells him. “You can change.” After thinking it over, Slade tells her she’s right. “I could become Evil John Ferguson, Evil Fred Noland or Evil Lee Rich.”

I’m reminded of that fictional conversation every time I hear certain people discuss the role of health insurance companies as they relate to healthcare in the United States. It’s as if most people have been so brainwashed they can’t imagine a system in which the health insurance industry doesn’t make all the rules – while we are expected be grateful they will take our money.

The industry decides who will be insured, what the insurance will cover and how long the people who are insured will remain insured. We have forgotten that health insurance evolved as a means of minimizing financial risk for the insured, while making a profit for the insurance companies – but not a guarantied percentage. That’s why it’s called risk.

The original concept was that people who bought insurance were betting that their healthcare would cost more than the annual premiums; insurance companies sold the insurance, betting that the combined premiums of all their clients would be more than what they would pay out. The concept requires risk for both parties.

Today in this country, the healthcare insurance industry has created a system under which they take almost no risk because they can pick and choose the young and healthy while excluding the sick and elderly and have convinced most of us that if we rock their boat healthcare will somehow vanish.

Our way or the highway is how it is presented to us. They call it free market, but it isn’t. In fact, preventing a free market is why the industry pays out so much money to keep lawmakers voting their way. Insurance industry apologists are putting up the same tired smoke screens to obscure the problem. Let’s examine them.

Untaxed medical accounts. It is a ludicrous concept. If people had the money to save, they would buy the insurance.

Tort reform. This is a joke because the percentage of money paid out by insurance companies in huge settlements is miniscule and the insurance industry knows it.

Insurance company competition across state lines. This would be laughable if some didn’t take it seriously. It wouldn’t change a thing because the insurance companies all use the same standards and the fix is in. Look at the “competition” now because that’s what it will look like if even if barriers are taken down.

What insurance companies know and fear is meaningful regulation; nationalized healthcare is the boogeyman they have raised to frighten us. The solution is simple and it can be real, competitive and done in a free market.

For it to work, though: all insurance companies have to take all applicants, including those with preexisting conditions, to spread the risk. And insurance companies cannot be allowed to cancel policies for reasons known only to them.

If you want real competition, regulation will give it to you. Without the deck stacked in their favor, individual companies will have to actually find ways to cut costs and sell more insurance than their competitors. It has worked in other countries and it will work here, if we can pull the fangs of the insurance dragon.

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT

2009-07-20T12:11:00.001-04:00

The health industries are doing a full court press against changes in health care, as they always do. This time there seems to be a bit of desperation, a little less confidence, in the industries and among their congressional flunkies.

When only the poorest are affected by a lack of good health care, there isn’t much pressure on elected officials to rein in the health industry. These days, the price of insurance is beginning to damage the middle-class backbone of America. Professionals who had good insurance are losing it because businesses are being forced to compromise.

The insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies are using scare tactics and threats of impending socialism, as usual. The commercials they fund are stressing the danger of government bureaucrats who are not doctors making medical decisions for anyone with any type of government run health coverage -- which sounds a lot like insurance company policies.

These commercials focus on the “failed” European and Canadian systems, long lines at the doctor’s office and longer waits for a specialist. A central point is the claim that Canadians are flocking to the United States for treatment. It’s an easy claim to make without statistics.

The opposite claim can be made that U.S. citizens are moving to Canada for affordable healthcare, which also happens -- and with just as much certainty. No statistics are available for that argument, either. Most people don’t boast about becoming expatriates.

Lumping European health care systems together is ludicrous, because each country has arrived at a different solution -- The Netherlands, for instance has an affordable, workable system, a mixture of government and free enterprise. What the Europeans have in common is that they chose to do something.

The American insurance industry is making much of isolated cases where people on lists got worse. A friend of mine recently said, “They at least have a list.”

My friend was right. Working Americans who can’t afford insurance have emergency rooms, which are expensive and wasteful. A bandage is slapped on and they are told to consult their family doctors for follow-up -- which works if you have a family doctor.

Even in an area where tremendous savings and real competition were possible, the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies blocked it. If the Social Security Administration -- the largest single user of medicine had been allowed to bargain with drug companies in a competitive manner, the competition would have driven prices down immensely.

Unfortunately, Congress, acting for big donors, torpedoed efforts to inject very real competition into industries that want no competition. It has almost become a cliché that forcing members of Congress to buy their own health insurance like everyone else would bring immediate changes, though it’s true.

On November 19, 1945, 7 months into his presidency, Harry S. Truman gave a speech to the United States Congress proposing a new national health care program. He said, "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility."

Truman was not able to do what he proposed, of course. Today a meaningful attempt to put healthcare on the same level as national defense is being pushed by President Barack Obama. He is as close as anyone has come to changing a broken system. Whether he succeeds or not probably depends on those of us at the grassroots.

The only thing that frightens professional politicians is the fear of losing the next election. We can be quiet or we can speak out. I suggest the latter.

DO WE REALLY CARE WHAT’S AHEAD?

2009-07-07T15:24:00.006-04:00

If you think human beings appeared instantaneously on Planet Earth 10 thousand or fewer years ago, you should probably skip the rest of this piece and save yourself the aggravation. It’s about some aspects of human evolution -- the brain in particular.

If the brain is viewed through certain imaging devices and a snake is put in front of us, our brains light up like Christmas trees; if somebody tells us the odds of Earth being struck by a meteor in the next 1000 years are high, a little spot twinkles. Our brains are more geared to primitive fears than to future threats -- because they evolved that way.

Most of us have never been bitten by a snake, the majority of snakes are not a threat to us, anyway, but the part our brain that process the information takes no chances. The fear of snakes is something that must be suppressed with practice; the brain is able to ignore future threats all by itself.

A prime example was what Katrina did to New Orleans. Engineers and city officials knew the levees would not hold under the strain of hurricanes at a certain level. A lot of the city was bowl-shaped and everyone understood what would happen when (not if) water poured in. Still, every year after hurricane season passed, people put the danger out of their thoughts.

Millions still smoke cigarettes, aware that there is a connection with cancer. However, since it isn’t usually an overnight disease, it can be easily ignored -- unlike a snake hissing in front of us or a growling mountain lion. Most smokers have periods of fear, but all it takes is for the next chest x-ray to come in clear to relegate cancer to a distant threat.

Our nonchalance about the future is also why so many of us don’t floss after every meal, eat properly, save money or keep our houses in good repair. In my own case, it’s why I will agree to appear almost anywhere to give a talk if it’s at least 2 months in the future.

Reduced to its simplest terms, we are still using a brain that evolved to protect us from wild animals while living in a period where we need to focus on the future because there are some real problems looming ahead of our race.

Until 40 thousand years ago, another species called Neanderthal shared the Earth with Homo sapiens before vanishing, probably because they could not compete with our species. We now understand that we shared 99.5 percent of our DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) with Neanderthal. The differences were minute but we survived and they did not.

Maybe they were less able to look forward than we are. Rest in peace

STUPID PEOPLE STORIES

2009-06-30T14:17:00.003-04:00

“The Annual Darwin Awards” began as circulating e-mails in the early 1990s, purporting to be official awards given to the “the person who removed himself from the gene pool in the most spectacular way.”

There are now websites claiming to be the original and one writer has penned several books on the subject. However, the new awards have many of the same stories contained in the original circulating e-mails.

Among the most popular, were about a man who supposedly attached a jet engine to his Impala and crashed into a hillside in Arizona; a Canadian man who plunged through a skyscraper window to prove the glass was unbreakable; and a convicted murder who beat the death penalty then electrocuted himself while sitting on a metal toilet attempting to repair a portable television.

Some of them may even be true, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I have my own collection that I just call “stupid people stories.” Some of them I saw and they turned up in one of my true crime books, others I read about in the local newspaper. So, by and large, most of my collection contain true events -- even though most didn’t result in death.

-- In the early 1970s, a new employee at the Merita Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina asked me if it was O.K. for him to eat a fresh doughnut as we were walking by the area where doughnuts were made. I told him everyone did so he should help himself.

A moment later, I watched as he plunged his hand into the hot grease where the doughnuts were frying after dropping out of the proof box where they rose to the correct size. I can still hear his scream of agony as his hand cooked on the outside.

-- Back in the early 1990s a newly sworn Ku Klux Klansmen in upper East Tennessee was celebrating his acceptance into that grand society by firing his pistol in the air. Moments later, one of the rounds dropped back down and hit him in the head, ending his membership in the KKK and the human race.

-- Not long ago a man broke into the Knoxville Museum of Art (in Knoxville, Tennessee) through the heating and air conditioning duct system. When he became stuck, he called the Knoxville Police Department on his cell phone and told them he was an “undercover agent for the Illuminati” and even gave a badge number.

He told the police he was there to find a “blue cow” with a nuclear device inside it in order to render it harmless. Later, he confessed to police he had made an error and was in the wrong art museum in the wrong city.

-- A local grocery store and deli in Knoxville, Tennessee had been broken into so many times, the owner finally had the glass replaced with unbreakable plastic. Not long afterwards, an unconscious would-be burglar was found on the ground outside. He had attempted to toss a concrete block through the window and it had bounced back and hit him in the head.

-- At some point in the middle to late 1980s, an elderly man on crutches stuck up a bank in Knox County, Tennessee and attempted to flee across Chapman Highway, a heavily traveled four-lane. Officer David Seabolt of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office arrived and caught the man before he was able to hobble across the highway.

I couldn’t make this stuff up. Well, actually I could, but I didn’t.

IN A MOMENT OF MADNESS

2009-06-29T17:36:00.004-04:00

When I was 18 one of the fabled Green Berets from the U.S. Army Special Forces was attached temporarily to my company at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. Silence would fall over the mess hall when he walked in.

As code-breakers and analysts in training -- techno-geeks of that era -- we were in awe of a real warrior. We had all heard Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets.” I was mightily impressed and during a brief period of temporary derangement, I found out where they gave the screening test and signed up to take it.

Caught up in visions of glory and fired up by testosterone, I showed up early on a Saturday morning with 10 or 12 other would-be warriors. Despite the fact that I hadn’t kept in shape since basic, I made it through the chin-ups, push-ups and assorted other physical torture.

Then we had to run a prescribed distance around a parade ground. Whether it was 2 miles or 5 miles I don’t remember. What did come to mind in the first few hundred yards was that at the end of basic training -- when I was in good condition -- my drill instructor only got the required mile run out of me by running beside me, threatening mayhem if I stopped.

It was a very bad position for a would-be Green Beret. I knew I wasn’t going to make the entire run, having always been a sprinter not a distance runner. To quit would have been too humiliating, so I did the only logical thing for an 18-year-old soldier; I ran until I collapsed.

Later I realized that my inability to cover long distances had probably saved the embarrassment I might have received if I had made it through the screening and found myself on one of the legendary airborne training towers-- petrified by my fear of heights.

Things tend to work out for the best, even for young men under the thrall of testosterone.

NOODY DOES IT ALONE

2009-06-26T17:59:00.003-04:00

“I worked hard to get where I am and nobody helped me. Everyone else had the same opportunities I did.”

This phrase generally precedes an angry tirade about people too lazy to work or with wasteful spending habits that keep them from buying health insurance or enough food. Both sentences are wrong in most cases.

Our Constitution makes us equal under the law, in theory, but none of us start out with on a level playing field and nobody succeeds without help from others. The disparity starts at birth.

Who our parents are determines how intelligent we are, whether or not we get proper nutrition and whether or not we are likely to get an education. A person with an IQ of 80 and another with an IQ of 120 definitely don’t start on equal footing.

Neither do those who suffer from physical or psychological disabilities start out with the same advantages as those of us who are born with good physical and mental health. For the most part, it’s nothing more than the luck of the genetic dice whether we are born healthy.

I know many successful people who take great pride in saying, “I worked my way through college without any help from anyone.” A college education is something in which a person should take pride, but there’s a difference between working to survive while going to school and working for recreation money.

Add this thought to your social equation: Not everyone is capable of learning at a college or even a high school level.

As pleasing as it sounds to say we are “self-made,” none of us really are. There are always people who ease our way in life, even if it’s just an employer who worked with us so we could attend classes or a teacher who saw something in us and cut us a break in a subject where we were weak.

Loving parents, who worked hard and taught us values, even if they had little money, gave us a head start and are something for which we all should be thankful. Not all parents are that way.

Someone at the Interfaith clinic told me about a 10-year-old girl who was failing classes and considered slow. Before they found the Interfaith Clinic, her parents -- who both worked at minimum wage jobs that offered no health insurance -- took her to the emergency room with periodic sinus infections. There was no follow-up, of course.

Doctors at Knoxville's Interfaith Clinic found that she couldn’t sleep because of chronic sinus difficulties that woke her up through the night. They also found out that her vision was impaired and she couldn’t even read the blackboard.

A new pair of glasses and a few cents worth of medicine for the sinus problems sent her to the top of her class in no time. She wasn’t slow, she was very bright, but until she received proper medical care, nobody knew it.

Some people find it all too easy to blame the poor for their lot in life. It’s the best salve for a guilty conscience. But the poor also have children and their children are no more to blame for their condition than children of the prosperous.

POSTS FROM THE WORLD OF OUR FELLOW CRITTERS

2009-06-22T15:22:00.003-04:00

Your dog sees the world in yellow, blue and gray. Reds, greens and orange probably appear black. Fido uses his vision to confirm what he learns by sniffing. By human standards, dogs are near-sighted, but they can detect movement at four times the distance you can.

-- Killing carpenter bees to keep them from eating your wooden deck only causes them to bore more holes for new nests. You can move the carpenter bees to a new location by painting or varnishing the deck and leaning a few short 4 X 4s against the foundation of your house. The bees like dry timber in its natural state.

Male carpenter bees have white or yellow faces. They are annoying but they can’t sting. Both sexes pollinate flowers and pollinators are badly needed with honeybees vanishing.

--American black bears (which may range in color from brown to cream color) only live in North America. Though they appear clown-like and friendly, they can kill and have consumed human flesh, especially if cubs are in danger.

If you meet a Black bear on the trail, don’t run away because it turns you into prey and they can run 35 miles per hour for short distances. Throw your arms up to make yourself look bigger and yell at the top of your lungs. Note: This does not work with grizzlies. If a grizzly comes after you, play dead and you might survive.

-- Crows (including ravens, rooks, magpies and similar birds) are extremely intelligent and will dip food in water to make it easier to swallow. They have adapted to almost every climate in the world.

They are scavengers that eat virtually anything. They have a highly developed social order and assignment of duties. Some pet crows have been taught to speak. It is difficult to get close to a group of crows called a (murder of crows) because they have sentries watching the area.

-- The American Pygmy shrew (Sorex hoyiis) is the smallest mammal in North America (2-4 grams, or 1/10^th to 1/7^th of an ounce and 2 3/4th - 3 3/8^th of an inch). Using food consumption as a gauge, this little creature may be the most ferocious mammal on Earth, eating its own body weight every day. It has been said that a shrew “is killing, has just killed or is about to kill” around the clock.

The Pygmy shrew’s diet is mostly insects, but it is not unheard of for a shrew to kill and eat a mouse that dwarfs it --or even another shrew. It will attack a human foot without hesitation. A female shrew can produce three litters a year of two--eight babies. Aren’t we glad that Pygmy shrews only live 16 months at the most and they aren’t the size of dogs?

LIKE UGLY ON A FROG?

2009-05-30T14:23:00.004-04:00

Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House, has been calling for the resignation of current Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on the grounds that she lied about her knowledge of water boarding.

Even many supporters wish Pelosi would be more discrete with her words. A simple, “I don’t remember being briefed,” rather than “I was misled by the CIA,” would have ended the matter.

However, New Gingrich calling anyone else a liar is like a toad calling someone ugly. When he was speaker of the house, Gingrich admitted giving inaccurate statements during a probe of a college course he was marketing and agreed to pay $300,000 dollars for the cost of the investigation.

Later, the House Ethics Committee said the "inaccurate information" amounted to “intentional or ... reckless" disregard of House rules.

We won’t even get into Gingrich’s admission that he was having an extramarital affair with the woman who became his third wife, even as he led the attack against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair -- or how he treated his first wife while she was in the hospital undergoing treatment.

Of course, when you have supporters with the attention span of a gnat, these things are forgotten -- unless the media reminds them.

TIDBITS FOR THE END OF MAY

2009-05-30T01:22:00.004-04:00

Orange Juice Leads To Arrest

On Memorial Day, Raibin Osman went in to a McDonalds in Alhoa, Oregon and learned the possible hazards of orange juice consumption. He landed in jail after calling 911 to complain that a McDonald's worker was rude and didn't give him an orange juice he ordered. Osman was charged with improper use of the emergency telephone number.

It’s a good bet he’ll stick with coffee from now on. Apparently one of the side effects of orange juice is terminal stupidity.

GOP Boss Steps On His... Tongue

Michael Steele, the first black Republican National Committee Chairman, recently told delegates at a Georgia GOP convention that the party can reach a broader base by opposing gay marriage, not just as a moral issue, but as a burden to small businesses that would have to pay spousal benefits to gay spouses.

Hats off to Steele who has made two points with a single statement: The same financial burden can be said of straight marriages, which Republicans tout as sacred; and a black GOP leader can be every bit as stupid as any white GOP leader.

G. Gordon Liddy Adds His Wisdom To Sotomayor Debate

G. Gordon Liddy, convicted felon and darling of the right, recently pointed out on the air that we should not worry only about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s alleged racism. The comment is sure to win friends and influence people in any group consisting of white males.

Here is what Liddy said about Sotomayor, the first Hispanic woman to be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court: “Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.” If you don’t believe it, click here.

BOYS WILL BE... RECKLESS

2009-05-23T00:04:00.002-04:00

Several people commented on a column I wrote for the Knoxville News Sentinel not long ago. It included a true story about drunken, teenage elephants in Indonesia. One female reader pointed out that adolescent elephants aren’t a lot different from adolescent human males. “Testosterone-driven,” was how she put it. And she was right.

In fact, it boggles my mind that so many of us survive adolescence. Young males rank higher in accidental deaths than any other group. Young males are more prone to risk-taking than females and a lot of the risk-taking is to impress said females.

Not all risks have the potential for a fatality; some only make the risk-taker wish he had perished. One of my early testosterone-driven feats involving poison ivy comes to mind.

I was 12, I think, and my class was having a rare recess that didn’t involve a team sport. I was propped up against a tree, reading a book called The Wonderful Trip to The Mushroom Planet, near a brown-eyed beauty named Vicky.

One of my classmates, Steffan Ledgerwood, who was interested in the book, made an observation: “You’re sitting in poison ivy.” The brown-eyed Vicky glanced in my direction. I had been afraid to talk to her, so when the opportunity to show-off came, I took it.

“Doesn’t bother me,” I said. To prove my point, I grabbed a handful of the leaves and rubbed them all over my face and arms, then lifted my shirt and applied them to my stomach.

“You better wash it off,” Steffan said. Seeing that the object of my desire was still watching, I shrugged off the danger, probably with a sneer. After recess, we went to the restroom, where I washed my hands as I had been taught, after I finished -- but not before.

Early the next morning, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and a monster stared back at me. My eyes were swollen shut, my fingers had blisters between them and I itched in every place I had touched myself the day before. Apparently a bath taken several hours after contact hadn’t helped.

My own mother had to stifle a smile when she saw me. Today, my condition would have warranted a trip to the doctor, but such wasn’t the case then. I endured alcohol baths and calamine lotion for three days before the blisters began to subside, but evidence of my stupidity still remained when my father said I had to go back to school.

News of my condition had spread during my absence -- and so had the reason for my misery. I stared straight ahead and kept quiet to avoid attention the first day back. I did sneak a look at my brown-eyed beauty and she looked amused, not sympathetic.

My vow not to show-off again lasted a few weeks. Another Lolita from down the street was present when a couple of boys began jumping their bicycles off a steep bank. I decided to push my bike up the side of a wooded ridge -- then jump the embankment.

It would have been easier pushing the bike if my arm hadn’t been in a cast from a fall a next to the last day of school. But I got the bike about 200 yards up the ridge. I yelled so everyone would look and pushed off.

A few feet into my ride, I found I couldn’t steer with one hand and I couldn’t stop, either. I missed the bigger trees and a pile of brush stopped finally stopped me, resulting in multiple scratches and bruises. I went home limping and went back after the bike later.

It was the last time I showed off -- until the next time.

GLENN BECK 0, LADIES OF THE VIEW 1

2009-05-21T15:42:00.001-04:00

Glen Beck was caught in a barefaced lie and was confronted by Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters. The sad thing is, the people who love Glenn Beck apparently don’t care whether he lies or not -- as long as he says what they want to hear. Watch it for yourself here.

A NEO-CON VIEW OF RANTS

2009-05-17T21:07:00.001-04:00

First, let’s get Michael Gerson’s credentials in order as we look at his comments in a recent column called, “The Rhetoric of the Rant.”

Gerson is an op-ed columnist for The Washington Post and served as President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter from 2001 until June 2006. Prior to joining the Bush Administration, he was a senior policy advisor with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Gerson wrote an impassioned piece about how Wanda Sykes “crossed the line” with a comment about how she wished “Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys would fail,” at the 2009 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Her comment was a follow-up on Limbaugh’s stated wish that President Obama will fail.

The conservative Gerson referred to Sykes’ comments as “a practiced form of verbal aggression, combining harshness and coarseness to shock and intimidate. Continuing, he dragged in Al Franken and the comic’s book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.

The irony of using Franken’s openly satirical book about Limbaugh as an example of a rant might have passed had Gerson gone on to mention that Limbaugh is a dedicated practitioner of rants, having insulted everyone from the families of 9/11 survivors to American war veterans -- but, of course, he did not.

Neither did Gerson mention Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck (who once fantasized about killing Michael Moore on the air) or Sean Hannity, who have developed rants to the exclusion even of facts on occasion. Gerson suffers from the “conservative humor syndrome.” If it’s about a conservative -- or those who pass as conservatives today -- it ain’t funny.

Come on Mr. Gerson, when your side does the same thing as Sykes, who is a comic, and Franken who was a comic and satirist, you just say something along the lines of “politics is a contact sport.” I bet you didn’t even complain when Dick Cheney snapped a gutter invective at a United States Senator on the floor of the Senate.

TEMPESTS IN TINY TEA CUPS

2009-05-08T18:54:00.001-04:00

Not long ago, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, was asked by Miss U.S.A. pageant judge, Perez Hilton what she thought of same-sex marriage. Never mind that it was a politically loaded question that should never have come up -- she answered it.

It was not an unambiguous, straightforward answer. Prejean, who finished second in the pageant, first said she was glad to live in a country in which people could make that decision for themselves, then -- almost as an after thought -- gave the opinion that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

It is an opinion to which she is entitled, but the first part of her answer and subsequent actions opened her up for charges of hypocrisy. You can’t be glad to live in a country where people are allowed to make their own choices while lobbying to make certain that some people are not allowed to make the choice.

Perez Hilton is a nationally know blogger and a jerk, who is living proof that being gay and being a jerk are not mutually exclusive. The next day, he used a shrill, disrespectful gutter term (bitch) on his blog to describe Prejean and called her stupid. It was in bad taste, demonstrating only that Perez has no class.

Prejean, on the other hand, put her own classiness under suspicion the next morning, by suggesting that she had not won the contest because of her answer. Many on the religious right immediately dropped the suggestion part and began to print it as a fact that she had lost because she opposed same sex marriage.

Then, risqué photos of Prejean turned up on the Internet. As far as risqué goes, they were tame. ( Yes I did some research.) But it was the type of thing those on the religious right -- which is fronting Prejean to suit their agenda -- would have used as evidence, just a few years ago, to prove that she was morally unfit to win a beauty contest.

However, there are standards and there are standards. When radio super moralist Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s full frontal nude photos turned up on the Internet a few years ago, she got a pass from fellow pontificators on the right. The photos were passed off as a youthful indiscretion, even though she was pushing 30 when they were made.

Prejean appears ready to assume a career as a professional moralist. Hey, if they throw you lemons, make lemonade. I would imagine there’s a book in her future and years of profitable appearances ahead of her.

It could not mean any less to me what Miss California’s opinion of gay marriage is -- nor what a celebrity blogger like Hilton thinks. I only looked at his blog long enough to verify the facts.

What worries me is that so many Americans take either Carrie Prejean or Perez Hilton seriously. Oh age of enlightenment, what happened to you?

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF RUSH LIMBAUGH, PAST AND PRESENT

2009-04-24T17:29:00.007-04:00

"He (Barack Obama) will lose big," Rush Limbaugh predicting the outcome of the presidential election of 2008. Boston Globe, May of 2008.

“I don't care how far feminism's saying (sic), you can't hit the girl, and you can't -- you can't criticize the little black man-child. You just can't do it, 'cause it's just not right, It's not fair. He's such a victim." Rush Limbaugh from his radio show Wed, Aug 20, 2008 (http://mediamatters.org/items/200808200009)

“Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” Rush Limbaugh from his Radio show, Aug. 16, 2006(http://mediamatters.org/items/200508160001)

“Patriotism is rallying behind the country, regardless of party affiliation…” CBS, Sept. 7, 2006. | http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/07/freespeech/main1980670.shtml

But then again...

“I hope he (Obama) fails.” http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011609/content/01125113.guest.html

Limbaughism: ‘the incessant and smug belief that conservatives are always winning; that the public is always behind us; that the other side is always in a panic; and that public opinion is the measure of all things.’” Charles J. Sykes, author of "Dumbing Down Our Kids.”

THE PARTISAN WHINE OF THE DAY

2009-04-20T12:03:00.004-04:00

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nevada, complained to the Cable News Network (CNN) Sunday that it was "irresponsible" for President Obama to have been seen "laughing and joking" with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas on Friday.

Apparently, Ensign believes a more proper response by the president of the United States would have been to balance a chip on his shoulder and yell, “Bring it on, Hugo.” After all, that was the type of policy that made the United States so popular throughout the world under George W. Bush and accomplished so much.

Remember those glorious days when supposedly adult legislators changed the name of French fries to “freedom fries” in the Congressional cafeteria? Now that’s the way to treat a foe, even if the foe is one of this country’s allies of longest standing.

Hugo Chavez is a jerk -- a popinjay, we might have called him in the past. He is like a spoiled child, hungering for attention. But he is also a head of state and it harmed nothing for President Obama to take the high road and act with the dignity expected from a the leader of the free world.

Nations consist of people and heads of state react to the manner in which they and their countries are treated. The ancient Book of Proverbs says, “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” Two thousand years ago, Jesus of Nazareth said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

In more recent history, President Teddy Roosevelt said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The entire world knows that the United States has that proverbial big stick.There’s no need to rub their collective noses in that knowledge.

There’s a saying among American police officers that says, “If you start out easy, you can always get hard; if you start out hard, there’s nowhere else to go except to force.”

THE ANSWER, MY FRIEND, IS FLAPPING IN THE WIND

2009-04-13T13:27:00.004-04:00

Hasn’t it been great, basking in the breeze generated by right wing pundits grasping at straws, but to no avail.

The latest flap has been over President Obama’s alleged excessive bow to Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. It’s another tempest in a right wing teacup.

Anyone who wants to see the video already has; what I saw was a polite man extending courtesy to a head of state -- and a taller man minimizing the difference in size to a shorter one, not a kow-tow.

No if we really want to get into disturbing behavior, it’s only necessary to type a couple of key words into our browsers for this photograph of George W. Bush (upper right) and the same Saudi back in 2006.

Great balls of fire, Batman! I wasn’t that affectionate with my first real date when I was 13 years old. But the right wing had no problem with two sons of privilege affectionately strolling around, holding hands -- and kissing upon parting, I understand.

Oh yeah, it's the custom in Abdullah's country.

OH THE PAINLESS PROTESTS

2009-04-08T12:33:00.002-04:00

Political commentary brings out the worst in some readers. That’s why I did so so little of it for years. Lately, a particularly ludicrous idea cries out for comment: Think “Tea Party Movement.”

The stated reason for the Tea Party Movement is to protest tax money being spent for programs that President Barack Obama and (so far) a majority of Congress believe will get our economy back on track.

If you read the blogs promoting the movement, though, it becomes evident that it is fueled by people who voted against Obama and ended up on the losing side. Sore losers we called them when I was playing vacant lot football.

Meaningful protest is good; I’ve done a lot of it. It is protected by the First Amendment. But here’s a suggestion for these particular protesters -- hire somebody in public relations to find an appropriate symbol and rallying cry.

The one you are using -- The Boston Tea Party -- does not fit in any form or fashion.

The Sons of Liberty who dressed up like Indians and tossed 45 tons of British tea into the harbor were protesting “taxation without representation.” That is to say, American colonists were being taxed by the British without the consent of the governed.

Furthermore, tea was a commodity that practically everyone used, every day. Today’s protesters can dump tea to their heart’s content -- except where it is deemed an environmental hazard -- without upsetting coffee-drinking Americans. It’s their money and their tea.

It should also be noted that none of these latter-day Tea Party protesters are being taxed without representation. From city councils, all the way up to the President of the United States, we all have democratically elected representation.

To clarify, we directly elect the representatives. In the latter case, we vote on electors.

It may be worth reminding everyone who doesn’t understand that we are guaranteed a vote, but not a winning vote. They call it an election because one candidate loses and the other wins.

Also on the subject of appropriate representation, nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution is it stated that citizens get a free ride. We may not like taxes and we may not like what taxes are being spent for, but our elected representative make those decisions.

We pay taxes or face consequences, just as citizens of every civilization have done. The difference is, we get to elect our representatives.

Back in the 1970s Caesar Chavez, leader of the National Farm Workers Association, called for a boycott of lettuce. I and many others participated because it had a purpose -- better treatment of migrant workers -- and a rally cry that made sense, “Don’t Eat Lettuce!”

Before that, draft-age young men had burned their Selective Service cards to protest being inducted (involuntary servitude, some believed.) I didn’t because I had already volunteered for the U.S. Army. Protest actually cost many draft resisters prison time.

If the present day “Tea Party protesters” want do something meaningful they might stop making house payments in protest of bailouts or refuse to pay income tax. Of course, that would actually cause them personal problems.

It may be better if they just keep brewing tea and pouring it out. It doesn’t change anything and nobody actually has to take any risk on principle.

Painless protest could catch on. Heck, I may stop wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day to protest Irish elitism.

LOOKING FOR FILTHY LUCRE

2009-04-04T14:00:00.002-04:00

Once, not so long ago, cosmically speaking, the Whittle Communications group published short books -- or pamphlets you might have called them -- for use on airliners, waiting rooms and such. If I recall correctly, they were about ten thousands words and carried the name of successful authors. The rest of the little books consisted of advertising.

Memory serving correctly (it’s been a while, in human years), the authors got ten grand for writing the books. It was a nice lump of money for very little work.

Someone in the literary circles of the Knoxville area, referred to the money paid for these books as “filthy lucre.” The idea was that anyone who would take money to appear in a book dedicated to advertising was a literary sell out -- unaware, I suppose that magazines had been publishing “literary” writers and paying them with the same filthy lucre since time immemorial.

I was not among those successful authors, but I did a newspaper column and said I would be delighted to accept some of the filthy lucre. Actually, it wasn’t entirely true. I received a lot of filthy lucre from Tennessee Illustrated, a Whittle’s publication, during it’s short lifespan -- including the last cover story.

Had I stopped with the request for filthy lucre, things would have been better. But I went on to talk about the difference between “real” professional writers as opposed to the ivory tower publications done for professors by university presses. It created a rift between me and the university community that has never entirely healed.

My friends, the wheel has turned again and I am once more in search of filthy lucre -- at least enough to keep this blog successful enough to continue. You may have noticed that there are now advertisements running in the side panel and between entries of this blog.

Here’s how it works: Google supplies the ads and every time a reader clicks on one of them, I get paid a very small amount. The more you click the more I make. So far, I’ve made 21 cents, I think. However, from humble acorns, mighty Oak trees grow.

The point I am trying to make is that contrary to the lunatic ravings of some, we still live in a capitalistic society -- which is preferable to any other kind I know of. Time will tell if I’m interesting enough to stay viable. Adieu for now, friends and sworn enemies alike.

THE CONTINUING SAGA OF MR. REPUBLICAN

2009-03-31T12:35:00.004-04:00

In a galaxy far, far away… no, wait… it is actually in the state of Tennessee’s 18th district and the the hero of today’s story is Rep. Stacey Campfield (right), who was once described as “uber-Republican” by journalist and blogger Katie Allison Granju.

Not so long ago, Campfield was likely sitting around, perhaps reading a copy of the Demagogue’s Handbook, asking himself the question, “What segment of society can I demonize today in my quest for “family values” as I see them?”

In the past, Campfield has unsuccesfully attempted to join the caucus of black legislators (presumably to prove the racial bias of that group); wanted a law to issue death certificates for aborted fetuses; make it illegal to mention homosexuality before 9th grade; and to deny birth certificates to the babies of illegal immigrants.

On this particular day, the Opie Taylor look-a-like, must have had an epiphany. Why not attack people on government assistance? The government insists on refusing to let deadbeats starve as they would in nature, Campfield must have thought, so how can I pile on one more insult on top of injury?

And he tried his best. Under HB981, anyone winning a lottery prize worth more than $600 would have had to authorize a check of records to determine if he or she were receiving any "public assistance." If they were found to be getting government assistance, they would have been denied their winnings.

Campfield’s reasoning seems to have gone something like this: People drawing government assistance should not be allowed to play the lottery anymore than they should be allowed have sex outside of marriage -- and if they won’t behave on their own, we’ll make the deadbeats suffer.

The provision did not pass -- as most of Campfield’s suggestion do not pass -- but what the hey! Prejudice plays well with the judgmental back home. Keep it up, Campfield -- even if it didn’t occur to you that big lottery winners don’t need public assistance.

FRIENDS, READERS AND SWORN ENEMIES

2009-03-29T16:11:00.004-04:00

Friends, readers and sworn enemies, these are perilous times for the print media. As I pointed out in a previous Knoxville News Sentinel column, “Daily newspapers are dropping like tame quail and ducks in front of former vice-president Dick Cheney's shotgun.”

Personally, I hope the Knoxville News Sentinel will be around for another 100 years, and I don’t have any information that it won’t. However, it has been said that a wise man looks both ways, even when crossing a one way street. As a person who has been around long enough to know how little I know, I am establishing a separate presence for myself on the Internet as David Hunter In His Own Write.

Whether you have read my columns through the years because you liked them or just because you need someone upon whom to vent, I am sending you a means of keeping up even if the Knoxville News Sentinel decides to fold its print media. Let me repeat, I have no information that this will happen in the near or even distant future. It is strictly a safety net I am hanging for myself.

If you glance through the archives, it will become evident that I have blogged only sporadically in the past. I will try to be more timely in the future. I just wanted to let you know where to find me. If necessary, and I won’t be bombarding anyone with spam. If you’re interested -- for whatever reason -- ad my blog to your favorites, your book marks or whatever your browser calls the list.

And watch for further updates,

Thinking Ahead

2009-03-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, the guest speakers at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) were big hits. They reminded me of a story I once heard.

Two amateur renovators were trying to hang sheetrock using large ball peen hammers that were so heavy they kept knocking holes in the sheetrock. Realizing that they were doing a lot of damage to the walls, they thought the matter over and went out to buy some five pound sledge hammers.

A MISSING CHUNK OF NEWS

2009-01-24T15:05:00.001-05:00

“2 U.S. Airstrikes Offer a Concrete Sign of Obama's Pakistan Policy.” This was the Washington Post’s take on the two U.S. military strikes ordered by President Barack on Friday, January 24.

The story was widely covered in the British news media and by individual American papers. CNN covered it in a roundabout manner by way of an interview with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Fox News appears not to have heard about the strikes.

Fox News has had numerous talking heads discussing the possible disastrous repercussions of Obama’s order to close the prison at Gitmo, but not a word about a major policy matter on terrorists. They are making founder Rupert Murdoch proud once again.

Yesterday, I picked up the story by way of an e-mail alert online while I was working. This morning, while watching the overnight news summary, I began to doubt that I had actually read about it because what is a major news story was missing on CNN and Fox News.

So I went back to the Internet to verify that a Obama had indeed ordered a strike inside Pakistan in which 15-20 people were killed. The lack of coverage by Fox doesn’t surprise me coming from the station that speaks of “homicide bombings” rather than “suicide bombings,” but why the general silence from CNN?

I hope Fox and CNN aren’t ignoring it for the same reason -- that it doesn’t suit their public image of Barack Obama. Our new President made no secret of his intentions in the pursuit of terrorists in Pakistan.

STUFF AND NONSENSE

2009-01-22T15:55:00.001-05:00

Will anyone join me in asking Keith Olbermann to join the Republicans? His pontificating has driven me to give up MSNBC for the same reason I long ago gave up Fox News -- there’s no balance at all.

Olbermann has done the impossible by making even Bill O'Reilly appear almost rational by comparison.

For instance, Olbermann’s smarmy advice to President Obama that he is obligated to put George W. Bush on trial for war crimes. It would be the perfect way for the new President to render himself politically impotent for the nest four years -- and it would set a horrible precedent.

If Bush is guilty of war crimes by torture -- and many believe he is -- let the International Criminal Court take up the matter. If he is tried in absentia (and he would be crazy to show up), then he’ll never be able to travel internationally again and history will have its story.

Geez, hasn’t the country had enough craziness in the last eight years to last another century without this nonsense from our side?

ARE WE ENLIGHTENED?

2009-01-19T13:34:00.002-05:00

It has been called The Age of Reason and The Enlightenment which had been fermenting throughout Europe for 200 years, and bore fruit in the 18th Century, producing the American Revolution and its Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as the French Revolution and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

The Enlightenment marks a principled departure from the Middle Ages, State and Church mandated oppression, toward an era of rational human discourse, freedom of religion, liberty, scientific advancement, and a new way of thinking about government.

At the time when reason began to assert itself, most of the world was illiterate. The printing press had been around for 300 years and contributed to the spread of enlightenment, but books were still too costly for the masses. Those thinkers must have looked forward to the day when most of the world would be literate and able to read for themselves the wisdom produced by that period.

Today, in the civilized world, the majority can read, but a daily reading of any modern American newspaper’s “letters to the editor” has to give pause as to whether near-universal literacy has improved the intellectual level of the masses or whether we are in the process of descending into another period of darkness.

Nearly half of Americans believe that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and the majority of the American public still believes that homosexuality is a product of the way people are brought up (13%) or is a lifestyle choice (38%). How enlightened is America?

The personal computer and the Internet have brought the latest scientific knowledge to our fingertips, but a majority don’t seek out the knowledge -- they spend their days reading and forwarding political e-mail from people who think the same they way they do and accept the most bizarre charges as Gospel.

A Pew survey showed that as late as late as July 8, 2008, 12 percent of the American public still believed that Barack Obama is a Muslim -- with only slightly more Republicans than Democrats believing it; the unsubstantiated rumor that Obama is not a native-born American is still being argued by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage with plenty of support from people who have never looked at the evidence for themselves.

Are we as Americans, the jewel of the Age of Reason, really enlightened? Are we even rational, for the most part? I think it’s open to debate.

FIRST THE TRIAL AND THEN THE SENTENCE?

2009-01-05T14:08:00.002-05:00

Every crime has elements that must be met in order for the accused to be convicted. First degree murder, for instance, is the intentional killing of a human being with premeditation, and burglary is the breaking and entering of a place with the intent to steal.

If all the elements of a crime can’t be proven, the accused is innocent of that crime. It doesn’t always work out the way it should, but proving the elements of a crime is where it begins.

A person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, so an accused person has only allegedly committed a crime until such time as convicted. Ethical journalists always say “allegedly” or add some other caveat to indicate there has been no conviction.

The general public doesn’t need a trial and isn’t bound by journalistic ethics. A good rumor is enough to touch off a lynching in the comments section of a newspaper or in what we call the blogosphere.

Most people have always been up for a good public lynching; it’s just easier now.

Take the case of Rod R. Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois. He was arrested and charged with federal crimes involving mail fraud and soliciting and accepting bribes -- generally reported under the heading of “corruption.”

As of this writing, at least 51 Democrats in the United States Senate and President-elect Obama have made the assumption that Blagojevich is guilty and should resign. At least two of the 51 -- Obama and Harry Reed the Senate Majority Leader -- are lawyers and should know better.

If those 51 Democrats and most of the people of the United States were depending on the shame factor to end the situation quickly, they were wrong. Either Blagojevich has no shame or he really doesn’t think he is guilty. In fact he proceeded to appoint a new U.S. Senator, which was his legal prerogative.

Now there really is a mess. Roland Burris, the man appointed by Blagojevich says he will take his seat -- given him by a legal appointment -- in the Senate, and 51 Democrats find themselves in opposition to the first African American elected to statewide office in Illinois, and who, by all reports, is a good man.

Gee whiz, who would have ever thunk there could have been so much trouble caused by ignoring the presumption of innocence in the United states of America?

For what it’s worth (and it’s not worth much), I think Blagojevich is probably guilty as sin, but I wouldn’t say it in print. Jackleg journalist that I am, the editors with whom I’ve worked for nearly 20 years, taught me to be very clear that a crime is only alleged and not proven until there has been a trial and a conviction.

THE LEGACY OF GEORGE W. BUSH

2008-12-09T14:50:00.002-05:00

George W. Bush regrets that he was given bad intelligence on Iraq. Oh yeah, and he’s decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to dress up like a real combat pilot, make a staged landing on an aircraft carrier and declare victory in Iraq five tears too early.

It’s the most regret we’ll ever get out of a man who wasn’t able to think of a single mistake he had made when he was asked during the election leading to his second term. That’s all right, he thinks history will prove he was right and almost everyone else in the world was wrong -- except for ideological patsies in and out of his administration.

Here’s what I what I think the history books will say about a strutting, little popinjay with stunted thought processes who listened to those around him who said he was a great man:

The first and most obvious historical fact will be that he crippled the effort to find Osama bin Laden and the leaders of Al Qaida who took down the World Trade Center and struck the Pentagon, killing 3,000 or so people -- by launching a trumped up war in Iraq. And that the invasion of Iraq created a training field for Al Qaida where they had been banned before and tarnished the image of the United States of America around the world.

George Bush handed over the conduct of the war to Donald Rumsfeld, whose military background had been flying U.S. Navy planes during peacetime. Rusted ignored generals and sent in American troops in numbers too small to prevent chaos. Runsfeld will be known for his arrogant statement: “We go to war with the military we have, not the one we want to have.”

Bush then proceeded to endorse a code of conduct that shocked the conscience of the world, as well as the leaders of our military. Torture and atrocities happen during wars, but our president endorsed interrogation methods outlawed by the Geneva Convention and authorized the use of mercenaries as he was pushing our armed forces to their limit.

So far, there have been nearly 100,000 confirmed Iraqi civilians killed. We won’t get into the 4,000 American troops killed to date and the unknown number of those maimed -- brave men and women doing what soldiers do, which is to obey orders. How Bush sleeps at night, I don’t know. Maybe his conscience is as stunted as his intellect.

Books have already been written and there are more to come on the Iraqi invasion and occupation. What I have touched on is just the beginning of the George W. Bush legacy. History won’t vindicate him -- it will convict him.

Peace on Earth

2008-12-05T00:17:00.002-05:00

A video from Tom Jester, political wheeler and dealer extraordinaire. His version of what peace on Earth should look like. Check it out

THE MAKING OF A JUNIOR EXECUTIVE

2008-12-03T13:24:00.000-05:00

I just got an e-mail from somebody name Josh Laster at Gibbs & Soell Inc., Public Relations, who is an “account executive.” He informed me that there is no such thing as a “Styrofoam cup.” The e-mail was garbled, but I made out most of it.

For a moment I was startled since I knew I hadn’t used the term “Styrofoam cup” lately. Then I noticed that the e-mail was in reference to my column, “Not all secret meetings are subversive,” from the week of 10-13-09, in which I had made reference to a “Styrofoam box.”

Laster went on to explain that STYROFOAMA® is actually a registered trademark of The Dow Chemical Company -- a type of insulation made of “extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam,” as opposed to disposable plastic foam containers and packaging which are made with a different type of foam known as expanded polystyrene (EPS).”

The letter asked me to use the proper term in the future for such cups, boxes, plastic peanuts, and etc. The suggested terms were garbled, but I got the idea. It’s easy to see how an amateur like me confused XPS with EPS.

However, the e-mail piqued my curiosity and I decided to check out the job qualifications for an account executive who spends time e-mailing newspaper columnists in obscure places. It’s pretty obvious the e-mail was computer generated, but somebody still had to enter my name and column title.

According to its web site, Gibbs & Soell Inc., Public Relations, New York, Chicago, Raleigh, Zurich, Shanghai, Bejing, Tokyo and Latin America. The company boasts of “a dynamic work environment” and employees that are “passionate about delivering results and exceptional service.”

Under employment opportunities for “junior account executives”, the company claims to “always be looking for motivated, team-oriented communicators” with “exceptional presence, excellent writing, creativity and organizational skills.” It was also noted that “public relations or journalism experience and/or internship” are a plus when applying for employment.

Benefits listed include medical, dental and life insurance, short and longtime disability, generous spending accounts, profit-sharing, vacation and sick days, a 401K and performance bonuses. It was a very impressive list.

By the time I’d finished reading about the benefits, I was ready to turn in a resume. The benefits sound almost as good as those given to members of Congress. Then I remembered, I’ve never been an intern. Besides, I’m not all that dynamic and my organizational skills leave a lot to be desired.

THE MYTH OF THE MUSE

2008-12-03T13:14:00.001-05:00

I’ve never entered a writing contest. I was twice nominated for awards by my publisher, which I didn’t win.

Neither have I ever attended a writers’ conference or seminar unless I was teaching. After high school, my formal literary training amounted to 20 minutes in a community college class I dropped because the instructor wasn’t a writer. The library is my alma mater.

There’s nothing wrong with writing contests, but the only writer I have ever tried to surpass is myself. Nor is there anything wrong with trying to learn from others; I’ve learned lots of things -- in private -- from writers I personally consider to be exceptional. In fact, I’m still learning from them.

Once a week, at least, I hear from someone who wants to learn the “insider secrets” I’ve picked up through the years. I always disappoint them, because I don’t know any secret except to keep writing. And hear this, if you wait on the muse you’ll be waiting a long time.

Sometimes, people mail manuscripts to me, asking for an opinion on the quality of their writing. I send them back unread with a note that I am not an editor and the only person whose opinion counts is the publisher or editor to whom they send their work.

There are very few writers in America who make a living writing books and I am not one of them. I have made a little money through the years, but not enough to live on. I wrote a long time before anyone ever paid me to do it and I would still be writing if nobody ever paid me again.

A lot of journalists earn a living, of course, but reporting is a specialized field and expertise as a reporter doesn’t necessarily translate to the kind of writing that goes into books -- though it can. There’s a reason why it doesn’t happen more often than it does.

Every profession, including journalism, has a distinct way of writing. Cops, lawyers and reporters tend to write they way they have learned on the job and most can’t break the habit after they’ve done it for a long time.

Take note that everyone a reporter writes about has a title: Jeffrey Dahmer, the Wisconsin cannibal and serial killer, was a “former candy factory worker;” Rodney King was a “motorist;” and anyone who has ever been under psychiatric care becomes a permanent “former mental patient.”

A report written by a cop is filled with “suspects,” “subjects” or “defendants” and terms like, “the suspect had the odor of an alcoholic beverage about his person.” Lawyers use phrases such as: “For good and valuable consideration;” “Whereas, the parties;” and “Be it known.”

Joseph Wambaugh made the transition from cop reports to writer; John Grisham evolved from lawyer lingo to novels; and Edna Buchanan broke out of being a reporter to write books. For every success there are probably thousands who can’t make the change.

It’s my personal opinion that real writers are obsessive-compulsive about what they do because for the vast majority, there’s no other explanation. Stephen King was once asked if he wrote every day. He replied, “Every day except Christmas and my birthday.” Later, he admitted that he also wrote on those two days.

I think it was Faith Baldwin who wrote that after the first million published words, a writer begins to get the hang of writing. She may have been right.