Lessons Learned in 2012

A controversial Newsweek cover with Bachmann, entitled "the Queen of Rage" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A presidential campaign marked by flawed candidates, attention and tons of ads focused on certain states, and actors debating empty chairs shows what money and too much time on our hands can do.

Given the opportunity to vote for change, people chose to stick with the same President and most of the same Congress, leading to the same kind of gridlock that has ensnared this country.  The fiscal cliff is the latest example.

After Aurora, Newtown and countless other places where shootings have occurred, the time to talk about what to do about guns and the people who use them is long overdue.  That is, until the next big thing comes along.

The NRA wants to put armed guards in every school.  Great idea, except that it's easy to suggest something drastic if you're not the ones paying for it.

In countries where dictators are either dying or cling to power, some forms of democracy might be the cure that's worse than the disease.

September 11 is still a powerful date in world history.  What happened in Benghazi, Libya is one reason why.

The U.S. Supreme Court isn't always as conservative as you think it is.  For one thing, they let Obamacare live.

Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, climate change had a lot to do with all those storms, heatwaves and droughts, no?

The Minnesota state bird is the loon.  Michele Bachmann acted like one on the presidential campaign trail, but she got herself re-elected to Congress anyway.

Never take a job involving national security if you can't keep your own secrets beyond the bedroom.

Those states who talked about seceding from the union because their presidential candidate lost, even in jest, should be careful of what they wish for.

To videogamers, war must be a hell of a lot of fun.  Try fighting in a real one sometime.

To soldiers coming back from Afghanistan:  Is all this public adoration for real, or just a phony marketing gimmick?

Is the economy improving?  It depends on whether you have a job, live out on the street, or both.

Rush Limbaugh can lose dozens of sponsors over his demeaning comments about women, yet still remain on the air.

Reports of the death of this planet, as Mark Twain might say, were greatly exaggerated.

When Apple speaks, people listen--then buy their latest smartphone.

Reality TV is rigged.  Wow.  What a shock.

Other than "American Idol" and "Survivor", are the winners of reality TV competitions remembered years later?

Newsweek magazine was dying a slow death long before Tina Brown got her hands on it.

Morning TV can be fickle.  Just ask anyone who works for the "Today" show or "Good Morning America".

"Someone That I Used to Know" is Billboard's top single of the year.  "Call Me Maybe" is the best-remembered song of the year.

Mike Wallace, Dick Clark, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, Andy Griffith, Whitney Houston, Larry Hagman, Nora Ephron, Davy Jones, Robin Gibb, George McGovern, Harry Morgan, Andy Williams, Andy Rooney, Arlen Specter, Donna Summer, Gore Vidal, Ray Bradbury and Maurice Sendak all died this year.  Who will take their place?

The next twelve months will determine whether 2013 is a lucky year or not.

12/21/2012: Is This The End for Planet Earth?

The Earth seen from Apollo 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the Mayan calendar, the world is supposed to end this Friday.  We don't know how it will end, or even if it will actually happen.  But it's best to be prepared just in case.

Fireballs from the sky.  Tsunamis.  Earthquakes.  Raging storms.  The Earth implodes.  Humans going the way of the dinosaurs.  It all sounds like a bad special effects-laden disaster movie, or a History channel documentary.  That's what could happen Friday.  Or not.

Some of you are treating this as one big joke, using it as an excuse to go out and party.  Comedians have been making fun of it.  That's called gallows humor, and it's about as funny as a crutch.

Some of you are more skeptical.  The federal government has been trotting out its researchers and scientists to try and convince us that the Mayan calendar is wrong.  But all that is for public consumption.  Maybe the government and the scientists know more than they're telling us.

Some of you are treating the possible apocalypse with deadly seriousness.  These are the signs of what some believe are the End Times:  Global climate change, with its heat waves and storms.  School shootings.  World economic collapse.  Some of you are going to be hiding in your bunkers, armed to the teeth.  Some of you will be praying to the deity of your choice and commit mass suicide.

Some of you will be mourning the passing of life on Earth which, despite its problems, had been well on its way in advances in technology and human development.  For others, the end of the world can't come soon enough.

Maybe December 21 will simply be a flip of the calendar, a chance for all of us to start fresh and look forward to a brighter future.  Or else it'll be just another day and nothing's changed.

If you are reading this on or before December 21, turn off the damn computer or smartphone and give yourself one last look at the world around you.   Give yourself one last chance to say goodbye to everything and everybody that's important to you.  If you have no regrets about the kind of life you've lived up until now, then don't worry about it.

If, however, you're reading this after December 21, then never mind.  We made it, at least until the next doomsday prophecy.  Happy holidays.

Another Day, Another Massacre

Once again, a lone gunman goes on a rampage, killing as many people as he (and it's usually a he) could before turning the gun on himself.  So it's left to other people to try as best they could to explain what really happened.

In the span of a few days, a shopping mall in Portland, Oregon and an elementary school in Connecticut became battlegrounds for the ones who bear a grudge against society.  Around thirty people have died in those incidents, including the gunmen who allegedly committed the act.

We're not here to talk about gun control.  That argument has been won long ago by the National Rifle Association, and the millions of gun owners who believe that the Second Amendment is the only law in the U.S. Constitution that counts.  Besides, there is no law on Earth that could have prevented what these men allegedly did.

Instead, let's talk about what mass shootings and other acts of violence have done to our society.  Schools have become minimum security prison facilities.  It is harder to get through an airport, a government building or a sports stadium without being wanded or body-scanned.  Well-meaning but ineffectual signs reading "Guns Are Banned On These Premises" are everywhere.  And thanks to the Patriot Act, freedom's not what it used to be.

Parents who took their kids to school in Newtown, Connecticut on the morning of December 14 believed they were in the safest place in the world, away from the noise and crime of New York City just 60 miles away.  Well, to paraphrase singer Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Newtown became the safest place they never found.  Because no matter where you go or what you do at whatever time of the day, violence will find you.  That's not a threat.  That's a fact of life in the 21st century we all have to deal with.

And we have been dealing with it for nearly a half century.  As much as we remember names of battles from wars past, the names of places where political or other acts of murder have taken place stand out as well:  Dallas.  Memphis.  Los Angeles.  Oklahoma City.  Columbine.  The World Trade Center in New York.    Virginia Tech.  Fort Hood, Texas.  Tucson, Arizona.  Aurora, Colorado. 

We'll keep adding to this list until the last man or woman standing on this Earth is holding a gun in their hand.  What happens next may or may not be their choice.

They Started a Joke

Mel Greig (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer)

You might have heard that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, is going to be a mother soon.  The news has been treated with almost as much fanfare as, let's say, a birth that allegedly occured around 2000 years ago near Bethlehem.

When the Duchess had to be hospitalized for a bad case of morning sickness, a couple of radio hosts from Sydney, Australia named Mel Greig and Michael Christian had the bright idea of calling that hospital to get some information on her condition.  Imitating the voices of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, they got through to a nurse, who thought she really was talking to members of the royal family.

Most everyone who saw and heard this thought the hoax was pretty hilarious.  Everyone, that is, except Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who got punked.  She was found dead a couple of days after the prank call.  At 46, she left behind a husband and two children.

Authorities in Britain are still investigating the cause of Saldanha's death, but the hospital where she was employed and the royal family have claimed that they had nothing to do with this.

Meanwhile, back Down Under, Greig and Christian are in big trouble.  They've been suspended by their radio station (2Day FM), their show has been canceled, and they're facing jail time.  The parent company of 2Day FM has banned prank calls, and is reportedly giving a half-million dollars to Saldanha's family as part of a memorial fund.

Prank calls and practical jokes have been a staple of broadcasting for decades, from "Truth or Consequences" and "Candid Camera" in the 1950s to "Crank Yankers" and "Punk'd" in more recent years.  So have those morning-drive "zoos" on local radio across the country, taking unsuspecting people and playing jokes on them, mostly without incident.  Now there's going to be a lot more scrutiny from station management, ownership groups and the FCC.

All this royal baby talk has been temporarily suspended due to this tragedy.  But it will start up again when the birth date gets near.  Lots of names have been bandied about, mostly on the traditional side.  Here's our little suggestion:  If it's a girl, we think the heir to Prince William and Duchess Catherine should be . . .  Jacintha.

One Saturday Morning In Kansas City

English: Jovan Belcher, a player on the Kansas City Chiefs American football team. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the morning of the first of December, according to police reports, 25-year old Jovan Belcher killed his 22-year old girlfriend Kassandra Perkins.  A little later, the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker drove to his team's practice facility, where he shot himself in front of his coach and general manager.

The following day the Chiefs played a football game at Arrowhead Stadium, defeating the Carolina Panthers for only their second victory of the 2012 NFL season.  It must have been hard for everyone involved to even think of playing the game under such circumstances.

Cancellation was never an option because the NFL doesn't do business that way.  Unless there's a natural disaster or a national catastrophe (think 9/11), life goes on as if nothing ever happened.  Heck, they once played an entire schedule of games two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

A few people have tried to turn this tragedy into yet another debate on the merits of gun control, including Bob Costas of NBC echoing the column Jason Whitlock of Fox Sports.com wrote when he delivered his sermon on "Sunday Night Football".  Sorry, but we're done talking about this.  Even after massacres involving an Arizona congresswoman and a Colorado movie audience, the National Rifle Association and its assorted gun nuts have hollered so much about their Second Amendment rights being taken away that they have intimidated Washington and most state legislatures into keeping things the way they are.  After all, guns don't kill people, do they?

We've also heard plenty about the physical effects of concussions and drug use among athletes.  What we haven't heard--and this is where we defer to the professionals in the psychological field--is how these also affect the athletes' personal relationships.

Most of all, this isn't about guns or head trauma or drug abuse.  It's about domestic violence.  It's about those who threaten their significant others if they don't do as they're told.  It's about women who simply can't leave a relationship no matter how dangerous it has become, especially if there's children involved.  Sometimes they end up dead, restraining order or not.

We don't know what really happened to Jovan Belcher and Kassandra Perkins to set off this chain of events on a Saturday morning in Kansas City.  But we do know that those who witnessed what happened are now scarred for life, and that a three-month old girl no longer has parents.

Some things we'll never understand.

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