The Obsolete Amendment

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Title: Arms | Date: 12/31/2007 | Photographer: Hrs | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Last Friday night, around 9 p.m. PST, 22 year old Elliot Rodger stabbed his three roommates in their shared apartment, then drove five blocks to a sorority house to kill the women inside. When they didn't open the door, he marched around the corner and opened fire at a random group of students, killing two sorority members and injuring a third.

When a grieving father, Richard Martinez, blamed his  son’s death on “craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA,” conservative pundits argued,
"if we pass gun control laws we should ban knives and machetes too, since Rodger killed three people with a blade."

The blade comparison doesn't hold water.  According to FBI Homicide data, if you break the U.S. homicide numbers down, for one year, by weapon type, and you get the following: Guns 68% (8,583), Knives 13%(1,646), Blunt objects 4%, Personal weapons (hands, feet) 6%, Other 9%  1,646 doesn't come close to comparing to 8,583. 

Additionally, if one combines the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, one would get a population roughly the size of the United States. We had approximately 30,000 gun deaths (8,583 of which were murders) in 2011, they had 112 gun deaths total. Should we believe this difference is the result of Americans being more homicidal by nature, or could it be because the rest of the civilized world has gun control laws?

GOP mascot, Joe the Plumber, addressed the issue writing, “Mr. Martinez and anyone calling for more restrictions on American’s rights need to back off and stop playing into the hands of the folks who merely capitalize on these horrific events for their own political ends. We still have the Right to Bear Arms and I intend to continue to speak out for that right, and against those who would restrict it — even in the face of this horrible incident by this sad and insane individual.”


The statement's as ignorant as it is insensitive.  Private citizens only have a right to bear arms if we omit some words from the Constitution.  The 2nd Amendment says, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  Since we have a standing army these days, can't we agree it's an obsolete amendment, and catch up to the rest of the world?
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Blogging Dilemmas

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Blogging is a tricky thing.  A good blogger wants to say things about the world, but doesn’t want to simply regurgitate what the mass media has already said.  It’s for this reason that I haven’t blogged lately.
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• Recently, I was thrilled to see Judge McShane overturn Oregon's Constitutional prohibition of gay marriage.  Some claimed McShane over stepped his bounds by overturning the will of the majority. 

I wanted to point out that majority rule has never been seen as a substitute for constitutional principles.  The Southern majority was in favor of school segregation, a ban on interracial marriage, literacy tests for voters, and other Jim Crow laws, but those laws were overturned because they were in direct opposition to the principles our Constitution is based on.  Unfortunately, a number of pundits beat me to the punch, so I didn’t feel like I could write that blog.

• Similarly, I wanted to question the wisdom of a candidate for Senate preaching against ObamaCare in liberal Oregon.

Before I could comment on the tactic, the candidate in question was revealed to have stalked her, one time, boyfriend.  Then, during a debate in Portland, the candidate, and doctor by trade, publicly stated her support for government sanctioned torture of terror suspects.  Suddenly, anything I could’ve said about her campaign message, regarding healthcare, seemed trivial by comparison.

• I wanted to say something about the girls from Chibok who were kidnapped by terrorists.

Everyone’s talking about the tragedy, but no one really knows anything, at least publicly.  If a covert op is in the works, we wouldn’t know it.  With the amount of conflicting information circulating through the media, I couldn’t say anything remotely intelligent on the subject.
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Being an engaged learned person, I have opinions on a variety of topics.  The trick is in being able to say something which isn’t already being said.
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Once OK - Once Taboo

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I can see the jolly African American singer, Fats Waller, sitting at his piano and merrily belting out the following tune in a dance hall in 1936.

"Say up in Harlem at a table for two,
There were four of us,
Me, your big feet and you,
From your ankles up, I'd say you sure are sweet,
From there down; there's just too much feet,
Yes, your feets too big.
Don't want ya, 'cause ya feets too big.
Can't use ya, 'cause ya feets too big.
I really hate ya, 'cause ya feets too big."
This song would NEVER fly today.  It’s offensive.  The song has the singer withholding love from a woman, because of a single physical deficit.   Hardly PC.  Yet, the song serves as a prime example of how artistic standards change in response to the values of an era. 

When women and minorities "knew their place," 80 years ago, songs such as "Your Feet's Too Big," and Ernest Hogan's "All Coons Look Alike to Me," were common place.  The moment the songs were over, or once Bugs Bunny escaped from Little Black Sambo‘s stew pot, very few people thought about the social or political ramifications of the piece. 

Today the NAACP, and other watch dog groups, would be up in arms over such artistic depictions.  Likewise, Hogan’s Heroes, the 1965 sitcom about the whacky goings on at a NAZI prison camp, wouldn’t last a season, now that most of us have seen pictures of gas chambers and mass graves.

While our sensibilities have evolved, and increased enlightenment has moved certain artistic slants to the taboo list, other topics are OK to talk about today, which were once kept hushed.  Gay culture/rights is, arguably, the best example of a liberated topic.  As late as 1974, it would have been unthinkable for Beaver Cleaver or Greg Brady to be depicted as having a gay friend.

The tide began to turn in 1979 when Officer Zatelli came out to NYPD Captain Barney Miller and the fictional captain took up the cause of gay rights in the work place.  A bold sitcom topic 35 years ago, now seems rather common place in an era that’s been privy to “Will & Grace,” “The L Word,” and “Queer As Folk.”

Similarly, until relatively recently, disabilities were rarely discussed in polite society.  Even the liberal leaning Kennedys hid Rosemary, JFK’s mentally disabled sister, in a nursing home and never acknowledged her publicly.  Plus, there were few, if any, handicapped characters within mainstream media, unless they were deformed and/or evil, such as Captain Hook & Bedford Falls' Mr. Potter.

These days we’ve been exposed to heroes with disabilities such as X-Men’s Xavier, “My Left Foot’s” Christy Brown, and San Francisco’s Chief Ironside.  Plus, we can’t watch TV without seeing ads for wheelchairs and catheter supplies.

There’s little doubt that as society’s values evolve our taboos change.  The once acceptable is now unthinkable, and the once shocking is now considered mundane.  Today popular music & fiction can talk about gay rights, disabilities, and other sensitive topics, but we can no longer mock groups, based on surface differences.

As our morality evolves, I wonder what will be acceptable tomorrow?
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May The 4th Be With You

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               Photo courtesy of Amazon's Affiliate Program. 

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....    It is a period of civil war. Rebel  spaceships, striking from a hidden  base, have won their first victory  against the evil Galactic Empire.    During the battle, Rebel spies managed  to steal secret plans to the Empire's  ultimate weapon, the Death Star, an  armored space station with enough  power to destroy an entire planet.    Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents,  Princess Leia races home aboard her  starship, custodian of the stolen  plans that can save her people and restore  freedom to the galaxy..."
Since first reading these words on May 25th, 1977, fans of science fiction have been enthralled with the universe of Star Wars.  The tale of laser wielding knights, bounty hunters, royalty, monsters, and villains spawned five more movies, and more novels, comic books, toys, games, t-shirts, posters, buttons, and other bobbles than I can count.  The franchise's fictional Jedi Order even inspired the formation of The Temple Of The Jedi Order: Church Of Jediism in Texas.

While most fans haven't adopted the saga as a replacement for their personal God concept, the franchise has made an indelible mark on pop culture and, arguably, society in general.  This Sunday, fans will be celebrating Star Wars Day with movie marathons and themed parties.  I even plan to "get my geek on" by digging out my Luke Skywalker t-shirt and watching a few of the films.


First recognized in Toronto, in 2011, May the 4th was chosen for its phonic similarity to, "May the Force," within the franchise's popular tagline, "May the Force be with you."  While this observance may seem to lay nerd centrically outside the box, it's actually not unique.

In England and Scotland, January 25th is known as Burns Supper, in recognition of the UK's premier poet—Robert Burns.  The celebration features a set menu of Scottish favorites, including haggis, which is touted in Burns' poem Address To A Haggis. Other poems are read, speeches of appreciation are given and, in the case of more formal gatherings, the night ends with a dance.

May 20th is recognized, by My Fair Lady fans, as Eliza Doolittle Day.  Based on the lyrics, "One evening the king will say, 'Oh, Eliza, old thing — I want all of England your praises to sing. Next week on the twentieth of May, I proclaim Eliza Doolittle Day,'" the day is celebrated with showings of  the 1964 film and lots of chocolate for fans to eat.  Wouldn't it be lovely?

Bloomsday is a celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, during which the events of his novel Ulysses (which is set on 16 June 1904) are relived.  On June 16th, in Dublin and elsewhere, enthusiasts dress in Edwardian costumes and retrace Bloom's route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrne's pub. Avid devotees have even been known to hold marathon readings of the entire novel, some lasting up to 36 hours.

Title: Robert B. Parker at the Manchester (N.H.) Library | Date: 05/17/2006 | Photographer: Manchester (N.H.) Library | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

I personally set aside January 18th, each year, to remember the life and works of Robert B. Parker (September 17, 1932 – January 18, 2010), an American crime writer who's work helped me learn how to write fiction in the first person while including omnipresent narration. His most famous works were  novels about the Boston P.I. Spenser. Since they were known as Bullets & Beer stories, I spend the day with some beer and one of his many novels.

Fiction and poetry, when it's at its best, speaks to us in entertaining, instructive, and./or profound ways.  They can put issues into perspective, answer questions for us, impress us with their structure and flow, and provide us with a temporary escape from life.  Given the impact fiction and poetry have on readers and viewers, it's not surprising that we assign days to commemorate our favorites.  Thus, the observance of Star Wars Day may not be that far outside the box after all.
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