Scump's Planned Bullying of Americans for When He Turns 80

One of thmost visually unappealing US presidents i've seen is the current one, DonaldTrump,also very unpopular as a monster egomaniac, andwihout ny concience to speak of,is due in a couple of months to celebrate turning eighty, a spectacle that I imagine will go off with shameless overhype and overspending.In the meantime i'm predicting yet another tedious "No Kings"Saturday protest rally at a local city park which i plan to boycott. See you then, coppers, when  then you setyourselves up for your own police riot...                           coming over then to,roundus ofd geezers                                                                                                                                              off to jail9(if they don't shoot us irst). sountil then it's all ""HOOray for myself.''.this dude seems to rival convicted and executed serial killer Ted Bundywith his own death obsession, how many people he hates and how many he thinks he will get away with killing...beforea higher auhoriyintervnes in rescue. WithTrump, I truly seea villain of our times.hohewants to bring America to its knee and degrade our own lives.. I believe he has the heart of a murderer. BUT like Michael Corleone in the movie The Godfather PartII, OUR President feels he has to have his buffer between hi sown button-pushers and hi viictim. An it's always the victim's fault, right?                                                                                                            aa                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Just Finished Reading Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

I just finished reading Gilbert King's historical work Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America.  Published in 2012, it won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction the following year.  It's an account, earlier in Marshall's career before his tenure on the United States Supreme Court, of when he was an NAACP lawyer defending blacks across the country, and of a case in Jim Crow-segregated central Florida in the late 1940s and early 1950s where four young black man were framed in a white supremist justice system for a rape that probably never happened.  Called the Groveland Four case after the southern Lake County town at the epicenter, King examines the deeply entrenched racism of the white community there at that time, with an extremely corrupt, racist sheriff and deputy who would stoop to any level to see to it that Charles Greenlee, Earnest Thomas, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin would be executed for their alleged crimes.  If Marshall represented the virtuous, rescuing hero of this story then Sheriff Willis McCall would be the archvillain, closely tied in with the Ku Klux Klan and illegal gambling operations in the area.  On one evening outside Groveland, a poor rural white married couple, the Padgetts, got their car stuck in the mud...Shepherd and Irvin were together driving by, and stopped to help them get their car free.  Unsuccessful, the husband, Willie, got angry at them and after insulting them got on the short end of a fist fight with Shepherd.  That was the incident that later was turned into a gang rape allegation...the other two eventual defendants were nowhere near at the time and were sucked into the case by McCall.  Thomas, hearing that he was being accused of this capital offense, fled to the north Florida woods while the other three, while in detention, were beaten and whipped into forced confessions by deputy Yates and his partner...with McCall looking on.  I'll save relating the fates of these four innocent black men, two of them brave, returning World War II veterans, in case you decide to read or research the case for yourself.  Instead I'll discuss how the author chose to present it...

Gilbert King split his analysis of the Groveland Four case into sections whereby he described Thurmond Marshall's philosophy of defense and his different partners and associates within the NAACP, as well as his communications and relationships with the FBI, Florida governors, and the judges and prosecution.  The endemic racism of the South...and of Lake County, Florida in particular...of that time was emphasized as King related incidences of previous horrific lynchings of blacks.  This was crucial to the story as it showed the defense strategy Marshall would employ in trying to save his clients from the electric chair.  The citrus growers would use cheap black prison labor in their groves...Sheriff McCall would see to it that he provided the necessary bodies. The author also presented the corruption and ties to the KKK of the local law enforcement as well as the inherent racism of the local justice system at the time through the principals involved.  And of course, the sequence of events that first led up to the arrests and what followed to the end was revealed through the course of the book.  This is not one of your "whitewashed" Yankee Doodle Dandy American history texts that paint our past in generally idealized terms, but rather is an important testament to the underlying reasons for the racial divisions still plaguing our society in this Black Lives Matter era...I recommend it although its content is very disturbing and pulls no punches about the extreme violence that happened: if you're white and grew up in Lake County back then you most definitely enjoyed a much different experience than if your skin had been of a darker hue...

The Ongoing NFL Kneeling-at-the-National Anthem Controversy

I wrote early on in the 2016 National Football League season that I strongly disagreed with the tactics taken by then-San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick as he remained seated during the pregame playing of the National Anthem as a protest against how he perceived blacks and other minorities were being treated in this country.  Several players on his team and others joined him in this silent but ostentatious action, and at the time I stated that since the league was not going to take any disciplinary action against them then I would boycott the season.  And I did, until I noticed that that same league was making sure that the police and our brave soldiers were being honored during different halftime shows and decided that in an imperfect world, they were probably doing the best they thought they could.  Still, I objected to the protests...and multimillionaire Kaepernick, a sympathizer of brutal communist totalitarian dictator Fidel Castro, should have been the last person to emulate or be called "courageous" for taking his stand...or should I say "seat".   But it seemed that the furor over all this had finally died down until it looked as if all of the teams were blacklisting Kaepernick, a capable pro quarterback who was an available free agent but not being considered...and believe me, some teams desperately need a quarterback who doesn't totally suck.  As this 2017 season has begun and progressed, more and more players were seen kneeling during the anthem, and the league offices once again averted their eyes.  Then President Trump went off on one of his spontaneous rants the other day at a rally aimed at his whopping 35% base of supporters and angrily urged fans to walk out of stadiums and for the teams to fire players who refuse to honor our national symbols.  I thought it was interesting that during the Charlottesville incident when white supremacist racists demonstrated against the removal of a Confederate statue, his off-the-cuff reaction was that they had a legal permit to do so and then equated their actions with the counter-demonstrators.  But with these NFL protestors Trump decided to make a "moral statement" instead and come down harshly against them.  So let me see...when it's white racists protesting, our prez says there are some very good people among them and takes great pains to emphasize that it's their legal right...when it's blacks protesting against white racism, he says "Fire them!"  H-m-m, I think I'm beginning to understand where Mr. Trump stands on race...

In spite of disliking the protests at the playing of the National Anthem, I do respect and agree to a great extent with the reasons for them...blacks and other minorities really don't get a fair shake in this society, especially with regard to their treatment by police and how the justice system more severely prosecutes them.  But I'm standing back and watching how it's all being spun on TV and I have to wonder whether I'm the only one who discerns that the issue is being twisted around a bit.  To disrupt an assembly through protest is in of itself a deliberate act of disunity...to stand together at the playing of the anthem would have been the act of unity.  Instead, different teams are all pretending to be "united" by holding arms and doing other sorts of symbolic acts...but the unity is among themselves only, not with the fans or the people at large.  And Trump is consequently being portrayed as a "divider"...which I agree he most assuredly is, but not for the reason they're all giving over the air...and it's a shame, because I find myself at times agreeing with the president's positions on different issues: if he only didn't act as a wrecking ball in promoting his viewpoint.  The protesters most certainly are ALSO dividers, not unifiers, and it might be argued that their divisiveness is for a good cause...you're not going to hear me disagree on that one.  But I think that all of this symbolic stuff going on isn't going to make anyone's life better...if anything it will just entrench those whose mindsets need the most change.  In any event, our bumbling, blustering president has turned the protests from a social statement into a political one: if you're against Trump, then kneel, if you support him, stand...never mind how you feel about the honor and privilege of being an American anymore...

Sampan Off the Port Bow

If you've been anywhere near a TV set during the last few days and happened to hit upon one of those cable news channels, you've no doubt encountered the extensive coverage of the prolonged protests in Charlotte, North Carolina against the fatal police shooting of a young black man there.  At the same time, there is a parallel story going on in Oklahoma where a young white female cop is being charged with manslaughter after shooting to death a black man on a highway there.  As a matter of fact, these types of fatal encounters have been accumulating and have gotten quite beyond old...they are reprehensible.  Not just because some people got shot, or necessarily because the most highly publicized incidents involved black victims...I wonder if those in other demographic groups who have been killed in this fashion by law enforcement are being filtered out of media coverage because they don't fit the protesters' narrative.  No, the truly reprehensible...and frightening...aspect to all of this is the attitude that the police take to citizens under their jurisdiction when they decide that they are suspects: suddenly the lives of the very people they were supposed to be protecting...but whom they're now suspecting...no longer seem to matter very much...

Off and on for the last 52 years, the United States military, while avoiding officially declared wars, has instead been engaged in what our government has termed "police action", especially regarding the adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  The missions in these places have been to protect their populations against the "bad guys" (like communists and terrorists) and give the people there the chance to enjoy freedom and prosperity.  The problem with all this is that, once the troops were there occupying the land that others called their own, the soldiers often could not distinguish among those who were friends and who were foes.  So in a sense the locals collectively became the "suspects", and that tended to cheapen their lives.  You may have heard of the terrible My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam, which is an illustration of this point, as well as seeing on the evening news back then the burning down of villages in order to "save" them.  The movie Apocalypse Now, which depicted the overwhelming suspicion that a sizable segment of the American troops had of the native population, has a scene in which the Navy boat transporting upriver the movie's protagonist, played by Martin Sheen, encounters a Vietnamese junk boat, also referred to as a "sampan".  Someone yells out "Sampan off the port bow!" and, despite Sheen's protestations, the Navy boat's chief insists on stopping it and investigating.  The Vietnamese on it dutifully provide the necessary papers, but no, they are now "suspects" and so the boat has to be searched for contraband.  While this is going on, a woman in the boat suddenly lurches toward the back and the entire Navy boat goes berserk with gunfire, killing all of the Vietnamese on the sampan.  These were supposed to be the people that were being protected in this "police action" most of the world called the Vietnam War, but instead they were always going to be suspects from the soldiers' viewpoint and suffer the resulting peril...

I brought up the above illustration, admittedly in itself a work of fiction, to point out what I believe to be the main problem. Whether one is a policeman on patrol duty in this country or a soldier on "police action" duty in an occupied country, they should be respected and applauded for their brave service and sacrifices.  But the behavior of some of these courageous public servants seems to "go south" toward any individual once he or she gets put into the "suspect" category...and the value of that suspect's life becomes diminished as a result.  It is not for the police to administer justice or decide who is guilty.  I cannot understand how the only available option for subduing uncooperative suspects is to shoot them with deadly force.  As far as the racism angle being charged by protesters and movements like Black Lives Matter is concerned, I feel that there may be a tendency for some of those within the police forces to discriminately, even if done unconsciously, move African-Americans they encounter in the line of duty out of the category of the "protected" and into that of the "suspected".  And once you're a suspect, life can get very, very scary: make the wrong move and you're history, whether you are a Vietnamese running in a sampan or an American reaching into your pocket or your car...

NFL Shows Double Standard with "Free Speech"

The National Football League's double standard concerning the issue of free speech as it pertains to player protests during the national anthem and one team's attempt to honor its slain law enforcement officers is too much for me to bear.  Following the refusal of the league to allow Dallas Cowboys players to display a small memorial to the recent murdered policemen from their city on their helmets, the same organization is bending over backwards to appease players who refuse to honor our national anthem, either by remaining seated, kneeling, or pumping their fists in the air.  Now if you are going to side with the players who protested in this manner before yesterday's games because you agree with their agenda but oppose what the Dallas players want to do, then perhaps you are one who believes in freedom of speech only as long as whoever is speaking "freely" agrees with you.  On the other hand, you may agree with some of the reasons for the protests...as I do and am also concerned about civil rights violations of minorities by police...but think that this form of expression is unacceptable.  I know that our Constitution's First Amendment, which protects us from being persecuted or censored by our government for what we say or express, does not extend to private employees who are expected by their employers to abide by a certain standard of demeanor for the sake of the company's public image...or go seek employment elsewhere.  No doubt this also includes playing for professional sports teams as well.  And the National Football League is quick to apply free speech restrictions in the case of the Dallas Cowboys players wanting to honor their fallen police heroes.  But they then turn around and say it is these other players' "rights" to openly show their contempt for this country while publicly on the field, wearing their teams' uniforms, and getting paid their millions.  Something is seriously amiss here.  I followed the first weekend of the 2016 regular season to see what would come of all this after second-rate 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick started it all by refusing to stand for the anthem before an exhibition game. Sad to say, I am very disappointed at the outcome and plan to boycott the National Football League henceforth...

Just Finished Reading James Patterson's The 6th Target

So far I understand there have been fifteen books published in James Patterson's Women's Murder Club crime series.  I'm reading them in numerical order, having just finished The 6th Target.  This is another Patterson novel in which he shares writing credits with another, the collaborator again being Maxine Paetro.  As is the general pattern in this series, main protagonist Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco police homicide officer, is embroiled in trying to catch a seriously deranged killer. This time one of her best friends, a fellow member of the informal group called Women's Murder Club, has been shot and seriously wounded.  And there are two other ongoing mysteries as well: abductions of precocious children of wealthy families...along with their nannies, and a series of nasty crimes committed at the apartment complex where Cindy, another "Club" member, resides.  As I read on into the novel, I kept expecting these three distinctly separate story lines to come together at the end, but no...Patterson/Paetro apparently decided to take what could have been three different short stories and combine them into the format of a single novel, adding assorted subplots involving the personal and professional life of Boxer.  I wasn't very surprised, since the same sort of thing happened with the previous book in the series, The 5th Horseman...

These Patterson crime novels are pretty short and simple to read, and I have no problem getting hold of them.  But there is something disturbing about the attitudes of the "good guys", i.e. the police, in these stories.  They tend to be insulting and unnecessarily rough with suspects, something that is easy enough for the reader to support since he or she enjoys the advantage of already knowing their guilt.  But in real life, being picked up and interrogated and/or arrested for a crime is all on the side of our system of justice known as "presumed innocent".  However, the cops in Lindsay Boxer's SF Police Department seem to go on the presumption "guilty until proven innocent".  I've seen this kind of attitude in numerous movies...Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan series is a prime example...and several television police series.  Maybe the notion promoted in many of these shows that the police should be the arbiters of justice instead of the courts is why I have a sense of aversion to them.  It certainly doesn't help me to get through this Women's Murder Club series...

UF Public Trespass Arrest Raises Questions

Earlier this week, I picked up a copy of The Independent Florida Alligator free newspaper that someone sometimes leaves lying around on tables in my workplace break room.  What drew my attention was a picture on the front of a middle-aged-to-elderly man lying on his back on the floor, being held down by three police officers.  The picture's caption carried its own headline: "Trespassed".  The caption named the man being restrained, and, along with the short explanatory article on page 4, explained that he had been arrested for "public trespass" after he had gone to the University of Florida Library West...and the workers there had looked his name up in their "public trespass file" when he went to the counter to check out a book.  No information was given as to why this individual was placed on a public trespass list, though, giving rise to speculation on my part as to whether he was profiled for his appearance.  It could well be that the arrested man had been known to the workers for causing a disturbance or complaint in the library or elsewhere on the university campus.  Melissa Mihm, the Alligator's writer, and Kristan Wiggins, the editor, should have elaborated on the reason for his being placed on a "public trespass" list...after all, they already blew this dude's privacy (not to mention humiliating him) by naming him and showing his picture on the front page.  Moreover, this would have been a good opportunity to educate the reading public as to the nature of such a list as well...what are the criteria for putting somebody's name on it?  If this guy hadn't been causing trouble and was simply profiled due to his looks, would I suffer being looked up on a "public trespass" list as well, should I make my own presence known in Library West?  After all, I'm not exactly a "spring chicken" either and often receive (undeserved) automatic senior discounts in various business locales (I guess that's a type of "positive" profiling). Were I to walk into a place like this, which is overwhelmingly populated by people my own children's age (and below), I might stand out as well.

The point I'm making here is that the Alligator was derelict in not providing enough information to support their own front-page story.  This is the type of story that can only give rise to rumors and suspicion, especially in regard to how institutions and the state treat the population at-large.  After all, supposing that this individual had elicited suspicion from the library staff simply for his appearance and not by recognition for an earlier behavioral infraction of his, this would be an example of profiling...does the library staff actually scrutinize people who walk in there by their outward appearance to determine who "belongs" and who doesn't?  A troublesome question...

Presidents Past, Present, and Potential

Ever since the so-called "Bridgegate" scandal that I believe was designed by the opponents of New Jersey's governor Chris Christie to eliminate from presidential consideration the one Republican in the country who was consistently outpolling Hillary Clinton, his name has faded and suddenly, almost out of the blue, former Florida governor Jeb Bush has been getting a lot more press attention.  H-m-m, I'm sure that's just a coincidence, or is it...

I've always had a higher opinion of Jeb than his brother George W., and wish that he instead had served as president from 2001 to 2009.  But back in 1994, when the two brothers were simultaneously running for governor in two important states, George won Texas in a squeaker over Ann Richards while Jeb lost Florida, also in a squeaker, to Lawton Chiles.  This gave George the political advantage over his brother by already having been in office for more than one term before the 2000 election.  Meanwhile Jeb, who ran again in Florida and won in 1998, was only in there a couple of years and was behind his brother on the national political scene.  Had things happened just a tiny bit different in Texas and Florida in '94, our history no doubt would have been vastly different.  Of course, the same could be said about the 2000 presidential election when, in Palm Beach, Florida, a misguided "butterfly" ballot design caused thousands of voters to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore, handing that state (and the election) over to Bush by just over a 500-vote margin.

George W. Bush, who liked to pride himself as being a "decider" while in office, nevertheless was heavily dependent on his vice-president and advisors for the direction that led to his "deciding".  From my experience living in the state for which he was governor for eight years, I feel that Jeb is someone who tends to think more for himself and uses those around him more for information and less for direction.  But please don't get the notion that George W.'s emphasis was necessarily wrong: our current president Barack Obama also seems crystal clear about his own sense of direction for the country...but unfortunately often seems to display an unsettling and frustrating degree of indecision.

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC continues her almost nightly obsession to nail Chris Christie as the mastermind to the bridge closings on the Hudson River late last year that tied up traffic for a while.  But this story has lost its traction and I don't hear too many others, even on MSNBC, which is noted for its more liberal, pro-Democratic Party leanings, pushing this story.  But the damage has been done to Christie, at least in the short term.  Don't think that I'm being partisan here, though.  What happened to Christie recently is nothing compared to what I believe will be unleashed against Hillary Clinton in the next couple of years by HER opposition in the media (especially on Fox News Channel)...

Are We Becoming a Police State?

I just finished reading a very disturbing article from the Gizmodo website revealing how ordinary citizens are being arrested, jailed, and criminally charged for videotaping their public encounters with on-duty police officers. The rationale for this persecution is a wiretapping law designed to protect people's privacy. How completely upside-down to apply it in this manner, especially when it is often the privacy of the ordinary citizen that is being threatened by the officer!

Video-taping public encounters with the police is the only sure way that a citizen has for protection against harassment or false accusations on the part of our public "protectors". Some of the cases that have occurred are being challenged in court, but the overall effect of prosecuting those who are only trying to protect their own civil rights is to intimidate people in the presence of the police and to aggravate distrust of civil authority. Not a very good way to promote law and order, in my opinion.

After all, police testimony against a defendant is still almost automatically accepted by juries. Unless, of course, the defendant can produce contradictory audio/visual evidence that clearly refutes that testimony. It seems to be a blatant violation of the US Constitution to deprive people of the right to defend themselves in the best way possible. Otherwise, if this prohibition against taping police encounters stands, police can arbitrarily trump up any kind of charge against people that they disapprove of, based on lies about them creating a "public disturbance" or "resisting a police officer".

I hope that we are NOT becoming a police state, but right now the prospects don't look so bright. This is the sort of situation that I would have expected in closed, authoritarian third world countries, not the good ol' freedom-loving, flag-waving USA!

Immigration Reform and Arizona's Law

President Obama has decided to avoid tackling the sticky immigration reform issue this year before the 2010 midterm elections. While this may not sit very well with many within the Latino community, it is nevertheless probably a savvy political move. As I have stated before, it will be the issues being debated just before the election that will most intensely galvanize various interests into disproportionately going to vote on Election Day. The calculation is that the Democrats would lose more by appearing to be opening up the borders for a mass influx of Mexicans, even though the proposals circulating around so far seem more in line with the previous Republican Bush administration, supported then by (never really was a maverick) senator John McCain. Having already seen how the GOP is so willing to blame the Democrats for their own proposals (in health care reform, Republican Senator Johnny Isaakson's living will amendment was the source of the "death panels" and "killing grandma" hysteria last summer), it is no surprise that the elected majority party may not want to confront another legislative behemoth reminiscent of the recent struggle to get health care reform passed through Congress.

Regarding the newly passed law in Arizona giving that state's police officers much greater personal latitude in selecting individuals out of the general population to demand "papers" documenting their legal status in the U.S., it should be noted that Rachel Maddow showed the connection with racist white supremacist groups and this new law. And why not? If I'm walking the streets of Mesa or Flagstaff, the cops aren't going to bother me because, to them, it's clear that I obviously look like an "American" (i.e. I'm white). It doesn't matter that those who support the new law say the police won't be profiling people "waiting outside for the bus". If they are ignoring people who don't "look" like they might be illegal immigrants, than that constitutes an unacceptable racial profiling in itself. So that's why I oppose this law, although I do understand the concerns of legal residents in the region about the recent rise in violent crimes. There has to be another way.

I have a suggestion: you don't need another bill to more aggressively enforce the immigration laws we already have on the books. Our president should quickly act to assert as much federal authority into this matter as legally possible, both to protect legal residents from crime and to ensure that people won't be persecuted by the state and its police force because of their appearance. Arizona, as far as I know, is not an independent country. Its border with Mexico is not only its state border: it's our NATIONAL border. And thus this a national issue on which our federal government, under our president's executive power, has the legal right and responsibility to assert itself for the NATIONAL interest. So Arizona can take its precious new state law and stuff it, as far as I'm concerned.

The Void: Everywhere and Nowhere

A terrible incident occurred in Gainesville a few weeks ago. A Ghanan doctoral student enrolled at the University of Florida, alone in his apartment, one evening began to create a great commotion, causing much anguished noise that concerned his neighbors. One of them called the University Police (the same department of Andrew Meyer “don’t Tase me bro” infamy), who then proceeded in careful, methodical fashion to break down his door, Taser him, attack him in stepped up fashion and finally, when the visibly very upset man wouldn’t lie down and say “uncle”, instead waving around a crude metal stick at them in self-defense, carefully aimed and shot him in the head. In his own apartment. A man hurting no one, but in great emotional distress. The brutes.

The student, it turns out, was panic-stricken over fears that his visa would not be renewed and he would soon be forced to leave the country. But to me, it mattered not what his reasons were for causing the disturbance; the police were completely unjustified in using deadly force on him. Which brings me to a feeling I sometimes get when out in the lonesome public environment too long: the Void.

The Void is an inner state of mind, one of alienation, hopelessness, and stress. It envelops me sometimes when I am out in public too long and I begin to feel that everyone around me regards me as a suspicious stranger. I tend to think that the police are all eyeballing me to see whether or not I fit their criteria for becoming a potential victim of theirs, i.e. a potential arrest. I don’t always feel this way, but when a wave of the Void sweeps over me, I imagine it is something like how the hideous dementor monsters in the Harry Potter series would make people feel if they really existed. The best remedy for this feeling, I have discovered, is simply to go home and revel in my seclusion and rightful, “safe” privacy.

But now apparently the cops can bust down anyone’s door and, if they employ the “correct” procedure, can bully, arrest, Taser, or even shoot a private resident just on the merits of that individual’s expressed response to their uninvited, unwelcome, and often quite frightening intrusion.

So now I wonder: is the Void everywhere? Can I really get away from it from sealing myself within my home, drawing the curtains, and locking the doors? And if I can never safely get away from it, perhaps I need to reconsider the legitimacy of my panic in public places.

Gainesville, as far as I know, has no curfew. I can walk or run down any publicly owned street I want anytime I want. And I owe nobody any explanation for my presence. As long as I am civil to others in public, they have no cause to act in any way against me. I am no longer a stranger; I belong here and anywhere I decide to go. Those who I earlier feared may have cast me in such a category have diminished themselves through their fears, if it turns out that they really regarded me this way. For the most part, though, I believe that most people around me actually regard me with the utmost indifference, completely immersed in their own vanity and personal narratives.

So if the Void is everywhere, then it is really nowhere, either. I belong here, and so do you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. By the way, the student in question survived the shooting, but his life hung in the balance for several days. And he is now being subject to criminal prosecution for his entire horrible ordeal!

No More City Park Articles For Now

If you have been following this log over the past few months, you may have noticed that (1) I had been writing articles (with photos) describing various Gainesville city parks and (2) I stopped doing so. Why?

Well, if you look at the pics, it should be apparent that most of these parks simply have a playground/picnic area and a looping walking trail through a wooded area, with a small running creek running through it. Some parks have better play areas than others while some excel at the trails. But the experiences, at least to me, are pretty similar. So why keep visiting new parks that are minor variations of each other? But there were a couple of other factors that curtailed my interest in this "explore local parks" project of mine.

The various Gainesville city parks were listed and described on their own website. There were two "parks" so described that were relatively close to my neighborhood, so I went out to explore them. And found that they didn't really exist, at least not yet. But the website had them already open, with walking trails and play areas! So phooey on them for that!

And then there was the time that I took my wife to walk with through the pretty little Cofrin Nature Park off NW 8th Avenue. It was almost twilight as we got out of our car, entered the park, and walked through the woods on the trail. A pretty pleasant experience, I might say. But as we left the wooded trail area and approached the park's exit, we noticed two police cars parked right there. We asked a policeman if there was a problem, and he replied that someone reported a suspicious-looking man in the park. They obviously didn't regard US as suspicious because we were a COUPLE. But later I wondered to myself, what if it had been just me going by myself through the park? The police would have automatically regarded me as a suspicious type, possibly the one who had been reported, and who knows how events would have progressed after that. So my initially positive experience walking through a park with my wife ended with a sense of paranoia about the police. I recognize that part of this is coming from me, but part of it is also, I am convinced, from the tendency of the police to discriminate in their treatment of people based on their demographic classification (gender, race), dress, and grouping (solitary, coupled, or in a larger group). And often finding myself being a "solitary" person in public, I find that to be just a little bit threatening.

Boston Cop's Racist E-Mail

Talk show host Glenn Beck, for whom I actually felt some respect when he worked at HLN, has gone completely off the deep end ever since he switched his employment to Fox News Network. It seems that Beck has been trying to out-Hannity right wing extremist Sean Hannity with his hateful comments about anything and anyone whose political sentiments are anything left of far right. Now he has gone and called our president a racist because he had the audacity to question a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer's arresting of a prominent scholar in that scholar's own home. Wait, let me fill in the blanks: the officer was white, the scholar was black, and our president is black. Oh yeh, Glenn, that's got to be racist!

Now comes the news that in Boston (lying next to Cambridge) one of their police officers circulated a mass e-mail calling that black scholar a "banana-eating jungle monkey". But hey, when he was confronted with his words, Officer Justin Barrett said, "I am not a racist". And Barrett, who as an officer "of the law" carries a gun and Taser and handcuffs and whose testimony against suspects as a policeman carries undue weight in court, retained an attorney who said that his "comments were taken out of context".

Yes, attorney, let me read a little more of the e-mail to put it in better "context". Your client stated in it that had he "been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey [Barrett] would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance." You're right, attorney, the context does change the meaning. It makes it worse.

Barrett was placed on administrative leave after the e-mail and may lose his job. Who wants anyone to lose their job? But shouldn't there at least be some accountability expected for the officer's actions? Nevertheless, I see ahead in my crystal ball the following events happening:

---Glenn Beck not only refuses to call Barrett or his comments racist; he turns it all around and further accuses President Obama somehow of causing Barrett to lose his job or suffer whatever disciplinary action he incurs.

---Sean Hannity gets (possibly former) Officer Barrett on his show and turns the racial-epithet spouting cop into a folk hero for the far right wing nuts, with the policeman having allegedly been hounded out of his job for political incorrectness by the intolerant left.

---Heads of various police and law enforment organizations hold another press conference, once again full of indignance and arrogance, and once again demanding apologies from whatever party they think that they can accuse of something. Without finding fault with Officer Barrett, for whom they collectively demand full reinstatement.

---President Obama DOESN'T invite this sorry dude to the White House for beer and pleasant chatter.

---The GOP targets for fund-raising white supporters of theirs with mass mailings capitalizing on their racial fears exploiting this sad incident, making it out to be an example of the administration behaving in a racist manner against whites. And making whatever happens to Barrett an example of political correctness gone wild.

Who knows what actually will happen. I do have a pretty cynical regard, though, for the right wing press. As well as for the way the police ominously seem to be setting themselves apart as a class superior to the rest of Americans. As for the Republican Party, well, that's the sorry state of politics nowadays. But I am pretty sure of my Obama/no beer prediction being a "slam dunk"!

The Professor and the Policeman

On the night of July 16, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was probably very tired from his trip to China and was also probably not in very good spirits when, upon finally reaching his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he discovered that his front door was jammed. With the assistance of his driver, though, Gates was able to finally enter his home. Meanwhile, a neighbor, seeing two men apparently trying to break into a house, called the police (wouldn’t you?). The Cambridge police responded in the person of Sgt. James Crowley, who entered the house and asked Gates for identification. The situation, which called for politeness and restraint on the part of both parties, escalated when Professor Gates began to accuse Crowley of racial profiling. Even when the matter had been settled and Sgt. Crowley was leaving the house, Gates wouldn’t let up and followed him, ranting angrily. Finally, Crowley arrested Gates on the charge of disorderly conduct. So an honest misunderstanding that could have been resolved in less than a minute has blown up into a national news story, with even President Obama weighing in (and later probably regretting that he did).

On Friday, heads of different police organizations held a press conference. They all appeared to have hurt feelings because Obama had offhandedly commented before that the arresting officer had acted “stupidly”. The various police representatives then went on to weave the sometimes-fictional narrative about how great, professional, and enlightened the police were and how Obama owed every policeman an apology for his careless remark. And Officer Crowley was there too, appearing stone-faced and offended.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Professor Gates could have defused the situation by trying to be a bit more understanding and a little less combative. But as far as I can tell, there was no reason for the officer to handcuff Gates in his own home and take him to jail when the incident had already been resolved and the professor obviously posed no threat to anyone.

Once I got a job working at a large hospital. Regardless of what type of work that new employees were engaged in there, they all had to attend an orientation meeting. In that meeting, the one thing that was heavily stressed was that, since the hospital was a place of very high stress and anxiety for its patients, their families, and visitors, all employees should take great care in exercising compassion and restraint when dealing with anyone who displays anger toward them. Because, after all, people are often not quite themselves in a hospital and often have some very unpleasant things weighing on their minds. In other words, we new employees were advised to soften our reactions to verbally abusive patients and visitors.

In like manner, Officer Crowley should have recognized the very sensitive matter of entering someone’s private domicile (which he had to do as part of his response to the reported break-in) and then making that person justify his residence there. And yes, also recognize that the resident was an African-American who was honestly convinced that he was being racially profiled. And yet this policeman held this obviously emotionally-upset citizen whom he was supposed to be protecting to the same standard of behavior that someone standing out in public would be expected to conform to. And that is unreasonable.

After seeing the public demonstration of self-righteousness and arrogance displayed across the board by the policemen at the press conference, it is not surprising to me that the police in America have a very serious public relations problem. And not just among African-Americans. As I have written before on this blog, my perception of them is that they tend to regard the general population as a “suspect pool” instead of as the people that they are being paid to protect. And if a policeman is so thin-skinned that he can’t take a little verbal abuse from someone after entering their own home without their permission, then he should find another profession. But if he does, then he should probably stay away from hospitals as well!

Cops and Gator Football Jocks Team Up

I read in the local newspaper a few days ago that the Gainesville Police Department and the University of Florida football team were going to “team up”, with Gator players riding with the police on their patrols. This is apparently a public relations stunt designed to repair the reputations of the two sides, both of which have received some bad press recently. The police have been implicated in an egg-throwing vandalism incident and several UF players have been arrested for various crimes recently.

Which brings me to the following potential scenario: Tim Tebow is riding next to Officer Smith, and Officer Smith gets a call that leads to…you guessed it…a physically unruly teammate of Tebow’s caught breaking the law. And the policeman calls out for Tebow to help in subduing the suspect. Now I ask, “WWTD” in this type of situation?

Or take another scenario. An irate motorist has been pulled over speeding a little over the limit or for some other minor infraction. How is seeing a University of Florida football player sitting next to the ticketing officer going to improve the police’s standing with that motorist? Wouldn’t that just serve to diminish UF’s standing instead?

It also sets up a dilemma at coffee shops. Do the employees offer free coffees to both the police and the football players, or do the jocks alone have to pay for their drinks? And if they’re given free drinks, isn’t this a violation of the NCAA’s asinine rules about material compensation for their supposedly “amateur” athletes? Wait until that new obnoxious, tattletale Tennessee coach hears about this!

Well, I read about this teaming up of Gator pigskin jocks with cops a while back and I haven’t seen any such pairings. But then again, other than with Tebow, how would I recognize an individual as being a Gator football player anyway unless he was in his uniform, complete with helmet and shoulder pads? Now seeing them like that in police cars would definitely change the public’s attitude toward both parties. Toward extreme laughter.