Random Stuff

What's crackin' friends? I'm not speaking to my frienemies today.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and thank you for weighing in on the first chapter of our race relations series. If you haven't checked out that post, feel free to take a minute, go back, read it and comment. Chapter Two will post Thursday or Friday.

So my weekend was pretty uneventful.

Saturday morning we stopped at a Miami-area mall for some crap I can't even remember right now. We had the pleasure of seeing auditions for the Miami Dolphins cheer leading squad. Of course, I didn't realize the whole set-up was for auditions, at first. Thankfully Mrs. B stopped me before I could wave dollar bills at the stage. And for some reason no one near me thought it was funny when I called out "skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet!" Seriously, if you get that joke then you listen to some really bad music...as bad as I occasionally listen to, apparently.

I'm kidding, by the way. I didn't yell "skeet, skeet, skeet..." at the would-be cheerleaders. They've gotta eat too. So more power to 'em. I hope they all made the team, and I hope they inspire better than 1-and-15 next season.

Anywho, we had dinner Saturday night with old friends from Milwaukee, plus one of their friends from here in South Florida. A local TV reporter, who used to work in Milwaukee also, and with whom I'm acquainted (but not friends), was supposed to join our group. But he was a no show. He didn't even call to say he was bailing on us. He is friends with the woman who organized the dinner. Tsk, tsk, TV reporters. This is why you should read your local newspaper and/or your newspaper's Web site. We're always on time. I admit I'm biased, 'cause we're a better, more thorough news source. Plus, pre-Mrs. B, I dated a couple of TV reporters back in the Midwest. They never knew how to turn off the "personality." Every conversation was like the 5 o'clock news had just started. And that makeup - the kind that's powerful enough to resist the hot lights on the set? - is toxic. I swear it ate a hole in one of my shirt collars once. Or maybe I'm just exaggerating that part 'cause I'm pro newspaper and local TV news bites.

We ate Thai. And I fell for the crispy duck...again. I order it repeatedly, because I hope one day it will actually be crispy. Once again though, I had the soggy duck...which sort of got crispy as it got colder.

Sunday I spent the afternoon scooping a fresh batch of tadpoles out of my koi pond. I got about 1,000 of 'em out before I tired of that exercise. It's not very nice to look at, but if I'm gonna prevent this from happening all summer, I may have to resort to putting a net over the pond to keep the mating toads out. Last time I broke out the net it inadvertently became a toad trampoline. I don't know if they couldn't see it, or if they just thought it would go away if they jumped on it enough, but it was a pretty funny sight - these giant toads hitting the top of that taut net and bouncing a foot higher than normal.

And Sunday evening I did homework, looking around for story ideas, hints of trends, and taking the race quiz at artist Faith Ringgold's Web site.

Quick takes on the news:

• Barack Obama messed up with his assessment that blue collar and rural folk are so bitter over the bad economy that they've turned for solace to their guns and religion. I'm no fan of Sen. Clinton. Actually, I'm no fan of any of the candidates, at least in terms of political positions. But even if she wasn't being sincere in her criticism of Obama, she was right about his comments sounding elitist. People don't go hunting, because they're bitter...unless they're Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Average hunters go, because they enjoy the sport. And while some bitter people may embrace religion in search for some kind of redemption, the average practicing religious person embraces their faith simply 'cause they believe it, it helps sustain them through good and bad times, and they like it. It makes 'em feel good.
• The current issue of Details magazine has a story about this year being the 20th anniversary of The Real World on MTV. Hard to believe that show is almost of legal drinking age. Even harder to believe they still call it "Real." I admit I was hooked on that first New York season, the one with Julie, the country girl, Eric Neis, the model dude, and Kevin Powell, the poet/writer dude, and those other people. I was a fan till I met Powell. He came to speak at my college in my junior year, and the Student Activities director asked me to shuttle him around and what not. So I did. I drove him to/from the airport, etc. And Powell, a couple of other folks, and I ended up out for dinner and drinks after his speech. The abbreviated version is he treated us like no 'count punks who should have been grateful to be in his presence. Not cool. First impressions, ya know?
• Dr. Phil is half a step away from becoming Jerry Springer.

Quick Hits from the Weekend

• Hussein - I have mixed feelings about this ongoing debate over Barack Obama's middle name. Barack Hussein Obama is his name, right? He hasn't expressed any shame over it. It's what his folks called him when he popped out of the womb. So what's the problem? You could argue that all the hype about Republicans using his middle name at campaign rallies for McCain is just that, hype. On the other hand though, while it's perfectly OK to cite someone's middle name when speaking about them, it's just not something we usually do. I mean I don't. I don't go around calling out co-worker's and/or rivals as Joseph Robert Smith, or Jane Sally Jones, or whatever. That sounds dumb. I'm more likely to call out Joe That Rat Bastard or something like that. BTW, I don't believe I have any co-workers named Joseph Robert Smith or Jane Sally Jones. But if I do, I apologize. My use of your name in this post was purely coincidental. So anyway, I have to ask why people in those campaign speeches are calling out Barack Hussein Obama. Don't insult me and say it's because that's his full name. Again, who ever calls you by your full name? The only people who have ever called me out as James "Something that starts with H" Burnett have been my mother when she was ticked off, and the dean of my college when he was handing out diplomas back in the day.
• I'm working a theory here. I'm going to drop you guys a single word, and I want you to tell me what it means to you. First, a clue: it does not involve the animal kingdom. Here it is: Cougar.
• And speaking of felines, does anyone make a scarecat? I need something to scare away the neighborhood strays. At least one of them has taken to using a bare spot in my front yard as a litter box. And if you know South Florida, then you know the soil can be very sandy. So a two-by-two-foot square of that soil is a loose cat's dream. Come to think of it maybe that's why grass won't grow in this spot.
• If you can't laugh at yourself then you're probably no fun to be around. I can laugh at myself. That being said, if you've been looking for a way to make fun of me, well, you haven't been trying hard enough. Even so, I'm gonna toss you a bone. Follow this link and when you arrive click number one for a better explanation of why I write and don't, say, do rodeo or fly space shuttles for a living. A story should follow in the paper tomorrow.
• How badly must you hate your job to do this to avoid work?
• I have once again changed my mind about health insurance. You may recall that I posted a couple of weeks ago that I thought the blame for our jacked up system and super high costs should be shared by every entity making a buck off the medical industry, not just insurance agencies. I included equipment suppliers, hospitals, etc. But then many of you scolded me for my lack of knowledge of the health care industry and shared anecdotes with me about how costs are so high because of insurance industry trickery. And I conceded in a subsequent post. However, I was watching 60 Minutes last night, and one segment was about a British guy, a former soldier and adventurer, who a few years back started this volunteer medical service called Remote Area Medical that involves a fleet of planes dropping donated goods into remote areas - like jungles - and then volunteer doctors going down to those areas and for a day or for a weekend providing medical care, from basic checkups, to C.A.T. scans, to tooth surgery. Anyway, R.A.M. is so serious about that volunteer label that they operate on a shoestring budget. Here's what I'm driving at: last year RAM's all-volunteer staff saw 17,000 people and did it all on a $250,000 budget. Seventeen thousand people. $250K. I take back my concession. If these people can volunteer their way to these sorts of numbers, then everybody involved in health care, not just the insurance companies, can find a way to charge a little less.

Ripped from the headlines

There's the news, and there's what we think of the news. I'm curious to get your take on the following. I've provided links too, in case you'd like to read the original stories in their entirety.

• A 28-year-old Pennsylvania man is in jail, and his 41-year-old brother-in-law is in the hospital, after they argued over Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the younger man, a Clinton supporter, stabbed the older man. There is no punchline. Except maybe that Stabby McStabber may not make it to the polls to vote for Clinton in Penn's upcoming primary.
• That first one leads me right back to Obama. The Associated Press ran an interesting story over the weekend about how black Americans - the story would suggest lots, even though I'm certain they only interviewed four or five - fear Obama's life is increasingly in danger the better he does in this presidential race. Some of the people in the story flashed back to Martin Luther King Jr. and how he was killed, and he wasn't even trying to run the country. For me, this story presents an interesting contrast. On the one hand it examines this man who has seemingly overcome the skin color millstone hanging around his neck and made himself attractive to people of multiple races and ethnicities. On the other hand it examines a place and time where people still fear his skin color could get him killed if he does too well. Which place and what time do we live in? Setting aside his politics, I think that fear might be rational. I mean there was a time I thought the only black person who could be president was Morgan Freeman, and even then he was usually cast as president in a movie when the earth was about to be destroyed in a day or two. Even comedians have always said that if we got a mixed presidential ticket - black pres. candidate and white VP candidate, or the other way around - some extremist from one race or the other would try to do harm to whomever the top dog was. I wonder.
• In my old stomping grounds in Milwaukee, Wis., a woman has filed a discrimination suit against a nursing home she used to work for - she quit; she wasn't fired, because she feels like she was hassled and menaced while working there for speaking Spanish on the phone to her mother, and with another co-worker. In case you don't follow the link, the woman's mother doesn't speak English. And she says she and the co-worker only spoke Spanish to one another in private, personal conversations while at work. She didn't speak Spanish to any of the patients or other staff, since apparently none of them spoke the language. Also, she spoke Spanish at work for more than six years. It was only more recently, when a new supervisor was hired, did the home present (or start enforcing) a "dominant language" policy: that you can speak whatever you want - even on the job - in a private setting and a personal conversation, but around patients you speak the language they're comfortable with and accustomed to. The home's management, after the arrival of the new supervisor, warned the woman in question about speaking Spanish around the patients, and even disciplined her. Their logic was it made some of the patients uncomfortable since they didn't know what was being said, and it took some of the patients' dignity away since they were in the dark. I don't know about this one. I've sat in restaurants where everyone around me spoke a different language. Did it make me uncomfortable? A little, I guess. I'm human. But it wasn't about me trying to mold people in my image. It was about a comfort zone, a lack of familiarity, especially when I was ordering and sometimes eating food whose description I already didn't understand. Living in an area like Miami, I hear all sorts of conversations going on around me that I don't understand. It doesn't bother me. It is what it is. I can't expect everyone to speak what I'm speaking, unless they're speaking to me. On the other hand, who knows? Maybe the nursing home really meant well and just intended to make their patients comfortable. It might not matter though, since an EEOC spokesman says the home's policy may already violate federal anti-discrimination law.

Code Words II

The last time I commented seriously about presidential politics, I weighed in on Delaware Sen. Joe Biden's "compliment" that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was a clean and articulate guy.

As you may recall, Biden caught heat from folks who asked this hypothetical: if Obama had been a well-spoken, clean cut, 40-something white Harvard educated attorney and freshman U.S. Senator, would Biden have still felt the need to compliment Obama's appearance and speech, or would he have taken them for granted?

I don't like thin skins, and if you read this blog regularly you know that already. Nor do I toss bombs like "racist" too often. But that hypothetical struck a raw nerve with me, 'cause I've been on the receiving end of such code-worded compliments - the kind that read between the lines "I'm impressed with you, 'cause I wouldn't expect someone like you to be so (fill in the blank)."

So keeping in mind that I don't do partisan politics, 'cause I think don't think donkeys are funny and elephants are only cool on the Discovery Channel, and I don't have a horse in this presidential race...other than Dave Barry, don't get mad at me if what I'm about to write is a shot at your candidate:

Anyone who is delusional enough to believe that crusty, old school Republicans are the only politicians, or even the predominate politicians, who condescend to ethnic minorities with coded language has not been listening very closely to the words of former Pres. Bill Clinton in reference to Barack Obama's potential abilities to run the country.

I can't fault the former president for vigorously advocating for his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential run. But when he does it by dropping between-the-lines hints that many minorities support Obama just because he's half black, then Clinton is essentially suggesting that black people are not smart enough to pick a candidate because they simply like his positions more than his opponent's.

When asked by a TV reporter to comment on Obama's South Carolina primary victory, Clinton replied in part that Jesse Jackson had also won the South Carolina Democratic primary in 1984 and 1988. Hmmm. Why mention Jackson's victory? Why didn't Clinton compare Obama's victory to his own South Carolina primary wins in 1992 and 1996? What about Al Gore's South Carolina primary win in 2000, or John Edwards' in 2004? Clinton singled out Jesse Jackson's victories, in my opinion, to diminish Obama's win as being significant only because he is half black, to suggest Obama's win was a "black thing."

Bill Clinton, the guy who gladly accepted the label of being the "virtual first black president" from some numbnut who didn't get a good look at the former president before making that assessment, would never dare scoff at blocs of white voters and suggest they support a particular candidate just because that candidate is also white. He'd never dismiss a white candidate's victory as being the result of that candidate's skin color.

Why, you ask? I don't know. You'd have to ask Clinton. Maybe he gives white voters the benefit of the doubt that they have sense enough to pick candidates for the right reasons. What kind of credit he gives white politicians to whom he's not married, I don't know.

It all sounds very racist and non-Democrat to me, at least according to how the TV talking heads have described the Democratic Party's collective tender heart. And to all the preachers, retired politicians, and former peddlers of self-defeating music video channels aimed at black people, who have publicly suggested Obama isn't black enough or "real" enough because he hasn't made a career out of his race, shame on you for perpetuating that sort of stereotype.

Remember, I'm voting for Dave. And if I were to simplify my beliefs and concerns to a 10 point scale, I'd say that none of the candidates from either major party get more than a few points. So I don't care if you love Obama, hate Obama, love Clinton, hate Clinton, love McCain, hate Romney, sort of like Huckabee, etc.

But the actions of some of Obama's rivals remind me that subtle, deceitful racism is alive and well, and not always from the people the pundits warned you about.