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Thursday, August 30, 2007
James Brown, peanut butter, fat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• But not Vick. That comment window reopens Dec. 10. Pick another.
• Vick’s male parent is, however, another matter. Every troubled kid needs a dad who’ll pile on when he’s down.
• Please continue watching the front driveway. Either the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes crew or the mobile lab offering DNA tests to identify all the children in America caused by James Brown will be arriving shortly. Those identified, and abandoned without acknowledgement, should be doubly compensated from the Brown estate for the lives they missed.
• Ken Bernhardt, a marketing professor at Georgia State University, proves that his expertise is marketing and not peanut butter. In response to the question of whether Peter Pan peanut-butter lovers will return, Bernhardt opined: “People that like peanut butter don’t stop liking peanut butter if one brand goes out. So they’ve switched. The key is, how do you get them to switch back?” The way to get real peanut butter lovers to return to their favorite brand is to put it back on the shelves. Then tell us it’s there.
• Georgia ranks 12th in obesity among 10- to 17-year-olds and 46th in education, as measured by SAT scores. This is a parent problem: Make ‘em put down the fork, pick up the book.
• Clayton County becomes the first, or maybe second or third, county in Georgia to outlaw the death penalty via jury nullification. The jury opted for life without parole for Robert Dwight Foster of Covington, who beat a sleeping 5-year-old to death and seriously injured her 10-year-old brother with a tire iron because their mother had broken off a romantic relationship with him.
• Headline: “Elected office has its benefits.” Those being pensions and health care for part-timers. Run for public office. Part-timers should be getting pensions and insurance from their day jobs. If they have them.
• Truism of the week: “People don’t own rights to the view,” said John Lowery, president of Wellstone Communities LLC, of the Lanier Golf Club in Forsyth County. His company is planning to pay a reputed $24 million for the course, which would be redeveloped as housing. Neighbors object. Half the redevelopment battles are fought over view, the other half over congestion. Can’t keep what you don’t pay for.
• Fidel Castro has a favorable opinion of only one of the 10 U.S. presidents who’ve served during his reign. Ronald Reagan. Just fooling. Georgia’s native son’s the winner of the Friends of Fidel competition.
• A Democratic bias? The three TV networks’ morning news show are “overwhelmingly focused on Democrats” and “are actively promoting the Democrats’ liberal agenda,” reports the conservative Media Research Center. Analyzing 517 campaign segments on the three between January and July, the center found: 55 percent focused on Democrats, 29 percent Republicans; 69 percent of questions to D’s reflected a liberal premise, as did 82 percent of the questions to R’s; D candidates got 4 hours and 35 minutes of interview airtime, compared to 1 hour and 44 minutes for R’s. Rudy Giuliani was branded a liberal 11 times, Barack Obama once, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards never; Hillary got 61 exclusives, Edwards 44, Obama 41. Among the R’s, John McCain got 31, Giuliani, 26, and Mitt Romney, 19.
• Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) urges President Bush to appoint a replacement for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who “will unite the nation.” Code translation: somebody the Democrats want.
• A Swiss-based group that believes “the proliferation of small arms and light weapons represents a grave threat to human security” reports that in the U.S. there are 90 handguns, rifles and shotguns per 100 civilians, highest in the world. In Canada, Switzerland and Austria it’s 31. So? The relevant info is this: “There’s no clear relationship between more guns and higher levels of violence,” said Keith Krause, who heads the survey group. And why should I have three when somewhere in America there’s a poor victim who needed one? Oh, the guilt.
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Craig, Vick and images
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
People in public life who commit offenses that reflect profoundly flawed judgment — U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) or Michael Vick — can limp on in the public arena, but they can never regain the credibility they’ve lost.
Look at Craig, for example, and you see a guy who had the world engaged in reckless misconduct. The image of a U.S. Senator in a grungy airport bathroom behaving in a way that caused a cop to think he was soliciting sex is repulsive. It’s hard to envision him again in a position of authority. That’s true to a lesser extent of Vick, who achieved his position on the basis of talent, not respected judgment, except of course whether to pass or run under pressure. But nevertheless, see Vick in uniform now and the immediate image that comes to mind is of fighting pit U.S. Sen. Robert C. Bryd (D-W. Va.) so graphically described on the Senate floor.
The bathroom conduct, to which Craig pleaded guilty, will and should end his Senate career. As noted Wednesday by Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), “Senator Craig pleaded guilty to a crime involving conduct unbecoming a senator” and “should resign.”
The question, though, is a broader one. Can an individual, especially one in public life, express values that he or she sometimes fails to live up to in private life, without being considered a hypocrite? I say yes. All of us, for example, can recognize and preach the virtue of a lifelong commitment to a single spouse, especially when children are involved, though one — or more — of our marriages fail. It’s human to aspire to be better than we are, even when our own flawed judgment and choices occasionally reveals otherwise.
As a political party, certainly, Republicans or Democrats can construct public policies in support of family values, as they define them, while individuals within those parties fail personally.
It’s not Craig’s sexual preference or solicitation — something he disputes — that renders him unfit for public office. It’s the recklessness of the offense that calls his future judgment into question. Between Craig and Vick, it’s easier to imagine Vick again on the football field than Craig continuing in the Senate. Vick is a kid who never held an off-the-field position requiring good judgment. Craig did.
