Burnettiquette

Kill and be killed spared

I know, without a doubt, that someone - at least one person - will misinterpret this post to be an opinion on whether or not the death penalty is right or not. I also know that at least one person will try to make it a debate on liberals vs. conservatives.

If you're that person, you are wrong.

This is about figuring out when boys become men, and how to characterize young people who are just a couple years removed from outright childhood, but old enough that the old-school among us call them "young adults."

Earlier this week, a quartet of teenage numbnuts in Miami learned that they will be spared the death penalty, the ultimate adult punishment allowed by law, if they're convicted of murdering Washington Redskins up-and-comer Sean Taylor several months ago.

In case you don't have time to click the link, they decided to burglarize Taylor's home. They say they wanted money and stuff. But they brought a gun with them to do the job. Hmmm.

According to prior reporting and court records, the young crooks, who drove from the other side of Florida to commit their crime, didn't think anyone would be home. And yet they brought a gun. Hmmm.

Taylor was at home. And so was his girlfriend and young child. The youngest of this group, Eric Rivera Jr., was 17 at the time that he fired the fatal shot into Taylor, who brandished a machete in an apparent attempt to protect his girlfriend and child.

Because Rivera was under-aged at the time he committed murder, the U.S. Supreme Court says that he cannot face the death penalty, because executing "children" who kill is cruel and unusual. And because Rivera is ineligible to die for killing, the local court has decided that his co-defendants, all legal adults at ages 18 and up, will not face death for their roles in the murder.

I gotta tell you, even if you don't like the death penalty, you can't be comfortable with the notion that a violent 17-year-old is considered a child, unless that 17-year-old has diagnosable mental and emotional developmental issues. Everything I knew at 18 I knew at 17...the exception being my knowledge of women had increased ever so slightly by my 18th birthday.

Seriously though, when it comes to anything other than murder, most people will err on the side of adulthood when judging a 17-year-old's actions and his comprehension of those actions. But let a 17-year-old commit a wacked out crime, and he becomes "just a boy!"

A 17-year-old who's deemed to have good sense can join the military with his parents' or legal guardians' consent...and be trained to shoot big guns in defense of country. A 17-year-old can get a driver's license and drive a car, which if not handled properly can turn into a deadly weapon. A 17-year-old can drive recklessly and get pulled over for it, and be held directly responsible for his actions, without consideration for his age. A 17-year-old can make a baby. A 17-year-old can work and hold a credit card and a bank account.

And, without so much as an afterthought most of us would describe that stuff as adult behavior. This 17-year-old and his friends had the wits about them to plan a burglary...and bring a gun along.

So, whether you're for execution or against, keep your blood pressure down. This isn't about the punishment itself. It's about how old you have to be, before you can no longer say with a straight face you don't get it. Face it: there's a problem with the fact that this young "man" considered himself grown enough to commit the ultimate crime, but he is not considered grown enough to face the ultimate punishment. Again, I'd say the same if the ultimate punishment was just a few months at Club Med.

Yeah, yeah. We have to protect our kids. I know. But this kid doesn't need protecting. He has a gun to protect himself.

Barack Obama is white!

Ha! Made you look.

Listen, since we've been talking media in the past couple of posts, I had to take this opportunity to declare shenanigans on my industry, at least the part of my industry that keeps us informed on presidential politics. The first time I heard anyone declare shenanigans was on "Cow Days," season 2, episode 213 of South Park. A traveling carnival was in town. The boys scraped together money to buy Terrance and Phillip dolls at the carnival, and after they paid big bucks the dolls immediately fell apart. Well, the boys declared shenanigans, and the rest of the town got together in a mob and beat the carnies with brooms and garden tools.

I don't plan on beating any other journalists like carnies, but I should. Getting ready for work this morning I channel surfed between CNN, Headline News, MSNBC, and FNC, and I heard no fewer than six talking heads refer to Obama as "African American" AKA black, and potentially "the first African American" president. To be fair, I've sipped that Kool-Aid once or twice and not thinking before I spoke or wrote, referred to Obama as a black candidate.

It is short-sighted and disingenuous for my elevated peers to keep referring to Obama as black or African American. He is biracial.

And while his skin color...and Clinton's gender, and McCain's age shouldn't matter in terms of their qualifications, how we address those characteristics should matter to you.

This country has a history of using that whole "one drop" rule that basically stated anyone with a drop of black blood in his system is black. It was used as a means of holding some folks back, back in the day.

We're past that kind of blatant stuff now, I know. But this has psychological implications too. By completely ignoring the fact that Obama is half white, when discussing voters' feelings about his ethnicity, the media is perpetrating a fraud on the news consumer and  buying into to the racial hype that has contributed to people drawing tan lines in the sand this election season.

Let me say this one more time: if Barack Obama is black, then he is white.

He is half of both. So if my better-paid peers insist on continuing to refer to him as the black candidate, instead of a biracial candidate - on those occasions when his appearance is relevant to the conversation - then I am going to have to start referring to him as the white candidate. Why not? Clearly forcing him onto one side or another makes for better TV.

It hasn't been that many years since the media crowned clergymen from New York and Chicago the co-emperors of black people. Are we so desperate to crown someone new that we're gonna force the rectangle that is Obama into the square hole that is the mass media's designated spot for such royalty?

All this talk about making this race about substance and, um, not race, and we can't even use an accurate description of this man's ethnicity. Tsk, tsk.

And remember, when major party candidates finally turn you off for good, you always have this.

A rhetorical question

This one could've gone in the sports and crime categories.

Anyway, what is the purpose of prison?

Think hard. Seems simple, I know.

But I heard a fascinating debate about this earlier this evening on ESPN's E:60 show, where I learned that former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick has been playing football on his prison team.

The tidbit on E:60 led to a brief debate on prison? Punishment, rehab, both? Other? Or is the answer on a sliding scale?

I have an opinion. But before I share it I want your thoughts on it. And whatever answer you give, include an explanation, a "why," if you will.

The "truth" about media...and nothing but the truth

A couple of posts ago, I wrote in snarky tones about a substitute teacher in the Tampa, Fla., area who alleged that back in January his school district fired him, because an egg-headed student complained to his dad that he thought the teacher was a wizard, after the teacher performed a "magic"/sleight-of-hand trick in the classroom. The dad, also apparently an egghead (if the teacher's version is true), took the complaint seriously and complained to school officials, who in turn dismissed the teacher.

To be fair, the district says the teacher is full of it and that they dismissed him 'cause his methods and behavior in the classroom didn't meet their standards or rules for governing the students.

One blogger raised an interesting issue though in the comments section of that post, questioning the veracity of the story and whether or not the reporter who told it had given the entire story.

A healthy skepticism of the media is fair, just like the media is expected to have a healthy skepticism of the government and big corporations.

Call it a check and balance system. There's another side to this coin though - when that skepticism gets so overripe that it's no longer healthy, and people just assume outright that everything they get from the mainstream media - or how do they say it on talk radio, MSM? - is wrong or suspect.

And that's a damned shame. I can't count the number of times I've had friends and acquaintances and even strangers in the airplane seat next to me or on the bar stool next to me throw Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass in my face. It was their A-ha! moment. And it never occured to one of them that Blair and Glass, and maybe a dozen other egregious offenders represent the worst the news business has had to offer over the past 15 years. What about the other 300,000-plus newspaper folks (that figure's from a 2002 Census Bureau study, and includes all jobs at newspapers, not just reporting jobs)? Can't they get any love?

I personally know five former police officers who are either in jail or have been in recent years, because of crimes they committed while on the force. Three of those officers' crimes involved a violent assault. At the time, their department had about 1,800 sworn officers. By the standards that critics hold the media to, these few officers' actions should have made me fearful of the entire force.

I know two attorneys who lost their rights to practice after stealing from clients and lying about it. Does that make all attorneys suspect? Hmmm. Nevermind. Don't answer that.

My point is I hear lots of speculation from people who think - presumably from TV shows and movies and what not - exactly how news gathering and reporting works. And if they don't see what they think they should be seeing, they assume a reporter is being shady.

Don't be so hasty.

I'll leave you with this tidbit: When I was reporting in Milwaukee, Wis., I got an anonymous phone tip one day that a sheriff's deputy had driven drunk and injured a child and that the county sheriff was covering up the incident and protecting the deputy.

So I did what I was supposed to do. I informed my editor of the tip, and I beat a path to the sheriff's department for explanation. I was relatively new to the crime beat. So I didn't have a ton of sources other than the official ones. But I met with my sources on the sly. And they didn't know about the story. Then I went to the sheriff, and he wasn't immediately "available." Then I went to the department's records office to fish around, but the clerks were coy and insisted that without a name or a report number they wouldn't know what to look for. I gave them the deputy's name. They looked and told me there was no report available for any incident involving that deputy. I didn't believe them. But I couldn't prove otherwise. And so I returned to the paper and told my editor what had gone down. We both agreed that all I had at that point was an unsubstantiated rumor. So I'd hold onto the information until I could track down the sheriff and get copies of any related reports. And that's what I did.

So imagine my chagrin a couple days later, when a local bobble-headed talk radio host began railing against me on the air, accusing me of being in cahoots with the sheriff to cover up a dirty deputy's dirty deeds, accusing me of being a shady reporter, and accusing me of representing what's wrong with the MSM. Clearly the anonymous tipster had called the radio host too, 'cause the host yelled on the air that he knew that I had received a tip and was appalled that I had chosen to ignore it.

I was even more surprised when the radio host's first segment concluded and he went to commercial break, and my phone rang a moment later. It was him. He asked me if I wanted to come on the air and explain myself. I told him there was nothing to explain. He demanded an explanation off the air then. I told him fine. It's not complicated. I got an anonymous tip. I have not been able to prove or disprove it yet, since the sheriff isn't around and I have no documents to back it up. I don't believe in reporting unsubstantiated rumor. That's bad, right? So I've opted to wait until I can verify or prove false the tip I received. Silence. Then a clearing of the throat. Then, "oh!" He was surprised. I'm guessing he was suspecting something more ominous, like me admitting that I was protecting the deputy because he was my brother-in-law or something. But there was no sultry story. I just didn't want to report a rumor.

The radio host offered something as close to an apology as talking heads are able to give, said he didn't realize the back story, and said that in the next segment he'd correct what he'd said on the air about me.

He never corrected anything. So his listeners never learned the truth. But he did tone down his rhetoric toward me in the next segment. And a couple days later I found the sheriff, got an admission that the story was true - a deputy had taken a vehicle from the drug impound lot, drove it to a friend's barbecue, had a few beers, drove away, and then struck a car on the highway being driven by a poor kid who'd just earned a spot as a walk-on on the University of Wisconsin's football team. The kid's leg was shattered, and doctors speculated he'd never be able to play football again. The sheriff, who had said no report was immediately available 'cause the incident was still being investigated, ultimately suspended the deputy without pay. But he kept his job. My story explained all this.

And the talk show host? He continued to bash the MSM and accuse "us" of conspiring to hide the truth, while failing to share with his listeners the stories behind the stories.

Don't be a talk show host. Hold your judgments unless a particular reporter gives you a specific reason to believe he's shady.

Civic duties, the thin line between compassion and callousness, and all that jazz

So Mrs. B and I recently joined the board of our neighborhood association.

It wasn't that either of us wanted to be more formally involved in anything remotely connected to local government, But it was like we were both Michael Corleone, and the rest of the association board was the mob: the more we tried to get away, the more they tried to pull us back in.

That's a paraphrase by the way.

At any rate, we're in, and it appears we're staying.

So it was with great excitement and equal reluctance just a few days ago really, that we attended our first meeting as "official" types.

I am skeptical of government's ability to operate smoothly. But I'm no delusional hippie. I prefer my granola in a bowl of cereal. And I know the system we have, while flawed, is probably the best this planet has to offer. Regardless, that's another debate and another post.

As I crossed my fingers and mumbled under my breath wishes and prayers for a smooth meeting, ours got started...smoothly enough. We said the Pledge of Allegiance. The board's president introduced folks. Our city commissioner started giving us an update on official efforts to shorten the ho stroll in our neighborhood and build a protective hozone layer, or something along those lines. Gotta put the pimps and drug dealers out of work.

That part of the conversation went fine. If it had been church, you'd have heard "amen!" and "preach!" more times than you can count. But it wasn't church, and when the conversation turned to efforts to corral some out-of-control clients of a couple of social service agencies on the edge of our 'hood, all hell broke loose.

These clients, for the most part, are homeless adults.

Keeping that in mind, imagine a room full of angry home owners and a few renters - we're talking 50 to 75 people - going bonkers, shouting over one another, all trying to get a word in on how homeless guys who get served at the soup kitchen and other agencies have harassed their daughters and trampled their flower beds and trashed their lawns and even relieved themselves in residents' yards.

Folks were really ticked off. And the meeting fell to pieces after that. This part of the post is pretty anti-climactic. Suffice it to say my faith in the smooth function of government - and yes, I consider this city-sanctioned neighborhood association a form of government - is even weaker after that meeting. The last time I saw folks that out of control it was in the audience at the taping of a TV talk show that will go unnamed.

What really moved me in that meeting though was the anger. And for most of the residents it was all about the homeless, plain and simple.

And for the record, I'm not mad at 'em. I live on the opposite end of the 'hood and rarely see anyone homeless - maybe the occasional homeless person passing through the alley behind my house. But I sympathize with the middle class folks who worked hard to build beautiful homes. And then just two or three blocks from their homes, agencies that attract very troubled people set up shop. If I had a young daughter I don't know how I'd keep my cool if I walked out to my back yard where my kid was playing and saw a grungy dude peeking over the fence. I don't care if he's not in his right mind - actually, that's even more reason for me to be concerned - and theoretically didn't mean any harm. I'd be pissed. I might even want to get violent.

Here's my quandary though: I'm trying to balance my support for my neighbors with compassion for the homeless who come to our 'hood every day. At the meeting advocates for the social service agencies and for the homeless showed up en masse and loudly decried what they characterized as hate for the homeless by the residents of my 'hood. They scolded folks for lacking compassion and not recognizing that the homeless being served had "real" needs. I don't think it was hate at all though. On the contrary, I think it was people showing lots of intense love - love for their families and their personal space and the home lives they worked so hard to cultivate.

I get it. The homeless - particularly those without the mental capacity to fully take care of themselves - need help. My compassionate side gets it.

But my practical common sense side thinks maybe we can't care so much that we neglect the needs and concerns of the people who do have homes and do have the ability to care for themselves. For every homeless person in our 'hood who can't fully help himself, there's another who has his wits about him, who just doesn't care that he's violating other people's space by napping in a resident's yard or leaving an empty food container in a resident's driveway, or ogling a resident's kid.

It's like the whole legal standard of respecting the rights of people charged with crimes. What do we always say to that? "What about the victim's rights?"

This is the same argument, right? I don't want to be calloused. There but for the grace of God, etc. But if my compassion, care, and concern sit on a 0 - 100 scale, then I have to admit those feelings are tipping the scale in favor of the frazzled home owners.

Welcome to my new home...

What's crackin' folks? I'm trying to settle into this new blog setup, but I'm also trying to wrap up a story right now. So I don't have any words of wisdom for you - just thanks that you've migrated with me.

Until later this evening when I can do a normal post, check out my most recent attempt to earn part of my paycheck. We're bringing back "Unbuttoned with James Burnett." Some of you may remember that it's a Q&A I do with interesting personalities some regular folks, some celebs, and some very strange folks. Here's the first Unbuttoned on the rebound: Cosmetic surgeon mixes arts and sciences.

Peace and hair grease.