Burnettiquette

Real Housewives Don't Eat Their Young

I shouldn't even admit to wasting quality time watching any of those Real Housewives shows. Can't imagine what it does to my reputation as a sane person. But Mrs. B is sleep, and I'm bored and don't feel like working on any serious writing projects right now. So I'm watching Real Housewives of New York City.

But if ever there was proof that money doesn't guarantee anything but...money, it's that show.

You have a collection of wealthy women - some self made, some wealthy via marriage - who have access to the nicest and priciest things in their community.

And the best they can do is cannibalize one another over perceived slights and delusions of grandeur.

We should be so lucky to have problems limited to which social circles we're allowed to walk in.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go update my best friends list.

ShamPow!

I shouldn't crack jokes, but I can't stand those infomercials, featuring that guy with the Popeye face, pitching the ShamWow shammy cloth.

Anyway, that guy, Vince Shlomi, 44, was in my backyard recently and got busted for punching a hooker.

That can't be good for the marketing of liquid absorbing cloths.

Do not love thyself Crespo style!

I don't know if you've ever heard of the merengue singer Crespo. Regardless, he was a headline last night on MiamiHerald.com. Apparently Crespo was caught giving himself a hand shake while on a flight from Houston to Miami.

A female passenger said Crespo was attending to himself under an airline blanket, when the blanket slipped and the contents of his, um, shifted into view.

The female passenger told a flight attendant, who told the pilots, who called ahead to Miami so that a hazmat team could be standing by when the flight arrived.

I'm kidding about the hazmat team, but note to self: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever again ask a flight attendant for a blanket...or a pillow for that matter. If the AC is too high on the plane, shake off the cold, and grin and bear it.

What got me most about this was Crespo's reply to police in Miami, when they asked whether he had indeed been juggling his goodie bag on the plane: "I don't recall doing that."

"I don't recall doing that."

Hmmmm. I was thinking he'd say "No!"

I suppose maybe Crespo answered that way 'cause he's morally opposed to lying. Then again, if there was a choice of what to be morally opposed to, I'd think touching and exposing one's self in plain view on an airplane would outrank lying.

Crespo, if you make it through this mess, fire your PR advisor and image consultants. I'm relatively cheap, and if we could rewind the clock I would have saved you some grief and advised you to go into the bathroom. Those airplane bathrooms are hardly good for what they're actually meant for. May as well get some use out of them.

And next time, just say no...before you get the urge in public.

BONUS MATERIAL: Crespo's biggest hit to date has been his song Suavemente (Softly). He he he he he he!

PS. Follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

AIG In Layman's Terms (Not Mine!!!)

Sorry folks, I don't have any wisdom about the bailout messes, other than to say as an Average Joe I feel like taxpayers have been bent over without the benefit of receiving kisses first.

But, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has broken it all down here in as plain language as you're likely to get.

I don't care which political philosophy you've "insured" your theory on the bailout with. I found Taibbi's explanations mind-blowing.

The irony is I know so little about high finance that I don't know if Taibbi's account is accurate and/or fair. But if it is...accurate and fair, then bravo to him.

So if you have a spare 15 minutes (20ish if you read slowly), check out his article in the link above. I finished it angrier than I was when I started reading. And that says a lot, 'cause I was already fuming - just not fully sure what I was angry about.

Cosby Show turns 25....soon

Happy Saturday, friends and frienemies.

I just wrapped up a pleasant afternoon of recording radio interviews and ambient sound for a story I'm working on about something I'll call "pubic relations" for now. I'll become less vague as the project moves forward.

In the mean time, even though its actual "birthday" isn't until September, when mine happens to be, I thought I'd take a moment and pay tribute to "The Cosby Show" for what it has contributed to life and perceptions in the United States.

Yeah, I know it's just a TV show, and I've never been much of a fan of Jello Pudding Pops or Coogi Sweaters. But "The Cosby Show" helped me in a tremendous way by breaking and defying common, if silly, stereotypes about black folks.

I had a great example in my parents and how they operated our household. Unlike the Huxtable parents, neither of my folks was or is a doctor or a lawyer. They're accomplished. But they are and were normal, and honest, and proudly simple.

They didn't feel the need to impress anyone. They didn't show off, though they could have. My mom has been recognized widely for her community service. My dad would be aw shucks about it, but he's a widely sought after speaker in some pretty big religious circles. And during his military career my dad was a U.S. Navy Sailor of the Year.

Most importantly, my folks marched to their own beat when I was a kid. Sometimes that beat had them in line with the rest of our community. Sometimes not.

To an adult, the stuff I just listed about my folks and family is "neat!" To a kid? It's little more than additional reasons to get picked on by the cool kids and called a nerd...or, in my case, when I was younger, occasionally being called "not black enough." My point is, like a typical tunnel-visioned kid, I didn't appreciate the lifestyle my folks had set for my sister and I until after I saw that it was popular outside our little home.

So when "The Cosby Show" debuted in the fall of 1984, even as a young boy I can remember thinking how cool it was that this regular black family was causing such a stir, breaking stereotypes and defying common but silly assumptions. Even though it was just a bunch of actors, I can remember swelling with pride and thinking "We're sort of like them. And if they're cool for dressing sharply, speaking well, and trying to get good grades, and working hard, then so are we!"

I used to cringe when some fathead in school teased me and called me some form of "Cosby," 'cause it was the pop culture equivalent to teasing the smark kid for scoring well on a test.

In retrospect I should have thanked the fatheads for comparing me to a Cosby. It was a pretty damned high complement.

I have friends who've complained for years that "The Cosby Show" wasn't realistic. But by who's standard? Your realism is about how you live. The Huxtables represented a lot of black families who never made headlines because they hadn't done anything wrong.

PS. Don't forget to follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Teenagers, Rape, Geese, and Ganders

I love a good debate. I know many of you do too. So chew on this story linked today on The Daily Beast:

In Sheboygan, Wis., in January, a 17-year-old boy was arrested, held in jail for a week in lieu of $1,000 cash bond, and charged with felony sexual assault for having sex with a minor - his 14-year-old girlfriend. Within days, also in Sheboygan, a 17-year-old girl was arrested for having sex with her 14-year-old boyfriend. The 17-year-old girl was charged with only a misdemeanor and released from jail almost immediately on a $1,000 "signature bond" AKA her good word.

He faces up to twenty-five years in prison, since he was charged with a felony. She faces up to nine months in jail for her alleged misdemeanor.

The same prosecutor handled both cases. And his justifications for charging the two older teens differently are that the girl has no prior criminal record and that the older girl's boyfriend would turn 15 in February, while the older boy's girlfriend wouldn't turn 15 till April. That's right, a great big two month difference.

The prosecutor doesn't say anything about whether or not the older boy has a prior criminal record. But someone in the District Attorney's Office didn't do his homework. Turns out the older girl has had at least a brush with the law. There's an unrelated criminal case pending against her for alleged battery.

The 17-year-old boy claims his young girlfriend told him she was 16, not 14. The Sheboygan Press reported that the girl, who may be pregnant, may have been a run away and may have been staying with the boy's family.

I'm generally way more uptight than is justified by my age. And I definitely don't approve of kids - that's aimed slightly more at the 14-year-olds than the 17-year-olds - having sex. But I think these prosecutions - of both the 17-year-olds - are stupid and overkill.

Both should have been lectured sternly, warned to keep their pants up and stay away from kids, and released to their parents...unless, of course, the parents knew about and allowed sex with 14-year-olds to go on under their roofs. I feel annoyed with all the parents in these cases, but I'm not sure what should happen to them.

What do you think?

Domestic Violence didn't start with a boom box

So I was channel surfing Monday night and came across Bill O'Reilly discussing with two guests the saga of pop singers Rihanna and Chris Brown.

The topic was a survey of teenagers, in which nearly half the respondents blamed Rihanna for the beating Brown allegedly gave her several weeks ago.

O'Reilly then said this about why any sane person could even dream of blaming Rihanna for getting assaulted: "And I'm chalking this up to hip-hop rap music. That's what I'm chalking this up to."

He went on to blame rap and hip-hop culture as the root cause for some kids having a blame-the-victim attitude toward domestic violence.

Now, I know it makes some of you cringe when I say from time to time that I agreed with O'Reilly on something.

But relax. This definitely isn't one of those times.

Men were beating their girlfriends and wives before anyone ever heard of rap. When cavemen were pounding on stones with sticks in the first drum solos, there was probably domestic assault.

I can recall when I was a teenager in the late '80s asking my mom, who was doing laundry, if she had seen my white wife beater. I didn't mean my neighbor with the truck on cinder blocks in his front yard. I meant my ribbed, tank top T-shirt.

I didn't get that T-shirt nickname from a rhyme. I got that from a buddy, who said he got it from Mad Mag.

Country music has featured songs describing domestic abuse for decades. There hasn't been a major run on wife/girlfriend beating by country fans as a result...not that I've heard of.

O'Reilly's allegation is a dangerous one. What's next? Rock music made me wear tight jeans that cut off my blood flow? Country made me drink too much? Old Rocky movies made me want to slur my words and beat the crap out of a rival? Rambo made me want to sneak into Vietnam and shoot the place up? Watching Congress on C-Span made me want to become a crook?

The Pope v. AIDS

Interesting article circulating the news wires today that quotes Pope Benedict XVI saying "you can't resolve it (the global AIDS problem) with the distribution of condoms... On the contrary, it increases the problem."

While I'm not sure what Benedict's motivation was, beyond the obvious religious motivation, I happen to agree with him.

I think the best way to slow the spread of AIDS is to convince sexually active people to weigh the Pros and Cons of shagging someone with infected naughty bits.

And getting grown people to think doesn't require expensive lesson plans.

Ask yourself "Which is more valuable to me - my bits not burning and remaining intact and me leading a potentially long, healthy life, or the temporary satisfaction that will follow this romp I'm about to have with this person whose sexual history I'm unsure of?"

If you choose the latter over the former, you are a moron. And expensive education wouldn't have helped you anyway. And you're probably too dumb to put a condom where it belongs anyway.

Spirituality is great. Religion often bites. But spirituality is terrific. Still, this AIDS issue doesn't even require religion.

I agree with the Pope on this one, 'cause we tend to throw up our hands in helplessness too often and rely on devices and tools to save us from destruction, when the simplest, cheapest solution of all is self control.

And don't tell me it's different in Thirld World countries. How? Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on education programs and prevention programs by "developed" countries. And education is great. But how about tasking people with simply weighing the consequences?

Yeah, sex is a right, for everyone, even the poor and destitute and starving and what not. But where the act of consensual intercourse may be a right, what could happen to your body if you sleep with a sick person is a consequence.

It really is that simple.

I'm not picking on the Third World. Plenty of us are hypocrites on this one. We get righteously indignant when someone drives drunk and injures or kills another person. We wax poetic that the drunk driver should have exercised self restraint himself and stopped drinking before he got drunk, or maybe he shouldn't have had anything to drink.

We tell greedy banks they should never have loaned money to people without obvious means to pay them back. We tell Average Joe that he should have reigned himself in, and lived within his means, and never should have taken out a loan that was 10 times his annual income.

But with AIDS? We have to educate people, or else they might happen to get AIDS.

Remember that old Crime Mutt who used to say stuff like "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time?" That doesn't need translating, but just in case...it breaks down to "You might not get caught if you commit a crime, but you might. So before you commit it, ask yourself if you're prepared to suffer the consequences."

Substitute "have sex with anyone who might be six" with "commit a crime" or "do the crime," and you have the most cost effective fix for AIDS ever.

Real Talk: What's up with newspapers?

Do you recall that one girl in high school who was too friendly?

I mean the sweet girl who really just wanted to be liked, the girl whom all the jocks would take behind the gym after school to rehearse birds-and-bees lessons, but they would never take her out on a date or acknowledge her in a crowded room full of other students.

Nowadays, newspapers are that girl. And everyone who takes their too often free content online for granted is a jock.

Yeah, I know that this example will not convince anyone anytime soon to offer me the job of modernizing Aesop's Fables, but it's the analogy I gave a reader who emailed me several days ago to ask the question in the headline of this post. So it'll have to do.

The reader's question was prompted by news that my paper, the Miami Herald, had slashed jobs this week in order to help parent company McClatchy cut overall budget, and by news about other papers on the verge of disaster from coast to coast.

My first instinct was to reassure the reader, the way a parent who'd just lost his job (or taken a pay cut) reassures his teenager that everything will be alright and that the people still want the news done well and delivered in some form of print...just not necessarily on paper.

But then I thought about it and decided that sort of response to the reader would have been disingenuous.

Things have change inside and outside newspapers.

For example, I've been trained to shoot and edit video now. Ten years ago if an editor had asked me to even consider such training I'd probably have given a saditty answer to the effect of "I'm a writer. Let someone else do it."

Now, for the sake of maintaining until the news delivery method that will save the industry is found, I'm ready to get my commercial driver's license and add newspaper delivery truck driver to my repertoire.

So instead of coddling, I figured I'd tell the reader some of the truth...as I see it:

• The radio and TV talking heads' argument that newspapers are struggling 'cause average Americans stopped reading them 'cause papers are politically biased is bogus. I'm not saying there isn't some bias sometimes in some papers. But newspapers are struggling 'cause the economy is terrible and businesses aren't advertising as much as they used to. If it was a matter of simply reaching the public, in South Florida, for example, the Herald still reaches more consumers than any other local media outlet, print or broadcast. But it's more than reach. Businesses don't have big ad budgets. 
• Newspapers are also hurting 'cause they haven't figured out how to fully capitalize on Internet traffic. TV stations and networks haven't figured that out either. But you wouldn't know it, since they never report their problems the way we do. True, only the Googles and Yahoos and porn companies of the world are making big bucks online these days, but if I had my way every news organization in this country - print and broadcast - that has a Web site would set a date and time and simultaneously begin charging for content. It might stem the tide of content theft and "borrowing" between organizations. And if there's no free alternative online, then maybe readers will finally, even if grudgingly, begin registering on their favorite sites and setting up billing accounts. You can't get the paper at the newsstand for free. You can, but only if the guy running the newsstand isn't looking. And you can get a free subscription to some papers, but only until that trial period runs out and you start getting the bill in the mail. So why shouldn't you pay to read it online? Some working person researched, gathered, and compiled that info.
• With our society becoming one big reality TV show, where consumers like to feel they have a connection to the people on the screen, I sort of feel like newspapers failed to borrow from the broadcast news formula and offer up print journalists as "personalities," so readers could follow and establish a loyalty to their favorites, the same way they do with favorite evening news anchors. Yes, newspapers have columnists and in recent years bloggers. But they're still a minority of print journalists.

Again though, I'm not a professional analyst. I'm just a squirrel trying to hoard a few nuts in case, as Young Jeezy says, "it's gonna be a cold summer."

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get "fitted" for a mop handle and learn to operate the scaffolding that the window cleaners use.

Just kidding...I think.

PS. Follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett

Friendliness vs. Nosiness

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but for at least the third time in the past week or so I encountered a stranger who asked too many questions.

In keeping with my total sellout to technology that has not improved my life in any way I Tweeted about this earlier today.

Anyway, when I meet a friendly stranger I expext the first minute or so of conversation to consist of "hello" and some small talk about weather or the economy or the Miami Heat or the Dolphins...or the lovely headline on the Miami Herald I'm reading when the stranger says hi.

After that, if the conversation carries on another 10 or 20 or 30 minutes it can get gradually more personal if both parties are comfortable with it.

Those are the unwritten - except for here - rules, right? They're reasonable, no?

So why last weekend when I was browsing the clearance rack at my favorite top secret men's clothier, did a guy approach and overdo it?

And no, Sarcasticynic, before you even speculate, he wasn't hitting on me.

He started with hello, followed not 10 seconds later with "nice sun glasses," followed not 10seconds after w/ you live around here?" And so on.

In the course of three minutes he wanted to know where I lived, rent or own, what I did for a living, what my wife did...

I dodged some of the questions but eventually had to stop him and ask questions of my own: Do I know you? Why are you asking so many personal questions? Are you writing a book? If so could you leave out the chapter about me? You a cop?

He seemed flustered and hinted that he was slightly offended at my reaction to his frielndliness. I thought he crossed the bound of friendliness.

What do you think?

I learned later my instincts were sorta on. Turns out he was feeling me out to see if I might be interested in selling Amway or bowling balls or vacuum cleaners or something.

It happened again, minus the sales pitch, a couple days later in the grocery, and then again a couple hours ago at the dog park. This morning the "offender" wanted to know my neighborhood, street, rent/own status, and what state I'm from, among other things. This was all in about one minute's time.

I don't think I'm overreacting.

Friendliness is like flirting: gotta go slow or you're gonna spook the object of your attention.