Burnettiquette

AIG Cheering Section

You can't make this stuff up: A fourth-grade teacher in Houston, who gives her students a daily economics lesson by letting them operate mock businesses and earn fake money and taxing them appropriately, recently made the daily lesson about AIG.

First she tore into AIG to make a point to the students. Their reaction, apparently, was predictable: They fumed at what they believed AIG execs had gotten away with.

But then the teacher, Rebecca Chapman, changed directions and asked her students to think about how they'd feel if they were AIG employees who didn't make the bad decisions but remained at the company to fix those decisions. She even asked them to think about how bad they'd feel if they were asked to give back millions in bonus money they felt they'd earned, and if their families had received death threats.

So the students, not yet being jaded about life, proposed that they write and send letters of support to AIG employees.

The current head of AIG's financial products unit - the unit blamed for much of the company's alleged shady dealings - said the cards and letters are hanging up on bulletin boards at the company and that they've made the AIG folk weepy and sentimental and what not.

Not sure what I think of this. The smartass in me wants to say something like "When I have kids one day, this is why they're attending private school!"

But that's too easy. Besides, when I have kids and they're old enough to attend school I probably won't be able to afford a private education 'cause it'll probably cost as much as college.

I commend the teacher for her daily economics lessons. That's awesome. And if just a few of her students remember those lessons, maybe they'll know how to balance books and prioritize spending and saving before they even graduate high school.

Maybe I'm crazy though, but for a hot-button issue like AIG's bonuses, I almost feel like academic opinion on that should be left to these kids' parents/legal guardians.

I'm not saying Wall Street bonus "education" is equivalent to parents debating over whether they or the schools should teach sex ed. But do you get the "sensitive" subject issue?

Think about it. Maybe I'm the parent of one of those kids. Maybe I'm pretty well versed in economic issues. Maybe it's my opinion that all the AIG bonus recipients - whether they were top decision makers or not - are the recipients of ill-gotten gains. Maybe that's the opinion I'm preaching to my family. So maybe I don't want my kid being groomed to be sympathetic to Wall Street bonus-getters at failed companies that are only surviving on tax dollars.

Maybe you think that sort of speculation is goofy. Maybe. But I'm the Devil's advocate here. And I'll put money on it: as this story plays out that teacher, for all her good intentions, is going to run into a few disgruntled parents.

Passover/Easter Weekend

If' you're expecting a mini-sermon, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed if you keep reading.

Truth is I wanted to weigh in on diversity for a minute.

There was a period of time when I was younger when that word confused me.

As a boy at barbecues at my Grandma Rosa's house, I observed people who looked like me enjoying each other's company and celebrating the fact that they were different. At the seditty private school I attended, talk of diversity was discouraged 'cause school officials felt it was backhanded way at hinting that there might be other paths to success in life than the narrow path they enforced.

By the time I became an adult - and I'm talking just 18 - I was such a curmudgeon and old beyond my years that if I heard anyone talking about diversity I grew grumpy and would mutter that they should just shut up and quit being hippies - whom I now love, in case you didn't know - and simply get to know the people around them. And that would be all the diversity their lives needed.

Fortunately though, I outgrew that attitude after a few months or a year or whatever, because what I found was if I simply turned to the people who happened to be in my general vicinity the odds were high I was going to encounter a lot of people exactly like me. And there's nothing wrong with being surrounded with people exactly like you. To an extent that's a function of human nature. But it doesn't go very far when you're trying to broaden your knowledge and understanding of how and why other types of people think and act the way they do.

So skip past my "formative" years, if you will, and join me in my reflection of this past Wednesday evening.

I'm Christian. But I have lots of friends who are Jewish. The camaraderie I share with these friends has always been very easy for me to claim though, because it required little effort on my part, save the occasional after work Happy Hour, the occasional dinner, or rubbing elbows at barbecues and cocktail parties.

This year though, a new friend - Dr. Mimi Scott, a pyschologist, actress, and playwright I profiled a couple months ago - invited me to attend her Passover Seder.

After I wrote about Mimi, who lives near Mrs. B and me, she made us honorary members of her brood and has since graciously treated us as though we were her own children, checking in on us by phone several times a week, sharing meals with us, etc.

So with Mimi's invitation I found myself faced with a true friendly gesture: attending a Seder, a religious dinner celebrating Passover and sharing through song and food and wine the Old Testament biblical story of the Jews' exodus from slavery in Egypt.

Suddenly - but just for a moment - my reaction was awe man, do I have to! I admit it. No matter how open-minded we think we are, when it comes to topics like religion there is at least a small part in all of us that generates hesitance when we think we "have" to be a part of an activity that might contradict our beliefs.

Can we help it? I don't know.

Regardless, I scrubbed that bratty thought out of my head almost instantly and I embraced the idea 'cause it was new, 'cause Mimi's a treat to be around, 'cause she has been a friend to me, 'cause over the years I've just become constantly curious about other people's hows and whys, 'cause it was free food...and wine, and 'cause in the short time I've known her Mimi has done nothing small or boring.

So I wasn't disappointed when I arrived at Mimi's Seder to find a crowd more diverse in every aspect of their lives than characters in the board game Clue.

Seriously, among them was the dreadlocked black female blues musician...who sang the Jewish religious songs throughout the dinner. There was the the Cuban-American former Muslim/semi-agnostic guy. There was the Irish-American single mom and her daughter, who both recently converted to Judaism. There was the philanthropist Protestant guy, who has been buying up foreclosed houses in South Florida only to turn right around and rent them for pennies to families in need who recently lost their homes to foreclosure.There was the New Yorker who is also a popular Canadian-newspaper columnist as well as the author of several books, including a cook book based on her travels across the African continent. There was the British expat who is in the process of launching a holistic - mind/body - healing center. There was the young Jamaican man who sat so quietly in the beginning listening to everyone around him, until Mimi called for entertainment after the meal stood and he stood and sang operatic arias in a voice so saintly, he should have been been on stage at the Met, instead of a party room in a Miami-area condo. Dwight, as it turns out, is a young but retired opera singer. There was the young Israeli marketing exec and her husband, who are relatively new to the U.S. and to South Florida.

And so this group from all four corners came together and ate and drink and sing along as best they could as Mimi led us through the Seder.

Gotta say it was one of the most fun times I've had in recent memory. And I walked away from that room with several new friendly acquaintanceships that could blossom to friendships.

And to think, I might have missed it for paranoia over religious differences.

Anyway, my point to all this has nothing to do with religion.

I'm still mulling over exactly what I wanted to get across in this post, but for now let's say that we can stand unwavering by what we believe and still get valuable lessons about life from people who are absolutely nothing like us.

With that, I'm done for the weekend, I think.

Enjoy!

Kanye West has been cured!

And all it took was a cartoon.

I'm not a celebrity hater. But I do believe some of them are not familiar with the philosophy: to whom much is given much is required.

About those who've forgotten, I ask: how often have you seen an insanely egotistical celebrity act out in public so much that they make you wanna hate them, in spite of their talent?

Say, all the time?

How often do you see such a person called out for his behavior?

Not often enough.

So it was frickin' hilarious last night when South Park went after rapper/producer/fashionisto Kanye West with a punchline involving West not getting a nationally popular joke about a gay fish. At the end of the episode, West "sees the light," ackowledges that he actually is a gay fish and not human. The episode closes with West rapping like Sponge Bob on the ocean floor and making out with a male fish that he finds sexy.

If none of this sounds funny to you, the back story is that in recent months, as he's added fashion designer and fashionisto to his repertoire, West and his entourage have dressed in public a number of times like a bunch of dandies.

Dandy isn't a gay bash. I've been called dandy. But I've been called dandy the way Bertie Wooster was called dandy: for wearing pocket squares with my neck ties, or wearing brightly colored socks with a bow tie.

West and his crew have dressed in a manner that would fairly be called feminine: Think Steven Tyler meets Steve Urkel meets Pete Burns meets Alex Vanderpool.

Anyway, some not so bashful fashion critics have said that rather than being innovative in their dress, West and his crew appear to be trying too hard to mimic how they think gay men dress.

The result has been repeated and increasingly angry denials on West's part that he's gay.

Of course, his denials have just fueled critics to take even more digs at him. Most of those digs have had nothing to do with West's sexual orientation though. Most have been about his incredibly huge ego and occasional rash of hoof-in-mouth disease.

So all that leads to question number three: How often have you heard of an egotistical celebrity getting his comeuppance and expressing humility from it?

Can't speak for you. But my answer is never!

Until now.

Following last night's South Park, West was so humbled that he took to his blog and said the episode hurt his feelings but was funny and was something he deserved. Surprisingly, he even has a YouTube copy in his blog post of the "Gay Fish" music video "he" made in the South Park episode last night. He went on to insist that he's making a genuine effort to subdue the ego. He apologized for having spent so much time talking publicly about how great he thinks he is, and said he plans to let his music speak for itself and the public decide for itself.

Maybe there's hope for Hollywood yet!

Tweet Dreams!!!

I had a Twitter nightmare last night. No joke. I fell asleep peacefully enough, but as I drifted off I started dreaming about a Tweet someone sent me and that I responded to.

It wasn't a real Tweet. It was part of the dream.

But instead of the conversation ending there it grew more mundane and the replies wouldn't stop. And I couldn't figure out how to break free from the other Twit. Trying to get away from that conversation thread was futile, like trying to resist the Borg, or like trying to run up the down escalator - and not just any escalator, but rather one of those seemingly mile high, incredibly steep ones that lead to/fro' the subway in Atlanta.

Eventually I snapped awake in a sweat, trying figure out how Twitter had bored into my brain like a weevil.

That's it. No punchline. I swear that was my nightmare last evening.

Somewhere there's a metaphor or a parable or a simile or a Freudian meaning in this dream. Or maybe I'm just a loser who spends too much time on Twitter (and I spend just a fraction of the time that most of my friends and friendly colleagues do).

Until we figure it out though, follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Pigeons need not apply

These two were squawking away about a foot above my head as I exited a parking garage earlier. Sent via Blackberry from AT&T

I miss the good old days of name calling

An editor for a Michigan college newspaper wrote a column taking his school's baseball team to task for playing lousy ball this season and yet walking around campus with what he felt was an air of arrogance and entitlement.

His "reward?"

When he left his apartment the next morning to go to class, the editor's porch was covered in dead animals, including rodents, a deer, and a goat. And animal entrails were strewn across the porch.

Hmmm. It sounds more like this guy lives next door to the Blair Witch than anything else.

I only think one thing was done wrong here: the executive editor of that college paper punked out and sold out the editor who wrote the baseball team column by telling the Detroit Free Press that in retrospect the paper didn't do the right thing in publishing the editorial. She should've stood by her own player. It was his opinion. Columnists are supposed to give their opinions. Does a losing record equate to lousy play? Makes sense to me. 

In my junior year in college, the women's basketball team was in the NCAA title game against a major powerhouse squad.

I was at the Women's Final Four to cover that game, and my article the next day said the women's team "got spanked." I used those exact words. There were few other PG-13 ways to describe what happened to my school's team that night.

I suppose I could've used "beaten" (sounds just as bad as "spanked" to me) or "throttled," or something like that.

Anyway, the women's team put a price on my head. Not literally. I don't think they wanted me dead, because they didn't kill me. And they couldn't have wanted me physically hurt, 'cause they were all bigger than me and more than capable of beating me like I stole something...or perhaps spanking me! Ha ha ha ha ha! Just kidding. Go team!

Still, some team members protested loudly and demanded sanctions against the paper, and some of their diehard fans with too much time on their hands sat outside the school newspaper offices in protest too.

I understand fighting back against slander and libel. But this thing in Michigan was different.

At M.I.T. a couple weeks ago, two campus cops were caught stealing copies of the school paper because they didn't like an article in it about a fellow campus cop who'd gotten busted in a drug-dealing sting. 

I wrote a crime-related narrative a couple months ago, that examined a middle class neighborhood struggling to fight off the advances of blight, drugs, and homeless people. In the article I mentioned a seedy motel on the edge of that neighborhood and how that motel was visited by the cops more than 300 times last year. Know what happened when I reached out to the motel's management for comment? They threatened to sue me if I mentioned anything in writing about their property's many run-ins with police. The truth is ugly sometimes. I mentioned their problems with the law. Still waiting to be served papers. Not holding my breath.

I don't get the mentality: If I don't like what you wrote - regardless of whether it has basis in fact - I'm gonna make you pay? Tsk, tsk.

Anyway, I miss the good old days of college journalism when you'd write something that certain people didn't like and all they'd do was call you names and tell you your mother didn't love you.

Now, they've graduated to dead goats on your porch?

Kids.

Given the state of media and the economy that editor may have wanted to test the goat for freshness and if it passed, shoved it in his freezer...the deer too.

The Transformation is Complete: I ♥ hippies.

I've been ragging on hippies my entire adult life.

I can't remember how or why it started. Maybe the bully in me was just struggling to find a way out.

I was never Eric Cartman-like in my hippie bashing, but I came close. Even so, I've always had a few faithful hippie-ish friends.

But then a hippie-ish friend, tired of listening to me complain about my seemingly constant sinus problems, encouraged me to buy a neti pot. I always laughed him off, though and insisted I'd stick with medicine. I even vaguely recall my mother pouring stuff up my nose when I was a frail, allergy-stricken kid.

Meds haven't worked for me though. So this weekend, while sporting a 102 fever, an extreme sinus headache, and nasal congestion that was tough enough to dam a river, I caved in and went in search of a neti pot.

Found one at Walgreens for $15. Sat for about two hours trying to convince myself that it was perfectly normal to pour salt water into one nostril and watch it run out the other nostril. Eventually got up the nerve to try it. And waddayaknow? Not only didn't it hurt, but my sinus headache went away almost instantly, and the congestion was gone within hours.

I'm not writing off doctors anytime soon. But I will now listen more closely when the hippies I know tell me that something is good for my health.

Rihanna flexes her guns

I don't know if singer Chris Brown, who is currently fighting felony charges for allegedly beating the crap out of his girlfriend and fellow singer Rihanna, has ever seen the movie The Burning Bed.

But if he hasn't, Brown may want to rent it from Netflix before he (allegedly) messes with her again.

Or, he can ignore the signs and interpret her new handgun tattoos to be a cutesy wutesy thing with no Freudian meaning beneath it.

Ofcr. Robert Powell

Can't believe it took me till now to comment on the traffic stop involving now former Dallas Police Officer Robert Powell and Ryan Moats, but I had to chew my cud for a while and think.

If you don't have time to follow the link, last week 26-year-old Ryan Moats, his wife, her grandfather, and her aunt, ran a red light en route to a Dallas hospital where Moats's mother-in-law was minutes away from dying from breast cancer.

Moats didn't blow through the light. He came to a stop, then turned on his hazards, rolled down the driver's window, waved his arm frantically at on-coming traffic, paused to see if the cross traffic understood his I-have-an-emergency! signal, and only then proceeded through the red light.

Ofcr. Powell tried to pull Moats over, but Moats didn't stop for another block or so, till he was in a parking space at the hospital's emergency room entrance.

The abbreviated version is that Moats and his relatives pleaded with Powell to let them go inside to see Mrs. Moats's dying mom. Powell declined. The women ignored him and went inside anyway, getting to Mrs. Moats's mom's bedside moments before she died. Moats and his grandfather-in-law were not allowed in, and even after begging Powell to just write them a ticket so they could get in doors, he still dragged the traffic stop out to nearly 15 minutes, stopping periodically to berate Moats and threaten him with arrest and with having his vehicle towed, since the flustered Moats couldn't find the registration.

Even after a hospital cop (or security guard?) accompanied by a nurse came outside and told Powell that the story was true and not a BS attempt to get out of a traffic ticket, Powell's best response to them was that he was almost finished with Moats.

Moats and his grandfather-in-law made it inside, Moats's mother-in-law had died.

Was Powell justified in pursuing Moats's vehicle? Sure, he saw it go through a red light.

But everything that came afterward was handled miserably by Powell. Law enforcement isn't just dotting I's and crossing T's. It's having good sense and knowing when to bring down the hammer and when to give a pass.

I've seen tough cops give lectures to people they could have arrested, because they determined a stern talking to would do as much or more good than handcuffs and a jail cell.

A few weeks ago I was pulled over during a traffic stop, in which the cop was also justified in stopping me. My plates were expired. I'd forgotten to renew. That stop also took nearly 20 minutes - about 15 minutes beyond the point that the officer had checked me out in his on-board computer and called my ID in to check for warrants and determined that I was clean. I wasn't on my way to see a dying relative, but I was on my way to an appointment. Even after I acknowledged that the officer had every right to ticket me if he wanted to, he continued to linger and sort of lord his badge over me, reminding me every few minutes that if he wanted to he could ticket me. It was only at the end of the 20 minute drama that another officer drove by, saw me, waved, said hi, and asked how Mrs. B was doing, did the first officer decide to wrap up the traffic stop. But first, he had to put on another display of power for me by asking the second officer if he knew me and I was a friend or if I was just a passing acquaintance. When the second officer said friend, then called the first officer over to his car to explain that I'd just written a large article about his police department's efforts in my area, the first officer gave me pouty attitude and said I should have told him who I was and none of this would have ever happened! Why should I have had to drop names and leverage my friendship with another cop? I didn't ask out of my ticket. I just asked for the cop to give my ticket and let me go about my business, unless he had a good reason (beyond bragging rights) to keep me there.

The badge is supposed to be an honor, not permission to be a bully. I'm glad Powell resigned today. If he hadn't I'd say he should be fired, 'cause he obviously has down the part of his job that involves enforcing the letter of the law, but he clearly has no clue about discernment.

Still, do you think the hubbub over how Powell treated Moats would still be ongoing if Moats, a Houston Texans running back, wasn't a professional athlete?