Burnettiquette

R.I.P. Elvis of Generation-X AKA Michael Jackson

So by now, you know that Jackson is dead. Or you should, unless you're completely unplugged.

I hope he did not really molest children, as was alleged many times over the past 20 years or so. But he was never convicted of it, so unless and until I learn in the next life that he did it, then that R.I.P. stands. If I learn "later" that he did it, I'll posthumously rescind the R.I.P.

At any rate, for people born between 1962ish and 1982ish, he was Elvis. Trust me, when I tell you that in all my travels abroad, the one famous or infamous American that locals always bring up to me in casual conversation is Michael Jackson. When I lived in the UK 11 years ago there were still fans walking around my Sunny Brixton neighborhood in London wearing that stupid, puffy-shouldered red leather jacket, long after Eddie Murphy had made it a laughingstock in Beverly Hills Cop.

The second person I'm asked about most often when traveling abroad is Michael Jordan. Third Britney Spears. Distant fourth, fifth, etc? Statesmen, U.S. presidents, and the like. Sad social commentary, but let's save that for another post.

The same way my parents' generation remembers where they were when they heard Elvis had died, I'm telling you my peers, with a few exceptions, will remember years from now what they were doing or where they were when they heard Michael Jackson had died.

There will never be another music video like Thriller. Bad, Beat It? Are you kidding me? And based on the current crop of pop talent, we shouldn't hold our breath waiting for another solo musician who will bridge the gap between genres ranging from soul, to disco, to R&B, to bubblegum pop, to rock, to electronica. Half the pop singers today can't walk and chew gum at the same time, much less moonwalk. Speaking of, am I the only one here who nearly broke his ankles trying to dance like MJ back in the day?

And love or hate the guy, you must admit that long after Britney Spears is a distant memory, and long after the Ashlee Simpsons, Pinks, Chris Browns, and Rihannas of the world are just dusty footnotes on some defunct VH-1.com memories page, you will remember the name Michael Jackson.

The only other pop artist's name you'll remember from this generation? Madonna.

Let's not mince words. For a couple of decades in addition to the child sex allegations, he was weird, what with the dangling babies over balconies, and the glove, the outfits, the masks, Bubbles the chimpanzee companion, the children of mysterious origin, the crotch-grabbing performance gesture adopted by an unfortunate generation of rappers, etc. If I had kids I probably wouldn't have let Jackson babysit 'em, but when they were old enough I'd definitely let them hear his songs.

But before the tarnish, Michael Jackson changed pop music forever, and in a bass ackwards way that he may or may not have intended, the nature of his music attracted fans from all cultures and ethnicities and brought people together in a way that to date no politician and few religious icons, save the Pope and Billy Graham.

PS. R.I.P. Farrah Fawcett

P.P.S. NFL player Chad Ocho Cinco is an idiot. Not for changing his name from Chad Johnson, but for Tweeting earlier today, upon learning of Jackson's death, that Jackson's death combined with Fawcett's made for a day worse than 9/11.

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

Happy Anniversary!!!!

...to Mrs. B and me.

That's right. Today marks four years since Mrs. B and I tied the knot.

And I mean this in the most positive way, but it feels like 40 years. Not 'cause it's been a drag, but because time has flown.

She and I have ridden a couple of roller coasters, and we've always finished the ride sturdier and stronger than when we climbed aboard.

Our first couple of anniversaries I tried to wax poetic. Not today. I have nothing to prove to anyone but her and me. We love each other. She sometimes annoys me. I sometimes annoy her. We laugh, we cry, we argue. We get over it. We're down like Bonnie & Clyde, minus the murder and bank robbery, of course.

I look forward to forty more years.

Now, if you'll excuse me, we're going to go celebrate.

BTW, I don't often single people out just for being nice. But I have to give special kudos to Monty AKA The CEO, for those of you who've read his knowledgeable comments on the economy under that moniker. Monty and I have never met in person. We have had extensive conversations online and via email. And I can say with a straight face that I've had deeper talks with him than I've had with some people I've considered friends for 10-years or more. So when I awakened this morning, what did find once I got wired? A card from Monty and his wife, wishing Mrs. B and me a happy anniversary. That my friends and frienemies is a good friend!

Real Talk About Race: Re-introduction

I said last week we'd restart this chat on Monday. But what can I tell you? News is like the funeral business - a never ending and ever changing supply of new subjects.

I kind of hate the better late than never school of thought, but I am human and therefore a frequent an occasional hypocrite, so I'm going to apply that logic here.

If you were with me for the first four chapters of this friendly discussion/Q&A/debate/confessional/defensive posturing session/explanation period, then you know how it works. If not, let me explain:

For so many significant reasons that affect or will affect the telling of American history some day, race, ethnicity, and skin color are hot topics right now.

Often each of those things is used out of context. We talk about different races, when we really mean skin colors. We talk about skin colors when we mean ethnicities.  We talk about race and ethnicity when we really mean culture. We take smug pride in the philosophy that racism and other serious isms are institutional and therefore don't apply to us as individuals, but we can't bring ourselves to acknowledge prejudice, which is a "trait" of individuals. And we use political correctness as an excuse...to either guilt-trip our foes into walking on egg shells for fear of tearing our thin skins, or to excuse ourselves (or our friends) for ignorant words or behavior that we should have known better than to utter or engage in.

So in this occasional "series" I'll introduce topics sometimes based on current events and sometimes based on your questions or comments.

There are only four rules for Real Talk:

• Don't be afraid to ask a question...if you really don't know the answer. But don't engage in faux ignorance of a particular topic, in order to "subtly" slip in a low blow at a person or group you dislike. If you really don't know, ask. And if you do know but pretend not to, you'll be called out! Maybe not by me, but another reader/commenter will get you!
• No broad generalizations. If you read this blog with any regularity, you know broad generalizations are a major pet peeve of mine, especially when it comes to judging people on characteristics they have no control over...like skin color. Be specific to your experiences. I don't want to read any "Why do (presumably all) white people..." or "Why do (presumably all) black people...," etc.
• Don't be an apologist for past actions you weren't involved in. I love sincere people. I love sincere people who understand and acknowledge the good and bad parts of the past. But, for example, I can't stand it when I meet sappy people who tell me things like "I am so sorry my people enslaved your people." Seriously, that phrase was actually uttered to me once, by a weird hippy I made the mistake of briefly dating. What do you say to something like that? Maybe "thanks!" Or "no problem, I wasn't there!" Or "I hate you! You ruined everything!" Or "that couldn't have happened; I checked. My 'people' came here on a different kind of boat, free, via Scotland." Guess which of those responses is both true and the one I gave.
• Don't be abusive or intentionally abrasive. I don't have a thin skin, but I won't humor certain language. And I have no qualms about deleting and/or blocking you.
• Now that I'm done finger wagging, the last rule is don't be uptight. We tend to offend when we're too worried about offending. That's not a contradiction to rule number four. Be sincere. Be curious. But don't be stiff. And please, within the confines of good taste and in the spirit of ice-breaking, don't be afraid to have a sense of humor.

OK, so that's the deal. Think about topics, questions, etc. And feel free to leave 'em in a comment on this post, or save 'em for later.

I'll post the first topic in this conversation on Friday, unless, of course, one of you suggests something better than what I have planned.

Peace and hair grease, and follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Shame on the Los Angeles County Prosecutors, RE: Chris Brown & Rihanna

Chris Brown, the Britney-esque pop singer and dancer, who was charged with felonies for then-allegedly viciously beating his then girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna several months ago, has been given a plea deal by those tough as nails prosecutors in LA: Brown admits to felony assault, serves no jail time, receives five years of probation, and performs six months community labor AKA community service.

That's it. Not a day behind bars for beating the hell out of a woman.

And don't give me that speech about innocent till proven guilty. Don't tell me, you, like me, have not mentally convicted people before the fact when their guilt seemed apparent.

I'm not talking complicated mysteries, in which there is "reasonable" doubt. I'm talking those scenarios when someone walks in on a blood-soaked woman as she plunges a knife into a man's chest while cackling in a nutty way "die, die, die!" I'm talking the drunk driver with no passengers in his car, who climbs out of the driver's seat at the accident scene, as two dozen other drivers watch. Or, in this case I'm talking the boyfriend who acknowledges he was the only person with his girlfriend the evening bruises, cuts, and black eyes materialized on her face - the injuries shown in this picture, the boyfriend who through leaked text messages and such admits culpability, the boyfriend who acknowledges in his plea that those injuries were not sustained through a mysterious fall down a stairwell.

Why a plea deal? Why not no deal? A spokesperson for the LA County DA's office says Brown's deal is in line with what other first-time offenders in similar crimes get in Cali. Did I miss something? Brown was not charged with assaulting another man in a fistfight. He was charged with assault for beating a woman.

If this were philosophy class, the analogy would be that the tiny-brained reaction to Brown's admitted assault would be to give him a minor punishment 'cause others have gotten minor punishments for the same thing in the past. The logical thing to do though would be to stop giving minor punishments to men who beat women (and the less frequently occurring and less frequently reported women who beat men), and instead raise the punishment bar on all such offenders!

Prosecutors, you want to give deals to first-time offenders? Give those deals to the 13-year-old who steals a DVD from Target, or the harried mom of five, who injures her back and then gets so badly hooked on pain pills she falsifies a prescription slip to get more. But folks who assault or kill or commit crimes with weapons or deal drugs to or sexually assault children? No deals.

By not making an example of Brown and ending with him its admitted long practice of coddling first-time woman beaters, prosecutors in LA have condoned domestic violence, and have done nothing to quell the popular belief that if you want to get a slap on the wrist for committing a crime, then get rich, get famous, and go West young man!

I'm too pretty to go to jail. But I'm not famous, so I can guarantee you if I went to LA and beat the hell out of a woman, I'd get locked up faster than your head would spin...from me slapping you silly, of course.

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

PS. As an angry black man, who sometimes expresses his frustration via tough love to the segment of young black men who are misguided by tough home lives and disingenuous entertainers they admire, I'm even more ticked off by this prosecution decision, because it furthers the urban legend that the hip and cool can get away with anything. You know what some young guys are thinking right now? Wow, Chris Brown is untouchable! He's teflon! So cool! Not the message to send to young men who are already facing an uphill battle on the road to professional success and social acceptance. Don't twist my words. I'm not talking all young black men. Plus, I know that assault knows no racial boundaries. But let's be blunt: I'm showing tough love to the young guys who look like me, 'cause they need it (from me) most. And don't bother scolding me, 'cause I'm not apologizing for a single word. Chris Brown's a punk and a bad example.

Weekend Pictures

Can you tell I'm feeling lazy? I want to give you images, not words.

But if a picture is really worth a thousand words, then, I'm giving you guys a five or six thousand word essay here.

So I never thought I'd become one of "those" dog owners. You know the kind that take their dogs to dog-themed festivals and what not? But Mrs. B rubbed off on me, and where our last dog Cheko - may he rest in peace - was a little unsociable in his old age, our current dog Leo, the Labradinger, is in the mix. So here's Leo and me at a park a few blocks from Burnettiquette World Headquarters, where dog loons were hosting a Dog Days of Summer festival.

Here's Leo with a dog I believe is Star, one of his buddies, in the background.

  

Here's Mrs. B melting in the heat, across from Leo and me.

 

Here are the two mourning doves that fell from a poorly built nest in our back yard. When Mrs. B found 'em, Leo was sniffing them. Pleasantly surprised that he didn't seem interested in eating them. Mrs. B called a forestry person and they told her to build a makeshift nest and put the birds back in the tree and the mother dove, who is a terrible home-builder, would take 'em back. So Mrs. B gathered the old nest and put it in this cardboard box and I strapped the box with bailing wire on top of a limb in the tree.

Here's the fallen doves' tree in the yard.  You might be able to see their box/nest from the bottom. Maybe not.

 

Sun doing its thing on the beach, down the street from Burnettiquette World Headquarters.

Playing the race ethnicity card

I have confessed to lots of things over the past several years, from knowing the lyrics to most of the songs from the movie Grease to getting manicures.

I can't defend knowing those songs. I learned them while watching the film in a moment of weakness as a nerd kid, back in the day...before I became cooler than the other side of the pillow.

The manicures? I stand by 'em. My grandfather, James Sr., once told me that there's two things a man must keep consistent about his appearance if he wants to convince women he's got class: clean, smooth fingernails, and well-polished shoes.

But I digress. My third confession is that I watch those Real Housewives shows...all of 'em.

I know. It's shameful, but I have watched every episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, Real Housewives of New York, Real Housewives of Atlanta, and now Real Housewives of New Jersey.

And I must say that this television franchise has convinced me of what I always suspected: that money gives people class and character.

Psyche! I'm kidding. The people displayed on these shows are about as classy as one of those tuxedo T-shirts. And my puppy has left more character in tightly coiled piles of lawn sausage in my backyard. I watch because it's like glancing at a car wreck as you drive by on the freeway: hard to resist.

But on a serious note, in the season finale of the New Jersey series Tuesday night, the female stars of the show got into shouting matches over who leaked to the public a book that revealed one of them had once been a cocaine-loving stripper, with prostitutish tendencies.

In the course of the argument, as they all swore in so much that their young daughters blushed in apparent shame, one of the women knocked over dishes, flipped over a table, and threatened physical harm to the subject of the salacious book...who probably deserved it. But that's not the point!

After things calmed down, the table flipper dismissed her behavior by shrugging and explaining "I'm Italian...." Her sister-in-law chimed in later that the tantrum was the result of the table-flipper's "hot Italian temper."

And that was that.

I know that this is just a dumb TV show, but it is popular on the entertainment culture landscape. So I have a major problem with that sort of cop out.

If I drop-kicked my annoying neighbor from three doors down - the one who has a perfectly manicured lawn and well-kept house but arrives home from work every evening blasting Freebird from his pick-up truck, sometimes shouting "Git 'er done!" - and then casually shrugged it off with "I'm African American," or "it's my hot black temper," I'd get blasted in the court of public opinion.

Even worse, and more accurate to the example from this TV show, what if I blamed my temper tantrums on being "African" - not "African American," but "African?"

You guys would never let me hear the end of it. I'd be slapped with reminders that folks born in this country should acknowledge and even embrace their ethnicities, but if they're born here they're American, yada yada yada.

And don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. What gives with this type of hypocrisy?

I have my thoughts, but I'm gonna save 'em for when we re-start our occasional blog series "Real Talk About Race." If you'd like to catch up on old installments of that series go here, here, here, and here.

Otherwise, skip the first four chapters, and we'll kick off the next installment on Monday.

Till then, follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett. And if you read books or pretend that you do, you can befriend me at http://shelfari.com/jamesburnett. It's sort of a Facebook for readers. I just joined a couple days ago, so I haven't had time to add my whole library - just three books. More to come.

Cat Killer Caught

In case you live outside South Florida and that headline hasn't made its way to your local paper or newscast, here's the deal: For the past couple months or so, cats in South Miami-Dade County have been turning up gutted and skinned and otherwise mutilated around a couple of residential neighborhoods.

Often their bodies were left at or near their owners' homes.

A couple days ago, with the cat corpse count at 19, Miami-Dade Police announced they'd caught the cat killer. Turns out, rather than fit a stereoptype - that of a greasy-faced, pock-marked kid, who parts his hair too far to one side and tilts his head to accomodate, who wears too much black and listens to angry music about a rendezvous with Satan or getting stuck in traffic on the Highway to Hell, the suspect is a good-looking, dog-loving young man from a good family in a good community.

Sounds like a character from Pleasantville.

Let's get this part out of the way: Killing animals is terrible, unless we're talking killing for food - beef, venison, fish, etc. Some of you don't like that sort of animal killing either, but you're gonna have to deal. No amount of domestic animal abuse is going to stop folks from eating meat.

But back to the point. If the cops are right and this kid killed those cats, then he should be locked up. He committed a crime...over and over again. He should serve not concurrent jail or prison sentences, but separate terms for each cat he tortured and mutilated.

That being said, there are a couple of things that bother me about this story: Based on chatter I've heard and seen around town, there are more people outraged about this cat-killing spree than there are even curious about the cloud surrounding the investigation of the police shooting of an apparently unarmed toursit on Miami Beach over the weekend, the laying off of nearly 400 teachers in Broward County, or the sad death of a police officer in a car crash early this morning, or the fact that another rich jock did something terrible and will only serve a month in jail for it (NFL player Donte Stallworth is pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter, for an accident several months ago in which he struck and killed a guy with his car, following a night of boozing in Miami Beach.)

Don't believe me? A Miami Herald Web boss tells me that our online team was compelled to shut down the comments section on some of the articles about alleged cat killer Tyler Weinman, because there were so many menacing, abusive comments.

The other thing that bothers me though is how many people I hear saying things like "He just doesn't seem like someone who'd do this," or "He's such a good kid," or "This isn't like him...."

How exactly is a cat-killer supposed to seem? We've watched so many movies and so many TV shows about oddballs and social misfits that we've fooled ourselves into believing that criminals have to fit a certain appearance profile...or else it's harder for us to believe they could be criminals. Ted Bundy was a serial people killer. And he looked plain and "normal" as hell.

All that being said, even people charged with crimes are innocent till proven guilty. So let Tyler Weinman have his day in court. But if he's proven guilty? Lock him up. A slap on the wrist won't do, considering he supposedly did a whole lot more than slap his victims.

Pay it Backwards

So three years ago, I wrote this post on my old blog about how I grudgingly lowered my wall of suspicion one evening to give $20 to a guy who gave me a sob story in the parking lot at Blockbuster. Yeah, I hadn't really given much thought to Netflix yet. What can I tell you? I'm slow to change.

Anyway, I wrote this follow-up post 10 days later, about how the guy had never mailed me my money as he'd promised to do. Yeah, I got suckered.

I thought about those two posts, 'cause yesterday while Mrs. B, our neighbor Mike, and I were sitting outside our neighborhood Harsnucks Coffee House watching a 10-year-old curse out his mother, a sort of well-dressed guy approached us. I say sort of 'cause his shirt and tie and slacks and shoes looked like they had been nice at one point. But they were a little grimey. Still, I gave him points for trying to maintain an air of pride.

So we all thought he was gonna ask for a light for a cigarette or something. Instead he dove into a sad story about having lost everything in the markets and how he and his wife and two young children had recently been forced out of their nice house across the street, and how he'd found another job for significantly less than he'd earned before, and how he and his family had gotten a room in a seedy hotel a half mile away and the manager, after verifying the guy had a job, had agreed to let the family stay free for a week till payday, and how the very next morning - yesterday, Sunday morning - the manager had changed his mind and said pay up or get out, and how he needed $65 for a room for one night, 'cause his wife and kids were gonna have to sleep in a car, and how he'd scraped up $10 and needed more.

It was all a lot to take in in under 60 seconds. But you know what? In spite of my promises in those prior posts to never give money to panhandlers with elaborate stories again, I felt compelled to give this guy some cash.

Hell, I'm broke as a joke too. Not "for real" broke, like penniless, but broke in the sense that I don't believe in "spare" money or "extra" money right now. If I have it, it's likely accounted for already - bills, necessary savings, shoes for Mrs. B (kidding about that last one!). People with "extra" money spend it for fun. I don't find spending to be fun anymore. Maybe I will again someday.

Anyway, my buddy Mike wasn't buying it. But Mrs. B shot me the look and nudged me, and I knew what she was thinking: This isn't three years ago. This is the middle of a recession with unusually high unemployment numbers. So what might have sounded like BS to us three years ago had a ring of sincerity to it.

Plus, the guy pulled an Ace card on us and said at the end of his pitch "If you don't believe me, it's the (Yada Yada) Hotel straight up the road, and you can go and pay for the room directly instead of putting the cash in my hands."

I didn't call his bluff. I figured why would anyone risk getting exposed as a fraud when they're hitting up a few skeptical-looking strangers for cash? I could easily have called, jogged, or driven up to that hotel to check his story. Maybe he was counting on us being to lazy to check.

So we hooked him up - not with the remaining $55 he said he needed, but we got him noticeably closer to his goal.

Could be he conned us like that guy in the Blockbuster parking lot conned me. But I felt better about helping this guy 'cause the way things are these days everything he said could have been the gospel truth.

I hope so, 'cause just as with the last guy I told this one not to pay it forward, but rather to pay it backwards. In other words when payday comes around mail me my money!

I don't expect to ever see the money again, but it would do a world of good for my waivering faith in goodness if he does keep his word and pay me back. If he does, I'll give what I gave him to the next sincere person in need I come across.

I will keep you updated.

http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

A Case for Corporal Punishment

All the parents I know - except for mine and all the other older parents I know - always tell me that when Mrs. B and I have kids we should never hit them.

And the reason they give is it will harm a kid psychologically and make him bitter and violent and a cannibal and a terrorist and a member of the political party you dislike the most.

But I'm sitting outside our neighborhood Yarshucks Coffee House right now in too-sunny XXXXX,Florida, with Mrs. B and our neighbor Mike, and about 30 feet away from us a very pretty 40-ish woman is standing outside a Chevy Suburban with the driver's door open. A man, apparently her husband, is standing by the rear of the vehicle. Dad is holding one hand on his forehead. Mom is begging, "Please, come on over her! Please! I promise we'll do it later!"

The object of her pleas? A chubby, rosy-cheeked boy, approximately 10-years-old, apparently her son, circling the parking lot on a bicycle, turning increasingly red in the face the more his mom begged.

Sonny Boy's response to his mom? I can't spell it out, 'cause this is a PG-13 blog. But, using abbreviations, he shouted back "Eff you, b**ch, I'm not comin' anywhere!"

He's shouted this at his mom several times now.

Now, he's shouting "Stupid, b**ch; eff you!"

Now she's begging again.

She finally spells out the cause of the strife. "We'll come back and get it for you later!"

"It" was a cell phone from the comm store next to the Yarshucks.

Seriously, I know that "violence is not the answer," or at least that's what a celebrity wearing a milk mustache once said in an infomercial I fell asleep watching.

But if that had been me back in the day, my dad would have walked over, grabbed me by the collar and yanked me off of the bike while it was still rolling. He then would have dragged me back to the car and tossed me by collar and pants into the  back seat. Then my mom, without another word, would have climbed back behind the wheel and driven off, pausing briefly to back up and purposely run over my bike. Then as we were driving away and the windows were rolled up so passers by couldn't hear, she'd have turned around and given me the deadly look I like to call "Black Steel," and said "Boy, wait till we get home!"

And you know what? Even though I'm Monday Morning quarterbacking in this post, I don't think my folks' actions would have been abuse.

It's the old soul in me, but as far as I'm concerned this kid is already a quarter of the way to ending up in juvie and later getting hugged by a guy named Sally in adult prison. So it couldn't "hurt" for his folks to cuff him behind the ear once or twice, tell him to shut the hell up, forget cell phones, go ride that bike a few miles to burn a few ounces, and then go home and get hooked on phonics instead of XBox.

Or am I overreacting?

Nah. I'm right ;-)

http://twitter.com/jamesburnett

Five Questions: Miss California, Nazis, Menacing Computers, World Citizens, Racists

What's crackin' friends and frienemies? I have been so remiss with Burnettiquette. But hey, I had news to find and write, because my bills don't pay themselves.

We need to catch up. And I think the easiest way to do so is ask you five of the most pressing questions on my mind.

Without further ado:

1. If "contract violations" are a good enough reason for Donald Trump to snatch Miss California Carrie Prejean's crown off her head today, why weren't they a good enough reason a month ago when Trump said she could keep her crown? Make up your mind, Trump.
2. The number of people hurt by computer equipment rose eight-fold from 1994 to 2006, to more than 78,000. About 39% of the injuries are llacerations to the head. Victims age 9 and under were injured climbing on or playing near computer stuff. I get that. But how in the world do adults with all their faculties cut themselves on computers? I've got computer equipment everywhere at home. It has never wounded me...except for that time I shattered the stupid mouse 'cause it wouldn't respond. That hurt my wrist.
3. "88" is a common tattoo on the slimy bodies of Nazi-wannabes, because "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet, thus "88" is a supposedly clever and coy way for them to say "HH!" or Heil Hitler. You're welcome for the lesson. But my point is the irony: An 88-year-old Nazi-wannabe shot a guard in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. today. The guard shot him back. No word on either man's condition as of the writing of this post. Why is anyone still angry at 88-years-old? Why not write off the parts of life that angered you most and spend the rest of your days or years engaged in your hobby...unless your hobby is plotting museum shootings?
4.  I sorta liked Ronald Reagan. There I said it. Deal with it. If it makes you feel any better, I liked a few things about Bill Clinton too. Anyway, I think former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dishonored the late president Monday night in his speech at a Republican fundraiser, when he took a jab at Pres. Obama for calling himself "a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world." Gingrich left out the "proud...United States" part of Obama's quote. He also failed to mention this quote Reagan made in a 1982 speech at the United Nations: "I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world." What's the difference? BTW, it's not that the GOP doesn't have jabs that could work against Obama, but if this were a boxing match Gingrich's goofy swat on Monday was the equivalent of waving to his fans instead of throwing punches that will score points with the judges (voters).
5. While we're talking politics, a friend who always asks me what he thinks are trick questions in the hope of tripping me up and "catching" me saying something racist, asked me if I have ever been in a situation where I thought my race made me better able to get the job done than a white person. My answer: Skill trumps everything. But...I do recall being with a white colleague at a rowdy homicide scene years ago in a black neighborhood. We each took one side of the block so we could talk to witnesses. On her side she ran into trouble when a group of young black males started yelling at her and accusing her of being everything from "the man" to an undercover cop. Silly accusations. But my colleague is tough. She was unruffled and persisted with her questioning. The guys grew more agitated and not only stopped answering questions but began hinting that they might get violent. So I crossed the street, intervened, and pulled my colleague aside to tell her to let me finish the interview. The guys calmed down and talked to me. Yes, I am convinced they did it in part because I'm black. So, did it make me racist to reason in my mind that my skin color might help me make progress with these guys where my colleague couldn't? I don't think so. I think I was using an available "resource." What do you think?

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