What's crackin' friends and frienemies? Busy day, so I'll get right to it. My column in today's Miami Herald is about the outrage expressed in South Florida over the recent slaughter of a number of horses. This week and last, two young men were arrested for two of the killings, and they're facing serious criminal charges, as they should be. Supposedly they were killing the horses - other people's horses - not for sport, but to sell the meat to people who enjoy eating horse.
So along with just about everyone else in the Miami area, I was pretty angry when I read details of how these poor horse were killed. And I want the book thrown at the killers. But what annoyed me at a level much greater than my anger over the horse killings was the starkly opposite responses of readers to the horse killing news and concurrent but unrelated people killing news.
Comments on the horse killings were that the young killers should suffer horrible deaths and burn in hell, etc. On a story about a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed at a Burger King a couple weeks ago, one reader commented that the boy's death was "no big loss; he should have been home studying."
Hmmm, so a 15-year-old kid, a victim, sort of asked for it 'cause he wasn't home studying. But if that had been a 15-year-old horse, the same reader would have written in that the killer should suffer the same fate as the victim.
I'm not saying that we should not take special care of animals. I get it. They're innocent creatures and depend on us. But just because humans have a cognitive level that allows us to better know right from wrong than four-legged animals, doesn't mean we deserve to be victims of cold-blooded murder any more than horses or dogs or cats deserve it. So only if you're innocent and not able to care for yourself do you deserve to be mourned or avenged for your murder? Doesn't make sense to me.
So my feedback on the column so far has been interesting - a mixed bag. Some folks agree with me. Others think I'm an idiot, because I can't compare innocent animals to humans...who may have asked for it.
I don't need to tell you what I think of that philosophy. But I will give you this analogy that I shared with a woman who emailed and told me that she makes no distinction between human and four-legged animal life, 'cause we're all animals:
I told her I didn't believe her, because while we may agree that when it comes to being victims, neither humans nor four-legged animals should suffer cold-blooded violence (unless they're cows or chickens preparing to be shipped off to the grocery. What? I'm just sayin'.). But if the topic is not victimization then human instinct will not allow us to value four-legged animal lives as equal to human lives.
So you're walking down the street and you come upon a house on fire. A woman laying on the front lawn begs your help and tells you her baby and her cat are both upstairs in different rooms - cat to the left, baby to the right.
Knowing you may have time to rescue only one of them, you run upstairs. Which way do you go? I'd argue that even the greatest animal lover is going to go to the right and rescue the baby first.
But why? They're both innocent creatures, right?
No answer necessary to that one. I think common sense will fill in the blank.
Anyway, check out the column here. And if you want to continue friendly (or unfriendly) debate about that column, go here to post a question or comment for my interactive chat that will take place from 1 - 2 p.m. today.
Either way, it's all good.
PS. Follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.
I'll be in your corner until the second you become a "black columnist" instead of a "colunist."
If you decide to be the champion of black causes or Obama or the race card, I'm out. If you decide to be the champion of all people, including whites, Hispanics and conservatives, I'm for you.
Truth knows no race or political leaning. Truth is deserving of a champion. Be that.
Hmmm, so let me get this straight, Al Charteer, in order to exhort me to not be a racist, and to not be a "black colunist (sic)," and to not play "the race card," you write me a note that assumes from its start that I fit any or all of your stereotypes.
Well, I hate to disappoint you, my friend, but you might want to get out of my corner now, 'cause I'm going to be a "black columnist."
I have no choice. Like my grandfather told me when I was a kid, there are only two things that I will always be 100% certain of at all times: that I am black, and that one day I'll die. Those are the two elements of my life that will never change, unless that machine Walt Disney supposedly slept in really does exist. And no amount of scrubbing is going to alter the color of my skin. Turning white didn't do Michael Jackson any good.
Get used to it.
Yes, I'm being coy. I know by "black colu(m)nist," you mean a stereotypical liberal who fits your description of a soldier in a vast leftwing media conspiracy, a colu(m)nist who uses his pulpit to preach that the world revolves around African Americans and African American "issues." I know that's what you meant, because your entire comment in context proved it. But what I'm trying to demonstrate to you and your ilk is that your arguments - whether baseless or legit - are indictments of culture, not color. Sadly, you don't get that because you assume that people who look a certain way are all but guaranteed to think, act, and opine a certain way.
You can't have read my prior opinions on anything. If you had, you'd know that my opinions run the gamut from right to left, and most often rest firmly in the middle. And you would know that trying to tell me that truth knows no race or political leaning is like trying to tell a golfer that his goal is to hit the little white ball into the cup: unnecessary. It's like me feeling the need to tell you that "white ball" isn't a display of my racist feelings toward white balls. It's just a common sense analogy about golf.
So, I am a black columnist, and as I've always done with my opinions, I'll cover a wide range of social issues - sometimes issues of specific interest to black people, or Latino people, or white people, or Albino people, or men, or women, or children, or porn stars with one leg, or roosters who only crow on a lunar equinox, or politicians, or people who make assumptions about writers whose work they're not familiar.
Did I say get used to it, already?
PS. Follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.