Burnettiquette

John Mayer, ghetto pass? This is why certain celebs shouldn't be allowed to eat fresh food.

John Mayer, whose music I like liked until this evening, bragged to Playboy Magazine (caution: NSFW language)in an interview published this week that black people love him. As "proof," he offered the example that he was asked recently how it felt to have a "ghetto pass" - an accolade he takes a self-deprecating position on by saying if he truly, truly had a "ghetto pass" he'd be able to call it a "n**ger pass." This is all covered about 2/3 of the way down the page if you follow that link to the interview.

In case you don't know, folks inclined to use the term "ghetto pass," AKA "hood pass," use it to describe the honorary "ghetto" status bestowed by the mysterious Ghetto Tribunal on folks whose appearance, background, and primary lifestyle are all the direct opposite of "ghetto." The term is also a reference to a "pass" for those opposite folks described in the previous paragraph to navigate the "ghetto" unharmed and be chummy along the way with all those full-time ghetto residents.

Naturally, I think it's dumb. But what I think is dumber is when folks like Mayer use "ghetto pass" to brag about how close they are to black people, as though "ghetto" and "black" are synonymous.

The Playboy interviewer alludes to the black people Mayer is close to: the likes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Common, etc.

What's the most prominent thing all three of those guys has in common (no pun intended on the latter's name)? Not that they're black, or that they're rappers, but that they're all very wealthy. I've been a fan of all these guys' music (including Mayer's...till tonight), but I'm gonna guess that the last time any one of them spent significant time in a poor ghetto/'hood was for a food drive, or the filming of a music video.

So considering Mayer's Tarantino-esque willingness to toss around "n**ger" so loosely, his apparent assumption that ghettos and black communities are one and the same, his apparent ignorance of the fact that "ghetto" once defined neighborhoods that European Jews were forced to live in, and in modern terms defines a residential neighborhood populated by a predominant ethnic/racial/cultural group, it's clear he does not have a "ghetto pass," but rather an "out-of-touch rich guy pass."

When John Mayer starts hanging around in certain parts of South Los Angeles, rather than Hollywood, North St. Louis, MO, Centerville in Camden, NJ, or say Overtown, here in Miami, and he can hang out in those places without getting beaten like a piñata, then he claim to have a ghetto pass.

PS. Some people are going to read that interview and hone in on the fact that Mayer doesn't date black women. Don't care, don't care, don't care. To each his own in that regard. Like my uncle used to say, doesn't matter what color your partner is 'cause when the lights go out we're all black.

MLK & Politics

Contrary to what pro pundits would have you believe, if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today he wouldn't be a Republican or a Democrat.

Both sides, via some political séance that the rest of us aren't privy to, have cited his speeches and social stances as evidence that he'd be one of them today.

He wouldn't. King was to-the-point with all of his goals and didn't waste time obfuscating, making stuff up about his opponents, or beating around the bush for fear of offending people. His message? Simple: voting & civil rights, safety, fairly administered criminal justice system, judgment of character, not looks. Nothing more, nothing less.

He would be an Independent today. Not a tea party independent or a tea cup independent, but a real independent. And all he would have to offer the extremists in both of the two major fading parties (and the extremists who pretend to be independents) is a giant backhand to smack 'em all with.

R.I.P. MLK.

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Ten things that surprise me...or maybe not

• Levi Johnston, former almost son-in-law to Sarah & Todd Palin and father of their only grandchild, exposed his junk for Playgirl magazine.
• Playgirl magazine still exists.
• In her new book, Going Rouge Rogue, Sarah Palin bit the hands that fed her. And relax, Palin fans. I'm neither bashing the GOP or hockey moms. You should know this already. But just in case, "Bit the hand" is just a figure of speech, not a comparison to a dog or any other mammal large enough to hold a hockey stick or wear lipstick. Anywho, setting aside your political leanings, you have to believe that any reining in done by McCain staffers during last fall's presidential election was done to help McCain - and therefore Palin - win the White House. To bash those staffers now over things like diet advice, wardrobe, Saturday Night Live, and media interviews is silly.
• The first missing kid whose picture was posted on the side of a milk carton is still missing 30 years later. Not making fun. It's a tragedy. But have you ever taken even 10 seconds to look closely at one of those milk carton pics and then kept an eye out for the kid? Me either. And I used to drink a lot of milk.
• In the "It was bound to happen" category: A young athlete with big potential did not drop out of college to turn professional. Nope, Jeremy Tyler broke a record. He dropped out of high school. That's right, Tyler, a 6'11" basketball phenom, quit San Diego High School after his junior year. You can't enter the National Basketball Association draft till you're 19. So the impatient Tyler stupidly signed a 1-year $140,000 (that's thousand, not million) contract with a pro team in Haifa, Israel, so he could polish his skills and raise his profile till he becomes eligible to play in the U.S. Here's the shocker: Tyler's Haifa experiment is going very badly A good crossover dribble is great. Tyler's suck-ups (parents, friends, etc.) should have told him reading is fundamental, 'cause at the rate he's going, he may never make it to the NBA.
• The U.S. Army gave a bogus story...at first about the circumstances surrounding the murders committed at Fort Hood recently by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan - everything from who took him down, to whether he'd made any declarations involving his religion, to whether he was alive or not, following the shooting. Why?
• Andre Agassi's early-to-mid 1990s power mullet was actually a pelt. I would have written about this sooner, like right after Agassi admitted it in his new book. But the shock was too great for me.
• This one falls into the Hell-must-exist-for-people-like-this category: A woman in Texas faked breast cancer, so she could collect donations and use 'em to pay for breast implants. She got the implants.
• Carrie Prejean has more sex tapes, eight total. So if the first that she admitted to was "the biggest mistake of (her) life," as she told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel show, then where on the sliding scale of mistakes do the other seven tapes fall? Lesson: It's OK to take a moral stance on something, even if your stance is unpopular. If you're really principled, then popularity shouldn't phase you. On the other hand, before you take "principled" stands that involve finger-wagging, news conferences, and making the talk show rounds, you'd better make sure you don't have any closet skeletons that will negate your self-righteousness in the eyes of the general public. That's not caving in to popularity. That's just good sense. BTW, those of you, my friends, who always scold me for allegedly picking on sexually "free" people, leave me alone on this one. I'm not picking on Prejean for loving herself. But you gotta admit it was kind of very stupid to do it on tape, know the tapes were out there, and still go on a media blitz portraying herself as the picture of the new, modern, young "Christian soldier."
• This one from the Daily Mail in Britain: Universal Pictures, one of the film companies that frequently distributes to theaters worldwide movies so bad they might cause cancer, has been busted in the UK for deleting the images of African American actors Faison Love and Kali Hawk from promo posters for Couples Retreat. Asked to explain, Universal said it was innocently trying to "simplify" the poster for international audiences. Loosely translated, "simplify" in this context means "remove the scary black people so that our British audiences don't see the posters and get turned off to this film."

I told you about this...

What's crackin', friends and frienemies?

I hope you've all been well and have had a restful break from me blogging. See how I flipped that and put the onus on you for my absense? Man, I'm good. I should be a politician.

Anywho, I've been plotting my takeover of the world in recent weeks, starting with conquering the Internets.

On a more serious note, I wanted to write a quick something about a current homicide case unfolding in the Miami area.

In mid-September, 17-year-old Danny Rodriguez, a student at Coral Gables High School, fatally stabbed classmate Juan Carlos Rivera, also 17, on campus.

Since then speculation, based on what friends and family of both young men had to say, was that this murder was largely about a fight over a girl.

And it turns out that was part of it. But what actually prompted the murder, the morning of Sept. 15th? A "mean mug," or as Rodriguez told police in interrogation video released yesterday, a "bad face."

Yep, on the morning of the murder Rivera gave too tough a look to Rodriguez and took a knife in the gut and the back for it.

Some of you not familiar with the urban colloquialism of "mean mug" may think it's a stretch that a "bad look" could prompt a murder in any but an insane person, but consider it a sign of the times.

When I covered crime back in the day, I wrote about murder cases in which the otherwise "normal" suspect took a life over a scuffed shoe, flirting with another man's girlfriend, scratching another man's car bumper, and so on. I could go on and the "motives" would get even more trite, but I think you get the point.

So I have to say I'm not surprised, not even a little bit.

May Rivera rest in peace.

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My Friday Column: To snitch or not to snitch

What's crackin' folks? Happy Friday to you.

My column in today's Miami Herald is about a kid who sort of bucked a national trend and "snitched" on another kid who was trying to commit a theft. The kid who reported the attempted theft got second and third-degree burns for his trouble, when the other kid rounded up several friends, tracked down the "snitch" and set him on fire.

We have this tunnel vision - some of us do, anyway - that says "stop snitching" is an urban phenomenon that takes place in the so-called 'hood and (only) involves gangbangers and wannabe rappers and poverty-stricken people who fear gangbangers and wannabe rappers.

In reality though, "stop snitching" is an American phenomenon. It's as classic as apple pie and Ballpark franks. It is pervasive in police departments, in the military, among athletes who know damned well that teammates are abusing 'roids, among young siblings, etc.

And so when something like this happens, we all shake our fists and say "How dare they set this kid on fire!" But our culture says something else, because "snitching" is discouraged no matter what we say on our soapboxes.

Anyway, read the column here.

Prison Inmate Plastic Surgery on Taxpayer Dime: Right, Wrong?

Before I even give you this scenario, I can tell you right now I say "No!" Seriously, (almost) no gray area for me.

Now, here's the deal: Daryl Strenke, 45, is serving 30 years in a Wisconsin prison as part of a 60-year sentence, for murdering his ex-girlfriend, the first half of what he apparently planned to be a murder-suicide.

Strenke lured Samantha Verby out of her home, blasted her in the face with a shotgun, with her 7-year-old daughter a few feet away, and then turned the gun on himself.

While aiming at himself Strenke suddenly became a bad shot and instead of dying, mangled his face.

His mother says he's "tortured" daily by the physical pain caused by his self-inflicted injuries...again, self inflicted after he shot his recent ex-girlfriend point blank in the face.

Drumroll, please! The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is about to embark on a series of expensive cosmetic surgeries, at taxpayer expense, to repair Strenke's face and ease his pain.

They say, it's their obligation to provide medical care to inmates, because inmates are wards of the state. I get that argument, and I actually agree with it, if the medical care is either basic "maintenance" stuff or emergency care to save an inmate's life or prevent his death.

But no one with the WDoC will say whether Strenke's disfigurement and related issues make for a life or death situation. His mother says though that the surgery is needed 'cause he can't speak clearly, he's in constant pain, and since he shot his teeth off all his food has to be puréed. So he's in pain, can't chew solid food, and has difficulty talking.

Should he get the surgery, and should the state pay for it?

You already know my answer. I'd say 30 years in prison with physical pain and disfigurement serving as a daily reminder that you murdered someone is a fair trade off. My one exception would be if Strenke's family/supporters can pay for the surgery themselves.

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Friday Column: The myth of the lucrative drug deal

What's crackin' folks, and Whatever-emotion-you-want Friday to you.

So, today's column in the Miami Herald is about a young man convicted by a Miami jury yesterday of manslaughter for accidentally shooting and killing a 9-year-old honor student while she played outside her home. Damon Darling, 24, was apparently trading shots with another poorly-aiming knucklehead over a drug deal gone bad.

Now Darling is going away for a long time for the death of Sherdavia Jenkins. The outrage over her death is a given. And I'd be worried if the outrage wasn't there, or if the pinheads who wrote me a few weeks ago complaining that human deaths are no big deal because humans aren't innocent like animals dominated this discussion.

What was sort of overlooked a little was Darling's motivation for putting himself in a circumstance that led to him killing a little girl: He wasn't a drug dealer because he was desperate for money to help pay his sick grandmother's medical bills. He was a drug dealer, because he thought he could get rich quick, easily (the two are not synonymous in this case), or both.

And having written about crime for years, I know that Darling's belief about dealing was 99% myth. Most street level drug dealers are not "rich." Most never get rich. Most never even "earn" a livable wage and could probably make more money flipping burgers. And yet they cling to this Scar Face-esque dream, like the high school kid with two left feet who thinks he's going to the National Basketball Association.

Anyway, if you have three minutes, check out the column here.

And don't forget to follow me: http://twitter.com/jamesburnett. 

Chicago Beating Death

By now you probably know that a teenage boy was beaten to death in Chicago earlier today by two groups of other teens who were fighting each other - allegedly a gang dispute, but jointly turned on the victim when he unwittingly wandered into the middle of their rumble.

Now, Derrion Albert, a good student and church-going kid with absolutely no reputation for violent or criminal behavior of any kind, is dead.

Over the next several days, good people in Chicago will March, ask police for more patrols, and ask the city for more $$$ to help fund programs to save the kids from themselves. People will also say the violence must stop, but they will say it in a way that mimicks the dissipation of smoke in the open air: that plea will go nowhere, because it will be aimed at no one in particular.

Yeah, communities have to turn on criminals. But this kind of mind-numbing violent crime, involving perpetrators as young as 17, won't stop until communities also turn on parents who allow their children to raise themselves and who don't compel their kids to behave.

That's right. Parents. The four knuckleheads in custody in Chicago for killing Albert didn't lose respect for human life this morning. It's been building for some time, and probably because no adult relative or guardian got in their faces and told them to straighten up or else.'

Pathetic.

PS. If you're considering leaving a racist or borderline racist comment on this post, don't bother, unless you have newly discovered scientific evidence that there is a cause and effect relationship between skin color and behavior. If you don't have that proof - that color causes certain behavior, then swallow your prejudice and face this fact: this crime was (allegedly) committed by four young men, not every other young man in this country who happens to share a tan with them. Hell, I look like 'em. But I look like the victim too. Chew on that.

PPS. I wonder if I'll hear from the readers who wrote me on Friday to say they care less about human victims of crime than animal victims, because human victims ask for it. Hmmm, Albert's family would no doubt be thrilled to hear that enlightened view of the cycle of life.

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

Roman Polanski

In case you live in a cave, thirty-two years ago at the age of 44, movie director Roman Polanski, "hosted" a 13-year-old female date at then friend Jack Nicholson's house. Polanski gave the girl champagne and drugs, and when she was good 'n drousy, he raped her. He later admitted the sexual encounter as part of a botched, wonky, plea agreement with prosecutors in Los Angeles. The agreement called for Polanski to spend 90 days in a secure psychiatric facility, AKA psych jail, being evaluated. Following his evaluation, if the shrinks did not consider him a threat, he'd likely be done with jail, would go on probation, and would have to get counseling, etc.. At the end of his psych incarceration, the judge in the case hinted that he might disregard the plea deal and sentence Polanski to something harsher, in order to appease the public.

So Polanski fled to France, where he was still a citizen. And that's where he's been since, living his life, starting a new family (wife, two daughters), making movies and winning an Oscar, and being hailed as a cultural and artistic icon, till yesterday when police in Switzerland arrested Polanski and held him on that 31-year-old rape case from the U.S.

Pundits and politicians in France and Switzerland are calling for Polanski's release, saying the case is too old to resume, the collective consciousness of the U.S. is too puritanical, and that U.S. authorities should let bygones be bygones.

Friends and fans in Europe and the U.S. say Polanski has suffered enough in life, being exiled all these years from the U.S., being tormented by Nazis during WWII, and dealing with the murder of his first wife Sharon Tate, by Charles Manson and his gang of loons.

So what do I think? Bring him back and lock his Oscar-winning butt up!

Here's my logic:

• Sure, the judge in the Polanski case back in the day, may have been a fame seeker, but criminal law doesn't require a judge to abide by a plea deal between prosecutors and a defendant, if the judge doesn't think the terms of the deal are just. So whatever his motivation, I can't be too mad at the judge for balking at 90 days in psych jail as a sufficient sentence for the rape of a 13-year-old.
• If Polanski wasn't famous, this would not be a public debate right now.
• If a woman whose husband beat her declined to press charges, in most jurisdictions law enforcement would proceed to charge him anyway. So when Polanski's 13-year-old victim - obviously now an adult - says she doesn't want the case against him to proceed, I feel for her desire to move on, but the case should go on. Besides, her judgment may be clouded, since he paid her in a financial settlement from a civil suit she filed against him over the rape.
• If Polanski wasn't famous, no one would even dream of entertaining his claim that his victim was a real-life Lolita and enthusiastic about their encounter.
• Even if you fell for Polanski's Lolita defense, how do you justify the booze and drugs? Consensual sex partners don't need to be drugged first.
• If Polanski wasn't famous, and had instead been your weird, creepy-looking neighbor back in the day, you'd be calling for a new judge to drop the hammer on him. Same goes if he was one of the guys from the trailer park or the projects on the other side of the tracks.
• If that guy from the trailer park or the projects cited his horrific childhood and adult tragedies as factors in his crime, we'd all tell him - say it with me now - That's all sad, but it's no excuse to rape a child!

Let's review. Regardless of whether the judge was fame-seeking or not, here are a few of the things that troubled him about Polanski's deal: Polanski gave his victim multiple glasses of champagne; fed her quaaludes; performed oral, vaginal, and anal sex on her, even after she said asked him to stop, and even after she said she felt like she was suffering an asthma attack; and had the presence of mind to lie to a visitor who unwittingly interrupted the rape, and told that person he was getting dressed.

Yeah, I thought The Piano was a great movie too. But Polanski needs to face a judge in this country, where he committed and admitted his crime.

PS. Here's a doozy for ya: My Friday column was about two South Florida men accused of horribly mutilating two horses, so they could butcher the animals and sell their meat. I mourned the loss of the animals but said I was disturbed by what appears to be an increasing callousness toward human victims of violent crime. I suggested that we shouldn't care less about animal victims of violent crime, but we should definitely care more about human victims of violent crime. Half the reader responses I received argued that humans aren't real victims like animals, because humans bring crime on themselves. Hmmm, does that enlightened view apply to 13-year-old rape victims too?

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Today's Column: Mourning people as we mourn animals

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.