Burnettiquette

Monday Roundup: Rielle Hunter, Sweet, Sweet Detroit workers, Glenn Beck, Precious

Pleasant Monday to you, friends and frienemies.

• We start today with GQ Magazine not getting the memo that there is actual news happening...stuff that people - even its high-end readership - care about, and instead dedicating words and pictures to Rielle Hunter, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' mistress. Hunter uses her space to defend her affair with Edwards, insist she didn't pursue him, blame his terminally ill soon-to-be-ex-wife for his hankering for strange, and predict that they (Hunter and Edwards) would be in love with one another forever. And she took a really weird picture for someone begging to be taken serioulsy - posing pantsless with stuffed animals and cartoon characters, including a stuffed Dora the Explorer, and Barney the Dinosaur. Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground! Ahem, as a public service, I'm not including the link to the GQ article. I read it for you, so you could look up more important things on more important sites like MiamiHerald.com...You're welcome!
• A city worker in Detroit just won a $100,000 settlement against the city, because the worker successfully argued that a co-worker's too-strong perfume made it difficult to work, focus, breathe, etc. I hate frivolous lawsuits, but I'm not so sure this one's frivolous. I have fairly heavy allergies and asthma. So I feel this woman's pain. And if she asked her supervisors to help by moving her or the perfume wearer or by asking folks to tone down their scents, and they didn't help, then bully for her. Glad she won. I've had a couple of co-workers who smelled like goat farms. It was like working with Pigpen. Made my eyes water. And damned if I couldn't focus either. I was writing things that looked like hieroglyphics I was so dazed. Kidding about that last part. But seriously, I think this suit was just fine. The city's putting up placards now, asking other workers to not wear strong, smelly stuff, so as to avoid further suits.
• Glenn Beck is wrong about social justice having no place in church teachings. Last week the Fox News Channel commentator urged fans to leave their churches if their ministers preached "social justice," because such preaching/teaching pollutes the Gospel. The problem with Beck's argument though, is he interchanges kindness with politics. Every major religion and every Christian denomination - including Beck's Mormon religion - call on government to be fair to people. If you're athiest or agnostic or whatever, none of this means squat to you, 'cause good deeds are good deeds and bad are bad, and so on. But if you call yourself Christian, then you know - or should know - that your bible teaches that Christ fed the poor and encouraged his disciples to do so. He washed other people's feet as a demonstration of humility. He healed the blind and sick (even those without adequate health insurance). His actions were kind, and exhorted his followers to do practice similar acts. Same goes for pretty much every organized religion, and its deities, and prophets, and leaders. Beck'sproblem seems to be one of churches whose leaders try to influence government to set formal policy on social justice issues like poverty. Either way, he's wrong. A religious group can teach its parishioners to do all those kind things in the name of social justice and it can call on government or big business or both to be fair to Average Joe, without making the argument a partisan one and without arguing that individual rights be diminished.
• There's been a lot of outrage over the past few days, since Howard Stern ranted on-air that Gabourey Sidibe, who played the title character in the film Precious, was so fat she'd never work again in Hollywood and that she should treasure her Oscar nomination now 'cause it was the only time she'd get one. In fact, Stern was downright mean in his descriptions of Sidibe. But for all the distasteful nature of his style (and that of sidekick, Robin Whatshername), Stern alluded to a very, very valid point: Obesity is a major health problem in the United States. Obesity among African Americans is at scary levels. Obesity in general costs the already overburdened medical care system billions per year. If the source of our obesity problem was a mystery, this would be a different discussion. But much of it can be attributed to people eating crap and leading sedentary lifestyles. So, Stern argued that people who tell Sidibe to stay just the way she is and tell her that she can get plenty of roles in Hollywood just the way she is, are helping keep her at a dangeroulsy unhealthy weight/size by inadvertently telling her to stay obese. I think his argument warrants consideration. Again, there's no excuse for Stern's mean descriptions of Sidibe. But what do you expect - for him to be diplomatic? And his claim that she'll never work in Hollywood again have already been proven false. She co-stars with Zoe Kravitz in Yelling to the Sky, set for release later this year. The Oscar thing? Silly. How do you predict that someone will "never" be nominated again? Who would've thought Mickey Rourke would make a comeback? But I do agree with Stern's argument about Hollywood folks doing Sidibe a disservice by telling her she's fine just as she is, physically. If they mean to tell her she's an all-around beautiful person for having a radiant smile and confidence and smarts and an awesome personality, etc., they should. But they shouldn't encourage anyone to remain obese because it seems like the nice thing to say.

So that's all for me...for this morning, anyway. I've got an article to finish.

PS. Follow me, please, at twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Monday Roundup: 24, Oscars, Ashburn, Burkett, Walt Baker, Haiti

What's crackin' friends and frienemies?

Just finished watching 24, 1 a.m. - 2 a.m., and I remain confused about something: How did charatcer Dana Walsh get a job at a federal counter-terrorism unit, with a criminal background as an armed robber (at least, I think it was armed robber)? I know a guy who couldn't get a gig at McDonald's 'cause he had a terrible driving history with a gut-load of unpaid tickets. Not like he was gonna be driving through the grill area at McD's. Of all the spy stuff that sometimes comes across as incredulous (though enough of it is scary enough to make you ponder) on this show, her making it through the background check process is the least believable thing to me.

I was happy for Sandra Bullock that she won the Oscar for "best actress" Sunday night. I thought The Blind Side was touching. But I can't lie. I'm still slightly put off by yet another movie about a needy, poor black kid, saved in the nick of time when a white family swoops in. Why does this bother me? It's not the acts of kindness. I laud them. I laud those acts from the Touhy family, portrayed in the film, and from any other family that helps a kid in need. My problem is really me - my paranoia that certain tiny-minded folks will read into the Touhy's good deeds and see a perpetuation of the stereotype of needy, helpless black folks. Shoot, my folks over the years have taken in a dozen ragamuffins of all stripes, particularly struggling younger black folks. And no one's making any movies about the Burnetts. I recommended to my mom they call the movie "The Dark Side" if it ever got made. Thought I was being clever. But she pointed out I could end up getting sued by George Lucas for swiping one of his Star Wars themes.

And speaking of Oscars, I wonder if Elinor Burkett, who pulled a Kanye West, by bum rushing the stage during Roger Ross Williams' acceptance speech will draw several days worth of condemnations for the act. There were people on Twitter calling for West's man parts to be lopped off when he interrupted singer Taylor Swift at an MTV awards ceremony a few months ago. I'm thinking the buzz about Burkett is gonna fade quickly. The difference between her and Man-West is he had a public track record of speaking out of turn. Plus, Taylor Swift is a kid, and thus more sympathetic than Williams, a grown man who could have put Burkett in a headlock till he was done saying thank you.

I believe in Karma. So before reading further, set aside your opinions on homosexuality and affirmative action - as in whether you believe either is right or wrong or good or bad or whatever. Now, with a level mind, tell me if you disagree that Karma has bitten California State Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Sacramento), who so vehemently spoke out against gay rights legislation in his state, but was caught last week driving drunk on his way home with a male hookerish guy from a gay bar. In that incident, Ashburn, who on Monday came out as gay, was exposed as a hypocrite. Ashburn's admission that he is gay makes him just as bad as those Baby Boomer beneficiaries of affirmative action legislation, who later got on soapboxes and poked fun of and placed guilt trips on people younger than them who stood to benefit from the same legislation. Again, this isn't a con/pro judgment of AA, any more than it is of Ashburn's lifestyle. It's a judgment against phonies. We can talk lifestyle in another post ;-)

Walt Baker is the latest example of a sufferer of Hoof-in-Mouth disease, who didn't quite get the problem with his most recent display of symptoms. Baker, was CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, till he was fired on Monday, following an uproar over an email he circulated several days ago that compared First Lady Michelle Obama's looks to those of Cheetah, Tarzan's chimpanzee companion. Baker's initial reaction wasn't "Sorry for my tasteless attempt at a joke." It was This email was sent to me. I simply forwarded it!, followed by I forwarded it from a personal email account, not from work!, followed by It didn't occur to me that there might be a racist interpretation of the email. I meant it as political commentary! (so what do her looks have to do with her/her husband's politics?), followed by I'm sorry some people were offended by my joke! (never mind the content of the joke), followed by Oops!, followed by Guess I'll be cleaning out my desk now! 

I don't feel any sympathy for Baker, but the most honest, stand-up thing he could have done (or what he should have done if he had good PR people) would have been to issue an immediate statement saying "Look, I forwarded that email 'cause I thought it was funny. I know it was tasteless. And that's why I only sent it to a few people. The sentiment in the email was mean-spirited, and arguably racist, two attitudes I'd say I've never had, though I know my actions with this email say otherwise. So I'm sorry. I'm first sorry for getting caught, 'cause I admit if I hadn't gotten caught I'd have never felt sorry. But now that I am caught the uproar over this incident is giving me pause to examine my own heart and sense of humor. I'll be seeking counseling from my minister. And I'll be meeting with a diverse set of community leaders to discuss ways I might open my mind and better learn the common sense differences between humor and poor taste." No way that statement was gonna happen. Still...

 Friends have been asking me what was the most disturbing thing I saw in Haiti a couple weeks ago. Answer? Classism. It's a given that all the death and destruction were horrible. Difficult stuff to describe and it bothered me to see it all day everyday, especially knowing that folks in Port-au-Prince would have to live in it for years to come. But what bothered me most was the blatant classism on display. Yeah we have it in the U.S. too. But here it's often tied in with race or skin color...though not always. It couldn't be blamed on skin color in Haiti, just status. My last day in the city, the driver who took me to the airport wasn't my regular guy. This driver was from Petionville, a nice (in some parts downright fancy) neighborhood in the hills above Port-au-Prince. As we drove through destroyed poor 'hoods on the way to the airport, we passed an old guy limping with a cane, dressed in rags, walking his dog through a pile of garbage, looking for scraps. My driver honked at them, gestured wildly for them to get out of the way, cursed at the pair, though there was plenty of room for us to get by without all the drama, and then turned to me with a dumb grin and said "Eh, I almost mixed them up, boss! They look to me like two dogs, instead of one." He thought he was funny. I won't be hiring that driver when I go back.

So a goat walks into a strip club...

A goat in California broke into a strip club and tore the joint up. You'd think this would be good for lots of laughs, but it's so obvious I can't come up with anything. I was thinking about the goat's hours being cut, or the goat having too large a C-section scar, or maybe the goat having too many needle tracks on its fore-legs. But none of those quite cut it. So I give up.

Anyway, here's the full story. You're on your own to find an additional punchline.

PS. Follow me, please, at twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Only in Florida: Raccoon Gang Jumps Elderly Woman

When a 74-year-old Lakeland, FL, woman tried to stop a band of raccoons from loitering in her yard by shooing them away, the racoons surrounded her and attacked.

Seriously, I won't even crack jokes, 'cause she was injured. They didn't bite her much, but Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Gretchen Whitted "was filleted," the animals scratched her up so badly.

But the crazy thing about this to me is when Whitted shooed them, the racoons had the presence of mind to form a circle around her before attacking.

That's crazy! That's crazy on a Planet of the Apes level. I will never again look at two or more racoons the same way. And if I see two or more of them hanging out, whether in my yard or not, I'm gonna leave them alone.

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

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.

Kill the dog or pimp slap the owner?

The owner of a pit bull mix, who is scheduled to be put down soon for attacking and killing a neighbor's cat, is suing Broward County, Fla., officials to overturn his doggy's death penalty and the law that condemned his dog.

Brian Hoesch, 25, says a year-old one-strike-and-you're-dead law against dogs who kill other domestic animals in unprovoked attacks is unfair and amounts to seizure of property (in this case, the dog itself) without first giving the owner reasonable time and leeway to correct the dog's behavior.

The late cat's owner says tough nuts and may the dog have a peaceful journey to the doggy afterlife. Can't say I blame him. The cat was lounging on his porch when the dog came over and attacked it.

I feel for the dog, especially since her attorney claims she was mistreated as a pup. And in a perfect world I'd say spare her. But we don't live in a perfect world. And vicious animals probably should get put down if they can't be isolated, or maybe whether or not they can be isolated. I know that bad dogs tend to get that way from having bad owners. So if Hoesch wins and the law's changed and his dog is allowed to come home, what guarantee is there that Hoesch will do a better job keeping his dog secured?

Hoesch's stepdad had this to say of the inmate: ''She's really a very sweet dog. But unfortunately, she got out and killed the cat. She has a natural instinct to chase furry things. Our goal is to get her home.''

"She has a natural instinct to chase furry things."

Hmmm. I don't think the chasing part was what caused the problem here. I'm thinking it was the biting and killing part. But I haven't watched The Dog Whisperer in months, so what do I know?

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.

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.

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.

I'm having kittens for dinner!

That's right, tomorrow evening this will be me.

I won't be a former president in a poorly doctored photo. But according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, I'll be eating kittens.

See, I plan to have fish for dinner tomorrow. And PETA's latest inadvertent attempt to convince everyone on Earth to do the exact opposite of what PETA suggests, is a PR campaign to have fish renamed "sea kittens," so that fish eaters will begin to see them as cute animals and therefore not tasty when prepared beer battered and served with tartar sauce, fries, and cole slaw.

Advocacy for disadvantaged animals is great, since, like babies, they can't speak for themselves. But whether you believe in creation or evolution you can't deny that humans are king over the other animals. It's either the order of deity or survival of the fittest.

Yeah, yeah, I once had a hippie share an unoriginal thought with me: animals don't make bombs or fire guns, except for apes. Just ask Roddy McDowall.

Well, (sane) humans don't eat their young or fling their poop against walls...or randomly hump each other at the dog park.

So we rule.

It's true that we can get protein from very healthy vegetable sources, especially soy-based stuff. But some folks simply prefer delicious animals instead. It's their right. Their choice. Our choice.

So change the name. I don't care what you call fish. As Shakespeare might say, a sea kitten by any other name is still great with tartar sauce, fries, and cole slaw...and if I can get my grandmother's recipe, cathead biscuits.

But that's tomorrow night. Right now, I'm gonna go snack on some very cute sky puppies with sweet, sweet, honey mustard sauce.