If this date means absolutely nothing other than you have three days left to buy Christmas presents, then I applaud you.
If the date, however, means you believe this is when the world ends, you belong in that insane group of conspiracy nuts who claim our government agents actually piloted those jets into the World Trade Center on 9/11. That bombs placed inside the Twin Towers caused their collapse, not the heat from burning jet fuel that weakened the buildings’ steel structures.
If you haven’t already noticed articles in magazine about 12/21/12 or the slew of books in the New Age & Spirituality section at bookstores, it’s a good bet you will know the meaning of the date when Hollywood’s big budget disaster movie, “2012”, is released.
Originally set to open last summer, “2012” stars John Cusack and Amanda Peet and is directed by Noah Emmerich, who unleashed Mother Nature’s fury in “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004) and gave aliens inside giant pancakes carte blanche to incinerate landmarks from the White House to the Empire State Building in “Independence Day” (1996).
“2012” opened in theaters Nov. 13, 2009. Friday the 13th to be exact, perhaps the perfect date to release a movie about humanity biting the big one. The only other time studios look to cash in on the superstitious date is when they release a slasher pic about a guy in a hockey mask named Jason who around knocking off young college kids at a campground called Crystal Lake.
Perhaps you’ve seen “2012’s” big promotional cardboard display at theaters showing what resembles a continent of cities and suburbs falling into the ocean. I wonder if it’s that part of America that’s been referred to as “The Blubber Belt”; the juncture where we will finally pay the price f0r being so obese because the land we live on can no longer sustain our increasing weight.
Watching the trailer, I couldn’t help but laugh seeing the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, being flipped over by a giant tidal wave that washes away the White House.
This brings me to the subject of entertainment, which when you get down to it is all “2012,” the movie really is. It’s not about the Mayans, though their unseen presence does play a significant role in the film and the main reason for Mother Earth’s destruction. Leave it to the doomsayers to twist what is nothing more than an end date of the Mayan calendar.
“There’s going to be a whole generation of people, who, when they think of the Maya, think of 2012, and to me that’s just criminal,” said David Stuart, director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas at Austin in an article on CNN’s website. “There is no serious scholar who puts any stock in the idea that the Maya said anything meaningful about 2012.”
Even “2012” director Roland Emmerich doesn’t believe the world is on collision course with Doomsday.
“I’m a pretty down-to-earth guy,” Emmerich said on Yahoo! Movie Talk earlier this year. “Even though I made movies about aliens, I don’t believe in aliens. And I don’t believe the world will come to an end in 2012, but it’s a great scenario.”
The idea we will all perish on Dec. 21, 2012, is becoming as much a mass marketing fad, if not a fraud, the way businesses capitalized on President Barack Obama’s inauguration last January with hundreds of trinkets being ridiculously referred to as collector’s items. Obama was even seen in a Marvel Comics issue of Spider-man aptly titled “Election Day.”
Go to AOL.com and type in “2012” under the search bar and you get 19.6 million articles. Yahoo’s search engine reveals 712 million. At Google, you get 191 million searches. Type in “2012” at amazon.com and you’ll find 67,359 books on just the year alone versus the 245 “all products” listing on the subject at Barnes and Noble’s website.
This is just in 2009. How many more falsehoods will flood the Internet, bookstore and the entertainment industry before the “fateful” date hits?
All things must come to an end, much like the mass-marketed, so-called “positive” change honeymoon that was Obama’s inauguration. Eventually this senseless controversy surrounding 2012 will subside but not until after doomsayers wake up the morning of Dec. 22, three years from now, to find out, much to their dismay, that we’re all still here.
So much for the $100 I was hoping to save that Christmas on gift cards for family members. As usual, that’s money I will never see again.
I hope before this so-called apocalypse hits, I meet a doomsayer so I can ask him such questions as “Why do you want to die?” Where is the celebration in seeing the world go up in a series of catastrophes? Don’t you realize that if some asteroid the size of Texas hits us or the Moon collides with Earth, or we get into some kind of nuclear Armageddon that’s not just “us” who will perish but you, as well?
I am not denying that an afterlife doesn’t exist where things for people will be far better or worse for them in the next world, depending on their religious beliefs on God, Heaven, Hell, and eternal bliss and damnation. When our world ends, however, that’s it.
Then again, anyone who has read the Bible should know there is no date or time predicted when the world will end, despite all the bad things happening right now (the Swine Flu outbreak, world disasters, the collapsing economy, the continuing confrontation with North Korea, Iran, and al-Qaeda, and humanity’s immoral compass that goes against God’s laws) that some die-hard religious zealots say are signs we are living in “The End Times.”
So, excuse me if I play devil’s advocate and say I think all this stuff about the world ending in 2012 is a load of crap. Recall the scene in “2012” where John Cusack laughs off the idea with his kids saying, “What are the odds” before being bombarded with meteors as they’re driving through Yellowstone National Park? I don’t foresee meteors raining down on me as I’m driving down I-635 on my way to work at 3 p.m. three days before Christmas, three years from now.
But look at this way, doomsayers. There is hope for you 27 years from now. Astronomers say that’s when the 880 megaton Apophis asteroid will supposedly hit Earth.
The date will be April 13, 2036. Do you doomsayers have that already marked on your future calendars?
Like most, if not all Americans, who whenever a national tragedy hits home looks to their president for consolation that things are under control and that we, as a country will prevail, I was actually proud of President Obama responding so quickly to reporters in the hours after the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood that left 42 wounded, 12 servicemen and one civilian dead.
That pride lasted less than 24 hours.
Those who know me, and know how fed up I am with President Obama and his socialist agenda would probably call that a world record in terms of how long I spent not criticizing his actions and decisions.
That all ended around 10:30 a.m. Friday morning when a military serviceman called in to WBAP’s The Mark Davis Show to say how embarrassed he was at the President’s remarks Nov. 5. The serviceman said President Obama didn’t even address the shootings late Thursday afternoon until two minutes into his speech at The Tribal Nations Conference.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The moment I got home I immediately went to youtube.com to see if there was any videos of the entire press conference.
Watching the Thursday news conference, I couldn’t believe my ears. There was President Obama at 5:02 p.m. EST opening his comments from the transcript I got off a website saying, “Let me first of all just thank Ken and the entire Department of the Interior staff for organizing just an extraordinary conference. I want to thank my Cabinet members and senior administration officials who participated today.”
“I hear that Dr. Joe Medicine Crow was around, and so I want to give a shout-out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner,” President Obama said. “It's good to see you.”
This was followed by applause in the audience.
“My understanding is, is that you had an extremely productive conference. I want to thank all of you for coming and for your efforts, and I want to give you my solemn guarantee that this is not the end of a process but a beginning of a process, and that we are going to follow up.”
More applause.
“We are going to follow up. Every single member of my team understands that this is a top priority for us,” the President went on to say. “I want you to know that, as I said this morning, this is not something that we just give lip service to. And we are going to keep on working with you to make sure that the first Americans get the best possible chances in life in a way that's consistent with your extraordinary traditions and culture and values.”
It is after these comments that President Obama discussed the Fort Hood shootings. The serviceman who called in to The Mark Davis Show Friday said he almost expected the Obama to start giving high-fives.
If you check out any online news article written Nov. 5 about the shootings, you will find the President’s consoling remarks saying “These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk, and at times give, their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil."
Now if I were editor or a writer for that matter covering this story, I definitely would have put in there somewhere about how Obama didn’t respond immediately at the conference about Fort Hood until two minutes later. This is the equivalent of those mock news conferences I attended for the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association years back when I was serious about pursuing journalism. I signed up to cover a fake news conference and sometime during that conference, something unexpected would happen that would make everyone go cover that instead. Why? It’s because that was the more important story.
Fort Hood was the most important story here Mr. President!
I guess I should not be surprised about President Obama’s delayed response to the Fort Hood incident, nor am I the least bit surprised at how the Obama controlled state run media are not reporting much about it, if at all. They love this guy and to the drive-by’s, he can do no wrong.
If former President Bush had opened up with remarks about a Tribal Conference when this happened, the drive-by media, late night talk show hosts, and the entertainment industry would have had a field day. It would be the My Pet Goat incident on 9/11 all over again and all the untruths many people, the young in particular liberal high school and college students stupidly embracing Michael Moore’s 2004 laugh fest riot, Fahrenheit 9/11, which I call the funniest film since Airplane (1980).
I have heard a lot these past few months from the hard right who have said President Obama is a narcissist. Up until Nov. 5, I refused to believe it. Now I believe otherwise. Even if he isn’t a narcissist, he sure as Hell doesn’t know how to cover it up. Not when he fails to address a national tragedy immediately. Not when he is off in Denmark in hopes of landing Chicago the Olympics when the Derrion Albert incident was making national headlines at the end of September.
Not when he promised during his presidential campaign last year that the situation in Afghanistan would be top priority and he has yet to commit to anything. In the meantime, we have soldiers there in harm’s way, the death toll is rising and the American people, most of who now say they are not for the mission, have forgotten the entire reason we’re there to begin with started on Sept. 11, 2001. Somewhere in that region, Osama bin Laden is loving every minute of this.
If I were president and this had happened on my watch, I would have immediately been on the phone to the top military officials at Fort Hood to find out how soon I could visit the base, the troops, the wounded, and perhaps even the families of the dead on that Friday, maybe even Thursday night if possible. President Obama, however, was too busy to do so. He spent the weekend staying on top of Congress making sure his health care bill was passed and then went off to Camp David for some much needed rest and relaxation.
So who visited Fort Hood in the hours following the tragedy? President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush that’s who. But don’t worry America. President Obama did delay his trip two days in Japan so he can attend the funeral services for the Fort Hood victims Nov. 10 and as an added bonus ordered all American flags to half staff through Veteran’s Day, which is something any president would have done. There is nothing extraordinary about this unless you call him signing a $24 million bill to extend jobless benefits a good thing, which I DO NOT.
If this is how the President of the United States handles a national tragedy where over fifty people are killed or wounded, I can’t help but wonder what his response will be if terrorists hit the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington during a Sunday football game where hundreds are killed.
Will he start out his press conference on the golf course thanking his staff for the opportunity for some recreation that was ruined by another terrorist attack worse than 9/11?
Such was the title of that famous Bob Dylan song. When it comes to the variety of options consumers now have to rent movie, the times really “are a-changin” especially for Dallas-based Blockbuster Video.
If the video retailer’s announcement Sept. 15 that it may close as many as 960 of the more than 4300 stores Blockbuster operates in the country as a result of continuing low profits and the massive beating from competitive rivals Netflix, Inc. and Redbox is any indication, it looks like “the Buster” is well on its way to becoming a dinosaur.
Of course, it wasn’t always like this.
Working for “the Buster” from 1988 to 1996, I can’t tell you how many times I heard the comment that Blockbuster’s days of being one of the top video chains were numbered thanks to upcoming technology that would make renting movies easier.
What amazed me was every time someone made such a comment the Blockbuster CEOs and executives managed to prove the naysayers wrong.
I equate working for Blockbuster those eight years to being a member of a successful, long-running sitcom. I looked at Blockbuster like working at a popular bar, like on the show, “Cheers” (1982-1993).
At the Town East Blvd. location, where I worked, which is no longer there, we had our regular customers who were the equivalent of Norm Peterson, Cliff Claven, and Frasier Crane. You could almost set your watch as to when they’d show up. If they didn’t, you knew something was up. They’d gather at the front door t 9:45 a.m. every morning, especially Fridays and Saturdays. Their lives depended on them getting their hands on that copy of “Die Hard” or “Bull Durham” from 1988 or that only copy of “Millenium” (1989) the rental giant stupidly ordered when demand for lousy box office flops was always high.
One customer named Howard McGinnis rented over 3,000 movies. When he passed away in 1995 the priest at the funeral said the one question Howard will ask St. Peter as he passes through the pearly gates, “Where is the nearest Blockbuster?”
When the company was big on protecting children from sexual predators by offering parents the opportunity to bring their kids in to have identity videos filmed of them to be given to the police to help in disappearances, one customer had one of the employees set up the video camera to propose to his girlfriend.
She said yes.
In addition to the Norm Petersons, there was even a Carla Tortelli, behind the counter, who didn’t get off being chained to the first register for eight hours checking out customers. She referred to customers as cattle and it was her responsibility to get the herds out of the door by any means necessary. Customer service was not high on her list.
What the clientele weren’t standing outside waiting for the doors to open, they would hang around at the drop boxes, whether they were inside or outside. Sometimes they’d bother other renters near the outside drop box, asking them what movies they were returning. Inside of serving drinks, the clerks were serving movies.
The last time I stepped inside a Blockbuster Video was last summer to return some late DVDs I had in the car for two weeks. I didn’t pay the late fee either. Sure, there are several movies I’d like to see that I missed at the box office this year such as “Defiance,” “He’s Just Not That into You,” or “Revolutionary Road.”
What do I need Blockbuster for when I’ve got a wireless Internet/cable service provider and can order the titles from them or off their Video-On-Demand stations, record them on DVR and watch them later?
Or, if I want, I can just drive to the local Walmart and get the titles from their Redbox machine. Walmart I now the new Blockbuster. With such websites at YouTube, Hulu, and IMDB making older movies and television shows available for download off the net, all one needs to do is just open up an account. Since they show R-rated movies at no cost, who needs Blockbuster?
I predict the day will come when that video store I referred to as the place “where everybody knows your name” will play out a scene similar to the one in the last episode of “Cheers.” Except in this case the store will never reopen.
Instead of a patron eager to get a drink at 10 a.m. the moment the doors open, there will be a customer either hoping to get the DVDs they rented out checked in before the midnight deadline or get their hands on some new release that’s been out for weeks. Like Ted Danson’s bar owner, Sam Malone, the video store manager will come out of his back office for the very last time to say, “Sorry. We’re closed.”
Despite my growing fascination with supposedly real-life supernatural events, thanks to my reading such magazines as Fortean Times and Paranormal and watching documentaries on the Discovery, History, and Travel channels, I remain skeptical on whether ghosts exist.
That’s not to say I don’t believe in the afterlife. I know when my aunt passed away in 2000, after being in a coma for several weeks, I was told she had a smile on her face, thus proving to me where her spirit went. That is provided you believe that upon death and having lived a good Christian life, your eternal award awaits you in Heaven.
On the flip side, I don’t believe the story my grandfather told me a few years ago. He said he awoke early one morning to see his bedroom completely illuminated with a very bright white light lasting several minutes.
No lamps were on, he said. He told me he thought it was my late grandmother trying to tell him something. Still say it was probably a porch light from next door that shined through the bathroom window from across the hall to the bedroom.
I have, however, experienced a few strange things at work while alone. But in the three years there, the occurrences haven’t bothered me to the point I think the place is haunted. A couple of coworkers have told me that when they’re alone working in the building, they’ve felt like they heard voices.
I can explain every occurrence that’s happened. The ticking noise I hear coming from one side of the office sometimes is probably a computer or alarm system resetting itself. The reason I heard a loud bang, which was my manager’s metallic name tag hitting the floor one night, was because the plastic clip holding it broke on its own.
I could not find what fell on one coworker’s desk one Saturday afternoon, since my cubicle s in the opposite end of the office. I assumed whatever it was rolled under the desk somewhere. I wasn’t about to go looking for it. I am not maintenance.
I am certain the sounds I hear on the roof at night are either squirrels or raccoons or just the building settling. The wasps I have seen buzzing around sometimes are not something out of the “The Amityville Horror” (1979) where masses of flies milled around a bedroom window. The wasps either go in through the vents or got nests inside. God help them should they see me.
Granted, when I am in the men’s restroom, I have sometimes heard the women’s restroom door open like someone was in the building. I continue to assume security was there at the time and used the restroom before leaving, though I never bothered to see if their police car was parked outside.
Even if I had learned there was no one in the building at the time and that door opened on its own, I still wouldn’t believe the place is haunted. I can understand, though, how some could make that assumption. My dad did on Nov. 1, 2009. The incident happened one month after my grandfather passed away.
My dad awoke to find the living room is disarray like maybe the house had been robbed. The lounge chair my grandfather sat in when he came over was in an upright position as though someone was there facing the television. The television set was to a Christian cable station my grandfather watched in the early morning hours. Several pictures were lying face down while in the kitchen one of the chairs my grandfather sat in was on the table similar to that kitchen scene in “Poltergeist” (1982). The cabinet doors were also opened.
My dad was convinced at that moment my grandfather had come back as a spirit and was trying to tell him something. He even spoke to the parish priest at the church he attends about the “supposed” supernatural occurrences he saw that weekend. The priest gave him sage leaves spiritualists use to cleanse “haunted” homes of ghosts and/or negative energy.
I could not keep a straight face when my parents questioned me about whether I had something to do with it. After all, it’s always the quiet ones people most suspect.
To quote Conal Cochran, the Irish toymaker in “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” (1982), “I do love a good joke, and this is the best ever.”
I admitted to everything my dad wrote on a notepad of the different “occurrences” he noticed during those two days with the exception of two things he listed. He wrote the cabinet doors in the bathroom were left open and the soap was moved.
I didn’t do that. Perhaps it was my grandfather who as a spirit saw what I was doing and decided to join in the fun. Not that I believe that sort of thing.
To this day, whenever I see my sister’s in-laws on the holidays for dinner, they dare me to put the dining room chairs on the table before my parents get there and blame it on a “ghost.”
Cast & Credits: Hilary Swank (Amelia Earhart), Richard Gere (George Putnam), Ewan McGregor (Gene Vidal), Christopher Eccleston (Fred Noonan), Cherry Jones (Eleanor Roosevelt), Mia Wasikowska (Elinor Smith),William Cuddy (Gore Vidal). Screenplay by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan based on source materials from the books East to the Dawn and The Sound of Wings. Directed by Mira Nair.
"Amelia," much to my dismay, falls into that category I refer to as the “one-note performance movie.” If such a term exists in "Websters," I am sure the definition is much different from the negative one I define.
The “one-note performance movie” could be 1) the type of film where it literally is all about the lead actor/actress in the leading role and nothing else matters, be it the plot, the screenplay, or any of the other supporting characters. I also define it as 2) a movie so bad, the actor/actress knows it, yet they make the best of their leading role giving a stand-out performance of their own.
I have seen less than a handful of “one-note performance movies” this year and that is not a good thing. If the Razzies ever came up with such a category for the first time next year, I would add Dakota Fanning from "Push", Sienna Miller from "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra", and Seth Rogan from "Observe & Report." Add Hillary Swank’s performance as “Aviatrix” Amelia Earhart to the list of competitors of which there can be only one winner for a Razzie Award in the “one-note performance” category, and I predict Swank would win by a landslide. At least that’s who I’d vote for.
Swank is no doubt a dead ringer for the real Amelia Earhart in terms of appearance so much so I find it eerie. We even see her freckles, which is something “the vagabond of the skies” didn’t want captured in pictures and newsreel footage of her. Her publicist and eventual husband George Putman (Richard Gere) agreed.
I am amazed sometimes at how actors are made to look exactly like the actual people to the point you could almost be fooled into thinking you are watching the real thing. Val Kilmer looked exactly like singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s "The Doors" (1991). The same went for Denzel Washington in his role as controversial African American leader Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s 1992 film.
"The Doors" and "Malcolm X" offered substance. Amelia offers up everything but. Screenwriters Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan who base their script on the biographical books, East to the Dawn and The Sound of Wings, along with director Mira Nair know the notes. They capture Earhart’s private life with Putnam, her brief affair with TWA founder Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) and her relationship with his young son, Gore Vidal (the kid doesn’t like his name).
In between these dramatic moments is the black and white newsreel footage showing the real Earhart’s successes and sometimes failures as well as her publicity stunts promoting various products and being an inspiration to women everywhere.
Swank provides a few memorable scenes. I especially liked the moment where she takes First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (Cherry Jones) on a flight. If the incident actually happened, Earhart allowed her to take the plane’s controls without anyone aboard knowing it. I also liked the moment where Earhart showed her vulnerable side and didn’t like how she looked. In a scene that could almost hint that perhaps Earhart was a closet lesbian, she tells Gene Vidal how she admires the young, elegantly dressed women sitting at a restaurant commenting on their nice legs, versus her own boyish-like appearance.
There is even a surprise revelation or two. We learn, for example, that her navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston) is an alcoholic, which is something I did not know, if true. It’s obvious the filmmakers attempted to stay faithful to the biographical material right down to the model of the ill-fated plane Earhart and Noonan flew in, the Lockheed L-10 Electra. They just don’t know how to put any of this to music. The film and Swank’s character are so emotionally distant, it’s like spending almost 40 years with someone you’ve fallen in love with and by the time they have unexpectedly passed on, you are unable to shed any tears because you haven’t really gotten to “know” them.
A movie like this should make us hope Earhart will reach that lone island before fuel runs out on her much publicized flight around the world July 2, 1937, despite the eventual tragic outcome. Instead of making me shed any emotion for the character, all I saw from the film’s final few moments was just another scripted scene that was part of her life.
A big screen adaptation about Amelia Earhart should not only have the word “epic” written all over it but “Oscar” worthy as well. On one level, Amelia could be considered an art house film that you’d find playing in theaters that show only independent movies. Amelia should have been the kind of film critics would have not only embraced but small crowds as well; enough to still give it a chance at Oscar nominations.
It is instead the equivalent of a forgettable 111-minute TV movie of the week with aerial cinematography that is far from any of the exciting flying shots done in "Top Gun" (1986) or "The Right Stuff" (1983). Gabriel Yared’s musical score is nothing more than a pale imitation of the memorable slow moving, inspirational, sometimes sad ballads John Barry churned out for a number of the James Bond movies, "Frances" (1982) and "Chaplin" (1991) to name a few.
Even more annoying is how I often had a hard time hearing what the characters were saying. I know I am getting old but I’ll blame the theater’s sound system where the technicians know nothing about making the dialogue stand out and drowning out all the other unnecessary noise going on in the background before I assume I’m having hearing problems.
Instead of being an independent success, "Amelia" will probably go down as an expensive, if not embarrassing flop for Fox Searchlight Pictures. The film reportedly cost $100 million to make and failed to hit the top ten box office hits opening weekend grossing just a paltry $4 million. If it had been good enough to attract the critics and exhibited Oscar potential, that might have given the film some better financial success.
So much has been discussed in the seventy plus years since her mysterious disappearance on whether or not Amelia Earhart actually survived. The aircraft she flew in was reportedly never found. There is speculation maybe she and Noonan were taken prisoner by Japanese soldiers and tortured or that she was a spy working for the United States government and that her final trip around the world was just a cover. The most interesting one I saw discussed on a National Geographic episode was that she actually returned to the states but under a different identity altogether. None of that is discussed or proposed here which would have probably made the storyline more interesting. What we get is just how her fate played out that day.
When movies are based on biographical books or any book whether it be fiction or non fiction, I have always heard they are better than the films. Amelia Earhart’s life story deserves a better adaptation than the one released. The only thing "Amelia" does is make me want to read those two books about her life on which this film is based.
First, in late September there was the unnecessary death of 16-year-old sophomore honor student Derrion Albert from Christian Fenger Academy High School in Chicago, who got caught in the middle of a fight between two groups of teens from different neighborhoods.
Chicago prosecutors charged four teenagers from ages 16 to 19 in the Albert killing.
Then on Oct. 14 came the news about 15-year-old Michael Brewer being set on fire by a group of juvenile delinquents, not only because Brewer reported one of the suspects to police days before for stealing his father’s bicycle, but because Brewer owed one of them a lousy $40 for a stupid video game!
The way President Obama responded to the Albert killing and the response of a lawyer for one of the suspects in the Brewer case infuriated me.
Given that Chicago is Obama’s hometown, I would think he would have addressed the Albert case head-on and speak to members of the drive-by liberal Obama controlled state run media during a press conference that day or that week.
But, Obama had more important issues that week. That didn’t include the health care debate, the rising numbers in unemployment, the war in Afghanistan, or the “Derrion Albert” incident. Instead, he made an emergency trip to Denmark, in hopes of landing Chicago the 2016 Olympics.
To manage the Albert case, the president sent Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to the windy city the week after to meet with school officials, students, and residents to discuss school violence.
Way to go, Mr. President!
It’s as though such discussions will help curb the city’s spurt of fatal student shootings. Before 2006, according to an Associated Press story Sept. 28, 10 to 15 students were fatally shot each year: The number climbed to 24 fatal shootings during the 2006-07 school year, 23 deaths and 211 shootings in the 2007-08 school year, and 290 last year. What will Chicago’s magic number in student deaths be when the 2009-10 school year ends?
Then on Oct. 16, I read on www.truecrimereport.com of lawyer Steve Melnick pleading for the release of 13-year-old Jeremy Jarvis, one of the suspects who took part in the Brewer attack, explaining how his client was traumatized and needs to be at home with his parents.
"He is a 13-year-old child," Melnick said. "I don't know of his involvement in this case, but from reading just the police reports, it appears that his involvement was on the periphery and wasn't directly involved in this horrible attack on Michael Brewer. And if so, he needs to maybe be home with his parents and begin counseling and therapy because he witnessed a horrible attack."
Melnick, your client, the no-good piece of s--- he is should have thought about that before he took part in this heinous act! To quote a priest I had who taught Social Issues class in high school, “You do the crime, you do the time.”
Jarvis is one of five suspects arrested in the Brewer incident and according to Broward County Police Sgt. Steve Feeley in a CNN article said only one of them “seems genuinely sorry about it.”
That person, however, is not Jarvis according to the truecrime.com article but Jesus Mendez, the kid who actually lit Brewer on fire.
The others, Feeley, said upon their arrest laughed about the incident.
"In my 31 years -- I always say, 'it's the most heinous crime I've ever seen,' " said Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti to reporters earlier that week. "This one fits in that category. The fact that a person would intentionally ignite another child on fire -- it's indescribable."
I get sickened whenever I hear of defenseless dogs being abused and set on fire by kids with nothing better to do. Then I hear about a kid being set ablaze and I can’t think of any words to say how disgusted I am. My ideas of vengeance are things only Satan himself could produce for an eternity in Hell and are too gruesome to publish here.
I have always believed when people commit such atrocities, and I don’t care how old they are, even if they are aged 5 and they knew fully well what they were doing when they committed the act, they need to be locked up for 25 years or more.
Now, however, I am beginning to believe the responsibility should not just be on the youths who committed the acts, but on their parents as well.
It breaks my heart at how far and how low society has stooped to when it comes to today’s youths having targets of unnecessary violence. When I attended grade and high school, my worry was either being bullied or coming home with D’s and F’s. I knew I’d be yelled at by my parents, who’d make me do the assignment over.
Today, kids living in violent suburbs are more afraid of not coming home from school at all. I look at my two young nephews and I can’t help but worry about whether they might be the next Derrion Albert, Michael Brewer, or the target of some psychotic classmate out to unleash their pent-up rage on the entire student body with gunfire. Now it’s not just coming home safe from grade school and high school parents have to worry about, but college as well.
"Someone said he (Derrion Albert) was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said student Annette Holt of Chicago. "No, he wasn't. He was in the right place. He was coming from school."
The one and only solution, to keep such incidents from happening, must start in the homes with parents.
"It is our problem. We have to take control of our children," said Dawn Allen, who attended a vigil for Albert last month in Chicago.
"Our country, our world, needs to wake up and see what is going on with our children," said Michael Brewer’s mother, Valerie. "They need to do something. This has got to stop. It's not just my son. It's everybody's children. This could happen to somebody else, and God forbid -- I don't wish this agony and torture on anybody. We have got to do something to make this violence stop today."
When are parents going to stop being preoccupied with their own lives and start paying more attention to what their kids are doing?
