Been a while since I wrote something of a more substantial nature.

I'd heard that people were anticipating LA riots following the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams III, and in thinking about some of the folks I know in California, it popped into my head to see if anything had happened. Upon finding an article that addressed my concern -- it was all quiet on the Western front -- I went on to read the numerous comments that readers had posted regarding this turn of events. And I haven't been this disgusted in a long time. Which is saying something, since I find myself thoroughly disgusted on a daily basis.

Now, I don't go in for the death penalty. Even if a person has done unspeakable things, once that person is caught and incarcerated, that person can do no further damage. Killing the convict neither serves to protect society -- if they're that worried about the person doing further damage, they should probably beef up the prison security -- and numerous studies have shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent for violent crime. In the thread attached to that article, posters gloated over the execution, condemning the deceased as a "merderous thug" (so either they can't spell or were referring to the French word for crap) and asserting that now young would-be gang members will look at the fatal consequences and be frightened away from that path. But look: if the threat of being beaten, stabbed, or shot to death by rival gang members isn't enough to dissuade them, why should the death of an apparently repentant man, 25 years later, by lethal injection, have any effect on their mindsets whatsoever?

Yes, I do think it was a glaring flaw on Tookie's part to claim innocence for the murders -- unless he actually didn't commit them. I think he probably did. However, when the state executed him, it didn't kill a violent, 28-year-old multiple murderer. It killed a harmless 51-year-old author of children's books that spoke out against gangs. Tookie never claimed that he didn't co-found the Crips, and during his time in prison he renounced his former activities and wrote books to dissuade others from following in his footsteps. I'm not saying that's tantamount to achieving "redemption" or atoning for murdering four people and starting a gang that's been responsible for the deaths of thousands. But the impact that he might have had in the future does constitute a compelling reason to spare his life.

Was Tookie genuinely sorry? There's no way to know. However, one in his position only needs to appear sincere to make an impact. Had Tookie been spared, the media buzz surrounding the case might have helped to spread his anti-gang message to a number of different people who wouldn't otherwise have been reached. Maybe that'll still happen. Maybe it never would have, given the fickle nature of the media. Maybe Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should realize that they do their causes no favors by getting involved.

Maybe people who claim to have such respect for life shouldn't derive such satisfaction from the deaths of others.

"When dealing with other people, one should temper everything one says and does so as not to risk making them even the slightest bit angry -- because if one does, those others may be moved to retaliate by contacting the authorities and tell unbelievably vicious lies in order to ruin one's life and damage one's reputation beyond repair."

This is not a belief that anyone should hold, nor should an individual's experiences consistently force this thought into one's consciousness. Yet because I have been blamed for every instance in which I have been made to suffer these attacks, it is a code by which I am obviously expected to live.

And the very same people who condemn me criticize me for being "antisocial" -- as if, knowing what I know and having experienced what I have experienced -- entering into healthy relationships with other people is even a remote possibility.

To the women out there (or men who feel inclined to reply in a similar capacity, though I suspect that women the recipients of the more injurious and limiting stereotypes) -- I imagine you must deal with some similar issues, given the more or less inherent assumptions that people make about you on the basis of your sex. How do you endure it? And do you think that, in spite of these perhaps inevitable presumptions, it is possible for anyone to judge you as an individual, without considering it -- or is "being a woman" so integral to your self-perception that such appreciation of your (independent) individuality is unnecessary? At any rate, I am deeply saddened by the fact that a few physical features -- here, breasts and genitalia -- seem to make all the difference regarding how people treat one another.

I have been reading about suicide and methods and came across this article as a "disorder" associated with suicidal thought. I found the latter sections of the piece to be especially interesting.

I wanted to see if they could tell me something important about God before I go to meet the Creator, if the Creator does in fact exist. And I made two interesting observations:

1. The apparent communal atmosphere of the church, whether perceived or real. I'm inclined to think that unlike other churches, the attendees of this one were hardly as close-knit as other congregations -- this being a church on a military base and the members being diverse enough in age to lead me to suspect that they're not Bingo buddies -- and yet many of them felt comfortable sharing their difficulties and joys during the part of the service in which persons ask for the prayers of the congregation or submit their own success stories as evidence of the greatness of the Lord. Today, for example, one woman praised God for allowing her husband to return safely to her from Iraq (which struck me as being odd, since he's apparently been back for a year -- does she say the same thing every Sunday?), a child praised God for granting her visiting grandmother safe passage (cute), a man asked the congregation to pray for his ailing wife (definitely understandable), and a family lamented their car troubles and praised God because apparently the latest difficulty is covered by warranty and will therefore be fixed without incurring any additional costs. What? That last one had me scratching my head -- while I can understand the family being glad about that, if it had been me, I'm not sure I would've submitted it after the preceding testimonies and requests, as it seems kinda trivial in comparison. But perhaps the congregation truly wasn't judging or comparing the individual statements, or at least the speakers didn't expect them to. Interesting. (more...)

So here's a brief commentary I wrote last week concerning the tribute to Rosa Parks. I sent it to NPR, but somehow I doubt they'd print/air it!

Last Monday, Rosa Parks was honored for her legendary role in the Civil Rights Movement with a memorial service at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church and a slew of news segments lauding Parks' seated stand while managing to say surprisingly little about the rest of her 92 year life. And I don't know how others felt as they watched these fawning bits, but the excessively sycophantic nature of these segments and overuse of the same key phrases rang so false to my ears that I was only "moved" to change the channel in disgust. I don't mean to underemphasize Parks' involvement or dedication to the movement, mind you, but a lot of other factors contributed to its success. Not only do I very much doubt that Parks the first person to be arrested for refusing to give up her seat, but her act would hardly have been so effective if Martin Luther King, Jr., hadn't called for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, nor would his merely calling for the boycott have made any waves whatsoever if not for the compliance of the manifold participants. Listening to the tributes to Parks, however, one would think that she single-handedly brought about the end of segregation and ushered America into a new age in which skin color is a moot point and everyone is treated as an individual -- an age which, by the way, is so far from our present that (if the present glorification of racial stereotypes and social ostracism facing persons who don't adhere to them serve as any indication), most people appear to have given up on it.

I also thought it was pretty ghoulish that people were traveling from all over to visit a corpse in the Capital on Halloween (to say nothing of hearing the terrible demon Oprah Winfrey speak), but maybe that's just me.