Sleepless in Midland

In defense of Michael Richards

It wasn't a magic act, but by saying that magic word he launched himself into the headlines and transformed some obnoxious cads into aggrieved national victims.

One doesn't have to look very hard to find a criticism of Michael Richards, so let's take the other side, play Clarence Darrow, and see what can be said in his defense.

Lenny Bruce and George Carlin made their comic bones by using words that many people didn't want to hear.  If there's anything to learn from their experience it's that what sounds awful to one generation might very well end up as everyday slang in the next.

Michael Richards' career has been flat since his stint on "Seinfeld," and he was probably engaged in standup comedy in an attempt to show that he was not just another pretty face.  His act probably wasn't that funny anyway, and his attempt to strike back at the hecklers was just an unfunny rant.

A good comedian could have made the audience laugh at the heckler, not with him.  I once witnessed Rodney Dangerfield do that effortlessly in a live performance -- "You want a funny joke take off your clothes and look in the mirror."

But Richards used the "n" word, and critics came out of the woodwork.  Other commentators "tsk tsk" at the threatened lawsuit now hanging over Richards' head.  But that's what broke the code for me.  This is the grievance industry at work.

The "n" word trumps everything.  O. J. Simpson is a free man partly because Mark Furhman used the "n" word, and lied about it.  Michael Richards' hecklers could have committed any number of foul acts on Richards, but his use of the "n" word placed a weapon in their hands that was more powerful then anything Richards had left with which to defend himself.

It brings to mind the Geico commercials in which the aggrieved caveman is so offended by an implication that something is simple enough for him to do.  The commercials always have a Geico spokesperson apologizing profusely at the caveman's perceived slight.

I'm amazed that those ads ever made it onto television, because they exemplify a phenomenon we've seen play out so many times.  The grievance industry must have been very upset about those ads, because they say that someone somewhere is able to see that the grievance industry emperors have barely any clothes.

So what's Richards to do?  He can go big, go home, or go lame.  He chose to go lame, but if he wanted to stay in show business he really had no choice.

So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant you see before you is guilty of going on stage to try to make people laugh.  Maybe he wasn't funny.  But there he was, up there on the stage, unprepared for the obnoxious hecklers who felt perfectly comfortable verbally assaulting him.  And when they attacked him, he had a bout of temporary insanity, lashing out, trying to defend himself, trying to hurt them as much as they had hurt him.  He used every insult he could think of, but then he made a mistake.  He hit on race.  And because of his use of that one word, he is before you now.  When you go into that jury room, please remember that this is a free country.  Freedom of speech means that we are supposed to be able to say what we please.  And just because someone gets offended doesn't mean he's entitled to anything more than a refund of his ticket price.

Midland in the Movies

Well, not movies so much as tv -- I can't pass up an alliteration.

There's the cheerleader heroine of Heroes from Odessa which we've discussed before.   Ancillary characters ended up at the fictional Burnt Toast Cafe in Midland.  (Mmmmmmm, burnt toast.)

Why do you suppose the show makers used West Texas?  Maybe it's to relieve their guilt over moving the "Friday Night Lights" tv show out of Odessa, dang them.

Then there's Monk, who's papa on a recent show worked for a trucking company in Midland, Texas.

The land in those scenes that are supposed to be West Texas looks suspiciously like Southern California.  But that's understandable.  West Texas and Southern California could pass for twins, give or take a few million trees, hills and humans.

"Off the Clock" in the inbox

A friend emailed this article.  Check it out, it's brutally funny.

Thanks Pete.

Update 11/21/06:  Turns out this story has been around awhile.   Astute researcher Joe H.  forwarded this link to Snopes.com which has the skinny and some variations.

And as for the reporter, framing the story as told to her by a "friend" was just a little bit too clever.

It was take your daughter to catch a criminal day

They're blond, they're beautiful, and they catch criminals.  It sounds like a tv drama, but it's not.  They are the highly decorated real life mother and daughter crime fighting team of Gloria and Trichelle.

They are veteran Citizens on Patrol, and they prowl the mean streets in the wee hours listening to their police radio and zeroing in on hot spots .  In their unmarked car they watch and wait until the bad guy makes that one big mistake.

Thieves caught, beer runners nabbed, house burglars apprehended, and most recently, car thieves caught.  See the writeup in Mywestexas.

Anyone interested in becoming a citizen on patrol should contact Sgt. Dale Seago of Midland Police Department Community Relations at  (432)685-7580.

Keep up the good work, ladies.  Can't wait for the tv show.

It's Your Day, Veterans. Thank you.

For all you guys and gals who are serving or who ever served in the U.S. Military.  Thanks.

We live in a country of 300 million armchair generals, backseat presidents, and hindsight geniuses ready to criticize your every move.  And there you are out there eyeball to eyeball with an enemy obsessed to kill.

It's a thankless job you are doing.

So thanks, y'all.  Thanks for doing the heavy lifting.  Thanks for doing what it takes to allow people like me to sit here and spout off.

Pelosi's Victory Speech

Oh my, how can we believe this?  It's from Nancy Pelosi's celebratory speech on election night.

"And the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history."

Heard on C-Span this morning.  Watch it yourself on youtube.

The audience is cheering because they want to believe it, surely not because they actually believe it.  It's easy to imagine a hard nosed Pelosi lashing out at some of the well known Republican scandal targets, but it's awfully hard to picture Ms. Pelosi getting tough with the miscreants in her own party.

Court Watch Alert - the Aldo Pacheco trial

According to the allegations, he tried to kill three people.  He succeeded with the first two but botched the third, which happened to be himself.  Midland and Odessa residents will recall the incident:

The picture for Midland police was grim Jan. 16 as they found Wiggs lying on the sidewalk of a Midland home, with shotgun injuries to the chest and right arm, according to police reports.

Wiggs died on the way to the hospital as Aldo Pacheco barricaded himself in the house with Barbara Pacheco, officials reported.

After Aldo Pacheco released the couple’s 2-year-old son to negotiators, SWAT team officers entered the home to find Barbara Pacheco dead from gunshot wounds to the throat and stomach, and Aldo suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the face.  Source .

Prosecutors have elected, wisely, not to seek the death penalty.  The trial date is set for Monday, November 13, 2006 in Midland.

Update 11/16/06:  Mr. Pacheco's testimony:  First killing, self defense.  Second killing, accidental.  Attempt to kill self, intentional.   Source.

Update 11/17/06:  Guilty.

Jane's Law still in effect

Jane's Law pretty well sums up the way the political parties have behaved in the last few years.  Now that the Democrats have retaken the House and Senate, we'll see if it still maintains.  Here it is:

Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant.  The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

The net result is that it creates an informal term limit program.

Want a paper ballot? Good luck!

In my precinct to get a paper ballot you have to have an emergency, special circumstance or a note from your mother.

Just kidding.  They are available, but one has to be a crusty curmudgeon to get it.  And I was told that this would be the last election in which paper would even be available.

Kinky: Jokes too stale for voters to care

Kinky says he's too young for Medicare and too old for women to care.  A joke doesn't have a very long shelf life, and we've heard that one umpteen times too many.  So to add a suffix, he's too stale for voters to care.

He was on the Letterman show last week, and it would have been a great opportunity to wow us with some new material.  But no.  Just the same old jokes he's been telling for months -- no new material the whole time he's been campaigning.

So if I thought the humor quotient might make him a larger than life Texas governor and provide enough to reason to vote for him, I was wrong.

And the polls show him in the tank, too.  Yeah, I know, we shouldn't let the polls influence our votes, but it's sort of a  Heisenberg uncertainty principle applied to politics -- measure something closely enough and it changes the outcome.

Stayhorn trails Perry, too, but she's the only other candidate running for governor who has come out in favor of voter initiative and referendum.  And even if/when she loses she will probably stay on the scene as a somewhat influential politician.

Getting voter initiative and referendum in Texas is going to be an uphill battle, and it probably doesn't even register on the radar of a lot of Texas voters.  But at least Strayhorn was the first to put it out there as a possibility.  So when I go vote tomorrow, I'm going to vote for the Strayhorn.  You go, gal.