Going Jihadi

 --Baltimore mother, Toya Graham

The "Mother of the Year" was everywhere yesterday. The hero mom, Toya Graham, is seen delivering a serious whoopin' to her 16-year-old son Michael as he retreats down and across a street. CBS news promised a later feature with the mother and son in their living room. Apparently this was the best feel-good piece the broadcasters could find.

Single mother of six Graham is relentless in her assault, hitting her son repeatedly about the head and face after she says she saw him throwing items at the police trying to quell the riots in Baltimore, and acclaim for her violent reaction is fawning. You go girl, they say.

Turn it around for a moment: say the camera caught a Baltimore policeman hitting the rock-throwing 16-year-old upside the head, all the way across a street. Would the cop be our hero?

What if Ms. Graham began whaling on a policeman in the same way she attacked her son? We would call it, "battery upon an officer". What if a white woman did that to her son? We would think she is crazy, strung out or loveless.

We would ask, "Is it any wonder the young man turned out the way he did?", that is, if we actually cared to know how it is 16-year-old Michael came to be throwing rocks at the cops.

What if a 200-pound white woman charged at the (apparently) smaller young black man, reining her fury down upon him? RACISM, no doubt.

Yet the true racism is revealed by the glee shown uniformly in the news. We accept that these people live in a jungle, and are delighted (as when watching a nature film) the elder member jumps a presumptuous younger member for transgressing the group's mores.

But this is not a nature film, and the younger, smaller member will soon outgrow the family member dispensing jungle justice.

A Philedelphia Times Op-Ed column proclaims with attitude, "Baltimore mother in viral video who beat up her son is my kind of mom." "Who beat up son ..." I wonder if that privileged writer also chose to beat up her children? I wonder what the Department of Children and Families would have to say about that?

If you saw Ms. Graham meting out the punishment to her son in another venue, would it look like child abuse? If your son were involved in mayhem, would pummeling his body be your first reaction?

How about if this were a formative experience of a young President Obama after his mama caught him smoking weed? Would we be reveling in the punishment she exacted, calling it righteous? Would we say, "That is the sort of discipline that allowed Barack to aspire to the White House?

More likely, we would cry foul -- a white woman failing to understand the efforts of the young Barry to fit in. We would chasten ourselves, excusing the lad of simply getting caught in the seine net of hood behavior. We would call his mom a brute, insensitive, surely out of line.

The permutations are many. Look into your heart and decide if this video brings you peace and satisfaction.

This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. 


Prediction: Either young Michael will become an honorary gang member, he will be given no quarter for being p-whipped before he is even a baby daddy, or he will have a conversion and join the ministry, capitalizing on his 15 minutes.

Dollar Store

 

 We’re gonna jump down turn around
pick a bale of cotton,
jump down turn around pick a bale a day 
--Pick a Bale of Cotton, traditional  

Call me a relic call me what'cha will
Say I'm old fashioned say I'm over the hill 
--Old Time Rock and Roll, Bob Segar

 I don't know where my soul is
I don't know where my home is 
--I'm Like a Bird, Nelly Furtado
 ___________________

Not wanting to be one of those people who critiques other blogs, please see that this not the point of this entry.

As a follow-on to yesterday's "Prelude to the Finale", RAW will mention a piece from yesterday's Huffington Post about a mother who left her kid in a closed vehicle in a parking lot on a hot (89 degree) day. The child was released unharmed, but the story shadowboxed one comment to their piece which called for a sort of vigilante posse to "patrol the parking lots of Dollar stores."

"I think we should all form a vigilante group and wander discount store parking lots and rescue kids and pets left in hot cars. I will buy us all frappes if you design the logo for our Mommy Hot Car Rescue league!"

 
Frapes all 'round! What's not to love?


Does that sound reasonable to you? That ostensibly well-meaning comment reveals why liberals are unsuccessful in implementing any sort of meaningful projects. The comment is angry, dismissive and denigrating, embodying the divide between the haves and have-nots. You who have the time to patrol parking lots where the dregs shop may be able to fish the occasional child out of a sweltering (or freezing) car, and that may make you Superman for a moment. Then you may go back to HuffPo and report on your intervention, feeling very good for a moment.

But the people reading HuffPo are not the average worker bees who are lucky to have a moment to turn on the evening news, which means they will not really get a fair diary of the news but merely a entertainment facsimile leaving them all the more incurious about their world or alternately feeling hopelessly separated from it.

The problem is not confined to those who shop at Dollar Stores or whose thinking is disarranged. Child abuse (neglect) is a problem in all social strata. By making it a blight of "those people" who shop at Dollar Stores, you make an uncomfortable and illiberal divide between you and your sisters. We are all guilty of neglect; those with more money are able to fob their children off on au pairs, or sit them in front of the latest video games; anytime we fail to connect with those in our environment we cannot understand and so cannot contribute to a reasonable solution.

That parent and child saved from the potential fiasco at the Dollar Store will return to an abode without proper cooling or insulation, perhaps vermin-ridden with peeling lead paint or compromised asbestos tile. Maybe a mobile home full of carcinogens (FEMA or not).

There may be insufficient or no food in the fridge, or spoiled food. There will probably be no adequate medical care to treat an emergency which might arise, or to create a healthcare plan for achieving and maintaining a well body. (Waiting in an ER for 6+ hours does not qualify as adequate medical care.) The frustration which arises from such a fraught life may result in depression or substance abuse, which rolls over into abuse perpetrated on the innocent or a living dead sort of ennui which is just bad.

It is the paradox of the blind men in the room with an elephant. Each touches one part and so is certain that the animal is narrow, hard, rough and wrinkled or hairy depending upon which part he got to "see". We are not blind, and yet when we react by treating a symptom as though it were the root problem, we may as well be.

People seem to enjoy getting up in arms about the "outrage du jour", and that emotion feels like "doing something", which seems to quell their feelings of impotence, discharging their energy in a socially acceptable way. "You see, I am a caring person and just got very upset about what I saw." It is as though the outrage packet carries within it the knowledge that very little will change. The packaging of that reaction on Facebook or in 140 characters on Twitter is becoming a new art form.

A recent prime example of this was the reaction to the new "Common Core" school initiative proposing a set of standards for public schools in the vein of the spectacularly unsuccessful, "No Child Left Behind". Steve Krashen at the Cinncinnati Enquirer got it right when he observed that U.S. still lags miserably behind in school achievement among the other industrial nations and pins it to the fact that the U.S. has the 2nd highest level of Child poverty in the developed world.

"When children are hungry undernourished, ill" and go home to dysfunctional families, new standards and tests mean very little.

Are there any questions?

Big Boys Don't Cry

--Maria Datsykova

Thou shall not kill
Thou shall not steal
Thou shall not take the Lord's name in vain
Thou shall not cause thy children pain
--The Eleventh Commandment,
Collin Raye

Little child, looking so pretty
Come out and play, I'll be your daddy
Innocent child, looking so sweet
I'll rape your mind and on your flesh I'll eat
-- Daddy, Korn

The sexual abuse and exploitation of children
is one of the most vicious crimes conceivable,
a violation of mankind's most basic duty
to protect the innocent
--David Walsh

Children are the world's most valuable resource
and it's best hope for the future
--John F. Kennedy

But Jesus said, Suffer little children,
and forbid them not, to come unto me:
for of such is the kingdom of heaven
--Matthew 19:14
__________________

I know four men who were sexually assaulted when they were young.

Four, and I do not that many people intimately. I am not a counselor, nor have I ever solicited such information; how could one? Yet it is true: four men have confided in me of their abuse at the hands of relatives, headmasters or other trusted adults. Their response varies from melancholy and confusion to fury. Some have married, some never will. For each, it is a heavy burden.

It is unforgivable to break the innocence and trust of a young person via sexual exploitation -- to my mind, it is one of the highest moral offenses (ignoring the criminal aspect.) We all get to feel the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune soon enough, but sexual exploitation corrodes straight through to the core of a young person's identity. It can never be set aright, though one can hope -- if the victim is fortunate enough and resilient enough -- that the accretion of a lifetime of compassion may help eventuate some measure of healing.

In my limited experience with these four, they are the more sensitive and thoughtful among us; probably, they were the more trusting. All the more pity their abuse.

Poseur "Bishop" Eddie Long -- self-proclaimed imperfect man and accused child molester -- is back in the news last week after taking a sabbatical from his post at the mega church Atlanta New Birth Missionary Baptist after his wife (who held a position at New Birth via "divine ordination") filed for divorce. Apparently the divination decree did not extend to her marriage vows.

People like Mr. Long cannot earn a seat hot enough in hell, IMHO. Long, married father of four, settled in a non-disclosure agreement in May with five young men who accused him of sexual coercion, and though "[d]etails of the settlement were to be kept secret, people with knowledge of the case have put it at several million dollars paid over a period of years".

One can only be re-born so many times. A suggestion for Bishop Long's next incarnation (if not an incarceration based on new embezzlement charges) would be as a Gospel Clown, doing a perpetual atonement schtick before any ministry willing to listen to such a fraud. Not very funny, but one thing Long is eminently qualified to do.

Equally vile is the unfolding case of Ex-Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky and the now dozens of sexual abuse charges he faces. Many of the young men Sandusky is accused of assaulting were predated upon over a period of years and were procured via his Charity, the Second Mile. Complicit in the tragedy are police, university administration, probably Sandusky's wife, and many others.

How can this happen? Surely some of all of these people subscribe to a religion and presumably believe in the protection of the flock, no? Some say in the case Sandusky, it is a cabal of secrecy which surrounds profitable athletic programs. For those in the employ of the church, they have a ready-made cover.

But really, the issue is power. Children have no voice, and especially children of need. Layered upon that is guilt, and a sense of shame and culpability, and you have victims who nicely feed into the cabal. Shame may be one of bedrock human emotions, one not easily extinguished.

Oh that the perpetrators were able to access their own sense of shame, and minister to it accordingly, as only an adult is able to do. Until they do, the repercussions of violence and assault eddy outward. And we continue to feign naive shock when we hear of the latest shipwreck as we plod on the endless march of stupidity, cruelty and idiocy that is the worst of what we call a life.

If we cannot extinguish cruelty in a personal transaction, we will not be able to halt it on a more universal level. Thinking of the multifold abuses that occur in the silence of the church, one wonders if religion enables poor behavior by facilitating or accommodating our primate nature. Through the Confessional, indulgences, prayers and baptisms, one gets a sort of endless mulligan.

But what if there were no do-overs, and one could only sit in the welter of whatever it is they thought was a good decision at the time? What if one did not have recourse to some kind of divine or cosmic forgiveness, and one was stuck with the reality of his actions and the repercussions upon those whom he acted. Might that change our impetuous, self-gratifying nature? Is conscience capable of rising to the fore for the average person? Not as long as social institutions hand out free passes for feeble excuses called the School of Life.

Unless one is dealing with a true psychopath, it is usually not hard to find the genesis of aberrant behavior. The Sandusky's and Long's of the world are probably not ex nihilo.

• More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse.²
• It is estimated that between 50-60% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates. ³
• More than 90% of juvenile sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way. ⁴
• Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.
• About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the horrible cycle of abuse. ⁵
• ^{Almost 500,000 episodes of child sexual molestation are reported annually in the U.S.}
• 14% of all men in prison in the USA were abused as children. ⁷
• 36% of all women in prison were abused as children. ⁷

(U.S. Statistics from ChildHelp.org)

A Click Off

Dead babies can't take care of themselves
Dead babies can't take things off the shelf
Well we didn't want you anyway
Lalala-la, lalala-la, la la la
--Dead Babies, Alice Cooper

My possessions are causing me suspicion
but there's no proof
in the paper today
tales of war and of waste
but you turn right over to the T.V. page
--Don't Dream it's Over, Crowded House

You’re missing that one final screw
You’re simply not in the pink my dear
To be honest you haven’t got a clue
--I'm Going Slightly Mad, Queen

They only hit until you cry
And after that you don't ask why
You just don't argue anymore
--Luka, Suzanne Vega
_____________________

Over the past several days Lisa has had the misfortune to be exposed to what passes for news today -- Caylee mania.

People she did not know implored her on the day of the not guilty verdict, "Did you hear?", as though this decision were something that would jostle the sun and the moon (Casey Anthony and the Court of Public Opinion). For three years Caylee's sad story has provided fodder for those who would declaim against the forces of dissolution in the U.S.: Justice must be served for little Caylee, and that means mother Casey must go down.

Yet justice worked as it must; the prosecution did not present an airtight case. The whole lot of the Anthony's are defectives -- misfits and liars -- and it is very hard to disentangle a bag of snakes. CNN promises 24-hour coverage Sunday, July 17th, when Casey Anthony is released, just so we may release a bit more bile.

Observers gathered outside of the Orlando courthouse daily to score one of the 50 tickets in. A psychologist was on air to minister to the viewer's grief ("over time, the sadness and anger will fade"); it is reported that a lightning strike at Caylee memorial "could be a sign from the angels", and there is a Broward County resto who won't serve the bad Caylee jurors. All of this was gotten in 20 minutes of CNN "news". We really are a fried chicken short of a church picnic.

More to the point: Why is the nation transfixed by tales of blond babies murders? Remember the Jon Benet Ramsey furore in the 1990's? Jon Benet was the six-year-old blond beauty pageant "star" who riveted the nation in her death. How about Madeleine McCann, blond British child reportedly kidnapped in Portugal? But what about the other 2,000 kids killed annually in the U.S.? Well, they don't meet the photogenic bar for one reason or another.

Poor children fall through the cracks of supervising agencies with appalling regularity, but they don't permeate our collective mindset; just more statistics. Welfare workers are swamped with bloated caseloads, but no new taxes (the lesson of GHWB has not been lost.)

Do we care about the black toddler baked in an oven this March in Mississippi (that's how they do in Mississippi), or the Asian baby fried in a microwave that month in L.A.? How about Alexis (Lexie) Glover, found dead in a frigid D.C. creek, repeatedly failed by the child services system? Or Banita Jacks, who killed her four daughters because they were "demon-possessed"? Or 7-year-old with cystic fibrosis Charles Poertner, found dead last December in horrific circumstances, or Danieal Kelley, and so many, many more.

The answer is, No, because they are not pretty little blond babies. We are hypocritical dunderheads.

[cross-posted @ BigBrassBlog]

Immaculate Deception

--Danieal Kelly

They only hit until you cry
And after that you don't ask why
You just don't argue anymore
--Luka, Suzanne Vega

--Ruth, you listen to me! Don't you do it!
What if I'd aborted you?
--Well at least I wouldn't have had to
suck your boyfriend's cock!
--Don't you bring that up again! That's ancient history!
I've been saved!
--Citizen Ruth (1996)
______________

This Sunday's homily is on the topic of child abuse.

"Abortion: The Ultimate Child Abuse" is the rallying cry of the Right to Lifers. It papers billboards throughout the Southeast. We beg to differ with the sentiment.

The ultimate child abuse IS child abuse, and it happens every day of the week in every city. We only get to hear about the sensational cases.

How about Danieal Kelly, 14, whose mother pled guilty last week to starving her child to death. Danieal, a cerebral palsy victim, was kept sequestered in a room on a mattress soaked in her own excrement, her last words begging her little brother for a sip of water.

Or the mom last month in Orlando who killed her son "to save him" (she must've been reading some COIN from Vietnam days), she being the Antichrist who felt she would usher in 1,000 years of peace by so doing. (To her credit, she was confused as to why she was the Antichrist, since her bible led her to believe that privilege should fall to a man.)

But the ultimate child abuse might be the ongoing verbal and/or physical cruelty suffered quietly by children in dysfunctional families, or lives spent in an impersonal foster care system which merely profits by their presence.

In The Principle at Stake at Notre Dame last week, The WaPo's Kathleen Parker writes on abortion, "It has always seemed to me that the truest form of feminism. . . would be to hold abhorrent the state-sanctioned destruction of women's unique life-bearing gifts."

How very disingenuous of Ms. Parker, who issues the typical conservative clap-trap wrapped in high-mindedness. In fact, the highest form of humanism would be to oppose actual "state-sanctioned destruction" of these "gifts" (=humans), which would be to oppose war. But she and her ilk will never raise themselves to that height.

Abortion is a finality; abuse is a beginning.

Suffer the children, indeed.