a little ditty about Carlos Estevez

life's funny, am i right?

just when you're pretty sure you know the rules of the game, of what does and doesn't make a person a piece of shit, here comes a curve ball.

to recap: Chris Brown beats the shit outta Rihanna and we're still talking about it as late as last month.

Charlie Sheen pulls a freakin knife on his wife and is arrested on 2 felonies and...well....let's just say the clamor for the spill of his blood is muted. and this is after allegations of physical abuse against his previous wife and an "accidental" shooting of then fiance Kelly Preston in 1990.

where you at, Oprah?

 

i asked myself why there was this difference in reaction earlier today, but i already know the answer.

and that answer is getting really really really old.

well, i guess i could put it all in perspective. maybe the media isn't talking about Carlos and his switchblade (how stereotypical) because they have other things to talk about?

yeah....i'm giving the media way too much credit.

i said it yesterday and i'll say it again: it pays to be a Sheen, man. you can just keep on being crazy until you finally kill a woman.

Chris Brown is totally changing his same to Critian Estevez in 2010!

Something I Can't Get My Head Around...or...a decidely unfunny post

thanks to the generosity of a friend, i was able to read the book Push, the story of Claireece Precious Jones and her struggle to learn how to read.

well....that paragraph is like trying to describe a christmas tree by only talking about the 3rd ornament 2 rows from the bottom.

actually, Push is about a young girl who struggles with the horror of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and the hands of her mother and her father. A father who ends of dying of AIDS...but not before infecting Precious with the virus.

and not before causing two pregnancies, one resulting in a child with Down's Syndrome.

and i'm not even going to go into Precious' knowledge of and reverence for Louis Farrakhan and Harriet Tubman, her disdain for dark-skinned blacks, and her lack of awareness of the hypocrisy of these thoughts...

this is by and far the most devastating read i've tackled in quite a while. i thought Back Roads was a toughie, Push threatened to completely crush my mood as i fought my way through the stream of consciousness style of story-telling and it's graphic, horrifying accounts of abuse.

reading this book opened my eyes in a lot of ways. it reminded me that survivors of this type of abuse are walking around, some functioning, some still struggling, but among us. when i debriefed the book with the friend who loaned it, she said she didn't think she knew anyone who had gone through the things in the book.

but probably we do. we probably all do. the story is right there under the surface.

i thought about Tiffany Wright, Keara Hess, and Mackenzie Phillips, all victimized, the crimes committed against them making the news within weeks of each other.

i thought about the case in Alabama in which the husband, father, Preacher killed his wife and hid her body in a freezer for several years after she caught him sexually abusing their daughter.

Roman Polanski's distasteful attempt to get everyone to forget that he orally, anally, and vaginally raped a 13 year old girl after giving her alcohol and Quaalude. (really, Whoopi? are you serious?)

and then today, this comes out.

i don't know what the answer is. can parent education fix a person so broken they'd damage a child in this way? can court-mandated therapy? why are there so many men and women who see children as sexual objects and prey upon them??? and why are there so many apologists lining up to go to bat for the adults mistreating children.

Precious often asks why those terrible things had to happen to her. Why the schools didn't teach her, why her mother abused her, why she had to have two kids by her father, why one had Down's Syndrome, why she had to have HIV.

i don't know how to tackle this issue but i do know just thinking about it isn't going to solve the problem. it's not going to affect a change. but maybe if more people keep the physical and sexual abuse of children on their radar, maybe if more people start speaking out against it instead of acting like it's either not happening or the child victim's fault...

well, then maybe we can finally make a difference.

National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children

Samuel Wertzenheimer Schmidt

So Joe the Plumber....why yes, people ARE still talking to him...had something interesting he wanted to share regarding his frustration with Nancy Pelosi:

"Those kind of people, I usually took out behind the woodshed and just beat the livin' tar out of 'em."

let's deconstruct this statement shall we?

"Those kind of people.." - what kind of people would that be? women? say it ain't so, joe!

"i usually took out behind the woodshed" - is that what you usually did, Samuel? when did you stop? when they got restraining orders? when the ex moved to the battered women's shelter? when?

"and just beat the livin' tar out of 'em." - and so now we're from the south. can't you practically hear the drawl ratchet up as you read the words to yourself? now say it out loud. no you're ears are not deceiving you, you did just sound like Dolly Parton.

now, what did Nancy Pelosi do to inspire a threat of woodshedding from Joe? well, i dunno. maybe she had the audacity to have a man-type job instead of a lady-type job? you know, like one of those jobs whose title ends in the letters -ette?

word on the street is Joe the Unlicensed Plumber wants to run for public office. apparently he is taking the old down home approach of talking like he grew up in the mean streets of Appalachia. you know, the strategy that worked so well for Sarah Palin.

....or not.

all i can say is this: if i happen to see any political ads for this man where he is talking like an idiot and punctuating his statements by dropping a wink, i'll pluck my own damn eyes out.