On Guns and Violence, part 2

Here is a letter I sent to my Congressman, Republican Patrick Meehan of the Pennsylvania 7th District:

Dear Mr. Meehan:

As one of your constituents, I urge you to support the agenda to remake our gun laws put forth by President Obama today. Like so many Americans, I have become increasingly horrified by the amount of lives lost in the name of appeasing a few strident voices.  It is clear to me (as it should be to any student of American history) that this kind of unfettered access to weapons of war is not what our founders intended when they drafted the Bill of Rights. 

I work in a public setting, as a librarian; my wife works in a public setting as the associate rector of an Episcopal church, both within your district.  On more then occasion in the last few months I have lain awake at night imagining that we could be next.  All of us that work in public buildings are targets. What are we to do?  Turn our libraries and churches into fortresses, as Wayne LaPierre wishes to do to all our schools?  Does that really make more sense then simply making it harder for potential threats to get their hands on a weapon?

As a voter, I've always prided myself on being an independent, unaffiliated with any party.  Likewise, I've never believed in being a one issue voter.  However, I feel so strongly about this cause, and that ignoring these problems and rejecting these solutions is to be criminally negligent, that I would find it impossible to vote for a representative that would put the welfare of us all behind limiting the rights of a few.

Sincerely,
Kenneth Raining

I urge everyone to contact your Congressman and make sure that your voice is heard as this debate continues.  Find your Congressman at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

I Know I Shouldn't be Surprised, But...

... I am surprised- shocked, really, and horrified- that the NFL is carrying on with tomorrow's Kansas City Chiefs- Carolina Panthers game in the wake of Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdering his girlfriend and then committing suicide in front of Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel and GM Scott Pioli.  I know that the NFL has never been known for its' sensitivity, but this strikes a new low.  Rather then allow an obviously distraught team(not to mention community) a day or two to collect themselves, the Chiefs will take the field a little more then 24 hours after one of their teammates orphaned his three- month old son daughter.  Crennel will have to try and lead his troops through a game with visions of one of them ending his life.  And why?  Because this is a heavyweight game between two playoff-bound titans.  Oh, nope, not that: the Panthers are 3-8, the Chiefs the worst team in the league at 1-10.  But, you see, this game has ramifications.  What if the game were cancelled, and the Denver Broncos miss out on a first-round bye because the Chiefs are only 1-14, and their strenghth of schedule is affected?  Wouldn't that be a tragedy?

No, of course it fucking wouldn't.

So now we know what's more important then football: nothing.  Not even death.  I'm sure that Crennel and the Chiefs players want to play... but they shouldn't.  Just like in every other profession, your place of work would be closed the day after a tragedy, since it's still a crime scene, for god's sake. The NFL has to be the voice of reason here.

In 1963, the week after John Kennedy was killed, the NFL played its' full slate of games to massive national criticism.  Legendary commishioner Pete Rozelle called it the greatest regret of his career.  Well, congratulations, Roger Goddell: by allowing a meaningless game to be played the day after an employee kills himself on your property, you're finally in Rozelle's class.

On Guns and Violence

Last year, my wife took on the challenge of doing one new thing every day, which she recorded on her blog 365 Alive.  Among the many cool things she did was to go target shooting with my dad.  For me, as I was tagging along, this raised several ethical and moral dilemmas.  For one,  Dad suggested we bring our daughter along, something I was not comfortable with.  For another, he offered to let me shoot as well.  I had to think about this.  I've never held a gun, much less fired one.  In the end, I said thanks but no thanks, having decided that I'd rather spend my life knowing I've never squeezed a trigger, even in a controlled setting.

I can honestly, unequivocally, say that I hate guns and that I think the world would be a much better place without them.  Now, this doesn't mean that I hate gun enthusiasts; I don't hate my dad, obviously, whom I'd certainly term a responsible gun user.  But it does make me uncomfortable knowing he has weapons in the house, even if they are secured.  I don't know how long he's owned a gun, and I don't know if we had a gun in the house during my childhood, and frankly, I don't want to know.

I bring all this up now, obviously, as I continue to process the horrible shooting at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in Colorado.  Of that, I don't think there's much to say.  But, as always seems to happen in the wake of these ever-more frequent public massacres, my own feelings have begun to shift from grief and horror to anger and bafflement that we as a nation and community don't seem more outraged.  Oh, we're all outraged at the shooter, no doubt.  But why aren't we more outraged that he had guns?

From all early evidence, it seems clear that the shooter purchased his weapons legally, and passed any background check required to purchase weapons.  And our collective response?  To shrug and say "well, he purchased the weapons legally".  Doesn't that very fact implicitly imply that it should be harder to get a gun?  That background checks and waiting periods are fine and good, but they do nothing to deter the citizen with no criminal record and murder in his heart?

Unfortunately, bizarrely, incidents like this, and the Gabby Giffords shooting, and the Virginia Tech shootings, and hell, even Columbine, in the same damn state, seem to do little to move public sentiment towards stricter gun laws.  I've gone beyond asking "what will it take?", because if those things won't convince a majority of the population that outlawing assault weapons is a good idea, I can't (and don't want to) imagine what will.

Here's what I'd like to ask every gun enthusiast, every NRA member, everyone that has fought against any legislation that would eliminate the general public's ability to purchase assault weapons: why?  Why do you need them?  What is the possible reason that any private citizen would need assault weapons, or body armor, or tear gas, or any of the other items used by this lunatic?  And, I'm sorry, but "I like them", or any answer that essentially comes down to "I like them" is simply not fucking good enough.  The argument that "if we outlaw guns, only criminals will have them" is such a strawman, because, firstly, of course only criminals will have them: that's the point.  If they're illegal, you're a criminal if you possess them.  But, more importantly, we'll never know how stricter gun laws will work.  We'll never know if James Holmes might have been deterred had he not been able to walk into a store and buy an item whose only purpose is mayhem.  But we know that he was able, and we should all be appalled by that truth.

Really, what I don't understand is why gun enthusiasts aren't more outraged that something they love is more perverted, and why the NRA isn't leading the charge for stricter gun laws.  Because, let me tell you, as a lifelong comic-book and Batman enthusiast, I'm pretty devastated right now.  It seems to me an inescapable conclusion that something I love contributed directly to the death of twelve people.

Brutal,violent imagery has become such an accepted part of our culture that we barely even blink any more.  My wife, in talking about this last night, told me that, as a comic book novice, the first time she read Preacher she could barely make it through the book, so appalled was she by the gratuitous violence.  Then, upon rereading it two years later, she barely noticed.  In just two years, she'd become almost completely desensitized to the violence.  I can't imagine what a lifetime of it has done to me.  But I'm not so desensitized yet to not be aware that comics have become far more brutal over the last twenty years, and that I wonder what exactly goes on in the heads of writers like Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, and Robert Kirkman that allows them to devise such elaborate depictions of death and mutilation.  It makes me sad that I have to be very careful of what comics I leave laying around my home, lest my four year old daughter pick up, say, the issue of Teen Titans where a beloved pet turns out to be a beast from Hell and brutally, graphically murders his owners.

I do not advocate censorship, nor do I believe a return to the Comics Code Authority is in order, but I do think that all of us that create, consume and enjoy Geek culture need to seriously evaluate how it has evolved.  It's not enough to say "that guy was sick; I enjoy violence, and I'm not going to shoot anyone, so I don't want it taken away or watered down"; any factor that may have contributed to a violent crime needs to be analyzed, not dismissed, certainly not for the sole purpose of keeping one's toys intact.

This post has been written in haste, and I freely admit that it comes from a place of emotion.  I will not presume that my opinions expressed herein will be popular, or are completely rational, but right now I'm just sick and tired of watching people die needlessly and saying nothing.  I welcome any rational, reasonable disagreements.

Someone Needs to Get Jonathan Papelbon to Paris Immediately

Here's a quote from new Phillies closer Jonathan Papelbon regarding his new home town:

"Philadelphia has a cool feel to it, man,'' Papelbon says. "It's a vibe that the city produces. It makes you feel like you are in Paris. I've never been to Paris, but I've seen it in a lot of movies. I think [Philadelphia] is going to be a great place to live."

Look... I love Philadelphia.  I agree that it's got a cool feel, and is a great place to live.  But... Paris?  PARIS?!  That's just insane.  I get that you're trying to endear yourself to your new city, but let's keep it realistic, okay?

I do like the "it reminds me of this place... I've never been there" aspect of his quote, though.

The Million Dollar Cheeto

There are a lot of ways to waste your money. Lord knows I'm something of an expert.  But I've not yet wasted a million dollars.  At least, I've not yet wasted it on just one thing.  And I've not wasted it on one thing that's a piece of snack food.  I wouldn't have thought I'd even have the chance.  But the world's a big place, my friends, and so I give to you:

The Million Dollar Cheeto

I've read this thing a few times, and I honestly can't decide if the seller is being extraordinarily sincere, or extraordinarily sarcastic.  I mean, lines like

I prayed for a way to enable me to do more for others and aid their needs.  In answer to my prayers…I didn't get a million dollars instead I got a Cheeto with a heart! And on the flip-side it smiles!!! No kidding! It’s totally awesome.

could go either way.  This auction's been up for over a year now, and he's got 31 offers, and I'd love to know what they are.  Is he holding out for the million?  If someone came to him and said "look, I've only got $800,000" would he turn it down?  

All I know is, if I was in a financial position to literally waste a million dollars, I would buy that Cheeto.  And I would carry it with me in it's little box and use it as the greatest conversation stater ever.  Perhaps, if a million of us get together and donate a dollar, we can pitch in and buy it and have it once a day for, like, every million days.  That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? 

Penn State

If you live outside of Pennsylvania, I don't think you can quite fathom how omnipresent Penn State University is in our lives.  Pennsylvania is a funny place, its' two large cities living at opposite ends of the state, but in reality a world apart.  Here, in the east, we think of New York, Washington DC, and the rest of the I-95 corridor as our neighbors and rivals, while in the west it's Ohio and West Virginia and the rest of the Rust Belt.  The Phillies play in the NL East, the Pirates in the NL Central, and nobody seems to think that's a lost opportunity.  If you told most people here that Pittsburgh was in a different time zone, I don't think any one would question that.

We come together in two ways: statewide elections and Penn State.  Not just Penn State football either; you can't live in Pennsylvania and not have a connection to Penn State, even if you're not a graduate.  My brother-in-law went to Penn State, as did my oldest friend, and my stepfather is a professor in the Penn State system.  That's just the way it is.  Penn State is, literally and figuratively, at the center of the state I've called home for at least 30 of my 37 years.

So it's not just the Penn State community that's shaken by the scandal that broke this weekend, it's Pennsylvania, period.  I've been able to think about much else, and I've been to State College once in my life.   It's been a whirlwind of a week; it's hard to believe that, just a few weeks ago, Joe Paterno was being celebrated for becoming college football's all-time winningest coach in what turned out to be his last game.  Just think about that for a second.  Here's a quote, from SI.com college football writer Stewart Mandel, from the story linked above: "In a sport filled with misguided, misbehaved or flat-out devious individuals, JoePa remains our moral compass, as he has for more than five decades."  What a difference a week makes.

When the story first broke, late Saturday afternoon, my wife was out of town attending a wedding.  When she got home that evening, and I told her about it, I speculated that this might be big enough to bring down Joe Paterno himself.  Then, it seemed far-fetched, to think that the public career of the most revered figure in Pennsylvania this side of Ben Franklin could come to such a sudden, shocking, disturbing end.  But it took less then a week for that prophecy to become fulfilled, and, as the details of the timeline of events covered in the grand jury probe into former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky's alleged pedophilia were fully digested, it's hard to say such drastic action isn't warrented.

I don't have a whole lot to say about the Sandusky case itself; what is there to say, really?  I do want to say, though, that much of the criticism that has been leveled against then graduate assistant (and now Penn State assistant football coach) Mike McQueary, allegedly caught Sandusky in the act of of an unspeakable crime; many question his courage, and his manhood, and claim that they would have acted differently.    And, quite honestly, I don't think that's true.  Most of us, when faced with trauma, go into shock; we act, or fail to act, not in the way we would imagine.  Most of us are not heroes, and we certainly don't walk into a room expecting to find a horrible crime and prepared to act.  So, yes, while the heroic thing to do would have been to jump to action and drag Sandusky off that boy, it's not necessarily the human thing to do.

But McQueary was absolutely, positively right in going to his immediate superior, Joe Paterno.  Moreover, Paterno was right in referring the matter to his superiors, even if you subscribe to the belief that, at Penn State, Joe Paterno had no superiors.  There are mechanisms within institutions such as this to handle such things, and this is why.  After that, well, there's no question that that mechanism failed to an astonishing degree.  It's mind-boggling to think that the university could have conducted a "thorough internal investigation" without involving the campus police. And you have to wonder how anyone could speak to McQueary about the matter and come to the conclusion that this was just a case of "horsing around" gone to far.  And, yes, when Paterno and especially McQueary learned that the university powers that be were content to let the matter lie, that's when they should have taken matters into their own hands and gone to the police independently.  There's simply no excuse for agreeing to what is, essentially, a cover-up.  Even if one removes morality from the situation for a moment (and one shouldn't), didn't anyone stop to think that the ramifications of inattention now would be that much worse down the line?

But no one's actions make sense in this case.  It doesn't make much sense that, upon one of them catching Sandusky in a similar act in the showers in 1998, the custodial staff decided it was best to keep it to themselves.  It doesn't make sense that, when Sandusky admitted on tape to taking a shower with a boy on tape to his mother, the Center County District Attorney at the time decided not to press charges.  Even more shocking, it wasn't a decade after those accusations that the charity Sandusky founded and used as essentially a locator service for his victims even decided to cut ties with the man.  How could so many people have failed so spectacularly for so long?

While most of us have instantly drawn a connection to the massive coverup of similar abuses within the Catholic Church, I'm also uncomfortably reminded of Chris Benoit, the WWE wrestler who murdered his wife and son before taking his own life.  There aren't a lot of parallels, really; Sandusky's crimes were carried out over a period of years, and, if not outright covered up, were at the very least allowed to continue unabated.  Benoit, meanwhile, simply snapped without much warning.  But the shock and the horror are the same, and the sense that nothing the man touched will be the same from that day forward.  Because Benoit was not just a wrestler, but a champion and mentor to his peers.  Chris Jericho still calls him the most important person in his career; watching Jericho tell his story on his recent WWE dvd, there's a clear hole in the narrative where Benoit belongs.  But the WWE, as best they can, have tried to erase Benoit from their narrative, as is their right.

Penn State won't be so lucky.  Because football is real, and wrestling is not, it's not so easy to dismiss the contributions of a monster.  I thought that this piece from State College native Michael Weintrab really encapsulated the devastation among the Penn State community, particularly this passage regarding the 1986 national title game, in which Sandusky's defense was the key component in upsetting Miami: "I have the original video recording of it in my living room, and I have thought several times over the past couple of days about taking a hammer to it."

This is, unquestionably, the worst scandal in American academic history, and will forever taint the school, much the way Kent State University will forever be associated with the events of May 4, 1970.  I don't really know how the university recovers; forget athletes, I can't imagine why any prospective student would want to go to State College now.  As for the athletic program, more then just a clean sweep of personnel is needed; they need to blow up the damn buildings.  Can you imagine having to use one of those showers now?

I'm not sure that I agree with the decision to remove Paterno now, rather then at the end of the year.  While I don't absolve him of blame, and I understand the need to move on now, doing so shifts the narrative from being about Jerry Sandusky, his crimes, and his victims, to Joe Paterno.  Yes, if Paterno remained with the team, the rest of the football season would be a circus.  But it will be a circus regardless.  I find it interesting that the attorney for the alleged victims criticized the Board of Trustee's actions, saying in essence "they don't want to be held responsible for ending Joe Paterno's career".

Of course, as I'm sure Paterno would readily admit, only he is responsible for his career ending in this manner.  It's a shame that the legacy and reputation of a man that has accomplished so much, and for so many, should end so sordidly.  But, on the other hand, as victims go, it's pretty far down the list.

EDIT: I don't want to undercut the seriousness of this whole thing with something trivial, but I just can't resist: Ashton Kutcher, somehow learning that Joe Paterno has been fired but oblivious to the circumstances, proves himself to be, definitively, the universe's biggest idiot.

ANOTHER EDIT: Sara Ganim, a crime reporter for the Patriot-News, had provided amazing coverage of the story; today, she provides a timeline of the entire case, and all the spots along the way where Sandusky was somehow able to avoid scrutiny and continue  to have access to young boys.  An astonishing amount of failures by people that are trained to recognize these signs and how to act.  And yet, for most people, this case has somehow become a referendum on Joe Paterno.

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

Wow, hard to believe it's been a whole month since my last post here, huh?  Time sure does fly. In that flying time I've been chewing around at least a half-dozen posts on various topics sure to amuse, delight and maybe, just maybe, make you better understand this condition we call human.  Of course, you're never going to get to read them, since the world's ending Saturday.  I might be able to squeeze in a Minimate post before then, but that's about it.

Who's picking him up at the airport?

Oh, you hadn't heard?  Yep, the Rapture's coming May 21st.  That's Saturday.  The Big R.  Kind of makes the NFL lockout seem like not a big deal, huh?

Twitter is my Super Bowl MVP

So my Super Bowl Sunday began with this:

The San Diego Stabbing

Well. This was surprising. A fight at a panel at the San Diego Comic Con ends in one man stabbing the other in the eye with a pen. Looking at the pictures of the assailant being led away in handcuffs made me sad; no one expects their day at a convention to end in a jail cell. Of course, no one expects their day to end with a pen in the eye, either, so I suppose my sympathy should be tempered.

Not to excuse either party in this situation, as violence is obviously not called for, but the convention organizers share a large part of the responsibility here. The hullabaloo about Comic Con panels has clearly gotten out of hand, and little has been done to adjust. At my one and only San Diego Comic Con, I ended up avoiding the panels almost entirely because Hall H, where the panels are held, was chaos. Lines for the big panels are so long, with people waiting in line all day for afternoon panels, that it seemed pointless. I don't really understand this need to attend a panel, to the point that you'd pay whatever the cost of tickets, transportation, and accommodations only to spend a day at the con sitting in a hallway.

One thing San Diego doesn't do that most other major cons do is clear the convention halls after each panel. This has lead to people sitting all day in convention halls, "attending" panels for which they have no interest, waiting for their panel later that afternoon. And that, apparently, was the cause of the dispute this year, and it's surprising, really, that there hasn't been more instances of violence.

This is a monster of the Con's creation. They've spent so much time building San Diego as the event of the year for all things nerd, and the panels as the must-attend for "true" fans of your given property, that people have become desperate to be in the room. And it gets worse every year, even though every panel is extensively covered from several sites, and video of most panels eventually makes it online. Is the need to ask Joe Quesada a question really that great?

The Beat this morning has several suggestions for alleviating the problem. I agree with most of them, but I think the idea of distributing tickets/collectible wrist bands for the panels will just cause more chaos. You'd just be shifting the problem, not solving it, and by creating a new "must-have" collectible, possibly adding on. I think, first off, San Diego has to start clearing out the panel rooms immediately. Also, it's time to start streaming the panels online, and perhaps even take online questions during the panel. Perhaps, if it's clear to all that you'll still be able to participate in the panels even if you're not in the room, some tension will be alleviated.

There's been a lot of talk over the last few years about the con leaving San Diego, with the thought being that the con has outgrown the hall. I wonder if this incident will be the tipping point that expedites the process. That Harry Potter fan may just have stabbed the Comic Con out of San Diego.

On a Certain Popular Vampire Book which shares it's name with an old U2 song

I find it amusing that Twilight fans have somehow become the bottom feeders amongst nerd culture fan groups. There's a big, big backlash at Twilight out there, almost all of it, I suspect, stemming from this summer's San Diego Comic-Con. There thousands of Twilight fans essentially took over the first day of the con, camping out for days- if not weeks- outside the San Diego Convention Center to get into the Twilight panel. That's right, a panel: a little hourlong chat that would be widely available as a podcast. The vast majority of those people in line, by the way, never even made it into the hall for their oh-so important Twilight lovefest.

But their effect was felt. The talk for days after Comic-Con was that Twilight "ruined" Comic-Con, which is fairly preposterous. After all, it's Hollywood that ruined Comic-Con; once all these non-comics TV shows began using the con as a platform to reach fans, it was inevitable that one would come with a large fan base that could give a whit about Spider-Man's marriage.

Of course, the real objection is not to Twilight itself but to the assumed demographic of the fans: teenage girls. It must have been quite a blow to all those former and current high-school outcasts to see the object of both their desire and derision finally at Comic-Con... but for some stupid vampire romance thing. To be fair, I don't know if teenage girls do in fact make up the majority of the Twilight fan base; the one that I know reasonably well rolls her eyes at it, although sources indicate that she was into it not all that long ago. Teenagers, they be a fickle beast.

(As an aside, if the majority of Twilight fans at Comic-Con were in fact teenage girls, and this meant that their parents shelled out for con tickets, made travel arrangements, booked transportation and lodging, and either allowed their daughters sit for days outside of the San Diego Convention Center alone or held a place for them, all so that they could squeal at some actors for an hour, that's some !@#$ed-up parenting there. I can say that, no, when my daughter comes of age, we won't be doing anything like that. It reminds me of those stories of parents pulling their daughters out of school to go see that Hannah Montana movie that played for a week a few years ago. I understand not wanting to disappoint little Kaley, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.)

Really, what's extraordinary here is that Twilight has become big enough that it's fans can be lumped together as a unique nerd-culture group. This is not as easy to do as one might think. For example, I don't really think there are Transformers Nerds are GI Joe Nerds; most likely, they would be general Toy Nerds, and would cross between the two. Oh, I'm sure some would argue otherwise. But I don't think there's enough people that are exclusively or primarily fans of one of those properties to identify themselves as such to the exclusion of anything else.

Likewise, I doubt that there are many Battlestar Galactica Nerds, as any fan of the show is almost sure to be a Sci-Fi Nerd in general. But there are, no doubt, Star Wars and Star Trek Nerds that are devoted only to their particular property. They would, of course, make up two of the largest and most vocal nerd communities, though there are many others. There's Toy (or Action Figure) Nerds, and Comic Book Nerds, and the aforementioned Sci-Fi Nerds, and Gaming Nerds, and Video Game Nerds (and no, those are not the same thing). And Furries, I suppose, but that's really more of a fetish thing, and besides: we don't want the Furries lumped with us.

I myself am a Comic Book Nerd. I would not classify myself as an Action Figure Nerd, despite my home being literally littered with action figures, because I basically only buy comic book related figures. So this collection is really more of an extension of my Comic Book Nerdom (or Nerdhood). My friend Kevin would be both a Comic Book and Action Figure Nerd (among other things), because he collects comic books and action figures like GI Joe. See the difference?

I doubt that Twilight will have the staying power to become a permanent Nerd demographic, but one never knows. It's already made a name for itself in Nerd culture circles; after all, I don't recall anyone ever accusing Harry Potter of ruining Comic-Con.