Friday Local News Mashup! Dogs, Gods, and Odds

Today is an overwhelming news day locally, so here are the highlights….

Safety NOT in These Numbers!

How can anyone feel safer in Indianapolis now than two years ago? Masked gunmen robbed the downtown Dunkin’ Donuts this morning. (Learn to spell, oh, purveyor of greasy delights! It’s “doughnuts.”). A Village Pantry got hit a bit later, and we just added a homicide to our annual count. For the past two months, the city has suffered from a barrage of violent crime unlike anything I've seen in quite some time.

Dog-Killer, the Bounty Hunt

In South Bend, residents pooled together $1,000 as a reward for information about a home robber who shot and killed a three-legged dog who lost the limb to bone cancer. Only a sick puppy would kill a sick puppy, and I’d like to deposit this guy in a small closet with some Pit Bulls.

But I’m always intrigued at the heightened level of outrage over animal cruelty. Gina Oliver says that the robbers “crossed a line that no one should ever cross.” Surely, Gina Oliver knows of people who have been murdered in South Bend. Has she ever established a reward fund for the information about those murderers?

This story made me think of what D.L. Hughley said shortly after Michael Vick's arrest:

"White people love their dogs, boy. Michael Vick is gonna get the death penalty. Right now, O.J. Simpson is off somewhere thinking, "Man, I'm sure glad I didn't kill the dog, too.' "

Is there anybody who thinks that there are many human murder victims whose deaths prompt less outrage? What’s your take on this? Is it because people believe other people have a fighting chance and dogs don’t? What about if the dog that gets shot is a Doberman? What prompts so many to feel more sympathy for man’s best friend than for man?

Terre Haute Baptists "Go Negative" on Islam

A Baptist Church in Terre Haute (which the French translate as "high ground" but West Hautians translate as "terrible hole") posted the message "Jesus rose and died for your sins. What did Allah do?"

Now here's the insane part. Pastor Bob Parker said the sign wasn't meant to be derogatory to Islam. Does anybody believe this was posed on the little church board as an insightful, comparative religion question?!? Tsk, tsk, Pastor Bob. Last time I checked, lying was a sin.

This story reminded me of the late George Carlin's take on claims of religious superiority:

...if you read history, you realise that God is one of the leading causes of death. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other 'cuz God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the land, veangence is mine. Millions of dead (m.f.) all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. 'You believe in God?' 'No.' BLAM! Dead. 'You believe in God?' 'Yes.' 'You believe in my God? 'No.' BLAM! Dead.

'My God has a bigger (expletive) than your God!'

Next Time Pay the Freakin’ Ticket

What the hell was he thinking? We don’t know.

Instead of paying a ticket for illegally parking his bike, a Purdue University student thought it would be funny to put the ticket, a bike lock, and a $20 bill in a box and leave it under suspicious circumstances in the Vistor’s Center.

Guess the joke is on him. The bomb squad had to scan the package, and now the student is being accused of “terrorist mischief,” a C felony. If you don’t know by now that Americans don’t play around with terrorism, you’re basically an imbecilic gluteus maximum.

Oxley Hospitalized

Indiana State Representative Dennis Oxley, Sr., is in critical condition with an “undisclosed illness.” The Star says nobody knows any more than that. Our prayers go out to Representative Oxley and his family.

Friday Local News Mashup! Dogs, Gods, and Odds

Purdue Gets It Right on Chapman; Students....Not So Much!

Ahhhh....the young....so idealistic and ignorant of public relations!

I might get grief for this, but...(1) Purdue University was absolutely right not to bow to student demands for the termination of professor Bert Chapman, and (2) the students, though well-intentioned, "chose poorly."

Calls for Chapman's ouster came after he posted comments about the alleged economic costs of homosexuality on his conservative blog.

The First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." Too many Americans who haven't actually read the passage think "the First amendment" means speech without consequences. It doesn't.

The focus is on government stiffling free speech, not private individuals (or even groups of students). This is why I said "knock yourself out" when a bunch of good old boys with belt buckles bearing their names crushed Dixie Chick CDs with a steamroller. I said the same thing when people protested Don Imus and Lou Dobbs, as well as when conservatives boycotted the Teletubbies because one carried a purse and had a triangle on his head. (As an aside, did anyone else find it amusing that conservatives branded Tinky Winky gay while somehow missing that two of the other Teletubbies have phalluses coming out of their heads?)

Individuals and groups can protest, and they can boycott. But when they start trying to force government entities like public universities to take sides on a moral debate, they've crossed the line. In addition, if freedom of expression deserves extra protection anywhere, isn't it on a college campus, the alleged bastion of academic freedom?

Too many people in my party try to stifle dissenting views they find deplorable. We must ask more from ourselves, or we'll get trapped in the same yoke when the political tide turns. Remember the plea from The American President?

"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center-stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."

Maybe it's the lawyer in me, but I get nervous when people try to stop others from raising questions, and that's what's transpired here.

I read Chapman's piece because I didn't want to be one of those folks who criticize without first-hand knowledge. Chapman asks, in an admittedly semi-demagogic and only semi-scholarly way what we could have achieved healthwise had we not spent billions on AIDS funding.

While I say, given how the federal government's tragic inaction in the early 1980's permitted the proliferation of HIV, sums spent thereafter were necessary, isn't the most fundamental question a citizen gets to ask his government, "What was the next best alternative for the dollars you spent?"

Chapman's piece is undoubtedly anti-gay, as it classifies homosexuality as "aberrant." But it does something else that is not customary in gay-bashing screeds - it classifies all sex out of heterosexual marriage as aberrant and costly to society.

This is noteworthy because many Republicans/conservatives tend to draw the lines of acceptable conduct right at the ledge where they stand, which is why a staggering number condemn homosexuality while also being serial adulterers. Chapman seems intent not to let them off the hook, and if he cannot ask his questions on a private blog without fear of the governmental hand slapping him down, where can he?

Now, do I think Chapman's comments are wrong? Yes. But this is precisely why I do not fear their injection into public discourse. If Chapman's views are off-base, they will not take hold, we'll win on the merits, and Chapmans of the world fade into obscurity.

That didn't happen here.

My hope is that one day the self-aggrandizing who are so eager to lead protests will realize that the main byproduct of their actions is nothing but heightened publicity for the ill-formed view and its purveyor. I promise you, Chapman is now a political martyr for the right and his blog traffic has gone up 1,000 fold.

Maybe it's the students who needed to be shut up.

Purdue Gets It Right on Chapman; Students....Not So Much!