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Gross Overreaction Still Haunts Kiera Wilmot

A year ago, I wrote about Kiera Wilmot, a student at Bartow (Florida) High School who was expelled and criminally charged for setting off an explosive after her science class volcano experiment backfired.

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The trumped-up charges were eventually dropped, but Wilmot’s brush with the law continues to haunt her. According to civil liberties site Police State USA, the charges continue to taint Kiera’s record and impede her chances for success.

“All my charges have been dropped, but the lawyer says that it takes 5 years to clear each felony off the record,” Wilmot told the publication. She wants to be an engineer “building robots that can do tasks like surgeries or driving cars.” Here’s a young woman who was an honor student with no record of trouble. The principal described her as a “good kid” before expelling her anyway because he felt bound by the school’s zero-tolerance policy.

Suspending her might have been justified, but expelling her was over the top. The law slapping her with criminal charges for so obvious a mistake was shameful.

These are the incidents that make me lose faith in our institutions of education and law enforcement. The fear that has taken root in the aftermath of 9-11 and various school shootings has turned officials into overreactionary fools.

The year Wilmot has endured is tragic. Parties involved should atone for the injustice by helping the teen get back on her feet. I doubt they will, though. That would involve an admission of wrongdoing.

I suspect that Wilmot will achieve her dreams with hard work and determination, with no thanks to the society that should have supported her.

Kiera Wilmot

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Frances Bean Cobain Gets It Right

Update: Frances Bean Cobain threw more cold water on the romanticism of her dad’s life and death in this Rolling Stone interview.

Until now, we hadn’t heard much about Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. Now she’s getting headlines, and it appears the young lady has a good head on her shoulders despite a tumultuous childhood.

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http://youtu.be/5wev8W9PDAg

She’s getting the headlines for telling another young star that her talk of dying young is misguided. Cobain should know. She never got to know her father, who killed himself 20 years ago.

Specifically, Cobain responded to Lana Del Rey’s recent “I wish I was dead already” proclamation, which came after an interviewer mentioned Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011. If she’s to be believed, Del Ray harbors a serious death wish, telling The Guardian that she sees an early death as glamorous. “I don’t want to have to keep doing this. But I am.”

Cobain’s response, according to Rolling Stone and other publications:

The death of young musicians isn’t something to romanticize. I’ll never know my father because he died young, and it becomes a desirable feat because people like you think it’s “cool.” Well, it’s fucking not. Embrace life, because you only get one life. The people you mentioned wasted that life. Don’t be one of those people.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I know what it’s like to watch loved ones die young, by intent and from illness.

I do find myself wondering if Del Ray is serious or if she’s just saying it for attention. She wouldn’t be the first star to carry on that way. If she is serious, that interview could be her cry for help. If so, I hope she gets what she needs.

Some will say she’s being a snot, because here she has all the success and fame, and she’s saying she doesn’t want to live long. I remember hearing that kind of talk from bands like Mötley Crüe in the 1980s. There was the whole “live fast, die young” romanticism. Fortunately, the Mötley guys got beyond that, grew up and have lived full, meaningful lives — especially Nikki Sixx, who has four kids and too many successful business ventures to count on one hand.

Hopefully, Del Ray will grow up in similar fashion.

Maybe Cobain’s words of wisdom will help in that regard.

Frances Bean CobainImage by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images

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Loudmouth Politics and the Damage Done

I love that we live in a country where freedom of speech is an essential right; that you can call your president names without getting thrown in jail. I also love that people are willing to debate their beliefs fervently, whatever those beliefs are.

But there’s a downside.

For some people, it’s not enough to state a political belief. They have to judge people who believe differently and resort to name calling.

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I saw such a display recently. One person, a conservative who hates Barack Obama, was telling everyone that the president is “a piece of shit.” When someone else chimed in, saying something sympathetic to the president, the Obama hater exploded. “If you’re an Obama lover, I don’t like you!”

The Obama sympathizer had the good sense to walk away.

This is why we can’t solve the big problems. We can’t get past disagreements. Instead, we obliterate each other.

Or, more accurately, just enough people choose that approach to fuck things up for the rest of us.

If you don’t like the current occupant of the White House, good for you. If you think the problem is Congress, fine. By all means, speak your mind.

But if you can’t do it like a grownup, don’t be surprised when the rest of us walk away.

Ruined American Flag

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Confronting Your Biggest Fear on “America’s Got Talent”

I don’t watch America’s Got Talent. I have nothing against the show; it’s just not my cup of tea.

But something happened on the show that recently caught my attention: A young lady who suffers from terrible fear and anxiety went on the show and performed in front of a huge crowd and a panel of judges that include Howard Stern, Howie Mandel and Heidi Klum.

You have some serious courage, Anna Clendening. I salute you.

http://youtu.be/XO-abUhL_Ws

America's Got Talent logo

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Disrespecting Women: Return of Idiots

I’ve spent a few recent posts slamming the blog Return of Kings over its hugely offensive content, particularly articles like “5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder” and “Why Society Owes Men Sex.” A reader informs me that this is no simple trolling blog. It’s part of a larger movement in the US.

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According to the reader:

That’s not a troll blog. That’s actually an extremist movement you’ve stumbled upon. Look up “men’s rights” movement and you’ll find opinions ranging from blaming feminism for all problems to strange arguments like you just saw there decrying the lack of sex despite the fact that females are 50 percent of the population. There is even more crazy but it all stems from deriving self worth from women and the resulting obsession about women.

Strange that the men’s rights movement doesn’t focus on fatherhood etc issues. It actually puts very little focus on that.

I did a Google search and the reader is right. I came across several articles like this one in TIME, which notes, among other things, that these groups

tap into fear and insecurity and turn it into blame and rage. Often the leaders of these groups are men who feel as though they got screwed in a divorce. They quote all sorts of statistics about child custody and unfair alimony payments, because in their minds, the single mother who has to choose between feeding the kids or paying the rent is a myth. They believe passionately in their own victimhood and their creed goes something like this: Women are trying to keep us down, usurp all our power, taking away what it means to be a man.

My take on this movement is that you have a bunch of guys who failed to confront their own faults as husbands, fathers and lovers, and that they instead choose to blame women for their lot in life.

It’s certainly not unique. We all have our flaws, and when confronted about it our first reaction is often denial and defense. I’m sure they also believe their own bullshit and believe women were created for nothing other than serving males in the kitchen, bedroom and nursery.

Reasonable people look at this sort of thing and wonder how it can be in the 21st century. We’re supposed to be beyond it, right? But then there are still plenty of gay haters in the world, as well as those who despise Jews and African Americans.

I can’t change them. None of us can. They can only change themselves through a lot of personal growth and soul searching. I hope that’s how it plays out for them.

Meanwhile, I choose to weaken their hand by being the best man I can be.

Men's Rights Activists: Men complaining about issues created by men and blaming it on feminism somehow

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Support for Janessa Gordon

I’ve been following the story of 18-year-old Janessa Gordon’s hospitalization after a car wreck. I don’t know her personally, though I am acquainted with her mom, Kimberly Lepito, via Facebook.

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I feel some connection with the young woman because she attended Northeast Metropolitan Technical High School in Wakefield, which I graduated from 25 years ago. Unfortunately, she was unable to attend her graduation last week because of injuries she sustained during the accident in Rangeley, Maine.

She was in Maine with about 20 classmates attending a pre-graduation celebration and was a front-seat passenger in a car that crashed. According to news reports, the driver lost control while trying to pass another vehicle at 90 miles per hour.

My prayers go out to Janessa and her family during this difficult time. If you’re a praying person, please add your prayers too.

Medical costs will surely be crushing. You can help by donating to an account at gofundme.com, set up by family friend Darla Casey-Smith a couple days after the accident. Updates on Janessa’s condition are posted regularly. Donations can also be sent to Blessings for Janessa Gordon, c/o Eastern Bank, 72 Loring Ave. Salem, MA 01970.

Janessa Gordon

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To the Coward with the Cell Phone

In Tuesday’s post, I criticized a mother for giving in to her child’s spoiled tirade and whining about the legal ramifications. But there’s another irritant in this story: the anonymous bystander who video recorded the mother leaving her child in the car with a cell phone and then sent it to police.

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Yeah, Kim Brook’s essay irritated me. The worst wasn’t her leaving the kid in the car or her failure to lay down the law. It was her defensive drivel, which lacked any kind of lesson readers could benefit from.

But I don’t blame her one bit for wishing that bystander had approached her instead of quietly recording her failure and dropping a dime. Maybe that person thought they were being a responsible citizen. But the act was cowardly.

To stand in the shadows recording someone is pathetic at best. It would be understandable if the bystander were recording a mob hit or an act of political corruption. Getting caught could lead to bodily harm in those circumstances. But in this case the bystander was recording an unarmed woman. If leaving the kid in the car was such a reprehensible act in this person’s opinion, the better, more courageous thing to do would have been to get in Brook’s face and tell her she was an idiot for endangering her child that way.

Chances are Brooks would have been mortified by her own behavior and I doubt she’d ever leave her son in the car again after that.

It would have been the best possible outcome.

Whoever the bystander is, I hope they feel like shit for:

  • Being too much of a chicken shit to confront Brooks directly.
  • Setting a legal process in motion that cost a lot of people time, money and emotional well-being. Brooks was stupid, but the punishment was way over the top. She caved and had a moment of bad judgement, but she’s not a child abuser by all outward appearances.
  • Bringing Brooks to a state of mind where she felt the need to defend herself in a column that was torture for the reader.

This whole affair illustrates how outrageously unreasonable our society has become.

Cell phone screen that says Big Brother is watching you

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The Blues Brothers’ Brand of Catholicism

The Blues Brothers is one of my all-time favorite comedies. What’s not to love about over-the-top police chases, white supremacists being pushed over a bridge by an oncoming car and levitating nuns?

My kids finally reached an age to see the film, and they loved every minute of it. Being good Catholic school boys, they especially loved watching two guys get into all manner of trouble to raise money to save a Catholic orphanage.

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As a converted Catholic, I’ve read the Biblical passages about Jesus befriending slimy tax collectors and thieves. People often miss the point that He came down to save people like that and that all dirtbags have a shot at redemption.

Given my earlier history of bad behavior and the struggles I still have in being a good person, it’s a faith I cling to hard, hoping that I ultimately earn my blessings.

When things are hard, it’s easy for people to get discouraged and lose faith. What I love about The Blues Brothers is that Jake and Elwood Blues are constantly getting shit hurled at them. The cops are after them, the Illinois Nazis want to kill them and Jake’s ex keeps trying to blow them to bits. But they’re undeterred, plodding along, putting their band back together and playing a concert to raise the tax money to save the orphanage they grew up in.

They misbehave in every possible way, but their hearts stay in the right place.

They go back to prison, but they accomplish their “mission from God.”

The movie symbolizes something special for me: faith that stands up to everything. I doubt that’s how John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd planned it. The movie is ultimately a celebration of Chicago and the blues.

But it’s what I got from it, and it makes me happy.

The Blues Brothers

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The Spoiled Brat, the Whiney Mom and the Damage Done

Parents screw up. I certainly do. Most acknowledge a mistake when they make it. So when someone leaves a 4 year old in the car and writes a rambling essay about all the legal woe that came of it, I struggle to sympathize.

Mood music:

Kim Brooks writes about her mistake in Salon.com in the essay “The Day I Left My Son in the Car.” She writes of a harrowing morning getting her kids on a plane and making a last-minute trip to the store because her son misplaced his headphones. It was going to be a long flight, and she couldn’t board without headphones so the kid could use his iPad and keep quiet.

At the last minute, the boy announces he’s going with her. Despite her better instincts, she relents. When they reach the store, he announces he’s not leaving the car; he’s too busy with the iPad.

So she lets him stay, figuring she’ll just be a minute. She returns to the car and a safe-and-sound son five minutes later. After the flight, Brooks discovers she’s in a heap of trouble because a bystander used a cellphone to record her leaving the child and later returning. The bystander sent the recording to police.

The rest of the essay chronicles her dealings with lawyers and law enforcement and how absolutely awful it all was. If she has a lesson to share, it’s buried beneath all the whining.

I want to sympathize. She didn’t act maliciously. She made a split-second decision. A bad one, but find me a parent who hasn’t and I’ll eat a live worm.

Here’s what’s truly outrageous to me: She admits giving in to a seemingly spoiled brat:

“I don’t want to go in,” my son said as I opened the door. He was tapping animated animals on a screen, dragging them from one side to the other. “I don’t want to go in. I changed my mind.”

He glanced up at me, his eyes alight with what I’d come to recognize as a sort of pre-tantrum agitation. “No, no, no, no, no! I don’t want to go in,” he repeated, and turned back to his game.

And then I did something I’d never done before. I left him. I told him I’d be right back. I cracked the windows and child-locked the doors and double-clicked my keys so that the car alarm was set. And then I left him in the car for about five minutes.

The rest of the essay goes something like this: “He didn’t die. He wasn’t kidnapped.” Why then, was she being punished?

Here’s why, Kim:

You should have made him go in. Better yet, when he refused to get out, you should have driven back without the headphones and confiscated the iPad. Sure, he’d have screamed bloody murder. But he would have learned something.

Do us all a favor: Instead of writing essays like this, why don’t you discipline your child instead?

Thanks.

Baby crying

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Lower Your Expectations

Occasionally, my kids get all kinds of upset when their high hopes for something don’t go as expected.

A good example is the disappointment Duncan felt when it was too chilly to go in the campground pool Memorial Day weekend. He remembered one campout last year when he got to swim for hours, and to him, that was an important ingredient for an awesome weekend. He got over it and still had a good time. But the disappointment he expressed was dramatic.

I was thinking about his disappointment on the drive into work this morning and was reminded that I used to be equally dramatic when something failed to meet my expectations. My typical reactions were far worse, though. I’d give into my addictive impulses, mope for days and, perhaps worst of all, I’d let disappointment completely destroy the rest of the day, weekend, holiday, what have you.

Mood music:

When you have OCD and a brain that never stops thinking, you tend to expect certain things out of your day. When the expectation is a bad one and isn’t fulfilled, it’s a huge weight off the shoulders. Expect to be told that you have cancer and then learn it’s just a benign lump is freeing.

But when you expect something good and it doesn’t happen — a snow day, a night out, a promotion at work — the sudden change of events can be devastating to a guy like me.

I’ve gotten better, though, because I learned to keep my expectations low.

That same Memorial Day weekend experience is a good example. I remembered how it rained so much the year before and how disappointed I was. This time I went in assuming the weather would suck, and I prepared, bringing some good reading and the laptop in case the writing muse paid a visit, which it did. It turns out the weather, though chilly, was pretty decent. We got in a lot of time outdoors.

I went in with low expectations and got a far better weekend than I planned for.

I don’t pull this off every time. But I have certainly gotten good results more often from lowered expectations. I’ve also learned to look at plans that fall apart as plot twists, and that’s helped me roll with the punches better.

Cheers.

set low expectations and blow them away<