“America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh, whose TV crime show has helped police capture 1,500 fugitives and find 50 missing children since 1988, is being given an honorary award from organizers of the Emmys.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said on Tuesday said it will give its Governors Award to Walsh for making an impact on society through the use of TV.

“John Walsh has dedicated his life to the betterment of society, and while doing so has used television in an inventive and extraordinary way,” academy chief executive John Shaffner said in a statement. “His contribution to society goes far beyond just hosting a hit TV show, but sets a prime example of how television can be used to convey an important message.”

Walsh became known around the world as a crime fighter and victims’ advocate after his 6 year-old son Adam was abducted from a mall near his home in Hollywood, Fla., on July 27, 1981 and found murdered two weeks later.

The case remained unsolved for 27 years until 2008 when police linked the slaying to a serial killer who died in prison and who claimed responsibility for hundreds of murders.

Read the full piece here.

The troubled actress didn’t admit to stealing a $2,500 necklace last February, but her no contest plea does go on her record as a conviction.

Apparently not content to subsidize the whining of the nonentities at Media Matters, Soros is taking a break from his adventures in currency manipulation and general scuzziness to enlist entertainment celebrities like Sting in his newest quest.  The Drug Policy Alliance is the result, a group whose members, as its founder puts it, “come from across the drug use spectrum.”  Yes, the junkies, stoners, hopheads, dope fiends, pill-poppers, and Lindsay Lohan are unanimous:  Drug laws are bad, and it’s probably BusHitler’s fault.

The threshold problem with comments by Sting such as, “The war on drugs represents an extraordinary violation of human rights,” is that Sting presumably not only believes this piffle, but further believes that he can put down his bass and offer meaningful input into the discussion.  This assumption of competence is a common delusion among celebrities, and here it has more potential for damage than most mindless celebribabble.

Now, Sting is not alone – no one in that clip says anything worthwhile.  One woman, who is bald for no apparent reason, states that “The War on Drugs is a war on people of color,” as if Americans decided they would outlaw crack because they fear that black people might enjoy themselves.  Montel Williams shows up to explain that drug laws prevent him from making choices about his own body, but the awful tie and ridiculous earring he chose to wear make a powerful argument against allowing him to make any kind of choices at all.

Tony Papa also appears.  He went to jail for 12 years for being part of a drug deal – oh, I mean committing “a nonviolent drug offense” – and became an artist on the taxpayer’s dime.  While most of us will likely ask “Why only 12?,” naturally Papa is worshipped by trendy leftist celebrities.  Some Hollywood half-wit even scooped up the rights to his inspiring story.  So, to repeat, Tony Papa joined a drug conspiracy, got arrested, went to jail, leveraged that into becoming a hip artist and the subject of a movie, and yet he is somehow the real victim.

Of course, there’s also the perennial “America imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world!” meme.  In fact, the only drug incarceration problem in America is that too few drug dealers are incarcerated.  Sting suffers from the same delusion that afflicts many of his celebrity pals.  He seems to think that if the kind of people who deal drugs didn’t have drugs to deal, they would naturally flock to the world of hard work and responsibility.  Oh, if only drugs weren’t illegal, the drug dealing scumbags who infest our ghettos, barrios and college sociology departments would morph into clean-shaved, untatted workerbees eagerly embracing the world of 9-5 employment.  Yeah, it was outlawing meth and crack that turned the scumbags into scumbags. 

At one point, the clip promises “new solutions” to the drug problem.  Then Sting pops back up, smug and self-satisfied, to announce that drug laws violate his individual sovereignty.  Uh, typically, when you say you are going to provide new solutions you might consider, you know, providing some new solutions instead of some new cliché.

I certainly enjoy Sting and his pals’ new-found appreciation of my personal autonomy and “sovereignty over my body.”  I assume they’ll be standing by me when I reject the government’s interference in my health care decisions.  Unlikely.  If you think consistency is one of their strong points, perhaps you’ve been smoking the same stuff as them.

Now, Sting was always annoying but here he is reaching new heights of crappiness and pomposity in direct proportion to his declining relevance.  It’s always a pleasure to hear some Brit mega-millionaire who glides around his English manor practicing tantric sex sound off on American domestic policy. 

Please Sting, save us!  Unleash the full intellectual firepower you’ve amassed writing forgettable smooth jazz/rock fusion tunes for people who buy their music at Starbucks.  Just because you’ve been waited on hand and foot for three decades by a coterie of professional sycophants telling you you’re wiser than Buddha and smarter than Einstein doesn’t mean it’s true. 

There may be a case for looking at our drug laws, but these nimrods don’t make it.  The most compelling points are made by the conservatives at National Review and the libertarians at Reason.  Sure, pot smokers steal your snacks, listen to Phish and sound-off with long, disjointed monologues about the miracle of hemp, but I have a hard time getting too bent out of shape by them.  Many celebrities are among them, but Sting and Soros aren’t just talking about causal stoners.  They think we ought to go open season on meth, crack and whatever else these degenerate half-wits today are ingesting.  No thanks – I’d prefer not to live with the mess you’re rich enough to ignore.

The fact is that His Stingness knows nothing – or cares nothing – about the unspeakable devastation drugs cause, particularly within the inner cities.  Instead of standing behind the one truly effective response to urban drug terror – throwing the bastards in a cell and dropping the key down the Guatemalan sinkhole – His Majesty Sting decrees that drug dealing scumbags should run free, then retreats back behind his gates and armed guards to further hone his delayed orgasm skills.

Well, Sting, let’s discuss your really keen points about why poison ought to be legal.  But let’s expand the scope of our discussion to include some other celebrities who might be able to provide us with some valuable insights.  Let’s invite Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Brad Renfro, DJ AM, and Brittany Murphy to weigh in with their points of view.  Oh wait, they’re all dead.  So are just a few others.

Like a Sean Penn who can’t help but fly into some hellhole, figuratively fellate the local anti-American strongman then jet back to Santa Monica in time for dinner at Pizzeria Mozza, Sting wanders out of his fairy-tale life for a few minutes to tell the benighted peons in the real world how they need to live their lives before retiring back inside his palace behind three layers of security.  The violence, the abuse, the wasted potential brought on by drugs mean nothing to him; what is important is his own act of scolding his lessers for failing to conform to his personal vision.

That’s Sting’s high – lording over others as if he was something more than a glorified cruise ship bassist who got lucky and didn’t have to spend his career cranking out covers of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” for Corona-swilling passengers during runs between San Diego and Puerto Vallarta on the S.S. Living Hell.  And like so many in the entertainment world, he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of possession of stupid ideas – with intent to distribute.

—–

Breaking Bad is the best crime show currently airing on television. It starts with an original premise. Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, is a low paid high school chemistry teacher in a dead end job. He has a handicapped son (RJ Mitte) and a wife (Anna Gunn) who doesn’t work. They’re barely making ends meet. And then he gets a bomb dropped on him. He’s diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Walter’s given less than a year to live.

Looking at his options and his debts, Walter realizes that he will leave his wife and son with nothing. His wife will have to go back to work, which she hasn’t done in years. His son, who has cerebral palsy, will not have much help in life. He’s in high school, but there is no money to send him off to college.

So Walter gets an idea from his brother-in-law, Hank Schrader (Dean Norris). Hank is a DEA agent and the big problem in Kingman are meth addicts. There are a lot of them. Hank talks about how stupid they are and how much money there is in that business. So Walter puts two and two together in his mind. He’s a chemist. He could make drugs far superior to the crap on the market. And he’s smart. Maybe he can out think those people and make enough money before he dies that his family won’t be destitute. But of course, no one in his family can know what he’s planning. The other problem is, Walter has no experience with crime or drugs. He has no idea where to start.

Enter Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a drop out student of Walter’s who was a high school dealer. Walter contacts Jesse and enlists him with his plan. Walter will use his expertize to make the drugs, Jesse will use his connections to sell them and they’ll split the money. Jesse was going nowhere so he accepts. Hilarity ensues.

Jesse is a clueless punk who think’s he’s smart, like just about any dude in his early 20s. Neither he, nor Walt, have any idea how ruthless the criminals they will have to deal with are. Or how dangerous their new profession is. But they find out the hard way. And the fun comes from Walt pretending to be this boring chem teacher on chemo while trying to keep everyone from knowing that he’s become the most sought after meth manufacturer in the area. His DEA agent brother in law has no idea, as Walk acts like a fumbling Clark Kent keeping his secret identity hidden.

The show was created by X-Files writer/exec-producer Vince Gillian who provides a storyline filled with some of the best twists on TV. Breaking Bad manages to fool you almost every time and yet delivers a satisfying conclusion to each episode. Last season ended with a surprise that was sheer brilliance. They had been setting it up all season and if you watched, you thought you knew what was going to happen. Instead they blew the audience away.

And while the writing is top notch the acting is even better. Gillian does a tremendous job of fleshing out the characters and shows all their sides. The actors rise to the challenge and provide performances that can best be called master classes in acting. Lead by Bryan Cranston who is like a modern day Jack Lemmon, Cranston shows us a character that starts off as a doormat and morphs into a complex man who finds his own inner Scarface while trying to be a loving father and husband. It’s not as simple a task as he may have thought. Aaron Paul as his cohort Jesse is absolutely brilliant as the idiotic partner who manages to screw up just about every plan they hatch. His dialog is some of the most hysterical in the show. The luscious Anna Gunn plays Walt’s wife as a woman entering middle age who’s forced to reenter the working world because she doesn’t trust her husband anymore. Dean Norris’ Hank is someone you think you have pegged as soon as you meet him and then you discover there’s much more depth to this narc who loves the badge. Recent additions like Bob Odenkirk as Walt’s crooked lawyer and Giancarlo Esposito as his mysterious distributor are excellent.

If you loved the Sopranos when it as good, you’ll probably love this. It has a similar flavor.

Breaking Bad returns to AMC this Sunday, March 21st at 10PM/9 Central.

Frommer says he’ll consider whether “tourists should safeguard themselves” by avoiding the crime-ridden hellhole that is the Grand Canyon. After I read about this, I decided to do a search to see if Frommer ever made similar pronouncements about other cities or states. I wondered if he had ever told people to avoid Washington DC, where, according to a US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004 report – that place topped the entire country in crime.

Zilch. Nor could I find any such commentary, regarding Detroit, Memphis or Miami – the only large cities in the US with more than 950 violent crimes per 100,000 people, according to FBI’s 2008 crime report. And what of President Obama’s very own Chicago, a city experiencing a dramatic uptick in shootings, muggings and other violent gang activity? Did Frommer warn travelers away from that bullet-ridden borough?

Nope. Fact is, Frommer went after Arizona, because it’s an easy target. It’s just a buncha white rednecks with guns, even if one of the white rednecks is uh, black. And it fed Frommer’s ego: voicing an opinion in sync with the liberal, like-minded media provides him, for a brief moment, an elevated sense of self.

But I sympathize. All he does all day is make travel guides.

Maybe he should get out more.

Tonight, we’ve got Jim Nortion, Faith Salie and Tucker Carlson, and Mad Men’s Rich Sommer!

“There is a long history of African-Americans and Latino’s being stopped by law enforcement, disproportionately” – Barack Hussein Obama. Boy, there’s a prejudiced little statement… against cops.

Sure it may be true that more minorities in this country are pulled over or even given the once-over by our police officers… But a disproportionate amount… Really?

When you take into account that black people are over seven times more likely to commit murder or a violent crime, I think you’ve got to ask yourself, at what point do we forbid a police officer from doing his job in the name of political correctness? Shouldn’t the honorable men and women who put themselves in harms way to protect us be given the benefit of the doubt?

Do we really want to get to a point where we assume racism is at play every time a decorated officer such as Jim Crowley makes a game-time decision?

As is often the case, Mr. Crowley had to deal with a phoned-in complaint of somebody breaking and entering. When the officer showed up, the man happened to be black (as well as uncooperative). Should he have just turned around and gone home? Would that have made him a more progressive chap?

The truth is that we don’t know what was said and we don’t know how out of line Mr. Gates had truly been. What we do know is that Officer Crowley has been nothing short of an exemplary police officer throughout his career and had never displayed any racially prejudiced tendencies before. We know that Mr. Gates is a notorious racist. We also know that Crowley works a job that causes him to deal with violent, volatile perpetrators who can flip the switch at any second to put his life in immediate danger.

For crying out loud, these people get shot at! Everyday people like Officer Crowley have to deal with scum who would like nothing more than to light them up like the fourth of July. Ever see that scene in “Robocop”?  Yeah, like that. After one day on the job Obama would have to change his tapered little Hugo Boss pants.

Another question… How can so many cops be “racist white men” when many of the police officers themselves are minorities (much like Crowley’s black partner who was at the scene and supports the man 100%)?

Answer me that one, Bama. Sean Penn, feel free to chime in here too, buttercup.

I shan’t lie folks, I really don’t have all of the facts to make a proper judgment call on this one… But that won’t stop me from stating my opinion anyway. Sound familiar?

A few days ago, an even more egregious travesty upon the innocent occurred in upstate New York.  A disgruntled man blocked off the exit to a community service building with his car, then went around front and entered the building firing a high-powered rifle.  Before the rampage was done, fourteen souls were gone, including the shooter’s.   

Predictably, there surfaced immediately the usual suspects who painted this tragedy as further evidence that more comprehensive and restrictive gun laws are needed, now more than ever. 

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

But first let me say that my heart breaks for the families of those killed and wounded in this past week’s slayings.  They were done in both cases by deranged men, intent upon murdering innocent and unarmed people.   You will notice that in the most recent case, the scumbag killed himself quickly and painlessly before having to confront the consequences of his evil actions.  (And those of us who believe in the afterlife know of what consequences await him.)  The shooter at the convalescent home took on a policeman and one shot dropped him.   What’s my point?  Almost all of these killers are cowards.  They arm themselves to the teeth and go up against an unarmed enemy no more formidable than a cornered herd of sheep. 

How very brave of them.

The Main Stream Media is busy screeching two questions:  1) Where did the shooter get the weapons? and 2) What was his motive?

I’m sorry… but who gives a sh*t??  Anyone can get a gun anywhere in the world, regardless of the prevailing gun laws.  As for motive…hey, I don’t care whether he was frustrated about his unemployment, or the fact that he couldn’t speak English, or his favorite for American Idol got voted off.  What difference does any of that make when a deranged asshole decides to go postal?   Is society now to walk on eggs, even more tolerant and deferential than we already are; constantly scared to death that we might inadvertently say or do something that may offend a tender sensibility and trigger a violent orgy of mass murder?  Hey…not in my movie.

A day after the horrendous mass-shooting in Binghamton, a deranged scum-dog kill-‘em-there A-hole gunned down three Pittsburgh Police Officers.  His picture (along with assorted tattoos) was immediately thrown onto the media screens, quoting his words that, “Crazy to me is going through the motions … Crazy to me is letting each day slip past you. Crazy is being insignificant. Crazy is being obscure, pointless.”

 My plea to ALL media:  Stop putting their faces on the news!   These scumbags who are virtually screaming, “Hey world look at me!  I killed a bunch of people!  Now I matter!  I’m a star!!”   (Yeah, pal – nice career move.)   You, in the media, are giving these coward miscreants exactly what they want – to be media stars for 15 minutes.  They couldn’t get enough attention to suit their self-possessed, meaningless existence, so they went for the easy way into infamy – they locked and loaded and snuffed out a bunch of innocent lives.   ”But it’s our job to report the news,” you say in your lame attempt to insulate yourselves from complicity; but you in the media are accomplices in this sad, sick media mobius.  Report the news and refuse to put their pictures up!  Refuse to give them what they want — media exposure.  Don’t let them ‘go out in a blaze of glory’.  Do not yield to the impulse to pick the low hanging fruit; let the other jerks do that.  Be better than the rest.  Your coverage encourages other would-be psycho killers.  Surely you can see this.  Surely there must be some moral integrity left somewhere in the media.   How about exercising just a modicum of social responsibility for a change?

But I digress.

It is a grievous sadness that anyone had to die at the hands of these demented homicidal losers.  Dialing 911 is of course a good thing when the sh*t goes down – but the police are a dispatch call away.  The responder in last week’s case in Binghamton, N.Y. was there very quickly, less than five minutes, I understand.   But generally it takes an overworked police force longer to arrive on the scene – at least it does in my neighborhood.   But even at five minutes…a lot can happen within that time.  And in New York, by the time the several SWAT teams arrived, the damage was done, fourteen people were already dead.  

Beyond the inevitable, yet ultimately meaningless, questions of why he did it, there’s a much more important question we should be asking ourselves:  What if one or more of those innocent civilians had been packing, and was trained, and drew his or her gun…and shot back? 

Things may have turned out very differently.

What is needed, now more than ever, is for Americans to pull their heads out of their tails and become proficient with firearms.  And then, having gained competency with their safe usage, arm themselves.   And then, having armed themselves, be prepared to deploy those arms in the responsible defense of innocent life. 

Guns stop crime.

Sorry for the whiplash all you Lefties just got doing the double-take on that last line.  (Call your chiropractor for an adjustment, it’ll be all right.)  But yes, guns stop crime.  Now, of course, that’s an intentionally incomplete statement.  Obviously, guns don’t stop crime in and of themselves, any more than guns cause crime.  A gun is an inanimate object, a tool, incapable of doing anything on its own.  And like any tool, it is the user that determines the outcome of its utility.  Statistically, guns in this country are used more to stop crime than perpetrate crime almost thirty to one. An armed citizen can stop horrendous murders The so-called “gun-free zones” are a joke.  Who pays attention to those zones?  Law abiding citizens.  Your friends, peace-loving people.  Who ignores them?  The bad guys.  And also…smart people, who risk imprisonment and persecution to protect their loved ones against the bad guys who might want to harm innocent life.

An armed, trained citizen can make a difference. 

I’ve never worked for the police force, nor have I ever been in the military service.  But I’m around guns and gun owners a lot.  Aside from having had extensive tactical firearms training over the years (professionally and for fun), I also do competitive shooting events all over the country.  And I admit that when I first started, it was a daunting moment when I realized that I was surrounded by a large group of people, each of whom had a gun on his person.  But what I came to realize is this:  There is not a safer place to be, than surrounded by a bunch of responsible, armed gun owners.   I’m not sure of the origin of the saying (but I heard it first from a gentleman named Massad Ayoob in his book In the Gravest Extreme):  “An armed society is a polite society.”

Now…  I understand this is anathema to many on the Left…and probably some on the Right.   Fantasies of ‘the Wild, Wild West‘ roam through their minds; people brandishing guns at the least provocation, shootouts in the streets, neighbors drawing down on each other if one refuses to turn down the music or take in their trash cans.  And sure, there are exceptions to every rule…parts of the Middle East come to mind…

But in civilized society, this saying largely holds true.  An armed society is a polite society.  There is something that comes over a person once they, A) have been highly trained in one or more of the firearms skills, and B) are armed with a gun.   One’s countenance steadies.  Your very carriage changes.  You become a model citizen; because along with the actual physical training of gun handling and manipulation, safety awareness, loading, malfunction clearance, and general marksmanship…comes education.   Legal, civil, ethical…and moral.  

More specifically, you learn the hypothetical ramifications of getting into a real gun fight.  You learn what is likely to happen should you elect to produce your weapon in defense of innocent life; and also what the police response is likely to be, step-by-step, from the moment the initial 911 call goes out, to you either being turned loose…booked for a crime… or worse.  (the ‘or worse’ would be waving a gun about as amped-up officers arrive on scene, draw down on you, misinterpret that you’re the good guy – and shoot you my mistake.   It’s been known to happen.)   You learn how you are likely to be handled, possibly ordered or thrown to the ground and cuffed.  You find out what the questioning process is, how the investigation is handled and what your likelihood of going to jail…or being released. 

And beyond the legal problems — you may be sued, either by the wounded bad guy himself, or by the family of the dead bad guy.  You learn that you are talking a minimum of $50,000 in legal fees just to defend yourself.  You may lose your job.  You may lose your house.  You may lose your standing in your community, the respect of your friends, and you may have to move out of the area.  And that’s if you were completely justified by law in the shooting. 

But beyond the legality of the shooting…and the civil action that may or may not be taken against you…is the moral issue.  There are psychological issues.  How would it make you feel to hurt someone, even kill them…though you were completely legally justified using your weapon.   How does it square with your ethics or religious beliefs?  Is your marriage affected adversely?  Do your children look at you differently, having to defend your actions at school?  What does that feel like?

Your reaction may surprise you.  I have known people who have produced their weapon in defense, have been involved in a gunfight; and I know people who have had to take a life.  In each instance a common reaction held true:   First, there was an immediate elation and relief at having survived a potentially lethal situation.   This was quickly followed by anger and deep regret at having been forced into the fight.  Then, came an unmistakable sadness and devastation.   I’m not talking about the steeling of the heart necessary for the combat veteran; I’m talking about a typical law-abiding citizen who finds himself in the unenviable position of having used his weapon in lethal defense.  The use of deadly force has lasting impact and permanence of consequence.   It’s no small deal.

A trained, armed citizen learns the legal, civil and moral ramifications of being involved in a gun fight to such elaborate and excruciating extent, that I guarantee you:  the very last thing you ever want to do is get into a gun fight. 

But what if we citizens were armed?  What if we took the Second Amendment to heart, not only as our Constitutionally-guaranteed right…but our responsibility?  What if the two cowardly mass-murderers in North Carolina and New York couldn’t be sure they would be confronting unarmed citizens?  Maybe they wouldn’t have entered the buildings in the first place? 

Maybe…maybe not. 

But one thing is irrefutable:  In every state where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry guns, violent crime drops to almost zero.  And everywhere people are prohibited from owning or carrying guns…burglary, armed assault, and home invasion crime sky-rockets.

Criminals in prison testify that the number one deterrent to them committing violent crime upon a citizen…is the fear that their possible mark might be armed with a gun.  It naturally follows that the biggest fans of gun control…are the criminals.   They love when their targets are disarmed by gun laws.  Because only law-abiding citizens pay attention to them!  Criminals certainly don’t.

But if I enact my right in Los Angeles to keep and bear arms…and carry a concealed hand gun…and am deemed a criminal for it…and in deploying my weapon to avert a much more grievous offense against the innocent (a rape or robbery, or murder)… am I a criminal?

Yes…and no.  The Law of Competing Harms, as I understand it, says that you are not guilty of a crime, if in the act of breaking the law, you avert a more heinous crime from being committed.

So I ask myself…what’s it going to be?  In the face of a possible tragedy such as these horrendous shootings, do we just ‘think a good thought’ and hope it all goes away?  Do we trust that maybe a cop will get there in time when it all goes down and only seven people will be killed? 

Or do we step up and declare ourselves to be Defenders.  The American citizen as Citizen Soldier.  Trained and armed.  A model citizen – responsible, professional, respectful.  And if some scum-sucking lowlife shows up at a McDonald’s or a Denny’s where you’re sitting with your wife and kids, and he pulls out an AK-47 thinking this is the day he’s gonna ice some people and get ‘pay back’ for some imagined grievance…  Well there’s a good chance you could completely ruin his afternoon.  

“But what about Los Angeles?  New York City?  You can’t legally carry concealed in these cities.” – Joe Lefty

And your irrelevant point is..?

Am I advocating breaking the law?  Yes.  I’m advocating civil disobedience.  In support of the Law of Moral Common Sense.   I’m not a vigilante.  But I am prepared to risk criminal prosecution in order to defend innocent life.  Concealed-carry permits are almost all but impossible to get in Los Angeles currently, even to a model citizen who is also highly trained in the use of firearms like myself.  So do I have a concealed carry permit?  Yeah – it’s called the 2nd Amendment.

“The competent deployment of a gun, on scales both personal and national, is the guarantor of our freedom.” – Gary Graham

Now we hear from the Obama Administration that the problem is there are too many guns out there.   In a prevailing cultural mindset that wants to avoid accountability, shirk responsibility and just be taken care of…my question to you, dear reader is…  How long are we going to buy into what the Left tells us is the mandate of the Obamanation:  That we must sit back, let the brilliant Obamaheads figure it all out, and simply take care of us?  They will take over and run our formerly free markets, banks, and corporations.  They will monitor and censor our airwaves, creating what they call ‘fairness’, thereby protecting us from the ubiquitous ‘hate speech’ of the Right.  They will take over the medical community and deliver to us ‘free’ health care that will resemble a wasted and decimated shell of its former magnificence.   And then they will compel us to build autos we don’t want to buy, and use energy we don’t want to use, and do things we don’t want to do…all for our own good — if we were only smart enough to realize it. 

And, oh yeah, almost forgot.  They will want to take away our guns.

 As a great man once said, “…From my cold, dead fingers.”  (– C. Heston)  

Well FTS!  We don’t want to be ‘taken care of’.  We want to be left alone.  I say we keep our guns.  We keep our liberty.  We keep our country. 

Who’s with me?

Here’s the thing: no matter how many hours of community service T.I. does, it will never make up for the crap he puts into the minds of his listeners.  His biggest hit is “Whatever You Like.”  Here’s a sample lyric “Whatever You Like”: Late night sex so wet you’re so tight …Let me put this big boy in yo life / The thang get so wet, it hit so right. 

Not surprisingly, T.I. has six children from three women.  The kids, sadly, have been saddled with names out of the WTF Name Dictionary: Messiah Ya’Majesty (after Barack Obama, no doubt), Domani Uriah, Clifford “King,” Major Philand, Zonnique, and Deyjah (who will no doubt be labeled Vu sooner or later).  When Clifford (T.I.’s namesake) is the luckiest kid in terms of names, you’ve got a problem. 

Here’s a lyric from another T.I. song, “Big Things Poppin’“: I send ‘em missiles that’ll have you goin’ in your underwear / I tote a pair of 40’s on me so you better tone it down.  Anybody surprised he got busted on a gun charge? 

There are those out there who patronize the African-American community by praising rappers like T.I.  Folks like John Kerry, who infamously stated, “I’m fascinated by Rap and Hip-Hop.  I think there’s a lot of poetry in it. There’s a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you’d better listen to it pretty carefully, ’cause it’s important.”  Folks like Barack Obama, who proclaims that many in the African-American community must accept more social responsibility, and simultaneously praises militant anti-Bush rappers like Ludacris as “great talents and great businessmen.”  

Since nobody seems willing to state the obvious due to cultural sensitivity – after all, as Eric Holder says, we’re a nation of cowards on race — I’ll say it: rap isn’t music; rap culture is disgusting and degrading; rap creates racial stereotypes and revels in them.  

First, rap isn’t music.  Music has three elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm.  Rap is all rhythm, very little melody, and virtually no harmony.  Cultural relativists who say that Eminem is like Mozart make Barbara Boxer look like Einstein. 

Second, rap culture is disgusting and degrading.  Not every song, of course – the culture as a whole.  It values the basest elements of human nature, from promiscuous sex to maltreatment of women to sickening violence.  It’s no wonder that rappers have the life expectancies of fruit flies: by the time they’re 40 – if they hit 40 – there’s a good shot they’ll have shot somebody, been shot, been busted for hard core drugs, or acquired an STD (see this short list).   The millions they earn from gullible white kids in the suburbs who just want to seem cool end up flushed down the drug/sex/fancy car toilet. 

Third, rap culture creates racial stereotypes and revels in them.  Many rappers (including Ice T, who now plays a cop on television) target the police for special hatred based on their alleged discriminatory tendencies.  Meanwhile, rappers kill each other in gang rivalries … and then have movies made about them (see Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. – and T.I., who was involved in violent altercation with rapper Lil’ Flip and Ludacris’ manager Chaka Zulu).  It provides ammunition to racists who wish to slander all black men as rap-loving violent misogynists, and it encourages ignorant and disadvantaged young black men to become rap-loving violent misogynists.  Lovelle Mixon may have listened to late Beethoven string quartets when he wasn’t busy committing felonies, but somehow I doubt it. 

Cultural diversity may be a wonderful thing, but rap isn’t.  Liberals may call rap art, but they also call glazed poop art.  They may praise rap as culturally enriching, but then again, they’re quick to defend human rights abuses by “culturally diverse” nations.  And they may defend it an authentic part of “black culture,” but that phrase is in and of itself racist – who’s going to define “black culture” as a whole?  If we start defining “black culture”, it won’t be long before we’re back to labeling successful blacks — Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and yes, Barack Obama — racial sell-outs if they don’t listen to rap.  Or, in the words of Michelle Obama, if they talk “like white people.” 

T.I. will no doubt emerge from prison with some new raps about thug life in the big house.  No doubt he’ll win some Grammys.  And no doubt some young black men will listen to him, think about the glories of thug life, and pull the trigger.

Those of us who have worked with crime data have long understood this problem. For example, 50 percent of counties in the US have zero murders in any given year and another 25 percent have just one murder. Over 70 percent of murders take place in just a little over 3 percent of the counties, but even that exaggerates the picture because anyone who has seen a picture of murders in a major city know how heavily concentrated they are in specific areas within the city.

I looked at I-Tunes descriptions for seasons seven and nine of “CSI” and seasons four and five of “CSI NY” as well as some episodes of “Law & Order,” but I can’t seem to find any episodes that deal with gangs. I found “Law & Order” shows that dealt with gang rape, but that is obviously not the same as gang violence. During the first season there is a murder by a doctor at a hospital, a white woman who guns down two blacks, a gay man killed because he was gay, a man who kills his lovers, and on and on during the first season.

The cases dreamed up for TV shows may make interesting viewing, but just remember they have little to do with more than a tiny minority of the crime in the US. Sometimes a show like “Law & Order” latches on to a real life event that has been in the news to form the basis for a script, but the reason they latch on to those pieces of news is their desperate desire to be relevant. The shows have other inaccuracies over who the criminals are and how the cases are solved, but that will be something for a later post.